The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “Whatever you say, Rafiel,” she said submissively. But she stayed attentively by him all through the break, watchful as any serving machine. And when they started again, he saw the girl reporting to her father, and felt Mosay’s eyes studying him.

  He managed to keep his mind on what he was doing for that shot, and for the next. It was, he thought, a creditable enough performance, but it wasn’t easy. They were shooting out of sequence, to take advantage of the lighting as the sun moved and for grouping the actors conveniently. Rafiel found that confusing. Worse, he discovered that he was feeling strangely detached. Docilia did not seem to be the Docilia he had so often bedded any more. She had become her role; Jocasta, the mother of his children and appallingly also of himself. When he reached the scene where he confronted her dead body, twisting as it hung in the throneroom, he felt an unconquerable need for reassurance. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her to make sure she was still warm.

  “Oh, merde, Rafiel,” she sighed, opening her eyes to stare at him, “what are you doing? You’ve wrecked the whole drecklich shot.”

  But Mosay was there already, soothing, a little apprehensive. “It’s all right, Rafiel,” he said. “I know this is hard on you, the first day’s shooting, and all this heat. It’s about time to quit for the day, anyway.”

  Rafiel nodded. “It’ll be better in the morning,” he promised.

  But it wasn’t.

  It wasn’t better the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that one. It didn’t get better at all. “It’s the heat, of course,” Docilia told him, watching Charlus trying to perfect the chorus in their last appearance. (“Deeper plié, for God’s sake – use your legs!”). “Imagine Mosay making us work in the open, for God’s sake.”

  “Of course,” Rafiel agreed. He had stopped trying to look as though he were all right when he was off camera. He just stood in the shade, with an air cooler blowing on him. And Charlus said the same thing.

  “You’ll be all right when we finish here,” he promised, watching Bruta and the Ismene. “It’s only another day or two – no, no! Chassé back now! Then a pas de chat, but throw your legs back and come down on the right foot – that’s better. Don’t you want to lie down, Rafiel?”

  He did want that, of course. He wanted it a lot, but not enough to be seen doing it on the set. He did all his lying down when shooting was over for the day, back in the borrowed condo, where he slept almost all the free time he had, with the kitten curled up at his feet.

  Even Docilia was mothering him, coming to tuck him in at night but making it clear that she was not intending, or even willing, to stay. She kissed him on the forehead and hesitated, looking at the purring kitten. “You got that from Alegretta, didn’t you? Permesso ask you something?” And when he nodded, “No offense, Rafiel, but why are you so verrückt for this particular one?”

  “You mean Alegretta? I don’t know,” he said, after thought. “Forse it’s just because she’s so different from us. She doesn’t even talk like us. She’s – serious.”

  “Oh, Rafiel! Aren’t we serious? We work hard.”

  “Well, sure we do, but it’s just – well – you know, we’re just sort of making shadow pictures on a screen. Maybe it comes to what she’s serious about,” he offered. “You know, she started a whole new life for herself – quit medicine, took up science . . .”

  Docilia sniffed. “That’s not so unusual. I could do that if I wanted to. Some day I probably will.”

  Rafiel smiled up at her, imagining this pale, tiny beauty becoming a scientist. “When?” he asked.

  “What does it matter when? I’ve got plenty of time!”

  And Rafiel fell asleep thinking about what “plenty of time” meant. It meant, among other things, that when you had forever to get around to important things, it gave you a good reason to postpone them – forever.

  The shooting went faster than Rafiel had imagined, and suddenly they were at an end to it. As he waited in full make-up for his last scene, his face a ruin, himself unable to see through the wreck the make-up people had made of his eyes, Docilia came over. “You’ve been wonderful,” she told him lovingly. “I’m glad it’s over, though. I promise you I won’t be sorry to leave here.”

  Rafiel nodded and said, more wistfully than not, “Still it’s kind of nice to have a little solitude sometimes.”

