The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The burly Colonel sat down on a rock wall and stared off to sea. “Could you tell me the story, Georgios? Never mind how insignificant it seems.”

  Had the man really climbed up all this way for a view of various shades of gray? Through binoculars yet? Theodoros shivered and sat down next to Stasov.

  “It took place on Delos, long enough ago that the Egyptians had no Pharaoh, and built with reeds. A singer lived on this island, a lyre player who had dedicated his life to Apollo and played to the sky and the sea. After a storm, the singer went down to the sandy shore to see what the sea had tossed up. On the beach lay a whale, sighing at the knowledge of his certain death. He cried thick, bitter tears.

  “‘Why are you here, brother?’ the lyre player called. ‘Why are you not off tossing the sea over your back, as is the natural duty of whales?’

  “‘I have come to hear your songs,’ the whale replied. ‘Sing to me, while I die.’

  “The singer sang to the whale for three days, while the birds wheeled and cried overhead and the sun rose and set and the whale’s flesh began to stink. At the end of the third day the whale died. The man wept and sprinkled water on the whale’s head, since dust seemed improper, and wished him good hunting in the world to which whales go, for he did not think that Hades had a place for him.

  “He looked out into the sea and saw a dolphin dancing. The dolphin leaped and gamboled, but said nothing. When he saw the man on the shore he first ignored him, then slid up onto the shore.

  “‘Do you wish to sing to your dead brother?’ the lyre player asked. The dolphin said nothing. ‘His soul needs your songs to speed him to the dark sea where he now swims.’ Still the dolphin said nothing. ‘He cries for the sound of your voice.’ The dolphin remained silent. In a rage, the singer raised up his lyre and broke it over the dolphin’s head. ‘Speak not then, dumb beast, and go to your death unknown.’

  “Blood came from the dolphin’s blowhole and he cried out. ‘Why do you torment me so?’

  “‘To teach you the responsibilities of death and the songs that it calls for,’ the singer said.

  “‘I will hear you then,’ the dolphin said. ‘Teach me the songs, if you will not let me be silent.’

  “And so the man taught the dolphin to sing the rhythmic songs of the ancients, those sung by shepherds at first light, by fishermen pulling in full nets, by priests to the brow of the impending storm. The dolphin took the songs and made them his own, adding the sounds of the sea.

  “Apollo, hearing the songs, came down laughing, though his hands smelled of blood and corruption. He was an Asian god then, from Lycia, but was on his way to lead the Greeks.

  “‘I have slain the monster, Typhaon, at Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus,’ he told them. ‘My Temple and wooded grove are to be there. Now that you are able to sing, friend dolphin, you will aid me. Find me my priests.’

  “‘The sea moves,’ the dolphin said. ‘The land is solid. I will search.’

  “The dolphin swam the seas until he saw a ship of Cretan priests bound for Pylos. He sang to them from the sea and they followed him, to that place beneath Parnassus that was, forever afterward, to be called Delphi, after the dolphin who had led them. Men and dolphins spoke from that time afterward.”

  Theodoros felt the warm light of the Aegean island die, and found himself again sitting on a cold stone wall above the Tatar Strait.

  “It’s there,” Stasov said, pacing back and forth in front of Theodoros. “I know it is. But why did they stop talking?” His pale eyes stared at Theodoros as if suspecting the Greek of concealing something.

  “The story doesn’t say. My guess would be that it had something to do with the eruption of Strogyle, the great volcano on Thera. Whether it was the cause or not, that seems to mark the end of Cretan civilization. Once the men stopped talking, perhaps the dolphins did also.”

  “And have refused ever since out of sheer spite? Perhaps, perhaps. But I think there’s more. The volcano … interesting…” Stasov continued to pace, then froze, staring out over the water. He put his binoculars to his eyes.

  “What do you see?” asked Theodoros.

  “I see a need for our work,” Stasov said. He pointed. In the haze at the horizon Theodoros could barely discern a dark ship. “That’s a Japanese vessel. The Americans have been allowing them to build armed cruisers. A mistake. The Japanese claim the southern half of Sakhalin, you know.”

