Year's Best Scifi 8 Part 12

She looks at him, and she sniffs.

"I saw two of them," he reports. "And I saw you, too. You were inside that cylinder, weren't you?"

She watches him, saying nothing.

"I saw something pull you out of that trap. And then I couldn't see you. It must have put you here, I guess. Out of its way." Able nods, and smiles. He can't help but stare at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but at least he keeps his eyes halfway closed, pretending to look out over the water instead. "It took pity on you, I guess."

A good-sized fish breaks on the water.

The woman seems to watch the creature as it swims past, big blue scales catching the light, heavy fins lazily shoving their way through the warm water. The fish eyes are huge and black, and they are stupid eyes. The mind behind them sees nothing but vague shapes and sudden motions. Able knows from experience: If he stands quite still, the creature will come close enough to touch.

"They're called coelacanths," he explains.

Maybe the woman reacts to his voice. Some sound other than crying now leaks from her.

So Able continues, explaining, "They were rare, once. I've studied them quite a bit. They're old and primitive, and they were almost extinct when we found them. But when they got loose, got free, and tookapart the Earth...and took everything and everyone with them up into the sky..."

The woman gazes up at the towering horsetails.

Able stares at her legs and what lies between them.

"Anyway," he mutters, "there's more coelacanths now than ever. They live in a million oceans, and they've never been more successful, really." He hesitates, and then adds, "Kind of like us, I think. Like people. You know?"

The woman turns, staring at him with gray-white eyes. And with a quiet hard voice, she says, "No."

She says, "That's an idiot's opinion."

And then with a grace that belies her strong frame, she dives back into the water, kicking hard and chasing that ancient and stupid fish all the way back to the bottom.

Flight Correction

KEN WHARTON.

Ken Wharton is currently an a.s.sistant professor in the San Jose State University Physics Department. In 2002, his first novel, Divine Intervention (2001), was runner-up for the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award for best SF paperback book.

"Flight Correction" was published in a.n.a.log. It is about several intertwined themes, including the daily life of scientists, ingrained prejudice in physics and engineering against evidence from "softer" sciences, and how the human relations of people in science can hinder as well as help the solution of problems. It is set in an interesting future in which the s.p.a.ce elevator has been constructed in the Galapagos Islands, perhaps a technological triumph and most likely an ecological disaster.

"Albatross, Daddy!" Sally's freckled face was pure excitement. "Albatross!"

Hank blinked a few times from his position in the hammock under the red mangroves. His daughter stood just beyond his reach. "How do you even know what an albatross looks like?"

"Just come quick, Daddy! C'mon..." She stepped forward and tugged at the remnants of his favorite shirt, a threadbare blue oxford from his professor days back in the states.

Hank finally got to his feet and followed his daughter down to the narrow lagoon. Splashing across after her, he realized he had forgotten his hat. "Wait a sec, Sally..."

Whether she heard him or not, she didn't turn around. Screw it , he thought, still following her. If he fried his bald spot in the equatorial sun, it wouldn't be the first time. Stepping out of the water, they turned left, following the main path across the white sand beach. "Where's your mother?" he asked at last.

"Finches," was all Sally said, clearly doing her best to be patient with her slow-paced father.

Of course. Those boring little critters that he'd never learned to tell apart. If his wife had studied some of these other birds he might actually be interested in her research. At that very moment Hank was walking right past a pair of goofy-looking masked b.o.o.bies, brilliant white except for the dark mask around the yellow-orange bill. The two birds were waddling around their sorry excuse for a nest, which looked for all the world like a random pile of rocks on the ground. Meanwhile, three beautiful red-pouched frigate birds sat within reach just overhead in the mangrove tree, inflating their sacs and ululating madly. All the birds ignored the humans with their usual Galapagos detachment, which could have made them easy to study. But instead Julia went roaming all over the island in search of those d.a.m.n finches.

Sally led him up the trail toward the two solar-powered lighthouses that guided those intolerable mini-cruiseships into the heart of Genovesa. After a minute of climbing, Hank was embarra.s.sed to find himself panting with exertion. He glanced down into the blue expanse of Darwin's Bay and made a half-hearted resolution to start swimming again.

Finally Hank made it over a crest, and there it was. Standing on an ancient memorial plaque at theedge of the cliff was an enormous white bird with a hooked, yellow beak. It was, in fact, an albatross.

"Wow," muttered Hank, his interest growing despite himself. He had been told that these birds were endemic to Espanola, at the far south of the Galapagos archipelago. Hank had even seen them down there once, a huge breeding colony next to the cliffs. But on this island, a hundred miles to the north, he had never seen one. Not a single one, for the three years they had lived here.

"Must have gotten lost, I guess," Hank said to his daughter. "Mom'll be interested."

But Sally apparently wasn't finished yet. She was already halfway to the next crest. Hank sighed and started walking again. "What's up there? Another...?"

