The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it,” I say. A killer geek quoting Superchicken; I’d get thrown out of the union if they knew. “We don’t get to pick and choose.”

  The Maje scowls at me. I yawn. “I’m tired of this,” I say. “I want something to eat. Some ice cream. I want some rocky road ice cream. Seems funny, don’t it? All that goddamned ice, and I come back wanting ice cream.” There is no ice cream, of course. There hasn’t been any ice cream for half a generation, anywhere in the godforsaken mess they call a world. But Nan used to tell me about it. Nan was the oldest geek, the only one born before the big crash, and she had lots of stories about the way things used to be. I liked it best when she talked about ice cream. It was smooth and cold and sweet, she said. It melted on your tongue and filled your mouth with liquid, delicious cold. Sometimes she would recite the flavors for us, as solemnly as Captain Todd reading his Bible: vanilla and strawberry and chocolate, fudge swirl and praline, rum raisin and heavenly hash, banana and orange sherbert and mint chocolate chip, pistachio and butter pecan. Creeper used to make up flavors to poke fun at her, but there was no getting to Nan. She just added his inventions to her list and spoke fondly thereafter of anchovy almond and liver chip and radiation ripple, until I couldn’t tell the real flavors from the made-up ones anymore and didn’t really care.

  Nan was the first we lost. Did they have ice cream in St. Petersburg back in 1917? I hope they did. I hope she got a bowl or two before she died.

  Major Salazar is still talking, I realize. He has been talking for some time. “… our last chance now,” he is saying. He begins to babble about Sveaborg, about the importance of what we are doing here, about the urgent need to change something somehow, to prevent the Soviet Union from ever coming into existence, and thus forestall the war that has laid the world to waste. I’ve heard it all before, I know it all by heart. The Maje has terminal verbal diarrhea, and I’m not so dumb as I look.

  It was all Graham Cracker’s idea, the last chance to win the war or maybe just save ourselves from the plagues and bombs and the poisoned winds.

  But the Maje was the historian, so he got to pick all the targets, when the computers had done their probability analysis. He had six geeks, and he got six tries. “Nexus points,” he called ’em. Critical points in history. Of course, some were better than others. Rollins got the Great Northern War, Nan Got the Revolution, Creeper got to go all the way back to Ivan the Terrible, and I got Sveaborg. Impregnable, invincible Sveaborg. Gibraltar of the North.

  “There is no reason for Sveaborg to surrender,” the Maje is saying. It is his own ice-cream litany. History and tactics give him the sort of comfort that butter brickle gave to Nan. “The garrison is seven thousand strong, vastly outnumbering the besieging Russians. The artillery inside the fortress is superior. There is plenty of ammunition, plenty of food. If Sveaborg holds out until the sealanes are open, Sweeden will launch its counteroffensive and the siege will be broken easily. The entire course of history may change! You must make Cronstedt listen.”

  “If I could just lug back a history text and let him read what they say about him, I’m sure he’d jump through flaming hoops,” I say. I’ve had enough of this. “I’m tired,” I announce. “I want some food.” Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I feel like crying. “I want something to eat, damn it, I don’t want to talk anymore, you hear? I want something to eat.”

  Salazar glares, but Veronica hears the stress in my voice, and she is up and moving around the table. “Easy enough to arrange,” she says to me, and to the Maje, “We’ve accomplished all we can for now. Let me get him some food.” Salazar grunts, but he dares not object. Veronica wheels me away, toward the commissary.

  Over stale coffee and a plate of mystery meat and overcooked vegetables, she consoles me. She’s not half bad at it; a pro, after all, Maybe, in the old days, she wouldn’t have been considered especially striking—I’ve seen the old magazines. Even down here we have our old Playboys, our old video tapes, our old novels, our old record albums, our old funny books. Nothing new of course, nothing recent, but lots and lots of the old junk. I ought to know, I practically mainline the stuff. When I’m not flailing around inside Bengt’s cranium, I’m planted in front of my tube, running some old TV show or a movie, maybe reading a paperbak at the same time, trying to imagine what it would be like to live back then, before they screwed up everything. So I know all about the old standards, and maybe it’s true that Ronnie ain’t up to, say, Bo or Marilyn or Brigitte or Garbo. Still, she’s nicer to look at than anybody else down in this damned septic tank. And the rest of us don’t quite measure up either. Creeper wasn’t no Groucho, no matter how hard he tried; me, I look just like Jimmy Cagney, but the big green tumor and all the extra yellow teeth and the want of a nose spoil the effect, just a little.

