The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  But the air is just part of all the rest of it—part of the world, not of the planet. Right? “That’s right,” Roger says, staring through the tent wall down the endless slope of the mountain.

  * * *

  That night they celebrate with champagne again, and the party gets wild as they become sillier and sillier. Marie tries to climb the inner wall of the tent by grabbing the soft material in her hands, and falls to the floor repeatedly; Dougal juggles boots; Arthur challenges all comers to arm-wrestle, and wins so quickly they decide he is using “a trick,” and disallow his victories; Roger tells government jokes (“How many ministers does it take to pour a cup of coffee?”), and institutes a long and vigorous game of spoons. He and Eileen play next to each other and in the dive for spoons they land on each other. Afterwards, sitting around the heater singing songs, she sits at his side and their legs and shoulders press together. Kid stuff, familiar and comfortable, even to those who can’t remember their own childhood.

  So that, that night, after everyone has gone out to the little sleeping nooks at the perimeter of the tent’s circular floor, Roger’s mind is full of Eileen. He remembers sponging her down that morning. Her playfulness this evening. Climbing in the storm. The long nights together in wall tents. And once again the distant past returns—his stupid, uncontrollable memory provides images from a time so far gone that it shouldn’t matter any more … but it does. It was near the end of that trip, too. She snuck into his little cubicle and jumped him! Even though the thin panels they used to create sleeping rooms were actually much less private than what they have here; this tent is big, the air regulator is loud, the seven beds are well-spaced and divided from each other by ribbing—clear ribbing, it is true, but now the tent is dark. The cushioned floor under him (so comfortable that Marie calls it uncomfortable) gives as he moves, without even trembling a few feet away, and it never makes a sound. In short, he could crawl silently over to her bed, and join her as she once joined him, and it would be entirely discreet. Turnabout is fair play, isn’t it? Even three hundred years later? There isn’t much time left on this climb, and as they say, fortune favors the bold.…

  He is about to move when suddenly Eileen is at his side, shaking his arm. In his ear she says, “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  And afterwards, teasing: “Maybe I do remember you.”

  * * *

  They trek higher still, into the zone of rock. No animals, plants, insects; no lichen; no snow. They are above it all, so high on the volcano’s cone that it is getting difficult to see where their escarpment drops to the forests; two hundred kilometers away and fifteen kilometers below, the scarp’s edge can only be distinguished because that’s where the broad ring of snow ends. They wake up one morning and find a cloud layer a few k’s downslope, obscuring the planet below. They stand on the side of an immense conical island in an even greater sea of cloud: the clouds a white wave-furrowed ocean, the volcano a great rust rock, the sky a low dark violet dome, all on a scale the mind can barely encompass. To the east, poking out of the cloud-sea, three broad peaks—an archipelago—the three Tharsis volcanoes in their well-spaced line, princes to the king Olympus. Those volcanoes, fifteen hundred kilometers away, give them a little understanding of the vastness visible.…

  The rock up here is smoothly marbled, like a plain of petrified muscles. Individual pebbles and boulders take on an eerie presence, as if they are debris scattered by Olympian gods. Hans’s progress is greatly slowed by his inspection of these rocks. One day, they find a mount that snakes up the mountain like an esker, or a Roman road; Hans explains it is a river of lava harder than the surrounding rock, which has eroded away to reveal it. They use it as an elevated road, and hike on it for all of one long day.

  Roger picks up his pace, leaves the cart and the others behind. In a suit and helmet, on the lifeless face of Mars: centuries of memory flood him, he finds his breathing clotted and uneven. This is his country, he thinks. This is the transcendent landscape of his youth. It’s still here. It can’t be destroyed. It will always be here. He finds that he has almost forgotten, not what it looks like, but what it feels like to be here in such wilderness. That thought is the thorn in the exhilaration that mounts with every step. Stephan and Eileen, the other two out of harness this day, are following him up. Roger notices them and frowns. I don’t want to talk about it, he thinks. I want to be alone in it.

  But Stephan hikes right by him, looking overwhelmed by the desolate rock expanse, the world of rock and sky. Roger can’t help but grin.

  And Eileen is content just to walk with him.

