Analog SFF, September 2010 (28 page)

"I know the story well."

"So let us go back two millennia."

The landscape dissolved, then we were somewhere on Earth, at night, in a town that reminded me of paintings done in Egypt. I was sitting with an imposing, dynamic-looking man, in some sort of outdoor tavern. He looked tired, even haggard, but by no means defeated. He smiled at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Angelica?” I asked.

"Hannibal to you. Look behind me, what do see?"

"A man with two mugs on a tray. He is adding powder to one of them. Poison?"

"Of course."

The assassin came up to us, bowed, gave us our drinks, then hurried away. He had Norvin's face.

"Remember, I am Hannibal,” said Angelica. “If you reach across and fling the contents of my mug into the dust, I may live to raise another army of Rome's enemies. This time I may defeat Rome. Think of what would be gained and lost."

I thought. Rome had many accomplishments, but it also had a lot to answer for.

"But Hannibal suicided to avoid capture and humiliation."

"You think so? Victors write the histories. I should know."

"Will it be any better under your rule?” I asked.

"I would like to think so. The Carthaginians were more merchants than conquerors."

The figure of Hannibal began raising the poisoned wine to his lips. Without being entirely sure why I did it, I reached across and struck it from his fingers.

The scene dissolved into a modern workshop. We were standing beside a workbench, upon which an unusual piston assembly had been dismantled.

"Powered by a very ordinary steam engine, this piston and valve system can slowly withdraw air from a chamber the size of a small room. It can reduce the atmospheric pressure to one tenth that at sea level."

"The pressure at eight miles?"

"Yes. I could dwell within it and have full control of my mind."

"Do you want me to build it?"

"That is the wrong question, Mr. Parkes. Do you want to build it? I have pleaded my case, now
you
are my judge. What is my sentence?"

Once more the scene began to dissolve, but this time only blackness followed.

We were at four miles when I revived. Breathing was not easy, but a trickle of oxygen seemed to be still issuing from the reactor. Angelica was back to her old vegetative self, sitting on the floor.

In my haste to plan the abduction of the balloon, I had made no real plans for the return to earth. While still a few yards from the ground I released the rope and grapple. It snared a tree in a windbreak, then the car came to earth gently in what was actually one of my better landings. I helped Angelica from the car, and pausing only to discard my heavy coat and gloves, I hurried her to a nearby stand of trees. We had come down in a field not far from the edge of London, and I estimated that we had travelled no more than fifteen miles laterally. Gainsley and his men would arrive soon, to fetch Angelica back and have me dead. My thought was to hide until a large crowd had assembled, for he would not want to kill me in front of witnesses.

A pair of farm labourers arrived at the balloon after a few minutes. Although fearful of the huge gas bag at first, they soon began striking poses in front of the wicker car. One even put on my heavy fur coat, as if he had been the aeronaut.

It was now that Gainsley arrived, riding hard with his butler, groom, and two other men. My worst fears were justified when he shouted an order and all four of his men produced rifles and fired at the man in my coat. He fell to the ground. His companion raised his hands. It was clear that Gainsley had mistaken the two men for myself and Angelica. He soon realised his error.

"The man and woman— where are they?” he screamed, dismounting and seizing the surviving labourer by the smock while pressing one of those tiny American percussion cap pistols between his eyes.

"Dunno, sir,” the man answered. “Me an’ Fergus, we found the balloon ‘ere. We thought we'd guard it until the owner got back."

"My balloon was stolen by the man who owns that coat. Where is he?"

"Dunno sir, the coat was on the grass when we arrived."

The temptation for Gainsley to kill him was probably near to overwhelming, but by now another horseman was approaching. One death could have been a mistake. A second would send Gainsley to the gallows, baron or not. He ordered his men to dismount and reload as the rider drew up.

"Ho there, sir, we are pursuing dangerous criminals who stole this balloon,” was as much as Gainsley managed to say before the rider produced a pistol and shot him between the eyes.

