Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 5

Her face fell. I almost felt bad. I hadn't realized the way the word prom would hit her. Stimulus response. For one microsecond I was a normal daughter, wanting the normal world of dresses and boys and family, not a changeling who wanted to go to film school and raise tattoos.

They really did get my blood tested once. They were that convinced I'd been switched in the nursery.

"So can I go?"

She sighed. "Go. Do what you want. Remember, there are only seventy-two Family Shaming Days before you go away to college."

"Thanks, Mom. When you make a joke like that, I almost believe we're related."

She flinched, started back to the kitchen, then turned.

"You know what I hope?" she said. "I hope you show up at the prom-your future self, I mean-and I hope you tell yourself what a mess you're going to make of your life. I hope to G.o.d you straighten out."

And then I shuddered. Because I thought of all those old farts at their twenty-fifth reunion, coming back en ma.s.se to look at the glory days of the prom-anyone who wasn't dead or broke or a total reject-and I didn't want it. I didn't want to be one of the jerks smiling and waving and holding snapshots of big families and big cars and big houses.

"I wouldn't do that," I muttered. "I wouldn't do anything so-so ordinary."

On the other hand, if I did feel like I had to revisit my prom, maybe I'd be cool enough to do it dressed entirely in vinyl Partridge Family souvenirs.

No corsage, but he brought me a red carnation that went with my color scheme.

We started out at the Chess Club alternate prom party. Eight people, seven computers, a lot of Doritos, and two bottles of Annie Green Springs.

"G.o.d, you both look great," said Net Girl. "I love the tux. You two could be Fred and Ginger."

"Yeah, the Transylvanian dance team," said Jean-Luc. "Make it so." Poor guy had three strikes against him: he was brilliant, he was going bald at seventeen, and he liked to write philosophical essays in Klingon. But there was something in his eyes I wasn't accustomed to...

Great. I was now the s.e.x G.o.ddess of the pathetic loser crowd.

"We'll be back after the dance," said Gar. "a.s.suming we're not hospitalized or murdered or anything."

Then we gritted our collective dent.i.tion and drove to the school gym. "I couldn't believe it when I heard you were coming," said Mrs. Trout, my homeroom teacher.

She hated my guts. It was mutual. "I should have known you'd pull something likethis."

"It's my best dress, ma'am," I said.

We didn't dance. I don't know how, and Gar looked dangerous to my podiatric integrity. So we stood by the wall, occasionally shouted something sarcastic at each other over the din, and were bored to tears.

Until the dumdums started to appear. You can get a lot of mileage watching eighteen-year-olds confront their forty-three-year-old selves. Like they never realized they'd get that old. And the dumdums thinking they still looked buff or cool, not realizing they were just ancient: Embarra.s.sing.

Most of them were holding little signs or pictures of all the detritus they'd acc.u.mulated. The pictures of families, mansions, and what we could only a.s.sume were expensive cars.

I made a gagging sound. I couldn't imagine anything worse than knowing where you were going to live, how many kids you'd have. It would be like trying to read an Agatha Christie when you've already snuck a look at the last chapter.

Gar kept looking around. I guess he thought he'd show up with his n.o.bel around his neck. Maybe a physics groupie on each arm. It could happen. Sooner or later he'd have to grow into his face.

The cla.s.s president stood at the mike and tapped it until everyone quieted down.

He'd just seen his own red-nosed future self holding pictures of a car dealership and what was either a second wife or a very inappropriately clad daughter. He was primed.

The pitiful country band quieted down. Fine with me. You ever heard redneck rap?

"Now it's time to announce the Prom King and Queen..."

And he named us.

"Oh h.e.l.l," I said. I didn't like the sound of this.

We found ourselves being pushed up to the stage. The president and my homeroom teacher pulled us up. "Your future self hasn't appeared yet, has she?"

she sneered. Obviously meaning: because you couldn't afford it, or you died of a drug overdose in a gutter, or you're embarra.s.sed by your lack of success.

