The prose was lurid, the action improbable, but there was something about the image of this future of electricity and equality presented by the author, that resonated with Chabane. This Nikola Tesla was no Jules Verne, but still Chabane was reminded of the sense of boundless potential he used to feel when reading the Extraordinary Voyages story-papers.
Before turning onto the Midway, Chabane saw a handbill posted to a lamppost, advertising the impending Opening Day celebrations for the Columbian Exhibition. In addition to the last living relative of Christopher Columbus, the duke of Veragua, the most honored guest at the ceremony would be the octogenarian Abraham Lincoln, former president of the United States, who would be on hand to cut the ribbon on the Exhibition.
The imagery of “Dane Faraday, Man of Justice” still rolling in his thoughts, Chabane tried to imagine a world in which James Clark Ross had never returned from the south seas with a broken automaton, in which Ringgold had never discovered prometheum, in which the modern age knew nothing of the forgotten Antediluvian civilization. Perhaps in such a world, there would now be an Electricity exhibit instead of a Prometheum one, with Tom Edison’s dynamos at center stage. And perhaps instead of an Automata building, one devoted to some other industry, metal-working perhaps, or mining. But then, in the world in which the United States army lacked prometheic tanks, perhaps they wouldn’t have been able to subdue the southern insurrection, and the Union might have split in two over the question of slavery. Perhaps there might not be a Columbian Exhibition at all.
What Chabane couldn’t decide was whether such a world would be better, or worse, than the one he knew.
By the time Chabane returned to the Algerian concession, the sun had long since set, and the fourth prayer of the day, Maghrib, had been completed. Now the troupe was breaking their Ramadan fast. Even the non-observant among them, like Chabane, usually had the good graces not to eat and drink in front of the others while the sun was shining in the holy month. Fast or not, though, Chabane knew that a fair number of the performers, once their meals were done, would slip off and drink spirits, perhaps swapping Algerian wines for the “firewater” favored by Cody’s Indians. Perhaps tonight, instead of trying to stop them, Chabane just might join them.
The stranger sat among the Algerians, in his lap a plate of food, untouched. He had been cleaned up, his wounds bandaged, and dressed in a suit of borrowed clothes. He was awake, but unspeaking, and it was unclear what, if any, tongue he comprehended. He simply sat, watching the others silently, his expression mingling confusion and interest.
“Keep your distance, amin,” Papa Ganon said, as Chabane crouched down beside the man. “My hand brushed his bare skin while we were dressing him, and I got the shock of my life. He’s like a walking thundercloud, this one.”
Chabane nodded, and kept his hands at his sides. In the soft white glow of the prometheic lights overhead, Chabane examined the stranger closely. His coloration, what little of it could be seen beneath the bandages, cuts, and scars, was somehow…off. His skin was a darker shade than his light hair would suggest, the little hairs on the backs of his hands darker than his feathery eyebrows. And his features seemed mismatched, his nose too long and narrow, his mouth a wide slash in his face, his overlarge ears too low on his head.
“What will we do with him?” Dihya asked, coming to stand beside Ganon. Taninna came with her, staring hard at the stranger’s disfigured face, as though trying to find something hidden there.
Chabane thought about tradition, about the past and the future. He remembered the superstitions he’d been taught as a child, and the story-papers’ fantastic futures into which he’d fled.
In many ways, the future promised by Jules Verne had arrived, but not in the way the young Adherbal Aït Chabaâne had imagined. But the future that young Mezian now dreamt of, the future promised in Nikola Tesla’s colorful stories? That would never arrive. That wasn’t tomorrow, but was yesterday’s tomorrow. The world of Dane Faraday would never arrive, with its heavier-than-air craft, and wireless communications connecting distant nations, and incandescent lights dangling from wires, and massive dynamos. A world of phosphorescent gas tubes on lampposts, and power-lines crisscrossing the countryside, and antennas atop every house picking symphonies out of the air. Of men and women of all races and nationalities, each measured by their conduct and their character, not by their language or the color of their skins.
