The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  A Bodhisattva blessed my exit with bland beneficence. In contrast to the serene order of the Chancellor’s garden, the city streets beyond were a tangle. What had been intended as triumphal thoroughfares were blocked every hundred paces by merchant’s stalls, religious shrines, or entire shanty towns, complete with chickens and screaming children. Under other circumstances, it would have been a swirling, delightful mess.

  However, the streets had the same feeling of oppression as the park. Everywhere there were knots of people discussing dark matters. A scuffle broke out between two groups, one with dark skin and bulbous, deformed Mayan heads, shouting loudly and striking out clumsily, the other short, sibilant, with narrow catlike eyes and flat noses, darting with precisely placed energy. Suddenly abashed by the attention they aroused, both groups melted into the surrounding crowds.

  “The Prince is dead.” Everywhere I heard the murmur. “The Prince, murdered. Vengeance, for our Prince. Where is his murderer? He must be found. He must be killed. The. Prince. Is. Dead.” Each word was a call of anguish.

  I emerged onto a wide street that had been kept clear. Flat fronted buildings of basalt bulked on either side, all identical.

  There was a sound down the way, the rhythmic thud of metal drums, growing ever louder. In response to some signal not perceptible to me, a crowd had gathered. Some of them were dressed in woolen robes that looked suspiciously familiar to me, but there was no time to think about it. Everyone began to sway in time to the beat. As the sound of the drums approached I could hear, over it, the baying of hunting horns. I looked up the street. Sailing towards me like an image from an involuntarily recalled memory was the Face.

  “Woe!” the crowd wailed. “Oh woe! Dead. Dead!” Tears streamed down every face, and every body moved to the beat of those awful drums. “The Prince! Woe!” And the Face continued.

  It was huge, at least thirty feet high, carved out of some dark, gray flecked rock. The eyes, blank and pitiless, stared into mine, and beyond me, to infinity. The lips were curved in a slight smile, like that of a Buddha, but seemed to be arrested in the process of changing to some more definite expression. What would it have been? A grin? A scowl? A grimace of pain, or anger? Or a mindless nullity? The Face was of stone and would carry that secret forever. There were creases in the cheeks, and the nose was slightly bent at the end. The Prince was becoming a god, but obviously intended to keep his nose intact. A god is not handicapped by a twisted nose.

  The sculpture rested on a great wagon, each of its many wheels reaching to twice the height of a man. It was pulled by teams of men and women, volunteers. Everyone wanted to help, and unseemly scuffles broke out for places on the ropes. The drummers seated below the god’s chin occasionally enforced justice by clubbing someone with their brass drumsticks. And the crowd cried “Woe!”

  The Face swept by, becoming, from behind, a rough hewn, lumbering mountain of stone.

  The mood of the crowd changed. Like a shadowed pool of blood in the corner of a slaughterhouse suddenly illuminated by shutters flung open on sunlight, the black despair of the crowd was revealed as scarlet imperfectly perceived. Icicles grew on my spine as shouts of rage and upraised daggers greeted the approach of the second Face. The daggers …

  “Murderer!” they cried. “Death!” Though essentially a thirty-foot-high stone wanted poster, the sculptors had lavished no less care on this Face than on that of the Prince. Its brows were knit in jealous rage, its eyes glowered. Its lips were pulled back in a contemptuous grin, challenging us all to do our worst. Though fleshier and more dissipated than I remembered, the Face was familiar. It should have been. I looked at it every morning in the mirror when I shaved. It was my own.

  The sculptors had done their work well. So compelling was the Face that no one noticed my real face as, shaking with fear, I slipped through the crowd. Their daggers, with silver hilts chased with a pattern of eyes and lightning bolts, were also familiar. The last time I had seen one, it had been sticking out of a bedpost next to my head.

  Martine! It had been him the whole time. He’d sent his creations to kill me in Schekaagau, and when that had failed, he’d exposed me to radiation from his Virgin Mary, so that the cumulative dosage from my visit to Berenson’s radioactive world would kill me. Hell, he’d probably locked me in my room at Cuzco. But for what? My wife? It made no sense, but then, murder often made no sense, at least to the victim. But didn’t the idiot know that none of this was real?

