The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  The 2003 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Westin Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Washington, April 17, 2004, were: Best Novel, The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon; Best Novella, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman; Best Novelette, “The Empire of Ice Cream,” by Jeffrey Ford; Best Short Story, “What I Didn’t See,” by Karen Joy Fowler; Best Script, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson; plus the Grandmaster Award to Robert Silverberg.

  The 2004 World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Thirtieth Annual World Fantasy Convention in Tempe, Arizona, on October 31, 2004, were: Best Novel, Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton; Best Novella, “A Crowd of Bone,” by Greer Gilman; Best Short Fiction, “Don Ysidro,” by Bruce Holland Rogers; Best Collection, Bibliomancy, by Elizabeth Hand; Best Anthology, Strange Tales, edited by Rosalie Parker; Best Artist, Donato Giancola and Jason Van Hollander (tie); Special Award (Professional), to Peter Crowther for PS Publishing; Special Award (Nonprofessional), to Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker, for Tartarus Press, plus Life Achievement Awards to Stephen King and Gahan Wilson.

  The 2004 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America during a banquet at the Embassy Suites in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 5, 2004, were: Best Novel, lost boy lost girl, by Peter Straub; Best First Novel, The Rising, by Brian Keene; Best Long Fiction, “Closing Time,” by Jack Ketchum; Best Short Fiction, “Duty,” by Gary A. Braunbeck; Best Collection, Peaceable Kingdom, by Jack Ketchum; Best Anthology, Borderlands 5, edited by Elizabeth and Thomas Monteleone; Nonfiction, The Mothers and Fathers Italian Association, by Thomas F. Monteleone; Best Illustrated Narrative, The Sandman: Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman; Best Screenplay, Bubba Ho-Tep, by Don Coscarelli; Best Work for Younger Readers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J. K. Rowling; Best Poetry Collection, Pitchblende, by Bruce Boston; Best Alternative Forms, The Goreletter, by Michael Arnzen; the Specialty Press Award, to Earthling Publications; plus the Lifetime Achievement Award to Anne Rice and Martin H. Greenberg.

  The 2003 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by Omega, by Jack McDevott.

  The 2003 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by “The Empress of Mars,” by Kage Baker.

  The 2003 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan.

  The 2003 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.

  The 2003 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award was won by Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, by Matt Ruff.

