Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future

by Gardner Dozois

  As he walked up Kathi's street, he saw that her apartment was still dark. Good, she would not even have missed him, again. He pushed past the big front door, still not repaired since he had kicked it open the evening of the fire, two— no, three— nights ago. He used the stairs. He let himself in quietly.

  He was in the kitchen preparing breakfast when he heard her stirring.

  "Jack?"

  "Yes. Good morning."

  "Come back."

  "All right."

  He moved to the bedroom door and entered the room. She was lying there, smiling. She raised her arms slightly.

  "I've thought of a wonderful way to begin the day."

  He seated himself on the edge of the bed and embraced her. For a moment she was sleep-warm and sleep-soft against him, but only for a moment.

  "You've got too much on," she said, unfastening his shirt.

  He peeled it off and dropped it. He removed his trousers. Then he held her again.

  "More," she said, tracing the long fine scar that ran down his forehead, alongside his nose, traversing his chin, his neck, the right side of his chest and abdomen, passing to one side of his groin, where it stopped.

  "Come on."

  "You didn't even know about it until a few nights ago."

  She kissed him, brushing his cheeks with her lips.

  "It really does something for me."

  "For almost three months—"

  "Take it off. Please."

  He sighed and gave a half-smile. He rose to his feet.

  "All right."

  He reached up and put a hand to his long, black hair. He took hold of it. He raised his other hand and spread his fingers along his scalp at the hairline. He pushed his fingers toward the back of his head and the entire hairpiece came free with a soft, crackling sound. He dropped the hairpiece atop his shirt on the floor.

  The right side of his head was completely bald; the left had a beginning growth of dark hair. The two areas were precisely divided by a continuation of the faint scar on his forehead.

  He placed his fingertips together on the crown of his head, then drew his right hand to the side and down. His face opened vertically, splitting apart along the scar, padded synthetic flesh tearing free from electrostatic bonds. He drew it down over his right shoulder and biceps, rolling it as far as his wrist. He played with the flesh of his hand as with a tight glove, finally withdrawing the hand with a soft, sucking sound. He drew it away from his side, hip, and buttock, and separated it at his groin. Then, again seating himself on the edge of the bed, he rolled it down his leg, over the thigh, knee, calf, heel. He treated his foot as he had his hand, pinching each toe free separately before pulling off the body glove. He shook it out and placed it with his clothing.

  Standing, he turned toward Kathi, whose eyes had not left him during all this time. Again, the half-smile. The uncovered portions of his face and body were dark metal and plastic, precision-machined, with various openings and protuberances, some gleaming, some dusky.

  "Halfjack," she said as he came to her. "Now I know what that man in the café meant when he called you that."

  "He was lucky you were with me. There are places where that's an unfriendly term."

  "You're beautiful," she said.

  "I once knew a girl whose body was almost entirely prosthetic. She wanted me to keep the glove on— at all times. It was the flesh and the semblance of flesh that she found attractive."

  "What do you call that kind of operation?"

  "Lateral hemicorporectomy."

  After a time she said. "Could you be repaired? Can you replace it some way?"

  He laughed.

  "Either way," he said. "My genes could be fractioned, and the proper replacement parts could be grown. I could be made whole with grafts of my own flesh. Or I could have much of the rest removed and replaced with biomechanical analogues. But I need a stomach and balls and lungs, because I have to eat and screw and breathe to feel human."

  She ran her hands down his back, one on metal, one on flesh.

  "I don't understand," she said when they finally drew apart. "What sort of accident was it?"

  "Accident? There was no accident," he said. "I paid a lot of money for this work, so that I could pilot a special sort of ship. I am a cyborg. I hook myself directly into each of the ship's systems."

  He rose from the bed, went to the closet, drew out a duffel bag, pulled down an armful of garments, and stuffed them into it. He crossed to the dresser, opened a drawer, and emptied its contents into the bag.

  "You're leaving?"

