praise for frontera “Lewis Shiner’s Frontera is an extraordinarily accomplished first novel...his pacing is brisk, his scientific extrapolation well-informed and plausible, and his characterization noth- ing short of outstanding...This is ‘realism’ of a sort seldom found in either commercial or literary fiction; to find it in a first novel makes one eager for more.” —Roland J. Green, ChicagoSun-Times “Frontera is hard-edged and colorful and relentless, and alto- gether a compelling read. Shiner paints his picture of the day after tomorrow with a gritty realism that makes you believe every minute of it.” —George R.R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones “Well written...inspired...a breezy, terrific read.” —Heavy Metal “Frontera is a heroic saga (literally) in which Promethius’ inspiration is a kaleidoscopic mix of his own desires and the subliminal whisperings of a microchip implanted in his brain. The ‘fire’ is a teleportation device developed by an abandoned Mars colony. The gods are represented by a mul- tinational corporation and the Soviets...But Frontera is much more than this standard sf plot. It’s a well-written telling of the conflicts of intelligent humans.” —Lili Dwight, Forced Exposure “One of the genre’s more arresting books.” —Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone “Strong plotting in the political thriller vein is the hall- mark of Lewis Shiner’s Frontera...Shiner wraps the story in a compelling package...its raw energy holds your interest and keeps you turning the pages.” —Frank Catalano, Amazing “A well-written first novel in the action-adventure vein, principally set in a lost colony on Mars. Frontera rises to literary art, first because several viewpoint characters are rendered with skill and sensitivity as complex people, and second because Kane, the central combat-capable figure, is a poor bastard who’s had his head screwed with in various un- pleasant ways, so that he is both hero and victim, doing his deeds of derring-do as best he can with a headful of broken glass.” —Norman Spinrad, Science Fiction in the Real World “Combine[s] classic hard-sf structure with a harrowing portrait of postindustrial society in the early twenty-first century.” —Bruce Sterling, Mirrorshades Finalist for the Nebula Award (Science Fiction Writers of America) Finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award (Best paperback original sf novel) frontera books by lewis shiner novels Black & White (2008) Say Goodbye (1999) Glimpses (1993) Slam (1990) Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) Frontera (1984) collections Collected Stories (2009) Love in Vain (2001) The Edges of Things (1991) Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990) frontera a novel by lewis shiner subterranean press © 1984 by Lewis Shiner. Interior design and map by Lewis Shiner Set in Bembo Author photo © 2008 by Orla Swift Grail photo © 2005 by iStockphoto.com/Donald Johansson Astronaut and shuttle launch photos courtesy nasa Mars surface photo courtesy nasa/jpl-Caltech Mars from space © esa 2007 mps for osiris Team mps/upd/lam/ iaa/rssd/inta/upm/dasp/ida Cover design by Lewis Shiner isbn 978-1-59606-338-9 Subterranean Press PO Box 190106 Burton, MI 48519 www.subterraneanpress.com www.lewisshiner.com original dedication: For E. ith less than five minutes left, Kane tugged nervously at his Wshoulder harness and tried to remember gravity. The feel of his arms dragging by his sides, the blood pooling in his legs, his head jerk- ing forward in fatigue—it all seemed distant, clumsy, irrelevant. “You’ve gone soft, Kane,” Lena whispered, but her eyes were afraid of him. She locked her cleats into the gridded floor, peeled the plastic sheath from a hypo, and pushed 15 milligrams of Valium into his left arm. “You look like hell. You’re about nine-tenths crazy and you haven’t got any muscle tone at all. I don’t think you’re going to make it.” “Four minutes,” Takahashi said. “I’ll make it,” Kane said. Not just gravity, he thought, but eight Gs, wrenching, crushing, suf- focating him while the ship threw off10,000 feet per second of velocity by diving into the thin atmosphere of Mars. The ship’s computer would sail them through a narrow, invisible corridor, balancing air drag against the strength of their reinforced carbon-carbon aeroshell, slowing them just enough to put them into a high, elliptical orbit around the planet and not send them crashing into the frozen Martian wastes. All because the corporation didn’t have the booster stages to slow them down any other way. He knew Lena had put him off, not caring if she had time to give him the shot, not caring if his muscles had the elasticity to ride out the re-entry. Reese had been first, of course: the senior astronaut, the father figure. Then she’d taken care of Takahashi and after that her- self, floating where Kane could see her, easing the needle into the soft flesh of her thigh. In the first weeks of the mission, she and Kane had struggled through a brief, sweaty affair; it ended when Lena, fingers stiffening in orgasm, drew blood from Kane’s chest and triggered his defensive reflexes. 