The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “I’m tired of this little prick,” the woman chimes in. “He’s thrown away opportunities other people would kill for—”

  He makes a rude noise. “Yeah, we’d all kill to be someone’s data chip. You think I really believe Bobby’s real just because I can see him on a screen?”

  The older man turns to the younger one. “Phone up and have them pipe Bobby down here.” Then he swings the lounger around so it faces a nice modern screen implanted in a shored-up cement-block wall.

  “Bobby will join us shortly. Then he can tell you whether he’s real or not himself. How will that be for you?”

  He stares hard at the screen, ignoring the man, waiting for Bobby’s image to appear. As though they really bothered to communicate regularly with Bobby this way. Feed in that kind of data and memory and Bobby’ll believe it. He shifts uncomfortably, suddenly wondering how far he could get if he moved fast enough.

  “My boy,” says Bobby’s sweet voice from the speaker on either side of the screen and he forces himself to keep looking as Bobby fades in, presenting himself on the same kind of lounger and looking mildly exerted, as though he’s just come off the dance floor for real. “Saw you shakin’ it upstairs awhile ago. You haven’t been here for such a long time. What’s the story?”

  He opens his mouth but there’s no sound. Bobby looks at him with boundless patience and indulgence. So Pretty, hair the perfect shade now and not a bit dry from the dyes and lighteners, skin flawless and shining like a healthy angel. Overnight angel, just like the old song.

  “My boy,” says Bobby. “Are you struck, like, shy or dead?”

  He closes his mouth, takes one breath. “I don’t like it, Bobby. I don’t like it this way.”

  “Of course not, lover. You’re the Watcher, not the Watchee, that’s why. Get yourself picked up for a season or two and your disposition will change.”

  “You really like it, Bobby, being a blip on a chip?”

  “Blip on a chip, your ass. I’m a universe now. I’m, like, everything. And, hey, dig—I’m on every channel.” Bobby laughed. “I’m happy I’m sad!”

  “S-A-D,” comes in the older man. “Self-Aware Data.”

  “Ooo-eee,” he says. “Too clever for me. Can I get out of here now?”

  “What’s your hurry?” Bobby pouts. “Just because I went over you don’t love me any more?”

  “You always were screwed up about that, Bobby. Do you know the difference between being loved and being watched?”

  “Sophisticated boy,” Bobby says. “So wise, so learned. So fully packed. On this side, there is no difference. Maybe there never was. If you love me, you watch me. If you don’t look, you don’t care and if you don’t care I don’t matter. If I don’t matter, I don’t exist. Right?”

  He shakes his head.

  “No, my boy, I am right.” Bobby laughs. “You believe I’m right, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t come shaking your Pretty Boy ass in a place like this, now, would you? You like to be watched, get seen. You see me, I see you. Life goes on.”

  He looks up at the older man, needing relief from Bobby’s pure Prettiness. “How does he see me?”

  “Sensors in the equipment. Technical stuff, nothing you care about.”

  He sighs. He should be upstairs or across town, shaking it with everyone else, living Pretty for as long as he could. Maybe in another few months, this way would begin to look good to him. By then they might be off Pretty Boys and looking for some other type and there he’d be, out in the cold-cold, sliding down the other side of his peak and no one would want him. Shut out of something going on that he might want to know about after all. Can he face it? He glances at the younger man. All grown up and no place to glow. Yeah, but can he face it?

  He doesn’t know. Used to be there wasn’t much of a choice and now that there is, it only seems to make it worse. Bobby’s image looks like it’s studying him for some kind of sign, Pretty eyes bright, hopeful.

