Year's Best SF 17

by David G. Hartwell

  Now that you have become the trusted mistress of the aviary, it is time for you to learn about this cabinet of curiosities. Being a scholar of advanced and thoughtful habits, I own a large number of these inexplicable objects. Old drawings, fossil bones, seashells, coins and medals, and, especially, many arcane bits of antique machinery. Some are rare. Most are quite horribly old. They all need to be cleaned and dusted. They break easily. Be tender, cautious, and respectful. Above all, do not peel off the labels.

  My curiosities are not mere treasures. Instead, they are wonders. Watch with the students, and you will see.

  Students, dear friends of learning and the academy: Tonight we study the justly famous “external combustion engine.” Tonight we will make one small venture in applied philosophy, revive this engine from its ancient slumbers, and cause it to work before your very eyes.

  And what does it do? you may well ask me. What is its just and useful purpose? Nobody knows. No one will ever know. No one has known that for three thousand years.

  Now my trusted assistant Sparrow will light the fire beneath the engine’s cauldron. Nothing sinister about that, a child could do it, an illiterate, a helpless alien, yes, her. Please give her a round of applause, for she is shy. That was good, Sparrow. You may sit and watch with the others now.

  Now see what marvels the world has, to show to a patient observer. Steam is boiling. Steam travels up these pipes. Angry steam flows out of these bent nozzles. This round metal bulb with the nozzles begins to spin. Slowly at first, as you observe. Then more rapidly. At greater speed, greater speed yet: tremendous, headlong, urgent, whizzing speed!

  This item from my cabinet, which seemed so humble and obscure: This is the fastest object in the whole world!

  Why does it spin so fast? Nobody knows.

  It is sufficient to know, young gentlemen, that our ancestors built fire-powered steaming devices of this kind, and they wrecked everything. They utterly wrecked the entire world. They wrecked the world so completely that we, their heirs so long after, can scarcely guess at the colossal shape of the world that they wrecked.

  You see as well, little Sparrow? Now you know what a wonder can do. When it spins and flashes, in its rapid, senseless, glittering way, you smile and clap your hands.

  In the summer, a long and severe heat came. The wisdom of the founders of Selder was proven once again.

  Every generation, some venturesome fool would state the obvious—why don’t we grow our crops outside of these glass houses? Without those pergolas, sunshades, reflectors, straw blankets, pipes, drips, pumps, filters, cranes, aqueducts, and the Cistern. That would be a hundred times cheaper and easier!

  So that error might well be attempted, and then disaster would strike. The exposed crops were shriveled by heat waves, leveled by storm gusts, eaten by airborne hordes of locusts and vast brown crawling waves of teeming mice. In endless drenching rains, the tilled soil would wash straight down the mountainside.

  In the long run, all that was not sustainable was not sustained.

  Brown dust-lightning split the angry summer sky. Roiling gray clouds blew in from the southern deserts and their dust gently settled on the shining glass of Selder. There were no more pleasant, boozy, poetic star-viewing parties. People retreated into the stony cool of the seed vaults. When they ventured out, they wore hats and goggles and wet, clinging, towel-like robes. They grumbled a great deal about this.

  Mellow Julian Nebraska made no such complaint. In times of civic adversity, it pleased him to appear serene. Despite this unwholesome heat and filth, we dwell in a city of shining glass! We may well sweat, but there is no real risk that we will starve! Let us take pride in our community’s unique character! We are the only city of the world not perched like a ghost within the sprawling ruin of some city of antiquity! Fortitude and a smiling countenance shall be the watchwords of our day!

  Julian sheltered his tender birds from the exigencies of the sky. He made much use of parasols, misting-drips, and clepsydra. The professor’s villa was modest, but its features were well considered.

  Dirt fell lavishly from the stricken sky, but Sparrow had learned the secret of soap, that mystic potion of lye, lard, ashes, and bleach. Sparrow spoke a little now, but not one word of the vulgar tongue: only comical scraps of the finest Old Proper English. Sparrow wore the clean and simple white robes that her master wore, with a sash around her waist to show that she was a woman, and a scarf around her hair to show that she was a servant. Sparrow would never look normal, but she had come to look neat and dainty.

