Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  The women easily matched him.

  A hundred meters later he tired and switched to a back stroke.

  Mabel glided by him effortlessly, leaving no wake that Bik could see.

  Suwon pulled up to him with an easy side stroke. “I know that feels like a rest, but you should get back to your crawl as soon as you can. It’s a much more efficient distance-eater. Vary your pace, if you have to, but keep going.”

  Bik nodded and resumed, one hand over another, breathing every time now. It went on and on. The shore behind them receded but the island shore seemed to get no closer. Stroke, breathe, stroke.

  A few minutes or an eternity later he faltered to a breaststroke, just enough to keep his feet up.

  “Look,” Suwon called. “The sunshield rim!”

  On the crest of the next wave, Bik saw it: a tiny golden arc over the wavetops.

  “Then we’ve lost,” he croaked. It was all for nothing. Mabel would lose her homestead, he would lose his son, Suwon would lose her chance for land on which to settle down.

  “Come on!” Mabel shouted from ahead, her musical voice carrying clearly over the waves. Then she added in short phrases between breaths: “We’re on the west side of the time zone. And we’re seeing it early. It’s really below the horizon. Because of refraction. Venus only rotates at about, uh, fourtenths of a degree an hour. Astronomical sunrise isn’t for another hour yet. We can still make it. Come on, keep stroking.”

  With renewed desperation, Bik plunged ahead. His arms, he told himself, weren’t nearly as tired as the rest of him. Ahead, Suwon was fighting her own battle, silently maintaining the pace she had started, not looking anywhere but ahead at the still-distant dark shore of the island.

  Bik heard the buzz of a fan skimmer, but he didn’t see where. Then, so quickly he had no time to think, it was coming right at him, out of the gloom of the island shore, skimming the wave tops. Instinctively he ducked underwater as it roared over him.

  That was it, he thought as he surfaced. If they were going to do that to him, he was done. He had no strength left. No energy. There was maybe one thing he could do, though.

  “Mabel!” He shouted, took a stroke, and caught a breath. “They want me. Go on. Get your land. I’ll keep them busy. They can’t stop all of us.”

  He saw the skimmer this time—a blur to his wet, unfocused eyes—as it looped around to come at him again. With a supreme effort, he waved a fist at them and resumed his crawl. He looked left and right and couldn’t see the women—underwater, he hoped. Okay, bastards, he thought as the fan skimmer grew in front of him. Do your worst. I’m not stopping. I’m not ducking. Too damn tired.

  Off to his right, something came up out of the waves, high up. He couldn’t see it clearly; a head on two necks? It bent back, whipped forward and its “head” flew off toward him. Then his vision cleared some and in this instant he saw it was a large rock, and standing on the water was … But the skimmer was on him and despite himself he ducked deep and heard a solid tick as the rock bounced off the skimmer and slammed into the water somewhere behind him.

  What he thought he had seen was a woman standing high on the waves silhouetted against the rising sun, proud and triumphant like the goddess Venus herself.

  He surfaced, exhausted, barely able to float, and glanced behind him as he gasped for air. The fan skimmer, its hum wavering now, was heading away, not coming back.

  “Bik!” Suwon called. “Put your legs down! We’re here!”

  He rolled, put his feet down, and looked toward her voice, toward the sun. To his surprise there was sand barely a meter under him. Suwon was standing on the sea off to his right, about ankle-deep. She was, his numb mind finally realized, on a higher part of the sand bar.

  “Grab this! I hit them!” she shouted, gleeful. “I threw a big rock behind you with both hands. When you ducked, they nosed down right into it!”

  Bik looked toward the island, dazed. It was there. Close by. He couldn’t remember it getting so close. He caught his breath in great gasps. It was all he could do to stand on the shallow bar, even with the fortunately calm water helping, but if he didn’t try to move, he was okay. The sun was clearly up now, huge on the horizon, shining through the sunshield with its rim just touching the lower rim of the sunshield, and both just touching the horizon.

  “We made it,” Mabel called from the beach. “I’ve reported us in, and they’ll give you credit for getting on the bar. Less legal mess that way. You’ve got land.”

