The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “There!” Malak pointed, and only then did Lauren see who was waiting for them. Society master Tamlaine appeared to be alone. The Society was marshaling its resources, she’d heard, another way of saying it had hit hard times. On her first delivery, the master had been waiting with three decoy couriers, two official scribes and three hired guards.

  It didn’t matter; Tamlaine was grinning his relief. “That’s them, right, Master Lauren?” asked Malak.

  “Yes,” she said. “Go.” He ran—or rather staggered—forward, and his knees actually began to buckle just steps from Tamlaine. He’d been far more scared, Lauren suddenly realized, than he’d let on.

  Her own steps were steady as she reached the master and shook his hand. “Sir.”

  “You look good, courier,” said Tamlaine, and Lauren smiled. She was just as ready to collapse as Malak, but they weren’t home free yet. She wasn’t about to let her guard down until the gates to the fortress opened in two days’ time, and her letter was finally delivered.

  * * *

  “It was Niles and Powen,” she affirmed that evening as they sat by the fire. “They’re pure Westerfenn on their father’s side. Of course they’d think they have a claim. The other man I didn’t know, but it’s a big family.”

  “But why do they even bother?” With two mulled ciders in him, Malak was half-asleep in a big wing chair. “The Westerfenns haven’t been couriers for two hundred years.”

  “Yes, but son,” said Tamlaine, “they were the couriers for six hundred before that. Do you wonder that they feel they have a claim?”

  “As far as some people are concerned, courier means Westerfenn,” agreed Lauren. “We’re the upstarts. Interlopers.”

  “But who cares what we think?” Malak was still puzzled. “All that matters is that the Authors decided to switch to us.”

  Tamlaine sent Malak a slightly pitying smile. “Do you really think the Authors care who delivers their letters? Do you think they even know?”

  Malak sat up, offended. “They see us once a month!”

  “But that’s thirty years for the courier. Sometimes it’s been the same person twice, and they didn’t notice until it was pointed out to them. For his part, I know that Chinen de Conestoga doesn’t care as long as his letters get through.”

  “How can you say that!”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s barely a year older than you are. Malak, tell me this: Do you know the name of the girl who sells you bread in the mornings?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and sank sullenly into his chair.

  Malak didn’t succeed in falling asleep, though; moments later, he sat up, blinking. “What’s that?”

  It had been so faint Lauren hadn’t noticed the faint rumbling until now. Remembering it was something of a shock. Of course it would come, she should have expected it. Yet with so much else going on … She stood, still not hearing Malak’s increasingly worried questions, and moved as if in a trance to the doorway.

  She’d been sixteen, carrying the message bag herself on the way across the bridge. The Westerfenns of that generation hadn’t made any fuss. Of course, her uncle Despolino would be the one to actually deliver the letter; still, she’d felt a huge sense of importance and responsibility. They’d set up camp in the evening, with the fortress a vast black silhouette against a silver sky. After, they’d entered the village and as she reluctantly prepared to hand the pouch to her uncle, this same vibration had filled the sky. Amazing that she could have forgotten!

  Makeshift stages had been set up along the road to the fortress’s main gates. These would be taken down before the doors opened. For the next day, various groups would perform stories and allegories from the histories of the locksteps. The first time she’d been here she’d begged to watch them, but Uncle had been all business. Malak didn’t seem to care.

  She walked to the end of the row of stages and, when Malak appeared at her side, pointed upward. “Look. It’s landing.”

  The orbital transport was all glittery surfaces, chrome and glass and plastic like an insect. The roar came from its engines as it delicately hovered above the fortress. Its long landing legs rose and fell and angled fussily, as if groping for a solid surface. As they watched, the thunder rolling over them in waves, it settled behind the fortress. Moments later the sound cut out—and Malak started running.

  “Travelers!” he shouted happily. Lauren set off after him at a jog. Laughing and shaking his head, Tamlaine followed them both at a more dignified saunter.

