“It’s getting too much for me,” said the leader of the Party in Power, his voice thundering through the sky. “I propose a simple contest, winner take all.”
“Oh?” replied the leader of the Opposition, the syllable materializing as a puff of flame. “This intrigues me. The terms?” “We select a mutually agreeable subject, an average man, and measure his tendencies toward our respective sides. The party whose ideology he leans to will gain custody of the species for all time. I’m getting too old to fight over each individual with you. Do you agree to the contest?”
“It sounds like a Hell of an idea.”
“It is done, then.”
John Smith was, of course, the perfect choice. He was of average height and average weight, of average intellect and income. Even his name was average. He went to work that morning just another one of four billion people, but, during his lunch hour, he became the sole object of attention of two great minds.
“Aha!” proclaimed the leader of the Party in Power, whom henceforth we shall call G. “Observe his generosity: his gratuity is over twenty percent of the total bill. My point.”
“Not so fast,” interposed the leader of the Opposition, D. “Look into his mind for his motive. The magnitude of the tip is intended to impress the buxom secretary he is dining with. His wife, I suspect, would not approve. The point is mine.”
John Smith left the table with his secretary and proceeded through the streets to their place of employment. Catching sight of a matronly woman ahead soliciting donations for a worthwhile charity, he crossed the road early.
“Generosity, you said?” D smiled. “My point.”
Returning to his office ten minutes late, Smith settled to his work. His secretary buzzed him to say that his wife was on the phone.
“Tell her I’m in a meeting,” Smith commanded.
“Three zip,” said D.
Smith next entered his purely personal luncheon date on his company expense account.
“You’re lagging behind,” said D, satisfied. “I would say he is a staunch supporter of my party. Four.”
“Perhaps,” said G, “perhaps.”
At 4:50, Smith left his office to go home. “Don’t worry. I won’t count that against him,” said D, comfortable in his lead.
On the subway, Smith read over the shoulder of the man sitting beside him, averting his eyes from the old woman standing nearby.
“Five.”
Walking from the subway station to his house, he threw a candy bar wrapper onto his neighbor’s lawn.
“Is littering a sin?” asked D.
“I’m not sure,” allowed G.
“It’s unimportant. The outcome is inevitable.”
Entering his house, Smith called a greeting to his fat wife and sat down to read the newspaper before dinner. His wife asked him to take the dog for a walk before they ate. He left something else on his neighbor’s lawn this time.
“Well, I’m certainly entitled to a point for that,” said D.
“Crudity. Six to nothing.”
“Perhaps a more definitive test?”
“For instance?”
D waved his red arms and screams rose from an alley near Smith. “Help! Somebody help!” D chalked up another point as Smith turned deliberately away from the noise. G sent a police officer running past Smith.
“Did you hear anything?” shouted the cop.
“No. I don’t want to be involved.”
G frowned. D smiled.
Smith headed quickly back to his house, hurrying up the driveway as he heard the phone ringing. “It’s for you,” called out his wife.
He picked up the receiver. “Why, Christopher! I’ll be damned!”
“Would you care to play the best two out of three?” sighed G.
Stream of Consciousness
Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year
Julie E. Czerneda is one of Canada’s newest, and best, SF novelists, but she has also worked for years in educational publishing. She commissioned me to write a biologically themed short story for an anthology that would be used to teach science through science fiction; the book, eventually entitled Packing Fraction, also contained stories by Julie, Charles Sheffield, Josepha Sherman, and Jan Stirling, plus poetry by my wife Carolyn Clink and illustrations by my friend Larry Stewart. Sudbury, Ontario, where this story is set, went on to feature prominently in my Neanderthal Parallax novels.
The roar of the helicopter blades pounded in Raji’s ears—he wished the university could afford a hoverjet. The land below was rugged Canadian shield. Pine trees grew where there was soil; lichen and moss covered the Precambrian rocks elsewhere. Raji wore a green parka, its hood down. He continued to scan the ground, and—
There! A path through the wilderness, six meters wide and perhaps half a kilometer long: trees knocked over, shield rocks scraped clean, and, at the end of it—
Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
A large dark-blue object, shaped like an arrowhead.
Raji pointed, and the pilot, Tina Chang, banked the copter to take it in the direction he was indicating. Raji thumbed the control for his microphone. “We’ve found it,” he said, shouting to be heard above the noise of the rotor. “And it’s no meteorite.” As the copter got closer, Raji could see that the front of the arrowhead was smashed in. He paused, unsure what to say next. Then: “I think we’re going to need the air ambulance from Sudbury.”
Raji Sahir was an astronomer with Laurentian University. He hadn’t personally seen the fireball that streaked across the Ontario sky last night, flanked by northern lights, but calls about it had flooded the university. He’d hoped to recover a meteorite intact; meteors were a particular interest of his, which is why he’d come to Sudbury from Vancouver twenty years ago, in 1999. Sudbury was situated on top of an ancient iron-nickel meteorite; the city’s economy had traditionally been based on mining this extraterrestrial metal.
The helicopter set down next to the dark-blue arrowhead. There could be no doubt: it was a spaceship, with its hull streamlined for reentry. On its port side were white markings that must have been lettering, but they were rendered in an alphabet of triangular characters unlike anything Raji had ever seen before.
Raji was cross-appointed to the biology department; he taught a class called “Life on Other Worlds,” which until this moment had been completely theoretical. He and Tina clambered out of the copter, and they moved over to the landing craft. Raji had a Geiger counter with him; he’d expected to use it on a meteorite, but he waved it over the ship’s hull as he walked around it. The clicks were infrequent; nothing more than normal background radiation.
When he got to the pointed bow of the lander, Raji gasped. The damage was even more severe than it looked from above. The ship’s nose was caved in and crumpled, and a large, jagged fissure was cut deep into the hull. If whatever lifeforms were inside didn’t already breathe Earthlike air, they were doubtless dead. And, of course, if the ship carried germs dangerous to life on Earth, well, they were already free and in the air, too. Raji found himself holding his breath, and—
“Professor!”
It was Tina’s voice. Raji hurried over to her. She was pointing at a rectangular indentation in the hull, set back about two centimeters. In its center was a circular handle.