Beth found the group spread out on a beige carpet. She was running late and barely had time to give Janine a nod and get out her pen. A physicist from Case Western, Dr. Babcock, took the floor. She wore a faded skirt and sweater.
The topic was time travel. Even having read the supplemental materials, Beth found herself poorly prepared. So perplexed was Beth by the universal constant that she almost didn’t hear the speaker’s central assertion. “We have now transported a photon backward in time by six milliseconds,” the woman stated without any special emphasis. Beth copied the statement into her notes, then read it and really comprehended it for the first time.
“But certainly this would have been all over the newspapers,” she blurted.
“We have not, as yet, published this work. In fact, it’s quite confidential.” She straightened her skirt. “Considering the future implications, we feel this could be a dangerous discovery.”
“But why are you on the lecture circuit, then?”
Dottie intervened. “It’s so difficult to get really interesting lecturers,” she said. “We could catch Stephen Hawking at any number of universities, for example, so why trouble him to come here? Some of our friends are friends of her friends, and so her work came to our attention by the very most discreet means and we invited her over for a chat.” She was wearing a lilac pant suit this week, still sporting that god-awful huge ruby brooch on her lapel.
Sandy, who was sitting in the corner, continued. “Part of what we do at these enrichment meetings is collect knowledge. Many of us take notes, and we file the notes, along with the publications. We maintain a library, just in case any of the ladies needs to read up on things.”
“And we have access to certain funds that we can use to support research like Dr. Babcock’s,” added Claire. She blushed. “You know, from bake sales and such…”
“How much money?” said Beth. “How big a library?”
There was silence around the room. “I guess I don’t actually know,” said Sandy. Many of the women shrugged. Beth caught Dottie’s eye and saw a vague glimmer, then it was gone, and the lecture continued. Nothing they said quite made sense.
Then it was time to clean up and drive home. Beth walked out with Janine. “You think they got that professor here on bake-sale money?” Janine whispered.
A footstep behind them on the sidewalk startled Beth, and she jumped, her heart pounding hard. Dottie had somehow crept up on them. How much had she heard?
“It’s twenty-five thousand,” said Dottie.
“What?”
“Twenty-five thousand articles, books, and recordings in the book-club library.”
“How could half a dozen women collect that many?” said Beth.
“Half a dozen women in North Revena, another half-dozen in Westwood, a hundred or so in Detroit and Toledo, and so forth. Our network branches right across the country, though there aren’t many that know it and I would thank you to take that information in confidence.”
Beth gaped. Janine raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly. Dottie continued.
“I was wondering if you two ladies would like to join me for an informal tea next week. It’s just some other book-club women. I’d like to introduce you to them. Strictly private, of course. Sort of an enrichment-enrichment meeting.”
Janine got a wicked, secretive look on her face. “I’m having my nails done next Thursday night, but I suppose I could reschedule.”
Beth decided to play coy, too. “I’ll have to check my calendar, but I believe I’m free.”
“I believe you’re free as, well,” Dottie answered, giving them both a schoolteacher’s glare. “We meet at the university graduate library. Be in the foyer at seven sharp.” Then she turned and hobbled away.
* * *
MATT HUNCHED OVER a cardboard box, filling it with books that Beth handed to him. They had half of the living room bookshelf packed already. The room was beginning to look bare and forlorn. Jimmy was upstairs beating the hell out of a stuffed animal with his “lightsaver,” and Suzie was at the neighbor’s house, playing with her best friend while she still could. Sarah sat on the floor nearby, quietly eating a copy of Goodnight Moon. “Oh, I called the CIA,” said Matt. “They want to talk to you.”
“Go figure,” said Beth.
“Yeah, at first I thought you would be in trouble for disturbing a crime scene, but I told them you were on your period that day and they got over it.”
Beth threw a shoe at him. “What are they going to do about it?” Into the box went Foundation, by Isaac Asimov.