  She gave him a perplexed look. “Solitude,” she said, as though she’d never heard the word before.

  Then Mosay was calling for him on the set . . . and then, before he had expected it, his part was done. Old Oedipus, blinded and helpless, was cast out of the city where he had reigned, and all that was left for the cast to shoot was the little come-on Mosay had prepared for the audiences, when the children and chorus got together to set up the sequel.

  They didn’t need Rafiel for that, but he lingered to watch, sweltering or not. A part of him was glad the ordeal was over. Another part was somberly wondering what would happen next in his life. Back to the hospital for more tinkering, most likely, he thought, but there was no pleasure in that. He decided not to think about it and watched the shooting of the final scene. One after another the minor actors were telling the audience they hoped they’d liked the show, and then, all together:

  If so, we’ll sure do more of these

  Jazzy old soaps by Mr. Sophocles.

  And that was it. They left the servers to strike the set. They got on the blessedly cool cast bus that took them back to the condo. Everyone was chattering, getting ready for the farewells. And Mosay came stumbling down the aisle to Rafiel, holding on to the seats. He leaned over, looking at Rafiel carefully. “Docilia says you wanted to stay here for a bit,” he said.

  That made Rafiel blink. What had she told him that for? “Well, I only said I kind of liked being alone here . . .”

  The dramaturge was shaking his head masterfully. “No, no. It’s quite all right, there’s nothing left but the technical stuff. I insist. You stay here. Rest. Take a few days here. I think you’ll agree it’s worth it, and – and – anyway, ese, after all, there’s no real reason why you have to go back with us, is there?”

  And, on thinking it over, Rafiel realized that there actually wasn’t.

  The trouble was that there wasn’t any real reason to stay in the Sonora arcology, either. As far as Rafiel could see, there wasn’t any reason for him to be anywhere at all, because – for the first time in how long? – he didn’t have anything he had to do.

  Since he’d had no practice at doing nothing, he made up things to do. He called people on the tel screen. Called old acquaintances – all of them proving to be kind, and solicitous, and quite unprecedently remote – called colleagues, even called a few paparazzi, though only to thank them for things they had already publicized for him and smilingly secretive about any future plans.

  Future plans reminded him to call his agent. Jeftha, at least, seemed to feel no particular need to be kind. “I had the idea you were pretty sick,” she said, studying him with care, and no more than half accepting his protestations that he was actually entirely well and ready for more work quite soon.

  She shook her head at that. “I’ve called off all your appearances,” she said. “Let them get hungry, then when you’re ready to get back—”

  “I’m ready now!”

  The black and usually cheerful face froze. “No,” she said.

  It was the first time his agent had ever said a flat “no” to her best client. “Ay Jesus,” he said, getting angry, “who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I don’t need you.”

  The expression on Jeftha’s face became contrite. “I know you don’t, caro mio, but I need you. I need you to be well. I – care about you, dear Rafiel.”

  That stopped the flooding anger in its tracks. He studied her suspiciously but, almost for the first time, she seemed to be entirely sincere. It was not a quality he had associated with agents.

  “Anyway,” she went on, the tone becoming more the one
he was used to, “I can’t let you make deals by yourself, piccina. You’ll get involved with people like that stupid Hillaree and her dumb story ideas. Who wants to hear about real things like kosmojets going off to other stars? People don’t care about now. They want the good old stories with lots of pain and torture and dying – excuse me, carissimo,” she finished, flushing.

  But she was right. Rafiel thought that he really ought to think about that: was that the true function of art, to provide suffering for people who were incapable of having any?

  He probably would think seriously about that, he decided, but not just yet. So he did very little. He made his calls, and between calls he dozed, and loafed, and pulled a string across the carpeted floor to amuse the kitten, and now and then remembered to eat.

  He began to think about an almost forgotten word that kept popping up in his mind. The word was “retirement.”

