The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He was still hungry when he finished his repast, but his headache had subsided. He crept back upstairs to his room and fell asleep again. This time, his rest was broken intermittently by street noises and volcanic rumblings, by heat and stinks. Once, he awoke to find himself thinking about temporal engineering.

  There were, he reflected, many things about the world of his proper matrix that had never bothered him very much. Eco-collapse? Never cared for a second, he told himself, that there’s nothing but desert or pavement on land, and the oceans are cesspools, and everywhere you go smells like a beer fart. Money meltdown, nuclear exchange? So the world is owned in the Awful Oughts by a few greedy people who want all the other people to keep bending over and greasing their own behinds for the next reaming. So what? When have things ever been different?

  It just hasn’t bothered me.

  Because I have a gift.

  How can I hate the world, he thought as he turned on the cot and pressed the side of his face into the gritty pillow, when I’m free to escape from it whenever I like…?

  Still. Only a fool—not that there weren’t always lots of fools—would deny that civilization was in trouble, that the planet itself was in trouble. Perhaps temporal engineering could save the day.

  Only, it hadn’t saved the day.

  Then perhaps it was about to save the day, and this was the last moment of the old timeline, and everything would now shimmer and dissolve or do some special-effects thing, and he’d awaken with the rest of humanity in some restored Eden …

  He wondered how one would go about heading off the more complicated disasters, and about how different his own life might be after temporal engineering. Neither line of speculation took him very far. The Awful Oughts were the culmination of some trends that had begun with the Industrial Revolution and others that went back to Sumer, possibly even to Olduvai Gorge. As for himself, surely he would still be a traveler. And surely there would still be an agency, a Garrick, a Thomas. Even a Ranke.

  Far away, seafloor twitched. Close by, the volcano gave a growl.

  How much force would it take to change the past? Sleep was taking him again. How much force, measured in, say, Pelées? Two Pelées each to stop Hitler, Stalin, Breedlove? Five Pelées to disinvent styrofoam? Fifteen …

  When he awoke next, night had fallen. His headache was back and worse than before, he was thirsty and ravenously hungry, and he could not recall having felt so wretched or so stupid in the wake of a drunk since college. Downstairs, his hostess was able to offer him coffee and a single brown banana. He ate the fruit slowly and deliberately, by the light of a lamp on the table. Madame let him drink coffee by himself for a while, then came to stand by the table. He looked up and waited. After a moment she cleared her throat softly, put her hand into the pocket of her apron, and withdrew some franc notes and coins.

  “Madame Garrick paid a week’s rent,” she said, placing the money on the table, “and paid also for a week’s meals. This is the portion intended to cover your expenses for the remainder of this week. There is no food here, even for my daughter and myself. Money cannot buy it now. The countryside is deserted, so there is no harvest. The fishermen catch nothing.” She would not meet his eye. Her manner was very formal, and she addressed him so stiffly that he knew she must have devoted considerable time to composing and mentally rehearsing this speech. “The mayor says that carts have been sent to gather food from other parts of the island, but the carts do not return. Even if the mountain does not destroy the town, it has destroyed my livelihood. I do not know how to reach your friend, so I must impose upon you to return this money to her.”

  “Please keep it. She will never miss it. Believe me, I am certain that she would want you to keep it.”

  Madame drew herself up. “I cannot accept charity.”

  “A loan, then.”

  She shook her head again. “I do not know when I would be able to repay it. I am leaving for Fort-de-France in the morning. Today, I prayed to the Holy Virgin, who told me that you are right. I am going to take my Elizabeth and visit my relatives in the south.”

  “I think you are making a very wise decision. I shall personally escort you and your daughter to the edge of town.”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  He indicated the bolted front door with a slight jerk of his head and instantly regretted the movement. His head was still as tender as a boil. He could all but hear his brain slosh inside his skull. “Anything can happen out there now.”

  “Yes, I know.” He heard her sigh. “Sickness is breaking out. They have lighted fires on the beach to purify the air.”

