The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  Amadou had no answers. “They don’t speak with us directly. The time and place of your arrival all came through RVR, a forwarded message, from the far future. A one-time thing. I was chosen to wait and meet and guide you. It’s a great honor.”

  “The honor is entirely ours,” said Lee. “But tell us about this RVR.”

  And so he did. Lee’s formal speech, as well as Cole’s ability to understand it, were all due to RVR, which was the “folds” in the air, and much else as well – a worldwide database for communication, translation, archiving, accounting and keeping track of almost every aspect of human intercourse in this far future world. It was almost like a personal genie for everyone on Earth, reminding Cole of Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be magic.

  “RVR tries to anticipate our needs as well as fulfill them,” Amadou said. “He even tries to cheer us up when we are sad.”

  “You are sometimes sad, then,” said Lee, “even in this seemingly perfect world?”

  “Of course,” said Amadou. “Neither the world nor the creatures that make it up are perfect – or perfectible.”

  “Just as I always suspected,” said Lee. While he and Amadou discussed this interesting-only-to-them concept, Cole learned from RVR himself (who whispered into his ear, in English!) that he had been designed and built – self-constructed from neo-biological nanos – 19,376 years before. “Official name, RVR, or – ” and he pronounced the full acronym in some dialect that was totally incomprehensible to Cole, since the fold itself had no fold to watch.

  Amadou picked up his daughter and a friend from school, which was a low building set into a clay cliff beside an arm of the sea. Two little girls of about seven ran out in bright dresses, and shoes that changed colors with every step.

  In case you are wondering what these little girls thought of time travelers from the distant past – they thought nothing at all. Cole and Lee were just two more grownups, looming in the background of their lives like trees. The girls twirled and chirped and ran and skipped with each other, ignoring the adults (including their father) altogether.

  Cole was interested in the global communicator/net, RVR.

  “RVR keeps track of things,” Amadou said. “Suppose you want to get in touch with that flautist you met four years ago at that Music Festival in Norway . . .”

  “You still have nations, then,” Cole said.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” said Amadou. “They are language groups and culture matrices. Without nations where would music or art come from? After the family there is the tribe, and then the nation. These are the things we are careful not to change. We are social beings, and society requires both a One and an Other. It’s simply that we have grown beyond the conflict between the tribes and the nations. We had to outgrow that or die.”

  “So the guy in Norway . . .”

  “Who said it was a guy?” Amadou laughed. “But yes, RVR keeps track of such things. RVR knows his name, knows where he lives and knows if he wants to hear from you.”

  “What if I just want to be left alone?” Cole asked.

  “RVR takes care of that too,” said Amadou. “RVR is not always so great with ideas, but good with feelings. That’s because RVR has feelings. Touch him, like this.” Amadou put his hand up beside his ear, like a listener, and inserted two fingers into the cone.

  Cole did the same.

  “See?”

  See? Cole felt. It was a warm – indeed, wonderful – feeling that flowed up from his fingertips through his arm, to his heart and head and down to his toes. It was like a first hit of tobacco after long abstinence; he blushed and felt it in the backs of his knees.

  “That’s RVR,” said Amadou.

  “RVR doesn’t even know me!” Cole said.

  “Oh yes he does. RVR knows us. Humans. People. Our whole million year history. It’s us he loves. All of us.” In fact, as RVR (and Amadou, who joined in) explained, RVR had responded to humanity’s need for companionship. RVR even shared the disappointment that ARD, the only other intelligence in the Universe, was totally uninterested in humans, who were at the same time her creations and her creator.

  “RVR loves us,” said Amadou. “What hurts us, hurts him too. ARD is cold. We love ARD but she doesn’t love us, not really. And that hurts.”

  “And this RVR does?” Lee asked. “Love you? Love us?”

  “Try it, Lee,” Cole said. “You’ll see.”

  Lee tried it and Lee “saw.” He closed his eyes and raised his hand, and all he said was, “Oh, my goodness!”

