Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 40

"Okay, how's this," I said. "You clear out of here with your friends. No problem.

I'll take care of this with my science and then we'll talk about it, all right? But let me get on with it already."

Lapp signaled the last of his people to leave. "Take her," he said, and pa.s.sed custody of Sarah along to a big burly man with a gray-flecked beard. She tried to resist but was no match for him.

Lapp squinted at the flickering fireflies. They were much more distinct now, as if the metamorphosis into bomb mode had coa.r.s.ened the nature of the mesh.

He turned to me. "I'll stay here with you. I'll give you two minutes and then I'm yanking you out of here. What does your science have to offer?"

"Nothing all that advanced," I said, and pulled my little halogen flashlight out of my pocket. "Those are fireflies, right? If they've retained anything of the characteristics of the family Lampyridae I know about, then they make their light only in the absence of daylight, when the day has waned- they're nocturnal. During the day, bathed in daylight, they're just like any other d.a.m.n beetle. Well, this should make the necessary adjustment." I turned up the flashlight to its fullest daylight setting, and shone it straight at the center of the swirling starlight fountain, which now had a much harsher tone, like an ugly light over an autopsy table. I focused my halogen on the souped-up fireflies for a minute and longer. Nothing happened. The swirling continued. The harsh part of their light got stronger.

"Doctor, we can't stay here any longer," Lapp said.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and opened them. The halogen flashlight should have worked-it should have put out the light of at least some of the fireflies, then more, disrupting their syncopated overlapping pattern of flas.h.i.+ng. I stared hard at the fountain. My eyes were tired. I couldn't see the flies as clearly as I could a few moments ago...

No... of course!

I couldn't see as clearly because the light was getting dimmer!

There was no doubt about it now. The whole barn seemed to be flickering in and out, the continuous light effect had broken down, and each time the light came back, it did so a little more weakly... I kept my halogen trained on the flies. It was soon the only light in the barn.Lapp's hand was on my shoulder. "We're in your debt, Doctor. I almost made the fool's mistake of closing my mind to a source of knowledge I didn't understand-a fool's mistake, as I say, because if I don't understand it, then how can I know it's not valuable?"

"Plato's Meno Paradox strikes again," I said.

"What?"

"You need some knowledge to recognize knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from?" I smiled. "Wisdom from an old Western-style philosopher-I frequently consult him-though actually he probably had more in common with you."

Lapp nodded. "Thank you for giving us this knowledge of the firefly, that we knew all along ourselves but didn't realize. From now on, the Mendel bombs won't be such a threat to us-once we notice their special flicker, all we'll need to do is flood the area with daylight. Plain daylight. Sometimes we won't even need your flashlight to do it-daylight is after all just out there, naturally for the asking, a good deal of the time."

"And in the evenings, you can use the flashlight-it's battery operated, no strings attached to central electric companies," I said. "See, I've picked up a few things about your culture after all."

Lapp smiled. "I believe you have, Doctor. And I believe we'll be all right now."

"Yeah, but it was a good thing you had Sarah Fischer to warn you this time, anyway," I said.

Of course, the enemies of John Lapp and Amos Stoltzfus would no doubt come up with other diabolical breedings of weapons. No one ever gets a clear-cut complete victory in these things. But at least the scourge of Mendel bombs would be reduced. I guess I'd given them an SDI for these pyro-fireflies-imperfect, no doubt, but certainly a lot better than nothing.

I was glad, too, about how Sarah Fischer had turned around. She'd come back to the barn to warn us. Said she couldn't take the killing anymore. She said she had nothing directly to do with Mo's or Jacob's-her father's-deaths, but she could no longer be part of a community that did such tilings. She had started telling me about the allergens-the irritation ones-because she wanted the world to know. I wanted to believe her.

