Year's Best SF 10, page 27
One hour had ticked by, then two. Miles had grown weary of watching the shadow space, and still Lucinda had not reappeared. “Well, Singh,” he said at last. “What’s our next best option? It does not seem that my wife has had the sense to step straight back into the CTC, does it?”
“Truly, I cannot tell,” Singh replied. “We simply do not know enough about how it works. Your lady wife may have tried to return but been transported to another point in time.”
“Or to this time in a parallel universe,” Miles added glumly. “One in which she does not return, at least not at this moment.”
“Correct,” said Singh. “That’s the rub. There must be an infinite number of possible temporal destinations inside the CTC. The whole thing is quite indeterminate.” He shrugged. “If you had gone together,” he added, “then both of you could have come back together, but still to another variant. You can’t go home again, as they say, but only to something like it, but maybe to something so close that you might not even notice it isn’t quite the same. Only mostly, maybe.”
“True,” said Miles. “But we didn’t go together. And I honestly don’t know what to do for the best.” He sighed heavily. “I’m willing to go after her, but it would help if we could figure out where that is. Or when it is.”
“Of course you are willing, Professor Smythe. And I, too, am willing to help in her rescue.”
The conversation faltered into silence as both men considered their willingness.
“I have been racking my brains for a solution,” Singh said at last. “But we must proceed safely. There is little point in complicating the situation by having both of you lost.”
“I know.”
“It seems to me,” Singh said carefully, “that we should perhaps consult with the other researchers to ascertain if their findings will be of any help to us.”
“But the researchers are not here today,” said Miles.
“Alas, no,” Singh replied. “Finding them will take a little time. Do you have a better idea?”
“No, but I’m concerned about my wife.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine, wherever she is,” Singh said. “She is a formidable lady.”
“True.” Miles managed a little smile. “Lucinda can take care of herself. I don’t doubt that she’ll be safe, at least for a while. Someone is probably making her a cup of tea.”
“Then shall we go in search of my colleagues?” Singh said.
“What if she returns while we’re away? She’ll be very angry when she gets back, especially if I’m not here to meet her.”
“I’ll instruct Ahmed to keep watch,” said Singh. “He will certainly agree. After all, it’s the least he can do. He will telephone me immediately if your lady wife returns.”
Miles hesitated.
His watery blue eyes met Singh’s brown ones for an instant.
Miles looked quickly away. “I guess that would be okay then,” he said slowly.
Singh nodded. “You have my complete sympathy, Professor Smythe.”
“As long as someone is here for her.”
“I understand entirely,” Singh murmured.
“Do you know where we might find your colleagues today?” Miles asked.
“There is a hotel in a nearby village where they are often to be found,” Singh replied. “The beer there is excellent.”
“That would be most welcome,” Miles said with relief. “I’m parched.”
“Then it is settled,” said Singh. And he, too, sounded relieved. “I’ll just go and get the boy. Do you want to write a message for your lady wife, just in case?”
“I’ll leave her a note.”
The next thing Lucinda knew was that Abdul was shaking her by the shoulder. “Wake up,” he said. “You have been summoned.”
“What?”
“No time for arguments.”
Lucinda realized, belatedly, that the two slave girls were standing behind him.
“Get her dressed,” he said curtly.
The girls wasted no time. Lucinda was washed, brushed, and quickly arrayed in a flowing outfit of pure white. The choli was white silk, the white sari was patterned with silver stars, and the palloo shoulder drape was exquisitely embroidered in silver thread. A long white veil covered her head and shoulders, and the veil was held in place by a crown of silver. And this time there were silver sandals for her feet.
“Good,” said Abdul.
Lucinda forgot her position for a moment. “What’s all this about?” she asked.
“You are to be Queen for a day,” he answered, smirking. “Enjoy it.”
A small bell rang.
“Your escort has arrived,” said Abdul. “Come along.”
Lucinda had no chance to protest as Abdul hustled her from her apartment and through a maze of corridors.
The Captain of the Guard was waiting in the entry hall.
“All yours,” Ali said, pushing Lucinda forward. “Watch her. She’s not to be trusted.”
“I have my orders,” the man replied, taking Lucinda by the arm. “As you see, I have come myself to collect her.” He nodded curtly to the eunuch.
Once outside, the captain marched Lucinda through the city streets. There were people everywhere, and a feeling of carnival was in the air. Street vendors were out and about, selling sticky sweet drinks and cooking flat bread over little charcoal fires.
“What’s going on?” Lucinda asked. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see,” he replied curtly.
The Hall of Public Audiences soon came into view, but the Captain took Lucinda through a small, dark back entrance and into what looked like a holding pen where dozens of people dressed strangely in either black or white stood about dejectedly. There were guards everywhere. The place smelled of urine, and fear.
“Last one,” the Captain said to his men. “Take her. And let’s get this lot moving. The Emperor won’t thank us for keeping him waiting.”
The guards responded immediately, rounding up the people into two lines—one black, the other white.
When the group was assembled to the captain’s liking, he nodded to the guards, who opened a pair of heavy brass-studded doors and herded their charges outside into brilliant sunlight.
