The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (91 page)

“He did. That’s why he’s going.”

She glanced over at me, then returned to her driving, her endless scanning of the roadside. Was that a break in the bushes? Had a car gone off there? Was that a skid mark in the headlights?

She said, “No, that’s not why. It’s that girl. Belinda. She wants to go home, and I saw her whispering to him all afternoon, and I should have realized . . . but he doesn’t like children! And she’s only eleven! I didn’t think she could influence him.”

Leila was right. I should have anticipated this; I’d seen far more of Belinda than Leila had. Belinda would have known exactly what Ethan was feeling, exactly how to play on his weak spots. She didn’t even have to think about it, merely let her instincts take over. Empathy in action.

“Barry, he’s not a bad kid underneath. He can be very sweet sometimes. You’ve never seen that.”

“I believe you,” I said, wondering if I did. “And the other times – well, he can’t help it, can he? It’s in his genes.”

“No, it’s not.” The intensity of her anger surprised me, even as she kept on scanning, looking, dreading what she might see. “You attribute everything to genes. It’s not true. Genes made you a dwarf, and you think that’s wrecked your life, but genes didn’t make you so bitter and unhappy. I know that because when we met, you weren’t bitter and unhappy. And you were a dwarf then, too. I didn’t want Ethan around your self-created misery. I still don’t. And maybe he does have some predisposition to danger and anger and impulsiveness, like the doctors say. But he doesn’t have to indulge it. He chooses to do that. Just like you choose to be miserable and envious.”

“Leila, there’s so much wrong with that simplistic analysis that I don’t even know where to start correcting it.”

“Then don’t. I don’t need your ‘corrections.’ You can’t – what’s that!”

I saw it a second after she did. The Lexus, smashed head-first against a tree, which was the only thing that had kept it from going over the embankment.

Leila, younger and with less spinal constriction, was first out of the Ford, running toward the car, uttering loud wordless cries. I followed her, stumbling as my treacherous legs collapsed under me, getting up, trying again to run. Those were the longest seconds – minutes, hours, eons – of my life. Until. I. Reached. That. Car.

They were both alive. Belinda seemed unhurt, mewling in her seat belt. Ethan, who had taken the brunt of the crash – had he turned the wheel at the last minute to save the little girl? – slumped unconscious against the steering wheel. Blood trickled through his bright hair.

“Don’t move him,” Leila said frantically. “If anything’s broken . . . I’m going for help!”

She ran back to her Ford. I undid Belinda’s seat belt, yanked her out, and dropped her on the dark roadside weeds. I could feel her fear, just as she could feel my fury. She shrank back against the fender. I climbed into the passenger seat beside my son.

He stirred. “Mommy . . .”

“She’ll be here soon, Ethan. Help will be here soon.”

He said something else, before sliding again into unconsciousness. It might have been, “Fuck you.”

Maybe no child, other than those with Arlen’s Syndrome, understands how a parent feels. Maybe I hadn’t earned the right to even be considered a parent. Maybe, as Leila said, my bitterness and anger would be worse for Ethan than if I weren’t there at all for him. I don’t know, any more than I know any more what’s genetic and what’s not. Did Jane go all maternal with the twins because she had more oxytorin receptors, or did The Group’s virus make her a good candidate for growing more oxytorin receptors because she’d always had a penchant for wounded birds anyway? Susceptibility to the genemod will vary among people.

In the darkness, I sat for a long time beside my injured son. Finally, with great deliberation, I spat on my fingers and gently, gently, pushed them inside his mouth. I felt the softness of his slack tongue, his strong young teeth. Strong teeth, strong long bones. He was not a dwarf I spat a second time on my hand and did it again.

Overhead, medical and police flyers droned in the dark night When they arrived, I borrowed a cell phone and comlinked Elaine Brown, Human Protection Agency.

A week later, I sit in a Temporary Government Quarantine Facility in San Diego, watching TV. On the other side of the negative-pressure barriers, researchers from the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, dressed in Level 4 biohazard suits, go through two airlocks to reach Jane and me. The Barrington twins are here, too, but not Leila or Ethan. Ethan is in a hospital in LA, and she is with him, along with her boyfriend from Oregon. He flew down immediately to be with her.

They treat us well here. There are endless medical tests, of course, but I’m used to that. Everyone is both respectful and curious. If they’re also frightened, I don’t sense it, but of course Bridget and Belinda do. Bridget is a favorite with the staff. Belinda wants to go home, although she likes all the attention from Jane. The twins’ parents “visit” via Link several times each day. Frieda sometimes has a distinct look of relief. Her kids are behind glass, and she can break the link with Belinda whenever she needs to.

