The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

“Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to kill you?” He peered at me to see what my reaction would be.

  I stared at him for a second before I thought of a response. “Samos, I’m a critic.”

  “Point well taken. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Samos, when you come to visit a sick friend in the hospital, you’re supposed to make small talk, not start off with—”

  “The fact that I suspect someone of trying to kill you?” Halicarnassus was remorseless. “Not telling you that as soon as possible would be crass impoliteness. However, if you insist. On the way here I saw some cumulus clouds. They brought a number of impressions to mind, and in fact I saw one that strongly resembled a mongoose.”

  I should have known better. I sighed and gave up. “To answer your question, Samos, no, I don’t think someone’s trying to kill me. Do you?”

  He grimaced. “I’m not sure. It’s just that the shielding in your robe was good, everything was in order, calculations from your dosimeter indicate that you absorbed a dose of somewhat over twenty rem, high but not fatal, and yet, you were almost dead when they got you here. Don’t you find that odd?”

  “How did—” I stopped. It was useless to ask Halicarnassus how he found these things out. He seemed to know all the back stairs of Centrum, including which steps creaked. “I don’t, unfortunately, find getting radiation sickness after walking into a fresh blast crater particularly odd, no.”

  “Let me remind you of the fate of one of your predecessors, who died in a zeppelin explosion while eating coq a vin off a silver plate in the company of the Duc de Moscau.”

  I’d been trying not to think of him. “Gambino was reviewing one of Nobunaga’s worlds, if I remember. His people are colorful, but tend to be indifferent engineers.” I didn’t know why I was arguing with him.

  Halicarnassus shrugged. “He’d also revealed Lord Meern’s collection of sexually obsessed societies, which caused Meern to suffocate himself, if you’ll recall. It could all be accidental, of course. In an infinite number of Shadows, an infinite number of things happen. But here’s an interesting thought. Can you conceive of two worlds that differ in only one important detail?”

  It was a relief to talk shop, rather than death. I hadn’t caused anyone’s suicide. Not that I knew about. “What do you mean?”

  “Say I create two Shadows, identical in everything, except in one the writing in books is boustrophedon, like the ancient Greeks did it, with alternate lines going right to left. It’s a more efficient way of reading, really, you don’t have to move your eyes back to the beginning of each line.”

  I liked the idea. “Or two Shadows, but in one men kiss, rather than shaking hands.”

  “Taking an inhabitant of one and dropping him in the other would cause no end of problems. Or better yet, trading two otherwise identical people.”

  “Both would end up arrested.”

  We laughed and explored the idea, and the thought of murder, never quite reasonable to begin with, was forgotten.

  “Jacob!” Amanda finally flounced in, wearing a red dress, not one I remembered ever having seen before. She pecked me on the forehead, then sat down in the chair and rearranged the pleats of her dress until they lay in the proper pattern. Then she smiled at me. Behind her, moving silently, was Martine, holding a box. My head was pulsing again, and I felt disoriented. I blinked my eyes, but it didn’t help.

  Martine and Amanda were both frowning over my shoulder, as if there was something improper there. Halicarnassus stared back expressionlessly, then bowed. Amanda smiled tightly, Martine did nothing. “Good day, Jacob,” Halicarnassus said, patted my shoulder, and was gone.

  They had brought me cookies, airy things of almond and spice. Amanda had made them. I hadn’t known she could bake. They brought me cookies. Symbols are not only in books, but help us see the structure of our own lives. Each cookie shattered as I bit into it, then stuck to my teeth. Martine avoided this problem by swallowing his whole.

  Martine was desperate to know what Halicarnassus and I had been discussing, but didn’t want to ask. I ignored his ever more pointed hints with sickbed stupidity, and left him frustrated. It was meager satisfaction. Amanda chattered, more talkative than I’d seen her in months. I watched the delicate curve of her throat and shoulders. She talked about the weather, about jewelry, about the music she’d been listening to, about art. Her tastes were dependent on the important others in her life, but she’d been mine for so long that I had forgotten, and was startled to hear her criticizing works that I loved, and thought she had also.

