Year's Best Scifi 6 Part 34

On the other hand, Janie was right. If you go around talking about your other-worldly experiences, you never again have quite the same relations.h.i.+p with people. You're a zealot, a fanatic, a crazy, someone most right-thinking people try to avoid. You're seeing visions, and that's weird. You're telling everyone, I've found something more important than what you've staked your life to get. I've got news from the other side!

People don't like you when you talk like that.

I didn't want to be driven by the force of an experience I'd never bargained for, didn't want now that I had it, wanted to get rid of it.

"Whatever it was, we don't owe it anything," Janie said. "We've killed it. Let's just never mention it again."

I nodded.

She looked at me very seriously. "It's agreed, then."

I nodded again. And we never talked about it again.

Except that I'm writing about it now. Janie doesn't know. Won't know until I publish it. And then?

I don't know. But I have to write this.

You see, I figured out, after a very long time, just what the creature was up to.

She was sealing off that puncture wound in my back. What else was that sticky stuff she sprayed on me but some way of stopping the wound? Even the doctor, when I finally got to see one the next day, asked me about it.

The Horla had just finished sealing my wound when Janie got her with the pillow.

Not that I'm blaming Janie.

I figure we killed that thing together. Or maybe I did it alone. Because I sure wanted to, even if I didn't actually do it. But I think I did.

We weren't ready for the Horla, and for what it might bring.

Anyway, Janie wasn't really there, so I must have killed the Horla myself. But in another way, Janie did it.

I'm not going to change anything now. It's impossible to get the weird stuff that happens to you down all neat and straight. But I figured I needed to tell the story. In case the Horla's family-lover-friends-she must have had some-one-never learned what happened to her, blown off course by a sudden storm, trapped in a weird room, pursued by a big creature-or maybe the ghost of a big creature-whom she was trying to help and who wanted only to kill her. And finally did.

The Horla gave up her life for me. If she has any friends, family, or lovers out there, if there's any way my words can get to them, I thought they'd be proud of her.

Well, that's the only experience I can call genuinely weird in a rather ordinary life. A story I've never told. Especially that last part about Janie swatting it with a pillow. Because, of course, I did that. Janie wasn't there.

As for Janie and me, we're as well as can be expected.

Madame Bovary, C'est Moi

DAN SIMMONS.

Dan Simmons (www.erinyes.org/simmons) was born in Peoria, Illinois, and lives in Longmont,Colorado, where he was for years an elementary school teacher. His first novel, Song of Kali (1985), won the World Fantasy Award. It was followed by Phases of Gravity (1989), an excellent mainstream novel about an astronaut, Carrion Comfort (1989), a huge and ambitious horror novel, and The Hyperion Cantos- Hyperion (1989), an equally large and ambitious SF novel that won the Hugo Award, and its companion (the two are really one large work), The Fall of Hyperion (1990). By 1991 he was famous and successful in both the horror and SF genres. He has since gone on to write SF, horror, and mainstream novels and stories for the last decade, and has maintained both his ambition and versatility. Most notable in SF are Endymion (1996) and The Rise of Endymion (1997), another pair of novels. Even though his attention has been spread among genres for the last decade, his place in SF is central to the fiction of the 1990s and beyond.

Two forthcoming SF novels have been announced, Ilium and Olympos.

Simmons's fiction is filled with literary allusions (just look at the t.i.tles, above). This little story, another piece from Nature, is no exception. It is a showpiece for Simmons's wit, giving an SF rationalization for the real existence of the literary universes of fiction.

2052 AD: the current migration of millions of people to novel universes by quantum teleportation (QT) was a shock even to the system's inventor, Jian-Wei Martini. "I don't know why it took me by surprise,"

said Dr. Martini in a 2043 interview. "I had the basic idea for QT when I read an ancient New Yorker story by Woody Allen, but the potential was all there in Schrodinger's cla.s.sic wave equation." Dr Martini has since QT'd to Madame Bovary's universe and is currently living in Flaubert's Paris as Monsieur Leon.

The quantum-mechanical entanglement effect had been a.n.a.lysed (in Einstein's sceptical term) as "spooky action at a distance" since 1935, but it was not until 1998 that a research group at the University of Innsbruck demonstrated actual quantum teleportation of a photon-or more precisely, the complete quantum state of that photon.

