Year's Best Science Fiction 02 # 1985

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Inside, something black crouched upon a dais. “I’ve come for Lissy,” Tim said.

  There was no reply, but a question hung in the air. He answered it almost without intending to. “I’m Timothy Ryan Neal, and I’ve come for Lissy. Give her back to me.”

  A light, it seemed, dissolved the blackness. Cross-legged on the dais, a slender man in tweeds sucked at a long clay pipe. “It’s Irish, are ye?” he asked.

  “American,” Tim said.

  “With such a name? I don’t believe ye. Where’s yer feathers?”

  “I want her back,” Tim said again.

  “An’ if ye don’t get her?”

  “Then I’ll tear this ship apart. You’ll have to kill me or take me, too.”

  “Spoken like a true son of the ould sod,” said the man in tweeds. He scratched a kitchen match on the sole of his boot and lit his pipe. “Sit down, will ye? I don’t fancy lookin’ up like that. It hurts me neck. Sit down, and ’tis possible we can strike an agreement.”

  “This is crazy,” Tim said. “The whole thing is crazy.”

  “It is that,” the man in tweeds replied. “An’ there’s much, much more comin’. Ye’d best brace for it, Tim me lad. Now sit down.”

  There was a stout wooden chair behind Tim where the door had been. He sat. “Are you about to tell me you’re a leprechaun? I warn you, I won’t believe it.”

  “Me? One o’ them scamperin’, thievin’, cobblin’ little misers? I’d shoot meself. Me name’s Daniel O‘Donoghue, King o’ Connaught. Do ye believe that, now?”

  “No,” Tim said.

  “What would ye believe, then?”

  “That this is—some way, somehow—what people call a saucer. That you and your crew are from a planet of another sun.”

  Daniel laughed. “‘Tis a close encounter you’re havin’, is it? Would ye like to see me as a tiny green man wi’ horns like a snail’s? I can do that, too.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “All right, I won’t, though ‘tis a good shape. A man can take it and be whatever he wants, one o’ the People o’ Peace or a bit o’ a man from Mars. I’ve used it for both, and there’s nothin’ better.”

  “You took Lissy,” Tim said.

  “And how would ye be knowin’ that?”

  “I thought she’d drowned.”

  “Did ye now?”

  “And that this ship—or whatever it is—was just a sign, an omen. I talked to a policeman and he as good as told me, but I didn’t really think about what he said until last night, when I was trying to sleep.”

  “Is it a dream yer havin’? Did ye ever think of that?”

  “If it’s a dream, it’s still real,” Tim said doggedly. “And anyway, I saw your ship when I was awake, yesterday and the day before.”

  “Or yer dreamin’ now ye did. But go on wi’ it.”

  “He said Lissy couldn’t have been abducted because I was in the same bed, and that she’d gone out for a swim in the morning and drowned. But she could have been abducted, if she had gone out for the swim first. If someone had come for her with a boat. And she wouldn’t have drowned, because she didn’t swim good enough to drown. She was afraid of the water. We went in yesterday, and even with me there, she would hardly go in over her knees. So it was you.”

  “Yer right, ye know,” Daniel said. He formed a little steeple of his fingers. “‘Twas us.”

  Tim was recalling stories that had been read to him when he was a child. “Fairies steal babies, don’t they? And brides. Is that why you do it? So we’ll think that’s who you are?”

  “Bless ye, ‘tis true,” Daniel told him. “’Tis the Fair Folk we are. The jinn o’ the desert, too, and the saucer riders ye say ye credit, and forty score more. Would ye be likin’ to see me wi’ me goatskin breeches and me panpipe?” He chuckled. “Have ye never wondered why we’re so much alike the world over? Or thought that we don’t always know just which shape’s the best for a place, so the naiads and the dryads might as well be the ladies o’ the Deeny Shee? Do ye know what the folk o’ the Barb’ry Coast call the hell that’s under their sea?”

  Tim shook his head.

  “Why, ’tis Domdaniel. I wonder why that is, now. Tim, ye say ye want this girl.”

  “That’s right.”