Lucinda, entering in the midst of the white line, looked around in amazement. The scene was spectacular. The courtiers of Fatehpur Sikri were seated in shaded cloisters that surrounded the courtyard that was the Emperor’s chessboard. Tall, well-muscled slaves fanned their masters with huge peacock fans set in silver, and musicians played softly in high galleries. Slaves carrying trays laden with raisins, almonds and sliced lemons threaded their way through the crowd. Other servants offered pastries and sweets, and drink servers constantly refilled the nobles’ goblets from huge silver pitchers. The atmosphere was charged with excitement. Today, the game would be played in earnest.
The emperor’s private enclosure stood on one side of the courtyard. A richly gilded throne had been set for him under a canopy of gold-fringed black silk. Opposite, an elaborately carved chair had been set for his opponent, the English envoy, under a canopy of white, also fringed with gold. Behind these enclosures, the banners of Emperor Akbar and of Queen Elizabeth drooped in the heat, fluttering only when the wielders of the peacock fans came close.
A hush fell upon the crowd as the Captain of the Guard arrayed his charges in their places on the board. Lucinda looked about her, beginning to understand. The people were to be players, and all had been costumed to suit their stations—the pawns wore only loincloths and carried short stabbing swords, but the major pieces had more elaborate garments and weapons. Lucinda could see that the knights wore plumes and carried spears, and the men she thought of as the bishops wore elaborately ornamented sashes and wielded curved scimitars. The black queen was dressed exactly as Lucinda herself, robed and crowned. Two courtiers, dressed to kill, played the kings.
When all was in readiness an official stood to give the signal. The music changed, and all of Akbar’s court rose to its feet to welcome their Emperor and his worthy opponent. Each man took his proper seat, and the formalities began.
Lucinda tuned out as the usual speeches of welcome and reply were made and applauded. She felt hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, standing here in the summer heat, but she dared not move. Finally, a ripple of excitement in the crowd caught her attention. An official was ending his recitation of the rules for today’s match: “And lastly,” he said, “our merciful Emperor has decreed that the surviving players will be pardoned and set free.”
The crowd applauded.
Lucinda was still trying to make sense of it when the game began.
The envoy stood to direct his first move.
The Emperor, as the astrologer had predicted, was playing the black.
The first pawn was slain, stabbed through the heart by his opponent. Two attendants quickly removed the corpse from the board.
Lucinda put her hand to her mouth, realizing, at last, the nature of this game.
The first deaths were swift and predictable as the players sacrificed pawns and set up game plans. The hot air smelled of blood and feces, and the courtyard was already becoming slippery. Lucinda felt queasy, but she struggled to pay attention, even though attendants were there to guide her through the moves the Englishman directed.
Emperor and envoy both played with talent and confidence, and as the afternoon wore on the kills became less frequent, if not less strategic. But Lucinda slowly became aware that the envoy was losing the match. And as she watched the Emperor’s knight spear the sole surviving white castle, she realized, with sudden horror, that the Englishman was playing to lose. In fact, that diplomacy demanded he should lose.
At that moment, Lucinda, the white queen, looked up obliquely. She saw the mirror of her death in the slanting path that had suddenly opened between herself and the Emperor’s implacable black bishop. The man raised a bloodied scimitar in mock salute.
The endgame was upon her. Lucinda forgot her dignity, forgot revenge, and prayed that the envoy would concede.
Act of God
JACK Mc DEVITT
Jack McDevitt [www.sfwa.org/members/McDevitt] lives in Brunswick, Georgia, but is originally from Philadelphia. He is probably best known for his sequence of Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins novels (The Engines of God [1994], Deepsix [2001], Chindi [2002], and Omega [2003]), and he has had a book on the final Nebula awards ballot for seven of the last eight years.
“Act of God” is another story from the original anthology, Microcosms, edited by Gregory Benford, which is the best hard SF anthology of the past year. A biologist works with a physicist who creates and tinkers with a bubble universe, one small enough to fit in his lab, until intelligent life evolves. Then he gives them the ten commandments with benign intent, plus an eleventh one. Greg Egan and Stanislaw Lem have both written stories where scientists set independent universes into being, becoming, in effect, creator-deities, and the theme of a creator’s responsibility for that creation becomes complex very quickly. McDevitt’s take here is briefer and yet still complex and incisive.
I’m sorry about showing up on such short notice, Phil. I’d planned to go straight to the hotel when the flight got in. But I needed to talk to somebody.
Thanks, yes, I will take one. Straight, if you don’t mind.
You already know Abe’s dead. And no, it wasn’t the quake. Not really. Look, I know how this sounds, but if you want the truth, I think God killed him.
Do I look hysterical? Well, maybe a little bit. But I’ve been through a lot. And I know I didn’t say anything about it earlier but that’s because I signed a secrecy agreement. Don’t tell anybody. That’s what it said, and I’ve worked out there for two years and until this moment never mentioned to a soul what we were doing.
And yes, I really think God took him off. I know exactly how that sounds, but nothing else explains the facts. The thing that scares me is that I’m not sure it’s over. I might be on the hit list too. I mean, I never thought of it as being sacrilegious. I’ve never been that religious to start with. Didn’t used to be. I am now.
