The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He had tried to look and sound amused, and to be a good sport overall, whenever he heard the joke in any of its mutated forms. After all, it was never intended really maliciously; it merely partook of a largely unconscious acceptance of a hierarchy of scientists. Physics and astronomy were glamour fields. Geology and paleontology were comparatively rough-hewn but nonetheless logical choices; moreover, they were perennially popular with the public, a crucial concern when public money was involved. Pedology was none of the above. He liked to think that he did not have it in himself to be envious, and so, with unfailing good humor, he agreed that there certainly would be a lot of geology at hand in the Paleozoic, mountains, valleys, strata, and the like. And, as for paleozoology, the Paleozoic would be nothing if not a big aquarium stocked with weird wiggly things and maybe a few big showy monsters.

  And as for the crazy night skies, my oh my!

  And even Kemal Barrowclough, paleobotanist, could get up and describe some harsh interior landscape enlivened only by the gray-green of lichens, “the first true land plants, because, unlike the psilophytes and lycopods we find clinging to the low moist places, close to water, always looking over their shoulders, so to speak, to make sure they haven’t strayed too far, lichens, by God, have taken the big step,” and there would scarcely be a dry eye among the listeners, except for Kemal’s sister, Gulnar, herself a paleobotanist. Gulnar specialized in psilophytes.

  Throughout the discussions, Ivan had felt that, in effect, DeRamus had but to point to his rocks and say, “Old!” or Gabbert to his sky and say, “Big!” and nothing, nothing, he could have said about microbiotic volume in the histic epipedon, or humic acid precipitation, or the varieties of Paleozoic mesofauna he expected to sift through a tullgren funnel, would have meant a damn thing. Rather than enter his saprotrophs in unequal and hopeless competition against thrust faults, sea scorpions, or prehistoric constellations, he would wait until all around the table had settled back, glowering but spent, then softly clear his throat and calmly explain all over again that the origin and evolution of soil ranked among the major events in the history of life on Earth, that soil was linked inextricably to that major event of mid-Paleozoic time, life’s emergence onto land.

  It had been by dint of this stolid persistence that he had, in the minds of enough of his peers, ultimately established himself as precisely the sort of knowledgeable, dedicated, persevering person who should be a member of the Paleozoic expedition—and had also established, by extension, all soil scientists everywhere, in every geologic age, as estimable fellows. When finally, Stoll had announced who would go, Ivan stunned to speechlessness, could only gape as each of his colleagues shook his hand; almost a minute passed before he found his voice. “Wonders never cease,” he had said.

  Almost the next thing he remembered was looking over the back of the man who had knelt before him to check the seals on his boots. Cutsinger had stood leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed and watched the technicians work. He smiled ruefully at Ivan and said, “Tell me how you really feel.”

  “Like the first astronaut to spacewalk must’ve, just before he went out and did it.”

  “That guy had an umbilical cord,” said Dilks, who sat nearby, surrounded by his own satellite system of technicians. He did not go onto say the obvious: We don’t.

  “Just don’t lose sight of the anomaly once you’re through,” Cutsinger said.

  “Right now,” Ivan said, “getting back through the anomaly doesn’t concern me quite as much as going through the first time and finding myself sinking straight to the bottom of the sea.”

  “We sent a probe in to bird-dog for you. The hole’s stabilized over solid ground. You’ll arrive high and dry.” Cutsinger nodded at Dilks. “Both of you, together.”

  Ivan flexed his gloved fingers and said, “It’s just the suit,” and thought, It isn’t only just the suit, but part of it is the suit. The suit was bulky and heavy and had to be hermetic. He and Dilks had to carry their own air supplies and everything else they might conceivably need, lest they contaminate the pristine Paleozoic environment and induce a paradox. The physicists, Ivan and Dilks privately agreed, were covering their own asses.

  Cutsinger asked Dilks, “Anything you’re especially concerned about?”

  Dilks grinned. “Not liking the scenery. Not seeing a single prehistoric monster.”

  Cutsinger smiled thinly. “Careful what you wish for.”

