Every Hill Ends With Sky

Every Hill Ends With Sky

Robert Reed

But the purge freed up niches for fresh colonists, including one Brazilian graduate student. More a software guru more than a biologist, the woman was nonetheless versed in natural selection, and she had a fearless interest in all kinds of connected specialities, like mathematics and cybernetics and fantastical fictions. And after a week spent reviewing everyone else’s empty results, the newcomer decided on an entirely different test.

She resurrected the solar system inside a null-heart computer, putting things where they stood four billion years ago. Here was the newborn earth and an authentic Mars, the most likely Venus and the rest of marquee characters, alng with many more asteroids than existed today. Her model was unique, but not in large, overwrought ways. The worlds were laced with small assumptions that she never intended to defend. This was her game, she assumed. This was meant to be easy grant money while she pushed ahead with her doctorate. And because this wasn’t her primary job, she let the scenario play out more than once, never hunting for the bugs. Watching nothing work out as intended, and every time with the same luicrous results.

There was a husband in the picture, an aeronautical engineer who kept hoping for a child or two, if their lives went well enough. He wasn’t the most observant beast when it came to emotions, but one night, glancing at his wife he realized that he had never seen that expression before. Was she scared? Was she angry? Maybe work was a problem, be he feared some kind of trouble with their little family.

«What is so wrong?» he whispered.

«Nothing,» she said.

She never was much of liar.

The young man tried waiting her out, and he tried coaxing. Neither strategy worked well. Only when she was ready did his wife explain, «These simulations keeping giving odd results, the same results, and they want me to fix my mistakes.»

«Who wants to fix this?»

«Crypsis does.»

«Oh,» he said. «This is your planet game.»

Every Hill Ends With Sky. Photo by Elena

She often called it a game, but now she bristled at the cavalier label. « Yes. That’s what I’m talking about. The four-billion year model.»

«All right, darling,» he said, attempting to project calmness.

«Mars,» she said. «I always guessed Mars would be the problem. It’s small and cools early, so you have to assume that its lifeforms would gain early toeholds everywhere.»

The wise course was to say nothing, which is what he did.

Sne continued, saying, «I’ve always encouraged Earth and Mars and Venus to produce multiple lifeforms. Dozens, even hundreds of discrete biologies would emerge when the crusts cooled and water condensed. Each biology would align to local chemistries and temperatures. And on every world, everything eats the alien neighbors as well as every tasty cousin. The only winners are metabolically isolated, and only then if there was ample space and a long timeline.»

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.