The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Hitchcock nodded. “Yeah. We may be in deep shit already.”

  “What you say?”

  “Look at the berg,” Hitchcock said. “At water line. It’s getting real carved up.”

  Carter scooped up his glass and kicked in the biosensor boost. He scanned the berg. It didn’t look good. The heat was working it over very diligently.

  This was the hottest day since they’d entered these waters. The sun seemed to be getting bigger every minute. There was a nasty magnetic crackling coming out of the sky, as if the atmosphere itself were getting ionized as it baked. And the berg was starting to wobble. Carter saw the oscillations plainly, those horizontal grooves filling with water, the sea not so calm now as sky/ocean heat differentials began to build up and conflicting currents came slicing in.

  “Son of a bitch,” Carter said. “That settles it. We got to get moving right now.”

  There was still plenty to do. Carter gave the word and the mirror-dust spigots went into operation, cannoning shining clouds of powdered metal over the exposed surface of the berg, and probably all over the squid ship and the dinghy, too. It took half an hour to do the job. The squid ship was still roughening, the belly was lolloping around in a mean way. But Carter knew there was a gigantic base down there out of sight, enough to hold it steady until they could get under way, he hoped.

  “Let’s get the skirt on it now,” he said.

  A tricky procedure, nozzles at the ship’s water line extruding a thermoplastic spray that would coat the berg just where it was most vulnerable to wave erosion. The hard part came in managing the extensions of the cables linking the hooks to the ship so they could maneuver around the berg. But Nakata was an ace at that. They pulled up anchor and started around the far side. The mirror-dusted berg was dazzling, a tremendous mountain of white light.

  “I don’t like that wobble,” Hitchcock said.

  “Won’t matter a damn once we’re under way,” said Carter.

  The heat was like a hammer now, pounding the dark, cool surface of the water, mixing up the thermal layers, stirring up the currents, getting everything churned around. They had waited just a little too long to get started. The berg, badly undercut, was doing a big sway to windward, bowing like one of those round-bottomed Japanese dolls, then swaying back again. God only knew what kind of sea action the squid ship was getting, but Carter couldn’t see it from this side of the berg. He kept on moving, circling the berg to the full extension of the hook cables, then circling back the way he’d come.

  When they got around to leeward again, he saw what kind of sea action the squid ship had been getting. It was swamped. The ice tongue it had been anchored next to had come rising up out of the sea and kicked it like a giant foot.

  “Jesus Christ,” Hitchcock murmured, standing beside him. “Will you look at that. The damn fools just sat there all the time.”

  The Calamari Maru was shipping water like crazy and starting to go down. The sea was boiling with an armada of newly liberated squid, swiftly propelling themselves in all directions, heading anywhere else at top speed. Three dinghies were bobbing around in the water in the shadow of the berg.

  “Will you look at that,” Hitchcock said again.

  “Start the engines,” Carter told him. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Hitchcock stared at him, disbelievingly.

  “You mean that, Cap’n? You really mean that?”

  “I goddamn well do.”

  “Shit,” said Hitchcock. “This fucking lousy world.”

  “Go on. Get ’em started.”

  “You actually going to leave three boats full of people from a sinking ship sitting out there in the water?”

  “Yeah. You got it. Now start the engines, will you?”

  “That’s too much,” Hitchcock said softly, shaking his head in a big slow swing. “Too goddamn much.”

  He made a sound like a wounded buffalo and took two or three shambling steps toward Carter, his arms dangling loosely, his hand half cupped. Hitchcock’s eyes were slitted and his face looked oddly puffy. He loomed above Carter, wheezing and muttering, a dark, massive slab of a man. Half as big as the iceberg out there was how he looked just then.

  Oh, shit, Carter thought. Here it comes. My very own mutiny, right now.

  Hitchcock rumbled and muttered and closed his hands into fists. Exasperation tinged with fear swept through Carter and he brought his arm up without even stopping to think, hitting Hitchcock hard, a short fast jab in the mouth that rocked the older man’s head back sharply and sent him reeling against the rail. Hitchcock slammed into it and bounced. For a moment, it looked as if he’d fall, but he managed to steady himself. A kind of sobbing sound, but not quite a sob, more of a grunt, came from him. A bright dribble of blood sprouted on his white-stubbled chin.