  He marveled at the logic of that and couldn’t frame a reply.

  Madame finally let herself make eye-contact with him. She said, “La Verette kills whites as well, Monsieur. You should take your own advice and go.”

  “I have no relatives in the south.”

  “Will you sail away, then, on a big boat?”

  “On something, I assure you.”

  The sound of an explosion passed over them. The woman cried out, and Medlin jerked violently and spilled coffee on himself. He heard a rattling of shelves from the bar and next, as the bang faded, a shrill note like the sound of a titan’s train whistle. He realized that he was standing, open-mouthed, with saliva pooling in the back of his throat. He gulped hard, almost choked. The whistling persisted for several minutes before trailing off.

  “I must go to the cathedral,” Madame said in a quavering voice, “and offer prayers for our deliverance.”

  Prayer, he started to tell her, will not prevent what is going to happen here, but he saw her eyes widen suddenly, saw her listen and cross herself hurriedly. He said, instead, “What is it?”

  She shushed him.

  He listened hard.

  The drumming was ragged and muted at first, but it steadied quickly, sharpened and rose in volume, became frenzied. He could hear shouts, too.

  One damned thing after another, he thought, and asked again, “What is it?”

  “Wizards.” Her reply was almost inaudible. There was an especially sustained burst of yelling, and then he could hear them approaching. He extinguished the lamp with a puff of breath, moved toward the window, and peered through the crack between the shutters. He saw nothing. A din of singing, shouting, and drumming passed at no very great distance, and, as it did, behind him, the terrified woman hissed, “Monsieur!”

  “Where are they going, Madame?” There was no answer. He looked over his shoulder, and sensed rather than saw her standing wrapped in darkness at the center of the room. “Where are they going?”

  She moaned but made no other sound.

  “We’ll be safe here,” he said. “I have a gun.” He patted his coat pocket, then remembered that Garrick had taken it. He kept talking. “You should go see about your daughter. Reassure her. And try to get some rest. You will both need your rest if you are going to Fort-de-France tomorrow.” Yeah, right, he told himself, as if anyone could rest. “Pray, Madame. Pray for—” Pray for whatever one prayed for.

  He went to the table and groped around its edge to her side. She seemed to be standing very rigidly with her arms pressed tightly against herself and her hands clasped over her bosom as in prayer. She was still moaning as he took both of her hands in his. Either she was numb with fear or else the gesture simply astonished her, for she did not resist or react in any way at first. Her hands were dry and much harder than he had expected them to be. They were the rough, strong hands of someone who worked like a mule every day of her life. They felt more real than his own hands. He could not see her face, but imagined it, and wondered how old she really was, and what the life expectancy of a West Indian mulatto woman could have been—could be, here, now—at the beginning of the twentieth century. She suddenly started like someone awakening from a nap. He made no attempt to hold on as she withdrew her hand from his. Wordlessly, she turned and stumbled away.

  Depressed, he sat down by the shuttered window an
d listened. After a time, he caught himself nodding and got up sharply and walked around the room once. Then he went to his room and cautiously opened the shutter. There was nothing to see except the glow of the volcano’s mouth. There was nothing to hear except the noises made by earth and sea and town, each restless and unhappy. The shouting and singing had died away, and even the drumming had become subliminal. Medlin stretched out on his cot and closed his eyes. Sometime later, he was shaken awake by a loud report from the volcano. The summit of the mountain looked like a blast furnace; over it was a cloud filled with lightning.

  He did not sleep again after that. Wednesday’s sunrise was the saddest he had ever seen. With it came a resumption of the volcano’s grumbling. Lightning flashed among the clouds, and thunder rumbled down the mountainside. The sea was full of wreckage swept down from forest and field during the night. The dozen ships lying in the roadstead looked as though they had run aground on small islands.

