Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “She goes to church every Sunday and she believes in God. I asked her how she knew that wasn’t just an illusion, and she said she didn’t know directly, but she had faith, which was belief in what could not be known directly. I said that was a good definition of ‘illusion.’ She said no, she knew which was faith and which was direct experience, but if I wanted to believe in the Queen of Air and Darkness, I was muddying that distinction, by taking direct experience of deception for truth. I said there was more than one kind of truth and she wasn’t capable of seeing that psychological truth, the truth of fiction and poetry, has its own validity. I said the really intelligent mind could hold both the truth and untruth of the alien illusions in mind at the same time. She said that was semantic hogwash. I said she was incapable of seeing it because she was incapable of doing it. I said she was an idiot. Then we had a big fight.”

  Luke was startled. He’d expected an outburst, but not this eloquence. Anne sat there—mulish, belligerent, more subtle than he’d expected. Obviously she had thought about all this, perhaps even rehearsed it. She was intelligent and very unhappy. Luke would have to tread softly.

  “How did the fight end?”

  “I moved out. I’m sixteen, you know. I took a room in the transition dorm.”

  This useful structure, unique to Christmas Landing, provided three months’ free lodging to anyone who asked for it. The intention was to house newcomers to Christmas Landing while they organized their lives as outwayers, the farmers and ranchers and miners in the hinterlands who supported Roland. The transition dorm also housed those same outwayers who had failed in those endeavors and were returning, usually broke and sometimes broken, back to Portolondon. Several families reclaiming their stolen children had stayed in the transition dorm, as did the inevitable drifters, petty criminals, down-on-their-luck gamblers. Luke could imagine what Chief Halford thought of her daughter’s living there.

  “Anne,” he said gently, “have you thought what you might do when the three months are over?”

  “Yes. I went to Dr. Cardiff and offered myself as a liaison with the natives. I said I would go live with them and report back, and that way his scientific team would get another perspective on them than just talking to people like Mistherd.”

  He was staggered. “What . . . what did Dr. Cardiff say?”

  “He said no.”

  Of course he had. Project Recovery was bringing children back, not sending them out. And no matter what this frontier town said, to Luke, sixteen was still a child.

  Anne leaned forward in her chair. “You think it’s a stupid idea, too.”

  “Not necessarily.” She was looking for a fight, but she wasn’t going to get it from him. “In time, it may be a viable one. But neither the natives nor we may be ready for it just now.”

  “‘May,’ ‘may,’—aren’t you ever definite, doctor?”

  “Yes,” he said, and she got the joke and smiled. The tension dissipated a little, but only a little.

  “I’m going now,” she said. “The session’s over.”

  “Yes, it is, but Anne—don’t go thinking that I’m in the same camp as your mother. I think your . . . your interest in the natives and their abilities shows a genuine intellectual curiosity. And I believe you are stable enough to tell the difference between illusion and reality.”

  He was rewarded with her rare smile. “Thanks.” And then, fiercely, “All that people like my mother can think to do with illusion is wall themselves away from it. Instead of exploring what good it might bring to us.”

  It had not brought anything good to Mistherd, or to Shadow-of-a-Dream. Neither of them, however, had Anne’s obstinate clarity. At the same time, Luke was afraid that, in the effort to keep her from stopping therapy, he had offered her too much encouragement. Perhaps he should not have taken this assignment; he was too sick, too old. His head hurt.

  “I’ll see you Tuesday,” he said to Anne. All at once, and very unprofessionally, he was eager for her to leave.

  “Yes,” Anne said.

  But Tuesday she was in the infirmary with flu, Luke was in bed at his hotel with chest pains, and Shadow-of-a-Dream had vanished.

  “She could not have left Christmas Landing,” Chief Halford said. “I’ve reviewed the surveillance data on every penetration of the perimeter shield. All authorized.”

  “I thought,” Luke said, “that you’d assigned her a twenty-four-hour guard.”

  “We did. A dog, of course; we can’t afford personnel for wayward girls!”

