Hey, Fritz is fine with Willie—as long as Willie does what Fritz wants. “Why don’t you come back to my place?” he says? “We can talk about it some more there.” I can talk you around there are the words behind the words.
Willie doesn’t hear the words behind the words. Willie is a trusting soul, like darn near everybody else in the future. He’s not stupid, either, not exactly. But he’s different from people in the old days. So is everybody else in the future. He smiles and goes, “Okey-doke.”
Yeah, everybody in the future is different from the way people were back in the old days. Only some are less different than others. Fritz, for instance. He isn’t nearly different enough. If he were, his answering smile couldn’t have so much barracuda in it. “Come on, then,” he says.
“Willie, no,” a Voice says out of the air. Willie can stop Joe from misbehaving when he talks a certain way. The Voice stops him just like that. Then it goes on, “Fritz, you are sanctioned. Again. Go home. Now. By yourself, except for your dogs.”
Fritz’s heavy-featured face falls. “Aw, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says. “Swear I didn’t.” He shouldn’t be able to protest even that much, but he does.
“Bullshit.” The Voice may be automated, but that doesn’t mean it came to town on a turnip truck. “The sanction will go up because it’s bullshit, too. Go home, I told you. With your dogs. Without Willie. Get moving right this minute, or I’ll see what else I can tack on.”
Fritz goes. All the other choices are worse. If looks could kill, Willie’d be lying there dead on the sidewalk. So would Joe. And so, especially, would the Voice. It isn’t what you’d call corporeal, but Fritz doesn’t care.
“I don’t think he meant anything bad by it,” Willie tells the Voice.
It doesn’t sigh. It doesn’t sound pleased, either. It’s not designed that way. It just says, “I know you don’t, Willie. That’s why I’m here. Nothing’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around. And I am.”
Not quite I am that I am. Close enough for government work. Oh, wait. This is the future. No government, or not hardly, anyway. Willie and Joe go on with their walk. They’re happy. Hey, what else are they gonna be?
Genes. It’s all in the genes. Once upon a time, a comic with deciduous top cover complained, “They say going bald is in your genes. I got hair in my jeans. It’s hair on my head I want!”
Usually, what they say is a crock of crap. Not this time. The difference between the hair apparent and the hair presumptive is in our genes.
So are lots of other things.
Dmitri Belyaev bred for tame foxes. A long, long time ago, Ugh bred for tame wolves, even though he might not have realized that was what he was doing. Belyaev—and Ugh—got other things, too. They got short tails and floppy ears and white patches of fur and short muzzles and the like. They got them … ? Let’s hear it, people!
That’s right! In the genes.
One of the places they particularly got them was in a DNA sequence near a gene labeled WBSCR17. This stretch of DNA shows a lot of differences between wolves and dogs, where most parts of the genome don’t.
People have this WBSCR17 gene, too. Back in the day, when something with it went wrong, the people it went wrong in were born with a genetic disease called Williams-Beuren syndrome. They looked kind of, well, elfy-welfy. The bridge of their nose was abridged, if you know what I mean. And they were the friendliest, most gregarious, most trusting people you ever saw in all your born days. They really, really got into music, too.
In a world where everybody wasn’t just like that, they were friendly and gregarious and trusting to a fault. People with Williams-Beuren also had other troubles. Most of them were retarded, some a bit, some more than a bit. They were extra prone to heart disease.
But suppose changes in the human WBSCR17 gene are a feature, not a bug. You don’t need to suppose, of course, on account of that’s where we’re at. It’s where we’ve been at since the old days turned into what we’ve got now, however long ago that was. I said it before and I’ll say it again—since we are the way we are now, things like how long ago aren’t really such a big deal.
After the last Big Fracas, everybody who was left could see that one more fracas and nobody would be left any more. Everybody could see that, if people stayed the way old-time people were, one more fracas was coming, too, sure as God made little green traffic lights.
Human nature doesn’t change? Tell it to Belyaev’s ghost. Tell it to his foxes, the most popular pets in the not-quite-new world. Change the genome and you change the fox—or the human. Change the human, and you change human nature.
Change WBSCR17 the way they could after the last Big Fracas, make sure the change goes through the whole surviving population (not too hard, because it wasn’t what you’d call big), and what you get is …
You get the upside of Williams-Beuren without the downside. No retardation. No heart disease. You get friendly, trusting, considerate, kindly people. All day, every day. They think as well as old-style humans, but not just like ’em. John Campbell would love them and hate them at the same time.
You get Willie, who’s every bit as domesticated as Joe, and who likes it every bit as much. John Campbell’s been dead one hell of a long time. That’s kind of the point, too.