  By the time they reached the landing field, the transport had opened its hatches and a gang of bots was unloading blocky shipping containers from its belly. If Malak had expected live humans at this point he was disappointed; if there were passengers on this flight they were frozen as solid as the rest of the cargo. The bots bounced the crates onto rolling pallets and took them through a heavily guarded set of metal gates into the fortress.

  Malak watched it all avidly. “Yesterday—their yesterday—they fell asleep on another world. They’ll wake on this one,” he said. “I wonder where they’ve been?”

  Lauren shrugged. “Join the lockstep, and find out.” She knew he’d never do that; in order to stay inside when they sealed the doors again, you only had to ask—but doing that meant giving up everyone you knew here. Parents, children, friends, family, profession: all would be left behind. Lauren had never once considered doing that, and she knew Malak wouldn’t either. It was too drastic a step.

  They watched the unloading until it was full night and the crickets were chorusing. When Tamlaine began to walk back, Lauren turned to follow and saw that the little stages along the road were lit. “Malak! Look at this.”

  He was reluctant until he saw the players, then he raced ahead. Lauren and Tamlaine laughed together, remembering their youths as they followed.

  The biggest stage was lavishly decorated and lit. Devotees of the Lord of Time were staging a highly stylized, half-ritual performance of the Revelation of Tobias. The actor playing Tobias McGonigal was masked and so heavily swaddled in costume that you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The three couriers watched for a while as McGonigal tried to convince his mother (in mime) that the galaxy would be theirs if they accepted the gift of cold sleep. When she rejected him, a quick set change put Tobias on his legendary ship, and then he began an interminable oratorio about his first and final entry into cold sleep. After it had dragged on for fifteen minutes, Lauren took Malak’s shoulder and steered him onward.

  There were plays about the founding of the locksteps on this world, plays about distant and legendary Earth. There were stories of kings who took refuge in the locksteps and after thirty years returned, a day older, as beggars to behold the ruin of their kingdoms. There were romances. There were murder mysteries. And there was—

  “Hey!” Malak stopped dead, and Lauren almost tripped over him. “That’s Powen, isn’t it?”

  It was indeed, and Niles was beside him. They were standing on a modest stage near the end of the row, along with a girl and a boy dressed in lockstep fashions. Right now the girl was writing furiously at a little desk, and Niles hovered behind her, speaking to the audience.

  “One month together! One Jubilee, and the two locksteps will not meet again for nine centuries! Three hundred sixty months for her lockstep, three hundred seventy-two for his, their times will diverge and converge over a millennium. To those whose lives follow the rhythm of the fortresses, a mere two and a half years will pass before their rhythms synchronize again. But a boy and a girl who have met and fallen in love—well, they will feel the centuries as much as we!”

  “They’re telling the story!” Malak hissed. “The story of the Authors!”

  Lauren shrugged, though she was uncomfortable. “They have a perfect right to do it.”

  It wasn’t one of the great tales, but it was well-enough known. Of the several locksteps on this planet, there were two so mutually hostile that they hibernated on different frequencies. The fr
equency of the first was 360 months asleep to one month awake. The other’s was 372 to one. As out of phase as they were, they still couldn’t completely avoid each other. Every 960 years they came into phase and both were open during the same month. The last time this Jubilee had happened, a girl from the first lockstep had met a boy from the second, and they had fallen in love.

  There were popular books on the subject, and Malak had seen the secret ones, too, the Commentaries, that filled the Society’s library. He shouldn’t be surprised.

  The girl onstage was now holding a golden letter up to the one thin spotlight. “Oh, to whom can I entrust my words of love?” she quavered. “For when it leaves my hands, thirty-one years shall pass before my lover’s touch shall it awake. Who might dedicate themselves to its preservation, and to bear the fragile wings of my ardor to my heart’s desire?”

  Tamlaine leaned close. “Not one of the better ones. They could at least have done Gisbon’s version. It’s in rhyming couplets.”

  Now Niles was kneeling before her, hand outstretched. “And who are you, sir knight?” sighed the girl.

