The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  She was trembling. “I’ve never heard of doing any such thing!”

  “But don’t you think it’s possible?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Of course it’s possible. If they can create visitors, they can take a citizen and duplicate her in such a way that—”

  “It’s never been done. I’m sure of it. I can’t imagine any citizen agreeing to any such thing. To give up the body—to let yourself be turned into—into—”

  She shook her head, but it seemed to be a gesture of astonishment as much as of negation.

  He said, “Sure. To give up the body. Your natural body, your aging, shrinking, deteriorating short-timer body. What’s so awful about that?”

  She was very pale. “This is craziness, Charles. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy to me.”

  “You can’t possibly understand.”

  “Can’t I? I can certainly understand being afraid to die. I don’t have a lot of trouble understanding what it’s like to be one of the few aging people in a world where nobody grows old. What I can’t understand is why you aren’t even willing to consider the possibility that—”

  “No,” she said. “I tell you, it’s crazy. They’d laugh at me.”

  “Who?”

  “All of my friends. Hawk, Stengard, Aramayne—” Once again she would not look at him. “They can be very cruel, without even realizing it. They despise anything that seems ungraceful to them, anything sweaty and desperate and cowardly. Citizens don’t do sweaty things, Charles. And that’s how this will seem. Assuming it can be done at all. They’ll be terribly patronising. Oh, they’ll be sweet to me, yes, dear Gioia, how wonderful for you, Gioia, but when I turn my back they’ll laugh. They’ll say the most wicked things about me. I couldn’t bear that.”

  “They can afford to laugh,” Phillips said. “It’s easy to be brave and cool about dying when you know you’re going to live forever. How very fine for them; but why should you be the only one to grow old and die? And they won’t laugh, anyway. They’re not as cruel as you think. Shallow, maybe, but not cruel. They’ll be glad that you’ve found a way to save yourself. At the very least, they won’t have to feel guilty about you any longer, and that’s bound to please them. You can—”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  She rose, walked to the railing of the patio, stared out toward the sea. He came up behind her. Red sails in the harbor, sunlight glittering along the sides of the Lighthouse, the palaces of the Ptolemies stark white against the sky. Lightly he rested his hand on her shoulder. She twitched as if to pull away from him, but remained where she was.

  “Then I have another idea,” he said quietly. “If you won’t go to the planners, I will. Reprogram me, I’ll say. Fix things so that I start to age at the same rate you do. It’ll be more authentic, anyway, if I’m supposed to be playing the part of a twentieth-century man. Over the years I’ll very gradually get some lines in my face, my hair will turn gray, I’ll walk a little more slowly—we’ll grow old together, Gioia. To hell with your lovely immortal friends. We’ll have each other. We won’t need them.”

  She swung around. Her eyes were wide with horror.

  “Are you serious, Charles?”

  “Of course.”

  “No,” she murmured. “No. Everything you’ve said to me today is monstrous nonsense. Don’t you realize that?”

  He reached for her hand and enclosed her fingertips in his. “All I’m trying to do is find some way for you and me to—”

  “Don’t say any more,” she said. “Please.” Quickly, as though drawing back from a suddenly flaring flame, she tugged her fingers free of his and put her hand behind her. Though his face was just inches from hers he felt an immense chasm opening between them. They stared at one another for a moment; then she moved deftly to his left, darted around him, and ran from the patio.

  Stunned, he watched her go, down the long marble corridor and out of sight. It was folly to give pursuit, he thought. She was lost to him: that was clear, that was beyond any question. She was terrified of him. Why cause her even more anguish? But somehow he found himself running through the halls of the hotel, along the winding garden path, into the cool green groves of the Paneium. He thought he saw her on the portico of Hadrian’s palace, but when he got there the echoing stone halls were empty. To a temporary that was sweeping the steps he said, “Did you see a woman come this way?” A blank sullen stare was his only answer.

  Phillips cursed and turned away.

  “Gioia?” he called. “Wait! Come back!”

