The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  For the briefest moment, Knecht thought he meant Schneider should be in hospital. When he realized the confusion, he laughed. Ochsenfuss looked at him oddly and Knecht took a pull on his mug to hide his embarrassment.

  “If I could use mescal or peyote to heighten his suggestibility,” Ochsenfuss continued to no one in particular. “Or if I could keep our friend the Kommandant away from my patient.…” He studied his drink in silence, then abruptly tossed it off. He looked at his watch and waved off a hovering orderly. “Well, things cannot go on as they are. Something must break.” He laughed and rose from the table. “At least there are a few of us who take a hard-headed and practical view of the world, eh, Leutnant?” He patted Knecht on the arm and left.

  Knecht watched him go. He took another drink of beer and wiped the foam from his lips with his sleeve, thinking about what the Hexmajor had said.

  * * *

  A few days later, a carrier pigeon arrived and Knecht rode out to meet its sender at a secret rendezvous deep inside Wyoming. Such meetings were always risky, but his agent had spent many years working her way into a position of trust. It was a mask that would be dropped if she tried to leave the country. Knecht wondered what the information was. Obviously more than could be entrusted to a pigeon.

  But she never came to the rendezvous. Knecht waited, then left a sign on a certain tree that he had been there and gone. He wondered what had happened. Perhaps she had not been able to get away after all. Or perhaps she had been unmasked and quietly executed. Like many of the Old-style Quakers, Abigail Fox had learned English at her mother’s knee and spoke without an accent; but one never knew what trivial detail would prove fatal.

  Knecht chewed on his moustache as he rode homeward. He had not seen Abby for a long time. Now he didn’t know if he would ever see her again. The worst part would be never knowing what had happened. Knecht hated not knowing things. That’s why he was a good scout. Even bad news was better than no news.

  Well, perhaps another pigeon would arrive, explaining everything, arranging another rendezvous. But how could you be sure, Rudi, that it really came from her? Spies have been broken before, and codes with them. One day, he knew, he would ride out to a meeting and not come back. He felt cold and empty. He slapped his horse on the rump and she broke into a trot. He was afraid of death, but he would not send others to do what he would not.

  It had been two weeks to rendezvous and back and Schneider was still at Fox Gap when Knecht returned. The rumors had grown up thick for harvesting. Between the front gate and the stables five soldiers and two officers asked him if a command shake-up were coming. His friendship with the General was well-known, and why else would Schneider stay on?

  Why else, indeed. Kelly. Knecht was certain of it, but the why still eluded him.

  * * *

  Catching up on his paperwork kept Knecht at his desk until well after dark. When he had finished, he made his way to Vonderberge’s quarters. Knecht’s thought was to pay a “social call” and guide the conversation around to the subject of Kelly. Once he arrived, however, he found himself with some other officers, drinking dark beer and singing badly to the accompaniment of the Chief Engineer’s equally bad piano playing. It was, he discovered, a weekly ritual among the permanent fortress staff.

  Ochsenfuss was not there, but that did not surprise him.

  He was reluctant to bring up the business of the prisoner in front of the other officers, so he planned to be the last to leave. But Vonderberge and the Fortress Staff proved to have a respectable capacity for drinking and singing and Knecht outlasted them only by cleverly passing out in the corner, where he was overlooked when Vonderberge ushered the others out.

  * * *

  “Good morning, Rudi.”

  Knecht opened his eyes. The light seared his eyes and the top of his head fell off and shattered on the floor. “Ow,” he said.

  “Very eloquent, Rudi.” Vonderberge leaned over him, looking impossibly cheerful. “That must be some hangover.”

  Knecht winced. “You can’t get hangovers from beer.”

  Vonderberge shrugged. “Have it your way.” He held out a tall glass. “Here, drink this.”

  He sniffed the drink warily. It was dark and red and pungent. “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Grandmother Vonderberge’s Perfect Cure for Everything. It never fails.”

  “But what’s in it?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t drink it. Go ahead. Grandmother was a wise old bird. She outlasted three husbands.”

