A Small Anthoogy of Science Fiction

by Flyboy707

  “I’m sorry, Keith,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Keith. “So am I.” There were tears on his face. Keith was never ashamed to cry.

  There was no singing that night.

  * * *

  Winters didn’t time-trip. He sent men on “search expeditions” into the past, all very carefully planned for minimum risk and maximum reward.

  We didn’t get any doctor out of it. Rick made three trips back without coming up with any useful memories. But one of the guys remembered some valuable stuff about medicinal herbs after a trip back to a bio lab, and another jaunt recalled some marginally good memories about electricity.

  Winters was still optimistic, though. He’d turned to interviewing by then, to decide who should get to use the chronine next. He was very careful, very thorough, and he always asked the right questions. No one went back without his okay. Pending that approval, the chronine was stored in the new cabin, where Pete kept an eye on it.

  And Keith? Keith sang. I was afraid, the night of the argument, that he might give up singing, but I was wrong.

  He couldn’t give up song, any more than he could give up Sandi. He returned to concert rock the very next evening, and sang longer and harder than ever before. The night after that he was even better.

  During the day, meanwhile, he went about his work with a strained cheerfulness. He smiled a lot, and talked a lot, but he never said anything much. And he never mentioned chronine, or time-tripping, or the argument.

  Or Sandi.

  He still spent his nights out by the creek, though. The weather was getting progressively colder, but Keith didn’t seem to mind. He just brought out a few blankets and his sleeping bag, and ignored the wind, and the chill, and the increasingly frequent rains.

  I went out with him once or twice to sit and talk. Keith was cordial enough. But he never brought up the subjects that really mattered, and I couldn’t bring myself to force the conversations to places he obviously didn’t want to do. We wound up discussing the weather and like subjects.

  These days, instead of his cigar box, Keith brought his guitar out to the creek. He never played it when I was there, but I heard him once or twice from a distance, when I was halfway back to the common house after one of our fruitless talks. No singing, just music. Two songs, over and over again. You know which two.

  And after a while, just one. “Me and Bobby McGee.” Night after night, alone and obsessed, Keith played that song, sitting by a dry creek in a barren forest. I’d always liked the song, but now I began to fear it, and a shiver would go through me whenever I heard those notes on the frosty autumn wind.

  Finally, one night, I spoke to him about it. It was a short conversation, but I think it was the only time, after the argument, that Keith and I ever really reached each other.

  I’d come with him to the creek, and wrapped myself in a heavy woolen blanket to ward off the cold, wet drizzle that was dripping from the skies. Keith lay against his tree, half into his sleeping bag, with his guitar on his lap.

  He didn’t even bother to shield it against the damp, which bothered me.

  We talked about nothing, until at last, I mentioned his lonely creek concerts. He smiled. “You know why I play that song,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I wish you’d stop.”

  He looked away. “I will. After tonight. But tonight I play it, Gary. Don’t argue, please. Just listen. The song is all I have left now, to help me think. And I’ve needed it, "cause I been thinking a lot.”

  “I warned you about thinking,” I said jokingly.

  But he didn’t laugh. “Yeah. You were right, too. Or I was, or Shakespeare…whoever you want to credit the warning to. Still, sometimes you can’t help thinking. It’s part of being human. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “I know. So I think with my music. No water left to think by, and the stars are all covered. And Sandi’s gone.

  Really gone now. You know, Gary…if I kept on, day to day, and didn’t think so much, I might forget her. I might even forget what she looked like. Do you think Pete remembers his chick?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And you’ll remember Sandi. I’m sure of that. But maybe not quite so much…and maybe that’s for the best. Sometimes it’s good to forget.”

  Then he looked at me. Into my eyes. “But I don’t want to forget, Gary. And I won’t. I won’t.”

  And then he began to play. The same song. Once. Twice. Three times. I tried to talk, but he wasn’t listening.

  His fingers moved on, fiercely, relentlessly. And the music and the wind washed away my words.

