The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  A good life. Maybe a better life.

  "Stephen? You okay?" She poured me a whiskey. Kerry had been a clear spirits drinker. I nodded. My breath shuddered. "Stephen. Do you really have to go back to Dublin tonight?"

  Dara's sofa was hard, her bed-throw thin and her cabin chilly but I slept like a god resting after creation. We had made it late over to the Big House the night before-eating was communal at Twelve Willows. A couple of vanloads had already gone into nearby Newtownards in search of nightlife, but enough stayed behind to scrape us together two platefuls of leftovers and a couple of bottles from the community cellars. The food was vegetarian, and very good even to an unreconstructed carnivore. After much Guinness, instruments were broken out, and we played and sang our way through the hoariest numbers in the Oldfolkies-in-Aran-Sweaters song-book. They'd do it at the drop of a hat when there were sojourners in, Dara told me. Picking my way over the frost back to her cabin, I realized a strange thing. I was happy. Food, company, music. The ancient tradition of hospitality of the Culdee mystics, whose ruined monasteries ringed this lough, was reborn in the new orders and communities. Simple gifts. Direct living. Being, without necessarily becoming. Becoming, in its own time, like the shoots of green willow. I envied Dara her new life and family.

  Sundays in Twelve Willows were only worked if you wanted to. Dara didn't. She took me out along the lough shore. The frost had settled hard in the night. Mist clung to the lough, glowing in the November sun, blurring the boundary between land and water. I shivered in my borrowed parka and Wellington boots and followed Dara's footprints out across the sand.

  "What was she like?" she asked when I caught up with her. "What did she do? Who was she?"

  "Bitter. Compassionate. Wild. Then again, always afraid. Contradictory. Tremendous, terrifying mood swings. From incredible, devouring energy to absolute desolation."

  "Manic depressive?"

  "No. I don't think it was clinical like that. She had to stop herself. She couldn't allow herself to go too far, achieve too much, be too free. Something had to pull her back to what she had been told all her life she was. Useless. Worthless. A waste of womb-space."

  "Happy?"

  "What does that mean?"

  "What did she do?"

  "She was an animator. She was brilliant; these freaky, scratchy, creaky collages out of old toys and dolls and bits of bone and wire. Won awards. Only she was so brilliant she kept her job, when the depressions hit her. You kept that bit of her."

  "I was never brilliant. I would never have done anything like she did. Afraid to pay the price of brilliance. Stephen, what was her name?"

  "Kerry."

  She did not repeat it, not even shape her lips silently around it. Dara walked on over the tide-rippled sand. In the distance a flock of geese grazed, black atoms in the bright mist. "What about you, Stephen?"

  "What about me?"

  "Happy?"

  "I have a job I hate; no friends, can't get a woman, bursting for a shag, don't get out, going nowhere. And I find my sister has changed into another person and does not even know who I am."

  "Who are you?"

  "In here?" I touched my hand to the parka quilting. "I don't know."

  "What would you like to be?"

  The words came in a rush, like many wings.

  "A poet." I blushed instantly. Dara saw it and smiled.

  "What's stopping you?"

  I knew the answer to that, but I was not brave enough to speak it. Dara continued.

  "There are a thousand places like this where you're allowed to be whatever you want to be. A thousand ways to be Stephen O'Neill."

  I stopped walking. Water oozed from the sandy impress of my borrowed boots.

  "Dara. There's something I'd like you to have. Something that was Kerry's, that she left behind."

  I fumbled out the silver bird broach. Dara looked at the tiny, exquisite thing in the palm of her hand.

  "Transmigration of the soul," I said. Curlews called, unseen in the mist.

  "I could put you back," Dara said. "Go to Feargal, put you back into my childhood. The white house with the black paint and the trees around it. The Victorian conservatory. Barney the dog. Cat the cat. Make you my brother."

  "Why?"

  "I like you. You're ... you. My brother. I need you, I think."

