The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

by Gardner Dozois

  Then the lights went down and came up again as Lucius said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Kool-Tones!”

  It was magic of a grubby kind.

  The Kool-Tones shuffled on, arms pumping in best Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers fashion, and they ran in place as the hand-clapping got louder and louder, and they leaned into the mikes.

  They were dressed in waiters’ red-cloth jackets the Hellbenders had stolen from a laundry service for them that morning. They wore narrow black ties, except Leroy, who had on a big, thick, red bow tie he’d copped from his sister’s boyfriend.

  Then Cornelius leaned over his mike and: “Doook doook doook doookov” and Ray and Zoot joined with “dook dook dook dookov,” into Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl,” with Leroy smiling and doing all of Chandler’s hand moves. Slim chugged away the “iiiiiiiiyiyiyiyiiiii’s” in the background in runs that made the crowd’s blood run cold, and the lights went down. Then the Bombers were back, and in contrast to the up-tempo ending of “The Duke of Earl” they started with a sweet tenor a cappella line and then: “woo-radad-da-dat, woo-radad-da-dat,” of Shep and the Limelites’ “Daddy’s Home.”

  The Kool-Tones jumped back into the light. This time Cornelius started off with “Bom-a-pa-bomp, bomp-pa-pa-bomp, dang-a-dang-dang, ding-a-dong-ding,” and into the Marcels’ “Blue Moon,” not just a hit but a mere monster back in 1961. And they ran through the song, Slim taking the lead, and the crowd began to yell like mad halfway through. And Leroy – smiling, singing, rocking back and forth, doing James Brown tantrum-steps in front of the mike – knew, could feel, that they had them; that no matter what, they were going to win. And he ended with his whining part and Cornelius went “Bomp-ba-ba-bomp-ba-bom” and paused and then, deeper, “booo mooo.”

  The lights came up and Bobby and the Bombers hit the stage. At first Leroy, sweating, didn’t realize what they were doing, because the Bombers, for the first few seconds, made this churning rinky-tink sound with the high voices. The bass, Letus, did this grindy sound with his throat. Then the Bombers did the only thing that could save them, a white boy’s song, Bobby launching into Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” with both feet hitting the stage at once. Leroy thought he could taste that urine already.

  The other Kool-Tones were transfixed by what was about to happen.

  “They can’t do that, man,” said Leroy.

  “They’re gonna cop out.”

  “That’s impossible. Nobody can do it.”

  But when the Bombers got to the break, this guy Fred stepped out to the mike and went: “Eee-de-ee-dee-eedle-eee-eee, eee-deee-eedle-deeee, eedle-dee-eedle-dee-dee-dee, eewheetle-eedle-dee-deedle-dee-eeeeee,” in a splitting falsetto, half mechanical, half Martian cattle call – the organ break of “Runaway,” done with the human voice.

  The crowd was on its feet screaming, and the rest of the song was lost in stamping and cheers. When the Kool-Tones jumped out for the last song of the first set, there were some boos and yells for the Bombers to come back, but then Zoot started talking about his girl putting him down because he couldn’t shake ’em down, but how now he was back, to let her know. . . . They all jumped in the air and came down on the first line of “Do You Love Me?” by the Contours, and they gained some of the crowd back. But they finished a little wimpy, and then the lights went down and an absolutely black night descended. The stars were shining over New York City for the first time since World War II, and Vinnie said, “Ten minutes, folks!” and guys went over to piss against the walls or add to the consolation-prize bottles.

  It was like halftime in the locker room with the score Green Bay 146, You 0.

  “A cheap trick,” said Zoot. “We don’t do shit like that.”

  Leroy sighed. “We’re gonna have to,” he said. He drank from a Coke bottle one of the Purple Monsters had given him. “We’re gonna have to do something.”

  “We’re gonna have to drink pee-pee, and then Vinnie’s gonna denut us, is what’s gonna happen.”

  “No, he’s not,” said Cornelius.

  “Oh, yeah?” asked Zoot. “Then what’s that in the bottle in the clubhouse?”

  “Pig’s balls,” said Cornelius. “They got ’em from a slaughterhouse.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know,” said Cornelius, tiredly. “Now let’s just get this over with so we can go vomit all night.”