"h.e.l.l no," I said. "Think I'd want to relive this boring and now humiliating piece of s.h.i.t night?"

"Detention until the end of school for swearing, dear," she hissed.

The cla.s.s president stuck crowns on our heads, ducked back quickly, and then the pies started to fly. But I'd been alerted, and dove behind Miss Trout, pushing her into the line of fire. Detention, h.e.l.l-now it would be suspension.

Poor Gar wiped banana cream from his gla.s.ses-the idiots didn't know you were supposed to use shaving cream- and staggered to the microphone."You are all... infantile," he said. His voice was cracking, but it got stronger as he went. I stepped forward to put a hand on his shoulder. I felt kind of bad I hadn't had time to warn him.

"You're all unoriginal, boring, hopelessly conventional bourgeoisie."

"Yeah!" a Neanderthal shouted, and the football team whooped. They weren't sure what it meant, but if the four-eyed technonerd was against it, they were for it.

"And it's really all just jealousy. Because I'm leaving this hick town and you'll all stay, just live and die here and no one will ever remember you. But I'm going to be important..."

"America's Most Wanted Dork!"

"Good one," I shouted. "Who writes your jokes, Flipper?"

"I'm going to contribute to human knowledge, and you'll just contribute to... to your own IRAs."

Gar never thought well on the fly. I should have antic.i.p.ated the need for a retribution speech.

"And you'll only be remembered as the a.s.sholes who made fun of me, like the ones who laughed at Darwin and suppressed Galileo..."

And that's when it got weirder, as everyone realized that attendance in the room had doubled. There were future people everywhere, looking around, recording, remembering. And all the dumdums were focused on Gar, except when they were sneering at the other prom-goers.

It was too funny. I couldn't stop laughing. They'd been trying to make fun of us and now they would be famous as the Village of Short-sighted Idiots. Spending the rest of their lives as the laughingstocks of history, trying to live it down. And in the process, no doubt, becoming eyen more militantly shortsighted and closeminded.

I loved it. Even as I pitied the next generation in this c.r.a.ppy town.

And yeah, I even caught sight of Grownup Gar the Tenured Professor. He did grow into his face, and there are n.o.bel Groupies.

I stumbled away out of the crowd. My own cozy footnote in history a.s.sured, maybe, as Gar's vampira prom date. But he didn't need me now. He was basking in the attention of the future's intelligentsia, and the air that was thick with / Told You So.

I walked out into the parking lot, breathing in the relatively fresh air, and leaned against the wall. I'd probably have to b.u.m a ride to the Chess Club party, or walk. I had a feeling Gar was about to go home and pound out a theory of time. Excuse me, Time.

Something crackled out of the corner of my eye, and I found myself looking into my own eyes. Crow's feet, middle-aged spread, and it seemed I was apparently doomed to another quarter century of bad hair days and no fashion sense.But I still had my patented sardonic grin, as my future self flashed up something white.

"Not pictures," I moaned.

No. It was an index card. My handwriting didn't seem to have improved either.

I'd scrawled, "IT HASN'T BEEN DULL."

I shrugged at me and disappeared.

It hasn't been dull.

Cool. I can live with that.

Chapter 6 - Guest Law by John C. Wright.

John C. Wright is a new writer with a future, judging by this story. He trained in law, but dropped out of the workforce to write, and has sold a few stories only to Asimov's, while working on novels not yet published. This story struck me as strong, individual, and unusual right away. It has some of the submerged just anger of Cordwainer Smith, and some of his poetics. It also has some of the feel of Donald M. Kingsbury's fiction, just a bit wonderfully inhuman in its future. It has a bit of the feel of cybers.p.a.ce. But primarily it has the feel of traditional SF, of great issues raised by t.i.tanic beings in the distant future, against a backdrop of uncountable stars. All in all it is the work of a strong new talent.

