The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Imagine, my dear MacLuhan, the exquisite embarrassment of the moment. For as Hillis spoke, his “latest project” appeared on the fringes of camp. Darrow had mastered the machine, caught an updraft from the depths of the canyon, and was now fluttering slowly around us. Murmurs began spreading among the crowd; people began to point.

  Hillis, not a gifted speaker, was painfully slow to catch on. He kept talking about the “heroic pilot” and how his Dragonfly would be airborne “sooner than we knew.” The audience thought poor Hillis was making some elaborate joke and they began laughing. Most people thought it was clever publicity. In the meantime, Darrow swooped nearer. Sensing with a model’s intuition that he was the cynosure of all eyes, he began stunting.

  Still avoiding the crowd, he threw the aircraft into a hover. The wings hummed audibly, their tips flapping in complex loops and circles. Slowly, he began flying backwards, the craft’s long tail waggling in barely controlled instability. The crowd was amazed; they cheered aloud. Hillis, frowning, squinted across the table, his drone dying into a mumble. Then he realized the truth and cried out. Crocodile #2 took his arm, and Hillis tottered backward into his nearby chair.

  Dr. Somps, his long face livid, scrambled to the podium. He flung out an arm, pointing. “Stop that man!” he screeched. This provoked hysterical laughter, shading close to authentic hysteria when Darrow spun the craft twice tailfirst and caught himself at the last moment, the wings kicking up clouds of dust over the rear of the crowd. Diners, shrieking, leapt from their chairs and fled for cover. Darrow fought for height, throwing full power into the wings and blowing two tables over with a crash and spatter of tureens and cutlery. The Dragonfly shot up like a child’s toy rocket.

  Darrow regained control almost at once, but it was clear that the sudden lurch upward had strained one of the wings. Three of them beat smoothly at the twilit air but the fourth, the left rear one, was out of sync. Darrow began to fall, sliding out of the sky, listing backward to his left.

  He tried to throw more power into the wings again, but we all heard the painful flopping and rasping as the injured wing refused to function. At the end the craft spun about again a few feet from earth, hit a pine at the edge of our rock garden, and crashed.

  That effectively ended the festivities. The crowd was horrified. A number of the more active attendees rushed to the crash site while others babbled in shock. Crocodile #2 took the microphone and began yelling for order, but he was of course ignored. Hillis, his face twisted, was hustled inside in his chair.

  Darrow was pale and bloodied, still strapped into the bent ribs of the pilot’s cage. He had a few scrapes and he had managed to break his ankle. We fished him out. The Dragonfly did not look badly damaged. “The wing gave out,” Darrow kept muttering stubbornly. “It was equipment failure. I was doing fine!”

  Two husky sorts formed an arm-cradle for Darrow and lugged him back to the hogan. Mari Kuniyoshi hurried after him, her face pale, her hands fluttering in shock. She had a dramatic, paralyzed look.

  Lights blazed from the hogan, along with the excited babbling of the crowd. The outside floodlights in the rock garden dimmed suddenly. From the clearings around us, corporate helicopters began to lift, whirring almost silently into the fragrant Arizona night.

  The crowd dispersed around the damaged craft. Soon I noticed that there were only three of us left; myself, Dr. Somps, and Claire Berger. Claire shook her head. “God, it’s so sad,” she said.

  “I’m sure he’ll recover,” I said.

  “What, that thief?” she said. “I hope not.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said. I examined the Dragonfly critically. “She’s just a little bent, that’s all. Nothing broken. She only needs a few biffs with a lug-wrench or what-have-you.”

  Somps glared at me. “Don’t you understand? Dr. Hillis has been humiliated. And my work was the cause of it. I’d be ashamed to speak to him now, much less ask for his support.”

  “You still have his daughter,” Claire Berger said bluntly. We both looked at her in surprise. She looked back boldly, her arms stiff at her sides.

  “Right,” Somps said at last. “I’ve been neglecting Leona. And she’s so devoted to her father.… I think I’d better go to her. Talk to her. Do whatever I can to make this up.”

  “Plenty of time for that later, when things calm down,” I said. “You can’t just leave the Dragonfly here! The morning dew will soak her. And you don’t want gawkers out here tonight—poking at her, maybe laughing. Tell you what—I’ll help you carry her up to the airfield.”