  “I don’t want to hear any talk like that,” said Leroy. “We’re gonna go through with this and give it our best, just like we planned, and if that ain’t good enough, well, it just ain’t good enough.”

  “No matter what we do, it just ain’t good enough.”

  “Come on, Ray, man!”

  “I’ll do my best, but my heart ain’t in it.”

  They lay against the loading dock. They heard laughter from the place where Bobby and the Bombers rested.

  “Shit, it’s dark!” said Slim.

  “It ain’t just us, just the city,” said Zoot. “It’s the whole goddamn U.S.”

  “It’s just the whole East Coast,” said Ray. “I heard on the radio. Part of Canada, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Hey, Leroy,” said Cornelius. “Maybe it’s those Martians you’re always talking about.”

  Leroy felt a chill up his spine.

  “Nah,” said Slim. “It was that guy Sparks. He shorted out the whole East Coast up that pole there.”

  “Do you really believe that?” asked Zoot.

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  “I believe,” said Lucius, coming out of nowhere with an evil grin on his face, “that it’s show time.”

  They came to the stage running, and the lights came up, and Cornelius leaned on his voice and: “Rabbalabbalabba ging gong, rabbalabbalabba ging gong,” and the others went “wooooooooooo” in the Edsels’ “Rama Lama Ding Dong.” They finished and the Bombers jumped into the lights and went into: “Domm dom domm dom doobedoo dom domm dom dobedoobeedomm, wahwahwahwahhh,” of the Del Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.”

  The Kool-Tones came back with: “Ahhhhhhhhaahhwoooowoooo, ow-ow-ow-owh-woo,” of “Since I Don’t Have You,” by the Skyliners, with Slim singing in a clear, straight voice, better than he had ever sung that song before, and everybody else joined in, Leroy’s voice fading into Slim’s for the falsetto weeeeooooow’s so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

  Then Bobby and the Bombers were back, with Bobby telling you the first two lines and: “Detooodwop, detooodwop, detooodwop,” of the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You,” calm, cool, collected, assured of victory, still running on the impetus of their first set’s showstopper.

  Then the Kool-Tones came back and Cornelius rared back and asked: “Ahwunno wunno hooo? Be-do-be hoooo?” Pause.

  They slammed down into “Book of Love,” by the Monotones, but even Cornelius was flagging, sweating now in the cool air, his lungs were husks. He saw one of the Bombers nod to another, smugly, and that made him mad. He came down on the last verse like there was no one else on the stage with him, and his bass roared so loud it seemed there wasn’t a single person in the dark United States who didn’t wonder who wrote that book.

  And they were off, and Bobby and the Bombers were on now, and a low hum began to fill the air. Somebody checked the amp; it was okay. So the Bombers jumped into the air, and when they came down they were into the Cleftones’ “Heart and Soul,” and they sang that song, and while they were singing, the background humming got louder and louder.

  Leroy leaned to the other Kool-Tones and whispered something. They shook their heads. He pointed to the Hellbenders and the Purple Monsters all around them. He asked a question they didn’t want to hear. They nodded grudging approval, and then they were on again, for the last time.

  “Dep dooomop dooomop doomop, doo ooo, ooowah oowah oooway ooowah,” sang Leroy, and they all asked “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” Leroy sang like he was Frankie Lymon – not jus
t some kid from the projects who wanted to be him – and the Kool-Tones were the Teenagers, and they began to pull and heave that song like it was a dead whale. And soon they had it in the water, and then it was swimming a little, then it was moving, and then the sonofabitch started spouting water, and that was the place where Leroy went into the falsetto “wyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” and instead of chopping it where it should have been, he kept on. The Kool-Tones went ooom wahooomwah softly behind him, and still he held that note, and the crowd began to applaud, and they began to yell, and Leroy held it longer, and they started stamping and screaming, and he held it until he knew he was going to cough up both his lungs, and he held it after that, and the Kool-Tones were coming up to meet him, and Leroy gave a tantrum-step, and his eyes were bugging, and he felt his lungs tear out by the roots and come unglued, and he held the last syllable, and the crowd wet itself and –

  The lights went out and the amp went dead. Part of the crowd had a subliminal glimpse of something large, blue, and cool looming over the freight yard, bathing the top of the building in a soft glow.