  "Dara, I wouldn't fit into your childhood. Stephen O'Neill comes from that other childhood. What you remember could never produce me."

  Dara winced. Her hand closed on Kerry's silver bird.

  "Consider us separated at birth," I said. "Orphans, adopted into different families. Separate lives. Intimate strangers. Learning about each other. Because you aren't Kerry. You are the sister I should have had, that I never knew."

  "Yeah," Dara said. She opened her hand and looked at the broach. Then, suddenly, stunningly, she drew back her arms and threw it out over the sands. I saw it glitter in the sun, but I did not mark where it fell. We walked back across the tide flats toward the low willow-covered hills, following our waterfilled footprints. Behind us, the feeding geese rose up and passed over us in a long straggling skein, calling to each other as they flew north.

  The Masque of Agamemnon

  Sean Williams & Simon Brown

  New Australian writer Sean Williams is the author of several novels in collaboration with Shane Dix, including The Unknown Soldier and The Dying Light, and of a solo novel Metal Fatigue, which won Australia's Aurealis Award for 1996. His stories have appeared in Eidolon, Aurealis, Aboriginal Science Fiction, The Leading Edge, Alien Shores, Terror Australis, and elsewhere, and have been gathered in the collection Door way to Eternity. He has a Web site at http//www.eidolon.net/seanwilliams/.

  Australian writer Simon Brown works as a journalist with the University of Western Sydney. He made his first sale to Omega in 1981, and has since sold to Eidolon, Aurealis, and elsewhere. His novels include Privateer and, most recently, Winter.

  As the inventive, ironic swashbuckler that follows demonstrates, imitation can be the sincerest form of flattery. It can also kill you ...

  Not long after the Achaean fleet arrived at the periphery of the Ilium system, its area sensors noted a phenomenon its sentient matrix could neither A accept nor explain. An owl appeared in the middle of the fleet, circled around it three times-its wings eclipsing the distant point of light that was Ilium's sun-then headed straight for the Over-captain's own ship, Mycenae. just as it was about to smash into the ship's hull, there was an intense flash of blue light and the owl disappeared.

  Internal sensors picked it up next: a bird the size of a human child, dipping and soaring within Mycenae's vast internal halls and corridors. Before any alarm could be given, the sensor matrices received a supersede command; the owl was a messenger from the goddess Athena, and it was not to be interfered with.

  Seconds later, the owl reached its destination, the chamber of Agamemnon, Over-captain of the entire Achaean fleet. What happened therein is not recorded, but an hour later Agamemnon announced to his crew he was going to hold a grand ball.

  His wife, Clytemnestra, attributed the idea to his love of games and his penchant for petulant, almost child-like whims. She thought the idea a foolish notion, but she did not argue against it; she loved her husband and indulged him in all things.

  Arrangements were quickly made, and maser beams carried messages to all the other ships of the fleet, demanding their captains attend the Great Masque of Agamemnon.

  "Your brother should spend more time worrying about the Trojans," Helen told her husband, Menelaus.

  The captain of Sparta grimaced. He disliked anyone criticising his older brother, but in this instance he had to agree with his wife. Agamemnon was spending a large amount of the fleet's energy and time to throw his ball; energy and time that could have been better spent prosecuting an attack against the Trojans' home on Ilium.

  "Nevertheless, he has commanded the presence of all his captains and their wives, so we must go."

  "Bu
t why a masque? He loves his games too much. And I suppose we will end up spending the whole time with Nestor."

  "Nestor is the oldest among us, and his words the wisest."

  "The most boring, you mean. Oh, Menelaus," she pouted. "I wish we didn't have to go."

  Although Menelaus agreed with Helen's sentiment, he would not allow himself to say so.

  Achilles had made a silver helmet for his friend Patroclus to wear to the ball. When Patroclus saw it he could not find the words to thank Achilles; it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. Then Achilles showed him the helmet he himself would be wearing, and to Patroclus' surprise it was exactly the same as the one he had been given.

