Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

by Mike Ashley

  The sea-dragon was pythoning its lower anatomy around one of the support legs, crushing and grinding. Scabs of concrete came away, hitting the sea like chunks of melting glacier. The floor under his feet surged and when it stopped surging the angle was all wrong. Gaunt knew then that the rig could not be saved, and that if he wished to live he would have to take his chances in the water. The thought of it was almost enough to make him laugh. Leave the rig, leave the one thing that passed for solid ground, and enter the same seas that now held the dragon?

  Yet it had to be done.

  He issued the distress call but didn't wait for a possible response. He gave the rig a few minutes at the most. If they couldn't find him in the water, it wouldn't help him to know their plans. Then he looked around for the nearest orange-painted survival cabinet. He had been shown the emergency equipment during his training, never once imagining that he would have cause to use it. The insulated survival clothing, the life jacket, the egress procedure...

  A staircase ran down the interior of one of the legs, emerging just above the water line; it was how they came and went from the rig on the odd occasions when they were using boats rather than helicopters. But even as he remembered how to reach the staircase, he realized that it was inside the same leg that the sea-dragon was wrapped around. That left him with only one other option. There was a ladder that led down to the water, with an extensible lower portion. It wouldn't get him all the way, but his chances of surviving the drop were a lot better than his chances of surviving the sea-dragon.

  It was worse than he had been expecting. The fall into the surging waters seemed to last forever, the superstructure of the rig rising slowly above him, the iron-grey sea hovering below until what felt like the very last instant, when it suddenly accelerated, and then he hit the surface with such force that he blacked out. He must have submerged and bobbed to the surface because when he came around he was coughing cold salt-water from his lungs, and it was in his eyes and ears and nostrils as well, colder than water had any right to be, and then a wave was curling over him, and he blacked out again.

  He came around again what must have been minutes later. He was still in the water, cold around the neck but his body snug in the insulation suit. The life jacket was keeping his head out of the water, except when the waves crashed onto him. A light on his jacket was blinking on and off, impossibly bright and blue.

  To his right, hundreds of metres away, and a little further with each bob of the waters, the rig was going down with the sea-dragon still wrapped around its lower extremities. He heard the foghorn call, saw one of the legs crumble away, and then an immense tidal weariness closed over him.

  He didn't remember the helicopter finding him. He didn't remember the thud of its rotors or being hauled out of the water on a winch-line. There was just a long period of unconsciousness, and then the noise and vibration of the cabin, the sun coming in through the windows, the sky clear and blue and the sea unruffled. It took a few moments for it all to click in. Some part of his brain had skipped over the events since his arrival and was still working on the assumption that it had all worked out, that he had slept into a better future, a future where the world was new and clean and death just a fading memory.

  "We got your signal," Clausen said. "Took us a while to find you, even with the transponder on your jacket."

  It all came back to him. The rigs, the sleepers, the artilects, the sea-dragons. The absolute certainty that this was the only world he would know, followed by the realization - or, rather, the memory of having already come to that realization - that this was still better than dying. He thought back to what he had been planning to do before the sea-dragon came, and wanted to crush the memory and bury it where he buried every other shameful thing he had ever done.

  "What about the rig?"

  "Gone," Clausen said. "Along with all the sleepers inside it. The dragon broke up shortly afterwards. It's a bad sign that it held coherence for as long as it did. Means they're getting better."

  "Our machines will just have to get better as well, won't they?"

  He thought she might spit the observation back at him, mock him for its easy triteness, when he knew so little of the war and the toll it had taken. But instead she nodded. "That's all they can do. All we can hope for. And they will, of course. They always do. Otherwise we wouldn't be here." She looked down at his blanketed form. "Sorry you agreed to stay awake now?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "Even with what happened back there?"

  "At least I got to see a dragon up close."

  "Yes," Clausen said. "That you did."

  He thought that was the end of it, the last thing she had to say to him. He couldn't say for sure that something had changed in their relationship - it would take time for that to be proved -but he did sense some thawing in her attitude, however temporary it might prove. He had not only chosen to stay, he had not gone through with the accident. Had she been expecting him to try something like that, after what had happened to Steiner? Could she begin to guess how close he had come to actually doing it?

  But Clausen wasn't finished.

  "I don't know if it's true or not," she said, speaking to Gaunt for the first time as if he was another human being, another caretaker. "But I heard this theory once. The mapping between the Realm and base-reality, it's not as simple as you'd think. Time and causality get all tangled up on the interface. Events that happen in one order there don't necessarily correspond to the same order here. And when they push things through, they don't always come out in what we consider the present. A chain of events in the Realm could have consequences up or down the timeline, as far as we're concerned."

  "I don't think I understand."

  She nodded to the window. "All through history, the things they've seen out there. They might just have been overspill from the artilect wars. Weapons that came through at the wrong moment, achieving coherence just long enough to be seen by someone, or bring down a ship. All the sailors' tales, all the way back. All the sea-monsters. They might just have been echoes of the war we're fighting." Clausen shrugged, as if the matter were of no consequence.