It was at this point that I recognised Norvin. Gainsley's four men had not yet managed to reload their Enfield rifles, so they attempted to mob him. They had not realised that he was armed with one of the new pepperbox pistols by Cooper of London. It could fire six shots from six barrels in as many seconds, so at close quarters it made one man as effective as six. Two more men were shot down before one of the others used his rifle butt to club Norvin from the saddle. He fell, but shot a third while lying on his back in the grass. The survivor raised his hands.

"Mercy, sir, you'd not shoot an unarmed man, would you?” he cried.

"How much mercy did you show me, Monsieur Garrard?” asked Norvin, who then shot him down.

By now the farm labourer had got to his feet and was running for his life. Norvin calmly took a percussion lock rifle from his saddle, aimed with smooth, professional style, and fired. The side of the man's head burst open as a ball seven tenths of an inch across did its work. Even at distance I could see the gleam of tears on Norvin's cheeks. He was a good man, being forced to kill. He was a Frenchman killing a Napoleon for the greater good. He probably thought he was saving the world. Knowing only what he did, which of us would not do the same?

I lay absolutely still. True, I had my father's flintlock, but I am no flash shot, and would have trouble hitting a steam train from the platform. Norvin had killed six men with as many shots, and still had one shot remaining in his pistol. Apparently satisfied that he had killed Gainsley and his men, and that Angelica and myself were the dead farm labourers, he mounted and rode away. We remained hidden amid the trees until more people arrived at the balloon and discovered the massacre. When the authorities arrived I emerged and played the part of a yokel who had come late to the scene, and of course Angelica was quite convincing as a village idiot. It was no great effort for us to slip away and walk back to London.

That was two years ago, and since then I have prospered. I have my own workshop, where a steam engine chugs night and day to maintain the world's only altitude chamber. It is the size of a small room, and within it lives Angelica, in conditions of pressure that can be found at eight miles. Otherwise, it is furnished very comfortably in red and green leather upholstery, Regency furniture, a small library, a desk where she draws diagrams of things for me to build, and a workbench where she builds tiny, intricate metal machines like surreal insects with wings of blue and silver lace. Food and drink passes in through an equalisation chamber. What comes out is mainly diagrams.

I am building a voidcraft. The thing resembles a streamlined steam train with no wheels. It stands on grasshopperlike legs driven by pistons plated in gold. In place of a cabin there is an airtight double chamber with portholes. One side is for Angelica, the other is mine, and they are at very divergent atmospheric pressures. I tell the artisans that help with construction that it is a new type of armoured balloon, and in their ignorance they believe me.

The parts were made at a thousand different workshops in Britain, continental Europe, and even America. It is a beautiful thing, with a body of brass pipes, steel tubes, crystal mechanisms mounted in gaslight enclosures, and riveted boilers in which nothing boils. Even in its incomplete state, it is awesome in its performance. Last night we rolled back the moveable roof of the workshop, ascended into the night, and looked down upon the gaslit, smoky haze of London in comfort . . . from eight miles. How easily the frontier becomes the commonplace. Angelica spoke within my thoughts, asking whether I wished to fly on to the Moon, but I was not ready for that. Like lungs acclimatising to the air at great altitudes, my mind needed time to adjust to such wonders.

Currently, I am having four quite different engines built to add to our craft. To me they make no sense, but Angelica insists that they will work. The clever and industrious Mr. Brunel has contracts to make some of the parts. If only he knew that he was really building boilers to confine matter more black than soot that has no real existence as we know it. The electrical experimenter Faraday is supplying many of our electromagnetic and electrostatic controls, while the jewelers Pennington and Bailey fabricate crystals to almost-conduct electricity, and Harley Brothers Watchmakers build control clockwork that they do not understand.

The voidcraft of rivets and iron plate will be able to travel to the stars, even though my mind cannot comprehend the distances in any more than the most general sense. It will be armed with a tube being built in two sections in the workshops of Glasgow and Sheffield, a tube that will one day enclose a fragment of a star's heart. With it one can vaporise a warship at ten miles using not one thousandth of the power available. Angelica will be the captain, navigator, and gunner, yet when she leaves, I will be with her. After all, what engine can work without a humble stoker and oiler?

