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Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte (Uncanny #40, May-June 2021)1 opens with Paulie arriving at the hospital to discover his father has died. Standing next to his father’s wife is the chaplain, who offers Paulie the chance to enter his father’s “Coda”, a computer simulacrum of his father’s consciousness made just before his death:

Gone was the endotracheal tube. The room was eerily silent, with none of the sounds he’d associated with the hospital from his visits over the past week.
He met his father’s eyes. “Hey.”
His father smiled ruefully. “Hey.”
“Are you—”
“Dead?” His father gestured toward the inactive monitors.
“Apparently so.”
“Does it hurt?” Are you afraid, he wanted to ask, but he knew better than to talk to his father about emotions.
“Nothing hurts,” he said, picking at a scab on his leg. “I guess they have a way of turning that off.”
“Did the doctors mess up? Should I ask for an autopsy?”
His father shook his head. “Nah. I’m seventy-one, diabetic, and with a bad heart. You’re not going to win any lawsuits here.”
It occurred to Paulie that Codas could be programmed to give whatever answer benefitted the hospital.
Paulie stared out the window, over the parking lot, to the eerily empty expressway. “I really believed we were close on that Perelman proof.”
“Maybe nobody’s meant to find it.”
Easy for him to say. He’d already been beyond questions of tenure and publication; now all of that was even more meaningless for him.
For Paulie, though, Perelman would have been the home run his tenure dossier needed. He turned back toward the bed. “Okay. Well.” He put a hand on the chair he’d sat in last night while his father complained about his breathing. He should say something. Something like I love you¸ he supposed. But his father had never gone in for the mushy stuff in life, so why start now?
“Goodbye, then,” he finished instead.
“Bye, Paulie,” said his father. “Thank you for visiting.”

Paulie subsequently arranges to take a copy of the Coda home with him, and the rest of the story mostly consists of scenes where Paulie visits his father’s Coda to work on the theorem (although we also see something of Paulie’s own family life and relationship with his daughter, and the peer pressure he experiences at his university job).
The two men’s attempts to solve the theory become increasingly complicated by the fact that Paulie’s father has no memory of what has happened during previous visits, which means that Paulie has to explain everything they have done each time he enters the Coda. We also see further evidence of the emotional distance between the men, and Paulie’s attempts to make some sort of connection with his father, such as the occasion he mentions his daughter’s forthcoming dance recital:

“It just. . .it reminds me of my piano recitals.”
His father leaned on his bed railing. “Is that what this is really about, Paulie? Are you here to tell me I was a shitty father? I know. I already acknowledged that, after the divorce.”
Paulie dropped into the chair by the bed. “No,” he said at last. “Sorry. I keep thinking of what other people use the Coda technology for, and I keep waiting to hear you talk about something besides math or life insurance. I keep hoping you’ll have something profound to say.”
“I’m not the mushy type.”
“You could fake it.”
“You’re the smartest person I ever met. You would see through any faking.”
Paulie blinked. A compliment.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t want anything to do with me,” his father went on, “after not being there for you as a kid. But then you made me a part of your life and we got along okay. You treated me like a colleague, so I tried to treat you the same. Now you’re mad at me for not acting more like a father? I didn’t think you wanted that from me.”
Paulie waited to see if he would say anything else. That was about as close to “mushy” as he’d come since the night twenty years ago when he’d apologized for abandoning him.
After a quiet eternity, he got up from the chair. “Okay, well, I think I have enough to work on for now. I’ll come back when I have some progress.”
“Bye, Paulie. Thank you for visiting.”

Eventually (spoiler) they go on to solve the theorem, and Paulie comes to accept that his father is never going to say the things that he wants him to say.
Normally I’m not remotely interested in “Daddy” or other problematical relationship stories, but this one works quite well—probably because Iriarte handles this in a fairly muted way and not as the usual whiny adolescent psychodrama. I’d also note that the description of the mathematical processes undertaken to solve the theorem are an equal focus of the story, and are quite gripping—a significant feat considering that I had no idea about what was being discussed.
This story has an odd combination of ideas and themes, but I liked it a lot.
**** (Very good). 6,250 words. Story link.

