announcement in mind.

  He said, “I know you keep ship’s time on the Beatitude, as if the ship has a time amid eotemporality, but here in Sol system we are coming up for Year One Million, think

  of it, with all the attendant celebrations. Yep, Year One Million, count them. Got to celebrate. We’re planning to

  nuclearize Neptune, nuclearize it, to let a little light into the circumference of the system. Things have changed.

  One Million . . . Yes, things have changed. They certainly have. They certainly are . . .”

  “I asked you if we on shipboard have been subjugated

  by the aliens.”

  “Well, that’s where you are wrong, you see. The wrong

  question. Entirely up the spout. Technology has improved

  out of all recognition since your launch date. All recognition . . . Look at this.”

  The globe exploded into a family of lines, some run-

  ning straight, some slightly crooked, just like a human

  family. As they went, they spawned mathematical sym-

  bols, not all of them familiar to Hungaman. They origi-

  2 3 2

  A B OA R D T H E B E AT I T U D E

  nated at one point in the bowl and ricocheted to another.

  Twohunga said, voice-over, “We used to call them

  ‘black holes,’ remember? That was before we domesti-

  cated them. Black holes, huh! They are densers now.

  Densers, okay? We can propel them through hyperspace.

  They go like spit on a hot stove. Propelled. They serve as weaponry, these densers, okay? Within about the next

  decade, the next decade, we shall be able to hurl them at the enemy galaxy and destroy it. Destroy the whole

  thing . . .” He gave something that passed for a chuckle.

  “Then we shall see about their confounded hiseobiw, or whatever it is.”

  Hungaman was horrified. He saw at once that this

  technological advance, with densers used as weapons,

  rendered the extended voyage of the Beatitude obsolete.

  Long before the ship could reach the enemy galaxy—al-

  ways supposing that command of the ship was regained

  from the Slipsoid invader—the densers would have de-

  stroyed their target.

  “This is very bad news,” he said, almost to himself.

  “Very bad news indeed.”

  “Bad news? Bad news? Not for humanity,” said

  Twohunga sharply. “Oh, no! We shall do away with this

  curse in the sky for good and all.”

  “It’s all very well for you to say that, safe at He-

  liopause HQ. What about those of us on the Beatitude—if any of us are there anymore . . . ?”

  Twohunga began to pace again, this time taking four

  paces to the left, swivel on heel, four paces to the right, swivel on heel.

  He explained, not without a certain malice, that it was

  not technology alone which had advanced. Ethics had

  also taken a step forward. Quite a large step, he said. He 2 3 3

  B R I A N W. A L D I S S

  emitted a yelp of laughter. A considerably large step. He paused, looking over his shoulder at his clonther far

  away. It was now considered, he stated, not at all correct to destroy an entire cultured planet without any questions asked.

  In fact, to be honest, and frankness undoubtedly was

  the best policy, destroying any planet on which there was sentient life was now ruled to be a criminal act. Such as destroying the ancient Slipsoid dual-planet culture, for

  instance. . . .

  As Captain of the Beatitude, therefore, Hungaman was a wanted criminal and, if he were caught; would be up

  for trial before the TDC, the Transplanetary Destruction

  Crimes tribunal.

  “What nonsense is this you are telling—” Hungaman

  began.

  “Nonsense you may call it, but that’s the law. No non-

  sense, no! Oh, no. Cold fact! Culture destruction, criminal act. It’s you, Hungaman, you!”

  In a chill voice, Hungaman asked, “And what of Mili-

  tary Morality?”

  “What of Military—‘What of Military Morality?’ he

  asks. Military Morality! It’s a thing of the past, the long long past! Pah! A criminal creed, criminal . . . We’re living in a new—In fact, I should not be talking to a known

  genocidal maniac at all, no, not a word, in case it makes me an accessory after the fact.”

  He broke the connection.

  Hungaman fell to the floor and chewed the leg of his

  chair.

  It was tough but not unpalatable.

  “It’s bound to be good for him,” said a voice.

  2 3 4

  A B OA R D T H E B E AT I T U D E

  “They were an omnivorous species,” said a second voice

  in agreement—though not speaking in speech exactly.

  Seeing was difficult. Although it was light, the light

  was of an uncomfortable wavelength. Hungaman seemed

  to be lying down, with his torso propped up, enabling

  him to eat.

  Whatever it was he was eating, it gave him strength.

  Now he could see, although what he could see was hard

  to make out. By what he took to be his bedside two rub-

  bery cylinders were standing, or perhaps floating. He was in a room with no corners or windows. The illumination

  came from a globular object which drifted about the

  room, although the light it projected remained steady.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  The two cylinders wobbled and parts of them changed

  color. “There you are, you see. Typical question, ‘Where

  am I?’ Always the emphasis on the Self. I, I, I. Very typical of a human species. Probably to be blamed on the

  way in which they reproduce. It’s a bisexual species, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Fatherhood, motherhood . . . I shall never

  understand it. Reproduction by fission is so much more

  efficient—the key to immortality indeed.”

