Cracking the Sky (32 page)

We stood, still looking away. I hadn’t known they could do that.
We
could do that. Another ratchet up in the weather wars.

It scared me as much as the lab.

NorAM’s voice again. “The fences are all fried. The building’s main security is probably off, but there may be generator power. Go, now. Copters will be along. Ground troops are arriving now.”

Another scary thing. “Did you catch the traitor?”

“Yes.”

Hopefully there was only one. “Wait for orders,” the NorAM dispatcher said, enough happiness in her voice that I guessed whatever the lightning and the new troops were supposed to do was getting done.

I glanced over at Alissa. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.” She still looked fierce. Like the scientist in a television show I used to love that chased down Japanese whale boats. Something to be said for fierce scientists. Our back was still to the lab and the conflict, and we watched a sliver of black cloudless sky slowly grow as the storm above us blew further east. From time to time we heard thunder in the distance.

It had stopped raining by the time they called for us. I smiled at the look on some of the NorAM shock troop faces and I brought Alissa Freitag into the compound on top of a wet, banged-up robot that barely resembled a dog. I had no mirror, but I’m sure we looked like wild women, rain and sun and wind and thunder drenched, wild-eyes, and fierce.

I kind of liked the picture that drew for me.

Two scientists had come in via the road, and been protected in the back until the lab’s defenses were neutralized. NorAM replacing what we’d lost, and probably unhappy about it. But then they’d wanted us to be entirely stealth. Which is probably why so many died. Making sure of success, I supposed. Not that I got to make high-level battle plans or even hear what data went into them. It felt good to have done my part, and that all of the soldiers who had escaped with me were alive. And I liked seeing Alissa run up to the others and start organizing immediately, no question, as if she were the field commander among the scientists.

Maybe she was.

John and Jillie and me attended to the robots and set them charging. After about twenty minutes, a small crew returned with Scott and Paulette. I complimented Scott on a decent job of field-bandaging, and he blushed.

Just as we were about to leave, Alissa came up to me, almost bouncy. No—more than that. Electric with excitement. Her eyes were shining as she said, “Thank you. You have no idea how important it was that you got me here.”

“What did you find?”

“Bees.”

I must have looked stupid. I had been expecting a breeding farm for human organs or something else scary. “Bees?”

“Genetically changed to kill the few remaining regular bees, and then they would have died out. Would have killed off the whole honeybee line of pollinators. At least that’s what they were trying to do.”

“Bees were worth all that?” I meant the people dying, the scientists dying, the robots with the rocks, all of it.

She was more direct than me. “The deaths? Yes. GenGreen wants to force us to depend on their products.”

I swallowed and watched her, hoping I’d see her again somewhere besides on television. I could get into helping scrappy scientists save bees. Even if I wasn’t quite sure of our methods either. But thunder and lightning and bad weather were the slow way to kill the bees. If I understood what Alissa was saying, we had helped stop a fast way. And even I knew that had become the game. Fight the cancers day by day and hope the body finds remission.

“Are you supposed to tell me this?”

Her sharp brown eyes shone with mischief as she said, “I believe in the power of information.”

“And I believe in the power of science.”

She shook her head. “Don’t. Science is on both sides of this.”

I winced. “You’re right. Maybe that’s why I’m a soldier and you’re a scientist.”

“And maybe you just saved a lot of the heirloom food left.”

We napped in a pile of soldiers and robots until dawn. Alissa said nothing else to me, and NorAM gave no more comment than, “Well done. Come home.” As I led my severely reduced crew out of the lab and headed us home, I realized that I felt more sure of our side than I had before we got into the lab. I remembered the power of calling down the lightning and splitting open the sky just for us to continue a war, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to do that again. I let us stay mounted until we were out of sight, and then I gave the order to stand down and walk. Our backsides would get home in better shape that way, and besides, the sun had already warmed the air, and a light breeze plucked at my uniform.

