The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (27 page)

Could we say we had learned a single useful piece of information about Troxxt technology – for all of the work we had done on their machines, for all of the lives we had lost in the process? No, of course not. We had merely contributed our mite to the enslavement of far-off races who had done us no harm.

There was much that we had cause to feel guilty about, the Dendi told us gravely – once the few surviving interpreters of the pre-Bengali dialect had crawled out of hiding. But our collective onus was as nothing compared to that borne by “vermicular collaborationists” – those traitors who had supplanted our martyred former leaders. And then there were the unspeakable human interpreters who had had linguistic traffic with creatures destroying a two-million-year-old galactic peace. Why, killing was almost too good for them, the Dendi murmured as they killed them.

When the Troxxt ripped their way back into possession of Earth some eighteen months later, bringing us the sweet fruits of the Second Reliberation – as well as a complete and most convincing rebuttal of the Dendi – there were few humans found who were willing to accept with any real enthusiasm the responsibilities of newly opened and highly paid positions in language, science and government.

Of course, since the Troxxt, in order to reliberate Earth, had found it necessary to blast a tremendous chunk out of the northern hemisphere, there were very few humans to be found in the first place …

Even so, many of these committed suicide rather than assume the title of secretary-general of the United Nations when the Dendi came back for the glorious Re-Reliberation, a short time after that. This was the liberation, by the way, which swept the deep collar of matter off our planet, and gave it what our forefathers came to call a pear-shaped look.

Possibly it was at this time – possibly a liberation or so later – that the Troxxt and the Dendi discovered that the Earth had become far too eccentric in its orbit to possess the minimum safety conditions demanded of a Combat Zone. The battle, therefore, zigzagged coruscatingly and murderously away in the direction of Aldebaran.

That was nine generations ago, but the tale that has been handed down from parent to child, to child’s child, has lost little in the telling. You hear it now from me almost exactly as
I
heard it. From my father I heard it as I ran with him from water puddle to distant water puddle, across the searing heat of yellow sand. From my mother I heard it as we sucked air and frantically grabbed at clusters of thick green weed, whenever the planet beneath us quivered in omen of a geological spasm that might bury us in its burned-out body, or a cosmic gyration threatened to fling us into empty space.

Yes, even as we do now did we do then, telling the same tale, running the same frantic race across miles of unendurable heat for food and water; fighting the same savage battles with the giant rabbits for each other’s carrion – and always, ever and always, sucking desperately at the precious air, which leaves our world in greater quantities with every mad twist of its orbit.

Naked, hungry and thirsty came we into the world, and naked, hungry and thirsty do we scamper our lives out upon it, under the huge and never-changing sun.

The same tale it is, and the same traditional ending it has as that I had from my father and his father before him. Suck air, grab clusters and hear the last holy observation of our history!

“
Looking about us, we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be
.”

A CLEAN ESCAPE

John Kessel

To hint at what is in John Kessel’s story would spoil the reading experience.

Shortly after publication in
Asimov’s,
he turned the following story into a one-act play, then a decade later into a radio play performed by the online series Seeing Ear Theater, and then a TV version was adapted for a Masters of Science Fiction series. Among Kessel’s feats is a marriage between Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein,
namely the novelette “Pride and Prometheus”, which won the 2008 Nebula Award. Other recent publications are
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories
and, with his friend James Patrick Kelly, an anthology of stories inspired and influenced by Franz Kafka.

“I’ve been thinking about devils. I mean, if there are devils in the world, if there are people in the world who represent evil, is it our duty to exterminate them?”

– John Cheever “The Five-Forty-Eight”

A
S SHE SAT
in her office, waiting – for exactly what she did not know – Dr Evans hoped that it wasn’t going to be another bad day. She needed a cigarette and a drink. She swivelled the chair around to face the closed venetian blinds beside her desk, leaned back, and laced her hands behind her head. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The air wafting down from the ventilator in the ceiling smelled of machine oil. It was cold. Her face felt it, but the bulky sweater kept the rest of her warm. Her hair felt greasy. Several minutes passed in which she thought of nothing. There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she said absently.

Havelmann entered. He had the large body of an athlete gone slightly soft, grey hair, and a lined face. At first glance he didn’t look sixty. His well-tailored blue suit badly needed pressing.

“Doctor?”

Evans stared at him for a moment. She would kill him. She looked down at the desk, rubbed her forehead. “Sit down,” she said.

She took the pack of cigarettes from her desk drawer. “Would you care to smoke?”

The old man accepted one. She watched him carefully. His brown eyes were rimmed with red; they looked apologetic.

“I smoke too much,” he said. “But I can’t quit.”

She gave him a light. “More people around here are quitting every day.”

Havelmann exhaled smoothly. “What can I do for you?”

What can I do for
you
, sir.

“First, I want to play a little game.” Evans took a handkerchief out of her pocket. She moved a brass paperweight, a small model of the Lincoln Memorial, to the centre of the desk blotter. “I want you to watch what I’m doing now.”

Havelmann smiled. “Don’t tell me – you’re going to make it disappear, right?”

She tried to ignore him. She covered the paperweight with the handkerchief. “What’s under this handkerchief?”

“Can we put a little bet on it?”

“Not this time.”

“A paperweight.”

“That’s wonderful.” Evans leaned back. “Now I want you to answer a few questions.”

The old man looked around the office curiously: at the closed blinds, at the computer terminal and keyboard against the wall, at the pad of switches in the corner of the desk. His eyes came to rest on the mirror high in the wall opposite the window. “That’s a two-way mirror.”

Evans sighed. “No kidding.”

“Are you videotaping this?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“I’d like to know. Common courtesy.”

“Yes, we’re being recorded. Now answer the questions.”

