The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Columbia bounced off the pad, clearing the tower, climbing on a dense column of smoke, fire barely visible, while the camera pulled back so you could see it go, climbing over the heads of the newsmen and women. Two guys in the foreground, standing near the countdown sign, one fat, holding a camera, the other less so, holding binoculars, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, rather strange looking.…

  Moment of intense regret. I wish I’d just gone on down. I could be standing with those guys right now, feeling what they’re feeling.…

  In a little while, the rocket was up in space.

  * * *

  Mark sat back from the AppleStar Touchvoice III+, unclipping the microphone from his collar, reading the last words of the article, lips moving slightly. Well. Pretty good. Another few thousand bucks in the can, at any rate. He reached out and touched the SAVE/EXIT icon on the right-hand side of the screen and watched the file explode out of the picture, system desktop reappearing.

  Hell of a way for an old man to make a living, really, but the outdoor engineering days are long gone. Not much civil tech going on anymore anyway. Not much of anything, these days, younger engineers going overseas, if they could. Even Billy, talking about taking his wife and kids out of the country, maybe get a decent-paying job in Serbia or Kazakhstan, where there was new infrastructure abuilding.

  I’ll miss Jerry, though. Of course the boy was getting too old to have much interest in his grandfather, finishing up high school, slim, handsome, fresh-faced.…

  Mark shut off the computer and was suddenly aware of his reflection in the screen. Not too damned bad. Still slim, though I don’t work hard anymore. Still got all my hair, even if it is white. If this were a mirror, I could see the corneal rings … and the little scars where my glasses used to sit. Glasses. I wonder where I put them? He grinned at his reflection. Good riddance, after fifty years!

  He pushed back from the desk and turned the chair around, looking out the window into sunset. Nice fall colors in the sky, clouds turning brown in the fading light, blue turning to vermilion, dark red over the horizon. The weather’d been good all week. A sunny day when we buried Mom in the spot she reserved beside Dad. I wish I could imagine them together right now.…

  No. Nothing. Gone. Hard times, though. I thought about giving her an Alcor burial, just silliness, but a sliver of hope for the rest of us. She wouldn’t have wanted it, though, not with Dad Purina Worm Chow all these years.…

  He sighed and stood up, stretching. Morbid thoughts, all right. Useless. Ow. The twinge in his shoulder was back, making him worry. I’m just a few years short of how old Dad was when he died. Maybe … Christ. More morbidity. Also useless. Dad had thirty years of cheeseburgers on me. I’ve got another twenty years to go, maybe more. A whole generation. Practically another whole life.…

  * * *

  The big, flat box of the HDTV, dominating one wall of the living room, was already set to CNN-4, Endeavor on the launchpad, outlined by darkening sunset colors, T-60 minutes and counting. It would, just barely, be dark by the time the thing went. Something familiar …

  Oh, hell. Apollo 17. Another “last time.” Hard little ball of regret in his throat. Well, at least the TV keeps getting better and better. But the ship would fly to orbit with its nine-man crew, primary mission to attach a de-orbiting rocket to the little bit of Freedom that had been built, just so it could fall harmlessly into the sea, avoiding the hysteria that had accompanied the fall of Skylab, of Salyut 7, of Mir.

  All over. Like everything else in my life. America entering its senescence after a short, brilliant youth. No more moonshots. No more Voyagers. No space station at all. After this, no more Man in Space. Childhood dreams finished. Russians gone. Chinese and Japanese never went. Europeans just couldn’t seem to get their act together.…

  Gina came out of the kitchen, smiling, carrying two tumblers of liquor, her own old fashioned, his Black Russian. She put the drinks down on the coffee table and stood looking down at him, hands on slim hips. Look of concern. “You all right, Mark?”

  He sighed, then shook his head. “Sure. I just get tangled up in old memories sometimes.…”

  She sat in his lap, pulled her legs up, put her arms around his neck, and leaned close. “Yeah. I guess … I didn’t expect to feel this way when I got old.…”

  “Old, hell!”

  That made her smile, lean in closer, nuzzling her face against his. She was pretty damned nice looking for a woman pushing sixty. Still slim, not too many lines in her face. Let her hair go gray though, unlike Marian, who’d been dyeing hers for decades.