These initial quantum-state teleportations avoided violating Heisenberg's principle and Einstein's speed-of-light restrictions because teleported photons carried no information, even about their own quantum state. However, by producing entangled pairs of photons and teleporting one of the pair while transmitting the Bell-state a.n.a.lysis of the second photon through subluminal channels, the recipient of the teleported photon-data had a one-in-four chance of guessing its quantum state and then utilizing the quantum bits of teleported data.

All of this would have amounted to very little except for remarkable advances in human-consciousness research. Researchers at the University of Kiev interested in improving memory function used quantum computers to a.n.a.lyse biochemical cascades in human synapses. In 2025, they discovered that the human mind-as opposed to the brain-was neither like a computer nor a chemical memory machine, but exactly like a quantum-state holistic standing wavefront.

The human brain, it turned out, collapsed probability functions of this standing wavefront of consciousness in the same way that an interferometer determined the quantum state of a photon or any other wavefront phenomenon. Using terabytes of qubit quantum data and applying relativistic Coulomb field transforms to these mind-consciousness holographic wavefunctions, it was quickly discovered that human consciousness could be quantum-teleported to points in s.p.a.ce-time where entangled-pair wavefronts already existed.

And where were these places? Nothing as complex as an entangled consciousness-wavefront existed elsewhere in our continuum. QT researchers soon realized that they were teleporting human consciousness-or, rather, the complete quantum state of these consciousnesses-to alternate universes that had, in turn, come into being through the focus of pre-existing holographic wavefronts: in other words, complete alternate universes created by the sheer force of human imagination. These singularities of genius act as Bell-state a.n.a.lyser/editors on the quantum-foam of reality, simultaneously interpreting one universe while creating a new one.

It seems that poets, playwrights and novelists already understood this. "The imagination may becompared to Adam's dream," wrote John Keats: "he awoke and found it truth."

The QT charting of "fiction universes" began immediately, but even before a hundred alternate universes were confirmed, the QT migration from our Earth began.

Meanwhile, the "agon"-the imperative to rank the relative importance of creative works-now had a scientific tool at its disposal. The long literary debate as to which works belonged in the so-called "Western Canon" was settled by QT exploration. For example, 21 of Shakespeare's 38 plays generated complete alternate universes, as complex and expansive as our own, each capable of supporting a human population from a few thousand (Measure for Measure) to many billions (King Lear), despite the fact that each play may have had a cast of a score or fewer players when it was performed. More than a million people have migrated to Elsinore, whereas fewer than 5,000-mostly clinically depressed Scandinavians-have seen fit to re establish themselves in Lear's universe.

Flaubert, it turned out, generated two complete universes-the so called "Madame Bovary's World"

and that of Sentimental Education -whereas Alice Walker, it seems, to the frustration of American academics, had created none.

The alternate universe of Dante's Inferno has received more than 385,000 emigrants (mostly from Southern California), but his Paradiso Planet shows only 649 transplants. The current count of those who have QT'd to Huckleberry Finn's "River World" is 3,622,406, and more than a million have been transported to each of Charles d.i.c.ken's five extant universes.

It is true that more than 60 million people volunteered to QT to D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's World," but- sadly-no such discrete universe has been found. Some have made do with the universe of Sons and Lovers. Recent QT stampedes to the worlds of Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson and the effectively infinite number of universes created by Jorge Luis Borges may reflect current social trends.

It remains to be seen whether QT technology will solve the current global population crisis or if it will remain an option of the rich, bored and educated. It also remains to be seen whether any universes will be found-beyond the paltry handful already discovered-that owe their origins to 21st-century imaginations.

"That which is creative must create itself," said John Keats. And perhaps more pointedly, from William Blake- "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's."

Which brings us to the central question of this new quantum reality. None of the millions of ancillary characters living in Madame Bovary's universe (except for the QT emigres) know that they are characters in a work of fiction. Nor do they know that Madame Bovary is the main character.

So who wrote our universe? And who are the central characters?

Grandma's Jumpman

ROBERT REED.

Robert Reed was born and raised and lives in Nebraska. He published nearly a dozen SF and fantasy stories in 2000, of which six or more were worthy of consideration for this book, an amazing and continuing explosion of SF writing. His first story collection, The Dragons of Springplace (1999), fine as it is, skims only a bit of the cream from his works. And he writes a novel every year or two as well (his first, The Leesh.o.r.e, appeared in 1987; his ninth is Marrow, 2000, a distant future large scale story that seems to be a breakthrough in his career). He has been publis.h.i.+ng SF since 1986, but has reached his present level of achievement only in the mid-1990s. Given his level of achievement, he is one of the most underappreciated writers in contemporary SF.

