A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Dale had read theories in the paper. He’d had the phone taken out the fourth day after it started ringing with people wanting interviews and saying it was the devil’s work and Dale had to destroy it because it was the end of the world and so on, blah, blah, blah. Dale read theories in the paper before he stopped getting it, and watched on TV. Lots of theories.

  Nobody was at ease with an alien thing nobody understood.

  Except Richard. He knew.

  “ ‘Brigadoon’,” Richard said at the breakfast table the day after he arrived, around a mouthful of egg.

  “What?” Dale said. “Bridge O’ Doom?”

  “No, Mr. Strausser.” The boy swallowed and wiped his lips. “’Brigadoon‘. It’s a play about a magical place on the other side of a, well, a bridge, like what you have.”

  “A play?”

  “Right, dad,” Patrick said. “Richard thinks what’s on the other side is a paradise, like in the play.”

  Dale didn’t see many plays in Three Pines, but he did read. “You mean like Shangri La?”

  “Exactly.” Richard related his theory. “Whatever you want is on the other side. Heaven or hell. It depends on what you believe is there, waiting for you. If you believe you’re going to heaven and you believe heaven looks like, say, downtown New York, you’ll find yourself in Times Square when you cross. If you believe hell is waiting, maybe you should bring marshmallows to toast.”

  He said he wanted to cross because paradise awaited him, this “Brigadoon.”

  “You’re not going to this Bridge O’ Doom place, not on my property, you’re not.”

  “’Brigadoon‘,” Patrick explained again, but Dale knew the difference. I was just being stubborn, is all. I admit it. I was afraid, back then. I can’t explain. I just was is all.

  They argued a long time but never settled anything. It didn’t stop Dale from liking the boy.

  Dale woke up the next morning and found Patrick on the back porch, looking out at the Bridge, the note from Richard in a fist, shoulders shaking in the cold, a tear in one eye he tried to hide.

  Nobody in the yard. Everybody gone, even the military police that wanted to guard the Bridge so nobody accidentally crossed. They’d put up a wire fence. Nobody guarded against the likelihood somebody would deliberately cross.

  Like Richard did.

  I lost his note years back but I recall it said he knew whatever was across the Bridge O’ Doom—he used the term, I think, not to mock me but to help me make light of it—was better than this side. Had to be. He typed up twenty single-spaced pages why he believed so.

  Patrick gave a copy of the note to the media.

  A couple days later, it started. A trickle at first. An old couple after breakfast, a woman with a baby a few minutes later, a teenage couple “eloping,” then a Catholic priest. They came by ones and twos all that day, parking their vehicles at the gate and walking in.

  Then, a flood. They came, like lemmings, down the road, across the field to the north, and up the valley from the south. Abandoned cars piled up for miles around.

  The military tried to turn people away. Dale and Patrick heard explosions and gunshots over the horizon, and shouting, but that stopped after a few hours.

  We were overwhelmed.

  Still, most came quiet, orderly, with good manners, like Richard and Patrick. They didn’t run or scream or act crazy. They didn’t drool. Some sang. “Off to See the Wizard” was popular. Some crossed naked, tossing clothes into the river as they went.

  And they came and came and came, day and night, week after week, month after month, year after year, they came. Enough thought to bring food to share or Patrick and Dale would have starved to death the first month.

  Patrick crossed a year later.

  I don’t think I want to talk about why he did. He just did is all. Leave it at that.

  The flood died down five years ago, turned to a trickle again. It got so I’d see a few hundred people a day, then a few dozen, then just a handful a month.

  Nobody has crossed for the past—hell, I forget.

  “Why?” the stranger asked, voice raspy.

  “Why?” The question startled Dale. “Well, I guess because most of them—”

  “Why do you stay?” The stranger pointed at the Bridge O’ Doom. “Everybody else—”

  “Ah.” Dale nodded. “The other question.”

  The scarecrow-thin man, of indeterminate age, scruffy-bearded and road-dirty, eyes glazed with weariness, stood before Dale and looked past him at the Bridge, or past it, to whatever lay beyond.