  Kids didn’t like seeing her in his lap like this, especially in front of the younger grandchildren, so it was just as well they’d ignored his invitation to come over for an Endeavor party. They’d’ve brought Marian anyway, bitter Marian, with all her acid little remarks, eliciting his usual muttered response.

  Well, dear, you didn’t have to throw me away.…

  He rubbed his hands up and down Gina’s back, feeling her smooth muscles through the thin blouse, just a faint hint of loose skin here and there, spine a well-defined ridge.

  Murmuring into his neck, she said, “You keep that up, we’ll miss the launch.…”

  Smiling back at her, feeling her solid, comfortable weight on his lap, Mark dismissed yet another little pang: I could’ve had this all my life if only … Hell, boy. Forget about that. You’ve got it now. That’s all that matters.

  “Maybe,” he said, hands drifting down past her hips, “it isn’t worth watching.”

  * * *

  Mark sat at his desk in the spacious, glass-walled office, nine floors above the street, higher than most of the other buildings in this part of town, staring into space. Nice day out there. Sunny. Cloudless. Probably a bit of a breeze ameliorating the August heat. Nice day for a walk. No smog. Not anymore. Car exhaust diminishing as emission standards tightened, more and more people going for quiet electrics, long-haul trucks running on low-residue, stack-scrubbed synfuel …

  Nice day for a walk. And you should be happy you can go for a walk on your seventy-sixth birthday, old man no cane, no pain, not a problem in the world.

  It’s just that you’re all done. Finished again.

  Mark sighed and leaned back, staring at the low, flat black box of the Toshiba Vortex transmedia system sitting on the corner of his desk, spidery headset crumpled in a pile next to it. No, you just don’t want to do this. It’s only been eight years since you started Future Life, eight years in which you built it up into the twenty-first century’s premier technophile vidmag. Eight years in which you built what felt like a whole new career. And careers are supposed to last a lifetime.…

  OK. So this one did last a lifetime. You just don’t have a whole lot left. Twenty years? In twenty years, I’ll be under the ground. Not a clean thought. Alcor and its competitors out of business, protocorpsicles thawed and buried. That nice insurance policy just one more pile of cash, insignificant compared to what the magazine made you. Ten years? Maybe. If I’m lucky. Ten years in which to grow frail and sick and very, very old …

  Hah. Maudlin. Morbid. Get on with it. Retire and hand it over to the people you trained. Go sit in the sunshine. Finish those ten years in comfort. Owe it to Gina, at least …

  He picked up the headset and slipped it on, watched admiringly as the virtual office formed up around him. All right. Point at the imaginary voicewriter and see its blue LED blink, acknowledging your presence, sheet of paper forming in the air above it, column of icons like magic in the air beside you. Reach up and grasp the NOTE icon. “Editorial Number 96,” he muttered. Tap the CENTER icon, then tap ITALICS. “Ave. Atque. Vale.”

  Hmh. Very nice looking. Now if only the software engineers would come up with subroutines that were really good at recognizing global context-sensitive stylesheets, external to the local setup-universe. Give it time. If you live long enough, you’ll see it happen. Hmmm … All right, that’s what I’ll talk about, then.…


  * * *

  Later, at home, he sat on the couch, Gina curled against his side, watching TV, dinner a warm lump just to the left of center. Gina holding onto me. Worried that I’ll be upset, feeling a little guilty. Retired, by God. All over. And in six weeks we’ll move to a nice little house in Cocoa Beach.…

  Someplace for the kids to visit. Astonishing thought: My children are getting old! Billy’s hair iron gray now, even baby Alice nearing the end of her forties … Grandkids then. Most of them don’t really know me. Jerry, though, a fine strapping young man, just about ready to turn thirty, happy with that young wife, what’s-her-name … Lisa! Right. How could I forget? Not that old. Jerry and Lisa, proudly showing off their new baby boy, name of Matthew Severn. Little red Matt. What a marvel. Great-grandchildren now. Something I didn’t expect, but I guess I just wasn’t thinking.…

  Gina shifted position, stretching out her legs with a faint murmur of protest, rubbing her hand across his stomach then straightening up, stretching. “Good grief,” she muttered, “stiff already.…”

  Mark laughed, signaling to the TV with his free hand, dumping the dull old movie they’d been watching, switching over to the global newsnet, hugging her tight with the other.

