The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003 Read online

  I remembered the final scene from “Invaders from Mars,” where the little boy wakes up from his dream, and felt a cold hand on my heart. If I wake up now and it’s time for school, why don’t I just kill myself and get it over with?

  But the ship flew on into the black and starry sky, and I realized, after my moment of inattention, I could no longer find the Earth or Moon. Where am I going?

  And why?

  I awoke from a dreamless sleep, and opened my eyes slowly, lying on my side, cramped and cold, against the curved Ob Deck bulkhead, staring at the motionless gort by the door. Whispered, “Gort. Merenga.” Nothing.

  I always wake up like that, always knowing where I am, never confused. Maybe because there’s that little re-entry period, those few seconds between waking up and opening my eyes, when I remember where I was when I went to sleep, so I know where I’ll be when I awaken.

  I pushed myself to a sitting position, back to the wall, something in the back of my neck making a little gurgle as I stretched, like my spine was knuckles wanting to crack.

  Seemed more real, now that I’d been asleep, putting a bracket around the night before. I was here. Period. Unlike the hazy wonder of the dream where we flew past Jupiter, some time around midnight. It’d been a fat, slightly flattened orange ball, not at all the way I would’ve expected.

  Three hours, I remember thinking. That’s fast. What, fifty thousand miles a second? More? We went by something that looked like a ball of pink twine, and that’s when I discovered if I put my finger against the window glass and circled something, it’d get bigger, that another tap would make it small.

  I’d picked out five little crescents. Circled and tapped. Figured out the red potato must be Amalthea, the pink ball Europa. Maybe the scabby yellow one was Io? Those other two, two similar-looking gray cratered bodies, looking pretty much like the Moon, those would be Ganymede and Callisto, but I couldn’t figure out which was which.

  Murray would know. Murray out at night in the summertime, pointing at this star and that one, naming names, mythological and scientific, every kid in the neighborhood but me impressed as all hell. Once, I’d caught him in a mistake.

  And he’d said, “I don’t know if I want you for a friend anymore.”

  After that, I kept my mouth shut.

  The lights flickered and the woman’s soft voice said, “La grineao druai lek aporra ….” Trailing off, like she had something else to say, but couldn’t quite get it out.

  I stood, turned and looked out the window.

  It was like a featureless yellow ball, hazy maybe, circled by a striated yellow-white ring, grooved like a 45rpm record. Colored like those records I’d had as a child, like the one with “Willie the Whistling Giraffe.” I’d loved that song, and listened to it so much I could still sing all the words. I was startled to find out, years later, it was written by Rube Goldberg.

  Saturn was growing in the window, growing slowly and … I realized it should already be going past, shrinking away. “We’re slowing down.” I glanced at the robot, as if looking for confirmation.

  Nothing.

  When I looked back, a smoky red ball was in the window, starting to slide past. It stopped and stabilized when I circled it with a quick fingertip, movement transferring to the sky beyond. Saturn starting a slow slide across the fixed stars.

  “Titan.”

  Nothing.

  “God damn it, Titan!”

  Like I wanted something from myself then. But all I could do was remember, remember Captain Norden from The Sands of Mars reminiscing about the cold, howling winds of Titan, remember Tuck and Davey from Trouble on Titan and their homebuilt oxygen-jet, flying the methane skies.

  What would I remember about all this, years from now?

  I had a glimpse of the man I might have become, some fat guy in a crumpled suit, selling who-knows-what. All the men on Staggs Court. All the men in America in 1966.

  The woman’s voice said, “… kag at vrekanai seo ke egga.” The lights flickered again, like punctuation. I tapped Titan to release the image and pressed my nose to the glass.

  Ought to feel colder than this. Saturn’s pretty far from the sun.

  There. A spark of pale yellow light.

  It grew swiftly, filling the window without interference from me, gliding to a stop just outside. It was a cylinder of gray rock, things visible on its surface, structures, and I could see it was revolving slowly around its long axis.