  Somps hesitated. It did not take long, for his devotion to his machine burst all bounds. With her long wings hinged back, the Dragonfly was easy to carry. Somps and I hoisted the heavy torso to our shoulders, and Claire Berger took the tail. All the way to the mesa Somps kept up a steady monologue of self-pity and disaster. Claire did her clumsy best to cheer him up, but the man was crushed. Clearly a lifetime of silent spleen had built up, requiring just such a calamity to uncork it. Even though he sensed that I was a rival and meant him ill, he could not entirely choke back his need for sympathy.

  We found some flyers at the base of the Throne of Adonis. They were curious and eager to help, so I returned to camp. Once he had the Dragonfly in her hangar and his tools at hand, I was sure that Somps would be gone for hours.

  I found the camp in uproar. With amazing crassness, Crocodile #2, Hillis’ security man, wanted to arrest Darrow. A furious argument broke out, for it was brutally unfair to treat Darrow as a common thief when his only crime had been a daring gesture.

  To his credit, Darrow rose above this ugly allegation. He rested in a wicker peacock chair, his bandaged ankle propped on a leather hassock and his pale, blond hair swept back from a bruised forehead. The craft was brilliantly designed, he said; it was only the shoddy workmanship of Hillis Industries that had put his life into danger. At various dramatic cruxes, he would lean back with a faint shudder of pain and grasp the adoring hand of Mari Kuniyoshi. No jury in the world would have touched him. All the world loves a lover, MacLuhan.

  Old Dr. Hillis had retired to his rooms, shattered by the day’s events. Finally, Leona broke in and settled things. She scolded Darrow and threw him out, and Mari Kuniyoshi, swearing not to leave his side, went with him. Most of the modern contingent left as well, partly as a gesture of solidarity with Darrow, partly to escape the source of embarrassment and transmute it, somewhere else, into endlessly entertaining gossip.

  Poor Fred Solokov, made into the butt of jokes through absolutely no fault of his own, also stormed off. I was with the small crowd as he threw his bags into a robot chopper at midnight. “They do not treat me like this,” he insisted loudly. “Hillis is mad. I thought so ever since Tyuratam. Why people admire such young vandals as Darrow these days I do not know.”

  Truly, I felt sorry for him. I went out of my way to shake his hand. “Sorry to see you go, Fred. I’m sure we’ll meet again under better circumstances.”

  “Never trust women,” Fred told me darkly. He paused on the running board to belt his trenchcoat, then stepped in and slammed the vacuum-sealed door. Off he went with a whir of wings. A fine man and a pleasure to know, MacLuhan. I shall have to give some thought to making things up to him.

  I then hurried back to my room. With so many gone, it would now be easier for Leona and me to carry on our assignation. Unfortunately I had not had time to arrange the final details with her. And I had a lover’s anxiety that she might not even arrive. The day had been a trying one, after all, and carezza is not a practice for hurried nerves.

  Still, I waited, knowing it would be a lover’s crime should she arrive and find me sleeping.

  At half past one I was rewarded by a dim flicker of lamplight under the door. But it passed me.

  I eased the door open silently. A figure in a white nightgown was creeping barefoot around the dome’s circular hall. She was too short and squat for the willowy Leona, and her trailing, loosened hair was not blonde, but an unre
markable brown. It was Claire Berger.

  I tied my pajamas and shuffled after her with the stealth of a medieval assassin.

  She stopped, and scratched at a door with one coy forefinger. I did not need my ward to tell me this was the room of Dr. Somps. The door opened at once, and I ducked back just in time to avoid Claire’s quick glance up and down the hall.

  I gave the poor devils fifteen minutes. I retired to my room, wrote a note, and returned to Somps’ door. It was locked, of course, but I scratched lightly and slid my note under it.

  The door opened after a hurried conclave of whispers. I slipped inside. Claire was glowering, her face flushed. Somps’ fists were clenched. “All right,” he grated. “You have us. What is it you want?”

  “What does any man want?” I said gently. “A little companionship, some open sympathy, the support of a soul mate. I want Leona.”