  So Martine had created this entire world just to kill me, despite what Halicarnassus had said about my ego. I should have been flattered, but it’s hard to feel flattered when you’ve pissed in your pants and are fleeing for your life.

  I quickly became lost in the tangle of streets, though I really had no idea of where I was going, or for what reason. Everywhere was equally dangerous in this city of Laoyin. The houses were all about four stories high, of cracked stucco, and leaned crazily. The air smelled of frying fish and fermented black beans. I turned a corner into a dusty square. A group of locals sat gloomily around a nonfunctioning fountain. I slunk past them, trying to look nonchalant. I almost made it.

  “Look, Daddy!” a little boy said, pointing at me. “Prince!”

  “No it isn’t. Its—” Their knives were out in an instant. They didn’t waste time debating points of tactics, but launched themselves at me in a mass. I turned and ran.

  The tangled streets, confusing enough at a walk, were a nightmare at a dead run. Every few seconds I ran into a wall or the sharp corner of a building. I began to gain on my pursuers. Despite their hatred, they still had some concern for their bodies. I could not afford to have any.

  I broke clear of the high buildings and found myself on a wide promenade, paved with multicolored slabs of rock and bordered on my left by an ornamental railing. Through the railing, far below, were the waters of the Lao, as they flowed towards what I knew as Puget Sound. Leaning casually on the railing, as if on the parapet of his palace, was Martine. He held a gun in his hand, slightly nervously, as if unsure of what to do with it. He had been unable to resist taking a direct hand in things, despite all of his efforts to set up a perfect trap for me. I was trapped. I stopped. Would he posture, preen, and carry on first, or would he simply gun me down? Right on the first guess.

  “At last,” he said. “At last I can have my revenge.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You have tormented and ruined me. I did my best, I poured my soul into my art, but it was not enough for you. My genius was never enough.” He raised the pistol. “Say your prayers, Jacob.”

  “Wait a minute, for God’s sake.”

  “Nothing can stay my hand now, Jacob. Compose yourself for death.”

  “I’ll compose myself for anything you want, if you tell me what you’re going on about. You’ve got Amanda, what more do you want?”

  He frowned, confused. “Amanda? What does Amanda have to do with this? How can you mock my work, humiliate me, degrade me—”

  I should have known. I grinned in relief. “Is that it? You’re all upset because of some lousy reviews? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  His finger whitened on the trigger. “You have destroyed me. Now I destroy you.”

  “For crissakes, Salvator, are you crazy? Who takes critics seriously?” I was almost in tears. Here I’d finally found someone who paid attention to my criticism, and he wanted to kill me for it. It wasn’t fair.

  “Make your peace with God, though I have no doubt that you’ll pick enough with Him that He’ll wish He never created you.” Martine was proving to be an extremely gabby murderer.

  A knot of people emerged from an alleyway behind Martine. Seeing that he had held me prisoner rather than killing me outright made them smile. It’s always nice when someone is willing to share.

  I nodded. “All right, Samos. Take him.”

  Martine snorted. “A feeble ruse, Jacob.”

  The first man in the group brushed past Martine’s el
bow. With a shriek, he turned and fired, blowing the man’s chest open and leaving him with a surprised and offended expression on his face. Before Martine could get the barrel pointed back in my direction, the blades were into him, silver into scarlet. He screamed once. That done, the blades turned towards me. With the sharp decisiveness that makes for John Doe corpses in the morgue, I took three quick steps and threw myself over the railing into the air. I don’t know if I screamed. I know that those behind me did, in disappointment. I watched the river. It didn’t seem to get any closer, just more detailed, ripples, whirlpools, and flotsam appearing and sharpening as if on a developing piece of film.

  I must have remembered Halicarnassus’s modification to my Key subconsciously, because the next instant I found myself, sweating and soiled, in the dark hallway beneath Centrum.