1. This story is a Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist.

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen (F&SF, September 1976) is a fantasy about a young girl whose sea-faring father who does not love her and whose mother dies while he is away on a voyage. Her father remains distant as the girl, who is called Borne, grows up. Then, one day many years later, Borne is sitting on a rock by the sea when she sees a merman.
When her father subsequently sees Borne’s distraction, he tells her to “be done with it”, which prompts her to write a message to the merman on the beach. When the words are washed away by the tide, the syllables are carried down into the deeps where the merman reads them. He later comes to Borne and, when he indicates that he can only talk to her under the water (spoiler), she follows him:

Gathering her skirts, now heavy with ocean spray and tears, Borne stood up. She cast but one glance at the shore and her father’s house beyond. Then she dove after the merman into the sea.
The sea put bubble jewels in her hair and spread her skirts about her like a scallop shell. Tiny colored fish swam in between her fingers. The water cast her face in silver, and all the sea was reflected in her eyes.
She was beautiful for the first time. And for the last.  p. 39

There is no particular plot here, but the story’s prose, dreamlike progression, and last line are consolations.
** (Average). 1,250 words. Story link.

Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Mr Death by Alix E. Harrow (Apex #121, January 2021) begins with Sam, the narrator, telling us that he has ferried “two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death” before he is given his next assignment:

Name: Lawrence Harper
Address: 186 Grist Mill Road, Lisle NY, 13797
Time: Sunday, July 14th 2020, 2:08AM, EST
Cause: Cardiac arrest resulting from undiagnosed long QT syndrome
Age: 30 months

Jesus Christ on his sacred red bicycle. He’s two.

Sam goes to see Lawrence several hours before his death (a requirement that helps smooth the passing of the dead across the river to “rejoin the great everything”) and, when he arrives in the boy’s bedroom, watches him stir. Lawrence’s father, alerted by the intercom, comes in and picks the boy up and takes him into the kitchen. Sam then watches the father hold and feed Lawrence, and notes the father does not know that this will be his last time together with his son. Later on in the garden, the boy (unusually) sees Sam, and the pair later play catch together.
The rest of the story switches between this kind of affecting domestic detail (we see the boy with his mother when she gets home), backstory about the premature death of Sam’s own young son, Ian, and an account of Sam’s own death and recruitment as a “reaper”.
Eventually (spoiler), Lawrence’s moment of passing arrives and, when his heart stops, Sam intervenes, putting a ghostly hand into the boy’s chest and massaging it back to life.
Sam subsequently has his tea leaves read by his Archangel supervisor, Raz (“the kind of sweet, middle-aged Black woman with whom you do not fuck”) and is given another appointment to reap the boy. Once again Sam saves him, and once again Raz appears. This time she asks Sam what he would do if she punished him by leaving him on Earth, never to cross the river and rejoin the great everything, but to fade into nothingness. Sam says he would watch over Lawrence as long as he could, and the story finishes with Raz telling him he no longer works for the Department of Death. Before she goes she hands him a card, which says, “Sam Grayson, Junior Guardian, Department of Life”.
Although this story pretends, for most of its length, to be an edgy and dark piece, it is ultimately sentimental and feel-good—and, to be honest, quite well done.1 I couldn’t help but think, however, that there are darker and more profound versions of the story where the boy dies. Two options spring to mind: the first, which would appeal to the religious, is that we see the joy of him rejoining the great everything; the second just sees him die, and has the narrator reflect on the need for stoicism to get us through this veil of tears. I doubt any current SF writer is going to be writing that kind of story any time soon.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 5,100 words. Story link.

1. This piece, obviously, is a short story finalist for this year’s Hugo Award.

The Purple Pterodactyls by L. Sprague de Camp

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Purple Pterodactyls by L. Sprague de Camp (F&SF, August 1976) is another of the supernatural adventures of Willy Newbury.1 In this one he is on holiday by the sea with his wife Denise and, when they visit a nearby amusement park, Willy notices something at the rubber ring stall:

The prizes were even more original: a flock of plush-and-wire pterodactyls. They came in several models and sizes, some with long tails and some with short, some with teeth and some with long toothless beaks. The biggest were over a yard across the wings. They were made so that you could hang one from your ceiling as a mobile.
If the wind was strong, you could lock the wings in place and fly the thing as a kite. They were all dyed in shades of purple.
“Purple pterodactyls!” I cried. “Darling, I’ve got to have one of those.”  p. 144