  “What happened to the dog?” Luke sat in his hotel room, as utilitarian as everything else in Christmas Landing, and tried to appear healthier than he was. He had doubled his medication, but if he went to the infirmary, he would never come out. That was not how he wanted to die.

  Chief Halford—it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never heard her first name—said, “The dog was drugged.”

  Luke was impressed. “Where did Shadow-of-a-Dream get drugs?”

  “Her name is Carolyn and I haven’t yet found out where she got the drugs. You know Carolyn better than anyone—where do you think she might be in Christmas Landing? Dr. Cardiff and his team are very anxious to have her back.”

  I’ll bet they are, Luke thought. And so was the chief, whose reputation would not be helped by this. Luke looked at her as steadily as he could manage.

  “Chief Halford, the human brain is more plastic than we once thought, especially the brains of children. Children damaged in freak accidents have shown the ability to modify neural connections in ways completely impossible for adults. I’m sure Dr. Cardiff told you this after he examined the brain scans of Hal DiSilvio and Laura Simmons.” Fire-Born and Cloud, that were.

  “He did, but it isn’t very relevant to what I’m dealing with here, is it? Do you have any idea where Carolyn might be?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you.” She left, scowling, a competent woman only trying to do her job, and faced with forces she could not comprehend.

  But we all do that every day, Luke thought. Life itself is too complex for us to fully comprehend, let alone death.

  In fact, humanity had gone backwards in its ability to deal with death. Once death was carried around as a constant companion, a silent shadow that might at any moment choose to speak. People died so much younger, and so much more frequently. In childbirth, as infants, of untamed diseases, of harsh environments. There was no choice but to live with the shadow, acknowledge it, and from that had grown death’s opposite: stories of heroism and transcendence, of Valhalla and Paradise and the Elysian Fields, of beauty so strong it diminished one’s inevitable fate. From the acknowledged shadow had come the once-and-yet-to-be Arthur asleep in Avalon, had come Apollo blinding in his beauty, had come the Queen of Air and Darkness. Illusions, and yet more than illusions.

  It hurt to move. Luke did so slowly, gathering only what was necessary: a warm jacket, strong boots. In the hotel lobby, a mastiff eyed him. He ignored it and went out into the street. The night was clear and moonless, the stars dimmed by the lights of the city. He caught a robo-taxi and it took him to the transition dorm.

  Only on the way did he realize it was Saturday night. Onto the streets near the hotel, outwayers spilled out of the bars, into the bars. They called to each other raucously, young people who lived with hardship but not usually, thanks to modern technology, with death. In the bright holos of Christmas Landing, under the dim stars, there were no shadows. Even the northern auroras seemed faint.

  It was quieter close to the transition dorm, located near the city perimeter to make outgoing expeditions more efficient. Most of the transients were partying in the quarter he had just left. Luke made his slow way through the lobby, then up in the elevator to the room listed for A. Halford.

  “Yes?” Anne’s wary response through the closed door. Ready to be angry, but with another note underneath.

  “It’s Dr. Silverstein. Please let me in, Anne. I need to see you.”

  Silence.
Then the door opened, almost defiantly. Luke understood. They were conducting a test.

  Anne was dressed in clothes a little too warm for the evening. The guard dog assigned to her lay beside the bed, eyeing Luke. Luke gazed back, and he knew. Painfully he squatted beside the dog, looked directly into its eyes.

  “Hello, Shadow-of-a-Dream.”

  They were first shocked, then afraid. “How did you know?” Anne demanded. Shadow-of-a-Dream had resumed her human form, which of course she had never lost. The girl was not a shape shifter. Only the human mind was.

  Luke addressed not Anne but the beautiful, naked child. “It was in the chapel—do you remember?” A brief vision, quickly gone, and he found himself slumped on a plain wooden bench, the girl kneeling beside him. “I thought I was dying, and I saw the same vision I’d seen from your alien caretaker, the one who raised you, outside the perimeter of the mind shield. Only this time you sent it, didn’t you, Shadow-of-a-Dream? Your own brain, worked on all those years and perhaps possessing more talent than most—you can cast the illusions, too. Not far and maybe not for long, but you can do it.” Brains more plastic than we once thought, Cardiff’s report had said, especially the brains of children.

