Alternate Empires

by Gregory Benford

  Alison folded her napkin along the diagonal.

  “So no one could be tried. It was an inspiring and purging operation. It was copied in many little towns across the country. God knows, the women had access to sheets.”

  Alison laughed, but the woman was not expecting it, had not paused to allow for laughter. “And then Annie Oakley shot Frank Butler in a challenge match in Cincinnati.”

  “Excuse me,” said Alison. “I didn’t quite hear you.” But she really had and the woman continued anyway, without pausing or repeating.

  “She said it was an accident, but she was too good a shot. They hanged her for it. And then Grover Cleveland was killed by twelve sheeted women on the White House lawn. At tea time,” the woman said.

  “Wait a minute.” Alison stopped her. “Grover Cleveland served out two terms. Nonconsecutively. I’m sure.”

  The woman leaned into the candlelight, resting her chin on a bridge she made of her hands. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “That’s what happened here. But in another universe where the feminine force was just a little stronger in 1872, Grover Cleveland died in office. With a scone in his mouth and a child in New York.”

  “All right,” said Alison accommodatingly. Accommodation was one of Alison’s strengths. “But what difference does that make to us?”

  “I could take you there.” The woman pushed her hat back so that Alison could have seen her eyes if she wanted to. “The universe right next door. Practically walking distance.”

  The candle flame was casting shadows which reached and withdrew and reached at Alison over the table. In the unsteady light, the woman’s face flickered like a silent film star’s. Then she pulled back in her chair and sank into the darkness beyond the candle. The ball was on the ten-yard line and the bar was quiet. “I knew you were going to say that,” Alison said finally. “How did I know you were going to say that? Who would say that?”

  “Some lunatic?” the woman suggested.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about it anyway? About my universe?” The woman smiled at her. An unperturbed smile. Nice even teeth. And a kind of confidence that was rare among the women Alison knew. Alison had noticed it immediately without realizing she was noticing. The way the woman sat back in her chair and didn’t pick at herself. Didn’t play with her hair. Didn’t look at her hands. The way she lectured Alison.

  “All right,” Alison said. She put the napkin down and fit her hands together, forcing herself to sit as still. “But first tell me about Laura Fair. My Laura Fair.”

  “Up until 1872 the two histories are identical,” the woman said. “Mrs. Fair married four times and shot her lover and was convicted and the conviction was overturned. She just never lectured. She planned to. She was scheduled to speak at Platt’s Hotel in San Francisco on November 21, 1872, but a mob of some two thousand men gathered outside the hotel and another two thousand surrounded the apartment building she lived in. She asked for police protection, but it was refused and she was too frightened to leave her home. Even staying where she was proved dangerous. A few men tried to force their way inside. She spent a terrifying night and never attempted to lecture again. She died in poverty and obscurity.

  “Fanny Hyde and Kate Stoddart were released anyway. I can’t find out what happened to the Marys. Edith Wilson was condemned by respectable people everywhere and cast out of her family.”

  “The eleven-year-old child?” Alison said.

  “In your universe,” the woman reminded her. “Not in mine. You don’t know much of your own history, do you? Name a great American woman.”

  The men at the bar were in an uproar. Alison turned to look. “Interception,” the man in the blue sweater shouted to her exultantly. “Did you see it?”

  “Name a great American woman,” Alison called back to him.

  “Goddamn interception with goal to go,” he said. “Eleanor Roosevelt?”

  “Marilyn Monroe,” said a man at the end of the bar.

  “The senator from California?” the woman asked. “Now that’s a good choice.”

  Alison laughed again. “Funny,” she said, turning back to the woman. “Very good.”

  “We have football, too,” the woman told her. “Invented in 1873. Outlawed in 1950. No one ever got paid to play it.”

  “And you have Elvis.”

  “No, we don’t. Not like yours. Of course not. I got this here.”

  “Interception,” the man in the blue sweater said. He was standing beside Alison, shaking his head with the wonder of it. “Let me buy you ladies a drink.” Alison opened her mouth and he waved his hand. “Something nonalcoholic for you,” he said. “Please. I really want to.”

  “Ginger ale, then,” she agreed. “No ice.”

  “Nothing for me,” said the woman. They watched the man walk back to the bar, and then, when he was far enough away not to hear, she leaned forward toward Alison. “You like men, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Alison. “I always have. Are they different where you come from? Have they learned to be honest and careful with women, since you kill them when they’re not?” Alison’s voice was sharper than she intended, so she softened the effect with a sadder question. “Is it better there?”

  “Better for whom?” The woman did not take her eyes off Alison. “Where I come from the men and women hardly speak to each other. First of all, they don’t speak the same language. They don’t here, either, but you don’t recognize that as clearly. Where I come from there’s men’s English and there’s women’s English.”

  “Say something in men’s English.”

  “ ‘I love you.’ Shall I translate?”

  “No,” said Alison. “I know the translation for that one.” The heaviness closed over her heart again. Not that it had ever gone away. Nothing made Alison feel better, but many things made her feel worse. The bartender brought her ginger ale. With ice. Alison was angry, suddenly, that she couldn’t even get a drink with no ice. She looked for the man in the blue sweater, raised the glass at him, and rattled it. Of course he was too far away to hear even if he was listening, and there was no reason to believe he was.

