Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  I wondered what it must be like for Jesus, to have a constant stream of visitors from every century there will be, arriving in every spare moment, all praising him for the fight he would have and win. What must it be like knowing you were going to win? And die?

  The disciples basically ignored me. They must see a dozen awestruck timedreamer kids a day. All of us breaking the guidelines.

  “I should go,” I said. “It’s a long wave back.”

  Which truly made me very nervous. The longer you stay in the past, the further back you go, the more chance there is that you change something, especially if you talk to someone backwhen. The universe, the timeline, it adjusts to every dream we have, every impact we make. Every word we speak to a fellow fey alters something, not by loading them with foreknowledge which is just damn stupid. But even if you only speak for a moment, you delay them – that changes things in a physical way, and that has consequences. The example Guardians always give is that a pause makes a pace different, every step they make thereafter is fractionally altered. Dislodge a pebble that wasn’t dislodged before (step on a Butterfly! – the timedreamers’ very own ultimate horror story) and it has consequences. That pebble can start a temporal avalanche if you’re not very careful. Was it the stone that got caught in a sandal, which made another traveller on the road stop, and if it doesn’t get caught in his sole and he arrives a minute early, he might see someone he didn’t before, a friendship springs up, lives are altered and so – history is different. Too different and you might not get born.

  So you ride the consequence wave home. And you get to see what you’ve done rushing around you like you’re watching the whole world in IMAX, watching the changes ripple out to become temporal tsunamis that wipe away everything you know, the timeline that produced you.

  I did change things. I watched my consequences from a couple of the disciples admiring me, talking about me later that evening. Their movements were different, they trod on ground left clear before. Dirt was dislodged, tiny specks only, but some soil was compressed. A couple of grass seeds never germinated. But others came and took their place – were chewed on by animals. It was a ripple – circular, small. It washed out. The timeline didn’t change. I woke up safe on my bed on a sunny afternoon August 2000.

  I’m never going back that far again.

  Jesus is history to me for evermore.

  He made his stand back there when we fey were becoming hunted to extinction. Not that there have ever been many of us. But nature being the bitch she is creates predators for everything, locking life in an eternal rock paper scissors battle. Humans are deadly to most animals, we can swat a scorpion, but a scorpion sting can kill humans just as asteroids kill dinosaurs (don’t laugh, asteroids are part of nature too, a very big nature).

  We timedreamers were stalked and our minds devoured by ghouls as we contained the richest thoughts of all the fey. Just like us, ghouls were physically indistinguishable from baseline humans; but once they latched on, they savoured the memories and sensations of others, sucking them out to leave husks behind. And us, with our ability to visit anywhen, well we were the ultimate hit; the high they all craved. They sought us out first before feasting on the other fey. We were on the verge of dying out until Jesus decided to make his stand and fight back. He was a fardreamer, so he gathered other fey to him, which was a remarkable achievement in its own right. We always prefer to live quiet lives, keeping our heads down. Even today the prejudice against us is nasty. Back then, with Rome dominating Europe, any difference to the baselines was a death sentence. But he convinced the fey we were doomed anyway, and rallied our ancestors.

  That many of us together acted like nectar for the ghouls. They came from all over the globe. Unfortunately for them, it turned out the disciples were a wasp trap. There are no more ghouls now. Not in this universe. Oh sure, they’re still out there in the endless parallels of the multiverse. But us, here, now, since the Time of Christ, we’re clean.

  Jesus knew the outcome, because stupid awestruck teenagers like me came back to tell him, but still he fought on. He died to save us. Others have different versions of the conflict. They’re all good.

  I’m wondering if one day when I’m older and supposedly wiser I’ll put in a stint as a Guardian. Lecturing and nagging kids to be careful how they dream themselves back in time, warning them of the consequence wave. Emphasising how history has to be preserved, because we’ve tried altering it, and frankly this is the best version there is – Hitler, Genghis Khan and all the other bastards included.

  Except I’m not sure I believe that. I still think we should be bolder.

  After that visit, when those missing blades of grass really did scare the crap out of me, I did what all of us with half a brain do, and stuck to the recent past.

  I’m rich, of course. Our family always has been; using the talent to do very nicely thank you – the trick is not to overdo it and call attention to yourself. Mum is a reasonable fardreamer, and Dad can soothe, so my talent came as quite a surprise.

  I have a nice life. Loving parents. Nice house by the sea. Housekeeper and gardener. It’s easy. I want for nothing. I travel as I please. Mum and Dad encourage that, always telling me there’s so much to see and enjoy in this world, this time. “Get out there, girl, and live it.”

  But I’m human. I want more. So I dream.

  Everyone has dreams that they think are so real. That’s because they are. Baseline humans view what’s happening all over the multiverse. But they don’t manifest there, they don’t take part. They’re observers only, and never really understand what they see anyway.

  So after that stupid rite of passage I was a lot more cautious about when I went back to. It’s thrilling to see history for real. Not that I’m one for politics (exception: Nelson Mandela walking out of prison is a must) or war or disasters, there’s way too much suffering going on in my realtime, I don’t need to add to it. Instead I did what most of us do, and go for the uniques. Concerts, sports matches, and of course everyone goes to watch the Vostock 1 and Apollo 11 launches, festivals, Woodstock (naturally!) Live Aid, I even went to the first Glastonbury – wow was that different: no yurts for the mega-rich back then.

