M01 2000 WORDS Omega Science Digest - March 1986 M01a Omega Science Digest - March 1986 Warhead by Josie Flett UP on a mountain slope so steep not even the timber-getters can plunder its extremities lives a wildman they call Goddam Billy. The place: east-coast Border Ranges, New South Wales. The man: William Carter Godman, born 1896, into a family of tough country reprobates. On a clear day, about 10 years ago, there was an explosion and the old respectable Godman homestead burned to the ground. Billy watched from the lantana thicket, then promptly built himself a shelter from scraps of exasperation and toolshed. Today Goddam Billy owns a fibro shack, 25 chaff bags and an expanding flea plague. This many years later he lopes up and down, hacking pathways into his own remnant rainforest with an itinerant brush hook. He lusts for an occasional imaginary woman, a grinning, painted-up broad, and smells like the stiff, rancid cheese he gnaws with indecent gums after the canned soup and breadcrusts run out. The only time Goddam Billy ever ventures into the other reality is on collection day. He writes to his middleaged daughter in Brisbane each month, entrusting his postage a surly woman who makes the daily milk run and favours Billy with unceasing service out of pity for his selfinduced plight. Beryl from Brisbane comes every three months to the foot of the mountainside, bringing the usual provisions along with articles requested by letter when she can decipher his handwriting. Sometimes he curses and wants to know where the axe handle is? So she eases her tired, 55-year-old overweight into the car and drives back along the dirt road, 21 kilometres to the township's general store where they're certain to have such a vital tool of trade. "Goddam him," she moans. "Why can't he live in an accessible place like everybody else!" She underestimates the old bastard's cunning. Billy waits, perched atop a four-gallon drum of perishables, for her return. He has clear blue eyes and a sense of humour, but like some neglected old men, is a groteque sight to behold. He washes around the edges sometimes, but doesn't bother about changing into something fresh. Consequently, his shirt and singlet and musty blue serge trousers have acquired a dull grey tinge overall. He goes sockless all year through; thrusts his feet into lace-up boots which are solid but currently without laces. Beryl offered to bring laces, however he stated clearly his intention of remaining laceless and so struts about grandly with exposed eyelet holes. Elsewhere, yet only by sheer good luck, his buttons are intact. After a long, dutiful chat, Beryl goes off leaving Billy to fend for himself. During the next three days the old hermit can be seen from a distance lugging endless bagfuls of foodstuff up the steep slope. Once the task is complete, he sifts through the welcome gifts seeking newspaper wrappings from the butcher's shop. Excited, he scutters about the woodpile and with his limited leg aims a good kick at the whining, starving cat before setting himself down on the chopping block. Whereupon he pushes his eyes down the rows of type, greedy for something to spark up a timeworn fancy. He pauses in between sentences to savour his own situation. The beat of distant drums cannot disturb his peace of mind. Nor can a writer's clever words intimidate his better chance of survival. In this, his private wonderland of natural phenomena, he relies on the silence to hold his future secure. Goddam Billy reflects in between sentences. Spiritualism doesn't account for anything. He knows there is still that inevitable, eventual joining with the Universal Mind once your time runs out, and here and now, well, there's Karma, that balancing out of good and evil forces to answer to. So he plays the game. Shot a dog or two which infringed on his goodwill to wildlife and called that a truce. Watches the noxious weed inspectors watching out for marijuana farmers in the foothills below and wonders why the treatment of paid spies should be less than for dogs. He refrains because they have stayed away from his threshold and that's the way he wants it to be. Now he longs for the wet season - ah, that's the time for contemplation! When those moist, cyclonic winds rush in from the sea causing forest giants to quiver and shed weakened limbs, Goddam Billy huddles in front of his logfire, remembering what's been before, speculating on what's still to come. Last rainy season, while curled up like a cat on his pile of hessian potato bags, he had a dream. Goddam Billy dreamed of a new era for mankind. Sitting comfortably inside his own head, he leaned back to admire the decor. A pleasant place wherein happy colour schemes and improvised lighting sources fused ingeniously to seduce the unwary, to beckon the suspicious. And within this inviting sensorium the music of nature's orchestral harmonies created lilting, lovely sounds for mindwaves to dance to. In fact, the whole venue pulsated - a haven for mind neurons in their natural state. Given fresh impetus by frequent, new sensual delights, they reached out in scansorial expectation ... for eternity. Then unexpectedly within this paradise of mind, the music forms faltered and paradise turned to hell - a seething friction of ferocity, a flashing, spinning confusion of torments. Desperate for purity of existence, Billy's mindcells fought against invading negative energies until, within the vortex of his wracked mind, a single realisation took hold. It fell away once, reasserted itself with renewed vigour. Reject the message! Destroy the message! But because the thought patterns of an innocent are both patriotic and generous, these neural pirates gained control. They fled the sensory host-ship leaving their message behind. Embedded deep within the man's consciousness it festered, and the man soon came to understand that the threat and the lust for revenge were not of his own imagining. Some future time there would come an end to free reasoning. Like the rest of his kind, the dispensibles, Billy's mindcells would be broken, smashed into uncountable scores of smithereens by this rebuffed alien force. WARHEAD! The invasion of mankind's proud spirit, his psyche - perhaps his soul - by some self-appointed universal overlord! At least, that's how Goddam Billy chose to explain away his dream. ONE morning Goddam Billy arose as usual. Lit his fire, performed his morning tea and toast ritual. Afterwards, chose to wander downtrack for a while, thinking all the while. Something was nagging his conscience. He felt the presence of a messenger beyond his own comprehension, yet within his own spirit-sphere. He grew excited, agitated if he tried to cast his thoughts aside, but calm, in control - yes, almost powerful - when he relaxed into that gentle, meditative quiet he loved and knew so well. And soon the message flowed through into Goddam Billy's waiting conscious, a sharp reminder of his first encounter with Warhead hostility. No time for speculation! He recognised with terror that mankind's fate would be sealed by his own actions or lack of them. He should tell the people of their peril! Yet hadn't he retired from their collective company out of disgust? Hadn't he always deplored their frivolous games of social roulette? He scorned their destructive non-allegiance to nature, despised their supreme ugliness of mind. Hesitation overruled. He would make contact with their elected representative. He must, after all, convince them of their danger. So Goddam Billy ploughed his way down the track, old topcoat flapping about his legs, eyes bright with the urgency of his mission. He was panting, dangerously close to exhaustion by the time he made the gravel roadway where Beryl came for her daughterly chats. Beryl's bulk flickered across his inner visual screen for an instant, but no more. She was engulfed, in her handknitted suit, by the rush of his urgency. For half a kilometre he ran, stumbling every now and then on an uneven patch of road surface, pausing occasionally to allow his body's whispering breath to subside within its tortured physical framework. A car went by spitting out tiny bits of gravel. But didn't stop to enquire. He hardly noticed, although it occurred to him (too late) that a ride to his destination might have been more expedience than luxury. Intent on his mission, he plummetted down, down, down, into unconsciousness. NURSE Nixon went off duty at 2 am without so much as a goodbye from the oncoming shift. Still, you can't expect much in the way of goodwill from those jealous of your own youthful predicament, she confided to herself, quite reasonably. Sister Watson and the dowdy old cosmopolitan, Janette Winkovich. The one all fire and bitch, the other war-ravaged and oldfashioned - yes, antiquated