The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “My aunts tried dying me when I was young. I hated it, a horrible messy process that stank and had to be done over and over. When it was time, when I smelled the dye cooking, I’d run away and hide, and they would come hunting. They made my cousins join in, until they began to refuse. ‘If Thev wants to be ugly, let him be. We don’t want to hunt him down like an animal.’ My aunts gave up finally.”

  “You never rethought that decision?”

  “What are you telling me, Akuin? You are willing to become my lover if I turn myself black? But not otherwise? Can’t you be content to be the lovely one? I am certainly content to be the smart one.”

  No question the spots were ugly. But the thin body was good enough, and so was the voice, even and friendly and amused. The mind was in front of any mind he’d ever encountered. What would it be like to make love with someone who could peer into the center of stars and see what lies beyond ordinary experience?

  Akuin kissed his friend. Thev responded with passion. Ugly he might be, and intellectual, but he was also passionate.

  They became lovers. This is always a difficult situation when the couple is young, without much privacy. Either they waited till their roommates were gone, or they used the rooms-for-sex-and-other-intimate-behavior that are associated with gymnasia.

  It would be better to do these things, Akuin thought, in the woods of Atkwa or in a secluded part of his grandmother’s garden. Even the dunes next to his boarding school would have been better. Love did not belong in the station. Though Thev didn’t seem to mind the grey rooms and the air that smelled of machinery.

  Would life have been different, Akuin wondered later, if he’d chosen a more appropriate lover? One of the older men, who showed an interest in him? The senior gardener, for example?

  The problem now, aside from the uncomfortable places they made love, was Thev’s other passion. He was onto something interesting about the star grove.

  Maybe if Akuin had loved his work as much, he would have been able to endure Thev’s periods of abstraction or his long discussions of the behavior of aging stars. He tried to be as boring, telling Thev about the garden’s problems. It is always difficult to keep an incomplete ecology in balance. This particular garden had recurrent infestations of a parasitic organism that was neither a plant nor an animal, but rather alive in its own peculiar way. It was native to the hwarhath home world, but had changed after the hwarhath had inadvertently carried it into space, a region it liked; or rather it liked the conditions of gardens in space. It thrived under lights that did not have the exact spectrum of the hwarhath home star; and soil that wasn’t full of the home world’s microorganisms seemed like a gift from the Goddess.

  Thev listened patiently, but what he heard – more than anything else – was complaining. Obviously, a garden in space was going to be different from a garden on the home planet. Obviously, there were going to be difficulties and problems. But to a man of his temperament, optimistic and determined, problems were something one overcame or suffered cheerfully, the way he suffered his spots.

  If Akuin’s plants were covered with mold, well then, Akuin would have to find a cure. If a cure could not be found, the garden would have to grow other kinds of plants.

  “Does nothing discourage you?” asked Akuin.

  “You do, sometimes. Why not enjoy life? Is anything improved by moping? Think of how handsome you are! Think of my devotion! Do you think mold is any worse than my equations, which are not going where I want them to?”

  In spite of his excellent heritage, Thev said, he was not a first-rate mathematician. Rather, he had an instinct for how things are. “Where that came from, I don’t know. The same place as my spots, maybe. In any case, I don’t reason out what the Goddess has done with the universe. It comes to me almost as a vision; and if you think it’s easy to see things in more than the usual five dimensions, you are wrong.* That’s what the grove is like: a place that requires far more than five dimensions, if I’m going to understand it. There are so many stars here, and they are packed so closely!”

  Maybe the problem was a difference in magnitude. Mold seems like a trivial problem, compared to Thev’s struggles with his equations. More likely it was a difference in temperament. Thev’s energy made everything he did important. When he struggled, it was a real struggle. Akuin’s sadness, which was chronic now, diminished his concerns. Nothing he did seemed worth doing, to himself or to those around him.