  As that long, slow, sweet afternoon dragged on, it became apparent that Amadou was only killing time, entertaining his guests until it was time for them to leave. Unlike the Modernists in Paris, almost a hundred thousand years ago (were they really that gone, that dead? Ou sont les nieges?) Amadou had little interest in Cole or Lee or in their time. Perhaps, Cole thought, humankind had finally left the past behind altogether and moved entirely into the future.

  Which worried him, more than a little. “We have to be getting back,” he said to Lee. “We shouldn’t be getting so far from the glider. We have to get back before ten.”

  “We can do nothing until the cursor begins to blink,” said Lee, showing him his PalmPC. “In the meantime, let us enjoy tomorrow today.”

  Enjoy tomorrow today. Lee should write fortune cookies, Cole thought. And yet it was true: the future was theirs to enjoy. Time seemed loose there, like comfortable clothing. Humankind had apparently abandoned (outgrown, perhaps) the obsessive slicing of the day and the hour and the minute into ever smaller slices; the day was just morning, early and late, and afternoon, early and late; although the days and months were still, of course, intact, being ruled by the sun and moon.

  Lee was interested to learn that the day was longer than it had been in his time by almost a minute. RVR did the math for him. Perhaps, Cole suggested, this contributed to the sense of unhurried leisure that seemed to prevail in Bahia.

  “And what about disease?” asked Lee. “Or have bacteria ceased to evolve?”

  “Nano-docs,” said RVR. “Everyone dies of either accident or old age.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Ninety, a hundred. After that the nano-docs are whelmed.”

  “You mean, overwhelmed.”

  “No, whelmed.”

  They were at the seawall, having abandoned the car, which someone else took up as soon as they dropped it. Cole let Lee and Amadou and the two girls walk (skip, run) ahead, while he stopped and shared a cigarette with an old couple sitting on a flat stone, looking out to sea.

  Smoking, they told him, was allowed and even encouraged after age sixty-five. “Before that you can bum them but you can’t buy more than a pack a week. Gives you something to look forward to.” They were seventy-three and seventy-seven and had just come from the funeral of his ex, who was seventy, killed in a fire.

  “Died too soon,” said the woman, whose name was Pearl (the same as her little dog). “But not too soon for me,” said the man, whose name was Rob. He started to tell a long involved story of love and madness, but Cole excused himself and left. Except for his grandparents he had never liked old people. And now he was, in a sense, the oldest of all.

  Second oldest. He caught up with Lee and Amadou and the girls at a break in the seawall. The sea seemed unchanged in a hundred thousand years, as in (Cole assumed) the millions or hundreds of millions before. There was that same small death smell. Sailboats skimmed over the waves. Far in the distance, on the horizon, he saw a larger ship, with white sails; and when he looked again it was gone.

  He checked nervously with Lee. Still no beep, still no cursor.

  The sky was a high, bright blue. Behind them the city was more trees than buildings. Cole asked about the other cities in the world. Cairo and Paris and Peking were Amadou’s favorites. He and his wife had been to them all. His ex-wife lived in Hong Kong, which he didn’t like. Too steep, too crowded.

  A
madou asked about New York, where his aunt and mother lived. Cole told him he knew it well . . . rough, hard, loud, old-fashioned, even in his own time. “But magnificent,” he said. “A magnificent city.”

  Amadou was clearly not convinced.

  And wars? “There are conflicts,” Amadou said. “And even killings, but before they go too far they are settled in The Hall, our once-a-month government. The day-to-day details of administration are handled by RVR, and by ARD when they involve the Earth, which most decisions do.”

  ARD and RVR got along fine, Amadou assured them, even though ARD didn’t share RVR’s love for humanity. Cole wondered if this had to do with humankind’s behavior in the past, his present – the Sixth Extinction – but Amadou said that ARD’s feelings were more disinterest than dislike.

  “That is even worse,” said Lee, sailing a stone off toward the sea where it skipped eight times. That feat surprised Cole, who realized how little he knew about his companion. Even Amadou’s daughter applauded. While the girls waded barefoot into the green, shallow waves, Cole held their shoes – little blue shoes that curled up in his hand like kittens.