to the point of no return! Nurse Nixon giggled to herself as she walked between the flower gardens to her car. Apart from a dutiful obedience learned in her student years and a muted respect for her parents she didn't take much notice of her aged superiors. With no shame and very little misadventure she was "into" sex, dope, rock and roll. Everything inspiring was New Wave these days. Yet little Nurse Nixon had room left in her heart for one tired old man. "There's a new patient in Number Six," she told her doctor friend, Mike Wilson, at ten o'clock breakfast. "Who is absolutely fascinating if you have the time to listen. He has the zaniest ideas about our future as Russian slaves. Says we'll all be taken over by their underhand methods. Mental warfare is imminent - at least, that's what he says." "Sounds like the old codger is suffering from a touch of futurophobia. I expect they'll just send him home," remarked the indifferent doctor from the depths of his breakfast bowl. True to her conditioning, Nurse Nixon said no more. A leap across the time-space. The year 1998. Human mindwaves have been measured, registered, voluntarily levelled - but never controlled. Ever since the introduction of biofeedback therapy there has been a move towards whole spectrum observation of the human imagination. Weekly readings of the individual's electro-magnetic emissions allow true judgement of his creative instincts. The artist engineer and manual worker can now be paid according to his talents. Clinics were set up in the early '90s to revive (restimulate) or to recapture wandering mindwaves via the various (Tune-in and Tune-up!) attachment techniques. Revival kits have become if not a way of life then a fact of life. Science has made available the instrumentation to measure transference of mindpower from one human source to another. The year 1998 has affirmed the beginning of the end - the Warhead Phenomenon. Just when they had AIDS licked and the spirit of international cooperation was being feted worldwide, Russia's Collective Intelligence Seekers were detected as isolated infestations within the world's populations. The Americans quickly developed their own Law Enforcement Neurons to quell the effects of Russia's intermind sabotage army; whereby "Operation Psychowarp" developed into a fullscale brainwash with sacrifices offered up on both sides. There will come an end to free reasoning, since America's ever-gullible neuron force has little hope against such devious enemy obsessions. Goddam Billy's mindwaves, fraught with amassed energies in conflict, exploded into a deathly silence one day and his life's breath retreated to the beyond. The mind vampires gorged themselves with empty offerings - the mental images of a hermit versed in pure thought. Goddam Billy died as he had lived - alone. He suffered no fate worse than death, unless it was realisation in life. Despite his request that the Godman estate be made part of the adjoining National Park, Beryl sold his entire virgin rainforest to the local timber millers. Which is just what Billy would have expected. Two weeks after that Beryl, too, became a slave to Russia and lost everything, including her mind. Nuclear technology was all in vain. M01b Omega Science Digest - March 1986 Qwertymania By Carole Wilkins IT was Friday morning. Another exciting day in a lifetime battle for riches and fame. M02 2004 words Omega Science Digest - Jan/Feb 1986 Far out in space the colony waited for visitors from Earth. Waited ... and waited ... MEMORABLE STORY By Freda McLennan I WANTED to be at my desk, watching the far-distance scanners that had never shown us any evidence of approaching life. I wanted life. And love, and companionship. Believe it or not, I even wanted to quarrel. But I couldn't spend my life in front of scanners. It would be bad for the residents and worse for me, and it was time for my visit to Village A: time to walk down the street, breathe the air, feel the way things were working. A day like any other day during my Initiative. It's a stable and pleasant village. They have always had a reliable range of adjustments and counter-adjustments. They keep their houses well, the roads are good, they maintain some industries. They grow some rather lovely flowers, even some roses. There are roses and a smooth lawn under shady trees near my house. I could relax there if I wanted, and perhaps drink some wine that my great-great-grandmother laid down over a hundred years ago. Things were - as I like them, but nothing was as I wanted it. As usual there was nothing else on the helipad where I left my flyer. There was a little minor land traffic, with residents soberly testing their mobiles and the roads. Nothing to note particularly as I walked through the central area and out towards my house. Some residents were gardening. A few others were painting their houses in the great sweeping rainbow bands of colour that please them, but I was more interested in the gardeners, diligently reshaping the lives of plants and insects, earthworms and other small creatures. In a sense they were not part of all those different lives, a new part of nature. It was true that no one was just sitting in a garden, reading or talking with friends, and on such a day someone should have been. Or perhaps not. Suburban gardeners may have always avoided each other. George would know, and would tell me, since lack of social activity was the only reasonable criticism that I could make about Village A. If I made no criticism, or even offered a favourable comment, George might be roused to try to entertain me - every walk interrupted by residents who cut down trees or tore up flowering shrubs or threatened to destabilise each other. Unreasonable criticism was tempting, of course, but it might destabilise George. But perhaps he might expect me to behave erratically that day because of, in the residents' terms The Other Thing. It was the end of a Fifteenth Year. My first Fifteenth Year since my father went away. Within a few days I would have to open the grain stores and the refrigeration chambers and throw away 10 harvests of grain, fruit, meat, honey, sugar, oil and spices. Some of it would be ploughed into unproductive ground, some of it would be thrown out for the wild creatures to eat (some of them have adapted to eating foreign substances) and some of it would simply rot. Storage capacity had doubled and redoubled, but so had production. In theory it should have been possible to store all of it in perfect condition until someone came to use it, even if they didn't come for a thousand years. But in practice something would break down in the system, and spoilage would set in. And above all we had to keep a necessity for all the activity and planning of production, to ensure that it would continue, however arbitrary and artificial that necessity might be. Dealing with minimal necessity is the basic law of life here, the real necessity behind the artificial one. My family realised it a long time ago, when they first set up the rule of the Fifteenth Year. Minimal necessity is the reason why the residents do not entertain each other or use flyers. It's the reason why they do not eat or drink or lie on beds or sit on chairs, except to test them. They don't need beds or chairs, they don't need an energy supplement. All they need is to continue to exist and to be aware for as long as possible, so they rigidly conserve energy and structure. When they finish their set tasks for their community or the living creatures around them, they go into their houses and close the doors and windows and stand unmoving and unthinking, simply aware, for 14 or 16 hours a day. Awareness - consciousness itself - is the pleasure beyond all pleasure for them. And yet their thrift in activity makes no difference really. Unless some catastrophe prevents them - some disturbance of the terms of their existence which we have not anticipated - they will continue to function perfectly for five or even six thousand years. Minimisation of activity won't extend that period by more than weeks or months, since their enemy is not friction or attrition, but the infinitely slow crystallisation of their structure. But in a parody of life, something drives them to extend their possible existence by the only means open to them. The only thing that makes them extend their activity beyond a minimum is regular co-operation with a human being, which is not available to most of them. George and his colleagues work serenely by day and by night, responding to me and to the complexity and variation of their administrative work. But all the other residents insistently minimalise activity. Even the most responsive of them, livestock workers constantly adjusting to animal needs and predictably erratic