  “Oof. God,” she said, “I can’t believe I’m so stiff just from sitting here.…”

  Old joints, creaking here, creaking there. “You’re lucky, damn you. I’ve been stiffening up for the past thirty years.”

  She smiled up at him, long lines from the corners of bright blue eyes, patted him on the thigh, and said, “Longer than that, I think.…”

  Laughter just a puff of air from his nostrils. “Hmh.” He snuggled down, lips rubbing on her forehead, waited while she tipped her head back for a real kiss.

  When it was over, she sighed, delicate, a soft, young sound, head against his chest. “Fifteenth anniversary coming up. I can hardly believe it.…”

  Fifteen years. Another ten and she’ll have been with me longer than Marian. Jesus. Marian. Dead two years already? Kids not too happy when you didn’t go to the funeral … Stop it. Happy now. He hugged her gently. “Fifteen years. No regrets.”

  Her arms were around his chest, squeezing him close.

  On TV, the newshead was talking about something … Several men in expensive-looking suits, sitting around a conference table. Representatives of the American Aerospace Consortium. The commerce secretary. The vice president. Artist’s conception of the various competitors for the NNLS, New National Launch System, mostly single-stage very high energy concepts, unmanned but mannable, part of the Third Millennium Infrastructure Initiative. SynchroNet Platform. Man-tended …

  Other stuff, but Gina was pulling his head down, closing out that imagery, pulling him into her world, more immediate, much more certain, just a tiny slice of regret left behind, caption beginning, If only …

  * * *

  Mark lay back on their comfortable bed, watching Gina get undressed. She was facing away from him, over by the caddy where his own clothes already sprawled, more fastidious, draping pieces carefully, though wrinkles were a thing of the past.

  Not too many wrinkles at that.…

  Blouse sliding over her head, back very smooth in the shadowy light, hips flaring just so … Little pouches of flesh just above them, where her little bit of fat had drained away, skin not elastic enough to take up the slack. Maybe a vain woman would have it cut away. Maybe she would, but she’d said nothing.…

  Arm, still limber, reaching back, unhooking the brassiere, shrugging it off, and you could see by the movement of skin on her ribs that she was sagging just a little more with every passing month, tissue shriveling, making her once-fine breasts look empty indeed. Maybe she looks at herself in the mirror, handles them perhaps, and is sorry she never had children.…

  Slipping the bikini briefs down, bending over to step out of them, Mark’s breath catching slightly as desire kindled here and there.…

  She turned to face him, hands on hips, posed just so, watching him look at her, eyes wandering, face and form and back again.

  What one word will tell her how I feel right now? “Beautiful…” he told her.

  Gina looked down at him, eyes bright, smiling. “Well,” she said, “looks like that famous ‘male climacteric’ we’ve all heard so much about is just another old wives’ tale.…”

  He beckoned to her. “Just bring that old wife’s tail over here and we’ll see how many myths we can manage to debunk.…”

  * * *

  Toward the end of one long evening, shadows lengthening as the sun set inland, Mark sat alone on his porch, waiting for the rocket to go up. Not quite a night launch, but close enough. He glanced at his watch, then down at the screen of the little TV sitting on the table beside him. Ten minutes. Well, you could go inside and watch it in comfort, get away from the bugs for a while, get a better view too, plugged into the RealWorld 3-D Entertainment Center, maybe blend newsnet footage with unedited NASA Select In-house Video shots.…

  Nonsense. Watch it live. That’s why you moved here when you know Gina would’ve been happier over in Clearwater.…

  Tiny pang, deep inside his chest, hardly able to form. I keep expecting her to come out through the door, laughing, maybe even sit in my decrepit old lap … Has she really been gone for three whole years? Seems like only a few days have gone by. Making love in the dark one fine night, laughing together, falling asleep in each other’s arms … Waking up in gray light of morning, finding her so cold and still …

  Oh, back out of that one … Jesus. How the hell did I get to be eighty-four years old.…

  The people on the little TV were counting down now, voices excited, three … two … one … Static from the TV and a bright light forming in the distance, silent, Cape Canaveral just ten miles away. Brighter. Brighter … The light detached from the horizon, ball as bright as the sun blotting out reddening background sky, long tongue of flame seeming to flicker, climbing … Distant thunder, growing louder.

