The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “But if one makes a large number of these partial models, each one showing an aspect of reality –”

  Now the room was full of floating objects, all made of glowing lines, but not all the same color. Some were red or orange, like the vanished stars. Others were green, blue, yellow. Hah! It was like a garden! Except these flowers were all deformed and deforming. Some expanded like leaves opening in spring. Others folded in and seemed to be swallowing themselves. As one diminished, the one beside it grew, either in size or complexity. Akuin began to feel queasy.

  “The problem, of course, is fitting all these partial models together. This is where a computer is essential.”

  “What is this about?” Akuin asked. “Does this array of ugly objects serve any purpose?”

  “Ugly!” said Thev. “Dear one, they are the achievement of my life!” He was back on the bed now, sitting with his arms around his knees, admiring the things. “Of course, I’m young and likely to do better. But this isn’t bad, I assure you.”

  “You have told me,” Akuin said, “that you are trying to see what can’t be seen, and comprehend what isn’t comprehensible. Maybe you can do this. Everyone agrees that you are brilliant. But I’m not going to understand these things swallowing themselves.”

  “You want another kind of model. Something which has to do with plants and bugs.”

  “That’s what I know,” Akuin said.

  Thev was silent for a while, watching his things, which continued to grow, change shape, divide, diminish and vanish. A garden out of a bad dream. A sorcerer’s garden.

  Thev spoke finally. “Think of this region, this grove of stars, as a grove of trees growing in a dry place, so the trees are forced to seek water. We think the ground is dirt and stone; we think it’s solid. In reality, a multitude of roots go down and out, forcing their way through dirt and stone, twisting around each other. It’s possible the roots are connected.”

  Akuin had grown up in a part of the home world where many species of trees were communal, their various trunks rising from a single root system. But he had trouble imagining stars connected in the same way. This suggests that he hadn’t paid attention to his physics class in school, which is true.

  “We know that strange stars can be connected with other strange stars. Usually, the partners are not in close proximity. Here, I think they are. Imagine what this must do to reality. Strangeness loops back on itself. The fabric of space is pierced — again and again — by strangeness.

  “What I’ve said so far is ordinary. Few scientists would disagree, except about the strangeness looping. That’s not a generally accepted idea, though I’m not the only person who’s come forward with it. But from this point on –” Thev glanced and smiled. “The ideas are mine.

  “According to the usual theory, the ground under our grove of trees is stable. Yes, the roots have pushed through it, causing stress — most evident at the surface, where the ground may buckle, forced up from below. In areas settled by people, this pressure-from-below is easily perceived. Sidewalks are lifted. The walls of buildings crack and fall. All done by roots.” Thev wiggled his fingers, apparently showing the action of roots.

  “But let’s imagine that the ground is not stable. Maybe the land is limestone and full of caves. The roots, burrowing down, are cracking stone—a thin layer — which forms the roof of one of these caves. In time the roof will break. The grove will fall into a sinkhole.”

  This was understandable. There are places in the Great Central Plain where the ground is limestone, and water is usually found in pools at the bottom of sinkholes. Nowadays, windmills bring the water up. In the old days, people cut steps in the stone walls and carried buckets. Akuin knew all this, and knew that sinkholes could appear suddenly. But how could a sinkhole appear in space? After all, a sinkhole was an absence of stone. But space wasn’t there in the first place. How could one have an absence of something already absent?

  “Let me give you another model,” Thev said. “Think of this region of space as a cheese.”

  “What?” said Akuin.

  “A large, round one.” Thev spread his arms to show the cheese’s size.

  “Bugs have infested it. It looks solid, but inside is a maze of tunnels. If one bends the cheese a little, or twists it, if any extra strain is put on it—hah! It breaks apart! There’s nothing left but crumbs. The bugs have destroyed their home.”

  “These are disturbing images,” Akuin said. “What are you saying with them? That this region of space could break into crumbs? I find it hard to imagine such an occurrence. What is a space crumb like?”

  “Maybe the grove is a better model than the cheese, though you wanted plants and bugs, and I have given you both. I think it’s possible this region will collapse. More than possible. In time, collapse is certain.”

  “But what will it become? Not a sinkhole?”

  “My guess would be a large area of strangeness. Spherical, of course. Such things always are.”

  “What would happen to the station?” By this time Akuin was sitting up and looking at Thev with horror. This wasn’t a pleasant situation that Thev was describing. But Thev’s voice was full of interest and pleasure. What Thev was enjoying, of course, was his own cleverness. In addition, it’s possible that he saw the situation as one of the many fine jokes with which the Goddess has filled her universe. A pious man will always enjoy the Great Mother’s tricks.

  “It depends on the size of the collapse,” Thev said. “If it takes the entire region out, the station will be destroyed. But if it’s the right size, and happens at the right distance, we’ll be able to observe the process.”

  Akuin was getting a headache, either from the conversation or his lover’s ugly things, which still filled the room and continued to change in disturbing ways. He mentioned the headache. Thev stopped the recording. The garden remained, but everything in it was motionless.

