The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  Sitting beside him, Eloise is bright and talkative. She’s wearing bandages soaked in a topical anesthetic, and when I ask how she’s doing, says, “My right tit will look like hell for a while.” She holds up her thickly wrapped hands and intones, “And never, never will I play the harp again.” Funny lady.

  Then I brief the supply ship’s Captain Cetewayo (pronounced approximately Chetch-why-oh, with a click to start). He’s a big guy with a polished bald head like a bronze ingot, which nods as I brief him. Fortunately he wears a uniform too, and I don’t have to spell out the facts of life for him.

  The loss of a whole mining colony is going to cause a stupendous stink back home. I expect to spend several years as a professional witness, being grilled by all sorts of people. I want everything done by the book before we leave Bela for good.

  He agrees, collects my notebook and a number of other pieces of evidence and seals them in his safe. Issues me this new notebook. Orders Mannheim to start collecting statements from the survivors – all ten of us.

  Since bureaucrats believe nothing until it’s written down and all the signature blocks properly filled in with names and ranks, these statements will be collated and an after-action report prepared, signed and sealed.

  Admittedly, this is a cover-your-ass operation. But there’s one more thing. It’s essential that we check the mining camp and Main Base from the air, to insure that there are no human survivors. If we had troopers with us, we’d have to physically go inside and inspect, whatever the danger. Since we haven’t the people or weapons to do that, we must do what we can – or risk our careers.

  That sounds cold, but I am metaphysically certain that everybody except ourselves is dead. We gotta do what we gotta do, but we will not save anybody by doing it. Cetewayo agrees and gives the necessary orders.

  Then I join Mannheim in the shuttle. We strap in and drop off the underbelly of the ship, and all at once it’s déjà vu all over again, as some ancient philosopher put it.

  We’re diving into the endless roiling clouds, rain hits us like surf and a huge crooked bolt of lightning flashes from cloud to cloud. I think how silly it would be, after all I’ve been through, if I get killed by a common-place thunderbolt while performing a routine and essentially meaningless duty.

  Instead we drop through the last and darkest layer of the eternal overcast, and we’re flashing over the familiar blue-black sea. With a navigator disk in hand I’m directing Mannheim to Alfa. Soon we’re viewing the familiar sheds and domes and chicken runs of the mining camp, and I ask Mannheim to drop down lower.

  The jungle’s closing in, preparing to erase every track humans ever made here. Only our machines are still alive, the power station chugging away, the brown stream of slurry gushing down the hill like a giant case of dysentery. The lights are long burned out, of course, and –

  Something moving –

  No! Somebody!

  A little figure that’s not an Arkie!

  Standing in a doorway, waving!

  We dip down for an instant, I haul him in with my workable right arm and we’re soaring again. I look at him in awe, trying to imagine how he survived in an alien jungle this long – all alone!

  He’s even skinnier than I remember him, he’s wearing rags, his pants are held up with a vine, he’s got long angry scars on face and hands, and whatever isn’t scarred is covered with some kind of insect bites. He smells like the whole rotten understory of Bela’s jungle. He’s beautiful.

  “Ted,” I tell him, “I’m sorry I missed you the last time.”

  “Well, here I am,” he says, and starts to tell his story – without a single stutter.

  How he wriggled out of the bearpig’s grasp, leaving his oversized coveralls behind; how the beast wasted time trying to eat the coveralls, allowing him time to slide into the thickets; how he ran and hid; how he made himself a cape of leaves to keep warm and shed the rain. How he watched a wingless feathered creature like a parrot, and began cautiously eating what it ate. How in time he worked his way back to Alfa, found it deserted, scavenged some torn clothing and lived off the contents of a couple of sealed supply cartons until he heard the flyer.

  “You weren’t worried we’d go off and leave you?”

  “No,” he says serenely. “I know you’re not like that,” at which I have the grace to blush.