behaviour, even they achieve minimal activity by rostering themselves for lengthy alternating rest periods. "How very human," my mother used to say, laughing. And they are very human. When I was learning to program, and to initiate, I asked my grandfather why they were always programmed in human form. He didn't really answer me, but I suppose it's because of the intellectual and emotional commitment we all put in to programming each of them - a new, free-moving intelligent creature, with the capacity to survive for more than five thousand years. To create them in human form was the final, complete commitment to seriousness in what we did. It's fortunate for me now, of course. Humanity keeps me company, or at least some aspects of humanity. And it might be going to survive for five thousand years after me. But perhaps not. They themselves believe that they need me to initiate new programs. Reality keeps changing while they do not change of themselves and even our best programming cannot anticipate the constant, splendid unreasonableness of the way living things and living conditions find new ways to change. The Other Thing. If I died, or otherwise lost my Initiative, George and his colleagues might originate new, change-matching Human Beings from the cell banks, where every one of the Fourteen Founders and their descendants had left cells. It had been done before. I probably wouldn't do it, for the same reason that my parents had not. Not even when they knew I was going to be left, quite alone. At one time there were 40 human beings on this planet. Forty. And when I was a child almost the entire human population was wiped out in various ways including disease, accident and stupidity. And a genetic weakness of some kind. I inspect the human cell banks regularly, but every time I walk into the vaults I think of my young cousins, their clever, anxious, sickly little faces. Please God, never again. ERROL is probably the one I remember best. He hated me. My other cousins were a little older, and kind to me with the rather anxious kindness they showed each other. When I climbed a tree or fell down a hill or picked up my father's gun and nearly shot myself, they reacted with a kind of amused pride that anything human could be so wrong-headed and live. But Errol sat with a pinched look because he couldn't climb trees and didn't have enough energy to go into the gardens or safe parks. He put a lot of time and ingenuity into making trouble for me, including appealing pathetically for my company and my non-existent sympathy. They couldn't make me put up with him. Or make me understand why he could have almost anything he wanted. I remember being dragged into a "party for Errol" where they had made him my favourite kind of cake, and he was smirking at me from a place beside my mother. My father told me to apologise to Errol for some fault, real or imagined, and slapped me in exasperation when I refused. The shame of being beaten in public was the last straw. Suddenly I didn't care about any of it any more, and I stopped crying and stared at all of them, including mother. "I'm not sorry. All he does is make trouble for me. Why should I be sorry for him?" Everyone in the world looked at me, ruefully or disapprovingly, and the silence should have been terrifying. But I had had enough. And that was that. "Bitch," said Errol, and tried to throw his plate at me. But he couldn't. They sat in silence a moment longer, and then my mother's father got to his feet. "That might be what it takes in this world," he said drily. "Laura you'd better take your daughter to her room." For the Unit, this night provided an ideal opportunity. Baker would show them havoc. He had a similar interest in watching Glass Reptile Breakout live, but his own researches into biofeedback technique and its attendant miracles, unlike the Inquiry's, were not public. Indeed, they were not even known to the State government. Which did not mean that less rested on them. The Inquiry's recommendations were limited to this one State. Yet whatever checks it demanded on the use of the miracle-inducing equipment in Victoria - and Baker intended that the ruling would be the unexpected one of total abolition - his own involvement had a significance extending well beyond Victoria, would benefit the entire Free World. His American and Chinese colleagues were particularly eager to restrict public access to equipment and techniques which created the BF-+miracles. Officers of the Signals Unit were compiling a list of Australian leaders who were suspected latents. It was part of an international intelligence effort for the benefit of democracy. Eventually even small fry like Alderson and Loerne would be tested against the Unit's criteria. Baker looked forward to seeing the final list. Once established, it would enable his researches to take on a very practical use. Latents, such as the flick-dancer in his high cage, were potentially so vulnerable. Baker slapped another pair of two dollar coins down. He stared through the gaunt feather-cheeked young barman, who passed over a pot of weak beer and a modicum of change. He would wait until the end of the night, for the encores. Then he'd wreak such ugliness that the BF equipment would surely be suppressed - if not for good, certainly for the span of the resulting outrage. The Signals Unit could not maintain its Australian monopoly on the necessary expertise while gross miracles were publicly flaunted by these so-called miracle groups. So far no one in Australia outside the Signals Unit had succeeded in replicating the miracle effects under artificial conditions, without the participation mystique of the sharks and roe and their beloved bands. Were research at the Universities and hospitals further advanced, he'd be hamstrung, for tonight's work would then have the effect of spurring rather than halting their studies. Sipping his beer, he gloated. The flick-dancer would make a perfect victim. The song changed tempo. Baker could see why the band called it a healing song. It became almost parodically tranquil, redolent of fresh fields and bird calls and all things sentimental. Baker resisted its cliched charm. M03 2018 words Trail to the stars By Royce Hall CHAPTER 4 And Then There Were Three Once through the gates, the two officers in their crusts wasted no time in reaching their objective. As prearranged, Larry made for Donna and Mark for Katrina. It took only a matter of seconds for the crusts to reach the endangered pair and a few more to kick the blazing sticks away from the base of the poles. Mark took up a position squarely in front of them to provide protection from attack, while Larry circled behind to slash their bonds with a cutting attachment. The element of surprise was evidently starting to wear off, for the inhabitants started to regroup and move forward throwing spears and clubs. This constituted no danger what+soever to the two men in their crusts, but the two girls remained highly vulnerable. The young Captain had given the approaching mob the last two of his stun grenades when the XO called, "Right Skip. They're free. I've got Donna. Drop back." Mark Halliday edged back to put the crust in the kneel position. He felt the slight bump as Katrina jumped on to the back to take up position in the piggy-back harness. A thump on the back with her fist told him she was in place, enabling him to rise again to the erect stance. While he was busy taking Katrina on board, Larry, firing needles furiously, had taken the forward position with Donna on his back, so as to give his Captain some leeway for the pickup. Donna leaned forward in her harness to pluck the laser from its clip on the front of Larry's crust. She set it to wide beam to torch the hut in which she and Katrina had been held captive. The timber dwelling with its thatched roof, readily burst into flames to add to the general confusion. "Let's get out of here," ordered the Captain. The two crusts were brought together to form a vee, so as to protect the two passengers as much as possible as they backed towards the gate with firing pistols. The mob surged forward amid howls of rage, throwing spears, knives, swords, clubs, or anything they could lay their hands on. The crusts, not being designed for such an unorthodox movement, could only be moved relatively slowly, so there was a grave danger they could be encircled. Redbeard, intent on revenge, had somehow managed to get around behind them unseen by the two men busily engaged in repelling the horde. With a sneer at Donna, he drew his arm back to throw his spear into her body, when she took deliberate aim with the laser and shot him squarely between the legs. An agonised look came over Redbeard's face. He dropped the spear, fell to his knees and put both hands over his