  The older man leans down and speaks low into his ear. “We need to get you before you’re twenty-five, before the brain stops growing. A mind taken from a still-growing brain will blossom and adapt. Some of Bobby’s predecessors have made marvelous adaptation to their new medium. Pure video: there’s a staff that does nothing all day but watch and interpret their symbols for breakthroughs in thought. And we’ll be taking Pretty Boys for as long as they’re publicly sought-after. It’s the most efficient way to find the best performers, go for the ones everyone wants to see or be. The top of the trend is closest to heaven. And even if you never make a breakthrough, you’ll still be entertainment. Not such a bad way to live for a Pretty Boy. Never have to age, to be sick, to lose touch. You spent most of your life young, why learn how to be old? Why learn how to live without all the things you have now—”

  He puts his hands over his ears. The older man is still talking and Bobby is saying something and the younger man and the woman come over to try to do something about him. Refreshments are falling off the tray. He struggles out of the lounger and makes for the door.

  “Hey, my boy,” Bobby calls after him. “Gimme a minute here, gimme what the problem is.”

  He doesn’t answer. What can you tell someone made of pure information anyway?

  * * *

  There’s a new guy on the front door, bigger and meaner than His Mohawkness but he’s only there to keep people out, not to keep anyone in. You want to jump ship, go to, you poor un-hip asshole. Even if you are a Pretty Boy. He reads it in the guy’s face as he passes from noise into the three A.M. quiet of the street.

  They let him go. He doesn’t fool himself about that part. They let him out of the room because they know all about him. They know he lives like Bobby lived, they know he loves what Bobby loved—the clubs, the admiration, the lust of strangers for his personal magic. He can’t say he doesn’t love that, because he does. He isn’t even sure if he loves it more than he ever loved Bobby, or if he loves it more than being alive. Than being live.

  And here it is, three A.M., clubbing prime time, and he is moving toward home. Maybe he is a poor un-hip asshole after all, no matter what he loves. Too stupid even to stay in the club, let alone grab a ride to heaven. Still he keeps moving, unbothered by the chill but feeling it. Bobby doesn’t have to go home in the cold any more, he thinks. Bobby doesn’t even have to get through the hours between club-times if he doesn’t want to. All times are now prime time for Bobby. Even if he gets unplugged, he’ll never know the difference. Poof, it’s a day later, poof, it’s a year later, poof, you’re out for good. Painlessly.

  Maybe Bobby has the right idea, he thinks, moving along the empty sidewalk. If he goes over tomorrow, who will notice? Like when he left the dance floor—people will come and fill up the space. Ultimately, it wouldn’t make any difference to anyone.

  He smiles suddenly. Except them. As long as they don’t have him, he makes a difference. As long as he has flesh to shake and flaunt and feel with, he makes a pretty goddamn big difference to them. Even after they don’t want him any more, he will still be the one they didn’t get. He rubs his hands together against the chill, feeling the skin rubbing skin, really feeling it for the first time in a long time, and he thinks about sixteen million things all at once, maybe one thing for every brain cell he’s using, or maybe one thing for every brain cell yet to come.

  He keeps moving, holding to the big thought, making a difference, and all the little things they won’t be making a program out of. He’s lightheaded with joy—he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

  Neither do they.

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Against Babylon

  One of the most prolific authors alive, Robert Silverberg has produced more than 450 fiction and nonfiction books and over 3,000 magazine pieces. Within SF, Silverberg rose to his greatest prominence during the late fifties and early seventies, winning four Nebula awards and a Hugo Award, publishing dozens of major novels and anthologies—1973’s Dying Inside in particular is widely
considered to be one of the best novels of the seventies—and editing New Dimensions, perhaps the most influential original anthology series of its time. In 1980, after four years of self-imposed “retirement,” Silverberg started writing again, and the first of his new novels, Lord Valentine’s Castle, became a nationwide bestseller. Silverberg’s other books include The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, Tower of Glass, The World Inside, Born With the Dead, Shadrach in the Furnace, Lord of Darkness (a historical novel), and Valentine Pontifex, the sequel to Lord Valentine’s Castle. His collections include Unfamiliar Territory, Capricorn Games, Majipoor Chronicles. The Best of Robert Silverberg, and At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party. His most recent books are the novels Tom O’Bedlam and Star of Gypsies, and the collection Beyond the Safe Zone. His story “Multiples” was in our First Annual Collection, “The Affair” was in our Second Annual Collection, and “Sailing To Byzantium”—which won a Nebula Award in 1986—was in our Third Annual Collection.