The Link has brought the most attention to Jane. Death threats, pleas for help, fan letters, offers from the ACLU to sue The Group if any members of that organization can be found, which so far they haven’t. Jane would be a high-profile and appealing case. The movie is on again, but not with the same script, or even with the same studio. There’s another chapter now to the Arlen’s Syndrome story, and Jane has become an actor in that saga in both senses of the word. The whole thing looks like box-office gold.

Jane is not unhappy. If that’s not exactly the same thing as being happy, it seems to do.

The Link is also how I visit with Ethan. He had three broken ribs and a damaged spleen, which seems to be repairing itself without surgery. Youthful spleen can do that. We gaze at each other, and sometimes he’s sullen, and sometimes I’m impatient, and sometimes he sees me shift on my spine in chronic pain. Or maybe he catches a sadness in my eyes. At such times, his expression softens. So does his voice. He’ll ask if I’m okay. When he asks, I am.

Is it wrong to genetically modify human beings? First I thought it was, when I tried to alter Ethan’s FGFR3 gene in utero. Then I thought it wasn’t, seeing both Ethan and the Arlen’s Syndrome kids. Now I don’t know again. There’s still panic out there about The Group’s virus, and the virus is still spreading, and eventually it may – or may not – make enough of society more nurturing. In turn, that may – or may not – change society. If enough people are susceptible. If feelings of compassion actually translate into actions of compassion. If the weather holds and the creek don’t rise and seven or eleven comes up enough on the dice. This is barely Act One, Scene One of whatever comes next. Chaos theory tells us that, in a system of circular feedback, a small change in initial conditions can cause huge and unpredictable changes down the road. Human behavior is a system of circular feedback. Is Ethan more compassionate toward me because he’s growing more oxytorin receptors, or because I’m more open to his (and everyone else’s) compassion? How did the same genemod for empathy produce both Bridget and Belinda?

I have no idea. And to tell the truth, I don’t really care. I’m supposed to care, ethically and pragmatically, but I don’t.

Jane comes into the room and says, “Guess what? The studio is getting Michael Rosen to write the script! Michael Rosen! It’s sure to be terrific!”

I smile back. Michael Rosen is indeed a terrific writer, a creator of sensitive and layered scripts that both challenge audiences and fill seats. He’s also a handsome womanizer, and Jane is looking more beautiful than ever. I know what will happen.

“That’s good,” I say. “Congratulations. The movie’ll be a smash.”

“Thanks to you.” She smiles at me and goes out again.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I turn to my computer and get back to work.

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

John C. Wright

John C. Wright attracted some attention in the late 1990s with his early stories in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
(with one of them, “Guest Law,” being picked up for David Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF), but it wasn’t until he published his Golden Age trilogy (consisting
of The Golden Age, The Golden Transcendence
, and
The Phoenix Exultant)
in the first few years of the new century, novels that earned critical raves across the board, that he was recognized as a major new talent in SF. Subsequent novels include the “Everness” fantasy series, including
The Last Guardians of Everness
and
Mists of Everness
, and the fantasy “Chaos” series, which includes
Fugitives of Chaos, Orpahns of Chaos
, and
Titans of Chaos.
His most recent novel, a continuation of the famous “Null-A” series by A. E. van Vogt, is
Null-A Continuum.
Wright lives with his family in Centreville, Virginia.

Here he delivers a rousing space-age take on Wagner’s
Ring of the Nibelungen
, which performs the trick of writing valid science fiction that reads like epic fantasy as well as anyone has ever done it.

T
ALL GOLDEN DOORS
loomed up behind the dais of the throne. Behind those doors, it was said, the Main Bridge of the Twilight of the Gods reposed, a chamber dim and vast, with many altars studded all with jeweled controls set before the dark mirrors of the Computer. But Acting Captain Weston II found the chamber oppressive, and did not like the mysterious dark mirrors of the Computer watching him, and so, since his father’s death many years ago, this white high chamber before the golden doors was used as his hall of audience.

The chamber was paved in squares of gold and white, with pillars of gold spaced along white walls. Hanging between the pillars were portraits of scenes from somewhere in the ship the Captain had never seen; fields of green plants, some taller than a man, growing, for some reason, along the deck rather than in shelves along the walls. In the pictures, the deck was buckled and broken, rising and falling in round slopes (perhaps due to damage from a Weapon of the Enemy) with major leaks running across it. The scenes took place in some hold or bay larger than any Acting Captain Weston II had seen or could imagine; the overhead bulkhead was painted light blue, some sort of white disruption like steam-clouds floating against it. In many pictures, the blue overhead was ruptured by a large yellow many-rayed circular explosion, perhaps, again, of a Weapon.

