The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “I sectioned a lot of tissue, just to track the rate of degeneration, without seeing anything unusual. The rate was still very slow. Then I caught the anomaly—an oocyte that had started dividing, forming what looked like a tumour. Not a virgin birth, you understand. It wasn’t forming an ordinary embryo, and the new cells looked to be dispersing, like a cancer in metastasis. It looked then as if the virus was a killer, and I kept the remaining live mice under observation to see what would happen. I waited for them to show external symptoms, but they didn’t. I waited, and waited, and the damn things didn’t die.

  “They didn’t die at all. Ever.

  “Eventually, I figured it out. The oocytes which were developing were producing new juvenile cells which gradually displaced the maternal cells in the mother’s body. They were producing new individuals, all right, but not separate individuals. As the mother got older she became a mosaic, except that the new cells weren’t genetically different: these freak oocytes were diploid clone-daughters of the original. They were rejuvenating the host body, over and over again. Instead of living the one lifetime programmed into its originating egg-cell, each mouse was living a whole series of lifetimes, cannibalizing her own egg-cells. I’d infected the damn things with immortality.

  “You probably remember the old joke about the chicken just being an egg’s way of making another egg. DNA has always been immortal; our chromosomes live forever, they just use organisms as a way of swapping their individual genes around. Bacteria and protozoans generally don’t bother—their cells just keep on dividing. It only needed a little genetic nudge to put the mouse chromosomes on a new track, so that they express their immortality through a series of individuals who would just grow up to displace one another inside the same body, shedding the aged cells just as a growing snake periodically sloughs its skin.

  “I had a complete gene-map of the bullet virus that had done the trick. Its infective capacity was mouse-specific but the active DNA wasn’t. I knew that I could tailor a virus to do the same thing to human egg-cells. Two or three misses, maybe, but the problem wasn’t difficult. Armed with that gene-map, anyone with a decent lab could do it. But without the map, even knowing that it could be done, it would be impossible. You know how many ways there are to perm four bases into a string of DNA a hundred units long. I knew it would be hundreds of years before anyone else turned up another fluke like it. So I hid the map.”

  Lisa had listened in silence, not wanting to break the rhythm of his speech, fearing that if the flow were once switched off, it might be very difficult to get it going again. Now, though, Morgan Miller had stopped of his own accord, and he was watching her with his bird-bright eyes, waiting for her reaction, as if challenging her to work out the pattern of his motives for herself.

  “You discovered immortality?” she queried. “And you decided to keep it a secret between you and the mice?”

  He nodded slightly, but said nothing.

  She realized that she had left something out. “You discovered a way to make females immortal,” she corrected herself. “Only females.”

  He nodded again.

  “What have you been doing?” she asked. “Trying to find a magic bullet that would transform sperm-cells the same way? In the interests of fair-play?”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” he said, softly. “A sperm-cell doesn’t have the supporting biochemical apparatus. It’s just a bundle of chromosomes. Its genes can only become active after invading another cell. Like a virus, in a way. In biochemical terms, males have always been parasitic on females. When oöcytes can do it on their own, a species doesn’t really need males.”

  Lisa thought about the implications of what Morgan Miller had discovered, and what he had done—or not done—about it.

  “How long ago, Morgan?” she asked, eventually.

  He tried to shrug his shoulders, but couldn’t. “Forty years,” he said.

  Forty years ago, thought Lisa, coldly. I was in love with Morgan Miller then, and my body contained hundreds of thousands of egg-cells. Hundreds of thousands of potential lifetimes. And he knew—even then, he knew.

  * * *

  She had known, of course, that Morgan Miller had not loved her, and that he never would. He would never have given her a child. Why should she be shocked because he had known a way by which he might have made her an elixir of life, and had not even tried?

  Whatever happens now, she thought, it’s too late. I’m too old, and there are no more egg-cells left.

  Stella Filisetti, she remembered, was young enough still to be carrying viable egg-cells.

