The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Karpal led him on through the secret ocean. There were helical worms, coiled together in groups of indeterminate number—each single creature breaking up into a dozen or more wriggling slivers, and then recombining … although not always from the same parts. There were dazzling multicolored stemless flowers, intricate hypercones of “gossamer-thin” fifteen-dimensional petals—each one a hypnotic fractal labyrinth of crevices and capillaries. There were clawed monstrosities, writhing knots of sharp insectile parts like an orgy of decapitated scorpions.

  Paolo said, uncertainly, “You could give people a glimpse of this in just three dimensions. Enough to make it clear that there’s … life in here. This is going to shake them up badly, though.” Life—embedded in the accidental computations of Wang’s Carpets, with no possibility of ever relating to the world outside. This was an affront to Carter-Zimmerman’s whole philosophy: if nature had evolved “organisms” as divorced from reality as the inhabitants of the most inward-looking polis, where was the privileged status of the physical universe, the clear distinction between truth and illusion?

  And after three hundred years of waiting for good news from the diaspora, how would they respond to this back on Earth?

  Karpal said, “There’s one more thing I have to show you.”

  He’d named the creatures squids, for obvious reasons. Distant cousins of the jellyfish, perhaps? They were prodding each other with their tentacles in a way which looked thoroughly carnal—but Karpal explained, “There’s no analog of light here. We’re viewing all this according to ad hoc rules which have nothing to do with the native physics. All the creatures here gather information about each other by contact alone—which is actually quite a rich means of exchanging data, with so many dimensions. What you’re seeing is communication by touch.”

  “Communication about what?”

  “Just gossip, I expect. Social relationships.”

  Paolo stared at the writhing mass of tentacles.

  “You think they’re conscious?”

  Karpal, point-like, grinned broadly. “They have a central control structure with more connectivity than the human brain—and which correlates data gathered from the skin. I’ve mapped that organ, and I’ve started to analyze its function.”

  He led Paolo into another environment, a representation of the data structures in the “brain” of one of the squids. It was—mercifully—three-dimensional, and highly stylized, built of translucent colored blocks marked with icons, representing mental symbols, linked by broad lines indicating the major connections between them. Paolo had seen similar diagrams of transhuman minds; this was far less elaborate, but eerily familiar nonetheless.

  Karpal said, “Here’s the sensory map of its surroundings. Full of other squids’ bodies, and vague data on the last known positions of a few smaller creatures. But you’ll see that the symbols activated by the physical presence of the other squids are linked to these”—he traced the connection with one finger—”representations. Which are crude miniatures of this whole structure here.”

  “This whole structure” was an assembly labeled with icons for memory retrieval, simple tropisms, short-term goals. The general business of being and doing.

  “The squid has maps, not just of other squids’ bodies, but their minds as well. Right or wrong, it certainly tries to know what the others are thinking about. And”—he pointed out another set of links, leading to another, less crude, miniature squid mind—”it thinks about its own thoughts as well. I’d call that consciousness, wouldn’t you?”

  Paolo said weakly, “You’ve kept all this to yourself? You came this far, without saying a word—?”

  Karpal was chastened. “I know it was selfish—but once I’d decoded the interactions of the tile patterns, I couldn’t tear myself away long enough to start explaining it to anyone else. And I came to you first because I wanted your advice on the best way to break the news.”

  Paolo laughed bitterly. “The best way to break the news that first alien consciousness is hidden deep inside a biological computer? That everything the diaspora was trying to prove has been turned on its head? The best way to explain to the citizens of Carter-Zimmerman that after a three-hundred-year journey, they might as well have stayed on Earth running simulations with as little resemblance to the physical universe as possible?”

  Karpal took the outburst in good humor. “I was thinking more along the lines of the best way to point out that if we hadn’t traveled to Orpheus and studied Wang’s Carpets, we’d never have had the chance to tell the solipsists of Ashton-Laval that all their elaborate invented lifeforms and exotic imaginary universes pale into insignificance compared to what’s really out here—and which only the Carter-Zimmerman diaspora could have found.”