  Watching it go, hydrogen burning in the sky, Mark thought, first flight. In three years, they leave for Mars, just about forty years behind schedule. If I’m lucky, I may still be alive.…

  * * *

  A few days later, Mark was sitting on the porch again, facing into the warm morning sunshine, when Jerry and his family rolled up in their brand new BMW Comet II, electric/turbine–drive system a barely audible whine, tires crunching softly in the gravel driveway. He opened his eyes, smiling, but was, momentarily, too tired to get up out of the chair. For the last few months, the swivel mount had been difficult to manage. Cold chill. Old, boy. Getting very old …

  Car doors clunking, people getting out, Jerry tall and tanned, graying at the temples, but still young and handsome at thirty-nine, Lisa a slim and pretty redhead, lovely in a bright, patterned sundress. Matt dodged around them suddenly, popping through the gate, running toward him across the lawn, all freckles and dark red hair and bright blue eyes, feet clattering on the steps, flopping across his lap with a hug. “Hiya, Gramps!”

  Mark squeezed him close. “Hiya, Mattie. How’s it going?” Gramps. I wonder what he calls Bill? Christ, my grandson is a middle-aged man!

  Jerry and Lisa were on the porch now, looking down at them, smiling. “Hey, Grandpa. How’ve you been?”

  Mark sat up a little straighter and shrugged. “Oh, all right. Enjoying the view at least.” He nodded to the car. “That a new one?”

  Jerry looked at the sleek silver-and-black thing and nodded. “Got it in the spring. Eleven thousand.”

  Moment of surprise. German cars haven’t been that cheap in forty years. Balance of payments must be pretty good. Not to mention … “Magazine doing OK?”

  Jerry nodded. “With the start you gave it?” Not only Future Life, of course, but its far less techie companion, Global Life.

  Mark slid the boy off his lap and looked at him, young, bright-eyed. Eyes that’ll still be here when this century slides to a close. Maybe remember today, remember me,
sitting with great-grandchildren of his own … He reached under the chair suddenly, trying not to wince from the too-sudden movement, pulled out a flat, gaily wrapped package. “What do you think, Mattie?”

  Though he must have been anticipating a gift, the boy’s eyes widened with surprised pleasure as he took it and paused, smiling at him. “Thanks…” then ripped it open. “Wow…” Holding the black box at arm’s length.

  “What is it?” said Lisa, stepping forward, unaccountably concerned.

  Jerry looked over the boy’s shoulder and frowned. “Well. An MBB Spielraum hypergame deck. With nerve-induction interface clips.” He looked at the old man. “That must’ve set you back a pretty penny.”

  It had, in fact, cost a little more than the new car. Mark looked up at him. “At my age, what else am I going to do with my money?” He gestured. “Just make a boy smile, that’s all.”

  Matt slid up the unit’s SynchroNet antenna, then opened the storage compartment and picked up one of the radiosonde stickum tabs, turning it over in his fingers. “Can it run PlanetQuest 5?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  * * *

  Walking along the beach, wind blowing in his hair, Jerry liked the way his wife’s body felt, pressed against his side, shoulder not quite tucked under his arm, her arm around his back, thumb tucked through a belt-loop. Familiar. Comfortable. Like we belong together. They’d been married for twelve years now and seldom had a difficult moment. Thanks, in part, to the old man’s monetary legacy. But …

  Her words of concern as they wandered the beach. “I know he means well, Jer. I just don’t know if this is a good idea. Matt’s a bright boy. I don’t want him distracted by something like this.…”

  The new gaming devices could be hypnotic indeed, projecting their fantasy world directly into the minds of the players, and had caused some outcry, filled Future Life’s letters column for issue after issue.…