Havelmann seemed to shrink in the face of her hostility. “Sure.”

“How do you like it here?”

“It’s OK. A little boring. A man couldn’t even catch a disease here, from the looks of it, if you know what I mean. I don’t mean any offense, Doctor. I haven’t been here long enough to get the feel of the place.”

Evans rocked slowly back and forth. “How do you know I’m a doctor?”

“Aren’t you a doctor? I thought you were. This is a hospital, isn’t it? So I figured when they sent me in to see you, you must be a doctor.”

“I am a doctor. My name is Evans.”

“Pleased to meet you, Dr Evans.”

She would kill him. “How long have you been here?”

The man tugged on his earlobe. “I must have just got here today. I don’t think it was too long ago. A couple of hours. I’ve been talking to the nurses at their station.”

What she wouldn’t give for three fingers of Jack Daniel’s. She looked at him over the steeple of her fingers. “Such talkative nurses.”

“I’m sure they’re doing their jobs.”

“I’m sure. Tell me what you were doing before you came to this … hospital.”

“You mean right before?”

“Yes.”

“I was working.”

“Where do you work?”

“I’ve got my own company – ITG Computer Systems. We design programs for a lot of people. We’re close to getting a big contract with Ma Bell. We swing that and I can retire by the time I’m forty – if Uncle Sam will take his hand out of my pocket long enough for me to count my change.”

Evans made a note on her pad. “Do you have a family?”

Havelmann looked at her steadily. His gaze was that of an earnest young college student, incongruous on a man of his age. He stared at her as if he could not imagine why she would ask him these abrupt questions. She detested his weakness; it raised in her a fury that pushed her to the edge of insanity. It was already a bad day, and it would get worse.

“I don’t understand what you’re after,” Havelmann said, with considerable dignity. “But just so your record shows the facts: I’ve got a wife, Helen, and two kids. Ronnie’s nine and Susan’s five. We have a nice big house and a Lincoln and a Porsche. I follow the Braves and I don’t eat quiche. What else would you like to know?”

“Lots of things. Eventually I’ll find them out.” Evans tapped her pencil on the edge of the desk. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me? How you came to be here? How long you’re going to have to stay? Who you are?”

Havelmann’s voice went cold. “I know who I am.”

“Who are you, then?”

“My name is Robert Havelmann.”

“That’s right,” Dr Evans said. “What year is it?”

Havelmann watched her warily, as if he were about to be tricked. “What are you talking about? It’s 1984.”

“What time of year?”

“Spring.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

“What do I have under this handkerchief?”

Havelmann looked at the handkerchief on the desk as if noticing it for the first time. His shoulders tightened and he looked suspiciously at her.

“How should I know?”

He was back again that afternoon, just as rumpled, just as innocent. How could a person get old and remain innocent? She could not remember things ever being that easy. “Sit down,” she said.

“Thanks. What can I do for you, Doctor?”

“I want to follow up on the argument we had this morning.”

Havelmann smiled. “Argument? This morning?”

“Don’t you remember talking to me this morning?”

“I never saw you before.”

Evans watched him coldly. Havelmann shifted in his chair.

“How do you know I’m a doctor?”

“Aren’t you a doctor? They told me I should go in to see Dr Evans in room 10.”

“I see. If you weren’t here this morning, where were you?”

Havelmann hesitated. “Let’s see – I was at work. I remember telling Helen – my wife – that I’d try to get home early. She’s always complaining because I stay late. The company’s pretty busy right now: big contract in the works. Susan’s in the school play, and we have to be there by eight. And I want to get home in time to do some yard work. It looked like a good day for it.”

Evans made a note. “What season is it?”

Havelmann fidgeted like a child, looked at the window, where the blinds were still closed.

“Spring,” he said. “Sunny, warm – very nice weather. The redbuds are just starting to come out.”

Without a word Evans got out of her chair and opened the blinds, revealing a barren field swept with drifts of snow. Dead grass whipped in the strong wind, and clouds rolled in the sky.

“What about this?”

Havelmann stared. His back straightened. He tugged at his earlobe.

“Isn’t that a bitch. If you don’t like the weather here – wait ten minutes.”

“What about the redbuds?”

“This weather will probably kill them. I hope Helen made the kids wear their jackets.”

Evans looked out the window. Nothing had changed. She drew the blinds and sat down again.

“What year is it?”

Havelmann adjusted himself in his chair, calm again. “What do you mean? It’s 1984.”

“Did you ever read that book?”

“Slow down a minute. What book?”

Evans wondered what he would do if she got up and ground her thumbs into his eyes. “The book by George Orwell titled
Nineteen Eighty-Four
.” She forced herself to speak slowly. “Are you familiar with it?”

“Sure. We had to read it in college.” Was there a trace of irritation beneath Havelmann’s innocence? Evans sat as still as she could.

“I remember it made quite an impression on me,” Havelmann continued.

“What kind of impression?”

“I expected something different from the professor. He was a confessed liberal. I expected some kind of bleeding-heart book. It wasn’t like that at all.”

“Did it make you uncomfortable?”

“No. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already. It just showed what was wrong with collectivism. You know – communism represses the individual, destroys initiative. It claims it has the interests of the majority at heart. And it denies all human values. That’s what I got out of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, though to hear that professor talk about it, it was all about Nixon and Vietnam.”

Evans kept still. Havelmann went on.

“I’ve seen the same mentality at work in business. The large corporations, they’re just like the government. Big, slow. You could show them a way to save a billion, and they’d squash you like a bug because it’s too much trouble to change.”

“You sound like you’ve got some resentments,” said Evans.

The old man smiled. “I do, don’t I. I admit it. I’ve thought lot about it. But I have faith in people. Someday I may just run for state assembly and see whether I can do some good.”