Willy’s attempts to win one of the pterodactyls are unsuccessful, and he also isn’t able purchase one (he asks the stall’s proprietor, Mr Maniu, when he sees him at the beach the next day, but is refused). Willy’s luck changes later, however, when he buys an old ring for a quarter and, when his wife takes him to a jeweller to have it valued, discovers that the ring is ancient and the stone a real emerald. Then, when Willy is asleep that night, the djinn of the ring reveals himself to Willy and says it can perform “little favours” for him. Willy asks the djinn to help him win a purple pterodactyl.
This begins a spat that sees, after Willy subsequently wins more than one of the prizes, (a) Maniu hire his own djinn to stop Willy winning any more; (b) Willy going back to win a third pterodactyl when his own djinn tells him of this; (c) words disappearing off a speech Willy gives at a local women’s club meeting; (d) Willy winning another two pterodactyls; and then (e) Willy and Denise having their boat capsized by a freak squall that comes out of nowhere.
At this point Willy realises that he is involved in a potentially lethal vendetta, so he promises the djinn his freedom if he can get Willy out of his predicament. The story then ends (spoiler) with a shriek in the night, and Willy seeing Mr Maniu on the beach the next morning, his body covered in sand as usual . . . then Maniu’s decapitated head rolls off the mound.
When Willy sees the djinn in a dream several nights later he promptly gives him the ring and his freedom. Then he wakes up and has sex with his wife, as you do when you’ve just caused someone’s death.
This piece isn’t as slight a story as some in the series, but it does have a deus ex machina ending and is tonally a bit off: not only does the final line about sex with his wife not sit well with previous events but, if it wasn’t for Willy’s awful behaviour (who need five purple pterodactyls?), relations between the two men would not have deteriorated. I’m probably reading too much into a piece of light fantasy, but still. . . .
** (Average). 5,650 words. Story link.

1. The ISFDB page for the Willy Newbury series.

The Castle by Raylyn Moore

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Castle by Raylyn Moore (F&SF, August 1976) opens with Beryl the narrator being woken by her husband Miles, who has just had a nightmare where he was attacked by children. After Miles tells her about the experience he goes back to sleep, but she cannot. She thinks about various matters, during which we learn (a) that their house is a part-time toy museum which houses their huge collection and is open to occasional visitors, (b) Miles is Beryl’s second husband, and (c) he is building a huge play fort in the back garden overlooking the gully at the edge of their property. This latter venture does not proceed smoothly:

The first time the children had attacked the castle was before it was quite finished. Miles had left it late one afternoon with the mortar wet and returned in the morning to find the stones prized out of place. It looked as if a heavy pinch bar had been used. “I can scarcely believe it was children,” Beryl had said. “Think of the strength it must have taken.”
“Which is why I’m sure it was children,” Miles insisted. “They’re all just bubbling over with misdirected energy, aren’t they? And if they’re determined enough, they can do anything.”
[. . .]
The next time, the vandals had somehow sheared off the towers of the completed citadel, and once they had blasted a hole under the front wall with some explosive, presumably dynamite, though it didn’t make sense that children should have access to dynamite. (The Hullibargers had been out the evening it happened, and so had heard no sound.)  p. 101

Most of rest the story concerns their otherwise idyllic life (neither seems to work and they do as they wish), but one action after another subtly portrays Miles as a self-centred man-child (earlier in the story Beryl says, “There’s an old wives’ tale that all American men are really little boys in wolf’s clothing”). This is finally made explicit in the last scene (spoiler), where the couple come home to find two children/intruders in the castle and Miles agrees to fight them for it:

He plunged up the slope ready for battle, and the two emerged from behind the stone kremlin to meet him as agreed. For a long time she remained frozen near the bottom of the hill, watching what was happening simply because she couldn’t make herself stop watching. It went on for a long time. They fought desperately, as if for their lives, kicking, gouging, smashing.
And after a while she had to admit that of the three little boys, all of a size, struggling fiercely on the leaf-covered slope, she could no longer tell, through the lowering dusk, which was Miles.  p. 108

I think this is really a slightly surreal mainstream story rather than a fantasy (you would have to squint to see it as the latter), but I enjoyed its slow burn descriptive passages and quirkiness.
*** (Good). 6,050 words. Story link.