  Dale had been telling the story, as he had to thousands who’d come before. The man had shuffled up the road, stood looking out, and asked “Is this it?” and Dale had told him.

  “I’ve been gatekeeper for twenty-two years and more,” Dale had started, “and you’d be surprised how many people ask me how it got its name. Let me tell you . . .”

  Now, the man wanted to know “why.”

  “The other question.” Dale eased his creaky bones onto a stool under the shade of a ratty Army issue tarp at the foot of the Bridge. The day had been relentless hot, no breeze.

  Dale resumed stitching, repairing a holey shirt, what he’d been doing before the man arrived.

  “Could offer you a bite to eat.” Dale nodded at a sack of dried apples by his foot.

  No answer. In the still air, Dale heard the man breathe, in and out, a blacksmith bellows. Eyes fixed on the Bridge. Or beyond.

  No knapsack. No baggage. Sweat dripped down a hatchet-thin nose, collected in his beard.

  “I tell them the story and they nod, their eyes on the Bridge, or past it, not looking at me, maybe not even listening. Like you.”

  No answer.

  “It doesn’t matter. After a while, sometimes even before I finish, they take a deep breath and head out.

  “I think they ask as a way to delay while they psyche themselves up. Like somebody on the high dive, nervous, asks their buddies ‘How deep is the water?’ or ‘How high up am I, do you reckon?’ Helps steel their nerves. You go off the high dive the first time—once. After that, it’s not the first time no more.

  “It’s not so pretty now, not like when Ansel Adams took that picture in ‘42. All these dead cars and old rusted crap. I try to clean up, but, well.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a garden—”

  The man turned and fixed glazed eyes on Dale. “Why?”

  “Ah.” Dale lay his stitching aside and returned the man’s gaze. “Why I haven’t crossed yet? What’s an old fart like me doing here and what’ll I do if I need a dentist or run out of toilet paper? Okay.”

  Dale sighed. “For a while, till Patrick crossed, I expected it to do something, you know? Maybe belch or spit out a pile of bones. Don’t know what I expected, but something—some change that would explain what it was for.

  “For a while, I thought maybe I didn’t cross because I wanted to see the change. I was here when it came, I was the first to put anything through it, I saw the first crossing, I was here when Richard crossed. I’ve seen everybody who crossed since, except when I slept or went to the bathroom.

  “So, why not be here to see when it coughs, spits out a bone pile, burps, or disappears, or whatever?

  “A few years ago, I got to wondering how many people had crossed. Millions, maybe, but not all six billion on the planet.” Dale shrugged. “Or maybe not. I wonder if other Bridges opened up so the entire human race could cross.”

  The stranger opened his mouth as if to speak, but Dale raised a hand. “I don’t know,” he said, “and I don’t intend to find out.

  “I just don’t care.

  “That‘s why I don’t cross. I don’t care what’s out there. Not a bit. I’m happy right here.

  “See, I grew up in Wyoming, population 470-thousand last time I saw a census, north of Three Pines, population two thousand. My nearest neighbor lived two miles away. My father and his father and his father lived here.


  “People used to ask me what I saw to like out here. No excitement, nothing to do. No people. I get no smog, no noise, no hurry, no crime. No people.

  “I like it because it’s quiet. Even if it wasn’t quiet, like during the exodus, I’d still like it here.

  “It’s home, you see? Home. Whatever’s on the other side, I don’t care. It isn’t home.”

  The stranger cocked his head as if thinking. Or maybe, Dale thought, listening to some call Dale couldn’t hear.

  “Now.” Dale stood. “You tell me.”

  The man shook his head, as if awakening from a nap. “What? Tell you—”

  “Why. Why you want to go. What’s over there that you—”

  The man turned, as so many had before. He turned toward the Bridge O’ Doom, as if Dale wasn’t there, had never been, and he began walking.

