Complete Stories (70 page)

“What’s the news, Revel?” asked Tug.

“All the oil in Texas is turning into Urschleim,” said Revel. “And we’re the only ones who know what to do about it. Let’s land this thing and start makin’ us some deals.”

The giant sea nettle hovered uneasily, rippling a bit in the prop-wash of the anxious helicopters. Tug made no move to bring them lower. “There’s no we and no us as long as you’re talking that salary bullshit,” said Tug angrily. “If you want me to bust ass and take risks in your startup, it has to be fifty-fifty down the line. I want to be fully vested! I want to be on the board! I want to call my share of the shots!”

“I’ll think about it,” Revel hedged.

“You better think fast, Revel.” Tug looked down between his legs at the jostling crowd below. “Look at them all. You don’t really know how the hell we got here or what we’re doing, Revel. Are you ready to face them alone? It’s nice up here in this balloon, but we can’t ride a balloon forever. Sooner or later, we’re gonna have to walk on our own two feet again, and look people right in the eye.” He reached up into the tissues of the giant sea nettle, manipulating it.

Now the sun-baked quake-prone ground began rising up steadily again. Tattooed local hipsters billowed away from beneath them in San Francisco’s trademark mélange of ecstasy and dread.

“What are you going to say to them when I land us?” demanded Tug harshly.

“Me?” Revel said, surprised. “You’re the scientist! You’re the one who’s s’posed to explain. Just feed ‘em some mathematics. Chaos equations and all that bullshit. It don’t matter if they can’t understand it. ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ Tug. P. T. Barnum said that.”

“P. T. Barnum wasn’t in the artificial life business, Revel.”

“Sure he was,” said Revel, as the great jellyfish touched down. “And, okay, what the hey, if you’ll stick with me and do the talkin’, I’ll go ahead and cut you in for fifty percent.”

Tug and Revel stepped from the jellyfish and shook hands, grinning gamely, in a barrage of exploding flashbulbs.

============

Written in 1992.

Asimov’s SF Magazine
, November 1994.

In May, 1992, Bruce and I were panelists at a computer conference in Monterey called the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing. At the same time, there was a big show on jellyfish at the Monterey Aquarium, and Bruce and I went and looked at the tanks together. The jellyfish made a big impression on us. So as not to be locked into the classic macho SF two-guys story mode, I tried making “my” character gay for a change.

In a far corner of a distant galaxy spins planet X, a place quite similar to our wonderful Earth. Like Earth, X is in a planetary system with a chaoticity of six parts per million and, like Earth, X orbits its sun in the third resonance band of its planetary system’s attractor.

Planet X wears a lifeweb much like our holy Gaia, mother of life. Planet X once had a living neighbor, a planet Y, but eons and eons ago, the lost inhabitants of Y mastered direct matter control—and ended by turning themselves and their planet into a great band of dust.

Each year there is a day when planet X is the furthest from its sun and the closest to the orbit of the shattered planet Y. The people of planet X call this day Xday, and they cheer themselves through it with eating, drinking and the giving of gifts.

This is the story of what happened one Xday season to a selfish peasant named Karl and to his kind, long-suffering wife Giselle.

Karl and Giselle’s hut was on the outskirts of a large ugly city. As a young man, Karl had been lively and wise, but time had crusted his heart over with self-indulgence and idle lechery. With his and Giselle’s children grown and gone, Karl’s only remaining smiles were for dancing-girls, for smoke, and for drink.

Like many women, Giselle thought first and foremost of her family and her home. If Karl was increasingly unpleasant to live with, there were still things to be set right in their hut and, above all, there was the Xday visit of the children to prepare for.

Six weeks before Xday, Giselle began talking to Karl about the coming holiday. Karl tried to put her off with sullen grimaces and discouraging words, but Giselle kept up her happy plans and chatter. What Giselle thought, she frankly said, and now she was thinking about the holiday.

“You say we can’t afford a goose, but at least we have to put up some garlands, Karl. And the hut needs to be cleaned from top to bottom.”

“Oh, what for? The hut looks fine. And you didn’t like the garlands I put up for you last year.”

“I think that this year we’ll use ivy for the garlands,” continued Giselle. “Ivy will stay nice and green.”

“Where are we supposed to find ivy?”