  His first year in space ended. The second began. According to messages from relatives, everyone at home was doing well, though his grandmother’s garden didn’t thrive as it had when he tended it. Beyond doubt, he had a gift. “How lucky that you can use it where you are,” his mother said.

  The mold was under control now. He had convinced the senior gardener to introduce a few ornamental plants.

  “Just in the corners, lad. The places we aren’t using. This isn’t a great station. If the officers here want flowers for their lovers, too bad. And no matter how you beg, I’m not going to send for bugs. They aren’t in the budget.”

  At first he put in plants with colored leaves. They shone like jewels at the corners of beds full of green and blue-green vegetation.

  “Like fire in the night,” said one of the station’s senior officers. “Are flowers possible?”

  “Talk to the man in front of me. He says we don’t have the money.”

  The officer, a physicist and a good one, according to Thev, ran his hand along a bright red leaf. “Maybe something can be worked out, though he’s right that research never gets the funding it deserves.” The man glanced at Akuin. “You are Gehazi Thev’s friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve made a good choice. He’s going to have a future, in spite of being as ugly as a wall made of mud. Beauty isn’t everything.” The man touched the leaf a second time. “But it’s something.”

  Money was found for flowers, though not for bugs. The senior officer picked the first bloom that opened. “To give to someone dear.”

  “I know who that is,” Thev said. “A man who gets ahead on charm. He’ll go into administration. He hasn’t got the mind for research. But he isn’t a bad fellow, and he’ll make sure the men who can think get the chance to think. Do you think charm can take a person all the way to the front, Akuin?”

  “I never got the impression that the Frontmen-in-a-Bundle were charming.” *

  “Research scientists don’t make it to the Bundle,” Thev said. “Accountants, yes, and administrators, though I’m not sure they are especially charming administrators. Also experts on warfare. But not experts on how the universe really works.”

  “Are you ambitious?” Akuin asked.

  “Yes, but not in that way. What I want, aside from you – ” He rolled over and took hold of Akuin, pulling him close. “Is fame that goes on forever and a good teaching position.”

  At the end of his second year in space, Akuin got leave and went home, like any other young man, to his native country and the house where he’d been raised. He was there for the usual length of time, working in his grandmother’s garden and taking hikes in the stony hills. For the most part, he spent his time alone.

  Hah! He had grown, his female relatives told him. He was handsomer than ever! They didn’t mention his aloofness, which troubled them, or the expression of sadness that appeared too often on his face.

  “It may be nothing,” his grandmother said in private. “There are men who have trouble adjusting to space, but almost everyone manages in the end. This other young man sounds encouraging. I’ve done research on the family. They are a small lineage, not rich, but they have made excellent alliances; and their traits seem fine. If this romance works out, and Akuin stays involved with the Gehazi boy, we ought to think of approaching them for semen.”

  “It’s the other side of the planet!” Akuin’s mother exclaimed. “And the young man has spots!”

  “He’d be a poor choice to father children,” the grandmother admitted. “Tho
ugh he is apparently a genius. But I agree with you. It would be better to go to his male relatives. He has plenty who look normal, and most are bright. As for Gehazi’s location, these are modern times. We can’t be provincial. Who can say which alliances will prove useful?”

  At the end of his leave, Akuin visited his former school. It was almost empty, the students on vacation, but Tol Chaib was there, getting his garden ready for winter. Hah! The air was cold already and smelled, when the wind came off the land, of drying vegetation.

  He spent a day working with his mentor, digging into the sandy soil, cutting stalks and branches, gathering fallen leaves. In the evening they drank halin and talked, alone together in Tol Chaib’s quarters. The rest of the building was unoccupied.

  After they were both drunk, Tol Chaib said, “I always wanted to have sex with you. It wasn’t possible, until you became a man. But the longing was there. It frightened me. I’m not usually attracted to boys.”

