The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson

  "Speaking of the long run," Pierre-Paul said, "is anyone getting hungry?"

  They all were. The rushes were over, and Ivan had dismissed them as unusable. They climbed out of the pool and walked toward the changing room, discussing restaurants. There were a considerable number of them in the station, and new ones were opening every week. "I just tried the new Hungarian restaurant," Melina said. "The food was good, but we had trouble, when the meal was over, finding someone to give us the check!"

  "I thought you said it was a Hungarian restaurant," John said. They threw him back in the pool.

  The second time they ran through the rescue scene in the compound, Ivan had repositioned most of the minicams, and many of the lights; his instructions to the actors remained the same. But once inside the hallways of the set, John Rand couldn't help hurrying in the general direction of Annette Bellows's room.

  All right, he thought. Maybe Colonel Jackson had been a bit hasty to rush into the compound in search of hostages, leaving the group without a commander. But his heart had been in the right place, and the truth was, he had found a lot of the hostages without any help from Bellows at all. It was easy; they were scattered in ones and twos on the floor of almost every room he and his commandos entered, and stretched out along with the guards in the rooms and in the halls, paralyzed by the nerve gas. Damn good idea, that nerve gas. Guards and hostages, tough parts to play, no doubt, as they were getting kicked pretty frequently by commandos running by. He hustled his crew into room after room, then sent them off with hostages draped over their shoulders, pretending to stagger down the halls, banging into walls—really tough part to play, hostage—and clutching at gas masks and such; great images for the minicams, no doubt about it.

  When all his commandos had been sent back, he ran around a corner in what he believed to be the direction of Annette Bellows's room. Over the racket of the helicopters, and the occasional round of automatic fire, he thought he could make out Melina's voice, shouting hoarsely. So Pierre-Paul hadn't gotten to her yet. Good. Now he could find her and be the one to follow her around rescuing the more obscurely housed hostages, just as De Niro had in the docudrama. It would give Ivan fits, but they could argue it out afterward. No way of telling what had really happened in that compound twenty years before, after all; and it made a better story his way.

  Their set was only one story tall, which was one of the things that John had objected to; the compound in Teheran had been four stories high, and getting up stairs had been part of the hassle. But Ivan was going to play with the images and shoot a few stair scenes later on, to achieve the effect of multiple floors. Fine, it meant he had only to struggle around a couple of narrow corners, jumping comatose Revolutionary Guards, looking fierce for the minicams wherever they were. It was really loud this time around; really loud.

  Then one of the walls fell over on him, the plywood pinning him to the ground, the boxes behind it tumbling down and filling the hallway. "Hey!" he cried out, shocked. This wasn't the way it had happened. What was going on? The noise of the helicopters cut off abruptly, replaced by a series of crashes, a whooshing sound. That sound put a fine electric thrill down his spine; he had heard it before, in training routines. Air leaving the chamber. The dome must have been breached.

  He heaved up against the plywood. Stuck. Flattening himself as much as possible he slithered forward, under the plywood and out into a small space among fallen boxes. Hard to tell where the hallway had been, and it was pitch-dark. There wouldn't be too much time left. He thought of his little gas mask, then cursed; it wasn't connected to a real oxygen supply. That's what comes from using fake props! he thought angrily. A gas mask with nothing attached to it. Open to the air, which was departing rapidly. Not much time.

  He found room among the boxes to stand, and he was about to run over them to the door leading out of the warehouse—assuming the whole station hadn't been breached—when he remembered Melina. Stuck in her embassy room down the hall, wouldn't she still be there? Hell. He groped along in the dark, hearing shouts in the distance. He saw lights, too. Good. He was holding his breath, for what felt like minutes at a time, thought it was probably less than thirty seconds. Every time he sucked in a new breath he expected it to be the freezing vacuum, but the supply of rushing, cold—very cold—air continued to fill him. Emergency supply pouring out into the breach, actually a technique he had helped develop himself. Seemed to be working, at least for the moment.

