Nebula Awards Showcase 54 Read online

  Right after the words left her lips, an earsplitting explosion rang out. I grabbed Kara and dropped to the ground. Mr. Drayton’s daughter cried while he squeezed her and repeatedly promised her everything was going to be fine. Outside, the volume of the mob amplified, becoming so loud that Kara and I immediately scrambled to our feet so we could see what was happening.

  A drone had been shot down by something and had crashed right outside of the gate. Its explosion busted the hinges enough for people to crawl through one at a time. Before the officers inside could reinforce it, one member of the mob squeezed through and sprinted toward the Titan Project. “No children!” the incensed man shrieked. “That’s my spot!” He didn’t make it far. A gunshot cracked from somewhere on the wall. This one wasn’t a warning. A bullet tore into the back of the man’s skull and he toppled forward in a heap of tangled limbs.

  Everybody went silent.

  The guard on the wall who’d shot stood completely still, smoke rising from the end of his rifle’s blistering muzzle. If Mr. Drayton getting caught sneaking in a child had roused the mob, I knew this would ignite them.

  I was no military commander, but I did the first thing that came to mind. I grabbed Sgt. Hale who was positioned just inside the dormitory monitoring the candidate transition and said, “Get everyone to the ship now!”

  “Director, it takes time to load them into the pods,” he answered.

  “Sort them on the ship! We need them alive!”

  He nodded and transmitted orders over his radio. Moments later, every chosen candidate rushed across the compound toward the ship. They were terrified. Guards poured out of the watchtowers to reinforce their comrades by the damaged gate. There were no more gunshots, but rifle butts cracked bones as the mob stuck their wailing arms through the bars.

  I turned to Kara, Mr. Drayton, and his daughter, and shouted, “Let’s go!”

  Kara didn’t move at first. Her petrified gaze was fixed on the mob. I’d never seen her so rattled. I shook her by the shoulders to snap her out of it, and we took off. Mr. Drayton picked up his daughter and followed.

  We didn’t make it far before a bottle shattered next to my feet. I hopped out of the way of the shards, but Kara tripped over the legs of the rioter who’d been shot. As she slid across the dirt, her hands dragged through the man’s blood. Again, she froze.

  “C’mon, Kara!” I yelled as I hoisted her back to her feet.

  We crossed the expanse of dirt between the dormitory and the ship without suffering any more setbacks. I helped Kara onto the entry ramp, and once we were at the top, I fell against the wall. My lungs were filled with dirt and I couldn’t stop coughing.

  Once I was finally able to catch my breath, I scanned my compound. A few hundred yards away, the guards at the gate struggled. The mob had started to climb over the gate, and I knew it wouldn’t last much longer with all their weight pressed against the compromised area.

  “Recall the men,” I shouted to Sgt. Hale at the bottom of the ramp. He nodded.

  I could no longer recognize any of the people I’d rejected in the mob. Everyone was covered in dirt and blood, and they were all so riled that they might as well have been foaming at the mouths. The officers received the order and immediately broke ranks to sprint to the ship. Most had fought in wars, but gunning down innocent people wasn’t in the job description. When the gate failed, they’d have no other choice. The last thing I wanted was my followers to be reduced to savages like the rest of the people on Earth.

  “Daddy, what’s going on?” Mr. Drayton’s daughter asked, her voice so frail I could barely hear her over the commotion.

  He didn’t respond. He was busy staring at the chaotic scene below. “I didn’t think I would cause this…” he muttered. “You didn’t think?” I said, my glare boring through him. “Three thousand spots, Mr. Drayton. Life support doesn’t allow for any more. Do you suppose I only chose people with no connections for my health? A man is dead because you didn’t listen!”

  “What does it matter!” he snapped, startling me. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “He would’ve been dead tomorrow. They’re all going to be dead tomorrow. Nothing we do can stop that.”

  “No.” I caught a glimpse of the surging mob in my peripherals. “But we can retain our humanity.”