  Here he gives us a gripping study of the different kinds of conflagration.…

  AGAINST BABYLON

  Robert Silverberg

  Carmichael flew in from New Mexico that morning, and the first thing they told him when he put his little plane down at Burbank was that fires were burning out of control all around the Los Angeles basin. He was needed bad, they told him. It was late October, the height of the brushfire season in Southern California, and a hot, hard, dry wind was blowing out of the desert, and the last time it had rained was the fifth of April. He phoned the district supervisor right away, and the district supervisor told him, “Get your ass out here on the line double fast, Mike.”

  “Where do you want me?”

  “The worst one’s just above Chatsworth. We’ve got planes loaded and ready to go out of Van Nuys Airport.”

  “I need time to pee and to phone my wife. I’ll be in Van Nuys in fifteen, okay?”

  He was so tired that he could feel it in his teeth. It was nine in the morning, and he’d been flying since half past four, and it had been rough all the way, getting pushed around by that same fierce wind out of the heart of the continent that was now threatening to fan the flames in L.A. At this moment all he wanted was home and shower and Cindy and bed. But Carmichael didn’t regard fire-fighting work as optional. This time of year, the whole crazy city could go in one big fire storm. There were times he almost wished that it would. He hated this smoggy, tawdry Babylon of a city, its endless tangle of freeways, the strange-looking houses, the filthy air, the thick, choking, glossy foliage everywhere, the drugs, the booze, the divorces, the laziness, the sleaziness, the porno shops and the naked encounter parlors and the massage joints, the weird people wearing their weird clothes and driving their weird cars and cutting their hair in weird ways. There was a cheapness, a trashiness, about everything here, he thought. Even the mansions and the fancy restaurants were that way: hollow, like slick movies sets. He sometimes felt that the trashiness bothered him more than the out-and-out evil. If you kept sight of your own values you could do battle with evil, but trashiness slipped up around you and infiltrated your soul without your even knowing it. He hoped that his sojourn in Los Angeles was not doing that to him. He came from the Valley, and what he meant by the Valley was the great San Joaquin, out behind Bakersfield, and not the little, cluttered San Fernando Valley they had here. But L.A. was Cindy’s city, and Cindy loved L.A. and he loved Cindy, and for Cindy’s sake he had lived here seven years, up in Laurel Canyon amidst the lush, green shrubbery, and for seven Octobers in a row he had gone out to dump chemical retardants on the annual brushfires, to save the Angelenos from their own idiotic carelessness. You had to accept your responsibilities, Carmichael believed.

  The phone rang seven times at the home number before he hung up. Then he tried the little studio where Cindy made her jewelry, but she didn’t answer there either, and it was too early to call her at the gallery. That bothered him, not being able to say hello to her right away after his three-day absence and no likely chance for it now for another eight or ten hours. But there was nothing he could do about that.

  As soon as he was aloft again he could see the fire not far to the northwest, a greasy black column against the pale sky. And when he stepped from his plane a few minutes later at Van Nuys he felt the blast of sudden heat. The temperature had been in the mid-eighties at Burbank, damned well hot enough for nine in the morning, but here it was over a hundred. He heard the distant roar of flames, the popping and crackling of burning underbrush, the peculiar whistling sound of dry grass catching fire.

  The airport looked like a combat center. Planes were coming and going with lunatic frenzy, and they were lunatic planes, too, antiques of every sort, forty and fifty years old and even older, converted B-17 Flying Fortresses and DC-3’s and a Douglas Invader and, to Carmichael’s astonishment, a Ford Trimotor from the 1930’s that had been hauled, maybe, out of some movie studio’s collection. Some were equipped with tanks that held fire-retardant chemicals, some were water pumpers, some were mappers with infrared and electronic scanning equipment glistening on their snouts. Harried-looking men and women ran back and forth, shouting into CB handsets, supervising the loading process. Carmichael found his way to Operations HQ, which was full of haggard people staring into computer screens. He knew most of them from other years.