  Julian’s enemies—and he had made some—said dark things about the controversial philosopher and his mute exotic concubine. Julian’s friends—and he had made many—affected a cosmopolitan tolerance about the whole arrangement. It was not entirely decent, they agreed, but it was, they opined, very like him.

  Julian was not a wealthy man, but he could reward his friends. His small garden was cool in the stifling heat, and Sparrow had learned to cook. Sparrow cooked highly alarming meals, with vegetables cut in fragments, and fried in a metal bowl. This was the only Selder food that Sparrow could eat without obvious pangs of disgust.

  His students ate these weird concoctions cheerily, because healthy young men ate anything. Then they ran home in darkness to boast that they had devoured marvels.

  The wicked summer heat roiled on. It was the policy of the finer folk of the court to dine on meat: mostly rabbit, guinea pig, and mice. Meat spoiled quickly.

  When he fell ill, there were rumors that the Godfather had been poisoned. No autocrat ever died without such claims. But no autocrat could live forever, either. So the old Godfather perished.

  On the very day of the old man’s death, the dusty heat wave broke. Vast torrential rains scoured the mountains. Everyone remarked on this fatal omen.

  It was time for the Godfather’s cabal to retire into the secret seed vaults, don their robes and masks, and elect the successor.

  Julian’s students had never seen a succession ritual. It was a sad and sobering time. Men who had never sought out a philosopher asked for some moral guidance.

  What on earth are we to do now? Console the grieving, feed the living, and lower the dead man into the Cistern.

  What will history say of Godfather Jimi the Seventh? That the warlike spirit of his youth had matured into a wise custodianship of the arts and crafts of peace.

  Then there were others with a darker question: What about the power?

  There Mellow Julian held his peace. He could guess well enough what would happen. There would be some jostling confusion among the forty masked Men in Red, but realistically, there were only two candidates for the Godfather’s palace. First, there was the Favorite. He was the much-preened and beloved nephew of the former Godfather, a well-meaning idiot never tested by adversity.

  There was the Other Man, who had known nothing but adversity. He had spent his career in uniform, repressing the city’s barbarian enemies. His supporters were hungry and ambitious and vulgar. He would not hesitate to grasp power by any means fair or foul. His own wife and children feared him. He was stubborn and bold, as Julian knew, because he had once been Julian’s classmate.

  Who would complain if a professor, in a time of trouble, retired into his private life? No rude brawling for the thinking man, no street marches, no shouted threats and vulgar slogans. No intrigues: instead, civility. The cleanly example of the good life. Food, drink, friends, and study. Simplicity and clarity. Humanity.

  Humanity.

  “Tonight,” said Mellow Julian, in his finest Old Proper English, “as scholars assembled in civil society, we shall study together. The general theme of our seminars is remote from all earthly strife. Because she is shining, she is gorgeous, she is lovely, she is the planet Venus. In all her many attributes.”

  Hoots and cheers and claps.

  “Young men,” said Julian, “I do not merely speak to you of the carnal Venus. You will recall that your ancestors sent flying machines to Ven
us. Electrical machines, gentleman, and they had virtual qualities. The people of antiquity observed Venus. And Mercury. And Mars. And Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. It is written that they sent their machines to observe moons and planets that we can no longer see.”

  Respectful silence.

  “We do not deny that Venus has her venereal aspects,” said Julian. “What we want to assert—as civic philosophers—is a solid framework for systematic understanding! What is a man, what is his role in the universe, under the planets and stars?

  “Consider this. If a man has a soul, then Venus must touch that soul. We all know that. But how, why? It is not enough to meander dully through our lives, vaguely thinking: ‘Venus is the brightest planet in the heavens, so surely she must have something to do with me.’ Of course the vibrations of Venus affect a man! Can any man among you deny that we live through the vibrations of the sun? Raise your hand.”

  Being used to rhetorical questions, they knew better than to raise their hands.