  Was that her, giong into the Library? He rushed past the startled mumbling librarians and sped through the stacks, peering beyond the mounds of double-handled scrolls into the shadowy corridors. “Gioia? Gioia!” It was a desecration, bellowing like that in this quiet place. He scarcely cared.

  Emerging by a side door, he loped down to the harbor. The Lighthouse! Terror enfolded him. She might already be a hundred steps up that ramp, heading for the parapet from which she meant to fling herself into the sea. Scattering citizens and temporaries as if they were straws, he ran within. Up he went, never pausing for breath, though his synthetic lungs were screaming for respite, his ingeniously designed heart was desperately pounding. On the first balcony he imagined he caught a glimpse of her, but he circled it without finding her. Onward, upward. He went to the top, to the beacon chamber itself: no Gioia. Had she jumped? Had she gone down one ramp while he was ascending the other? He clung to the rim and looked out, down, searching the base of the Lighthouse, the rocks offshore, the causeway. No Gioia. I will find her somewhere, he thought. I will keep going until I find her. He went running down the ramp, calling her name. He reached ground level and sprinted back toward the center of town. Where next? The temple of Poseidon? The tomb of Cleopatra?

  He paused in the middle of Canopus Street, groggy and dazed.

  “Charles?” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Right here. Beside you.” She seemed to materialize from the air. Her face was unflushed, her robe bore no trace of perspiration. Had he been chasing a phantom through the city? She came to him and took his hand, and said, softly, tenderly, “Were you really serious, about having them make you age?”

  “If there’s no other way, yes.”

  “The other way is so frightening, Charles.”

  “Is it?”

  “You can’t understand how much.”

  “More frightening than growing old? Than dying?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose not. The only thing I’m sure of is that I don’t want you to get old, Charles.”

  “But I won’t have to. Will I?” He stared at her.

  “No,” she said. “You won’t have to. Neither of us will.”

  Phillips smiled. “We should get away from here,” he said after a while. “Let’s go across to Byzantium, yes, Gioia? We’ll show up in Constantinople for the opening. Your friends will be there. We’ll tell them what you’ve decided to do. They’ll know how to arrange it. Someone will.”

  “It sounds so strange,” said Gioia. “To turn myself into—into a visitor? A visitor in my own world?”

  “That’s what you’ve always been, though.”

  “I suppose. In a way. But at least I’ve been real up to now.”

  “Whereas I’m not?”

  “Are you, Charles?”

  “Yes. Just as real as you. I was angry at first, when I found out the truth about myself. But I came to accept it. Somewhere between Mohenjo and here, I came to see that it was all right to be what I am: that I perceive things, I form ideas, I draw conclusions. I am very well designed, Gioia. I can’t tell the difference between being what I am and being completely alive, and to me that’s being real enough. I think, I feel, I experience joy and pain. I’m as real as I need to be. And you will be too. You’ll never stop being Gioia, you know. It’s only your body that you’ll cast away, the body that play
ed such a terrible joke on you anyway.” He brushed her cheek with his hand. “It was all said for us before, long ago:

  Once out of nature I shall never take

  My bodily form from any natural thing,

  But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

  Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

  To keep a drowsy Emperor awake—”

  “Is that the same poem?” she asked.

  “The same poem, yes. The ancient poem that isn’t quite forgotten yet.”

  “Finish it, Charles.”

  —“Or set upon a golden bough to sing

  To lords and ladies of Byzantium

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

  “How beautiful. What does it mean?”

  “That it isn’t necessary to be mortal. That we can allow ourselves to be gathered into the artifice of eternity, that we can be transformed, that we can move on beyond the flesh. Yeats didn’t mean it in quite the way I do—he wouldn’t have begun to comprehend what we’re talking about, not a word of it—and yet, and yet—the underlying truth is the same. Live, Gioia! With me!” He turned to her and saw color coming into her pallid cheeks. “It does make sense, what I’m suggesting, doesn’t it? You’ll attempt it, won’t you? Whoever makes the visitors can be induced to remake you. Right? What do you think: can they, Gioia?”

