The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  Lenin glanced over at the next table as the three women broke into another fit of noisy giggles. “They seem to be making inroads on that bottle,” Lenin said. “If you want any more, you’d better go get it before they finish it off.”

  “They’re welcome to it,” Jack said. He looked at his own glass and grimaced. “Damn vodka tastes like something you’d rub on a horse. How the hell do you people stand it?”

  “Practice.”

  “Yeah, well, better you than me. What I’d give for a taste of good old honest John Barleycorn.”

  “It’s available,” Lenin said. “Though probably not in a place like this. It’s just very expensive, like everything else not made in Russia, thanks to the exorbitant import duties. Another blessing from our beloved official bureaucracy.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jack said. “Came up here figuring to dig some gold, make a little something for myself instead of always being broke on my ass. Found out foreigners have to have a special permit to prospect or even to travel in the interior, no way to get it without paying off a bunch of crooks behind government desks. So I said the hell with it.”

  “And you were caught.”

  “Yep. Damn near went to jail, too, but by then I’d hit just enough pay dirt to be able to grease a certain Cossack officer. And here I am, broke on my ass again and a long way from home. I’m telling you, Vladimir,” he said, “if you wanted somebody to blow up that bunch of greedy sons of bitches who run things here, I’d be your man and I wouldn’t charge a nickel to do it.”

  He rubbed his face and sighed. “Instead I’m about to go blow the bottom out of a German battleship and kill a bunch of people who never did me any harm, all for the sake of the great workers’ revolution. How about that?”

  The three women exchanged looks. The one with the red ribbons said, “No.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”

  “So it’s true.” The woman with the seashell ear pendants shook her head. “Incredible.”

  “Watch it,” the one with the braids said, breaking into a broad sloppy smile. “Lenin’s already nervous – see, he’s looking around again. Act drunk, damn it.”

  “That’s easy,” the woman with the red ribbons said, reaching for the vodka bottle. “After hearing that, I need a drink.”

  “In fact,” Lenin said, “you are doing it for the price of a ticket back to your own country. Not that I question your socialist convictions, but right now you would blow up your own mother – ”

  Jack’s hand shot across the table and clamped down on Lenin’s forearm. “Don’t you ever speak to me about my mother,” he said thickly. “You got that?”

  Lenin sat very still. His face had gone pale and there were pain lines at the corners of his mouth. “Yes,” he said in a carefully even voice. “Yes, I apologize.”

  “Okay, then.” Jack let go and gulped at his drink. “Just watch it.”

  Lenin rubbed his forearm. After a moment he said, “Go easy on that vodka. You’re going to need a clear head and steady hands tonight.”

  Jack gave a short harsh laugh. “Save your breath. Even I’m not fool enough to tie one on when I’m going to be handling dynamite in the dark. Make a mistake with that much giant, it’d be raining Jack London for a week. Mixed up with a couple of Aleut paddlers, too, they’d never get the pieces sorted out.”

  He sipped his drink again, more cautiously. “Not that it’s all that tricky a job,” he added. “Nothing to it, really. Come alongside the Brandenburg, just forward of her aft turret, so we’re next to the powder magazine. Arm the mine, start the timer – neat piece of work there, your pal Iosif knows what he’s doing – and ease the whole thing up against the hull till the magnets take hold, being careful not to let it clang. Take the forked stick and slide the mine down under the waterline, below the armor belt, and then tell the boys to high-tail it. Hell, anybody could do it.”

  He grinned crookedly. “When you get right down to it, you only need me to make sure we get the right ship. Those Aleuts are the best paddlers in the world, but they wouldn’t know the Brandenburg from the City of New Orleans.”

  The woman with the braids said, “You know, I never believed it. I got into some pretty hot arguments, in fact. ‘Ridiculous’ was one of the milder words I used.”