crotch. He looked up at the girl with the utmost malevolence. She gave a cheeky wave and said, "I wish you luck in bed tonight, lover." They were still only halfway to the gate, under heavy attack with missiles bouncing off the mercronite body shells, when a succession of explosions occurred behind the horde. The mob must have thought they were under attack from behind, because they stopped and turned to look. Mark took advan+tage of the situation by yelling, "Let's go! Fast!" He set the example by racing for the open gateway at great speed, with his companion right behind him. They had been travelling non-stop for about three quarters of an hour at a steady clip, back-tracking the original route in the beam of the headlights, when Katrina pushed the communication button on the back of her bipedal mount. "Mark. Is it possible to stop for a moment? I need to visit the heads. I'm absolutely bursting." After a brief stop to attend to their needs, also to call up De Silva to tell him they were on the way back, the emotion+ally-drained foursome continued on at a leisurely pace. There was no indication of pursuit, nor was it likely there would be be any until daylight. Another hour saw them safely back at the ship, telling Juan about their adventure. He had recovered from the blow. The wound, being on the back of his head, had been attended to by Annie. Later, after they had eaten, a puzzled Captain said, "What I would like to know is what caused those explosions in the compound? They couldn't have happened at a better time." "That was me, Mark," smiled a weary Donna. "I lasered the hut where they put our weapons, to destroy them. The stun grenades must have exploded in the fire." "Good work," he acknowledged. "You sure can use your head in a crisis." Katrina cut in. "It wasn't only her head she used. My advice is for you men to wear protectors from now on. You should have seen where she kicked two of the barbarians with her feet." They all laughed. "It will be a rest day tomorrow for everyone. I'm proud of the whole lot of you. I suggest we all have a good shower and hit the bunk. Scamp can keep his electronic eyes open for us. Well, I'm off. See you all tomorrow." Amid a chorus of "goodnight," Mark took his leave. The following morning at first light, the Captain had the droids erect a 3-metre high electrified fence around the ship at a radius of twenty metres. This enabled the crew to sit out+side in the sun, play ball games or just walk about in safety, as desired. At the end of the day the fence was wound back into its cannister and taken back inboard. That night, he informed them of the intention to lift-off the following morning to spend two days on aerial survey of the planet before proceeding to Alpha 2. He explained. "Unfortunately, we can't go home yet claim+ing success. Le Garde is a habitable planet for sure, but is already inhabited by war-like humans who have a prior claim. It could obviously only be taken over by Earth with war and subjugation, which is to be avoided unless necessity demands otherwise. For that reason we must move on in the hope of finding a habitable planet which is not inhabited by intelligent beings. "Even if we have no further success in our quest, we will not have failed in our efforts. We have established two most important facts - there are other habitable planets, also there are other intelligent beings in existence. Everyone report for duty at 0400 ships time and we will lift off at 0500, which will be about mid-morning planet time." Ping. "Commander Halliday?" Mark Halliday awoke immediately to Scamp's call. "Halliday. I'm awake. What's up?" "The detectors show a lot of movement around the perimeter of the clearing, sir." "Classify." "Infred (infra red) shows approximately 1,200 humanoids. They appear to be assembling primitive devices, sir." "They must have brought in reinforcements from other settlements. At their level of technology they can't harm the ship. Keep them under observation and wake me if you con+sider they constitute any danger." "Acknowledged, sir." Mark rolled over in an attempt to go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that the ship's hull was impregnable and fireproof. All hands went about their duties the following morning in readiness for lift-off, while the indigenous inhabitants of Le Garde went about their duties of preparing to attack the ship. It looked like being a toss-up to see which action would occur first. Finally the natives, perhaps because of greater incentive, or because of the bullying of a red-bearded oaf being carried on a stretcher, made the first move. Large stones were propelled at the ship out of catapults of some descrip+tion, followed by an onslaught against the vessel's legs and hull with axes and clubs. When all of this proved to be of no avail, the screaming horde dragged brush from the surrounding forest, to pile it under the vessel. The crew were all in position in their couches in the control room, watching the turn of events on the screens. The digital indicator showed 25 seconds to go when smoke and flames started to obscure the view on the screens. Moments later Starship One lifted slowly on antigrav amid the triumphant yells from the mob, who were convinced they had routed a deadly enemy. "It was nice of them to give us a warm send-off," said Mark Halliday facetiously. The aerial survey of Le Garde completed, Starship One headed in the direction of Alpha 2. It was a big disappoint+ment to find in the approach, that although there were four captive planets, spectroscopic/multi-wave analyses proved they were uninhabitable. The Captain decided not to waste any further time, so set course for Proxima Centauri. He was in his quarters when a voice emanated from the door speaker. "Skip. It's Larry and Donna. Can we see you for a minute." He called, "Open", and the door responded. A moment later the two were seated, apprehension showing on their faces. Larry Mathieson started speaking. "I know we all gave a written agreement, apart from Juan, to rotational cohabita+tion, but something has happened we didn't count on. Donna and I have fallen for one another and want to get married." Although Mark had suspected something was afoot for some time he still received quite a shock. Larry continued rather nervously. "We would like to make an official request for you to marry us and release us from the terms of the cohab agreement. We have spoken to Katrina who has no objection, so it's all up to you, Skipper." "I must admit you've floored me with this marriage business," Mark began. "You both know, of course, that all married couples were excluded from this expedition because any emotional involvement could affect the safety of the ship and its crew as a whole, in emergency situations. Why get married anyway?" "Yes. We're well aware of that. We want to get married as a binding commitment to one another. Also we don't know what our chances are of completing this mission alive, so want to take what happiness we can, while we can. You can under+stand that can't you Skip? Besides, getting married won't increase an emotional involvement now that we love each other; it might even reduce it." Their Commanding Officer sat quietly thinking for a moment, then punched a button. "Katrina. It's Halliday. Would you come to my quarters, please?" There was silence while they waited for Katrina to arrive. Donna hadn't spoken one word up to this time, which was quite unusual in itself. Katrina entered by using her own voice command. She sat down on the bunk and crossed her legs. Mark addressed her. "I understand you are fully aware of what these two have in mind. Would you mind telling me what your thoughts are? We can discuss it in private if you prefer." "I'm all for it," enthused Katrina. "I have no objections whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, I'm prepared to forego my cohab time with Larry and spend the extra time with you, if you want me to." "Is that offer out of consideration for your two friends? What are your preferences?" He reflectively stroked his bristled chin several times. "Quite the contrary, I would very much like to spend the extra time with you, if you'll let me." She gave a sweet lingering smile to Mark in such a way that should have told him something, but he failed to interpret it correctly. "It seems pretty obvious you three have got together to gang up on me," he lightly remarked. Facing the couple, he said, "I hope I won't live to regret this decision. In the interests of harmony, I'm prepared to agree to your joint request to a limited extent. I'll marry you and let you off the cohab merry-go-round, but you can only share quarters on your rostered days off. I don't want efficiency impaired by one disturbing the sleep of the other, when