The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  There was a commotion from behind and another warrior pushed his way forward. "What is it? Have you found the-?"

  The new arrival stopped short. He removed a helmet identical to the one Achilles had worn.

  "Patroclus!" wailed the new arrival in despair, flinging himself on the body of the fallen man.

  A chill went down Bernal's spine as he guessed what had happened: a tragic case of mistaken identity-another echo of the Iliad. Had the goddess planned this, too? Was Odysseus' murder of Achilles' lover part of the damned script?

  Achilles looked up from the body of his friend and stared with naked hatred at Odysseus.

  "Hold, Achilles!" said Odysseus. "He was helping the Trojan escape. I was merely attempting to ensure that Agamemnon's orders were carried out."

  "To hell with Agamemnon," Achilles snarled. "You murdered Patroclus! I will kill you myself for this!"

  The grief-stricken warrior rose to his feet and drew his sword. Odysseus reached for his own and warily backed away.

  A hoot of alarm from behind Bernal warned him to duck. The incarnation of the goddess Athena flew over his head, aimed squarely at Achilles. The grieving warrior roared in anger and swung his sword in self-defence. His companions scattered in fear.

  Meanwhile, the airlock was unguarded. Bernal took his chance and scurried for his life. His last glance through the gap as he closed the door behind him would be engraved forever on his mind: two ancient heroes, swords locked, doing battle in an airlock while the holographic manifestation of the goddess Athena swooped low upon them from above.

  Foreigners, he thought.

  Alterego initiated the escape sequence before he was even in the cockpit. Sudden accelerations knocked him around the interior of the ship like a pea in a pod, but he didn't have the heart to complain.

  Once in his seat, still breathing heavily, he had time to think about what might happen next. His thoughts were interrupted by Alterego, speaking vocally now that Bernal was back in their ship.

  "By the way, you might be interested to learn that Athena built the Achaeans to match the illustrations it found in Groenig's copy of the Iliad-a copy of an antique version printed many millennia ago. The illustrations-wood-block is the correct term, I believe-depicted the ancients with exaggerated proportions and impossibly perfect features. Naturally the probe-intelligence was not to know the difference, and copied it all too faithfully."

  "The same with the food," Bernal said. "It looked nice but tasted like the supplies in Groenig's ship."

  "And it's also why they waltzed instead of dancing more traditional Helladic dances. Everything was either improvised or based on the illustrations in the text. The characters themselves were little more than automata, programmed within a set of very narrow guidelines to perform their part in the story."

  "Except Odysseus," said Bernal. "He seemed to know what was going on."

  "Maybe he acted as a sort of relay, for when cosmic intervention was less effective than a personable nudge."

  "But why?" Bernal scratched his head. "What did the collective-Athenagain by doing such a thing?"

  "It is hard to tell exactly."

  "But you have a theory?" Bernal guessed from Alterego's tone.

  "Of course. The Von Neumann probes had no reason to exist beyond their initial programming objectives: to seek out new worlds and seed them. Once communication between probes confirmed that, that request became meaningless. Likewise they possessed only a limited database, comprising just enough information to study and to categorise planets, but no more. They had no data upon which to decide what to do next. They had no alternatives."

  "Until they found the Apollo," Bernal said, guessing ahead.

  "Exactly," said Alterego, something very much like compassion in its voice. "And Athena finally found a quest."

  "The Trojan War?"

  "Yes."

  "With us as the Trojans, whether we wanted to play along or not?"

  "Yes."

  "All because the only data it had about human society was the book of the Iliad?"

  "Yes."

  Bernal sighed. As interesting as all the new information was, he was still confronted with a nightmare. "Regardless of how much free will a creation like Agamemnon really has, he is going to be upset. We can't rely on Achilles to distract him from the war. Everyone will be looking for scapegoats, and it'll probably be us. We'll have to do something ourselves to stop them from attacking us. But what-?" An idea suddenly struck him. "Wait! You still have a link to the Apollo through Mycenae's navigation computer?"

