The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  In the time it took her to take a couple of breaths, a breath and a half, over the course of many years, she passed through habitable and uninhabitable places, worlds which had once been classified as existent, worlds which did not appear and had never appeared and probably would never appear in any cartographical survey. Planets of exiles, singing sands, minutes and seconds in tatters, whirlpools of nothingness, space junk, and that’s without even mentioning those beings and things, all of which stood completely outside any possibility of description, so much so that we tend not to perceive them when we look at them; all of this, and shock, and fear more than anything else, and loneliness. The hair grew gray at her temples, her flesh lost its firmness, wrinkles appeared around her eyes and her mouth, her knees and ankles started to act up, she slept less than before and had to half close her eyes and lean backward in order to make out the numbers on the consoles. And she was so tired that it was almost unbearable. She did not waltz any longer: she put an old tape into an old machine and listened and moved her gray head in time with the orchestra.

  She reached the edge of the universe. Here was where everything came to an end, so completely that even her tiredness disappeared and she felt once again as full of enthusiasm as she had when she was younger. There were hints, of course: salt storms, apparitions, little brushstrokes of white against the black of space, large gaps made of sound, echoes of long-dead voices that had died giving sinister orders, ash, drums; but when she reached the edge itself, these indications gave way to space signage: “End,” “You Are Reaching the Universe Limits,” “The Cosmos General Insurance Company, YOUR Company, Says: GO NO FURTHER,” “End of Protected Cosmonaut Space,” etc., as well as the scarlet polygon that the OMUU had adopted to use as a sign for that’s it, abandon all hope, the end.

  All right, so she was here. The next thing to do was go back. But the idea of going back never occurred to her. Women are capricious creatures, just like little boys: as soon as they get what they want, then they want something else. She carried on.

  There was a violent judder as she crossed the limit. Then there was silence, peace, calm. All very alarming, to tell the truth. The needles did not move, the lights did not flash, the ventilation system did not hiss, her alveoli did not vibrate, her chair did not swivel, the screens were blank. She got up, went to the portholes, looked out, saw nothing. It was logical enough:

  “Of course,” she said to herself, “when the universe comes to an end, then there’s nothing.”

  She looked out through the portholes a little more, just in case. She still could see nothing, but she had an idea.

  “But I’m here,” she said. “Me and the ship.”

  She put on a space suit and walked out into the nothing.

  When the ship landed in the Independence crater in the republic of Rosario, twenty-six minutes after it had taken off, when the hatch opened and she appeared on the ramp, the spirit of Paul Langevin flew over the crater, laughing fit to burst. The only people who heard him were the madman who had grown the flower for her in the Espinillos cemetery and a woman who was to die that day. No one else had ears or fingers or tongue or feet, far less did they have eyes to see him.

  It was the same woman who had left, the very same, and this calmed the crowds down at the same time as it disappointed them, all the inhabitants of the country, the diplomats, the spies, and the journalists. It was only when she came down the gangplank and they came closer to her that they saw the network of fine wrinkles around her eyes. All other signs of her old age had vanished, and had she wished, she could have waltzed tirelessly, for days and nights on end, from dusk till dawn till dusk.

  The journalists all leaned forward; the diplomats made signals, which they thought were subtle and unseen, to the bearers of their sedan chairs to be ready to take them back to their residences as soon as they had heard what she had to say; the spies took photographs with the little cameras hidden away in their shirt buttons or their wisdom teeth; all the old people put their hands together; the men raised their fists to their heart; the little boys pranced; the young girls smiled.

  And then she told them what she had seen:

  “I took off my suit and my helmet,” she said, “and walked along the invisible avenues that smelled of violets.”

