The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  Jealous?

  No. I was holding hands with Tracy.

  She said, “I think they were working on a new type of space drive, one that would have been virtually instantaneous, given them access to all places and all times, all at once.”

  What the hell book had I read where they had some kind of instantaneous radio? One of those Ace Doubles? Rocannon’s World, maybe.

  “The evidence is spotty, but it looks like the event sequences all stop when they switched on the test unit.”

  “So . . . ? Where’d they all go?”

  More shadow, this time deep in her eyes. “I don’t know, Wally. I think maybe they went to the Omega Point.”

  I waited for a minute, but she didn’t offer any more, and I decided not to ask. After a bit, we went up the ramp and into the saucer, lifting off for our spome.

  Sightseeing.

  Sightseeing and fucking.

  So much fucking, I probably would’ve lost another twenty pounds and gotten as skinny as a rock star, except that Tracy insisted she had to eat, if she was ever going to grow. I didn’t mind her only being four-foot-nine, but it didn’t seem fair to make her stay little, and since I had to hang around while she was eating, I guessed I might as well eat too.

  Eventually, we wound up going to a world Tracy found in one of those magical electronic information nodes she could access, something she said would interest us both, and it did: a planet-sized museum that’d been the Lost Empire’s biggest tourist attraction. Like the Smithsonian and the Guggenheim and the Louvre and everything else you could possibly think of, all rolled into one and then enlarged a million, billion times.

  What can I tell you about the history of a billion years? A billion years, a hundred billion galaxies, all of it stuffed into a tiny corner of an incomprehensibly larger universe?

  I remember standing in a hall with more square footage then the Pentagon, detailing the history of a nontechnological race, a people who looked a little like vast shell-less oysters, slimy and featureless gray, who’d devoted a hundred thousand years to perfecting an art form that looked like nothing so much as boiling bacon grease.

  The stories got it wrong, I remember thinking. All those story aliens were nothing more than Chinamen and Hindoos in goofy rubber suits pretending to be wonderful and strange. Even the best of them . . . Dilbians? Talking bears from a fairy tale. Puppeteers? Kzinti? I remember I’d liked all that stuff, but what’s a few more intelligent cows and giant bipedal housecats among friends?

  Tracy and I walked the halls, and fucked and ate and sightsaw, and one day wound up in a great dark cavern of the winds, in which were suspended ten thousand interstellar warships, bristling with missile launchers and turrets and ray projectors.

  The Chukhamagh Fleet, the narrative node named them, most likely inventing a word I could pronounce, at Tracy’s behest. They’d been hit by the expanding wave-front of the Lost Empire, and, being a martial people, had decided to make a fight of it. The local police force, if you can call them that, dragged the fleet straight here to the museum, where they made the crews get out and take public transportation home.

  So there we were, sprawled on the floor on a picnic blanket, dizzy from exertion, sweat still evaporating, in front of a kilometer-long star-battleship that looked better than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

  Look at the God-damned thing! What a story that would’ve made!

  Hell, maybe somebody did think of it.

  Maybe it was written and published, and I just missed it.

  Maybe . . .

  I rolled on my side then, looked at Tracy and smiled.

  You could see she was expecting me to crawl right back on top of her, but what I said was, “Hey, I’ve got an idea! Tell me what you think of this. . . .”

  The automatic pilot dropped us out of hyperspace just outside Jupiter’s orbit, just as planned, and gave a delicate little chime to get our attention. I guess we were about done anyway, getting up off the command deck floor, using the blanket to dry off a bit, plopping down bareass in those nice leather chairs the Chukhamagh had been so proud of.

  Not really comfortable, especially the way my nuts kept winding up in the crevice the Chukhamagh made for their beavertails, but good enough.

  “Let’s see what we got here.”

  I let the autopilot find Earth with the telescope optics, frosted blue-white marble swelling to fill the vidwall. Hmh. Not exactly the way I’d expected. I guess I didn’t really pay attention on the way out, so I’d keep expecting to see the continents on a globe instead of blue with white stripes and a hint of tan here and there. What’s that white glare? Antarctica?