STORY NOTES

The idea for the “The Robot’s Girl” came out of a one-paragraph article about Japan using robots to watch children. I have been fascinated with robots for some time, and I am completely certain that humanoid robots are coming shortly. We will soon see them in roles often reserved for humans. They will be our friends, our nurses, our cleaners, and out staff. In some cases, they may be our bosses or our teachers. I must admit, I’m pretty happy that at this moment the only working robot we own is our vacuum cleaner. We’ve named it Jake. But I’m certain more are already planning an assault on my life.

“Savant Songs” came from two things. I’m interested in high-functioning autistic spectrums. So much brilliance and so much tragedy. The literal science text for this story was “A Brief History of Time,” by Stephen Hawking, which is where I first understood the concept of mbranes. I’d read about them before, but Hawking made them accessible to my brain, which is less brilliant than my character Elsa’s. Lastly, I wrote this in response to a challenge from my writing group. I was having trouble getting as much emotion as I wanted into stories and so someone suggested I write a story where the emotion just went over the top. I felt like I was writing a soap opera with this story. It was the first of my stories to be re-printed in any form of Year’s Best anthology. The story about the writing group challenge has become one of my go-to teaching stories.

“Riding in Mexico” was written specifically for editor Jetse DeVries. Jetse challenged the entire science fiction community to write optimistic science fiction set in other countries - he wanted diversity and hope together. It was a brilliant call to arms for all of us, and lifted the whole genre for a year or so as the stories he didn’t buy made it into other markets. The brilliant anthology
Shine
came from that call, and Daybreak was the companion webzine.

“The War of the Flowers” came out in
Strange Horizons
, in January, 2004. It’s one of the earliest pieces of work that I included in this collection. I had just read
Snowcrash
, and gotten interested in the joys and dangers of fully virtual worlds. I would write it better today, but it’s not too bad as an awkward teenager of a story, and it’s about an awkward teenager’s mistake, so it seemed all right.

“Trainer of Whales” came out in an anthology called
The Future we Wish we Had
. The idea for this one came early. I suspect I was only nine or ten when I did a school project on living underwater. I remember creating space bubbles out flour-glue and painting them with some of my mom’s craft paint.

“Star of Humanity” appears here for the first time. The spark for this story came from Eli Pariser’s 2011 TED talk “Beware of Online Filter Bubbles.”

“My Father’s Singularity,” first appeared in
Clarkesworld
, June 2010, edited by Neil Clarke. I had just bought my first iPad keyboard, and I decided to spend about an hour practicing. That practice yielded this story. Strange. It also made it into a Year’s Best. When you’ve written enough stories, sometimes one sneaks up on you.

I started my writing career with a great gift—a mentor. Larry Niven was already a hero of mine before I met him; I had been reading his work for years. “The Trellis” is one of my favorite stories from the years I spent writing with Larry, who is sweet and brilliant and generous. I learned a lot from him.

“Second Shift” is a love story.

“Blood Bonds” was a story I wrote and couldn’t sell. I loved it. I sent it out over and over and probably garnered twenty rejections. Then I redrafted it from start to finish and it sold on its next trip out. There you go. Another free writing lesson.

“The Hebras and the Demons and the Damned,” and “The Street of All Designs” are both set in the worlds of my first solo series. Hopefully they’ll tempt you into exploring those novels.

I love short fiction. Really short fiction. To me, flash is like poetry. “My Grandfather’s River” was inspired by Michael Fay’s transect of the Congo. I heard him talk at an international conference of people using ESRI’s Geographic Information System’s software, and after his talk I sat outside on the steps of the San Diego convention center and thought for quite a long time. I may have written the story that night.

“Tea with Jillian,” is more fun with robots.

“For the Love of Mechanical Minds,” is fun with AI.

“Entropy and Emergence” appears here for the first time. It’s a disturbing little story. Really, it’s quite weird. One of the beautiful things about flash fiction is that you can be weird in it. After all, if a reader flees, they only miss a few hundred words.

“Alien Graveyards” is another story about love in the future. I have a feeling we’ll need it. Love, that is.

“A Hand and Honor” was written before I’d ever heard of Oscar Pistorus. That’s all I have to say about that. :)

“Mind Expeditions” is really a bit of military fiction, and so I chose it to end the flash fiction section with, since its a decent transition onto my military fiction. I like the way its nine-hundred or so words explore the realities of a war fought remotely.