  She did not know that the whole world was waiting to hear what she said; that Ekaterina V had made Sergei Vasilievich get up at five o’clock in the morning so that he could accompany her to the grand salon and wait there for the news; that one of the seventy-nine Northern States had declared its independence because the president had not stopped anything from happening or obtained any glory, and this had lit the spark of rebellion in the other seventy-eight states, and this had made Mr. Jackson-Franklin leave the White House without his wig, in pajamas, freezing and furious; that Bolivia, Paraguay, and Iceland had allowed the two Peruvian republics to join their new alliance and defense treaty set up against a possible attack from space; that the high command of the Paraguayan aeronautical engineers had promised to build a ship that could travel beyond the limits of the universe, always assuming that they could be granted legal immunity and a higher budget, a declaration that made the guarani fall back the two points that it had recently risen and then another one as well; that Don Schicchino Giol, the new padrone of the Republic of Labodegga at the foot of the majestic Andes had been woken from his most recent drinking bout to be told that he had now to sign a declaration of war against the Republic of Rosario, now that they knew the strength of the enemy’s forces.

  “Eh? What? Hunh?” Don Schicchino said.

  “I saw the nothingness of everything,” she said, “and it was all infused with the unmistakable smell of wood violets. The nothingness of the world is like the inside of a stomach throbbing above your head. The nothingness of people is like the back of a painting, black, with glasses and wires that release dreams of order and imperfect destinies. The nothingness of creatures with leathery wings is a crack in the air and the rustle of tiny feet. The nothingness of history is the massacre of the innocents. The nothingness of words, which is a throat and a hand that break whatever they touch on perforated paper; the nothingness of music, which is music. The nothingness of precincts, of crystal glasses, of seams, of hair, of liquids, of lights, of keys, of food.”

  When she had finished her list, the potentate who owned the Ford 99 said that he would give it to her, and that in the afternoon he would send one of his servants with a liter of naphtha so that she could take the car out for a spin.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You are very generous.”

  The madman went away, looking up to the skies; who knows what he was searching for. The woman who was going to die that day asked herself what she should eat on Sunday, when her sons and their wives came to lunch. The president of the Republic of Rosario gave a speech.

  And everything in the world carried on the same, apart from the fact that Ekaterina V named Kustkarov her interior minister, which terrified the poor man but which was welcomed with open arms by Irina as an opportunity for her to refresh her wardrobe and her stock of lovers. And Jack Jackson-Franklin sold his memoirs to one of Paraguay’s more sophisticated magazines for a stellar amount of money, which allowed him to retire to live in Imerina. And six spaceships from six major world powers set off to the edges of the universe and were never seen again.

  She married a good man who had a house with a balcony, a white bicycle, and a radio which, on clear days, could pick up the radio plays that LLL1 Radio Magnum transmitted from Entre Dos Rios, and she waltzed in white satin shoes. The day that her first son was born a very pale green shoot grew out of the ground on the banks of the great lagoon.

  The Owl of Bear Island

  JON BING

  Jon Bing (1944–2014) was an important Norwegian speculative fiction writer and professor of law. Born in the town of Tønsberg, Bing moved to Oslo to attend university, and there in 1966 met Tor Åge Bringsværd, with whom he would collaborate and whose career would b
e intertwined with his own for many decades. Both men were inveterate science fiction readers in a country where science fiction literally did not exist, and in 1966 they founded the still-active Oslo University science fiction club Aniara and its fanzine. Almost from the beginning, however, both Bing and Bringsværd preferred to use the term fabelprosa—best translated as, literally, “fairy-tale fictions,” or, idiomatically, “speculative fiction”—for their endeavors, rather than science fiction.

  In 1967, they made their joint debut as professional writers with a short story collection, Rundt solen i ring (“Ring Around the Sun”), the first book by any Norwegian author to be labeled “science fiction.” In the same year, they also published their first jointly edited anthology of translated science fiction, Og jorden skal beve (“And the World Will Shake”). Their first play, Å miste eit romskib (“To Lose a Spaceship,” 1969), was performed at Det Norske Teatret in Oslo, the Norwegian national theater. In 1970, Bing published a first novel, as did Bringsværd, and in the same year they dramatized four science fiction short stories that aired on Norwegian television. With Tor Åge Bringsværd, Bing would publish several story collections; numerous stage, radio, and television plays; and almost twenty science fiction anthologies. On his own, Bing wrote many more novels as well as short stories.