  “I am Atamandius Westerfenn, and I dedicate my life to the transmission of your message.”

  Despite the crass propaganda of it all, Lauren felt her fingers curl protectively around the pouch hanging at her waist. Malak was muttering about self-serving Westerfenns, and Tamlaine simply stood there watching with his arms crossed. Disgusted, Lauren was about to leave when there was a discreet cough behind her. She turned.

  “Lauren Arthen, I believe?” It was the third of the men who’d been following them. Lauren glanced around—two onstage, one here; were there more?

  He seemed to sense her anxiety, and bowed slightly, shaking his head. “There’s just me. And I would never hurt you.”

  Malak and Tamlaine were busy watching the clumsy play. Lauren took a step back into the shadows with the man. “I am armed,” she lied. “You were waiting with those two to ambush us this morning.”

  “And they would have, too,” he agreed, “if I hadn’t intervened. Which I would have.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  Now grimaced, shrugged. There was a suggestion of Westerfenn to his face, which was long and high browed. He seemed more a scholar than a courier. “I was hoping you’d remember me,” he said, very quietly.

  She looked at him more closely. Where would she have remembered a Westerfenn from? He was about her age, which would mean, if he was a courier … “Kiel?”

  Now he grinned. “You do remember! We spent a few days together, after the Authoress gave you … that.” He nodded at the pouch at her side.

  “A lunch or two. A walk, if I remember,” she said. That was all it could reasonably have been. Their families, their societies and histories would all have been against it. Both had known at the time, and hadn’t spoken of it. They’d never even touched, but Lauren had sometimes thought about the might-have-beens in the ensuing years. Remembering, she looked down.

  Kiel Westerfenn sent an impatient look at the stage. “Forget about those two congenital thugs, they’re just looking to regain lost glories because they have no ideas of their own. Even this play … they’re trying to win over the crowd because they still have a half-baked plan to take the letter from you. When I heard they were going to try to intercept your delivery I … well, I invited myself along. I’m sorry if they scared you this morning. But I won’t let them stand in your way.”

  “Well … thank you!”

  He bowed fully this time. “I respect your mission, even if they do not.” With that, he stepped into further shadow, and vanished among the crowd.

  Lauren turned back to watch the insipid play, but she didn’t hear anything that the actors said, and despite the darkness of the night, she felt herself blinking as though a bright light had just shone in her eyes.

  * * *

  Two days later, at dawn, the massive gates grated open, and Lockstep 372/1 came into Jubilee with realtime. On seventy thousand planets and on countless comets, asteroids, and colony cylinders, morning came to trillions of people.

  When Lauren was little she’d imagined it as a revelation: numberless eyes opening in rapture after thirty years in the underworld. Yet for those in the locksteps, she had learned, it was just another morning. Last night—or so it seemed to them—they’d gone to sleep under their blankets as on any evening. The hibernation technologies that wound them down into nearly perfect stasis were unobtrusive—hidden, usually, in the bases of their beds. They slept, they woke, and many of them simply didn’t care that thirty years had passed in the outer world.

  Here they came now, the ones who did care. The new population of the refurbished village surrounding the fortress was waiting as the first yawning traders from the lockstep emerged. They seemed relaxed, casual even; they did this once a month, after all. Lauren watched the waiting craftsmen and journalists try to temper their own excitement to match. Act normal—the locksteppers expected it.

  Lauren stood back a bit with Malak and Tamlaine. She was conscious of the presence of others, mostly people who knew the story of the Authors and had come to watch the delivery.

  The Westerfenns were here too, but Lauren was no longer worried about them. Yesterday, Kiel had found her as she walked in the marketplace, and handed her a small cloth-wrapped object.

  “A first step, maybe,” he’d said. “I heard the Society library was missing a few volumes.” She unfolded the cloth and found she was holding a very old leather-bound book. She looked at the spine. “Commentaries, volume seventy-four? You’re right! We don’t have this. But how—”

  Kiel had shrugged. “A little larceny on my part. It’s not like we need it. We’re not the couriers anymore.”

