The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Stasov grimaced. “I learned more from them than they did from me. The Japanese have little sympathy for cetaceans. They murder them with less concern than even Russians. Their curiosity was purely practical. I told them little, and that little took them a long time to discover. I know what that’s like. I’ve been on the other side of it. But they showed me that my life is not yet closed. I will continue living. That’s no small thing to learn, and I should be grateful.” The rustle of a rat in a palm tree made him jump. It took a moment for his heart to slow. “Are you a dolphin researcher, Ms. Morgenstern?”

  “No. My interest is planetary exploration. Little enough use for that now, I’m afraid. After the Pacific War, the world’s too poor to afford it.”

  He stared at her for a long time, long enough for her to worry that he was having some sort of traumatic stress attack. “That’s an interesting point,” he said, finally, his voice betraying no particular emotion. “Interesting indeed. No, we can’t afford it. But others might be able to.”

  * * *

  Two days later they crossed Manila Bay to Cavite, where the Soviet delegation waited. Sea gulls spun in the hot, wet air. The water was glass smooth, with a long, sickening swell. Suddenly, all around them, the water was filled with the flashing forms of dolphins. They leaped out of the water, occasionally clearing the boat itself. Stasov sat at the stern underneath the flapping Rising Sun and looked out at them.

  The white-jacketed Japanese pilot accelerated and began to slew back and forth, though whether to avoid the dolphins or to hit them was not clear.

  “Are they glad to see you alive?” Morgenstern shouted over the roar of the motor.

  Stasov looked thoughtful. “Glad isn’t the word. They know that something has been left undone. They will see me do it.”

  “Isn’t something always left undone, Ilya? I don’t understand.”

  “If something is always left undone, then no one would ever be allowed to die.”

  Morgenstern turned away from her incomprehensible charge and looked back out at the dolphins. Most of them were dark blue-gray, their smooth skins gleaming in the sun, but some of them had rough attachments on their sides, the cyborg modifications that made them machines of war.

  “Those are Soviet military dolphins,” Morgenstern said. “What are they doing in Manila Bay?”

  Stasov shook his head. “None of my concern, now. Something for the Japanese and Americans to worry about.”

  “Why? Soviet forces have demobilized.”

  “They have. The Pacific Fleet is gone, the Japanese occupy Vladivostok, and there isn’t a Red Army unit existing east of the Lena. But the dolphins aren’t Soviet citizens, are they? And they have not signed any instrument of surrender.” He sat back in his seat and straightened the knot on his tie.

  They had talked little about dolphins over the past two days. They had, instead, spoken mostly of space exploration, of Morgenstern’s hopes and dreams, as if Stasov had come into her life to rescue her. As if he and his dolphins could somehow get her into space.

  She looked out at the dolphins sliding in and out of the water and remembered the images from the TV: the flat burning shape of the Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu at the Battle of La Perouse Strait and the vanishing prow of the Aegis cruiser Jonathan Wainwright as it failed to defend Kagalaska, both ships sunk by dolphins. The Soviets had been defeated, but the dolphins were still out there, and no one knew what they would do.

  She looked at Colonel Ilya Sergeiivich Stasov, the Shark of Uglegorsk, and noticed that, for the first time since she had met him at Homma, he was smiling.

  THE MALDIVES, JUNE 2029

  Stasov clambered down over the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks to take a look at the octopus trapped in the tide pool. It had come too high up near shore at high tide, probably in pursuit of crabs to eat, and been imprisoned when the water receded. Snails and sea urchins tumbled helplessly as the octopus whirled its tentacles. The red starfish and the sea anemones clinging to the rocks on the side of the pool went calmly about their business, ignoring the frantic interloper. Stasov reached in and prodded the octopus with his finger. It flushed dark with fear and irritation and huddled down between two rocks. The overturned sea urchins waggled their spines and slowly began to right themselves.

  The waves slapped louder as the tide rose over the rocks, gleaming eye-hurtingly in the glaring sunlight. Here and there the water met momentary resistance from a ridge or a seaweed pile, but it rose inexorably over all obstacles, finally pouring into the tide pool and reuniting it with the sea. The octopus jetted and vanished in the direction of deeper, safer waters.