  "You believe that?"

  "I don't know if it makes the world seem weirder, or a little more sensible." She shook her head. "I mean, sea-monsters ... who ever thought they might be real?" Then she stood up and made to return to the front of the helicopter. "Just a theory, that's all. Now get some sleep."

  Gaunt did as he was told. It wasn't hard.

  THE LAST SUNSET

  Geoffrey A. Landis

  Geoffrey Landis has worked for NASA and the Ohio Aerospace Institute and specializes in photo-voltaics, which is all about harnessing the power of the Sun. He has been writing science fiction and poetry for over twenty years and has won two Hugo Awards and a Nebula for his short fiction. His books include the novel Mars Crossing (2000) and the collection Impact Parameter (2001).

  The following is one of the simplest ideas in all catastrophe stories, namely what we do as individuals when we face the inevitable cataclysm.

  * * *

  LIKE AN ENEMY fighter in an old movie about flying aces, the comet came out of the sun, invisible against the glare until it was far too late. There was nothing left to do, Christopher thought, but wait for the inevitable impact, and to calculate where it would hit.

  Chris was the astronomy group's pet computer whiz. The comet had been discovered by the astronomers but the calculation of orbit, and hence finding the time and location of the impact, was his responsibility. He'd been extraordinarily careful with the calculation, checking the critical lunar perturbation by three different methods before he was confident of the results. It was close, almost a miss. Had the Earth been ten minutes further along its orbit, it would have been a miss.

  It was a hit.

  "Shit," said Martin, one of the astronomers. They were gathered in the computer division's conference room, not that the results couldn't have been printed out in any one of their offices. "F
orty miles? The impact is forty miles east of here? You're sure?"

  Christopher nodded. "I'm sorry."

  "Huh? Not your fault," the astronomer said. "What irony. We'll be at ground zero, then, or just about. The fireball will be a hundred miles across. We won't even see it."

  "No consolation," said Tibor, the second astronomer on the team, "but, if it matters to you, yes, we'll see it. It will take about a minute for the fireball to expand."

  "I'm sorry," said the first astronomer. "I really wanted to see my kids grow up. I did." He was crying now, awkwardly. "Not that it makes any difference what I wanted. I'm sorry. I'm going home now. I think I want to be with my family."

  Tibor looked at his watch. "Go ahead and call the newspapers, if you want."

  "Why bother?" Martin said, already halfway out the door. "I don't see much point in it."

  Tibor tossed the page of printout on the floor. "Yeah. Guess I'm going to go home, too." He looked up at Christopher. "You know, you're lucky," he said, shaking his head. "You're not married. Never thought I'd envy somebody for that."

  "Some luck," Christopher said softly, but by then the astronomers had both left, and he was alone in the bright silence of the conference room.

  An hour and a half to the end of the world. There was no sense running, Christopher knew. When the end of the world falls like the sword of God out of the sky, there was no place far enough to run. He walked back to his office and stared at the books and papers piled helter-skelter across his desk. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered now; nothing at all.

  He closed the door.

  Kara was in her office two doors down, reading a journal. She was the newest hire in the University Research Institute's computer division - she'd been there only a year - but of all the group, he liked working with her best.

  Occasionally they went out for coffee together; once they'd gone to a movie.

  She looked up when he passed her door. "Say, Chris, where is the astronomy group off to?" she asked. "I was just looking for Tibor but he's not here, and his car's not in the lot."

  "He went home early today," Chris said. "So did Martin."

  "Oh," Kara said. "No big deal. Guess I'll have to catch him tomorrow." She went back to her reading.

  Christopher worked well with her but sometimes he thought he didn't really know her. Kara was four years younger than he was, and at times the difference seemed like an abyss. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was gently flirting with him, and then a moment later she would be nothing but business, friendly and casual in a completely professional way. She was smart and extremely competent; he never had to explain anything to her twice. He liked working with her.

  She was a bit shy, he knew, although she hid it well. One time he'd seen Kara with her kid sister, and the difference in her had been striking. She'd been simultaneously more grown up, and also younger, laughing and kidding. That day, he thought, was probably when he'd fallen in love with her. He'd known better than to try to make a pass at somebody he worked with; far too often, that led to disaster.

  But he'd thought about it many times over the last year. And now, he thought; he could do it now. Now that nothing mattered.

  "Hey, Kara," he said, and waited for her to look up again. "Coffee?"

  She looked at her watch. "Well—"

  "Come on," he said. "You need the break. It's after four."

  She looked at the stack of papers on her desk, a bit neater than the piles on his, but still formidable. "Thanks, but I can't. I've really got a lot of work."

  "Oh, come on. If it was the end of the world, would any of this really matter?"

  She smiled. "Well, okay. Give me five minutes."

  It was more like twenty minutes before she came by his office. Chris spent the time writing names on a list of people he ought to call, then crossing them off again.