"Grandma's Jumpman" appeared in Century (edited by Robert J. K. Killheffer and Jenna Felice), the literate quarterly of speculative fiction that was reborn at the end of 1999, adding Bryan Cholfin, formerly of Crank!, to its staff, and got out three issues in 2000. Although only aminority of the fiction in Century is SF, it is still very important as a model of the well-produced and well-edited semi-prozine in the field. This story uses SF, in the manner Ray Bradbury did in the 1950s. It is set in a rural area (that might be Nebraska) years after a war on Earth against humanoid aliens and is about love, loss of innocence, and combating the prejudices fostered by propaganda during any war in the generation after.

Someone's wasting fireworks-that's what I'm thinking.

I'm out by the road, just playing, and I hear all these pops and bangs coming from the west. It's the middle of the day, bright and hot, and what's the point in shooting fireworks now? Someone sure is stupid, I'm thinking. Then comes this big old whump that I feel through the hard ground. I drop all my soldiers and climb out of the ditch, looking west, watching a black cloud lifting. That's over by the old prison camp, isn't it? I'm trying to guess what's happening, and that's when he tries sneaking up on me.

But I hear him first. I turn around fast and catch him staring at me. Grandma's ugly old jumpie.

His name is Sam. At least that's what it is now, and he's not a bad sort. For being what he is.

"Did I startle you, Timmy?" he asks. "I'm sorry if I caught you unaware."

"You didn't," I tell him.

He says, "Good."

"I'm watching the fireworks," I tell him.

"Fireworks?" He gives the black cloud a look, then says, "I think you're mistaken." His voice is made inside a box sewn into his neck, and the words come out soft and slow. Sam doesn't sound human, but he doesn't sound not-human either. If you know what I mean. He's been here for thirty years, and that's a long time to practice talking. He's one of the prisoners-a genuine war criminal-but he lives up here in his own little house. He helps Grandma with the farm, and after so long people almost seem to trust him.

I don't trust him. I watch him as he watches the black cloud, both of us thinking that maybe it's not fireworks.

"Something's happening," Sam says. He's not big, not even for a jumpie. And he's old, fat gray hairs showing in the red ones, his long face and forearms halfway to white. "They're probably detonating old ammunition. That's all." He waits a moment, then tells me, "Perhaps you should stay near the house, for the time being."

"You can't boss me," I warn him. I won't let him boss me.

"You're right," he says. "It's not my place." Then he says, "Do it for your grandmother, please. You know how she worries."

There comes a second whump, followed by two more.

And Sam forgets about me. His big eyes stare at the new clouds, then he shakes his tongue and starts for Grandma's house. He doesn't say another word, walking slowly in the earth's high gravity, his long bare feet doing the jumpie shuffle.

And I go back to my soldiers. There are more pops and bangs, and I use them with my pretend sounds. Then it's quiet, and I'm thinking it was nothing. It was just like Sam said, someone blowing off old bombs. I put my soldiers down and climb up to the yard, sitting under the big pine tree. I'm thinking about the old prison camp. Grandma's driven me past it, a bunch of times. It's still got wire fences and guard towers, but almost n.o.body's there. That's what Grandma says. Just some ordinary human crooks stashed there by the county. All the important Chonk-squeal-squeal-oonkkk-what jumpies call themselves-died long ago or were s.h.i.+pped home. Except for Sam, that is. He's the last one left, and even he's got a death certificate with his hairy face on it. "He died of heatstroke," Grandma told me, driving us past the camp. "And the c.u.mulative effects of gravity, too."

The black clouds have vanished. Blown away. Whatever happened, it's done, and I can't hear anything but the wind.

I start to rip up pine cones, wis.h.i.+ng for something to do. I'm bored, like always. I'm sick of being bored, wis.h.i.+ng I could be anywhere else, doing anything even halfway fun. And that's when I hear thetruck coming, grinding its gears on the hill. A big green Guard truck rolls past. Its back end is stuffed full of soldiers, rifles pointed at the sky. I'm watching them. Unlike my plastic soldiers, their faces aren't worn smooth. Noses and cheeks are sharp. Their eyes are spooked. n.o.body waves when I wave, and they barely notice me. Then the truck is past and a cloud of white, white dust rolls over Grandma's lawn, and I'm looking west, wis.h.i.+ng I could ride on that truck.

Wis.h.i.+ng hard and tasting the rough dust against my teeth.

My folks got called up for Guard duty in June, for their usual six weeks. But this time it was summer and school was out, there was n.o.body to watch me. That's why they put me on the new Bullet train, s.h.i.+pping me off to the farm.