I'd thought of calling the Pennsylvania police, having them take her into custody, but what was the point? I had no evidence on her whatsoever. Even if she had set the Mendel bomb in John Lapp's barn-which I didn't believe-what could I do about that anyway? Have her arrested for setting a bomb made of incendiary flies I'd been able to defuse by s.h.i.+ning my flashlight-a bomb that Lapp's people were unwilling in any way to even acknowledge to the outside world, let alone testify about in court? No thank you-I've been laughed out of court enough times as it is already.

And Lapp said his people had some sort of humane program for people likeSarah-help her find her own people and roots again. She needed that. She was a woman without community now. Shunned by all parties. The worst thing that could happen to someone of Sarah's upbringing. It was good that John Lapp and Amos Stoltzfus were willing to give her a second chance-offer her a lamp of hope, maybe the real meaning of the Mendelian lamp, as it Lapp had aptly put it.

I rolled my window down to pay the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge toll. It felt good to finally be back in my own beat-up car again, I had to admit. Corinne was off with the girls to resettle in California. I'd said a few words about Mo at his funeral, and now his little family was safely on a plane out West. I couldn't say I'd brought his murderers to justice, but at least I'd put a little crimp in their operation. Laurie had kissed Amos goodbye, and promised she'd come back and see him, certainly for Christmas...

"Thanks, Chief." I took the receipt and the change. I felt so good to be back I almost told him to keep the change. I left the window rolled down. The air had its customary musky aroma-the belches of industry, the exhaust fumes of even EPA-clean cars still leaving their olfactory mark. d.a.m.n, and didn't it feel good to breathe it in. Better than the sweet air of Pennsylvania, and all the hidden allergens and catalysts it might be carrying. It had killed both Jacob and Mo. They'd been primed with a slow-acting catalyst years ago. Then the second catalyst had been introduced, and whoosh... some inconsequential something in their surroundings had set the last short fuse. Just as likely a stray firefly of a certain type that buzzed at their ankles, or landed on their arm, as anything else. Jacob's barn had been lit by them. The lamp was likely the other thing Mo had wanted to show me. There were likely one or two fireflies that had gotten into our car on the farm, and danced unseen around our feet as we drove to Philadelphia that evening... A beetle for me, an a.s.sa.s.sin for Mo.

The virtue of New York, some pundit on the police force once had said, is that you can usually see your killers coming. Give me the soot and pollution, the crush of too many people and cars in a hurry, even the mugger on the street. I'll take my chances.

I unconsciously slipped my wallet out of my pocket. This thinking about muggers must have made me nervous about my money. It was a fine wallet-made from that same special lamp-weave as Laurie's handbag. John Lapp had given it to me as a little present-to remember Jacob's work by. For a few months, at least, I'd be able to better see how much money I was spending.

Well, it was good to have a bit more light in the world- even if it, like the contents it illuminated, was ever-fleeting...

Chapter 21 - Kiss Me by Katherine MacLean.

Katherine MacLean entered the science fiction field in 1949 and produced some of the fine hard SF short stories of the 1950s. Like Judith Merril and Virginia Kidd,she was one of the bright, tough-minded young women who entered the SF scene in the late 1940s and helped change the face of SF in the next decade. She was at her best and most influential in short fiction. Her collections, The Diploids and The Trouble with You Earth People, are filled with gems but now hard to find. She took a break and then produced some fine work in the 1970s, including her best novel, The Missing Man. By the end of that decade, she had left again, moved to Portland, Maine, and only returns to writing SF sporadically, for fun. This story is from a.n.a.log and shows the lighthearted side of hard SF. It's an interesting contrast to the Landis story.

Denny's new girlfriend, Laury, was not interested in sci-ence; she was busy studying computer applications to business, but she was pretty and she hung around his laboratory most of her free time and happily listened to him explain what he was doing.

This time his laboratory was full of frogs.

"This bunch is from South Africa, and this bunch in the plastic crate," he pointed, "they are from Kenya." He moved his skinny self over to a big damp gla.s.s box.

"These are from a lake in Georgia, where they fell into a fis.h.i.+ng boat. Usually people only send in frog falls when they come down in dry territory or on city sidewalks, come down like rain. Maybe they come down over lakes too, but on a lake, they could have jumped into the boat from the water. So I don't trust this batch."