  * * *

  Next day, however, in the harnesses of the cart, Stephan plods beside him and says, “Okay, Roger, I can see why you love this. It is sublime, truly. And in just the way we want the sublime—it’s a pure landscape, a pure place. But…” He plods on several more steps, and Roger and Eileen wait for him to continue, pulling in step together. “But it seems to me that you don’t need the whole planet this way. This will always be here. The atmosphere will never rise this high, so you’ll always have this. And the world down below, with all that life growing everywhere—it’s beautiful.” The beautiful and the sublime, Roger thinks. Another duality. “And maybe we need the beautiful more than the sublime?”

  They haul on. Eileen looks at the mute Roger. He cannot think what to say. She smiles. “If Mars can change, so can you.”

  * * *

  “The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?”

  * * *

  That night Roger seeks out Eileen, and makes love to her with a peculiar urgency; and when they are done he finds himself crying a bit, he doesn’t know why; and she holds his head against her breast, until he shifts, and turns, and falls asleep.

  * * *

  And the following afternoon, after climbing all day up a hill that grows ever gentler, that always looks as if it will peak out just over the horizon above them, they reach flattened ground. An hour’s hike, and they reach the caldera wall. They have climbed Olympus Mons.

  * * *

  They look down into the caldera. It is a gigantic brown plain, ringed by the round cliffs of the caldera wall. Smaller ringed cliffs inside the caldera drop to collapse craters, then terrace the round plain with round depressions, which overlap each other. The sky overhead is almost black; they can see stars, and Jupiter. Perhaps the high evening star is Earth. The thick blue rind of the atmosphere actually starts below them, so that they stand on a broad island in the middle of a round blue band, capped by a dome of black sky. Sky, caldera, ringed stone desolation. A million shades of brown, tan, red, rust, white. The planet Mars.

  * * *

  Along the rim a short distance stands the ruins of a Tibetan Buddhist lamasery. When Roger sees it his jaw drops. It is brown, and the main structure appears to have been a squarish boulder the size of a large house, carved and excavated until it is more air than stone. While it was occupied it must have been hermetically sealed, with airlocks in the doorways and windows fixed in place; now the windows are gone, and side buildings leaning against the main structure are broken-walled, roofless, open to the black sky. A chest-high wall of stone extends away from the outbuildings and along the rim; colored prayer wheels and prayer flags stick up from it on thin poles. Under the light touch of the stratosphere the wheels spin slowly, the flags flap limply.

  * * *

  “The caldera is as big as Luxembourg.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No.”

  * * *

  Finally even Marie is impressed. She walks to the prayer wall, touches a prayer wheel with one hand; looks out at the caldera, and from time to time spins the wheel, absently.

  * * *

  “Invigorating view, eh?”

  * * *

  It will take a few days to hike around the caldera to the railway station, so they set up camp next to the abandoned lamasery, and t
he heap of brown stone is joined by a big mushroom of clear plastic, filled with colorful gear.

  The climbers wander in the late afternoon, chatting quietly over rocks, or the view into the shadowed caldera. Several sections of the ringed inner cliffs look like good climbing.

  The sun is about to descend behind the rim to the west, and great shafts of light spear the indigo sky below them, giving the mountaintop an eerie indirect illumination. The voices on the common band are rapt and quiet, fading away to silence.

  * * *

  Roger gives Eileen a squeeze of the hand, and wanders off by himself. The ground up here is black, the rock cracked in a million pieces, as if the gods have been sledge-hammering it for eons. Nothing but rock. He clicks off the common band. It is nearly sunset. Great lavender shafts of light spear the purple murk to the sides, and overhead, stars shine in the blackness. All the shadows stretch off to infinity. The bright bronze coin of the sun grows big and oblate, slows in its descent. Roger circles the lamasery. Its western walls catch the last of the sun and cast a warm orange glaze over the ground and the ruined outbuildings. Roger kicks around the low prayer wall, replaces a fallen stone. The prayer wheels still spin—some sort of light wood, he thinks, cylinders carved with big black eyes and cursive lettering, and white paint, red paint, yellow paint, all chipped away. Roger stares into a pair of stoic Asian eyes, gives the wheel a slow spin, feels a little bit of vertigo. World everywhere. Even here. The flattened sun lands on the rim, across the caldera to the west. A faint gust of wind lofts a long banner out, ripples it slowly in dark orange air—“All right!” Roger says aloud, and gives the wheel a final hard spin and steps away, circles dizzily, tries to take in everything at once: “All right! All right. I give in. I accept.”

  He wipes red dust from the glass of his faceplate; recalls the little bird-thing, pecking free of clouded ice. A new creature steps on the peak of green Mars.

  HONORABLE MENTIONS

  1985

  Jim Aikin, “My Life in the Jungle,” F&SF, Feb.