  I guess that’s when I fell in love with Sixties music. I know, I know. That’s a cliché. But I loved it. Music was raw and new back then, it meant something in that era, it wasn’t a business. Bands and singers believed in their art, they were musicians not celebrities. All of it was exciting, and it spoke to the hearts of a whole generation. Inspired them. People had a buzz.

  So back I went, again and again. The Who, the Stones, Joan Baez, Pink Floyd, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, I even sat through some Ravi Shankar – not really my thing but the audience vibe, man o man!

  Then I found him.

  “You’re dreaming your life away,” Mum says. “Look, I know it’s like when you discover sex –”

  “Mum!” she is the classic parental embarrassment at times.

  “All right. But there’s so much this world has to offer, too. Take a couple of trips further back, see the poverty and squalor everyone lived in just two hundred years ago. That way you might appreciate what you have a little more.”

  “I don’t want to risk the consequence wave,” I tell her.

  Her eyes narrow. “Ah, you went to visit Jesus.”

  “Did not.”

  “Really?”

  I sometimes think fardreaming is code for mind-reading. “Maybe quickly. Once. It didn’t have consequences.”

  “But riding a wave that far must have scared you, so I get how you’re just dipping shallow right now. But what we have is a gift, especially you; don’t waste it.”

  “It’s not a gift, it’s natural. And really, apart from the money, it’s not terribly practical, is it? It’s for enjoyment. So I’m enjoying.”

  So she sighs in that waiting-till-it-runs-its-course patience she has. “Life i
s a gift, darling. Timedreaming enriches it like no other. Don’t waste your gift, but don’t let it dominate.”

  “We could do so much, though. We could have stopped 9/11. We still can.” I still think about the attack most days. I saw it all on the TV. The first thing I wanted to do was go back, warn the CIA or FBI or someone. Mum sat with me watching events unfold, telling me I couldn’t. That the Guardians already knew about 9/11, and were ready to stop any attempt to prevent it.

  Life was simpler back in the Sixties, another reason to spend all my time there.

  “We could have,” mum says sadly. “But the Guardians said no. The fanatics would have come back with nukes in Paris and Washington.”

  “Then we could have stopped that, too.”

  “We’re not the police.”

  “We could be. We should be.”

  “Sweetheart, please. You’re young, and that’s a gift as precious as any. I just want you to be happy. Now, have you been seeing any decent boys?”

  “Mum!”

  “All right. Girls?”

  “Arrrgh. Stop it.”

  I manifested in the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall in Spalding, 29th May 1967. Cream and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience were headlining, with Pink Floyd supporting. Gabriel Ivins played a couple of songs first, an unannounced warm up for the support, when Spalding’s young and restless were still clustered round the bar. He was nineteen, an electrical engineering student at Cambridge; up on stage all by himself, him and his acoustic guitar. All dark curly hair, weak Sixties sideburns, gangly frame, big thick-knit pullover, and flares wider than some of my skirts. Dylan was clearly a big influence on Gabriel, he was almost a tribute act. Except he wrote those two songs himself. And his voice was mellow and kind of appealing.

  I saw quite a few girls in the bar crowd turn round and listen, and watch. He finished, bowed nervously while no one applauded, and scuttled off stage. Just before he left, he caught my eye and quirked a grin.

  I drifted after him. Caught up in the green room. The green room being where they stored bulb crates in an annex at the back of the hall. He was putting his guitar away in its case while the Floyd were getting ready to go on. I should have been interested in them, Syd Barrett was still part of the line up at that point.

  Instead I went over to Gabriel. “Hi.”

  “Hi yourself,” he said, and looked round the annex to check that he was right, and only he could see me. It was just him, looking like he was muttering to himself in the corner like a true wacko artist. “Cool threads, man.”

  “Thanks.” I was wearing a ridiculous purple and green tie-dye shirt with a long vintage turquoise-blue skirt, gold daisies woven into my hair. I hadn’t cut my hair since I was fourteen, so now aged seventeen it was halfway down my back – I had a real hippy-chick look going. “I liked your songs.”

  “Thanks. Where are you from?”

  “Two thousand and three.”

  I could see the surprise in his eyes. “Yeah? You look… today, man.”

  “I like today.”

  “I thought you were a maybe a sidedreamer. I’m always kind of surprised to hear the twenty-first century exists.”

  “Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction,” I grinned.

  “Something like that.” He produced a half-burnt reefer, and lit it.

  “He was too pessimistic,” I said. “Things aren’t perfect but they’re not too bad. So are you writing any more songs?”

  “Some. They’re not good enough to sing in public yet.”

  “The ones you sang tonight, Rainbow Smile and Flower Sun; are they recorded?”

  “No. Not yet. Hey, you can tell me if they ever are, future girl.”

  “I can’t. Sorry. Too many consequences.”

  “Heavy.”

  “Like neutronium.”