  Stasov climbed back up from the water, away from the heavy iodine smell of the dark seaweed. Isopods, those marine pill bugs, scuttled madly under his feet amid the barnacles and black lichens at the upper reach of the tidal zone. Above was the rough, bare rock where the sperm whale lay baking in the morning sun.

  Its smooth black bulk loomed above the rough rock like a dream of a living mountain, sharply outlined against the cloudless sky. It had leaped from the sea sometime during the night and smashed itself on the land. Without help it would be dead by noon. Staring up at it, mesmerized, Stasov tripped over a stretch of the limp tubing that now crisscrossed the island. A firm hand grabbed his elbow and held him.

  “We’re ready to pump,” Habib Williams’s wheezy voice said. “Tubes are soft now, but under pressure they’re like tree trunks. Get one of them wrapped around your leg and you got some trouble. Not to mention one leg fewer.” Williams was a short, skinny man with a bald, brown head. His white suit was cut with precise jauntiness and he carried a flowered Japanese parasol. He peered at Stasov with narrow, obvious suspicion. “Now tell me. Why are we here?” He reached down with the parasol’s crook and flipped the switch that was the only external feature of a satiny ovoid the size of a desk. It hummed, and seawater filled the tubing. Water sprayed out of hundreds of nozzles, played rainbows in the sun, and ran down the whale’s sides.

  Stasov gazed at him, pale blue eyes as featureless as robin’s eggs. “We’re saving a whale,” he said. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  Williams scowled. “It is. Cetacean rescue for the Indian Ocean. Fine, a respectable occupation, pleases my mother, though it means I can’t get home much. I know my profession. What I don’t know is why I, and Marta and Jolie and Ahmed, are here, on this tiny rock in the Maldives. The water is as clear and calm as I’ve ever seen it. There hasn’t been even the hint of a storm in a month. Halcyon weather. This time of year we sit in a garden in Colombo and play cards. Marta usually wins. She claims it’s skill.”

  He walked around the perimeter of the spray, stepping over the streams which now flowed in the cracks down to the sea. Stasov followed. On the other side of the whale were the two heavy-lift helicopters that had brought the rescue team from Sri Lanka. Next to them was Stasov’s own aircraft, a tiny military surplus helicopter, its red star dimmed by sun and salt. Stasov thought of the red starfish in the tide pool. That helicopter had fought in the Aleutians, but its star now seemed to have an aquatic rather than a military character. Things did manage to change, sometimes. Ahmed and Jolie had set up a crane which curled over the sperm whale like a scorpion’s tail.

  “Then, this morning, the sun comes up, and the Indian Ocean seasearch satellite tells me there’s a giant parmacety lying on the rocks in the middle of the ocean like a toy some god’s child forgot. It happens. I’ve seen gams of whales beach themselves and pods of dolphins bash themselves against cliffs until the water is red. Sperm whales do reverse brodies and drop themselves on islands to die. I don’t know why they do it, but I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is getting to the scene at top speed and finding Colonel Ilya Sergeiivich Stasov lying next to the whale, wrapped in a blanket, listening to the whale die.”

  “I hold no such rank,” Stasov said sharply. His large hands tightened on each other. “The research vessel Andrei Sakharov has been in the Maldives for the pas
t two weeks, not half an hour’s flight from here, at Ihavandiffulu Atoll.” Stasov had trouble pronouncing the outlandish word. “And she has been my station for two years.”

  “Oh, has she?” Williams said with heavy sarcasm. “And aren’t you afraid you’ll be sunk if you venture into the open sea? The sea has become a dangerous place, these days. I would assume for Soviet ships more than anyone.”

  “We’ve had no trouble.” Stasov took a breath. “I heard a call on one of our hydrophone buoys. Two weeks ago. A deep call, out in the Arabian Basin. If you play back your recordings, you’ll hear it. Three humpbacks, in close chorus. A simple call. It said ‘The Bubble Is Rising.’ It was a call to prayer. So I am here.”

  Williams stared at him, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely.” Stasov lifted his suntanned high-cheekboned face to the sky. “The Bubble Has Risen.”

  “Bullshit.” Williams restrained his temper with a visible effort and turned away.

  Stasov shook his head, knelt, and folded up his blanket. “The whale is dying. You want to play militia officer, interrogate me and throw me off your island. Understandable. But while we argue theology, the whale’s mass is slowly crushing its lungs. Don’t your people have the respirator ready yet?”

