Mammoth Book of Best New SF 19

by Gardner Dozois

  “What a boon to democracy,” Sage said.

  “It just proves you can’t act like customers owe you their attention. You’ve got to earn it.”

  The president-elect had come opposite them. On seeing D. B. he did a comic doubletake, then said, “D. B. Beddoes, in public! Say, how does it feel to be popular all of a sudden? No, wait — I know!” As everyone around him laughed, he took D. B.’s hand and leaned close to say, “Thanks for the media blitz the last few days. You crowded my opponent’s little bombshell right off the air. Good work.”

  Sage turned to D. B., speechless — for one point five seconds. Then, “You jerk!” she said.

  D. B. gripped her arm tightly. “Sage, let me introduce —”

  “No,” she said, pulling her arm away. “Is that what this has all been about? You’ve been using me as a smokescreen to manipulate an election?”

  “No,” he said, flushing crimson.

  “Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Beddoes. I still happen to believe in democracy, and I will not be used as your corporate tool to corrupt the process.”

  By now, he had gotten angry. “I have done more to promote democracy than Thomas fucking Jefferson.”

  “By burying people in infocrap till they’re incapable of judgment or reason? Before you trot out your cynical market populism, let me say something. Democracy’s not just about customer satisfaction. It’s not about finding the lowest common denominator. It’s about finding the highest.”

  The whole room had fallen breathlessly silent. D. B. said, “Can we talk about this some other time?”

  “No,” Sage said, “because there’s not going to be another time. I’ve had it with you. I’m asserting my copyright. I’m going out there to expose you.”

  “Fine!” he said. “Go for it! Then maybe I’ll just run off another copy of you that suits me better.”

  It felt like a gut-punch to her humanity. There was even an intake of breath in the listening crowd. “Go back to hell,” Sage said, and walked away in the first direction that offered an empty space, which happened to be up the stairs. Silent people in gowns and tails moved out of her way as she climbed the marble steps in the most conspicuous exit she could have chosen.

  Once on the second floor, Sage headed down a random hallway till she was out of the crowd, and heard the hum of conversation resume behind her. Her heart was beating very fast. She passed down a long gallery into an empty, octagonal exhibit hall. On the western wall was a line of three tall glass doors letting onto a pillared balcony. She lifted the heavy old latch and went outside.

  At first she paced up and down behind towering columns, replaying the argument in her mind till her temper cooled. She looked out over the low stone balustrade. The setting sun was shining through the windows in the Capitol dome, making it look transparent and fragile, like everything it represented. She suddenly felt trapped and friendless. He had said it all: she was just product, only of value if the demand exceeded the supply.

  Below on the street, partygoers were still arriving, the cameras still shooting. Doubtless, the scene that had just taken place was already on the net. To distract herself, she took D. B.’s phone from her purse, opened the screen, and spoke her own name into the search box. It responded with a cascade of hits, but one caught her eye — a private folder named “Sage.” Curious, she opened it and found an assortment of documents, D. B.’s private collection. One of them was an e-mail to her from Jamie Nickle, sent two days ago and never received.

  No longer feeling like she was snooping, she opened it.

  Sage (it said),

  There is something I have to let you know about. I didn’t have time today, and God knows when we might see each other again. This is it: Years ago, shortly after we sent you off to the future, another team of physicists proved that the universe is temporally symmetrical. That is, for every quantum particle that travels forward in time, there is another identical one that goes backward, and those backward particles (which they called “quirks,” ha ha) are detectable. You can check with me for details. This is the point: we instantly realized it would be possible to aim a quirkstream at the same black hole that sent you here, and by playing the process in reverse, send a message backward to any date when a quirk detector existed.

  Of course, the first thing we did was build a quirk detector. Since we had just sent someone forward, we thought the future might respond by sending someone back, so we made sure we could reassemble anyone who came through. It took us five years; and since you have now been here five years, the time has just now come when we can send a person back and know they will be received.

  So if for any reason you don’t like it here and want to go back, the technology exists. Just give me a call.

  Jamie

  The relief Sage felt was dizzying. She was not trapped or friendless. She had a way out of this time, and back to her own. Laughing aloud, she kissed the screen that had brought her the news, then folded it up and put it back in her purse. The sun had come out from behind the dome, and was bathing her in a glorious shower of photons. Behind her, the door clicked, and she glanced around. It was D. B. He had ripped off his bowtie and disposed of the body, and his hair looked like he had been tearing at it.

  He just stood watching her at first, and she watched the sun, her back to him. At last, when the silence had grown over-long, he said, “Listen. That was just about the stupidest thing I ever said.”

  She said nothing, waiting to see where this would go.

  “I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “I’d be crazy to copy you. Your whole value is in your uniqueness, the fact there’s no one else like you.”

  That finally made her turn around. He was looking at her with the same expression he had looked at the sunset the night before, the one he had wanted to chase even knowing he could never possess it. “Look, I’ll destroy the disk,” he said. When she still didn’t answer, he said, “All right, I’ll give it to you, and you can destroy it. Or whatever.”