  Both girls, one so clearly the child of civilization and one so much the opposite, both stared mutely. Luke said, “What did you do with the dogs?”

  Anne said sulkily, “Drugged. Hers and mine. We will not be guarded like criminals!”

  Luke said, “You got the sleeping pills from the infirmary. While you supposedly had the flu.” He didn’t ask how she had faked the symptoms; it was easy enough with various ingested substances, and she was a researcher.

  Anne said, “Don’t try to stop us!” But she was no threat. It was Shadow-of-a-Dream who held the long, wickedly sharp knife—and where had she concealed it when she wore no clothes?

  “Shadow-of-a-Dream,” he said quietly, “you don’t need that. I’m not trying to stop you. I want to go with you.”

  Three figures walked slowly down the corridor, open on one side to the warm summer night. The figures passed two or three people, all of whom saw a boy and girl holding hands, accompanied by their large mastiff.

  The strip of bare land beyond the corridor was not surveilled; the mind-shield was deemed strong enough to keep out illusions. These illusions, however, were inside the shield. Had anyone been watching from the windows of Christmas Landing, three dogs wandered over the dirt, as dogs always did. The ground was littered with dog poop.

  The mind-shield, a faint shimmer in the starlight, was under surveillance. But the dogs were not there long. They passed through the shield, and alarms began to ring. Within Christmas Landing, people responded.

  “Run!” cried Shadow-of-a-Dream. Luke ran, but only a short distance was necessary.

  “Go,” he gasped, and collapsed to the ground, thinking I didn’t need boots and jacket after all.

  Shadow-of-a-Dream stopped. She looked at him, and in her eyes he saw comprehension.

  Did the girl think then of Terry—Mistherd? Did she regret that he would not join her and Anne in the wild and enchanted Carheddin under the mountain? Terry’s bitterness would never permit that. More, he would consider Shadow-of-a-Dream’s return to the natives an act of weakness. But which was stronger: the mind able to reject illusion, or the one able to embrace it while still recognizing it for what it was?

  Luke had a last glimpse of Shadow-of-a-Dream, lovely and wild and pagan and alien, before she vanished. The men who ran toward him through the shield saw only two shiverleaf bushes, among the many that grew just beyond the outpost. Luke saw only the stars above, not dimmed at all. He saw only the dark night, and the darker one approaching.

  And then he saw the Angel of Death, as he had seen it once before on this spot, and then once again in the chapel. Shadow-of-a-Dream’s last gift, coming toward him in a blaze of white light, holding out her long slim hands. Compassionate and welcoming, erasing all illusion of fear.

  AFTERWORD:

  I first read Poul Anderson when I was fifteen. My mother had given me for Christmas the two-volume Treasury of Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher, which I still have (it’s a bit battered from umpty-umpty moves). The volume included Anderson’s “Brain Wave,” in which the Earth in its movement through space moves out of an “inhibitor field” that has been affecting electromagnetic activity in the human brain for millions of years. All at once everyone is much, much more intelligent. So are the animals. This story knocked me out with its inventiveness and scope. So I reread it while looking for a universe to borrow for this anthology story, and it still knocks me out.

  However, for this anthology I chose instead “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” the 1972 Hugo winner. This also is concerned with the human brain. It’s a gorgeous story but, unlike “Brain Wave,” it does not carry its characters’ fates past the revelation of what the aliens have been doing. Even in 1972 I wanted to know more: What happened to Mistherd back in “civilization”? To Shadow-of-a-Dream? And what about the fact that the human civilization Anderson had created for Roland was far less attractive than the alien illusions? It was lovely to have a chance to write this story and thus to create some answers.

  A final note on writing “Outmoded Things”: Gardner Dozois is an experienced editor. I signed the contract for this story in August, 2010. This manuscript was not due until the following June. But Gardner knows writers, and so every single month he sent out a reminder: “Only nine more months until your story is due! Eight more months! Six more months and, oh, incidentally, Harry Turtledove and Stephen Baxter have already turned theirs in! They get a gold star!” It was lovely to have a chance to write this story—and the editorial nagging didn’t hurt, either.

