The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  Now, forty years later, N-ray technology, much expanded and embedded in France’s vast navies, armies, and aerial forces, remained a French monopoly, the foundation on which the ever-expanding Empire rested, and the envy of all other nations, which waged constant espionage to steal the Empire’s secrets, spying so far completely frustrated by the DGSE. Not the Russian czarina nor the British Marxist cadres nor the Chinese emperor nor the Ottoman pashas nor the American president had been able to successfully extract the core technology for their own use. And as France’s dominion grew, so did all these aforenamed nations shrink.

  So much did every schoolchild of the Empire learn. Although not many of them could claim, as Camus could, that their fathers had been present at the very first unveiling of the world-changing devices.

  Camus’ ruminations were interrupted by the arrival of Céleste at his table. The plump proprietor coughed politely, then tendered a slip of paper to his patron.

  “A gentleman left this earlier for you, M’sieur. Please pardon me for nearly forgetting to deliver it.”

  Camus took the folded sheet of notepaper and opened it. Inside was a simple message.

  Dear Sisyphus,

  Meet me tonight at the dancehall at Padovani Beach. I have a proposition that will change your life, and possibly the world.

  Camus was dumbstruck. How did some stranger come to address him by his unrevealed sardonic nickname for himself? What unimaginable proposition could possibly involve Camus in world-altering events?

  Camus summoned Céleste back to the table.

  “What did this fellow look like?”

  The restaurant owner stroked his mustache. “He was an odd duck. Completely bald, very thin, with odd smoked lenses concealing his eyes. But most startling was his mode of dress. If he’s wearing the same clothes when you see him, you won’t be able to mistake him. A queer suit like an acrobat’s leotard, made of some shiny material and covering even his feet, poked out of the holes of a shabby Arab robe that seemed like some castoff of the souks. At first I thought him part of the circus. But upon reflection, I believe that no circus is in town.”

  Camus pondered this description. This stranger was no one he knew.

  Camus thanked Céleste, folded the note into his pocket, paid his bill, and returned to the office.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a stuporous fog. Camus consumed numerous cups of coffee while attending in mechanical fashion to the neverending stream of paperwork that flowed across his desk. All the caffeine, however, failed to alleviate the dullness of his thoughts, the dark befuddlement that had arrived with the stranger’s note. Merseault called on the televisor once. The governor-general wanted to ensure that his counterpart from the French Congo was bringing all the native women he had promised to deliver during the upcoming festivities. Merseault had a weakness for Nubians. Camus promised to check.

  At eight o’clock Camus bade his equally hard-working secretary goodnight, and left the palace. Two streetcar rides later, he arrived at Padovani Beach.

  The famous dancehall situated in this location was an enormous wooden structure set amidst a grove of tamarisk trees. Jutting with awnings, the building’s entire seaward side was open to the maritime breezes. With the descent of darkness, the place came alive with the violet-tinged N-ray illumination from large glass globes. (Suitably modulated, N-rays could be conducted along copper wires just like electricity.) Couples and single men and women of all classes streamed in, happy and carefree. Notes of music drifted out, gypsy strains recently popular in France. Camus wondered briefly why the intriguing “jazz” he had heard at a reception at the American Embassy had never caught on outside America, but then realized that Rhinebeck’s tirade about the unidirectional flow of culture from France outward explained everything.

  Inside, Camus went to the bar and ordered a pastis and a dish of olives and chickpeas. Halfheartedly consuming his selections, Camus wondered how he was to meet the writer of the note. If the stranger remained dressed as earlier described, he would be immensely out of place and immediately attract notice. But Camus suspected that the meeting would not occur so publicly.

  For an hour, Camus was content simply to admire the dancers. Their profiles whirled obstinately around, like cut-out silhouettes attached to a phonograph’s turntable. Every woman, however plain, swaying in the arms of her man, evoked a stab in Camus’ heart. No such romantic gamin occupied his life. His needs were met by the anonymous prostitutes of the Marine district, and by the occasional short-term dalliance with fellow civil servants.

  Finally Camus’ patience began to wear thin. He drained his third pastis and sauntered out to a deck overlooking the double shell of the sea and sky.

  The stranger was waiting for him there, sitting on a bench in a twilit corner nominally reserved for lovers, just as Céleste had depicted him.

  The stranger’s voice was languorous and yet electric. His shrouded eyes disclosed no hints of his emotional state, yet the wrinkles around his lips seemed to hint at wry amusement. “Ah, Albert my friend, I was wondering how long it would take you to grow bored with the trite display inside and visit me.”

  Camus came close to the stranger, but did not sit beside him. “You know me. How?”

  “Oh, your reputation is immense where I come from, Albert. You are an international figure of some repute.”

  “Do not toy with me, M’sieur. I am a simple civil servant, not an actor or football hero.”

  “Ah, but did I specify those occupations? I think not. No, you are known for other talents than those.”

  Camus chose to drop this useless line of inquiry. “Where exactly do you come from?”

  “A place both very near, yet very far.”