  While listening to Ted Szczech, we’ve crossed the roiling bay and now arrive at the estuary of that river whose name I never learned – not that human names mean anything on Bela anymore. I suppose the Arkies have a musical phrase for it, as they have for everything else.

  Zamók is rising before us, and I see that things have changed. It’s no longer Main Base; the Arkies have already cleared some of the human hovels off their Incan stonework. Reconstruction of lovely temples to follow, I’m sure.

  There’s a crowd of them gathered in the cleared area, standing in circles, and they turn their heads when they see us. Some of them shake weapons, but most merely look once and then turn back to what they’re doing. We don’t count any longer, but a rite is a rite.

  In the center of the crowd stands Julia Mack. I tell Mannheim to bring us to a low hover so we can watch. She completely ignores us, looking straight ahead, and she’s wearing a gorgeous robe of some sort, and no wig, and she looks more than ever like Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, or how Gertrude would have looked if she’d been wrapped in a Persian carpet.

  Suddenly Ted’s stutter comes back, and he starts sputtering, “Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-”

  “I’ll explain later,” I murmur.

  Now an Arkie steps up behind her and he’s carrying – not the usual bronze implement – no, by God, it’s white metal, it’s the titanium mountaineer’s pickaxe that Mack’s parents must have brought to Bela so long ago. Only it’s been fitted with a longer handle, so the little Arkie can reach her.

  He swings it, and Mannheim exclaims something, I don’t know what, and Ted gives a strange cry as Mack falls heavily with the point in her brain. Another priest comes forward, carrying the usual curved axeblade to complete the ritual.

  Mannheim says, “We’ve got to stop this,” and I say, “No, we don’t.”

  This is her reward for all she’s done for them – to become a god of the Arkies, to join their pantheon and live here forever. At last she’s joined her true species, and she’s no longer alone.

  When it’s over – all but the ritual meal – I have to jiggle Mannheim’s arm to get his attention.

  “It’s their church,” I tell him, “and it’s their communion. We don’t belong here. We never did. So let’s go.”

  CONCLUSION AND JUDGMENT

  KOHN, Robert Rogers, cannot be held legally culpable for the disaster on Planet Bela. However, as the only surviving senior official he must be held administratively responsible, since there is no one else left to blame. He is therefore involuntarily retired from the Security Forces with official reprimand and reduced pension.

  PROTEST of judgment filed by Citizens Alcerra, al-Sba’a, and Szczech is hereby REJECTED.

  PETITION of KOHN, Robert Rogers, and spouse to be allowed to live in retirement in an oasis of the Great American Desert is hereby GRANTED.

  BY ORDER OF THE HONORABLE COMMITTEE

  SITKA

  William Sanders

  William Sanders lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. A former powwow dancer and sometime Cherokee gospel singer, he appeared on the SF scene in the early eighties with a couple of alternate-history comedies, Journey to Fusang (a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award) and The Wild Blue and the Gray. Sanders then turned to mystery and suspense, producing a number of critically acclaimed titles under a pseudonym. He credits his old friend Roger Zelazny with persuading him to return to SF, this time via the short story form; his stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies, earning himself a well-deserved reputation as one of the best short-fiction writers of the last decade, winning a
Sideways Award for Best Alternate History story. He has also returned to novel writing, with books such as The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan and The Bernadette Operations, a new SF novel, J., and a mystery novel, Smoke. Some of his acclaimed short stories have been collected in Are We Having Fun Yet? American Indian Fantasy Stories. His most recent book is a historical study, Conquest: Hernando de Soto and the Indians: 1539–1543. (Most of his books, including reissues of his earlier novels, are available from Wildside Press, or on Amazon.com.) His stories have appeared in our Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth Annual Collections.

  In the sharp little story that follows, he escorts us around the town of Sitka, which proves to be a very cold place, even in the summertime.

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, a little before sundown, the fog moved in off the ocean and settled in over the islands and peninsulas of the coast. It wasn’t much of a fog, by the standards of Russian America in late summer; just enough to mask the surface of the sea and soften the rough outlines of the land.