  I said, “No atomic war, I guess.”

  Tracy said, “It’s not that common, anyway. Judging from the early history of the Lost Empire, not one culture in a million blows itself to bits on the way to star travel. Ecological misadventure is much more common.”

  Like wiping out an entire intergalactic civilization while you’re looking for a quicker way to get around? She still wasn’t talking about that. Not telling me what an Omega Point might be, or why it’d taken the organic sentiences, but left the robots behind. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

  I polled the electromagnetic spectrum. Lots of noise from Earth, just like you’d expect. Try a sample. “Jesus.”

  Tracy cocked her head at the two sailors on the screen. “Something you recognize.”

  “Yah. I guess I didn’t expect Gilligan’s Island would still be in re-runs after half a century.”

  “Not your language, though.”

  “Maybe it’s dubbed in Arabic or Japanese or something.”

  I sampled around the solar system, trying to figure out . . . “Almost nothing. A couple of satellites around Jupiter and Saturn. Hell, I figured on a Mars base by now, at least.”

  Not a peep from the Moon. No Moonbase? What the fuck . . .

  There was a tinkertoy space station in very low Earth orbit, not even half way to Von Braun’s celebrated two-hour orbit. No space-wheel. No spin. No artificial gravity. On the other hand, I was impressed by the big delta-winged shape docked to one end. “At least they’ve got real spaceships now!”

  Tracy said, “The remotes show eleven humans aboard.”

  Eleven. Better than Von Braun’s projected seven-man crew for those 1950s ships. “How many aboard the station?”

  “Eleven total, between the station and ship.” She went deeper into the scan data, and then said, “I think the station is set up to house a three-man crew. That little thing with the solar panels down there is the escape capsule, I guess.”

  I looked, but didn’t recognize it. Smaller than an Apollo, bigger than a Gemini. Kind of, I thought, like a Voskhod with two reentry modules, all wrapped up in some green crap.

  I flopped back in the command pilot’s chair, and said, “Man, what a bunch of fuckin’ duds! They might just as well have had the goddam atomic war and got it over with!”

  Tracy smiled, and said, “Maybe you’re being a little hard on them.”

  Getting a little bossy, now that she’s full size. Although having her five-feet-eight to my six-foot-nothing made for a much more comfortable fuck.

  She said, “Are we ready, then?”

  I gave the pathetic old Earth a long, long look, thought about Murray, down there somewhere, pushing sixty, and said, “Sure. Let’s do it.” Get it over with, and get back to something worthwhile.

  I sent the signal, dropping the main fleet out of hyperspace, bringing it swinging on in, wave on wave of robot-crewed battleships, wondering what they’d make of it down there, when, in just a minute, the radar screens began to go wild.

  And then, not just on every TV, not just on every movie screen, not just on every audio tape, but in the printed words of every book, magazine, and newspaper, on every billboard, on the signs by the side of every road that should’ve given speed limits and directions, the labels on bottles, the images and text on the boxes of all the breakfast cereals, on magical t
hings Tracy explained to me, the little display windows on electronic calculators (!), on these shiny little thingies called CDs that’d displaced our old LPs, on every page in every browser (not a clue! something to do with “peecees” and what she termed “the Internet”?), all over the world, there was nothing but the face of a fiery God, and the words of his message:

  “Behold,” he said. “I am coming to punish everyone for what he has done, and for what he has failed to do.”

  I took a moment to imagine the look on Murray’s face right now, another moment to wonder if he even remembered me. When the moment was over, we got down to work.

  And so the seed of mankind was parceled out to the trillion worlds of the Lost Empire, a family here, a neighborhood there, this one with a whole nation, that one with no more than a township, a few with no more than a single man or woman, left to wonder just what they’d done to merit such a nightmare punishment, or such a grand reward.

  It was a long while before they understood what’d been done to them, longer still before they began to look for one another.