  Now that he had no ultimate power over her, much of the ice had melted from her anger. “All right,” she said. “It’s a deal. No backups.”

  “No backups.” There was an awkward pause. He came forward to the balustrade and looked out, avoiding her gaze. “I couldn’t say it back there, but the idea that I would use you to affect something as paltry as an election — well, it’s ludicrous. You don’t get what you are, Sage. I didn’t want to use you to change the government for the next four years. I wanted to change the world for centuries to come.”

  He gestured dismissively at the hub of earthly power. “This world doesn’t live up to my expectations. It needs a heart transplant, a phase change. That’s what I want. And you are the highest-caliber archetype I’m ever likely to lay my hands on. It took me five years to set it up. I was going to knock the culture off its orbit with you. You were going to be the first woman of your kind, homo novus.”

  “I’m more than just a meme, D. B.,” she said.

  “Believe it or not, I have figured that out.” He glanced at her sideways.

  “No one ever accused you of being dumb,” she said.

  He chewed his lip, his hands in his pockets. “I was thinking just now, when I was angry at you — probably seventy percent of the women in that room would sleep with me.”

  From Sage’s observations, the estimate was low. But she shook her head. “Not with you, D. B. With your brand name.”

  “Whereas the one woman I’d like to — no, damn it, that’s the wrong thing to say.”

  She drew breath to save him, but he said, “No, shut up. I’ve got to figure out how to say this without making it sound like it’s all about lust, because it’s not. Only partly. Damn.” He pounded his fist against the granite pillar, then shook it in pain. “Ouch. The thing is, there’s another reason I couldn’t copy you. Because I don’t want a copy. I want the original. The only drawback is, you don’t give a shit whether I live or die.”

  “That’s not true.”

&n
bsp; He looked at her, hugging his bruised hand under the other arm. “Does that mean the ‘die’ vote won?”

  “Do you know what I just found out?” She leaned against the pillar, feeling the warm stone on her bare back. “There is a way to travel backward in time. It’s possible for me to return to my own era.”

  His face froze in a look of tachycardiac horror. “No!” He spun around and paced away, fists clenched in rage and frustration. “God fucking damn!” He turned back on her. “How did you find out?” Then, before she could answer, realization crossed his face. “My phone! Oh, how could I have such crap for brains?”

  Watching calmly, she said, “You knew. You were hiding it from me.”

  “I had to, Sage! I need you here. I didn’t want you to get away. I banked everything on you.”

  “I’m not your intellectual property, D. B. I deserve to decide for myself.”

  She watched the thought come upon him that he had actually lost, that he no longer controlled any of the variables. He looked stunned at such an alien state of affairs.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said numbly.

  “What about asking me to stay?”

  He studied her face, and she could actually see new thoughts dawning on him. “You wouldn’t, would you?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he came forward, putting his hands on her arms. “Sage —”

  The opportunity was too good to pass up. She pulled him close by the lapels and kissed him. It took him by surprise again, but not so badly as the night before, and it was a far more satisfying experience.

  “Oh, God, Sage,” he breathed when it was over. “Let’s go —”

  She put a finger on his lips. “Shut up,” she said tenderly. “That wasn’t my answer.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “This is my problem, D. B. You’re a dangerous megalomaniac. You manipulate people as naturally as you breathe. I find your life work reprehensible; I loathe your politics. You’re also cute and smart and funny, and there are times when I really want to take off in your plane, if you know what I mean.”

  He started to say something, but she stopped him again. “If I stay here, there’s not a chance I’ll be able to keep away from you, and I don’t know if my nerves can handle it. So I’ve decided to go back. I just haven’t figured out when.”

  He took it calmly. “I guess that’s the best I could hope for.”

  Too calmly. It made her suspicious. “Did you know I was going to say that?”

  “Well,” he admitted, “the thing is, you did go back. It’s part of the historical record.”

  She pushed him away. “What historical record? I looked for information on our project. There wasn’t any.”

  “There’s some information not even I will sell.”

  “You bastard! So if you knew I was going to go back, what was this all about?”

  “The historical record doesn’t say how long you spent here. You would never say a word about the future, or anything you did here. You said it was for fear of making it happen.”

  She looked out at the Capitol dome against the scarlet sky, on the street below where the photographers were hauling out infrared cameras to get a better shot of the drama on the balcony. “So I wasn’t able to prevent any of this,” she said. “That means it’s inevitable.”

  “Absolutely inevitable,” he said.

  “Well then,” she said, “I guess I better get used to it.”

  * * *

  Interview: On Any Given Day

  MAUREEN F. MCHUGH

  Maureen F. McHugh made her first sale in 1989, and has since made a powerful impression on the SF world with a relatively small body of work, becoming one of today’s most respected writers. In 1992, she published one of the year’s most widely-acclaimed and talked-about first novels, China Mountain Zhang, which won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Lambda Literary Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Award, and which was named a New York Times Notable Book as well as being a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her other books, including the novels Half the Day Is Night and Mission Child have been greeted with similar enthusiasm. Her most recent book is a major new novel, Nekropolis. Her powerful short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Starlight Alternate Warriors, Aladdin, Killing Me Softly, and other markets, and is about to be assembled in a collection called The Lincoln Train. She has had stories in our Tenth, Eleventh (in collaboration with David B. Kisor), Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Annual Collections. She lives in Twinsburg, Ohio, with her husband, her son, and a golden retriever named Smith.