Matt shrugged. “Investigate, I guess.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Beth said. “Sirocco doesn’t shoot up houses. They send tiny jujitsu masters into your bedroom at night with a knife or a garotte, to keep it nice and quiet. If they had wanted one of us dead, we would be dead.” She handed him Seabiscuit: an American Legend and The Traditional Bowyer’s Bible, Volume 2.
“Maybe your book-club is more than it seems. Maybe they’re trying to scare you. What do you have that they want?”
“Barb’s phone, apparently,” said Beth, dropping Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary in his lap. “Though I can’t imagine that Sirocco was that desperate to have her kid’s soccer schedule.” She tossed down The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon, Parkman’s Conquest of Mexico, and Merill’s Catullus.
“We live, my Lesbia, and we love,” said Matt.
Beth sighed. “Ah, ‘Counting Kisses.’ I remember you used to recite that poem to me in Kuwait. In Latin.”
Matt waggled his eyebrows at her. “It worked.”
* * *
BETH AND JANINE waited in the foyer at the University Graduate Library, the “Gradli.” It was five stories high with several basement sublevels, every level packed with books floor-to-ceiling with rows so close together two people would have to turn sideways to pass. Colored tape on the floors marked paths back to the elevators and computers. Every year, some pervert would surprise an unsuspecting coed and expose himself, then disappear into the stacks. The police never caught up with him.
Dottie met them in the foyer, smiling broadly. The pant suit was gray this time, with pin stripes, and she was still wearing her brooch. She led them past the information desk, where students smiled politely, waiting to answer their questions. Dottie cut a straight path to the back of the library, all the way to the back, then led them into a tiny elevator, almost too small for three people. An old-fashioned gate closed off the front of the elevator, and it lurched as it lowered them into the basement.
These were the deepest stacks, and Beth had hardly ventured inside them, even in her student days. The shelves themselves were two stories high, and the “floors” merely metal grid-work pathways spanning the space between shelves. There was no colored tape down here, only an occasional telephone to call for help. You could read the decimal numbers from the books nearby, and the desk would send someone down to lead you out.
The elevator thumped down on the lowest level, and Dottie led them out between the bookshelves. They were on a concrete floor here. They craned their necks upward to see light penetrating the metal grids above. Beth lost track of the turnings as they wove through the stacks, making their way back toward what she thought was the front of the library again.
“Why couldn’t we have just come down the front way?” Beth asked.
“You can’t get down that way,” Dottie answered, and shuffled along quite rapidly for someone so old and hunched up.
Finally, Dottie stopped and lifted up a trap door in the floor. A flight of stairs led downward. She ushered them on, then followed. The stairwell was lit only by a single, bare, dim bulb at the bottom where a hallway spread before them, lined on both sides by gray metal doors.
Dottie opened one and gestured for Janine and Beth to go inside, then slammed it behind them. Beth whirled around. “Dottie?” They stood inside an empty room, the walls cinderblock and painted gray.
Janine’s eyes went wide and round.
> Dottie’s voice piped in from a hidden speaker. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, ladies. We’ve received intelligence recently indicating that our organization has been infiltrated by a Sirocco operative.”
Beth swore. Janine began to cry. “Get me out of here! I’m claustrophobic,” she said.
Dottie continued, “The lecture you heard last week about photons traveling in time is a small part of our work, ladies. Scientists have isolated photons traveling backward in time in nature. By collecting these photons, they’ve been able to construct a picture of the future, if you will, though if you looked at their scopes, it would only be a bunch of jagged lines. We know, though, that a great war will destroy civilization in the next century, and that humanity will be subjected to centuries of suffering and barbarism. A warlord named En’uka will come to power, and his tyranny will nearly destroy humanity a second time. Our only hope is a tiny city-state that will arise in northern Wisconsin called Wellspring. Given the right circumstances, Wellspring will become the kernel of a new civilization.”
“What does a book club have to do with it?”
“One of the requirements for saving humanity is preserving its knowledge. Over the next half-century, the library compiled by the Ladies Literary Society network will surpass the Libary of Congress, and it already holds some secret knowledge, such as Dr. Babcock’s research. And all of it fits inside a device small enough to carry in your pocket.”