  Suwon splashed down the slope of the bar to him, and with her help Bik found the strength to wade ashore. Then he collapsed on the cool sand of the beach.

  “Do you think it will be enough?” Mabel asked as he caught his breath.

  Bik managed a weak shrug. “I hope so.”

  It took him a dozen seconds to say anything else. “At least Junior will know I tried.” Breathe. “That might be important to him someday. I did everything I could.”

  “What about getting a wife?” The gleam in Mabel’s eyes belied the innocent tone of her voice.

  “Mabel! I found him first!” Suwon protested, then stared open-mouthed.

  “That’s quite all right, dear. I have a half-dozen perfectly good relationships going.”

  “Why you old—matchmaker. You tricked me!”

  Mabel laughed and turned to Bik with a sly grin. “Well, what about it, Bik? Take a chance on her? I’ve known her for thirty years, which isn’t much these days, but that’s all she’s got. You couldn’t do any better.”

  Bik shook his head and stared at the sea. She was too much like Kai, he told himself: too wild and spontaneous. She was someone who jumped off three-hundred-kilometer bridges for fun: someone who probably had a wrong take on him, because, once, scared to death and for something that mattered more to him than his own life, he had jumped with her. She was someone who was willing to risk a putative eternity with someone she knew less than twenty-four hours just to accomplish a goal, to complete a mission. No way, except … except that, with the board, it might work. And if he were really committed, he’d do everything.

  “How about an engagement?” he asked. “Give us six months to get to know each other?”

  “That sounds very reasonable.” Mabel shook her head. “But I’m sure Mr. Wendt’s lawyers will point out that if you call it off, it will be too late to give Bik, junior, back to the starship captain. I’d say they’ll want to see at least a twenty-year contract. Suwon, dear, are you really sure?”

  “Hell, no. If I were, it wouldn’t be so exciting. Grab this, Mabel, Bik. Nothing’s certain. It all depends on initial conditions, chance, and how you play it—like a jump. But I like the weather.”

  “Well,” Mabel added, “in the old days, a lot of good marriages started when the parents matched you with someone you’d never seen before. Other people dated for a decade, lived together, got married and still broke up. Only question is if you’re committed to it long enough to raise Bikki. There are some things, Suwon, that people have to make certain.”

  Suwon sat beside him, her bare arm and thigh burning against his. “You can count on me, Bik.”

  He could almost feel her purr. Talk about leaping into space!

  In his mind, Bik could hear Kai laughing at her. You’ll never get to first base with that wimp, his ex would have said to Suwon. For the first time, Bik found himself a little angry with his mental image of Kai, and it dawned on him that Kai perhaps had not really been such an exemplar of womanhood, that their split had not necessarily been all his fault, and that what she would have said about Suwon shouldn’t really be his measure of things.

  Bik set his jaw and reached for Suwon’s firm, callused hand. She was not Kai. Her whole body, her attitude, was different from Kai’s, and maybe better. She did wild things, and thought wild thoughts, true, but, unlike Kai, there was nothing flaky about how she did them. Suwon seemed competent and responsible. And she dared to take responsibility.

  His thoughts were interrupted as
she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the lips, and seemed to melt into him. He kissed back, tentatively at first, then with increasing warmth. Despite his tiredness, his body started to respond.

  Mabel cleared her throat. Bik released Suwon, and they all laughed. But strangely, he felt no real embarrassment, nor urgency either. Everything felt very easy and natural. It would be like that with Suwon, he realized—just fun. With Kai there had always been tension, a performance, an evaluation, something to live up to.

  Bik shook his head, sighed, and looked at Mabel. “Can we just register the contract?” he asked. “At least that’s how we did it on Mercury.”

  Mabel nodded. “I’ll send it in and witness it. There, I’ve bent-piped my audio to the registrar; it hears what I hear. Do you two want a twenty-year marriage contract? Bik?”

  He took a breath and let go for the second time today. “Yes.”

  “Suwon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Congratulations! May I kiss the groom?”

  “Wait until I’m done,” Suwon objected, and launched another round of physical affection, including Mabel this time. Bik felt embarrassed at first, but that passed into simple goodness.

