Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  “LuisMichael told us about your idea,” Derek said, at Manda’s curious glance, and Arlene said with a shrug, “It’s worth a shot.”

  Jim climbed into the hole and squatted on the piping. Beneath his feet, the curved, bone-colored sump lay. He took out a wrench, reached down between the pipes, and tapped on the sump. It rang hollowly. Everyone waited. Nothing. After a long pause he tapped again. And there was an answering thump. And more thumps. And muffled voices.

  Cries of excitement went up. Several people jumped into the hole and began trying to pry the pipes out of the way, while others started hammering and banging shovels on the floor drain. Manda whistled for attention, and she-Crane lumbered up.

  “This will be quicker,” she said. “Everyone out of the hole.”

  Jim shouted, as much for the sump’s occupants as the workers, “Stand clear!”

  Manda-Crane grabbed the pipes and floor drain with her-its claws and tore a two-meter segment of conduit away, with torn pipe segments trailing streams of fluid. When she-Scaffold rolled over to the hole and shone her-its lights back into it, the sump had an opening in its top, which had formerly been connected to the concrete floor drain. Manda jumped down into the hole with the LuisMichael triplets. She and Jim climbed down among the severed utility pipes and shone their flashlights into the sump, and their beams glinted off the upturned faces of four very dirty, shivering people: the UrsulaMeriwether sisters, and a JennaByron—one of the clone-siblings presumed dead.

  Manda stumbled over to Arlene and Derek, while others moved in to help the survivors out. Derek opened his arms and she walked into them; they gave each other a long, wordless hug, and Arlene wrapped her arms around both of them. Manda pulled back and eyed her older siblings.

  You saved the colony, Manda.

  They didn’t have to say it. The pride and love they felt gleamed in their gazes, even amid the still-raw sense of loss.

  It was time to ask. “The twins?”

  “We lost the girl,” Derek said. “The boy is hanging on. They have him in intensive care. It …” His voice broke. Arlene finished in flat tones, “It doesn’t look so good.”

  Manda pressed herself against them again, and hung on tight. She felt as if the world were coming to an end. Perhaps it was.

  Two days later Manda visited her little, unnamed brother. Paul was inside the intensive-care unit, masked, holding the baby in his gloved hands under a bank of warming lights. The baby was hooked up to an IV and several monitoring wires. The infant looked so pitiful, punctured and wired as it was; Manda cringed. (Not it, she reminded herself, sharply; him.) And the look on Paul’s face was so intensely sorrowful that Manda couldn’t bear to look directly at him, either.

  She grabbed a mask and entered the room, and sauntered rather too casually over. “Hi.”

  He didn’t even glance at her as she approached. She saw that Paul’s right hand cupped the baby easily; he was that small.

  “How is he doing?”

  “I talked to the doctor. They say he’s stable, he’s gained a little weight, and his lungs are in better shape.”

  “He’s a fighter,” she said. Paul nodded.

  “He might make it.” Paul stroked the baby’s hair with a thumb. “Poor little guy.”

  Manda realized he meant, Poor little guy is going to live. And that Paul was here to say goodbye to him.

  “Being a single isn’t that bad,” Manda said mildly. He gave her a raw, shocky look; Manda guessed he hadn’t slept at all in the three days since Teresa’s death. He opened his mouth; You don’t know what it’s like. But of course, in her own fashion, she did. He closed his mouth and looked at the baby again.

  “It’s different when you grow up together, I guess,” Manda said.

  Paul nodded, swallowed convulsively. “Perhaps you’re right. He won’t know this.” His voice cracked and bled. “This pain.”

  Fear grabbed Manda—fear of saying the exact wrong thing; fear of what would happen if she remained silent. She took a deep breath. “Paul, we need you.”

  Surprise and anguish flicked across his face. He slipped his hands out from under the baby and turned away from her.

  “I can’t, Manda. I can’t. Part of me is already dead.” He paused. “I reach out,” he said, lifting a hand to empty air, “and—where she was, I reach for her and—nothing’s there. I’m hollowed-out. I’m nothing.” He closed his hand and brought it to his chest. “Teresa. Oh, God. Help me.” He doubled over, and his voice became a growl of pain, a mantra. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  So Manda took hold of him, and they sank to the floor together. He howled his anguish. His fingers gouged into her and his tears poured out and soaked her sweater. Then he tried to silence himself, and bit her shoulder so hard it hurt even through the multiple layers she wore. She saw staff come running, and shooed them out.

  Once Paul’s grief had abated, she took his face in her hands—his face so like lost Teresa’s.

  Teresa. Teresa. As you love Paul—as you love me—give me the words.