  For a moment, Hitchcock seemed dazed. Then his eyes came back into focus and he looked at Carter in amazement.

  “I wasn’t going to hit you, Cap’n,” he said, blinking hard. There was a soft, stunned quality to his voice. “Nobody ever hits a cap’n, not ever. Not ever. You know that, Cap’n.”

  “I told you to start the engines.”

  “You hit me, Cap’n. What the hell you hit me for?”

  “You started to come at me, didn’t you?” Carter said.

  Hitchcock’s shining bloodshot eyes were immense in his Screen-blackened face. “You think I was coming at you? Oh, Cap’n! Oh, Jesus, Cap’n. Jesus!” He shook his head and wiped at the blood. Carter saw that he was bleeding, too, at the knuckle, where he’d hit a tooth. Hitchcock continued to stare at him, the way you might stare at a dinosaur that had just stepped out of the forest. Then his look of astonishment softened into something else—sadness, maybe. Or was it pity? Pity would be even worse, Carter thought. A whole lot worse.

  “Cap’n—” Hitchcock began, his voice hoarse and thick.

  “Don’t say it. Just go and get the engines started.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, man.”

  He went slouching off, rubbing at his lip.

  “Caskie’s picking up an autobuoy S O S,” Rennett called from somewhere updeck.

  “Nix,” Carter yelled back furiously. “We can’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no fucking room for them,” Carter said. His voice was as sharp as an icicle. “Nix. Nix.”

  He lifted his spyglass again and took another look toward the oncoming dinghies. Chugging along hard, they were, but having heavy weather of it in the turbulent water. He looked quickly away before he could make out faces. The berg, shining like fire, was still oscillating. He thought of the hot winds sweeping across the continent to the east, sweeping all around the belly of the world, the dry, rainless winds that forever sucked up what little moisture could still be found. It was almost a shame to have to go back there. Like returning to hell after a little holiday at sea, is how it felt. It was worst in the middle latitudes, the temperate zone, once so fertile. Rain almost never fell at all there now. The dying forests, the new grasslands taking over, deserts where even the grass couldn’t make it, the polar ice packs crumbling, the lowlands drowning everywhere, dead buildings sticking up out of the sea, vines sprouting on freeways, the alligators moving northward. This fucking lousy world, Hitchcock had said. Yeah. This berg here, this oversized ice cube, how many days’ water supply would that be for San Francisco? Ten? Fifteen?

  He turned. They were staring at him—Nakata, Rennett, Caskie, everybody but Hitchcock, who was on the bridge setting up the engine combination.

  “This never happened,” Carter told them. “None of this. We never saw anybody else out here. Not anybody. You got that? This never happened.”

  They nodded, one by one.

  There was a quick shiver down below as the tiny sun in the engine room, the little fusion sphere, came to full power. With a groan, the engine kicked in at high. The ship started to move away, out of the zone of dark water, toward the bluer sea just ahead. Off they went, pu
lling eastward as fast as they could, trying to make time ahead of the melt rate. It was afternoon now. Behind them, the other sun, the real one, lighted up the sky with screaming fury as it headed off into the west. That was good, to have the sun going one way as you were going the other.

  Carter didn’t look back. What for? So you can beat yourself up about something you couldn’t help?

  His knuckle was stinging where he had split it punching Hitchcock. He rubbed it in a distant, detached way, as if it were someone else’s hand. Think east, he told himself. You’re towing 2000 kilotons of million-year-old frozen water to thirsty San Francisco. Think good thoughts. Think about your bonus. Think about your next promotion. No sense looking back. You look back, all you do is hurt your eyes.