  Revolving so there’d be artificial gravity inside, centrifugal force. It’ll be hollow, I thought. Maybe this was what Isaac Asimov had termed a “spome,” short for “space home,” in some F&SF column or another? No, that’s not right. Where the hell … Asimov’s article was in that book my dad brought home, Kammermeyer something … “There’s No Place Like Spome”? Dad had gone to a meeting of the American Chemical Society a year or two earlier, had come home snickering about the little fat man with what he’d term “a thick New York Yid accent.”

  I remembered him saying, “Asimov? Now I see him in a different light!” When I was little, we’d lived in a neighborhood full of Russian Jews, somewhere in Boston, Brookline maybe, and he’d done a good job of picking up the accents, and those special cadences. It’d become the basis for some family in-jokes.

  The thing rotated toward us, though it had to be my flying saucer flying around I guess, then a four-mandibled parrot’s beak opened, spilling bright yellow light, and we flew right in.

  Flew right in, swooped over green landscape, found a flat white field, concrete I figured, and slotted in to a landing, one of the few vacant spaces in a parking lot full of flying saucers just like mine.

  A flicker of lights.

  A womanly voice, full of warmth and welcome, “Todos passageiros sai ….” Then the saucer groaned and shivered as the boarding ramp slid down. It only took me a minute to realize that if I could find a land crab, I could follow it down to the hatch; maybe fifteen minutes after that, I was standing outside.

  There was a cool breeze blowing across the concrete apron, and it smelled sweet here, making my nose itch. Alien pollen? I’m allergic to a lot of stuff. I whispered, “What if I get sick?” My voice sounded funny, here in the silence. I shouted, “Hello-oh?”

  Not even an echo, my voice carried away to nowhere by the breeze. “Anybody ….” Of course not. I started forward, walking between two other saucers, stopped suddenly, feeling a cold knot in my guts, looking back toward my saucer, realizing how easy it would be to get lost here.

  Does it matter?

  How would I know if my saucer is ever going back to Earth?

  From where I stood, I could see beyond the last row of saucers. There was a tall chain link fence, topped by razor wire; beyond it, a dark green forest.

  Nothing moving.

  No dinosaurs, big or little, in the woods, no pteranodons in the sky.

  Sky? Well, not exactly.

  Overhead, the main thing was a long yellow stick of bright light. In a story, that’d be a fusion tube or something, an “inner sun” for this long, skinny ersatz Pellucidar. Beyond, to the left and right, were two green bands, the same color as the forest. Between them were three more bands of black.

  In one of them, you could see Saturn, its brightly backlit rings looking like ears, or maybe jug handles. And that bright star? That’d be the sun I guess. Glass? So how come I didn’t notice any windows from the outside? How come it just looked like rock?

  My memory started picking through stories, right then and there.

  Something moved in the distance. I looked, and felt cold when I saw what it was. One of those brontosaurus-things, full size I think, but with a too-skinny head, snaky neck dipping so it could browse among the treetops. Glad for the razor wire. Cold but elated. As if …. As if!

  The was a deep bass thrumming noise, almost like a long, low burp. The bronto looked up. The inner sun suddenly brightened, filling the landscape with a violet dazzle.

  I blinked hard, eyes watering, l
ooked up again and realized that Saturn was gone, that I felt something else in my guts, a pulling and twisting. Dizzy. I’m dizzy. Like the ship is maneuvering violently, and I just can’t see it because there’s nothing to see.

  Then there was a great big ripping sound.

  A white zigzag crack appeared in the windows, going from one to the other, as if it were a rip in the sky itself, though my mind served up an image of what it would be like as the glass blew out and the air roared away to space, carrying off forest and trees, brontos, flying saucers, Wally and all.

  The crack opened like white lips, revealing a blue velvet throat beyond, into which, somehow, the ship seemed to plunge, then the fusion tube dimmed, back to yellow again, back to being a soft inner sun, all the odd twisting and pulling stopped, and there was only the soft breeze.

  In a story, I thought, we’d be going faster than light now.

  And then I said, “Damn! This is the coolest thing that ever happened to anyone! Murray would be so fucking jealous!”

  Yeah, right. I could almost see his bemused, angry smirk, fading into the blue velvet hypersky as he turned away, forgetting about me, about Venus, about all the things we’d done together, all the dreams we’d had.

  On Earth, in only a little while, people would stop wondering what’d become of me, and go on with their lives.