Chabane thought about the frisson he’d felt on flipping through Tesla’s story, the familiar thrill of boundless potential. But he realized now it wasn’t a hope for a new world to come, but a kind of nostalgia for a future that could never be. He thought about the dead man in the blood-covered shack in the Machinery building, so committed to a particular view of yesterday’s tomorrow that he had been willing to commit horrible acts to get back to it, what ever the cost.
“Amin?” Dihya repeated, seeing Chabane lost in thought. “What will we do with the stranger?”
Chabane took a deep breath, and sighed. He had tried to escape tradition before, and now knew he never would. “We do what our grandmothers would have us do. No stranger who comes into the village for aid can ever be turned away.”
Maybe it wasn’t all of the tomorrows that mattered, Chabane realized. Maybe what was truly important was preserving the past, and working for a better today. Perhaps that was the only real way to choose what kind of future we will inhabit.
But Taninna was right, Chabane knew, looking back to the silent man sitting in the cool glow of the prometheic light. The stranger did have Salla’s eyes.
Acknowledgments
Ellen Datlow, Gardner R. Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Nick Gevers, Pete Crowther, especially among the anthologists, gave us some real help as well as publishing some good stories, and Alice Krasnostein, Jed Hartman, Trevor Quachri, Brian Bienowski, and Gordon Van Gelder answered a lot of last-minute queries and send a lot of files quickly.
About the Editors
DAVID G. HARTWELL is currently a senior editor at Tor/Forge Books. He is the proprietor of Dragon Press, publisher and bookseller, which publishes the New York Review of Science Fiction. He is the author of Age of Wonders and the editor of many anthologies, including The Dark Descent, Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, Northern Stars, The Ascent of Wonder (co-edited with Kathryn Cramer), and a number of Christmas anthologies. In addition to editing fifteen annual paperback volumes of Year’s Best SF, he has also co-edited five volumes of Year’s Best Fantasy. He has won the Eaton Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll, has been nominated for the Hugo Award thirty-one times to date, and has won the Hugo for Best Editor.
KATHRYN CRAMER is a writer, anthologist, and housewife. She has won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear, co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology Walls of Fear. She has co-edited several anthologies with David G. Hartwell and now does the annual Year’s Best SF with him. She is on the editorial board of the New York Review of Science Fiction and has been nominated for the Hugo Award twelve times. Her dark fantasy hypertext, In Small and Large Pieces, was published by Eastgate Systems, Inc.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for previous volumes
“An impressive roster of authors.”
Locus
“The finest modern science fiction writing.”
Pittsburgh Tribune
Edited by David G. Hartwell
YEAR’S BEST SF
YEAR’S BEST SF 2
YEAR’S BEST SF 3
YEAR’S BEST SF 4
YEAR’S BEST SF 5
YEAR’S BEST SF 6
Edited by David G. Hartwell
& Kathryn Cramer
YEAR’S BEST SF 7
YEAR’S BEST SF 8
YEAR’S BEST SF 9
YEAR’S BEST SF 10
YEAR’S BEST SF 11
YEAR’S BEST SF 12
YEAR’S BEST SF 13
YEAR’S BEST SF 14
YEAR’S BEST SF 15
YEAR’S BEST FANTASY
YEAR’S BEST FANTASY 2
YEAR’S BEST FANTASY 3
YEAR’S BEST FANTASY 4
YEAR’S BEST FANTASY 5
Copyright
This book is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Infinities” by Vandana Singh, copyright © 2008 by Vandana Singh.
“This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Robert Charles Wilson, copyright © 2009 by Robert Charles Wilson.
“The Unstrung Zither” by Yoon Ha Lee, copyright © 2009 by Yoon Ha Lee.
“Black Swan” by Bruce Sterling, copyright © 2009 by Bruce Sterling.
“Exegesis” by Nancy Kress, copyright © 2009 by Nancy Kress.
“Erosion” by Ian Creasey, copyright © 2009 by Ian Creasey.
“Collision” by Gwyneth Jones, copyright © 2009 by Gwyneth Jones. First published in When It Changed, ed. by Geoff Ryman, Comma Press, Manchester, UK.
“Donovan Sent Us” by Gene Wolfe, copyright © 2009 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Other Earths; reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
“The Calculus Plague” by Marissa K. Lingen, copyright © 2009 by Marissa K. Lingen.
