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    Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 38, May 2019: Galaxy's Edge, #38
    Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 38, May 2019: Galaxy's Edge, #38
    Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 38, May 2019: Galaxy's Edge, #38
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    Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 38, May 2019: Galaxy's Edge, #38

    By Michael Swanwick, Robert Silverberg, Todd McCaffrey and

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    A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

    ISSUE 38: May 2019

    Mike Resnick, Editor
    Taylor Morris, Copyeditor
    Shahid Mahmud, Publisher

    Stories by: Emily McCosh  James Reinebold  Kristine Kathryn Rusch  D.A. Xiaolin Spires   Alex Shvartsman  Robert Silverberg  Eric S. Fomley  Rachelle Harp  Todd McCaffrey  Eric Leif Davin  Nina Kiriki Hoffman   Michael Swanwick

    Serialization: Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield

    Columns by: Robert J. Sawyer, Gregory Benford

    Recommended Books: Richard Chwydyk

    Interview: Joy Ward interviews Gordon Van Gelder

    Galaxy's Edge is a bi-monthly magazine published by Phoenix Pick, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Arc Manor, an award winning independent press based in Maryland. Each issue of the magazine has a mix of new and old stories, a serialization of a novel, columns by Robert J. Sawyer and Gregory Benford, book recommendations by Richard Chwydyk and an interview conducted by Joy Ward.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhoenix Pick
    Release dateApr 30, 2019
    ISBN9781612424613
    Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 38, May 2019: Galaxy's Edge, #38

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      Book preview

      Galaxy’s Edge Magazine - Michael Swanwick

      ISSUE 38: May 2019

      Mike Resnick, Editor

      Taylor Morris, Copyeditor

      Shahid Mahmud, Publisher

      Published by Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick

      P.O. Box 10339

      Rockville, MD 20849-0339

      Galaxy’s Edge is published in January, March, May, July, September, and November.

      All material is either copyright © 2019 by Arc Manor LLC, Rockville, MD, or copyright © by the respective authors as indicated within the magazine. All rights reserved.

      This magazine (or any portion of it) may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

      ISBN: 978-1-61242-461-3

      SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION:

      Paper and digital subscriptions are available. Please visit our home page: www.GalaxysEdge.com

      ADVERTISING:

      Advertising is available in all editions of the magazine. Please contact advert@GalaxysEdge.com.

      FOREIGN LANGUAGE RIGHTS:

      Please refer all inquiries pertaining to foreign language rights to Shahid Mahmud, Arc Manor, P.O. Box 10339, Rockville, MD 20849-0339. Tel: 1-240-645-2214. Fax 1-310-388-8440. Email admin@ArcManor.com.

      www.GalaxysEdge.com

      Table of Contents

      THE EDITOR’S WORD by Mike Resnick

      BREATH, WEEPING WIND, DEATH by Emily McCosh

      AN EMPTY SPACE WEST OF IOWA by James Reinebold

      THE LAST SURVIVING GONDOLA WIDOW by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      GULP REVIEW FOR JACKLEBEER BURGERS & MORE AT INTERGALACTIC HIGHWAY REST STOP #698309 IN THE DRAGONFRUIT NEBULA by D.A. Xiaolin Spires

      THE ROYALTY OF APARTMENT COMPLEX 417 by Alex Shvartsman

      BASILEUS by Robert Silverberg

      I LOVE YOU MORE by Eric S. Fomley

      THE WOMAN WITH A THOUSAND FACES by Rachelle Harp

      RHUBARB AND BEETS by Todd McCaffrey

      A SONG FOR EURYDICE by Eric Leif Davin

      BABY AND ME by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

      THE SHE-WOLF’S HIDDEN GRIN by Michael Swanwick

      BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS by Richard Chwedyk

      A SCIENTIST’S NOTEBOOK by Gregory Benford

      DECOHERENCE by Robert J. Sawyer

      THE GALAXY’S EDGE INTERVIEW Joy Ward Interviews Gordon Van Gelder

      SERIALIZATION: TOMORROW AND TOMORROW (part 5) Charles Sheffield

      The Editor’s Word

      by Mike Resnick

      Welcome to the thirty-eighth issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We’re proud to present stories by new and newer writers Emily McCosh, James Reinebold, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Alex Shvartsman, Eric S. Fomley, Rachelle Harp, and Eric Leif Davin, plus old established friends Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Todd McCaffrey, Michael Swanwick, and the very first appearance here, with a brand-new story, Nebula winner Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