  Some days later, I couldn’t tell you how many days, already a good bit skinnier than I was the night I’d decided to cut through Dorvo Valley on my way home from Drug Fair, I sat beside a little deadwood campfire on the concrete apron beside my trusty flying saucer, roasting up a few fresh breadfruit for supper.

  Mangosteen! That, I’d remembered, was from a kiddie book I’d found in my grandfather’s attic, when we went up for the funeral, four, five years before, The Hurricane Kids in the Lost Islands. I’d been looking for the sequel ever since, where Lebeck and DuBois send their boys off to the Land of the Cave Dwellers.

  Breadfruit? Probably not. Probably no breadfruit back in the Jurassic.

  Sudden image of myself finding the little gate, sneaking out into the edge of the Big Woods, finding all sorts of stuff. Nuts mainly, and these things. Ferns. A tree I recognized had to be a gingko. Little lizards, maybe skinks, anoles, some kind of snake.

  I fished one of the breadfruits out of the fire with a stick, held it down and cut it open with another stick I’d managed to break off at an angle and sharpen by rubbing on the pavement. It had mealy yellow-white flesh inside, like badly overcooked baked potato, steamy now, odorless, smelling just the way it would taste when it cooled enough to eat.

  This is the last of them. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out again and … I felt a little sick. Last time, blundering around in the woods, picking nuts and berries and what-not, there’d been that soft rumble, I’d looked up, and suddenly wet my pants.

  The allosaurus didn’t even notice, didn’t look up as I’d crept away, back through the gate, closing it carefully behind me. I’d cooked and eaten, silent with myself, sitting bareass while my underpants and jeans dried by the fire, draped over my constant companion.

  I looked at it now, little humanoid robot, two feet tall, looking just like a toy from Sears I’d had when I was eight or nine, electric igniter in one hand, fire extinguisher in the other. It’d come toddling up just as I’d burst into tears beside my pitiful pile of dry sticks, just as I’d screamed, “Fuck it!” and thrown my pathetic attempt at a fire drill as hard as I could at the nearest flying saucer hull.

  I said, “What d’you think, Bud? Why’s this starship got a Jurassic biome inside?”

  Silence.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  I picked up the now merely hot breadfruit and scooped out some tasteless muck with my upper front teeth. “Mmmmm …” blech. Even butter, pepper, and sour cream wouldn’t’ve helped. Not much, anyway.

  “What d’you think, Buddy? Thanksgiving yet?” Probably not. It hasn’t even been a week. But I pictured my little sisters, Millie and Bonnie, sitting down to turkey dinner with Mom. Bonnie probably misses me. Millie was probably glad just to get my share.

  Christmas. I wondered what Dad would get me? I’d asked for a copy of Russian in a Nutshell. Two years. Then what? No college for me. Bad grades and no money.

  Vietnam?

  Maybe. Some of my friends’ older brothers had gone. At least one boy who’d picked on me when I was little was dead now. I remembered reading an article in the Post a while back, about how so many good American boys were being corrupted by little brown Asian prostitutes, which made me think about Glory Road.

  Murray and I had talked about that the next day, and he’d given me a funny look, kind of a sneer, before changing the subject. Remember when we debated Vietnam in eighth-grade Social Studies class? I’d said I wasn’t worried. It’ll be all over, long before I turn draft age, toward the end of 1969. Yep. All over.

  And, just like that, there was a deep bass thrum, like a gong gone wrong. When I looked up, the blue velvet sky was broken by a long white crack, white lips opening, spitting us out into a sky full of stars.

  I got up, throwing the half-eaten breadfruit aside, running for the flying saucer’s ramp. Behind me, I could hear the sharp, fizzy hiss of my little buddy’s fire extinguisher, as it sprayed away the flames.

  Down on the yellow-gray world, I crouched in the shade of the flying saucer’s hull, looking out toward the horizon, across a flattish landscape floodlit from above under a pale, blue-white sky. I’d run off the bottom of the ramp when we landed, had run right out there, bounding high, realizing the surface gravity of this place was maybe no more than half that of Earth.

  But then the light from the vivid spark of a tiny blue sun had turned to pins and needles in my November-white skin, forcing me back into the shade. My face, when I touched it, was already starting to peel.