  Finally I gave up and left. It was a long walk back to the common house, and Keith’s guitar stalked me through the drizzle.

  * * *

  Winters woke me in the common house, shaking me from my bunk to face a grim, gray dawn. His face was even grayer. He said nothing; he didn’t want to wake the others, I guess. He just beckoned me outside.

  I yawned and stretched and followed him. Just outside the door, Winters bent and handed me a broken guitar.

  I looked at it blankly, then up at him. My face must have asked the question.

  “He used it on Pete’s head,” Winters said. “And took the chronine. I think Pete has a mild concussion, but he’ll probably be all right. Lucky. He could be dead, real easy.”

  I held the guitar in my hands. It was shattered, the wood cracked and splintered, several strings snapped. It must have been a hell of a blow. I couldn’t believe it. “No,” I said. “Keith…no, he couldn’t …”

  “It’s his guitar,” Winters pointed out. “And who else would take the chronine?” Then his face softened. “I’m sorry, Gary. I really am. I think I understand why he did it. Still, I want him. Any idea where he could be?”

  I knew, of course. But I was scared. “What…what will you do?”

  “No punishment,” he said. “Don’t worry. I just want the chronine back. We’ll be more careful next time.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “But nothing happens to Keith. I’ll fight you if you go back on your word, and the others will too.”

  He just looked at me, very sadly, like he was disappointed that I’d mistrust him. He didn’t say a thing. We walked the mile to the creek in silence, me still holding the guitar.

  Keith was there, of course. Wrapped in his sleeping bag, the cigar box next to him. There were a few bags left.

  He’d used only one.

  I bent to wake him. But when I touched him and rolled him over, two things hit me. He’d shaved off his beard.

  And he was very, very cold.

  Then I noticed the empty bottle.

  We’d found other drugs with the chronine, way back when. They weren’t even guarded. Keith had used sleeping pills.

  I stood up, not saying a word. I didn’t need to explain. Winters had taken it all in very quickly. He studied the body and shook his head.

  “I wonder why he shaved?” he said finally.

  “I know,” I said. “He never wore a beard in the old days, when he was with Sandi.”

  “Yes,” said Winters. “Well, it figures.”

  “What?”

  “The suicide. He always seemed unstable.”

  “No, Lieutenant,” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong, Keith didn’t commit suicide.”

  Winters frowned. I smiled.

  “Look,” I said. “If you did it, it would be suicide. You think chronine is only a drug for dreaming. Bui Keith figured it for a time machine. He didn’t kill himself. That wasn’t his style. He just went back to his Sandi. And this time, he made sure he stayed there.”

  Winters looked back at the body. “Yes,” he said. “Maybe so.” He paused. “For his sake, I hope that he was right.”

  * * *

  The years since then have been good ones, I guess. Winters is a better leader than I was. The time-trips never turned up any knowledge worth a damn, but the search expeditions proved fruitful. There are more than two hundred people in t
own now, most of them people that Winters brought in.

  It’s a real town, too. We have electricity and a library, and plenty of food. And a doctor—a real doctor that Winters found a hundred miles from here. We got so prosperous that the Sons of the Blast heard about us and came back for a little fun. Winters had his militia beat them off and hunt down the ones who tried to escape.

  Nobody but the old commune people remember Keith. But we still have singing and music. Winters found a kid named Ronnie on one of his trips, and Ronnie has a guitar of his own. He’s not in Keith’s league, of course, but he tries hard, and everybody has fun. And he’s taught some of the youngsters how to play.

  Only thing is, Ronnie likes to write his own stuff, so we don’t hear many of the old songs. Instead we get postwar music. The most popular tune, right now, is a long ballad about how our army wiped out the Sons of the Blast.

  Winters says that’s a healthy thing; he talks about new music for a new civilization. And maybe he has something. In time, I’m sure, there will be a new culture to replace the one that died. Ronnie, like Winters, is giving us tomorrow.