  On the waterfront in the town of New Arkhangelsk, on the western side of the big island that the Russians called Baranof and the natives called Sitka, two men stood looking out over the harbor. “Perfect,” one of them said. “If it’ll stay like this.”

  The other man looked at him. “Perfect, Jack? How so?”

  The first man flung out a hand. “Hell, just look. See how it’s hanging low over the water?”

  The other man turned back toward the harbor, following his gesture. He stood silently for a moment, seeing how the fog curled around the hulls of the anchored ships while leaving their upper works exposed. The nearest, a big deepwater steamer, was all but invisible down near the waterline, yet her masts and funnels showed clear and black against the hills beyond the harbor, and the flag of the Confederate States of America was clearly recognizable at her stern.

  “Perfect,” the man called Jack said again. “Just enough to hide a small boat, but not enough to hide a ship. Less chance of a mistake.”

  He was a powerfully built young man with curly blond hair and a tanned, handsome face. His teeth flashed white in the fading light. “After all,” he said, “we don’t want to get the wrong one, do we, Vladimir?”

  The man called Vladimir, whose last name was Ulyanov and who sometimes called himself Lenin, closed his eyes and shuddered slightly. “No, that would be very bad.” His English was excellent but strongly accented. “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “Don’t worry,” the younger man said. “We’ll get her for you.”

  “Not for me. You know better than that.”

  “Yeah, all right. For the cause.” Jack slapped him lightly on the upper arm, making him wince. “Hey, I’m a good socialist too. You know that.”

  “So you have assured me,” Lenin said dryly. “Otherwise I might suspect – ”

  He stopped suddenly as a pair of long-bearded Orthodox monks walked past. Jack said, “What,” and then, “Oh, hell, Vladimir, don’t you ever relax? I bet they don’t even speak English.”

  Lenin looked after the two black-robed figures and shook his head. “Two years away from the twentieth century,” he murmured, “and still the largest country in the world is ruled by medieval superstition. . . .”

  He turned to the younger man. “We shouldn’t be standing here like this. It looks suspicious. And believe me,” he said as Jack started to speak, “to the people we are dealing with, everything looks suspicious. Trust me on this.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of a nearby saloon. “Come,” he said. “Let us have a drink, Comrade London.”

  As the two men started down the board sidewalk, a trio of dark-faced women suddenly appeared from the shadows and fell in alongside, smiling and laughing. One of them grabbed Jack’s arm and said something in a language that was neither English nor Russian. “For God’s sake,” Jack said, and started to pull free. “Just what we need, a bunch of Siwash whores.”

  “Wait.” Lenin held up a hand. “Let them join us for now. With them along, no one will wonder what we are doing here.”

  “Huh. Yeah, all right. Good idea.” Jack looked at the three women. They weren’t bad-looking in a shabby sort of way. The one holding his arm had red ribbons in her long black hair. He laughed. “Too bad I’m going to be kind of busy this evening. Give them a bath, they might be good for some fun.”

  Lenin’s nose twitched slightly. “You’re not serious.”

  “Hell, no. I may be down on my luck but I’m still a white man.”

  Lenin winced. “Jack, I’ve got to talk to you some time about your – ”

  The saloon door swung open and a couple of drunken Cossacks staggered out, leaning on the unpainted timber wall for support. When they were past, Lenin led the way through the narrow doorway and into a long, low-ceilinged, poorly lit room full of rough wooden tables and benches where men, and a few women, sat drinking and talking and playing cards. An old man rested on a tall stool near the door, playing a slow minor-key tune on an accordion. The air was dense with smoke from cheap mahorka tobacco.

  “There,” Lenin said. “In the back, by the wall, where we can watch the door.”