  In the dead air the voices of the Kool-Tones dropped in pitch as if they were pulled upward at a thousand miles an hour, and then they rose in pitch as if they had somehow come back at that same thousand miles an hour.

  The blue thing was a looming blur and then was gone.

  The lights came back on. The Kool-Tones stood there blinking: Cornelius, Ray, Slim, and Zoot. The space in front of the center mike was empty.

  The crowd had an orgasm.

  The Bombers were being violently ill over next to the building.

  “God, that was great!” said Vinnie. “Just great!”

  All four of the Kool-Tones were shaking their heads.

  They should be tired, but this looked worse than that, thought Vinnie. They should be ecstatic. They looked like they didn’t know they had won.

  “Where’s Leroy?” asked Cornelius.

  “How the hell should I know?” Vinnie said, sounding annoyed.

  “I remember him smiling, like,” said Zoot.

  “And the blue thing. What about it?”

  “What blue thing?” asked Lucius.

  “I dunno. Something was blue.”

  “All I saw was the lights go off and that kid ran away,” said Lucius.

  “Which way?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly see him, but he must have run some way. Don’t know how he got by us. Probably thought you were going to lose and took it on the lam. I don’t see how you’d worry when you can make your voices do that stuff.”

  “Up,” said Zoot, suddenly.

  “What?”

  “We went up, and we came down. Leroy didn’t come down with us.”

  “Of course not. He was still holding the same note. I thought the little twerp’s balls were gonna fly out his mouth.”

  “No. We . . .” Slim moved his hands up, around, gave up. “I don’t know what happened, do you?”

  Ray, Zoot, and Cornelius all looked like they had thirty-two-lane bowling alleys inside their heads and all the pin machines were down.

  “Aw, shit,” said Vinnie. “You won. Go get some sleep. You guys were really bitchin’.”

  The Kool-Tones stood there uncertainly for a minute.

  “He was, like, smiling, you know?” said Zoot.

  “He was always smiling,” said Vinnie. “Crazy little kid.”

  The Kool-Tones left.

  The sky overhead was black and spattered with stars. It looked to Vinnie as if it were deep and wide enough to hold anything. He shuddered.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Somebody bring me a beer!”

  He caught himself humming. One of the Hellbenders brought him a beer.

  DINNER IN AUDOGHAST

  Bruce Sterling

  One of the most powerful and innovative new talents to enter SF in the past few decades, Bruce Sterling sold his first story in 1976. By the end of the ’80s, he had established himself, with a series of stories set in his exotic “Shaper/Mechanist” future, with novels such as the complex and Stapeldonian Schismatrix and the well-received Islands in the Net (as well as with his editing of the influential anthology Mirror shades: The Cyberpunk Anthology and the infamous critical magazine Cheap Truth), as perhaps the prime driving force behind the revolutionary “Cyberpunk” movement in science fiction, and also as one of the best new hard-science writers to enter the field in some time. His other books include a critically acclaimed nonfiction study of First Amendment issues in the world of computer networking, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, the novels The Artificial Kid, Involution Ocean, Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, Distraction, and Zeitgeist, a novel in collaboration with William Gibson, The Difference Engine, an omnibus collection (it contains the novel Schismatrix as well as most of his Shaper/Mechanist stories) Schismatrix Plus, and the landmark collections Crystal Express, Globalhead, and A Good Old-fashioned Future. His most recent books include a nonfiction study of the future, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, and a new novel, The Zenith Angle. His story “Bicycle Repairman” earned him a long-overdue Hugo in 1997, and he won another Hugo in 1997 for his story “Taklamakan.” His stories have appeared in the first five Mammoth Book of Best New SF collections, as well as the Eighth, Tenth, Twelfth and Sixteenth anthologies. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.

  Sterling was just another of a jostling pack of new writers when he published this story back in 1985, as yet only recognized by a very few of the cognoscenti as a writer to watch . . . and in the years that followed, we have watched him become one of the most significant talents of his generation. Here, in a story which sounds a cautionary note for our own smug belief in the immortality of our own society, he reminds us that while prophets may indeed be without honour in their own countries, they remain, after all, prophets. . . . Then one arrives at Audoghast, a large and very populous city built in a sandy plain. . . . The inhabitants live in ease and possess great riches. The market is always crowded; the mob is so huge and the chattering so loud that you can scarcely hear your own words. . . . The city contains beautiful buildings and very elegant homes.

