Asimov's SF, December 2009 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:38.588000+00:00

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Novelette: A LARGE BUCKET, AND ACCIDENTAL GODLIKE MASTERY OF SPACETIME

by Benjamin Crowell

When Ben Crowell was growing up, his only reliable source of science fiction reading matter was his elementary school's collection of Heinlein juveniles. These days we know that meeting an alien won't be as easy as grabbing a quick flight to Mars in a cigar-shaped rocket ship—but, in this story, Ben tries to have his hard-SF cake and eat it too.

Sidibe Traore ended up as Earth's diplomatic representative because she was an astronaut who loved to pop the blisters on a sheet of bubble wrap. Sidi volunteered without any expectation of being chosen. What she did expect was that her training was about to become obsolete, so she decided to visit what little family she had left in Bamako before deciding what to do next with her life. On the way out the door of her apartment in Houston she was intercepted by her neighbor.

Mrs. Forrest leaned over her walker and squinted through her bifocals. “Cindy, darling, are you getting sick?”

“Afraid so, ma'am,” Sidi said. “Thanks for watering my fern while I'm gone.”

“Of course, dear. Hold on, I have something for you.” She produced a little box of See's candy with a well-worn red bow on it.

“Oh, that's sweet of you.” The thought of food nauseated her.

“Nuts and chews. If you don't need the bow I can use it again. The Mexican girl on the news says the aliens are practically in our lap already, because they sent us the radio signals from the spaceship, but the ship is coming in almost as fast as sound.”

“Light.” Her sinuses hadn't hurt this much since decompression training.

“She said sound. I don't see why they have to whiz on past like our whole world is just a whistle stop. Plenty of people like me would like to meet them. You know I get along fine with colored people, so why should it be any different for ones with tentacles?”

“I'm sure they'd like to stop and visit, but the Bus is the size of a city, and when you're going that fast you can't stop and start again. That's why it just sort of loops around the galaxy and picks up representatives of species that are ready to graduate into the GalCiv.” She told Mrs. Forrest she had to get to the airport.

Sidi didn't waste much time worrying about the gruesome things that the aliens had to do to a human body to boost it to near light speed in a matter of days. (The press used words like “iron maiden,” “julienne,” and “Frankensteining.") Nor did she agonize over the prospect of only having bug-eyed monsters to socialize with for the rest of her life, while relativistically compressed centuries rolled by back on earth. She wouldn't be picked. She'd only volunteered because—well, the U.S. astronaut corps was almost the only family she had left, and not to step forward—she knew the word the Americans would use: “chickenshit.”

Her connection to Paris was going to be delayed because of weather.

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