  Growing impatient, Camus said, “If you don’t wish to answer me sanely, please at least keep your absurd paradoxes to yourself. You summoned me here with the promise of some life-altering program. I will confess that I stand in need of such a remedy for the moribund quandary I find myself in. Therefore state your proposition, and I will consider it.”

  “So direct! I can see that your reputation for cutting to the heart of the matter was not exaggerated. Very well, my friend, here it is. If you descend to the beach below and walk half a kilometer north, you will encounter a man sleeping in the dunes. He looks like a mere street Arab, but in reality he is a trained Spanish assassin who has made his laborious covert way here from Algeciras and on through Morocco. He intends to kill the emperor during your ruler’s visit here. And he stands a good chance of succeeding, for he is very talented in his trade, and has sympathizers in high places within your Empire.”

  Camus felt as if a long thin blade were transfixing his forehead. “Assuming this is true, what do you expect me to do about this? Do you want me to inform the authorities? Why don’t you just go to them yourself?”

  The stranger waved a slim hand in elegant disdain. “Oh, that course of action would be so unentertaining. Too pedestrian by half. You see, I am a connoisseur of choice and chance and character. I believe in allowing certain of my fellow men whom I deem worthy the opportunity to remake their own world by their existential behavior. You are such a man, at such a crucial time and place. You should consider yourself privileged.”

  Camus tried to think calmly and rationally. But the next words out of his mouth were absolute madness. “You are from the future then.”

  The stranger laughed heartily. “A good guess! But not the case. Let us just say that I live in the same arrondissement of the multiverse as you.”

  Camus pondered this response for a time, striving to reorder his very conception of the cosmos. At last he asked a broken question. “This multiverse is ruled –?”

  “By no one. It is benignly indifferent to us all. Which makes our own actions all the more weighty and delicious, wouldn’t you say?”

  Camus nodded. “This is something I only now realize I have always felt.”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you give me a hint of the a
lternate outcomes of my actions? Will one decision on my part improve my world, while its opposite devastates it?”

  The stranger chuckled. “Do I look like a prophet to you, Albert? All I can say is that change is inescapable in either case.”

  Camus contemplated this unsatisfying response for a time before asking, “Do you have anything to aid me if I choose to accept this challenge?”

  “Naturally.”

  The stranger reached beneath his robe and removed a curious gun unlike any Camus had ever seen.

  “Its operation is extremely simple. Just press this stud here.”

  Accepting the gun, Camus said, “I need to be alone now.”

  “Quite understandable. An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, like a work of art.”

  The stranger arose and made as if to leave. But at the last moment, he stopped, turned, and produced a book from somewhere.

  “You might as well have this also. Good luck.”

  Camus accepted the book. The faint violet light reaching him from the dancehall allowed him to make out the large font of its title, The Myth of Sisyphus.

  The author’s name he somehow already knew.

  After the stranger had gone, Camus sat for some time. Then he descended to the sands and began walking north, carrying both the book and the pistol.

  Just where the stranger had specified, Camus found the sleeping man. His hands were pillowing his head as he lay on his side. The waves crashed a maddening lullaby. In the shadows, the sleeper’s Iberian profile reminded Camus of his mother, Catherine, who boasted Spanish ancestry herself, a blood passed down to her son.

  It occurred to Camus that all he had to do was turn, walk away, and think no more about this entire insane night. His old life would resume its wonted course, and whatever happened in the world at large would happen without Camus’ intervention. Yet wasn’t that nonaction a choice in itself? It crossed his mind that to fire or not to fire might amount to the same thing.

  The assassin stirred, yet did not awake. Camus’ grip on the pistol tightened. Every nerve in his body was a steel spring.

  A second went by. Then another. Then another. And there was no way at all to stop them.

  TEN SIGMAS

  Paul Melko

  New writer Paul Melko has made sales to Realms of Fantasy, Live Without a Net, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Talebones, Terra Incognita, and other markets. He had a story in our Twenty-first Annual Collection. In the quirky and surprising story that follows, he shows us that even if a new universe is created every time we make a decision, somehow it still matters just which decision we make . . .

  AT FIRST WE DO not recognize the face as such.

  One eye is swollen shut, the flesh around it livid. The nose is crusted with blood, the lip flecked with black-red, and the mouth taped with duct tape that does not contrast enough with her pale skin.

  It does not register at first as a human face. No face should be peeking from behind the driver’s seat. No face should look like that.

  So at first we do not recognize it, until one of us realizes, and we all look.

  For some the truck isn’t even there, and we stand frozen at the sight we have seen. The street outside the bookstore is empty of anything but a pedestrian or two. There is no tractor trailer rumbling down Sandusky Street, no diesel gas engine to disturb the languid spring day.

  In some worlds, the truck is there, past us, or there, coming down the road. In some it is red, in some it is blue, and in others it is black. In the one where the girl is looking out the window at us, it is metallic maroon with white script on the door that says, “Earl.”

  There is just one world where the girl lifts her broken, gagged face and locks her one good eye on me. There is just one where Earl reaches behind him and pulls the girl from sight. In that world, Earl looks at me, his thick face and brown eyes expressionless.

  The truck begins to slow, and that me disappears from our consciousness, sundered by circumstance.

