The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  “But then, no matter what we do, it’ll work out that way. If I just go to bed for twenty years, that contact will still occur.”

  Pruitt lifted the lid of the Dutch oven and stirred the apples, letting out a cloud of fragrant steam, then came and sat on the bench next to Denny. “The Hefn have another saying: ‘What we never know is how.’ If a window opens in the future, they know of one little thing that will definitely happen, but not what else will happen between the present and that moment in the future. Maybe the ‘how’ is that you call a press conference and announce that the Hefn are reproducing, using bears as surrogate mothers. Maybe it’s that you go back to work for Fish and Wildlife and get assigned here, and never say a word to anybody. Maybe you sneak back to have another look at baby Dennifrey and Humphrey catches you with your hand in the cookie jar, or you hide out in Utah and convert to Mormonism, or you go to bed for twenty years. You can say it doesn’t matter, but you still have to choose among alternatives, see? And whatever you actually choose, that turns out to be ‘how.’ Your choice isn’t determined by anything, but it’s already there in the timestream.”

  Denny shook his head dubiously. “I don’t really see why that’s not determinism, but never mind. I’m making my choice. I’m choosing to believe that I’m really going to have a child and a grandchild, and that it means that up in the future where they are, human babies are being born, whether or not the Ban’s been lifted. So for now, I’m deciding not to expose them. I’m going back to Fish and Wildlife and take the Hurt Hollow assignment, and wait and see.” He looked straight into Pruitt’s face, close to his own, her expression unreadable. “That’s what you were hoping I’d do, right?”

  “I’m not sure anymore.”

  The world seemed to have changed for her as well, but it wasn’t Denny’s problem. He stood and zipped his coat again. “You don’t need to row me over, I’ll walk back to Milton and catch the Louisville packet there. No big rush now.” Despite saying this, he realized he couldn’t wait to be off. He grabbed his duffel’s straps with one hand and reached with the other for the door latch. “Thanks for everything. Will I see you when they send me back?”

  Pruitt stood, dug in her pants pocket and pulled out a key on a ring. “Probably not. I’ll need to be getting back to Salt Lake fairly soon. Here, take the gate key and let yourself out at the top of the path. Leave the key in the lock, I’ll pick it up later.”

  “Well,” said Denny, “thanks again.”

  “No problem. Good luck.” She held out her hand.

  Denny gripped it. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Outside he donned his pack and, feeling light as a milkweed parachute, bounded past the studio, across the bridge spanning the creek, and up the footpath he had last climbed as a boy of twelve. He felt like singing. He’d had absolutely no inkling that he cared so passionately whether his species did or didn’t have a future, or whether he, as a biological organism, would be allowed to fulfill his own reproductive drive. The world had opened up, enormous with possibility.

  He was fitting the key in the padlock when the sound of a chopper abruptly cut across these thoughts like a shock wave. In seconds he could see the thing, flying lower, turning – yes, landing, in the road; the cold blast from the propeller blades, beating just beyond the meshes of the fence, hit him in the face. For an instant he panicked; but then he saw his elderly self, standing in the Time Window with his arm around a little girl, and he closed the gate calmly and clicked the padlock shut.

  Leaving the key in the lock as instructed, he turned toward the chopper. To his relief there seemed to be no one aboard but the pilot, who opened the passenger door and yelled, “Want a lift? I’m headed back to Louisville.” It was that Somebody Hoffman, the woman who’d flown Humphrey to the farm the day his old world had collapsed. Denny ducked under the whirling blades, threw his duffel in, and climbed in after it. He strapped himself in and put on the headphones she handed him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dropping off Humphrey. Didn’t you see him? He just got out. We spotted you coming up from the house and figured you’d been checking out Hurt Hollow from the bear-study perspective.”

  Denny grinned hugely. “Shrewd guess. That is exactly what I’ve been doing.”

  “If you’ve decided to go with that, you might want to reconsider.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell you after takeoff.” The chopper lifted off and the view of the Hollow spread out below them: steeply sloping hillsides of bare trees, kinking creek valleys, and, in another minute, Orrin Hubbell’s house and studio, perched above the broad, winding, steel-colored Ohio River. Smoke floated from the chimney, and a tiny black dog danced back and forth on the shore, looking up and, no doubt, barking like anything. Inside, Pruitt would be putting the hot apple pulp through a colander. She must be wondering what the chopper was about, and half-prepared for Humphrey’s imminent appearance. What would they say to each other, while Pruitt stirred in nutmeg and cinnamon and assembled her canning paraphernalia? Denny squinted into the leafless woods, but caught no glimpse of a Hefn descending the bluff.

  The chopper banked left and straightened out, following the river downstream. Somebody Hoffman settled back in her seat. “I don’t guess you’ve heard about the bombings.”

  Jerked back to the here and now, Denny said, “Bombings? No! What bombings?”

  “It’s on all the newscasts. Terrorists blew up the headquarters of the Bureau of Temporal Physics in Santa Barbara last night. Also Senator Carpenter’s office in the Congressional Office Building – he’s chair of the Committee on Alien Affairs, I guess you knew that? The bombs were synchronized to go off at one and four in the morning, so there were no fatalities and not many injuries, but they sure made a mess.”

