Fiction River: Moonscapes, page 1
Fiction River: Moonscapes
Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith
Series Editors
Dean Wesley Smith
Editor
Copyright Information
Fiction River: Moonscapes
Copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing
Editing and other written material copyright © 2014 by Dean Wesley Smith
Cover art copyright © Httin/Dreamstime
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
“Foreword: Moon Stories” copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Introduction: A Moon: That’s It” copyright © 2014 by Dean Wesley Smith
“Hot Jupiters” copyright © 2014 by Steven Mohan, Jr.
“The Old Guy” copyright © 2014 by Annie Reed
“The Toy That Ran Away” copyright © 2014 by Scott William Carter
“The Payment” copyright © 2014 by Maggie Jaimeson
“Caressing Charon” copyright © 2014 by Ryan M. Williams
“Moon Shine” copyright © 2014 by Matthew Lieber Buchman
“Dreams of a Moon” copyright © 2014 by Dean Wesley Smith
“The Moon Was Bitter and Hungry” copyright © 2014 by JC Andrijeski
“The Verdant Gene” copyright © 2014 by Marcelle Dubé
“Moonfall” copyright © 2014 by Lisa Silverthorne
“A Murder of Clones” copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Moon Stories
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Introduction: A Moon: That’s It
Dean Wesley Smith
Hot Jupiters
Steven Mohan, Jr.
The Old Guy
Annie Reed
The Toy That Ran Away
Scott William Carter
The Payment
Maggie Jaimeson
Caressing Charon
Ryan M. Williams
Moon Shine
Matthew Lieber Buchman
Dreams of a Moon
Dean Wesley Smith
The Moon Was Bitter and Hungry
JC Andrijeski
The Verdant Gene
Marcelle Dubé
Moonfall
Lisa Silverthorne
A Murder of Clones
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Acknowledgements
About the Editor
Copyright Information
Foreword
Moon Stories
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Recently, some writer on a major science fiction blogging site wrote a screed begging for purity in his sf. Legendary editor Gardner Dozois calls such sf “pure quill” sf—the kind that Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov wrote, updated for the modern era, of course. The blogger (who shall remain nameless because, by the time you read this, some other blogger will have said the same thing) decried romance stories with sf trappings marketed as sf, adventure stories marketed as sf (without science in them), dystopias marketed as sf—well, you get the idea.
I read his piece and felt a twinge of empathy. I read every single genre I can get my hands on. Fiction River reflects that in its design—we cover all the genres, and then mix them up, so that you’ll get the unexpected—a touch of sf with your romance, a touch of mystery with your sf.
But as I read the blogger’s piece, I realized that I’m a pure-quill sf girl. When I pick up a book marketed as sf, I want sf.
So, when Dean proposed Moonscapes as volume six of Fiction River, I thought “science fiction!” He didn’t say that—he never said that. He wanted stories about moons or set on moons or near moons or about moons. He wanted moonscapes.
I realized this as we read a pile of stories that professional writers wrote with Moonscapes in mind. We both loved several stories that had no real sf element. If I were editing, I wouldn’t have bought them, even though they were brilliant. My envisioned volume was hard sf to the core—the kind Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke would have written.
Dean’s was moon-based to the core—and he didn’t care which moon. Earth’s moon? Sure. Jupiter’s moon(s)? Okay. A made-up moon? Yeah, fine.
I’ll be honest: a goodly portion of the stories in this volume are pure-quill sf, like Steven Mohan’s “Hot Jupiters.” But some are something Damon Knight used to call space fantasy, like Scott William Carter’s “The Toy That Ran Away.” The purists and the sf fans would argue about the categories other stories would fall into, such as Lisa Silverthorne’s “Moonfall.” And other stories in this volume are just great stories with a moon in it, like Annie Reed’s “The Old Guy.”
The moods in this volume vary from suspenseful to touching to I-can’t-believe-she-did-that. Surprising, fun, different, the stories in Moonscapes also manage to use the second part of that word as well. They give a portrait of moons that pans the imaginative landscape. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) We have moons and scapes, and moonscapes. And a lot of wonderful reading.
Enjoy!
—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lincoln City, Oregon
September 6, 2013
Introduction
A Moon: That’s It
Dean Wesley Smith
Back in the planning stages of Fiction River, I really hoped that one of the first volumes would be about moons. One of my all-time favorite books (that I read back when I was growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s) was Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. I loved that book and I always wished AJ would have managed to write a sequel to it before he left us. But no luck I’m afraid.
That book is now considered a classic, as it should be. I can still remember the tag line on the front of that old first edition paperback. “He died, and ascended to the moon and sat on the right hand of death.” Wonderful.
