Thanks to all readers of Ibn Qirtaiba who have enabled its popularity to grow exponentially over the two years since it hit the Internet. A good sign of the interest IQ now enjoys is the decreasing number of articles by its editor - none in this issue, aside from this brief editorial!
Having just introduced W Gregory Stewart's poetry as a regular feature, unfortunately this issue's short story, serial and Sci-Fi Corner column leave room for nothing else. There is, however, room for another selection of fine science fiction artwork. This issue features the synthetic fractal images of Ken Musgrave, a pioneer in that field. Professor Musgrave began creating fractal artwork during the six years he worked at the Yale math department with Benoit Mandelbrot (yes, that Mandelbrot). Clicking on any of his images in this issue will take you to a gallery of his art.
Short story: Chip Off the
Ol' Block by Vasilis Adams A
"Power is always charged with the impulse to eliminate human nature, the human variable, from the equation of action. Dictators do it by terror or by the inculcation of blind faith; the military do it by iron discipline; and the industrial masters think they can do it by automation."
- Eric Hoffer
Middle-aged with a broad bust, silvering hair and bushy stray brows Reginald stopped scribbling, squinted and eyed the intruder from behind the posh cherry-wood desk. He didn't like to be alone. Reginald was not young, looked strong for his age, and he wanted folk nearby him. He fancied weaker folk, employees who could be managed. Examining somewhat tentatively around him, he scrutinized the thin little man who had already taken a seat. Weak enough.
"What is the nature of your call, Mr-?"
"Hauge, Dr Seamus Hauge. Billions, Mr Marcus."
Staring hard now, Reginald Marcus, president of International Medical Software Development, bit his lip. He felt like a huge wooden cockroach foraged in his stomach. Last night's partying with the board pantheon was apparently not punishment enough. And currently they had been the only staple of companionship around. His inflicted isolation lately, he hoped, would not debilitate him, turn him into another Hughes.
The heavy sweet aroma expensive Havana cigars are famous for, mingled with the scent of leather of the choicely Near East quality. Marcus wished somebody change places with him. He sank deep into the the leather chair. The office would commence to pirouette if he shut his eyes.
"Billions?"
"Most appropriate, Mr Marcus, for the biggest medic software company around."
"That we are."
Reginald Marcus considered having an employer-employee talk with Ms. Atwood, his new, goggle-spectacled, personal secretary. Retirement had absorbed the older, more adept, Mrs. Parsons. Bless you, Mrs. Parsons, he thought, but your understudy dispenses protocol blindly.
"I do hope you remember." Hauge reached into his coat pocket and extricated a small white card. "You had said, 'Show this card'."
A vestige of recollection trundled in Marcus. "University of Edinburgh?"
"School of Computer Medicine - now doing a sabbatical at A & M," said Hauge. "Hadn't explained half of what it's all about. Too busy looking over my shoulder and all last evening."
Then and there, Marcus denounced Old Cherokee Bourbon and silently apologized to Ms. Atwood.
"You did say billions?"
"Quite. Sir, you pioneer in treading paths no one has ever voyaged on before. Of course, you'll undoubtedly be facing competition no one's ever dealt with..."
Marcus was grateful for the man's
garrulity. It gave him time to compose. Looking out the penthouse
window, that was one of the four walls opposite the luxurious
bar, he gazed upon the azaleas flooding onto the terrace, the
pointed and cubed tops of looming skyscrapers with their
mirroring or black windows, the steel and glass blocks of his
empire where the thousands of men and women worked for him like
sprightful ants scurrying every which way.
Marcus nodded at the man: his newest and perhaps most lucrative triumph. If only Quasimodo would stop pealing those bells inside his head.
He reached into the pocket of his cashmere jacket. "Want a couple?"
Hauge looked at what Marcus was offering. Anti acid drops. They came in an etched container, carved out of white gold in the shape of a basket cockle. A modest diamond carapace was set into it. A pistil of blood-red was infused atop it.