  “An’ ye say there’ll be trouble and plenty for us if ye don’t have her. But let me tell ye now that if ye don’t get her, wi’ our blessin’ to boot, ye’ll drown—hold your tongue, can’t ye, for ’tis worse than that—if ye don’t get her wi’ our blessin’, ‘twill be seen that ye were drownin’ now. Do ye take me meaning?”

  “I think so. Close enough.”

  “Ah, that’s good, that is. Now here’s me offer. Do ye remember how things stood before we took her?”

  “Of course.”

  “They’ll stand so again, if ye but do what I tell ye. ‘Tis yerself that will remember, Tim Neal, but she’ll remember nothin’. An’ the truth of it is, there’ll be nothin’ to remember, for it’ll all be gone, every stick of it. This policeman ye spoke wi’, for instance. Ye’ve me word that ye will not have done it.”

  “What do I have to do?” Tim asked.

  “Service. Serve us. Do whatever we ask of ye. We’d sooner have a broth of a girl like yer Lissy than a great hulk of a lad like yerself, but then, too, we’d sooner be havin’ one that’s willin’, for the unwillin’ girls are everywhere—I don’t doubt but ye’ve seen it yerself. A hundred years, that’s all we ask of ye. ’Tis short enough, like Doyle’s wife. Will ye do it?”

  “And everything will be the same, at the end, as it was before you took Lissy?”

  “Not everythin’, I didn’t say that. Ye’ll remember, don’t ye remember me sayin’ so? But for her and all the country round, why ’twill be the same.”

  “All right,” Tim said. “I’ll do it.”

  “’Tis a brave lad ye are. Now I’ll tell ye what I’ll do. I said a hundred years, to which ye agreed—”

  Tim nodded.

  “—but I’ll have no unwillin’ hands about me boat, nor no ungrateful ones neither. I’ll make it twenty. How’s that? Sure and I couldn’t say fairer, could I?”

  Daniel’s figure was beginning to waver and fade; the image of the dark mass Tim had seen first hung about it like a cloud.

  “Lay yerself on yer belly, for I must put me foot upon yer head. Then the deal’s done.”

  The salt ocean was in his mouth and his eyes. His lungs burst for breath. He revolved in the blue chasm of water, tried to swim, at last exploded gasping into the air.

  The king had said he would remember, but the years were fading already. Drudging, dancing, buying, spying, prying, waylaying, and betraying when he walked in the world of men. Serving something that he had never wholly understood. Sailing foggy seas that were sometimes of this earth. Floating among the constellations. The years and the slaps and the kicks were all fading, and with them (and he rejoiced in it) the days when he had begged.

  He lifted an arm, trying to regain his old stroke, and found that he was very tired. Perhaps he had never really rested in all those years. Certainly, he could not recall resting. Where was he? He paddled listlessly, not knowing if he were swimming away from land, if he were in the center of an ocean. A wave elevated him, a long, slow swell of blue under the gray sky. A glory—the rising or perhaps the setting sun—shone to his right. He swam toward it, caught sight of a low coast.

  He crawled onto the sand and lay there for a time, his back struck by drops of spray like rain. Near his eyes, the beach seemed nearly black. There were bits of charcoal, fragments of half-burned wood. He raised his head, pushing away the earth, and saw an empty bottle of greenish glass nearly buried in the wet sand.

  When he was able at last to rise, his limbs were stiff and cold. The dawnlight had become daylight, but there was no warmth in it. The beach cottage stood only about a hundred yards away, one window golden with sunshine that had entered from the other side, the walls in shadow. The red Triump
h gleamed beside the road.

  At the top of a small dune he turned and looked back out to sea. A black freighter with a red and white stack was visible a mile or two out, but it was only a freighter. For a moment he felt a kind of regret, a longing for a part of his life that he had hated but that was now gone forever. I will never be able to tell her what happened, he thought. And then: Yes, I will, if only I let her think I’m just making it up. And then: No wonder so many people tell so many stories. Good-bye to all that.

  The step creaked under his weight, and he wiped the sand from his feet on the coco mat. Lissy was in bed. When she heard the door open she sat up, then drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.

  “Big Tim,” she said. “You did come. Tim and I were hoping you would.”