“For the Love of Metal Dogs,” and “Cracking the Sky” were both requested by Mike McPhail and Daniel Ackley-McPhail for the fabulous anthology series “Defending the Future” out from Dark Quest books. I am not a soldier, and never have been. I’m kind of a pacifist; I write about wars in my books to illustrate how downright awful they really are. But I did know a
lot
of Vietnam vets. Some of the last vets back from Vietnam were the right age for me to date, or worked with me, or went to school with me. One of my best teachers was a Vietnam veteran named Tim “Touches the Earth” Toohey, who has passed beyond his pain now. I remember how his experiences in war shaped almost all of his demons and helped create the deep spiritual beauty that he shared with so many of us. No matter what we think of those who start wars, it’s important to honor those who serve in them, and to respect what they lose for us.

PUBLICATION NOTES

“The Robot’s Girl” first appeared in
Analog
, © April, 2010, edited by Stan Schmidt | “Savant Songs” first appeared in
Analog,
© December 2004, edited by Stan Schmidt; shortlisted for the Sturgeon Award in 2005; reprinted in
Year’s Best SF 10
, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer | “Riding in Mexico” first appeared in
Daybreak Magazine
, © Feb 2010, edited by Jetse DeVries | “The War of the Flowers” first appeared in
Strange Horizons
, © January, 2004 | “Trainer of Whales” first appeared in
The Future We Wish We Had
, © 2007, edited by Martin Greenberg and Rebecca Lickiss | “Star of Humanity” © 2015 appears here for the first time | “My Father’s Singularity” first appeared in
Clarkesworld
, © June 2010, edited by Neil Clarke | “The Trellis” with Larry Niven first appeared in
Analog
, © November 2003, edited by Stan Schmidt | “Second Shift” first appeared in
Love and Rockets
, © 2010, edited by Martin Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes | “Blood Bonds” first appeared in
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 2
, © 2008, edited by George Mann | “The Hebras and the Demons and the Damned” first appeared in
Analog
, © December 2010, edited by Stan Schmidt; reprinted in
Year’s Best SF 16
, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer | “The Street of All Designs” was first published on TheFiveWorlds.com, © 2009 | “My Grandfather’s River” first appeared in
Nature Magazine
, Nature 442. © August 2006, edited by Henry Gee; reprinted in
River
, edited by Alma Alexander; reprinted in
Futures from Nature,
edited by Henry Gee | “Tea with Jillian” first appeared in
Nature Magazine
, Nature 480, © December 2011; reprinted in
Nature Futures 2
, edited by Colin Sullivan and Henry Gee | “For the Love of Mechanical Minds” first appeared in
Nature Magazine
, Nature 457, © February 2009; available as an audio podcast at
Starship Sofa Aural Delights No 162.
| “Entropy and Emergence” © 2015, appears here for the first time | “Alien Graveyards” first appeared in
Alien Skin
, © 2007 | “A Hand and Honor” first appeared in
Nature Magazine
, Nature 450, © November 2007; also available as an audio podcast at
Starship Sofa
in Episode 91 | “Mind Expeditions” first appeared in
Nature Magazine
, Nature 465, © May 2010 | “For the Love of Metal Dogs” first appeared in
Dogs of War
, © 2013, edited by Mike McPhail | “Cracking the Sky” first appeared in
No Man’s Land
, © 2011, edited by Mike McPhail.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brenda Cooper
is a technology professional, a science fiction writer and a futurist. Her most recent novel is
Edge of Dark
, from Pyr. Also from Pyr, the duology
The Creative Fire
and
Diamond Deep.
Brenda has four science fiction novels out with Tor books:
The Silver Ship and the Sea
, its sequels,
Reading the Wind
and
Wings of Creation
, and in collaboration with Larry Niven,
Building Harlequin’s Moon
. She also has a stand-alone historical fantasy/sf mashup from Prime,
Mayan December
. Brenda’s short fiction has appeared in
Nature, Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, The Salal Review
, and multiple anthologies.