The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Adding to the dreaminess was a time-lapse effect. Medlin sank through a leafy canopy, disturbing it no more than a moonbeam, and alighted on firm ground. Trees cut off his view of the town. All he could see of the volcano now was a red-tinged dark sky. He could see it better, in fact, than he could see his own nimbused hand. Yet, even as he watched, the sky lightened, pinkish-brown cumulous masses of volcanic smoke raced across the sky, and shafts of sunlight speared down through gaps in the treetops. He was standing in the middle of an unpaved road in the heart of a tropical forest.

  As he solidified, he became aware of other, less pleasant details.

  The air was full of white specks that looked like snowflakes but stung like nettles when they hit bare skin. He took a breath, and the moisture in his mouth evaporated. A second breath made the lining of his throat sear and pucker. A paroxysm of coughing bent him double, and frightening thoughts filled his head.

  Perhaps he had mistimed his arrival.

  Perhaps he didn’t have the better part of a week after all.

  Perhaps he had arrived instead at the climactic moment.

  But he did not shrivel, did not burst and stew in his own juices, did not become a charcoal mannequin. He lived, and felt as though he were coughing himself inside out, and reached with one hand to steady himself against a huge tree garlanded with lianas and orchids. The bole was warm to his fingertips, almost hot. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth and nose. That made breathing easier—a little easier.

  Watery-eyed and puffy-lidded, he rested against the tree, and at almost the same moment, he realized two things: one, he was not alone; two, Ranke was not present.

  The road was barely more than a trail of wheel ruts through the jungle. It branched above a fast, swollen creek, one fork veering to his left, the other plunging straight down the creek bank into water full of uprooted trees and other vegetation. Coming off the creek was a powerful smell of rotten eggs and dead animals. Strung in a ragged line beside it were two hundred men, women, and children. They were staring gloomily at the water. Medlin immediately knew them for what they were. He had seen their like thirty-six hours before, subjective time, in the Low Countries in 1940. As a consequence of that experience, he was convinced that it was impossible to mistake even small numbers of refugees for any other group one might encounter anywhere. These were, with a single exception, dark-skinned people. The men wore straw hats, loose trousers, and shirts. The women wore madras scarves, white blouses, long skirts. They carried little more than their infants.

  The exception among them was a late-middle-aged white man dressed in a cassock. He was the only one wearing shoes. He started so violently when he noticed Medlin that Medlin thought the priest must somehow have detected the luminous vapor that clung to him. His alarm did not entirely fade as the man strode forward with a belligerent expression on his face: even as reason asserted itself—the envelope of charged particles which Medlin saw as a nimbus about himself was as imperceptible as water vapor to denizens—he retreated two steps backward and thrust his hand into his coat pocket to feel the butt of the revolver there. The priest had enormous ropey hands and looked very fit for his age. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses was the fixed squint of someone who had spent a great many daylight hours hatless in the sun. He slightly knitted the muscles between his thick eyebrows, and the squint transformed into a scowl that told Medlin, here is a clergyman used to getting his way with the laity. The priest said, in snappish French, “Do not waste your time trying to persuade us to return! We are not going back!”

  Behind him, several of the men put on scowls of their own. Medlin mustered all the sunny good nature he had in him at the moment and said, “I beg your pardon, Father. I have no intention of persuading you to go back. In fact, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  The priest looked past him in obvious expectation of seeing others. Finding no one, he relaxed his expression somewhat.

  “With that accent,” he said, “you are a foreigner.”

  “I am an American traveler.”

  “Ah! An American!” The priest half-turned for a moment to give the refugees a reassuring smile and nod. The men’s scowls yielded to the same disconsolate looks as before. “Americans are the only other people on this island who have shown any good sense so far! Accept my most sincere apologies. I am Father Hayot. When I saw you, I thought that the governor must have sent you after us.”

  “I myself have never met the governor.” One played these things by ear.

  Father Hayot’s face wrinkled into a relief-map of righteous anger. Up close, he was even more formidable. He had eyes like musketballs. “My parishioners and I are from Le Prêcheur, a village to the north. Yesterday, while Governor Mouttet was safe in his residency in Fort-de-France, where the mountain cannot possibly harm him, we were fleeing for our lives. The lava destroyed everything, homes, crops—even the statue of the Virgin. Then, when we reached St. Pierre, the governor telegraphed the military commandant to confine us to the town hall compound, as though we were criminals! We would be there even now if I had not persuaded the guard to let us go.”

  Medlin thought it generally good policy to listen sympathetically to denizens, so he said, “But why would the governor have you confined?”

  “He is too concerned with elections. He must feel a few poor refugees will cause a panic that will drive people from the polls!”

  The volcano made a sound like something clearing its throat. Medlin would not have imagined it possible for the villagers to look any unhappier than they did already. They surprised him.

