The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  "I think so. Probably.... Listen, I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I'd like to get it off my chest. First, I've had to assume that their plate's pretty much like ours. Ours is the only one we're familiar with."

  "Sure."

  "Assuming that it is, we'd have to drill into it and plant charges about a hundred feet down. I said the people there aren't going stand still for that, and they said they'd take them by surprise. It's not very big, okay? A thousand men, well trained and heavily armed. Hydrofoils that will launch when we're close. I'll probably be one of the men on the boats. Everyone else here is older, they'll be old men by the time it happens. I'm not much older than you are. I'll still be active."

  "What about somebody younger? Somebody who hasn't graduated yet?"

  "There won't be anybody like that." Sutton's voice went flat, stripped of all emotion. "I might as well tell you this, too--it's the kind of thing that can't be kept secret. The university's dropped geology. They've closed the whole department, effective immediately."

  * * * *

  That night, over wieners and sauerkraut, he told Mona. "I promised a person who trusted me that I wouldn't talk about this, but you're going to have to know."

  When he had finished outlining the situation, she said, "But won't it work? This man you talked to said it would."

  "Probably not." He paused, listening to the trees murmur in the wind that would soon become a years-long gale: the wind of the city's swift descent. "They must surely see us coming at them, just as we see them in our path. They'll start preparing, and both sides have ten or fifteen years to prepare in. They can arm everyone who's willing to fight, and put up obstacles to keep our people from landing. I think we can count on both those."

  "They could break up their plate for us."

  He nodded. "Yes, they could. We could break up ours, too. Do you think the government will?"

  For a long moment Mona stared at him. At last she said, "How horrible! No. Of course they won't."

  "But we could do it ourselves." The idea had come to full flower during his long call to Sutton; he had seized it eagerly, and hoped now to inspire her to an equal acceptance. "We could plant charges that would exploit known weaknesses in our plate. The force of the explosions would start our piece moving away from the city, and out of the collision path the city's on now."

  "But, darling--"

  "Adrian would have a future. Don't you see, Mona? We wouldn't take just this residential neighborhood, but a piece of the infrastructure big enough to be economically viable. We could make things for ourselves then, make things to trade, grow gardens, and fish. That town the city's going to hit--French or Belgian or whatever it is--people survive there. They even prosper. I've bounced this off of a man over on the next street, a geologist. He agrees it might be possible, and he's coming over to talk about it."

  "Bumpers! We could build bumpers, things with springs in them. Or--or big sacks full of air."

  He shook his head. "Nothing we could build would have much effect on a mass as great as the plate's, and if we succeeded in slowing it down much--we wouldn't--the wave would break over us and drown everybody."

  "But..." Mona looked desperate. "But, Honey--"

  He glanced at his watch. "Sutton's coming at eight. You won't have to feed him, but coffee and cookies might be nice. Or cake. Something like that."

  "Okay." Mona's voice was scarcely audible.

  * * * *

  An hour later she said, "Won't you please stop combing your hair with your fingers like that? And pacing up and down and up and down?"

  For the twentieth time he looked at his watch. "Sutton could be here right now."

  "He could," Mona conceded, "if he'd come at least ten minutes early. Honestly, I'm going to get hysterical. Sit down and relax. Or--or go outside where you can see his headlights as soon as he turns onto the street. Please? If I start screaming I'll wake Adrian. Won't you, pretty please, Honey, for me?"

  He nodded, suddenly grateful, and discovered that he had been on the point of running his fingers through his hair again. "Okay. I'll do that. I won't come back in until he gets here."

  The wind had turned the night cold. He walked out to the street. How many charges would they need, and how big would each have to be? Would they have to enlist a chemist to make the explosives? Dynamite, or whatever? To his right, looming white above the treetops though far more distant, he could only just glimpse the boiling crest of the wave. Those trees were wrongly slanted now. Come morning, they would find themselves pointed away from the sun. He chuckled softly. It could not be often that smug suburban trees received such an unpleasant surprise.

  When he returned to the house to sit on the stoop, Mona had drawn the blinds. She was being overly cautious, he decided, but he could not find it in his heart to blame her.