"I don't mind if I do." Hauge took two. "I say, we were a slight tipsy last night."
"A might." Marcus took a deep breath.
"It's a Mont Blane ruby," he said, fingering the blaring red stone.
His tenure just then carried the exaggerated seriousness of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. The container was small in Marcus's palm, but prodigious, substantial, potent.
"You do have an eye for the arresting," Hauge said. "Excellent taste too. The braised liver with the onions was lip-smacking, and the chitterlings...never tasted anything like it."
"To our subject, Dr. Hauge."
"Quite." Hauge alternated his legs. "It's a processor, to make a long story short. Somewhat different from a computer processor in that it learns and... and carries a certain, I might say, intrinsic leverage."
"Don't all?" Marcus tossed four anti acid pills into his mouth. Haziness enclose him and thickened.
"Not all," Hauge said. "Processors so far in the market are silicon and binary. They are made up of tiny transistors, switches, imprinted on silicon-based wafers which are activated to an on or off state by a trickle of current-"
A churning built up in Marcus's stomach, clutched for a time, then loosened. For a moment the upheaval seemed to wane. It was a rough landing, not like ever before.
The whipping in his gut built up again, gripped, expired. The pill holder shone. Its rainbow beams washed over him and nudged him five centimeters into the soft leather of the chair.
"Don't claim to be a pundit, but I am conversant with the subject of solid state electronics," Marcus said, showing a bit ruffled.
Hauge spoke over the wide desk separating them. "May I illustrate further?"
"Never say no to that."
Marcus tolerated another brisk, vibrantly disorienting pang of nausea. He must look the worse for wear. His onerous, strained breathing patiently slowed down, but still tethered in pain. "The stuff must have been poison," he mumbled, his heart hammering against his chest, keening to break loose from it. But Hauge seemed to no longer be attending him or his predicament.
He listened to Hauge prattle on about what he considered monumental, and rated him arch-ingrate. He thought that he would perish here, imbibed, maligned like an unsuspecting Napoleon amidst his empire; his immortality perhaps mere footsteps away.
"No offence intended," said Hauge.
Hauge looked relieved. Then lifted and high of heart. He now settled into his chair, relaxed, and seemed to appraise all that surrounded him.
The office was huge and plushly furnished and only a small part of the penthouse they were in. Soft music and singing was piped in that he recognized to be Bolivar, an old opera by the French Darius Milhaud.
Hauge upped his head and took in the vista of a quadrant of Dallas that lay beyond the enormous window, between an Apollo by Scopas and Orcagna's Madonna delle grazie.
"I only wanted to clarify a point," Hauge continued. "My discovery is not silicon-based or binary. It's organic, neural-prosthetic implant or permanantly cultivated, DNA-protein-based." He produced from his pocket a black cube the size of a die. A thin pig tail of tiny electrodes ran off it. "Uses quanta states instead of binary logic."
"No offence taken - son," Marcus returned. A candied Texas drawl garnished his voice. He craned forward for a better look. Landed a big one tthis time, his gut told him. On the spot assessment of multitudes of executives, yuppies and hirelings over the years and intuition had honed and sharpened his capacity for judging. Seldom did it prove him wrong. His ashen face once again started to bead with sweat.
The sun, rising behind the forest of buildings, had turned the cinemascope, polarized plate-window to sunset red - a lone, massive, vermilion ball, jabbed by black angular and sharp-edged protrusions, was only left to be discerned. The flat land and low granite hills beyond faded into a maroon dusk. Numbing out there, Marcus's thoughts now bandied about. The murky yellows, the glaring lapis blue sky, the dim harshness of the desert rocks and dust. The heat that makes the darkness ripple like black silk.
He had planned to leave today for Kruger National Park in South Africa to survey his latest acquisition there, a three wing hospital, purchased dirt cheap. But it could wait. So could Lanarkshire; that was a nine-floor, thousand-bed 'gift' from Glasgow, literally a steal. Competition better don their glasses, he thought.