  What was it, Akuin wondered, about him and ugly men? Maybe they could see the wrongness in him, though it was different from their ugliness. There was nothing wrong with Thev except his spots. In every other way, he was a model young man: loyal, determined, direct, pious. Though not violent. Thev lacked the fifth male virtue. Well, no one was perfect, and Thev’s other traits – his intelligence and cheerfulness – ought to count for something.

  Tol Chaib was more disturbing. Looking at him, Akuin saw loneliness and grief for things lost: his old beauty, his life in space. The old man was like a mirror, reflecting Akuin’s future. He could end like this. Though he didn’t think he would ever be attracted to boys. That was a perversion, after all; and his wrongness – whatever it was exactly – seemed unconnected with perversity. He was a gardener, who wanted to garden at home. A shameful ambition! But not the same as wanting to molest children.

  In the end, after another cup of halin, he went to bed with Tol Chaib, though he was never certain exactly why. The old man wanted this to happen, and he felt he owed his mentor something. That was as good an explanation as any. In the morning they parted, Tol Chaib giving him a tropical flower from the school greenhouse. It was huge and intricate and as blue as the sky, though almost scentless. Akuin carried it until it wilted, then threw it in the ocean. This was on one of the rocket islands. An ikun later he boarded a rocket, which carried him into space.

  Gehazi Thev greeted him with affection when he got back to their station. “Though it was a good idea to have time away from you. I thought about stellar evolution instead of sex. There is much to be said for both, of course, but my job is stars.”

  During his absence, Thev had moved into a new dormitory, this one occupied by four young physicists.

  “There didn’t seem to be any reason to stay in my old room. I have nothing in common with the other men. It was only habit that kept me there. Habit and you, and you were gone.”

  Their romance continued, though it might have ended. Who can say what ties men (or women) together? They returned to their old habits, exercising in the station’s gymnasia, going to its one theatre to see recordings of plays put on in the great stations, places such as Tailin. Both enjoyed soaking in the pools-for-soaking. Both enjoyed sex in the rooms-for-privacy.

  These last were small, like everything in the station. There was a low bed, fastened to the floor, and two stools that moved in grooves. The ceiling had a mirror, which could be turned off, though the lovers usually kept it on. The wall opposite the bed could be replaced with a hologram. Thev liked scenes of space: galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets. Akuin (of course) preferred scenes of home.

  During one of their stays in a private room, Thev spoke about the work he was doing. They’d had sex and were lying together on the bed’s thin mattress. A trio of stars – red, white and orange – blazed at the room’s end. The mirror above them showed their bodies, quiet now, Thev resting on his belly, Akuin on his back.

  Later, Akuin remembered the scene, as he remembered the day he first fell in love with his grandmother’s garden.

  Thev had been working with geometry. “Making models, so I can visualize what is happening in this region of space. Mind you, it isn’t easy. We evolved to see five dimensions, and that’s the number we insist on seeing, no matter how many there may be.

  “But it is possible, especially if one uses a computer. How did our ancestors get anything done, before the existence of computers? Imagine trying to understand the universe by counting on fingers! Or making lines in the dirt! No wonder the universe was small in those days! No wonder it was simple!

  “What one does – ” Thev rolled over and began to go through his uniform’s pockets.* A moment later he was kneeling by the hologram projector. The triple star vanished. In its place was an irregular object made of glowing white lines. It floated in midair, turning slowly and changing shape as it turned.

  “ – Is eliminate one of the ordinary visible dimensions and replace it with a dimension that can’t be seen. Obvious, you may say to me; and certainly it has been done many times before; and certainly it isn’t adequate to show what’s happening in this region of space.

  “But if one makes a large number of these partial models, each one showing an aspect of reality – ”

  Now the room was full of floating objects, all made of glowing lines, but not all the same color. Some were red or orange, like the vanished stars. Others were green, blue, yellow. Hah! It was like a garden! Except these flowers were all deformed and deforming. Some expanded like leaves opening in spring. Others folded in and seemed to be swallowing themselves. As one diminished, the one beside it grew, either in size or complexity. Akuin began to feel queasy.