Janine hissed.
“Unfortunately, it is not hidden inside Barb’s phone. Ladies.” Dottie glanced between Beth and Janine, her tone dripping with accusation.
“I can’t believe you think one of us stole Barb’s phone!” said Janine.
“Huh?” Beth said, then blinked. “Foundation! You’re a Foundation! Like in Isaac Asimov’s book.”
“Exactly. In fact, it was Foundation that inspired us to begin our work, ten years ago when the first post-apocalypse images began to circulate. Sirocco is an organization whose founders seek to wrest control of the future for themselves and their descendents. After the war, Sirocco will become the great power in North America. It will eventually spawn En’uka. But we can talk more after this bit of unpleasantness,” Dottie said. “In a few moments, you will be exposed to an electromagnetic pulse. If either of you carries a brain implant, it will be disabled at that point. Again, we’re sorry, but this is necessary for you safety.”
“Noooo!” screamed Janine. “If you don’t get me out of here right now, I’m going to freak out! I’m seriously claustrophobic!”
“Dottie!” said Beth. “Open the door and let us out. We’re not Sirocco spies.”
Janine pounded on the door so hard, she cut her fist. Blood welled up and ran down her arm, but she ignored it and kept screaming and crying at the door.
“Please,” said Beth. “Janine needs medical attention. I think she’s telling the truth about her phobia.” Then Beth glanced at her friend and began to doubt. She had only known Janine for a year.
“Ten seconds,” said Dottie’s voice. “Then we’ll let you out.”
Beth turned in a circle, looking for a window, or even a chink in the cinder block. She was beginning to feel claustrophobic herself.
Suddenly, Janine grabbed Beth from behind, with unexpected strength. The cold tip of a gun barrel touched her temple. “Five seconds,” said Janine in a perfectly calm voice, “And Beth dies.”
“Janine!” said Beth.
“Sorry,” said Janine. And louder, “Four.”
Nothing happened. Beth realized there was no EM pulse. If they had one, they would have used it. This drama had been set up to flush out the spy.
“Three.”
The door opened. Janine dropped Beth and ran out. In a minute, she had disappeared up the stairs and into the library stacks. Dottie stood in the hallway, suddenly looking a lot younger. She stood up straighter, taller, and Beth realized that “old lady” was her disguise. A half dozen other women stood behind her, several of them dressed in full military gear. In their oversized flak jackets, toting M-16s, they looked like they had just scored big at a Guantanamo Bay garage sale.
Beth pulled her Colt 1911 from her purse and set off in pursuit. Behind her, she heard Dottie’s slingbacks clopping against the floor with amazing speed. The rest of the book-club ladies followed.
They popped out of the sub-basement into the lowest level of the library. The troops fanned out, disappearing into the stacks. Beth paused to listen for footsteps, heavy breathing, anything that would give them an idea which way Janine had gone. She choked back her sympathy. A human being who has given up free will is no longer human. She learned that in Kuwait. Sirocco members would slaughter their own children for the cause. The implant ameliorated any inconvenient pangs of conscience. It could turn anyone into a perfect psychopath. The friend she thought she had never existed.
Finally, it came, a sliding sound, off to the left. Beth ran down the rows with Dottie close behind her. Volumes whipped past. Beth stopped at a corner and looked down a row of books. She waited again for a sound. Dottie came up behind her, a Glock clutched in her bony, arthritic hands. Beth looked again. Not bony and arthritic, but corded and muscular! How many things had she assumed about Dottie, just because she appeared to be an old woman. No one looks closely at a harmless old lady.
Dottie pointed at Beth, then pointed down the aisle, then pointed at herself, and pointed down the row. Beth understood. They were going to flush her out, then cut her off.
Beth began to move down the aisle, stopping at every shelf, and peering around carefully before advancing. Then she heard another noise. This time from above.
