The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “I’d lost other people who were close to me,” she said. “My parents. My brother. Friends. And so had everyone around me, then. I wasn’t special: grief was still commonplace. But decade by decade, century by century, we shrank into insignificance, those of us who knew what it meant to lose someone for ever. We’re less than one in a million, now.

  “For a long time, I clung to my own generation. There were enclaves, there were ghettos, where everyone understood the old days. I spent 200 years married to a man who wrote a play called We Who Have Known the Dead – which was every bit as pretentious and self-pitying as you’d guess from the title.” She smiled at the memory. “It was a horrible, self-devouring world. If I’d stayed in it much longer, I would have followed Grace. I would have begged for death.”

  She looked up at Jamil. “It’s people like you I want to be with: people who don’t understand. Your lives aren’t trivial, any more than the best parts of our own were: all the tranquillity, all the beauty, all the happiness that made the sacrifices and the life-and-death struggles worthwhile.

  “The tragedians were wrong. They had everything upside-down. Death never gave meaning to life: it was always the other way round. All of its gravitas, all of its significance, was stolen from the things it ended. But the value of life always lay entirely in itself – not in its loss, not in its fragility.

  “Grace should have lived to see that. She should have lived long enough to understand that the world hadn’t turned to ash.”

  Jamil sat in silence, turning the whole confession over in his mind, trying to absorb it well enough not to add to her distress with a misjudged question. Finally, he ventured, “Why do you hold back from friendship with us, though? Because we’re just children to you? Children who can’t understand what you’ve lost?”

  Margit shook her head vehemently. “I don’t want you to understand! People like me are the only blight on this world, the only poison.” She smiled at Jamil’s expression of anguish, and rushed to silence him before he could swear that she was nothing of the kind. “Not in everything we do and say, or everyone we touch: I’m not claiming that we’re tainted, in some fatuous mythological sense. But when I left the ghettos, I promised myself that I wouldn’t bring the past with me. Sometimes that’s an easy vow to keep. Sometimes it’s not.”

  “You’ve broken it tonight,” Jamil said plainly. “And neither of us have been struck down by lightning.”

  “I know.” She took his hand. “But I was wrong to tell you what I have, and I’ll fight to regain the strength to stay silent. I stand at the border between two worlds, Jamil. I remember death, and I always will. But my job now is to guard that border. To keep that knowledge from invading your world.”

  “We’re not as fragile as you think,” he protested. “We all know something about loss.”

  Margit nodded soberly. “Your friend Chusok has vanished into the crowd. That’s how things work now: how you keep yourselves from suffocating in a jungle of endlessly growing connections, or fragmenting into isolated troupes of repertory players, endlessly churning out the same lines.

  “You have your little deaths – and I don’t call them that to deride you. But I’ve seen both. And I promise you, they’re not the same.”

  In the weeks that followed, Jamil resumed in full the life he’d made for himself in Noether. Five days in seven were for the difficult beauty of mathematics. The rest were for his friends.

  He kept playing matches, and Margit’s team kept winning. In the sixth game, though, Jamil’s team finally scored against her. Their defeat was only three to one.

  Each night, Jamil struggled with the question. What exactly did he owe her? Eternal loyalty, eternal silence, eternal obedience? She hadn’t sworn him to secrecy; she’d extracted no promises at all. But he knew she was trusting him to comply with her wishes, so what right did he have to do otherwise?

  Eight weeks after the night he’d spent with Margit, Jamil found himself alone with Penina in a room in Joracy’s house. They’d been talking about the old days. Talking about Chusok.

  Jamil said, “Margit lost someone very close to her.”

  Penina nodded matter-of-factly, but curled into a comfortable position on the couch and prepared to take in every word.

  “Not in the way we’ve lost Chusok. Not in the way you think at all.”

  Jamil approached the others, one by one. His confidence ebbed and flowed. He’d glimpsed the old world, but he couldn’t pretend to have fathomed its inhabitants. What if Margit saw this as worse than betrayal – as a further torture, a further rape?

  But he couldn’t stand by and leave her to the torture she’d inflicted on herself.

  Ezequiel was the hardest to face. Jamil spent a sick and sleepless night beforehand, wondering if this would make him a monster, a corrupter of children, the epitome of everything Margit believed she was fighting.

  Ezequiel wept freely, but he was not a child. He was older than Jamil, and he had more steel in his soul than any of them.

  He said, “I guessed it might be that. I guessed she might have seen the bad times. But I never found a way to ask her.”

  The three lobes of probability converged, melted into a plateau, rose into a pillar of light.

  The umpire said, “Fifty-five point nine.” It was Margit’s most impressive goal yet.

  Ezequiel whooped joyfully and ran towards her. When he scooped her up in his arms and threw her across his shoulders, she laughed and indulged him. When Jamil stood beside him and they made a joint throne for her with their arms, she frowned down at him and said, “You shouldn’t be doing this. You’re on the losing side.”

  The rest of the players converged on them, cheering, and they started down towards the river. Margit looked around nervously. “What is this? We haven’t finished playing.”