  I lay back and listened to them, until their voices were just a buzz. Life was full of troubles, and I had more important things to worry about than exploding zeppelins.

  * * *

  I hadn’t been in Halicarnassus’s new world for more than five minutes when I saw her. I should have known better than to be in his Shadow in the first place, but I’ve never been able to resist an exclusive showing, even knowing his habit of unpleasant tricks. Halicarnassus had always enjoyed forcing societies into unnatural forms, unhealthy adaptations. He’d done an ornate Victorian style Europe full of confectionary palaces and light operas which practiced brutal ritual cannibalism at fancy dress dinner parties, a hereditary American Congress full of dangerously inbred religious fanatics who dressed in drag when deciding on bloody crusades against Sumatra and Ethiopia, and a North American Great Plains kept free of habitation from the Mississippi to the Rockies so that its Mongol conquerors could ride as their ancestors had, while forcing enslaved Europeans to build meaningless monuments larger than the Pyramids. His worlds seemed to disturb most of the Lords, who found them mocking, and they found few buyers. He got by, somehow, the way artists always have, and still made his art.

  I came into this world on the bottom level of Grand Central Station, as if I were simply another traveler amid the scurrying mobs, who carried me up into the light of the streets above.

  Just a few blocks away, near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I saw Amanda, her blond hair curled and flowing, crossing 50th Street on Fifth Avenue, obviously in a hurry. I didn’t stop to think, but followed her trim, gray suited figure as she walked down the street, carrying a briefcase. The people of this Shadow did not dress brightly, or use much color on their buildings, which were disproportionately high, like the spires of iron cathedrals that had never been built. So Amanda, always in fashion, dressed here in discreet urban camouflage.

  Love is a random process, depending on such improbable events as an introduction by mutual friends followed by a chance meeting in an exhibit of etchings, and a common liking for a certain sweet wine punch which now, in memory, makes me gag. Or perhaps not so improbable: I later found out that Amanda had gone to that gallery because she knew I would be there. She has never learned to like copperplate etchings, though she pretended to, at the time. The loves of our ancestors were equally random. Exact duplicates of individuals seldom exist from Shadow to Shadow, despite Halicarnassus’s elaborate plans for almost duplicate worlds, so we almost never get to see ourselves in a different life. Was there a Jacob Landstatter in this world? A Salvator Martine?

  So I followed her, my heart pounding. Her waist and her hips were just the same, and she swayed, enchantingly, the way she always had. When she stopped at street corners, she looked up at the tops of the buildings, shading her eyes, as if looking for roosting storks, or gargoyles. Her walk was quick, even on heels, and I had to concentrate on keeping up, difficult on the crowded street. She continued for quite a distance, finally coming to the edge of a large green park called, with no particular originality, Central Park. This was a strange, mechanical Shadow, full of flying machines and automobiles. It was incredibly noisy. She finally turned into a large gray building called the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I paused at the base of the stairs for a long moment. Banners announced special exhibits of eighteenth century French crystal, Japanese swords, and the works of a Rembrandt van Rijn. Dutch again. I was tired of
Dutch. I followed her up the stairs and into the museum.

  It was Rembrandt that she wanted, and she went straight there through the maze of corridors. It was an exhibit of copperplate etchings. Much of it was a series of self-portraits of that same Rembrandt van Rijn, from rather boorish youth to brooding old age, in a variety of strange headdresses. The man was obviously a genius, and I lost myself in his intricate lines.

  “He is remarkable, isn’t he?” she said, at my side. “I took some time off from work to come see him. This is the last day it’s going to be here.”

  I turned slowly to look at her. Her eyes were the same too, lighter blue within dark, under long, soft lashes. She looked down when I met her gaze then glanced back up. There was no sign of recognition in her eyes. No Jacob Landstatter in this world. Until now. She smiled. Here she smelled like wildflowers, something other than violets.

  We found ourselves strolling around the exhibit together, giving each other details of the various etchings as gifts. Some of her remarks were critical, and I suspected that she didn’t think as much of etchings as she had initially claimed she did.