  Out at the curb again and still nervous, he held his breath as headlights turned off Miller Road. They crept up the sloping street as though the driver were checking house numbers, and then--incredibly, miraculously--swung into the driveway.

  Sutton climbed out, and they shook hands. "I hadn't forgotten where you live," Sutton said, "but this new angle has me a little disoriented.

  He nodded. "All of us are. I think that may work in our favor."

  "Maybe you're right." The wind snatched away Sutton's baseball cap. Sutton grabbed for it, missing by a foot or more. "Help me find that, will you? I'd hate to lose it."

  They had searched the bushes for a minute or more when Sutton straightened up and said, "Something wrong? What's the matter with you?"

  He had straightened up already. "Sirens." He pointed east, northeast, and after a momentary hesitation, north. "Don't you hear them?"

  Sutton shook his head. "No, I don't."

  "Well, I do. Three or four cars, and they're getting closer."

  One by one, the sirens grew louder--and abruptly fell silent. For almost the last time, he ran nervous fingers through his hair.

  "What's up?" Sutton began. "If you--"

  Before the third word, he had turned and sprinted for the door. It was locked. His key turned the lock and the bolt clicked back, but the night bolt was engaged. Once only, his shoulder struck the unyielding wood.

  By that time the first police car had turned the corner on two screaming wheels, and it was too late to hide.

  * * *

  Audubon in Atlantis

  Harry Turtledove

  Although he writes other kinds of science fiction as well, and even the occasional fantasy, Harry Turtledove has become one of the most prominent writers of Alternate History stories in the business today, and is probably the most popular and influential writer to work that territory since L. Sprague De Camp. In fact, most of the current popularity of that particular sub-genre can be attributed to Turtledove's own hot-ticketed bestseller status.

  Turtledove has published Alternate History novels such as The Guns of the South, dealing with a time line in which the American Civil War turns out very differently, thanks to time-traveling gunrunners; the bestselling Worldwar series, in which the course of World War II is altered by attacking aliens; the Basil Argyros series, detailing the adventures of a "magistri-anoi" in an alternate Byzantine Empire (collected in the book Agent of Byzantium); the Sim series, which takes place in an alternate world in which European explorers find North America inhabited by hominids instead of Indians (collected in the book A Different Flesh); a look at a world where the Revolutionary War didn't happen, written with actor Richard Dreyfuss, The Two Georges; and many other intriguing Alternate History scenarios. Turtledove is also the author of two multivolume Alternate History fantasy series: the multivolume Videssos Cycle and the Krispes Sequence. His other books include the novels Wereblood, Werenight, Earthgrip, Noninterference, A World of Difference, Gunpowder Empire, American Empire: The Victorous Opposition, Jaws of Darkness, and Ruled Britannia, the collections Kaleidoscope and Down in the Bottomlands (and Other Places), and, as editor, The Best Alternate History Stories o
f the 20th Century, The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century, with Martin H. Greenberg, and the Alternate Generals books—plus many others. His most recent books include the novels Settling Accounts: Drive to the East and In the Presence of Mine Enemies; and the anthologies The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, Alternate Generals III, and The Enchanter Completed. Coming up are The Bridge of the Separator, End of the Beginning, and Every Inch a King. He won a Hugo Award in 1994 for his story "Down in the Bottomlands." A native Californian, Turtledove has a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA, and has published a scholarly translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle. He lives in Canoga Park, California, with his wife and family.

  Here he invites us to voyage with pioneering ornithologist John Audubon to unknown territory in search of bird species feared to be extinct, on an Earth not quite our own…

  * * *

  Delicate as if walking on eggs, the riverboat Augustus Caesar eased in alongside the quay at New Orleans. Colored roustabouts, bare to the waist, caught lines from the boat and made her fast. The steam whistle blew several long, happy blasts, telling the world the stemwheeler had arrived. Then black smoke stopped belching from the stacks as the crew shut down the engines.

  The deck stopped quivering beneath John Audubon's feet. He breathed a silent sigh of relief; for all the time he'd spent aboard boats and ships, he was not a good sailor, and knew he never would be. Any motion, no matter how slight, could make his stomach betray him. He sighed —a long sea voyage still lay ahead of him.