  The one with the seashell ear pendants said, “Well, you were hardly alone. All the authorities agree that Jack London’s involvement in the Brandenburg affair is merely a romantic legend, circulated by a few revisionist crackpots. I don’t know any responsible scholar who takes it seriously.”

  She chuckled softly. “And oh, is the shit going to fly in certain circles when we get back! I can hardly wait.”

  “Not quite true,” Lenin said. “I also need you to make sure that our aboriginal hirelings don’t change their minds and run away home with their advance money. If they haven’t already done so.”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t do that. See,” Jack said, “they think it’s a Russian ship we’re after.”

  Lenin’s eyebrows went up. “You told them that?”

  “Hell, I had to tell them something. So they’ll be there. The way they hate Russians, they wouldn’t pass up a chance like this. Christ,” Jack said, “I know we did some rotten things to the Indians in the States, but compared to what your people did to those poor devils . . .”

  “Oh, yes. The exploitation of native peoples, here and in Asia, has been one of the worst crimes of the Tsarist state.”

  “Yeah, well,” Jack said, “all I’m saying, the boys will do their job and I’ll do mine. Quit worrying about it.”

  “Hey,” the woman with the braids said. “Go easy on that stuff. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  “I’m already sick,” the woman with the red ribbons said. “Just thinking about it, sitting here listening to them talk about it, seeing it about to happen, I’m as sick as I’ve ever been in my life. Aren’t you?”

  “Now what happens after that,” Jack said, “whether things turn out the way you want, I can’t guarantee. I’ll sink the ship for you, but if it doesn’t get you your war, don’t come to me wanting a refund.”

  Lenin’s lips twitched in what was very nearly a smile. “That,” he said, “is perhaps the surest part of the entire business. Believe me, nothing is more predictable than the reaction of the Kaiser to the sinking of one of his precious warships in a Russian port.”

  “Really? I don’t know as much as I should about things like that,” Jack admitted. “Foreign rulers and all, I need to read up . . . but I can see how it would make him pretty mad. Mad enough to go to war, though?”

  “Wilhelm will be furious,” Lenin said. “But also secretly delighted. At last he will have a pretext for the war he has wanted for so long.”

  Jack frowned. “He’s crazy?”

  “Not mad, no. Merely a weakling – a cripple and, according to rumor, a homosexual – determined to prove his manhood by playing the great warrior.”

  “Ah.” Jack nodded slowly. “A punk trying to pick a fight to show he’s not a punk. Yeah, I know the kind. Saw a good many of them when I was riding the rails.”

  “Even so. Wilhelm has been looking for a fight ever since ascending the throne. Since no one has so far obliged him, he contents himself with playing the bully.”

  Lenin nodded in the direction of the German sailors, who were now roaring out “Ach, Du Lieber Augustin” in somewhat approximate harmony. “As for example this little ‘good-will cruise,’ ” he said. “This series of visits to various ports by a Hochseeflotte battleship. Nothing but a crude show of force to impress the world.”

  “Showing everybody who’s the boss?”

  “Exactly. And therefore its destruction will be taken as a response to a challenge.”

  “Hm. Okay, you know more about it than I do.” Jack shrugged. “Still seems pretty strange, though, starting a war hoping your own country will get whipped.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lenin said. “I am Russian, after all, and this isn�
�t easy for me. But there is no better breeding ground for revolution than a major military defeat. Look at France.”

  “The Communards lost, didn’t they?”

  “True. They made mistakes, from which we have learned.”

  “If he says anything about omelettes and eggs,” the woman with the red ribbons said through her teeth, “I’m going to go over there and beat his brains out with this bottle. Screw the mission and screw noninterference and screw temporal paradox. I don’t care. I’ll kill him.”

  Jack said, “You know, the joke’s really going to be on you if Russia wins.”

  “Not much chance of that. Russia’s armed forces are a joke, fit only to keep the Tatars in line and occasionally massacre a village of Jews. The officers are mostly incompetent buffoons, owing their rank to family connections rather than ability. The troops are badly trained, and their equipment is decades out of date. The German military, on the other hand, are very nearly as good as they think they are.”