      We’ve also got our regular (and very popular) columns: Recommended Books with brand-new reviewer, Nebula winner Richard J. Chwedyk, our science column by Worldcon Guest of Honor Gregory Benford, our literary column by Hugo and Nebula winner Robert J. Sawyer, and the Joy Ward Interview, in which Joy interviews F&SF editor and publisher Gordon van Gelder.

      In other words, it’s a typical issue of Galaxy’s Edge.

      * * *

      I recently had the experience of spending close to a month in a hospital and a rehab center. (No, don’t cheer; I’m back out and reasonably healthy again.)

      While I was there, since I had a ton of time on my hands, I had Carol bring my laptop and began writing. Of course all the nurses wanted to know what I was writing, and it turns out that a number of them were science fiction fans—though most had been originally attracted to the field by Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas rather than by Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, and that whole crowd.

      Which is not to say they weren’t aware of some names. Sooner or later every single nurse asked me if I knew George R. R. Martin. They were thrilled when I explained that we were starving writers together in Chicago back in the 1960s, and that he’s a little less starving than me—or just about anyone else in the world—these days.

      One nurse spent her break time learning about the field on the internet, and when she felt sufficiently versed in it she told me that Heinlein was the writer who most fascinated her, and what has he done lately?

      I explained regretfully that he hasn’t done much for the past thirty years, since he died in 1988.

      I thought she might cry, so I added that he had a new book coming out later this year.

      Her eyes went wide, her hands started shaking, and she said, in a very tremulous voice: "He’s still writing? God help us, where is the publisher located?"

      Her reaction was almost worth the time I spent at her facility.

      * * *

      For more information on the new Heinlein title please visit: ArcManorBooks.com/Heinlein

      Emily McCosh is a science fiction/fantasy writer, an AuthorTuber, a humorist, and a poet. This is her second appearance in Galaxy’s Edge.

      Breath, Weeping Wind, Death

      by Emily McCosh

      There is someone watching you, and what an unfamiliar sensation that is. When was the last time you sat out and let someone take in the sight of you? Not anywhere close to here, atop this New York skyscraper. And not anyone with life still in them. Only the dying do you speak to, and on occasion, the very old or very young, like this one.

      It’s a little girl. You can tell she thinks she’s sneaky, the way she crouches behind the flower pot—the one, large speck of greenery adorning the rooftop—folding her adolescent limbs into a ball, peeking through the fern fronds. Eyes. She has eyes like a horse. Not in appearance, but in their effect. Curious and heavy-lidded, looking right into your soul and calming you. Very pretty, actually.

      She doesn’t look afraid. Then again, you’re very much a man, at the moment.

      Don’t talk to her. You know better. Don’t talk to the ones you don’t take with you. Leave, or at the very least, keep yourself quiet. You don’t even know why she’s up here.

      Still, you find yourself asking, What are you looking at, child?

      Her face disappears from between the fronds, abashed at being caught. Her voice reaches your ears muffled. Who are you?

      You close your eyes, resting against the small cement wall of the apartment building roof. You’ve been sitting here so long the cold has seeped into your bones. You haven’t felt quite this cold for a long time, and with the wind howling, sounding too much like weeping, her question makes you tired.

      Are you supposed to talk to strangers?

      Given her age, maybe ten or eleven years, it’s a question you can ask.

      You were talking to Grandma.