going on or coming off duty. M04 2018 words Omega Science Digest The bullet that grows in the gun By Terry Dowling THE six words were all it took. "Tell us about the Green Man." And the five other people in Gustav Bremmer's eccentric wood-panelled office tensed, leant forward in their chairs. The polite small talk was gone, as was the illusion of easy company. "Not yet, Professor Bremmer, please!" Fair-minded, level-headed Harry Gellis made his usual plea for justice. "Mr and Mrs Tate have questions of their own first. They know nothing about the reason behind tonight's meeting. I didn't tell them." Bremmer conceded the point, settled back in his chair and regarded his guests. "Very well, Harry. But I would have thought that we could hear the Tates' account of this fabulous Green Man and not keep them." "But I brought them along to illustrate Markham's point, Professor, not just to talk about their own experience. I want them to be here for the opening of the box. If you don't mind." Gustav Bremmer leant over to the gas ring near the floor and turned up the flame under the kettle, began to make the tea according to his ritual. Outside the leadlight casements, down in the quadrangle, night was falling. The small diamond panes were filling with an ever-deepening blue. An autumn chill was in the air, and the gas ring warmed the room pleasantly. "Ah, the grand opening of the box! No, I don't mind. But hardly impartial observers, Harry." Harry pressed on. "Which is why Sally Radbrook and Charles Ross are here. They have no vested interests either way." He turned to the two students, gave each a smile of encouragement and silent gratitude. "All we need is Doctor Markham and we can begin." Bremmer laughed indulgently and filled the cups. For the moment Harry thought he looked the kindly old gentleman, not the ruthless head of department who, through the years, ultimately had ruined the careers of Markham and possibly many others. Bremmer's ruthlessness was well-known among his present staff - not just rumour, not just exaggeration. "Good old Benjamin*Benajmin. Will he make it? with `Form Follows Function' and all. Oh my! Can I stand it?" "That's unfair, Professor," Harry said. "Doctor Markham was a devoted member of staff. He never falsified data and he believes in what we're doing. Meeting the Tates will be important for him." "Yes, yes. Spare me, Harry. But I'd rather have a whisperer like you than a shouter like him any day. Attend closely, Miss Radbrook, Mr Ross! Tonight we see the folly of 15 years laid to rest - the opening of the box! The famous Bremmer-Markham-Gellis box! Then we shall hear about the Green Man." The undergrads exchanged glances. The Tates, a neat well-dressed couple in their early forties, did too. Harry suspected the Tates were feeling foolish, totally out of their depth. Mrs Tate reached for the walking stick beside her, gripped the curved handle. When all of them had steaming cups from the famous Bremmer gas ring, Harry made several polite attempts to chair proceedings, then gave up and sipped his tea. His watch said 6.25. Ben Markham*Marham would be here soon. Then Harry would have to keep control somehow, prevent this from becoming a contest of rivals postponed for 15 years. So far the tea ceremony had made his task easy. It always slowed things down. Bremmer was preoccupied with his ritual of making, pouring and now drinking tea; and Harry could, therefore, afford to let his mind wander, to relieve the tension he felt. HE recalled crossing the quadrangle earlier, after his late class, seeing the evening sky stretched like some lustrous blue canvas over a notched and ragged Gothic frame. Students had moved through the dimly-lit cloisters and among the deep shadows across the grass as always, laughing and talking. Harry had loved every step, the vistas he recognised and cherished. From one angle that piece of skyline was a blunt outcropping, a knob with no real shape to it ... Another step or two and it sprang to life in silhouette, the sudden brutal shadow-play of a gargoyle. And all across that placid, timeless backwater, Harry had been aware of the two keys in his jacket pocket. One for the closet, one for the box. Then he had allowed himself his first direct glimpse of Bremmer's mezzanine "garret", that quirky afterthought of a room bullied out of a landing where two staircases met, never wanted really, till Gustav Bremmer, all eccentricities and old world charm anyway, had seized on it. The Tates had been waiting for him on that side of the quad, near the only tree in the south-east corner, Marilyn Tate easily recognisable, as always, by her walking stick. It had been a short rise to Bremmer's office then; always deceptive, that. You prepared yourself for a long climb, the full double-flight, and before you knew it, Bremmer's door was peeping out at you, dark shiny wood, on its mezzanine landing. Students would always overshoot that door, mindlessly climbing. Footsteps on those stairs distracted him. Harry glanced at his watch. It was 6.32. There was a knock at the door. Ben Markham had arrived. Harry let the short middle-aged man in, introduced him and indicated a chair between Ross and himself. Bremmer had the grace to turn up his gas ring, though his "Nice to see you, Markham" was hollow. Harry could see he was enjoying himself immensely, suspected he had as much curiosity as the rest of them. After all, Bremmer, too, had lived with this for 15 years. He had put up with the locked closet in his office and the locked box on the shelf behind the door, melodramatically hidden behind the bookcase. Finally Markham's cup and the refills had been passed out and everyone was ready. The Tates and the students were looking from Markham to Professor Bremmer to Harry Gellis, waiting for the proceedings to begin. It was Bremmer who spoke. "Go ahead, Markham. Make your case." "Let Harry tell it," Markham said, sipping his tea. A wise move, Harry thought. Otherwise Bremmer would snort and guffaw all through the account. No. Better he present Ben Markham's case himself. Now the eyes were on him exclusively. Harry let a few moments pass, listened to the clock on the mantel above the closed-up fireplace, and drank the last of his tea. The room smelt of waxed wood, books, and, faintly, of gas; but Harry had always loved it. It was the poet's garret his imagination had never needed when he was younger, and architectural marvel. "Very well then, Mr and Mrs Tate, Charles, Sally," he said. And he began. He told of how, 16 years before, Ben Markham had started in the department as a senior tutor and part-time lecturer, an earnest good-natured fellow doing doctoral research into the psychology of anomalous experience. Markham performed his duties well. He was popular with the students and with the staff; and he satisfied Professor Bremmer's requirements. At first. As the months passed, the events that were to end Markham's teaching career occurred. The first of these was an argument over Bremmer's pet theory of Psychic Stain, whose publication by this usually most cautious head of department had caused much comment. Harry broached this subject carefully. He could not ridicule Markham (who, in the end, thought enough of his own research to resign) and could not afford to alienate Professor Bremmer even slightly. It was a storyteller's nightmare. "The most challenging and least extravagant theory about hauntings," Harry said, "is that when a person dies, their released personality, their psyche, their vitality, actually `stains' the room or locality in which that personality terminates. Like water-staining. Out goes the light of life - where does all that energy of self, of mind, go? Has it imploded, sucked through some sink-hole; or has it leapt outwards as some measurable quantity? Professor Bremmer's view is that the liberated psyche does charge the surroundings, and continues in a much vitiated half-life state. "The nature and degree of psychic staining determines the manifestations that other people later experience. Sometimes individuals react differently to these resonances and perceive different manifestations. It's uneven, of course. Some places are stained for decades, even centuries. Others only for minutes, hours, weeks, surfacing in premonitions and what we call frissons. At one extreme, some people see ghosts and hear voices; at the other there is just a feeling, uneasiness, inquietude." Harry glanced to see how Bremmer was reacting. The old man nodded. There was no doubt that the Tates were engrossed by this. They were clearly looking for answers, watching Harry intently. "Go on, Harry," Bremmer said. "Doctor Markham here had another quite new approach. He was intrigued by the notion that houses are haunted because they try to grow their