  I push my fork away with the meal only half-eaten. “It has no taste. Back then, food had taste.”

  Veronica laughs. “You’re lucky. You get to taste it. For the rest of us, this is all there is.”

  “Lucky? Ha-ha. I know the difference, Ronnie. You don’t. Can you miss something you never had?” I’m sick of talking about it, though—sick of it all. “Want to play chess?”

  She smiles and gets up in search of our set. An hour later she’s won the first game and we’re starting the second. There are about a dozen chess players down here in the Cracker Box; now that Graham and Creeper are gone, I can beat all of them except Ronnie. The funny thing is, back in 1808 I could probably be world champion. Chess has come a long way in the last two hundred years, and I’ve memorized openings that the old guys never even dreamed of.

  “There’s more to the game than book openings,” Veronica says, and I realize I’ve been talking aloud.

  “I’d still win,” I insist. “Hell, those guys have been dead for centuries. How much fight can they put up?”

  She smiles and moves a knight. “Check.”

  I realize that I’ve lost again.

  “Someday I’ve got to learn to play this game,” I say. “Some world champion.”

  Veronica begins to put the pieces back in the box. “This Sveaborg business is a kind of chess game, too,” she says conversationally, “a chess game across time, us and the Swedes against the Russians and the Finnish nationalists. What move do you think we should make against Cronstedt?”

  “Why did I know the conversation was going to come back to that?” I say. “Damned if I know. I suppose the Maje has an idea.”

  She nods. Her face is serious now. Pale, soft face, framed by dark hair. “A desperate idea. These are desperate times.”

  What would it be like if I did succeed, I wonder? If I changed something? What would happen to Veronica and the Maje and Rafe and Slim and all the rest of them? What would happen to me, lying there in my coffin full of darkness? There are theories, of course, but no one really knows. “I’m a desperate man, ma’am,” I say to her, “ready for desperate measures. Being subtle sure hasn’t done diddlysquat. Let’s hear it. What do I gotta get Bengt to do now? Invent the machine gun? Defect to the Russkis? Expose his privates on the battlements? What?”

  She tells me.

  I’m dubious. “Maybe it’ll work,” I say. “More likely, it’ll get Bengt slung into the deepest goddamned dungeon that place has. They’ll really thing he’s nuts. Jägerhorn might just shoot him outright.”

  “No,” she says. “In his own way, Jägerhorn is an idealist. A man of principle. It is chancy, but you don’t win chess games without taking chances. Will you do it?”

  She has such a nice smile; I think she likes me. I shrug.

  “Might as well,” I say. “Can’t dance.”

  * * *

  “… shall be allowed to dispatch two couriers to the king, one by the northern, the other by the southern road. They shall be furnished with passports and safeguards, and every possible facility shall be given them for accomplishing their journey. Done at the island of Lonan, sixth of April, 1808.”

/>   The droning of the officer reading the agreement stopped suddenly, and the staff meeting was deathly quiet.

  Vice Admiral Cronstedt rose slowly. “This is the agreement,” he said. “In view of our perilous position, it is better than we could have hoped for. We have used a third of our powder already; our defenses are exposed to attack from all sides because of the ice; we are outnumbered and forced to support a large number of fugitives who rapidly consume our provisions. General Suchtelen might have demanded our immediate surrender. By the grace of God, he did not. Instead we have been allowed to retain three of Sveaborg’s six islands and will regain two of the others should five Swedish ships-of-the-line arrive to aid us before the third of May. If Sweden fails us, we must surrender. Yet the fleet shall be restored to Sweden at the conclusion of the war, and this immediate truce will prevent any further loss of life.”

