{"id":1109,"date":"2021-05-11T09:53:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T09:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2022-08-11T08:59:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T08:59:02","slug":"tunnels-by-eleanor-arnason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1109","title":{"rendered":"Tunnels by Eleanor Arnason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tunnels<\/em><\/strong> by Eleanor Arnason (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, May-June 2020) is the sixth of the author\u2019s \u2018Lydia Duluth\u2019 stories to appear. This one finds her in Innovation City, an island on the planet Grit, and she is there, as usual, on a work assignment for her employer, the holoplay production company Stellar Harvest. Most of the first part of the story is a mixture of background material (including a previous run-in she had with the owners of the island, a genemod company called BioInnovation), a description of the local silicon and carbon based lifeforms, and travelogue.
The story finally gets going when she meets an actor\u2019s agent for tea to discuss a production in progress on Grit. Before this, however, Duluth feels like she is coming down with a cold and, after the meal, she feels worse. Not only does it feel like she has caught the flu, she also has a compunction to go down into the railway system tunnels under the city. Her inbuilt AI, which hasn\u2019t said a lot until this point, tells her to phone for help, but she can\u2019t remember how. Then she sees a \u201cGotcha\u201d on the inside of her eyelids, and realises she has been infected with a hacked flu virus.
The second part of the story sees Duluth wake to find herself in a dark tunnel, with her AI silent. She starts walking and eventually finds a lit water fountain where, a little bit later, an alien Goxhat turns up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[She] saw something by the drinking fountain, her size, but lower to the floor. The way it moved was distinctive. She came closer. The creature had an oval body that rested on four legs, and four arms, two on each side of the oval body. One arm in each pair ended in a formidable-looking pincher. The other ended in a cluster of tentacles. The creature was holding a cup in one of its tentacle-hands and dipping it into the fountain. There was no head. Instead, its brain was housed in a bulge atop its body. There ought to be four eyes in the bulge, though Lydia couldn\u2019t see them. The Goxhat was facing away from her.
\u201cHello,\u201d she said in humanish.
The alien spun. The four blue eyes glared. \u201cDangerous!\u201d it cried in humanish. \u201cBeware!\u201d It waved the cup, spilling water. \u201cFierce! Fierce!\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m not a threat,\u201d Lydia said, trying to sound reasonable and unafraid. As far as she knew, the Goxhat were never dangerous to members of other species, but this one looked agitated and poorly groomed. The black hair that covered its body was spiky in some places and matted in others. What the heck was this guy doing here in this condition, and where was the rest of it?
\u201cWhere are your other bodies?\u201d Lydia asked.
The Goxhat screamed and ran into the darkness.
Well, that had certainly been the wrong question to ask.  p. 21<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, Duluth manages to talk to the creature and discovers that it knows other humans in the tunnels, and she manages to convince it to take her to them. She later meets three others that have been trapped underground for years because they too caught the hacked flu virus, and one of the side effects is that trying to climb up any of the stairways incapacitates them. Duluth also learns that the tunnels aren\u2019t actually in use, but are a result of a BioInnovation genmod product that has run wild and spread under the planet.
Further adventures follow, beginning with the four of them (and the Goxhat) going to a vagrants camp (this other group of humans aren\u2019t infected, but refuse to help those who are because they variously use them for stories, provided by Genghis the professor, and sex, from Tope the courtesan, etc.). This encounter is rather irrelevant to the story because when Lydia later talks to the Goxhat and asks it its name, it hoots three times, and adds that no-one has ever asked, before offering to lead her to the surface. However, the meeting provides an amusing after dinner episode where (a) Duluth is quizzed by the tunnel dwellers about a holo star she knows and (b) Genghis\u2019s story about Thor losing his hammer is subject to a relentless analysis of the character\u2019s attitudes and behaviour (\u201cYou can\u2019t be killing people, even if they\u2019re giants. It\u2019s illegal.\u201d \u201cAnd wrong,\u201d etc.).
The last section (spoiler)\u2014where Duluth and Three Hoots reach the surface, steal a boat and escape to the mainland, and then BioIn and Stellar Harvest (Duluth\u2019s employers) security get involved\u2014is routine stuff and not as engaging as the previous part (even with Three Hoots\u2019 revelation about how its other bodies died after they discovered financial irregularities in BioIn\u2019s accounts). The story also feels longer than it needs to be (it is just short of novella length).
Overall an entertaining and amusing, if minor, piece.
*** (Good). 17,400 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tunnels by Eleanor Arnason (Asimov\u2019s SF, May-June 2020) is the sixth of the author\u2019s \u2018Lydia Duluth\u2019 stories to appear. This one finds her in Innovation City, an island on the planet Grit, and she is there, as usual, on a work assignment for her employer, the holoplay production company Stellar Harvest. Most of the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[296,24,4,308,7],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eleanor-arnason","tag-296","tag-3-2","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-eleanor-arnason","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5290,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/5290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}