  Theodoros had no idea why anyone would be interested in the place, but decided not to say so. “I don’t think the Americans can do too much to stop them, Colonel Stasov.”

  “True enough. Though the Americans may soon find themselves in a war they don’t want.” Stasov paused. “Do the dolphins have a religion, do you suppose?”

  “Colonel Stasov, I suggest that we should first learn how to talk with them, and only then worry about their religion.”

  “True, perhaps,” Stasov replied, staring thoughtfully out to sea. “Though that may be the wrong way round.” He roused himself. “Come down then.

  You can drink with us one last time before you leave. You have given me much to think about.”

  Theodoros, his stomach churning at the thought of another of the massive drinking bouts which, besides arguing, seemed to be the only form of entertainment at Uglegorsk, followed Stasov back down the stairs.

  The vaulted dolphin research center was as huge inside as an aircraft hangar. The floor was always wet, and the air smelled of seaweed and iodine. Cables snaked across the floor with no attention to safety. Theodoros tripped over them constantly, even sober, while the Russians had no trouble even when roaring drunk.

  The farewell party had spread among the tanks, as such events always did, as if the researchers wanted to include the dolphins in their festivities. Stasov and Theodoros found a quiet corner to finish their discussion. Stasov balanced a bottle of vodka on a signal processing box and handed the other a pickle out of an unlabeled jar. It seemed to the Greek that everything was pickled here: the cucumbers, the cabbage, the peppers, the fish, and the researchers. He tossed back a shot of vodka, took a bite of pickle, and grimaced.

  Stasov chuckled. “You’ve learned to do it like a real Russian. The trick is to never look as though you enjoy it.”

  “I don’t enjoy it.”

  “Ha. You are a real Russian.”

  The huge form of General Anatoly Ogurtsov loomed over them. “More of these damn foreign computers for you, Ilya?” He waved a stack of requisition sheets at him. “How can our budget support this?”

  Stasov shrugged. “Sit down, Antosha.” He poured the General a glass of vodka. “I need sophisticated array processors. Who else makes them but the Japanese?”

  “Damn their yellow souls,” Ogurtsov said, in ceremonial anathema. “They do make good gadgets. I hope we can buy enough to defeat them when we go to war.” He sighed hugely. “That’s all image processing gear. Why do you need it?”

  “I think I know how to reach the dolphins,” Stasov said. “Aural images.”

  “An interesting thought,” Theodoros said. “What sort of images?”

  “That’s where I’ll need your help. I’ll need good sonic maps of the Aegean, and best guesses from oceanographic archaeologists on the conformation of the sea bottom at about 1500 BCE. Can you do it?”

  “I think so.” Theodoros was startled once again. When he had come here, to find the crude pens of inferior concrete already cracking, the drunken technicians, the obsolete foreign electronic equipment cadged or stolen from other research projects, he had been sure that he was wasting his time. Compared to the clean redwood boards and earnest college students of Santa Barbara or the elegant institutes at Monaco, this place was a hell hole. But somehow …

  “We’ll do it, you know,” Ogurtsov rumbled. “Ilya will make sure that we do.”

  “General,” Theodoros said. “I have no doubt that you’re right.”

  THE ALEUTIANS, SEPTEMBER 2022

  The Americans had found it s
urprisingly difficult to defend their Alaskan frontier, but they fought viciously every step of the way. The assault of Kagalaska Island, supposedly a surprise attack, faced brutal resistance from its first moment. Such desant operations were new to the Soviet Navy, and they were only gradually learning how to handle landing assaults. The price of the lessons was high.

  Long before his own ship came into range, Colonel Ilya Stasov was listening to the first casualty reports.

  “Death, death, death,” the dolphin keened. “The fuckers left me behind. Their lives have found completion. They’re dead.” Her voice came over a background roar, leaving it almost incomprehensible.

  “Calm down, Harmonia,” Stasov said, realizing that it was an easy instruction to give if you were out of the battle area. “What happened?”

  “… exploding eggs. They don’t listen to us anymore. You shark spawn, Stasov, you said they would listen!”

