The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  Just being able to remember that incident, after two hundred and eighty-odd years have passed, makes Roger a freak. Less than one percent of the population share this gift (or curse) of powerful, long-term recollection. These days Roger feels the ability like a weight—as if each year were a stone, so that now he carries the crushing burden of three hundred red stones everywhere he goes. He feels angry that others forget. Perhaps it is envious anger.

  * * *

  Thinking of that walk when he was nineteen reminds Roger of a time years later, when he read Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. The little black cabin boy Pip (and Roger had always identified himself with Pip in Great Expectations), “the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew,” fell overboard while his whaleboat was being pulled by a harpooned whale. The boat flew onward, leaving Pip alone. “The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?” Abandoned on the ocean surface alone, Pip grew more and more terrified, until “By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little Negro went about the deck an idiot.… The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.”

  Reading that made Roger feel strange. Someone had lived an hour very like his day on the polar desert, out in the infinite void of nature. And what had seemed to Roger rapture, had driven Pip insane.

  It occurred to him, as he stared at the thick book, that perhaps he had gone mad as well. Terror, rapture—these extremities of emotion circumnavigate the spirit and approach each other again, though departing from the origin of perception in opposite directions. Mad with solitude, ecstatic with Being—the two parts of the recognition of self sit oddly together. But Pip’s insanity only shocked Roger into a sharper love for his own experience of the “heartless immensity.” He wanted it; and suddenly all the farthest, most desolate reaches of Mars became his special joy. He woke at night and sat up to watch dawns, the flower in the garden of rock. And wandered days like John in the desert, seeing God in stones and frost and skies that arched like sheets of fire.

  * * *

  Now he sits on a ledge on a cliff on a planet no longer his, looking down on plains and canyons peppered with life, life created by the human mind. It is as if the mind has extruded itself into the landscape: each flower an idea, each lizard a thought.… There is no heartless immensity left, no mirror of the void for the self to see itself in. Only the self, everywhere, in everything, suffocating the planet, cloying all sensation, imprisoning every being.

  Perhaps this perception itself was a sort of madness.

  The sky itself, after all (he thought), provides a heartless immensity beyond the imagination’s ability to comprehend, night after night.

  Perhaps he needed an immensity he could imagine the extent of, to feel the perception of it as ecstasy rather than terror.

  * * *

  Roger sits remembering his life and thinking over these matters, as he tosses granules of rock—little pips—over the ledge into space.

  To his surprise, Eileen rejoins him. She sits on her heels, recites quietly,

  “I love all waste

  And solitary places, where we taste

  The pleasures of believing what we see

  Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”

  “Who said that?” Roger asks, startled by the lines.

  “Shelley,” Eileen replies. “In ‘Julian and Maddalo.’”

  “I like it.”

  “Me too.” She tosses a pip over herself. “Come join us for dinner?”

  “What? Oh, sure, sure. I didn’t know it was time.”

  * * *

  That night, the sound of the tent scraping stone, as the wind shifts it and shifts it. The scritching of thought as world scrapes against planet.

  * * *

  Next day they start spreading out. Marie, Dougal, Hannah, and Ginger take off early up the Gully, around a rib and out of sight, leaving behind a trail of fixed rope. Occasionally those left below can hear their voices, or the ringing of a piton being hammered into the hard rock. Another party descends to Camp 1, to begin dismantling it. When they have got everything up to Camp 2, the last group up will bring the fixed ropes up with them. Thus they will set rope above them and pull it out below them, all the way up the wall.

  * * *

  Late the next day Roger climbs up to carry more rope to Marie and Dougal and Hannah and Ginger. Frances comes with him.

  The Great Gully is steeper above Camp 2, and after a few hours of slow progress Roger finds his pack growing very heavy. His hands hurt, the footholds grow smaller and smaller, and he finds he must stop after every five or ten steps. “I just don’t have it today,” he says as Frances takes over the lead.