In most pictures were sheep or other animals, and young crewmen and women, out of uniform, blissfully ignoring the explosion overhead, and doing nothing to stop the huge leaks, one of which had ducks swimming in it.

Acting Captain Weston II found the pictures soothing, but disturbing. He often wondered if the artist had been trying to show how frail and foolish men are, that they will trip lightly through their little lives without a thought to the explosions and disasters all about them. Perhaps he preferred this chamber for that reason.

What the original use and name of this chamber had been in days gone past, no man of the Captain’s Court could tell, not even his withered and aged Computerman.

The chamber now was bare, except that the Computerman approached the throne and knelt to Weston. “My lord,” he said. His face was worn and haggard, his garb simple, rough, and belted with a hank of rope. The Computerman’s eyes showed red and staring, a certain sign of the many long nightwatches he had spent writhing in the grip of the holy drug, which allowed his brethren to commune with the Computer.

“Why do you come unbidden unto me?” Weston asked sternly. “I know you await another.”

The Computerman replied. “It is to warn you against that other, that I am come.”

The Acting Captain raised his hand, but the Computerman said swiftly, “Bid me not to go! Unless you would not heed the will of the Computer in this thing, the Computer which knows all, indeed, even things most secret and shameful.”

The Captain had a troubled look upon his face, and sat back with one hand clutching the front of his jeweled coat, as if to hide something behind his hand, something, perhaps, on a necklace hidden beneath his tunic. “What shame?” he said.

“Every child knows the story of the Ring of Last Command,” the Computerman said. “Of how, when the Sixth Barrage destroyed the lights and power of the second hundred decks, and Weapon of the Enemy opened the Great Chasm in the hull, reaching from the stars below almost to the thousandth deck, the first Captain, Valdemar, capitulated to the Enemy, and allowed a Boarding Party to come in from the Void Below the Hull. Decks Three Hundred through Seven Hundred Seventy rebelled, and followed bright Alverin into battle against the traitor Captain. But the Captain was not found, and his Ring of Final Command was lost. The ring, they say, can waken the Computers all again, and send the Weapons of the Twilight down into the Void.”

“Children’s fairy-tales,” the Captain said.

“Yet, I deem, they tempt you,” the Computerman said.

The Captain was silent.

“This prisoner which the giant brings; he had a ring inscribed with circuits, did he not? A ring which matches the descriptions of the Command Ring? You dream of learning the Secret Word which controls that Ring, and of conquering the world, of driving back the tall elves from decks above, where they fly and know no weight, and compelling the twisted dwarves from Engineering to obedience to your reign, and, one day, who knows? you think you will drive forth the Destroyers, and the servants of the enemy who infest the many antispinward decks, and hurl them down into the Void from whence they came. You dream a dream of vile pride; you are corrupted with temptation.”

The Captain rose angrily from his throne. “Stop! Do you think your holy office will protect you from my wrath? Were there such a ring as legends say, for certain I would seize it to my own. And who would dare deny me? You? You?”

But the Computerman bowed in all humility, and said, “My lord knows there can be no such ring. A ring to waken the computers, indeed! Our faith informs us that the Computers do not sleep, that their screens are not dark, not to eyes that keep the faith. I and my brethren commune with the computers each nightwatch, and it gives us secret knowledge.”

“My father told me the Computer screens once were bright to every eye, and a voice like a man’s voice spoke from them, every man, even the humblest, could hear that voice. Before the Fifth Barrage, in his youth, he had seen them shining, and heard the voice.”

“Men knew less sin in those days, my lord.”

At that moment came a noise at the doors before them, not the golden doors of the Bridge, but the silver doors leading to the to the outer part of the palace and to the corridors and warrens of the great city of Forecomcon. The silver doors swept wide; here were twenty pikemen of the Gatewatch, dressed in blue and silver, and here, garbed hugely in the gray-green of the ancient order of Marines, strode in the giant.

The giant’s shoulder was taller than a tall man’s head, but his hair and beard were white with age. For he was the last of his kind, born to serve as a Marine, created by the lost arts of the Medical House, back when the Twilight was young. His name was Carradock.

In one hand Carradock held a mighty weapon like a spear, made by ancient and forgotten arts. The weapon could shoot bullets like a musket, except that it could fire many at a time, yet the bullets were slow, and would not pierce the bulkheads, or damage the equipment, and so the weapon was lawful according to the Weapons Law.