  “The problem, of course, is fitting all these partial models together. This is where a computer is essential.”

  “What is this about?” Akuin asked. “Does this array of ugly objects serve any purpose?”

  “Ugly!” said Thev. “Dear one, they are the achievement of my life!” He was back on the bed now, sitting with his arms around his knees, admiring the things. “Of course, I’m young and likely to do better. But this isn’t bad, I assure you.”

  “You have told me,” Akuin said, “that you are trying to see what can’t be seen, and comprehend what isn’t comprehensible. Maybe you can do this. Everyone agrees that you are brilliant. But I’m not going to understand these things swallowing themselves.”

  “You want another kind of model. Something which has to do with plants and bugs.”

  “That’s what I know,” Akuin said.

  Thev was silent for a while, watching his things, which continued to grow, change shape, divide, diminish and vanish. A garden out of a bad dream. A sorcerer’s garden.

  Thev spoke finally. “Think of this region, this grove of stars, as a grove of trees growing in a dry place, so the trees are forced to seek water. We think the ground is dirt and stone; we think it’s solid. In reality, a multitude of roots go down and out, forcing their way through dirt and stone, twisting around each other. It’s possible the roots are connected.”

  Akuin had grown up in a part of the home world where many species of trees were communal, their various trunks rising from a single root system. But he had trouble imagining stars connected in the same way. This suggests that he hadn’t paid attention to his physics class in school, which is true.

  “We know that strange stars can be connected with other strange stars. Usually, the partners are not in close proximity. Here, I think they are. Imagine what this must do to reality. Strangeness loops back on itself. The fabric of space is pierced – again and again – by strangeness.

  “What I’ve said so far is ordinary. Few scientists would disagree, except about the strangeness looping. That’s not a generally accepted idea, though I’m not the only person who’s come forward with it. But from this point on – ” Thev glanced and smiled. “The ideas are mine.

  “According to the usual theory, the ground under our grove of trees is stable. Yes, the roots have pushed thro
ugh it, causing stress – most evident at the surface, where the ground may buckle, forced up from below. In areas settled by people, this pressure-from-below is easily perceived. Sidewalks are lifted. The walls of buildings crack and fall. All done by roots.” Thev wiggled his fingers, apparently showing the action of roots.

  “But let’s imagine that the ground is not stable. Maybe the land is limestone and full of caves. The roots, burrowing down, are cracking stone – a thin layer – which forms the roof of one of these caves. In time the roof will break. The grove will fall into a sinkhole.”

  This was understandable. There are places in the Great Central Plain where the ground is limestone, and water is usually found in pools at the bottom of sinkholes. Nowadays, windmills bring the water up. In the old days, people cut steps in the stone walls and carried buckets. Akuin knew all this, and knew that sinkholes could appear suddenly. But how could a sinkhole appear in space? After all, a sinkhole was an absence of stone. But space wasn’t there in the first place. How could one have an absence of something already absent?

  “Let me give you another model,” Thev said. “Think of this region of space as a cheese.”

  “What?” said Akuin.

  “A large, round one.” Thev spread his arms to show the cheese’s size. “Bugs have infested it. It looks solid, but inside is a maze of tunnels. If one bends the cheese a little, or twists it, if any extra strain is put on it – hah! It breaks apart! There’s nothing left but crumbs. The bugs have destroyed their home.”

  “These are disturbing images,” Akuin said. “What are you saying with them? That this region of space could break into crumbs? I find it hard to imagine such an occurrence. What is a space crumb like?”

  “Maybe the grove is a better model than the cheese, though you wanted plants and bugs, and I have given you both. I think it’s possible this region will collapse. More than possible. In time, collapse is certain.”

  “But what will it become? Not a sinkhole?”

  “My guess would be a large area of strangeness. Spherical, of course. Such things always are.”