  Dead in 2004 or early 2005 were: HUGH B. CAVE, 94, veteran horror writer, author of over forty-five books, including the World Fantasy Award–winning collection Murgunstrumm and Others, winner of both the World Fantasy Convention’s Life Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award; FRANK KELLY FREAS, 83, ten-time Hugo Winner as Best Professional Artist, and one of the most famous SF artists in history; WILL EISNER, 87, pioneering comic-book artist and graphic novelist, creator of the famous comic The Spirit; JACK CHALKER, 61, well-known SF author of more than sixty novels, also a long-time fan, convention organizer, bibliographer, and small-press publisher; F. M. BUSBY, 83, well-known SF writer and Hugo-winning Fannie editor, author of Cage a Man and the Rissa Kerguelen series; SONYA DORMAN (HESS), 80, SF short-story writer of the sixties and seventies, perhaps best known for her story “When I Was Miss Dow”; ROGER D. ALCOCK, 89, who wrote more than fifty SF stories under the name of Roger Dee; ALFRED COPPEL, 83, author of YA novels such as The Rebel of Rhada and of the Goldenwing trilogy; TETSU YANO, 81, Japanese writer and translator, who wrote many SF novels in his native language, but who is probably best known in the West for having translated works by Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert into Japanese, and for his story, “The Legend of the Paper Spaceship”; ROBERT MERLE, 96, French SF writer, cowinner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; JOHAN SPRINGBORG, 58, Danish SF writer; FRED WHIPPLE, 97, scientist and author, coauthor of the early nonfiction book about space exploration, The Conquest of the Moon, with Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley; BASIL WELLS, 91, veteran SF writer; DILIP M. SALWI, 52, Indian SF writer; ROXANNE HUTTON, 50, SF writer; KATHERINE LAWRENCE, 50, author of SF short fiction, nonfiction, computer games, and TV scripts; ROBYN HERRINGTON, 43, SF writer; BRIAN McNAUGHTON, 68, horror writer; REX MILLER, 65, horror writer; PAULA DANZIGER, 59, author of YA novels; MONIQUE LEBAILLY, 75, French translator, writer, and editor; MICHAEL ELDER, 73, British writer and actor; JACQUES DERRIDA, 74, famous French philosopher and critic, founder of the critical school of deconstructionism that was influential on critical writing worldwide; Australian small-press editor and publisher PETER McNAMARA, 57, founder of Aphelion Publishing; RAYMOND BAYLESS, 84, fantasy artist and Lovecraft enthusiast; FAY WRAY, 96, actress best known to genre audiences for her role as the continuously screaming blonde beauty in the original King Kong; JANET LEIGH, 77, another scream queen, best known for the shower scene in Psycho; ED KEMMER, 84, star of the fifties television show Space Patrol; CHRISTOPHER REEVE, 52, film actor, best known to genre audiences for his portrayal of Superman in four Superman movies in the late seventies through the mid-eighties; PETER USTINOV, 82, well-known actor whose connection to the genre is tenuous, but whose face must certainly be known to anyone who’s ever watched old movies on television like Spartacus or Quo Vadis or his sequence of films about detective Hercule Poirot; JERRY ORBACH, 69, Broadway performer and film and television actor whose connection to the genre is also tenuous, except for a role voicing an animate candelabra in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but whose long-running role on television’s Law and Order probably made him familiar to almost everybody reading these words; HOWARD KEEL, 85, veteran Broadway performer and film star, whose only real connection to the genre was his role in The Day of the Triffids; PETER GRAHAM, 65, long-time fan and fanzine fan, credited with coining the phrase “the golden age of science fiction is twelve”; ALLAN ROTHSTEIN, SF fan and convention-goer; GEORGE FLYNN, 68, scientist and long-time SF fan; ANTHONY STERLING RODGERS, six-month-old son of SF writers Alan Rodgers and Amy Sterling Casil.

  INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

  Pat Murphy

  As the story that follows demonstrates, that old movie line “What we have here is a failure to communicate” is likely to be just as true in the future, in spite of all our high-tech communications equipment – in fact, maybe even because of it.

  Pat Murphy lives in San Francisco, where she works for a science museum, the Exploratorium, and edits the Exploratorium Quarterly. Her elegant and incisive stories have appeared throughout the eighties and the nineties (and on into the Oughts) in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, Elsewhere, Amazing, Universe, Shadows, Lethal Kisses, Event Horizon, Full Spectrum, and other places. Her story “Rachel in Love,” one of the best-known stories of the eighties, won her the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Award in 1988; her novel The Falling Woman won her a second Nebula Award in the same year. Her novella “Bones” later won her a World Fantasy Award, and her collection Points of Departure won her a Philip K. Dick Award. Her stories have appeared in our First, Fifth, Eighth, and Ninth Annual Collections. Her other books include The Shadow Hunter; The City, Not Long After; Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles; and There and Back Again: by Max Merriwell. Her most recent book is a new novel, Wild Angel, by Mary Maxwell. She writes a science column, with Paul Doherty, for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

  THE MECHANO

  THERE WAS A MAN asleep on the sand.

  He should not be here. It was my island. I had just returned to my mechano and it was time for me to go to work. He should not be here.

  I studied the man through the eyes of my mechano. They were good eyes. They worked very well beneath the water, at depths down to fifteen hundred meters. I had adjusted them for maximum acuity at distances ranging from two inches to five feet. Beyond that, the world was a blur of tropical sunshine and brilliant color. I liked it that way.