  Brian W. Aldiss, “You Never Asked My Name,” F&SF, Nov.

  Gary Alexander, “Buddies,” IASFM, Sept.

  Kim Antieau, “Hauntings,” IASFM, Feb.

  Michael Armstrong, “Going After Arviq,” Afterwar

  Isaac Asimov, “Logic is Logic,” IASFM, August

  A.A. Attanasio, “Sherlock Holmes and Basho,” Beastmarks

  John Barnes, “Finalities Besides the Grave,” Amazing, Sept.

  Charles Baxter, “Through the Safety Net,” Twilight Zone, May/June

  Greg Bear, “Dead Run,” Omni, April

  Gregory Benford, “Time’s Rub,” IASFM, April

  ———, “To the Storming Gulf,” F&SF, April

  Michael Bishop, “A Gift from the Graylanders,” IASFM, Sept.

  ———, “A Spy in the Domain of Arnheim,” Shayol 7

  James P. Blaylock, “Lord Kelvin’s Machine,” IASFM, Mid-Dec.

  T. Coraghessan Boyle, “On for the Long Haul,” IASFM, August

  Scott Bradfield, “The Dream of the Wolf,” Interzone, No. 10

  Edward Bryant, “The Man Who Always Wanted to Travel,” Omni, June

  Pat Cadigan, “After the Days of Dead-Eye Dee,” IASFM, May

  Lillian Stewart Carl, “Where is thy Victory?” IASFM, Nov.

  Susan Casper, “Spring Fever,” Midnights

  ––––– and Gardner Dozois, “Send no Money,” IASFM, Mid-Dec.

  Jack Dann, “Between the Windows of the Sea,” Shadows 8

  ––––– and Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper, “The Clowns,” Playboy, August

  ––––– and Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick, “The Gods of Mars,” Omni, March

  Avram Davidson, “The Slovo Stove,” Universe 15

  ———, “Writ in Water,” Amazing, Sept.

  Bradley Denton, “The Summer we Saw Diana,” F&SF, August

  Gene De Weese, “Everything Going to be All Right,” Shadows 8

  Peter Dickinson, “Flight,” Imaginary Lands

  David Drake, “Dreams in Amber,” Whispers V

  George Alec Effinger, “The Beast From One-Quarter Fathom,” IASFM, April

  ———, “The Bird of Time Bears Bitter Fruit,” F&SF, Dec.

  Harlan Ellison, “Paladin of the Last Hour,” Universe 15

  ———, “With Virgil Oddum at the East Pole,” Omni, Jan.

  Phyllis Eisenstein, “Fair Exchange,” Analog, Mid-Dec.

  Dennis Etchison, “Dead Space,” Whispers V

  John M. Ford, “Scrabble with God,” IASFM, Oct.

  Karen Joy Fowler, “The Poplar Street Study,” F&SF, June

  ———, “Praxis,” IASFM, March

  ———, “The War of the Roses,” IASFM, Dec.

  Gregory Frost, “In Media Vita,” IASFM, Jan.

  Stephen Gallagher, “The Price,” IASFM, June

  Felix Gotschalk, “Vestibular Man,” F&SF, March

  Charles L. Grant, “Give Us a Big Smile,” Twilight Zone, Dec.

  Robert M. Green, “The Embezzled Blessing,” F&SF, June

  Terrence M. Green, “Ashland, Kentucky,” IASFM, Nov.

  Russell M. Griffin, “In Hector’s Grave,” F&SF, Sept.

  Lisa Goldstein, “Preliminary Notes on the Jang,” IASFM, Nov.

  ———, “Tourists,” IASFM, Feb.

  Joe Haldeman, “Seasons,” Alien Stars

  Charles L. Harness, “George Washington Slept Here,” Analog, July

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman, “The Shadow of a Hawk,” Shadows 8

  James Patrick Kelly, “The Last,” F&SF, June

  Leigh Kennedy, “The Window Jesus,” Shayol 7

  John Kessel, “A Clean Escape,” IASFM, May

  Garry Killworth, “The Thunder of the Captains,” IASFM, June

  Damon Knight, “The God Machine,” F&SF, July

  ———, “The Man Who Went Back,” Amazing, Nov.

  R.A. Lafferty, “All Hollow Though You Be,” Slippery

  ———, “John Salt,” Slippery

  Marc Laidlaw, “Sea of Tranquility,” Omni, Feb.