  “But that, Little Adam, is another story.”

  IT’S ALL TRUE

  John Kessel

  Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel now lives with his family in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is a professor of American Literature and the director of the Creative Writing program at North Carolina State University. Kessel made his first sale in 1975. His first solo novel, Good News From Outer Space, was released in 1988 to wide critical acclaim, but before that he had made his mark on the genre primarily as a writer of highly imaginative, finely crafted short stories, many of which were assembled in his collection, Meeting in Infinity. He won a Nebula Award in 1983 for his superlative novella “Another Orphan,” which was also a Hugo finalist that year, and has been released as an individual book. His story “Buffalo” won the Theodore Sturgeon Award in 1991, and his novella “Stories for Men” won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2003. His other books include the novel Freedom Beach, written in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, and an anthology of stories from the famous Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop (which he also helps to run), called Intersections, coedited by Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner. His most recent books are a major new novel, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and a new collection, The Pure Product. His stories have appeared in our First, Second (in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly), Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Annual Collections.

  Here he takes us back in time to the glamorous Tinseltown of the early Twentieth Century to show us that sometimes second chances aren’t all they’re cracked up to be . . .

  ON THE DESK in the marina office a black oscillating fan rattled gusts of hot air across the sports page. It was a perfect artifact of the place and time. The fan raised a few strands of the harbor master’s hair every time its gaze passed over him. He studied my papers, folded the damp sheets, and handed them back to me.

  “Okay. Mr. Vidor’s yacht is at the end of the second row.” He pointed out the open window down the crowded pier. “The big black one.”

  “Is the rest of the crew aboard?”

  “Beats me,” he said, sipping from a glass of iced tea. He set the perspiring glass down on a ring of moisture that ran through the headline: “Cards Shade Dodgers in 12; Cut Lead to 5-1/2.” On the floor beside the desk lay the front page: “New Sea-Air Battle Rages in Solomons. Japanese Counterattack on Guadalcanal.”

  I stepped out onto the dock, shouldered my bag, and headed toward the yacht. The sun beat down on the crown of my head, and my shirt collar was damp with sweat. I pulled the bandana from my pocket and wiped my brow. For midweek the place was pretty busy, a number of Hollywood types down for the day or a start on a long weekend. Across the waterway, tankers were drawn up beside a refinery.

  The Cynara was a 96-foot-long two-masted schooner with a crew of four and compartments for ten. The big yacht was an act of vanity, but King Vidor was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood and, though notorious for his parsimony, still capable of indulging himself. A blond kid who ought to have been drafted by now was polishing the brasswork; he looked up as I stepped aboard. I ducked through the open hatchway into a varnished oak com-panionway, then up to the pilothouse. The captain was there, bent over the chart table.

  “Mr. Onslow?”

  The man looked up. Mid-fifties, salt-and-pepper hair. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “David Furrow,” I said. I handed him the papers. “Mr. Welles sent me down to help out on this cruise.”

  “How come I never heard of you?”

  “He was supposed to call you. Maybe he asked Mr. Vidor to contact you?”

  “Nobody has said a word about it.”

  “You should call Mr. Welles, then.”

  Onslow looked at me, looked at the papers again. There was a forged letter from Welles, identifying me as an able-bodied seaman with three years’ experience. Onslow clearly didn’t want to call Welles and risk a tirade. “Did he say what he expected you to do?”

  “Help with the meals, mostly.”

  “Stow your gear in the crew’s compartment aft,” he said. “Then come on back.”

  I found an empty bunk and put my bag with the portable unit in the locker beneath it. There was no lock, but I would have to take the chance.

  Onslow introduced me to the cook, Manolo, who set me to work bringing aboard the produce, poultry, and case of wine the caterer had sent. When I told him that Welles wanted me to serve, he seemed relieved. About mid-afternoon Charles Koerner, the acting head of production at RKO, arrived with his wife and daughter. They expected to be met by more than just the crew, and Koerner grumbled as he sat at the mahogany table on the afterdeck. Manolo gave me a white jacket and sent me up with drinks. The wife was quiet, fanning herself with a palm fan, and the daughter, an ungainly girl of twelve or thirteen, all elbows and knees, explored the schooner.