  Ther
e had been a big storm the night before. One of the coconut palms had blown down, and the beach was littered with driftwood, coconuts, and palm fronds.

  The man didn’t look good. He had a bloody scrape on his cheek, other scrapes on his arms and legs, a smear of blood in his short brown hair. His right leg was marked with bruises colored deep purple and green. He wore an orange life vest, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and canvas boat shoes.

  He stirred in his sleep, sighing softly. Startled, I sent the mechano scuttling backward. I stopped a few feet away from him.

  My mechano had a speaker. I tested it and it made a staticky sound. I wondered what I should say to this man.

  The man moved, lifting a hand to rub his eyes. Slowly, he rolled over.

  “Bonjour,” I said through the mechano’s speakers. Maybe he had come from one of the islands of French Polynesia.

  THE MAN

  A sound awakened him – a sort of mechanical squawking.

  Evan Collins could feel the tropical sun beating down on his face, the warm beach sand beneath his hands. His head ached and his mouth was dry. His right leg throbbed with a dull, persistent pain.

  Evan raised a hand to rub his eyes and winced when he brushed against a sand-encrusted scrape on his cheek. When he rolled over onto his back, the throbbing in his leg became a sudden, stabbing pain.

  Wiping away the tears that blurred his vision, he lifted his head and blinked down at his leg. His calf was marked with bloody coral scrapes. Beneath the scrapes were vivid bruises: dark purple telling of injuries beneath the surface of the skin. When he tried to move his leg again, he gasped as the stabbing pain returned.

  He heard the sound again: a mechanical rasping like a radio tuned to static. He turned in the direction of the sound, head aching, eyes dazzled by the sun. A gigantic cockroach was examining him with multifaceted eyes.

  The creature was at least three feet long, with nasty looking mandibles. Its carapace glittered in the sunlight as it stood motionless, staring in his direction.

  Again, the mechanical squawk, coming from the cockroach. This time, the sound was followed by a scratchy voice. “Bonjour,” the cockroach said.

  He had taken two years of French in high school, but he could remember none of it. This must be a dream, he thought, closing his eyes against the glare.

  “Do you speak English?” the scratchy voice asked.

  He opened his eyes. The roach was still there. “Yes,” he rasped through a dry throat.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the scratchy voice said. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked past the monster, struggling to make sense of his situation. The beach sand was the pure white of pulverized coral. On one side of the beach was a tangle of mangroves. On the inland side, palm trees rose from scrubby undergrowth. The water of the lagoon was pure tropical blue – paler where the coral reef was near the water’s surface; darker where the water was deep. Some hundred yards offshore, he could see the mast of a boat sticking up out of the water. His boat.

  He remembered: he had been heading west toward the Cook Islands when the storm came up. He ran before the wind toward an island that was an unnamed speck on the nautical chart. He had made it over the reef into the lagoon before the surge smashed the boat against a coral head, cracking the hull, swamping the boat, sending him flying overboard to smash into the reef. He didn’t remember breaking his leg and struggling through the surf to the beach.

  “Thirsty,” he rasped through dry lips. “Very thirsty. Please help me.”

  He closed his eyes against the dazzling sunlight and heard the sound of metal sliding against metal as the roach walked away. He wondered if the monster was leaving him to die.

  A few minutes later, he heard the sound of the roach returning. He opened his eyes. The cockroach stood beside him, holding a coconut in its mandibles. As he watched, the roach squeezed, and the point of each mandible pierced the outer husk, neatly puncturing the nut in two places.

  Still gripping the coconut, the cockroach took a step toward him, opened its mandibles, and dropped the nut beside him. A thin trickle of coconut milk wet the sand.

  “You can drink,” said the cockroach.

  He picked up the coconut, pressed his lips to the hole in the shaggy husk, and tipped it back. The coconut milk was warm and sweet and wet. He drank greedily.

