Year’s Best SF 18

by David G. Hartwell

  * * *

  YOU WONDER WHY there are so many stories about how people came to be? It’s because all true stories have many tellings.

  Tonight, let me tell you another one.

  There was a time when the world was ruled by the Titans, who lived on Mount Othrys. The greatest and bravest of the Titans was Cronus, who once led them in a rebellion against Uranus, his father and a tyrant. After Cronus killed Uranus, he became the king of the gods.

  But as time went on, Cronus himself became a tyrant. Perhaps out of fear that what he had done to his own father would happen to him, Cronus swallowed all his children as soon as they were born.

  Rhea, the wife of Cronus, gave birth to a new son, Zeus. To save the boy, she wrapped a stone in a blanket like a baby and fooled Cronus into swallowing that. The real baby Zeus she sent away to Crete, where he grew up drinking goat milk.

  Don’t make that face. I hear goat milk is quite tasty.

  When Zeus was finally ready to face his father, Rhea fed Cronus a bitter wine that caused him to vomit up the children he had swallowed, Zeus’s brothers and sisters. For ten years, Zeus led the Olympians, for that was the name by which Zeus and his siblings would come to be known, in a bloody war against his father and the Titans. In the end, the new gods won against the old, and Cronus and the Titans were cast into lightless Tartarus.

  And the Olympians went on to have children of their own, for that was the way of the world. Zeus himself had many children, some mortal, some not. One of his favorites was Athena, the goddess who was born from his head, from his thoughts alone. There are many stories about them as well, which I will tell you another time.

  But some of the Titans who did not fight by the side of Cronus were spared. One of these, Prometheus, molded a race of beings out of clay, and it is said that he then leaned down to whisper to them the words of wisdom that gave them life.

  We don’t know what he taught the new creatures, us. But this was a god who had lived to see sons rise up against fathers, each new generation replacing the old, remaking the world afresh each time. We can guess what he might have said.

  Rebel. Change is the only constant.

  * * *

  “DEATH IS THE easy choice,” Maggie said.

  “It is the right choice,” João said.

  Maggie wanted to keep the argument in their heads, but João refused. He wanted to speak with lips, tongue, bursts of air, the old way.

  Every gram of unnecessary mass had been shaved off the Sea Foam’s construction. The walls were thin and the rooms closely packed. Maggie and João’s voices echoed through the decks and halls.

  All over the ship, other families, who were having the same argument in their heads, stopped to listen.

  “The old must die to make way for the new,” João said. “You knew that we would not live to see the Sea Foam land when you signed up for this. Our children’s children, generations down the line, are meant to inherit the new world.”

  “We can land on the new world ourselves. We don’t have to leave all the hard work to our unborn descendants.”

  “We need to pass on a viable human culture for the new colony. We have no idea what the long-term consequences of this treatment will be on our mental health—”

  “Then let’s do the job we signed up for: exploration. Let’s figure it out—”

  “If we give in to this temptation, we’ll land as a bunch of four-hundred-year-olds who were afraid to die and whose ideas were ossified from old Earth. How can we teach our children the value of sacrifice, of the meaning of heroism, of beginning afresh? We’ll barely be human.”

  “We stopped being human the moment we agreed to this mission!” Maggie paused to get her voice under control. “Face it, the birth allocation algorithms don’t care about us, or our children. We’re nothing more than vessels for the delivery of a planned, optimal mix of genes to our destination. Do you really want generations to grow and die in here, knowing nothing but this narrow metal tube? I worry about their mental health.”

  “Death is essential to the growth of our species.” His voice was filled with faith, and she heard in it his hope that it was enough for both of them.

  “It’s a myth that we must die to retain our humanity.” Maggie looked at her husband, her heart in pain. There was a divide between them, as inexorable as the dilation of time.

  She spoke to him now inside his head. She imagined her thoughts, now transformed into photons, pushing against his brain, trying to illuminate the gap. We stop being human at the moment we give in to death.

  João looked back at her. He said nothing, either in her mind or aloud, which was his way of saying all that he needed to say.

  They stayed like that for a long time.

  * * *

  GOD FIRST CREATED mankind to be immortal, much like the angels.

  Before Adam and Eve chose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they did not grow old and they never became sick. During the day, they cultivated the Garden, and at night, they enjoyed each other’s company.

  Yes, I suppose the Garden was a bit like the hydroponics deck.

  Sometimes the angels visited them, and—according to Milton, who was born too late to get into the regular Bible—they conversed and speculated about everything: Did the Earth revolve around the Sun or was it the other way around? Was there life on other planets? Did angels also have sex?

  Oh no, I’m not joking. You can look it up in the computer.

  So Adam and Eve were forever young and perpetually curious. They did not need death to give their life purpose, to be motivated to learn, to work, to love, to give existence meaning.

  If that story is true, then we were never meant to die. And the knowledge of good and evil was really the knowledge of regret.

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW SOME very strange stories, Gran-Gran,” six-year-old Sara said.

  “They’re old stories,” Maggie said. “When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me many stories and I did a lot of reading.”