"It works quite splendidly." Hauge interrupted Marcus's fixed look and raised the die higher. He regarded as Marcus got more deeply absorbed by the shades and moods around him. The hangover had run its course and would make things easier. Marcus looked to him dazed, and the eyes like two red puddles at the bottom of a dry well. Make hay while the sun shines, Hauge thought.
"Matter of fact its encapsulation is entirely too exaggerated. The active device inside is much, much smaller. It will be designed to interface directly with synapses. But the filament connections make it presently impossible to reduce further. Working on it. Its function? I'll demonstrate shortly."
Marcus steepled his hands. "About the billions." His attitude and diction changed, voice curt and brisque.
"No question about it. Everyone and their aunty would kill for one," Hauge preened. His listener attended mutely, so he cultivated the idea. "Rather funny, but fashion rests on the most rudimentary supposition that has ever promoted a model of human trend: a majority of people will be imitated more often than not. Fads come and go. Not trustworthy. Yet in the long run a trend-varying populace will be imitated most of the time than not. The untouchable harijan, here, would want, and be able, to reach the highest Brahman-"
"We're not Hindus, Mr Hauge," Marcus cut in, unsettled. "Jean Cocteau said, Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far. More pertinent, will the proponents of this trend have the tolerance to see it through to success and absorb the costs? Why, sir, would everyone want one?" Marcus fumbled with the pill container again.
Hauge looked down the desk. "Because we can make it from them for them," he said. "A trend of fashion will catch on in some places like flash fire, and this can do it, Mr Marcus!
"A fad or here to stay?" Marcus stubbornly inquired.
"Mr Marcus, what a question!"
"A good one," Marcus retorted. "A common mistake with technocrats is that they try to do away with, they say alleviate, human deficiencies. Aimless wriggling through the dark is what I say. Yet, and here's the paradox, they depend on these to make their bundle. They try to improve the system, and profit at the same time, by getting rid of it. Will your device provide to the degree that no other gambit is needed?"
Hauge stared puzzled.
"Look, we've got problems in this business that all these gadgets put together cannot solve," Marcus said. "Dehumanizing people to promote what is not simply a fad but a permanent fixture can prove not only unprofitable in the long run, but the most chancy and perfidious of all ventures risked. So, a fad or here to stay, Mr Hauge?" The raspy voice was permeate with disdain, with harsh reservation.
And your place in this snug paragon of corporate rectitude, Mr Marcus? Hauge itched to ask. But, for the present, he had to keep Marcus sweet, and thoroughly receptive.
Marcus sighed. "Your answer to my question?" he asked, and eyeballed Hauge. "Business, Hauge, ain't Pachisi."
"I don't know the answer," Hauge expelled, with calm gravity.
"I don't think you want it to be a fad," Marcus snorted. "Biological engineering is only a step below cyborgs." Now an odious and distasteful look darkened his face. He reflected at the consequence of the precarious grounds Hauge was rummaging through, and the rip it could irrevocably rend in the edifice of popular consent.
"Don't know who said, 'boldness without the rules of propriety, becomes insubordination'. That's burning ground, Hauge. The deep roots you talk about, are they perhaps the uprooting of other social strains?" Silently, All the same, curious as hell to see what you're nuzzling up to... Then loudly, "Want some coffee?"
Ms. Atwood softly served the cappuccino.
I must've been sloshed, Marcus thought. He grunted massaging his temples.
He put down one of the two silver and ivory tankards the secretary brought in, rose, moseyed over to where Hauge sat. His flat nose, his six foot three, two-twenty pound lean frame he hoped would hint at his beloved hobby. In his middle forties he could still get a few rounds in the ring without losing much wind. Other than by-the-book pugilism Marcus harrowed at all form of polemic art. But he loved to bluff. It gave him the edge over disorderly board meetings.