  But there’s a price.

  The other night, when Ronnie sang, I asked him to do “Me and Bobby McGee.” But nobody knew the words.

  THE FOUNTAIN OF AGE

  NANCY KRESS

  INTRODUCTION

  “Fountain of Age” was first published in the July 2007 edition of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

  It won the 2007 Nebula Award for Best Novella and was nominated again in 2008 for the Hugo Award.

  In this science fiction novella by Nancy Kress, it details the life of a wealthy, reformed criminal who tries to track down his famous long lost lover.

  With some rather interesting methods and help along the way…

  The Fountain of Age

  I had her in a ring. In those days, you carried around pieces of a person. Not like today.

  A strand of hair, a drop of blood, a lip-sticked kiss on paper—those things were real. You could put them in a locket or pocket case or ring, you could carry them around, you could fondle them. None of this hologram stuff.

  Who can treasure laser shadows? Or the nanotech” recreations—even worse. Fah. Did the Master of the Universe “re-create the world after it got banged up a little? Never. He made do with the original, like a sensible person.

  So I had her in a ring. And I had the ring for forty-two years before it was eaten by the modern world. Literally eaten, so tell me where is the justice in that?

  And oh, she was so beautiful! Not gene-mod misshapen like these modern girls, with their waists so skinny and their behinds huge and those repulsive breasts. No, she was natural, a real woman, a goddess. Black hair wild as stormy water, olive skin, green eyes. I remember the exact shade of green. Not grass, not emerald, not moss.

  Her own shade. I remember. I—

  “Grampops?”

  —met her while I was on shore leave on Cyprus. The Mid-East war had just ended, one of the wars, who can keep them all straight? I met Daria in a taverna and we had a week together. Nobody will ever know what glory that week was. She was a nice girl, too, even if she was a . . . People do what they must to survive. Nobody knows that better than me. Daria—

  “Grampops!”

  —gave me a lock of hair and a kiss pressed on paper. Back then I kept them in a cheap plastolux bubble, all I could afford, but later I had the hair and tiny folded paper set into a ring. Much later, when I had money and Miriam had died and—

  “Dad!”

  And that’s how it started up again. With my son, my grandchildren. Life just never knows when enough is enough.

  “Dad, the kids spoke to you. Twice.”

  “So this creates an obligation for me to answer?”

  My son Geoffrey sighs. The boys—six and eight, what business does a fifty-five-year-old man have with such young kids, but Gloria is his second wife—have vanished into the hall. They come, they go. We sit on a Sunday afternoon in my room—a nice room, it should be for what I pay—in the Silver Star Retirement Home. Every Sunday Geoff comes, we sit, we stare at each other. Sometimes Gloria comes, sometimes the boys, sometimes not. The whole thing is a strain.

  Then the kids burst back through the doorway, and this time something follows them in.

  “Reuven, what the shit is that?”

  Geoffrey says, irritated, “Don’t curse in front of the children, and…”

  “Shit is cursing? Since when?”

  “…and it’s Bobby, not ‘Reuven.’”

  “It’s ‘Zaydeh’, not ‘Grampops’, and I could show you what cursing is. Get that thing away from me!”

  “Isn’t it astronomical?” Reuven says. “I just got it!”

  The thing is trying to climb onto my lap. It’s not like their last pet, the pink cat that could jump to the ceiling.

  Kangaroo genes in it, such foolishness. This one isn’t even real, it’s a ‘bot of some kind, like those retro metal dogs the Japanese were so fascinated with seventy years ago. Only this one just sort of suggests a dog, with sleek silver lines that sometimes seem to disappear.

  “It’s got stealth coating!” Eric shouts. “You can’t see it!”

  I can see it, but only in flashes when the light hits the right way. The thing leaps onto my lap and I flap my arms at it and try to push it off, except that by then it’s not there. Maybe.

  Reuven yells, like this is an explanation, “It’s got microprocessors!”