Norvin was right in a sense. Angelica is a Napoleon from an unimaginably advanced race, and Earth is the Elba where she was exiled. Norvin also feared her, but in this he was mistaken. It is with worlds too distant to comprehend that Angelica has her quarrel. After all, why would a Napoleon want to conquer a little Elba when so much more is within reach?

Copyright © 2010 Sean McMullen

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One of the key skills of the science fiction writer is world building: the process of constructing consistent, believable planets. Selecting and calculating a planet's physical parameters (orbital dynamics, axial tilt, mass, surface gravity, atmosphere, temperature, and so on) is only the first step in building a world. After that comes geography, climate, biology, history, sociology, and economics . . . to name just a few. All of these factors define and constrain characters and plot elements, giving shape to the kinds of stories the writer can tell. Then, if the writer does a good job, all of this effort becomes largely invisible to the reader, serving as the unique background of the story.

Examples of fine world building are legion in science fiction. Some of the great names of the past were masters: Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, Philip José Farmer, Robert L. Forward, Harry Harrison, E.C. Tubb, and Jack Vance instantly spring to mind. David Brin, C.J. Cherryh, and Larry Niven made their names with excellent world building. Other recent notable world builders include Stephen Baxter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons, Sheri S. Tepper, John Varley, Joan D. Vinge, and Vernor Vinge. Really, just about any science fiction writer of tales set on another planet has engaged in world building to one degree or another.

What I want to talk about now, however, goes beyond mere world building. In some cases, a writer presents a particular fictional world that is so interesting and compelling that it moves out of the background, transcending mere setting to become almost a character in its own right. These are SF's beloved worlds, places so convincing in their artificial reality that readers feel as if they've actually been there—or even that they want to move in. These are the worlds that so fascinate readers that their creators have no choice but to keep writing books set there.

In the early days of SF, Edgar Rice Burroughs turned Mars into the world Barsoom, and for decades readers longed to visit its dead sea bottoms and ruined cities. The field has since moved on and modern readers are likely to find the Barsoom books less than accessible; if you once loved them and now feel the urge to revisit, you're well advised to approach them in a spirit of friendly nostalgia. (Nevertheless, there's a killer movie or several waiting in those books, now that special effects technology has caught up to Burroughs’ imagination. Do you hear me, Hollywood?)

Frank Herbert's desert world Arrakis, usually quite rightly quoted as the premier example of world building, is another world that's become almost real to readers. I don't know how many of us would want to actually live there, but everyone certainly wanted more than one visit: the ever-expanding
Dune
series is the result. About the only planet that can compete with Arrakis in readers’ hearts is Anne McCaffrey's Pern. Compared to Arrakis, Pern is a lovely place . . . and now that they've got that Thread problem licked, I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to have at least a summer house there. (And while we're at it, where are the
Dragonriders of Pern
movies? Peter Jackson, I'm looking at
you
.) Incidentally, both Pern and Arrakis first saw print in the pages of
Analog
, a fact which gives an interesting perspective on the eternal question of whether Pern is SF or fantasy. (My own argument is that any books that repeatedly reference the chemical formula for nitric acid, as the Pern books do with the compound called “agenothree,” clearly belong under the SF umbrella. I don't know whether it was McCaffrey or Campbell who came up with that one, but either way it's sheer genius.)

Other such beloved places in SF include Marion Zimmer Bradley's
Darkover
, Philip José Farmer's
Riverworld
, and Larry Niven's
Ringworld
. All of these took hold of readers’ hearts and imaginations and did not let go, resulting in multiple books. Some other classic beloved worlds such as Discworld, Earthsea, Witch World, and of course Middle Earth are fantasy and thus beyond our immediate purview—but don't let that stop you from paying a visit.

Science fiction, it's time to add another world to the club.