  In the incisive story that follows, she gives us a vivid and convincing look at what teenage life may be like in the near future. Not surprisingly, it turns out to be just as confusing as ever, if not more so — and full of hard new choices.

  (Pullout quote at top of site.)

  EMMA: I had this virus, and it was inside me, and it could have been causing all these weird kinds of cancers —

  INTERVIEWER: What kind of cancers?

  EMMA: All sorts of weird stuff I’d never heard of like hairy-cell leukemia, and cancerous lesions in parts of your bones and cancer in your pancreas. But I wasn’t sick. I mean I didn’t feel sick. And now, even after all the antivirals, now I worry about it all the time. Now I’m always thinking I’m sick. It’s like something was stolen from me that I never knew I had.

  (The following is a transcript from an interview for the On Any Given Day presentation of 4/12/2021. This transcript does not represent the full presentation, and more interviews and information are present on the site. On Any Given Day is made possible by the National Public Internet, by NPI-Boston.org affiliate, and by a grant from the Carrol-Johnson Charitable Family Trust. For information on how to purchase this or any other full-site presentation on CDM, please check NPI-boston.org.)

  Pop-up quotes and site notes in the interview are included with this transcript.

  The following interview was conducted with Emma Chicheck. In the summer of 2018, a fifteen-year-old student came into a health clinic in the suburban town of Charlotte, outside Cleveland, Ohio, with a sexually transmitted version of a protovirus called pv414, which had been recently identified as originating in contaminated batches of genetic material associated with the telemerase therapy used in rejuvenation. The virus had only been seen previously in rejuvenated elders, and the presence of the virus in teenagers was at first seen as possible evidence that the virus had changed vectors. The medical detective work done to trace the virus, and the picture of teenage behavior that emerged was the basis of the site documentary, called “The Abandoned Children.” Emma was one of the students identified with the virus.

  The Site map provides links to a description of the protovirus a map of the transmission of the virus from Terry Sydnowski through three girls to a total of eleven other people, and interviews with state health officials.

  EMMA: I was fourteen when I lost my virginity. I was drunk, and there was this guy named Luis, he was giving me these drinks that taste like melon, this green stuff that everybody was drinking when they could get it. He said he really liked all my Egyptian stuff and he kept playing with my slave bracelet. The bracelet has chains that go to rings you wear on your thumb, your middle finger and your ring finger. “Can you be my slave?” he kept asking, and at first I thought that was funny because he was the one bringing me drinks, you know? But we kept kissing and then we went into the bedroom and he felt my breasts and then he wanted to have sex. I felt as if I’d led him on, you know? So I didn’t say no.

  I saw him again a couple of times after that, but he didn’t pay much attention to me. He was older and he didn’t go to my school. I regret it. I wish it had been a little more special and I was really too young. Sometimes I thought that if I were a boy I’d be one of those boys who goes into school one day and starts shooting people. (Music — “Poor Little Rich Girl” by Tony Bennett.)

  INTERVIEWER: What’s
a culture freak?

  EMMA: You’re kidding, right? This is for the interview? Okay, in my own words.

  A culture freak is a person who really likes other cultures, and listens to culture freak bands and doesn’t conform to the usual sort of jumpsuit or Louis Vuitton wardrobe thing. So I’m into Egyptian a lot, in a spiritual way, too. I tell Tarot cards. They’re really Egyptian, people think they’re Gypsy but I read about how they’re actually way older than that and I have an Egyptian deck. My friend Lindsey is like me, but my other friend, Denise, is more into Indian stuff. Lindsey and I like Indian, too, and sometimes we’ll all henna our hands.

  INTERVIEWER: Do you listen to culture freak music?

  EMMA: I like a lot of music, not just culture music. I like Black Helicopters, I really like their New World Order CDM, because it’s really retro and paranoid. I like some of the stuff my mom and dad like too, Tupac and Lauryn Hill. I like the band Shondonay Shaka Zulu. It’s got a lot of drone. I like that.

  (Music — “My Favorite Things” by John Coltrane.)

  I’m seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in April. I went to kindergarten when I was only four. I’ve already been accepted at Northeastern. I wanted to go to Bard but my parents said they didn’t want me going to school in New York City.

  My dad’s in telecommunications. He’s in Hong Kong for six weeks. He’s trying to get funding for a sweep satellite. They’re really cool. The satellites are really small, but they have this huge like net in front of them, like miles in front and miles across. The net like spins itself. See, if space debris hits something hard it will drill right through it, but when it hits this big net, the net gives and just lets the chunk of metal or whatever slide away so it doesn’t hit the satellite. That way it won’t be like that satellite in 07 that caused the chain reaction so half the United States couldn’t use their phones.