  “Why did you tell Stella?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. Must be cleverer than I gave her credit for. A dozen immortal mice in a population of a thousand, all looking alike. I thought they were well enough hidden even in plain view. She always liked the mice, though—had a curious silly fondness for them. Sentimentality is so out of place in a biologist.”

  “You bastard, Morgan,” said Lisa, levelly. “If she hadn’t set you up, I swear I’d shoot you myself.” She was surprised, as she said it, how tempted she was. It was odd, in a way, because she felt no white heat of passionate rage. If, as she felt tempted to, she were to rip aside the sterile tent, pick up the pillow and smother him, she would be doing it quite coolly. She knew, though, that there was no point.

  “Well,” he said, softly, “it’s out now. Once she knew there was something hidden, she must have gone through my files very carefully. I had too many copies of the map, I guess. Maybe I should have destroyed it, if I really wanted to save mankind.” He put a faint stress on the word “mankind,” to emphasize that he meant just that, and no more.

  “Did you?” asked Lisa. “Want to save mankind, that is?”

  He grinned. “I rather liked the world as it was,” he said. “In spite of the greenhouse crisis, in spite of the plague wars, in spite of the energy shortage, in spite of the economic collapse. Not a bad world, for one such as I. I’m glad I had no sons, though—Stella’s people will make sure that the future’s very different.”

  “Smith’s men have found her,” Lisa told him. “There’s every chance that they’ll get the map back, if she hasn’t already run off and distributed a thousand copies. I don’t suppose she has. The fact that they bombed the lab and tried to kill you suggests that they don’t intend making their little discovery public. I think they want to keep it to themselves. Not so sentimental after all, you see.”

  He grinned again. “So much for sisterhood,” he said.

  Lisa studied his face carefully. “Why didn’t you tell Smith?” she asked.

  “Didn’t have time.”

  “Yes you did. You held back. You waited for him to go, and then you told it all to me. Why?”

  “Why’d you wrap up the bug?” he countered.

  “It was making me self-conscious. I thought I’d like us to have a little privacy.”

  “I don’t like men from the Ministry,” said Miller. “My first inclination is always to tell them nothing.”

  “It seems,” observed Lisa, “that your first inclination is to tell everyone nothing.”

  “I told you.”

  “Forty years too late.”

  “Too late for you, perhaps. But I never thought of you as a selfish person, Lisa. It was something I always admired in you. Authentic altruism. A sense of duty. You’ve always been my favourite.”

  Lisa watched him, knowing that he was playing a kind of game. He was teasing her, playing cat and mouse. There he was, on his deathbed, enjoying the idea that the future of the world might be still his to determine, his to play with, his to dispose.

  She still felt a little like killing him, but didn’t intend to.

  Instead, she knew, she would wait, and listen, and see what he decided to do. If he wanted to, he could tell her where to find another copy of his map. If he wanted to, he could die silent, leaving it for the painstaking Mr. Smith to seek out with his fine-toothed comb. She didn’t need three guesses to
know what Mr. Smith would do with it.

  There was a long pause while they watched one another, waiting to find out which one of them would break the silence, and what he, or she, would say.

  * * *

  Agents of the Ministry of Defence arrested Stella Filisetti later that day. Within a matter of hours, thay had made seven more arrests. Following a trial—which was held in secret because of its implications for national security—eight women were eventually sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in an unspecified location.

  When Peter Smith returned to Morgan Miller’s house the professor was still alive, and he remained alive long enough to repeat all that he had told Lisa Friemann. Smith’s men then began a very careful and exhaustively thorough search of Morgan Miller’s data-discs, looking for the crucial gene-map.

  AVRAM DAVIDSON

  The Odd Old Bird

  For many years now Avram Davidson has been one of the most eloquent and individual voices in science fiction and fantasy, and there are few writers in any literary field who can hope to match his wit, his erudition, or the stylish elegance of his prose. His recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Engelbert Esterhazy (collected in his World Fantasy Award-winning The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas), for instance, are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers. Davidson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, and the World Fantasy awards. His books include the renowned The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rogue Dragon, Peregrine: Primus, Rork!, Clash of Star Kings, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas with Oysters, and The Redward Edward Papers. His most recent books are Vergil in Averno, and, in collaboration with Grania Davis, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.