      You look again. She’s peeking around the dirty pot, hair caught in the fern, eyes wary. You can’t tell what color they are in the darkness—brown, you think, or maybe black. The skin around those eyes is like crepe paper smoothed out, thin and moth-wing delicate. Red like blush, even against her dark skin, but you’ve seen enough of tears to know it’s that and nothing else. It makes your heart ache. You’re feeling ashamed, and you don’t even know if she realizes who you are.

      Lying won’t do you any good.

      Who do you think I am?

      She stares, frowns, and finally ignores your question. Why were you talking to her?

      You’ve closed your eyes again. Your thoughts are a battleground, trying to decide if she knows who you are, or she’s being a child talking to a stranger she knows she shouldn’t. It isn’t as if one comes upon death every day as an old man wearing a Darth Vader T-shirt and old army boots. Because she wanted to talk.

      Somehow, that brings her out. The patter of feet announces her, and her baggy blue jeans scratch as she sits a few feet away. Her presence is warm, like a lamp through fog; not physical heat, but something you can feel in your chest. Like contentment, but different. You shudder. Every fiber of your existence is telling you that her time is far from running out.

      What did she say? she asks.

      You’re honest again, although you’re starting to believe you should have left the moment you noticed her sneaking. You made her happy. She said you came up here on the roof for months and painted the city, and it was so beautiful that it won an art competition at your school. None of the other children even came close. It made her so proud.

      There were other things the old woman had said, gripping your hand and staring out the window. You always give them a chance to talk, to tell their secrets. It’s a comfort, for some. Because you’re not there to judge. Just to help, really, a guiding hand between here and there. You’re full of the stories you’ve heard, bursting at the seams with them. But the rest were not confessions this child needs to know.

      For a moment you’re sure she’s crying, she should be after a story like that. The bottom lip is puffed out, trembling, but she chews on it. Maybe all the tears have run out—it wouldn’t be the first time. She’s thinking now, pressing and folding her fingers, staring at nothing. Mama says people just run out of time. That everyone has a time when they’re supposed to... her head cocks, almost like a wince, "die. I keep imagining a bunch of watches hanging from a ceiling. Like that Alice in Wonderland movie. But it’s not like that, is it?"

      There’s a genuine tightness in your chest. You wonder if it comes from the body you’re in, or that you’ve just never been asked outright.

      No, it’s nothing like that. That’s people making things all romantic. It’s just a feeling. Like when you know someone’s watching you but you turn around and there’s no one there. Or a bit of warmth for no reason. It’s different all the time, but the same. Then I know.

      The silence hurts, and you don’t want to look at her. There are others who need you now; you can feel them, like little throbbing pinpricks in your chest. Maybe if you left, you wouldn’t be so cold. But you’re tired—you don’t know how it’s possible to be tired of your own nature, but you feel it. You thought sitting here for a while, just taking a rest, would somehow make it better. Silly thoughts.

      You took her with you.

      You’ve never heard such a tone from a child. Sad, but not angry. Like she just wants to make sure it’s okay.

      Yes.

      Then why are you sad?

      You aren’t certain, but you have an idea. Because sometimes things that are supposed to happen can still be sad.

      She looks at you for a second, chin resting on her knees, scraping her sneakers back and forth on the concrete roof. When she gets up she’s ungainly, like she hasn’t grown into herself. She takes the door down from the roof without a word or a glance over the shoulder. You sigh, unsure if you’ve hurt or helped. People know of you, and you’ve been recognized before, talked to, but you’ve never talked in return, and you can’t remember the last time someone didn’t hate you. Funny that it came from a child.

      The door creaks, and her eyes reappear. When she retakes her seat beside you, she offers the plate she’s holding, and sniffles.

      Grandma would say, ‘Cookies help everything but your hips.’

      You chuckle, a noise that’s barely there over the wind. The cookie is soft in your fingers, crumbling against your shirt, and you watch the little girl eat hers. There’s no sound up here but the wind, and her slow, calming breaths. She doesn’t smile at you, but sits closer, like you aren’t a stranger, and bringer of the end. And after a time, she talks. It’s nothing important really. She talks about the stars, she talks about paint and clothes, and friends and books and the moon. You sit, and eat, and let everything in the world act like it’s okay.