  “They believe the mountain is the chimney of a gigantic blacksmith shop—God’s or the Devil’s, they are unsure.” Father Hayot’s expression was both patronizing and exasperated. “I have been with them for many years now, and still, still, I cannot make them understand the vital difference between Christian faith and paganistic belief.”

  Medlin had never understood the difference himself, but did not say so. Instead, he asked, “Where does this trail lead?”

  “Over the ridge to Morne Rouge if you follow it east. Straight to the coast road if you go west.” Suspicion suddenly clouded the priest’s face again. “Do you mean to say that you do not know where you are?”

  Medlin put on a rueful smile. “I know that I am standing next to a live volcano. Obviously, I am lost. I am not even sure what day it is.”

  Dismayed but disarmed, the priest clucked reproachfully. “Today is Saturday.”

  Five days, Medlin thought, relieved. Five whole days and nights.

  “If you have been lost out here on the mountainside,” Father Hayot went on, “you are indeed most fortunate to be alive and unharmed. This is dangerous country even under normal conditions. Serpents. Wild pigs.” He lowered his voice, and there was a fresh element of bitterness in it. “Sometimes I think there are no true Christians here in this countryside. People here may have a priest, may say prayers to the Virgin, but in their hearts they believe in magic and the world of ghosts. They listen to the quimboiseurs—the wizards, who kill whomever they meet and use human bones in their evil work. You must be very careful whom you meet in the jungle.”

  “I have a companion who seems to be lost, too. Perhaps you have seen him. He is a white man.”

  “We have passed few people at all since we left the coast road. Probably your lost companion has gone on to St. Pierre. But, were I you, I do not think I would follow him there. The situation has become very bad since just yesterday morning. No one knows what to do. Worse, no one seems to care. My parishioners want to return to their homes, whatever is left of them, but we are cut off by the torrent. The river is impassable all the way to the sea. I am trying to convince them to let me lead them inland. There is a convent at Morne Rouge where they can find shelter. You should come with us.

  Medlin made himself look as though he were mulling over the suggestion. He actually was pondering his next move, but it involved finding Ranke and getting on with
the business at hand, not running from volcanoes. Ranke’s absence was nothing to get too alarmed about, yet. He could simply be late. Passengers sometimes got momentarily misplaced. Experienced travelers and passengers sometimes arrived not even approximately simultaneously. More disturbing than Ranke’s missing a rendezvous by minutes or hours was the idea of his missing it by kilometers. He could have arrived on the opposite side of the island, or far out to sea. Damn all islands anyway. He could have come down close to the heart of the volcano’s red glow. Not that it had to be anything melodramatic. He could have landed right on target, right on schedule, but clumsily, and broken his neck.

  Medlin almost wished that, then admonished himself. Ought to have offered Ranke a hand to hold, he thought, and immediately recoiled from the idea. Holding hands was not essential, and it was no guarantee of anything, either. Some passengers found it reassuring. There was nothing travelers wanted more than calm passengers, but Christ-all-bleeding-mighty, Ranke. Not one to take anybody’s hand, unless maybe to break a finger. His problem—Medlin’s problem, now—was not that he needed reassurance or that he was even afraid of time-travel, but that he was no good at it.

  Still, as long as he had stood close to Medlin, within the circle marked on the floor with strips of duct tape, he should have gone wherever Medlin went. Only he hadn’t, and Medlin would eventually have to explain why not. It could go very badly indeed if the guy stayed lost. “Agent Ranke and I disliked each other,” Medlin could hear himself explaining, “and it was unpleasant for us to stand close together, so perhaps he unconsciously pushed himself away at a crucial moment,” and, “Perhaps,” he could hear someone on the board of inquiry retorting, “unconsciously or otherwise, you may have pushed Agent Ranke away,” and “Well,” he could hear himself concluding lamely, “Agent Ranke was there one moment and not there the next.”

  Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn.

  And then there was Garrick. At least the fugitive was near, or traces of her, anyway, scattered on the thick midday air, perceptible but ungraspable. Ranke was much, much better at this stuff. What for Ranke would have been a big neon arrow pointing directly toward Garrick was a film of cobwebs to Medlin.

  It was enough to fill Medlin with a glum resolve. He said, “Thank you for your concern, Father, but I must locate my companion. We have important business in St. Pierre.”

  Father Hayot used his lips to make an soft, unpleasant, unpriestly sound, disgusted and dismissive. “Everyone,” he growled, “has important business in that wicked place. Little Paris of the West Indies. Little Paris! A more appropriate name would be Little Sodom, or Little Gomorrah, especially if the lava should destroy it! Judgment is going to fall on those Pierrotins—a judgment of fire for their sinfulness and stupidity! The attitude among them is that my parishioners are foolish country people, and that Americans are cowards. Most of your countrymen have already sailed away.”

  “Still, I must go there.”

  “Then may God go with you, my son.”

