The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  When a wise man pretends to be more ignorant than any camp child, he must have a reason, though it was often the way with Wasichu that they mixed deep wisdom with childish lies. Out of respect for Teacher Miller, Stays Behind also feigned ignorance.

  Instead of speaking, she slid a thoughtfully folded scrap of paper across the unpainted desk top. The paper lay between them, amid the wood grains, till Miller picked it up. He read it, folded it, unfolded it, and reread it, as if the paper were somehow both familiar and out of place.

  The paper itself was plain enough. It was torn from a notebook that he himself had handed out. It was the series of equations scrawled across its surface that presented a problem. Their meaning seemed clear. The first dealt with velocity, the second with time, and the third with mass. What Miller couldn’t understand was how they’d gotten onto this particular piece of paper.

  He looked at the Lakota girl, who seemed to be searching for something in her coffee cup. “Did you write this?”

  She shook her head. “Yellow Legs wrote it.”

  “Yellow Legs? The Cheyenne medicine man that you live with?”

  This time she nodded.

  “How could he have written these formulas?” The question was not addressed to the girl—any answer she gave would only deepen the mystery.

  Stays Behind strove to speak straight. “I told Yellow Legs what you said about light. He listened, and that night he had a vision. Next morning he took my notebook and pencil, and drew what he had seen.”

  Miller watched heat rise from the stove and waver in the air. Ice was on the windows, beveled bits of frosted crystal that started next to the frames and grew out across the glass. Everything was quite normal, except for the paper in his hand. In a matter of minutes Miller invented and rejected a number of explanations. On his shelf he could see Henry James’s new Principles of Psychology and two older volumes by Spencer bearing the same name. They gave adequate explanations for dreams and visions, but not for the formulas he was holding.

  “What do they mean?”

  Miller looked back at the formulas. “The first is a mathematical expression of what I said before. The speed of light will remain the same no matter how fast the observer is moving. The second deals with time and offers a partial explanation for the Michelson-Morley results. It also implies that, if the speed of light were exceeded, time would be reversed. The last formula deals with mass. It says that objects having mass may never reach the speed of light, that objects without mass travel at the speed of light, and that objects with imaginary mass always exceed the speed of light.”

  Looking up from his hand, he saw that he had lost his audience. “You don’t understand any of this, do you?”

  She gave polite agreement.

  “That’s too bad. If you had written this, it would have made me an excellent teacher, and you an even better pupil. Instead, I must deal with a medicine man whose visions make mathematical sense.”

  The girl looked guilty. “Is that bad?”

  Miller paused and lost his chance to answer. The rear door swung open, and a tall, blue-coated Wasichu entered the room.

  Stays Behind put down the cup, as though it held poison, and began to back out of the room.

  Captain Wallace tipped his hat to the retreating girl, revealing a long lowland Scots face, fair hair, pale eyes, and a sad, drooping moustache. His grin remained fixed on the girl till she was out the door, then he turned it on Miller. “Wasting your time.”

  It took Miller a moment to harness his Quaker temper. “The government pays me to teach Indians. I was talking mathematics with a pupil. Anything else would have been a waste of time.”

  Wallace warmed his hands by rubbing them gleefully over the stove. “And exceptional pupils deserve extra instruction? The government pays me to kill Indians, but I make my exceptions, like as not for the same reason you do.” His hand went for the coffee. “Since we’re almost in the same line of work, can I bum some government coffee off you?”

  Miller shrugged and watched Wallace pour with a professional ease that left him envious and irritated.

  Captain Wallace added whiskey to the cup from a field canteen. “Take a word from a fellow who’s been at his job longer—don’t lift her skirt, you’ll end up short an arm.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Quaker, if you don’t, then you’re the only one.” Wallace swished his coffee and whiskey together. “Savages ain’t got our sense of shame. Every kid on the Agency knows she stays after class. Don’t they call her Stays Behind?”

  Miller hid behind his own cup. “Children will always—”

  “Don’t let it shame you. Doesn’t shame her. But remember she’s spoken for. Like as not she’ll marry her brother-in-law, Handsome Dog.”

  “Brother-in-law?”