  Penina said, “The game’s over early, just this once. Think of this as an invitation. We want you to swim with us. We want you to talk to us. We want to hear everything about your life.”

  Margit’s composure began to crack. She squeezed Jamil’s shoulder. He whispered, “Say the word, and we’ll put you down.”

  Margit didn’t whisper back; she shouted miserably, “What do you want from me, you parasites? I’ve won your fucking game for you! What more do you want?”

  Jamil was mortified. He stopped and prepared to lower her, prepared to retreat, but Ezequiel caught his arm.

  Ezequiel said, “We want to be your border guards. We want to stand beside you.”

  Christa added, “We can’t face what you’ve faced, but we want to understand. As much as we can.”

  Joracy spoke, then Yann, Narcyza, Maria, Halide. Margit looked down on them, weeping, confused.

  Jamil burnt with shame. He’d hijacked her, humiliated her. He’d made everything worse. She’d flee Noether, flee into a new exile, more alone than ever.

  When everyone had spoken, silence descended. Margit trembled on her throne.

  Jamil faced the ground. He couldn’t undo what he’d done. He said quietly, “Now you know our wishes. Will you tell us yours?”

  “Put me down.”

  Jamil and Ezequiel complied.

  Margit looked around at her teammates and opponents, her children, her creation, her would-be friends.

  She said, “I want to go to the river with you. I’m seven thousand years old, and I want to learn to swim.”

  SCHERZO WITH TYRANNOSAUR

  Michael Swanwick

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the nineteen years that have followed has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation.

  He has several times been a finalist for the Nebula Award, as well as for the World Fantasy Award and for the John W. Campbell Award, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well; in 1995, he won the World
Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves”; and in 1999, he completed his sweep of the major science fiction awards by winning a Hugo for his story “The Very Pulse of the Machine.” His other books include his first novel, In the Drift, which was published in 1985; a novella-length book, Griffin’s Egg; 1987’s popular novel Vacuum Flowers; and a critically acclaimed fantasy novel, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (a rare distinction!). His most recent novel, Jack Faust, a sly reworking of the Faust legend that explores the unexpected impact of technology on society, has garnered rave reviews from nearly every source from the Washington Post to Interzone. His short fiction has been assembled in Gravity’s Angels and in a collection of his collaborative short work with other writers, Slow Dancing Through Time. His most recent books are a collection of critical essays, The Postmodern Archipelago; and a collection, A Geography of Unknown Lands. Upcoming is a new collection, called Moon Dogs, and he’s currently at work on a new novel. He’s had stories in our many previous collections, including the last four. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter, and their son Sean.

  This story brings us sixty-five million years into the past for a clever, intricate, and deadly pavane of paradox, intrigue, destiny, and hungry killer dinosaurs with great big teeth . . .

  A KEYBOARDIST WAS PLAYING a selection of Scarlatti’s harpsichord sonatas, brief pieces one to three minutes long, very complex and refined, while the Hadrosaurus herd streamed by the window. There were hundreds of the brutes, kicking up dust and honking that lovely flattened near-musical note they make. It was a spectacular sight.

  But the hors d’oeuvres had just arrived: plesiosaur wrapped in kelp, beluga smeared over sliced maiasaur egg, little slivers of roast dodo on toast, a dozen delicacies more. So a stampede of common-as-dirt herbivores just couldn’t compete.

  Nobody was paying much attention.

  Except for the kid. He was glued to the window, staring with an intensity remarkable even for a boy his age. I figured him to be about ten years old.

  Snagging a glass of champagne from a passing tray, I went over to stand next to him. “Enjoying yourself, son?”

  Without looking up, the kid said, “What do you think spooked them? Was it a –?” Then he saw the wranglers in their jeeps and his face fell. “Oh.”

  “We had to cheat a little to give the diners something to see.” I gestured with the wineglass past the herd, toward the distant woods. “But there are plenty of predators lurking out there – troodons, dromaeosaurs . . . even old Satan.”

  He looked up at me in silent question.

  “Satan is our nickname for an injured old bull rex that’s been hanging around the station for about a month, raiding our garbage dump.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. The kid looked devastated. T. rex a scavenger! Say it ain’t so!

  “A tyrannosaur is an advantageous hunter,” I said, “like a lion. When it chances upon something convenient, believe you me, it’ll attack. And when a tyrannosaur is hurting, like old Satan is – well, that’s about as savage and dangerous as any animal can be. It’ll kill even when it’s not hungry.”

  That satisfied him. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

  In companionable silence, we stared into the woods together, looking for moving shadows. Then the chime sounded for dinner to begin, and I sent the kid back to his table. The last hadrosaurs were gone by then.

  He went with transparent reluctance.

  The Cretaceous Ball was our big fund-raiser, a hundred thousand dollars a seat, and in addition to the silent auction before the meal and the dancing afterwards, everybody who bought an entire table for six was entitled to their very own paleontologist as a kind of party favour.

  I used to be a paleontologist myself, before I was promoted. Now I patrolled the room in tux and cummerbund, making sure everything was running smoothly.