  The two would continue to collaborate, but their paths began to diverge when Bing, who studied law, went on to become a full professor at Oslo University, a visiting professor at King’s College in London, and an honorary doctor of Stockholm University and the University of Copenhagen as well as an internationally leading authority on legal informatics; as an academic, Bing published almost twenty books and innumerable essays and papers, in time becoming the first chairman of the Norwegian computer integrity council; chairman of the Norwegian Film Council, the EU Council Committee on Data Processing, and Arts Council Norway; and a member of many other expert committees. In 1999, Bing was made a knight of the Norwegian Order of St. Olav. Perhaps for this reason, Bing published only around fifty volumes of fiction, while Bringsværd has published close to two hundred.

  They had already, in 1967, talked the leading Norwegian publisher Gyldendal into launching a paperback line of science fiction, which they edited and which continued until 1980, releasing a total of fifty-five titles; this was where authors like Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Stanisław Lem, Clifford D. Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, and Kurt Vonnegut were all first published in Norwegian. Since the series also included several debut Norwegian writers, it is reasonable to say not only that Bing and Bringsværd founded Norwegian fandom but that they went on to create the Norwegian science fiction field.

  Although Bringsværd and Bing worked together for almost fifty years, there were clear literary differences between them. Both were civil libertarians, but Bing had a more generous attitude toward a central legislative power and system of justice, while Bringsværd characterized himself as a left-wing anarchist. Bringsværd’s science fiction in English translation has seemed to confirm this distinction in its very form, as he appears to be a more experimental writer than Bing in terms of story structure. (His work is well worth seeking out.)

  Bing’s “The Owl of Bear Island” is a sly and very unique tale of alien contact that first appeared in English in 1986.

  THE OWL OF BEAR ISLAND

  Jon Bing

  The landscape outside the window was black and white, with the ocean like gray metal beneath a dark sky. The cliffs were bare and steep, ribboned by bird droppings, the beaches stony and empty with off-white trimmings of dried foam and salt.

  It was a lifeless landscape, even this far into “spring.” The polar night had lost its grip on day and let it slide into twilight along the horizon in the south. I looked toward the metallic reflection of sunlight and felt invisible feathers rise around my neck. I blinked my eyes.

  Why were they this far north?

  I thought of my boss as an owl. A great white snow-owl with a cloud of light feathers. With big yellow eyes in a round head. With a sharp and cynical beak. With spastic movements. I felt like that when the Owl took me over, I discovered such movements in my own body when the Owl left me.

  What did he really want from me? Why was not I, like the others of whom I had heard, guided to the ghetto on Hawaii? What was an extraterrestrial doing on Bear Island, 74 degrees north?

  —

  Bear Island is the southernmost of the Spitsbergen Islands. Its area is approximately 180 square kilometers. Its shape is triangular, with the famous Bird’s Mountain on the southernmost point. It was discovered by the Dutch polar explorer Willem Barents in 1596, and fishermen were attracted to the island by huge populations of elephant seal and whale. The climate is quite mild: in the warmest month the average temperature is not more than 4 degrees centigrade, but the average drops in the coldest month to −7 degrees, quite mild for a latitude halfway between the North Pole and the northernmost point of Alaska.

  Bear Island was placed under Norwegian sovereignty in 1925. Since 1918, Norway has maintained a station on the island, partly to keep radio contact with the fisheries fleet, partly for meteorological observations. The station was destroyed when the Allies withdrew in 1941, to make it useless for the Germans. A new station was constructed in 1947 at Herwig Port, a few kilometers from the old.