  * * *

  Paolo and Elena stood together on the edge of Satellite Pinatubo, watching one of the scout probes aim its maser at a distant point in space. Paolo thought he saw a faint scatter of microwaves from the beam as it collided with iron-rich meteor dust. Elena’s mind being diffracted all over the cosmos? Best not think about that.

  He said, “When you meet the other versions of me who haven’t experienced Orpheus, I hope you’ll offer them mind grafts so they won’t be jealous.”

  She frowned. “Ah. Will I or won’t I? I can’t be bothered modeling it. I expect I will. You should have asked me before I cloned myself. No need for jealousy, though. There’ll be worlds far stranger than Orpheus.”

  “I doubt it. You really think so?”

  “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe that.” Elena had no power to change the fate of the frozen clones of her previous self—but everyone had the right to emigrate.

  Paolo took her hand. The beam had been aimed almost at Regulus, UV-hot and bright, but as he looked away, the cool yellow light of the sun caught his eye.

  Vega C-Z was taking the news of the squids surprisingly well, so far. Karpal’s way of putting it had cushioned the blow: it was only by traveling all this distance across the real, physical universe that they could have made such a discovery—and it was amazing how pragmatic even the most doctrinaire citizens had turned out to be. Before the launch, “alien solipsists” would have been the most unpalatable idea imaginable, the most abhorrent thing the diaspora could have stumbled upon—but now that they were here, and stuck with the fact of it, people were finding ways to view it in a better light. Orlando had even proclaimed, “This will be the perfect hook for the marginal polises. ‘Travel through real space to witness a truly alien virtual reality.’ We can sell it as a synthesis of the two world views.”

  Paolo still feared for Earth, though—where his Earth-self and others were waiting in hope of alien guidance. Would they take the message of Wang’s Carpets to heart, and retreat into their own hermetic worlds, oblivious to physical reality?

  And he wondered if the anthrocosmologists had finally been refuted … or not. Karpal had discovered alien consciousness—but it was sealed inside a cosmos of its own, its perceptions of itself and its surroundings neither reinforcing nor conflicting with human and transhuman explanations of reality. It would be millennia before C-Z could untangle the ethical problems of daring to try to make contact … assuming that both Wang’s Carpets, and the inherited data patterns of the squids, survived that long.

  Paolo looked around at the wild splendor of the star-choked galaxy, felt the disk reach in and cut right through him. Could all this strange haphazard beauty be nothing but an excuse for those who beheld it to exist? Nothing but the sum of all the answers to all the questions humans and transhumans had ever asked the universe—answers created in the asking?

  He couldn’t believe that—but the question remained unanswered.

  So far.

  CASTING AT PEGASUS

  Mary Rosenblum

  One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale to Asimov’ s Science Fiction in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine, with almo
st twenty sales there to her credit; her linked series of “Drylands” stories have proved to be one of the magazine’s most popular series. She has also sold to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, New Legends, and elsewhere. Her first novel, The Drylands, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for best first novel of the year; it was followed in short order by her second novel, Chimera. Her most recent book is a third novel, The Stone Garden; she has finished a fourth science fiction novel, and is currently at work on her first mystery novel. Coming up soon is her first short story collection, Synthesis and Other Stories. Her story “California Dreamer” appeared in our Twelfth Annual Collection. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

  In the bittersweet, elegant, and compassionate story that follows, she shows us the infinite possibilities—and the deadly dangers—that can open up for you if you dare to go beyond the limits that the world has imposed, and reach for the stars.

  It was a good night for flying. Windy enough to make her car buck. Stars and no moon, the riverbed a gouge of deeper darkness on her right. Therese braked, the highway empty behind her, nosed the little city-car into a tangle of fall-yellowed blackberries. Thorns scraped paint as she killed her headlights, and she didn’t care.

  It struck her suddenly how much she didn’t care. Because Selva had originally paid for half of the car? She had never changed the registration. It was still in both their names. Therese squinted at darkness and rutted mud, angry at herself. For not thinking about the registration.