  LEWIS SHINER

  White City

  Lewis Shiner is widely regarded as one of the most exciting new writers of the eighties. His stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, Oui, Shayol, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, The Twilight Zone Magazine, the Wild Card series, and elsewhere. His books include Frontera and the critically acclaimed Deserted Cities of the Heart. His most recent book is a mainstream novel, Slam, and recently released is an anthology of anti-war alternatives he edited, When the Music’s Over. His story “Twilight Time” was in our Second Annual Collection; his “The War at Home” was in our Third Annual Collection; his “Jeff Beck” was in our Fourth Annual Collection, and his “Love in Vain” was in our Sixth Annual Collection. Shiner lives in Austin, Texas.

  Here he gives us a sly and compelling look at what a certain eccentric nineteenth-century inventor might have been able to accomplish, if he’d had the chance.…

  White City

  LEWIS SHINER

  Tesla lifts the piece of sirloin to his lips. Its volume is approximately .25 cubic inches, or .02777 of the entire steak. As he chews, he notices a waterspot on the back of his fork. He takes a fresh napkin from the stack at his left elbow and scrubs the fork vigorously.

  He is sitting at a private table in the refreshment stand at the West end of the Court of Honor. He looks out onto the Chicago World’s Fair and Columbian Exposition. It is October of 1893. The sun is long gone and the reflections of Tesla’s electric lights sparkle on the surface of the Main Basin, turning the spray from the fountain into glittering jewels. At the far end of the Basin stands the olive-wreathed Statue of the Republic in flowing robes. On all sides the White City lies in pristine elegance, testimony to the glorious architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. Its chilly streets are populated by mustached men in topcoats and sturdy women in woolen shawls.

  The time is 9:45. At midnight Nikola Tesla will produce his greatest miracle. The number twelve seems auspicious. It is important to him, for reasons he cannot understand, that it is divisible by three.

  Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J. Pierpont Morgan, stands at a little distance from his table. Though still in finishing school she is tall, self-possessed, strikingly attractive. She is reluctant to disturb Tesla, knowing he prefers to dine alone. Still she is drawn to him irresistibly. He is rake thin and handsome as the devil himself, with steel gray eyes that pierce through to her soul.

  “Mr. Tesla,” she says, “I pray I am not disturbing you.”

  Tesla looks up, smiles gently. “Miss Morgan.” He begins to rise.

  “Please, do not get up. I was merely afraid I would miss you. I had hoped we might walk together after you finished here.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  “I shall await you there, by the Basin.”

  She withdraws. Trailing a gloved hand along the balustrade, she tries to avoid the drunken crowds which swarm the Exposition Grounds. Tomorrow the Fair will close and pass into history. Already there are arguments as to what is to become of these splendid buildings. There is neither money to maintain them nor desire to demolish them. Chicago’s Mayor, Carter Harrison, worries that they will end up filthy and vandalized, providing shelter for the hundreds of poor who will no longer have jobs when the Fair ends.

  Her thoughts turn back to Tesla. She finds herself inordinately taken with him. At least part of the attraction is the mystery of his personal life. At age thirty-seven he has never married nor been engaged. She has heard rumors that his tastes might be, to put it delicately, Greek in nature. There is no evidence to support this gossip and she does not credit it. Rather it seems likely that no one has yet been willing to indulge the inventor’s many idiosyncrasies.

  She absently touches her bare left earlobe. She no longer wears the pearl earrings that so offended him on their first meeting. She flushes at the memory, and at that point Tesla appears.

  “Shall we walk?” he asks.

  She nods and matches his stride, careful not to take his arm. Tesla is not comfortable with personal contact.

  To their left is the Hall of Agriculture. She has heard that its most popular attraction is an eleven-ton cheese from Ontario. Like so many other visitors to the Fair, she has not actually visited any of the exhibits. They seem pedestrian compared to the purity and classical lines of the buildings which house them. The fragrance of fresh roses drifts out through the open doors, and for a moment she is lost in a reverie of her native New York in the spring.

  As they pass the end of the hall they are in darkness for a few moments. Tesla seems to shudder. He has been silent and intent, as if compulsively counting his steps. It would not surprise her if this were actually the case.

  “Is anything wrong?” she asks.

  “No,” Tesla says. “It’s nothing.”