“Don’t you remember? There’s a big patch of ivy near the top of Summer Hill! When the children were younger, you and I used to walk there with them all the time. It’s not far. Come, Karl, let’s go to Summer Hill and gather ivy.”

“You’re always asking for something, Giselle. I’m about to go to the inn. I’ll get ivy another day. Or
you
get it.”

“The inn is what you love, Karl, and I don’t begrudge you; you worked hard for many years. Now you’re an idle red-faced lecher who stares at hussies, fine. Nobody’s perfect. But come with me to Summer Hill for an hour now.” Giselle smiled fetchingly at Karl and ran her gentle hand across his stubbled cheek.

“I’m not a red-faced lecher,” blustered Karl.

“Then don’t act like one. The inn’s empty at this time of day anyway. If you go there now, you’ll be a
desperate
red-faced lecher.” Giselle laughed so merrily that Karl’s anger was undone.

Karl and Giselle left their hut and wound their way through their neighbor’s huts and up the slopes of Summer Hill. Soon there were no more dwellings. Hilltops were viewed as sacred on planet X, and all hilltops were left empty for the wind, the people, and the Gaia of X.

As they gathered ivy high on the hill, the peasant couple could see out over the great imperial city of Mur which lay to their north. In the center of Mur rose the far tiny spires of the emperor’s palace. The air near the palace was enlivened by the comings and goings of the gleaming metal flying saucers that the emperor Klaatu and his court used.

Karl and Giselle had often been into the city for market day, but neither of them had ever stood directly before the imperial palace. Peasants were not much welcomed in Mur outside the market district, and a peasant who tried to walk all the way to the palace was likely to be beaten and robbed—if not by a thief then by an officer of the imperial watch.

Though his palace was off-limits to the peasants, the emperor’s airships often came to claim goods from the market. Over the years many of the great silvery saucers had grown to a size of over fifty feet across—yes,
grown
. The metal saucers were living things that grew and learned and eventually died. The saucers’ silver surfaces were intricately chased with filigreed coppery lines that branched and intertwined as a saucer grew. No two saucers were the quite the same. With exercise, polishing, and plenty of sunshine, a flying saucer could grow for many a year, perhaps as much as two centuries. When a saucer got quite old, its skin would thin out to nothingness and the whole thing would suddenly crumble into a drifting dust like mushroom spores.

Where did the saucers come from? They spawned on the ribs of planet X herself. Every few years in some deep cave of planet X—and never twice the same cave—a few baby saucers would be found stuck to the walls like limpets. All saucers that were found became the property of the Klaatu dynasty. And the finder—invariably a hardy young peasant—would be granted imperial favor, a purse of gold, and the rank of baroness or baronet.

The sages of planet X classified the saucers as Spore Magic. Spore Magic included all the inexplicable events that had puzzled the citizens of X throughout history. The fact was that very odd things happened regularly on planet X—especially around Xday.

When the bright shape came flying down at Karl and Giselle on Summer Hill, they may have thought for an instant that it was a saucer—but it was a goose with snowy white plumage and a wedge-shaped orange beak. The goose stood there on her orange webbed feet, curving her neck this way and that, looking at Karl and Giselle. Finally she began slowly to waddle about, pecking up snails from beneath the ivy.

“Catch the goose, Karl,” exclaimed Giselle. “We can eat her on Xday!”

Karl was reluctant. The goose looked alert and powerful. Karl didn’t much fancy being pecked, clawed, and wing-beaten by the beast. “Why can’t our Xday meal be turnips like it is every other day?” said Karl. “Leave the goose alone, Giselle. They’ll have goose at the inn on Xday in any case. If I happen to go there, I can bring a wing home for you.”

“Selfish old fool,” said Giselle. “
I’ll
catch the goose.”

Giselle marched towards the plump white bird. Far from looking alarmed, the goose looked interested. She stuck her neck up to full height and regarded Giselle. The goose had shiny blue eyes. Giselle made feeding motions with her fingers, though she had no food to give. “Nice goosey loosey goosey girl,” sang Giselle. “Goose, goose, goose!”

The goose honked, and when Giselle turned and walked away from her, the goose followed. When Karl, Giselle and goose were down among the huts, the goose willingly jumped into Giselle’s arms and let herself be carried back to the peasant couple’s hut.