  Much better! Akuin lay back. The mirror above him reflected his own dark body. On one side of him was a funnel made of bright red lines. It appeared to be dissolving and pouring itself down itself, though nothing moved now; and the center of the funnel was empty.

  On the other side of him was a blue sphere, which had apparently stopped in the middle of turning itself into something full of many sharp angles. Both the angles and the sphere’s smooth surface were visible. Akuin closed his eyes.

  Thev kept talking. More research was needed. He’d written a proposal. “But you know the funding situation. If an idea can’t be turned into a weapon at once, the frontmen aren’t interested; and I can’t see any obvious way to do harm with my ideas. Maybe some day we’ll be able to use strangeness as a weapon, but not soon.”

  Thev must be getting tired. His conversation was beginning to wander. So much was uncertain. So many things might happen. If the station wasn’t swallowed, it might still be destroyed by the event. “I don’t think this process of collapse will be entirely quiet and peaceful.” Or, if the station survived, and the men inside were alive, they might find that they’d lost their Heligian gate.10

  “We’d be trapped,” Akuin said. No one had ever warned him to beware of sex with physicists. Maybe they should have. It would be easier to have a lover who thought about more trivial problems.

  “We could send information home,” Thev answered in an encouraging tone. “Only at the speed of light. But that would be sufficient. It would take less than five years for a message to reach the nearest working gate. Surely the frontmen would post a ship there, after our gate vanished.”

  “What is most likely to happen?” Akuin asked.

  “The station will be destroyed.”

  “Soon?”

  “I don’t know,” Thev said. “Some of the work done here suggests the space in this region is badly strained already; and it’s possible that our presence is making things worse.”

  “How?” Akuin asked.

  “Through the coming and going of star ships. They do have an effect, though not one that matte
rs in ordinary situations. And there is at least one experiment which may be acting like roots pushing through a crack in limestone, or maybe like a slight twist of the cheese.” Thev smiled briefly. “The experiment is continuing, though I’ve mentioned that it may cause trouble. The men running it don’t believe the risk is significant.”

  “Aren’t you worried?” Akuin asked.

  “What can I do, except put my ideas out in front? Maybe I’m wrong. I have sent my theory, and recordings of my models, to the Helig Institute. If I die here, I will become famous. If I don’t die here, if this region of space does not collapse, then I’ll become famous later for something else. One cannot live in fear of thoughts, Akuin.”

  That was the end of the conversation. Akuin found he couldn’t get Thev’s ideas out of his mind. They haunted him: the collapsing grove, the cheese eaten out by bugs, the garden of ugly things.

  Bad enough to think of living for years in the station. But to think of dying here! How could he feel the same affection for Thev? A man who came up with such ideas and models!

  Gradually the two lovers drew apart. Thev accepted this with his usual calm good sense. Nothing pushed him back for long. He always recovered and went forward. Soon he found a lover among the physicists: not a thinker, but a hands-on builder, who said that Thev’s models were likely to prove useful, though he didn’t believe the station was in danger.

  “You theoreticians love terrifying ideas! The Goddess may be sloppy in her details. We know she is, from looking around. But the basic structure of her universe is solid. Space doesn’t fall to pieces like a bridge with bad mortar. It lasts! And will outlast everything!”

  As for Akuin, he took a series of sexual partners. All were casual. This didn’t especially bother him. Some men must have a true love, a companion for life. He wasn’t such a man. Sex was fine. So was friendship. But his real love — the center of his life — was plants.

  Another year passed. Once again he traveled home. His grandmother had died suddenly, shortly after his previous trip. Now it was time to put her ashes in the ground and carve her name on the monument for Atkwa women.

  When he reached his home country, it was spring. In his grandmother’s garden flowers bloomed, attracting early bugs. The house was full of female relatives, busy with details of the coming ceremony.

  There was nothing for Akuin to do, so he went hiking. South and west of the house were hills, not high, but made impressive by huge out-croppings of igneous rock. No limestone here, eroding easily! His country had bones of granite! An ikun from home, he came to his favorite spot for looking into the distance.11 Up he climbed, until he was atop the great bald knob. Now he could see the folded hills, covered with pale blue foliage. They stretched in every direction. Here and there were patches of color: yellow, light orange or lavender, flowering shrubs and trees.

  All at once, he realized he had reached the limit of his endurance. He could not bear to leave this place again. He would not return to space.

  Why did this happen? How can any man turn away from duty? His grandmother, the most formidable member of his family, was dead. He’d lost his lover. His mentor had turned out to be a pervert, attracted to children. The garden in the station was not an adequate substitute for the country here, extending around him in every direction under a cloudless sky.

  Always, in the station, he was aware of the space outside: dark, cold, airless, hostile to life. If Thev was right, the emptiness outside the station was not even reliable. It might collapse at any moment, becoming something worse.

  Here he stood on granite.

  By the time he returned to his grandmother’s house, he was already making plans. His female relatives continued to be busy, his mother especially. She would be the new matriarch. Akuin gathered supplies, sneaking them out of storerooms and hiding them in a forest. Tools. Clothing. A rifle and ammunition. A hunting bow and arrows. Medical supplies. Plenty of seeds. A computer full of information.