  “I thought that was it,” Somps said, trembling. “She’s been so different since Seattle. She never liked me, but she didn’t hate me, before. I knew there was someone after her. Well, I have a surprise for you, Mr. de Kooning. Leona doesn’t know this, but I’ve talked to Hillis and I know. He’s almost bankrupt! His firm is riddled with debts!”

  “Oh?” I said, interested. “So?”

  “He’s thrown it all away, trying to bring back the past,” Somps said, the words tumbling out of him. “He’s paid huge salaries to his old hangers-on and backed a hundred dud ideas. He was depending on my success to restore his fortunes. So without me, without the Dragonfly, his whole empire falls apart!” He glared at me defiantly.

  “Really?” I said. “That’s terrific! I always said Leona was enslaved by this nonsense. Empire indeed; why the whole thing’s a paper tiger. Why, the old fraud!” I laughed aloud. “Very well, Marvin. We’re going to have it out with him right now!”

  “What?” Somps said, paling.

  I gave him a bracing whack on the shoulder. “Why carry on the pretense? You don’t want Leona; I do. So there’s a few shreds of money involved. We’re talking about love, man! Our very happiness! You want some old fool to come between you and Claire?”

  Somps flushed. “We were only talking.”

  “I know Claire better than that,” I said gallantly. “She’s Mari Kuniyoshi’s friend. She wouldn’t have stayed here just to trade technical notes.”

  Claire looked up, her eyes reddened. “You think that’s funny? Don’t ruin it for us. Please,” she begged. “Don’t ruin Marvin’s hopes. We have enough against us as it is.”

  I dragged Somps out the door by main force and closed it behind me. He wrenched free and looked ready to hit me. “Listen,” I hissed. “That woman is devoted to you. How dare you trample her finer feelings? Have you no sympathy, no intuition? She puts your plans above her own happiness.”

  Somps looked torn. He stared at the door behind him with the look of a man poleaxed by infatuation. “I never had time for this. I … I never knew it could be like this.”

  “Damn it, Somps, be a man!” I said. “We’re having it out with the old dragon right now.”

  We hustled downstairs to Hillis’ suite. I tried the double doors; they were open.

  Groaning came from the bedroom.

  My dear MacLuhan. You are my oldest and closest friend. Often we have been one another’s confessors. You remember the ancient pact we swore, as mere schoolchildren, never to tell each other’s mischiefs, and to hold each other’s secrets silent to the grave. The pact has served us well, and many times it has eased us both. In twenty years of friendship we have never given each other cause to doubt. However, we are now adults, men steeped in life and its complications; and I’m afraid that you must bear the silent burden of my larger mischiefs with me.

  I know you will not fail me, for the happiness of many people rests on your discretion. But someone must be told.

  The bedroom door was locked. Somps, with an engineer’s directness, knocked out its hinge pins. We rushed inside.

  Dr. Hillis had fallen off the bed. A deadly litter on the bedside table told the awful truth at once. Hillis, who had been treating himself with the aid of the servile human doctor, had access to the dangerous drugs normally safely stored in machines. Using an old hand-powered hypodermic, he had injected himself with a fatally large dose of painkiller.

  We tugged his frail body back into the bed. “Let me die,” the old man croaked. “Nothing to live for.”

  “Where’s his doctor?” I said.

  Somps was sweating freely in his striped cotton pajamas. “I saw him leave earlier. The old man threw him out, I think.”

  “All bloodsuckers,” Hillis said, his eyes glazed. “You can’t help me. I saw to that. Let me die, I deserve to.”

  “We can keep him moving, maybe,” Somps said. “I saw it in an old film once.” It seemed a good suggestion, with our limited knowledge of medicine.

  “Ignorant,” Hillis muttered, as the two of us pulled his limp arms over our shoulders. “Slaves to machines! Those wards—handcuffs! I invented all that … I killed the scientific tradition.” He began weeping freely. “Twenty six hundred years since Socrates and then, me.” He glared and his head rolled like a flower on a stalk. “Take your hands off me, you decadent weasels!”

  “We’re trying to help you, doctor,” Somps said, frightened and exasperated.

  “Not a cent out of me, Somps,” the old man raved weakly. “It’s all in the book.”