  “Time to seal up,” said one of the technicians. Another raised a clear bubble helmet and carefully set it down over Ivan’s head. The helmet sealed when twisted to the right.

  “All set?” said the chief technician’s voice in the helmetphone.

  “All set,” said Ivan.

  Technicians stood by to lend steadying hands as the two suited men got to their feet and lumbered into an adjoining room for decontamination. They stood upon a metal platform. Their equipment had already been decontaminated and stowed.

  Ivan gripped the railing that enclosed the platform; he did not trust his legs to hold him up. This is it, he told himself, and then, This is what? He found that he still could not entirely believe what he was about to do.

  The wall opposite the door pivoted away. The metal platform began to move on rails toward a ripple in the air.

  Everything turned to white light and pain.

  They considered their reflections in the full-length mirror. Don and Ivan were two solidly built, deep-chested, middle-aged men, unmistakably products of the same parents. Michelle stood framed in the doorway. Her expression was dubious. “Daddy,” she said, “they’ll never accept him as one of their own. No offense, Uncle Ivan, but you don’t have Hollywood hair and teeth. They’ll be horrified by what you’ve done to your skin. Daddy’s tanned and fit because he works out. You’re brown and hard and leathery because you work.”

  Don said to Ivan, “Maybe they’ll mistake you for a retired stuntman.”

  “Why retired?”

  “What other kind is there anymore?”

  “I feel strange in these clothes, but I have to admit that they feel good and look good. They look better that I do.”

  “This is up-to-the-moment thread.”

  “I look like a rough draft of you.”

  “Whatever you do,” Michelle said, “don’t say you’re a scientist. ‘Scientist’ cuts no ice here.”

  Don flashed a grin along his shoulder at his brother and said, “Absolutely do not say you’re a pedologist. They won’t have any idea what a pedologist is, unless they think it’s the same thing as a pedophile.”

  “Someone asks what you are,” Michelle said, “they mean, What’s your astrological sign?”

  “I don’t know my astrological sign.”

  She made a horrified face. “Get out of California!”

  “Tell ’em anything,” Don said, “It doesn’t matter, they’ll run with it, tell you they just knew all along you were a Taurus or whatever.”

  “Say you’re a time-traveler,” Michelle told him. “But don’t be hurt if they’re not even impressed by that. It’s not like they’ve ever done anything real.”

  The afternoon was warm, golden, perfect, as they wound their way along Mulholland Drive. Don had put the top down, though it meant wearing goggles to screen out airvertising. Ivan sat fingering the unfamiliar cloth of his borrowed clothing and admiring the fine houses. They turned in at a gate in a high stucco wall, passed a security guard’s inspection, and drove on. Around a bend in the driveway, Ivan saw a monstrous house, an unworkable fusion of Spanish and Japanese architectural quirks framed by the rim of hills beyond. Don braked to stop in front of the house and simply abandoned the car—if he gave the keys to someone, Ivan did not see it happen. Just at the door, Don turned to Ivan and said, “Let me take one more look at you.”

  Ivan held his arms away from his body, palms forward.

  Don laughed. “You’re the most confident-looking guy I’ve ever seen. You look like Samson about to go wreak havoc amo
ng the Philistines.”

  “What’ve I got to be nervous about?”

  They went inside and immediately found themselves in a crowd of mostly gorgeous chattering people, all seemingly intent upon displaying themselves, all dressed with an artful casualness. As he followed Don through the room, Ivan admired their physical flawlessness. The women were breathtaking. They were shorter or taller than one another, paler or darker, blond or brunette, but nearly all fashioned along the same very particular lines—slim and boyish save for improbably full breasts. On two or three occasions, Don paused and turned to introduce Ivan to someone who smiled pleasantly, shook Ivan’s hand, and looked through or around him.

  Ivan was, therefore, taken aback when a lovely woman approached from his brother’s blind side, touched Ivan fleetingly on the forearm, and said, “I’m so glad you came, it’s so good to see you.” She wore a short skirt, belted at the waist. Her back, flanks, and shoulders were bare. The tips of her breasts were barely covered by two narrow, translucent strips of fabric that crossed at the navel and fastened behind her neck.