  "Yes."

  He entered the bathroom, emerged with two fistfuls of personal items, and dropped them into the bag.

  "Why?"

  He rounded the bed, picked up his bodyglove and hairpiece, rolled them into a parcel, and put them inside the bag.

  "It's not what you may think," he said then, "or even what I thought just a few moments ago."

  She sat up.

  "You think less of me," she said, "because I seem to like you more now that I know your secret. You think there's something pathological about it—"

  "No," he said, pulling on his shirt, "that's not it at all. Yesterday I would have said so and used that for an excuse to storm out of here and leave you feeling bad. But I want to be honest with myself this time, and fair to you. That's not it."

  He drew on his trousers.

  "What then?" she asked.

  "It's just the wanderlust, or whatever you call it. I've stayed too long at the bottom of a gravity well. I'm restless. I've got to get going again. It's my nature, that's all. I realized this when I saw that I was looking to your feelings for an excuse to break us up and move on."

  "You can wear the bodyglove. It's not that important. It's really you that I like."

  "I believe you, I like you, too. Whether you believe me or not, your reactions to my better half don't matter. It's what I said, though. Nothing else. And now I've got this feeling I won't be much fun anymore. If you really like me, you'll let me go without a lot of fuss."

  He finished dressing. She got out of the bed and faced him.

  "If that's the way it has to be," she said. "Okay."

  "I'd better just go, then. Now."

  "Yes."

  He turned and walked out of the room, left the apartment, used the stairs again, and departed from the building. Some passersby gave him more than a casual look, cyborg pilots not being all that common in this sector. This did not bother him. His step lightened. He stopped in a pay-booth and called the shipping company to tell them that he would haul the load they had in orbit: the sooner it was connected with the vessel, the better, he said.

  Loading, the controller told him, would begin shortly and he could ship up that same afternoon from the local field. Jack said that he would be there and then broke the connection. He gave the world half a smile as he put the sea to his back and swung on through the city, westward.

  *

  Blue-and-pink world below him, black sky above, the stars a snapshot snowfall all about, he bade the shuttle pilot goodbye and keyed his airlock. Entering the Morgana, he sighed and set about stowing his gear. His cargo was already in place and the ground computers had transferred course information to the ship's brain. He hung his clothing in a locker and placed his body glove and hairpiece in compartments.

  He hurried forward then and settled into the control web, which adjusted itself about him. A long, dark unit swung down from overhead and dropped into position at his right. It moved slowly, making contact with various points on that half of his body.

  —Good to have you back. How was your vacation, Jack?

  —Oh. Fine. Real fine.

  —Meet any nice girls?

  —A few.

  —And here you are again. Did you miss things?

  —You know it. How does this haul look to you?

  —Easy, for us. I've already reviewed the course programs.

  —Let's run over the systems.

 
—Check. Care for some coffee?

  —That'd be nice.

  A small unit descended on his left, stopping within easy reach of his mortal hand. He opened its door. A bulb of dark liquid rested in a rack.

  —Timed your arrival. Had it ready.

  —Just the way I like it, too. I almost forgot. Thanks.

  Several hours later, when they left orbit, he had already switched off a number of his left-side systems. He was merged even more closely with the vessel, absorbing data at a frantic rate. Their expanded perceptions took in the near-ship vicinity and moved out to encompass the extrasolar panorama with greater-than-human clarity and precision. They reacted almost instantaneously to decisions great and small.

  —It is good to be back together again, Jack.

  —I'd say.

  Morgana held him tightly. Their velocity built.

  Dancers in the Time-Flux

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Here's a visit to the very far future, a literary territory that has always fascinated Robert Silverberg, and a vivid demonstration that even when thousands or tens of thousands of years of evolution and technological advances separate the human from the posthuman, they may find that they still have a few things in common— depending on what dreams they share.