  “Me neither,” she says, wheezing for air. “I think we’ll have to start using oxygen during the climbing pretty soon.”

  But the lead climbers do not agree. Dougal is working his way up a constriction in the Gully, knocking ice out of a crack with his ice axe, then using his fists for chocks and his twisted shoe soles for a staircase, and stepping up the crack as fast as he can clear it. Marie is belaying him and it is left to Hannah and Ginger to greet Roger and Frances. “Great, we were just about to run out of rope.”

  Dougal stops and Marie takes the opportunity to point to the left wall of the Gully. “Look,” she says, disgusted. Roger and Frances see a streak of light blue—a length of xylar climbing rope, hanging free from a rust-pitted piton. “That Terran expedition, I bet,” Marie says. “They left ropes the entire way, I hear.”

  From above Dougal laughs.

  Marie shakes her head. “I hate seeing stuff like that.”

  Francis says, “I think we’d better go onto oxygen pretty soon.”

  She gets some surprised stares. “Why?” asks Marie. “We’ve barely started.”

  “Well, we’re at about four kilometers above the datum—”

  “Exactly,” Marie says. “I live higher than that.”

  “Yes, but we’re working pretty hard here, and going up pretty fast. I don’t want anyone to get edema.”

  “I don’t feel a thing,” Marie says, and Hannah and Ginger nod.

  “I could use as bit of oxygen,” Dougal says from above, grinning down at them briefly.

  “You don’t feel edema till you have it,” Frances says stiffly.

  “Edema,” says Marie, as if she doesn’t believe in it.

  “Marie’s immune,” Dougal calls down. “Her head can’t get more swollen than it already is.”

  Hannah and Ginger giggle at Marie’s mock glare, her tug on the rope to Dougal.

  “Down you come, boy.”

  “On your head.”

  “We’ll see how the weather goes,” Frances says. “But either way, if we make normal progress we’ll be needing oxygen soon.”

  This is apparently too obvious to require comment. Dougal reaches the top of the crack, and hammers in a piton; the ringing strikes grow higher and higher in pitch as the piton sets home.

  * * *

  That afternoon Roger helps the leads set up a small wall tent. The wall tents are very narrow and have a stiff inflatable floor; they can be hung from three pitons if necessary, so that the inhabitants rest on an air-filled cushion hanging in space, like window-washers. But more often they are placed on ledges or indentations in the cliff-face, to give the floor some support. Today they have found that above the narrowing of the Great Gully is a flattish indentation protected by an overhang. The cracks above the indentation are poor, but with the addition of a couple of rock bolts the climbers look satisfied. They will be protected from rockfall, and tomorrow they can venture up to find a better spot for Camp 3 without delay. As there is just barely room (and food) for two, Roger and Frances begin the descent to Camp 2.

  * * *

  During the descent Roger imagines the cliff face as flat ground, entertained by the new perspective this gives. Ravines cut into that flat land: ver
tically these are called gulleys, or couloirs, or chimneys, depending on their shape and tilt. Climbing in these gives the climber an easier slope and more protection. Flat land has hills, and ranges of hills: these vertically are knobs, or ridges, or shelfs, or buttresses. Depending on their shape and tilt these can either be obstacles, or in the case of some ridges, easy routes up. Then walls become ledges, and creeks become cracks—although cracking takes its own path of least resistance, and seldom resembles water-carved paths.

  As Roger belays Frances down one difficult pitch (they can see more clearly why their climb up was so tiring), he looks around at what little he can see: the gray and black walls of the gully, some distance above and below him; the steep wall of the rampart to the left of the gully. And that’s all. A curious duality; because this topography stands near the vertical, in many ways he will never see it as well as he would an everyday horizontal hillside. But in other ways (looking right into the grain of the rock to see if one nearly detached knob will hold the weight of his entire body for a long step down, for instance) he sees it much more clearly, more intensely than he will ever ever see the safe world of flatness. This intensity of vision is something the climber treasures.

