Analog SFF, April 2010 (2 page)

[FOOTNOTE 2: One that looks like it
might
be an exception is the northern raven, which we've been seeing and hearing more often in our area lately. But ravens are exceptionally adaptable and their range has long extended down the Appalachians, so I suspect this is less a matter of climate driving them south than their general success leading them to spread out wherever they are.]

Copyright © 2010 Stanley Schmidt

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Some writers break in small, slowly working their way up. Others enter with a splash and keep rising.

Brenda Cooper is one of the latter. Her first sale, other than a self-published Internet posting, was a coauthored novelette with Larry Niven ("Ice and Mirrors,”
Asimov's
, February 2001). “I will be forever grateful to him,” she says. “Essentially that was a student/teacher relationship.” (Details of their working habits are summarized in Niven's book,
Scatterbrain
.)

Cooper learned her lessons well. Seven more collaborations with Niven followed, including a novel (
Building Harlequin's Moon
, 2005). Then she was on her own. Her first solo novel,
The Silver Ship and the Sea
, won the 2008 Endeavor Award for best book by a Pacific Northwest author, and “The Robot's Girl,"in this issue, will be roughly her two-dozenth solo short.

Cooper got into science fiction at a tender age. “My dad is literally a rocket scientist,” she says. “We would watch moon launches together."

She was reading by the time she started school and was startled when her schoolwork was much less demanding than what she'd been doing on her own. “They gave me a picture book,” she recalls. “I threw a fit."

In college, she majored in management, with an emphasis on computer science: a good choice because she liked computers but not the math required for a computer science degree. Today, she's chief information officer for Kirkland, Washington, supervising a staff of twenty who manage phones and computers. In her spare time she's a futurist, giving keynote speeches to industry conferences and writing a column at futurismic.com. “I take a topic—cloning, for example—and find the most recent news. Then I talk both about what's going on and about how one or two science fiction stories have dealt with the topic,” she says.

Her latest novel,
Wings of Creation
(November 2009) takes a similar approach, dealing with a future in which people have been genetically engineered to have marvelous enhancements (such as the ability to fly), but are essentially slaves to the owners of their genetic codes. “It's pretty much cultural science fiction,” she says.

Exploring the impacts of scientific or cultural change is the main thing that separates science fiction from other forms of literature, she believes. “The story has to be engaging, [but] I think the job of science fiction is to make us stop and think about what we should be doing to create the future we want. Whether that means a warning, like
1984
, or telling us something we want, I think that if science fiction doesn't make you think, it's failed as science fiction. It might still be a successful story, but the joy of science fiction is that it also makes you think."

Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

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When choices are eliminated, one does what one must....

A long column of soldiers and horses moved across the rolling landscape, an intense thunderstorm pummeling them. At the head of the column walked Captain Ulysses Benton, on foot and leading his mount through the tempest like the rest of the cavalry company, peering ahead into the murk to be sure of his way. Civilians, who only saw cavalry on the Fourth of July when it paraded in dress uniforms while the band played, thought of horse cavalry as a romantic way of life. Captain Benton knew better, as did all of the troopers walking in column behind him.

The real cavalry was this, trudging through the endless prairie, mud sucking at your boots, grass slippery underfoot, your feet aching from the march, sheets of water being thrown on you from a leaden sky while gusts of wind tried to knock you from your feet and forced water through every seam and opening so that no portion of you remained dry, tugging on the lead of a horse just as weary and worn out as you were, the horse occasionally snapping at you in its misery and irritation or jerking its head with devilish timing so the tug of the reins would threaten to topple you into the mud, your stomach almost empty since there'd been no way to make a meal, and your last seven warm meals had only been bacon and beans, but this day there wouldn't even be that, nothing but soggy hardtack since no fire could be lit under these conditions.

And all for the princely sum of thirteen dollars a month for the privates. It had been sixteen dollars a month, but Congress had cut military pay in this year of 1870.

In the middle of column, the four supply wagons jolted and jumped over the uneven ground, riding light now that most of the provisions they had carried had been used up. Two more days, Benton thought. The company of cavalry would be back at Fort Harker in two more days. The only small mercy was that he and his men all wore the new broad-brimmed black slouch hats instead of the old forage caps, which wouldn't have provided any real protection from the rain.

Lightning suddenly erupted around them like an artillery barrage targeted on the column, momentarily lighting the world so brightly that men flinched and closed their eyes against the flares. Benton's foot came down hard, the way it would when walking down steps and misjudging the distance to the next step. He staggered, staying up only thanks to the fact that he had the reins wrapped around one hand, and getting another attempted nip from his ornery mount as the tired horse protested being used as a support.

Hearing some muttered curses, Benton blinked against the renewed darkness, locating Sergeant Tyndall. “Are you okay, sergeant?"

"Yes, sir, cap'n, except for being cold, tired, wet and miserable, begging your pardon, sir."

"'If you want to see a good time, join the cavalry,'” Benton quoted the recruiting motto.