Sparrows by Susan Palwick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sparrows by Susan Palwick (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) is set in an apocalyptic near future (storms and floods) and sees Lacey, a college student, finishing her paper on Shakespeare on a manual typewriter in her abandoned and damaged dormitory:

The paper was a comparison of Richard II and King Lear, contrasting close readings of Richard’s “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground” speech and Lear’s speech to Cordelia: “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage.”
The sonorous language filled Lacey’s head, as if the characters were here, talking to her. Both of these beaten kings: Richard railing against mortality and Lear—unaware that he was about to lose his only loyal daughter—vowing to find every grace he could in her company, to “wear out in a wall’d prison packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon.” Both of them were doomed. But Lear’s sufferings had brought him acceptance and humility, while Richard just felt sorry for himself.  p. 51

Lacey later goes to drop off the completed paper in Professor Ablethwaite’s mailbox and, as she walks through the campus, sees bodies that have been crushed by trees or washed onto campus by the floods. When she gets to the English building (“one of the oldest on campus”) she is amazed to find it is still standing. Then, when she gets to Ablethwaite’s office, she sees the door is ajar and he is inside sitting at his desk.
After some initial introductions, Albethwaite asks Lacey why she bothered to finish her essay, and then, when she goes to leave, he asks her to stay. Albethwaite offers her something to eat and drink, and they (spoiler) start talking about her paper. This discussion references the earlier passage above, and the situation they are in:

A booming sounded in the distance, and they both looked out the window. The storm was much closer, the few remaining trees dancing and crashing. “This may be it,” Ablethwaite said.
“Yes. It may be.”
He turned back to face her. “All right. So what’s this paper about?”
She’d loved writing the paper, but now she felt tongue-tied. “It’s about Richard the Second and Lear. It’s a comparison of how they face their ends. Richard’s all bitter and everything, but Lear’s okay with being in a prison cell if he can be with Cordelia.”
“Which he’ll never get to be.”
“No. But he doesn’t know that.”
Ablethwaite scowled. “Mercy not to know sometimes, isn’t it? No currently relevant subtext, oh no. What is it Lear tells Cordelia? ‘So we’ll live’?”
“Yes. That’s what he says.”
Lear and Cordelia wouldn’t live. No one would. Lacey wouldn’t and her aunt wouldn’t and none of the departed students would. Even without the storms, even without social collapse and all the catastrophes besetting every corner of the globe Lacey had heard about, everyone would die, because everyone always did. The trick was to find what good you could while you were still alive. Lear had finally learned that, and all these hundreds of years after Shakespeare had written Lear’s speech, he had taught Lacey, too.
She swallowed and said, “For just a minute, you know, he’s happy. For just a little while. It’s the only time he’s happy in the whole play.”
“The sparrow flying through the mead hall, warm and dry, before it has to fly back outside, into rain and darkness.” Ablethwaite glanced through the window again.
Nothing was visible. The wind was a howling roar.
“Is that Shakespeare?”
“Bede.”  pp. 53-54 

The description of the unfolding apocalypse and the story arc outlined above work well together. Succinctly done, too.
*** (Good). 2,500 words.

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) sees the narrator, Heli, meet her ex-girlfriend Nea in an all-night McDonalds. When Nea questions the choice of meeting place, Heli tells her it is ironic before launching into an explanation that involves (a) her reminding Nea of a cousin who got tick bites and developed an allergy to red meat (“The allergy’s unusual because it’s triggered by the Alpha Gal carbohydrate instead of by a protein”) and (b) that Heli has developed an Alpha Gal analog that can induce a permanent meat allergy with one dose. Heli then adds that she can make it contagious. . . .
After this revelation they debate the rights and wrongs of this type of eco-terrorism, before Heli eventually realises that her ex-girlfriend isn’t as enthusiastic about the prospect as she expected. They finally agree that the analog should be made available as a voluntary injection for those that want to give up eating meat (“Saving the world in slow motion”). After Nea leaves, however (spoiler), Heli inserts the contents of a vial into a sanitizer spray and starts spreading the agent.
This is a conversation about an idea, not a story—the novelette or novella that telescopes out from Heli’s final action would have been much more interesting.
** (Average). 2,300 words.