  It was a strange concept. He had never known anyone who had “retired.” Still, he knew that people used to do it in the old days. It might be an interesting novelty. There was no practical obstacle in the way; he had long since accumulated all the money he could possibly need to last him out . . . for whatever time he had left to live. (After all, it wasn’t as though he were going to live forever). Immortals had to worry about eternities, yes, but the cold fact was that no untreated human lasted much more than a hundred and twenty years, and Rafiel had already used up ninety of them.

  He could even, he mused, be like an immortal in these declining years of his life. Just like an immortal, he could, if he liked, make a midcourse change. He could take up a new career and thus change what remained of his life entirely. He could be a writer, maybe; he was quite confident that any decent performer could do that. Or he could be a politician. Certainly enough people knew the name of the famous Rafiel to give him an edge over almost any other candidate for almost any office. In short, there was absolutely nothing to prevent him from trying something completely different with the rest of his life. He might fail at whatever he tried, of course. But what difference did that make, when he would be dead in a couple of decades anyway?

  When the doorwarden rang he was annoyed at the interruption, since his train of thought had been getting interesting. He lifted his head in anger to the machine. “Ho detto positively no calls!”

  The doorwarden was unperturbed. “There is always an exception,” it informed him, right out of its basic programming, “in the case of visitors with special urgency, and I am informed this is one. The woman says she is from Hakluyt and she states that she is certain you will wish to see her.”

  “Hakluyt? Is it that fou dramaturge woman again? Well, she’s wrong about that, I don’t want to talk about her stupid show—”

  But then the voice from the speaker changed. It wasn’t the doorwarden’s any more. It was a human voice, and a familiar, female human voice at that. “Rafiel,” she said fondly, “what is this crap about a show? It’s me, Alegretta. I came to visit you all the way from my ship Hakluyt, and I don’t know anything about any stupid shows. Won’t you please tell your doorwarden to let me in?”

  10

  Rafiel knows that Alegretta has come from somewhere near Mars, and he knows pretty well how far away Mars is from the Earth: many millions of kilometers. He knows how long even a steady-thrust spacecraft takes to cross that immense void between planets, and then how long it takes for a passenger to descend to a spaceport and get to this remote outpost on the edge of the Sonoran desert. And he is well able to count back the days and see that Alegretta must have started this trip to his side – at the very least – ten days or two weeks before, which is to say right around the time when he collapsed into the hospital back in Indiana. He knows all that, and understands its unpleasing implications. He just doesn’t want to think about any of those implications at that moment.

  When you have lost the love of your life and suddenly, without warning, she appears in it again, what do you do?

  First, of course, there is kissing, and It’s been so longs, and How good it is to see yous and of course Alegretta has to see how well the kitten she sent is doing, and Rafiel has to admire the fat white cat Alegretta has brought with her, a server carrying it for her in a great screened box (it has turned out to be the kitten’s mother), and of course Rafiel has to offer food and drink, and Alegretta has to accept something . . . but then what? What – after half a century or more – do you say to each other? What Rafiel said, watching his love nibble on biscuits and monkey-orange and beer, was only, “I didn’t expect you here.”

  “Well, I had to come,” she said, diffident, smiling, stroking the snow-white cat that lay like a puddle in her lap, “because Nicolette here kept rubbing up against me to tell me that she really missed her baby kitten – and because, oh, Rafiel, I’ve been so damn much missing you.” Which of course led to more kissing over the table, and while the server was cleaning up the beer that had got spilled in the process, Rafiel sank back to study her. She hadn’t changed. The hair was a darker red now, but it was still Alegretta’s unruly curly-mop hair, and the face and the body that went with the hair were not one hour older than they had been – sixty? seventy? however many years it had been since they last touched like this. Rafiel felt his heart trembling in his chest and said quickly, “What were you saying about Hakluyt?”

  “My ship. Yes.”

  “You’re going on that ship?”