Laury stared solemnly at each one, trying to see some exciting difference. All the frogs were dark brown, or green with spots, or a pinkish tan, and they all had big yellow-gold eyes. "Beebeeb," said a big one.

"But they all look normal!" she was disappointed. "They don't look strange at all." She picked the biggest tan one from his gla.s.s box and kissed it, but nothing about it changed. It stared at her and puffed its throat in and out, "Reebeeb."

She put it back. "Reebeeb," she said back.

Denny was eager to explain. "That's what's strange about them, there aren't any tree frogs or desert toads or poison frogs or any of the interesting ones, the frogs people send in from frog falls are always the same three kinds, no matter where they are from."

"Where did you get all these frogs?" She tapped on the side of the gla.s.s box.

Most of them jumped away from her finger into the water, and some jumped toward her finger and b.u.mped their noses on the gla.s.s.

"Ouch," she said sympathetically to the ones who had b.u.mped their noses. "That must have hurt."

Denny was pleased by her interest. "The whole collection-" he waved at the room full of gla.s.s-faced boxes full of frogs, "was turned over to me by the Charles Fort Foundation. People are always sending them frogs from sidewalks and city roofs. They are funding me for a research project on the frogs that come down infrog falls."

"Funding you?" She looked at him with admiration. Scientists seemed to have a talent for generating money for their most kooky projects. "What do they want you to do?"

"Just study their genes. I put it to the university gene fingerprinter machine. So far just normal Rana pippens and such. No lead there." He leaned warmly against her shoulder to point. "That bunch is from a desert in Arizona. Look at the date on the label. They were just sent in this week."

Laury was baffled. "Arizona? Frogs don't grow in deserts, do they? They grow in water."

Denny was excited. "They didn't grow in the desert. They rained out of the sky.

A rain of frogs. The bible has something about rains of frogs in Egypt. But when it happens in a desert, ten or twenty miles from the nearest puddle, people really notice it and save some frogs to look at. Then I have a chance to get samples."

She was indignant. "You think I'll believe frogs fall out of the sky? You're putting me on. How did they get into the sky?"

"Here, read this," He shoved a big book into her hands. "It's a collection of reports about frogs raining from the sky." Dennis pointed at a photograph of a wrinkled-looking toad. "Ask me where that toad came from."

Obediently she asked, "Where did it come from?" She calculated the chances of making a tourist business about frog falls. Could Denny predict them?

"It was found inside a lump of coal. That means it's a billion years old or so.

Maybe all frogs and toads came from rains of frogs. Maybe rains of frogs started life on land, instead of lungfish. Frogs are a billion years old."

She looked at the big one she had kissed. "They don't look that old." She thought of putting a million-year-old frog on display. Would anyone pay admission?

He took a deep breath to control his temper and looked at her figure for consolation. "I don't mean these frogs. I mean the ancestors of all frogs. And maybe we are descended from them too. My theory is that some alien s.p.a.ce satellite was set in orbit to seed Earth with life, and it has been cloning frog eggs and raising pollywogs, and launching frogs down on us ever since Earth cooled and the oceans condensed. I'm sure that when I map all the frog falls and their dates they're going to show an orbit line around the Earth. With that for a clue I can get an observatory to locate the alien satellite in orbit around Earth and get it on camera launching frogs." He spun around in glee. "Ha! On CNN and the cover of Science!"

"Why would aliens launch frogs at us?" Laury asked. "Is it an invasion?"

"Calm down, Laury. Frogs aren't going to hurt us. They never have. They're too small. All they do is hop around, swim, lay eggs and eat bugs. They don't live long enough to become civilized and start wars." Denny started a round of throwing little white worms into the gla.s.s boxes. The frogs' tongues shot out and yanked the worms into their mouths so suddenly the insects seemed to vanish."Some of these are adult males. The green ones that say Peeeep and the big ones that say Reebeeb and Beebeeb are singing to attract females. They mature to be adults in one year."