  Lee was interested in farming, most of which was done in the sea. Cole was bored and tuned out. A group of children passed by, riding on an elephant.

  “They’re back?” Cole exclaimed.

  “They were gone?” For the first time Amadou seemed interested in the distant past. “You didn’t have elephants?”

  “We did,” Lee said. “But we did not take care of them.”

  Amadou looked puzzled. “Don’t they take care of themselves?”

  “They tried,” said Cole.

  “Not all were killed in the Sixth,” said RVR. He was better with information than with ideas. “There were a few left in the jungles of Africa. The Indian elephant, however, was truly lost. Is sadly gone forever.”

  Sadly gone forever. Instead of cheering him up, as expected, the elephant made Cole melancholy. As the shadows grew longer, they started back toward the glider in the house overlooking Grand Street. Lee’s PalmPC still wasn’t beeping, but the day was clearly drawing to a close.

  “There’s so much more I would like to ask before we go,” Cole said. “What about Africa? What about the USA? What about sea level?”

  Africa had been repopulated, RVR said, now that the Sahara was gone. Sea level was about what it had always been and always would be, he hoped. The USA was split into language and ethnic communities. Hadn’t that happened in Cole’s own time? The dismantling of the mega states . . .

  Not exactly, Cole said.

  There were some six billion people (5,987,097,543, RVR whispered) on the planet and most of them lived in cities. A few people lived in the “wilds” but ARD preserved most of the wilderness for other species. Humans used it only for hunting.

  “Hunting is allowed?” Lee asked. Cole was surprised; he hadn’t realized Lee was listening, or that RVR was talking to anyone but him. It seemed such an intimate, one-on-one experience.

  “That’s the part of us that ARD relates to best,” said Amadou, who had also been listening. “I’m a fisherman myself, but some people like to hunt. I guess it’s part of our genetic make-up.”

  “I don’t have a genetic make-up,” said RVR. “But I like to go with you when you hunt. It’s the only time ARD is pleased with you.”

  “What about the animals that are killed?” Lee asked. “Do they like to be killed?”

  “Nothing that is living likes to be killed,” said RVR. “Though everything that lives has to die.”

  “Including yourself?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t think about that,” said RVR. “I don’t think about things I don’t think about. But hunting, I like to think about. The chase, the kill. It’s the only time we are all together as one: ARD, myself, and you.”

  Cole suddenly realized that as far as RVR was concerned, they were all one person. All humankind. He was hurt, but only a little.

  The sun was setting over the blue hills in back of the town, which was not noisy enough (for Cole) to be called a city. The girls were gone, having peeled off at a little open air community center where a party was in progress. The sleepy city seemed much given to parties, elaborate dress, good food – the finer things in life.

  “And why in excellence not?” Lee said to Cole as they strolled along behind Amadou. “Why not, after surviving the explosion of technology which began in 1500, which I must admit I did not think we would survive, why not then relax to enjoy the life span of any species, which might be anywhere from a million to ten million years?”

  “It just seems too good to be true,” Cole said.

  “Ah, but I am Chinese,” said Lee. “We understand patience, time, the slow march of change. Do not forget we have a stable society that lasted two or three times as long as your Roman Empire. You Europeans know only change. Instability.”

  “Our Roman Empire?” Cole said. “I’m not European!”

  “Yes you are.”

  They passed a stall selling seafood and ate oysters on the half shell, which Amadou paid for with a blink (literally) of his eye. Accounts were retinal, and all went into the economic database kept by RVR. Lee and Cole shared a plate and washed them down with a kind of icy beer in bottles that got cold as soon as they were popped open. Cole was just thinking of ordering another beer when he heard the sound he had been waiting for.

  Beep beep.

  Lee showed him the cursor: blink-blink.

  They commandeered another car and headed back across town for the glider. The car remembered where to go even though they had come in another car entirely.

