“Careful, please—careful!” Patty scolded. She grabbed his hand in a tight grip. “Bear, thank God you are all right. You nearly died! Your lung collapsed and they had to do an emergency surgery—what do you call it?” she asked Dr. Zedrosky, who stood at the stair up to the main deck, arms folded, looking amused. “Oh, never mind. You are here now,” she said to Bear. “That is what matters.”
He looked over her head toward the others. Tom was there, and Jonah, and perhaps another six of the children. “Vanessa?” he asked. “Where is she? Where are the others?” A spasm of fear gripped him.
“No, no—don’t worry. She is fine. They are all fine. No one was hurt. Vanessa is learning to fly the blimp.”
“It’s not fair!” Tom told Patty. “I have to watch the twins and Latoya,” he said, turning to Bear. “I wanted to go first.”
Patty said, “Be patient, Tomás. You always nag!”
Bear laid a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “You’ll have your turn soon.”
Patty introduced Bear to the other scientists at the table near the back.
“Thank you,” Bear told them. “Thanks for rescuing us.”
A man about his age replied, “You’re the ones who rescued us.” They shook hands all around.
“Excuse me,” Patty said, “but I need to talk to Bear.” She pulled him over to the front of the lounge. “I’m very worried. Come see.” She set him up in a cushioned seat with pillows propping up his ankle, and laid a set of maps across his lap. It’d been a long time since he’d seen working smartpaper. He wondered whom O’Neal had stolen it from.
“I’ve plugged in my parents’ coordinates,” she said. “But they aren’t right. I just don’t understand.” She pointed out features below and before them on a mountain range. “Those peaks are right, but look out there. Where we are going, it is not supposed to be an island. My parents made me memorize, and this is wrong. What happened?”
“The seas have risen,” he told her, “since the maps were made.”
At the location where Patty’s coordinates said they should land, they began their descent, slow as a soap bubble, into a mountain valley lush and green. Bear should not have been surprised, but he was, when they peered at the ground through their instruments and what appeared to be ground cover was revealed to be camo netting.
Patty could hardly stand still. She paced like a cat in the lounge, and glanced over at him with an expression that said, See? What did I tell you?
The “fifteen minutes to touchdown” alert sounded. Patty dropped into a seat next to Bear’s. “How has it come to this?” she asked.
She meant, Why? She meant, his generation, and all those before them. Why had nothing been done, while there had still been time to act?
Because of men like O’Neal, he wanted to say, and the people who are afraid, and want him to tell them what to do.
There was perhaps truth in that. But it was also a lie.
We carry the past with us, he thought. The living and the dead, and all our past choices. No one person, no one nation, even, could have saved the planet alone. And we were incapable of working together. We were too greedy—too hungry, too afraid. Too distracted. Orla would have pointed out that there had been numerous extinctions before. We’re just clever monkeys, after all. Smart mammals, social chimps. Just not… quite… social enough.
In the end, he just shrugged and gave her a hug.
The entire population of the blimp crowded around the hatch when the airship alighted. The door went up and light streamed in. Bear was among the last to exit. Patty helped him down the ramp but she was wound as taut as a coiled spring.
“Go!” he said grumpily. “I’m not a child.” With a grateful glance, she raced ahead.
The ground was spongy and the morning air was chilly. Bear found himself wanting a jacket during daytime, for the first time in, oh, forty years.
A group of people came out of long, low buildings. Patty cried out. A man and woman who resembled her picked her up and hugged her close. They spoke together in rapid-fire Spanish. Patty sobbed. The woman cradled her and made crooning noises. Bear had never seen Patty cry till this moment.
The man came over to Bear. “Jesus de la Montaña.”
“Bear Jessen.” Bear shook his hand.
“You have returned our daughter to us. The soldados attacked and when we came back for her she was gone. We feared the worse. Gracias. Mil gracias. How can we ever repay you?”
“Your daughter” Bear replied, “is a remarkable young woman.” He looked around. “This is Hoku Pa’a?”
“It is. Welcome. Make yourself at home.”
“Is it true what Patty said? You’ve stored the world’s knowledge?”
“We have tried. Much is lost. But not all. And we have ideas for how to remove carbon from the atmosphere, how to restore and rebuild. It will be the work of many lifetimes. Perhaps next time we will do a better job of caring for the world.”
“And each other,” Bear said.
“De verdad,” Patty’s father said.