Laury nodded, "That's their real problem, too much s.e.x at an early age, r.e.t.a.r.ds growth, distracts from learning."

The big tan one in the gla.s.s case said, "Reebeeb reebeeb," in a deep musical voice, still staring at her.

"You shouldn't have kissed him," Denny said, "Kiss me instead."

"You never know about superst.i.tions until you try them. He didn't turn into a prince," said Laury. "But if he's only a year old he'd make a pretty small prince anyhow, still in diapers, so it's a good thing it didn't work."

"But he's an adult." Denny moved closer. "I'm an adult too. I'm a consenting adult. Kiss me. Maybe I'll turn into a prince."

"Maybe you'll turn into a frog." She kissed him but his green baseball cap got in the way. He spun the visor to the back, crossed his legs, and tried again.

The big frog sang "Reeebeeb reeebeeb!" and hopped at them, b.u.t.ting his nose against the gla.s.s.

"He's not very smart," said Laury. "No kind of invader from a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p can conquer anything being so small and dumb. Maybe they were sent down to be invaders from outer s.p.a.ce, but Earth is too s.e.xy for them and they become adults instead of growing up."

"If you put thyroid into the water of the pollywogs they turn to their adult shape when they are really tiny. The tiny females can even lay eggs." Denny said absently, watching Laury.

"That's not the kind of growing up I meant. That's the opposite. I mean-what can you give them to keep them from getting s.e.xy so they can keep on growing and get bigger?"

"Oh." Denny looked at the big pink one. He went to medical reference on his computer and let it search r.e.t.a.r.ded Growth, Premature Maturity, and Dwarfism, and sat down to read it on screen. "It says it's pituitary hormone, low pituitary hormone," he said. "I can expose some of them to pituitary hormone to increase growth and r.e.t.a.r.d maturity. I'll write it up as another project and they'll grant me more money. Grantsmans.h.i.+p. Do you know that frogs have more DNA than humans? I could claim it means that they have more shapes available, not just tadpole and frog."

He stayed up reading and typing and did not take Laury on a date that night, or the next night, or any time the next two weeks. She grew angry and when she graduated with her MBA she volunteered for the Peace Corps and went off to balance books for a community improvement incorporation in Mexico. It was easy.

She had free time to find a beach and let the students try to teach her wind surfing.In a hotel bar on a beautiful beach she met a handsome man who owned the hotel.

She moved into the hotel for a few years, remaining after the Peace Corps job was over, balancing his books and enjoying water sports in the day, and dancing and lovemaking with the handsome man at night. Her hair sunbleached a brighter blonde and her tan grew darker.

When the handsome man married a girl who had been chosen by his mother, Laury accepted his apology with an inscrutable smile, packed, wiped out all the hotel's financial records from the computer and shredded all the paper records, and caught a plane back to California.

She found out that Denny had been given another doctorate on his frog research and now had a bigger laboratory and some employees, and best of all he was still unmarried. She arrived at Denny's laboratory sure she looked more beautiful than ever.

"Honey, I'm back from Mexico," she called out to the back of a man in a green cap wearing Denny's favorite T-s.h.i.+rt.

The man turned and stood up tall. His face was s.h.i.+ny tan and very wide, his eyes were bright gold and very big, and his mouth stretched almost from ear to ear.

He was surprisingly attractive.

"I've never forgotten you," he said in a deep musical voice. "Kiss me again."

Chapter 22 - London Bone by Michael Moorc.o.c.k.

