The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  She awoke in the hospital. The light was too bright. Someone drew the curtains across the window. She could hear some kind of hubbub outside her door. She slept.

  Hours later she woke feeling better. A lantern-jawed doctor who looked like a very tired Clint Eastwood told her she had a mild concussion, and a cracked bone in her shoulder. The man at the bulldozer had turned the thing off just in time; it was the momentum that had gotten her. Otherwise she might be dead. She was really lucky. All the scans were clear, but they were going to keep her overnight for observation. After that, six weeks of rest for her shoulder.

  “I can see you’re a wild young rebel, Mrs. Cartwright, but promise me you won’t be up to those shenanigans for a while,” he said, smiling.

  She told him, smiling back, surprising herself, “You do your job, I’ll do mine.”

  Her son called. Matt was driving over the next day. He sounded more bemused than anything. She thought with satisfaction that she had finally managed to surprise someone.

  And then Molly was there, praising her like she had done something heroic.

  “Wish I could have been there,” she said wistfully. “Rita and Eva are in jail, and that black professor too, and about ten other people. They’re probably going to charge you as soon as you are well.”

  Dorothy couldn’t imagine going to jail—but Molly made it sound like it was the thing to do. Well, it had been some day. She decided not to worry. Over the doctor’s objections she let two journalists interview her and take pictures. Her mother used to call her a chatterbox, a trait that had disappeared with time and Rob, and now she couldn’t stop talking.

  “When my husband was still alive,” she said, “he used to tell me how impractical it was to worry about the environment. Practical people run the economy, make sure things work. That attitude, combined with greed, has ruined the Earth to a degree that threatens our grandchildren. I’m only a housewife, but I know that we need good, fresh air to breathe, and trees to grow, and we need the wild things around us. As a grandmother, I can’t think of one single grandparent who wouldn’t want to do the best for their grandchildren. That’s why I believe we need to protect what the good Lord gave us, this blessed Earth, else how can we live? And what’s more practical than that?”

  After they had all gone, in the silence of the room, she lay back against the pillows, spent. An incredulity rose in her. What had she done? The whole day she had been putting herself forward, Rob would say. The elation subsided. She hid her face in the pillows.

  Then the phone rang. This time it was Kevin.

  “Gramma! I saw you on TV! You kicked ass!”

  She laughed. It was so very nice of him to call. They talked for half an hour, until the nurse came and frowned at her.

  “Gramma, I’m going to get clean this time,” Kevin said. Dorothy took a deep breath.

  “Kev, soon as they let me out of here I’m going to come see you. This time you will get clean, love. You’ve got a life to live.”

  And so do I, she thought after she hung up.

  Lying back in the darkened room, she saw from the digital clock on the side table that it was nearly midnight on March 16. Heavens, no wonder Rob had been haunting her all day—it was his birthday! And she had forgotten. Well, at least she had baked his favorite cupcakes. She thought about how her life had changed in one day, and the work left to be done. It wasn’t going to be easy, and she had no illusions that she was any kind of heroine, or that her few minutes of fame were going to lead to any major changes. But Molly had told her that the phone lines of No Fracking Texas were swamped with calls from other assisted-living facilities and retired people’s associations. It seemed the old ones, the forgotten ones, were coming out of the woodwork. In times gone by, the old were the ones to whom the young turned for advice. Now the old had to bear responsibility for ruining the Earth, but they also, by the same logic, bore the responsibility for setting things right. The press was calling it the Suspender Revolution. The Retirees Spring. Kind of disrespectful, but they’d show them. And she, Dorothy Cartwright, had helped it come about. Viva la revolución, and poor Rob, rest in peace, and Happy Birthday.

  THE END

  The Story Begins

  Or does it end here?

  It ends, the young man thinks, as he climbs the last mountain, emerging into the last alpine valley. It ends with his own life winding down as he climbs to the roof of the world. The strength that has allowed him to leave the busy streets of Shanghai and journey to this remote place in the Himalayas is like the sudden flaring of the moth caught in the flame. Lately he’s had a vision of simply lying down in the tall green meadow grass, and falling asleep, and feeling the grass stalks growing through his body, a thousand tiny piercings, until he is nothing but a husk.

  He pauses to catch breath against the rocky wall of the cliff. His breath forms clouds of condensation in the cold air. His rucksack feels heavier now. He can’t remember when he last ate. Probably at the village he left in the morning. He takes out a flask of water, drinks, and finds a small bag with trail mix and walks again.

  When he emerges from the narrow pass, he finds himself at a vertiginous height. Below him, lost in mist and distance, is a rocky, arid valley through which a silver river winds. On the other side the mountains are gaunt and bare, the white tongues of melting glaciers high on the slopes. But the place he seeks is immediately to his right, where the path leads. The stone facade of the monastery comes into view, a rocky aerie impossible to conceive of—how could anyone build here, halfway up to the sky?—but it is solid, it is there. So he walks on, up the narrow path, to the great flight of steps. The tiers of windows above him are empty, and there is an enormous hole in the roof of the entrance hall, through which he can see a lammergeier circling high in the blue sky. Could it be that the last refuge is destroyed after all? He had dreamed of a great university hidden deep in the Himalayas, a place where people like him could gather to weave the web that would save the dying world. He had dreamed of its destruction too, at the hands of greed and power. Can it have happened already?