  Jesus. Stupid.

  And what if? What if a lot of things. What if the air here had been deadly poison? What if there’s some disease here a human being could catch? What if I’m already dead and merely waiting to fall down?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. The guy in the story never dies. Except the one in that Faulkner story the teacher made fun of, when we studied it in tenth grade English Lit class. What’re we supposed to imagine? she’d said. He’s carrying paper and pen, taking notes as he jumps in the river and drowns?

  From space, the planet had looked like a yellow-gray ball, almost featureless. Oh, there was a tiny white ice cap at the visible pole. A few pale clouds near what looked like some isolated mountain peaks. A canyon here, a dune-field there. Mars without the rust?

  Arrakis, I thought. I’d enjoyed the five-part serial in Analog, though I was mighty pissed off about the stupid format changes Campbell was playing with, going from digest to some standard magazine size, then back again, fucking up my collection. I remember I wondered if the Dune world had started out as Mars, if maybe Herbert realized at some point that the solar system was too small for the story.

  I thought about my bedroom. My bed. The little desk. Bookcases full of children’s hardcovers, the stuff from Grandpa’s attic, the paperbacks and magazines I was buying down at Drug Fair, Amazing and Fantastic, Worlds of If ….

  Out in the sun, the land crabs had buckets and little self-propelled wheelbarrow things, were shoveling up patches of mauve sand. Melange? Whatever it was, it went no more than a few centimeters deep. I sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything like cinnamon. Whatever this place was, it mainly smelled like fireworks. Gunpowder. It smells like gunpowder.

  From the Ob Deck, I’d been able to see something that looked like a city, way off on the horizon, low white buildings, dazzling in the sun. A circle of my fingertip had brought them close. Adobe? No sign of movement, some of the buildings looking weathered and worn, the ruins of Koraad perhaps.

  Miles off, anyway. I could wait ’til nightfall, and it’d take maybe three or four hours to get there, tops. Yeah? And what if the starship leaves without you? What then? I thought about Gal
actic Derelict suddenly. No. I never wanted to be one of Andre Norton’s dickless boys. Let’s have a Heinlein adventure, at least.

  Or maybe I can grow up to be John Grimes after all? Is there a beautiful spy somewhere waiting for me? Jesus. Grow up. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to last another week!

  What if this was a Larry Niven story? What if we land on a planet that has a habitable point? I pictured myself running down the ramp, out onto the sand. Then the deadly winds of We Made It would come up and there I’d be, on my way to fucking Oz.

  After a bit, I turned and went on up the ramp. Look out the window. Watch the baby dinosaurs or something. One thing you know: The saucer will leave, the starship will fly, and, sooner or later, we’ll be somewhere else. And, another thing: Who owns all this shit? The robots? Not bloody likely, cobber. Maybe this thing is like some super-sophisticated Mariner probe. And, sooner or later, it’ll take its samples on home.

  What happens when they find me in the collection bag?

  Watching the land crabs gather up Spice, I suddenly wished for … something. Anything. Wished I’d see a sandworm in the distance. Wished for Paul Atreides to come riding up? No. Chani, maybe?

  I’m guessing it was maybe three weeks before we made the next landfall—no, planetfall’s the right word—three weeks in which I got really sick of plain breadfruit. Somewhere along the way, I got up the nerve to cook and eat a few little lizards, which turned out to be mainly bones, and salty as kippered herring snacks, finally moving on to a two-foot brown snake I’d caught.

  Didn’t taste like chicken, more like fish I guess, but the oily juice that cooked out of it made the breadfruit taste okay.

  The next planet was … what’d we used to say in junior high? Cool as a moose. I crept down the ramp, uselessly cautious, and stood there with my mouth hanging open. What can I say? Earthlike but alien?

  The spaceport, if that’s what it was, was just a plain, concrete apron, not much bigger than the helicopter pad next to the Pentagon, sitting next to what looked like a walled city. Not a medieval city, not an ancient Roman city. The walls were plain and unadorned, no crenellations, no battlements, no towers. White concrete walls, pierced by a few open gates on the side I could see. Egyptian Memphis, I remembered, had been called something like Ineb-Hed by the natives. White Walls.