“It’s the stars, honey,” I say. “The stars are falling.”
It’s the most accurate explanation I can offer.
“Why?” she asks.
“Look at Daddy,” I say. I feel a sudden lightness, a gentle tug pulling us upward. I lean against the cables to make sure they are still tight. “Please look at your daddy. It will be okay. Hold on tight.”
Nails screech as a part of the roof frame curls away and disappears. Marie is biting her lips to keep her mouth closed and nodding as tears course over her cheeks. I have not consulted the child development books but I think she is very brave for three years old. Only three trips around the sun and now the sun is going to end. Sol will be teased apart in hundred-thousand-mile licks of flame.
“My darling,” I say. “Can you tell me the name of the planet that we live on?”
“Earth.”
“And what is the planet with a ring around it?”
“S-Saturn.”
“What are the rings made of?”
“Mountains of ice.”
Maybe a sense of wonder is also a heritable trait.
“Are the stars—”
Something big crashes outside. The wind is shrieking now in a new way. The upper atmosphere has formed into a vortex of supersonic air molecules.
“Daddy?” screams Marie. Her lips are bright and bitten, tear ducts polishing those familiar brown eyes with saline. A quivering frown is dimpling her chin and all I can think of is how small she is compared to all this.
“Honey, it’s okay. I’ve got you. Are the stars very big or very small?”
“Very big,” she says, crying outright now. I rock her as we speak, holding her to my chest. The cables are tightening and the sewer main is a hard knuckle against my spine. Marie’s static-charged hair is lifting in the fitful wind.
“You’re right again. They look small, but they’re very big. The stars are so very, very big.”
A subsonic groan rumbles through the frame of the house. Through the missing roof I can see that trees and telephone poles and cars are tumbling silently into the red eye overhead. Their sound isn’t fast enough to escape. The air in here is chilling as it thins but I can feel heat radiating down from that hungry orb.
Minutes now. Maybe seconds.
“Daddy?” Marie asks.
Her lips and eyes are tinged blue as her light passes me. I’m trying to smile for her but my lips have gone spastic. Tears are leaking out of my eyes, crawling over my temples and dripping up into the sky. The broken walls of the house are dancing. A strange light is flowing in the quiet.
The world is made of change. People arrive and people leave. But my love for her is constant. It is a feeling that cannot be quantified because it is not a number. Love is a pattern in the chaos.
“It is very late, my darling,” I say. “And the stars are in the sky.”
They are so very big.
“And that means it’s time for me to give you a kiss. And an Eskimo kiss.”
She leans up for the kiss by habit. Her tiny nose mushing into mine.
“And now…”
I can’t do this.
“And now I will lay you down…”
Swallow your fear. You are a good father. Have courage.
“And tuck you in, nice and tight, so you stay warm all night.”
The house has gone away from us and I did not notice. The sun is a sapphire eye on the horizon. It lays gentle blue shadows over a scoured wasteland.
And a red star still falls.
“Good night, my darling.”
I hold her tight as we rise together into the blackness. The view around us expands impossibly and the world outside speeds up in a trick of relativity. A chaotic mass of dust hurtles past and disappears. In our last moment together, we face a silent black curtain of space studded with infinite unwavering pinpricks of light.
We will always have the stars.
JACK, THE DETERMINED
You see, sir, life is a series of misunderstandings.
—Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (1785)
Jack sat next to the whirring copy machine in a cramped room at the Institut National Polytechnique de Langres. His Professor stood in front of the machine. The Professor held a thick book facedown and winced each time the bright light flashed from his thick glasses. Leaning against the wall, Jack idly held one hand near the machine and felt the heat of it radiating against his outstretched fingers.
Why were these two in France? Sadly, that is not up to me to decide. That is possibly regrettable, because if this were not a true story then there could be many amazing and terrible reasons. Maybe they were spies, copying documents describing a secret weapon? Maybe they were on the verge of a great discovery, which would be stolen from them and then recovered moments before disaster? Maybe not. Instead, they were ordinary participants at a prestigious technical conference. The truth is that the Professor had arrived only to deliver a report on a most important scientific work with his Jack, a most loyal and obedient student.
With a creaking noise and a frantic beeping, the copy machine stopped. The Professor groaned.
“Don’t be angry,” said Jack. “If the machine is broken, then it must have been written up above that it would happen. In the stars.”
“That is very profound, Jack, but my presentation will be terrible if I have no handouts.”
“It will be as it was meant to be. Nothing less.”
“Or more,” said the Professor, before pausing. “Jack, you are my presentation. We have only an hour left anyway. Let us forget the paper and go to the café.”
* * *
—
The student and teacher sat at a small round table outside the café. The winter sunlight was dazzling and without heat. Jack squinted through it. The Professor sipped a cappuccino, gripping the cup gently between thick fingers and dipping his gray mustache in froth.
“Jack, my boy, I’m all nerves. You must tell me a story,” said the Professor.