  Mr. Drayton took a measured breath. “You built this whole thing to save our species, Director. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “So did I.” He released his daughter and rose to his full height, no longer afraid. She wrapped her tiny arms around his leg and hid her face against him. “I wasn’t going to let her go like that. Not while there was a chance.” He gestured into the ship’s interior. “And I know you wouldn’t either.”

  I pride myself on my quick mind, but for once I had no idea what to say. There was no denying Mr. Drayton was right. I looked inside and saw Kara, and I couldn’t help but picture her as a nervous ten-year-old orphan without a place to go. Just seeing the fresh scrapes on her legs made me uneasy.

  “Let my daughter take my place,” Mr. Drayton implored. “I know the risks of sending her this young, but it’s got to be better than her staying here, right? She can learn from the other horticulturalists. She’s smart. Smarter than I was at her age.”

  I remained silent. Beyond Kara, hundreds inside scurried about preparing the sleep-chambers, moving up and down the central lift. Despite my stringent requirements, each of the people inside them was unique. Many could be considered true geniuses, while others were merely the hardest workers on my staff from a peaceful time. The only thing they all visibly had in common was that they were young. Young enough to flourish on our new world.

  Everyone but me…

  I looked in the opposite direction, over the shoulders of the security officers crowding the ramp. Each livid individual in the mob at the gate was someone I’d decided wasn’t worthy of propagating our species. My criteria. My interviews. My decisions. I was to remember their faces forever so that nobody else had to. But years of focusing on work had led me to ignore one simple fact… that I belonged with them.

  The scraping of metal over dirt made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The gate was breaking, and if the people on the other side reached the ship, we’d all be torn to pieces. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I had one last gift to give.

  “Kara,” I mouthed. I moved in front of her and gripped her gently by the arms to = gain her attention. “Kara, I need you to do something for me.”

  Her teary gaze snapped toward me. “Anything, dad… I mean, Director,” she stuttered. “I need you to go to the command deck and prepare the ship for launch while I manage the situation out here. This vessel was built to withstand entry through the thick atmosphere of Titan, but I don’t know how long we can endure the fury of humankind’s will to survive.”

  “It’s your design. I’m … I’m not sure if I know the ignition sequence well enough without you.” I held her at arm’s length. “Like you said, you’ve been with me since the beginning. You know everything that I do. Just stay focused and ignore what’s out there. I believe in you, Kara. Your people need you.”

  “Okay,” she said. She gritted her teeth and nodded. “I can handle it.”

  “I know you can.” I smiled as I patted her on the shoulder and turned her around. My heart sank as I watched her run toward the lift. I wanted to holler, “I’ll see you soon,” just so she’d glance back over her shoulder, but I couldn’t get the words out.

  I didn’t want to lie. Not to her.

  “Mr. Drayton,” I said, spinning around. My gaze darted between him and his daughter. “Are you sure you want this?”

  “It’s wha—” A thunderous crash cut him off. Half of the compound’s gate swung open against the wall, and the mob poured through, stampeded each other and screaming. Sgt. Hale and the officers at the ramp’s base tightened their stance and readied their rifles. “It’s what any father would do,” he finished.
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  “I think I understand.” I leaned in close so that I could whisper in his ear. “First, have your daughter loaded into the chamber meant for you. Then, I need you to follow Kara. There’s no time to get everybody hooked up. Tell the staff to have everyone get into their chambers themselves and worry about hooking up when the ship reaches space. Once everybody is safely restrained, initiate the launch. Kara will have it ready, but she’ll be waiting for me. Don’t.”

  Mr. Drayton eyes opened wide as he realized what I was planning. “There has to be another way,” he said.

  “Another body on the ship means someone else must be left behind. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Then let it be me! These people need you.”

  I smirked. “Not anymore. I’ll be dead in a decade. One old man isn’t going to make a difference on Titan. You have an entire lifetime to make it feel like home.” I regarded his daughter and wondered what Kara might’ve looked like at her age. “It starts with her.”