  “Certain students of our Academy,” said Julian, “have chosen not to attend this course of Venusian seminars. They felt that they needed to be together with their families in this difficult season … In this perilous moment in the long life of our city. Yet when we, as scholars, by deliberate policy … when we remove ourselves from the unseemly dust and mud of our civil strife … from all that hurly-burly …”

  A hand shot up in the audience.

  “Yes, Practical Jeffrey of Colorado? You have a question?”

  “Maestro, what is hurly-burly? Is that even a word? Hurly-burly doesn’t sound very Old Proper English.”

  “You make a good point as usual, Practical Jeffrey. Hurly-burly is an onomatopoeic term. That word directly arises from the sonic vibrations of the natural universe. Are there other questions about onomatopoeia, or the general persistence of some few words of Truly Ancient Greek within the structure of Old Proper English?”

  There were no such questions.

  Julian gestured beyond the row of chairs. Sparrow rose at once from her cross-legged seat on her mat.

  “You gentlemen have never witnessed a device remotely like this one,” said Julian, “for very few have. So let me frame this awful business within its rhetorical context. How did our ancestors observe Venus? As is well known to everyone, our ancestors tamed the lightning. On top of the wires in which they confined that lightning, they built yet another mystic structure, fantastic, occult, and exceedingly powerful. Their electrical wires, we can dig up in any ruin. No traces of that virtual structure remain: only certain mystical hints.

  “So we know, we must admit, very little about antique virtuality. But we do know that virtuality moved vibrations: It moved images, and light, and sound, and numbers. Tonight, for the first time in your lives, you will be seeing a projected image. Tomorrow night—if you see fit to return here—you will see that image moving. With sounds.”

  Sparrow bent her attention to the magic lantern. Julian arranged the makeshift stage. It was a taut sheet of white cotton, behind a flooring of bricks.

  Then Julian ventured through the small crowd to the aviary, where he had seen an ominous figure lurking.

  This unsought guest wore a red robe, with a faceless red hood. Everyone was cordially pretending to ignore the Man in Red. Even the youngest students knew that this was how things were done.

  “Thank you for gracing us with your presence tonight,” murmured Julian.

  “I haven’t seen that magic lantern in forty years,” said the Man in Red.

  “It consumes a very special oil, with a bright limestone powder … rare and difficult,” said Julian.

  “Are you willing,” said the Man in Red, “to pay the rare and difficult price for your failure to engage with the world?”

  “If you’re referring to the cogent matter of the succession,” said Julian cordially, “I’ve made it the policy at these civil seminars to discuss that not at all.”

  “If the Other Man takes command of the Palace,” said the Man in Red, “he will attack you. Yes, you academics. Not that you have done anything subversive or decadent! No, I wouldn’t allege that! But because your weakness invites attack. Since you are so weak, he can make an example of you.”

  Julian now had a quite good idea who the Man in Red was, but Julian gave no sign to show that. “I refuse to despair,” he said, smiling. “This is merely a change of regime. The world is not ending, sir. The world already ended a thousand years ago.”

  “Our world,” said the Man in Red, “this world we both enjoyed under the bounty of the previous Godfather, does not have to end. It’s true that the Other Man has the force of numbers on his side—because he’s forged an ignoble alliance of the greedy and the stupid. But it’s not too late for a small, bold group to preempt him.”

  “If there is trouble,” said Julian, “my students will come to harm. Because my students are brave. And bold. And idealistic. And exceedingly violent. You can start a brawl like that. Do you think you can end it?”

  “You could rally your students. These young men of fine families … Many about to lose their sinecures from the old man’s court … They trust your counsel. They adore you. Some of them more than they should, perhaps.”

  “Oh,” said Julian, “I don’t doubt I could find you one bold, bright, expendable young fool with a cloak and a dagger! But may I tell you something? Quite honestly? I spit on your cynical palace intrigues. I do. I despise them. They repel me.”

  “You quarreled with the old regime, Julian. The next regime might be kinder to you.”

