C. S. Friedman - This Alien Shore

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SABOTAGE

The Guildsman pulled out a chair and settled into it; his full sleeves fell upon the

tabletop as he leaned forward, his posture stiff with tension. "One hundred and

ninety E-days ago, a Guild outpilot was badly injured while returning to safespace.

Analysis of his personal log shows there was a malfunction in his brainware at the

moment of transition. It lasted only seconds, but that was long enough. In that

instant he believed himself to be an alien creature, surrounded by beings whose

brains didn't function like his own. He believed that these beings had fed programs

into his brainware which would make it impossible for him to think clearly, and that

they had surgically implanted a mechanism in his arm which would feed drugs into

his bloodstream, altering the very essence of his identity. With only seconds in

which to act, he did what he could to disable the perceived mechanism, and then

attempted to smash his skull open so that he could tear out his wiring. Fortunately

for him, the latter effort failed."

"Since his basic assumptions were correct," Masada said evenly, "I find it hard to

comprehend your objection to them."

Novels from

C. S. FRIEDMAN

Available from DAW Books

In Conquest Born

The Madness Season

This Alien Shore

The Coldfire Trilogy:

Black Sun Rising

When True Night Falls

Crown of Shadows

THE CRITICS RAVE ABOUT

THI5 ALIEN SHORE

"C. S. Friedman borrows some big ideas from writers like Cordwainer Smith, Frank Herbert and Samuel

R. Delaney, and runs with them. Instead of stumbling under the burden, she succeeds in making the ...

material her own ... Friedman has created a potent metaphor for the toleration of diversity—an

ever-evolving society where "the genes of wild genius" are acknowledged as necessary for survival."

—The New York Times

"A wide-ranging, action packed space opera. This Alien Shore is guaranteed to entertain those who like

to be swept up in an adventure with lots of characters, dangers, and revelations."

—Science Fiction Chronicle

"Friedman keeps her tale moving at a vigorous pace that's boosted through an abundance of well-chosen

details ... it is likely to hold readers' interest tenaciously. The ending neither requires nor precludes a

sequel, so readers are left with some hope of again encountering Jamisia and the duel between the Guild

and Earth that backdrops her adventures."

—Publishers Weekly

"Once again Ms. Friedman offers us great richness in both concept and detail, ingeniously weaving

together two strong plotlines and piquant characters into a superior reading experience."

—Romantic Times

C. S. FRIEDMAN

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

SHEILA E. GILBERT

PUBLISHERS

http://www.dawbooks.com

Cover art by Michael Whelan.

For color prints of Michael Whelan's paintings, please contact:

Glass Onion Graphics

RO. Box 88

Brookfield, CT 06804

DAW Book Collectors No. 1096.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

Book designed by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics Co., Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book may have been stolen property and reported as

"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither

the author nor the publisher has received any payment

for this "stripped book."

First paperback printing, July 1999

4 5 6 7 8 9

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To have a concept for a great book is a truly exciting experience,

and one every author dreams of. To have a concept for B great

book that requires a lot of knowledge you don't have is a pretty

overwhelming experience, and one every author dreads. To have

a concept for a great book that requires a lot of knowledge you

don't have, and then to locate people who not only have that

knowledge, but can communicate it in plain English . . . and who

don't mind spending endless hours with you discussing 28th

century hacking, or Inuit linguistics, or whatever else can be

fitted in between courses of Chinese food or rounds of e-mail . . .

well, that is what authors live for.

So thanks first and foremost to Paul Suchinder Dhillon, without

whom this book simply would not exist. (Well, it might exist, but

all the computer passages would be really had, so no one would

enjoy it.) Thanks for the hours of technical talk and devious plot

twists and the virtual tours of hacker trails . . . couldn't have done

it without you.

Thanks also to Anthony C. Woodbury of the University of Texas,

whose outstanding knowledge of arctic languages finally enabled

me to find those few words I needed to really make this book

come to life. (Readers please note that the versions used here

reflect many centuries of linguistic corruption; if the spelling is

wrong or the meaning has been modified, that is artistic license

on my part and not an error on his!)

Thanks also to Cordwainer Smith for a few precious sparks of

inspiration which fans will no doubt recognize. He is one of the

most remarkable writers of the 20th century, and one of its most

bizarre imaginative artists. Yes, there is science fiction stranger

than mine. Go read it. And to Oliver Sachs and Temple Grandin

and all those other writers who struggle to reveal the alien

landscapes inside the human brain. If my fiction is ever half so

gripping as their daily truths, I will have accomplished something

great.

