Challenge 299

Gimme That Old-Time Umbrella

In Mary B. McArdle’s “Sister Mary Ellen’s Black Umbrella”:
1. Why do Mort and Callista delay running from the swarm until it’s too late?
2. Whom do Mort and Callista abandon in the town even though they could rescue him?
3. What evidence might cast serious doubt on the hypothesis that the catastrophe was due to a freak of the weather?
4. How long have Sister Mary Ellen’s two umbrellas been sitting in the same place since her death?
In Slawomir Rapala’s “Redefinition”:
1. Why does Iskald make a deal with Pablo to fight Liath?
2. After Iskald slays the threatening Surath, Pablo says: “You shouldn’t have done that! [...] If the mob turns on us we’re all going to die!” In view of the mob’s motivation and behavior, why might Pablo’s reproof seem incongruous?
3. In The Three Kings to date, what two types of behavior distinguish the worst villains and are found in the mob scene? Cruelty doesn’t count: it’s a common denominator of villainy.
In Greg Ellis’s “Knock on Wood,” Beckhart tells Marston:
The Uncertainty Principle says that the probability that this wall, or any part of the physical universe, is in one state or another equal to all the other states. It is the act of observing any particular piece of the physical universe that changes its state, freezing it in place and probability during our observation period.

In other words, any material object is as likely to be in one state as another at any given moment, and observation alone determines which state we perceive.

Does the Uncertainty Principle really say that? How long would Beckhart and Marston have to keep reperceiving the wall before it turned into a liquid or a gas of its own accord? Might it not crumble into dust first?

In what way is the ending of the story ambiguous? Put another way, what does Marston do that might make us wonder why he’s still screaming at the end?

Responses welcome!