  Wearily he sinks down on the dusty floor at the top of the steps. In the silence he hears his own breath coming fast, and the faint trickle of water in the distance. He is conscious of being watched.

  A man is standing on a fallen column. He is tall, dressed in rough black robes. There is some kind of small animal on his shoulder, brown, with a long, bushy tail—a squirrel, perhaps, or a mongoose?

  Yuan bows, clears his throat.

  “I dreamed of this place,” he says in English, hoping the monk can understand him. “I came here to try to do something before I die. But it’s too late, I see.”

  The monk gestures to him, and Yuan stumbles over broken pieces of stone, follows him around a corner into a small, high courtyard open to sun and sky.

  “Sit,” the monk says, indicating a low wooden seat. There is tea in a black kettle, steaming over a small fire. “Tell me about your dream of this place.” There is white stubble on his shaven chin, and deep lines are etched on the brown face. His English is fluent, with an accent that is vaguely familiar. Yuan clears his throat, speaks.

  “It was a monastery first, then a university. It was a place for those who sought to understand the world in a new way, and to bring about its resurrection. I saw the humblest people come here to share what they knew, and the learned ones listened. It didn’t have the quietude of the monastery it had once been—at every corner, in every gathering, I heard arguments and disagreements, but true peace is dynamic, not static, and rests on a thousand quarrels.

  “It wasn’t a secret, although not many people knew about it. It was rumor and it was real, because at the university where I studied in Shanghai, there was a woman—a scientist from Nigeria—who spoke of this place. She came and taught for five days and nights. After that we were all changed. I got a new idea, and even though I was dying, I made sure it came to light. Then I thought I needed to find her, my teacher, and this place. Her
e and there I heard rumors that it had been destroyed—because there are people who will try to hasten the end of the world so they can make a profit. And this place stood in their way.

  “It was the hope of the world. I heard that there were branches in a few other places. There was an idea about connecting it through small world architecture to webs of information, webs of knowledge and people, to generate new ideas and, through redundancy, ensure their survival. If it hadn’t been destroyed before that hope was made real, its disappearance may not have mattered so much.”

  His voice fades, as he slumps to the ground. The monk gathers him up and carries him effortlessly through long corridors into a room of stone, where there is a rough bed. He wakes from his faint to see the wild creature sitting on a wooden stool by the bed, staring at him with dark, round eyes. The monk helps him up so he can sip hot yak butter tea, rich and aromatic. Then Yuan sleeps.

  Over five days and nights they talk, the monk and Yuan, sometimes in this room with its narrow windows, sometimes in the high, sunny courtyard.

  “This place was destroyed in an avalanche,” the monk tells him, pointing to the mountain behind them, from the high spur on which the monastery perches. “The glacier melted and brought down half the mountain with it. It rained boulders. Many were killed, and the place abandoned. I live here alone, except for the odd scientific team that comes to study the glacier.”

  Yuan is silent. So much for the university that would save the world. But how could his dreams be so vivid, if they weren’t true?

  When he feels a little better, Yuan goes with the monk to a high terrace from which he has the best view of the glacier. The terrace is broken in places—holes have been torn out of it, and the room below is littered with massive stones. The still-intact portions of the floor make a zigzag safe pathway across the terrace.

  The terrace is open to wind and sun, and the immensity of the mountain overwhelms him for a moment. Squinting, he looks up at it and nearly loses his balance. The monk steadies him.

  Far above them, what remains of the glacier is a bowl of snow above sheer rocky walls. A great, round boulder bigger than a house stands guard at the edge of the bowl, rimmed with white.

  “Don’t worry,” the monk says. “If that falls, it will fall right here and finish off this terrace, and what’s left of the western wing. The part of the monastery where we sleep is not going to be affected—see that ridge?”

  Yuan sees a ridge of rock high above and to his right, rising out of the steep incline of the mountain. A fusillade of snow, ice, and boulders falling down the slope would be deflected by it just enough to avoid the eastern edge of the monastery, which is why it is still intact.

  Yuan begins to shake. The monk guides him silently across the broken floor, and they return to the room. He sinks onto the bed.

  “Why do you remain in this terrible place?” he cries.

  The monk brings him tea.

  “Thirty-three died in the avalanche,” he says, “my teacher among them. So I stay here. The others left to join another monastery.”

  Yuan is thinking how this does not answer his question. He is beginning to wonder about this monk and his excellent English. After a pause the monk says:

  “Tell me about yourself. You said you came up with an idea.”

  Yuan rummages in his rucksack, which is at the foot of the bed. He draws out a handful of orange wristlets. Each has a tiny screen on it, and some are encrusted with cheap gems.

  “I am a student of computer engineering,” he says. “In my university in Shanghai I was working toward some interesting ideas in network communications. Then she came—Dr. Amina Ismail, my teacher—and changed everything I knew about the world.