Did you ever meet Abe? No? I thought I’d introduced you at a party a few years ago. Well, it doesn’t matter.
Yes, I know you must have been worried when you heard about the quake, and I’m sorry, I should have called. I was just too badly shaken. It happened during the night. He lived there, at the lab. Had a house in town, but he actually stayed most nights at the lab. Had a wing set up for himself on the eastern side. When it happened, it took the whole place down. Woke me up, woke everybody up, I guess. I was about two miles away. But it was just a bump in the night. I didn’t even realize it was an earthquake until the police called. Then I went right out to the lab. Phil, it was as if the hill had opened up and just swallowed everything. They found Abe’s body in the morning.
What was the sacrilege? It’s not funny, Phil. And I’ll try to explain it to you, but your physics isn’t very good so I’m not sure where to start.
You know the appointment to work with Abe was the opportunity of a lifetime. A guarantee for the future. My ship had come in.
But when I first got out there, it looked like a small operation. Not the sort of thing I’d expected to see. There were only three of us—me, Abe, and Mac Cardwell, an electrical engineer. Mac died in an airplane crash about a week before the quake. He had a pilot’s license, and he was flying alone. No one else was involved. Just him. FAA said it looked as if lightning had hit the plane.
All right, smile if you want to. But Cardwell built the system that made it all possible. And I know I’m getting ahead of things here, so let me see if I can explain it. Abe was a cosmologist. Special interest in the big bang. Special interest in how to generate a big bang.
I’d known that before I went out there. You know how it can be done, right? Actually make a big bang? No, I’m not kidding. Look, it’s not really that hard. Theoretically. All you have to do is pack a few kilograms of ordinary matter into a sufficiently small space, really small, considerably smaller than an atomic nucleus. Then, when you release the pressure that constrains it, the thing explodes.
No, I don’t mean a nuke. I mean a big bang. A real one. The thing expands into a new universe. Anyhow, what I’m trying to tell you is that he did it. More than that, he did it thirty years ago. And no, I know you didn’t hear an explosion. Phil, I’m serious.
Look, when it happens, the blast expands into a different set of dimensions, so it has no effect whatever on the people next door. But it can happen. It did happen.
And nobody knew about it. He kept it quiet.
I know you can’t pack much matter into a space the size of a nucleus. You don’t have to. The initial package is only a kind of cosmic seed. It contains the trigger and a set of instructions. Once it erupts, the process feeds off itself. It creates whatever it needs. The forces begin to operate, and the physical constants take hold. Time begins. Its time.
I’d wondered what he was doing in Crestview, Colorado, but he told me he went out there because it was remote, and that made it a reasonably safe place to work. People weren’t going to be popping in, asking questions. When I got there, he sat me down and invited me to sign the agreement, stipulating that I’d say nothing whatever, without his express permission, about the work at the lab. He’d known me pretty well, and I suddenly realized why I’d gotten the appointment over several hundred people who were better qualified. He could trust me to keep my mouth shut.
At first I thought the lab was involved in defense work of one kind or another. Like Northgate. But this place didn’t have the security guards and the triple fences and the dogs. He introduced me to Mac, who was a little guy with a beard that desperately needed a barber, and to Sylvia Michaels. Sylvia was a tall, stately woman, dark hair, dark eyes, a hell of a package, I’m sure, when she was younger. She was the project’s angel.
I should add that Sylvia’s also dead. Ran into a tree two days after the quake. Cops thought she was overcome with grief and wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. Single vehicle accident. Like Mac, she was alone.
Is that an angel like in show business? Yes. Exactly. Her family owned a group of Rocky Mountain resorts. She was enthusiastic about Abe’s ideas, so she financed the operation. She provided the cash, Mac designed the equipment, and Abe did the miracles. Well, maybe an unfortunate choice of words there.
Why didn’t he apply for government funding? Phil, the government doesn’t like stem cells, clones, and particle accelerators. You think they’re going to underwrite a big bang?
Yes, of course I’m serious. Do I look as if I’d kid around? About something like this?
Why didn’t I say something? Get it stopped? Phil, you’re not listening. It was a going concern long before I got there.
And yes, it’s a real universe. Just like this one. He kept it in the building. More or less. It’s hard to explain. It extended out through that separate set of dimensions I told you about. There are more than three. It doesn’t matter whether you can visualize them or not. They’re there. Listen, maybe I should go.
Well, okay. No, I’m not upset. I just need you to hear me out. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. Phil, we could see it. Mac had built a device that allowed us to observe and even, within limitations, to guide events. They called it the cylinder and you could look in and see star clouds and galaxies and jets of light. Everything spinning and drifting, supernovas blinking on and off like Christmas lights. Some of the galaxies with a glare like a furnace at their centers. It was incredible.
I know it’s hard to believe. Take my word for it. And I don’t know when he planned to announce it. Whenever I asked him, he always said when the time is ripe. He was afraid that, if anyone found out, he’d be shut down.
I’m sorry to hear you say that. There was never any danger to anybody. It was something you could do in your garage and the neighbors would never notice. Well, you could do it if you had Mac working alongside you.