In Carradock’s other hand was a chain. Bound by that chain, manacled and fettered, was a strange, dark man, wearing a uniform of silver-white, unlike any uniform known to Weston’s lore. The man had pale hair like an upper-deck elf, and, like them, he was tall. But he was darkened and scarred by radiation, like the dwarves of engineering, or like those who lived near the Great Chasm, the Lesser Chasm, or the Hole, or near any other place the Weapons of the Enemy had blown up through the world. He was muscled like a down-deck dwarf, with thicker muscles than Weston had ever seen, except, perhaps for those on Carradock.

The Gatewatch lieutenant spoke up out of turn, coming forward and saying, “My lord! I pray you, let not this man alone in audience with you! He has the strength of three men.”

“Then let him be bound with three men’s chains, but I will speak alone to him.”

The prisoner in silver-white stood, face calm, staring at the Captain. His face was still, his demeanor quiet. He seemed neither proud nor humble, but he stood like a man surrounded by a great silent open space, wherein nothing could be hidden from him, nor anything approach to harm him.

When he did not kneel, the Gatewatch pikemen struck him in the back of his knees with the butts of their spears. But the muscles of the prisoner’s legs were strong, and did not bend when struck. Three of the Gatewatch put their hands on his shoulders to force him down. The prisoner watched them calmly, but would not budge.

“Leave him stand,” the Captain ordered. The men stepped back. Then the Captain said, “Where are his wounds? He has no new scars. I ordered him put to torment. Bring forth the Apprentice Torturer.”

But the lieutenant said, “Sire, the Apprentice Torturer fled after you ordered the Master Torturer tortured to death. After, none of the lesser torturers would approach this prisoner. They refused to obey your order.”

The Computerman was still standing near the throne. He leaned forward and whispered, “Sire, why did you order the Master Torturer put to the question? I guess this: this prisoner told you that he had told the Master Torturer the Words which command the ring. The Master Torturer denied it. You conceived a jealous suspicion, and feared the Master Torturer craved the ring, and knew the Word. Do I guess aright?”

The Captain stood. “Leave me! All of you, except my giant, leave me! You, as well, Computerman!”

The lieutenant said, “Sire, shall we bring the other prisoner in now as well? The blind man we found wondering the Inner Corridor?”

“What care I for wandering beggars? Leave me, all!”

But the Computerman would not leave until the Gatewatch came to drag him away. The Computerman was shouting, “Beware the thing you covet! Beware! It is a thing accursed! All who do not possess it will crave it! It will drive you to madness; it will drive you to destroy your trusted servants, as you have destroyed your Torturer! Eschew this thing! Cast it away! The Computer cannot be controlled by it!” But by then the Gatewatch had gently pulled the old man out of the chamber and closed the door behind them.

Acting Captain Weston II sat upon his throne again, and bent his gaze upon the dark, scarred man before him. The man did not fidget or stir, but stood, calm and silent; and the giant stood waiting behind him.

“Speak!” ordered Weston.

The man said, “I have nothing more to say.” His voice was soft and pleasant to the ear.

“The Old Code requires you to speak to a superior officer. What is your name and station, rank and duty?”

“I am Henwis, son of Himdall. I come from Starwell. My rank is Watchman. I am come to report to the true Captain.”

“There are no Watchmen; the order is defunct. After the Boarding by the Enemy, all the outer Hull was laid to waste. No; you are no Watchmen. You have the look of an aftman farmer about you.”

“I was not born a Watchman; indeed, I was born a farmer. My village is called Aftshear, in the secondary engine core, near the Axis, where the world has no weight. My youth was spent tending the many plants and green growing things from whence come our air, and life. But I was captured by the Enemy, and, for a time, was a slave. I escaped, and fled below decks, where every step is a crushing weight, and the air is poisoned by the radiations of the Seventh Barrage. The servants of the Enemy feared the radiation, and could not tolerate the weight, and did not pursue me. Crawling, I went still lower, till I was nearly crushed. Then I came upon a place where nothing was below me, except for the stars.

“There I was found by Himdall, last of all Watchmen, in the midst of a deserted place and empty corridors, a chamber lit, and filled with sweet air, although surrounded by darkness and poison on every side.

“Himdall nursed me back to health, and taught to me his art, and showed to me the Starwell, at whose deep bottom the stars underfoot turn and turn again. And I became a Watchman in truth, and was adopted as his son. And for long years I kept watch on the Enemy stars, and saw the slow, grave motions.”

Weston asked: “And do you believe the heresy which says the stars which move are not mere colored lights, but the Ships from which the Enemy, in ancient times, came forth?”

“I do. And yet among those lights, are four Ships friendly to our own, sent out, as we were, in ages past, from Earth. Their names I think you know: the Götterdämmerung, the Apocalypse, the Armageddon, and the Ragnarök.”