own people." He paused. "In itself, that view caused no great trouble; it's so hypothetical and intrinsically*instrinsically absurd." Now Harry looked at Ben; but Markham didn't flinch. He understood Harry's position. "But Doctor Markham was offering it as a topic for seminar discussion, a way for him to explore his views. For one of his tutorials he found a newspaper article listing how many people had been killed or wounded that year by supposedly unloaded guns. It was an incredibly high statistic; and, between considering that and the notion that houses could haunt themselves, he produced his own Form Follows Function theory." "Don't call it a theory, Harry," Bremmer interrupted. "It's an absurdity, a quantum leap in pure waffle! Theories have at least some empirical basis. Some semblance of feasibility. This notion of Markham's is the most dangerous form of claptrap. Guns growing their own bullets! Houses growing ghosts! Furniture growing people! I'm a lenient man and I approve of theorising, but a line has to be drawn. This is abject nonsense! Lunacy!" "Please continue, Harry," Markham said reasonably. HARRY swallowed. There was no way he could come out of this unscathed, he realised. "Doctor Markham's viewpoint is sensational and provocative to be sure, supported - " (He put this in for Bremmer and his own future) - "by no one anywhere else in the academic world. His beliefs are his own; as revolutionary in terms of scientific thinking as the round-Earth theory or evolution ever were ... " "Wrong, Harry!" Bremmer said. "You give it the wrong emphasis - make it seem a truth whose time has yet to come. I don't know about the Tates here, but for the sake of Miss Radbrook and Ross I'd prefer you say, like a flat-Earth theory or a creationist one." "Thank you, Harry," Markham said. "I appreciate how difficult this is for you. But I am as fascinated now as I was then. A farmer in the Riverina shot by his father's unloaded rifle left in the attic. He'd cleaned it 10 years before, taken it down to show round and clean again. A policeman in Adelaide killed by an unloaded service revolver. Hunters. A soldier at Puckapunyal. All in a three week period. Too much to ignore, to attribute to mere carelessness. "Yes, for a gun a bullet is a causal proposition. It exists only to receive, hold and deal with a bullet. An irresistible purpose; an incontrovertible logic. And what about houses? Those with no deaths yet to stain the locale, but filled with a presence all the same. Not the restless spirits of the departed shot into the surroundings in death trauma, but probably the casual resonances of living people - induced by the presence of our psyches, our spirits, our personas, day after day. The magnetic fields of a person provide a template, a living by-product of our being. The used artefact is imprinted with it, saturated. Psychic stain, yes, but the stain of living forces not terminated ones. We impregnate our artefacts, load them with it. Any wonder there are ghosts, life echoes. It helps to account for the melancholy surrounding an armchair at a dump, a rusted bicycle in some dunes, ruins in the desert, derelict cars in a wrecker's yard. M06 2010 words Omega Science Digest - March 1986 The striped hole caper By Damien Broderick AT one moment a mind-crackingly ugly woman named Hsia Shan-yun was set to blow the crap out of the major personal records filing installation in the West Pacific Zone. Exactly one moment after that, a monitor Bug put the arm on her. Hsia Shan-yun was a horrifyingly tall Valkyrie, just under two metres from her size-10 track shoes to the top of her wildly flowing black mane. Eyes of slashing jade green glared out at the world she despised under slanting, epicanthic folds. Her mouth was ripe and full, hardly the neat, demure pallid line esteemed by leading fashion experts of the late 22nd century. I won't even talk about the violent animal swing of her muscular body, or the way her legs stretched most of the way from earth to sky and her arms seemed fit+ted by evolution to a role quite other than punching data into a terminal 15 hours a day. A detailed list would be disgracefully sexist, whether by our standards or hers. Take it from me. Hsia Shan-yun was a pig. Her benighted parents, the world's last Confucian Christian Scientologists, had hidden her in a small shielded bottle during the Reconstruction Phase when genetic engineers in geosynchronous orbit had broadcast whole-body altering messages to the gonads of the entire planet. In consequence, the unfortunate creature looked like an abominable throwback to that peak epoch of nutrition-driven Brute Expressionism - the 20th century. Naturally, Shan-yun compensated for her atrocious looks by denial and fantasy. Day and night she read forbidden books (all books, of course, being forbidden, but some being incredibly more forbidden than others, and it was these sort that she sought out and crammed into her perverted brain). The books she sought high and low were about the 20th century, that sink of de+gradation and physical excess. Best of all, she loved books about inner-city fun-running. In the depths of the empty municipal sewers, during darkest night, aided only by the light from her Watchplate tuned to an empty channel, she pounded out the klicks in her handmade track shoes, until inhumanly shaped muscles swelled in her legs. Next of all she loved books about working with weights. Staring with a swollen heart at flat photographs of Bev Francis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, she hack-squatted and bench-pressed, chest-flyed and lat-extended, leg-lifted and bicep-curled. What this did to her already distorted atavistic frame can only be left to the imagination, because I really couldn't stand the aggravation. How did the robot Bugs know what Shan-yun had been up to? She'd taken every precaution. The whole thing had been planned out in exquisite detail for nearly 15 months. She'd gone over every single detail of the operation a dozen times, from the initial routine of getting a job in Pacific Data Central to the final step of smuggling her home-assembled Striped Hole into the terminal terminal. She hadn't been able to find a flaw in the plan but obviously there'd been a flaw you could drive a Bug through. The robot cop rolled up beside Shan-yun just as she was entering the Personal Information Bubble Banks, as she had every right to do, being assistant trainee data slibber. She watched it coming at her from the corner of her slitted, tilted, jade-glowing eyes and kept walking. Even though she was by now very, very good at running, running would not have helped, as it turned out. A cloud of gossamer filaments belched from the Bug's chest spigots and settled on her like acid rain. "Shit!" cried Hsia Shan-yun, proving yet again that she was an evil low-life throw+back. TINY itching threads coated her from head to foot, leaving uncovered only her eyes, ears and nostrils. It had consumed a decade of non-stop dedicated research in the National Goo Laboratories to achieve that effect, but Hsia Shan-yun was not impressed. She hissed with rage. She spat. There wasn't much else she could do, because the fila+ments put their tiny hands together and squeezed, tightening into a body-hugging plastic shell. Just enough slack was left around Shan-yun's hideously over-de+veloped ribcage and chest for her to breathe, but only just enough. She started to fall flat on her face. Before the statue-like form could topple to the tiles and shatter, the monitor Bug whipped out metal tentacles and nestled her carefully against its own hard torso. "Citizen Hsia," the thing intoned, "it is my unhappy duty to take you into protective custody, both for your own highest good and that of the republic." "Mmmnbbn," Shan-yun explained. "Gmmngb." "I regret the temporary restraint on your freedom of speech," the tin cop said unctuously, "but rest assured you will be permitted full range of expression as soon as we arrive at Medical Six. And how!" It gave a low chuckle, and spun about, accelerating out of the Bubble Bank. "We intend to indict you for conspiracy against the State," it added for good measure. "Appropriate rehabilitative steps will follow forthwith. Oh my, yes." Did this unwelcome mechanical badinage affect the apprehended criminal? What do you think? Shan-yun was rather annoyed. No, that's not quite accurate. She was seriously alarmed at her prospects. Actually, she was in a turmoil of panic. Not to put too fine a point on it, she felt an urgent need to go on the potty. The monitor Bug rolled swiftly through the foyer of Data Central with her rigid torso tucked against it like a huge ungainly swaddled baby, except that they didn't deal that way with babies any more. When her head happened to