"Dr. Hauge, what's this about making computer components out of people?" A look of stern reproach appeared on his face.
The other scanned the tower before him and sipped the last drops of his coffee. "Not out of them, dear man, for them, like a heart valve, a skin graft from syntheticly cultured cells, plastic arteries, etcetera. Things that enhance, save people's lives as Pacemakers, artificial kidneys."
"Go on," Marcus said. He nudged near in another chair. Never had he been offered anything to compare with what this young man was offering. In his mind flashed a menagerie of cyberpunk images, endless queues of eager, nail-biting clientele. Meanwhile, dim circumspection tainted him with doubt. Visions of hacked, and patched up heads and defiled torsos paraded in front of him. But in the end he elbowed aside the stink of fear. He revelled at a euphoria of released capital fantasies.
"To put it simply," Hauge continued, "a sample of the subject's DNA is got and blown up hologrammically in a computer. The cell nucleus and double helix is much easier to deal with that way..."
Hauge thought of other things while he spoke. Something akin to hunger in that stare. A breeze of faith with a trace of sadness touched his face. It made Hauge's heart flutter. You never felt the bite of frost through torn shoes in deep Nor' Loch winter. Never had to eat stale bread and left-over mutton days unend in squalid, pest-infested, Auld Reekie ghettos to save up for coming tuition fees.
"...then the work begins. All genes not supportive to the
preset parameters are neutralized and modified. Genes that heal
the crippled, the blind, can make the deaf hear again; genes for
mathematical acumen, for musical talent, for body stamina,
business sagacity - you name it. The helix is then shrunk back
down to its nominal size, superimposed on the original, and with
the help of a broad-band laser beam is imprinted upon it..."
Blood, Marcus? Is that what you want? Hauge remembered his own skeletal, pinched face crimping in concentration over volumous texts. The explosive awakenings in the midst of nights by dreams in which cadavers he had dissected pursued him, threatening to fell him into so many lean strips. And that one child, the little girl, that expired in his arms slowly and lingeringly because the blood pool was empty and her parents could not pay Marcus, the world-wide provider of blood, for the rare, new blood. What new deal were you striking up, Marcus, at the time?
"Pardon my limited knowledge of genetics," at last Marcus wrenched in the luxurious chair, his hulking body coercing a tormented squeal from its frame, "but won't that just change the original chromosome's physical shape and not its quality?"
"Ah but it will. Chromosome is the name of the strange fellow: body of colour. Very sensitive to color frequency modulations. The modified facsimile will be color stained - coded with transparent dye where effective changes are desired, and by a mirror dye where not."
"Still, that leaves you with just one little, altered chromosome." Marcus stood up grinning, his argent hair wildly streaming and gleaming from the blowing air vent close above it, his pearly teeth teasing with their perfect dental work. He patted his lips with his index finger.
"That can, and will, reproduce its exact duplicate," Hauge came back, "since the regenerative mechanism will not have been touched. Only, now, it will not produce dyed molecules, but genuinely different molecules that correspond qualitatively, as well, to their counterparts. Chromosomes don't know about illusion. Don't know that the original strain is dissimilar merely in color and not in essence."
Marcus laughed, "I didn't know such infidelity, especially in the case of artificial encroachment, existed in these minuscule workhouses. But the building of a complete helix from half of one - a split helix - is done, if I'm not mistaken, with the aid of an enzyme," Marcus said.
"I didn't either - a decade back. But at University we managed, piecemeal, to weed out that protein type and the aminos and anything else that could interfere." Hauge tapped at the die and its dullness dispersed.
Marcus knitted his brows. "Well, won't something else still rectify the mutated helix?"
"Apoptosis - cell suicide? No. Now, the enzyme only constructs the mirror image of that which is in front of it from bona fide molecules. It does not compare chromosomes in doing so."