  By the time he had finished the milk, the roach was back with another coconut. It pierced the shell before dropping the nut.

  The roach brought him two more coconuts, piercing each one neatly and dropping it beside Evan. It stood and watched him drink.

  “I think my leg is broken,” Evan murmured.

  The roach said nothing.

  He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun. Many years before, as an undergraduate, he had taken a psychology course on the psychosocial aspects of emergencies and disasters. A guest speaker, a member of a search-and-rescue team, had talked about how people had managed to stay alive in terrible situations – and had described the mental attitude that helped those people survive. The search-and-rescue expert had said that survivors just kept on trying, doing whatever they could. “Step by step,” he had said. “That’s the approach to take. Don’t try to find the answer to everything at once. Remember, life by the yard is hard, but by the inch, it’s a cinch.”

  Evan thought about what he could do right away to help increase his chances of survival. “I need to get out of the sun,” he muttered. “I need food, water, medical supplies.”

  There were so many things he needed to do. He had to find something that he could use to splint his leg. He had to figure out a way to signal for help. He needed to find water. So many things he had to do.

  He fell asleep.

  THE MECHANO

  It was restful under the ocean. The light that filtered down from above was dim and blue. The world around me was all shades of blue – dark and light. I liked it on the ocean floor.

  I had left the man asleep on the sand. But first, I was helpful. I always try hard to be helpful.

  He had said he had to get out of the sun. So I had gathered palm fronds from the beach and stuck them in the sand where they would shade him. He had said he needed food and water and medical supplies. So I went to his sailboat and found some cans of food and a can opener and bottles of water and a first-aid kit. I carried all that stuff up from the sunken boat and left it on the beach beside him.

  Then I headed for deep water. I had work to do.

  I lifted my legs high as I walked, moving slowly to avoid stirring up the loose silt that covered the ocean bottom. My temperature sensors tested the currents – warm where they welled up from volcanic cracks below. My chemical sensors tested the water; it tasted of sulfides, a familiar musty flavor.

  I picked my way through the silt to reach my favorite spot. There was no silt here: a rocky portion of the ocean bottom had pushed up. There was a great tall chimney, where a hydrothermal vent brought up hot water from deep in the earth. Over the centuries, the hot water had deposited sulfides of copper, zinc, lead, gold, silver, and other metals, forming the chimney.

  The mining company had mined for gold not far from here. They had followed a rich vein of ore until it gave out. Then they gave up. I had sniffed around their tailings, but then I had found a spot near the chimney that was much more promising. I had spent my last few visits to this spot gnawing on the chimney and breaking loose big chunks of rock. Now I could do what I liked best – sort through those rocks. I tasted each one with my chemical sensors to find the rocks that were richest in gold and silver. Those I stacked up in a neat pile.

  It was wonderful work. I liked to sort things. I was very good at it. At home, I liked to sort all my books by color: putting the red ones on one shelf, the blue ones on another, the black ones on another.

  I worked until the light began growing dimmer, a sign that the sun was sinking low in the sky. I chose the best of the rocks and picked it up in the mechano’s mandibles. Then I headed back to
the island.

  I made my way up a long slope to reach the shallow waters where the coral reef grew. There, the bottom was sandy and I could walk quickly without stirring up silt. Schools of brightly colored fish swam above me. The fish darted here and there, fleeing from me. They moved too quickly, I thought. I liked it better in the deep blue waters. I passed the man’s sailboat, wedged between two coral heads.

  I came out of the water on the side of the beach near the mangroves. As I emerged from the water, the crabs hurried back into their holes in the sand.

  I placed the rock beside one of the burrows. On my first day on the island, I had noticed that the crabs all seemed to want the burrow that one crab had dug beside a rock. So I started bringing rocks for the other crabs.

  There were now rocks beside thirty-two crab burrows. I had been on the island for thirty-two days and I had brought the crabs one rock each day. I was very helpful. I thought it was appropriate to bring rocks for the crabs.