  “I don’t know what I should do now,” she said, looking up and down the street after we emerged. “I don’t really want to go back to work … it’s too nice a day.” She looked at me, then looked away.

  I suggested we get a drink, and she took my arm as we walked. I felt like an idiot. What was I doing? It was a beautiful spring day, and our steps matched as we walked. She looked up again, at the corner, and we discussed the cornices of buildings, the eaves of the roof of the house she had grown up in, the strange places birds manage to relax, and hidden roof gardens in Manhattan. It had been a long time since I’d enjoyed a conversation quite that much. She flirted with intent, and smiled when she looked at me. “I’ve been so lonely,” she said.

  Suddenly she froze, then turned to look into the window of a stationery store, pretending to look at her reflection and correct her hair. “Oh shit,” she said under her breath. “Oh damn. Oh damn. Why is he here?”

  I looked up and down the street, and had no problem spotting him, no problem at all. He walked with his head held up and his arms swinging, and wore a floppy shirt from South America. His right hand was stained with chrome yellow and viridian. Still an artist, even here, Salvator Martine strode past, his eyes fixed on an image invisible to everyone else on the street, and did not see us. I looked at Amanda. She was trembling as if with a chill. Her left hand pulled at her hair, and she looked vulnerable, like an abandoned child. It was only then that I noticed the glint of a gold wedding band on her finger, and it all made sense.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Who? Oh … somebody. It doesn’t matter.” She talked quickly. “Let’s go.”

  I went with her, but everything inside of me had turned to ice. I managed to disengage myself from her after drinks but before dinner, to her obvious dismay. She liked me, and found me attractive. I felt a fool for still wanting her, like a small child who wants to play with shards of glass because they glint so prettily in the sun, but I couldn’t help it. We made a date to meet at the Museum of Modern Art the following week, for an exhibition of Rothko. She would be there, but I wouldn’t be. It would be another two days before my Key would allow me back through the gate into the hallways. They had something called television here, moving images in a box. I decided to stay in my hotel room for the rest of the time and watch it.

  * * *

  When I returned home, I knew Amanda, my Amanda, the real Amanda, had finally gone. There was no trace of her perfume in the air, and her things were gone from her bureau.

  I walked through the entryway, down the hall, and into the quiet room, where I settled into a low couch facing the green, moss-filled garden. The chuckle of the stream flowing through it was vivid in the silence.

  Why did I hurt? Because I, of all possible Jacob Landstatters, had finally lost my Amanda, out of all possible Amandas? Does a minute flux in the probability stream feel pain? Nonsense. The pain was real, perhaps, but I wasn’t. I waited to vanish. But cardiac muscle doesn’t know anything about alternate probability worlds, or Shadow, or feelings of unreality, or the Lords. My heart continued beating. My diaphragm continued to pull downward, filling my lungs with air. My stomach rumbled. I was hungry. I got up to make myself a sandwich.

  The kitchen was clean and silent. Copper pots and steel utensils hung over the drainboard, and the red curtains puffed in the breeze from the open window. The breadbox contained half a loaf of rye bread, fresh and aromatic. Where the devil had it come from? Amanda couldn’t have put it here, she’d obviously been gone for too long. I hefted it. The crust was crisp.

  “Stop playing with your food and cut a slice for God’s sake,” a voice said behind me. I whirled, loaf in hand. Halicarnassus was sitting at the table in the darkened alcove. “It’s impolite to threaten your guests with deadly viands,” he observed. “Cut a slice, I said. I’ve got the mustard and roast beef here.”

  “How kind of you.”

  He took a luxurious bite of his sandwich. “Give it up, Jacob. Ah. Rye, beef, and mustard. There are some aesthetic verities that transcend reality. The field of gustatory ontology has been much neglected by philosophers.”

  “So much the worse for ontology,” I said, settling down to lunch with as much grace as I could muster. I really was quite hungry.

  “So much the worse for philosophers! All this Truth and Beauty stuff is fine, but it obscures the real issues. Rye bread! I try never to create a world in which it cannot be found. One must have an absolute aesthetic criterion to give an anchor to one’s life.”