  SIDEWALK AT 12:10 P.M.

  Nancy Kress is the multiple-award-winning author of much science fiction and fantasy, most notably the classic Sleepless trilogy that began with Beggars in Spain. The author tells us: “Like most SF writers, I occasionally ruminate about time. Like most senior-citizens-and-how-did-that-happen, I occasionally ruminate about things I might have done differently during my life, or reacted to differently, or at least viewed differently.” And because writers tend to ruminate on paper the result of that rumination is . . .

  She transfers slowly, painfully from the robocar to the floater, Liam gently helping her. Every part of her body hurts; RenewGen can do only so much, and today she has not taken her pain meds. Liam frowns. He disapproves of this trip, but it isn’t in him to thwart or scold her, to be less than kind. Sweetness like honey on the tongue, she used to say of his father, dead now these thirty-three years, his bones buried somewhere under the alien red soil of Mars. Thirty-three years! Where does the time go?

  It doesn’t. That is, of course, the whole point.

  “Careful, Gran,” Liam says.

  “Always. After all, I’m not 110 anymore.” An old joke; there are so many old jokes. But this one, she remembers now, was with his uncle, not him, and Liam looks baffled. Sometimes she gets lost in time, as if it were a maze.

  It is not a maze. It is a loaf of bread. That, too, is the point.

  “I used to make my own bread. Pumpernickel and rye and the most marvelous sourdough,” she tells Liam. He nods, without asking why this is relevant. He knows.

  Sarah yells up the stairs, “David! Aren’t you ready yet?”

  David clatters down the steps, shirt unbuttoned, permanent scowl beneath the new, wispy, ridiculous mustache. It looks like half a dozen spider legs unaccountably clinging to his upper lip. He is thirteen.

  “I told you we had to leave by 7:05 at the very latest and it’s 7:20 already!”

  “Chill, Mom.” He goes out the door and climbs into the Toyota. Ava and Aidan both fuss as she straps Ava into her car seat, Aidan into the infant SnugRide. 7:27. David will be late for school, Sarah late for work. Again. Aidan lets out a huge fart and, from the sudden awful smell, a load of wet shit. Ava goes, “Eewww!” David pops in his iPod ear buds
, as if sound could obliterate odor. Aidan wails.

  Sarah drives grimly, fingers clenched on the wheel. She drops David off at school—not even one other car still on the pick-up loop—and Ava at pre-school. Aidan cries the entire time. He is still crying when she hands him, as gingerly as an IED, to Mrs. Frick. The babysitter clicks her tongue at the smell, at the dampness, at Sarah’s obvious bad parenting. Her look could wither a cactus. 8:09. By the time she gets to work, finds a parking spot, and runs to the elevator, the staff meeting has been in progress for thirty-five minutes.

  “Sarah,” says McAffee, “how nice of you to honor us with your presence.”

  The floater is cushioned, and she floats along the corridor on invisible mag-lev wings, Liam walking by her side. A few people glance curiously. This is a place of brisk, competent people, of uncarpeted corridors, of nameplates that are neither boastingly large nor self-effacingly small. Scientists, engineers, technicians. There are no old people here. She sees no one over ninety.

  Liam’s hand, laid protectively over hers, has two small brown dots near the thumb. Surely he isn’t old enough for age spots? She can’t remember what year he was born. But his twins are in school now, she remembers that.

  “One more transfer, Gran,” Liam says as he helps her off the floater and onto the Throne. That’s what she immediately dubs it: a great padded chair royal with silver wires, ruby lights, data screens glinting like mirrors. How long ago was it that clothing had all those tiny mirrors sewn into it? She had a long red skirt, full, the mirrors at the hem flashing every time she moved.

  This high-tech throne is a long way from the simple hominess of bread. Not that she had ever been one for that. Too often the sentimental cliché meant “simple” and “homey” for the husband and children, bought with exhaustive, unending effort by a wife trying to do it all. Although maybe it was different now. “Ready, ma’am?” a tech asks. She is ready.