  When he did not answer, she added, “He’s out having a swim, I think. He should be around in a minute.”

  And when he still said nothing: “We’re—Tim and I—we’re going to be married.”

  KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

  The Lucky Strike

  History is a mutable thing, and each moment that passes has the potential to birth a thousand alternate worlds. The changes that produce those alternate worlds don’t always have to be big ones, like Lee winning at Gettysburg, or Wellington losing the Battle of Waterloo. Sometimes—as the suspenseful and passionate story that follows amply demonstrates—the largest of destinies can turn on the very smallest of details … with far-reaching and sobering effects.

  Kim Stanley Robinson, an alumnus of the Clarion Writers Workshop, sold his first story to Damon Knight’s Orbit 18 in 1976. He subsequently placed stories in Orbit 19 and Orbit 21, and in the last few years has gone on to become a frequent contributor to Universe and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His quietly evocative story “Venice Drowned” was one of the best stories of 1981, and was a Nebula Award finalist; his novella “To Leave a Mark” was a finalist for the Hugo Award in 1982. His brilliant story “Black Air” was both a Nebula and Hugo finalist in 1984, and went on to win the World Fantasy Award that year. “Black Air” was in our First Annual Collection. His excellent novel The Wild Shore was published in 1984 as the first title in the resurrected Ace Specials line, and was one of the most critically-acclaimed novels of the year. Two other Robinson books appeared in 1984: his second novel, Icehenge, and a critical book, The Novels of Philip K. Dick. Upcoming is a new novel, The Memory of Whiteness, from Tor Books. Robinson lives in Davis, California.

  War breeds strange pastimes. In July of 1945 on Tinian Island in the North Pacific, Captain Frank January had taken to piling pebble cairns on the crown of Mount Lasso—one pebble for each B-29 takeoff, one cairn for each mission. The largest cairn had four hundred stones in it. It was a mindless pastime, but so was poker. The men of the 509th had played a million hands of poker, sitting in the shade of a palm around an upturned crate sweating in their skivvies, swearing and betting all their pay and cigarettes, playing hand after hand after hand, until the cards got so soft and dog-eared you could have used them for toilet paper. Captain January had gotten sick of it, and after he lit out for the hilltop a few times some of his crewmates started trailing him. When their pilot Jim Fitch joined them it became a official pastime, like throwing flares into the compound or going hunting for stray Japs. What Captain January thought of the development he didn’t say. The others grouped near Captain Fitch, who passed around his battered flask. “Hey, January,” Fitch called. “Come have a shot.”

  January wandered over and took the flask. Fitch laughed at his pebble. “Practising your bombing up here, eh, Professor?”

  “Yah,” January said sullenly. Anyone who read more than the funnies was Professor to Fitch. Thirstily January knocked back some rum. He could drink it any way he pleased up here, out from under the eye of the group psychiatrist. He passed the flask on to Lieutenant Matthews, their navigator.

  “That’s why he’s the best,” Matthews joked. “Always practising.”

  Fitch laughed. “He’s best because I make him be best, right, Professor?”

  January frowned. Fitch was a bulky youth, thick-featured, pig-eyed—a thug, in January’s opinion. The rest of the crew were all in their mid-twenties like Fitch, and they liked the captain’s bossy roughhouse style. January, who was thirty-seven, didn’t go for it. He wandered away, back to the cairn he had been building. From Mount Lasso they had an overview of the whole island, from the harbor at Wall Street to the north field in Harlem. January had observed hundreds of B-29s roar off the four parallel runways of the north field and head for Japan. The last quartet of this particular mission buzzed across the width of the island, and January dropped four more pebbles, aiming for crevices in the pile. One of them stuck nicely.

  “There they are!” said Matthews. “They’re on the taxiing strip.”

  January located the 509th’s first plane. Today, the first of August, there was something more interesting to watch than the usual Superfortress parade. Word was out that General Le May wanted to take the 509th’s mission away from it. Their commander Colonel Tibbets had gone and bitched to Le May in person, and the general had agreed the mission was theirs, but on one condition: one of the general’s men was to make a test flight with the 509th, to make sure they were fit for combat over Japan. The general’s man had arrived, and now he was down there in the strike plane, with Tibbets and the whole first team. January sidled back to his mates to view the takeoff with them.