Since that early reading, the moon (and all moons, actually) have had a special place in my reading heart.
And it might be no surprise to anyone reading this that my wife and executive editing partner on Fiction River, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, has a series of books and short novels and short stories set mostly on the moon in the universe of The Retrieval Artist.
And to be clear, I am a major fan of those books and stories. Major. And I’m not alone, since the fans of Analog SF Magazine seem to love them as well, as do all the thousands and thousands who have purchased the first nine novels in the series.
Since Miles Flint, the Retrieval Artist himself, lives on the moon in the future, it was a logical conclusion that for Fiction River: Moonscapes, Kris would do a Retrieval Artist story. (With some arm twisting, I might add, but that’s the job of the editor.)
Then, after I got Fiction River: Moonscapes on the schedule, Kris decided she would do more than just a short story. She would do a special Retrieval Artist short novel (novella) for a bonus Kickstarter award. And a number of people signed up for that special Kickstarter edition of the short novel and have already gotten them by the time you read this.
Kris upheld her end of the bargain and wrote this fantastic Retrieval Artist short novel, “A Murder of Clones,” that you find complete in this volume. It’s not really set on the Moon, but it is set on a moon in the Retrieval Artist universe and that’s enough for this editor.
So with that wonderful short novel for me to build around, I went after some of the best writers working in short fiction to fill out the volume. And I got them.
By the very nature of the title Fiction River: Moonscapes, science fiction will dominate this volume. But not all stories are completely science fiction by any definition. In fact, this volume brushes past a number of genres as is the nature of any Fiction River volume.
A couple of the stories are bleak, a couple funny, and a number are just plain heartwarming. All are great reads and great stories in my opinion. And they all take a look at a moonscape in one way or another.
I hope you enjoy the read. It was a pleasure to bring this volume to life over the last year or so. And with it just a touch of my childhood as well.
—Dean Wesley Smith
Lincoln City, Oregon
September 6, 2013
Introduction to “Hot Jupiters”
Steven Mohan, Jr. published ten novels under various names. I’ve always thought Steve was a natural heir to Tom Clancy; Steve’s novel Winter Dragon (written as Henry Martin) proved me right by spending more than a year on Amazon’s techno thriller bestseller list. Steve is also a Pushcart Prize nominee whose short fiction has appeared in more than 100 venues, from anthologies to On Spec and Interzone.
About this story, he writes that once astronomers discovered the first exoplanet in 1992, humanity discovered that it was “living in a universe of puffy planets, water worlds, planets circling their suns in days—or hours, even a world-sized hunk of diamond orbiting a flickering pulsar. Just how did our universe get this weird?
“That’s a question I tried to answer in ‘Hot Jupiters.’”
Hot Jupiters
Steven Mohan, Jr.
Pravda’s meters-thick hull was a sandwich of steel and polymerized glass
The pair of lovers floated in a black sea whose islands were a million stars.
They were in bed, the wrecked sheets damp with sweat, the air heavy with the astringent smell of sex. Monica curled into him, her lovely face pressed against his chest, her long, slim legs tangled up with his, drowsing in the interstellar night.
Nearing the end of her long journey, the starship plunged toward one of the bright pinpricks of light, coming in high and steep. Only one of these suns mattered to Saxon. One sun. One world.
And one moon.
“I’m glad you came,” he whispered.
“Me, too,” she said, slurring the words.
“Glad,” he said. “And surprised.”
At first she said nothing and he thought he’d lost her to slumber, but something must have penetrated her sleep-addled mind, because after a minute she said, “What?”
They were close enough that he could see the system primary, a star with the artless name of HD 209458. The sun was a twin to Earth’s sun, a golden sphere speckled with granules of orange, cherry-bright flames ringing its disk, great molten loops of fire sculpted by powerful magnetic fields arcing across its surface.
“All that time in cold storage,” he said. “A thousand years out and another thousand back. Nothing but you and me. And who knows what it’ll be like when we get back to Earth? You never really wanted to come.”
Now she placed her hand on his chest and pushed back slightly, looking up at him. He could feel her eyes on him.
But he didn’t look back at her. The planet had come into view, close enough to the star to kiss.
The world was a monster, bigger than Jupiter, a gas giant colored methane-green and banded with the chocolate-dark stripes of hydrogen sulfide and thin cream filigrees of water ice. A great red eye watched them from the southern hemisphere. The planet’s official name was HD 209458b, but everyone called it Osiris.
After the Egyptian god of the underworld.
It was a hot jupiter, a gas giant circling improbably close to its primary. In the case of Osiris, it orbited only 7 million klicks from its sun, only one-eighth the distance that Mercury lay from Earth’s sun. A long, cometary tail stretched out from the gas giant, extending a quarter-million kilometers into space, its star ripping its atmosphere away.