  “Russia’s a big country, though.”

  “Yes. A big country with too much territory to protect. A German offensive in the west, a Japanese attack in the east – it will be too much. You’ll see.”

  “You’re awfully sure the Japs are going to come into it.”

  “Comrade London,” Lenin said softly, “where do you think our funds come from? Who do you think is paying for this business tonight?”

  The three women stared at one another. “Now that,” the one with the braids said after a moment, “is going to knock everyone on their butts.”

  “The Japs are bankrolling us?” Jack said incredulously. “For God’s sake, why?”

  “They have territorial ambitions in Asia. Russia has become an obstacle. A war in Europe would create opportunities.”

  “Damn.” Jack looked unhappy. “I don’t know if I like that part. Working for Orientals against white – all right, all right,” he said quickly, seeing Lenin’s expression. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. All I want is to get back home. I don’t really care if I have to go to work for the Devil.”

  He looked at Lenin over the rim of his glass. “If I haven’t already. . . .”

  “Oh, dear,” the woman with the braids said. “He does have some unfortunate racial attitudes, doesn’t he?”

  “So did Ernest Hemingway,” the one with the red ribbons said without looking up from the bottle. “And I thought we were going to have to peel you off him with a steam hose.”

  “The interesting question,” Lenin said, “is whether the other European countries will become involved. The French may well decide that this is an opportunity to settle old scores with Germany. The others, who knows? This could turn into a general conflict, like nothing since Napoleon.”

  “What the hell. As long as the United States doesn’t get involved,” Jack said. “And that’s not going to happen. We’ve just barely got an army, and they’re still busy with the Indians. The Confederates, now, they just might be crazy enough to get in on it.”

  “If the war spreads, so much the better,” Lenin said. “Because if it spreads, so will the revolution.”

  He took out a heavy silver pocket watch and snapped it open. “And now I think we should be going. It is still several hours, but we both have things we must do.”

  He started to push himself back from the table. Jack said, “Wait. Just one more thing.”

  Lenin sank back onto the bench. Jack said, “See, I’ve been thinking. Suppose somebody were to hire somebody to do something against the law. And maybe the man doing the hiring was the cautious type, and wanted to make sure the other bastard didn’t get talkative afterward. Maybe the law might catch him and beat the story out of him, maybe he might just get drunk and shoot his mouth off. I mean, you never know, do you?”

  Jack’s voice was casual, his expression bland; he might have been asking about a good place to eat.

  “But when the job involves a bomb,” he said, “then there’s one sure way to make sure the man never talks, isn’t there? With the little added bonus that you don’t have to pay him. Not,” he added quickly, “that I’m suggesting anything. I don’t really think you’d do something like that. Not to a good old revolutionary comrade.”

  He leaned forward, staring into Lenin’s eyes. “But just in case I’m wrong, you might be interested to know that a few things have been written down and left in safe hands, and if I don’t make it back tonight there are some people who will be reading them with deep interest by this time tomorrow.”

  Lenin sat unmoving, returning the younger man’s stare, for perhaps five seconds. Then he laughed out loud. “Nu, molodyets!” He slapped the table with his palm. “Congratulations, Comrade London. At last you are learning to think like a Russian.”

  “Looks like they’re leaving,” the woman with the braids said. “Do we follow them, or – ”

  The woman with the red ribbons said, “I can’t stand this.”

  Suddenly she was on her feet, moving very fast, brushing past Lenin and grabbing Jack by the arms, pushing him back against the wall. “Listen,” she said, speaking quickly but with great care, “listen, you mustn’t do this. You’re about to start the most terrible war in your world’s history. Millions of people will die and nothing will come of it but suffering and destruction. Listen,” she said again, her voice rising. “You have a great talent – ”

  Jack stood looking down at her, open-mouthed, as her voice grew higher and louder. “Damn!” he said finally. “Vladimir, did you ever hear the like? Sorry, honey.” He reached up and pulled her hands away, not roughly. “Me no speak Tlingit, or whatever the hell that is.”