  She nodded in a barely perceptible way. “I think so,” she said faintly. “It’s very strange. But I think it ought to be possible. Why not, Charles? Why not?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Why not?”

  * * *

  In the morning they hired a vessel in the harbor, a low sleek pirogue with a blood-red sail, skippered by a rascally-looking temporary whose smile was irresistible. Phillips shaded his eyes and peered northward across the sea. He thought he could almost make out the shape of the great city sprawling on its seven hills, Constantine’s New Rome beside the Golden Horn, the mighty dome of Hagia Sophia, the somber walls of the citadel, the palaces and churches, the Hippodrome, Christ in glory rising above all else in brilliant mosaic streaming with light.

  “Byzantium,” Phillips said. “Take us there the shortest and quickest way.”

  “It is my pleasure,” said the boatman with unexpected grace.

  Gioia smiled. He had not seen her looking so vibrantly alive since the night of the imperial feast in Chang-an. He reached for her hand—her slender fingers were quivering lightly—and helped her into the boat.

  JAMES PATRICK KELLY

  Solstice

  The enigmatic ruins of Stonehenge have been fascinating visitors for hundreds of years. And, as the hard-edged and troubling story that follows suggests, it may continue to fascinate them for years to come—even in the most high-tech and flashy of futures.

  Born in Mineola, New York, James Patrick Kelly now lives in Durham, New Hampshire. Kelly made his first sale in 1975, and has since become a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; his stories have also appeared in Universe, Galaxy, Amazing, Analog, The Twilight Zone Magazine, and elsewhere. His first solo novel, Planet of Whispers, came out in 1984. His most recent book is a novel written in collaboration with John Kessel, Freedom Beach, from Bluejay. His story “Friend”, also in collaboration with Kessel, was in our Second Annual Collection.

  SOLSTICE

  James Patrick Kelly

  Once a year they open it to the public. Some spend lifetimes planning for the day. Others arrive by chance, fortunate sightseers swarming out of the tour hovers. They record it all but only rarely understand what they are witnessing. Years later a few of the disks will come out to pep up drooping parties. Most will be forgotten.

  It happens on the summer solstice. One of two points on the ecliptic at which its distance from the celestial equator is greatest. The longest day of the year. A turning point.

  * * *

  They arrived late in the afternoon when the crowd was starting to thin. A tall man in his early forties. A teenaged girl. They had the same gray eyes. Her straw-colored hair had begun to darken, just as his had darkened when he was seventeen. There was an inescapable similarity in the way they whispered jokes to one another and laughed at the people around them. Neither carried a camera.

  They had come to wander among the sarsen stones of what Tony Cage considered the most extraordinary antiquity in the world. Yes, the pyramids were older, bigger, but they had long since yielded their mystery. The Parthenon had once been more beautiful but the acids of history had etched it beyond recognition. But Stonehenge … Stonehenge was unique. Essential. It was a mirror in which each age could observe the quality of its imagination, in which every man could measure his size.

  They joined the queue waiting to enter the dome. Occasional screams of synthesized music pierced the buzz of the crowd; the free festival being held in a nearby field was hitting a frenzied peak. Perhaps later they would explore its delights, but now they had reached the entrance to the exterior shell of the dome. The girl laughed as she popped through the bubble membrane.

  “It’s like being kissed by a giant,” she said.

  They were in the space between the exterior and interior shells of the dome. On any other day this would have been as close as they could have come to the stone circles. The dome was made of hardened optical plastic with a low refractive index. Walkways spiraled upward in the space between the shells; tourists who climbed to the top had a bird’s-eye view of Stonehenge.

  They entered the inner shell. There was a reporter with a microcam standing near the Heel Stone; he spotted them and started waving. “Pardon, sir, pardon!” Cage pulled the girl out of the flow of the crowd and waited; he did not want the fool calling his name in front of all these people.

