Parabolic Puzzles
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Last summer at an Event Horizon here in Edinburgh, Jane Yolen, SF poet extraordinaire and writer of many books enthralled an audience of writing students. We were therefore delighted when she agreed to talk to our Poetry Editor Russell Jones for this issue of Shoreline of Infinity. You can read about her thoughts on poetry, her strong female characters, YA fiction and writing being about “tell the True”. And better—we share four of her poems, dear reader, for you to hear her distinctive voice call out to you. We at the Shoreline of Infinity yurt are looking forward to Jane’s return visit to Scotland in the summer.
Arrival was the best SF film of 2016; no arguments, thank you. Last week I finally read the source—Ted Chiang’s short story: Story of Your Life. It showed once again how a short science fiction tale can be, at its finest, a condensed explosion of ideas, character and story. A quick Tweet brought a list of other short stories adapted for films (thanks folks!), from Sentinel for 2001: A Space Odyssey, to a tweet pointing out that Philip K Dick stories saw many transformations into films.
So Nolan, Spielberg, Wachowskis, Zemekis and all, I hope you’ve subscribed to Shoreline of Infinity—your next blockbuster film could be right here in your hands.
Noel Chidwick
Editor-in-chief
Shoreline of Infinity
March 2017
The Walls of Tithonium Chasma
Tim Major
Art: Jessica Good
Halliday pauses at the window that curves around the loading bay of Tharsis Foxglove. His bare arms reflect the pale red of the sky. The nicks and cuts on the window, the result of dust storms, are a complex net.
Are the sculptors really still out there? He imagines the three of them, free of the suffocating atmosphere of the base. Working, or just patrolling the surface aimlessly. It would be difficult to blame them if they never returned.
He continues along the curved passageway, moving away from the living quarters and the rest of the team. It seems unreasonable, stashing the aye-ayes out here beside the trucks and rovers in the workshop. He traces a finger along the lockers, counting up. Ai403, Ai404, Ai405 absent serving in the chapel, Ai406. Should they have given them names? People had, with the early models, back home. But they had been companions rather than tools.
The moulded faces gaze back at him from within shrouds of dustproof sheeting. Naked as the day they were born. At the touch of a panel, Ai407 slides out, suspended by the armpits on two extending rods. Some way to sleep.
What’s the hold-up? The boot process gets slower each time. The aye-aye’s smooth mask twitches. The corners of each empty eyepit flicker with fine motor calibrations. It feels intrusive, watching an aye-aye wake. Halliday keeps still to allow its recognition software to kick in.
“Bring a trundler to the doors,” he says, “I’ll meet you there.”
Ai407 moves away, its smooth feet padding softly on the shop floor.
Once he has suited up, Halliday slides himself into the passenger seat of the trundler. Ai407 does not turn to watch him as he struggles to arrange his legs into a comfortable position.
“Let’s go.”
The aye-aye raises both of its handless arms. Each stubby end glows blue as it interfaces with the onboard navigation system. The hatch door of the workshop rises silently and then they are outside.
Copper-coloured storm clouds have gathered in the distance, beyond the Valles Marineris. Other members of the team have talked about seeing clouds like these in dreams. They say that their dreams are more vivid, these days. Halliday himself doesn’t dream, or doesn’t remember.
He turns to look at the closed bay. The hatch is invisible from outside, fitted flush to the curve of the building. Behind the loading bay the spokes and bubbles of the living quarters emerge only slightly from their protective hills of dust. The buildings are sculpted from the same dull red as the Martian rock beneath.
“There’s no chance the storm will head this way?” he says.
“There is a chance,” the aye-aye replies.
“Quantify.”
“Six per cent.”
They travel in silence until they reach the end of the dirt track from the base. Halliday realises that he has always thought of it as a winding driveway, as if the base is a country house on Earth. They should sculpt a row of trees to line the edges of the road, do the job properly. The trundler slows to a halt.
“Where is our destination?” the aye-aye says.
“I don’t know yet.” Halliday fishes the screen from the pocket of his suit and unrolls it on his lap. It displays a map, preprogrammed by Aitchison in logistics. The base is marked in green and their own position is a throbbing orange dart. At a point five times the distance they have travelled hangs a parallelogram outlined in black. Its edges shift constantly. “Somewhere between F4 and F7, west of Tharsis Fuchsia. Get close and we’ll take it from there.”
The ground is rougher here. Halliday lurches to one side, pushing against Ai407’s slick shoulder to right himself.
“You’re not from the chapel, right?” he says.
“No. Ai406 and below service the chapel.”
Halliday nods. A decade ago most colonists would have been horrified at the thought of religion thriving on Mars. When the Foxglove council had displayed the blueprints for the chapel sculpture, the reaction back home had been one of polite disgust.
He looks outside as they push through the first of the half-pipes that lead to the plains. Its sculpted walls are perfectly smooth. Only the upper edges are frayed, where the regolith has been scooped and shifted by the wind.
He glances at the moving shape on the screen. “Hey, aren’t you all on the same network? All of you aye-ayes, and the sculptors?”
“Yes, we share bandwidth.”
“Aitchison says there are three missing. They left last week to begin sculpting the new storehouse, west of here. Can you hear them?” He slides a finger along one of the blades at the edge of the map to reveal Aitchison’s brief. “They’re models SC33 to 35.”
Ai407 turns its head as if straining to listen. “They’re out on the periphery. I can barely feel them.”
“They’ve been out there for days. What are they doing?”
Ai407’s smooth lips move before speaking, as if rehearsing a response. “Sculpting.”
Once they have crossed the sculpted bridge that connects Foxglove to the other regions, they emerge onto the plains proper. The sunlight, though filtered through the cloud of red dust and the tinted windscreen, stings Halliday’s eyes. He feels a sense of freedom at seeing the bare rocks that litter the desert to either side. They are unsculpted, unchanged, unchanging. Tharsis Foxglove will never extend this far and yet they are still close enough that no new base will be constructed here either. This space will remain preserved, an area of natural beauty, or perhaps natural ugliness.
The trundler finds a smooth route. The jolting lessens.
“Stop here.” Halliday pushes his way out of the vehicle and kneels, one gloved palm on the ground. The regolith is hard and compacted. It must have been pressed flat by the sculptors.