  The cetacean rescuer jerked his parasol shut, snapping several of its delicate wooden ribs. Stasov followed him to the crane. Williams carefully removed his white suit and finally stood, in paunchy dignity, wearing only a pair of red bikini shorts. Stasov also stripped.

  The two men stepped onto the crane and were lifted up to the whale’s back, which was warm and smooth under their bare feet. They were immediately soaked by the spray that played over the whale.

  Williams pulled the crane’s respirator nozzle over to the whale’s blowhole, located asymmetrically on the top left side of the snout. He stimulated the proper acupressure points with an ultrasonic probe, anaesthetizing the sensitive blowhole. He then inserted the nozzle and adjusted the suction cups that held it firm. A signal to Ahmed, and a rush of air inflated the whale’s lungs.

  “We can give him a breath of air, but we’re going to lose him,” Williams said. “A lot of damage down below where you can’t see it. He must have done a world record jump, from the looks of it. Cracked ribs, organ ruptures, internal hemorrhaging. A mess. Is this poor dying thing your Bubble, Stasov?” He snorted in disgust. “Dolphin superstition. Another of their mass of stupid lies.”

  From the whale’s back the two men could see the whole stretch of sea surrounding the island. Countless white splashes broke the otherwise calm water. Dolphins, hundreds of dolphins, were dancing in the sea. They surrounded the island out to the horizon. Williams stared out at them, his face twisted with disgust.

  “We’ve heard many lies over the past few years,” Stasov said, sweeping his arms at the dolphins. “The nature of dolphin Revelation isn’t one of them.”

  “Are you asking me to accept the religion of those thugs?” Williams said. “Are they here to kill us? You.” A sudden look of realization swept across his face. “They want to kill you. For what you did to them at Uglegorsk, and after.”

  Stasov shook his head slowly. “They know that I’m to live, for now. And when it is time for me to die, they’ll let me handle it myself. Dolphins are capable of an elementary politeness. No, Mr. Williams, they are here to witness the rising of the Bubble. The Great Whale swims beneath the surface of reality, and the buffetings of Her flukes are the swirls and eddies of our lives. A sweep of Her fluke has thrown this sperm whale out of the sea. God rises to breathe. When She does, all will change.”

  “No, Stasov, I don’t buy it.” Williams looked as if he wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room enough on the whale’s slick back. “You pretend not to believe it, officially, but you know that the dolphins have been at war with the human race since the end of the Pacific War. They sank the cruise ship Sagittarius off Martinique. They’ve cut through the hulls of fishing vessels. They’ve killed swimmers in the open water. It’s been random murder.”

  “Murder?” Stasov asked. “War? The actions of insane beasts? Which is it?”

  “You’ve played your legal games all the way along. That’s how you escaped punishment, and the way they will, too.”

  “The evidence that they’ve actually killed anyone is ambiguous.”

  “Ambiguous!” Williams’s face turned red. “Colonel Stasov, pain and death are not ambiguous.”

  “That’s quite true,” Stasov said seriously. “I know. But whatever has happened, the Americans and the Japanese have been forced to negotiate at Santa Barbara, recognizing dolphin rights. As they should have done years ago, at the end of the Pacific War.”

  “This is your doing, damn you! You tortured them. Your cetacean research station at Uglegorsk ranks with Dachau and Auschwitz. I watched them die at Kagalaska. I was there.”

  Stasov breathed slowly. “It was a war. A war for survival.” His voice was calm, almost dreamy. “But next time you give your diatribe, use some of our own Soviet concentration camps, such as Vorkuta and Kolyma, instead of those German ones. My grandfather died at Vorkuta. It lends a nice symmetry.” So Williams had been at Kagalaska. Had he watched his comrades’ blood crystallize on the blue rime ice and felt despair when the Wainwright sank?

  “You tortured them and now you accept their faith?” Williams asked.

  “I didn’t know I was torturing them,” Stasov said softly. “I didn’t know. But without understanding their faith, we would never have been able to communicate with them at all.”

  “We’ll talk with them at Santa Barbara. But you, thank God, won’t be there.”