A mother murdering her child.
“I love you,” she said, an undercurrent of hurt in her voice, hurt and pleading.
He knew she wanted him to say, “I love you, too.” Expected him to say it.
Instead he said, “Do you?”
“I do, of course I do. Why else would I have come with you, spent two thousand years of my life, if I didn’t love you?”
“That,” said Saxon, “is an excellent question.”
Now he did look down at her and he saw she was angry, her eyes burning with blue fire. It made her lovelier still, the blush of color in her cheeks, even with her black hair simultaneously sticking up and matted to her skull. He’d never known another woman more beautiful.
“How old are you?” he asked.
She peered at him, trying to understand where he was going. “One-ninety subjective,” she finally said.
“So you’re telling me that I mean more to you than any man you’ve been with in the last couple centuries?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“What about Charlie Fowler?”
Her body stiffened. He knew she was thinking hard, thinking fast.
“H-how did you—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
Before launch she’d gone back to Earth, to Maine, to visit her family one last time. Even though she’d been half a solar system away, Saxon had been watching her. Had known it when she had slipped.
“I’m thinking if you really loved me you wouldn’t have been so quick to jump into bed with Charlie Fowler.”
Guilt and pain flickered across her face. She masked both with anger.
She jumped out of bed, turned her body away from him, grabbed for a dark blue robe of shimmering silk. She shrugged into the garment with quick, jerky movements.
“You were spying on me?” she snarled, turning back to him.
“Come on. You’re not the injured party here.”
And just like that the anger was gone, flashing away like a sliver of ice dropped on a hot griddle. Her face twisted into something grief-stricken and desperate. “I’m sorry, Saxon. I’m so sorry. I was just so lonely. Charlie—He was from a time in my life—college—when the whole universe seemed to be open to me and I guess I needed—” She shook her head helplessly. “I was just so lonely,” she whispered.
“Lonely, because you don’t love me.”
“Lonely, because of the long journey.”
“You never wanted to come.”
“I’m trying, Saxon. I’m trying to work things out with you.”
“Trying to love me is not the same thing as loving me.”
Two roses bloomed high on her cheeks and that long, graceful neck flushed red. She awkwardly held the robe closed, the silk bunched up in her clenched fist. “If you knew, why did you let me come with you? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you make me come all this way and then—”
She couldn’t finish.
“You betrayed me,” he shot back, “but I still wanted you with me.”
She took an angry step toward him. “Then why couldn’t you keep your ugly little secret to yourself? Why did you have to rub my face in it?”
He glanced past her and suddenly he saw the moon. He stood up and went to look at it, unconcerned with his nakedness, unconcerned with Monica seething behind him.
Most gas giants commanded fleets of moons, but not hot jupiters. It was too easy for a stray asteroid to be caught in the powerful eddies of gravitational force that swirled between sun and world, too easy for a candidate moon to be swallowed up by one behemoth or the other.
But, inexplicably, this hot jupiter did have a moon, a burnt and blistered body the size of Mars, orbiting close-in.
It was the moon, the battered little world they were calling Horus, that would answer so many questions about the mysterious hot jupiters.
“Saxon. Saxon. Are you even listening? Why did you do this to me?”
Reluctantly he turned back to her. “Because it’s the truth, Monica. It’s the truth.”
“The truth.” She spat the words out. “There is more to human existence than your precious truth.”
He shook his head. “Truth is the engine that runs the universe. There is nothing else.”
“You are one cold son of a bitch,” she said bitterly. “Maybe that’s why I don’t love you.”
“That hurts,” he said. “But at least it’s true.”
“Truth is a blade,” she said savagely. “One day you will cut yourself with it just like you cut me today.”
Her words hung there for a moment, but only a moment, before the pregnant silence was sliced open by the shriek of bells and alarms, sirens and klaxons, Pravda crying for help in a thousand panicked voices.
***
Saxon ran for the bridge, pulling on a pair of navy coveralls as he went. The starship shuddered, knocking him to his hands and knees. He scrambled to his feet, only to be knocked down again, a stuttering palsy running through the vessel’s deck. Beneath the crying alarms, he heard an ominous rumble and then the moan of steel under stress, bending, straining, deforming.
Disbelief filled him, but disbelief threaded through with terror.
What the hell is going on?
He fought his way to his feet and staggered forward in the shaking passageway, his outstretched hand braced against the nearest bulkhead as the ship tried to buck him off. The terrible vibration throbbed in his flesh and buzzed in his teeth.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked back.
Monica was behind him, her face the color of chalk. “We’ll never make the bridge!” she shouted.