  He strode up to the bar, pushing past a group of sailors in the white summer uniform of the Imperial German navy, and came back a moment later carrying a bottle and a couple of glasses. “One minute,” he said, setting the glasses down and pouring, while Jack dragged up a bench and sat down. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Stepping over to the next table, Lenin beckoned to the three women. They looked blank. “Come,” he said, in Russian and then in English, and at last they giggled in unison and moved over to join him. “Here.” He set the bottle in the center of the table, making exaggerated sit-down motions with his free hand. “Sadityes’ You sit here,” he said, speaking very slowly. He touched the bottle. “You can have this. Ponimaitye?”

  As they seated themselves, with another flurry of giggles, Lenin came back and sat down across from Jack. “There,” he said. “That’s the only table in the place close enough for anyone to overhear us. Better to have it occupied by harmless idiots.”

  Jack snorted. “For God’s sake, Vladimir!”

  “Laugh if you like,” Lenin said. “I don’t take risks. Already I have been arrested – ”

  “Me too.”

  “Pardon me.” Lenin’s voice was very flat. “You have been arrested by stupid American policemen, who beat you and threw you in a cell for a few days and then made you leave town and forgot about you. You have been detained briefly, at a military outpost, for prospecting for gold without a permit. You have no idea what a Cheka interrogation is like. Or,” he said, “what it is like to live under the eyes of a vigilant and well-organized secret police force and their network of informers.”

  He lifted his glass. “What is that American idiom? ‘The walls have ears,’ yes? In the Russian Empire they have both ears and eyes – and feet, to run and tell the men with the big boots what you say and do. Until you have been stepped on by those boots, you have no business to laugh at the caution of those who have.”

  At the next table the woman with the red ribbons in her hair said, “I’m looking at him and I still don’t believe it.”

  She said it in a language that was not spoken anywhere in that world.

  The woman beside her pushed back her own hair, which was done up in thick braids that hung down to the swell of her bosom under her trade-blanket coat. She said in the same language, “Well, he was one of the great figures of history, for better or worse.”

  “Not Lenin,” the woman with the red ribbons said impatiently. “Jack London. He’s gorgeous. The pictures didn’t even come close.”

  Across the table, the third woman was doing something with one of the seashell ornaments that dangled from her ears. She looked over at the men’s table for a moment and then smiled and nodded without speaking.

  “Hand me that bottle,” the one with the red ribbons said. “I think I’m in love.�
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  “Of course,” Lenin said, “for me things did perhaps work out for the best. Siberia wasn’t pleasant, but it gave me time to think, to organize my ideas. And then the authorities decided to send some of the Siberian exiles even farther away, to this remote American outpost of the empire, and in time this presented . . . possibilities.”

  Jack gave a meaningless grunt and reached for his own glass, staring off across the room. The German sailors were clustered around the accordion player, who was trying to accompany them on “Du, Du Liegst Mir Am Herzen.” Some of the Russians were giving them dirty looks but they didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s right,” Jack muttered. “Sing, have yourselves a good time. Get drunk, find some whores, get skinned in a rigged card game. Just for God’s sake don’t go back to the ship tonight.”

  The woman with the red ribbons said, “He looks a lot younger. Than Lenin, I mean.”

  “Only six years’ difference in their ages,” the woman with the braids said. “But you’re right. Or rather Lenin looks older – ”

  “Sh.” The other woman raised a finger, still fiddling with her seashell ear pendants. “Quiet. I’ve almost – there. There.” She dropped her hands to her lap and sat back. “Locked on and recording.”

  “All right,” the woman with the red ribbons said. She reached up and pushed back her hair with a casual-looking motion, her hand barely brushing the area of her own ear. A moment later the woman beside her did something similar.

  “Oh,” the one with the red ribbons said. “Yes. Nice and clear. All this background noise, too, I’m impressed.”

  The one with the braids said, “Speaking of background noise, we need to generate some. We’re being too quiet. We’re supposed to be cheap whores drinking free vodka. Time to laugh it up again.”