"That's right, sir. It's bad enough out here in October. I hate to think of campaigning on the plains again come winter. And then that lightning, like we were back fighting Johnny Reb again. But just then I thought maybe we'd stumbled across a prairie dog town."

"Did you miss a step, too?"

"Yes, sir. I wondered if the dogs had torn up the ground, but I can't see none of their burrows, and we couldn't not see them even in this mess."

They plodded onward, men and beasts enduring the storm because they had no other choice. In a small mercy, the storm began lifting before sunset, and by the time dark came on, the clouds had split to reveal the innumerable stars above. Benton walked among his soldiers after the company had halted for the night, ensuring they had taken what care of their mounts they could in these conditions, with everyone and everything soaked to the skin. There was little he and Sergeant Tyndall could do but reassure the men that another couple of days would see them back in Fort Harker.

Lieutenant Garret, who had been walking with the rear of the column behind the supply wagons, straightened to attention and gave a precise salute. “I've had what dry hardtack remains distributed to the men, captain."

"You found some? Well done.” Benton rubbed his forehead, feeling exhausted but knowing that like everyone else he'd be sleeping in soggy clothing on wet ground. At that, he was better off than the enlisted men, because his uniform was of decent quality and cut, while they were still forced to wear left-over uniforms hastily and cheaply manufactured for the Civil War since the War Department had no intention of buying new enlisted uniforms until every old one had worn out.

For that matter, he should have an experienced first lieutenant in the company as well as a brand new second lieutenant, but Lieutenant Randall had died of cholera four months ago and the slow-turning wheels of the War Department had yet to produce a replacement. Fortunately, Randall must have contracted the ailment off the post, because no one else had fallen ill with it. “You've done well out here, lieutenant. Very well for a newly commissioned officer on his first field maneuvers."

Garret seemed to lose a little of his own fatigue at the words. “Thank you, sir. At one point I thought I'd literally lost my balance today."

"What's that?” Benton frowned at him. “Was it when the lightning hit?"

"Yes, sir. The ground wasn't quite where I thought it would be. The men around me and my horse all stumbled, too. It was very odd."

Benton's frown deepened. “It appears many of us experienced that, lieutenant, the lay of the ground being different in small ways than it had been a moment before. Did an earthquake strike, do you think?"

Garret looked around as if seeking evidence of such an event. “I didn't think Kansas was earthquake country, sir."

"I don't know about Kansas, but there were those earthquakes sixty or seventy years ago in Missouri. They still talk about them. One of them supposedly made the Mississippi River run backwards for a short time.” Benton shook his head. “Well, if it was an earthquake, it didn't last long or do any damage we know of aside from minor adjustments to the prairie. Get what sleep you can tonight, lieutenant. The horses are nearly spent. We'll have to walk all day tomorrow at an easy pace to let them recover."

"Yes, sir."

The next day dawned clear and crisp. Benton stood up, wincing from the body aches inspired by sleeping on the wet ground.

"Good morning, cap'n,” Sergeant Tyndall declared, offering a steaming cup.

"Coffee? How'd you get a fire going, sergeant?"

"An old Indian trick, sir."

Benton couldn't help smiling as he took the coffee. “Lieutenant Garret, I should inform you that any time Sergeant Tyndall accomplishes some remarkable feat he attributes his success to an old Indian trick."

Garret smiled despite the fatigue still shadowing his young face. “You must have known a lot of old Indians, sergeant."

"Yes, sir, lieutenant,” Tyndall agreed before searching the horizon and pointing. “Look there, cap'n. Those elevations. Right where they should be. We didn't lose our way at all yesterday afternoon.” He squinted. “Looks like something's up on one of them, though."

Benton pulled out his field glasses and focused them on the higher ground. One was crowned by a squat tower he didn't recall seeing before. “What do you make of that, lieutenant?"

Garret studied the view for a while. “It appears ruined to me, sir, as if it were taller once. You see those blocks of stone to one side?"

"That explains it. It's not ruined, lieutenant. It wasn't there the last time we came this way. Someone must be building a tower up there and the stone hasn't fallen, it just hasn't been set in place yet."

"Maybe Colonel Custer had the 7th build a monument to him, cap'n,” Tyndall suggested, deadpan.

Tyndall, like many cavalrymen, didn't have a high opinion of Colonel Custer. Neither, for that matter, did Benton, but he couldn't openly agree with an enlisted man on the subject. So he confined himself to addressing exactly what Tyndall had proposed. “The 7th Cavalry went through here in May, sergeant. I think we would have noticed something like that before now."

Less than an hour later the column was under way again, clothing, horses and men drying under the warmth of the rising sun and with the assistance of a brisk breeze. They walked their horses through increasingly familiar flat stretches and across rolling hills and vales, stopping at the upper reaches of the Little Arkansas River in the middle of the day to water horses and men.

Tyndall cast a puzzled glance around as they led their horses through the river, the column having to shift northward as several men and horses unexpectedly floundered into deeper water. “Sir, the ford's not the same. It should be down there a little ways."