  "I don't understand, Achilles. Are we going as brothers?"

  Achilles laughed. "As lovers, dear Patroclus. But there is more to it than symbolism."

  Patroclus looked blankly at his friend, which made Achilles laugh even harder. "We are the same size and shape. With these helmets, and wearing the livery of my ship, no one will be able to tell us apart."

  "A game?"

  Achilles shrugged, gently placed one of the helmets on Patroclus' head. He leaned forward quickly and kissed his friend on the lips, then closed the helmet's plate, hiding his friend's face entirely except for his eyes and mouth.

  "A game of sorts, I suppose, to match Agamemnon's own." Achilles put on his own helmet, closed the face plate. "We are, behind these disguises, nothing but shadows of ourselves, and as shadows at the Over-captain's masque, who knows what secrets we will learn?"

  "Secrets?"

  "I have heard rumours that Agamemnon has invited a surprise guest."

  "A surprise guest?"

  "A Trojan," Achilles said.

  His real name was Bernal, but Alterego insisted on calling him Paris.

  "Get used to it. Our hosts insist on you adopting the name for this occasion."

  "If they explained why, it would be easier," Bernal complained. Strapped into the gravity couch of the small ship in which he was travelling, he had little to do except complain. Alterego took care of all the ship's functions; Bernal was nothing but baggage.

  "Presumably, it has something to do with the fact that all the messages we've received from our visitors come in the name of Agamemnon."

  "Over-captain of the Achaean fleet, for pity's sake."

  "You can snort all you want, Paris, but we know very little else about them, and it will probably be in your best interests to take them seriously."

  "Not to mention the best interests of the whole of Cirrus."

  Bernal aligned the external telescope, the only instrument the ship carried that used visible light and installed specifically for Bernal's use. He could not see his planet-now more than forty billion kilometres away-but the system's yellow-dwarf sun, Anatole, was the brightest object in the sky, and Cirrus was somewhere within a few are-seconds of it. "Home-sick?" Alterego asked.

  "Scared, more like," Bernal answered. "When was the last time one of my people travelled this far from home?"

  Bernal was sure he heard Alterego's brain hum, even though be knew the AI didn't have any parts that hummed as such. He had been in the AI's company for too long. "Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago. Explorer and miner named Groenig. Last message came when her ship was forty-three billion kilometres from home. Never heard from since."

  "No one went after her?"

  "What good would that have done? Even back then, when intrasystem shipping was much more active than now, there would not have been more than two or three ships that could have reached her last known position within six months; far too late to do anything to help her if she was in trouble. Most likely there was some onboard disaster, or maybe the loneliness got to her and she committed suicide."

  The answer irritated Bernal. "what the hell did you wake me for, anyway?"

  "I did have the telescope aligned on something I thought you'd be interested in seeing."

  "Don't whinge. What was it?"

  "Fortunately, I took the precaution of storing some images over a three day period, which was just enough time to create some very interesting holographic-"

  "If you've got something to show me, get on with it", Bernal commanded.

  Several small laser beams intersected about half a metre in front of Bernal's face. At first they formed nothing but a white shell, but a second later a 3D image appeared. It looked like a crown of thorns. "How big is it?"

  "Some of my sensor readings indicate the object's mass is close to 7,000,000 tonnes."

  Bernal was surprised. Without a reference point, he had assumed the object was quite small. Then he remembered Alterego saying it bad taken three days to get a workable 3D image, which was a lot of time to work with for a computer of Alterego's capability.

  "What did you say its dimensions were?"

  "I didn't, but I estimate a radius of eighty or so kilometres."

  "My God! Is this one of the Achaean ships?"

  "I should think that if this was just one of their ships, a fleet of them would have been detected from Cirrus several years ago. I surmise, therefore, that this is the fleet, its individual components joined in some way."

  Bernal peered at the holograph. "Can you make out any repetitions of shape?