  He grinned and slapped her bottom. “Run along, now. Big white brothers got heap business.”

  And to Lenin, “Give her a few kopecks, would you, or she’ll follow me like a hound pup. And then let’s get out of here.”

  The woman with the red ribbons said, “But I heard myself speaking English!”

  They were climbing slowly up a hillside above the town of New Arkhangelsk. It was dark now, but the stars gave a good deal of light and the fog didn’t reach this high.

  The woman with the shell ear pendants, walking in the lead, said without looking around, “That’s how it works. Don’t ask me why. Some quirk of the conditioning program.”

  “It was covered in training,” the third woman said. “Don’t tell me you forgot something that basic. But then as much vodka as you put away, it’s a wonder you can remember where you left your own ass . . . you didn’t take the anti-intoxicants, did you?”

  “They make my skin itch.”

  “Gods.” The woman with the braids raised her hands in a helpless flapping motion. “You’re a menace, you know? One of these days we’re going to stop covering for you.”

  “No, we won’t,” the woman in the lead said. “We’ll cover for her this time – going to be a job doctoring the recording, but I can do it – and we’ll keep on covering for her. For the same reason she’s helped cover for us, when we lost it or just blew it. The same reason everyone covers for their partners. Because when you’re out on the timelines there’s no one else you can depend on and when you’re back home there’s no one else who really knows what it was like.”

  She stopped. “Hold on. It’s getting a little tricky.”

  She took out a pair of oddly shaped goggles and slipped them on. “All right,” she said. “Stay close behind me. It shouldn’t be much farther.”

  The Aleuts were waiting in the shadow of a clump of cedars as Jack came walking down the beach. “Zdras’tye,” one of them said, stepping out and raising a hand. “We ready. Go now?”

  “Da. Go now.” Jack’s gold-field Russian was even worse than their pidgin. “Uh, gdye baidarka?”

  “Von tam.” The man gestured and Jack saw it now, a long low black shape pulled up on the shore.

  “Harasho.” Jack made a come-on gesture and the two men followed him down to the water’s edge. His boots made soft crunching sounds in the
damp sand. Theirs made none at all.

  Together they lifted the big three-man sea kayak and eased it out until it floated free. Jack slid the heavy pack off his back, while the two Aleuts began the elaborate process of cleaning their feet and clothing, getting rid of any sand that might damage the boat’s sealskin covering.

  The forward paddler said cheerfully, “We go kill Russians, da?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jack said in English. “More than you know, you poor ignorant bastard. More than you’ll ever know.”

  The woman with the red ribbons said, “I’m sorry. I let it get to me and I’m sorry.” She turned her head to look at the other two. “It’s just the stupid stinking waste of it all.”

  They were well up on the hillside now, sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, facing out over the dark fog-blanketed harbor. It was the last hour before midnight.

  The woman with the seashell ear pendants said, “It was a dreadful war, all right. One of the worst in all the lines – ”

  “Not that. All right, that too, but I meant him. Jack London,” the woman with the red ribbons said. “You know what happens to him after this. He’s going to ruin himself with drink and then shoot himself in another five years, and never write anything in a class with his best work from the other lines. And now we know why, don’t we?”

  “Guilt? Yes,” the woman with the seashell ear pendants said. “Probably. But that’s just it. He is going to do those things, just as he is going to sink the Brandenburg tonight, because he’s already done them and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She raised a hand and stroked the red-ribboned hair. “And that’s what gets to you, isn’t it? The inevitability. That’s what gets to all of us. That’s why we burn out so soon.”

  The woman with the braids said, “How many known timelines are there, now, that have been mapped back this far?”