The night of deep s.p.a.ce is endless and empty and dark.

There is nothing behind which to hide. But ships can be silent, if they are slow.

The n.o.ble ship Procrustes was silent as a ghost. She was black-hulled, and ran without beacons or lights. She was made of anti-radar alloys and smooth ceramics, shark-finned with panels meant to diffuse waste-heat slowly, and tiger-striped with electronic webs meant to guide certain frequencies around the hull without rebounding.

If she ever were seen, a glance would show that she was meant to be slow. Her drive was fitted with baffle upon baffle, cooling the exhaust before it was expelled, a dark drive, non-radioactive, silent as sprayed mist. Low energy in the drive implied low thrust. Further, she had no centrifuge section, nor did she spin. This meant that her crew were lightweights, their blood and bones degenerated or adapted to microgravity, not the sort who could tolerate high boosts.

This did not mean Procrustes was not a n.o.ble ship. Warships can be slow; only their missiles need speed.

And so it was silently, slowly, that Procrustes approached the stranger's cold vessel."We are gathered, my gentlemen, to debate whether this new ship here viewed is n.o.ble, or whether she is unarmed; and, if so, whether and how the guest law applies.

It pleases us to hear you employ the second level of speech; for this is a semi-informal occasion, and briefer honorifics we permit."

The captain, as beautiful and terrifying as something from a children's Earth-story, floated nude before the viewing well. The bridge was a cylinder of gloom, with only control-lights winking like constellations, the viewing well shining like a full moon.

The captain made a gesture with her fan toward Smith and spoke: "Engineer, you do filth-work..." (by whkh she meant manual labor) "... which makes you familiar with machines." (She used the term "familiar" because it simply was not done to say a lowlife had "knowledge" or "expertise.") "It would amuse us to hear your conclusions touching and concerning the stranger's ship."

Smith was never allowed high and fore to the bridge, except when he was compelled to go, as he was now. His hands had been turned off at the wrists, since lowlifes should not touch controls.

Smith was in terror of the captain, but loved her too, since she was the only highlife who called smiths by their old t.i.tle. The captain was always polite, even to tinkers or drifters or bondsman.

She had not even seemed to notice when Smith had hooked one elbow around one of the many guy-wires that webbed the dark long cylinder of the bridge. Some of the officers and knights who floated near the captain had turned away or snorted with disgust when he had clasped that rope. It was a foot-rope, meant for toes, not a hand rope. But Smith's toes were not well formed, not coordinated. He had not been born a lightweight.

Smith was as drab as a hairless monkey next to the captain's vavasors and carls, splendid in their head-to-toe tattoos which displayed heraldries and victory-emblems.

These n.o.bles all kept their heads pointed along the captain's axis (an old saying ran: "the captain's head is always up!"), whereas Smith was offset 90 degrees clockwise, legs straight, presenting a broad target. (This he did for the same reason a man under acceleration would bow or kneel; a posture where one could not move well to defend oneself showed submission.) Smith could see the stranger's ship in the viewing well. She was a slim and handsome craft, built along cla.s.sical lines, an old, a very old design, of such craftsmanship as was rarely seen today. She was st.u.r.dy: built for high accelerations, and proudly bearing long thin structures forward of antennae of a type that indicated fearlessly loud and long-range radar. The engine block was far aft on a very long and graceful insulation shaft. The craft had evidently been made in days when the safety of the engine serfs still was a concern.

Her lines were sleek. (Not, Smith thought secretly, like Procrustes, whose low speed and lack of spin allowed her to grow many modules, ugly extrusions, and asymmetric protuberances.)But the stranger's ship was old. Rust, and ice from frozen oxygen, stained the hull where seals had failed.

Yet she still emitted, on radio, the cheerful welcome-code. Merry green-and-red running lights were still lit. Microwave detectors showed radiations from the aft section of her hull, which might still be *inhabited, even though the fore sections were cold and silent. Numbers and pictoglyphs flickered on a small screen to one side of the main image, showing telemetry and specific readings.