  THE MUSE OF EMPIRES LOST

  Paul Berger

  A ship had come in, and now everything would change. Jemmi had recently become adept at crouching under windows and listening around corners, so when the village went abuzz with the news, she heard all the excitement. She was hungry and lonely, and she thought of Port-Town and the opportunities that would be found there now, and she left the village before light. She went with only the briefest pang of homesickness, and she went by the marsh trail rather than the main road, because if she had met any of her neighbors along the way, they would have stoned her.

  The path was swallowed up by the murky water sooner than she expected, and the gray silt sucked at Jemmi’s worn straw zori with each step. Poor old Sarasvati, always laboring to bestow ease and prosperity upon her people, and always falling a bit more behind. These were supposed to be fields, but the marshes stretched closer to their houses each year. She couldn’t even get any decent fish to breed there. In the village they clucked their tongues and said that was old Sara’s nanos going, as if anyone knew what that meant or could do anything about it. But sometimes you could melt handfuls of this silt down and chip it into very sharp little blades that would hold their edge for a shave or two and could be bartered for a bite to eat. Sometimes you could see it slowly writhe in your hand.

  Now that the village had turned against her, Sara was Jemmi’s closest and only chum. When Jemmi was at her most alone she would sit quietly and concentrate on a tiny still spot deep in her center and maybe think a few words in her heart, and a spark would answer, and a huge warm and beloved feeling would spread through her. She knew that was Sara speaking to her. Everyone wanted Sara to listen to them, but Sara barely ever spoke back to anyone.

  By midday Jemmi struck a road, and the next morning she reached PortTown. Her parents had taken her there once when she was little, so she already knew to expect the tumult and smells and narrow streets packed with new faces, but the sheer activity spun her around as she tried to track everything that moved through her line of sight. Jewel-green quetzals squabbled and huddled together under the eaves of high-peaked shingled roofs, and peacocks dodged rickshaw wheels and pecked at the dust and refuse in the streets. There was plenty of food here if she could get it, and fine things to own, stacked in stalls and displayed in shop windows.

  She was drawn most of all, though, to the mass of humanity that surrounded her—she could practically taste their thoughts and needs as they swirled by. The townsfolk were thronging towards the old wharf, and she let herself be swept up with them. Sometimes men or women brushed against her or jostled her without a glance or a second thought, and she grinned to herself at the rare physical contact.

  An ambitious vendor had piled bread and fruit into a wooden cart at the edge of the street to catch the passers-by, and Jemmi stopped in front of him.

  “Neh, what ship is it?” she asked above the din.

  “Haven’t you heard, then?” he replied. “It’s Albiorix!”

  Jemmi thought he was mocking her until she caught the man’s exultant smile. Albiorix—no ship had stopped here for more than a generation, and now this! Albiorix was the stuff of legend, a proud giant among ships, braver and broader-ranging than any other. If Sarasvati was on Albiorix’s route now, they would all be rich again.

  “Who was on board, then?”

  “No one’s seen them yet. Looks like they’ll be debarking any minute.”

  Jemmi checked her urge to race off towards the wharf. She put her hand on the vendor’s forearm and smiled her warmest smile, and as he stood distracted and fuddled she swept an apple and two rolls into her pockets. She turned and ran before the man’s head cleared.

  The crowds along the quay were packed tight and jostling viciously, but Jemmi plunged in and no one noticed or resisted as she slipped right up to the barrier. A boy was standing near her. He was clear-eyed and honey-skinned and probably about two years older than she was. Judging from his clothes and the rich dagger that hung at his belt—the hilt bound with real wire—his family was quite well-to-do. With visions of regular meals and a roof over her head, she sidled towards him. The boy looked over her rags and begrimed face and straightaway disregarded her. Jemmi held firm and let the motion of the crowd press him close to her. The back of his hand brushed against her bare wrist, and he unconsciously jerked it away. She shifted her weight so that she was a fraction closer to him. The next time he moved he touched her again, and she imagined that he was not quite so quick to pull back.

  The third time they touched she kept her hand against his, and the boy did not pull away. He turned shyly to Jemmi.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name’s Roycer.”

  At that moment, the entire length of Sarasvati trembled with a gentle impact, and the crowd’s cheer was deafening.