  “It must be a new type of mine, Harmonia,” Stasov yelled in reply, as the noise in his headphones increased. “Some new magnetic detector. We’ll get the data—”

  “Fish, fish. I won’t go back until you give me a fish.”

  “You don’t have to go back. Pull out now. We’ll do a magnetic field analysis—”

  “I want a belly full of fish for this, turd swallower!” With that, the line went dead. As it did, the landing ship itself thrummed, and the thunder of an explosion roared down the hatch from outside. He waited for the sound to die away, but instead it grew insanely louder, reverberating. It was the roar of the attack, and was not about to end. He raced up the companionway.

  “Priblyudov!” he yelled at the comm officer over the noise. “The Americans have sowed the shore with a new type of mine. I’ve lost most of my first wave of dolphins. Send this info back to the Novgorod.” He waved a sheet of notes. The comm officer stared at him dully. “Hurry up!”

  While Priblyudov stumbled to obey, Stasov plugged his earphones into the console and linked back up with his microphones. He stepped out onto the deck in the cold northern sunlight. Stasov stared in horror at the bare rock of Kagalaska, which loomed ahead of the long deck of the landing ship, wreathed in smoke. Rockets flared over his head and the 76 mm bow guns thundered at the shore. Below decks, he knew, a battalion of troops was gathered, with battle tanks and assault vehicles. Two landing ships had already hit the island. Stasov listened to his earphones.

  The gray waters were covered with flaming oil. The dolphins, his dolphins, were strangling in it, their death cries cutting high above the rumbling of the engines and the crunching of propellers. The hazy arctic air was full of the sharp stink of oil and burning flesh. The other two landing ships had spilled their loads and the rocky shore ahead was covered with assault troops, swarming like isopods. Stasov closed his eyes, listening to the screams of death in his earphones. The thud of the American torpedo as it found the landing ship’s unarmored side was impossibly loud, agony in his ears.

  The ship slowed as if hitting a sandbar, and listed. Stasov slid down to the railing, vaulted over it, and hit the water. He felt freezing water on his face, but his assault uniform instantly compensated, keeping his body warm. Another explosion, which he felt with his body, and the landing ship sank as if pulled under by a giant hand. Stasov stroked away to keep from being sucked down with it.

  He pulled off his now-useless headphones and activated his throat mike. He called to those of his dolphins that had survived that far. Pitifully few.

  Suddenly Stasov heard the call of a hunting orca, a killer whale which sped through the struggling forms of the drowning assault troops who had escaped the landing ship, calling “Speak, food!” and devouring them when they did not reply. He came to Stasov. “Speak, food!” “I am Ilya Sergeiivich Stasov,” he replied, insulting the orca by speaking in dolphin dialect. “Go fuck a walrus.” It was amazing how quickly the ancient prohibition on conversation with humans vanished once it had been violated at Uglegorsk. The orca nudged him once, breaking several ribs, snorted “Spoiled food,” and vanished into the polluted darkness.

  The thunder of the assault lessened as the American troops were pushed back from the beachhead. The bodies of men and dolphins littered the shore, flopped on the rocks by the receding tide. A black line of oil and blood marked the highest rise of the water. Stasov climbed through the bodies. A rough road had been laid out and tanks ground up it. Bulldozers were already cutting out a landing strip. A few pockets of resistance were still being mopped up inland, but otherwise the island was in Soviet hands. Stasov made his way to the desant commander’s temporary HQ.

  “The American Aegis cruiser Wainwright is approaching in convoy from Kodiak,” General Lefortov said. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow and he looked like a dead man. The assault force had suffered numbingly high casualties. They were far from land-based aircraft and the air cover provided by the carrier Nizhni Novgorod was insufficient to defend against an Aegis task force. “What can your dolphins do?”

  “What’s left of them?”

  General Lefortov pointed his dead eyes at Stasov. He’d lost enough of his own men to be indifferent to the fate of Stasov’s precious dolphins. “We lost two attack submarines in the Bering Sea. The enemy advance is unopposed. What can you do?”