  “Director Trass, I don’t—”

  “This is an order, Mr. Drayton!” I cut him off. “Now, there are two chambers in the command deck. You might have to force her into hers, but make sure she gets in. You tell her…” The words got stuck in my throat. I could picture her beautiful smile. “Tell her she’s the only Trass who matters now.”

  He stood motionless. “Thank you,” he muttered, hardly able to get the words out. “For everything,”

  Our gazes met one last time. “Thank me when you’re there,” I replied. He was the only chosen candidate willing to risk everything on a lie. It was because of that I knew he wouldn’t fail me.

  He wrapped his arm around his daughter and turned to a member of my staff. Once he began communicating the orders I’d told him to, I hurried to Sgt. Hale at the ramp.

  “Move everybody inside!” I told him.

  “Director Trass, what’s going on?” he questioned. He fired off a few rounds to slow the rapidly approaching mob, but they were growing bolder. In minutes, I knew the guards I hired for protection were going to have to do whatever it took to survive. Having to slaughter members of their own species was going to be the last memory of Earth my candidates had. I couldn’t allow that. “It’s time,” I said. “Nobody gets in or out after me.” I keyed the ramp controls and set it to start closing. Then I sprinted out across my compound before any of the officers could stop me. Sgt. Hale shouted something, but he wasn’t foolish enough to follow.

  “That’s him!” someone in the mob screamed.

  I lowered my head and made a break for the compound’s office building. The throng abandoned the Titan Project to chase after me, just like I knew they would, but the angle I’d taken allowed me to stay ahead of them. They shouted all manner of obscenities. Debris rained down around me.

  A quarter-mile later, I busted through the lobby doors just before a slew of rocks peppered the glass. For once, there were no candidates at the front desk blocking the etching on it that read,

  TITAN’S COLD EMBRACE AWAITS US.

  I wasn’t far enough ahead of the mob to take the elevator, so I entered the emergency stairwell. My legs felt like jelly by the time I reached the hallway six stories up. My office glowed at the other end of it like a beacon. Apparently, I’d left my lights on. The rest of the floor was dark.

  I sprinted toward my office, locking the door as soon as I made it inside. A few seconds later, the mob pounded on it. I wasn’t worried. The door was installed by the company that I’d started from nothing, and our products always worked. It would hold long enough.

  “You can’t hide!” someone hollered.

  I strolled over to my desk and took a seat in my all-too-familiar chair. My foot knocked over a bottle of whiskey underneath. Enough was left to fix myself a glass. I grabbed one off the windowsill and cleaned it with the bottom of my shirt. As I held it up to the moonlight to see if I’d gotten out all the smudges, a series of bright lights along the bottom of the Titan Project winked on. A siren blared throughout the entire compound.

  I poured myself a drink and leaned back. The floor began to shake violently, causing the golden liquid to slosh over the rim of my glass. The shouting and banging at my door stopped. Seconds later, a blinding flash filled the sky, swiftly drowned out by smoke and dust. I could feel the heat radiating through the glass.

  The shaking grew so intense my bones rattled, and then it was gone. The faint light grew steadily smaller, and even though I couldn’t yet see the Titan Project through the fog, I knew liftoff was a success. Kara and Mr. Drayton had done it. They—his daughter, and two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven others—were going to live. Humanity’s best hope.

  As the dust and smoke began to part, the moon was revealed. On one side of it, the flaming engines of the Titan Project glimmered. On the other, the asteroid shone. I raised my glass to the instrument of Earth’s destruction and took a sip.

  And Yet

  by A. T. Greenblatt

  Only idiots go back to the haunted houses of their childhood. And yet.

  Here you are. Standing on the sagging, weed-strangled front porch that hasn’t changed in twenty years. Every dip in the floorboards, every peeling strip of paint is exactly as you remember it. Time seems to have ricocheted off this place.