  He heard a muffled cry to one side, began to pull at the boxes before him. Squeak in the gloom, ah-ha, there she was. Not fully conscious. Legs wet, probably blood, uh-oh. He pulled hard at boxes, lifted her up. Adrenaline and lunar gravity made him feel like Superman with that part of things, but there didn't seem to be anywhere near as much air as before, and what was left was damned cold. Hurt to breathe. And harder than hell to balance as he hopped over objects with Melina in his arms. Feeling faint, he climbed over a row of boxes and staggered toward a distant light. A sheet of plywood smacked his shin and he cried out, then fell over. "Hey," he said. The air was gone.

  When he came to he was lying in a bed in the station hospital. "Great," he muttered. "Whole station wasn't blown up."

  His friends laughed, relieved to hear him speak. The whole film crew was in there, it seemed. Ivan, standing next to the bed, said, "It's okay."

  "What the hell happened?"

  "A small meteor, apparently. Hit out in our sector, in the shuttle landing chambers, ironically. But it wrecked our storage space as well, as you no doubt noticed."

  John nodded painfully. "So it finally happened."

  "Yes." This was one of the great uncontrollable dangers of the lunar stations; meteors small and large were still crashing down onto the moon's airless surface, by the thousands every year. Odds were poor that any one would hit something as small as the surface parts of their station, but coming down in such numbers…. In the long run they were reduced to a safety status somewhat equivalent to that of mountain climbers. Rockfall could always get you.

  "Melina?" John said, jerking up in his bed.

  "Over here," Melina called. She was a few beds down, and had one leg in a cast. "I'm fine, John." She got out of bed to prove it, and came over to kiss his cheek. "Thanks for the rescue!"

  John snorted. "What rescue?"

  They laughed again at him. Pierre-Paul pointed a forefinger at him. "There are heroes everywhere, even among the lowest of us. Now you have to admit Ivan's argument."

  "The hell I do."

  "You're a hero," Ivan said to him, grinning. "Just an ordinary man, so to speak. Not one of the great leaders at all. But by saving Melina, you've changed history."

  "Not unless she becomes president," John said, and laughed. "Hey Melina! Go out and run for office! Or save some promising songwriter or something."

  Ivan just shook his head. "Why are you so stubborn? It's not so bad if I'm right, John. Think about it. If I am right, then we aren't just sitting around waiting for leaders to guide us." A big grin lit his face. "We become the masters of our fate, we make our own decisions and act on them—we choose our leaders, and instruct them by consensus, so that we can take history any direction we please! Just as you did in the warehouse."

  John lay back in his bed and was silent. Around him his friends grinned; one of them was bringing up a big papier-mâché medal, which vaguely resembled the one the Wizard of Oz pins to the Cowardly Lion. "Ah hell," John said.

  "When the expedition reaches Mars, they'll have to name something after you," Melina said.

  John thought about it for a while. He took the big medal, held it limply. His friends watched him, waiting for him to speak.

  "Well, I still say it's bullshit," he told Ivan. "But if there is any truth to what you say, it's just the good old spirit of the Alamo you're talking about, anyway. We've been doing it like that in Texas for years."

  They laughed at him.

  He rose up from the bed again, swung the medal at them furiously.

&
nbsp; "I swear it's true! Besides, it's all Robert De Niro's fault anyway! I was imitating the real heroes, don't you see? I was crawling around in there all dazed, and then I saw De Niro's face when he was playing Colonel Jackson in the Teheran embassy, and I said to myself, well hell, what would he have done in this here situation? And that's just what I did."

  The Translator

  Owen Rumford had a breakfast of postage stamp glue and mineral water. Combination of a rather strict diet and the fact that it was time again to send the bills to all the citizens of Rannoch Station. Rumford himself had had the stamps printed, and now he carefully counted out payment for them and shifted the money from the tavern's register to the postmaster strongbox, kept under the bar. A bit silly using stamps at all, since Rumford was the mailman as well as the postmaster—also the town's banker, tavern and hotel keeper, judge, and mayor. So he would be delivering the bills himself. But he liked stamps. These had a nice picture of Rannoch seen from space, all gray ocean with a chunk of onyx in it. Besides, in a town as small and isolated as Rannoch Station it was important to keep up the proprieties. Good for morale. Must, however, consider upgrading the quality of the stamp glue.