  The car had been as easily cast off as Therese herself. How could she have forgotten to change the registration? Lips tight, Therese pulled clear up to the rusty chain-link fence, and turned off the engine. Opening the door let in the cold, and she shivered as she dragged her carryall from the cargo space. The wind combed invisible fingers, rich with fall scents of rotting leaves and cold moist earth, through her short hair. Yeah. Good night for flying.

  She had told Selva about the airport, about sneaking out of her room at night when she was a kid, dressed in her “airport clothes.” She used to cross the highway, cut through a field to the parking lot. Inside, she hung around in the waiting areas, drinking too-sweet hot chocolate from the snack bar, talking to other passengers, telling them how she was on her way to live with her father in Paris, or Amsterdam, or New York. “You did your single-parent angst more creatively than most,” Selva had said. And she had laughed and rumpled Therese’s hair. “That’s why you’re such a wonderful artist.”

  She didn’t think so anymore. Therese hooked her fingers through the scabby fabric of the decrepit chain-link fence. The mesh shivered with a soft metallic clash as she climbed. Like a sigh, Therese thought. She threw one leg over the top, where she’d cut the barbed wire. A sigh of rust and aging and abandonment. Could a fence feel abandoned?

  She swung her other leg over, leaped down to land with a splat in hummocky dew-wet grass. Another world, in here. She looked skyward, remembering airplanes taking off like constellations of colored stars rising from the tangled strings of blue lights that edged the runways. Hi. Where are you going? I’m on my way to Paris. My dad’s there and he wants me to come live with him. He’s a correspondent for the New York Times.… Therese hefted her carryall higher on her shoulder, began to jog toward the asphalt runway. The broken stems of old landing-lights stuck up like mileposts along the runway. Who had broken them off, and why? Now, people came and went at the big shuttle terminal, arcing up to the Platforms and down again. Or they did the Net. God bless the Net. Which brought her back to Selva, and Selva didn’t belong here.

  Therese slowed to a walk, forcing herself to listen. The empty airport had its own population—the boarders who skimmed the runways, the taggers, and the night watchman, who took his break now, between midnight and one. No sound of board wheels. The taggers kept to the blank canvases of the buildings. On a whim, she decided to set up out beyond the old hangar, out past the gate area. It might take the watchman half the night to notice her lights if she were lucky.

  That was part of it—how long the flight lasted before the night watchman cut it down.

  With a roar of sound, a pod of boarders zoomed up out of the darkness; three of them, dressed in black, slaloming back and forth across the cracked asphalt. Their boards’ jet engines screamed, unmuffled and mocking. Therese dodged into the tall grass along the runway and dropped flat. Frost-killed stems brushed her cheeks, wet her face with dew like cold tears as they zoomed past. The night watchman would chase them. He always did. Thanks, guys, she mouthed silently, bounced to her feet, and broke into a run across the gate area. Big halides mounted on the terminal buildings splashed light across the asphalt, glinting on faded traffic markings. She avoided the light, cut across the grass again, shoes and socks soaked through now. Her feet slapped the concrete apron of the old hangar.

  Quick. She unzipped her carryall, grabbed the tether-stakes she’d made from plastic pipe. Pounded the first one into the soggy ground beyond the apron. Wind from the east. She tested it with a hand, guessed twenty-five with gusts to thirty-five. Exactly the conditions she’d plugged into her virtual simulation, so the lights should go up slick and fast. She pounded in the second and third stakes and fumbled in her bag. Working in the dark because light brought the night watchman that much sooner, she snagged the first string. High-tensile line, black. The fiberlight beading felt like thin plastic twine beneath her fingers, flexible, cool, invisible in the darkness. She wound the end of the string around the first stake, laid it out. Laid out the second string and straightened the crossties by touch. So far, so good. If she tangled it now, she could kiss this night’s flight good-bye.