  There are worse ones, I suppose. “Did you create that entire world to give me an object lesson about my personal life?”

  “Hey, they have great rye bread in that city. Don’t be such an egotist, Jacob. I put that in as a little detail, an ironic reference, like a dog crapping in the corner of a hunting scene. No artist is going to create an entire world just to please one critic’s vanity. That’s a real world, full of real people. Just like this one.”

  I had been suspicious for a long time, about the Lords, Centrum, and Samos Halicarnassus, so I decided to risk the question. “Did you create this world, Samos?”

  He grimaced. “Yes, and not one of my better efforts, I must say. The Lords are an insufferable bunch, and Centrum is … excessive.”

  “Where are you from?”

  He passed a hand over his forehead. “You know, I’m not even sure I remember. A lot of white stone buildings. Apple orchards. A big blue sky. Doesn’t tell you much, does it? I guess it didn’t tell me much either. But I remember school, a big hall with a dome, and my first world. It was a clunky thing, with brass and mahogany steam carriages and wars full of cavalry charges and solemn republics whose capital cities were always built of white marble and top-hatted ambassadors who exchanged calling cards and people who lived, breathed, and died, just like they did at home. I went to live there, a requirement for graduation, I think. I never went back. I just made worlds, Shadows you call them here, and moved on, sometimes into one of mine, usually into one I stumbled onto made, presumably, by someone else.”

  “So yours was the real world.”

  “Jacob, I’ve always been amazed at your inability to detach your emotions from your intellect. That world was created as a private project by a man from a culture so different from this one that my mind does not retain any information about it at all. He was ancient when I was a child, the grandmaster of the school. He died much honored, since he was, I suppose, God.” He cut himself another slice of bread. “It would be nice to be certain one existed, but as long as we spend our time twisting time like this, rather than on more rational pursuits, none of us ever will be sure. Most of the inhabitants of the worlds I have created at least believe they exist, which gives them the advantage over us. Your Lords devised these absurd Keys in your limbic systems to give you all a sense of reality, since you always feel like you are comi
ng home. A nice touch. You, incidentally, no longer have one.”

  I remembered my strange dizziness and disorientation at the medical ward. At the time, I had chalked it up to radiation sickness. “How did you manage that?”

  “Friends at the hospital in Centrum, willing to do me a favor. And why shouldn’t they? I created them, after all. It’s really a simple modification, and performed more often than you might think, even in this most real of all possible worlds.” He ate the rest of his sandwich and stood up. “Well, that’s enough for now. You’ll be seeing me again, I think. You’re one of my more engaging creations.”

  “Oh shut up.” I put my head in my hands. This was too much.

  “Good luck on your next job.”

  “What do you know about my next job?”

  He grinned maliciously. “It’s by Martine.”

  I choked on my food. “That son of a bitch has taken off with my wife.” I stopped. It hurt. It was surprising how much it hurt.

  “Don’t worry. It’s no more real than anything else.”

  “It’s no less real. My guts feel like they’ve been caught by a fishhook.”

  “And you sneer at gustatory ontology. Good day, Jacob.” And he walked out the door and was gone.

  * * *

  The various portions of the Chancellery Gardens of Laoyin harmonized not only in space, but in time. The arrangement of dells and lily ponds, of individual Dawn Redwoods, laboriously dug, full grown, in the fastness of Old China and brought here up the Lao River, which I knew as the Columbia, in barges built for the purpose, of stone temples with green bronze cupolas, and of spreads of native prairie, seemingly engaged in a devious wildness but actually existing because of the efforts of dedicated gardeners, took on meaning only when observed at a receptive stroll. I emerged from the yellow-green of a stand of ginkgoes, descended a gorge alongside a stream, and arrived at the rocky shore of a lake, its verge guarded by cunningly twisted pines and Amur maples. I trod the gravel path further, and felt uneasy. While I strolled, too many others strode purposefully, usually in tight groups of three or four. The vistas were ignored by men who muttered and gestured to each other. Either trouble was brewing, or the inhabitants of this Shadow had decidedly odd ideas of how to enjoy a sunny afternoon in the park.