  “I live simply. You have nothing that I want.”

  “I can tolerate a man of integrity,” said the Man in Red, “because the innocent men are all fools. But a man who reasserts his integrity—after what you did?—that is a bit more difficult to tolerate.”

  “Don’t let me be difficult,” said Julian. “You must have many pressing errands elsewhere.”

  “To tell the truth, I envy you,” admitted the Man in Red, with a muffled note of sadness behind his red fabric mouth-hole. “All of us envy you. We all tell each other that we would love to do just as you did: put aside the pen, take off the robes, and retire to a life of the mind. Oh yes, you do make that sound mild and humble, but this private dreamworld of yours, with these sweet little birdcages … It’s much more exciting and pleasurable than our grim, sworn duties. Your life merely seems lighthearted and self-indulgent. You have found a genuinely different way of life.”

  “My friend, yes I have, and I believe … I know that all of life could be different. Despite the darkness of the world it ruined, humanity could still transform itself. Yes, humanity could.”

  “You even have found yourself some creature comforts, lately. One of your minions bought you a mistress. I’m not sure I understand the appeal of that—for you.”

  “I rather doubt I’d understand the appeal of your mistress, either.”

  “I don’t understand that myself,” sighed the Man in Red. “A man imagines he’s cavorting like a rooster, while all the time he’s merely bleeding wealth. A mistress who cares nothing for you is an enemy in your bed. A mistress who does care for you is your hostage to fortune. A pity that my warnings were so useless. Good evening, sir.”

  The Man in Red left, with serene and measured step. The crowd parted silently before him as he approached, and it surged behind him as he left.

  Julian filtered through the crowd to Sparrow, where she knelt by the lantern, cautiously unwrapping fragile slides of painted glass.

  He gripped her by the arm and dragged her to her feet. “Sparrow will sing tonight!” he announced, pulling her toward the stage. “Sparrow will sing her very best song for you! It’s very curious and unusual and antique! I believe it maybe the oldest song in the whole world.” He lowered his trembling voice. “Go on, Sparrow. Sing it, sing …”

  Sparrow was in an agony of reluctance and stage fright.

  Julian could not urge her to be brave, because he was very af
raid. “This is the oldest song in the whole world!” he repeated. “Gentlemen, please try to encourage her …”

  In her thready, nasal voice, Sparrow began to choke out her mournful little wail. Although her words meant nothing to anyone who listened, it was clearly and simply a very sad song. It was something like a sad lover’s song, but much worse. It was a cosmic sadness that came from a cold grave in the basement of the place where lovers were sad.

  The lament of a mother who had lost her child. Of a child who could find no mother. A heartbreaking chasm in the natural order of being. A collapse, a break, a fall, a decay, a loss, and a lasting darkness. It was that sad.

  Sparrow could not complete her song. She panicked, hid her face in her wrinkled hands and fled into a corner of the house.

  Julian set to work on the magic lantern.

  His student Practical Jeffrey came to his side. Jef spoke casually, in the local vulgar tongue. “Maestro, what was that little episode about? That was the worst stage performance that I’ve ever seen.”

  “That was the oldest song in the whole world, Jef. And now, you have heard it.”

  “I couldn’t understand one line of that lousy dirge! She’s a terrible singer, too. She’s not even pretty. If she were young and pretty, that might have been tolerable.”

  “Don’t let me interfere with your pressing quest for a young and pretty girl, Jef.”

  “I know that I didn’t understand all that,” Jef persisted, “but I know that something has changed. Not just that the old man is finally dead, or that the antique world is so rotten. We have to force the world to rise again in some other shape … For me, this was enough of that. I’m leaving you, maestro. I’m leaving your academy for good. I’ve had enough of all your teaching and your preaching, sir. Thank you for your efforts to improve me. I have to get to work now.”

  Julian glanced up. He was not much surprised by Jef’s news. “You should stay to see this magic lantern, Jef. Projected images are extremely dramatic. They are very compelling. Really, if you’ve never seen one, they are absolutely wondrous. People have been known to faint.”