  They exchanged warm colors.

  “Quite. And the intense pleasure, the joy, of fission it-

  self . . .”

  “Look, you two, would you mind telling me where I

  am. I have other questions I can ask, but that one first.”

  He felt the nutrients flowing through his body, altering

  his constitution.

  “You’re on the Beatitude, of course.”

  Despite his anxiety, he found he was enjoying their

  color changes. The colors were so various. After a while

  2 3 5

  B R I A N W. A L D I S S

  he discovered he was listening to the colors. It must, he thought, be something he ate.

  Over the days that followed, Hungaman came slowly

  to understand his situation. The aliens answered his

  questions readily enough, although he realized there was

  one question in his mind he was unable to ask or even

  locate.

  They escorted him about the ship. He was becoming

  more cylindrical, although he had yet to learn to float.

  The ship was empty with one exception: a Bullball game

  was in progress. He stood amazed to see the players still running, the big black bulls still charging among them.

  To his astonishment, he saw Surtees Slick again, running

  like fury with the heavy blue ball, his yellow hair flowing.

  The view was less clear than it had been. Hungaman

  fastened his attention on the bulls. With their head-down shortsighted stupidity, they rushed at individual players as if, flustered by their erratic movements, the bulls believed a death, a stillness, would resolve some vast mys-

  tery of life they could never formulate.

  Astonished, Hungaman turned to his companions.

  “It’s for you,” they said, coloring in a smile. “Don’t

  worry, it’s not real, just a simulation. That sort of thing is over and done with now, as obsolete as a silicon-based

  semiconductor.”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure yet if you are real and not simulations. You are Slipsoids, aren’t you? I imagined we had destroyed you. Or did I only imagine I imagined we

  had destroyed you?”

  But no. After their mitochondria had filled the ship,

  they assured him, they were able to reestablish them-

  selves, since their material was contained aboard the

  2 3 6

  A B OA R D T H E B E AT I T U D E

  Beatitude. They had cannibalized the living human pro-toplasm, sparing only Hungaman, the captain.

  It was then a comparatively simple matter to redesign

  quanta-space and rebuild their sun and the two linked

  planets. They had long ago mastered all that technology

  had to offer. And so here they were, and all was right

  with the world, they said, in flickering tones of purple

  and a kind of mauve.

  “But we are preserving you on the ship,” they said.

  He asked a new variant of his old question. “And

  where exactly are we and the Beatitude now?”

  “Velocity killed. Out of the eotemporal.”

  They told him, in their colors, that the great ship was

  in orbit about the twin planets of Slipsoid, “forming a

  new satellite.”

  He was silent for a long while, digesting this informa-

  tion, glad but sorry, sorry but glad. Finally, he said—and now he was rapidly learning to talk in color—“I have suffered much. My brain has been under great pressure. But

  I have also learned much. I thank you for your help, and

  for preserving me. Since I cannot return to Earth, I hope to be of service to you.”

  Their dazzling bursts of color told Hungaman they

  were gazing affectionately at him. They said there was

  one question they longed to ask him, regarding a matter

  which had worried them for many centuries.

  “What’s the question? You know I will help if I can.”

  There was some hesitation before they colored their

  question.

  “What is the meaning of this hiseobiw we see in our night sky?”

  “Oh, yes, that! Let me explain,” said Hungaman.

  2 3 7

  B R I A N W. A L D I S S

  He explained that the so-called letters of hiseobiw, or preferably miqoesiy, were not letters but symbols of an arcane mathematics. It was an equation, more clearly

  written—for the space fires had drifted—as

  Μπ7;ϖ∈;τ5 (=)Χ!9.

  They colored, “Meaning?”

  “We’ll have to work it out between us,” Hungaman

  colored back. “But I’m pretty sure it contains a formula

  that will clear brains of phylogenetically archaic func-

  tions. Thereby, it will, when applied, change all life in the universe.”

  “Then maybe we should leave it alone.”

  “No,” he said. “We must solve it. That’s human nature.”

  2 3 8

  Droplet

  By Benjamin Rosenbaum

  1.

  Today Shar is Marilyn Monroe. That’s an erotic goddess

  from prehistoric cartoon mythology. She has golden

  curls, blue eyes, big breasts, and skin of a shocking pale pink. She stands with a wind blowing up from Hades beneath her, trying to control her skirt with her hands, forever showing and hiding her white silk underwear.

  Today I am Shivol’riargh, a more recent archetype of

  feminine sexuality. My skin is hard, hairless, glistening black. Faint fractal patterns of darker black writhe across my surfaces. I have long claws. It suits my mood.

  We have just awakened from a little nap of a thousand

  years, our time, during which the rest of the world aged

  even more.

  She goes: “kama://01-nbX5-# . . .”

  I snap the channel shut. “Talk language if you want to

  seduce me.”