  A quiet morning in the empty tavern. Hotel above empty as well; nothing had come in to the spaceport in the last few days. Unusual. Rumford decided to take advantage of the rare lull and go for a walk. On with his heavy orange overcoat. Tentlike. Rumford was a big man, tall and stout. Big fleshy face, cropped black hair, big walrus moustache that he tugged at frequently, as he did now while bidding a brief farewell to his daughters. Out into the stiff cold onshore wind. Felt good.

  Down the black cobblestones of Rannoch Station's steep main street. Hellos to Simon the butcher, chopping away at a flank of mutton; then to the McEvoys, who helped administer the mines. Pleasant sound of construction behind the general store, tinsmiths and stonemasons banging and clacking away. Then left at the bottom of the street where it crossed the stream, up the track of hard black mud until he was out of the town and on the low hills overlooking the sea.

  All views on the planet Rannoch were a bit dark. Its sun, G104938, known locally as the Candle, cast a pale and watery light. And the hills of Rannoch Island—the planet's only continent, located in subarctic latitudes—were composed mostly of black rock, mottled with black lichen and a bit of black bracken, all overlooking a dark sea. The dirt between stones had a high component of carbon ash, and even the perpetual frost on the bracken had gray algae growing in it. In short, only the white wrack thrown onto the black sand by the black waves gave any relief to the general gloom. It was a landscape you had to learn to be fond of.

  Rumford had. Sniffing at the cold wind he observed with satisfaction the waves mushing onto the beach below the town. All the dories out fishing except the spavined ones, drawn up above the high tide mark. Town sitting above them nice and cozy, tucked into the crease made by the stream's last approach to the sea, to get out of the perpetual wind. Houses and public buildings all made of round black stones, some cracked open to reveal white quartz marbling. Materials at hand. Roofs were tin, glinting nicely in the low rays of the late morning sun. Tin mined here for local use, not for export. They had found deposits of the ore next to the big manganese mines. Easy to work it. Slag heaps inland of the town just looked like more hills, fit in very nicely in fact. Helped block the wind. Bracken already growing on them.

  Altogether satisfactory. "A wild and unearthly place," as the song said. Rumford remembered trees from his childhood on a faraway planet, name forgotten. Only thing he missed. Trees, wonderful things. Would be nice for the girls. He'd told them tales till they'd cried for trees, for picnics in a grove, even though they hadn't the slightest. Flowering ones, perhaps. Grow in the ravines the streams cut, perhaps. Out of the wind. Worth thinking about. Damned difficult to get hold of, though; none native to this star cluster, and they were something traders out here didn't usually deal in. A shame.

  Rumford was still thinking of trees when the steep black waves sweeping onto the town beach burst apart, revealing a submarine craft apparently made to roll over the sea floor. Big, dull green metal, lot of wheels, a few small windows. Some of the Ba'arni again, making a visit. Rumford frowned. Bizarre creatures, the Ba'arni. Inscrutable. It was obvious to Rumford that they were as alien to Rannoch as humans were, though he'd never gotten a Ba'ar to admit it. Good traders, though. Fishing rights for plastics, metal nodules gathered off seafloor for refined product, deep sea oddities for machine parts and miscellaneous utensils. Still, what they got from Rannoch Station wasn't enough to sustain an undersea colony. And how start it?

  Aliens were strange.

  The sea tank rolled above the high water mark and stopped. Door on one side clanked open, becoming a ramp. Three Ba'arni trotted out, one spotted him and they veered, trundled toward him. He walked down to meet them.

  Strange looking, of course. The fishermen called them sea hippos, talked about them as if they were intelligent ocean-going hippopotami, nothing more. Ludicrous. The usual fallacy when dealing with aliens: think of them as the terran species they most resemble. Let it go at that. Rumford snorted at the idea. Really only the heads looked like hippos. Bodies too of course, to a limited extent. Massive, foursquare, rounded, etc. But the analogy held up poorly when you examined the fine bluish fur, the squat dexterous fingers on all four feet, and of course the row of walnut-sized excrescences that protruded from their spines. Purpose unknown. Like mushrooms growing out of their backs. Not a pleasant sight.