  I then remembered what Leona had told me about the old man’s book, to be published on his suicide. “Oh, no,” I said. “He’s going to disgrace us all and disgrace himself.”

  “Not a penny, Somps. You failed me. You and your stupid toys. Let me go!”

  We dropped him back onto the bed. “It’s horrible,” Somps said, trembling. “We’re ruined.”

  It was typical of Somps that he should think of himself at a moment like that. Anyone of spirit would have considered the greater interests of society. It was unthinkable that this titan of the age should die in such squalid circumstances. It would give no one happiness, and would cause pain and disillusion to uncounted millions.

  I pride myself that I rose to the challenge. My brain roared with sudden inspiration. It was the most sublime moment of my life.

  Somps and I had a brief, fierce argument. Perhaps logic was not on my side, but I ground him down with the sheer passion of my conviction.

  By the time I had returned with our clothes and shoes, Somps had fixed the door and disposed of the evidence of drugs. We dressed with frantic haste.

  By now the old man’s lips were bluish and his limbs were like wax. We hustled him into his wheelchair, wedging him in with his buffalo robe. I ran ahead, checking that we were not seen, while Somps wheeled the dying man along behind me.

  Luckily there was a moon out. It helped us on the trail to the Throne of Adonis. It was a long, exhausting climb, but Somps and I were men possessed.

  Roseate summer dawn was touching the horizon by the time we had the Dragonfly ready and the old man strapped in. He was still breathing shallowly, and his eyelids fluttered. We wrapped his gnarled hands around the joysticks.

  When the first golden rim of the sunlight touched the horizon, Somps flicked on the engine. I jammed the aircraft’s narrow tail beneath my arm, braced like a lance. Then I ran forward and shoved her off into the holy air of dawn!

  MacLuhan, I’m almost sure that the rushing chilly air of the descent revived him briefly. As the aircraft fell toward the roiling waters below, she began to pitch and buck like a live thing. I feel in my heart that Hillis, that seminal genius of our age, revived and fought for life in his last instants. I think he went like a hero. Some campers below saw him hit. They, too, swore he was fighting to the last.

  The rest you know. They found the wreckage miles downstream, in the Global Park, next day. You may have seen Somps and myself on television. I assure you, my tears were not feigned; they came from the heart.

  Our story told it as it should have happ
ened. The insistence of Dr. Hillis that he pilot the craft, that he restore the fair name of his industries. We helped him unwillingly, but we could not refuse the great man’s wishes.

  I admit the hint of scandal. His grave illness was common knowledge, and the autopsy machines showed the drugs in his body. Luckily, his doctor admitted that Hillis had been using them for months to fight the pain.

  I think there is little doubt in most people’s minds that he meant to crash. But it is all in the spirit of the age, my dear MacLuhan. People are generous to the sublime gesture. Dr. Hillis went down fighting, struggling with a machine on the cutting edge of science. He went down defending his good name.

  As for Somps and myself, the response has been noble. The mailnet has been full of messages. Some condemn me for giving in to the old man. But most thank me for helping to make his last moments beautiful.

  I last saw poor Somps as he and Claire Berger were departing for Osaka. I’m afraid he still feels some bitterness. “Maybe it was best,” he told me grudgingly as we shook hands. “People keep telling me so. But I’ll never forget the horror of those last moments.”

  “I’m sorry about the aircraft,” I said. “When the notoriety wears off I’m sure it will be a great success.”

  “I’ll have to find another backer,” he said. “And then put it into production. It won’t be easy. Probably take years.”

  “It’s the yin and yang,” I told him. “Once poets labored in garrets while engineers had the run of the land. Things change, that’s all. If one goes against the grain, one pays the price.”

  My words, meant to cheer him, seemed to scald him instead. “You’re so damned smug,” he almost snarled. “Damn it, Claire and I build things, we shape the world, we try for real understanding! We don’t just do each other’s nails and hold hands in the moonlight!”

  He is a stubborn man. Maybe the pendulum will one day swing his way again, if he lives as long as Dr. Hillis did. In the meantime he has a woman to stand by him and assure him that he is persecuted. So maybe he will find, in the good fight, some narrow kind of sublimity.