Hank broke off as he approached the top and could see the far side of the island. There was another one! And another.... With every step his jaw dropped a little further.

Here on Genovesa, a hundred miles off course, five dozen albatross had gotten lost in the exact same place.

Hank watched from the shade under the lighthouse while Julia filmed an albatross flopping toward the edge of the cliff.

"Their feet are funny, Mommy," Sally was saying. "They're way too long."

"They're not made for walking," Julia explained. "Wait, watch this..."

The bird hesitated at the edge of the cliff, extending its six-foot wingspan once, twice, and then backing off as if it was scared to death by the prospect. After a couple more fakes, it stepped forward and jumped. Jumped, not flew. Hank saw a white form plummet out of view, then reappear, enormous wings outstretched, speeding away over the calm water.

"See, Sally," his wife was saying, "they don't really flap. Takes too much energy, so they soar instead. Dynamic soaring, it's called."

"Where's it going?" Sally asked.

"To fish, probably. Maybe around here, maybe down off the coast of Peru. Or maybe it's going back to Espanola, where they all live."

"But then...what are they doing here?"

Julia lifted her gaze from the camera, smiled at her daughter. "Very good question. Usually they know right where to go."

Hank spoke up. "Know any bird people down south?"

Julia nodded. "Fernando does satellite migration tracking. Probably has some tagged ones right here, actually."

"Hmm. Maybe you'll get a call from him," Hank said.

"Oh, I'm sure the birds will all be gone before sundown."

Sally looked a bit sad. "But, but...it was nice of them to visit, right?"

Julia beamed down at Sally. "And it was nice of you to spot them for us. Otherwise we might never have known they were here."

Ten days later, the albatross population was pushing a hundred and fifty.

The population of bird people was skyrocketing as well: Fernando's arrival this evening made four.

Five, counting Julia. Their little island was getting awfully crowded. Not to mention their home.

Hank normally would have simply left, gone outside to read his new download in private, but tonight El Meano had sent yet another nasty rainstorm. And with the birders living in tiny two-man tents, the family's semipermanent shelter was the only spot for them all to gather.

Hank couldn't imagine how Sally managed to sleep through the noise; he couldn't even read with all their chatter. And if he heard the word "migratory" just one more time.... Finally, in frustration, he picked up the sim-finch he had designed for his wife's research and started morphing the beak into implausible shapes.

It was an impressive piece of machinery, Hank modestly told himself. Back in the early days of finch research, before nano'geering enabled such devices, academics had resorted to more gruesome techniques. One ancient study even reported chopping the heads off of dead birds, swapping themaround with the bodies, and then setting the chimeras in seductive poses to see who would try to mate with the corpses.

"I don't think that one is going to see many suitors, honey." Julia was speaking to him from across the room, referring with her eyes to the avian Cyrano. Hank shrugged and set it back down, nearly spilling his bottle of rum. Julia turned back to the main conversation.

"I'm telling you," Julia insisted. "The albatross are getting confused by the Line."

Hank rolled his eyes and turned away. His wife was always complaining about the s.p.a.ce elevator; nothing new there. But still, he couldn't tune out the conversation.

"I don't buy it, Julia," said the only other female in the group, a penguin expert. "One new star is not going to mess up these birds. They've done studies-"

"One star that doesn't rotate with all the others," Julia countered. "It's not natural."

"It's been fully clouded over the last few nights," noted Fernando. "And they keep arriving. So it can't be the stars."

"Well, what does that leave? Landmarks and dead reckoning?"

Hank looked back over at the group, surprised at the obvious omission. "Don't forget magnetic fields." Even a washed-up N.E. professor knew that much about bird migration.

The penguin expert shook her head. "Not here at the equator. Sure, albatross have traces of magnet.i.te in their brains like other birds, but the fields are so much weaker here that they don't rely on them at all."

Fernando stroked his white beard. "Still, he has a point. Flying up from Peru, it's a pretty small angular shift between here and Espanola. You know Tuttle, up in the states? He's bred a strain of pigeon that'll ignore all other cues, steer by magnetic fields alone. It must be an innate module in pigeons, so maybe all birds have it to some degree. Not at all inconceivable that new fields could gently steer the albatross off course."

"Maybe," Julia said. "Maybe that's what the Line is doing to them. Changing the fields."

"Enough about the Line, already," said Hank. Five pairs of eyes swiveled to glare at him, with varying levels of intensity. Hank retreated into his book, making an important mental note: don't mention the Line around Galapagos ecologists.

Hank supposed that the primary responsibility lay with generations of science fiction writers. If Ecuador hadn't been so certain about Quito they wouldn't have campaigned so heavily for a s.p.a.ce elevator in the first place. They wouldn't have weaned two generations on the premise that Ecuador would be the gateway to orbit, finally giving their country the first-world status they deserved. Eventually, they dreamed, Ecuador would become the richest and most powerful nation-state on Earth.