  Then again the pictures of hippos Rumford had seen were none too beautiful. Still, in hippos' eyes, even in pictures, you could see something you could understand. Expression maybe hostile, but perfectly comprehensible. Not so with a Ba'ar. Faces quite hippo-like, sure. Giant faces, butt ugly as the fishermen said. The eyes did it—round and big as plates, and almost as flat. And with a look in them you just couldn't read. Curious, that. The fishermen claimed to see them swimming free in the depths, above seafloor mansions of great size. That was after they'd had a few, but still. Obviously alien to Rannoch, nothing more advanced than bracken here. At least on the land. Different in the planet-wide ocean, perhaps; evolutionary advances all submarine, perhaps down in tropics? Impossible to say. But probably visitors, like the humans. Urge to travel fairly widespread among intelligent species. Spaceships filled with seawater. Funny thought.

  The three Ba'arni stopped before Rumford. The one on the left opened his voluminous mouth and made a short sequence of whistles and clicks. From experience Rumford knew this was the usual greeting given him, meaning something like "Hello, trading coordinator." Unfortunately, he usually relied on his translation box to make the actual sound of his response, and though he knew what it sounded like he didn't find it easy making the sounds himself. And the box was back at the tavern.

  He gave it a try and made the first few clicks that the box emitted when he typed in his usual hello. Then he added another click-combination, meaning, he thought, "Trade, interrogative?"

  The Ba'ar on the left replied swiftly. Trade negative, he appeared to say. Something else, well, Rumford had relied too often on the box to do the exact listening, but it seemed to him they were referring to the box itself.

  Rumford shrugged. Only one course. He tried the whistle for translation, added the English words "Rannoch Station," and pointed to the town.

  Agreement clicks from the spokesBa'ar.

  Sonic booms rolled over the hills. They all looked up; Rannoch's gray sky was split by white contrails. Landing craft, coming down in a very steep descent from orbit, toward the town's spaceport a couple miles inland. Rumford identified the craft by their extreme trajectory. Iggglas.

  Then an extraordinary thing happened; all three of the Ba'arni rose up on their hind legs and took swipes at the sky, roaring louder than the sonic booms.

  A bad sign. One time it had taken a shotgun blast to get a pack of Iggglas off a lone Ba'ar outside the tavern. Never understood the motive; only time he had
ever seen the two species together. Not a good omen. And if the Ba'arni needed translation help—

  The three of them returned to all fours with a distinct thump, then more or less herded Rumford down the track to the town. Not much chance of disagreement with them; they were remarkably fast on their feet, and must have weighed a couple of tons each. Drafted.

  Rumford entered his tavern and got the translation box from the shelf behind the bar. It was an old bulky thing, in many ways obsolete; you had to type in the English half of things, and it would only translate between English and the alien languages in its program—no chance of any alien-to-alien direct contact. Made for some trouble in the tavern.

  Without explanation to his daughters he was out the door. Again the Ba'arni herded him up the street. Quickly they were out of town in the other direction, onto the stony windswept road leading to the spaceport and the mines beyond.

  They were still hurrying up this road, the Ba'arni moving at a brisk trot and Rumford loping, when they came round a hill and ran into a party of Iggglas. A dozen or so of them, flapping about the road and squawking loudly. The Ba'arni froze in their tracks and Rumford stumbled to a halt out in front of them.

  He shuddered as he always did on first sight of an Igggla. They were beyond ugly; they were… well, beyond words. Languages, human languages at any rate, depend a great deal on analogies. Most abstract ideas are expressed by sometimes hidden analogies to physical things and processes, and most new things are described by analogies to older things. Naturally all these analogies are to things within human ken. But analogies to the human realm largely broke down when dealing with the Iggglas, for there was simply nothing to compare them to.

  Still, Rumford thought. Analogies all we have, after all. Especially for things alien. So the Iggglas were inevitably compared to vultures, because of body configuration. Fine except that their skins were covered by a white mucous substance instead of feathers. And then wings were not so much for flying as for hitting things. And then heads were distinctly fishlike, with long underslung jaws that made them resemble gars. Vultures with gars' heads, covered in whitish mucus: fair enough, only the analogy didn't really do justice to their sickening quality. Because above all they were alien, weird and hideous beyond appearance alone. Not even sure they occupied the same reality as other creatures; they seemed to flicker a little, as if disturbing the membrane between their physical realm and ordinary spacetime. Yes; disgusting. Next to them the Ba'arni seemed handsome beasts. Almost family one might say.