The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

"Ships?"

"Like he said," said Byrd, "some fellows just can't turn loose. And some can. So we got this far."

"We can get as far as this," Earhart said. "Easy."

"Further than this takes ships," Byrd said. "That's what we're here for. That's what we're looking for."

"You wouldn't be a flier yourself," Earhart asked, "would you?"

"I've got a short-hop license," Amir said.

A couple of hands landed on his shoulders. He looked from one young face to the other—guys in blue coveralls, who gri

"One dead," Station Chief Babbs heard, and dropped her head into her hands, shaking it slowly.

"Glasses and spilled drinks all over," the aide continued remorselessly. "The meds think he was just passed out drunk when the alarm went, just never heard it—"

"God," Babbs said, and reached for a bottle of pills, fumbling the lid off.

"The chief auditor's asking to see you," the comm said. "He's pretty upset." Pills spilled. Babbs popped a couple, started gathering up the rest.

"Chief?"

"Send him in."

Babbs capped the bottle again, shoved it in the desk, looked up as the white-haired Auditor General stormed into the office, and shoved herself to her feet, leaning on the desk with her knuckles.

"It's your damn staff!" she yelled before the auditor got a word out. "Your damn staff was occupying mine when an emergency broke out, which is why we have a fatality, mister, which is what's going on my report."

The auditor shouted back, "What's going on mine is a station riddled with security problems, communication problems, and staff incompetency! I'm finishing our work on our ship, which thank God! is under our own lock and key, withits data, withenough evidence to see you broken, Station Chief Babbs! When we send what we've documented down to Earth, I assure you, there's quite enough there to file charges on you and eleven other culpable parties on this station—"

"Chief?" the comm said. "Chief? Can you come out here?"

"I'm in conference!" Babbs yelled at the comm. .

"Chief. . ." the aide said, his voice hushed and agitated.

"Excuse me," Babbs said with a small exhalation of breath, and went out to the anteroom; closed the door behind her.

The aide, white-faced, gave Babbs a little scrap of paper with a written note. Upon which Babbs surprised the aide by gri

"I du

Babbs made a little frown. The dock chief shrugged and said, "I guess it was the automatics just got some bug in them. Undocked that gal and at that point, there ain't no other answer, she just kicked in some kind of program—must've had a whole sequence punched in—"

"No such thing!" the Auditor said.

The dock chief shrugged a second time and prudently kept his mouth shut. While the EFS Liberty II, without a soul alive at her helm streaked toward deep space, outbound from the world, the station and all.

1990

A MUCH BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME

Long ago a microbe decided to be god. It fissioned and became polytheistic. Rapidly the pond filled with gods fissioning and dividing until a passing rainstorm carried a number of the divinities downstream. They fissioned and filled a lake, which fed a river, which fed the sea. Within a billion years only isolate bodies of water lacked divinity. The microbes teleologically evolved bipedal colonies as transportation—which had drawbacks: these mobile colonies proved self directed and schismatic. The free swimming microbes (equally teleologically) maximized their reproductive potential by infiltrating mobile colonies which, responding to selective pressure, developed a space program.

1991

GWYDION AND THE DRAGON

Once upon a time there was a dragon, and once upon that time a prince who undertook to win the hand of the elder and fairer of two princesses.

Not that this prince wanted either of Madog's daughters, although rumors said that Eri was as wise and as gentle, as sweet and as fair as her sister Glasog was cruel and ill-favored. The truth was that this prince would marry either princess if it would save his father and his people; and neither if he had had any choice in the matter. He was Gwydion ap Ogan, and of princes in Dyfed he was the last.

Being a prince of Dyfed did not, understand, mean ba

His companion, riding beside him on a bay pony, happened through no choice of Gwydion's to be Owain ap Llodri, the houndmaster's son, his good friend, by no means his squire: Owain had lain in wait along the way, on a borrowed bay mare—Owain had simply assumed he was going, and that Gwydion had only hesitated, for friendship's sake, to ask him. So he saved Gwydion the necessity.

And the lop-eared old dog trotting by the horses' feet was Mili: Mili was fierce with bandits, and had respected neither Gwydion's entreaties nor Owain's commands thus far: stones might drive her off for a few minutes, but Mili came back again, that was the sort Mili was. That was the sort Owain was too, and Gwydion could refuse neither of them. So Mili panted along at the pace they kept, with big-footed Blaze and the bownosed bay, whose name might have been Swallow or maybe not— the poets forget—and as they rode Owain and Gwydion talked mostly about dogs and hunting.

That, as the same poets say, was the going of Prince Gwydion into King Madog's realm. Now no one in Dyfed knew where Madog had come from. Some said he had been a king across the water. Some said he was born of a Roman and a Pict and had gotten sorcery through his mother's blood. Some said he had bargained with a dragon for his sorcery—certainly there was a dragon: devastation followed Madog's conquests, from one end of Dyfed to the other. Reasonably reliable sources said Madog had applied first to King Bran, across the mountains, to settle at his court, and Bran having once laid eyes on Madog's elder daughter, had lusted after her beyond all good sense and begged Madog for her.

Give me your daughter, Bran had said to Madog, and I'll give you your heart's desire. But Madog had confessed that Eri was betrothed already, to a terrible dragon, who sometimes had the form of a man, and who had bespelled Madog and all his house: if Bran could overcome this dragon, he might have Eri with his blessings, and his gratitude and the faithful help of his sorcery all his life; but if he died childless, Madog, by Bran's own oath, must be his heir. That was the begi