Marcus shook his head. "Hauge, it'll still give you a chromosome different from the subject's intrinsic physiology. Won't the body's defences fight it off?"
"Does the immune system fight off radioactively mutated chromosomes, tissue for that matter? If it did we would have the cure for AIDS - for most cancers. Same principle holds true here. Furthermore, this is controlled and meticulously guided mutation. Not to mention that it comes from the same contingency as its host's inherent genes."
Two million years of conditioning, Hauge thought. The sun. The moon. Lightning. Fire. The piquancy of light and the seductiveness of color and what they incite, all pact into an irresistible live blend of rays. Symbols of a revered, supremacy/servility evolutionary path. Ritualistic moulds of castes and adherents to combat-based values. All now exposed, unguarded, before the slued raptures of subliminal intensities and hues, bolting through the optic nerve. Visible phenomena that silently cuffed and castrated willpower, the id, the superego - the brain's very identity. At that moment, Hauge caught himself almost splendouring. He was engrossed in the force of power availed to him. It tickled within him that mysterious ember he called imagination. But only for a moment.
"And its quota?"
"Mitosis, or cell division, is varied through a growth promoting and growth inhibitory signal genarator in pill form, controled solely by the subject's needs and by the subject alone." Hauge pinched two of the exposed fine wires on the end of the die's pig tail.
Marcus saw the inside begin to whirl and soon turn to muddy grey, dull cream, and, finally, to diamond brilliance.
He got up and came close to look at the sparkling jewel the other held between his fingers. Coruscating sprays of rainbows caught, filled and kept his eye - his sight. Its pristine radiance bathed his retinas making him blink. A hot drop dribbled down his cheek.
"Sin, itself!" he nearly drooled and kneeled before the Scot to have a better look. "Where is the agent?"
"A tiny shimmer - the star. Look hard, in its geometric centre."
"How?"
"Body heat. It is attuned to the body heat spectrum. Enough to generate ample potential for the chromosomes to activate and act as catalysts to the liquid plasma pigmentation surrounding it, and then some. Here," Hauge said and pinched more wires. The liquid swirled, sparkled, spewed needles of sheen through space. It changed to transparent bloodstone.
"Get off your knees, old fellow," Hauge said, offering his chair. "Take this too." He reached into his pocket. "Shouldn't we get back to the billions?"
Marcus pinched and gawked.
"Are you with me, man?"
Marcus saw the die in his own hand turn into a green emerald, a blue sapphire, yellow citrine, fire opal...
"Eh, Yes. Absorbing sort of prettiness."
"So, pretty!" Marcus's parched voice was weak and reedy.
"Er - you're in no condition to preside over the board, dear man. Oughtn't we let your board's directors know that you're postponing things? Till further word, let's say."
Marcus rose weakly, walked to the complex communicator, punched the red button, said what he was told, and returned to his seat.
Ms. Atwood," Hauge remembered the little plaque on the slight, bespectacled secretary's desk, "would you come in," he said, now bending over the intercom and standing behind Marcus' elegant desk.
The secretary entered, and riddled over the sitting man playing with his empty hands. "So, so pretty..." Marcus babbled.
"Is anything wrong, Mr -"
"Mr Marcus will be leaving now. Oh, and, Ms. Atwood, would you be kind enough to bring your pad with you when you come back. We have changes to make."
An enigmatic expression cast on the young lady as she faced Hauge, sitting behind the great desk. For a moment, Hauge thought amused, she must have taken me for someone else.
"Yes, sir," she said, lingering her dispersed, fishbowl stare a while.
The Scotsman observed and humoured the other's fascination as she watched the die in his hand turn cornelian pink, hyacinth red, amethyst violet, lazurite blue, peridot green...
"Have one," he said, reaching again into an empty pocket, knowing it would be the most important thing on her mind from here on. "Anything else, Ms. Atwood?"
"No, oh not a thing, sir. So pretty!" she chirped and gawked at her empty hand, sighed deeply and escorted her charge out.