  Waiters slipped in and out of existence. You’d see them hurry behind the screen hiding the entrance to the time funnel and then pop out immediately on the other side, carrying heavily laden trays. Styracosaurus medallions in mastodon mozzarella for those who liked red meat. Archaeopteryx almondine for those who preferred white. Raddichio and fennel for the vegetarians.

  All to the accompaniment of music, pleasant chitchat, and the best view in the universe.

  Donald Hawkins had been assigned to the kid’s table – the de Cherville Family. According to the seating plan the heavy, phlegmatic man was Gerard, the money-making paterfamilias. The woman beside him was Danielle, once his trophy wife, now ageing gracefully. Beside them were two guests – the Cadigans – who looked a little overwhelmed by everything and were probably a favoured employee and spouse. They didn’t say much. A sullen daughter, Melusine, in a little black dress that casually displayed her perfect breasts. She looked bored and restless – trouble incarnate. And there was the kid, given name Philippe.

  I kept a close eye on them because of Hawkins. He was new, and I wasn’t expecting him to last long. But he charmed everyone at the table. Young, handsome, polite – he had it all. I noticed how Melusine slouched back in her chair, studying him through dark eyelashes, saying nothing. Hawkins, responding to something young Philippe had said, flashed a boyish, devil-may-care grin. I could feel the heat of the kid’s hero-worship from across the room.

  Then my silent beeper went off, and I had to duck out of the late Cretaceous and back into the kitchen, Home Base, year 2140.

  There was a Time Safety Officer waiting for me. The main duty of a TSO is to make sure that no time paradoxes occur, so that the Unchanging wouldn’t take our time privileges away from us. Most people think that time travel was invented recently, and by human beings. That’s because our sponsors don’t want their presence advertised.

  In the kitchen, everyone was in an uproar. One of the waiters was leaning, spraddle-legged and arms wide against the table, and another was lying on the floor clutching what looked to be a broken arm. The TSO covered them both with a gun.

  The good news was that the Old Man wasn’t there. If it had been something big and hairy – a Creationist bomb, or a message from a million years upline – he would have been.

  When I showed up, everybody began talking at once.

  “I didn’t do nothing, man, this bastard –”

  “– guilty of a Class Six violation –”

  “– broke my fucking arm, man. He threw me to the ground!”

  “– work to do. Get them out of my kitchen!”

  It turned out to be a simple case of note-passing. One of the waiters had, in his old age, conspired with another recruited from a later period to slip a list of hot investments to his younger self. Enough to make them both multibillionaires. We had surveillance devices planted in the kitchen, and a TSO saw the paper change hands. Now the perps were denying everything.

  It wouldn’t have worked anyway. The authorities keep strict tabs on the historical record. Wealth on the order of what they had planned would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

  I fired both waiters, called the police to take them away, routed a call for two replacements several hours into the local past, and had them briefed and on duty without any lapse in service. Then I took the TSO aside and bawled him out good for calling me back real-time, instead of sending a memo back to me three days ago. Once something has happened, though, that’s it. I’d been called, so I had to handle it in person.

  It was your standard security glitch. No big deal.

  But it was wearying. So when I went back down the funnel to Hilltop Station, I set the time for a couple hours after I had left. I arrived just as the tables were being cleared for desert and coffee.

  Somebody handed me a microphone, and I tapped it twice, for attention. I was standing before the window, a spectacular sunset to my back.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “let me again welcome you to the late Cretaceous. This is the final research station before the Age of
Mammals. Don’t worry, though – the meteor that put a final end to the dinosaurs is still several thousand years in the future!” I paused for laughter, then continued.

  “If you’ll look outside, you’ll see Jean, our dino wrangler, setting up a scent lure. Jean, wave for our diners.”

  Jean was fiddling with a short tripod. She waved cheerily, then bent back to work. With her blond ponytail and khaki shorts, she looked to be just your basic science babe. But Jean was slated to become one of the top saurian behaviourists in the world, and knew it too. Despite our best efforts, gossip slips through.

  Now Jean backed up toward the station doors, unreeling fuse wire as she went. The windows were all on the second floor. The doors, on the ground floor, were all armoured.

  “Jean will be ducking inside for this demonstration,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to be outside unprotected when the lure goes off.”

  “What’s in it?” somebody called out.

  “Triceratops blood. We’re hoping to call in a predator – maybe even the king of predators, Tyrannosaurus rex himself.”There was an appreciative murmur from the diners. Everybody here had heard of T. rex. He had real star power. I switched easily into lecture mode. “If you dissect a tyrannosaur, you’ll see that it has an extremely large olfactory lobe – larger in proportion to the rest of its brain than that of any other animal except the turkey vulture. Rex can sniff his prey” – carrion, usually, but I didn’t say that – “from miles away. Watch.”

  The lure went off with a pop and a puff of pink mist.

  I glanced over at the de Cherville table, and saw Melusine slip one foot out of her pump and run it up Hawkins’ trouser leg. He coloured.

  Her father didn’t notice. Her mother – her step-mother, more likely – did, but didn’t care. To her, this was simply what women did. I couldn’t help but notice what good legs Melusine had.

  “This will take a few minutes. While we’re waiting, I direct your attention to Chef Rupert’s excellent pastries.”