  Knecht drank. He shuddered and sweat broke out on his forehead. “Small wonder,” he gasped. “She probably fed them this.”

  Vonderberge chuckled and took the glass back. “You were in fine form last night. Fine form. Who is Abby?”

  Knecht looked at him. “Why?”

  “You kept drinking toasts to her.”

  He looked away, into the distance. “She was … someone I knew.”

  “Like that, eh?” Vonderberge grinned. Knecht did not bother to correct him.

  “You should socialize more often, Rudi,” continued the Kommandant. “You’ll find we’re not such bad sorts. You have a good baritone. It gave the staff a fuller sound.” Vonderberge gestured broadly to show how full the sound had been. “We need the higher registers, though. I’ve thought of having Heinz and Zuckerman gelded. What do you think?”

  Knecht considered the question. “Where do they stand on the promotion list?”

  Vonderberge looked at him sharply. He grinned. “You are beginning to show a sense of humor, Rudi. A sense of humor.”

  Knecht snorted. He was easily twenty years the Kommandant’s senior. He knew jokes that had been old and wrinkled before Vonderberge had been born. He recalled suddenly that Abigail Fox had been an alto. There were other memories, too; and some empty places where there could have been memories, but weren’t. Ach, for what might have been! It wasn’t right for spymaster and spy to be too close. He wondered if Kelly had a world somewhere where everything was different.

  * * *

  Vonderberge had his batman serve breakfast in rather than go to the mess. He invited Knecht to stay and they talked over eggs, scrapple, and coffee. Knecht did not have to lead into the subject of Kelly because Vonderberge raised it himself. He unrolled a sheet of paper onto the table after the batman had cleared it, using the salt and pepper mills to hold down the curled ends.

  “Let me show you,” he said, “what bothers me about Kelly’s world.”

  A great many things about Kelly’s world bothered Knecht, not the least of which was the fact that there was no evidence it even existed; but he put on a polite face and listened attentively. Was Vonderberge beginning to have doubts?

  The Kommandant pointed to the sheet. Knecht saw that it was a table of inventions, with dates and inventors. Some of the inventions had two dates and two inventors, in parallel columns.

  “Next to each invention,” said Vonderberge, “I’ve written when and by whom it was invented. The first column is our world; the second, Kelly’s, as nearly as he can remember. Do you notice anything?”

  Knecht glanced at the list. “Several things,” he replied casually. “There are more entries in the second column, most of the dates are earlier, and a few names appear in both columns.”

  Vonderberge blinked and looked at him. Knecht kept his face composed.

  “You’re showing off, aren’t you, Rudi?”

  “I’ve spent a lifetime noticing details on documents.”

  “But do you see the significance? The inventions came earlier and faster in Kelly’s world. Look how they gush forth after 1870! Why? How could they have been so much more creative? In the early part of the list, many of the same men are mentioned in both columns, so it is not individual genius. Look…” His forefinger searched the first column. “The electrical telegraph was invented, when? In 1875, by Edison. In Kelly’s world, it was invented in the 1830s, by a man named Morse.”

  “The painter?”r />
  “Apparently the same man. Why didn’t he invent it here? And see what Edison did in Kelly’s world: The electrical light, the moving picture projector, dozens of things we never saw until the 1930s.”

  Knecht pointed to an entry. “Plastics,” he said. “We discovered them first.” He wondered what “first” meant in this context.

  “That is the exception that proves the rule. There are others. Daguerre’s photographic camera, Foucault’s gyroscope. They are the same in both worlds. But overall there is a pattern. Not an occasional marvel, every now and then; but a multitude, every year! By 1920, in Kelly’s world, steamships, heavier-than-air craft, railroads, voice telegraphy with and without wires, horseless carriages, they were an old hat. Here, they are still wonders. Or wondered about.”

  Inventions and gadgets, decided Knecht. Those were Vonderberge’s secret passion, and Kelly had described a technological faerieland. No wonder the Kommandant was entranced. Knecht was less in awe, himself. He had seen the proud ranks of the 18th New York mowed down like corn by the Pennsylvaanish machine guns at the Battle of the Raritan. And he had not forgotten what Kelly had written in his notebook: There were bombs that destroyed whole cities.