"Ah, one more thing. Change Mr Marcus's flight for Marakesh instead, and accompany him personally till he boards." The climate should be more akin to Texas's, he considered, and put the one real die back in his coat pocket.
He always wanted to see how it felt to be a megatherium of business, unfettered to make and supply freely as much blood as needed for poor, needy people and little girls like his late sister, Margaret. But he wasn't sure if he had what it took. Clearly, though, all one needed was a dab of cheek and a spot of hypnotic power at his touch. Everything else then just couldn't help coming one's way.
The board members will be the true challenge, the Scot thought, when Ms. Atwood had left.
"Into the maelstrom!" he hollered, and quailed at his own sound.
It was noon, the sun out of view, and the show-case window clear. Marcus's empire spilled once more before Hauge's surveying eyes. He'd have to call upon more compelling reserves than the die for the board. At that rumination, there was a knock at the door.
A meek Ms. Atwood peeked in. She took off her bone-rimmed glasses with the thick, round silver lenses. The secretary's irises rendered an unexcelled performance that even a chameleon would have coveted to be capable of. Hauge quickly looked away - but not quick enough.
Ms. Atwood was careful not to look directly into the bar's inlaid looking glass on her left as she refitted the eyeglasses. At times like these, she thought, a mirror could prove woman's worst enemy.
"The saddest part of all this business, Mr Hauge," Ms. Atwood said, leading the catatonic man slowly out from behind Marcus's massive desk, "is not recognizing your competition. Not inquiring why one needs to wear thick, silvered glasses inside this glare-free building. The naked eye, Mr Hauge, can often be quicker than your die."
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The story so far: A recon pilot flying surveillance above the surface of the desert planet, Maarzha, detects some of the planet's "natives" at a megalithic religious site. These maroons - the descendants of escaped Imperial citizens - scatter underground into a rock outcrop. The pilot, obeying a strange impulse, lands his flyer to photograph the monument's large stone idol. Walking around the site, he falls through a disguised covering above a stairwell, and discovers a stone chamber with an altar located beneath the surface idol. Acting upon another impulse, the pilot removes his flightsuit and lies down on the altar - into a depression which fits his body as if carved for it... He then falls asleep, without a care.
"Remarkable... It looks just like a neolithic site on Old Earth."
The two suited, helmeted visitors stood at the megalithic monument of Maarzha. Their suitcomm radios allowed them to communicate in the air they couldn't breathe. Nearby, their flyer sat on the sand, warming under the blistering sun.
"Yes it does, Professor" agreed the younger man. "But, of course, the maroons are Earth-descended, too."
The older man looked at him sharply. "Are you saying there's a racial memory operating here?"
"No... Nothing like that." The younger man - who looked a little like the fictional character, Indiana Jones - backpedaled. He was merely a civil servant employed by the Imperial military as an archeologist. The older man was a distinguished anthropological scholar who was quick to assert his assumed academic primacy.
"Places like this have been found on nonhumanoid worlds. The indigenies just used the same available materials to build their monuments as Stone Age Earthmen did, Doctor." He emphasized the civil servant's academic title a bit as an additional reprimand - but he kept to himself what he thought about government-men who held doctorates from hinterland colleges.
"Of course..." But the younger academic had a nasty surprise for his new colleague. Something that would both set him straight about this place - and put him in his place. "...Unfortunately, the natives didn't build any of this."
The Professor seemed dubious. "They didn't?"
"No... In fact this 'monument' isn't what it seems to be, Professor. Now that you're security-cleared, I can reveal the truth about it." He arched an eyebrow and paused, meaningfully.
"Yes?... Go on," replied the older man. He was annoyed that his younger colleague had sandbagged him with secret knowledge. That was why he was here: he was being paid to contribute his greater expertise. To save face, he muted his desire for the official "truth."