Smith studied the cylinder's radius and rate of spin. He calculated, and then he said, "Glorious Captain, the lowest deck of the stranger ship has centrifugal acceleration of exactly 32 feet per second per second."

The officers looked eye to eye, hissing with surprise.

The chancellor nodded the gaudy plume that grew from his hair and eyebrows.

"This number has ancient significance! Some of the older orders of eremites still use it. They claim that it provides the best weight for our bones. Perhaps this is a religious ship."

One of the younger knights, a thin, dapple-bellied piebald wearing silk speed-wings running from his wrists to ankles, now spoke up: "Great Captain, perhaps she is an Earth ship, inhabited by machine intelligences... or ghosts!"

The other n.o.bles opened their fans, and held them in front of their faces. If no derisive smiles were seen, then there was no legal cause for duel. The young knight might be illiterate, true, most young knights were, but the long kick-talons he wore on his calves had famous names.

The captain said, "We are more concerned for the stranger's n.o.bility, than her...

ah... origin." There were a few smirks at that. A ship from Earth, indeed! All the old horror-tales made it clear that nothing properly called human was left on Earth, except, perhaps, as pets or specimens of the machines. The Earthmind had never had much interest in s.p.a.ce.

The chancellor said, "Those racks forward..." (he pointed at what were obviously antennae) "... may house weaponry, great Captain, or particle beam weapons, if the stranger has force enough in her drive core to sustain a weapon-grade power flow."

The captain looked toward Smith, "Concerning this ship's energy architecture, Engineer, have you any feelings or intuitions?" She would not ask him for "deductions" or "conclusions," of course.

Smith felt grateful that she had not asked him directly to answer the question; he was not obligated to contradict the chancellor's idiotic a.s.sertions. Particle beam indeed! The man had been pointing at a radio dish.

Very polite, the captain, very proper. Politeness was critically important aboard a crowded ship.

The captain was an hermaphrodite. An ancient law forbade captains to marry (or to take lowlife concubines) from crew aboard. The Captain's Wife must be fromoff-ship, either as gift or conquest or to cement a friendly alliance.

But neither was it proper for the highest of the highlife to go without s.e.xual pleasure, so the captain's body was modified to allow her to pleasure herself.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were beautiful-larger, by law, than any woman's aboard-and her skin was adjusted to a royal purple melanin, opaque to certain dangerous radiations.

Parallel rows of her skin cells, down her belly and back, had been adjusted to become ornaments of nacre and pearl. Her long legs ended in a second pair of hands, nails worn long to show that she was above manual work. On her wrists and on her calves were the sheaths of her gem-studded blades, and she could fight with all four blades at once.

"Permission to speak to your handmaidens, Glorious Captain?"

"Granted. We will be amused by your antics."

The handmaidens were tied by their hair to the control boards (this was no discomfort in weightlessness, and left their fingers and toes free to manipulate the controls). Some controls were only a few inches from the captain's hand, but she would not touch controls, of course. That was what handmaidens were for.

Smith diffidently suggested to the handmaidens that they focus a.n.a.lytical cameras on several bright stars aft of the motionless ship, and then, as Procrustes approached a point where those same stars were eclipsed by the emission trail behind the stranger's drive, a spectographic comparison would give clues as to the nature of the exhaust, and hence of the engine structure. Such a scan, being pa.s.sive, would not betray Procrustes' location.

When the a.n.a.lysis had been done as Smith suggested, the result showed an usually high number of parts per billion of hard gamma radiation, as well as traces of high overall electric charge. Smith gave his report, and concluded: "The high numbers of antiprotons through the plume points to a matter-antimatter reaction drive. In properly tuned drives, however, the antiprotons should have been completely consumed, so that their radiation pressure could add to the thrust.