  “Sure, he’s Indian Police, getting enough government money for two women. If taking two sisters at the same time shocks you, then you still got a lot to learn about the Sioux. They figure what’s good for one sister is good for the other. Just ain’t got our sense of shame.”

  Wallace sipped from his cup and cocked his head towards the door through which Stays Behind had left. “You probably think of her as some little girl, but she thinks of herself as a Lakota woman.”

  Miller’s hand closed around the paper. “That child is modest to a fault.”

  “Sure,” Wallace said, nodding, “like any Sioux woman should be, but that’s a pose. Underneath that modesty, she’s a right proper little savage, without a lick of restraint. Decent parents would have taken a stick to her, and done her some good. Instead, her folks let her run wild when they were alive, and now they’re gone. You can bet she’s played tipi with a bunch of little bucks. She’s always had what she wanted, when she wanted it, and she thinks we’re the ones who’re shameful.”

  Miller focused on the crumpled paper. “Here, you know savages so well, explain this.”

  Wallace was an army engineer, so the form was familiar; but the meaning escaped him. “What do they mean?”

  “Yellow Legs, the old Cheyenne she lives with, saw these formulas in a vision. Problem is they make mathematical sense, and they represent a plausible solution to an important problem in physics.” Miller paused. “But perhaps the Cheyenne are noted for their knowledge of higher mathematics.”

  “Hell, no proper Cheyenne thinks it’s decent to count higher than a thousand.” Wallace passed the paper back. “You’re making too much of this. The old fellow probably got those figures from some whiskey sutler, then drank enough to get them into his dreams.”

  The teacher shook his head. “Chances of a whiskey drummer being so deeply involved in theoretical physics are only somewhat less remote than those formulas coming from a Cheyenne medicine man. I’m afraid I’ll have to see this old man myself. Do you think Handsome Dog could take me to him?”

  Wallace’s smile faded. “Perhaps he would, but God knows if he’d get you back. That Cheyenne lives among the worst of the Ghost Dancers, with Burnt Thighs and Ogalalas who’d take a slow and painful interest in your insides. Yellow Legs talks like a medicine man, but in his younger days he was a Dog Soldier who killed more whites than the cholera. Only mathematics he knew then was counting coup.”

  The Seventh Cavalry tabs on Wallace’s uniform caught Miller’s eye. “Most people have forgotten those days.”

  “Not me. I was with Custer, attached to Reno’s battalion. When Reno ran for the river, the gunfire was so heavy that half of my troop never heard the recall. My troop commander and most of the men with him didn’t make it back across the Little Big Horn. Yellow Legs can tell you all about it when you see him. He was there. Know how he got his name?”

  “A certain discoloration of the lower limbs?”

  Wallace reached down and ran his thumb up the yellow cavalry stripe on his uniform pants. “It comes from going into battle wearing the breeches of an officer that he’d killed and scalped. While you’re looking into higher mathematics, I�
�d hate for you to find out why there’s more hair than heads in Sioux tipis.”

  The stove had gone out, and Miller felt chilled.

  Wallace watched frost gather on a window pane. “Some nights, Quaker, I close my eyes, and I’m right back in that race for the river, with Sioux and Cheyenne riding in among us, yelling, laughing, and knocking men from the saddle.”

  * * *

  In winter, the black road between the Agency and the Ghost Dance camps on White Clay Creek became a twisted icy track. When there was school, Stays Behind walked the many miles twice a day, without thinking to complain. This day she rode home in Handsome Dog’s buckboard, feeling every frozen rut. Had he not been her brother-in-law, she would have walked.

  A red sun crawled towards its grave, bleeding over the land and leaving long shadows behind. Yellow Legs had told her how the Badlands were made from Uncegila, the great mother of water monsters. Her bones had been pressed to stone by the weight of ages. Miller had even shown her smaller creatures trapped in rocks from times gone by, then had told her of huge monsters that had swum in these parts, in the days when the prairies were warm seas. She could hardly imagine how long it took to turn flesh and bone to stone, or seawater into solid land. But today Uncegila seemed freshly slain: the dying light lay in bloody rags upon her bones. This was an omen for sure, but one with no obvious meaning.

