Analog SFF, July-August 2010 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines

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Short Story: THE SINGLE LARRY TI, OR FEAR OF BLACK HOLES AND KEN

by Brenda Cooper

Facts are not determined by consensus, but science interacts with people in a complex array of ways.

Salt-sweat dotted my forehead by the time I neared the last demonstrator in line, an old Asian woman with a hand-painted sign that looked too heavy for her. Indeed, her arms shook. The sign said NO SINGLE LARRY TI.

The benefits of globalization: bastardized spelling. I pictured a single white guy named Larry in a ragged t-shirt. I wanted to laugh—needed to laugh—but the look on her face stopped me. Fear was fear, and her thin pale lips and wide dark eyes with fist-sized circles under them screamed quietly. She even smelled like fear: adrenaline-sour sweat mixed with something antiseptic. I smiled at her, my hand brushing her shoulder as I whispered, “It will be all right. We won't eat the Moon.”

Her spittle on my hand was warm, and I wiped it quickly on the back of her dirty gray blouse, a reflex. Cameras snapped, catching the back of my hand sliding against her rough shirt. A deep breath enabled me to quell the urge to run from the reporters. I fixed my eyes on the courthouse in front of me, a rounded faux-brick building with open windows that spiraled up its smooth outer surface.

If I looked up at the building I didn't have to meet any reporter's eyes. Ten steps.

I ignored the reporter's buzzing lips, their questions nonsense garbled on nonsense. A deep male voice screamed above the crowd. “Save us, Mary! Recant!”

Twenty steps and then five more. I passed through the line of rainbow-clad UN policemen into near silence. No voices, just the buzz of swarm cams for a few more steps before they, too, gave up.

Inside, I stopped in the women's room and slathered disinfectant crystal on my hands, rubbing the grit into my palms over a low metal sink. Hopefully the spit didn't have any nasty bugs. I splashed tepid water on my face, over and over, sputtering, and then blotted my face with a terry towel.

For the last hour, I'd been worried about getting in at all, but now I was here, and there was no way left to avoid the media circus courtroom. Or to avoid Ken. Or to avoid the death of my professional life. The world was on a deep bender of craziness.

I needed to make the case for science. The already lost case. Me, fifty-something and looking it. Even dressed up in my best gray synth suit, I felt invisible next to the lawyers I'd be dealing with soon. Yes, our side had a lawyer or two or three of our own. Volunteers. The career public defenders of science spitting into the legal wind against a world court where four out of seven members didn't believe in evolution.

I snorted, wondering how they would spell singularity, or even black hole. Not that they needed to. The trial was over already: the

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