  “Do?” Stasov said wearily. He thought about the dolphins and equipment he had left. “We can sink it. It’ll cost—”

  “It might cost the war if we don’t. Prepare your troops. I’ll print up your orders.”

  “Yes sir.”

  BATAAN, THE PHILIPPINES, MAY 2024

  Stasov slipped gently across the smooth wood of the porch into the hot butter of the Philippine sunlight. He moved slowly, his joints rough and unlubricated, as if he were a child’s bicycle left long out in the rain. The Japanese guards at the door of the barracks smiled at him as he passed, an expression he had long since ceased to try to interpret. Cracking dolphin communications had been easier. He had adopted a purely behavioral operant conditioning model, letting blows, punishment cells, and food full of vermin modify his actions without the intervention of his conscious mind. He no longer tried to reason with the outside world, he simply responded to it. That let him keep his soul to himself.

  They’d started feeding him well several weeks before, a signal of his imminent release. He had refused to feel hope. It was not beyond them to use the illusion of freedom to get him to betray himself. Yesterday they had allowed him an hour in a hot Japanese bath, and this morning they had dressed him in a rather elegant suit of blue silk. It was much too large, made, perhaps, to the measurements in his records, from the start of his incarceration. His fingers had had trouble tying the knot on the tie, so one of the guards had delicately done it for him. It was not the regulation military knot he had been trying for, at least not of his army, but it would do. The high collar hid the scars on his neck where his carotid oxygenator had once attached. It wasn’t until he actually walked out into the sun that Stasov began to think that he might be free.

  Outside the barracks was a tiled patio where the camp’s officers had often had parties at night with the local women. A woman waited for him there now. Not one of those dark-haired beauties that had been one of Luzon’s main exports for centuries, but a fair-skinned woman with coppery hair, the New Zealand member of the UN delegation to Camp Homma. She held a notebook.

  “Colonel Stasov?” she said, standing. She was a plain-faced woman, strong. “My name is Erika Morgenstern.”

  They shook hands. “Not Colonel,” he murmured. “Not any more.” The hot sun made him dizzy, and the smell of the exuberant bougainvillaea that bloomed all around them seemed to clog his nostrils. His knees buckled and he sat down.

  She watched him narrowly. “Are you in need of medical assistance?”

  He shook his head. “No, certainly not. I have been … cared for.”

  “The Americans are unhappy about Camp Homma,” she said, scribbling in her notebook. “Any information you can give the UN will be usef
ul. Any violations of humane conditions.”

  He looked at her. “If I am being released, the time for Camp Homma must be almost over. The Japanese have a new empire to contend with. Including Sakhalin, I understand. American concerns are a minor problem.” Stasov had been captured at Uglegorsk with the collapse of the last Soviet naval effort in the Sea of Okhotsk, by Japanese troops bent on avenging the atrocities of the Soviet occupation of Hokkaido.

  The Japanese had chosen Bataan for their war crimes detention camp, for they were displaying as much their victory over their American allies in the Pacific War as over their Soviet enemy. They named the camp Homma, after the Japanese general who had commanded the invasion of the Philippines in 1942, a deliberate insult to which the Americans were powerless to reply.

  “Nevertheless,” she said. “If you have been mistreated—”

  “If I have been mistreated it is only just,” he replied. “Americans make poor victors. They are too forgiving. The Japanese are more like Russians. They demand justice, and perhaps a bit more. Or have you forgotten that you are talking to the Shark of Uglegorsk?”

  She looked startled. “Having a nickname is not a crime. The Japanese have charged you with genocide and slavery, crimes you committed against the very species whose intelligence was demonstrated by your researches. These charges, however, are ex post facto—are you familiar with the term?”

  “Soviet law is not very sophisticated, I’m afraid.”

  A Japanese guard brought them tea in graceful earthenware cups. With calm deliberation, Stasov poured the tea on the ground and let the cup fall on the pavement, where it cracked into pieces. The guard bowed expressionlessly, cleaned up the shards, and walked slowly away.

  “What did they want from you?” Morgenstern asked. “What did they want to know?”

  “They were curious about my work, my methods. My secrets.”

  “What did they learn?”