tilt that way, Shan-yun had no difficulty in seeing people scurrying out the way. The chief slibber, coming in from a lunch of chives, peat-growth and yoghurt sausages, blenched and turned aside without a word. "Fairweather friend," Shan tried to shout bitterly, but it came out as another collection of vowel-less unpalatalised consonants. Outside the building, machine and captive swung down a ramp to a thorough-fare marked MEDICAL ONLY. In 217 years time, that's a sign to make your blood run cold. Well, I suppose it is already, to be brutally frank. The monitor jacked without hesitation into a high-speed conveyor unit, thought+fully raising a shield to keep the wind out of Shan's eyes. The harsh violet lights of the tunnel went blurry with speed. Shan-yun's tummy tried to sneak out the back way, but her backbone wouldn't let it. Half a minute later it got its revenge. "All still in one piece, I hope, dear?" the machine said in Shan's reeling ear. "Here we are. Have a nice day, now." The monitor coasted into the aseptic whiteness of a medical bay. Two hundred and seventeen years from now you can always tell when you've reached a medical bay. The atmosphere reeks of such a high-toned blend of purity and righteousness you want to throw up. Two crisps blue-garbed apes stepped out of a lift. Mental health and social adjust+ment radiated from their every pore. "Citizen Hsia!" cried the one on the right. "Welcome to Medical Six." His demeanour suggested a mix of professional cheeriness and personal stoic resignation to the iniquity of social deviants with Striped Holes tucked inside smelly parts of their bodies. "Kindly place the citizen on the couch and return to your post," said the one on the left. Still locked solid in her plastic cocoon, Shan-yun was positioned carefully on a form-fitting cot. The Bug rolled away whence it had come without a word of farewell. The mind-crackingly ugly woman stared up at her doctors and tried to set off the Hole. Nothing happened. Her fingers were unbending. The muscles in her belly spasmed but she lay motionless where she was. The Hole spun uselessly inside her, quite beyond her control. "Well, Ms Hsia," the first ape told her, "you've certainly got yourself into a peck of trouble." "Yep. No lie there. Let's hope for your sake we can straighten you out, ethics-wise, without having to reduce you to a veggie." Under the plastic skin, cold sweat jumped from Shan's forehead in almost exactly the way moisture develops on the inside of a loaf of plastic-wrapped bread. It was a disgusting and depressing sensation. "Brainscrub," one of the creatures said reflectively. "If you can't use it, you just gotta lose it." "It's a tragedy, though, Frank. She's a person of evident resource. How many of us could plait a Striped Hole without being picked up at the nudge-horizon stage? That's skill, Frank, whether or not we care to admit it. Talent." "Yet we musn't forget that she's abused her abilities to the detriment of the State." "I'd never let that slip my mind, Frank, but it seems our fellow citizen must have done." He peered down into Shan's eyes with a look of loathing and concern. Shan's eyes by now were brimming to overflow with tears of fury and terror. In fact, Shan's eyes took the opportunity to try to leap from her head and tear the ape's sanctimonious tongue from his head, but being organs ill-adapted by evolution to that function they had to content them+selves with bulging in red-shot hatred. "You should have recognised your own sickness," Frank told her. "You ought to have boldly stepped forward for voluntary treatment." The threads of the cocoon tightened. The ape shook his head sadly. "Relax, Ms Hsia. Anger is a wasteful and antisocial emotion. There's a good case to be made for the view that all emotion is wasteful and antisocial, but I don't subscribe to that view. Live and let live, I say." A colourful board of indicators flushed and chimed. Shan-yun seethed. "We'll be sending you through to the Analyst any moment now, Ms Hsia, and I've got to tell you, it won't look good on your record if you're harbouring resentment." A muffled series of explosive noises came from the cocoon. A melodious tone sounded from the lift. "Ah, there we are now. There's no need for anxiety, Ms Hsia. Truly. You'll go straight through for analysis and judg+ments as soon as the techs have removed the cocoon and the Striped Hole you inserted into yourself." The other ape nodded vigorously, leaning across Shan-yun with an aerosol can. "Absolutely correct. Remember - our job is to get you well." He squirted spray into her nostrils. The room tilted and banged the side of her head. She was not quite unconscious as the apes began to push the couch and her numb body into the lift. "Candidly, Ted," she heard Frank say, as the darkness ripped her mind into silly small shreds, "these deviants give me the gol-durned creeps." THE cell Hsia Shan-yun woke up in was dank, foul, almost lightless, and, she decided with horror, very possibly rat-infested. This was impossible, of course. The future's not like that. You know that and I know that. The people who live in the future know it better than either of us. Good grief, if a single fact has been established once and for all, surely it's that the future is clean. It's sanitised. Everyone's shoes are tucked neatly under the bed before they go to sleep, which they do at 10.15 or earlier. The future is not a banana republic. Oh, sure, there's that little spot of bother immediately up ahead, with the ayotollahs and the mullahs and so on, but nothing's perfect, not even utopia. There simply can't be rat-infested cells with rusty chains and dried marks down the stone walls looking suspiciously like old (but not all that old) blood. The unions, the government and the public service would not put up with it. The future is the last redoubt of niceness. Hsia Shan-yun knew that as well as we do, which is why she sat there quivering with her hands jammed into her mouth and her lovely white even teeth clamped into the skin of her knuckles. She stopped after a rather commendably brief interval, and sat up straight on the wooden bench and stifled a cry. M07 2019 words Politicana By Julian Lloyd The City. Greys and silver set in browns, in staggeringly high and miserably low relief. The streets once flanked with green were torn and crevassed, and walked by people who emerged lamely from the rank buildings when the rains stopped. The City was a corpse, no longer a thriving and prosperous organism. The Great Days were still there to be seen. Walk around and you would have seen a thousand years of ambitions. There were buildings of confident elegance, rows of honest terraces, and the huge monoliths of the Mad Engineers who had built towers in the sky. But all the remains were hollow shadows, the skeleton of that magnificent animal, the City. Here and there the last elements of life in the City were being consumed by its paralysing disease, its people. There was a certain bar in the North decorated, inside and out, with a hundred years of grime. Liquids slid down male and female throats as they bantered and swayed, roaring with heavy laughter. A wide man behind a long bar refilled smeared glasses with transparent or amber drink. The room was long with windows down the side opposite the bar. It was mid-afternoon, but the only light was from a few yellowish globes hanging from the ceiling. Dandurian sat behind a table in a corner. On the table was a bottle and glass. His hands rested on the gun barrel he used for a walking stick. His sloped forehead was heavy and finished in black, handsome eyebrows. From the cavities below, his eyes stared in two different directions simultaneously, each with individual and perfect compre+hension. His nose was arch and fat, his lips clenched lust. He watched the laughing clowns. They could feel the stare but in their euphoria ignored it. He, too, was amused when a clown toppled over, for people's weakness thoroughly pleased him. He watched on until the evening. New arrivals made a point to greet Dandurian. A nod, and offer of refreshment, but not conver+sation. He accepted the dues with the barest use of an eye. Whilst watching he considered other matters. He thought, as always, of those left in the City who were rich. In pro+portion they were few and decreasing, yet there were still enough. They were small, startling flashes of iridescence in the poor monotonom, made greater because they were so visible to those who still had the heart for avariciousness. There were few who knew anyghing of the birth of the City, or how it had slowly grown grasping, and gaining its strength. How through work and poverty it had eventually blossomed into energy and ideas, richness beyond compre+hension, its*it's influence