  In fact the darkness is full of lurking nightmares for Tesla. Just now he was five years old again, watching his older brother Daniel fall to his death. Years of guilty self-examination have not made the scene clearer. They stood together at the top of the cellar stairs, and then Daniel fell into the darkness. Did he fall? Did Nikola, in a moment of childish rage, push him?

  All his life he has feared the dark. His father took his candles away, so little Nikola made his own. Now the full-grown Tesla has brought electric light to the White City, carried by safe, inexpensive alternating current. It is only the beginning.

  They round the East end of the Court of Honor. At the Music Hall, the Imperial Band of Austria plays melodies from Wagner. Anne Morgan shivers in the evening chill. “Look at the moon,” she says. “Isn’t it romantic?”

  Tesla’s smile seems condescending. “I have never understood the romantic impulse. We humans are meat machines, and nothing more.”

  “That is hardly a pleasant image.”

  “I do not mean to be offensive, only accurate. That is the aim of science, after all.”

  “Yes, of course,” Anne Morgan says. “Science.” There seems no way to reach him, no chink in his cool exterior. This is where the others gave up, she thinks. I will prove stronger than all of them. In her short, privileged existence, she has always obtained what she wants. “I wish I knew more about it.”

  “Science is a pure, white light,” Tesla says. “It shines evenly on all things, and reveals their particular truths. It banishes uncertainty, and opinion, and contradiction. Through it we master the world.”

  They have circled back to the West, and to their right is the Liberal Arts Building. She has heard that it contains so much painting and sculpture that one can only wander helplessly through it. To attempt to seek out a single artist, or to look for the French Impressionists, of whom she has been hearing so much, would be sheer futility.

  Under Tesla’s electric lights, the polished facade of the building sparkles. For a moment, looking down the impossibly long line of perfect Corinthian columns, she feels what Tesla feels: the triumph of man over nature, the will to conquer and shape and control. Then the night breeze brings her the scent of roses from across the Basin and the feeling passes.

  * * *

  They enter the Electricity Building together and stand in the center, underneath the great dome. This is the site of the Westinghouse ex
hibit, a huge curtained archway resting upon a metal platform. Beyond the arch are two huge Tesla coils, the largest ever built. At the peak of the arch is a tablet inscribed with the words: WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & MANUFACTURING CO./TESLA POLYPHASE SYSTEM.

  Tesla’s mood is triumphant. Edison, his chief rival, has been proven wrong. Alternating current will be the choice of the future. The Westinghouse Company has this week been awarded the contract to build the first two generators at Niagara Falls. Tesla cannot forgive Edison’s hiring of Menlo Park street urchins to kidnap pets, which he then electrocuted with alternating current—“Westinghoused” them, as he called it. But Edison’s petty, lunatic attempts to discredit the polyphase system have failed, and he stands revealed as an old, bitter, and unimaginative man.

  Edison has lost, and history will soon forget him.

  George Westinghouse himself, Tesla’s patron, is here tonight. So are J.P. Morgan, Anne’s father, and William K. Vanderbilt and Mayor Harrison. Here also are Tesla’s friends Robert and Katherine Johnson, and Samuel Clemens, who insists everyone call him by his pen name.

  It is nearly midnight.

  Tesla steps lightly onto the platform. He snaps his fingers and gas-filled tubes burst into pure white light. Tesla has fashioned them to spell out the names of several of the celebrities present, as well as the names of his favorite Serbian poets. He holds up his hands to the awed and expectant crowd. “Gentlemen and Ladies. I have no wish to bore you with speeches. I have asked you here to witness a demonstration of the power of electricity.”

  He continues to talk, his voice rising to a high pitch in his excitement. He produces several wireless lamps and places them around the stage. He points out that their illumination is undiminished, despite their distance from the broadcast power source. “Note how the gas at low pressure exhibits extremely high conductivity. This gas is little different from that in the upper reaches of our atmosphere.”

  He concludes with a few fireballs and pinwheels of light. As the applause gradually subsides he holds up his hands once again. “These are little more than parlor tricks. Tonight I wish to say thank you, in a dramatic and visible way, to all of you who have supported me through your patronage, through your kindness, through your friendship. This is my gift to you, and to all of mankind.”