  “Of course I am, dear.” And it turned out that she was, though such a thing had never occurred to him when he was talking to the dramaturge woman. There definitely was a Hakluyt habitat, and it really was, even now, being fitted with lukewarm-fusion drives and a whole congeries of pion generators that were there to produce the muons that would make the fusion reactor react.

  “You know all this nuclear fusion stuff?” Rafiel asked, marveling.

  “Certainly I do. I’m the head engineer on the ship, Rafiel,” she said with pride, “and I’m afraid that means I can’t stay here long. They’re installing the drive engines right now, and I must be there before they finish.”

  He shook his head. “So now you’ve become a particle physicist.”

  “Well, an engineer, anyway. Why not? You get tired of one thing, after you’ve done it for ninety or a hundred years. I just didn’t want to be a doctor any more; when things go right it’s boring, and when they don’t—”

  She stopped, biting her lip, as though there were something she wanted to say. Rafiel headed her off. “But what will you find when you get to this distant what’s-its-name star?”

  “It’s called Tau Ceti.”

  “This Tau Ceti. What do you expect? Will people be able to live there?”

  She thought about that. “Well, yes, certainly they will – in the habitat, if nothing else. The habitat doesn’t care what star it orbits. We do know there are planets there, too. We don’t know, really, if any of them has life . . .”

  “But you’re going anyway?”

  “What else is there to do?” she asked, and he laughed.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” he said fondly.

  “Of course not. Why should I?” She sounded almost angry – perhaps at Rafiel because, after all, he had. He shook his head, reached for her with loving hunger, and pulled her to him.

  Of course they made love, with the cat and the kitten watching interestedly from the chaise lounge at the side of the room. Then they slept a while, or Alegretta did, because she was still tired from the long trip. Remarkably, Rafiel was not in the least tired. He watched over her tenderly, allowing himself to be happy in spite of the fact that he knew why she was there.

  She didn’t sleep long, and woke smiling up at him.

  “I’m sorry, Rafiel,” she said.

  “What have you got to be sorry for?”

  “I’m sorry I stayed away so long. I was afraid, you see.” She sat up, naked. “I didn’t know if I could handle seeing you, well, grow old.”

  Rafiel felt embarrassment. “It isn’t pretty,
I suppose.”

  “It’s frightening,” she said honestly. “I think you’re the main reason I gave up medicine.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, soothing. “Anyway, I’m sure what you’re doing now is more interesting. Going to another star! It takes a lot of courage, that.”

  “It takes a lot of hard work.” Then she admitted, “It takes courage, too. It certainly took me a long time to make up my mind to do it. Sometimes I still wonder if I have the nerve to go through with it. We’ll be thirty-five years en route, Rafiel. Nearly five thousand people, all packed together for that long.”

  He frowned. “I thought somebody said the Hakluyt was supposed to have twenty thousand to start.”

  “We were. We are. But there aren’t that many volunteers for the trip, you see. That’s why they made me chief engineer; the other experts didn’t see any reason to leave the solar system, when they were doing so many interesting things here.” She leaned forward to kiss him. “Do you know what my work is, Rafiel? Do you know anything about lukewarm-fusion?”

  “Well,” he began, and then honestly finished: “No.”

  She looked astonished, or perhaps it was just pitying. “But there are powerplants in every arcology. Haven’t you ever visited one?” She didn’t wait for an answer but began to tell him about her work, and how long she had had to study to master the engineering details. And in his turn he told her about his life as a star, with the personal appearances and the fans always showing up, wherever he went, with their love and excitement: and about the production of Oedipus they had just finished, and the members of the troupe. Alegretta was fascinated by the inside glimpse of the lives of the famous. Then, when he got to the point of telling her about Docilia and her decision to try monogamy with the father of her child, as soon as the child was born, anyway, Alegretta began to purse her lips again. She got up to stare out the window.

  He called, “Is something wrong?”