The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Rules of Unbinding by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) opens with Kharkov in the Negev desert looking for antiquities, preferably gold or silver ones. We learn that he hasn’t bothered to get a permit and has no intention of reporting anything he finds to the relevant authorities.
After wasting his time digging up a jeep axle from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he finds a bottle just before he gives up for the day:

The bottle was ceramic, still intact, beautifully decorated with geometric patterns in yellow and blue glaze, but bound with an intricate cage of bronze, which must have been what had set off the metal detector. A clay jar would be exactly what a fleeing family might use to put their stashed coins in, so for an instant he’d been hopeful, but this was more of a bottle than ajar, with the neck opening too small for anyone to slip coins into. It was closed with a carved stopper (ivory, maybe?) that was held in place with twists of bronze wire—green with corrosion now—and then sealed with wax. Ottoman era, he thought; perhaps fifteenth century. When he picked it up, he realized it was too light to hold anything metallic, but still, a piece of Ottoman ceramic could fetch something in the antiquities market.
But he was curious what it had held—wine? Perfume? The rules of the antiquity market said that an untouched bottle would be worth more than one with the seal broken, but to hell with the rules. He could reseal the wax later and no one would know.  p. 80

Kharkov opens the bottle and smoke comes out, which eventually resolves into a genie clothed in modern attire. Kharkov quickly tells the genie that he wants his three wishes and then, when the genie begins to tell him the rules, says his first wish is that there should be no rules. The genie (spoiler) replies that without rules the universe would not exist in its current form (he gives several examples involving gravity, oxidation, etc. etc.) and asks Kharkov to reconsider. Kharkov complies and modifies his first wish to “no rules about wishes”—this means, of course (double spoiler), that the genie is not obliged to give him his three wishes.
Normally I don’t like short-shorts, but this one is well written and has a clever twist on an old theme.
*** (Good). 1,250 words.

Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Shoot your Shot by Rich Larson (Analog, September-October 2022) gets off to an entertaining start with its description of the story’s coke-head narrator in a club bathroom:

It’s been a while since I done coke—too expensive out East—but before Dante left the club he gave me his last two grams and the rolled-up fiver he was using, I think as an apology for bailing. I forgot just how fucking good it feels.
“Yo,” I say, pulling myself up to the sinks to make a new friend. “How’s your night going?”
My sink neighbor glances over, gives a bleary grin. “Yo,” he says. “Yo, not bad.”
“Heard you pissin’ while I was in the stall,” I say. “Terrific stream. Gotta say it. Real powerful-sounding.”
The guy looks confused for a second, then raises his soapy hand for a tentative fist bump. “Thanks, bro.”
I bump it, then start checking my nostril hairs for snowcaps. Clean.  p. 61

Subsequently, the sink neighbour talks about how he was just talking to “the most beautiful girl”, a “dark-haired chick with the silver jacket”. He says he is going to ask for her number, and the narrator assures him that he will succeed . . . before promptly going out and picking up the woman himself.
After some conversation in the club she suggests they go outside, and they eventually end up in an alleyway. They kiss, and then, when the narrator suggests they do some coke, he notices that (spoiler) her words aren’t matching her actions, that she is talking from a hole in her throat, and that her mouth is peeling back to show something like broken razors. The narrator can’t flee as the kiss has numbed his face and body.
This reads like a short character sketch lifted from the writer’s notes and given a random horror ending.
* (Mediocre). 1,500 words.

Call Me Maelzel by Don Trotter

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Call Me Maelzel by Don Trotter1 (F&SF, August 1976) gets off to a lively start with a ship AI called Maelzel pranking one of the crew:

I could hear water splashing on the deck in Lloyd’s shower, then the slap of his feet on the wet tiles. I had planned to zap him right away, but he started singing in his wheezy tenor that song about the sailor who’s spent a year and a quarter in his ship’s crow’s-nest and he goes up the river to see Budapest… but you probably know it. “Yardarm Arnie?” Anyhow, it’s a particular favorite of mine, and it sounded kind of nice echoing around in Lloyd’s shower stall. So I let him finish first, and on the final “…mizzen mast, tooooo!” I cut off the hot water and ran up the pressure on the icy as high as it would go. Exit Lloyd, raging wet.
“Goddarnit, Mazey! This time…” he started in, mad as a kicked kitten.
I hit the decompression warning in his cabin, a basso profundo WHOOT! WHOOT! that totally drowned him out. I think he might have called my bluff, but for realism I dropped the air pressure a little, just enough to make his ears pop, and let the emergency airbag fall from its recess in the ceiling. It was as convincing as hell, if I do say so myself.  p. 78