  By the time his grandmother was underground, he was ready. There was a final ceremony: cutting his grandmother’s name in the stone which memorialized the family’s dead women. When that was over, his mother bid him farewell. A cousin took him to the train station. He climbed on board, climbing out the far side and ducking behind a bush. The train pulled away. His cousin returned to her car. Akuin took off for the forest and his hidden supplies.

  He reached them without trouble. With luck, it would be several days before his family realized that he had vanished: time enough to get into the high mountains, the wilderness. He was strong, determined, and not afraid of anything in his homeland. Pack on back, he set off.

  There’s no reason to tell his life in detail from this point on. The important thing had happened. Akuin had decided to turn away from loyalty and obligation. Now, he lived for himself rather than his family or his species. This is something humans do, if the stories we hear are true. This is why their home planet is full of violence and has far too many inhabitants, produced not by careful breeding contracts, but random acts of heterosexuality.

  He found a valley high in the mountains, away from all trails with a hard-to-find entrance. There he built a hut and established his garden. The first year was difficult. So was the second. But he persisted. At times he was lonely. Not often. He’d always been comfortable with solitude. The things around him — sunlight, rain, wind, his garden, the mountains — were a constant source of joy.

  In the third year he built a solid cabin. Having done this, he began to wonder what was happening in the house where he’d grown up. He waited till harvest was over, and his cabin full of food. Then he went home.

  He couldn’t arrive openly, of course. He was a criminal now, and the women of his family had always been law-abiding and respectful of tradition. Instead, he lurked in the forest shadow and crept close after dark, peering in windows. There his family was, the same as always. Only he had changed. For a while he felt regret. Then he remembered the station, and Gehazi Thev’s terrifying ideas. He’d made the right choice.

  The next fall he came down again. This time he did a little stealing. There were tools he needed, and he could always use more seeds.

  The fifth year of his exile, he decided to visit the library in his grandmother’s house, which was held by his mother now. He crept in after midnight, when the house was entirely dark, and made his way without trouble to the room. Some of the houses in Atkwa were old. Their libraries were full of actual books, ancient cherished objects. This house had been built a century before. There were a few books, brought from other places, but most of the glass-fronted cabinets held modern recordings. When his electric torch played over them, they glittered like so many jewels: garnet-red novels, poetry like peridots, topaz-yellow plays. The music was shades of blue. What a fool he’d been to take only nonfiction before! Quickly, he picked the recordings he wanted and copied them into his computer, then replaced the shining bits of silicon and metal in their proper resting places.

  When he was almost done, he heard a noise. Akuin turned and saw his mother, standing in the doorway.

  Hah! She reached out a hand. The ceiling light went on. Akuin stood ashamed, his hands full of music, like a jewel thief holding sapphires.

  His mother stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. “It was you who stole from us last fall.”

  He tilted his head in agreement.

  “I thought so, and I thought, ‘He’s alive.’ That idea brought me joy, Akuin, though it shouldn’t have. What’s wrong with you? Why was it so difficult for you to live like other men? When you came home the first time, your grandmother and I made plans. If your romance worked out, she wanted to ask the Gehazi for semen. A young man of so much promise! A family worth forming an alliance with! We thought — we hoped — you had overcome your oddness at last.”

  No words of explanation came to him. Instead, he said, “What?” and stopped. His voice sounded harsh. The tone was wrong. He was no longer used to speaking.

  “W
hat am I going to do? Nothing. By now the neighboring families have forgotten about you. If I give you to the male police, it will bring our shame into daylight. People will know for certain that you ran from duty. Before, there was a possibility that something happened — an accident, a murder.”

  “You could tell me to die,” Akuin said in his new strange voice.

  “Would you kill yourself, if I asked you to?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “No,” his mother said. “I think not. Go back to your mountains. Every family has embarrassing secrets. You will be ours.”

  He set the music on a table. How it glittered!

  “Don’t come into the house again,” his mother added. “I’ll see that things are left in the far barn for you.”

  He opened his mouth to thank her.

  “Go.”

  Akuin left, carrying his computer.

  The next year he came home twice, though not to the greathouse. Instead he found his mother’s gifts in the far barn: tools, small boxes containing seeds, recordings of music, favorite pieces from when he was young, a letter full of family news.

  After this, there were no changes in his life for many years. Bit by bit, he expanded his garden and made his cabin more comfortable. Slowly he read his way through most of the great male plays, which are—as everyone knows — about honor and the making of difficult choices. The heroes, the men who must choose, usually die, as he should have. Or they sacrifice their happiness to obligation. Another thing he had failed to do.

  In addition, he read many of the plays written about women and their lives. These deal with endurance and compromise, which are not male virtues.

  Maybe he would have made a better woman, though it didn’t seem likely. Nothing about him seemed especially feminine. He certainly didn’t have his grandmother’s solidity. His mother was the same. Women like the mountains of Atkwa! Nothing ordinary could wear them down!