  Vonderberge sighed and rolled up his list. He tied a cord around it. “It is difficult, Rudi,” he said. “Very difficult. Your General, he only wants to hear about the inventions. He does not wonder why there are so many. Yet, I feel that this is an important question.”

  “Can’t Kelly answer it?”

  “He might. He has come close to it on several occasions; but he is … confused. Ochsenfuss sees to that.”

  Knecht noticed how Vonderberge’s jaw set. The Kommandant’s usual bantering tone was missing.

  Vonderberge pulled a watch from his right pants pocket and studied its face. “It is time for my appointment with Kelly. Why don’t you come with me. I’d like your opinion on something.”

  “On what?”

  “On Kelly.”

  * * *

  Knecht sat backward on a chair in the corner of the cell, leaning his arms on the back. A cigar was clamped tightly between his teeth. It had gone out, but he had not bothered to relight it. He watched the proceedings between Kelly and Vonderberge. So far, he did not like what he had seen.

  Kelly spoke hesitantly. He seemed distracted and lapsed into frequent, uncomfortable silences. The papers spread out on his table were blank. No new equations. Just doodles of flowers. Roses, they looked like.

  “Think, Kelly,” Vonderberge pleaded. “We were talking of this only yesterday.”

  Kelly pursed his lips and frowned. “Were we? Ja, you’re right. I think we did. I thought it was a dream.”

  “It was not a dream. It was real. You said you thought the Victorian Age was the key. What was the Victorian Age?”

  Kelly looked puzzled. “Victorian Age? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. You mentioned Queen Victoria…”

  “She was never Queen, though.”

  Vonderberge clucked impatiently. “That was in this world,” he said. “In your world it must have been different.”

  “In my world…” It was half a statement, half a question. Kelly closed his eyes, hard. “I have such headaches, these days. It’s hard to remember things. It’s all confused.”

  Vonderberge turned to Knecht. “You see the problem?”

  Knecht removed his cigar. “The problem,” he said judiciously, “is the source of his confusion.”

  Vonderberge turned back to Kelly. “I think we both know who that is.”

  Kelly was losing touch, Knecht thought. That was certain. But was he losing touch with reality, or with fantasy?

  “Wait!” Kelly’s eyes were still closed but his hand shot out and gripped Vonderberge’s wrist. “The Victorian Age. That was the time from the War Between the States to World War I.” He opened his eyes and looked at Vonderberge. “Am I right?”

  Vonderberge threw his hands up. “Tchah! Why are you asking me?”

  Knecht chewed thoughtfully on his cigar. World wars? And they were numbered?

  “What has this ‘Victorian Age’ to do with your world’s inventiveness?”

  Kelly stared at a space in the air between them. He rapped rhythmically on the table with his knuckles. “Don’t push it,” he said. “I might lose the … Yes. I can hear Tom’s voice explaining it.” The eyes were unfocused. Knecht wondered what sort of mind heard voices talking to it. “What an odd apartment. We were just BS’ing. Sharon, Tom, and … a girl, and I. The subject came up, but in a different context.”

  They waited patiently for Kelly to remember.

  “Critical mass!” he said suddenly. “That was it. The rate at which new ideas are generated depends in part on the accumulation of past ideas. The more there are, the more ways they can be combined and modified. Then, boom,” he gestured with his hands. “An explosion.” He laughed shrilly; sobered instantly. “That’s what happened during the Victorian Age. That’s what’s happening now, but slower.”

  A slow explosion? The idea amused Knecht. “Why slower?” he asked.

  “Because of the barriers! Ideas must circulate freely if they’re to trigger new ones. The velocity of ideas is as important to culture and technology as, as the velocity of money is to the economy. The United States would have been the largest free trade zone in the world. The second largest was England. Not even the United Kingdom, just England. Can you imagine? Paying a toll or a tariff every few miles?”

  “What has commerce to do with ideas?” asked Vonderberge.

  “It’s the traveling people who carry ideas from place to place. The merchants, sailors, soldiers. At least until an international postal system is established. And radio. And tourism.”