“The Island” by Peter Watts, copyright © 2009 by Peter Watts.
“One of Our Bastards Is Missing” by Paul Cornell, copyright © 2009 by Paul Cornell.
“Lady of the White-Spired City” by Sarah L. Edwards, copyright © 2009 by Sarah L. Edwards.
“The Highway Code” by Brian Stableford, copyright © 2009 by Brian Stableford.
“On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk” by Peter M. Ball, copyright © 2009 by Peter M. Ball.
“The Fixation” by Alastair Reynolds, copyright © 2009 by Alastair Reynolds.
“In Their Garden” by Brenda Cooper, copyright © 2009 by Brenda Cooper.
“Blocked” by Geoff Ryman, copyright © 2009 by Geoff Ryman.
“The Last Apostle” by Michael Cassutt, copyright © 2009 by St. Croix Productions, Inc.
“Another Life” by Charles Oberndorf, copyright © 2009 by Charles Oberndorf.
“The Consciousness Problem” by Mary Robinette Kowal, copyright © by Mary Robinette Kowal.
“Tempest 43” by Stephen Baxter, copyright © 2009 by Stephen Baxter.
“Bespoke” by Genevieve Valentine, copyright © 2009 by Genevieve Valentine.
“Attitude Adjustment” by Eric James Stone, copyright © 2009 by Eric James Stone. First published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, September 2009.
“Edison’s Frankenstein” by Chris Roberson, copyright 2009 by MonkeyBrain, Inc.
YEAR’S BEST SF 15. Copyright © 2010 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Eos paperback printing: June 2010
EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199553-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
1 Line from a twentieth-century American novel, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, now largely dismissed as both racist and romanticized. The male protagonist, Rhett Butler, speaks the line to the abrasive heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, as he leaves their marriage.
1 “Frankly” means that the speaker is talking without subterfuge or lies. Since only liars emphasize their truthfulness—enlightened endolas, of course, represent truth with their very beings—the speaker is openly announcing that he is lying, signaling to the hearer that everything which follows is therefore untrue. In fact, the speaker does give a damn. This sort of convoluted speech was often necessary in pre-Collapse societies, in which “governments” were so politically oppressive that truth could not be openly spoken.
2 “My dear” is an honorific, similar in construction to the equally archaic, hierarchical “my lord” or “your excellency.” This suggests that in the original, the speaker was addressing some sort of lord or commander.
3 “Damn.” Rigorous scholarship by Kral BlackG3 reveals that this was a curse. Its presence in a coded message to a high official is intriguing. For centuries the folk saying has been associated with an extinct “servant class” that included ditch diggers, butlers, and dentists. It may be that in ancient times, when humans compelled other humans rather than robots to provide services, a folk saying was the only acceptable way to “curse” or condemn the owner class, even as the speaker obediently transmits whatever coded information followed. Unfortunately, the sentences following “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” in this political drama have been lost.
NOTE: The common variation, still occasionally seen even in scholarly forums, is scripted in the short-lived and silly “Reformed English”: “Franklee, my der, I dont giv a dam.”
1 Frank Lee—Unknown folk persona who seems to have represented “straight shooting,” either verbal or (as is to be expected in violent historical periods) the use of personal arms. See Frank and Jesse James.
2 endolas—religious scholars of the pre-Catastrophe EuroPolar Coalition. They conflated some solid learning with much mysticism. Organized into “groves,” “forests,” and “amazons,” in the eco-heavy nomenclature of that era.
3 This explanation is typical of the confused and ignorant thinking that prevailed in the Endola Age.
4 Collapse—one name given to the economic and social upheavals, circa 2190-2210. Exact dates have, of course, disappeared with much other history in the EMP Catastrophe. Other names: Crash, Cave-in, the Big Oops (etymology unknown).
5 governments—vernacular name for ruling bodies, some consensual and some not. All pre-date Electronic Fair Facilitation and Enforcement.
6 “so politically oppressive that truth could not be openly spoken.” Unable to say whether this analysis is or is not correct.
00%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Year’s Best SF 15 Page 52