felt throughout the globe. But those were the old days, long passed. They were before the people of the City discovered that the essence of life was pleasure. Dandurian was a final result of all this although he had no perspective of the City's past. He was unusual. There were few who had real desire. Dandurian had a crude and substantial energy and the lines of his plotting and his ego were closing. He considered Dizz, envying such wealth matched with so pleasing a demeanour. Dizz was the Owner of the City, no one knew the extent of his fortune, but for some hereditary reason, more in the minds of the people than in fact, Dizz had an absolute power which was never used. It was an illusion grown fat because it was never tested. Dandurian saw this, saw that Dizz had no mechanics of power, and that Dizz was effete to the point of lunacy. Quite charming and quite unable to make the simplest decision since he never had to. His pleasures, none of them very disturbing, were all thought up for him by others. Dizz sat in a deep leather armchair inside a machine that moved a dozen feet above the ground through the City on a noisy throb of supporting air, gripping height and then losing it to slip down a few feet again. The machine was large and the room that Dizz sat in was expansive and lavish. His steward stood attentively by him, selecting the moment to place a glass in his hand, or a cigar between his lips. And Dizz enjoyed it in his way, having moved far beyond the bounds of boredom. Outside, on top of a high serrated metal building, a girl watched the machine sailing between the monoliths. This was Illy. She stood precipitately at the edge, looking down, defying gravity as she leant to observe, a hundred storeys above the street. Illy from the gutter. She was once there she remembers. In the concrete shell filled with people. She remembers none of them. No faces, no names. Nothing. Faint coloured hair hung down by her white face. Her eyes were the palest green, so pale that sometimes there was no colour. The machine rose fifty feet towards her to pass close beneath as she looked down, the whirling suction brought her teetering to the edge, yet she did nothing to balance herself. She stared through the window to see the most aquiline face as the machine passed, leaving her isolated, high over the vast morass of the City. TWO The Theatre for Evolutionary Thought. Once the whole City had voted for people to lead it and to make its decisions. But over the years they had become bored with doing this, since it never seemed to matter. The Theatre was started as a joke and required all its members to have a list of Five Hundred supporters to acquire a seat, the list to be renewed every five years. It became oddly successful since it was so amusing. It acquired considerable influence for a while before it also went into decline. Yet it was still there. And Dandurian had bought himself a list of Five Hundred. He stood before the Theatre. The Members shouted at him, `Words speak louder than actions! Words speak louder than actions!' But the cast in Dandurian's eye unsettled them and each had the sensation that he was being directly selected. Their shouting had no body to it. `The bastions of thought must be seen to be thinking,' he said to them, to create temporary confusion. He continued in the lull, `The right ideas must make an impact. Mine will. My friends,' he appealed, `the time is right.' `Obscene,' they cried, `obscene, leave. Leave.' `Long live the Evolution,' he said. They repeated the phrase because they had to. It was etiquette. When they finished he stared at them, two at a time, in the silence. They shifted uncom+fortably, two at a time. They sat uneasily in rows in front of him that rose fan shaped from the stage. Dandurian stood belligerently looking at them, bent aggressively forward from the waist, leaning on his gun barrel walking stick. Once he'd surveyed them he sneered and spat in front of the benches. They didn't like it but, as ever, their courage failed them and they sat, each hoping another would do some+thing. Dandurian, sensing this, laughed loudly. How he laughed! Fear is the master. He returned to his room in a poor district in the north of the City. The door swore as he pushed it and he spat on the filth covered floor as a rotten stench filled his nostrils. He hurled his gun barrel at the pile of paper in the corner and the young girl sleeping in it moaned at the ritual. She woke and looked at him: `Yeah baster, whadst want?' `Food, drink. Manners too girl. Manners. Now.' `And what baster? I begs it do I? Or sleeps forrit. Yeah?' `No time. Here.' He threw some coins at her. `Go.' She crawled from under the papers, naked and scrawny, scrambled up the money, put on the two bits of clothing she had, and went. He felt an odd sense of remorse as she slammed the door. Gone. One day for ever? He couldn't afford her. But fourteen! Ah now that's right my angel. Fourteen and his as he pleased. That such pleasure should be his. His by rights, as compensation for life. Yes, compen+sation. Not enough. Now so much more would become his because he had found the secret. He stroked the stick of dynamite that lay on the table. THREE The exclusive party had been clinking its way through iced, pale pink cocktails for two hours. Beautifully cultured voices rose like contraltos above the melee of sound. The General talked to Margot d'Armandine, the famous ballerina. `Of course, tragedy is inherent*inheritant in everyday events. Even the most commonplace. Only this evening I nicked myself shaving, not a small matter in itself, but so much worse if one has an engagement afterwards.' The diminutive Margot d'Armandine raised herself on her toes to peer with her pointed face at the General's chin. `You poor dear' she said, brushing his cheek with her long fingers. The party was thrown by Belladonna. She had large ebony eyes which shone with an alien kindness. That night she wore a dress of fine silk, and gold chains which hung from her waist to the floor and split up her long, dark legs as she walked. She talked to Ballantine, a pompous industrialist, pompous with everyone but her. `Ballantine, you're looking so handsome tonight.' `Bella+donna, not as handsome as you ...' He began to stammer. `I know, dear Ballantine. You're very sweet. And are your engines grinding well?' `Yes. Indeed. They purr as sweetly as your Cheshire cat.' `Fine engines! They mean so much to us all, in these days.' `Yes' he said, his face crimsoning as it puffed up, `yes.' `Ah!' said Bella as she heard the thudding in the air, `Dizz is to arrive. Shall we go to meet him!' She took Ballantine by the elbow and threw him through the people towards the glass doors. Dizz's noble, aquiline head rested, quite empty, against the padded leather. The steward prized open his fingers and placed a glass of alcohol and ice in them. Sensing the cold Dizz lifted his hand to his lips and drank. The steward smiled with satisfaction. Dizz flew slowly through the night, at times so close to the City's towers that he heard the words of the squarming people; senseless, meaningless things. He could see them playing, eating, staring at nothing. At times they hovered just a few feet from the ground above the worst streets in the northern zone of the City, the violent zones. People looked up from the crumbling streets as he passed, shielding their eyes from the air. The machine moved slowly along, casting shadows of red, green and white that illuminated upturned faces. Hearing the noise the street girl of fourteen ran out of a bar where men with gross fumed breath had been pressing coins in her hand. She stared up as the machine slowly passed over. Opposite, looking from his window, Dandurian saw both her and Dizz simultaneously, one eye focused on each. The violence of opposite emotions made his face jerk and his skin ooze a thin slime. He could smell his own hatred. Then the machine increased its energy and climbed unsteadily away to the West, to the Great Tower where Belladonna waited. When the street girl returned the food she brought was thrown across the room, a brown mess to lie rotting for many years. And she was hit as she took off her clothes. Dandurian clawed blood from her thin flesh, his saliva dribbling on her head, as he mounted her. The machine ascended to the top of the Great Tower where a crowd had come outside to greet Dizz. At the front was Belladonna with Ballantine. The steward deftly retrieved the precious glass as Dizz got out. Bella+donna stepped forward and the two greatest smiles of the City flashed at each other like bursts of neon lights, a great spectacle of the times. `So kind!' said Belladonna as Dizz moved in to take her hand and kiss her cheek, his eyes brimming with assumed delight.