  “Two-minute warning,” he called back. “I’ll be with you in two minutes.”

  Men were always promising to be with you soon. Men could never be with you now. Alison had only cared about this once, and she never would again. “Football has the longest two minutes in the world,” she told the woman. “So don’t hold your breath. What else is different where you come from?” She sipped at her ginger ale. She’d been grinding her teeth recently; stress, the dentist said, and so the cold liquid made her mouth hurt.

  “Everything is different. Didn’t you ask for no ice? Don’t drink that,” the woman said. She called to the bartender. “She didn’t want ice. You gave her ice.”

  “Sorry.” The bartender brought another bottle and another glass. “Nobody told me no ice.”

  “Thank you,” Alison said. He took the other glass away. Alison thought he was annoyed. The woman didn’t seem to notice.

  “Imagine your world without a hundred years of adulterers,” she said. “The level of technology is considerably depressed. Lots of books never written, because the authors didn’t live. Lots of men who didn’t get to be president. Lots of passing. Although it’s illegal. Men dressing as women. Women dressing as men. And the dress is more sexually differentiated. Codpieces are fashionable again. But you don’t have to believe me,” the woman said. “Come and see for yourself. I can take you there in a minute. What would it cost you to just come and see? What do you have here that you’d be losing?”

  The woman gave her time to think. Alison sat and drank her ginger ale and repeated to herself the things her lover had said the last time she had seen him. She remembered them all, some of them surprisingly careless, some of them surprisingly cruel, all of them surprising. She repeated them again, one by one, like a rosary. The man who had left was not the man she had loved. The man she had lo
ved would never have said such things to her. The man she had loved did not exist. She had made him up. Or he had. “Why would you want me to go?” Alison asked.

  “The universe is shaped by the struggle between two great forces. Sometimes a small thing can tip the balance. One more woman. Who knows?” The woman tilted her hat back with her hand. “Save a galaxy. Make new friends. Or stay here where your heart is. Broken.”

  “Can I come back if I don’t like it?”

  “Yes. Do you like it here?”

  She drank her ginger ale and then set the glass down, still half full. She glanced at the man in the blue sweater, then past him to the bartender. She let herself feel just for a moment what it might be like to know that she could finish this drink and then go home to the one person in the world who loved her.

  Never in this world. “I’m going out for a minute. Two minutes,” she called to the bartender. One minute to get back. “Don’t take my drink.”

  She stood and the other woman stood, too, even taller than Alison had thought. “I’ll follow you. Which way?” Alison asked.

  “It’s not hard,” the woman said. “In fact, I’ll follow you. Go to the back. Find the door that says Women and go on through it. I’m just going to pay for my drink and then I’ll be right along.”

  Vixens, was what the door actually said, across the way from the one marked Ganders. Alison paused and then pushed through. She felt more than a little silly, standing in the small bathroom that apparently fronted two universes. One toilet, one sink, one mirror. Two universes. She went into the stall and closed the door. Before she had finished she heard the outer door open and shut again. “I’ll be right out,” she said. The toilet paper was small and unusually rough. The toilet wouldn’t flush. It embarrassed her. She tried three times before giving up.

  The bathroom was larger than it had been, less clean, and a row of urinals lined one wall. The woman stood at the sink, looking into the mirror, which was smaller. “Are you ready?” she asked and removed her breasts from behind Elvis, tossing them into a wire wastebasket. She turned. “Ready or not.”

  “No,” said Alison, seeing the face under the hat clearly for the first time. “Please, no.” She began to cry again, looking up at his face, looking down at his chest. ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?

  “You lied to me,” she said dully.

  “I never lied,” he answered. “Think back. You just translated wrong. Because you’re that kind of woman. We don’t have women like you here now. And anyway, what does it matter whose side you play on? All that matters is that no one wins. Aren’t I right? Aren’t I?” He tipped his hat to her.

  WAITING FOR

  THE OLYMPIANS

  Frederik Pohl

  Chapter 1

  The Day of the Two Rejections

  If I had been writing it as a romance, I would have called the chapter about that last day in London something like “The Day of the Two Rejections.” It was a nasty day in late December, just before the holidays. The weather was cold, wet, and miserable—well, I said it was London, didn’t I?—but everybody was in a sort of expectant holiday mood; it had just been announced that the Olympians would be arriving no later than the following August, and everybody was excited about that. All the taxi drivers were busy, and so I was late for my lunch with Lidia. “How was Manahattan?” I asked, sliding into the booth beside her and giving her a quick kiss.

  “Manahattan was very nice,” she said, pouring me a drink. Lidia was a writer, too—well, they call themselves writers, the ones who follow famous people around and write down all their gossip and jokes and put them out as books for the amusement of the idle. That’s not really writing, of course. There’s nothing creative about it. But it pays well, and the research (Lidia always told me) was a lot of fun. She spent a lot of time traveling around the celebrity circuit, which was not very good for our romance. She watched me drink the first glass before she remembered to ask politely, “Did you finish the book?”

