Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 (23 page)

“You mean you don’t
know?
”
Miss Laburnum said,

Polly hoped he wasn’t so famous that her failing to recognize him would be suspicious. “He’s Godfrey Kingsman,” the rector explained, “the Shakespearean actor.”

“England’s greatest actor,” Miss Laburnum said.

Mrs. Rickett sniffed. “If he’s such a great actor, what’s he doing sitting in this shelter? Why isn’t he on stage?”

“You know perfectly well the theatres are closed because of the raids,” Miss Laburnum said heatedly. “Until the government reopens them—”

“All I know is, I don’t let rooms to actors,” Mrs. Rickett said. “They can’t be relied on to pay their rent.”

Miss Laburnum went very red. “Sir
Godfrey
—”

“He’s been knighted then?” Polly asked hastily.

“By King Edward,” Miss Laburnum said. “I can’t imagine that you’ve never heard of him, Miss Sebastian. His Lear is
renowned
! I saw him in
Hamlet
when I was a girl, and he was simply
marvelous
!”

He’s rather marvelous now, Polly thought.

“He’s appeared before all the crowned heads of Europe,” Miss Laburnum said. “And to think he honored
us
with a performance tonight.”

Mrs. Rickett sniffed again, and Miss Laburnum was only stopped from saying something regrettable by the all clear. The sleepers sat up and yawned, and everyone began to gather their belongings. Sir Godfrey marked his place in his book, shut it, and stood up. Miss Laburnum and Miss Hibbard scurried over to him to tell him how wonderful he’d been. “It was
so
inspiring,” Miss Laburnum said, “especially the speech from
Hamlet.
”

Polly suppressed a smile. Sir Godfrey thanked the two ladies solemnly, his voice quiet and refined again. Watching him putting on his coat and picking up his umbrella, it was hard to believe he’d just given that mesmerizing performance.

Lila and Viv folded their blankets and gathered up their magazines, Mr. Dorming picked up his thermos, Mrs. Brightford picked up Trot, and they all converged on the door. The rector pulled the bolt back and opened it, and as he did, Polly caught an echo of the tense, frightened look they’d had before Sir Godfrey intervened, this time for what they might find when they went through that door and up those steps: their houses gone, London in ruins. Or German tanks driving down Lampden Road.

The rector stepped back from the opened door to let them through, but no one moved, not even Nelson, who’d been cooped up since before midnight.

‘“Hie you, make haste!”‘ Sir Godfrey’s clarion voice rang out, “‘See this dispatch’d with all the haste thou canst,”‘ and Nelson shot through the door.

Everyone laughed.

“Nelson, come back!” Mr. Simms shouted and ran after him. He called down from the top of the steps, “No damage I can see,” and the rest of them trooped up the steps and looked around at the street, peaceful in the dim, gray predawn light. The buildings were all intact, though there was a smoky pall in the air, and a sharp smell of cordite and burning wood.

“Lambeth got it last night,” Mr. Dorming said, pointing at plumes of black smoke off to the southeast.

“And Piccadilly Circus, looks like,” Mr. Simms said, coming back with Nelson and pointing at what was actually Oxford Street and the smoke from John Lewis. Mr. Dorming was wrong, too. Shoreditch and Whitechapel had taken the brunt of the first round of raids, not Lambeth, but from the look of the smoke, nowhere in the East End was safe.

“I don’t understand,” Lila said, looking around at the tranquil scene. “It sounded like it was bang on top of us.”

“What will it sound like if it
is
on top of us, I wonder?” Viv asked.

“I’ve heard one hears a very loud, very high-pitched scream,” Mr. Simms began, but Mr. Dorming was shaking his head.

“You won’t hear it,” he said, “You’ll never know what hit you,” and stomped away.

“Cheerful,” Viv said, looking after him.

Lila was still looking toward the smoke of Oxford Street. “I suppose the Underground won’t be running,” she said glumly, “and it’ll take us ages to get to work.”

“And when we get there,” Viv said, “the windows will have been blown out again. We’ll have to spend all day sweeping up.”

‘“What’s this, varlets?”‘ Sir Godfrey roared. “‘Do I hear talk of terror and defeat? Stiffen the sinews! Summon up the blood!”‘

Lila and Viv giggled.

Sir Godfrey drew his umbrella like a sword. “‘Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more!”‘ he shouted, raising it high, “We fight for England!”‘

“Oh, I do love
Richard the Third!
”
Miss Laburnum said.

Sir Godfrey gripped the umbrella handle violently, and for a moment Polly thought he was going to run Miss Laburnum through, but instead he hooked it over his arm. ‘“And if we no more meet till we meet in heaven,”‘ he said, “‘then joyfully, my noble lords and my kind kinsmen, warriors all, adieu!”‘ and strode off, umbrella in hand, as if going into battle.

Which he is, Polly thought, watching him. Which they all are.

“How marvellous!” Miss Laburnum said. “Do you think if we asked him, he’d do another play tomorrow?
The Tempest,
perhaps, or
Henry the Fifth?
’

~ * ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connie Willis has won seven Nebulas, more than any other writer, and was the first author to win the Nebula in all four categories.

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~ * ~

INTRODUCTION

Here’s the winner of this year’s Dwarf Star Award, “Bumbershoot” by Howard Hendrix.

BUMBERSHDOT

Howard Hendrix

Night, a gun-blue umbrella tricked with distant suns and planets, is not to be opened indoors—more bad luck, or worse.

Hold it to the mind’s sky. Finger the trigger in its handle.

A meteor bullets the firmament. The universe falls shut with a whoosh.

Shake the drops of the stars from the loose skin of the darkness.

Think of nothing for which to wish. Step into a different house.

~ * ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Howard V. Hendrix is the author of six novels, three short story collections, and a whole bunch of poems that he really should put forward as a collection one of these days. He teaches English literature and creative writing at the college level. He has recently served as guest editor for a
Midsummer Night
’
s Dream-
themed issue of the
Pedestal Magazine,
and is lead editor on
Visions of Mars: Essays on the Fiction and Science of the Red Planet.

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~ * ~

AUTHOR
’
S INTRODUCTION

I recently realized, with something like horror, that I’m fast closing in on my twenty-fifth year as a published writer. If you asked me where the time went, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Perhaps the same place as my hair or a body type that was once upon a time described as emaciated and is now closer to spherical.

“Arvies” is my sixth Nebula nomination, one that as always leaves me scratching my head over the mysterious forces that usher one story into being while another—that might be just as promising—remains imprisoned in the brain vault and in no particular hurry to be released. Its genesis was the standard SF trick of turning the real-world status quo upside down and seeing what happens. In this case it was the premise that life legally begins at birth; I wondered what would happen if life legally ended there.

I am proud that the tale has been interpreted, by various partisans on opposite sides of the abortion debate, as being both for and against. . . while being criticized by others for refusing to take a stand. I’m firmly prochoice myself, but the story itself is none of the above; it’s just a thought experiment about an alien way to live and a demonstration of the truism that even in societies that offer their most privileged citizens unlimited opportunities for happiness, there’s always somebody, somewhere, who gets royally screwed.

ARV
IES

Adam Troy-Castro

STATEMENT OF INTENT

This is the story of a mother, and a daughter, and the right to life, and the dignity of all living things, and of some souls granted great destinies at the moment of their conception, and of others damned to remain society’s useful idiots.

CONTENTS

Expect cute plush animals and amniotic fluid and a more or less happy ending for everybody, though the definition of happiness may depend on the truncated emotional capacity of those unable to feel anything else. Some of the characters are rich and famous, others are underage, and one is legally dead, though you may like her the most of all.

APPEARANCE

We first encounter Molly June on her fifteenth deathday, when the monitors in charge of deciding such things declare her safe for passengers. Congratulating her on completing the only important stage of her development, they truck her in a padded skimmer to the arvie showroom where she is claimed, right away, by one of the Living.

The fast sale surprises nobody, not the servos that trained her into her current state of health and attractiveness, not the AI routines managing the showroom, and least of all Molly June, who has spent her infancy and early childhood having the ability to feel surprise, or anything beyond a vague contentment, scrubbed from her emotional palate. Crying, she’d learned while still capable of such things, brought punishment, while unconditional acceptance of anything the engineers saw fit to provide brought light and flower scent and warmth. By this point in her existence she’ll greet anything short of an exploding bomb with no reaction deeper than vague concern. Her sale is a minor development by comparison: a happy development, reinforcing her feelings of dull satisfaction. Don’t feel sorry for her. Her entire life, or more accurately death, is happy ending. All she has to do is spend the rest of it carrying a passenger.

VEHICLE SPECIFICATIONS

You think you need to know what Molly June looks like. You really don’t, as it plays no role in her life. But as the information will assist you in feeling empathy for her, we will oblige anyway.

Molly June is a round-faced, button-nosed gamin, with pink lips and cheeks marked with permanent rose: her blonde hair framing her perfect face in parentheses of bouncy, luxurious curls. Her blue eyes, enlarged by years of genetic manipulation and corrective surgeries, are three times as large as the ones imperfect nature would have set in her face. Lemur-like, they dominate her features like a pair of pacific jewels, all moist and sad and adorable. They reveal none of her essential personality, which is not a great loss, as she’s never been permitted to develop one.

Her body is another matter. It has been trained to perfection, with the kind of punishing daily regimen that can only be endured when the mind itself remains unaware of pain or exhaustion. She has worked with torn ligaments, with shattered joints, with disfiguring wounds. She has severed her spine and crushed her skull and has had both replaced, with the same ease her engineers have used, fourteen times, to replace her skin with a fresh version unmarked by scars or blemishes. What remains of her now is a wan amalgam of her own best-developed parts, most of them entirely natural, except for her womb, which is of course a plush, wired palace, far safer for its future occupant than the envelope of mere flesh would have provided. It can survive injuries capable of reducing Molly June to a smear.

In short, she is precisely what she should be, now that she’s fifteen years past birth, and therefore, by all standards known to modern civilized society, Dead.

HEROINE

Jennifer Axioma-Singh has never been born and is therefore a significant distance away from being Dead.

She is, in every way, entirely typical. She has written operas, climbed mountains, enjoyed daredevil plunges from the upper atmosphere into vessels the size of teacups, finagled controlling stock in seventeen major multinationals, earned the hopeless devotion of any number of lovers, written her name in the sands of time, fought campaigns in a hundred conceptual wars, survived twenty regime changes and on three occasions had herself turned off so she could spend a year or two mulling the purpose of existence while her bloodstream spiced her insights with all the most fashionable hallucinogens.

She has accomplished all of this from within various baths of amniotic fluid.

Jennifer has yet to even open her eyes, which have never been allowed to fully develop past the first trimester and which still, truth be told, resemble black marbles behind lids of translucent onionskin. This doesn’t actually deprive her of vision, of course. At the time she claims Molly June as her arvie, she’s been indulging her visual cortex for seventy long years, zipping back and forth across the solar system collecting all the tourist chits one earns for seeing all the wonders of modern-day humanity: from the scrimshaw carving her immediate ancestors made of Mars to the radiant face of Unborn Jesus shining from the artfully re-configured multicolored atmosphere of Saturn. She has gloried in the catalogue of beautiful sights provided by God and all the industrious living people before her.