  “Who did it?”

  “A group calling itself Collaboration Zero. They issued a statement calling on every human being presently helping or cooperating with the Hefn in any way to quit doing that. They want people to quit voluntarily, but whoever refuses to, they say they’re prepared to go to any lengths to stop them. Anybody they consider a collaborator, at every level of collaboration, will be a target. They’re claiming there are hundreds of resistance fighters, that the Hefn will never find them, and that this was a warning shot to convince everybody they can do what they say.”

  “My God.” A literal chill went through him. “If they can decide who’s a collaborator, it’s a witch hunt.” It struck him that the Time Window had opened on this day because of what he was hearing now, that he had been shown the future before learning about the present. But why? The sense of being thrown into uncertainty yet again made him feel almost frantic.

  “Yeah, and you and I are the witches,” the pilot was saying. “And besides that, they specifically named the Gaians as a group; they’re ordering all the missions to terminate their alliance with the Hefn and operate independently. Humphrey didn’t say so, but I bet that’s why he flew up here today. If those people know Pruitt’s here at Hurt Hollow, they might be coming for her. They could be anywhere.”

  “But how many of these dudes can there really be?” Denny protested. “They can’t possibly do all that much damage if they stay undercover, plus security will be a lot tighter wherever there’s a potential target. Unless they’re suicide troops. Jesus,” he said, “I’m having trouble taking this in.”

  “They’re clever,” replied the pilot – Marian, that was her name. “Technically, by targeting the collaborators instead of the Hefn themselves, they’re not violating the Directive. They explicitly said they didn’t intend to harm the Hefn, or break any Directive rules about transportation or the production and distribution of food or any of that. And the Gaians can go right on doing most of what they do. But if you’re a human being who helps the Hefn do what they do, and if you go on helping them after today, look out.” She glanced over at Denny. “There don’t have to be that many of them to scare the living daylights out of people. Today is my last day flying this thing f
or Fish and Wildlife, I can tell you that, and I wouldn’t be that keen to study bears in Hurt Hollow either.”

  “Who are they, though? What are they trying to accomplish?” With part of his mind Denny was trying, unsuccessfully, to make this new upset fit with the vision he’d been given. “I don’t see the logic of it,” he said, meaning both things.

  “Me neither, which is why I’ve started to wonder if this is maybe not so much about the Baby Ban, as just about standing up to the Hefn.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you know – striking a blow for human self-respect. I mean, you’re right, as a way to get the Ban lifted it makes no sense. But as a way to get people to stop cooperating with the Hefn – give them an excuse to stop, because in a lot of cases people would love to have an excuse – it kind of does. And let’s face it, how likely is it at this point that the Ban’s ever going to end?”

  Denny tried to focus his whirling thoughts. “Wait. You mean, like, if I quit studying bears because I refuse to work for the Hefn, they’re down on me. But if I quit because my life’s been threatened . . . ?”

  “That’s it. Like, I told Humphrey on the way up here that I’m probably going to have to quit flying, because my mother would worry herself sick, and he seemed to accept that at face value.”

  It did make a kind of sense, but – “But I don’t want to quit studying bears! God knows, I’d far rather do it without Hefn supervision; but one way or another, I bloody well want to keep on doing it!”

  Especially now.

  He pictured a pipe bomb going off in the middle of the night, blowing the Hubbells’ cabin to smithereens with him in it. Then he pictured himself in the Time Window, an old man, his arm around a girl in a blue dress, and calmed down. Whatever happened he wasn’t going to die anytime soon, a victim of Collaboration Zero.

  “ – your business,” Marian was saying. “But I’m going to find out who they are if I can, and what they’re really up to.”

  They could see Louisville in the distance now. “How do you figure on doing that?”

  She shrugged. “Search me. I don’t know yet, but I’ve got a few ideas.”

  Denny snorted. “And you think working for the Hefn is too dangerous!” But an idea was forming in his mind as it struggled to process Marian’s hypothesis. “These Collaboration Zero guys, you know, they could be just what they look like. A terrorist gang. But even if it’s not what they have in mind . . . mightn’t it be possible to cripple the Hefn without putting everybody at risk of mindwipe, by giving people a pretext to quit working for them? I mean, we don’t have to help the bastards take us out! You’re for sure dead right about what it would do for our self-respect, too, to stop cringing and groveling in the pathetic hope that the Baby Ban will be lifted someday.”

  “Exactly. A kick in the butt. Something to shock us into realizing that even if we can’t do anything about the Baby Ban, we’ve still got options.” She glanced over at him. “If I find out, want me to get in touch?”

  “Yeah, I do, sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Hurt Hollow.” I’ll sort out the contradictions later, he thought. Somehow, I belong on both sides of this fence.

  She made a wry face. “Okay, if Hurt Hollow hasn’t exploded, bears and all, by the time I get back to you.”

  “And if nobody’s put a contract out on you.”