  And the words came. “Listen. Right now I know you don’t care. Not about yourself, not about me, or our clone, or the colony. You don’t have to promise me you won’t ever do the recycler dive, or go walkabout without your gear. Just give me this one day. Just hang on till tomorrow.”

  He shook his head like a musk ox plagued by a shepherd dog’s nippings. “Can’t,” he whispered. “Can’t.”

  Manda gave his shoulders a shake. “You listen to me. You think I don’t know the pain you’re feeling because my own twin died before I was decanted and I don’t remember him. Well, guess what. I live with that loss every fucking minute of every fucking day of my life, ever since I was old enough to understand why everybody thought I was a bizarre and useless freak.

  “Well, I’m going to prove to them how wrong they are. This colony needs me, Paul, whether they know it or not. And they need this little baby. And they need you, too.”

  Paul had gone limp and unresponsive. After a moment Manda released him and draped her arms about her knees, sitting on the cold floor, eyeing the banks of equipment and the three other babies struggling for their lives.

  “Teresa cared about this colony,” she went on more quietly. “More than anything else. More than even her clone. If it had been you who had died, she would have hung on anyway, through the pain. I know it.”

  Paul just looked at her.

  “You know good and well,” Manda went on, “she would rather you suffer every ounce of this pain you’re feeling than throw your own life away. She cared about the colony more than anything in the world.” She cared about me. “She cared about you.”

  Anger coursed across his face. “What the fuck do you know about it? About her? You, with your selfish, loner attitude—you’ve always refused to have anything to do with me-us. With her. All you ever did was bring her grief. How can you possibly know what it’s like?”

  Then he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders and sobbed again: this time a child’s helpless, heartbroken tears. Manda felt abashed. She watched him for a moment, touched his head. Then she stood up and took the infant in her own right hand.

  It terrified her, how tiny he was. It awed her, that a human could be this small, this unformed, yet live.

  “His name will be Terence,” she said, and knew then that he would defy the doctors’ worst predictions and live. As had she.

  She held out her hand to Paul, who had grown quiet. He gripped her hand in his own—as tightly as if he were clinging to life itself—and stood up beside her. His face went through several contortions.

  “A good name,” he said finally, his voice hoarse.

  “Give me till tomorrow,” Manda said, and gave Paul’s hand a last, hard squeeze.

  He didn’t answer or even look at her, but she sensed a softening in his resolve, and clung to that, watching him leave.

  Brimstone’s tides were powerful and chaotic, much more so than Earth’s. During Brimstone’s long summe
r season they wracked the coastlines, tossing massive chunks of ice up onto the land as if they were a child’s blocks. And death, it seemed to her, came on like the tides. It bore down—unstoppable: sweeping its victims away, pounding the survivors into numbed, mindless submission, leaving a heap of wreckage on the shore, of chaos, pain, shattered lives. Leaving the survivors to sort it all out and find a way to go on.

  The tide had taken something else away from Manda, she realized, besides Teresa. It had reached in and dragged away Manda’s most secret and terrible anguish. She’d done something worthwhile for the colony. For the first time, she knew—if they did not, yet—that they were wrong about her.

  She discovered in herself a renewed determination to continue her undersea mapping. She’d keep at it till she found the seafloor vents. She’d take her marine-waldos to that dark and cold and lonely place and return with whatever glorious secrets, whatever marvels, whatever treasures of alien knowledge Brimstone might harbor.

  Her gaze went to her infant brother Terence. Though Brimstone’s tidal quakes had undoubtedly contributed, their penetration to the mantle—the terraforming effort—had certainly triggered the cave-in. Death had exacted a terrible price for Project IceFlame: a blood sacrifice. But terraforming also meant that Terence and future generations would be able to walk and work and love freely on the surface of Brimstone someday. Teresa hadn’t died for nothing.

  It mattered, somehow, too, that Terence had come into the world even as Teresa had left it. His presence—his struggle to live—gave Manda hope. If she could just hold on long enough, some tomorrow down the line would be better than today.

  She’d give it till tomorrow. As many times as it took.

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:

  “The Big Rain,” by Poul Anderson. Copyright © 1955 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. First published in Astounding Science Fiction, October 1954. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “When the People Fell,” by Cordwainer Smith. Copyright © 1959 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy, April 1959. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the agents for that estate, Scott Meredith Literary Associates, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

  “Before Eden,” by Arthur C. Clarke. Copyright © 1961 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. First published in Amazing, June 1961. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Scovil Chichak Galen Agency.

  “Hunter, Come Home,” by Richard McKenna. Copyright © 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1963. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent.