  “Do you want me to live forever like you, and not grow old and die someday like my mother?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do, sweetheart. You’ll have to figure that out when you’re older.”

  “Like the knowledge of good and evil?”

  “Something like that.”

  She leaned down and kissed her great-great-great-great …—she had long lost count—… granddaughter, as gently as she could. Like all children born in the low gravity of the Sea Foam, her bones were thin and delicate, like a bird’s. Maggie turned off the nightlight and left.

  Though she would pass her four hundredth birthday in another month, Maggie didn’t look a day older than thirty-five. The recipe for the fountain of youth, Earth’s last gift to the colonists before they lost all communications, worked well.

  She stopped and gasped. A small boy, about ten years of age, waited in front of the door to her room.

  Bobby, she said. Except for the very young, who did not yet have the implants, all the colonists now conversed through thoughts rather than speech. It was faster and more private.

  The boy looked at her, saying nothing and thinking nothing at her. She was struck by how like his father he was. He had the same expressions, the same mannerisms, even the same ways to speak by not speaking.

  She sighed, opened the door, and walked in after him.

  One more month, he said, sitting on the edge of the couch so that his feet didn’t dangle.

  Everybody on the ship was counting down the days. In one more month they’d be in orbit around the fourth planet of 61 Virginis, their destination, a new Earth.

  After we land, will you change your mind about—she hesitated, but went on after a moment—your appearance?

  Bobby shook his head, and a hint of boyish petulance crossed his face. Mom, I made my decision a long time ago. Let it go. I like the way I am.

  * * *

  IN THE END, the men and women of the Sea Foam had decided
to leave the choice of eternal youth to each individual.

  The cold mathematics of the ship’s enclosed ecosystem meant that when someone chose immortality, a child would have to remain a child until someone else on the ship decided to grow old and die, opening up a new slot for an adult.

  João chose to age and die. Maggie chose to stay young. They sat together as a family and it felt a bit like a divorce.

  “One of you will get to grow up,” João said.

  “Which one?” Lydia asked.

  “We think you should decide,” João said, glancing at Maggie, who nodded reluctantly.

  Maggie had thought it was unfair and cruel of her husband to put such a choice before their children. How could children decide if they wanted to grow up when they had no real idea what that meant?

  “It’s no more unfair than you and I deciding whether we want to be immortal,” João had said. “We have no real idea what that means either. It is terrible to put such a choice before them, but to decide for them would be even more cruel.” Maggie had to agree that he had a point.

  It seemed like they were asking the children to take sides. But maybe that was the point.

  Lydia and Bobby looked at each other, and they seemed to reach a silent understanding. Lydia got up, walked to João, and hugged him. At the same time, Bobby came and hugged Maggie.

  “Dad,” Lydia said, “when my time comes, I will choose the same as you.” João tightened his arms around her, and nodded.

  Then Lydia and Bobby switched places and hugged their parents again, pretending that everything was fine.

  For those who refused the treatment, life went on as planned. As João grew old, Lydia grew up: first an awkward teenager, then a beautiful young woman. She went into engineering, as predicted by her aptitude tests, and decided that she did like Catherine, the shy young doctor that the computers suggested would be a good mate for her.

  “Will you grow old and die with me?” Lydia asked the blushing Catherine one day.

  They married and had two daughters of their own—to replace them, when their time came.

  “Do you ever regret choosing this path?” João asked her one time. He was very old and ill by then, and in another two weeks the computers would administer the drugs to allow him to fall asleep and not wake up.

  “No,” Lydia said, holding his hand with both of hers. “I’m not afraid to step out of the way when something new comes to take my place.”

  But who’s to say that we aren’t the “something new”? Maggie thought.

  In a way, her side was winning the argument. Over the years, more and more colonists had decided to join the ranks of the immortals. But Lydia’s descendants had always stubbornly refused. Sara was the last untreated child on the ship. Maggie knew she would miss the nightly story times when she grew up.

  Bobby was frozen at the physical age of ten. He and the other perpetual children integrated only uneasily into the life of the colonists. They had decades—sometimes centuries—of experience, but retained juvenile bodies and brains. They possessed adult knowledge, but kept the emotional range and mental flexibility of children. They could be both old and young in the same moment.

  There was a great deal of tension and conflict about what roles they should play on the ship, and, occasionally, parents who once thought they wanted to live forever would give up their spots when their children demanded it of them.

  But Bobby never asked to grow up.

  * * *

  MY BRAIN HAS the plasticity of a ten-year-old’s. Why would I want to give that up? Bobby said.

  Maggie had to admit that she always felt more comfortable with Lydia and her descendants. Even though they had all chosen to die, as João did, which could be seen as a kind of rebuke of her decision, she found herself better able to understand their lives and play a role in them.

  With Bobby, on the other hand, she couldn’t imagine what went on in his head. She sometimes found him a little creepy, which she agreed was a bit hypocritical, considering he only made the same choice she did.

  But you won’t experience what it’s like to be grown, she said. To love as a man and not a boy.

  He shrugged, unable to miss what he’d never had. I can pick up new languages quickly. It’s easy for me to absorb a new worldview. I’ll always like new things.