  Here he gives us an affectionate, eccentric, and tasty look at a very odd old bird.

  The Odd Old Bird

  AVRAM DAVIDSON

  “But why a canal?”

  “Cheaper, more, and better victuals.”

  “Oh.”

  Prince Roldran Vlox (to cut his titles quite short, and never mind about his being a Von Stuart y Fitz-Guelf) had “just dropped in” to talk to Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy about the Proposed Canal connecting the Ister and the Danube … there were, in fact, several proposed canals and each one contained several sub-propositions: should it go right through the entirely Vlox-held Fens (“The Mud,” it was fondly called … “Roldry Mud,” the prince sometimes called himself)? should it go rather to the right or rather to the left? should it perhaps not go exactly “through” them at all, but use their surplusage of waters for feeder systems? and—or—on the one hand This, on the other hand That—

  “What’s that new picture over on the wall, Engly?” Guest asked suddenly. Host began to explain. “Ah,” said Guest, “one of those funny French knick-knacks, eh? Always got some funny knick-knacks.… The British for sport, the French for fun.…” Still the guestly eyes considered the picture over on the wall. “That’s a damned funny picture … it’s all funny little speckles.…”

  “Why, Roldry, you are right. What good eyes you have.”

  Promptly: “Don’t soil them by a lot of reading, is why. Lots of chaps want to know about a book, ‘Is it spicy?’ Some want to know, ‘Is it got lots of facts?’ What I want to know is only, ‘Has it got big print?’ Shan’t risk spoiling my eyes and having to wear a monocle. One has to be a hunter, first, you know.” He made no further reference to the fact his host himself sometimes wore a monocle.

  Eszterhazy returned to the matter of canals: “Here is a sketch of a proposed catchment basin—Yes, Lemkotch?”

  “Lord Grumpkin!” said the Day Porter.

  There followed a rather short man of full figure, with a ruddy, shiny, cheerful face. There followed also a brief clarification, by Lemkotch’s employer, of the proper way to refer to Professor Johanno Blumpkinn, the Imperial Geologist; there followed, also, an expression on the Porter’s face, indicative of his being at all times Doctor (of Medicine, Law, Music, Philosophy, Science, and Letters) Eszterhazy’s loyal and obedient servant and all them words were not for a ignorant fellow like him (the day porter) to make heads or tails of; after which he bowed his usual brief, stiff bob and withdrew. He left behind him a slight savor of rough rum, rough tobacco, rough manhood, and rough soap … even if not quite enough rough soap to erase the savor of the others. The room also smelled of the unbleached beeswax with which they had been rubbing—polishing, if you like—the furniture’s mahogany; of Prince Vlox, which some compared to that of a musty wolf (not perhaps to his face, though); of Eszterhazy himself (Pears soap and just a little bay rum) and of Professor Blumpkinn (Jenkinson’s Gentleman’s Cologne: more than just a little). Plus some Habana segars supplied by the old firm of Freibourg and Treyer in the Haymarket—London was a long way from Bella, capital of the Triple Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania (fourth largest empire in Europe) but so was Habana, for that matter. “Gentlemen, you have met, I believe,” Eszterhazy said, anyway adding, “Prince Vlox, Professor Blumpkinn.”

  Further adding, “I am sorry that my servant did not get your name right, Han.”