  Amadou rode on the back, stifling a yawn. Gracious but bored, he seemed glad to see them go. “Tell the kids goodbye,” Cole said. He sat down on the glider and felt Lee’s hand, still cold from the beer, cover his own.

  Lee pressed RETURN, and there they were, the army of mice – and Cole knew from the silence that followed them that they were still far, far, far from home.

  +1,000,000

  It’s an indication of the relative importance to consciousness of the mind and of the body, that on this “slice” Cole felt disoriented for the first time – not because he was living a million years after his own death, but because he was one-sixth his usual weight. The pounds were more important than the years.

  For the first time he felt truly strange. Even though he knew immediately where they were. He was looking up through a clear dome toward a blue planet hanging over an ash-colored horizon that was so close he could almost touch it.

  He was on the Moon.

  “Whoa,” he said quietly. “I didn’t exactly bargain for this.”

  “Nor did I,” said Lee. “But here in fact we are.” Cole was relieved to see (and hear) that they still had their translator, RVR. There he was, hovering by Lee’s ear and his own.

  He and Lee stood up together, still holding hands. They were so light it felt like someone was helping them. They were in a sort of greenhouse, lighted by luminous strips along the floor – and by the blue and white Earth.

  “Hello?” Lee called out. “Anyone home?”

  “Yes, of course,” said RVR. His gruff whisper in Cole’s ear was reassuring. “She is coming. Look around.”

  The room was long and narrow, filled with big-leafed plants. They heard a high singing sound. Cole looked down a long aisle between two rows of plants and saw a white-haired woman in a wheelchair coming toward them. The wheels had some kind of invisible spokes that sang.

  “Dr. Lee, Dr. Cole, so here you are,” she said. “Would you like coffee? We grow the best here.”

  The “we” turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, since she was the only human on the Moon. Her name was Zoe Zoesdottir and her hair was not really white but pale yellow. She wore a soft buttery jumpsuit with footlets, like a child’s pajamas. She looked about sixty. The coffee was excellent, almost as good as the wine in Paris or the beer in Bahia. The Moon base, Laurens, was 317,000 years old. It had been a
bandoned for over half that time, but the Old Ones had asked that it be repaired and reoccupied since it was on Lee and Cole’s trajectory.

  “You know, then – you can tell us – who these Old Ones are?” It was Lee who asked.

  No. Zoe and her collective had only gotten a message, like all the others before. This moon base was only a way station on Lee and Cole’s journey to wherever it was that the Old Ones wished to send them.

  Zoe had been there for almost a year, waiting for them. “I like living alone,” she said. “And at my age the lower gravity helps.” She told them her age: ninety-one. She had lost the use of her legs in an accident back on Earth, eleven years before. Her companion/husband had been killed in the same accident. Spinal injuries could be healed but the nanotech-nology was expensive and time-consuming. “I don’t have that many years left,” she said. “I like spending them here, with Rover and my plants. I’m weary of people.”

  People lived in 100 to 150 person collectives, based on work and language and family. But they were loose, and Zoe had untangled herself from her own.

  She took Lee and Cole on a tour of her greenhouse. Lee wanted to know where the air and water came from. Zoe pointed to a range of jagged mountains streaked with white. A comet had been diverted there some two hundred thousand years before.

  “A big mistake,” said Zoe. The Moon was lighter than they had known, and the collision had put a wobble into its orbit. The tides on the Earth were now erratic. The comet’s ice was still providing water and oxygen for the Moon colony, but the colony hadn’t lasted.

  “None of them lasted,” she said. “There were colonies on Ganymede also, and Mars. But eventually they all shut down. The only space travel is by mining ships, and there’s not much of that. There was a colony sent to a planet in another star system, but they haven’t been heard from in a hundred thousand years.”

  She spoke through RVR, which she called Rover. They all spoke through him – Lee to Cole, Cole to Zoe, her to them both. Without RVR Cole was as distant, linguistically, from Lee as from Zoe. RVR linked them all, like words holding hands. Cole couldn’t imagine how they had gotten along without him.