  Anything we could identify as a single unit?"

  "Ah, I was hoping you would ask that." Bernal was sure he heard smugness in that voice. "Indeed, this is why I woke you."

  The holographic image changed, metamorphosed into something more like a ship. Bernal peered at it. Well, vaguely more like a ship.

  "It reminds me of something I've seen before, but for the life of me I can't figure what."

  "Using some deductive logic, a little dash of intuition and a thorough search of the Cirrus Archives, I think I've discovered something," Alterego said. "Watch what happens when I remove from the Achaean ship the youngest hull material, connective grids and certain extraneous energy dispersion vanes.

  The image altered instantaneously into something barely a tenth the size of the original. Bernal studied the new shape for a moment before a memory clicked in his brain.

  "I don't believe it!"

  Alterego just bummed.

  "A Von Neumann probe.. ." Bernal's voice faded as he realised the implications.

  "Precisely my deduction," Alterego agreed, superimposing a second holograph over the first: a blue outline that almost perfectly matched the image of the Achaean artefact. "This diagram is from Cirrus's most ancient library stores. It is, of course, one of the original plans for a Von Neumann probe, circa 2090 CE."

  Bernal whistled. "But that was nearly 5,000 years ago. They were the first human-made ships to reach the stars."

  "And in their seedbanks they carried the ancestors of all human life in this part of the spiral arm .. ." There was the slightest of pauses ... . including your own kind."

  The bulkheads forming Mycenae's cavernous, square reception hall were decorated with depictions of a Cyclopean city: grey walls made from unworked boulders and dressed stone; a corbel arch gateway topped by a heavy, triangular sculpture of two lions and a Minoan column; and a massive beehive tomb made from the same stone as the city.

  Mingling in the hall were dozens of ship captains and their wives or mistresses, all dressed in elaborate costumes, the men in shining breast plates and tall helmets sprouting horse-hair crests or eagle feathers, the women in long tunics bordered in gold and beads of amber and lapis lazuli.

  Agamemnon moved among his captains, greeting each individually with generous words, baulking only when he met the two he knew were Achilles and Patroclus, but was unable to tell them apart in their silver helmets. He smiled, pretending to enjoy their private joke, and moved on to deliver more glib welcomings. Clytemnestra circulated as well, talking to the women, flattering them about their clothing and hair.

  In a short while, smaller groups coalesced from the throng, centred on the fleet's major captains. The largest group circled Agamemnon and his brothe
r Menelaus; a second group almost as large gathered around Achilles and Patroclus; other heroes to have their own audience included Diomedes, the huge Aiax, Nestor and Idomeneus. Standing apart from them all, however, was one captain without any followers or even the companionship of his own woman.

  Odysseus stood back from the assembly, looking on with a wry smile. He enjoyed observing the posturings of the major captains, the false camaraderie they shared and the whispered insults they passed. As well, he was entertained by the antics of the lesser captains, eager to please their patrons and desperate to raise their own status in the fleet.

  His inspection was interrupted by an owl that appeared on his shoulder.

  "The guest has arrived," the owl said. "His ship is about to dock. He brings a friend with him."

  "A friend?" Odysseus replied. "Troy was instructed to send only one of their own.

  "His friend is not human," the owl continued. "It is some kind of AI. I only learned of this when it communicated with the navigation computer."

  "Have you told Agamemnon?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then do so now. He should greet this Paris personally."

  Bernal cursed as Alterego made what it called "minor" adjustments to the ship's attitude in its final approach to the docking site. The ship jerked to port, then performed a quarter-roll, jerked back in the other direction, and finally decelerated rapidly as all the lateral thrusters fired simultaneously. Bernal's journey to the Achaean fleet, which bad begun with a smooth acceleration away from orbit around Cirrus and then continued on just as smoothly for another three weeks through intrasystem space, was now ending with a violent jagging that did nothing to ease his roiling stomach.