  “You’re the drug artist.” The reporter drew them aside. A daisy smile bloomed on his obsidian face. “Case, Cane…” he tapped the skull plug behind his ear as if to dislodge the memory from his wetware.

  “Cage.”

  “And this?” The smile became a smirk. “Your lovely daughter?”

  Cage thought about punching the man. He thought about walking away. The girl laughed.

  “I’m Wynne.” She shook the reporter’s hand.

  “Name’s Zomboy. Wiltshire stringer for SONIC. Have you seen the old stones before? I could show you around.” Cage kept expecting the microcam’s red light to come on but the reporter seemed strangely hesitant. “I say, you wouldn’t by any chance be holding any free samples? For one of your major fans?”

  Wynne bit her lip to stifle a giggle and reached into her pocket. “I doubt you could tell Tony much about Stonehenge. Sometimes I think he lives for this place.” She produced a plastic bottle, shook some green capsules into her palm and offered them to the reporter.

  He took one and inspected it carefully. “No label on the casing.” He fixed his suspicion on Cage. “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  “Hell no,” said Wynne. She popped two of the capsules into her mouth. “Very experimental. Turn your brains to blood pudding.” She offered one to Cage and he took it. He wished Wynne would stop playing these twisted games. “We’ve been eating them all day,” said Wynne. “Can’t you tell?”

  Gingerly, the reporter put one in his mouth. Then the red light came on. “So you’re a devotee of Stonehenge, Mr. Cage?”

  “Oh yes.” Wynne was babbling. “He comes here all the time. Gives lectures to whoever will listen. Says there’s a kind of magic to the place.”

  “Magic?” The lens stared at Cage, had never left him.

  “Not the kind of magic you’re thinking of, I’m afraid.” Cage hated looking into cameras when he was twisted. “No wizards or human sacrifices or bolts of lightning. A subtle kind of magic, the only kind still possible in this overly explained world.” The words rolled out unbidden—perhaps because he had spoken them before. “It has to do with the way a mystery captures the imagination and becomes an obsession. A magic that works exclusively in
the mind.”

  “And who better to contemplate mind magic than the celebrated drug artist, Mr. Tony Cage.” The reporter spoke not to them but to an unseen audience.

  Cage smiled into the camera.

  * * *

  In 1130 Henry of Huntingdon, an archdeacon at Lincoln, was commissioned by his bishop to write a history of England. His was the first written account of a place called “Stanenges, where stones of wonderful size have been erected after the manner of doorways, so that doorway appears to have been raised upon doorway; and no one can conceive of how such great stones have been raised aloft, or why they were built there.” The name derives from the Old English, “stan”: stone, and “hengen”: gallows. Medieval gallows consisted of two posts and a crosspiece. There is no record of executions at Stonehenge, although Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing six years after Henry, describes the massacre of four hundred and sixty British lords by treacherous Saxons. Geoffrey claims that, as a memorial to the dead, Uther Pendragon and Merlin stole the sacred megaliths known as the Giants’ Dance from the Irish by magic and force of arms and re-erected them on the Wiltshire Plain. The “Merlin theory” of Stonehenge’s construction, while certainly true to the spirit of Anglo-Irish relations, was a piece with the rest of Geoffrey’s Arthurian tapestry: a jingoistic fairy tale.

  * * *

  “Wake up.”

  Cage had been dreaming of sleep. A vast treeless pasture, green waves rolling to the horizon. The animals shied away from him as he wandered among them. He was lost.

  “Tony.”

  The cryogenicists claimed that stiffs did not dream. Strictly speaking they were right, but as the tank thawed him out, his synapses begin to fire again. Then dreams came.

  “Wake up, Tony.”

  His eyelids flickered. “Go ‘way.” He felt like a pincushion. He opened his eyes and stared at her. For a moment he thought he was still dreaming. Wynne had shaved her hair off except for a spiky multicolored fan that ran from ear to ear. From the looks of it she had just had a new body tint done. In blue.