"This should be interesting," he said. Although he scoffed at the military's obsession with secrecy, he was drawn to a good mystery and had endured the annoying security-vetting with patience.
The civil servant concluded the surface colloquy... "Let's go below to the 'altar room.' The truth is more obvious down there."
As the two academics conversed before the idol, they were closely watched by a party of four maroons among the boulders of the nearby rock outcrop. All of them carried sheathed knives. The leader of the group also packed a radpistol in a holster. Unlike the others, he wore the remnants of a old military uniform. Despite its dirty, tattered appearance, it gave him an air of importance. His former military training had taught him the fundamentals of leadership. He was clearly respected by the others.
Like the lesser-armed maroons, the leader was short, barrel-chested, thin-limbed, and very dark. Like them, his face was identical to that of the stone idol at the center of the monument. And, like the others, he was well adjusted to the brutal sunlight and the low oxygen level of the Maarzhan atmosphere.
"The pale strangers profane our sacred place," proclaimed the leader. The others grunted in agreement and scowled. "One of them is new."
"Will the new one comply?" asked one of the maroons. "...Or will he reject, like the other?"
"Both will comply - or they'll rest in the sand before their time," replied the leader.
The two academics stood before the
altar in the underground chamber beneath the idol.
"It looks like a simple sacrificial altar, doesn't it, Professor?"
The older man was cautious in his appraisal. "There are no drainage channels for blood, I notice, but the depression in the altar seems clearly designed for humanoids." He glanced warily at his colleague.
"Yes it is, Professor... For those of us it selects."
"What do you mean, 'selects'?" He took a second look at the altar's depression. It had seemingly been carved for a short, fat man.... He was short and fat. The younger man was taller and thinner.
His face registered a look of shock. "Y-you mean..."
"That's right. It wants you, Professor," declared the civil servant, smirking.
The older academic was stunned into silence, during which his hands roamed over the smooth depression. His colleague used this silence to explain his startling remark.
"You see, this is not actually a place of worship, at all. It's ... an evolution station - we've had some trouble categorizing the place since we discovered its purpose. Behind those rock walls is a machine built here, we suspect, by an advanced race of beings who once visited the planet. By means, yet unknown, the machine brings about swift changes in any humanoid who reclines on that altar-stone. He's quickly transformed into a new 'native' of this hellish world, one who can withstand the fierce sun and breathe the thin air."
The Professor seemed incredulous. "Really, Doctor!... I mean - how could this be?... Are you claiming this machine sensed me and formed a depression for my body before we even got down here?"
"It did... The material of the altar isn't stone - but, rather, a petroid, electroplastic material. As I said, we don't know how the 'evolution' is accomplished - by radiation, probably. We're awaiting permission to begin studying the concealed machine, itself." He gestured toward the wall behind the altar.
"You're saying the Imperial maroons found this place and were all converted by a machine to a new lifeform capable of thriving here?"
"It certainly looks that way... The local military called me in after one of their recon pilots apparently landed his flyer and came to the altar. The measurements of the depression they found were the same as his... He hasn't been found, so we believe he's joined the maroons."
"Why didn't this machine make a depression for you instead of me?"
"It did that the first time I visited the place... Apparently, it gives each of us only one chance for evolutionary transformation."
The older academic considered this astounding secret. "That's the most incredible thing I've ever heard... And, you're inviting me to join you in studying this place?" His expression softened as he reconsidered the significance of this 'monument' to his academic career. "I'm honored, Doctor. There's much to be learned here."
The younger man stuck out his hand. "Welcome to SITFAES, Professor - the Special Imperial Task Force on the Alien Evolution Station."
They shook hands. "Thank you... But I hope you don't expect me to lie on that altar and turn into a 'native.'"
The civil servant laughed. "No, no... We don't expect you to do that."
"Thank goodness."
"We'll get somebody else to do it."
"Oh..." The older man's relief was tempered with some disgust at the military archeologist's intentions. "...I see."