  Except not everything has stayed the same. You have your doctorate in theoretical physics now, the ink’s still fresh on the diploma. Your prospects look good. You’re going start teaching next month, your first steps on the path to tenure. You have a grant for a research project you’ve been waiting for years to start. The secrets of the universe are a locked door and you might have the key. That is, if the house doesn’t kill you first.

  You’re lingering on the doorstep, not quite ready to commit. There’s an early morning hush to the neighborhood, but it’s already ungodly humid and warm. The backs of your calves stick to your leg braces, your backpack is heavy on your shoulders, and your walking cane is slick from your sweaty palm, though you’re not sure if that’s because of the heat or because being back on this porch is doing terrible things to your heart rate. Even the dragonflies are smart enough to linger at the property line.

  This is a terrible idea. Your hand is clenched around the doorknob and you’re listing all the valid reasons you should walk away.

  And yet.

  If you’re right, you could be onto the greatest scientific discovery in quantum mechanics. Ever. And if you don’t make it out again…

  Well, at least it’ll be in the name of science.

  So, you open the door and step through.

  • • •

  Nothing in the house has stayed the same since the last time you worked up the nerve to come in. Nothing. This shouldn’t surprise you, because you have this theory that the house reacts to its visitors. The visitor is the catalyst and the catalyst is not a bullied eight-year-old kid anymore. Thus the reaction is different. And yet.

  You were hoping, god you were hoping you could take the same path as before. Have the same escape routes. But the haunted house of your childhood has become an unfamiliar landscape. Instead of the front door opening to a wide landing and a staircase, you are standing in a foyer, at the mouth of a narrow hall with rooms on either side. There’s no staircase in sight.

  The walls are slanted inward. They’re covered in dark, dizzyingly patterned wallpaper and you aren’t claustrophobic until you are. Vertigo and your pulse skips so badly you don’t even notice the frames on the walls at first. But when you do, you bite back a scream.

  They’re full of pictures of you.

  You’re well-documented. All ages and always caught unaware. Some pictures are taken from over your shoulder, some from a distance, some from right under your chin. You’ve never seen these photos before, but you recognize the settings in several, like the nook in the library you hang out in when you want to be alone.

  Your hand tightens around your cane. You’re going to make it down this hall and find those damn stairs. But the farther y
ou walk, the more pictures of yourself you discover. The more the slanted walls press down on you. The longer the passageway grows.

  In the end, you only make it about thirty feet before you can’t stand it anymore, your knees are shaking that badly. So, without thinking through the consequences, the possibilities, you turn into the second room on your left.

  • • •

  There are five of them sitting on the couch and watching TV. You don’t recognize them at first, all grown up. But these people in their best business casual and gelled hair are your former “friends,” the ones that met you at the haunted house twenty years ago. You only recognize them because you just saw them at your ten-year high school reunion two days ago. Admittedly, you attended it just to gloat a little.

  “Wow, you’re researching parallel universes? That’s crazy!” Chelsea said. “I’m jealous. My insurance job is so boring.” You gave her a tight-lipped smile. You’d been hearing a variation of this all evening. That, and “Look at you! Walking with one cane now instead of two!”

  “We did some crazy things as kids,” she said, a little too quickly. She kept mixing her cocktail, something that looked too red and smelled too sweet, and didn’t meet your gaze. “We were really stupid back then.”

  Intellectually, you understood she was trying to apologize. Morally, you knew you should be the bigger person. And yet, you said nothing.

  Now Chelsea is in the same pink frilly shirt she wore at the reunion, and she and the other four are completely absorbed in some TV show. Just like when you were kids. Except you’re not sitting on the floor with your two crutches on either side of you, slightly apart from them, hoping that this counts as friendship. You’re standing in the threshold, glaring. What the hell is so interesting on that TV anyway?

  You look.

  You regret it instantly.

  It’s a video of that terrible day. The day when your little brother, Avery, got hit by a car several blocks away.

  The video is playing on repeat.