  The next morning, universal time, Bik sat in Mabel’s dome wearing a beach towel as a sort of ersatz sarong, looking at the iron-gray crew cut and steel cold blue eyes of lawyer Deccar Brunt. “We did not anticipate such resolve on your part, Mr. Wu. As your lawyers, and the cybernetic advisors have undoubtedly told you by now, you are in a commanding position from a legal standpoint.”

  Bik wondered if Brunt had bribed someone to monitor his calls. It didn’t matter. The cybes had traced the attack and Mabel’s friends had turned a few screws of their own. Bik simply nodded. Yes, his being married now, and having a rich, open environment in which to raise Junior was one plus. But the opposition’s tactics, starting from witholding his messages and presents, and running right through the attempts to interfere with his getting the homestead were now all faithfully recorded and arrayed against them. It would be, everyone conceded, an open-and-shut custody board decision.

  “However,” the attorney continued, no trace of caring in his voice, “Captain Wendt would like to plead to you in the child’s interest.”

  “He’s here?”

  The attorney nodded. “Your bimbo almost killed him with a rock while he was driving, perfectly legally, well over your head, after his inspection of this jungle to which you want to take Ted.”

  It made sense—Wendt was too smart to risk a conspiracy; he’d do his own dirty work. Bik squirmed momentarily at the mention of the name Wendt had given Junior. Suwon, who had managed to fit tightly into a loose shift of Mabel’s, put a hand on Bik’s shoulder. There was no point in working themselves up by arguing with a professional liar.

  But Suwon tensed suddenly. “Then Bikki’s here too! Wendt wouldn’t have dared to leave Bikki two months away in the asteroid belt if he expected to win a custody battle!”

  “Yes, Ted is here,” Brunt said, his voice grating at the interruption. “Perhaps you should first listen to what he has to say.”

  A young male child’s image appeared in the holo stage. A legend assured them it was a faithful recording of a board interview with “Ted Wendt.” The boy seemed relaxed and polite, gave his name as Ted Wendt, and declared that he did not want to go to live with “Mr. Wu.”

  That image was replaced by a picture of a genial, fit man in a starship captain’s coveralls.

  “Well, Mr. Wu, we appear to have had some misunderstandings—”

  Bik dismissed this with a gesture.

  “I really don’t mean you or your new wife any harm; however, if you really care for this young man—” The field expanded to include Junior, sitting quietly in a comfortable chair behind Wendt, staring at the floor. “—you need to consider his view of this. I recognize that you might feel that what we did in restricting communications to keep his identity straight was a little unfair to you, but that’s all by the by. Fait accompli. You have to deal with the situation as it is, however unfair.

  “You could win this legally with the cybe’s evidence. I’ll concede that. But that would devastate my son. The fact is that I’m the only father he’s known; Ted was only three when your marriage ended and you left his life. It’s the reality he knows that counts. Please consider his interests. If you really want a child, have another one.”

  Bik shifted uncomfortably. However unfair the situation, the argument made too much sense.

  “He’s never been on a high-gravity planet,” Wendt continued. “He wants to go out on starships with me and see the rest of the universe, not be stuck on some artificial hothouse garden world. It’s not fair to take him from the only father he’s ever known, especially in view of his mother’s recent death. I suppose this doesn’t mean anything to you, but I loved Kai, and he’s all I have left of her.”

  Suwon touched Bik’s arm and looked wide-eyed at him. “No, no, it’s not,” she whispered, then turned to Mabel. Something went between them.

  Mabel concentrated, then her eyes went wide. “The inheritance. Kai left it all to Bikki!”

  Bik took a breath. Had there been some good in Kai after all, something that had been worth his love? Some mothering instinct that had put her son ahead of her selfishness? But that tainted money didn’t matter now, nor did the property rights. All that mattered was—damn, what did matter?

  Wendt appeared not to hear anything and made a helpless, open-handed gesture. “I don’t have a legal leg to stand on. I know it. So I’m pleading with you. Don’t ruin two lives, Ted’s and mine, just to get back at Kai for going off with me. She’s dead now. Gone. Please just let us be.”