He took another look at his made-to-order depression on the altar, then said, "Let's get out of here. Contemplating that thing makes me queasy."
"I know what you mean. I felt the same way when I first came here," replied the civil servant, sympathetically.
When the two academics walked up the stairs into the brilliant white sunlight, the maroons were waiting for them with their knives.
The strangers had failed to evolve.
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Once again, we push back the frontiers of science fiction and dish up four more books of varied style and subject matter.
This issue, we will be taking a look at:
The Postman deals with the aftermath of a total collapse of society. Set in the near future, the book details the efforts of Gordon, the main character, as he tries to survive a lawless countryside, where the ruins of cities are death-traps.
Gordon's fortunes turn around after he finds a wrecked Postal Service truck containing the remains of a postal worker and his mailbag. Gordon appropriates a spare uniform shirt, a jacket, and the mailbag, and goes into business for himself.
Passing himself off as a representative of the provisional government of the United States, Gordon delivers old mail and new gossip to the surviving towns. In giving the towns hope of a resurrected United States, he becomes a catalyst of growth and re-birth.
This novel, while powerful and moving, is not recommended for the sci-fi beginner. It starts slowly but, if you can get past the first couple of chapters, is very rewarding. Hard science takes a back seat to a hard hitting story of human endurance and triumph.
StreetLethal takes place some thirty years in the future, in the shadow world between the law-abiding citizenry and the crime overlords. Amidst new designer drugs and new diseases, Aubry Knight, a contender for the zero-gravity boxing championship, is framed for murder. Sentenced to a maximum security prison in Death Valley, Aubry must retain his health and sanity until he can accomplish the impossible: escape and get revenge on the crime family who set him up.
After his escape, he takes refuge in the ruins of downtown Los Angeles among the despised Scavengers, a group composed of addicts, the homeless, and petty criminals, who make their living scavenging equipment and materials buried by the Great Quake.
This book draws heavily on Steven Barnes background in the martial arts. Indeed, the story serves mainly as a backdrop for Barnes character to go around beating up on everyone that has dumped on Aubry until he meets someone who is better than him. An interesting story for anyone with a background in the martial arts who likes a good mystery. I enjoyed it, but then I'm strange anyway!
Lest Darkness
Fall draws on deCamp's extensive historical knowledge to
present what might happen should someone from our modern world,
through some mischance (which is never fully explained to my
satisfaction), suddenly find himself in ancient Rome. What would
you do? Invent gunpowder? Electricity? Become an Oracle,
predicting the future? It wouldn't be that easy!
First, you dress funny and you talk with a strange accent. That marks you as a barbarian right off the bat! Then, if you can avoid being enslaved, what are you going to use for money? Thieves are dealt with harshly back there. What kind of skills do you have that can be used in a low-technology society?
DeCamp includes enough details of life in ancient Rome that you might think he had lived in those times. However, he occasionally gets too wordy and winds up lecturing you when you only want to be entertained.
Not much science to the fiction, but highly instructive of what would need to be done to counteract the decay of Rome and ensure its survival. I rate this one a five on a scale of one to ten.
The Cold Cash War describes Asprin's concept of how the multi-national corporations deside who gets what.
The conglomerates have hired mercenaries to sabotage and fight the mercenaries hired by their rivals, with the possessor of the highest technology and most support calling the shots! Talk about corporate in-fighting!
As the corporate wars escalate, the various national governments start to take notice but nothing can be done, the corporate mercenaries are better armed and trained than the standing armies!
Easy to read, this story is not for the faint-hearted. The science in here is more on the order of gadgetry. While at the time it was written, the technology did not yet exist, nowadays it is entirely within the realm of possibility for the events in this book to happen. Hmmm... does anyone know if mercenary employment is on the upswing?
See you next issue. And remember to keep those cards and letters and e-mail coming! Send your mail to:
Fred the Sci-Fi Man c/o Ibn Qirtaiba.
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