  Blumpkinn waved his hand. “Calling me by the old-fashioned word for the smallest coin in his native province really helps me to remember a proper value of my own worth.—Ah. Canal plans. I hope that when the excavations are in progress you will be sure to keep me in mind if any interesting fossils turn up.” It was not sure that Prince Vlox would be able to identify an interesting fossil if one hit him in the hough or bit him on the buttock, but Eszterhazy gave a serious nod. He knew how such things were to be done. Offer a small gift for reporting the discovery of “any of them funny elf-stone things as the old witch-women used to use”—they used to use them for anything from dropped stomach to teaching a damned good lesson to husbands with wandering eyes: but now all that had gone out of fashion—should certainly result in the reporting of enough interesting fossils, uninteresting fossils, and, indeed, non-fossils, to provide copingstones for the entire length of the Proposed Canal … if ever there was actually a canal.…

  “And speaking of which,” said Blumpkinn, and took two large sheets out between covers large enough to have contained the Elephant Folios; “I have brought you, Doctor ‘Bert, as I had promised, the proof-sheets of the new photo-zinco impressions of the Archaeopteryx, showing far greater detail than was previously available … you see.…”

  Doctor ‘Bert did indeed now thrust in his monocle and scanned the sheets, said that he saw. Prince Vlox glanced, glanced away, rested a more interested glance at the funny French knick-knack picture … men, women, water, grass, children, women, women … all indeed composed of multitudes of tiny dots, speckles,… points, if you liked … a matter easily noticeable if you were up close, or had a hunter’s eye.

  “Yes, here are the independent fingers and claws, the separate and unfused metacarpals, the un-birdlike caudal appendage, all the ribs non-unciate and thin, neither birdlike nor very reptilian, the thin coracoid, the centra free as far as the sacrum, and the very long tail.…” His voice quite died away to a murmur, Professor Blumpkinn, perhaps thinking that it was not polite to lose the attention of the other guest, said, “This, you see, Prince Vlox, is the famous Archaeopteryx, hundreds of millions of years old, which the sensational press has rather inadequately described as the so-called ‘no-longer-missing-link’ between reptiles and birds … observe the sharp teeth and the feather … this other one unfortunately has no head … and this one—”

  Here Prince Vlox, perhaps not an omnivorous student of paleontology, said, “Yes. Seen it.”

  “Ah … was that in London? or Berlin?”

  “Never been in either place.”

  Blumpkinn gaped. Recovered himself. Looked, first amused, then sarcastic, then polite. Eszterhazy slowly looked up. “What do you mean, then, Roldry. ‘seen it’? What—?”

  Prince Vlox repeated, with a slight emphasis, that he had seen i
t. And he bulged his eyes and stared, as though to emphasize the full meaning of the verb, to see.

  “What do you—Ah … ‘Seen it,’ seen it when, seen it where?”

  “On our land. Forget just when. What do you mean, ‘Am I sure?’ I don’t need a monocle to look at things. Why shouldn’t I be sure? What about it?”

  Blumpkinn and Eszterhazy for a moment spoke simultaneously. What about it? There were only two known Archaeopteryx specimens in the world! one in London, one in Berlin—think what a third would mean! Not only for science, but for Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania and its prestige.

  Vlox, with something like a sigh, rose to his feet; clearly the subject no longer much engaged him … possibly because his own family and its prestige was incomparably older than the Triple Monarchy and its prestige. “Well, I’ll have it looked for, then. Must be off. Things to do. My wine-merchant. My gunsmith. My carriage-maker. A turn of cards at The Hell-Hole. See if they’ve finished re-upholstering my railroad car. Tobacconist … new powder scales.… Can I execute any commissions for you, as they say? Haw haw! Tell you what, Engly, damned if I know what you want with this odd old bird, but tell you what: trade it for that funny French painting.” And he donned his tattered seal-skin cap (so that he should not be struck by lightning) and his wisent-skin cape (also fairly tattered, but wisents weren’t easy to get anymore), picked up his oak-stick, nodded his Roldry-nod, neither languid nor brisk, and went out into Little Turkling Street, where his carriage (as they say) awaited him. Some backwoods nobles kept a pied-a-terre in Bella in the form of a house or apartment, Prince Roldran preferred to keep a stable and to sleep in the loft. With taste and scent, no argument.