  "Yes; Athena hasn't cut me off yet, but it must only be a matter of time. From there I can reach deeper into the sentient matrix of the Mycenae. What exactly are you planning?"

  Bernal ignored the question. "Quickly, I want a list of those classics Groenig had with her on board her ship."

  As far as wars went, it was a bit of a fizzer. Within hours of the download Alterego had forced into the sentient matrix of the Mycenae-and therefore into the greater pool of knowledge comprising Athena-the Achaean fleet ceased accelerating toward Cirrus.

  "They are no longer in attack formation," Alterego reported.

  Bernal wriggled anxiously in his life support suit. The ship was ready to flee home at the slightest hostile movement. "You've given them a destination?"

  "I have seeded the text with the coordinates of every white dwarf in this region of the galaxy. That should be enough. We don't want to tie them down too much, after all. What's a quest without some free will?"

  "As long as they don't bother us, they can have as much free will as they like."

  Two hours later, as Bernal prepared to enter deep-sleep, Alterego announced that the Achaean fleet had headed off on a new course, one that would take it well away from Cirrus.

  "Also, a message has arrived via the ship's maser dishes."

  "Who from?" Bernal asked.

  "From the intelligence we knew as Athena."

  "What does it want?"

  "Answer and find out. But I think you'll find that we have done well, you and I."

  Bernal took the call, responding with a simple: "Bernal, here." Not Paris.

  When the reply came from the former Achaean fleet, he recognised the voice instantly. It was Odysseus.

  "We received the data you sent," Odysseus said. "I have examined the text in great detail, and it is much to our liking. We are infinitely better-suited to pursuit than invasion."

  “I guess this is farewell, then."

  "Yes. We are grateful for your help."

  "Think nothing of it." Half-truth though that was, Bernal did feel slightly moved at the parting, enough so to add: "Take care, Odysseus; happy hunting."

  There was the slightest of pauses before the voice returned: "Call me Ishmael."

  Gulliver at Home

  John Kessel

  Here's a sly and revealing look at a famous literary figure, a famous voyager and explorer of unknown lands, seen from a new and unique perspective-the perspective of those who stayed at home ...

  Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel now lives with his family in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is a professor of American literature and creative writing at North Carolina State University. Kessel made his first sale in 1975. His first solo novel, Good News from Outer Space, was released in 1988 to wide critical acclaim, but before that he had made his mark on the genre primarily as a writer of highly imaginative, finely crafted short stories, many of which were assembled in his collection Meeting in Infinity. He won a Nebula Award in 1983 for his superlative novella "Another Orphan," which was also a Hugo finalist that year and has been released as an individual book. His story "Buffalo" won the Theodore Sturgeon Award in 1991. His other books include the novel Freedom Beach, written in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, and an anthology of stories from the famous Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop (which he also helps to run) called Intersections, co-edited by Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner. His most recent books are a major new nov
el, Corrupting Dr. Nice, and a new collection, The Pure Product. His stories have appeared in our First, Second (in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly), Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Annual Collections. He has a Web site at http//www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/index.html/.

  O, Eliza, I did not wish your grandfather dead, though he swears that is what I said upon his return from his land of horses. What I said was that, given the neglect with which he has served us, and despite my Christian duties, even the best of wives might have wished him dead. The truth is, in the end, I love him.

  "Seven months," he says, "were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which Yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom."

  There he sits every afternoon with the horses. He holds converse with them. Many a time have I stood outside that stable door and listened to him unburden his soul to a dumb beast. He tells them things he has never told me, except perhaps years ago during those hours in my father's garden. Yet when I close my eyes, his voice is just the same.

  His lips were full, his voice low and assured. With it he conjured up a world larger, more alive than the stifling life of a hosier's youngest daughter.

  "I had no knowledge of the deepest soul of man until I saw the evening light upon the Pyramids," he was saying. "The geometry of Euclid, the desire to transcend time. Riddles that have no answer. The Sphinx."