So the initial site report had taken them very much by surprise. High elevations weren't recommended. Sure, alt.i.tude meant slightly less cable, but compared to the total distance to geosynch orbit, the percentages involved were so small as to be almost meaningless. Besides, in the mountains there wasn't easy access to a seaport-an essential part of the high-volume operation.

Then there was the disaster scenario. Dropped equipment, hazardous spills, broken cables snapping down onto the surface of the earth...A remote location was deemed necessary for safety concerns alone.

Ecuador was. .h.i.t hard on both fronts: everything was too mountainous or too crowded. Or both.

Suddenly Brazil and Indonesia were being discussed as possible elevator locations.

For Ecuador, faced with the loss of its dreams, the sacrifice of its most famous national treasure hadn't come hard. The largest of the Galapagos islands, Isabela, was the only one to actually span the equator. If Quito wasn't possible, Ecuador had told the world, Isabela would be just perfect.

Predictably, the ecologists went daytrader on the whole idea. The Galapagos was not only a pristine ecological laboratory, but the very birthplace of evolutionary theory. They hadn't spent millions of dollars ridding Isabela of the wild goats, fighting the unending battles with the local fishermen, only to have the island turned into the biggest port on the planet. Years of intense protest followed, but the initial public opposition faded as Ecuador spared no expense on the propaganda wars. Hardly any of the islands would be affected, the government promised. The giant land tortoise population of Isabela would beprotected. A portion of the future tax revenue was even allotted to environmental research to help sow dissension in the ecologists' midst.

And, as always, the money had won. The s.p.a.ce elevator had been completed five years ago, and all of the rosy predictions were now proven rubbish. Isabela was almost completely developed, and many of the other islands were heading in the same direction. The smaller outlying islands were still relatively unaffected, but no one knew how long that would last.

To Hank, the Line had once dangled the promise of tropical employment. Three years back, when he had sacrificed his job for his family, he had held out hope of finding work on the s.p.a.ce elevator. The entire structure was nanoengineered, after all. His specialty. And with that fantasy in mind, giving up his tenure-track position hadn't seemed quite so final.

But the reality down here had been different. The completed elevator had no need for academic types. The only jobs available were loading cargo-and Hank's back certainly couldn't handle that.

So now he was just living for his family, and the occasional bottle of rum. No more Paula, no more cheating around, no more rat race...no more anything. But I'm doing the right thing, Hank told himself, reciting his mantra. I'm doing the right thing.

From across the room Julia glanced in his direction, with a smile that said she still loved him despite his terribly insensitive comment about the Line. He tried to return the smile, tried to return a bit of love to his wife, but came up empty on both counts. Hank raised his book to cover his face, and buried himself in the meaningless words.

They didn't speak again until halfway through breakfast.

"Hank..."

He knew that voice, that look. Hank took a shallow breath and steeled himself for another painful argument.

"Why wouldn't you expect a magnetic field from the s.p.a.ce elevator? Shouldn't there be currents every now and then?"

His pulse skipped a beat as he realized it wasn't going to be that sort of argument. He managed a smile.

"Yeah, that was a big worry. The cable goes right up through the Van Allen belts, after all. Wouldn't do to have an induced current yanking on the Line. So they spun it to be nonconducting."

"But buckytubes are..."

Hank broke into a full grin. Finches might be boring, but this stuff was cool. He arrayed his napkin in front of him, smoothed it out. "Not always. OK, say this is a single sheet of carbon atoms, arrayed like hexagonal chicken wire. You make it into a buckytube simply by rolling it up." He did so. "But there are lots of different cla.s.ses of buckytubes, depending on how you line up the hexagons."

He demonstrated this by first making a cylindrical tube-with the corners of the napkins touching-and then sliding one edge of the napkin with respect to the other. Now the axis of the tube was no longer perpendicular to the bottom edge of the napkin.

"There are lots of buckytube topologies, and each one has a different conductivity. So the tubes in your computer conduct, but the tubes in the Line don't."

Julia looked skeptical. "Thousands of miles of buckytube cable and they're sure it's all the non-conducting kind?"

"The fibers are all continuous. If there was a transition between two buckytube geometries, there has to be a discontinuity, a weak link. The tube hasn't snapped, so I think that's a good sign."

Hank was exaggerating; a single-point failure wouldn't snap the Line. It had been given the same design as the successful multifiber s.p.a.ce tethers, which contained many redundant strands that weren't even in use. If one strand failed, two others would instantly snap into place to take up the load.

Julia just shook her head. "I don't know, Hank.... But I do know that's got to be the answer. These birds think they're on Espanola. Something has messed them up, and we've dismissed pretty much every other explanation. Think about it, will you?"

"Sure, honey." Hank's gaze skipped over to the rum supply, then back to Julia. "Sure."