  “Don’t call it ‘the book,’” I said. “Call it by its name, An Ass’s Olympiad. I’m going to see Marcus about it this afternoon.”

  “That’s not what I’d call a great title,” she commented—Lidia was always willing to give me her opinion on anything, when she didn’t like it. “Really, don’t you think it’s too late to be writing another sci-rom about the Olympians?” And then she smiled brightly and said, “I’ve got something to say to you, Julie. Have another drink first.”

  So I knew what was coming right away, and that was the first rejection.

  I’d seen this scene building up. Even before she left on that last “research” trip to the West I had begun to suspect that some of that early ardor had cooled, so I wasn’t really surprised when she told me, without any further foreplay, “I’ve met somebody else, Julie.”

  I said, “I see.” I really did see, and so I poured myself a third drink while she told me about it, “He’s a former space pilot, Julius. He’s been to Mars and the Moon and everywhere, and oh, he’s such a sweet man. And he’s a champion wrestler, too, would you believe it? Of course, he’s still married, as it happens. But he’s going to talk to his wife about a divorce as soon as the kids are just a little older.”

  She looked at me challengingly, waiting for me to tell her she was an idiot. I had no intention of saying anything at all, as a matter of fact, but just in case I had, she added, “Don’t say what you’re thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything,” I protested.

  She sighed. “You’re taking this very well,” she told me. She sounded as though that were a great disappointment to her. “Listen, Julius, I didn’t plan this. Truly, you’ll always be dear to me in a special way. I hope we can always be friends—” I stopped listening around then.

  There was plenty more in the same vein, but only the details were a surprise. When she told me our little affair was over I took it calmly enough. I always knew that Lidia had a weakness for the more athletic type. Worse than that, she never respected the kind of writing I do, anyway. She had the usual establishment contempt for science-adventure romances about the future and adventures on alien planets, and what sort of relationship could that lead to, in the long run?

  So I left her with a kiss and a smile, neither of them very sincere, and headed for my editor’s office. That was where I got the second rejection. The one that really hurt.

  Mark’s office was in the old part of London, down by the river. It’s an old company, in an old building, and most of the staff are old, too. When the company needs clerks or copy editors it has a habit of picking up tutors whose students have grown up and don’t need them anymore, and retraining them. Of course, that’s just for the people in the lower echelons. The higher-ups, like Mark himself, are free, salaried executives, with the executive privilege of interminable, winey author-and-editor lunches that don’t end until the middle of the afternoon.

  I had to wait half an hour to see him; obviously he had been having one of them that day. I didn’t mind. I had every confidence that our interview was going to be short, pleasant, and remunerative. I knew very well that An Ass’s Olympiad was one of the best sci-roms I had ever done. Even the title was clever. The book was a satire, with classical overtones—from The Golden Ass of the ancient writer, Lucius Apuleius, two thousand years ago or so; I had played off the classic in a comic, adventurous little story about the coming of the real Olympians. I can always tell when a book is going really well and I knew the fans would eat this one up…

  When I finally got in to see Marcus he had a glassy, after-lunch look in his eye, and I could see my manuscript on his desk.

  I also saw that clipped to it was a red-bordered certificate, and that was the first warning of bad news. The certificate was the censor’s verdict, and the red border meant it was an obstat.

  Mark didn’t keep me in suspense. “We can’t publish,” he said, pressing his palm on the manuscript. “The censors have turned it down.”

  “They can’t!” I cri
ed, making his old secretary lift his head from his desk in the corner of the room to stare at me.

  “They did,” Mark said. “I’ll read you what the obstat says: ‘—of a nature which may give offense to the delegation from the Galactic Consortium, usually referred to as the Olympians—’ and ‘—thus endangering the security and tranquility of the Empire—’ and, well, basically it just says no. No revisions suggested. Just a complete veto; it’s waste paper now, Julie. Forget it.”

  “But everybody is writing about the Olympians!” I yelped.

  “Everybody was,” he corrected. “Now they’re getting close, and the censors don’t want to take any more chances.” He leaned back to rub his eyes, obviously wishing he could be taking a nice nap instead of breaking my heart. Then he added tiredly, “So what do you want to do, Julie? Write us a replacement? It would have to be fast, you understand; the front office doesn’t like having contracts outstanding for more than thirty days after due date. And it would have to be good. You’re not going to get away with pulling some old reject out of your trunk—I’ve seen all those already, anyway.”

  “How the hells do you expect me to write a whole new book in thirty days?” I demanded.

  He shrugged, looking sleepier and less interested in my problem than ever. “If you can’t, you can’t. Then you’ll just have to give back the advance,” he told me.

  I calmed down fast. “Well, no,” I said, “there’s no question of having to do that. I don’t know about finishing it in thirty days, though—”

  “I do,” he said flatly. He watched me shrug. “Have you got an idea for the new one?”

  “Mark,” I said patiently, “I’ve always got ideas for new ones. That’s what a professional writer is. He’s a machine for thinking up ideas. I always have more ideas than I can ever write—”