  Edward Harris came up and stood alongside him. "Well, my friend, we're on our way," he said.

  "It's true—we are. And we shall do that which has not been done, while it may yet be done." As Audubon always did, he gathered enthusiasm when he thought about the goal and not the means by which he had to accomplish it. His English was fluent, but heavily flavored by the French that was his birth-speech. He was a good-sized man—about five feet ten—with shoulder-length gray hair combed straight back from his forehead and with bushy gray side whiskers that framed a long, strong-nosed face. Even without an accent, he would have spoken more mushily than he liked; he was nearer sixty than fifty, and had only a few teeth left. "Before long, Ed, either the great honkers will be gone from this world or I will."

  He waited impatiently till the gangplank thudded into place, then hurried off the Augustus Caesar onto dry land, or something as close to dry land as New Orleans offered.

  Men and women of every color, wearing everything from rags to frock coats and great hoop skirts, thronged the muddy, puddled street. Chatter, jokes, and curses crackled in Spanish, French and English, and in every possible mixture and corruption of those tongues. Audubon heard far more English than he had when he first came to New Orleans half a lifetime earlier. It was a French town then, with the Spanish dons hanging on where and as they could. Times changed, though. He knew that too well.

  Not far from the Cabildo stood the brick building that housed the Bartlett Line. Edward Harris following in his wake, Audubon went inside. A clerk nodded to them. "Good day, gentlemen," he said in English. A generation earlier, the greeting would surely have come in French. "How may I be of service to you today?"

  "I wish to purchase passage to Atlantis for the two of us," Audubon replied.

  "Certainly, sir." The clerk didn't bat an eye. "The Maid of Orleans sails for New Marseille and Avalon on the west coast in… let me see… five days. If you would rather wait another week, you can book places on the Sea Queen for the east. She puts in at St. Augustine, St. Denis, and Hanover, then continues on to London."

  "We can reach the interior as easily from either coast," Harris said.

  "Just so." Audubon nodded. "We would have to wait longer to leave for the east, the journey would be longer, and I would not care to set out from Hanover in any case. I have too many friends in the capital. With the kindest intentions in the world, they would sweep us up in their social whirl, and we should be weeks getting free of it. The Maid of Orleans it shall be."

  "You won't be sorry, sir. She's a fine ship." The clerk spoke with professional enthusiasm. He took out a book of ticket forms and inked his pen. "In whose names shall I make these out?"

  "I am John James Audubon," Audubon replied. "With me travels my friend and colleague, Mr. Edward Harris."

  "Audubon?" The clerk started to write, then looked up, his face aglow. "The Audubon? The artist? The naturalist?"

  Audubon exchanged a secret smile with Edward Harris. Being recognized never failed to gratify him: he loved himself well enough to crave reminding that others loved him, too. When he swung back toward the clerk, he tried to make the smile modest. "I have the honor to be he, yes."

  The clerk thrust out his hand. As Audubon shook it, the young man said, "I cannot tell you how pleased I am to make your acquaintance, sir. Mr. Hiram Bartlett, the chairman of the shipping line, is a subscriber to your Birds and Viviparous Ouadrupeds of Northern Terranova and Atlantis—the double elephant folio edition. He sometimes brings in one volume or another for the edification of his staff. I admire your art and your text in almost equal measure, and that is the truth."

  "You do me too much credit," Audubon said, in lieu of strutting and preening like a courting passenger pigeon. He was also glad to learn how prosperous Bartlett was. No one but a rich man could afford the volumes of the double elephant folio. They were big enough to show almost every bird and most beasts at life size, even if he had twisted poses and bent necks almost unnaturally here and there to fit creatures onto the pages' Procrustean bed.

  "Are you traveling to Atlantis to continue your researches?" the clerk asked eagerly.

  "If fate is kind, yes," Audubon replied. "Some of the creatures I hope to see are less readily found than they were in years gone by, while I" —he sighed —"I fear I am less well able to find them than I was in years gone by. Yet a man can do only what it is given to him to do, and I intend to try."