  No, I did not use my tremendous power for the good of mankind. I used it to steal the intellectual property of a person who exists in one world and pass it off as my own in another. I used my incredible ability to steal songs and stories and publish them as my own in a million different worlds. I did not warn police about terrorist attacks or fires or earthquakes. I don’t even read the papers.

  I lived in a house in a town that is sometimes called Delaware, sometimes Follett, sometimes Mingo, always in a house on the corner of Williams and Ripley. I lived there modestly, in my two-bedroom house, sometimes with a pine in front, sometimes with a dogwood, writing down songs that I hear on the radio in other worlds, telling stories that I’ve read somewhere else.

  In the worlds where the truck has passed us, we look at the license plate on the truck – framed in silver, naked women – and wonder what to do. There is a pay phone nearby, perhaps on this corner, perhaps on that. We can call the police and say . . .

  We saw the girl once, and that self is already gone to us. How do we know that there is a girl gagged and bound in any of these trucks? We just saw the one.

  A part of us recognizes this rationalization for the cowardice it is. We have played this game before. We know that an infinite number of possibilities exist, but that our combined existence hovers around a huge multidimensional probability distribution. If we saw the girl in one universe, then probably she was there in an infinite number of other universes.

  And safe in as many other worlds, I think.

  For those of us where the truck has passed us, the majority of us step into the street to go to the bagel shop across the way. Some fraction of us turn to look for a phone, and they are broken from us, their choice shaking them loose from our collective.

  I am – we are – omniscient, at least a bit. I can do a parlor trick for any friend, let another of me open the envelope and see what’s inside, so we can amaze those around us. Usually we will be right. One of me can flip over the first card and the rest of me will pronounce it for what it is. Ace of Hearts, Four of Clubs, Ten of Clubs. Probably we are right for all fifty-two, at least fifty of them.

  We can avoid accidents, angry people, cars, or at least most of us can. Perhaps one of us takes the hit for the rest. One of us is hit first, or sees the punch being thrown, so that the rest of us can ride the probability wave.

  For some of us, the truck shifts gears, shuddering as it passes us. Earl, Bill, Tony, Irma look down at us, or not, and the cab is past us. The trailer is metallic aluminum. Always.

  I feel our apprehension. More of us have fallen away today than ever before. The choice to make a phone call has reduced us by a sixth. The rest of us wonder what we should do.

  More of us memorize the license plate of Earl’s truck, turn to find a phone, and disappear.

  When we were a child, we had a kitten named Cocoa. In every universe it had the same name. It liked to climb trees, and sometimes it couldn’t get back down again. Once it crawled to the very top of the maple tree out front, and we only knew it was up there by its hysterical mewing.

  Dad wouldn’t climb up. “He’ll figure it out, or . . .”

  We waited down there until dusk. We knew that if we climbed the tree we would be hurt. Some of us had tried it and failed, disappearing after breaking arms, legs, wrists, even necks.

  We waited, not even going in to dinner. We waited with some neighborhood kids, some there because they liked Cocoa and some there because they wanted to see a spectacle. Finally the wind picked up.

  We saw one Cocoa fall through the dark green leaves, a few feet away, breaking its neck on the sidewalk. We felt a shock of sorrow, but the rest of us were dodging, our arms outstretched, and we caught the kitten as it plummeted, cushioning it.

  “How’d you do that?” someone asked in a million universes.

  I realized then that I was different.

  We step back on the sidewalk, waiting for the truck to pass, waiting to get the license plate so we can call the po
lice anonymously. The police might be able to stop Earl with a road block. They could stop him up U.S. 23 a few miles. If they believe us.

  If Earl didn’t kill the girl first. If she wasn’t already dead.

  My stomach lurches. We can’t help thinking of the horror that the girl must have faced, must be facing.

  Giving the license plate to the police wouldn’t be enough.

  We step into the street and wave our hands, flagging Earl down.

  We once dated a woman, a beautiful woman with chestnut hair that fell to the middle of her back. We dated for several years, and finally became engaged. In one of the worlds, just one, she started to change, grew angry, then elated, then just empty. The rest of us watched in horror as she took a knife to us, just once, in one universe, while in a million others, she compassionately helped our retching self to the kitchen sink.

  She didn’t understand why I broke off the engagement. But then she didn’t know the things I did.

  Earl’s cab shudders as he slams on the brakes. His CB mic slips loose and knocks the windshield. He grabs his steering wheel, his shoulders massive with exertion.

  We stand there, our shopping bag dropped by the side of road, slowly waving our hands back and forth.

  In a handful of worlds, the tractor trailer slams through us, and we are rattled by my death. But we know he will be caught there. For vehicular manslaughter, perhaps, and then they will find the girl. In almost all the worlds, though, Earl’s semi comes to a halt a few inches from us, a few feet.

  We look up over the chrome grill, past the hood ornament, a woman’s head, like on a sea-going vessel of old, and into Earl’s eyes.

  He reaches up and lets loose with his horn. We clap our hands over our ears and, in some universes, we stumble to the sidewalk, allowing Earl to grind his truck into first and rumble away. But mostly, we stand there, not moving.