  “I see…”

  “But look at the barriers we have to deal with! The largest nation on the Atlantic seaboard is what? The Carolina Kingdom. Some of the Indian states are larger, but they don’t have many people. How far can you travel before you pay a tariff? Or run into a foreign language like English or Choctaw or French? Or into a military patrol that shoots first and asks questions later? No wonder we’re so far behind!”

  Knecht pulled the cigar from his mouth. “We?” he asked. Vonderberge turned and gave him an anxious glance, so he, too, had noticed the shift in Kelly’s personal pronoun.

  The prisoner was flustered. “You,” he said. “I meant ‘you.’ Your rate of progress is slower. I…”

  Knecht forestalled further comment. “No, never mind. A slip of the tongue, ja?” He smiled to show he had dismissed the slip. He knew it was important; though in what way he was not yet sure. He took a long puff on his cigar. “Personally, I have never thought our progress slow. The horseless carriage was invented, what? 1920-something, in Dusseldorf. In less than fifty years you could find some in all the major cities. Last year, two nearly collided on the streets of Philadelphia! Soon every well-to-do family will have one.”

  The prisoner laughed. It was a great belly laugh that shook him and shook him until it turned imperceptibly into a sob. He squeezed his eyes tight.

  “There was a man,” he said distantly. “Back in my hometown of Longmont, Colorado.” He opened his eyes and looked at them. “That would be in Nuevo Aztlan, if it existed, which it doesn’t and never has…” He paused and shook his head, once, sharply, as if to clear it. “Old Mr. Brand. I was just a kid, but I remember when the newspapers and TV came around. When Old Brand was a youngster, he watched his dad drive a stagecoach. Before he died, he watched his son fly a space shuttle.” He looked intently at Knecht. “And you think it is wonderful that a few rich people have hand-built cars after half a century?”

  He laughed again; but this time the laugh was brittle. They watched him for a moment, and the laugh went on and on. Then Vonderberge leaned forward and slapped him sharply, twice.

  Knecht chewed his moustache. What the prisoner said made some sense. He could see how technological progress—and social change with it—was coupled with free
trade and the free exchange of ideas. Yet, he wasn’t at all sure that it was necessarily a good thing. There was a lot to be said for stability and continuity. He blew a smoke ring. He wondered if Kelly were a social radical, driven mad by his inability to instigate change, who had built himself a fantasy world in which change ran amok. That made sense, too.

  He glanced at his cigar, automatically timing the ash. A good cigar should burn at least five minutes before the ash needed knocking off.

  Suddenly, he felt a tingling in his spine. He looked at the cigar as if it had come alive in his hand. It had gone out—he remembered that clearly. Now, it was burning, and he could not recall relighting it. He looked at the ashtray. Yes, a spent match. I relit it, of course. It was such an automatic action that I paid it no mind. That was one explanation. It was his memory playing tricks, not his reality. But the tingling in his spine did not stop.

  He looked at Kelly, then he carefully laid his cigar in the ashtray to burn itself out.

  “You just wait, though,” Kelly was saying to Vonderberge. “Our curve is starting up, too. It took us longer, but we’ll be reaching critical mass soon. We’re maybe 100 years off the pace. About where the other … where my world was just before the world wars.”

  That simple pronouncement filled Knecht with a formless dread. He watched the smoke from his smoldering cigar and saw how it rose, straight and true, until it reached a breaking point. There, it changed abruptly into a chaos of turbulent streamers, swirling at random in the motionless air. Then we could do the same, he thought. Fight worldwide wars.

  * * *

  Afterward, Knecht and Vonderberge spoke briefly as they crossed the parade ground. The sun was high in the sky, but the air held the coolness of autumn. Knecht was thoughtful, his mind on his cigar, on alternate realities, on the suddenness with which stability could turn to chaos.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” asked Vonderberge.

  For a moment he thought the Kommandant meant his mysteriously relit cigar. “Saw what?” he replied.

  “Kelly. He has difficulty remembering his own world. He becomes confused, disoriented, melancholy.”