  They went down Thayer Street to a coffee shop popular with undergraduates, and grabbed a corner table. It had been raining all day but the sky had finally cleared and the late afternoon sun glinted in the puddles. Chris's stomach was wound tight. He had to say something now but he couldn't find words. He felt like he was in high school again, dry-mouthed at the thought of asking a girl to dance. And, indeed, what could he say? He realized that he didn't want to threaten their friendship with a pass, and suddenly knew that he wasn't going to ask her anything. It would be too crude. He wanted her to like him too much. He felt like a fool. It was the end of the world, and even so, he was tongue-tied. Nothing could change him.

  Kara didn't seem to notice his silence. Perhaps she had things on her mind, too. He didn't even know if she had a boyfriend. She never mentioned one but why should she? There was so much he didn't know about her; so much he would never get a chance to know.

  Christopher turned away, pretending to watch the sunset reflected in the puddles, and worked hard to blink away his tears. Two minutes left. When he thought he could speak without his voice breaking, he said, "Say, grab your coffee and let's go sit by the observatory to watch the sunset."

  Kara shrugged. "Okay."

  Walking down the street, on a sudden impulse he reached out and took her hand. She gave him a sidelong glance but didn't pull her hand away. Her hand was cool, her fingers surprisingly small against his palm. It was enough, he decided, enough just to just walk down the street with her and hold her hand on the last night of the world. It was not what he wanted; he wanted to hold her close to him, to spend his life with her, to share all her secrets and her joys. But holding hands was enough. It was a promise; a promise meant for a someday that, now, would never be. Holding her hand would have to be enough for a lifetime.

  Opposite the sunset, a deep red glow was rising silently into the sky, backlighting the clouds low on the horizon. "Look," he said, and she turned around and stopped, her eyes brilliant in the glow.

  "Why, it's beautiful," she said. "I've never seen a sunset do that before. What is it?"

  The red stretched nearly from horizon to horizon now, and in the east it was turning an intense blue-violet, brighter than the sun. "It's the end of the world," he said, and then, at last, there was nothing left to say.

  MOMENTS OF INERTIA

  William Barton

  With this story we move from the pre- to the post-apocalypse, although this one takes us through the apocalypse and beyond.

  William Barton was an engineering technician, specializing in military technology and, for some while, helped look after the United States' nuclear submarines. He is now a freelance writer and software architect. He produced a couple of sf novels in the 1970s, but returned to the field with much gusto in the 1990s and has since produced a considerable body of complex and energetic science fiction, with a dozen novels and fifty or so short stories. He said of this story: '"Moments of Inertia' began as a novel that, as it evolved, proved unmarketable. It was picked apart into a series of short stories and novellas, published in venues ranging from North Carolina Literary Review to Asimov's Science Fiction. In the end, it even spun off a how-to article for Writer's Digest on what to do with a novel you can't sell. Waste not, want not!" He also called the story "about as apocalyptic as they come!"

  * * *

  ALL OVER, THEN. All over but the shouting.

  I sat with all the others, down in the National Redoubt's auditorium, watching it end, right there on the big screen, emptied of being, flooded with memory.

  Jesus.

  Life had sucked but it was life, however sad, and life goes on, whatever you make of it. Then the discovery of the Cone - the Cone of Annihilation -like some absurd techno-modernization of Hoyle's famous old Cloud. Then the Dark of the Sun. The Snowcanes. The Freezing. The Rainout.

  Beside me, as if reading my thoughts, Maryanne shivered, holding my hand. She leaned close, so close I could smell breakfast bacon on her breath, and whispered, "We ..."

  Too late.

  Suddenly, on the big screen, the sun lit up, pale pink, complete with frozen prominences and the black blotches
of sunspots, looking for all the world like a Chesley Bonestell illustration of a red giant star.

  Antares.

  Sudden black.

  Blue light.

  The image of the sun seemed to wrap around itself, twisting hard.

  It shrank to a brilliant dot. Then the screen filled with a blizzard of burning silver, and somebody actually screamed "Wooool" like they were watching fireworks or something.

  Beside me, Maryanne said, "I feel so helpless."

  Watching the silver blizzard, like so many trillions of burning gumwrappers flying in the wind, I said, "I guess we are helpless."

  "What do you want to do?"

  I squeezed her hand. "It's got to resolve quickly, whatever it is. Afterwards ... " I grinned. "How is anything changed? We can have dinner. Go home and mess around." That got a smile, a little blush. "Maybe watch a video? I've been wanting to see Gunga Din again. Cary Grant. Victor McLaglen. 'Though we beat you and we flayed you...' Something like that."

  She put her arms around my chest and gave me a hug. "It doesn't matter what happens, does it?"

  "Not any more." Nothing matters any more but us.

  It took about fifteen minutes for the expanding ball of burning silver to reach Mercury, momentarily a brilliant pinprick of silver light. Just before the wave front struck, it exploded in a muddy orange gout of flaming magma, flying apart like a bursting tomato, then it was gone.

  The whole room fell silent. "What happens when it gets here?"

  I looked at my watch. "It'll reach Venus in another fifteen minutes or so. If that goes ... I guess we've got about half an hour."