  Geoff says in his stiff way, “The ‘bot takes digital images of whatever is behind it and continuously transmits them in holo to the front, so that at any distance greater than—

  “This is what you spend my money on?”

  He says stiffly, “My money now. Some of it, anyway.”

  “Not because you earned it, boychik.”

  Geoffrey’s thin lips go thinner. He hates it when I remind him who made the money. I hate it when he forgets.

  “Dad, why do you have to talk like that? All that affected folksy stuff—you never talked it when I was growing up, and it’s hardly your actual background, is it? So why?”

  For Geoffrey, this is a daring attack. I could tell him the reason, but he wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t understand.

  Not how this “folksy speech started, or why, or what use it was to me. Not even how a habit can settle in after it’s no use, and you cling to it because otherwise you might lose who you were, even if who you were wasn’t so great. How could Geoff understand a thing like that? He’s only fifty-five.

  Suddenly Eric shouts, “Rex is gone!” Both boys barrel out the door of my room. I see Mrs. Petrillo inching down the hall beside her robo-walker. She shrieks as they run past her, but at least they don’t knock her over.

  “Go after them, Geoff, before somebody gets hurt!

  “They won’t hurt anybody, and neither will Rex.

  “And you know this how? A building full of old people, tottering around like cranes on extra stilts, and you think—“

  “Calm down, Dad, Rex has built-in object avoidance and—

  “You’re telling me about software? Me, boychik?”

  Now he’s really mad. I know because he goes quiet and stiff. Stiffer, if that’s possible. The man is a carbon-fiber rod.

  “It’s not like you actually developed any software, Dad. You only stole it. It was I who took the company legitimate and furthermore—“

  But that’s when I notice that my ring is gone.

  * * *

  Daria was Persian, not Greek or Turkish or Arab. If you think that made it any easier for me to look for her, you’re crazy. I went back after my last tour of duty ended and I searched, how I searched. Nobody in Cyprus knew her, had ever seen her, would admit she existed.

  No records: “destroyed in the war.”

  Our last morning we’d gone down to a rocky little beach. We’d left Nicosia the day after we met to go to this tiny coastal town that the war hadn’t ruined too much. On the beach we made love wi
th the smooth pebbles pocking our tushes, first hers and then mine. Daria cut a lock of her wild hair and pressed a kiss onto paper.

  Little pink wildflowers grew in the scrub grass. We both cried. I swore I’d come back.

  And I did, but I couldn’t find her. One more prostitute on Cyprus—who tracked such people? Eventually I had to give up. I went back to Brooklyn, put the hair and kiss—such red lipstick, today they all wear gold, they look like flaking lamps—in the plastolux. Later, I hid the bubble with my Army uniform, where Miriam couldn’t find it. Poor Miriam—by her own lights, she was a good wife, a good mother. It’s not her fault she wasn’t Daria. Nobody was Daria.

  Until now, of course, when hundreds of people are, or at least partly her. Hundreds? Probably thousands.

  Anybody who can afford it.

  * * *

  “My ring! My ring is gone!”

  “Your ring?”

  “My ring!” Surely even Geoffrey has noticed that I’ve worn a ring day and night for the last forty-two years?

  He noticed. “It must have fallen off when you were flapping your arms at Rex.”

  This makes sense. I’m skinnier now, arms like coat hangers, and the ring is—was—loose. I feel around on my chair: nothing. Slowly I lower myself to the floor to search.

  “Careful, Dad!” Geoffrey says and there’s something bad in his voice. I peer up at him, and I know. I just know.

  “It’s that . . . that dybbuk! That ‘bot!”

  He says, “It vacuums up small objects. But don’t worry, it keeps them in an internal depository. . . . Dad, what is that ring? Why is it so important?”

  Now his voice is suspicious. Forty-two years it takes for him to become suspicious, a good show of why he could never have succeeded in my business. But I knew that when he was seven. And why should I care now?