  Father Hayot regarded him with unanticipated kindliness as he said that, and Medlin marveled at his own luck in being the one thing on Earth today, an American, for which this cantankerous priest evidently had positive feelings. He said, “Good luck to you as well, Father,” and started walking away. The refugees hardly bothered looking at him as he passed.

  “There is no luck,” the priest called after him, “there is only God’s mercy. And God’s mercy is bigger than any mountain.”

  Medlin didn’t look back, but gave a friendly wave, as though taking the priest’s word for it. As soon as the villagers were out of sight around the bend in the road, he paused, shakily took a pint flask of distilled water from the left pocket of his coat, and drank half. First meetings with denizens always left him sweating and dry-mouthed.

  He came eventually to the edge of the jungle. Beyond the trees was a field of cane stubble and, beyond that, other fields ranked in tiers extending all the way down to the sea, three or four miles away. In some of the fields were rippling stands of cane and little moving specks that were canecutters hard at their work. Off to the south lay the town, a quarter-moon by day as well as by night, its outline dictated by the natural amphitheater in which it lay. Medlin walked out from under the trees and went some distance before he thought to turn and take a look at the volcano.

  He had to crane his head back to see it. Half-obscured by haze, the volcano’s rocky collar was surely some distance away, and yet the steep green slope beneath the crater seemed to loom directly above him. It was as though a jungle had been stood on end and a great sooty smoky fire lighted at the higher end. No open sky was visible to the north; the smoke rolled away to infinity. The sight was hypnotic. He turned his back on it with no small effort of will and struck out along the margin of the cane stubble.

  He headed south when he reached the coast road. To his right, the land sloped down into a calm sea. On his left, the road was edged with tropical trees. Set among them at intervals were stone crucifixes and shrines dedicated to the Virgin. On a slight rise near the northern point of the crescent, he paused for a first good look at his destination. While he surveyed the town, he took another drink from his flask, almost draining it, and ate his one nutrition bar, a dense, chewy foodstick a little larger than his thumb.

  Between the crescent’s horns, the waterfront stretched along a thin, scalloped beach of black sand. Crowded together along its entire length were wharves, warehouses, and, undoubtedly, establishments for the entertainment of sailors. A main thoroughfare ran the length of the crescent, about a mile. Numerous intersecting streets crept up from the waterfront to the base of the wooded slope behind the town, a distance of a quarter of a mile. There were one-storied buildings with tin awnings behind the quayside, and blocks of two-, even three-storied buildings. Most of the substantial-looking structures had walls of yellow stone and tiled roofs; the ash-coated tiles were faded pink. Here and there was something more impressive. Medlin saw a lighthouse, a twin-towered cathedral, and what appeared to be a fort or prison. But for the jungle and the volcano, he felt that he could have been looking at any small French Mediterranean seaport.

  The town seemed peaceful to the point of stultification. Everyone in it could have been dead already, suffocated by ash. Then he saw distant figures unhurriedly moving about in the streets, comporting themselves as though there were not an active volcano in the world. At the water’s edge, on a broad, sloping square dominated by the lighthouse, roustabouts worked like tiny ants. The roadstead was full of ships. The island shelved off at such a steep angle that even big ships were able to anchor close to shore.

  On the outskirts of town, soldiers were dragging dead animals from a cart and flinging them into a pit beside the road. Mounds of freshly turned dirt lined both sides of the road; this activity had been going on for some time. Only the soldiers seemed remotely interested in their work, and that only to the point of quite clearly disliking it. Mass animal burials could have been the commonest sight on the island for all the attention paid by civilian passersby.

  Medlin entered the town behind a tall black woman who strode along purposefully with a wooden tray of fruits and vegetables balanced on her head. He estimated that she could not have been carrying much under sixty pounds. Watching the play of muscles in her dusky calves made him feel flabby. Trotting along sometimes in front and sometimes beside or behind the woman was a miniature edition of her, with a miniature edition of her burden.

  The streets were filled with black, brown, and yellow people, with a sprinkling of white. The falling ash muffled every sound, and voices blended together into a soft background burble. The predominant speech was, to Medlin’s ear, like French come through Africa.

  It quickly became obvious to him that the situation was not only as bad as Father Hayot had said, but becoming steadily worse. Groups of people stood about who seemed to have no place to go, no idea of what to do. These, too, had that unmistakable look of refugees; the authorities must h
ave stopped confining them, but had not decided as yet what else to do with them. Livestock wandered loose. They seemed to be dropping dead faster than the soldiers could haul away the carcasses. Asphyxiated birds lay everywhere. The fountains were fouled with black mud.

  Yet commerce was gamely trying to flourish. Ash bedraggled flowers in the vendor’s stalls and made foodstuffs look grayish and unappetizing. The variety was more impressive than either the quality or the quantities—there were bananas, oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, breadfruit, sapodillas. Apart from the vendors’ manifest irritation at continually having to brush grit from their wares, few people evidenced much concern about the volcano. Many did not even seem interested. Everyone joked and haggled, harangued and gossiped.