Thanks to all those folks who kept me sane while this book was

being written (or as close to sane as I ever come), most especially

Paul Hoeffer, whose wonderful fan page kept my spirits up when

things were darkest. And to Senji and Lisa and Tina and Fonda

and Joan and Larry and Adam and most especially Chuck, whose

generosity of spirit and energetic labor helped me through those

last terrible weeks. There's nothing quite like trying to finish a

book and pack up a seven room house full of stuff at the same

time to make one truly crazed.

And thanks to Yann and Matt and Petra. They know why.

Thanks to Cheryl and Stan, for really knocking themselves out to

get this book printed on time. It's much appreciated, guys.

Most of all, thanks to Betsy Wollheim, for being the awesome

editor-goddess she is. Not only because she is brilliant and wise

and infinitely insightful, but because she didn't yell at me even

once when this was late. Now that is true greatness.

DEDICATION

This book is for my mother, Nancy Friedman, who died while it

was being written.

Sometimes the most impressive acts of courage are not dramatic

ones, such as we like to read about, but quieter, almost

imperceptible ones. Sometimes they are not even recognized as

such until their time has passed. My mother was a woman of such

courage, and her spirit affected all who knew her.

At age 20 her heart was damaged by disease, and she was told

she would not live past 30. She could have given up then and

refused to live, as many do, but instead she chose to go on as

though she had no deadline, as though Death did not dog her

every step. Most of those who knew her never knew that

anything was wrong. She would have considered it weakness to

tell them.

My father was forbidden to marry her because of her illness.

They married anyway.

She was told that if she tried to have a child it would kill her. She

wanted a child, and so took the chance and had me. She lived.

Later she risked it again, and had my brother.

Those of you who have read my other dedications know that she

went with me to Hawaii to see the volcanoes. What you do not

know is that everywhere there were signs warning people away

from various places if they had heart problems, or respiratory

distress. She had both, and at that point was dying of them. Still

she ignored the signs. No mere heart disease was going to keep

her from doing what she had come halfway across the world to

do.

She beat the odds and lived to age 67, always refusing to give up,

despite the fact that Death was only one step behind her. Even at

the end she told me that one of her greatest regrets was that her

illness had delayed my manuscript, because I had come to New

York to take care of her. Death might threaten her, but it had no

right to disrupt the lives of those she loved.

I wish she could share this book with me. I wish she could see

that it came out all right.

Fiction pales before such a life.

In a world where data is coin of the realm, and

transmissions are guarded by no better sentinels than

man-made codes and corruptible devices, there is no such

thing as a secret.

DR. KIO MASADA,

"The Enemy Among Us": Keynote address to the 121st

Outworld Security Conference (holocast from Guera)

EARTH ORBIT

SHIDO HABITAT

The VOICES woke her up.

For a moment Jamisia just lay in the darkness, neither dreaming

nor fully awake yet, listening. Whispers of sound tickled through

her brain, coalescing into words for an instant or two, then

breaking up again. Frightening words.

Danger.

Betrayal.

And one was almost a scream: Run!

Shaken, she sat up in bed. Her room in the Shido Habitat was

reassuringly familiar, filled with all the familiar relics of her

teenage years. Tickets from a concert over at Mitsui Habitat.

Flowers—real flowers!—from her coming out at Microtech's

Grand Pavilion. Homework chips piled up on one corner of the

dresser, along with the headset that would feed their contents into

her brain. All of it—her things, her life—familiar, comforting. It

wasn't always that way. Sometimes she awoke to find things on

her dresser that didn't (couldn't!) belong to her. Sometimes there

were pieces of jewelry in her slideaway that she knew she had

never bought, so alien to her taste that she could hardly imagine

herself wearing them. Sometimes there were worse things,

frightening things, and she threw those in the trash chute with

shaking hands, wondering who had left them there in the middle

of the night, in the room she locked so carefully before she went

to bed. She kept waiting for the rightful owners to say something

about their stuff, to yell at her for having chuted it without asking

them . . . some kind of reaction, anything. But no one ever yelled.

No one ever said a word, and her tentative queries to the habitat

database yielded no explanation for the strange offerings, or any

hint of their purpose.

It wasn't like that today; at least today everything in the room

was really hers, and that should have been comforting. Only it

wasn't. The voices were still clamoring inside her head, even

though the act of waking up for good should have banished them.

She couldn't make out most of what they were saying, but the

few words she did understand—and the tone in which they were

voiced—were terrifying.

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SABOTAGETheGuildsmanpulledoutachairandsettledintoit;hisfullsleevesfelluponthetabletopasheleanedforward,hisposturestiffwithtension."OnehundredandninetyE-daysago,aGuildoutpilotwasbadlyinjuredwhilereturningtosafespace.Analysisofhispersonallogshowstherewasamalfunctioninhisbrainwareatthemomentoftransitio...

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C. S. Friedman - This Alien Shore

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