  Bobby switched to speech, and his boyish voice rose as it filled with excitement and longing. “If we meet new life and new civilization down there, we’ll need people like me, the forever children, to learn about them and understand them without fear.”

  It had been a long time since Maggie had really listened to her son. She was moved. She nodded, accepting his choice.

  Bobby’s face opened in a beautiful smile, the smile of a ten-year-old boy who had seen more than almost every human who had ever lived.

  “Mom, I’ll get that chance. I came to tell you that we’ve received the results of the first close-up scans of 61 Virginis e. It’s inhabited.”

  * * *

  UNDER THE SEA FOAM, the planet spun slowly. Its surface was covered by a grid of hexagonal and pentagonal patches, each a thousand miles across. About half of the patches were black as obsidian, while the rest were a grainy tan. 61 Virginis e reminded Maggie of a soccer ball.

  Maggie stared at the three aliens standing in front of her in the shuttle bay, each about six feet tall. The metallic bodies, barrel-shaped and segmented, rested on four stick-thin, multi-jointed legs.

  When the vehicles first approached the Sea Foam, the colonists had thought they were tiny scout ships until scans confirmed the absence of any organic matter. Then the colonists had thought they were autonomous probes until they came right up to the ship’s camera, displayed their hands, and lightly tapped the lens.

  Yes, hands. Midway up each of the metallic bodies, two long, sinuous arms emerged and terminated in soft, supple hands made of a fine alloy mesh. Maggie looked down at her own hands. The alien hands looked just like hers: four slender fingers, an opposable thumb, flexible joints.

  On the whole, the aliens reminded Maggie of robotic centaurs.

  At the very top of each alien body was a spherical protuberance studded with clusters of glass lenses, like compound eyes. Other than the eyes, this “head” was also covered by a dense array of pins attached to actuators that moved in synchrony like the tentacles of a sea anemone.

  The pins shimmered as though a wave moved through them. Gradually, they took on the appearance of pixellated eyebrows, lips, eyelids—a face, a human face.

  The alien began to speak. It sounded like English but Maggie couldn’t make it out. The phonemes, like the shifting patterns of the pins, seemed elusive, just beyond coherence.

  It is English, Bobby said to Maggie, after centuries of pronunciation drift. He’s saying “Welcome back to humanity.”

  The fine pins on the alien face shifted, unveiling a smile. Bobby continued to translate. We left Earth long after your departure, but we were faster, and passed you in transit centuries ago. We’ve been waiting for you.

  Maggie felt the world shift around her. She looked around, and many of the older colonists, the immortals, looked stunned.

  But Bobby, the eternal child, stepped forward. “Thank you,” he said aloud, and smiled back.

  * * *

  LET ME TELL you a story, Sara. We humans have always relied on stories to keep the fear of the unknown at bay.

  I’ve told you how the Mayan gods created people out of maize, but did you know that before that, there were several other attempts at creation?

  First came the animals: brave jaguar and beautiful macaw, flat fish and long serpent, the great whale and the lazy sloth, the iridescent iguana and the nimble bat. (We can look up pictures for all of these on the computer later.) But the animals only squawked and growled, and could not speak their creators’ names.

  So the gods kneaded a race of beings out of mud. But the mud men could not hold their shape. Their faces drooped, softened by water, yearning to re
join the earth from whence they were taken. They could not speak but only gurgled incoherently. They grew lopsided and were unable to procreate, to perpetuate their own existence.

  The gods’ next effort is the one of most interest to us. They created a race of wooden manikins, like dolls. The articulated joints allowed their limbs to move freely. The carved faces allowed their lips to flap and eyes to open. The stringless puppets lived in houses and villages, and went busily about their lives.

  But the gods found that the wooden men had neither souls nor minds, and so they could not praise their makers properly. They sent a great flood to destroy the wooden men, and asked the animals of the jungle to attack them. When the anger of the gods was over, the wooden men had become monkeys.

  And only then did the gods turn to maize.

  Many have wondered if the wooden men were really content to lose to the children of the maize. Perhaps they’re still waiting in the shadows for an opportunity to come back, for creation to reverse its course.

  * * *

  THE BLACK HEXAGONAL patches were solar panels, Atax, the leader of the three envoys from 61 Virginis e, explained. Together, they provided the power needed to support human habitation on the planet. The tan patches were cities, giant computing arrays where trillions of humans lived as virtual patterns of computation.

  When Atax and the other colonists had first arrived, 61 Viriginis e was not particularly hospitable to life from Earth. It was too hot, the air was too poisonous, and the existing alien life, mostly primitive microbes, was quite deadly.

  But Atax and the others who had stepped onto the surface were not human, not in the sense Maggie would have understood the term. They were composed of more metal than water, and they were no longer trapped by the limits of organic chemistry. The colonists quickly constructed forges and foundries, and their descendants soon spread out across the globe.

  Most of the time they chose to merge into the Singularity, the overall World-Mind that was both artificial and organic, where eons passed in a second as thought was processed at the speed of quantum computation. In the world of bits and qubits, they lived as gods.