  Robert Silverberg is one of the most famous SF writers of modern times, with dozens of novels, anthologies, and collections to his credit. As both writer and editor, Silverberg was one of the most influential figures of the Post New Wave era of the seventies, and continues to be at the forefront of the field to this very day, having won a total of five Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards.

  Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935, Silverberg, like Poul Anderson before him, started a successful career as an SF writer while he was still in college; his first novel was sold in 1954, while he was a junior at Columbia University; by 1955, still prior to graduation, he was earning "quite a good living" by writing, and by 1956, he had won his first Hugo Award. He spent a period of some years in the late fifties and early sixties away from the field, writing a long string of well-received nonfiction books, but by the late sixties he'd returned to the genre, and during the first half of the seventies, the so-called "New Silverberg" would produce a large and remarkable body of work: the brilliant Dying Inside, easily one of the best books of the seventies, Downward to the Earth, The Book of Skulls, Tower of Glass, The World Inside, The Second Trip, A Time of Changes, The Stochastic Man, and Shadrack In The Furnace, as well as high-quality short work such as "Born With the Dead," "Sundance," "In Entropy's Jaws," "Breckenridge and the Continuum," "Push No More" "In the Group," "Capricorn Games," "Trips," "Swartz Between the Galaxies," and many more. Seldom has SF witnessed such a concentrated outpouring of high-level talent, work that would be highly influential on writers such as Barry N. Malzberg and the later Gregory Benford, to name just two, and which I strongly suspect was influential on writers of subsequent generations— such as Alexander Jablokov— as well. When you add in the influence that Silverberg would exert on the field through his editorship of the New Dimensions original anthology series, the most important anthology series of its day, you can see that the strength of Silverberg's impact on the SF world of the seventies can hardly be overestimated.

  In 1976, depressed by the general malaise that had settled over the field at the time, and perhaps exhausted from his efforts over the previous years, Silverberg publicly announced his "retirement" …and, indeed, would not write another word until 1980, when he suddenly came out of retirement to write his huge science-fantasy novel (also set in the far future), Lord Valentine's Castle. His output of new fiction was relatively low in the early years of the decade, but when a new surge of creative energy revitalized the field in the mid-eighties, Silverberg shifted into high gear once again, and as what might perhaps be referred to— a bit facetiously— as the "New New Silverberg," poured out another torrent of high-quality work such as "The Pope of the Chimps," "Multiples," "The Palace at Midnight," "We Are for the Dark," "In Another Country," "Basileus," "The Secret Sharer," "Enter a Soldier." Later: "Enter Another," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Beauty in the Night," "Death Do Us Part," "The Colonel in Autumn," and dozens of others, as well as a score of bestselling novels— a torrent that shows no signs of running dry even here at the beginning of a new century.

  Silverberg's other books include the novels Son of Man, Thorns, Up the Line, The Man in the Maze, Tom O'Bedlam, Star of Gypsies, At Winter's End, The Face of the Waters, Kingdoms of the Wall, Hot Sky at Morning, and two novel-length expansions of famous Isaac Asimov stories, Nightfall and The Ugly Little Boy. His collections include Unfamiliar Territory, Capricorn Games, Majipoor Chronicles, The Best of Robert Silverberg, At The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Beyond the Safe Zone, and a massive retrospective collection, The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume One: Secret Sharers. His reprint anthologies are far too numerous to list here, but they include The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One and the distinguished Alpha series, among dozens of others. His most recent books are the novels The Alien Years, Lord Prestimion, and Mountains of Majipoor. He lives with his wife, writer Karen Haber, in Oakland, California.

