Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

All we got from the paramedics was that a large swale had dropped off our shuttle and Neuter Kimball just outside Sol Central Station’s energy shield. Neuter Kimball had called the station, and the shuttle had been towed into a dock, where they cut through the hull to rescue us.

It wasn’t until Juanita and I were sitting in a hospital room, where an autodoc gave us injections to treat our radiation burns, that we were able to talk to Neuter Kimball.

“It was Leviathan who brought us back here,” it said.

I was stunned. “But why? And why didn’t she kill you?”

“When she saw that you were willing to die to save me, though I am not even of your own species, she was curious. She asked me why you would do such a thing, so I transmitted the Bible and the Book of Mormon to her. Then she brought us here in case you were still alive.”

“And you’re not hurt from what she did to you?” I asked.

“I will recover,” said Neuter Kimball. “Before she left, Leviathan declared that from this time forward, Mormon swales are not to be forced into sexual activity.”

“That’s great news.” I had won. No—I corrected myself—the victory was not mine. I thank thee, Lord, I prayed silently.

“Leviathan also had a personal message for you, President Malan. She said to remind you of what King Agrippa said to Paul.”

I nodded. “I understand. Thanks for passing that along.”

After the call was over, Juanita said, “What was that message about? Another Book of Mormon story?”

“No, it’s from the Bible. Saint Paul preached before King Agrippa, and the king’s response was, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’ So, no, Leviathan hasn’t become Mormon. But God softened her heart so she didn’t kill Neuter Kimball. Or us, for that matter. Back on the shuttle, you were certain we were going to die. You asked where God was when I really needed him. Well, God came through.”

Juanita puffed out an exasperated breath. “Typical.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked as the autodoc signaled that my treatment was complete.

“In one story, the preacher converts the king. In another, the king kills the preacher. And in a third, neither happens. That’s no evidence that God comes through.” She pointed at me. “As I see it, you came through. By mentioning that ‘greater love’ thing, you hit Leviathan where it counted: her pride at being the greatest.”

I shook my head. “I’m not taking credit for this.”

After we walked out of the hospital, she gave me a tight hug that reminded me how much I was attracted to her. But I knew it would never work out between us—our worldviews were just too different.

So I was still a single Mormon man with no dating prospects within ninety million miles.

And no, an attractive single Mormon woman did not arrive on the next solar shuttle. What would be the point of life if God solved all my problems?

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.

—Psalm 104:24-26

A Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, and winner in the Writers of the Future Contest, Eric James Stone has had stories published in Year’s Best SF 15, Analog, Nature, and Kevin J. Anderson’s Blood Lite anthologies of humorous horror, among other venues. Eric is also an assistant editor for Intergalactic Medicine Show.

In 2011, Paper Golem Press published Rejiggering the Thinga-majig and Other Stories, a collection containing most of Eric’s stories from 2005 to 2010.

Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp and the Odyssey Writing Workshop greatly influenced Eric’s writing.

Eric lives in Utah. His website is http://www.ericjamesstone.com.

The Andre Norton Award for outstanding young adult science fiction or fantasy book was established by SFWA in 2006. The award is named in honor of the late Andre Norton, an SFWA Grand Master and author of more than one hundred novels, many of them for young adult readers. Norton’s work has influenced generations of young people, creating new fans of the fantasy and science fiction genres and setting a standard for excellence in fantasy writing.

This year’s winner is I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett.

Why was it, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Why was noise so important?

Something quite close sounded like a cow giving birth. It turned out to be an old hurdy-gurdy organ, hand cranked by a raggedy man in a battered top hat. She sidled away as politely as she could, but as noise went, it was sticky; you got the feeling that if you let it, it would try to follow you home.

But that was only one sound in the great cauldron of noise around her, all of it made by people and all of it made by people trying to make noise louder than the other people making noise: Arguing at the makeshift stalls, bobbing for apples or frogs, [This was done blindfolded.] cheering the prizefighters and a spangled lady on the high wire, selling cotton candy at the tops of their voices, and, not to put too fine a point on it, boozing quite considerably.

The air above the green downland was thick with noise. It was as if the populations of two or three towns had all come up to the top of the hills. And so here, where ail you generally heard was the occasional scream of a buzzard, you heard the permanent scream of, well, everyone. It was called having fun. The only people not making any noise were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with commendable silence, and they didn’t come near Tiffany; who would pick a witch’s pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At least, that was what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them in this fear.

When you were a witch, you were all witches, thought Tiffany Aching as she walked through the crowds, pulling her broomstick after her on the end of a length of string. It floated a few feet above the ground. She was getting a bit bothered about that. It seemed to work quite well, but nevertheless, since all around the fair were small children dragging balloons, also on the ends of pieces of string, she couldn’t help thinking that it made her look more than a little bit silly, and something that made one witch look silly made all witches look silly.

On the other hand, if you tied it to a hedge somewhere, there was bound to be some kid who would untie the string and get on the stick for a dare, in which case most likely he would go straight up all the way to the top of the atmosphere where the air froze, and while she could in theory call the stick back, mothers got very touchy about having to thaw out their children on a bright late-summer day. That would not look good. People would talk. People always talked about witches.

She resigned herself to dragging it again. With luck, people would think she was joining in with the spirit of the thing in a humorous way.

There was a lot of etiquette involved, even at something so deceptively cheerful as a fair. She was the witch; who knows what would happen if she forgot someone’s name or, worse still, got it wrong? What would happen if she forgot all the little feuds and factions, the people who weren’t talking to their neighbors and so on and so on and a lot more so and even further on? Tiffany had no understanding at all of the word “minefield,” but if she had, it would have seemed kind of familiar.