  Shar pouts. With those little red lips and those inno-

  cent, yet knowing, eyes, it’s almost irresistible. I resist.

  “Come on, Narra,” she says. “Do we have to fight

  about this every time we wake up?”

  “I just don’t know why we have to keep flying around

  like this.”

  2 3 9

  B E N J A M I N R O S E N B A U M

  “You’re not scared of Warboys again?” she asks.

  Her fingertips slide down my black plastic front. The

  fractals dance around them.

  “There aren’t any more,” she says.

  “You don’t know that, Shar.”

  “They’ve all killed each other. Or turned themselves

  off. Warboys don’t last if there’s nothing to fight.”

  Despite the cushiony pink Marilyn Monroe skin, Shar

  is harder than I am. My heart races when I look at her,

  just as it did a hundred thousand years ago.

  Her expression is cool. She wants me. But it’s a game

  to her.

  She’s searching the surface of me with her hands.

  “What are you looking for?” I mean both in the

  Galaxy and on my skin, though I know the answers.

  “Anything,” she says, answering the broader question.

  “Anyone who’s left. People to learn from. To play with.”

  People to serve, I think nastily.

  I’m lonely, too, of course, but I’m sick of looking. Let

  them come find us in the Core.

  “It’s so stupid,” I groan. Her hands are affecting me.

  “We probably won’t be able to talk to them anyway.”

  Her hands find what they’ve been searching for: the

  hidden opening to Shivol’riargh’s sexual pocket. It’s full of the right kind of nerve endings. Shivol’riargh is hard on the outside, but oh so soft on the inside. Sometimes I wish I had someone to wear that wasn’t sexy.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she says in a voice that’s all breath.

  Her fingers push at the opening of my sexual pocket. I

  hold it closed. She leans against me and wraps her other

  arm around me for leverage. She pushes. I resist.

  Her lips are so red. I want them on my face.

  2 4 0

  D R O P L E T

  She’s cheating. She’s a lot stronger than Marilyn

  Monroe.

  “Shar, I don’t want to screw,” I say. “I’m still angry.”

  But I’m lying.

  “Hush,” she says.

  Her fist slides into me and I gasp. My claws go around

  her shoulders and I pull her to me.

  2.

  Later we turn the gravity off and float over Ship’s bot-

  tom eye, looking down at the planet Shar had Ship find.

  It’s blue like Marilyn Monroe’s eyes.

  “It’s water,” Shar says. Her arms are wrapped around

  my waist, her breasts pressed against my back. She rests

  her chin on my shoulder.

  I grunt.

  “It’s water all the way down,” she says. “You could

  swim right through the planet to the other side.”

  “Did anyone live here?”

  “I think so. I don’t remember. But it was a gift from a

  Sultan to his beloved.”

  Shar and I have an enormous amount of information

  stored in our brains. The brain is a sphere the size of a billiard ball somewhere in our bodies, and however much

  we change our bodies, we can’t change that. Maka once

  told me that even if Ship ran into a star going nine-

  tenths lightspeed, my billiard-ball brain would come

  tumbling out the other side, none the worse for wear. I

  have no idea what kind of matter it is or how it works,

  but there’s plenty of room in my memory for all the sto-

  2 4 1

  B E N J A M I N R O S E N B A U M

  ries of all the worlds in the Galaxy, and most of them are probably in there.

  But we’re terrible at accessing the factual information.

  A fact will pop up inexplicably at random—the number of

  Quantegral Lovergirls ever manufactured, for instance,

  which is 362,476—and be gone a minute later, swimming

  away in the murky seas of thought. That’s the way Maka

  built us, on purpose. He thought it was cute.

  3.

  An old argument about Maka:

  “He loved us,” I say. I know he did.

  Shar rolls her eyes (she’s a tigress at the moment).

  “I could feel it,” I say, feeling stupid.

  “Now there’s a surprise. Maka designed you from

  scratch, including your feelings, and you feel that he

  loved you. Amazing.” She yawns, showing her fangs.

  “He made us more flexible than any other Lovergirls.

  Our minds are almost Interpreter-level.”

  She snorts. “We were trade goods, Narra. Trade goods.

  Classy purchasable or rentable items.”

  I curl up around myself. (I’m a python.)

  “He set us free,” I say.

  Shar doesn’t say anything for a while, because that is,

  after all, the central holiness of our existence. Our catechism, if you like.

  Then she says gently: “He didn’t need us for anything

  anymore, when they went into the Core.”

  “He could have just turned us off. He set us free. He

  gave us Ship.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  2 4 2

  D R O P L E T

  “He loved us,” I say.

  I know it’s true.

  4.

  I don’t tell Shar, but that’s one reason I want us to go

  back to the Galactic Core: Maka’s there.

  I know it’s stupid. There’s nothing left of Maka that I

  would recognize. The Wizards got hungrier and hungrier

  for processing power, so they could think more and know

  more and play more complicated games. Eventually the