1 2 lewis shiner Kane’s erection had vanished, and his hands had closed around her wrist and neck in a killing grip. Within a second he was in control again, but Lena had panicked. Nerves, he’d explained, but she was already dressing, afraid to take her eyes off him. The next day they’d both started taking sex suppressants. Kane had gone off them two days ago, hoping to clarify his muddled thoughts and desires. Now he found himself remembering her thin, angular body, the bones like negative shadows under the darkness of her skin, her breath moving against the underside of his jaw. “Three minutes!” Takahashi said. “Kane, you’d better punch in.” Kane’s crt swam with concentric circles, the ship’s path projected onto the vortex of Mars’ gravity well. He reached for the bank of knobs and switches in front of him, as familiar now as the M37 he’d carried in North Africa, and hit Control-C on the keyboard. At least once a week for the last nine months he’d been strapped to this couch or one of the others, working through endless computer simulations of the landing. He remembered the morning he’d drifted in to find Reese buckled into one of the slings, jacked out of his skull on psilocybin, banging his massive fists into the control panel and screaming, “We’re crashing, oh Jesus, we’re crashing!” They had been six months out of Earth at the time, weightless, drifting, lights rheostatted down to save the fuel cells. Plague-carrying buboes on Reese’s neck would have been no more terrifying than his hysteria. Kane had fled from it, back to the wedge-shaped coffin of his quarters, and spent two days in a tranquil- ized fog. And now, he thought. Were they really braking for orbit? Or was this just another simulation? If he turned this switch, would it fire a braking rocket or would it just force a branch in the computer’s program? He remembered childhood nightmares of sitting in the back seat of a moving, driverless car. “One minute,” Takahashi said. The Valium washed over him like a lullaby. The blinking time display slowed as he watched, and the muscles in his shoulders and neck began to loosen. An attitude jet, fired by the computer, went off with a noise like a machine-gun burst. Kane’s heart stammered for a second, then recov- ered as his brain identified the sound. And then he was falling. Frontera 3 The air of Mars whimpered and then screamed as the aeroshell start- ed to burn. Kane’s Valium calm vaporized, and he was sure he was going to die. He’d looked at death before, sometimes gone out of his way to see it, but he’d never had so little control over the outcome. He felt as if he’d been thrown out of a helicopter with a mountain tied to his back. His vision narrowed to a gray, viscous tube, and he prayed he wouldn’t have to take manual control of the ship because he couldn’t lift his arms back up to the keyboard. One minute, he thought. I only have to take this for sixty seconds. He tried to see the time readout on his crt, but his eyes refused to focus. The screaming turned into a metal icepick, driving into Kane’s ears. He fought for air, imagining his windpipe collapsing like a soda straw. His lungs burned and he tasted blood. He kept waiting for it to be over, and the pressure kept getting worse. He felt thumbs gouging his eyes, blood pumping into his feet like water into balloons. And then something stabbed him in the chest. A rib. I just lost a rib. He felt the second one break. At first it was just the pressure, focused, inexorable, bearing down over his heart. Then he felt the muscles rip- ping and the sudden jerk as the bone snapped and bent inward. The pain knifed through his chest and for a long moment his own scream melted inaudibly into the shriek of the burning shield. The G forces pushed the broken bones deeper into his flesh. He wanted to pass out, but the pain was too intense. He could visualize the points of the ribs, the claws of some giant roc from mythology, digging deep into his heart.