Giselle cut a turnip into small bits and fed them to the goose, who gobbled them down avidly, stretching out her neck to swallow each morsel. Before letting the goose go outside, Giselle tied a heavy stone to one of the goose’s legs. Slowly dragging the stone, the goose waddled about the yard, contentedly rooting for slugs, bugs, and snails.

“What a beautiful bird, Karl!” exclaimed Giselle. “We’ll fatten her till the day before Xday, and then you can butcher and bleed her for me. I’ll pluck, singe, draw, and cook her! We’ll have goose for Xday! The children will be thrilled!”

“I hope Tolstan, the cook at the inn, can help me with the butchering,” grumbled Karl. “I don’t know anything about killing a goose. Yes, I’d better go talk to Tolstan.”

“That’s fine, Karl, but before you go off to the inn, I still want you to help me put up the ivy.”

“Will you never be done, woman?” cried old Karl, but help with the ivy he did, and only then, finally, could he go to the inn to smoke and drink and stare at women until it was time to totter home and fall into his and Giselle’s bed.

In the coming days, the goose became more and more Giselle’s pet. The goose quickly found a way to free her foot from the rope and stone, and could easily have flown away—but she chose not to. At every hour of the day she was inside or outside the peasant couple’s hut. When Giselle was active in the hut, the goose would honk plaintively until Giselle would pull aside the hut’s wicker door and let the goose in. Once in the hut, the goose delighted in following Giselle, who often fed the goose scraps. The goose liked meat as well as vegetables, indeed she would even eat small pebbles and pieces of wood. Not that the goose was going hungry—the more time she spent in the hut, the more snails and bugs there seemed to be on the hut’s floor. Giselle noticed that, for a special wonder, the goose seemed to know not to foul the floor, no matter how much she ate.

A few days later, Karl was due to pay off his quarterly debt at the inn. He and Giselle dug their small bag of savings out from under a stone at the back of the hearth. There was no way to reach the hoard without getting ashes all over oneself, which was the peasant couple’s way of being sure that neither of them dipped into the savings alone.

The small leather bag held some silver and copper coins saved from Karl’s occasional earnings, along with sixteen gold coins that remained from the inheritance which Giselle’s parents had left her several years before. Ever since Giselle got her inheritance, Karl had worked as little as possible. He thought of Giselle’s money as his own.

As was their custom, Karl and Giselle spread the coins out on the table and counted them together, a ritual they went through each time the coins appeared from beneath the stones of the hearth. The goose stood next to the table, watching with glittering eyes.

“Let me take a gold coin to the inn,” wheedled Karl when they were done counting. “Then I’ll have credit clear into the spring.”

“Very well,” said Giselle. “And I’ll take a gold coin to spend on gifts for the children.”

“One silver coin would be more than enough for them, woman!” snapped Karl. “The children are grown; they should take care of themselves!”

“It’s my gold, Karl. You should be grateful that I’m so foolishly generous to you.”

“Then I get some coppers as well,” shouted Karl. “I earned the copper and silver in the turnip harvest this fall!” Giselle nodded curtly, and slid two gold coins and three coppers to one side of the table. Leaning forward, the two peasants began telling the remaining coins back into the bag.

But now all at once the goose darted forward and gulped down the two gold coins, pumping her neck to get the hard metal disks all the way down from craw to crop to gizzard.

“No, Goosey!” cried Giselle.

“Grab her,” said Karl, drawing his knife. “I’ll cut her open!” The goose made a frightened noise like a rusty metal hinge, and waddled rapidly out of Karl’s reach.

“Stop, Karl!” cried Giselle. “She can’t digest gold. The coins are safe in her stomach. It’s still four days until Xday. If we butcher Goosey now, her meat will spoil.”

“What if she shits the coins into the street?”

“I’ll make a nest for her inside our hut,” said Giselle. “Anyway, haven’t you noticed? Goosey never shits. She just grows.”

“Well, nobody’s taking any
more
of our gold,” snapped Karl. He pocketed his three coppers, swept the remaining coins into the little sack, tied the sack tight, and crawled into the hearth to bury the sack again. “The inn’s coin and the children’s presents will have to wait until your precious goose is ready,” he told Giselle. And then Karl went down to the inn to spend his coppers.