  Sound in the darkness, over by the unlighted hangar. Therese straightened, adrenaline spiking through her. The night watchman carried a taser, and the boarders carried blades. She slipped a hand into her pocket, closed her fingers around her small cannister of mace, listening until her ears buzzed, turning the rush of wind into sneaking footsteps, the snap of an opening blade.

  Nothing. Hands wanting to shake, she unfolded the kite, bent the slender wands into the pockets she’d bonded into the corners. The wind caught at the transparent plastic so that it billowed out and came alive in her hands, straining like a dog tugging at a leash, full of promise, full of potential.

  Potential. She hated the word. Selva had used it a lot at the end—“Your stuff has so much potential.” Then came the “buts…” But the art market is such a closed place. But it’s so tough to make your living doing art. But, but, but …

  But get real and get a job, honey.

  With an angry shake of her head and a leap, Therese tossed the kite into the air. The wind caught it, snatched it skyward, burning the line through her fingers. She paid it out carefully, steadily, squinting as her light-lines rose, intertangled like an invisible net spread to catch the stars. It looked okay, just like her sim. She anchored the kite-line to the third stake, and pulled the remote from her other pocket, heart beating fast now, because she didn’t know, couldn’t know how it would really look, until … now. Her forefinger touched the button.

  And her light-net came to life, spilling meshes of liquid fire across the night. The hair-fine fiberlight threads, bought from a tattoo artist wholesale, glowed in jewel-bright color against the sky. Ruby. Neon blue. Sun-gold. Tonight, she had captured the great square of Pegasus, twined him in shimmering helices of light as the invisible kite danced with the wind, and the tangled threads glowed. Winged steed, lifting to a world behind those stars. Tonight she had harnessed him. She felt him tugging, the energy of those huge shoulders thrumming down the lines. Therese closed her eyes, let the energy hum through her flesh. In a moment, he would lift her from the ground, that harnessed creature, and carry her …

  “Hey.”

  Soft voice, a breath almost, surely too low to be heard over the wind. Therese spun around, poised to run. Light by the hangar, a
flash’s glow that illuminated a tawny, androgynous kid’s face. Spiky brown hair. Tilted, dark eyes.

  “Beat it.” Same soft, urgent carrying tone. “The cop’s comin’.” The light winked out.

  She heard him now—heavy footsteps thudding on the grass. She snatched up her carryall and ran. Behind her, a shout. Light. She glanced over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of a tall man-shape, bulky in a uniform coverall, flash beam swinging like a sword to chop her. The night watchman; Frankenstein of this dark abandoned place, the Boogeyman. What was the range of his taser-dart? The light stabbed at her and she ran faster. The fence loomed out of the night.

  Therese leaped, fingers hooking in the mesh, climbing, hiking her crotch over the rusty barbs of the top strands, deft, graceful, made so by fight-flight chemistry. She splashed down in cold, puddled water. She ran a few steps. Stopped and turned. He stood on the far side of the fence, a shadow, saying nothing.

  He never chased her beyond the fence. He never called the cops. Therese watched him turn and vanish back into the darkness. In the distance, her jewel-fire net danced against the sky, tethering Pegasus. Therese watched it, counting the minutes in her head, a clench of yearning in her chest. Because when those strings were cut, Pegasus would fly free. Without her. The distant strands of color sagged suddenly. Crumpled, twisted and crashed in glittering ruin to the ground. Therese touched the remote, warm in her pocket.

  The lights vanished.

  Behind her, a sigh.

  The kid? “Thank you.” Therese peered into the darkness, couldn’t see a thing. “He might have caught me, tonight.” No answer, but she could feel a presence, like an eddy in the perfect, windy darkness, a spiral knot of energy. “Good night,” Therese said, and trudged up the embankment to the main road.

  Her feet were cold now, the chill penetrating to the bone. The elation was gone, leaving her with a hangover of emptiness, and she wondered who the kid was as she trudged along the pavement. A boarder? She hadn’t seen a board. A tagger, scrawling his rude splash of identity across the hangar wall? And what are you doing, if not just that?