  “The Keys to December,” by Roger Zelazny. Copyright © 1966 by New Worlds. First published in New Worlds, August 1966. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the agents for the estate, the Pimlico Agency, Inc.

  “Retrograde Summer,” by John Varley. Copyright © 1974 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1974. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Pimlico Agency, Inc.

  “Shall We Take a Little Walk?” by Gregory Benford. Copyright © 1981 by Gregory Benford. First published in Destinies (Ace), Winter 1981. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Catharine Wheel,” by Ian McDonald. Copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, January 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Sunken Gardens,” by Bruce Sterling. Copyright © 1984 by Omni Publications International, Ltd. First published in Omni, June 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Out of Copyright,” by Charles Sheffield. Copyright © 1989 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Place with Shade,” by Robert Reed. Copyright © 1995 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Dawn Venus,” by G. David Nordley. Copyright © 1995 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “For White Hill,” by Joe Haldeman. Copyright © 1995 by Joe Haldeman. First published in Far Futures (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Road to Reality,” by Phillip C. Jennings. Copyright © 1996 by Dell Magazines, Inc. First published in Asimov’s Sceince Fiction, March 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Ecopoesis,” by Geoffrey A. Landis. Copyright © 1997 by Geoffrey A. Landis. First published in Science Fiction Age, May 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “People Came from Earth,” by Stephen Baxter. Copyright © 1999 by Stephen Baxter. First published in Moon Shots (DAW Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Fossils,” by William H. Keith, Jr. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Martian Romance,” by Kim Stanley Robinson. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Dream of Venus,” by Pamela Sargent. Copyright © 2000 by Pamela Sargent. First published in Star Colonies (DAW Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “At Tide’s Turning,” by Laura J. Mixon. Copyright © 2001 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ALSO BY GARDNER DOZOIS

  ANTHOLOGIES

  A DAY IN THE LIFE

  ANOTHER WORLD

  BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF THE YEAR #6—10

  THE BEST OF ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  TIME-TRAVELLERS FROM ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  TRANSCENDENTAL TALES FROM ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S ALIENS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S MARS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S SF LITE

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S WAR

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S PLANET EARTH (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOTS (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S CYBERDREAMS (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S SKIN DEEP (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S GHOSTS (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S VAMPIRES (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S MOONS (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S CHRISTMAS (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S DETECTIVES (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, #1—18

  FUTURE EARTHS: UNDER AFRICAN SKIES (WITH MIKE RESNICK)

  FUTURE EARTHS: UNDER SOUTH AMERICAN SKIES (WITH MIKE RESNICK)

  FUTURE POWER (WITH JACK DANN)

  FICTION

  STRANGERS

  THE VISIBLE MAN (COLLECTION)

  NIGHTMARE BLUE (WITH GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER)

  THE PEACEMAKER

  GEODESIC DREAMS (COLLECTION)

  NONFICTION

  THE FICTION OF JAMES TIPTREE, JR.

  ALIENS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  UNICORNS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  MAGICATS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  MAGICATS 2 (WITH JACK DANN)

  BESTIARY! (WITH JACK DANN)

  MERMAIDS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  SORCERERS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  DEMONS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  DOGTALES! (WITH JACK DANN)

  RIPPER! (WITH SUSAN CASPER)

  SEASERPENTS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  DINOSAURS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  LITTLE PEOPLE! (WITH JACK DANN)

  DRAGONS! (WITH JACK DANN)

  HORSES! (WITH JACK DANN)

  UNICORNS 2 (WITH JACK DANN)

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  ANGELS! (WITH JACK DANN)

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  HACKERS (WITH JACK DANN)

  TIMEGATES (WITH JACK DANN)

  CLONES (WITH JACK DANN)

  ARMAGEDDON (WITH JACK DANN)

  MODERN CLASSICS OF SCIENCE FICTION

  MODERN CLASSIC SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION

  MODERN CLASSICS OF FANTASY

  KILLING ME SOFTLY

  DYING FOR IT

  IMMORTALS (WITH JACK DANN)

  ROADS NOT TAKEN (WITH STANLEY SCHMIDT)

  THE GOOD OLD STUFF

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  EXPLORERS

  SLOW DANCING THROUGH TIME (WITH JACK DANN, MICHAEL SWANWICK, SUSAN CASPER, AND JACK C. HALDEMAN II)

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S WEREWOLVES (WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS)

  THE FURTHEST HORIZON

  WORLDMAKERS. Copyright © 2001 by Gardner Dozois. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  eISBN 9781429961868

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  Copyright acknowledgments follow the final story.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data