  “Most of us think there is nothing we can do about climate disruption. So we live an elaborate game of denial and pretend—as though nothing was about to happen, even though every day there are more reports of impending disaster, and more species extinctions, and more and more climate refugees. But what I learned from my teacher was that the world is an interconnected web of relationships—between human and human, and human and beast and plant, and all that’s living and nonliving. I used to feel alone in the world after my parents died, even when I was with friends or with my girlfriend, but my teacher said that aloneness is an illusion created by modern urban culture. She said that even knowledge had been carved up and divided into territorial niches with walls separating them, strengthening the illusion, giving rise to overspecialized experts who can’t understand each other. It is time for the walls to come down and for us to learn how to study the complexity of the world in a new way. She had been a computer scientist, but she taught herself biology and sociology so she could understand the great generalities that underlie the different systems of the world.”

  “She sounds like a philosopher,” the monk says.

  “They used to call scientists natural philosophers once,” Yuan says. “But anyway, I learned from her that whether we know it or not, the world and we are interconnected. As a result, human social systems have chaotic features, rather like weather. You know Lorenz’s metaphor—the butterfly effect?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” says the monk.

  Yuan pauses.

  “She said—Dr. Ismail—that we may not be able to prevent climate change because we’ve not acted in time—but perhaps we can prevent catastrophic climate change, so that in our grandchildren’s future—my teacher has two grandchildren—in that future maybe things will start turning around. Maybe the human species won’t go extinct.

  “So one day I was walking through the streets, very upset because my girlfriend and I had just broken up, and I didn’t look where I was going. I got hit by a motor scooter. The man who was driving it yelled at me. I wasn’t seriously hurt—mostly bruises and a few cuts—but he didn’t even stop to ask and went on his way. I dragged myself to the curb. People kept walking around me as though I was nothing but an obstacle. I thought—why should I go on with my life? Then a man came out of a shop. He bent over me, helped me to my feet. In his shop he attended to my cuts, and he gave me hot noodle soup and wouldn’t let me pay. I stayed there until I was well enough to go home.

  “That incident turned me away from my dark thoughts. I realized that although friends and family are crucial, sometimes the kindness of a stranger can change our lives.

  “So I came up with this device that you wear around your wrist, and it can gauge your emotional level and your mood through your skin. It can also connect you, via your genie, to your computer or mobile device, specifically through software I designed.”

  He sighed.

  “I designed it at first as a cure for loneliness. I had to invent a theory of loneliness, with measures and quantifiers. I had to invent a theory of empathy. The software enables your genie to search the Internet for people who have similar values of certain parameters … and it gauges security and safety as well. When you most need it, based on your emotional profile at the time, the software will link you at random to someone in your circle.”

  “Does it work?” said the monk.

  “It’s very buggy,” Yuan says. “There are people working on it to make it better. The optimal network architecture isn’t in place yet. My dream is that one day it can help us raise our consciousness beyond family and friend, neighborhood and religion, city and country. Throughout my journey I’ve been giving it away to people. In every town and village.”

  He taps the plain orange wristlet on his left arm.

  “I’m connected right now to seven other people, seven strangers. The connection is poor, but sometimes I hear their voices or see them on my notebook screen. On the way here I stopped at a grassy meadow criss-crossed by streams, a very beautiful place. The reception must have been good because all at once I saw an old woman on my computer screen. She was standing at a kitchen counter feeling like she had nothing to give to the world. Helpless, useless, because she was old. So I told her—I didn’t know what to tell her because I fel
t her pain—but finally I told her something clichéd, like a fortune from a fortune cookie. I said, ‘Something good will happen to you today.’ I don’t know if that turned out to be true. I don’t even know who she is, only that she’s from another country and culture and religion, and I felt her pain like it was my own.”

  The monk listens very carefully, leaning forward. The little creature has gone to sleep on his lap.

  “Perhaps you suffer from an excess of empathy,” he says.

  “Is that a bad thing? I suppose it must be, because of how I’ve ended up. As you grow up you are supposed to get stronger and harder, and wiser too. But I seem to be less and less able to bear suffering—especially the suffering of innocents. I saw a photo of a dead child in a trash heap, I don’t know where. The family was part of a wave of refugees, and the locals didn’t want them there. There was violence. But what could these people do? Their homeland had been flooded by the sea. They were poor.

  “I once saw a picture of a dead polar bear in the Arctic. It had died of starvation. It was just skin and bone, and quite young. The seals on which it depended for food had left because the ice was gone.

  “There are people who don’t care about dead polar bears, or even dead children in trash heaps. They don’t see how our fates are linked. Everything is connected. To know that truth, however, is to suffer. Each time there is the death of innocents, I die a little myself.”

  “Is that why you are so sick?” the monk says harshly. “What good will it do you to take upon yourself the misery of the world? Do you fancy yourself a Buddha, or a Jesus?”

  Yuan is startled. He shakes his head.

  “I’ve no such fancies. I’m not even religious. I’m only trying to learn what my teacher called the true knowledge that teaches us how things are linked. My sickness has nothing to do with all this. The doctors can’t diagnose it—low-grade fever, systemic inflammation, weight loss—all I know is that no treatment has worked. I am dying.”

  The monk walks out of the room.