  The station was my closest neighbor. I could in principle visit there, either in the boat if there was not too much ice along the coast, or in the small but efficient helicopter in the tin hangar outside the buried bunker in which the Institute was housed. It would take just a little while to fly north and west from Cape Levin to Herwig Port. But I did not fly.

  Of course.

  After I was possessed, I did not do such things.

  I blinked my great yellow eyes, flexed my clawlike fingers over the keyboard of my computer, and did not remember anything…until I later shuddered and blinked in front of the screen.

  My eyes were sore and staring. More than eleven hours had passed. I got back to the bunk I had made up in the terminal room just before being overwhelmed by deep sleep.

  —

  It was, of course, contrary to normal procedure to let one man live through the polar night on his own. There should have been two of us.

  Normally, there were, both specialists, experts on the analysis of geotechnical data from sonar probes. We were rather good friends, Norway being small enough to make most people within the same field acquaintances. His name was Johannes Hansen; he was from the small town Mo in northern Norway and was used to long and sunless winters. I was from the south, but I needed the bonus which a winter would bring. We had rather looked forward to a quiet winter of routine work—and a computer, which we could use in our spare time to process the material we had both collected for a paper, perhaps a thesis.

  It was not many nights after equinox before the white and dark wings closed over my thoughts and my boss took power.

  A few days later Johannes Hansen became seriously ill. I am sure that my boss induced the illness, though I do not know in what way.

  Johannes Hansen was collected by a helicopter from a coast guard vessel. He died before he reached the mainland.

  The doctors had problems in determining the cause of death, and no replacement was sent out. I remained alone in the bunker of the Institute on the east coast of Bear Island. People from the meteorological station did not visit. Nor did I visit them, though I talked to them by radio from time to time in order to reassure them. It was important that they should not grow suspicious, important to my boss.

  My boss knew why he was there. I did not. I did not know what the Owl wanted from me and the bunker of the Institute at Bear Island. I only knew that in this bunker for the better part of the winter a possessed person lived, a person who flapped invisible wings and hooted like an owl toward the night lying across the snow, and the ice outside the windows.

  —


  Institute for Polar Geology is the official name. It may sound rather academic. Formally, the Institute is part of the University of Tromsø—the world’s northernmost university—but in reality it is financed by the government. Norway had for many years conducted quite sensitive negotiations with the Soviet Union over possible economic exploitation of the Barents Sea; that is, the ocean north of Norway and the Kola Peninsula which stretches between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya toward the pole.

  The negotiations were difficult for several reasons. First, the Soviets had considerable military activity on the Kola Peninsula—for instance, its largest navy base. Second, preliminary surveys indicated major natural resources on the continental shelf, especially in oil. The coal mines of Spitsbergen were an obvious sign of what might lie hidden by the cold sea. In the summer of 1984 the Soviets made the first major find of natural gas and oil, midway between the Norwegian coast and Novaya Zemlya.

  The two countries had not arrived at a final agreement. There was still a contested sector midway between the two countries, popularly known as “the gray zone.” In 1984 it was discovered that one of the important members of the Norwegian delegation during the negotiations had been in contact with the KGB and was probably a Soviet agent. All these factors had combined to block the final solution of the gray-zone problem.

  Soviet mining ships had made test drillings as close to the gray zone as possible, seeking information on which natural resources it might hide. Norway was too occupied with exploration and development of promising oil fields in the North Sea to start more than symbolic test drills farther north. The northernmost samples were taken at Tromsøflaket, a fishing bank off the shore of North Troms at a depth of 2,300 meters.

  The Institute for Polar Geology was founded to furnish more information about the structures underneath the sea bottom in the north, and the sea bottom itself. An installation was constructed at Bear Island, approximately midway between the mainland and Spitsbergen proper. This installation was equipped with a computer system for analysis of data collected by sonar probes. The system was quite powerful. There was a sturdy minicomputer, databases with all available geological information on the northern seas, programs for analysis developed on the basis of experiments made in the North Sea, plotters and graphic screens for projection of maps and graphs.