  Cronstedt sat down. At his side, Colonel Jägerhorn came crisply to his feet. “In the event the Swedish ships do not arrive on time, we must make plans for an orderly surrender of the garrison.” He launched into a discussion of the details.

  Bengt Anttonen sat quietly. He had expected the news, had somehow known it was coming, but it was no less dismaying for all that. Cronstedt and Jägerhorn had negotiated a disaster. It was foolish. It was craven. It was hopelessly doomed. Immediate surrender of Wester-Svartö, Langörn, and Oster-Lilla-Svartö, the rest of the garrison to come later, capitulation deferred for a meaningless month. History would revile them. Schoolchildren would curse their names. And he was helpless.

  When the meeting at last ended, the others rose to depart. Anttonen rose with them, determined to be silent, to leave the room quietly for once, to let them sell Sveaborg for thirty pieces of silver if they would. But as he tried to turn, the compulsion seized him, and he went instead to where Cronstedt and Jägerhorn lingered. They both watched him approach. In their eyes, Anttonen thought he could see a weary resignation.

  “You must not do this,” he said heavily.

  “It is done,” Cronstedt replied. “The subject is not open for further discussion, Colonel. You have been warned. Go about your duties.” He climbed to his feet, turned to go.

  “The Russians are cheating you,” Anttonen blurted.

  Cronstedt stopped and looked at him. “Admiral, you must listen to me. This provision, this agreement that we will retain the fortress if five ships-of-the-line reach us by the third of May, it is a fraud. The ice will not have melted by the third of May. No ship will be able to reach us. The armistice agreement provides that the ships must have entered Sveaborg’s harbor by noon on the third of May. General Suchtelen will use the time afforded by the truce to move his guns and gain control of the sea approaches. Any ship attempting to reach Sveaborg will come under heavy attack. And there is more. The messengers you are sending to the King, sir, they—”

  Cronstedt’s face was ice and granite. He held up a hand. “I have heard enough. Colonel Jägerhorn, arrest this madman.” He gathered up his papers, refusing to look Anttonen in the face, and strode angrily from the room.

  “Colonel Anttonen, you are under arrest,” Jägerhorn said, with surprising gentleness in his voice. “Don’t resist, I warn you, that will only make it worse.”

  Anttonen turned to face the other colonel. His heart was sick.

  “You will not listen. None of you will listen. Do you know what you are doing?”

  “I think I do,” Jägerhorn said.

  Anttonen reached out and grabbed him by the front of his uniform.

  “You do not. You think I don’t know what you are, Jägerhorn? You’re a nationalist, damn you. This is the great age of nationalism. You and your Anjala League, your damned Finnlander noblemen, you’re all Finnish nationalists. You resent Sweden’s domination. The czar has promised you that Finland will be an autonomous state under his protection, so you have thrown off your loyalty to the Swedish crown.”

  Colonel F.A. Jägerhorn blinked. A strange expression flickered across his face before he regained his composure. “You cannot know that,” he said. “No one knows the terms—I—”

  Anttonen shook him bodily. “History is going to laugh at you, Jägerhorn. Sweden will lose this war because of you, because of Sveaborg’s surrender, and you’ll get your wish. Finland will become an autonomous state under the czar. But it will be no freer than it is now, under Sweden. You’ll swap your King like a secondhand chair at a flea market, for the butchers of the Great Wrath, and gain nothing by the transaction.”

  “A … a market for fleas? What is that?”

  Anttonen scowled. “A flea market, a flea … I don’t know,” he said. He released Jägerhorn, turned away. “Dear God, I do know. It is a place where … where things are sold and traded. A fair. It has nothing to do with fleas, but it is full of strange machines, strange smells.” He ran his fingers through his hair, fighting not to scream. “Jägerhorn, my head is full of demons. Dear God, I must confess. Voices, I hear voices day and night, even as the French girl, Joan, the warrior maid. I know the things that will come to pass.” He looked into Jägerhorn’s eyes, say the fear there, and held his hands up, entreating now. “It is no choice of mine, you must believe that. I pray for silence, for release, but the whispering continues, and these strange fits seize me. They are not of my doing, yet they must be sent for a reason, they must be true, or why would God torture me so? Have mercy, Jägerhorn. Have mercy on me and listen!”

