And now Bo McKinnon is remembered as Captain Future, one of the greatest heroes in the history of humankind.
It was the least Jeri could have done for him.
Considering what a jerk Bo had been all the way to the end, I could have tried to claim the credit, but her strong will persevered. I suppose she’s right; it would look bad if it was known that McKinnon had gone out as a raving lunatic who had to be coldcocked by his second officer.
Likewise, no one has to know that four missiles launched from the Comet destroyed the mass-driver’s main reactor, thus causing the explosion that averted 2046-Barr from its doomsday course. The empty weapon pod was jettisoned before the Comet reached Ceres, and the small bribe paid to a minor Pax bureaucrat insured that all records of it ever having been installed on the freighter were completely erased.
It hardly matters. In the end, everyone got what they wanted.
As first officer of the Comet, Jeri became its new commander. She offered me her old job, and since the Jove Commerce deal was down the tubes, I gratefully accepted. It wasn’t long after that before she also offered to show me the rest of her tattoos, an invitation that I also accepted. Her clan still won’t speak to her, especially since she now plans to marry a Primary, but at least her fellow Superiors have been forced to claim her as one of their own.
For now, life is good. There’s money in the bank, we’ve shucked our black sheep status, and there’s no shortage of companies who want to hire the legendary Futuremen of the TBSA Comet. Who knows? Once we get tired of working the belt, maybe we’ll settle down and take a shot at beating the odds on this whole cross-breeding thing.
And Bo got what he wanted, even though he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. In doing so, perhaps humankind got what it needed.
There’s only one thing that still bothers me.
When McKinnon went nuts aboard the Fool’s Gold and tried to attack me, I assumed that he had come down with the Plague. This was a correct assumption; he had been infected the moment he had come through the airlock.
However, I later learned that it takes at least six hours for Titan Plague to fully incubate within a human being, and neither of us had been aboard the Fool’s Gold for nearly half that long.
If McKinnon was crazy at the end, it wasn’t because of the Plague. To this day, I have no idea what made him snap… unless he believed that I was trying to run off with his ship, his girl, and his goddamn glory.
Hell, maybe I was.
Last night, some nervous kid—a cargo grunt off some LEO freighter, his union card probably still uncreased—sidled up to me at the bar and asked for my autograph. While I was signing the inside cover of his logbook, he told me a strange rumor he had recently heard: Captain Future managed to escape from the Fool’s Gold just before it blew. According to him, prospectors in the inner belt report spotting a gig on their screens, one whose pilot answers their calls as Curt Newton before transmissions are lost.
I bought the youngster a drink and told him the truth. Naturally, he refused to believe me, nor can I blame him.
Heroes are hard to find. We need to welcome them whenever they appear in our midst. You’ve just got to be careful to pick the right guy, because it’s easy for someone to pretend to be what they’re not.
Captain Future is dead.
Long live Captain Future.
Brad Linaweaver
MOON OF ICE
Brad Linaweaver
“Moon of Ice,” Brad Linaweaver’s contribution to this volume, was a Nebula finalist story in 1982, and was later expanded into the successful novel of the same name. He has worked almost exclusively in the alternate history subgenre, producing stories such as “Destination: Indies,” an alternate telling of Christopher Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic, and “Unmerited Favor,” which takes a more militant approach to the story of Jesus Christ’s life. He is also the author of the novels Clownface, The Land Beyond Summer, and Sliders: The Novel. Winner of the Prometheus Award in 1989, he lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
To all doubts and questions, the new man of the first German Empire has only one answer: Nevertheless, I will!
I have seen the man of the future; he is cruel; I am frightened by him.
APRIL 1965
TODAY I ATTENDED the state funeral for Adolf Hitler. They asked me to give the eulogy. It wouldn’t have been so bothersome except that Himmler pulled himself out of his thankful retirement to advise me on all the things I mustn’t say. The old fool still believes that we are laying the foundation for a religion. Acquainted as he is with my natural skepticism, he never ceases to worry that I will say something in public not meant for the consumption of the masses. It is a pointless worry on his part; not even early senility should enable him to forget that I am the propaganda expert. Still, I do not question his insistence that he is in rapport with what the masses feel most deeply. I leave such matters to one who is uniquely qualified for the task.
I suppose that I was the last member of the entourage to see Hitler alive. Speer had just left, openly anxious to get back to his work with the Von Braun team. In his declining years he has taken to involving himself full-time with the space program. This question of whether the Americans or we will reach the moon first seems to me a negligible concern. I am convinced by our military experts that the space program that really matters is in terms of orbiting platforms for the purpose of global intimidation. Such a measure seems entirely justified if we are to give the Führer his thousand-year Reich (or something even close).
The Führer and I talked of Himmler’s plans to make him an SS saint. “How many centuries will it be,” he asked in a surprisingly firm voice, “before they forget I was a man of flesh and blood?”
“Can an Aryan be any other?” I responded dryly, and he smiled as he is wont to do at my more jestful moments.
“The spirit of Aryanism is another matter,” he said. “The same as destiny or any other workable myth.”
“Himmler would ritualize these myths into a new reality,” I pointed out.
“Of course,” agreed Hitler. “That has always been his purpose. You and I are realists. We make use of what is available.” He reflected for a moment and then continued: “The war was a cultural one. If you ask the man in the street what I really stood for, he would not come near the truth. Nor should he!”
I smiled. I’m sure he took that as a sign of assent. This duality of Hitler, with its concern for exact hierarchies to replace the old social order—and what is true for the Volk is not always what is true for us—seemed to me just another workable myth, often contrary to our stated purposes. I would never admit that to him. In his own way Hitler was quite the bone-headed philosopher.