Grandma came to get me at the station. She's a big woman with gray hair and a couple million wrinkles, and she's strong from all her hard work. Bags that I could barely lift got thrown into the back end of her pickup. Then she slapped the dirt off her jeans and climbed behind the wheel, driving fast all the way home. She doesn't drive like a grandmother, I can tell you. And I don't know any other old woman who strings fences and drives tractors and calls s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t. Mom says that she's the most successful lady farmer in the state. I wonder about that lady part. Her only help is an old jumpie that she borrowed from the prison camp. He was an officer on one of their big rocket bombers. "He's called Sam," Mom told me before I left home, standing over me while she spoke. "Be nice to Sam. He's a very nice sentient ent.i.ty."

"He's a war criminal," I told her. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d bombed our cities!"

Mom just stared at me, shaking her head. She does that a lot. Then she said, "Don't cause me grief, Timmy. Please?"

"I hate the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," I told her. "They came to kill us, Mom."

"A long time ago," she said, "and the war is over." Then she told me, "Please. I don't want my mother thinking you're some brutal little boy."

"I'm not so little," I said.

She didn't say anything.

Then I asked, "Does that jumpie really live with Grandma?"

"Sam is called a jumpman, and he has his own house, Timmy." She made a windy sound, shaking her finger at my nose. "Since I was a little girl, and don't forget it."

I don't forget much. Riding to Grandma's farm, watching the other farms slide past, I remembered everything I'd ever learned about the war. How the jumpies came into the solar system in giant stars.h.i.+ps dressed up like ordinary comets. How they launched a surprise attack, trying to take out our defenses in a day. Later, they said they were being nothing but reasonable. Once our offensive weapons were removed, they would have become our best friends, colonizing only our cold places. They said. But they didn't get the chance since they didn't cripple us in the first day, or, for that matter, in the next thousand days.

It was the biggest war ever, and it could have been bigger. But the jumpies wanted to live on Earth, which meant they didn't like nuking us too often. And in the end, when things turned our way, we had the tools to blow away every last one of their stars.h.i.+ps. But instead of finis.h.i.+ng them for good, we made peace. We ended up with a d.a.m.ned sister-kissing draw.

"What isn't won, isn't done," I've heard people say.

That's why we can't relax. The jumpies-jumpmen, sorry-are still out there, mostly hanging around Mars, battering it with fresh comets, trying to make that world livable for them. We can't let them get their own world. That's what I think. What I want to be someday is a general leading the attack, winning everything for all time. Finally.

That's what I was thinking, smiling as Grandma pulled up in front of her house. "We're here," she announced. I climbed out, taking a good look at my first farm. Then I saw the jumpie coming out of the barn, doing little hops instead of walking, and I realized that I'd never seen one before. Not in person.

Not moving free and easy, I can tell you. But what really startled me was what he was wearing, which was overalls cut and resewn to fit his body, and how he showed me a big bright almost-human smile.Jumpies have different muscles in their faces. Showing his thick yellow teeth must have been work.

Like all of them, he was red-thick red fur; blood-red skin; black-red eyes. His tall ears turned toward me. Somehow the smile got bigger. Then his almost-human voice said, "And you must be Timmy. It's a great pleasure to meet you at last."

I felt cold and scared inside.

"I've heard fine things about you," he told me, shaking my hand with his rough two-thumbed hand.

"Your grandmother comes home from Christmas with such stories. How you've grown, and what a wonderful young man you are."

He didn't sound like the jumpies on TV. I tried picturing him and Grandma talking about me.

Standing together in the barn, I imagined. Shoveling s.h.i.+t and gossiping.

"He's rather quiet," Sam told Grandma. "Somehow I expected him to make a commotion."

"No, he's just frightened." She laughed when she said it, then laughed harder when I said: "I'm not scared. Ever!"

Sam's smile changed. He tugged on the white whiskers that grew from his heavy bottom jaw. Then he said, "I've got ch.o.r.es to do." Ch.o.r.es. He sounded as if he'd been born here, and that bothered me more than anything. "I hope you enjoy yourself, Timmy. Bye now." Nothing was what I had pictured, and I was glad to see him turn and shuffle off, his tail dragging in the brown dirt.

Grandma took me upstairs to a sunny and hot little bedroom. She told me to unpack and showed me where to put my things. "You can go where you want," she said, "but close every gate behind you and stay off the machinery."

I knew the rules. Mom had told them to me, maybe a thousand times.