  Colonel Jägerhorn looked past Anttonen, his eyes searching for help, but the two of them were quite alone.

  “Yes,” Jägerhorn said. “Voices, like the French girl. I did not understand.”

  Anttonen shook his head. “You hear, but you will not believe. You are a patriot; you dream you will be a hero. You will be no hero. The common folk of Finland do not share your dreams. They remember the Great Wrath. They know the Russians only as ancient enemies, and they hate them. They will hate you as well. And poor Cronstedt. He will be reviled by every Finn, every Swede, for generations. He will live out his life in this new Grand Duchy of Finland, on a Russian stipend, and he will die a broken man on April 7, 1820, twelve years and one day after he meets with Suchtelen on Lonan and promised Sveaborg to Russia. Years later, a man named Runeberg will write a series of poems about this war. Do you know what he will say of Cronstedt?”

  “No,” Jägerhorn said. He smiled uneasily. “Have your voices told you?”

  “They have taught me the words by heart,” said Bengt Anttonen. He recited:

  Call him the arm we trusted in,

  that shrank in time of stress,

  call him Affliction, Scorn, and Sin,

  and Death and Bitterness,

  but mention not his former name,

  lest they should blush who bear the same.

  “That is the glory you and Cronstedt are winning here, Jägerhorn,” Anttonen said bitterly. “That is your place in history. Do you like it?”

  Colonel Jägerhorn had been carefully edging around Anttonen; there was a clear path between him and the door. But now he hesitated. “You are speaking madness,” he said. “And yet, how could you have known of the czar’s promises? You would almost have me believe you. Voices? Like the French girl? The voice of God, you say?”

  Anttonen sighed. “God? I do not know. Voices, Jägerhorn, that is all I hear. Perhaps I am mad.”

  Jägerhorn grimaced. “They will revile us, you say? They will call us traitors and denounce us in poems?”

  Anttonen said nothing. The madness had ebbed; he was filled with a helpless despair.

  “No,” Jägerhorn insisted. “It is too late. The agreement is signed. We have staked our honor on it. And Vice Admiral Cronstedt, he is so uncertain. His family is here, and he fears for them. Suchtelen has played him masterfully, and we have done our part. It cannot be undone. I do not believe this madness of yours, yet even if I believed, there is nothing to be done. The ships will not come in time. Sveaborg must yield, and the war must end with Sweden’s defeat. Ho
w could it be otherwise? The czar is allied with Bonaparte himself, he cannot be resisted!”

  “The alliance will not last,” Anttonen said with a rueful smile. “The French will march on Moscow, and it will destroy them as it destroyed Charles XII. The winter will be their Poltava. All of this will come too late for Finland, too late for Sveaborg.”

  “It is too late even now,” Jägerhorn said. “Nothing can be changed.”

  For the first time, Bengt Anttonen felt the tiniest glimmer of hope. “It is not too late.”

  “What course do you urge upon us, then? Cronstedt had already made his decision. Should we mutiny?”

  “There will be a mutiny in Sveaborg, whether we take part or not. It will fail.

  “What then?”

  Bengt Anttonen lifted his head, stared Jägerhorn in the eyes. “The agreement stipulates that we may send two couriers to the king, to inform him of the terms, so the Swedish ships may be dispatched on time.”

  “Yes. Cronstedt will choose our couriers tonight, and they will leave tomorrow, with papers and safe passage furnished by Suchtelen.”

  “You have Cronstedt’s ear. See that I am chosen as one of the couriers.”

  “You?” Jägerhorn looked doubtful. “What good will that serve?” He frowned. “Perhaps this voice you hear is the voice of your own fear. Perhaps you have been under seige too long and it has broken you, and now you hope to run free.”

  “I can prove my voices speak true,” Anttonen said.

  “How?” snapped Jägerhorn.

  “I will meet you tomorrow at dawn at Ehrensvard’s tomb, and I will tell you the names of the couriers that Cronstedt has chosen. If I am right, you will convince him to send me in the place of one of those chosen. He will agree, gladly. He is anxious to be rid of me.”