  Outside, languid in the vacuum of space, Albiorix stroked Sarasvati’s stony mantle with the fluid tip of a miles-long tentacle—an overture and an offering. Sarasvati recalled Albiorix of old, and his strength and boldness were more than she could have hoped for. She extended a multitude of soft arms from deep within the moonlet that served as her shelter and her home, and entwined them with his. She dwarfed him as she embraced him. Her tentacles brushed the length of his nacreous spiral shell, and in the silence dizzying patterns of light flashed across both their surfaces. The colors matched and melded, until they raced along his arms and up hers and back again. Sarasvati was receptive, and eager to welcome Albiorix after his lonely journey across the vastness. He disentangled himself and drifted down to the tip of her long axis, and they both spread their arms wide as he clasped his head to the orifice there. She released her great outer valve for him, and he gently discharged his passengers and all their cargo. Sarasvati accepted them gracefully, and in return, flooded his interior with fresh atmosphere from her reserves. Now duty and foreplay had been dispensed with, and they embraced again in earnest, spinning in the void.

  The sphincter on Sarasvati’s inner surface dilated open, and the passengers off Albiorix stepped through into Port-Town, armed and alert. The arrivals were well aware that half the inhabitants of any orbital would tear newcomers apart just to see what they carried in their packs, and they hustled down the quay in tight phalanxes that bristled with weapons. They no doubt came from richer lands—Jemmi noticed the glint of steel in the trappings of their spears and crossbows as they passed. One group brandished old-style plasma rifles, but Jemmi assumed that was a bluff; everyone knew the smart electronics hadn’t worked since the day the Cosmopolis fell. The crowds parted grudgingly around this threat, and Roycer was pushed closer to Jemmi, his gaze never leaving her face.

  The rest of the townsfolk watched the arrivals’ every move as they sought shelter in the winding streets. Those that could strike deals with families or inns to harbor them were likely to survive. This must have been an especially long voyage, Jemmi thought, or else star travel must be harder than anyone remembered. These arrivals all looked sunken-cheeked and worn down as if drained, or haunted by something they could not name.

  One last traveler stepped through into Sarasvati, alone. He was the oddest thing Jemmi had ever s
een. He was tall and slightly stooped and unnaturally pale—both his skin and his sparse hair were the same shade of thin gruel—and although at a distance Jemmi assumed he was very old, as he approached Jemmi realized she could not guess his age at all. His only luggage was a canister that hung from his shoulder on a strap. He walked unarmed along the barrier and Jemmi was certain he would be snatched up, yet no one in the throng made a move towards him or particularly noted his presence. He took his time, scanning the faces and garments as if looking for something. He stopped in front of Jemmi and her boy, and smiled. His teeth were the same color as his skin, and were all broad and very large in his gums.

  “You’ll do,” he told the boy. “Shouldn’t we be getting home now?”

  Wordlessly, the boy nodded and released Jemmi’s hand. He slipped under the barrier and joined the traveler, and led him down the quay into town.

  Jemmi, stunned with amazement and impotent wrath, stood there slackjawed until long after they left her sight.

  With the excitement over, the crowd melted away, and Jemmi saw no chances to get close to anyone else. She spent the rest of the day sidestepping traffic and looking into windows, and she was able to grab a bit more to eat in the same manner she had acquired breakfast. After dusk one or two men on the darkened streets spoke to her, but they didn’t look useful and she didn’t like what their voices implied, so after that she took to helping people ignore her. That meant she couldn’t get indoors to sleep, but luckily Sara was still too distracted with her beau to make a proper rain. Jemmi spent the night curled at the foot of a weather-beaten neighborhood shrine at the end of a narrow alley. It was certainly not what she had hoped for when she had decided to make the journey to town, but it was not too different from what she had left behind. Amongst the incense ash and candle-stubs and tentacled figurines, some housewife had left a rag doll dressed in a new set of toddler’s clothes, a supplication to Sara for an easy birth and a healthy baby. The offering of a portion of a family meal that sat alongside it had barely gone cold, but some things were sacred, and Jemmi was not tempted to take it.