  *

  Under a warm golden wind from the west, Bhengarn the Traveler moves steadily onward toward distant Crystal Pond, his appointed place of metamorphosis. The season is late. The swollen scarlet sun clings close to the southern hills. Bhengarn's body— a compact silvery tube supported by a dozen pairs of sturdy three-jointed legs— throbs with the need for transformation. And yet the Traveler is unhurried. He has been bound on this journey for many hundreds of years. He has traced across the face of the world a glistening trail that zigzags from zone to zone, from continent to continent, and even now still glimmers behind him with a cold brilliance like a thread of bright metal stitching the planet's haunches. For the past decade he has patiently circled Crystal Pond at the outer end of a radical arm one-tenth the diameter of the Earth in length; now, at the prompting of some interior signal, he has begun to spiral inward upon it.

  The path immediately before him is bleak. To his left is a district covered by furry green fog; to his right is a region of pale crimson grass sharp as spikes and sputtering with a sinister hostile hiss; straight ahead a roadbed of black clinkers and ashen crusts leads down a shallow slope to the Plain of Teeth, where menacing porcelaneous outcroppings make the wayfarer's task a taxing one. But such obstacles mean little to Bhengarn. He is a Traveler, after all. His body is superbly designed to carry him through all difficulties. And in his journeys he has been in places far worse than this.

  Elegantly he descends the pathway of slag and cinders. His many feet are tough as annealed metal, sensitive as the most alert antennae. He tests each point in the road for stability and support, and scans the thick layer of ashes for concealed enemies. In this way he moves easily and swiftly toward the plain, holding his long abdomen safely above the cutting edges of the cold volcanic matter over which he walks.

  As he enters the Plain of Teeth he sees a new annoyance: an Eater commands the gateway to the plain. Of all the forms of human life— and the Traveler has encountered virtually all of them in his wanderings, Eaters, Destroyers, Skimmers, Interceders, and the others— Eaters seem to him the most tiresome, mere noisy monsters. Whatever philosophical underpinnings form the rationale of their bizarre way of life are of no interest to him. He is wearied by their bluster and offended by their gross appetites.

  All the same, he must get past this one to reach his destination. The huge creature stands straddling the path with one great meaty leg at each edge and the thick fleshy tail propping it from behind. Its steely claws are exposed, its fangs gleam, driblets of blood from recent victims stain its hard reptilian hide. Its chilly inquisitive eyes, glowing with demonic intelligence, track Bhengarn as the traveler draws near.

  The Eater emits a boastful roar and brandishes its many teeth.

  "You block my way," Bhengarn declares.

  "You state the obviou
s," the Eater replies.

  "I have no desire for an encounter with you. But my destiny draws me toward Crystal Pond, which lies beyond you."

  "For you," says the Eater, "nothing lies beyond me. Your destiny has brought you to a termination today. We will collaborate, you and I, in the transformation of your component molecules."

  From the spiracles along his sides the Traveler releases a thick blue sigh of boredom. "The only transformation that waits for me is the one I will undertake at Crystal Pond. You and I have no transaction. Stand aside."

  The Eater roars again. He rocks slightly on his gigantic claws and swishes his vast saurian tail from side to side. These are the preliminaries to an attack, but in a kind of ponderous courtesy, he seems to be offering Bhengarn the opportunity to scuttle back up the ash-strewn slope.

  Bhengarn says, "Will you yield place?"

  "I am an instrument of destiny."

  "You are a disagreeable, boastful ignoramus," says Bhengarn calmly, and consumes half a week's energy driving the scimitars of his spirit to the roots of the world. It is not a wasted expense of soul, for the ground trembles, the sky grows dark, the hill behind him creaks and groans, the wind turns purplish and frosty. There is a dull droning sound that the Traveler knows is the song of the time-flux, an unpredictable force that often is liberated at such moments. Despite that, Bhengarn will not relent. Beneath the Eater's splayed claws the fabric of the road ripples. Sour smells rise from sudden crevasses. The enormous beast utters a yipping cry of rage and lashes his tail vehemently against the ground. He sways; he nearly topples; he calls out to Bhengarn to cease his onslaught, but the Traveler knows better than to settle for a half-measure. Even more fiercely he presses against the Eater's bulky form.