  * * *

  She was home, sitting in the quiet room reading a book about Caravaggio. She looked up at me as I entered, smiled, then went back to her reading, saying nothing. It was not a silence that could be easily broken, for it seemed to me that it would shatter into a thousand pieces at the first word. I walked to the bedroom, took a shower, and changed into household clothes. There was no clothing out, no suitcase, and everything was folded neatly in the drawers. I breathed. The air smelled, just slightly, of jasmine. Jasmine? I went to the kitchen.

  Amanda had cleaned up the remains of the final lunch Halicarnassus and I had had together. I opened the green kitchen curtains to have a view of the garden and began to pull out ingredients. Had the knives always been on the left side of the drawer? How observant was a critic? I examined the curtains. Still green. The last time I had seen them, at lunch, they had been red. That I remembered.

  One Shadow differing from another in only one minor, but significant way. Amanda and I had had a discussion about those curtains. I had wanted green, but finally gave in. My hand shook a little as I chopped the onions, as I began to realize that Halicarnassus had sent me drifting through Shadow, with no way to ever return to the world I had spent my whole life believing was the real one.

  I flipped the top of the garbage can up to throw away the onion peels. Inside, crumpled, was a set of red curtains. A note was pinned to them. “You’ll never know,” it said. “Get used to it.” It didn’t need a signature.

  I stir fried beef and ginger, and thought about the woman in the other room. Was this the woman I had married, who had betrayed me? Or was this someone else? If Amanda was different enough that she would not betray me, could I still love her? I was adrift in a sea of infinite worlds, so I was starting to think that it didn’t really matter. I could discuss it with Halicarnassus, when we finally ran into each other again. Somehow, I was sure that we would.

  When it was finished, I took the food in to Amanda. It tasted very good.

  WALTER JON WILLIAMS

  Dinosaurs

  Some millions of years ago, our ancestors were tiny, chittering, tree-dwelling insectivores. We’ve come a long way since then … but evolution is a process that never stops, as amply demonstrated by the story that follows, which takes us six million years into a very bizarre future for an unsettling look at some of our distant descendants.

  Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Regarded as one of the hottest new talents in science fiction, Williams has sold stories to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, Far Frontiers, Wild Cards, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His novels include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, and the critically acclaimed Hardwired. His most recent novels are Voice of the Whirlwind and The Crown Jewels. His story “Side Effects” was in our Third Annual Collection; “Video Star” was in our Fourth Annual Collection.

  DINOSAURS

  Walter Jon Williams

  The Shars seethed in the dim light of their ruddy sun. Pointed faces raised to the sky, they sniffed the faint wind for sign of the stranger and scented only hydrocarbons, far-off vegetation, damp fur, the sweat of excitement and fear. Weak eyes peered upward, glistened with hope, anxiety, apprehension, and saw only the faint pattern of stars. Short, excited barking sounds broke out here and there, but mostly the Shars crooned, a low ululation that told of sudden onslaught, destruction, war in distant reaches, and now the hope of peace.

  The crowds surged left, then right. Individuals bounced high on their third legs, seeking a view, seeing only the wide sea of heads, the ears and muzzles pointed to the stars.

  Suddenly, a screaming. High-pitched howls, a bright chorus of barks. The crowds surged again.

  Something was crossing the field of stars.

  The human ship was huge, vaster than anything they’d seen, a moonlet descending. Shars closed their eyes and shuddered in terror. The screaming turned to moans. Individuals leaped high, baring their teeth, barking in defiance of their fear. The air smelled of terror, incipient panic, anger.

  War! cried some. Peace! cried others.

  The crooning went on. We mourn, we mourn, it said, we mourn our dead billions.

  We fear, said others.

  Soundlessly, the human ship neared them, casting its vast shadow. Shars spilled outward from the spot beneath, bounding high on their third legs.

  The human ship came to a silent rest. Dully, it reflected the dim red sun.

  The Shars crooned their fear, their sorrow. And waited for the humans to emerge.