      And that, more than anything, makes you feel warm again.

      Copyright © 2019 by Emily McCosh

      James Reinebold writes science fiction when he isn’t working as an AI programmer in the video games industry. He’s currently working on a novel.

      An Empty Space West of Iowa

      by James Reinebold

      While Haxley escorted the rest of the tourists out of the park, Phil Rodriguez took the parents of the boy to the back room of the ranger station. They only played happy music in the ranger station. Upbeat oldies like the Beach Boys, the Temptations, and ABBA. No blues, no metal, no Johnny Cash.

      Phil flipped on the lights. It was a dim, cramped room containing a teal couch from the Reagan administration and two fake leather chairs covered with coffee stains. An old analog TV tuned to the Weather Channel hung muted from the ceiling. It was the breakroom. It was where you took people when their loved ones fell into the Void.

      Would you like some tea?

      The mother shook her head no and sat down on the couch like a rigid bird. The father hadn’t stopped swearing to himself.

      There are a few questions we like to ask, Phil said. If now isn’t a good time I understand...

      "You’re going to ask us questions?"

      Phil stirred his tea.

      Please understand that I’m trying to generate a complete description of what happened out there. I’m only trying to help.

      OK.

      What was his name?

      Mark.

      Has Mark ever been depressed?

      "He was—is—eleven. He’s doesn’t even know the meaning of the word depression yet."

      Was it his idea to come here?

      No, the father said. It was mine. I thought it would be a nice stopover spot on our vacation.

      What’s going to happen now? the mother asked.

      Phil looked straight into her eyes and decided to be honest.

      There are going to be more interviews. People are going to want to talk to you. There will be lawyers, press, and more people like me. It will be a stressful few weeks.

      What happened to him?

      Once again Phil decided to be honest.

      We don’t know.

      You should seal it off, the father said. You should seal the damn thing off forever.

      There are support groups I can get you in touch with...

      To hell with that, the mother said. I want my son back.

      We’re doing everything we can.

      * * *

      The parents of the boy left a little after ten. Phil walked them back to their car and made sure they drove off in the direction of the motels. The press had already gone home. Outside, at night, it was unbelievably quiet above the Void.

      Highway One followed along its southern edge, you could see it on the right as you drove through the gas station towns and endless scrubland on the way west toward Disneyland. But only here, at the park’s visitor’s center, could you get any closer than a hundred yards.

      It was the Void: tourist trap, national park, and place of mystery. Some said it caused migraine headaches and restlessness the way a lack of light in winter causes depression. Others reported miracle cures or a kind of spiritual connection to it. All day long Phil watched the tourists take out their phones and snap photos of smiling faces against a blank space devoid of stars that started somewhere west of Iowa and ended somewhere east of Colorado.

      He walked back to the ranger’s station, pausing for a moment among the dioramas in the visitor’s center. The Midwest Void National Park, though it had gone by other names, had a long history. Billy the Kid had jumped inside it rather than surrendering to the law. Most of the explorers who had attempted to map it were last seen as vanishing dots. Old Comanche stories simply referred to it as a place to be left alone.

      A laminated display showed a blown-up photo of a bus. Haxley and a few of the older rangers still remembered the day the cult members dressed in white robes drove inside the Void with eyes bright and lips smiling, hippie music playing on the radio all the way down. Though the Void had been discovered thousands of years ago, no one had ever tamed it. Not drones, not sensor data, not radio waves. No cable had ever reached the bottom.

      Want some coffee? Haxley asked.

      She was still in her office doing the paperwork, a thick slab that in the morning they’d fax out to the local, state, federal, and international bodies that monitored activity at the Void. Technically, the child would be counted as missing for another ten days.

      Sure.

      It’s over in the pot.

      Phil walked over to the brewer and poured some stale coffee into a stained park mug. He sat across from Haxley at her desk, ran his hands through his hair, and sighed.

      I wish we could just fill it, he said.