  One of the dispatchers said, “We’ve got a DC-3 waiting for you. You’ll dump retardants along this arc, from Ybarra Canyon eastward to Horse Flats. The fire’s in the Santa Susana foothills, and so far the wind’s from the east, but if it shifts to northerly it’s going to take out everything from Chatsworth to Granada Hills and right on down to Ventura Boulevard. And that’s only this fire.”

  “How many are there?”

  The dispatcher tapped his keyboard. The map of the San Fernando Valley that had been showing disappeared and was replaced by one of the entire Los Angeles basin. Carmichael stared. Three great scarlet streaks indicated fire zones: this one along the Santa Susanas, another nearly as big way off to the east in the grasslands north of the 210 Freeway around Glendora or San Dimas, and a third down in eastern Orange County, back of Anaheim Hills. “Ours is the big one so far,” the dispatcher said. “But these other two are only about forty miles apart, and if they should join up somehow—”

  “Yeah,” Carmichael said. A single wall of fire running along the whole eastern rim of the basin, maybe—with Santa Ana winds blowing, carrying sparks westward across Pasadena, across downtown L.A., across Hollywood, Beverly Hills, all the way to the coast, to Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu. He shivered. Laurel Canyon would go. Everything would go. Worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, worse than the fall of Nineveh. Nothing but ashes for hundreds of miles. “Everybody scared silly of Russian nukes, and a carload of dumb kids tossing cigarettes can do the job just as easily,” he said.

  “But this wasn’t cigarettes, Mike,” the dispatcher said.

  “No? What then, arson?”

  “You haven’t heard.”

  “I’ve been in New Mexico for the last three days.”

  “You’re the only one in the world who hasn’t heard, then.”

  “For Christ’s sake, heard what?”

  “About the E.T.’s,” said the dispatcher wearily. “They started the fires. Three spaceships landing at six this morning in three different corners of the L.A. basin. The heat of their engines ignited the dry grass.”

  Carmichael did not smile. “You’ve got one weird sense of humor, man.”

  The dispatcher said, “I’m not joking.”

  “Spaceships? From another world?”

  “With critters fifteen feet high onboard,” the dispatcher at the next computer said. “They’re walking around on the freeways right this minute. Fifteen feet high, Mike.”

  “Men from Mars?”

  “Nobody knows where the hell they came from.”

  “Jesus Christ, God,” Carmichael said.

  Wild updrafts from the blaze buffeted the plane as he took it alof
t and gave him a few bad moments. But he moved easily and automatically to gain control, pulling the moves out of the underground territories of his nervous system. It was essential, he believed, to have the moves in your fingers, your shoulders, your thighs, rather than in the conscious realms of your brain. Consciousness could get you a long way, but ultimately you had to work out of the underground territories or you were dead.

  He felt the plane responding and managed a grin. DC-3’s were tough old birds. He loved flying them, though the youngest of them had been manufactured before he was born. He loved flying anything. Flying wasn’t what Carmichael did for a living—he didn’t actually do anything for a living, not anymore—but flying was what he did. There were months when he spent more time in the air than on the ground, or so it seemed to him, because the hours he spent on the ground often slid by unnoticed, while time in the air was intensified, magnified.

  He swung south over Encino and Tarzana before heading up across Canoga Park and Chatsworth into the fire zone. A fine haze of ash masked the sun. Looking down, he could see the tiny houses, the tiny swimming pools, the tiny people scurrying about, desperately trying to hose down their roofs before the flames arrived. So many houses, so many people, filling every inch of space between the sea and the desert, and now it was all in jeopardy. The southbound lanes of Topanga Canyon Boulevard were as jammed with cars, here in midmorning, as the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour. Where were they all going? Away from the fire, yes. Toward the coast, it seemed. Maybe some television preacher had told them there was an ark sitting out there in the Pacific, waiting to carry them to safety while God rained brimstone down on Los Angeles. Maybe there really was. In Los Angeles anything was possible. Invaders from space walking around on the freeways even. Jesus. Jesus. Carmichael hardly knew how to begin thinking about that.