  Tanith Lee, “After the Guillotine,” Amazing, Jan.

  ———, “Bloodmantle,” IASFM, Nov.

  Steven Leigh, “Shaping Memory,” IASFM, Sept.

  Oliver Lowenbruck, “Lonesome Coyote Blues,” Twilight Zone, Jan./Feb.

  Barry N. Malzberg and Carter Scholz, “The High Purpose,” F&SF

  George R. R. Martin, “Portraits of his Children,” IASFM, Nov.

  ———, “Second Helpings,” Analog, Nov.

  Bruce McAllister, “The Ark,” Omni, Sept.

  Jack McDevitt, “Tidal Effects,” Universe 15

  Ian McDonald, “Empire Dreams,” IASFM, Dec.

  ———, “Scenes From a Shadow Play,” IASFM, July

  Patricia McKillip, “The Old Woman and the Storm,” Imaginary Lands

  Robin McKinley, “The Stone Fey,” Imaginary Lands

  Cooper McLaughlin, “The Black and Tan Man,” F&SF, Nov.

  David Morrell, “Vastation,” Night Cry, Fall

  Richard Mueller, “The Day We Really Lost the War,” IASFM, Sept.

  Pat Murphy, “On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away,” IASFM, May

  Larry Niven, “Table Manners,” Far Frontiers 1

  Susan Palwick, “Ways to get Home,” IASFM, Mid-Dec.

  John Park, “The Software Plague,” Far Frontiers 2

  Frederik Pohl, “The Things that Happen,” IASFM, Oct.

  Steven Popkes, “Deathwitch,” IASFM, Feb.

  Larry Powell, “Siblings,” Analog, July

  Paul Preuss, “Small Bodies,” The Planets

  Tom Purdom, “Eyes,” Analog, July

  Keith Roberts, “Kitecadet,” Amazing, May

  Kim Stanley Robinson, “Mercurial,” Universe 15

  Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, “Storming the Cosmos,” IASFM, Mid-Dec.

  Pamela Sargent, “Originals,” Universe 15<
br />
  Hilbert Schenck, “Send Me a Kiss by Wire,” F&SF, April

  Carter Scholz, “Recursion,” Cuts

  Charles Sheffield, “Trader’s Secret,” Analog, August

  ———, “Tunicate, Tunicate, Wilt Thou Be Mine?” IASFM, June

  Lucius Shepard, “… How My Heart Breaks When I Sing this Song…” IASFM, Dec.

  ———, “How the Wind Spoke at Madaket,” IASFM, May

  ———, “The End of Life as We Know It,” IASFM, Jan.

  ———, “The Fundamental Things,” IASFM, July

  ———, “Mengele,” Universe 15

  John Shirley, “The Incorporated,” IASFM, July

  ––––– and Bruce Sterling, “The Unfolding,” Interzone, # 11

  Robert Silverberg, “Symbiont,” Playboy, June

  Norman Spinrad, “World War Last,” IASFM, August

  Bruce Sterling, “The Compassionate, the Digital,” Interzone, # 14

  ––––– and Lewis Shiner, “Mozart in Mirrorshades,” Omni, Sept.

  James Stevens, “Cycles,” Stardate, Nov./Dec.

  Michael Swanwick, “The Blind Minotaur,” Amazing, March

  ———, “The Transmigration of Philip K.,” IASFM, Feb.

  Jennifer Swift, “Marie,” IASFM, June

  Avon Swofford, “Taking the Low Road,” IASFM, Oct.

  Judith Tarr, “Defender of the Faith,” Moonsinger’s Friends

  John Alfred Taylor, “The Weight of Zero,” Twilight Zone, Feb.

  Steve Rasnic Tem, “The Battering,” Shadows 8

  ———, “Father’s Day,” Whispers V

  Harry Turtledove, “Archetypes,” Amazing, Nov.

  ———, “Les Mortes D’Arthur,” Analog, August

  ———, “The R Strain,” Analog, June

  ———, “Unholy Trinity,” Amazing, July

  Lisa Tuttle, “Flying to Byzantium,” Twilight Zone, May

  Steven Utley, “Creatures of Habit,” Shayol 7

  Joan D. Vinge, “Tam Lin,” Imaginary Lands

  Eric Vinicoff, “When the High Lord Arrives,” Analog, April

  Karl Edward Wagner, “Old Lovers,” Night Visions 2

  Howard Waldrop, “Heirs of the Perisphere,” Playboy, July