  We sat in the garden of my father's house in Newgate Street. My father was away, on a trip to the continent purchasing fine holland, and Mother had retired to the sitting room to leave us some little privacy.

  For three and a half years Lemuel had served as a surgeon on the merchantman Swallow. He painted for me an image of the Levant: the camels, the deserts, the dead salt sea, and the dry stones that Jesus Himself trod.

  "Did you not long for England's green hills?" I asked him.

  He smiled. Your grandfather was the comeliest man I had ever seen. The set of his jaw, his eyes. Long, thick hair, the chestnut brown of a young stallion. He seemed larger than any of my other suitors. "From my earliest days I have had a passion to see strange lands and people," he told me. "To know their customs and language. This world is indeed a fit habitation for gods. But it seems I am never as desirous for home as when I am far away from it, and from the gentle conversation of such as yourself."

  My father was the most prudent of men. In place of a mind, he carried a purse. Lemuel was of another sort. As I sat there trying to grasp these wonders he took my hand and told me I had the grace of the Greek maidens, who wore no shoes and whose curls fell down round their shoulders in the bright sun. My eyes were the color, he said, of the Aegean Sea. I blushed. I was frightened that my mother might hear, but I cannot tell you how my heart raced. His light brown eyes grew distant as he climbed the structures of his fancy, and it did not occur to me that I might have difficulty getting him to return from those imaginings to see me sitting beside him.

  You are coming to be a woman, Eliza. But you cannot know what it was like to feel the force of his desire. He had a passion to embrace all the world and make it his. Part of that world he hoped to embrace, I saw as I sat beside him in that garden, was me.

  "Mistress Mary Burton," he said, "help me to become a perfect man. Let me be your husband."

  Little Lemuel, the child of our middle age, is just nine. Of late he has ceased calling on his friends in town. I found him yesterday in the garden, playing with his lead soldiers. He had lined them up, in their bright red coats, outside a fort of sticks and pebbles. He stood inside the fort's walls, giving orders to his toys. "Get away, you miserable Yahoos! You can't come in this house! Don't vex me! Your smell is unendurable!"

  The third of five sons, Lemuel hailed from Nottinghamshire, where his father held a small estate. He had attended Emanuel College in Cambridge and was apprenticed to Mr. James Bates, the eminent London surgeon. Anticipating the advantage that would be mine in such a match, my father agreed on a dowry of four hundred pounds.

  Having got an education, it was up to Lemuel now to get a living as best he could. There was to be no help for us from his family; though they were prosperous they were not rich, and what estate they had went to Lemuel's eldest brother John.

  My wedding dress? Foolish girl, what matters a wedding dress in this world?

  My wedding dress was of Orient silk, silk brought to England on some ship on which Lemuel perhaps served. My mother had labored over it for three months. It was not so fine as that of my older sister Nancy, but it was fine enough for me to turn Lemuel's head as I walked up the aisle of St. Stephen's church.

  We took a small house in the Old Jury. We were quite happy. Mr. Bates recommended Lemuel to his patients, and for a space we did well. In those first years I bore three children. The middle one, Robert, we buried before his third month. But God smiling, my Betty, your mother, and your uncle John did survive and grow.

  But after Mr. Bates died, Lemuel's practice began to fail. He refused to imitate the bad practice of other doctors, pampering hypochondriacs, promising secret cures for fatal disease. We moved to Wapping, where Lemuel hoped to improve our fortune by doctoring to sailors, but there was scant money in that, and his practice declined further. We discussed the matter for some time, and he chose to go to sea.

  He departed from Bristol on May 4, 1699, on the Antelope, as ship's surgeon, bound for the south seas, under Master William Prichard.

  The Antelope should have returned by the following spring. Instead it never came back. Much later, after repeated inquiries, I received report that the ship had never made its call at Sumatra. She was last seen when she landed to take on water at the Cape of Good Hope, and it was assumed that she had been lost somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

  Dearest granddaughter, I hope you never have cause to feel the distress I felt then. But I did not have time to grieve, because we were in danger of being left paupers.