  * * *

  The next day Roger and Eileen team up, and as they ascend the gully with another load of rope, a rock the size of a large person falls next to them, chattering over an outcropping and knocking smaller rocks down after it. Roger stops to watch it disappear below. The helmets they are wearing would have been no protection against a rock that size.

  “Let’s hope no one is following us up,” Roger says.

  “Not supposed to be.”

  “I guess getting out of this gully won’t be such a bad idea, eh?”

  “Rockfall is almost as bad on the face. Last year Marie had a party on the face when a rock fell on a traverse rope and cut it. Client making the traverse was killed.”

  “A cheerful business.”

  “Rockfall is bad. I hate it.”

  Surprising emotion in her voice; perhaps some accident had occurred under her leadership as well? Roger looks at her curiously. Odd to be a climbing guide and not be more stoic about such dangers.

  Then again, rockfall is the danger beyond expertise.

  She looks up: distress. “You know.”

  He nods. “No precautions to take.”

  “Exactly. Well, there are some. But they aren’t really sufficient.”

  * * *

  The lead climbers’ camp is gone without a trace, and a new rope leads up the left wall of the gully, through a groove in the overhang and out of sight above. They stop to eat and drink, then continue up. The difficulty of the next pitch impresses them; even with the rope it is hard going. They wedge into the moat between a column of ice and the left wall, and inch up painfully. “I wonder how long this lasts,” Roger says, wishing they had their crampons with them. Above him, Eileen doesn’t reply for over a minute. Then she says, “Three hundred more meters,” as if out of the blue. Roger groans theatrically, client to guide.

  Actually he is enjoying following Eileen up the difficult pitch. She has a quick rhythm of observation and movement that reminds him of Dougal, but her choice of holds is all her own—and closer to what Roger would choose. Her calm tone as they discuss the belays, her smooth pulls up the rock, the fine proporations of her long legs, reaching for the awkward foothold: a beautiful climber. And every once in a while there is a little jog at Roger’s memory.

  * * *

  Three hundred meters above they find the lead climbers, out of the gully and on a flat ledge that covers nearly a hectare, on the left side this time. From this vantage they can see parts of the cliff face to the right of the gully, above them. “Nice campsite,” Eileen remarks. Marie, Dougal, Hannah, and Ginger are sitting about, resting in the middle of setting up their little wall tents. “Looked like you had a hard day of it down there.”

  “Invigorating,” Dougal says, eyebrows raised.

  Eileen surveys them. “Looks like a little oxygen might be in order.” The lead group protests. “I know, I know. Just a little. A cocktail.”

  “It only makes you crave it,” Marie says.

  “Maybe so. We can’t use much down here, anyway.”

  In the midday radio call to the camps below, Eileen tells the others to pack up the tents from Camp 1. “Bring those and the power reels up first. We should be able to use the reels between these camps.”

  They all give a small cheer. The sun disappears behind the cliff above, and they all groan. The leads stir themselves and continue setting up the tents. The air chills quickly.

  * * *

  Roger and Eileen descend through the afternoon shadows to Camp 2, and there is not enough equipment to accommodate more than the lead group at Camp 3. Descending is easy on the muscles compared to the ascent, but it requires just as much concentration as going up. By the time they reach Camp 2 Roger is very tired, and the cold sunless face has left him depressed again. Up and down, up and down.

  That night during the sunset radio conversation Eileen and Marie get into an argument when Eileen orders the leads down to do some portering. “Look, Marie, the rest of us haven’t led a single pitch, have we? And we didn’t come on this climb to ferry up goods for you, did we?” Eileen’s voice has a very sharp, cutting edge to it when she is annoyed. Marie insists the first team is making good time, and is not tired yet. “That’s not the point. Get back down to Camp 1 tomorrow, and finish bringing it up. The bottom team will move up and reel Camp 2 up to 3, and those of us here at 2 will carry one load up to 3 and have a bash at the lead after that. That’s the way it is, Marie—we leapfrog in my climbs, you know that.”