  She felt something moving under her calico dress, and the Spirit World faded. Stays Behind brought her quirt down hard on Handsome Dog’s hand. He jerked it back, sticking it into his mouth and sucking blood off the knuckles.

  “Counting coup, little warrior?”

  Handsome Dog had a proud feather rising from his wide-brimmed hat. His breast bore a blue coat and an Indian Police badge, but below the belt he wore buckskin breeches, fringed long to drag in the dust. From the waist down, he was all Ogalala.

  Stays Behind stayed silent, striving to keep in the spell of the Spirit World.

  “You act like Crazy Horse come again, not like a silly girl with rope between her legs. A spirit like that must find the old Shyela cold company.”

  “I already have a camp dog to keep me warm at night.” It made her mad to hear Handsome Dog name the dead so freely, for that was bound to bring bad luck.

  Laughing at her answer, he returned to keeping the road between the horse’s ears.

  The blood on the bones was drying. Red light darkened into purple patches of shadow. Stays Behind cast about for some sign that would give voice to her vision. Growing shadows and stone-strewn snowfields said nothing. Rows of gaunt cottonwoods lined the draws, pointing bare gray fingers at the sky. Stays Behind looked up.

  High overhead, a single goose winged its way north and west. Geese seldom go alone, and this deep into winter such birds should be flocking southward. For a time she watched the lone bird, fixing it in her mind, making sure there was no mistaking the sign. Then she asked Handsome Dog, “Do you see that goose headed north and west?”

  Her brother-in-law didn’t bother to look up. “Silly girl, no goose goes north in the Moon of Popping Trees.”

  She wished that she had walked the long way alone, then only the Spirit World would have spoken to her.

  * * *

  It was not Handsome Dog, but Stays Behind who took Miller to Yellow Leg’s lodge. She explained on the trip out what was proper in the tipi, and what was not. Sucking on rock sugar, she gave her instructions gravely.

  Miller knew to turn to his right, and to sit on Yellow Legs’s left. He knew not to look directly at his host, not to cross between his host and the fire, and not to speak directly to Stays Behind within the lodge. She entered after Miller, turning the opposite way. The south side of the lodge was for men, the north side for women.

  She couldn’t prepare him for the sights and smells. Light came only from a dim half-moon fire pit. Miller was lost in a smoky sea of dog smells, human sweat, old leather, and a pleasant aroma rising from a dark carpet of leaves. Snow and cold covered over the camp garbage and animal droppings that lay outside.

  As his sight returned, Miller noted that the lodge looked larger on the inside than it had seemed on the outside, a curious illusion. Trade blankets hanging from the lodge poles divided and darkened the tipi. Yellow Legs sat in the darkest recess, wrapped in a buffalo robe. There was a doeskin bundle across his knees. It was tanned white and soft with the hair off; painted blue diamonds chased red triangles across its surface.

  From the corner of Miller’s eye, Yellow Legs looked older than his sixty winters. Lines lay on his face like dark streaks in old oxblood. His eyes were hidden by a hawk nose, high cheekbones, and sad, heavy lids. Graying hair was held back by a beaded headband.

  Miller had manners enough not to speak, since his host’s mouth was shut tight as a turtle. Instead, he allowed Stays Behind to serve him a miserable mush made from dried meat and chokecherries. The meal was hard to stomach, but each bite Miller forced down encouraged Yellow Legs. Had Miller meant him harm, he would not have eaten inside the tipi.

  “Greetings, Teacher Miller.” Yellow Legs stressed teacher because Miller was a dead word with no special meaning. Miller had been warned that Yellow Legs spoke English, though no one knew where he had learned it.

  The teacher returned the greeting, and there was an awkward pause. Yellow Legs looked past where Stays Behind knelt, speaking to no one in particular. “I knew the teacher would come when she took the paper.”

  Miller took the words as meant for him, forgot his manners, and began to question as quickly as any Wasichu would. “Yes, I came. Do you know what these formulas mean?”