  * * *

  These? Yes. These. Drill, the human ambassador, gazed through his video walls at the sea of Shars, the moaning, leaping thousands that surrounded him. Through the mass a group was moving with purpose, heading for the airlock as per his instructions. His new Memory crawled restlessly in the armored hollow atop his skull. Stand by, he broadcast.

  His knees made painful crackling noises as he walked toward the airlock, the silver ball of his translator rolling along the ceiling ahead of him. The walls mutated as he passed, showing him violet sky, far-off polygonal buildings, cold distant green … and here, nearby, a vast, dim plain covered with a golden tissue of Shars.

  He reached the airlock and it began to open. Drill snuffed wetly at the alien smells—heat, dust, the musky scent of the Shars themselves.

  Drill’s heart thumped in his chest. His dreams were coming true. He had waited all his life for this.

  Mash, whimpered Lowbrain. Drill told it to be silent. Lowbrain protested vaguely, then obeyed.

  Drill told Lowbrain to move. Cool, alien air brushed his skin. The Shars cried out sharply, moaned, fell back. They seemed a wild, sibilant ocean of pointed ears and dark, questing eyes. The group heading for the airlock vanished in the general retrograde movement, a stone washed by a pale tide. Beneath Drill’s feet was soft vegetation. His translator floated in the air before him. His mind flamed with wonder, but Lowbrain kept him moving.

  The Shars fell back, moaning.

  Drill stood eighteen feet tall on his two pillarlike legs, each with a splayed foot that displayed a horny underside and vestigial nails. His skin was ebony and was draped in folds over his vast naked body. His pendulous maleness swung loosely as he walked. As he stepped across the open space he was conscious of the fact that he was the ultimate product of nine million years of human evolution, all leading to the expansion, diversification, and perfection that was now humanity’s manifest existence.

  He looked down at the little Shars, their white skin and golden fur, their strange, stiff tripod legs, the muzzles raised to him as if in awe. If your species survives, he thought benignly, you can look like me in another few million years.

  * * *

  The group of Shars that had been forging through the crowd were suddenly exposed when the crowd fell back from around them. On the perimeter were several Shars holding staffs—weapons, perhaps—in their clever little hands. In the center of these were a group of Shars wearing decorative ribbon to which metal plates had been attached. Badges of rank, Memory said. Ignore. The shadow of the translator bobbed toward them as Drill approached. Metallic geometri
es rose from the group and hovered over them.

  Recorders, Memory said. Artificial similarities to myself. Or possibly security devices. Disregard.

  Drill was getting closer to the party, speeding up his instructions to Lowbrain, eventually entering Zen Synch. It would make Lowbrain hungrier but lessen the chance of any accidents.

  The Shars carrying the staffs fell back. A wailing went up from the crowd as one of the Shars stepped toward Drill. The ribbons draped over her sloping shoulders failed to disguise four mammalian breasts. Clear plastic bubbles covered her weak eyes. In Zen Synch with Memory and Lowbrain, Drill ambled up to her and raised his hands in friendly greeting. The Shar flinched at the expanse of the gesture.

  “I am Ambassador Drill,” he said. “I am a human.”

  The Shar gazed up at him. Her nose wrinkled as she listened to the booming voice of the translator. Her answer was a succession of sharp sounds, made high in the throat, somewhat unpleasant. Drill listened to the voice of his translator.

  “I am President Gram of the InterSharian Sociability of Nations and Planets.” That’s how it came through in translation, anyway. Memory began feeding Drill referents for the word “nation.”

  “I welcome you to our planet, Ambassador Drill.”

  “Thank you, President Gram,” Drill said. “Shall we negotiate peace now?”

  President Gram’s ears pricked forward, then back. There was a pause, and then from the vast circle of Shars came a mad torrent of hooting noises. The awesome sound lapped over Drill like the waves of a lunatic sea.

  They approve your sentiment, said Memory.

  I thought that’s what it meant, Drill said. Do you think we’ll get along?

  Memory didn’t answer, but instead shifted to a more comfortable position in the saddle of Drill’s skull. Its job was to provide facts, not draw conclusions.