Beth threw herself aside and the books behind where her head would have been exploded. “Upstairs, Dottie!” Beth shouted. She fired a shot upward and ran.
Two more shots rang out above, and Beth ran faster. “Dottie!” She pelted off of the stairway and nearly bowled Janine over. Too close to shoot, she swung her pistol hard into the side of Janine’s head, knocking her to the floor. Janine tumbled backward, leveled her gun at Beth’s heart and pulled the trigger. At the same time, Beth fired one shot into her friend’s ruined brain, another into her aorta. Janine’s shot struck Beth in the chest and knocked her backward. Her body armor stopped the bullet, but most likely her ribs were cracked. Janine lay on her back, blood flowing from her chest and down through the metal floor grating, painting the concrete floor on the level below with splotches of bright red.
Beth looked up, and saw Dottie crumpled a short distance away. Beth ran to her and held her head. Dottie’s eyelids fluttered. She was shot in the stomach and her blood ran very dark. Beth pressed on the wound and started calling for help.
“Wait,” said Dottie. She lifted her hand and fumbled feebly at the brooch on her collar. Finally, she gave up. “Take it.”
“Your brooch?”
“The Library,” said Dottie. “It has been foreseen. It disappears … today.” She took a labored breath. “Reappears, who knows where. Take it, find others, fill it up, keep it safe, and remember, Wellspring.”
“Wellspring,” said Beth, unpinning the brooch. “I will.”
“Thank—you.” Dottie closed her eyes and died.
* * *
THE MOVERS CARRIED the last box out of the house, and Beth stood looking at the empty room. The carpet was brighter where the furniture had been. A coaxial cable snaked out of the wall on one side of the room, and a lone cobweb decorated a high corner. Matt put his arm around her. “I thought the CIA would never be done with you.”
“I don’t think they ever will be,” said Beth. She reached up and touched a lump under her T-shirt—a ruby pin hung on a chain around her neck. Her eyes misted up. “I’m going to miss this old house,” she said. “All I can think of is walking in that door with each of my three babies.”
“There are wonderful memories waiting for you in your new house,” said Matt. “You just don’t know about them yet.”
Beth smiled, wishing sh
e could get a glimpse of a few of the photons hurtling back through time from her own future. “You’re right. Sarah’s going to be taking her first steps in our new house. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“And think of Suzie’s graduation party,” said Matt. “The whole neighborhood will be there. The Joneses and the Smiths, our friends for over ten years.” He took her hand and turned her toward the door.
“Oh, and don’t forget Jimmy’s first day of school,” said Beth. They walked outside, where their children were waiting for them in the car already. “I hope I can find a good book club,” she said as she slid behind the wheel.
Matt buckled himself in. Jimmy bounced in his seat. “Are we going yet?” he said.
Beth smiled back at them. “We’re on our way! Daddy’s going to start his new job, and I think we’re all going to love living in Green Bay.”
ANTARCTICA STARTS HERE
Paul McAuley
Paul McAuley, formerly a research biologist, now a full-time writer, lives in North London, United Kingdom. He has published nineteen crime and science-fiction novels, including Fairyland, which won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell awards, Cowboy’s Angels, The Quiet War, and Gardens of the Sun. He has also published over eighty short stories. His latest books are A Very British History, a retrospective collection of short stories spanning more than twenty-five years, and a novel, Evening’s Empires.
“Antarctica Starts Here” was published in Asimov’s in 2012, when the magazine had a very strong year. It is a well-told story of how global warming affects the lives of some characters at one time in one place, dramatically. How will an ice-free Antarctica be exploited?
WE WERE COMING back from a hiking trip in the Rouen Mountains with five Hyundai executives and their gear in the back of the tilt-wing when I glimpsed a flash of reflected sunlight in the landscape. An ice-blink where there was no ice. Dan had spotted it, too. Before I could say anything, the tilt-wing was banking sharply and Dan was saying over the internal comms, “A momentary diversion to check out a place of interest, ladies and gentlemen.”
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