      You can’t protect people from the Void, she said. It’s too big for that.

      There has to be more we can do.

      Haxley looked up from the papers. I used to work in Joshua Tree. About once a year, on average, I’d stumble across a dead hiker. Sometimes it was a heart attack: death by natural causes that just so happened to happen while in the confines of the park. Nothing you can do about that. But usually it was the heat. The innate danger of the space. It’s survivable. You just have to obey the rules. But, inevitably, tourists would screw up in the most basic of ways, like not taking enough water or climbing into places they couldn’t climb back out of. And they’d die. Every season, sure as anything. By the time I found them the sun, vultures and coyotes had got to them first. Despite all that I never thought they should close the park. You can’t protect everybody.

      I told the mother that we were doing all we can, Phil said.

      We are.

      We could do more. Study it more, somehow.

      There’s nothing to study. It’s empty space. I don’t think we’d know anything more about that pit if we studied it for a thousand years. Even drones can’t get very far inside before the signal cuts out.

      There’s gravity inside, he said. People are falling down to something. There must be a bottom.

      Haxley passed Phil a blank form for his report.

      He had heard the scream. He had run past black text on black background shirts and the display about Billy the Kid. He had run out of the open door of the station toward the Void. He had arrived at the glass walkway where the parents were standing on the edge just as the shimmer of the child faded away into nothing. There had been a gap in time while the child took a breath. The screaming resumed. And then the sound faded away, completely and totally, to where even military-grade equipment could not penetrate.

      Phil passed the form back to Haxley. She initialed it without reading it.

      In the end there’s only one thing to do, she said. Leave.

      Leave?

      I’m retiring. This place has a way of screwing with your head and I’ve had enough.

      Come on, Phil said. You’ve still got a few more years left in you, right?

      Haxley took a sip of her coffee and turned up the radio. I’ll be professional. I’ll finish up with the paperwork. But after that I’m out.

      Get some sleep, Phil said. I’ll stay and finish up.

      Haxley paused before she left. You don’t blame me for wanting to quit, do you?

      No, he said. Truth is I’ve been thinking about quitting too.

      * * *

      Around two in the morning Phil finished filling out the forms for the missing kid. The press would be back soon. The parents would be back soon too.

      He had lied to the mother. There was more he could do.

      He went to the storage room, found some sheet metal, and started punching out warning signs. He found some wooden posts and carried them to the edge of the Void to plant them:

      DO NOT GET WITHIN

      THREE METERS OF THE VOID.

      DO NOT STARE INTO THE VOID FOR

      PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME.

      DO NOT DISPOSE OF ANYTHING INTO

      THE VOID WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.

      When he finished with the signs he spat down into the hole and watched his wobbly phlegm disappear into the blackness. The bottomless pit would someday earn him a pension, but he hated it all the same. Haxley was right to quit.

      When he finished with the signs it was nearly five a.m. Too late to go back home.

      A wind blew from out of the east. In another few hours it would push a storm directly overhead of the visitor’s center. Storms were frequent and when rain fell over the Void it appeared to fall forever. Same as Billy the Kid, the bus full of hippies, the drones, and now the boy. Were they still falling? Still in motion forever downward?

      The stars never looked so beautiful as they did above the Void. The air never smelled as clean.

      DO NOT DISPOSE OF ANYTHING INTO

      THE VOID WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.

      There was more he could do. He would find the boy.

      Phil Rodriguez took a deep breath and fell.

      * * *

      Down he tumbled, twirling rapidly through the air. He told himself he wouldn’t scream. He screamed. Took a breath. Screamed again. Ran out of breath and plummeted gasping into the Void.

      He fell down beside a wall of earth that became a wall of stone, then the walls vanished, and then the light ended. He could no longer see anything, could only feel the acceleration downward as the Void took him where it willed.

      His body shook and convulsed. He heaved and vomited. He grew dizzy.

      * * *

      When he awoke he was still falling.

      He tried to stabilize himself, brought his body as flat and wide as he could to increase his wind resistance. His

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