  “Why don’t the strike plane have a name, though?” Haddock was saying.

  Fitch said, “Lewis won’t give it a name because it’s not his plane, and he knows it.” The others laughed. Lewis and his crew were naturally unpopular, being Tibbets’ favorites.

  “What do you think he’ll do to the general’s man?” Matthews asked.

  The others laughed at the very idea. “He’ll kill an engine at takeoff, I bet you anything,” Fitch said. He pointed at the wrecked B-29s that marked the end of every runway, planes whose engines had given out on takeoff. “He’ll want to show that he wouldn’t go down if it happened to him.”

  “Course he wouldn’t!” Matthews said.

  “You hope,” January said under his breath.

  “They let those Wright engines out too soon,” Haddock said seriously. “They keep busting under the takeoff load.”

  “Won’t matter to the old bull,” Matthews said. Then they all started in about Tibbets’ flying ability, even Fitch. They all thought Tibbets was the greatest. January, on the other hand, liked Tibbets even less than he liked Fitch. That had started right after he was assigned to the 509th. He had been told he was part of the most important group in the war, and then given a leave. In Vicksburg a couple of fliers just back from England had bought him a lot of whiskies, and since January had spent several months stationed near London they had talked for a good long time and gotten pretty drunk. The two were really curious about what January was up to now, but he had stayed vague on it and kept returning the talk to the blitz. He had been seeing an English nurse, for instance, whose flat had been bombed, family and neighbors killed … . But they had really wanted to know. So he had told them he was onto something special, and they had flipped out their badges and told him they were Army Intelligence, and that if he ever broke security like that again he’d be transferred to Alaska. It was a dirty trick. January had gone back to Wendover and told Tibbets so to his face, and Tibbets had turned red and threatened him some more. January despised him for that. The upshot was that January was effectively out of the war, because Tibbets really played his favorites. January wasn’t sure he really minded, but during their year’s training he had bombed better than ever, as a way of showing the old bull he was wrong to write January off. Every time their eyes had met it was clear what was going on. But Tibbets never backed off no matter how precise January’s bombing got. Just thinking about it was enough to cause January to line up a pebble over an ant and drop it.

  “Will you cut that out?” Fitch complained. “I swea
r you must hang from the ceiling when you take a shit so you can practice aiming for the toilet.” The men laughed.

  “Don’t I bunk over you?” January asked. Then he pointed. “They’re going.”

  Tibbets’ plane had taxied to runway Baker. Fitch passed the flask around again. The tropical sun beat on them, and the ocean surrounding the island blazed white. January put up a sweaty hand to aid the bill of his baseball cap.

  The four props cut in hard, and the sleek Superfortress quickly trundled up to speed and roared down Baker. Three-quarters of the way down the strip the outside right prop feathered.

  “Yow!” Fitch crowed. “I told you he’d do it!”

  The plane nosed off the ground and slewed right, then pulled back on course to cheers from the four young men around January. January pointed again. “He’s cut number three, too.”

  The inside right prop feathered, and now the plane was pulled up by the left wing only, while the two right props windmilled uselessly. “Holy smoke!” Haddock cried. “Ain’t the old bull something?”

  They whooped to see the plane’s power, and Tibbets’ nervy arrogance.

  “By God, Le May’s man will remember this flight,” Fitch hooted. “Why, look at that! He’s banking!”

  Apparently taking off on two engines wasn’t enough for Tibbets; he banked the plane right until it was standing on its dead wing, and it curved back toward Tinian.

  Then the inside left engine feathered.

  Wars tears at the imagination. For three years Frank January had kept his imagination trapped, refusing to give it any play whatsoever. The dangers threatening him, the effects of the bombs, the fate of the other participants in the war, he had refused to think about any of it. But the war tore at his control. That English nurse’s flat. The missions over the Ruhr. The bomber just below him blown apart by flak. And then there had been a year in Utah, and the vise-like grip that he had once kept on his imagination had slipped away.