  “Wow, are you sure you’re not sidedreaming from the land of the fairies?”

  “Nah. Is that what you do?”

  “A little. My talent’s not too funky. I never get far enough to see anywhere groovy. My old man, he says there are wonders out there in the alternates.”

  “So I hear.”

  Gabriel took a deep drag. “I’d offer you some, but…”

  “I know.”

  “Gotta split. Gotta hitch back to Cambridge.”

  “Have you got another gig lined up? Maybe I could come and hear if your other songs make it to the stage.”

  “Uh. I dunno. The scene man, it’s not as cool as I thought. Unless you’re the Beatles.”

  “Yeah, two-thousand-three remembers the Beatles.”

  “Take care, future girl.”

  “And you.”

  Google is not my friend. Yahoo is not my friend. The internet has nothing on Gabriel Ivins. No bootleg sites have recordings of Rainbow Smiles and Flower Sun. I can’t believe it. They were good. How did he sink away without being signed by a record company?

  I so much want to hear them again. They’d be a comfort right now. I’m sitting here in this cold February, with the TV showing the build-up of troops on the Iraq border. There’s going to be war. Bush and Blair are really going to do it, they’re going to let thousands of people die.

  There must be another way, there must! I’m thinking in a few months I could go back to now. I could tell other fey how many died, that it wasn’t worth it. They’d be outraged. They’d do something. Wouldn’t they?

  It’d taken me a few dreams backwhen, stalking I suppose. But I found the student newspaper with the announcement, and manifested in the Cambridge Corn Exchange 23rd July 1967.

  Gabriel took to the stage just after eight o’clock. Still in his thick woolly jumper (does he have any other clothes?). He sang four songs, and this time people drifted away from the bar, starting to groove along. They’re sweet songs, his new two, about love and fate and hope. He got a big round of cheering and applause when he finished. It was great. This little gig must be the start of his success, I’m sure of it, and I’m one of the witnesses. Go history! But then he looked straight at me from the stage, smiled shyly, and started his fifth song of the evening. And OMG!

  The Future Fairy by Gabriel Ivins was issued in 1968, a limited pressing vinyl single on the Calibre label (an independent Cambridge record label – declared bankrupt in 1970). It is a love song by young poet musician Gabriel Ivins, dedicated to ‘my sad and lovely vision’. Ivins was a solo singer songwriter guitarist until this recording, when he was joined by Calibre session musicians, adding electric guitar and drums.

  Ivins died in November 1971 from a drug overdose. A good copy of The Future Fairy will cost £87.00. V Rare.

  Google is my friend after all. It doesn’t matter how many times I shake my head in disbelief, the words on the screen stay the same. The consequence wave I rode back after the concert was exhilarating. Nobody dies. Nobody is worse off. It’s changed the timeline.

  I. Changed. Things.

  The Guardians haven’t noticed.

  And Gabriel died.

  But before he did, he wrote a song about me. Me!

  It was cold on February 15th 2003. I’d never gone back such a short time before. But the crowds I saw on TV just a few months ago thronged all around me. Marching through London’s streets, chanting and calling. So many people, so much good humour. And desperate hope. I’ve seen that kind of belief once before, back in the Sixties. Back when music and good people were going to change the world.

  There are plenty of fey among the marchers. I flit between as many as I can find. And all the time I tell them. “There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction, there never were. I know. I’m a timedreamer from the future. They’re lying, Bush and Blair. Tell everyone. It’s all a lie. They don’t exist.”

  After it was over, after the crowds went home and the night claimed the empty streets, I braced myself and rode the consequence wave back to late summer.

  There was nothing, no real disturbance. February 15 was a day of chaos and determination. Everyone I told believed anyway. One fey girl with long hair
and a desperate smile telling them they were right changed nothing. Nothing. Around my pathetic little consequence wave, tens of thousands of people died in pain and fire.

  The Future Fairy single hit the timeline harder, for fuck’s sake.

  Mum knocks on my door. My knuckles screw the tears from my eyes and I say: “Come in.”

  She does, but she’s not alone. There’s this old woman with her, wearing a neat grey suit and sensible black shoes, like she’s on her way home from her city desk job. Except I know she never worked at any desk.

  “Sweetheart, this is Ms Remek,” mum says, slightly nervous.

  “You’re a Guardian,” I say. There’s only four or five in any generation. We don’t need more, there aren’t many timedreamers. We’re kind of like fey royalty I guess.

  “I am, dear, yes.”

  And she has this sympathetic voice, too, all understanding, an I-was-young-once voice. But stern, too.

  “Nobody listened,” I tell her miserably. “Nothing changed.”

  “I know. But the point is you tried to change it.”

  “There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There never were.”

  “All the fardreamers knew that last year. You weren’t telling anyone anything new.”

  “But it’s a lie, and now it’s over and all those people are dead.”

  “It’s not over,” Ms Remek says. “The war doesn’t officially end until December two-thousand-and-eleven.”

  “Eleven!” I squeak.

  “Fraid so. We screw up the peace even worse.”

  “Then stop it!” I yell.

  “It’s not that simple,” she says kindly. “It never is. You heard about Paris and Washington, didn’t you?”