  Sounds behind the static from the radio, of Dougal talking to Marie. Finally Marie says, “Aye, well you’ll need us more when the climbing gets harder anyway. But we can’t afford to slow down much.”

  * * *

  After the radio call Roger leaves the tent and sits on his ledge bench to watch the twilight. Far to the east the land is still sunlit, but as he watches the landscape darkens, turns dim purple under the blackberry sky. Mirror dusk. A few stars sprinkle the high dome above him. The air is cold but still, and he can hear Hans and Frances inside their tent, arguing about glacial polish. Frances is an areologist of some note, and apparently she disagrees with Hans about the origins of the escarpment; she spends some of her climbing time looking for evidence in the rock.

  Eileen sits down beside him. “Mind?”

  “No,” he says.

  She says nothing, and it occurs to him she may be upset. He says, “I’m sorry Marie is being so hard to get along with.”

  She waves a mittened hand to dismiss it. “Marie is always like that. It doesn’t mean anything. She just wants to climb.” She laughs. “We go on like this every time we climb together, but I still like her.”

  “Hmph.” Roger raises his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  She does not reply. For a long time they sit there. Roger’s thoughts return to the past, and helplessly his spirits plummet again.

  “You seem … disturbed about something,” Eileen ventures.

  “Ehh,” Roger says. “About everything, I suppose.” And winces to be making such a confessional. But she appears to understand; she says,

  “So you fought all the terraforming?”

  “Most of it, yeah. First as head of a lobbying group. You must be part of it now—Martian Wilderness Explorers.”

  “I pay the dues.”

  “Then in the Red government. And in the Interior Ministry, after the Greens took over. But none of it did any good.”

  “And why, again?”

  “Because,” he bursts out—stops—starts again: “Because I liked the planet the way it was when we found it! A lot of us did, back then. It was so beautiful … or not just that. It was more overwhelming than beautiful. The size of things, their shapes—the whole planet had been evolving, the landforms themselves, I mean, for five billion
years, and traces of all that time were still on the surface to be seen and read, if you knew how to look. It was so wonderful to be out there.…”

  “The sublime isn’t always beautiful.”

  “True. It transcended beauty, it really did. One time I walked out onto the polar desert, you know.…” But he doesn’t know how to tell it. “And so, and so it seemed to me that we already had an Earth, you know? That we didn’t need a Terra up here. And everything they did eroded the planet that we came to. They destroyed it! And now we’ve got—whatever. Some kind of park. A laboratory to test out new plants and animals and all. And everything I loved so much about those early years is gone. You can’t find it anywhere anymore.”

  In the dark he can just see her nodding. “And so your life’s work…”

  “Wasted!” He can’t keep the frustration out of his voice. Suddenly he doesn’t want to, he wants her to understand what he feels, he looks at her in the dark, “A three-hundred year life, entirely wasted! I mean I might as well have just…” He doesn’t know what.

  Long pause

  At least you can remember it,” she says quietly.

  “What good is that? I’d rather forget, I tell you.”

  “Ah. You don’t know what that’s like.”

  “Oh, the past. The God-damned past. It isn’t so great. Just a dead thing.”

  She shakes her head. “Our past is never dead. Do you know Sartre’s work?”

  “No.”

  “A shame. He can be a big help to we who live so long. For instance, in several places he suggests that there are two ways of looking at the past. You can think of it as something dead and fixed forever; it’s part of you, but you can’t change it, and you can’t change what it means. In that case your past limits or even controls what you can be. But Sartre doesn’t agree with that way of looking at it. He says that the past is constantly altered by what we do in the present moment. The meaning of the past is as fluid as our freedom in the present, because every new act that we commit can revalue the entire thing!”