  Each letter the Authors exchanged had been carefully opened and read, and scholars and philosophers had debated its contents for decades, sometimes centuries. All except Authoress Letter 13, of course, which the couriers at the time had for some reason failed to open. In the Society’s library, an entire bookshelf was devoted to speculations about what that letter had said.

  Bots, heavily laden vehicles, and people were now crowding through the open gates. Behind them, the long rectangular tunnel leading into the fortress was lit with the sorts of electric utility lights Lauren had seen in photos and ancient movies. At the same time, distant rumblings signaled the opening of the fortress’s rooftop doors. The fortress unfolded almost like a flower, and as it did, antennae rose and dozens of flying machines big and small shot up and away. The fortress would be connecting with its fellows across the planet, forming for one month a complete, dynamic, and overwhelmingly potent civilization. During Jubilee, 372/1 owned the world; it was the world.

  “Where is he?” Malak was shifting from foot to foot.

  “He’ll be here. Chinen isn’t going to miss a delivery from his love.”

  They had met in Jubilee, Chinen de Conestoga of 372 and Margaret Pierce of 360. They were the same age—roughly 6,000 years, or sixteen by their own reckoning. After Jubilee they had promised to write. The first courier had set out from Margaret’s home thirty years later, and it was easy: just one year later, her letter was delivered. Chinen’s reply had waited 29 years. As the pattern of exchanges settled in, their couriers learned to wait according to the shifting frequencies of the locksteps: one year then 29, two years then 28, three then 27. Eventually the phase shifted and now, as Jubilee approached again, it was Margaret’s letter that had waited 28 years. Chinen’s newest would be delivered in just two. Sixty-two years from now, they would finally meet again.

  “There he is,” said Tamlaine. He sounded more excited than she’d expected, and it seemed to unlock a thrill of anticipation in her as well. . After decades of imagining what this moment would be like, of course it was nothing like she’d pictured. Chinen de Conestoga was no radiant god emerging from Heaven; he was just a boy being jostled by the crowd as he looked around. His face seemed pinched, anxious even. And someone else was with him, a
n older man with his hand on Chinen’s shoulder.

  Lauren saw this, but she didn’t register it. Years of mental rehearsal made her step forward, wave, and say, “Chinen de Conestoga! Over here!”

  He looked, his eyes widened, and for just a second she saw him making a frantic gesture, as though warding her off. Then his face fell as the man whose hand lay so heavily on his shoulder swept by.

  The man stalked up to Lauren, and suddenly she recognized him. His portraits were not prominent in the Society headquarters, because he was considered a minor actor in the millennial drama of the lovers. He was Chinen’s father.

  “You!” He stabbed an accusing finger at Lauren. “Are you a part of this fiasco?”

  She found herself blinking, unable to speak. Chinen stepped between them. “It’s not their fault,” he said. “Please, Father—”

  The elder de Conestoga held out his hand to Lauren, snapping his fingers impatiently. “You, are you hiding something from some sort of three-sixty trash? Speak up!”

  Lauren still couldn’t speak. It wasn’t just the rudeness; most locksteppers treated realtimers with great respect, if with condescension now and then. But—360 trash? The Authoress?

  “I’m so sorry,” Chinen was saying to her, and Tamlaine was here now, too, gabbling something indignantly at the Author’s father, who ignored the Society elder and continued to glare at Lauren.

  Numbly, she raised the courier’s bag and fumbled it open. She began to bring out the letter, but he reached in impatiently and snatched it from her hand. Lauren gasped.

  “You told me it was just a Jubilee thing, and now I hear you’ve been exchanging letters with her?” Brandishing the letter, he rounded on his son. “There will be no more of this nonsense!” he cried. “It stops now!” And as he said now he tore the letter in half. He kept tearing until he had a handful of shreds that he flung to the ground.

  As the object of 28 years of devoted care fluttered into the mud, blackness rushed at Lauren from all quarters. The muck came up and smacked her in the face.

  * * *