  "If they're there, John, you'll find them," Harris said.

  "God grant it be so," Audubon said. "What is the fare aboard the Maid of Orleans?"

  "A first-class cabin for two, sir, is a hundred twenty livres," the clerk said. "A second-class cabin is eighty livres, while one in steerage is a mere thirty-five livres. But I fear I cannot recommend steerage for gentlemen of your quality. It lacks the comforts to which you will have become accustomed."

  "I've lived rough. Once I get to Atlantis, I expect I shall live rough again," Audubon said. "But, unlike some gentlemen of the Protestant persuasion" —he fondly nudged Edward Harris —"I don't make the mistake of believing comfort is sinful. Let us travel first class."

  "I don't believe comfort is sinful, and you know it," Harris said. "We want to get you where you're going and keep you as healthy and happy as we can while we're doing it. First class, by all means."

  "First class it shall be, then." The clerk wrote up the tickets.

  Audubon boarded the Maid of Orleans with a curious blend of anticipation and dread. The sidewheeler was as modem a steamship as any, but she was still a ship, one that would soon put to sea. Even going up the gangplank, his stomach gave a premonitory lurch.

  He laughed and tried to make light of it, both to Harris and to himself. "When I think how many times I've put to sea in a sailing ship, at the mercy of wind and wave, I know how foolish I am to fret about a voyage like this," he said.

  "You said it to the clerk last week: you can only do what you can do." Harris was blessed with both a calm stomach and a calm disposition. If opposites attracted, he and Audubon made a natural pair.

  The purser strode up to them. Brass buttons gleamed on his blue wool coat; sweat gleamed on his face. "You gentlemen are traveling together?" he said. "If you would be kind enough to show me your tickets… ?"

  "But of course," Audubon said. He and Harris produced them.

  "I thank you." The purser checked them against a list he carried in one of his jacket's many pockets. "Mr. Audubon and Mr. Ha
rris, is it? Very good. We have you in Cabin 12, the main deck on the starboard side. That's on the right as you look forward, if you haven't gone to sea before."

  "I'm afraid I have," Audubon said. The purser took off his cap and scratched his balding crown, but Audubon meant it exactly as he'd phrased it. He nodded to Harris and to the free Negro pushing a wheeled cart that held their baggage. "Let's see what we've got, then."

  They had a cabin with two beds, a chest of drawers, and a basin and pitcher on top of it: about what they would have had in an inn of reasonable quality, though smaller. In an inn, though, I'm not likely to drown, Audubon thought. He didn't suppose he was likely to drown on the Maid of Orleans, but if the seas got rough he would wish he were dead.

  He gave the Negro half a livre, for the luggage, once unloaded from the cart, filled the cabin almost to the bursting point. Neither Audubon nor Harris was a dandy; they had no extraordinary amount of clothes. But Audubon's watercolors and paper filled up a couple of trunks, and the jars and the raw spirits they would use to preserve specimens took up a couple of more. And each of them had a shotgun for gathering specimens and a newfangled revolver for self-protection.

  "Leave enough room so you'll be able to get out and come to the galley when you're hungry," the purser said helpfully.

  "Thank you so much." Audubon hoped his sarcasm would freeze the man, but the purser, quite unfrozen, tipped his cap and left the cabin. Audubon muttered in pungent French.

  "Never mind, John," Harris said. "We're here, and we'll weigh anchor soon. After that, no worries till we get to Avalon."

  No worries for you. But Audubon kept that to himself. Harris couldn't help having a tranquil stomach, any more than the artist could help having a nervous one. Audubon only wished his were calm.

  He also wished the Maid of Orleans sailed at the appointed hour, or even on the appointed day. Thursday, the 6th day of April, 1843, at half past 10 in the morning, the clerk had written on each ticket in a fine round hand. Audubon and Harris were aboard in good time. But half past ten came and went without departure. All of Thursday came and went. Passengers kept right on boarding. Stevedores kept on carrying sacks of sugar and rice into the ship's hold. Only the stuffed quail and artichokes and asparagus and the really excellent champagne in the first-class galley went some little way toward reconciling Audubon to being stuck on the steamship an extra day.