  They grinned at each other, excited and stirred by new possibilities. The chopper was losing altitude now, homing in on the city. “Of course, the Gafr could still obliterate us,” Marian said. “Or just leave, and come back in fifty years.”

  Denny thought of the baby Hefn in Rosetta’s den. “They won’t do either of those things,” he said with certainty. “It’s too late to deal with us like that.” A watery Sun had come out. As Denny twisted and craned to watch the chopper’s shadow skim the river, an object in a sling behind the pilot’s seat caught in his eye. “Whoa – is that a diskorder back there?”

  “Yep. Standard equipment on Fish and Wildlife helicopters.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Supposed to be. Why?”

  “Listen,” said Denny, “this being your last day and all, how about taking a little detour, while everybody’s focused on California and DC, and flying me out to my farm?”

  Marian frowned. “What for? If Humphrey or Innisfrey find out, we’re buzzard meat.”

  “Something I really need to do, in case I ever join the Resistance. No kidding, it’s really important.”

  “What could be that important?” But her hands moved on the controls and the chopper tilted and started to climb to the left.

  “Or start the Resistance,” he said, “the real one.”

  CALLING YOUR NAME

  Howard Waldrop

  Here’s a wry and compassionate look at the proposition that sometimes it’s the little things that count – and when they do, they count for a whole hell of a lot.

  Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short story writers in the business, and his famous story “The Ugly Chickens” won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has been gathered in the collections: Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of The Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, and Going Home Again. Waldrop is also the author of the novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, in collaboration with Jake Saunders, and of two solo novels, Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs. He is at work on a new novel, tentatively entitled The Moon World. His most recent books are the print version of his collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (formerly available only in downloadable form online), the chapbook A Better World’s in Birth!, and a collection of his stories written in collaboration with various other authors, Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations. His stories have appeared in our First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Twelfth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Twentieth Annual Collections. Having lived in the state of Washington for a number of years, Waldrop recently moved back to his former hometown of Austin, Texas, something which caused celebrations and loud hurrahs to rise up from the rest of the population. Upcoming is the collection Heart of Whitenesse and a novel called The Search for Tom Purdue.

  All my life I’ve waited

  for someone to ease the pain

  All my life I’ve waited

  for someone to take the blame

  – from “Calling Your Name” by Janis Ian

  IREACHED FOR the switch on the bandsaw.

  Then I woke up with a crowd forming around me.

  And I was in my own backyard.

  It turns out that my next door neighbor had seen me fall out of the storage building I use as a workshop and had called 911 when I didn’t get up after a few seconds.

  Once, long ago in college, working in Little Theater, I’d had a light bridge lowered to set the fresnels for Blithe Spirit, just after the Christmas semester break. Some idiot had left a hot male 220 plug loose, and as I reached up to the iron bridge, it dropped against the bar. I’d felt that, all over, and I jumped backward about fifteen feet.

  A crowd started for me, but I let out some truly blazing oath that turned the whole stage violet-indigo blue and they disappeared in a hurry. Then I yelled at the guys and girl in the technical booth to kill everything onstage, and spent the next hour making sure nothing else wasn’t where it shouldn’t be . . .

  That’s while I was working thirty-six hours a week at a printing plant, going to college full-time and working in the theater another sixty hours a week for no pay. I was also dating a foul-mouthed young woman named Susan who was brighter than me. Eventually something had to give – it was my stomach (an ulcer at twenty) and my relationship with her.

  She came back into the theater later that day, and heard about the incident and walked up to me and said, “Are you happy to see me, or is that a hot male 220 volt plug in your pocket?”

  That shock, the 220, had felt like someone shaking my hand at 2700
rpm while wearing a spiked glove and someone behind me was hammering nails in my head and meanwhile they were piling safes on me . . .

  When I’d touched the puny 110 bandsaw, I felt nothing.

  Then there were neighbors and two EMS people leaning over me upside down.

  “What’s up, Doc?” I asked.

  “How many fingers?” he asked, moving his hand, changing it in a slow blur.

  “Three, five, two.”

  “What’s today?”

  “You mean Tuesday, or May 6th?”

  I sat up.

  “Easy,” said the lady EMS person. “You’ll probably have a headache.”

  The guy pushed me back down slowly. “What happened?”

  “I turned on the bandsaw. Then I’m looking at you.”

  He got up, went to the corner of the shed and turned off the breakers. By then the sirens had stopped, and two or three firefighters and the lieutenant had come in the yard.

  “You okay, Pops?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. I turned to the crowd. “Thanks to whoever called these guys.” Then the EMS people asked me some medical stuff, and the lieutenant, after looking at the breakers, went in the shed and fiddled around. He came out.

  “You got a shorted switch,” he said. “Better replace it.”

  I thanked Ms. Krelboind, the neighbor lady, everybody went away, and I went inside to finish my cup of coffee.

  My daughter Maureen pulled up as I drank the last of the milk skim off the top of the coffee.

  She ran in.

  “Are you all right, Dad?”

  “Evidently,” I said.

  Her husband Bob was a fireman. He usually worked over at Firehouse #2, the one on the other side of town. He’d heard the address the EMS had been called to on the squawk box, and had called her.