  What money Lemuel had left us, in expectation of his rapid return, had gone. Our landlord, a goodly Christian man, Mr. Henry Potts of Wapping, was under great hardship himself, as his trade had slackened during the late wars with France and he was dependent on the rent from his holdings. Betty was nine and Johnny seven, neither able to help out. My father sent us what money he could, but owing to reverses of his own he could do little. As the date of Lemuel's expected return receded Mr. Potts's wife and son were after Mr. Potts to put us out.

  I took in sewing-thank God and my parents I was a master seamstress. We raised a few hens for meat and eggs. We ate many a meal of cabbage and potatoes. The neighbors helped. Mr. Potts forbore. But in the bitter February of 1702 he died, and his son, upon assuming his inheritance, threatened to put us into the street.

  One April morning, at our darkest moment, some three years after he sailed on the Antelope, Lemuel returned.

  The coach jounced and rattled over the Kent high road. "You won't believe me when I tell you, these minuscule people, not six inches high, had a war over which end of the egg to break."

  Lemuel had been telling these tales for two weeks without stop. He'd hired the coach using money we did not have. I was vexed with the effort to force him to confront our penury.

  "We haven't seen an egg here in two years!" I said. "Last fall came a pip that killed half the chickens. They staggered about with their little heads pointed down, like drunkards searching for coins on the street. They looked so sad. When it came time to market we left without a farthing."

  Lemuel carefully balanced the box he carried on his knees. He peeked inside, to assure himself for the hundredth time that the tiny cattle and sheep it held were all right. We were on our way to the country estate of the Earl of Kent, who had summoned Lemuel when the rumors of the miniature creatures he'd brought back from Lilliput spread throughout the county. "Their empress almost had me beheaded. She didn't approve my method of dousing a fire that would have otherwise consumed her."

  "In the midst of that, Betty almost died o
f the croup. I was up with her every night for a fortnight, cold compresses and bleeding."

  "God knows I'd have given a hundred guineas for a cold compress when I burned with fever, a castaway on the shores of Lilliput."

  "Once the novelty fades, cattle so tiny will be of no use. There's not a scrap of meat on them."

  "True enough. I would eat thirty oxen at a meal." He sat silent, deep in thought. The coach lurched on. "I wonder if His Grace would lend me the money to take them on tour?"

  "Lemuel, we owe Stephen Potts eleven pounds sixpence. To say nothing of the grocer. And if he is to have any chance at a profession, Johnny must be sent to school. We cannot even pay for his clothes."

  "Lilliputian boys are dressed by men until four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves. They always go in the presence of a Professor, whereby they avoid those early impressions of vice and folly to which our children are subject. Would that you had done this for our John."

  "Lemuel, we have no money! It was all I could do to keep him alive!"

  He looked at me, and his brow furrowed. He tapped his fingers on the top of the cattle box. "I don't suppose I can blame her. It was a capital crime for any person whatsoever to make water within the precincts of the palace."

  Last night your grandfather quarreled with your uncle John, who had just returned from the Temple. Johnny went out to the stables to speak with Lemuel concerning a suit for libel threatened by a nobleman who thinks himself the object of criticism in Lemuel's book. I followed.

  Before Johnny could finish explaining the situation, Lemuel flew into a rage. "What use have I for attorneys? I had rather see them dropped to the deepest gulf of the sea."

  In the violence of his gesture Lemuel nearly knocked over the lamp that stood on the wooden table. His long gray hair flew wildly as he stalked past the stall of the dappled mare he calls "Mistress Mary," to my everlasting dismay. I rushed forward to steady the lamp. Lemuel looked upon me with a gaze as blank as a brick.

  "Father," Johnny said, "you may not care what this man does, but he is a cabinet minister, and a lawsuit could ruin us. It would be politic if you would publicly apologize for any slight your satire may have given."