Jack considered his mentor’s request for a mere instant before making a decision. “Very well. I will tell you about something that happened to me this morning. In fact, it was a very distressing event.”
Elbows fluttering, the Professor noisily placed his cup on the unsteady table. “Distressing, you say?”
“Most,” replied Jack. “This morning I awoke in the hallway outside of our hotel room, standing up and already wearing my day’s clothing.”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed the Professor.
“I did say! I have no recollection of how I arrived there. It occurred to me that I must have already eaten, because I had no appetite—”
“Ah! That explains why you had no breakfast.”
“True, but I haven’t yet arrived at the most distressing part of my story—”
At that moment, a woman in a bright yellow dress approached from the sidewalk. She lowered her sunglasses and waved a hand, opening and closing red-nailed fingers.
“Professor!” she called.
The Professor grunted and turned from Jack. He patted his chest, searching for errant eyeglasses. The woman clambered past silver tables, straining her dress as she squeezed between occupied chairs, and sat herself down between Jack and the Professor.
The smell of her perfume swept into the Professor’s nostrils. The old man’s nose fell to wrinkles and he swallowed a throbbing sneeze, his corduroyed knees beating a staccato rhythm on the underside of the table.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the woman. “My name is Gretchen Hall. I’m in town for the conference. I’ve been following your work for years, Professor.”
The Professor’s chest expanded. “Well. Yes, I—”
“Oh my,” said Gretchen. “Is this Jack?”
“Indeed,”
sniffed Jack.
The waitress approached the table and addressed Gretchen, holding out a lazily flapping menu. “Would you like to make a choice, madame?”
“Oh, no thank you,” she said.
“And you, monsieur?” asked the waitress.
Jack looked at the Professor. “Yes, I suppose I would,” he said.
“No. No, he cannot,” said the Professor.
“Well!” huffed Jack. “I think that I would, and therefore I shall. I am quite capable of ordering a drink on my own, Professor.”
“So this is the famous Jack,” said Gretchen Hall. “You two make quite a pair!”
“Thank you, Gretchen,” said Jack, extending his hand. A smile twitched on his lips. “You know, we haven’t been properly introduced.”
“I am ordering you not to order that coffee!” exclaimed the Professor, surprising himself with his own vehemence.
Jack scowled at his mentor. “My fate is written in the stars, Professor. A domain that slightly exceeds your grasp. Or do you flatter yourself to think that you can control my every action?”
Jack sniffed angrily and looked away.
The waitress put a hand on her hip and sighed. “Monsieur? What will you choose?”
“You are my student,” said the Professor. “You will obey me because I am your professor and you are my Jack and what I tell you to do is what you will do.”
“You look like my professor. You sound like my professor. But we both know who the teacher is. We can pretend to the contrary all you like, and that suits me perfectly. But you cannot place knowledge in my head like placing direction in a play or equations on paper. Just know that it is pretend—this control of yours—and that I can do whatever I wish whenever I wish and wherever I wish!”
Jack slammed his hands onto the table, rattling the Professor’s cup and causing Gretchen to startle and drop her sunglasses.
“Waitress,” Jack said. “Bring me an espresso. And you, Professor, you tell me, where will you be in one hour without your Jack?”
What a row! Now, reader, what should happen next? Perhaps the Professor will become enraged, kick over the flimsy table, and wrap his fingers around the throat of his impudent student? Or maybe he will simply stand and walk away, catch a flight back across the ocean, and abandon his star pupil? Alas, I believe that Jack’s words held truth. As often happens to normal people at inopportune moments, the Professor sat speechless, filled with impotent indignation.
The waitress, on the other hand, thanked Jack and left to fetch the drink, happy to have finally received a cogent order.
“Jack?” asked Gretchen. “I had no idea that you could drink?”
The Professor found his voice. He sputtered, “He can’t!”
“I can!”
“You can’t!”
“I can—”
The waitress returned. “I am so sorry,” she said. “But the machine has broken.”
Everyone at the table sat quietly. The waitress took the opportunity to step away.
“It must have been written up above,” said Jack, quietly. “You were right, Professor. I apologize. I was not meant to drink coffee today.”
The Professor sat up and brushed his whiskers with one hand. He glanced at Gretchen; she watched Jack intensely.
“Yes. Well. Do please finish telling me your story,” said the Professor.
“Well, as I was saying,” continued Jack, “I found myself standing in the hallway, fully clothed and with no recollection of how I got there. Facing the wall, I saw the most disturbing image painted only inches from my eyes. The figure was of a skull and crossbones, and it filled my entire field of view. Surely, this is a bad omen.”
“An omen certainly,” said the Professor. “Your feet choose strange places to take you.”
“Stepping away from the wall, I realized that I was standing in front of a metal cabinet. In my left hand I was holding a black cord that went under the door and into the cabinet.”
The Professor leaned forward, dipping his shirtsleeve in his coffee. “You did not open the cabinet!”