  Bik stared at the floor. If … if they’d made their appeal that way in the first place.

  “I,” he began, then hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt anyone … .”

  Suwon’s hand clamped on Bik’s shoulder like a vise. “Don’t you dare give in,” she whispered. “I grab that recording’s a morph, at least the audio, fake as hell. Otherwise we would have got it realtime.” Then she said, loud, “Can he see us, Wendt? Can he hear us?”

  Bik looked up. Wendt made a nervous gesture to someone offstage and moved his lips. The sound didn’t come through. The boy nodded slightly and stared at the floor again.

  “Wu,” Wendt pleaded, “you heard the recording; he doesn’t want to go. I’m sure he remembers what to say. Why put him through that?”

  “I’ll bet Brunt gets to manage the estate while they’re gone,” Mabel whispered. “Bik, it stinks.”

  “I know,” he whispered back. “But does that justify hurting my kid?”

  “Bik, he’ll understand,” Suwon pleaded. “Trust me.”

  Another leap, Bik told himself, and you’re still alive after the first two. If Junior didn’t remember, it was all over, he’d look ridiculous and prove Wendt was right; that his custody fight would just be ruining lives for his own self-gratification. But no one who had pulled the crap Wendt had pulled could be that good a father, and some memories go way back. At the very least Bikki needed to know he hadn’t been abandoned; to know that Bik cared and always had cared. Bik decided to take the leap.

  “Bikki,” Bik said.

  The boy looked up, through the holoviewer, at Bik, and expressions of recognition, confusion, and wonder crossed his young face.

  “Daddy?”

  In that one word, Bik saw a future unfold before him. A wife, a son to raise, and maybe a daughter. A huge rambling house with lanais all around and a pool leading right to the ocean. Friends. But space to be alone, too. Fishing trips. Bik, junior, would grow up here, maybe go to the stars and come back with kids of his own in a century or two. And he and Suwon would be here. Forever? It seemed possible. Anything seemed possible, if he could just reach out. Now.

  Bik stood up, grabbed Suwon’s hand and stared the tight-lipped spaceman in the eyes. “Wendt, get out of there and let me talk to my son.”

/>   For White Hill

  JOE HALDEMAN

  Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Joe Haldeman took a B.S. degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland, and did postgraduate work in mathematics and computer science. But his plans for a career in science were cut short by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Vietnam in 1968 as a combat engineer. Seriously wounded in action, Haldeman returned home in 1969 and began to write. He sold his first story to Galaxy in 1969, and by 1976 had garnered both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award for his famous novel The Forever War, one of the landmark books of the seventies. He took another Hugo Award in 1977 for his story “Tricentennial”; won the Rhysling Award in 1983 for the best science-fiction poem of the year; and won both the Nebula and the Hugo in 1991 for the novella version of “The Hemingway Hoax.” His story “None So Blind” won the Hugo Award in 1995. His novel Forever Peace won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His other books include two mainstream novels, War Year and 1969; the SF novels Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, There Is No Darkness (written with his brother, SF writer Jack C. Haldeman II), Worlds, Worlds Apart. Worlds Enough and Time, Buying Time, The Hemingway Hoax, Forever Peace, and Forever Free; the collections infinite Dreams, Dealing in Futures, Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, and None So Blind; and, as editor, the anthologies Study War No More, Cosmic Laughter, and Nebula Award Stories Seventeen. His most recent book is the novel The Coming. Haldeman lives part of the year in Boston, where he teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the rest of the year in Florida, where he and his wife, Gay, make their home.

  Here he takes us thousands of years into a sophisticated, high-tech future for ringside seats at a unique competition among artists who have the kind of nearly unlimited resources to draw upon that would be unimaginable to someone from our day—but who find that, in the end, in spite of wealth and power, they still have to deal with the same old cold questions as artists of any age.

  I am writing this memoir in the language of England, an ancient land of Earth, whose tales and songs White Hill valued. She was fascinated by human culture in the days before machines—not just thinking machines, but working ones; when things got done by the straining muscles of humans and animals.