Bear watched the Hoku Pa’ans welcome the travelers. They viewed the children with surprise and delight. He watched the little ones spread out across the green valley—running, skipping, shrieking— giddy with joy.
“Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!” Jonah yelled. “I’m a giant!”
“No you’re not,” Angelique said. “You’re a midget. Bear is the giant!” “Am too a giant!” “Are not!” “Tag, you’re it!” Off they went.
Bear thought at Orla, Oh, fine. You win. There was a reason. I’ll carry on for the young ones’ sake. But I’m still not ready to let you off the hook for dying first. Damn you. He glared at his pop-top ring. Then he kissed it. Of course, Orla would laugh and kiss him and call him a fool.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In assembling this book, almost all of the contributors went out of their way to offer helpful suggestions for other writers and stories. In addition to them, I’d also like to thank the following people: Fernanda Diaz, Joshua Garrett-Davis, John Joseph Adams, Paolo Bacigalupi, Anatoly Belilovsky, Roberto de Sousa Causo, Bradley Denton, Cory Doctorow, Gardner Dozois, David Hartwell, John-Henri Holmberg, Yoshio Kobayashi, Stephen Mazur, Jean-Pierre Moumon, Barbara Norton, Al Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lisa Rogers, Alexander Shalganov, Lewis Shiner, Martin Sust, Harry Turtledove, Rachel Van Gelder, Vernor Vinge, and Jim Young. The biggest thanks of all go to John Oakes, without whom this book would not be.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Brian W. Aldiss, OBE, is the author of classics such as Hothouse (a 1962 novel about climate change, also known as The Long Afternoon of Earth), Greybeard, and The Malacia Tapestry. The three novels in his Helliconia trilogy depict an Earthlike planet where seasons last for centuries. He lives in Oxford, England.
Michael Alexander lives in western Oregon and holds degrees in chemistry and pharmacology. He considers the current yelling about climate change this century’s equivalent to the reception of Darwinian evolution one hundred fifty years ago, and fully expects the debate to be continuing one hundred fifty years from now, with both sides pointing and yelling while standing up to their waists in warm water.
Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at UC-Irvine who has published more than thirty books, mostly novels. His award-winning novel Timescape occurs against a background of climate change, as do many of his short stories. He has published scientific papers on the capture of carbon dioxide and on the methods described in his story here. He has also consulted with several government agencies on responses to the climate change problem and the coming energy crisis.
Jeff Carlson is the international bestselling author of the Plague Year trilogy. To date, his work has been translated into fourteen languages.
He is currently at work on a new standalone thriller. Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests, and more on his website at www.jverse. com.
Paul Di Filippo has sold nearly two hundred short stories and several novels in his thirty-year career to
date. His story “Life in the Anthro-pocene,” appearing in the anthology The Mammoth Book of the End of the World, considers a Greenhouse Earth scenario in which the planet nonetheless manages to support nine billion people.
Alan Dean Foster’s first stories appeared in The Arkham Collector and Analog in the late 1960s. His first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was published in 1972. It is still in print. His short fiction has appeared in all the major magazines and numerous anthologies. Six collections of his short form work have been published. Foster has written more than 100 books (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western, historical, contemporary fiction, and also nonfiction) and his work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He is the author of screenplays, radio plays, talking records, and the story for the first Star Trek movie.
Joseph Green worked for thirty-seven years in the American space program, six military and thirty-one civilian. At NASA he specialized in preparing fact sheets, brochures, and other semitechnical publications for the general public, explaining complex scientific and engineering concepts in layman’s language. As a part-time freelancer he published five science fiction novels and about seventy-five shorter works. One of his novels, Star Probe, examined environmental change from a different perspective, that of fanatics trying to sabotage the American space program in the belief that it wasted resources better devoted to saving Earth. Green has a BA from the University of Alabama, and worked as mill hand, construction worker, and shop supervisor for Boeing before moving to the Kennedy Space Center. He retired as deputy chief of the education office.
George Guthridge has lived in rural Alaska for twenty-eight years, including six in an Eskimo village on a Bering Sea island. He has been nationally honored five times for his work with Alaska Native youth and for having co-created the nation’s most successful college preparatory program for Native Americans. He has sold sixty stories, mostly to such magazines as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and Asimov’s, and has been a Nebula and Hugo Award finalist. In 1997 he and co-author Janet Berliner won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, for Children of the Dusk.
