Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

We’re going outside.”
Rikki didn’t budge from her seat. “Why? Do
you have more abuse to boast about?”
“I’m not the one yelling at the children.”
Holding open the bathroom door, Li backed
into the corridor. Her other hand held a gun.
“I assume you’d like to know what this is
about. And before you try anything stupid, remember:
you’re pregnant.”
“As an elaborate, especially cruel, slow-motion
way to kill me?” Because you’re that sick.
“Oh, never mind what I told your doting
husband. ‘Could be fatal’ leaves a great deal of
wiggle room. I’d give you four-to-one odds
you’ll be fine.” Li gestured. “Out. I have things
to show you. Things that, once you’re free,
you’ll want to tell your friends.”
Free? Without a hostage, how did Li expect—whatever
she was up to—to outlast Endeavour’s
return? She had to sleep sometime.
“You’re adorable when you’re confused.
Come. Your questions will all be answered.”
Seething, Rikki followed.
Just inside the open gate at the north end of
Main Street, she saw Carlos. And a bulldozer,
parked. And a dozen or more of the older children
with rakes and shovels. Only you
couldn’t dig in the rock-hard ground.
“What are they doing?” Rikki asked.
“All in good time.”
Their first stop was the settlement’s primary,
deeply buried bunker. A tornado shelter, at
Antonio’s insistence, not that they had ever
had a tornado. Li motioned Rikki away from
the double steel doors to palm the handprint
reader, then backed away.
“You first,” Li said.
Rikki raised one of the heavy doors. It fell to
the side with a crash. The late afternoon sun
touched only the first few steps, and she
tapped the light-switch sensor. Her heart
pounding, she scanned their most precious
possessions: the embryo banks, still almost
full. Bags of seed. Marvin’s servers. Everything
appeared untouched—but she knew Marvin
had been altered.
What else, unseen, had Li and Carlos tainted?
“We don’t have all day. Down.”
“So you can shut me inside?”
Li sighed. “I could have locked you here in
the first place, couldn’t I? Just go down. Trust
me, it’ll be worth it.”
DARK SECRET
JUNE 2013
Hugging the railing, Rikki started down the
concrete stairs. A tall stepladder she had last
seen in the greenhouse, where she had used it
to replace a cracked roof panel, leaned against
the opposite wall. Everything else in the
bunker was as Rikki remembered it—even the
sturdy steel hook of the chain hoist on which,
as usual, she cracked her head.
She reached the bottom and had circled half
the bunker floor before her captor descended
the first few steps. Li said, “Look up. Higher.”
Well beyond Rikki’s reach, strapped to the
two steel beams that braced the concrete ceiling,
packages . . . blinked.
Li took something from her pocket. “The
trigger.”
Rikki did not want to believe. “Those are explosives?”
“More than enough to bring the roof of the
bunker crashing down.”
And thereby end . . . everything. As from a
great distance, Rikki heard herself ask, “Why?”
“Here’s some old Earth history you might
never have learned. Two great-power archenemies.
Each side had enough nukes to obliterate
its rival many times over. And neither side
ever launched its missiles. Neither side dared,
knowing the other would retaliate. Even an
overwhelming first strike without warning
might leave intact enough weapons for a devastating
counterstrike. Strategists called the
policy MAD. Mutual assured destruction.”
It was mad, all right. “What can you possibly
hope to accomplish?”
“Our history lesson isn’t quite done.” Li
poked at her remote. Overhead, alongside
both blinking lamps, bright red numerals appeared.
25:14:06. A standard Dark day.
The counters began ticking down.
“I must reset the devices daily. That’s my
failsafe. If anything were to prevent me . . .”
Rikki shivered. “What if something comes
up? What if you can’t do the daily reset?”
“Après moi, le déluge.”
“What?”
Li sneered. “Didn’t they teach history on
Mars? You all deserve to be extinct. It’s
French. Louis XV. ‘After me, the flood.’ And,
as prophecies go, close enough. His son lost
his head.”
“Meaning?” Rikki asked despairingly.
“Meaning you’d best see to it that nothing
‘comes up’ before I’m prepared to disarm. As
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