  It took most of the morning to load Madame’s belongings for the exodus to Fort-de-France. The woman did not travel lightly. The cart she had got from somewhere was a bed of mismatched planks mounted between two solid wooden wheels. Hitched to this creaking, swaying conveyance was a horse hardly bigger than a large breed of dog. Medlin could not imagine that under the best of circumstances it would have been capable of budging the cart emptied, let along with the girl Elizabeth and household goods aboard, and its nose and lungs irritated by volcanic ejecta. At the woman’s urging, however—she pulled gently yet firmly with one hand at its harness and, with the other, flicked a long switch over its back but did not touch its ashy hide—the horse got moving with an easy indifference to the loaded cart. Medlin padlocked the gate to the courtyard and took his station, as he imagined it to be, on the animal’s opposite flank. They turned a corner and passed the front of the building. Madame did not pause for a farewell look at her locked and shuttered home. She set her mouth in a ruler-straight line and flicked the switch again to let the horse know she would not stand for dawdling.

  The cart made its slow way through and out of the town. Medlin walked with his head hurting and the sour taste of the air in his mouth. He was grateful that Madame seemed disinclined to chat. He saw a few soldiers ahead as the cart approached the junction with the road to Fort-de-France, and because he had no desire to be asked questions by them, he looked across the horse’s back at the woman and said, “This is where I get off.”

  She said, very seriously, “Now you are on the street again. I am sorry that your visit to St. Pierre could not have been a happier one.”

  “The bath and the gumbo were first-rate, and the rum, too.” That brought a faint, fleeting smile to her lips. He was pleased to see it. “Perhaps the next time,” he began, but she cut him off with an emphatic shake of her head.

  “There will be no next time,” she said flatly. “Farewell, Monsieur.”

  “Farewell, Madame.”

  “May God be with you.”

  “And with you,” and he asked himself, Why not?

  He stopped walking and let the cart pull away. Madame did not look back at him. The girl sat high upon a pile of bundles. When he saw her turn her cat-eyed gaze his way, he gave her a little wave. She did not return it. Congratulating himself on the way he had with children, he looked back at the town. It was the color of the surface of the moon. The muttering volcano was half-hidden by its own gray pall of smoke. The afternoon was passing hot, dark, and noisy.

  Well, he thought, how much goddamn longer do I have to stay in this hellhole before I can decently abort the mission? It wouldn’t make Thomas happy when he reported failure, but, then, Thomas was so rarely happy anyway. What did Thomas want him to do? Garrick had escaped—at least, Medlin hadn’t sensed her since, when had it been, Monday?—and Ranke was a no-show.

  He glanced after Madame Boislaville and did a double-take and stared. The soldiers had stepped forward at her approach, and she had halted the cart, and now he could see much gesticulating and hear the woman’s voice raised in protest. Flabbergasted, he watched her turn the cart around and head back toward the town. He shook off his amazement and ran forward.

  She did not slow the cart as he drew near. She looked as dangerous as the mountain itself as he fell in beside her and tried to walk, talk, look at her, and glare back at the soldiers all at the same time.

  She cut him short. “The road to Fort-de-France is blocked,” she said. “The soldiers say their orders came from the governor himself.”

  “Did you tell them you cannot stay here? That—”

  “The soldiers do not care what anyone but the governor tells them.”

  “I shall go talk to them!”

  “Yes,” she said, “certainly they must be more willing to listen to a dirty American stranger than to a respectable widow,” and the long switch hissed and snapped over the horse’s back, and the cart kept moving.

  They walked some distance wrapped in sullenness. Finally, Medlin said, “Madame, you and the girl must slip past the guards tonight.”

  She said, as she might impart an obvious fact to a stupid child, “The wizards will be out again tonight. They will kill anyone they find on the road.”

  “Then go by boat! I don’t care how you get out, but you must get out!”

  She seemed to be thinking it over, so he said no more. He noticed a small group of people gathered to examine a poster on a public bulletin board and stepped forward to read it.