  Yellow Legs drew a red clay pipe from the bundle. He filled it with tobacco and red willow bark. After offering the pipe to the four directions and smoking some himself, he passed the pipe to Miller. It was dangerous to tell power stories in daylight, but smoking together would make it better.

  As Miller puffed on the pipe, Yellow Legs observed, “It is often the way with visions that their meaning is not clear. What I wrote was like the words of the Wasichu. Perhaps you can give them meaning.”

  Miller decided not to attempt an explanation of mass, velocity, and acceleration in the middle of this murky tipi. “They represent a possible solution to a particular problem that interests me.”

  “Good, then my vision has been of use to you.”

  “Yes, but what I really want to know is where the vision came from?” Miller was off on another question, without thanking Yellow Legs for the vision gift, but that was often the way with Wasichu.

  Yellow Legs drew smoke and power from his pipe. “I have had visions for many winters, and that question has also interested me.”

  “But, do you always dream in mathematical symbols?”

  “My other visions had shown me many strange things, but never such symbols. Perhaps they were meant for you, not for me.” He was hinting again that Miller might thank him.

  Miller weighed the paper in his hand. “Have your visions always turned out to be true?”

  “Truth is not easy to know. I was at the Sun Dance on the Rosebud when Sitting Bull saw many soldiers falling into camp. The world knows what followed. Was it a true vision or not?”

  As clear as if Captain Wallace were in the lodge, Miller could see the Seventh Cavalry insignia. He pushed the memory from his mind. “Do you also believe in the Ghost Dance?”

  “The Ghost Dance is a thing beyond belief or disbelief.” The clay pipe was cold, so Yellow Legs began to repack it. “Wovoka, who gave us the Ghost Dance, once made a vision. He asked each person present to look inside his hat. Many looked inside and saw blue water and a green land where the dead lived again and the buffalo had returned. All saw this except one, who saw only the inside of a hat. Which would one not believe? Would one tell the many that they did not see the Spirit World? Would one tell the one man that he did not see a hat? Visions are real—their meanings remain hidden.”

  Miller stared straight at the medicine man. “What did you see in
the hat?”

  “I saw the green land, with the Wasichu gone and the buffalo come back, but I did not see the loved ones I have lost. What that means, I do not know.”

  He paused, balancing truth and trust against possible betrayal. “Sitting Bull is coming to the Agency. Perhaps he will have an answer. His visions have always been strong.”

  Letting go of the doeskin bundle, Yellow Legs warmed gnarled fingers over the fire, which had sunk to embers glowing like cracks into the earth’s core. “I will tell you my oldest and strongest vision so you may judge its worth.” He waited till Miller nodded, then went on. “When I was young, I feared to be brave in battle. I feared to meet a Wasichu’s bullet, or to be tortured by the Crows. A medicine man told me that I must seek my own death in a vision, then I could know it and prepare for it in life.”

  Miller saw the firelight in Yellow Legs’s eyes, burning brighter and stronger than his body. “I had a most powerful vision. In this dream I saw my own death. I saw my body laid out for burial—a worn husk, wrapped in wrinkled skins. Overhead, six stars shown down, four were white and two red, yet it was full daylight.”

  Miller shifted closer to the fire also.

  “This dream gave me courage, for I felt that I might never meet death till I saw these six stars shine in daylight. From that day forward I counted many coups, feeling neither fear nor pain in battle. In the Winter of the Hundred Slain, we rode against the Wasichu. When others held back for fear of the bullet storm, I rode right in among them, seizing a Wasichu’s many-firing rifle, though he aimed and fired at me as I came up. Every dawn as I saw the stars fade, I knew this was not my day to die.”

  “Do you expect this charm to always protect you?”

  “Protect me?” Yellow Legs stood up, letting slip the buffalo robe. His body was bare to the waist, glowing red in the firelight and filling the rear of the tipi. “Look, I am without a wound. This is not a kill talk, so I won’t recount my many battles. Almost all were losing battles. I lost my family, I lost my friends. My people are gone, the buffalo are gone. Even as we speak, Wasichu make ready to cut the tall grass and plow up the prairie. The world I was born with will be no more. Yet still the stars will not shine in daylight. Each dawn I watch them, hoping that this will be the day when they do not fade.”