  “No. I am forbidden. I am a war criminal.” Stasov shaded his eyes. Was she finally there, at the northern horizon? He watched as the huge white shape of the Andrei Sakharov pulled itself over the edge of the water. From this distance she looked pure, almost Japanese. Her rough welding and patched cables didn’t show. “We want the whale, Mr. Williams.” His voice was distant. “We intend to take it over from you.”

  “What?” Williams followed Stasov’s gaze. His face hardened when he saw the ship with the red star on its prow. “Damn you, you can’t have it.”

  “Is that your choice, Mr. Williams? The Sakharov is equipped with the full complement of systems for keeping the whale alive. It will die otherwise, within hours. You know that.”

  The Sakharov had once been an Aleksandr Brykin class nuclear-submarine tender with another name, and had loaded sea launched ballistic missiles into their launch tubes, missiles which, fortunately for the human race’s survival, had never been fired.

  “Better dead than in your hands,” Williams shouted.

  Stasov gestured, taking in the dolphin-filled sea visible from the whale’s back. “The dolphins don’t seem to agree with you.”

  “Fuck the dolphins! They probably want to haul the whale into the ocean so they can rape it.” He ran a hand over his scalp, gaining control of himself. “No. I can’t do it. It will imperil the treaty negotiations at Santa Barbara.” He smiled, pleased at this legalistic solution. “If we turned a whale over to Colonel Ilya Sergei—”

  “I’m glad you take so much trouble to pronounce my entire name,” Stasov said icily. “But who is being legalistic now? Unless we intervene, the whale will die.” He paused, in wonder at the threat he was about to utter. He had long ago resolved to put the military behind himself. “The Sakharov took on a platoon of Russian troops when we resupplied at Karachi a week ago. We are taking them to Oman. I think they would be willing to assist us in saving this whale’s life.”

  Williams stared out at the approaching ship. “You don’t give me any choice,” he said stonily.

  “Choice is usually an illusion.”

  OFF HOKKAIDO, SEPTEMBER 2030

  The aerobody had developed a noticeable list to starboard and vibrated vigorously, as if drilling through air suddenly solid. The airship’s pilot, Benjamin Fliegle, took a slow sip of the steamin
g green tea in his stoneware cup and set it back in its heated, gimbaled holder on the control board. The sleet was heavy outside, and the windshield wiper, inadequately heated, stuttered under a thick layer of ice. Fliegle, his small shaven head perched on top of his orange saffron robe like a potato on a pumpkin, leaned forward and pounded on the windshield with his fist. The wiper tossed a chunk of wet ice and moved more smoothly. The aerobody tilted perilously and he grabbed the wheel. “Pesky thing,” he muttered.

  The rear hatch opened and admitted a figure in heavy insulation, as well as a blast of wet, freezing air.

  “How does it look?” Fliegle said.

  “Not bad,” Olivia Knester said as she stripped her suit off. “Just noisy. I’ll overhaul it in the shop when we get back to Kushiro, but it won’t give us any trouble now.” Now naked, Knester also pulled on an orange saffron robe. She was a chunky, middle-aged woman with extravagant curled eyebrows which tried to compensate for the shaved skull above them. “However, Benjamin…”

  “Yes, Olivia?”

  “The engine isn’t buying your theories about the virtual identities of reciprocating parts. It will not ‘wear into perfection,’ it will wear into junk. Keep the crankcase oil full. Until we achieve satori and leave the Wheel, we must keep it lubricated.” She turned to Stasov. “Put on your suit. We should find the proper pod of orcas soon. Benjamin, it’s time to start listening.”

  Fliegle dropped the aerobody’s altitude to fifty feet and cut back the engines until they moved at twenty miles an hour. A lever on the panel released the hydrophone. As Stasov pulled on his wetsuit, Fliegle put in his earphones and leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed. The altitude continued to drop.

  “Benjamin!” Knester said sharply.

  The nose went back up. “Sorry.”

  Stasov put on his fins, fitted underwater lenses into his eyes, and snugged the oxygenator onto the valves on his neck. Then he attached the microphone to his throat, strapped the transducer and signal processor to his chest, and activated the bone conduction speakers behind his jaw hinge. Orca speech included frequencies from 5 Hz to 80 kHz, far beyond the range of human hearing. His equipment compressed and processed the information so that he could communicate.