  Extraordinary Proclamation

  to My Fellow Citizens of St. Pierre

  The occurrence of the eruption of Mount Pelée has thrown the whole island into consternation. But aided by the exalted intervention of the Governor and of superior authority, the Municipal Administration has provided, in so far as it has been able, for distribution of essential foods and supplies. The calmness and wisdom of which you have proved yourselves capable in these recent anguished days allows us to hope that you will not remain deaf to our appeals. In accordance with the Governor, whose devotion is ever in command of circumstances, we believe ourselves able to assure you that, in view of the immense valleys which separate us from the crater, we have no immediate danger to fear. The lava will not reach as far as the town. Any further manifestion will be restricted to those places already affected. Do not, therefore, allow yourselves to fall victims to groundless panic. Please allow us to advise you to return to your normal occupation, setting the necessary example of courage and strength during this time of public calamity.

  —The Mayor, R. FOUCHÉ

  Behind him, Madame asked softly, “What does it say?”

  Barely able to contain his anger, he replied, “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

  He barred the gate after she had driven the cart into the courtyard. The girl leaped down and vanished. Medlin helped her mother unhitch the cart and put the horse away, and then Madame led him into the back of the house. He had an impression of impersonal space given over to the utilitarian. It was gloomy and hot, and the ash was ubiquitous. The cafe area itself had acquired a dilapidated, disconsolate air during their brief absence.

  Madame said, “I think there is still water for coffee in one of the storage jars. Perhaps even enough for washing.”

  “That would be wonderful, Madame.”

  The girl emerged without warning and in a hurry from the rear. She went straight to her mother, who instinctively wrapped both arms around her, and glared back over her own shoulder. Madame looked past Medlin and started. Medlin, whose back was to the doorway, heard his name spoken.

  Ranke stood framed in the doorway and looked very pleased with the effect he was having. Throughout the years of their acquaintance, whenever he did not have the man actually in view, Medlin had always seen him in his mind’s eye as being taller, leaner, steelier—Ranke admired those qualities and aspired to them, and had some odd knack for leaving people with the impression that he possessed them. In fact, as Medlin realized whenever he actually did see him again, Ranke was no taller or leaner th
an he was, and the steeliness was only the intent look of a predator, not necessarily a mammalian one. Ranke’s light-colored and lidless gaze took in Madame at a glance, but lingered on the girl as though she might be prey, before coming smoothly back to Medlin. He said, “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday,” said Medlin, “the day before the eruption—” He shot a horrified look at Madame and saw that he need not have worried. Nothing he could have said would have got her attention from Ranke at that moment.

  Ranke stepped into the room and said, without rancor, “Took your own sweet time getting me here.”

  Medlin did not reply. The man frequently did leave him with nothing to say. Instead, he turned to Madame. “You said you thought you still have some water for coffee.”

  It seemed all she could do to look away from the unblinking serpent, the staring-eyed hawk. “Y-yes.”

  “May we have some, please?”

  “Yes. Of course, Monsieur.”

  Ranke stepped around to the left to vacate the doorway. The girl broke out of her mother’s embrace and bolted through to safety. Madame herself edged toward the doorway from the right. The look of satisfaction on Ranke’s face made a scowl start to build itself on Medlin’s. Medlin said, “Let’s keep this private,” and led him up to the room, where Ranke looked about fascinatedly. When he spoke, there was amazement or amusement in his voice, or both.

  “Some terrific base of operations you picked out here.”

  “Garrick picked it out. She had everything set up before I even got here.”

  “I know you’ve seen her, talked to her. I can smell her on you.” Ranke half-smiled; one cheek dimpled. He moved to the windows and threw open the shutters. Without looking at Medlin, he said, “Why didn’t you arrest her when you had her?”

  “I didn’t think it was part of my job. Anyway, she took my gun away from me.”

  Ranke shook his head and took out his own weapon. It was a Colt .38-caliber automatic, either an original or a replica. He was as likely to have the one as the other. He checked the chamber and polished the four-inch barrel on his sleeve. “I could have predicted that outcome. She took your balls away from you years ago. Still, it’s not going to look good on the report, sport.”