  – Description of Northern Africa, Abu Ubayd Al-Bakri (a.d. 1040-94)

  DELIGHTFUL AUDOGHAST! Renowned through the civilized world, from Cordova to Baghdad, the city spread in splendor beneath a twilit Saharan sky. The setting sun threw pink and amber across adobe domes, masonry mansions, tall, mud-brick mosques, and open plazas thick with bristling date palms. The melodious calls of market vendors mixed with the remote and amiable chuckling of Saharan hyenas.

  Four gentlemen sat on carpets in a tiled and whitewashed portico, sipping coffee in the evening breeze. The host was the genial and accomplished slave-dealer, Manimenesh. His three guests were Ibn Watunan, the caravan-master; Khayali, the poet and musician; and Bagayoko, a physician and court assassin.

  The home of Manimenesh stood upon the hillside in the aristocratic quarter, where it gazed down on an open marketplace and the mud-brick homes of the lowly. The prevailing breeze swept away the city reek, and brought from within the mansion the palate-sharpening aromas of lamb in tarragon and roast partridge in lemons and eggplant. The four men lounged comfortably around a low inlaid table, sipping spiced coffee from Chinese cups and watching the ebb and flow of market life.

  The scene below them encouraged a lofty philosophical detachment. Manimenesh, who owned no less than fifteen books, was a well-known patron of learning. Jewels gleamed on his dark, plump hands, which lay cozily folded over his paunch. He wore a long tunic of crushed red velvet, and a gold-threaded skullcap.

  Khayali, the young poet, had studied architecture and verse in the schools of Timbuktu. He lived in the household of Manimenesh as his poet and praisemaker, and his sonnets, ghazals, and odes were recited throughout the city. He propped one elbow against the full belly of his two-string guimbri guitar, of inlaid ebony, strung with leopard gut.

  Ibn Watunan had an eagle’s hooded
gaze and hands callused by camel-reins. He wore an indigo turban and a long striped djellaba. In thirty years as a sailor and caravaneer, he had bought and sold Zanzibar ivory, Sumatran pepper, Ferghana silk, and Cordovan leather. Now a taste for refined gold had brought him to Audoghast, for Audoghast’s African bullion was known throughout Islam as the standard of quality.

  Doctor Bagayoko’s ebony skin was ridged with an initiate’s scars, and his long clay-smeared hair was festooned with knobs of chiseled bone. He wore a tunic of white Egyptian cotton, hung with gris-gris necklaces, and his baggy sleeves bulged with herbs and charms. He was a native Audoghastian of the animist persuasion, the personal physician of the city’s prince.

  Bagayoko’s skill with powders, potions, and unguents made him an intimate of Death. He often undertook diplomatic missions to the neighboring Empire of Ghana. During his last visit there, the anti-Audoghast faction had mysteriously suffered a lethal outbreak of pox.

  Between the four men was the air of camaraderie common to gentlemen and scholars.

  They finished the coffee, and a slave took the empty pot away. A second slave, a girl from the kitchen staff, arrived with a wicker tray loaded with olives, goat cheese, and hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with vermilion. At that moment, a muezzin yodeled the evening call to prayer.

  “Ah,” said Ibn Watunan, hesitating. “Just as we were getting started.”

  “Never mind,” said Manimenesh, helping himself to a handful of olives. “We’ll pray twice next time.”

  “Why was there no noon prayer today?” said Watunan.

  “Our muezzin forgot,” the poet said.

  Watunan lifted his shaggy brows. “That seems rather lax.”

  Doctor Bagayoko said, “This is a new muezzin. The last was more punctual, but, well, he fell ill.” Bagayoko smiled urbanely and nibbled his cheese.

  “We Audoghastians like our new muezzin better,” said the poet, Khayali. “He’s one of our own, not like that other fellow, who was from Fez. Our muezzin is sleeping with a Christian’s wife. It’s very entertaining.”