Michael Moorc.o.c.k is one of the great writers, editors, public figures in SF of the latter half of this century. He can write, he can sing, he can play guitar (he was in the band Hawkwind for a while), and is at present the greatest English writer living in Bastrop, Texas. He was the force behind the New Wave of the 1960s in England, the prophet of change in SF in that decade, and the influential editor of the great magazine, New Worlds, that was the home of the avant garde in SF. There is of course a direct descent from that magazine to the anthology edited by David Garnett t.i.tled New Worlds, from which this story is reprinted. Moorc.o.c.k, more than any other figure, broke in two the history of SF in the second half of this century. SF since Moorc.o.c.k's advent in 1964 is contemporary, before him it is mostly literary history. This, it seems to me is one great significance of the New Wave, that it divides history, the way John W. Campbell divided history. Nothing was the same after New Worlds magazine. Even the continuing production of familiar SF existed forever after in a new context. Last year he was the guest of honor at the World SF Convention in San Antonio, Texas, so there is no doubt he remains a strong presence in SF today, though no longer the fiery nexus of the 60s. Still, the best original anthology of 1997 wouldn't have existed without him. "London Bone" ismature Moorc.o.c.k, rich, complex, socially textured, morally engaged SF.

For Ronnie Scott

ONE.

My name is Raymond Gold and I'm a well-known dealer.

I was born too many years ago in Upper Street, Islington. Everybody reckons me in the London markets and I have a good reputation in Manchester and the provinces. I have bought and sold, been the middleman, an agent, an art representative, a professional mentor, a tour guide, a spiritual bridge-builder. These days I call myself a cultural speculator.

But, you won't like it, the more familiar word for my profession, as I practiced it until recently, is scalper. This kind of language is just another way of isolating the small businessman and making what he does seem sleazy while the stockbroker dealing in millions is supposed to be legitimate. But I don't need to convince anyone today that there's no sodding justice.

"Scalping" is risky. What you do is invest in tickets on spec and hope to make a timely sale when the market for them hits zenith. Any kind of ticket, really, but mostly shows. I've never seen anything offensive about getting the maximum possible profit out of an American matron with more money than sense who's anxious to report home with the right items ticked off the beento list. We've all seen them rus.h.i.+ng about in their overpriced limos and mini-buses, pretending to be individuals: Thursday: Changing-of-the-Guard, Harrods, Planet Hollywood, Royal Academy, Tea-At-the-Ritz, Cats. It's a sort of tribal dance they are all compelled to perform. If they don't perform it, they feel inadequate. Sat.u.r.day: Tower of London, Bucket of Blood, Jack-the-Ripper talk, Sherlock Holmes Pub, Sherlock Holmes tour, Madame Tussaud's, Covent Garden Cream Tea, Dogs. These are people so traumatized by contact with strangers that their only security lies in these rituals, these well-blazed trails and familiar chants. It's my job to smooth their paths, to make them exclaim how pretty and wonderful and elegant and magical it all is. The street people aren't a problem. They're just so many charming d.i.c.k Van d.y.k.es.

Americans need bulls.h.i.+t the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can't survive without it. It's your duty to help them get their regular fixes while they travel.

And when they make it back after three weeks on alien sh.o.r.es, their friends, of course, are always glad of some foreign bulls.h.i.+t for a change.

Even if you sell a show ticket to a real enthusiast, who has already been forty-nine times and is so familiar to the cast they see him in the street and think he's a relative, who are you hurting? Andros Loud Website, Lady Hatchet's loyal laureate, who achieved rank and wealth by celebrating the lighter side of the moral vacuum? He would surely applaud my enterprise in the buccaneering spirit of the free market.

Venture capitalism at its bravest. Well, he'd applaud me if he had time these days from his railings against fate, his horrible understanding of the true nature of hiscoming obscurity. But that's partly what my story's about.

I have to say in my own favor that I'm not merely a speculator or, if you like, exploiter. I'm also a patron. For many years, not just recently, a niagara of dosh has flowed out of my pocket and into the real arts faster than a cat up a Frenchman.

Whole orchestras and famous soloists have been brought to the Wigmore Hall on the money they get from me. But I couldn't have afforded this if it wasn't for the definitely iffy Miss Saigon (a triumph of well-oiled machinery over dodgy morality) or the unbelievably decrepit Good Rockin' Tonite (in which the living dead jive in the aisles), nor, of course, that first great theatrical triumph of the new millennium.