Matthew Hughes writes science-fantasy in a Jack Vance mode. His latest novels are: Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, Template , and The Damned Buster). His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Postscripts, Storyteller, and Interzone. He has won the Canadian equivalent of the Edgar, and been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, and Derringer Awards. For thirty years, he was a freelance speechwriter for Canadian corporate executives and political leaders. At present, he augments a fiction writer’s income by housesitting and has no fixed address. His web page is www.archonate.com.
Chris Lawson is a doctor, teacher, and writer who lives on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
M. J. Locke is an engineer and writer eking out an existence in the urban wilds of New Mexico. Locke’s novel Up Against It is due out in March 2011. Up Against It is the first book of WAVE, a science fiction series about a group of souls struggling to survive on the treacherous frontiers of interplanetary space, the infosphere, and human nature.
Pat MacEwen has a B.S. in marine biology. She is a physical anthropologist who worked as a CSI in California for a decade. Currently, her research is focused on a detailed comparison of the genocidal campaigns carried out in Kosovo and Rwanda. Her short fiction has appeared in Aeon, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Full Spectrum 5.
Judith Moffett is the author of eleven books in five genres. Her science fiction novels include the Holy Ground Trilogy—The Ragged World (Vol. 1), Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream (II), and The Bird Shaman (III)—as well as Pennterra, a standalone. All four focus on ecological themes, including climate change. She has been honored with the Theodore Sturgeon Award (1987) and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (1988), and has been nominated for a number of others.
David Prill is the author of the cult novels The Unnatural, Serial Killer Days, and Second Coming Attractions, and the collection Dating Secrets of the Dead. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Subterranean, SCIFICTION, Cemetery Dance, and the original anthologies Salon Fantastique, Poe, and Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. He lives in a small town in the Minnesota north woods, where he is working on an offbeat baseball novel.
Bruce Sterling is the author of a dozen novels, including Islands in the Net, Distraction, Zeitgeist, The Difference Engine (written with William Gibson), and most recently, The Caryatids. His 1996 novel Heavy Weather depicts stormchasers in the American Midwest in a future where global warming has made tornadoes more active. Bruce Sterling writes frequently for Wired and for many online publications. Originally from Texas, he currently lives in Europe and travels a lot.
Ray Vukcevich’s new book is Boarding Instructions. His other books are Meet Me in the Moon Room and The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces. He lives Oregon. Read more about him at www.rayvuk.com.
ADDITIONAL READING
Most of the contributors to this anthology have written novels on this subject, ranging from Brian W. Aldiss’s novels of environment and season to Judith Moffett’s alien invasion novels to Jeff Carlson’s ecodisaster books. For readers interested in more stories about climate change, here’s a list of other books that might be of interest. These suggestions are neither comprehensive nor wholly recommended; instead, they are meant to point you in a few directions if you’re interested in reading more speculations about climate.
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin (1985)
Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson (1997)
Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler (2008)
The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman (1990)
Climate of Change by Piers Anthony (2010)
The Drought by J. G. Ballard (1968)
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard (1968)
The Drylands by Mary Rosenblum (1993)
Earth by David Brin (1990)
Eruption by Harry Turtledove (forthcoming 2011)
Exodus by Julie Bertagna (2005)
Far North by Marcel Theroux (2009) The Flood by Maggie Gee (2005)
Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) by Kim Stanley Robinson
Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias edited by Kim Stanley
Robinson (1994)
The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse by Dale Pendell (2010)
Greenhouse Summer by Norman Spinrad (1999)
Greensword by Donald J. Bingle (2009)
Greenwar by Steven Gould and Laura J. Mixon (1997)
The Ice People by Maggie Gee (2005)
In Flight Entertainment by Helen Simpson (2010)
Mother of Storms by John Barnes (1994)
The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman (2008)
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2004)
Primitive by Mark Nykanen (2009)
Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi (2008)
The Road to Corlay by Richard Cowper (1978)
River of Gods by Ian McDonald (2004)
The Sea and Summer (aka The Drowning Towers) by George
Turner (1987)
The Snow by Adam Roberts (2004)
Solar by Ian McEwan (2010)
State of Fear by Michael Crichton (2004)
Sunshine State by James Miller (2010)
Ultimatum by Matthew Glass (2009)
Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum (2007)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)
World made by hand by James Howard Kuntsler (2008)
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (2009)
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