  An hour later a maroon Packard pulled up to the dock and Welles got out, accompanied by a slender dark woman whom I recognized from photos as his assistant, Shifra Haran. Welles bounded up onto the deck. “Charles!” he boomed, and engulfed the uncomfortable Koerner in a bear hug. “So good to see you!” He towered over the studio head. Koerner introduced Welles to his wife Mary.

  Welles wore a lightweight suit; his dark hair was long and he sported a mustache he had grown in Brazil in some misguided attempt at machismo. He was over six feet tall, soft in the belly but with little sign of the monstrous obesity that would haunt his future. A huge head, round cheeks, beautifully molded lips, and almond-shaped Mongol eyes.

  “And who’s this?” Welles asked, turning to the daughter. His attention was like a searchlight, and the girl squirmed in the center of it.

  “Our daughter Barbara.”

  “Barbara,” Welles said with a grin, “do you always carry your house key in your ear?” From the girl’s left ear he plucked a shiny brass key and held it in front of her face. His fingers were extraordinarily long, his hands graceful. The girl smiled slyly. “That’s not my key,” she said.

  “Perhaps it’s not a key at all.” Welles passed his left hand over his right, and the key became a silver dollar. “Would you like this?”

  “Yes.”

  He passed his hand over the coin again, and it vanished. “Look in your pocket.”

  She shoved her hand into the pocket of her rolled blue jeans and pulled out the dollar. Her eyes flashed with delight.

  “Just remember,” Welles said, “money isn’t everything.”

  And as quickly as he had given the girl his attention, he turned back to Koerner. He had the manner of a prince among commoners, dispensing his favors like gold yet expecting to be deferred to at any and every moment. Haran hovered around him like a hummingbird. She carried a portfolio, ready to hand him whatever he needed – a pencil, a cigar, a match, a cup of tea, a copy of his RKO contract. Herman Mankiewicz had said about him, “There
but for the grace of God – goes God.”

  “Shifra!” he bellowed, though she was right next to him. “Get those things out of the car.”

  Haran asked me to help her. I followed her to the pier and from the trunk took an octagonal multi-reel film canister and a bulky portable film projector. The label on the canister had The Magnificent Ambersons scrawled in black grease pencil. Haran watched me warily until I stowed the print and projector safely in the salon, then hurried back on deck to look after Welles.

  I spent some time helping Manolo in the galley until Onslow called down to me: it was time to cast off. Onslow started the diesel engine. The blond kid and another crewmember cast off the lines, and Onslow backed the Cynara out of the slip. Once the yacht had left the waterway and entered San Pedro Bay, we raised the main, fore, and staysails. The canvas caught the wind, Onslow turned off the engine, and, in the declining sun, we set sail for Catalina.

  On my way back to the galley I asked the passengers if I could freshen their drinks. Welles had taken off his jacket and was sprawled in one of the deck chairs, regaling the Koerners with stories of voudun rituals he had witnessed in Brazil. At my interruption he gave me a black look, but Koerner took the break as an opportunity to ask for another scotch. I asked Barbara if she wanted a lemonade. Welles’s hooded eyes flashed his impatience, and I hurried back below deck.

  It was twilight when I served supper: the western horizon blazed orange and red, and the awning above the afterdeck table snapped in the breeze. I uncorked several bottles of wine. I eavesdropped through the avocado salad, the coq au vin, the strawberry shortcake. The only tough moment came when Onslow stepped out on deck to say goodnight. “I hope your dinner went well.” He leaned over and put a hand on Welles’s shoulder, nodding toward me. “You know, we don’t usually take on extra crew at the last minute.”

  “Would anyone like brandy?” I interjected.

  Welles, intent on Koerner, waved a hand at Onslow. “He’s done a good job. Very helpful.”