Fritz? Hey, things aren’t perfect even in this best (or at least most peaceable) of all possible worlds. Mighty good, but not perfect. Dogs have been domesticated for upwards of 15,000 years. Once in a while, they still come out wolfish. Their genes get a funny roll of the dice, and we call ’em throwbacks. We call ’em trouble, too. If we can help it, they don’t get to go swimming in the next gen’s gene pool.
And neither will Fritz. The Voice and the other automated safety systems that watch out for things new-model people don’t commonly worry about will make sure of that. Nothing cruel, mind you. Fritz can have as much fun as anybody else. But he’s the end of his line. If you think that’s sad, if his drives remind you of your own, you know what? That’s also kind of the point.
Willie and Joe keep walking in the sun. Joe isn’t sorry to see the last of Fritz’s big old dogs, no sir. Willie is sorry Fritz got sanctioned. He can’t imagine that happening to him. Hardly anybody these days can imagine stuff like that. Hardly anybody, but not quite nobody. That’s how come the Voice is still around.
Here comes Keiko a little while on, heading his way. Keiko is just the cutest thing Willie’s ever seen. Even if you don’t look elfy-welfy yourself, you’d think Keiko was hot. Trust me. You would. If you do look like that … Willie smiles most of the time any which way. But he smiles now. Oh, yeah. So would you, pal.
Keiko’s got a little fox on a leash, too. Daisy Mae is as cute a fox as Keiko is a girl. Joe’s not supposed to appreciate Daisy Mae the way Willie appreciates Keiko. And he doesn’t, not really. But he sortakinda whimpers, way down deep in his throat, as if he almost remembers he’s forgotten something.
“Hey!” Willie says, and gives Keiko a hug. She squeezes him back. It feels so good. Let’s hear it for gregariousness. Yeah!
“What’s up with Fritz?” Keiko asks. People have ways of hearing about shit. It’s the future. They don’t even need smartphones to do it.
Willie was there. It was happening to him. But he doesn’t know a whole lot more about it than Keiko does. What he does know, he doesn’t hardly understand. If he did … Hell, if he did, he’d be Fritz. Bunches of people would be Fritz. And then we’d end up in the soup all over again.
So Willie shrugs a little. “I guess he was kinda on, you know, the selfish side of things.” He looks down at his toes when the bad word comes out. I don’t care if it’s the future or not. There’ll always be bad words. Being bad is one of the things words are for.
Keiko gasps a little. She knows about Fritz. If you live around there, you have to know about Fritz. That doesn’t mean you enjoy thinking about him. Except
for gossip’s sake, of course. If gossip’s not the flip side of gregariousness, what is it?
“Too bad,” she says at last. “Oh, too bad!”
“Yeah, it is.” Willi nods. “But what can you do?” He knows what he wants to do. You bet he does. “Feel like comin’ back to my place? We can let the critters run around in the back yard while we fuck.” That’s not a bad word any more. It hasn’t been for a long, long time.
“Sure!” Keiko says. They walk back hand in hand. Some of human nature’s changed, uh-huh. Some, but not all. If that had changed, there wouldn’t be any humans left to have natures any more. There almost weren’t. But it’s taken care of. It sure is. Look at Willi and Keiko if you don’t believe me. Look at their frolicking foxes.
Poor Fritz.
About the Author
Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This collection includes works of fiction, in which names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Father of the Groom” first appeared in John Joseph Adams, ed., The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (Tor Books: New York, 2013).
“We Install” first appeared in Analog, January-February 2013.
“Alternate History: the How-to of What Might Have Been” first appeared in Michael Knost, ed., Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy (Seventh Star Press: 2013).
“Drang von Osten” first appeared in Martin H. Greenberg, ed., First to Fight (Jove Books: New York, 1999).
“Hoxbomb” first appeared in Alien Crimes, Mike Resnick, ed., (SFBC: New York, 2007).
“Logan’s Law” appears here for the first time.
“The Ring and I” first appeared in Karen Haber, ed., Meditations on Middle Earth (St. Martin’s: New York, 2001).
“Birdwitching” first appeared in Esther Friesner, ed., Witch Way to the Mall (Baen Books: New York, 2009).
“Down in the Bottomlands” first appeared in Analog, January 1993.
“The Thing in the Woods” first appeared in Martin H. Greenberg and Sarah Hoyt, eds., Something Magic This Way Comes (DAW Books: New York, 2008).
“Perspectives on Chanukah” appears in print here for the first time.
“Under St. Peter’s” first appeared in Darrell Schweitzer, ed., The Secret History of Vampires (DAW books: New York, 2007).
“It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and We Feel Fine” first appeared in Analog, March 2013.
Copyright © 2015 by Harry Turtledove
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-0940-9
Published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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