  “It’s so good to see you, too,” Ivan said. She said, “I have to go get after the help for a second, but don’t you go away,” and vanished.

  Ivan caught up with Don and said, “Who was that?”

  “Who was who?”

  A simply pretty rather than gorgeous girl paused before Ivan with a food-laden tray and smiled invitingly; he helped himself to some unrecognizable but delicious foodstuff. Before he could help himself to seconds, she was gone. He consoled himself with a drink plucked from another passing tray.

  The singer fronting the combo was Frank Sinatra, who snapped his fingers and smiled as he sang “My Way.” According to a placard, the skinny, artfully scruffy young men accompanying him were The Sex Pistols. Although none of the real people in the room appeared to notice when the song ended, Frank Sinatra thanked them for their applause and told them they were beautiful. Ivan caught up with the girl with the food tray and had helped himself to a snack before he realized that she was a different girl and it was a different snack. She was pretty in her own right, however, and the snack was as mysterious and delicious as the first had been. The combo began playing again, somewhat picking up the tempo. As Frank Sinatra sang that he didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew how to get it, Don turned, pointed vaguely, and said to Ivan, “I see somebody over there I have to go schmooze with. I’d introduce you, but he’s a pig.”

  “So go schmooze. I can look after myself.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Okay. Ogle some starlets—I’ll be back in a mo.”

  As though she had rotated into the space vacated by Don, a long tawny woman appeared before Ivan. Her waist was as big around as his thigh. Her high breasts exerted a firm, friendly pressure against his lapels. He thought she had the most kissable-looking mouth he had ever seen. She said, “I’m sure I know you.”

  Ivan smiled. “I was one of the original Sex Pistols.”

  “Really!” She glanced over her shoulder at the hologram, then peered at Ivan again. “Which one?”

  Ivan nodded vaguely in the band’s direction. “The dead one.”

  She pouted fetchingly. “Who are you, really?”

  He decided to see what would happen if he disregarded Don and Michelle’s advice. He said, “I’m a pedologist.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you specialize in child actors? No, wait, that’s a foot specialist, right?” She looked doubtfully at his hands, which were big and brown, hard and knobby. “Is your practice in Beverly Hills?”

  “Gondwanaland.”

  “Ah,” she said, and nodded, and looked thoughtful, and lost interest. Ivan let her rotate back the way she had come and then sidled into and through the next room. The house was a maze of rooms opening onto other rooms, seemingly unto infinity; inside of five minutes, he decided that he was hopelessly lost. Surrounded by small groups of people talking animatedly among themselves, he turned more or less in place, eavesdropping casually. He quickly gathered that most of the people around him believed in astrology, psychics, cosmetic surgery, and supplyside economics, and that some few among them were alarmed by the trend toward virtual actors. He overheard a tanned, broad-shouldered crewcut man say to a couple of paler and less substantial men, “What chance have I got? I’m losing parts to John Wayne, for chrissake! He’s been dead for decades, and he’s a bigger star than ever.”

  “Costs less than ever, too,” said the wispier of the other two men, “and keeps his right-wing guff to himself.”

  The broad-shouldered man scowled. “I don’t want what happened to stuntmen to happen to actors!”

  “Oh, don’t be alarmist,” the wispy man said. “No one’s going to get rid of actors. Oh, they might use fewer of them, but—besides, stuntmen’re holding their own overseas, and—”

  “Crazy goddamn Aussies and Filipinos!”

  “—and,” the wispy man said insistently, “the films do have a significant following in this country. For some viewers, it’s not enough to see an actor who looks like he’s risking his life. They want the extra kick that comes from knowing an actor really is risking his life.”

  The third man had a satisfied air and was shaped like a bowling pin; his white suit and scarlet ascot enhanced the resemblance. “Until that happens,” he told the broad-shouldered man, “better get used to playing second fiddle to John Wayne. Right now, I got development people e-synthing old physical comedians from the nineteen-whenevers. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Jackie Chan. People still bust a gut laughing at those guys.”

  “Never heard of ’em.”