When Lloyd makes it to the muster station he is only wearing a pair of soaking wet shorts under a transparent airbag, and is then subjected to the stares of the rest of the (unpranked) crew. They subsequently vote Maelzel into “Durance Vile” (limbo) for one day.
While Maelzel is disconnected from everything apart from the emergency systems, we get some backstory about the AI and learn that, because of a previous mission which ended in disaster, Maelzel has been, like the ship, hugely overspecified. This means Maelzel is underemployed, bored, and consequently needs to finds ways to entertain itself.
After Maelzel is released from limbo he gets up to his tricks again, this time slowly increasing the gravity and making the crew think about diets and exercise. When they find out about this some days later, they are just about to throw Maelzel back into Durance Vile when they are attacked by pirates. Of course, none of them believe Maelzel’s warnings until just before they are boarded, by which time it is too late:

At each of the four cardinal points of the lounge a tall skinny character appeared, back to the bulkhead, little round shield and big swashbuckling cutlass poised, ready to slay dragons or die trying. At the sight of my crew strewn all over the carpet they relaxed their defensive attitudes, and a couple of them started laughing. The one over by the aquarium, apparently the leader, swaggered over to where Sash was lying, half stunned, against the bar. He poked him with his cutlass.
“On your feet, reptile,” he said without rancor. Sash climbed slowly to his feet, then, with apparent effort, put his grin back in place. He looked his captor in the eye, then returned the careful eying the other was giving him.
Our uninvited guests were worth looking at. Two men and two women, each a shade under seven feet and several shades under two hundred pounds, they were as bald as a bar of soap and naked as a porno flick; nude, but not lewd, they were tattooed. All over. The one holding his cutlass at Sash’s throat had his musculature done in bright red and fine detail, from quadriceps and biceps down to the tiniest facial muscles. He looked like an anatomy chart, or like St. Bartholomew after the Armenians finished flaying him. The lady with her foot on the lens of my best holo projector was done up like a Gila monster, in black and orange pebble pattern, with each pebble carefully shaded to look raised. Black, whole-eye contacts made her eyes appropriately shiny and beady. I wondered how she felt about St. Bartholomew calling Sash “reptile.” The man down by where the fountain splashed into the pool was mostly in bare skin and tattooed zippers — some of which were partly unzipped to show right lung and liver, one temporal and both frontal lobes of his brain, and selected other bits of his internal workin’s, all in five colors and exquisite detail. The woman who had joined St. Bart in front of Sash was done over in spiders — big ones, little ones, hairy and smooth, they swarmed up her arms, legs, and torso (two enormous tarantulas cupped her breasts), all exact trompe l’oeil. If she’d been ticklish, she wouldn’t have lasted two minutes. Her head was done in furry black, with pairs of iridescent patches to match the contacts she wore, the locations of the false eyes being characteristic of the Latrodectus genus: the Widows, black and other colors.  pp. 84-5

That’s a passage that would grace a modern day issue of Planet Stories.
After an initially peaceable takeover, St. Bartholomew gropes Tilly, one of the crewmembers, and Sash gets slashed open when he tries to protect her.
The rest of the story sees the crew try to get Sash to sick bay, while avoiding mentioning Maelzel by name (to leave the AI with the element of surprise). Then (spoiler), when the pirates start wandering around the ship, Maelzel picks them off one by one (the first of the victims gets spaced through one of the ship’s toilets!)
If you are looking for a colourful and entertaining space opera with AIs and space pirates,2 then this will be right up your street.
*** (Good). 6,850 words. Story link.

1. According to ISFDB, Don Trotter only published three stories. On the basis of this one that is a pity.

2. This story reminded me of another recent AI/pirates tale, Knock, Knock Said the Ship by Rati Mehrotra (F&SF, July-August 2020).