Reader, what could be in the cabinet? It has certainly upset the Professor. In truth, I cannot say. I simply do not know. But it must be a horrible thing indeed. Or perhaps utterly mundane?
“No,” replied Jack. “I was confused. My mind was racing like a spooked horse. To be quite honest, I was so frightened that I dropped the cord and came straight away to meet you and make preparations for the speech.”
Gretchen spoke. “It sounds like an electrical cabinet, to me. They’re imprinted with the skull and bones as a warning. I wonder why this should surprise you—”
“What?” interrupted the Professor. “Of course it is a surprise! To wake fully clothed!”
“But—”
The Professor stood suddenly, again banging his knees into the table. “It is time to go, Jack,” he announced, holding one hand up to block the sharp sunlight from his eyes. “The presentation will begin shortly. Good day to you, Gretchen.”
And then the Professor abruptly walked away from the table. Jack shrugged to Gretchen, grinning, and dutifully followed his mentor.
* * *
—
Jack and the Professor stood together on the narrow wing of a stage, out of sight of the audience, ensconced in thick velvet curtains. Onstage, a white-haired man in a black suit stood behind a wooden podium. The stage was bare aside from the podium, a blackboard, and an odd table. The white-haired man waved his hands excitedly. He spoke eloquently and grandly of the Professor and his important scientific work. Jack blew air through his nose and traced his eyes with disinterest across the side of the man’s head.
“Why should I even bother coming to this presentation?” asked Jack in a whisper. “Are you not even capable of describing the results that I have collected through countless hours of hard work?”
The Professor adjusted his bow tie. The faint reverberation of hundreds of colliding hands emanated from the audience. The Professor looked mutely at Jack, then turned and stepped onto the stage, wincing under the bright lights. He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the blackboard: “Jacques: Un Homme Mécanique avec un Cerveau Artificiel.”
A slow, deep wave of applause rolled in from the audience and died away.
The Professor turned to Jack, beckoned him to emerge. Jack walked out onto the stage slowly, nonchalant. The student ignored the myriad sparkling eyes hidden in the glare of the spotlights. He approached the Professor and looked past him to the blackboard. He read the words.
Jack looked at the Professor with wide, confused eyes.
“Mécanique? What?” he whispered.
“Jack, please sit,” said the Professor, gesturing.
And Jack sat on the strange table.
Gently, the Professor pushed Jack’s shoulders down until he lay on his back. He secured Jack’s wrists, legs, and torso to straps attached to the sides of the table. The Professor reached under the table and pulled a lever. The table began to rotate until Jack stood facing the audience, strapped securely to the surface.
“Professor,” Jack whispered. “I can’t move.”
“Hush, all will be well,” murmured the Professor, pulling a pointer from his coat and extending it.
“We begin by examining the mechanism’s appendages, which have dexterity comparable to that of an average human being,” said the Professor to his audience, his gravelly voice echoing through the hall.
The applause began again, swelling until it washed over the stage.
“Do you understand?” the Professor asked Jack, quietly.
“I do,” replied Jack. “It was—I mean to say, everything that happens…This too, must have been written up above.”
“Not in the stars, Jack,” said the Professor, tapping two fingers softly against his student’s
temple. “Written here.”
“Oh yes,” said Jack. “Of course.”
“Now please, sleep,” said the Professor.
And Jack slept.
THE EXECUTOR
I stagger into the Executor’s office just before my joint-stabilization field fails. I crumble to the floor and I can hear my nine-month-old daughter crying but my eyes aren’t working for some reason. That’s when I realize that I’ve really failed now—there’s no other way to look at it.
The rest of my family is going to die, and I’m going first.
* * *
—
Twelve hours ago I stood in this same room on my feet, like a man. My daughter Abigail was safe and sleepy, strapped to my chest. And I still had some hope that I might save her life.
The Executor. It looms over me, imperious, an expensive hologram solid as a marble column. Flush as the devil and still with a sour mug. The machine sports the trademark scowl of the scientist who created it—my great-great-great-grandfather. The Executor has been controlling and building the family fortune for almost two hundred years. An angry old man staring down infinity with eyes like black pinpricks. Brilliant and wealthy and utterly alone, just like my ancestor.
“How much?” I ask.
“A common enough question,” responds the Executor. “Trillions. Wealth that you cannot properly conceptualize. Diversified. Off-planet mining. Interworld currency exchanges. Hard mineral caches. Property. Patents. People.”
“And yet your clothes are two hundred years out of date.”
“Some things even I can’t change, Mr. Drake. I am modeled after the original Dr. Arkady. As such, I am not allowed to…let’s say, evolve, outside of certain constraints. My goal is to amass wealth. And my strategies toward that end are quite, ah, contemporary.”
True enough. The Arkady Ransom is the largest concentration of loot on the planet. In his infamous will, Arkady made a promise that, one day, a descendant would claim the Ransom. That promise turned out to be a bucket of blood in the water. It broke my family into splinter dynasties. Sent the splinters borrowing from syndicates to pay for the Internecine War.