  “You will. Because I’m putting ‘em together in a film. Lots of smash-up, fall-down. Sure, we use computers to give ’em what they never had before—voices, color—personalities! But when people see Buster Keaton fall off a moving train, they know there’s no fakery.”

  “Who the hell cares if some dead guy risks his life?”

  The bowling-pin-shaped man jabbed a finger into the air. “Thrills are timeless!” Glimpsing yet another pretty girl with a food tray, Ivan exited right, through a doorway. He somehow missed the girl, made a couple of turns at random, and was beginning to wonder amusedly if he had happened upon another space-time anomaly when he suddenly and unexpectedly found himself outdoors, on the tiled shore of a swimming pool as big, he decided, as the Tethys Sea—Galveston Bay, at least. There were small groups of people ranged at intervals around the pool and one person in the water, who swam to the edge, pulled herself up, and was revealed to be a sleekly muscular Amazon. As she toweled her hair, she let her incurious gaze alight fleetingly on Ivan, then move on; she was as indifferent to his existence as though he were another of the potted palms. She rose lithely, draped her towel over one exquisite shoulder, and walked past him into the house.

  Ivan sipped his drink, thrust his free hand into his trousers pocket, and ambled toward the far end of the pool and an array of women there. At a table in their midst, like a castaway on an island circled by glistening succulent mermaids, a bald, fat, fortyish man sat talking animatedly to himself. A waiter stood at the ready behind a cart laden with liquor bottles. A large rectangular object, either a man or a refrigerator stuffed into a sports jacket, took up space nearby. Just as this large object startled Ivan by looking in his direction, the fat man suddenly laughed triumphantly, leaped to his feet, and clapped his hands. He pointed at bottles on the cart, and the waiter began to fuss with them. The fat man turned, looked straight at Ivan, evidently the only suitable person within arm’s reach, and pulled him close. “Help me celebrate,” he said, and to the large object, “Larry, get the man a chair.” Larry pulled a chair back from the table, waited for Ivan to sit, then moved off a short distance. The fat man introduced himself as John Rubis and looked as though he expected Ivan to have heard of him. Ivan smiled pleasantly and tried to give the impression that he had.

  “I am real happy!” Rubis pointed at his own ea
r, and Ivan realized that there was an AnswerMan plugged into it. “The word from the folks at Northemico is go!” He indicated the liquor cart. “What can I get you?”

  “Brought my own. Congratulations.” Ivan toasted him, and they drank. Rubis smacked his lips appreciatively. Ivan said, “You work for Northemico?”

  “I deal with Northemico. Their entertainment division.”

  “I didn’t even realize Northemico had an entertainment division.”

  “Hey, they got everything.” He turned toward the waiter and said, “Fix me up another of these.”

  “Sorry, I’m just a pedologist from Podunk.” Rubis looked perplexed. “Pedologist,” Ivan said, enunciating as clearly as he could.

  “Ah.” Rubis listened to his AnswerMan again. “As in child specialist—or soil scientist? No, that can’t be right. Sorry about that, Doctor. Sometimes my little mister know-it-all gets confused. At least it didn’t think you said you’re a pederast, ha ha. So what is it, set me straight here, what’s your claim to celebrity?”

  Ivan mentally shrugged and asked himself, Why the hell not? and to John Rubis he said, “I was one of the first people to travel through time.”

  Instead of responding to that, Rubis held up a forefinger, said, “Incoming,” looked away, and hunched over the table, listening intently to his AnswerMan and occasionally muttering inaudibly. Ivan’s attention wandered. Light reflecting from the pool’s surface shimmered on the enclosing white walls. The water was as brilliantly blue-green as that ancient sea—and as he pictured that sea in his mind, he also pictured a woman like a tanned and buffed Aphrodite rising from the waters. And when he told her that he was a foot specialist, she heaved a sigh of exasperation and dived back into the sea.

  Rubis turned back to him and said, “Sorry. You aren’t kidding about the time-travel, are you?”

  “Well, I was part of the first team of time-travelers—half of it. There were just two of us. Afterward, I made other visits and helped establish a community of scientists in Paleozoic time. The base camp’s the size of a small town now.”