Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (4 page)
Read Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Online
Authors: Greg Bear,Gardner Dozois
Anne leaned forward in her chair. “You think it’s a stupid idea, too.”
“Not necessarily.” She was looking for a fight, but she wasn’t going to get it from him. “In time, it may be a viable one. But neither the natives nor we may be ready for it just now.”
“‘May,’ ‘may,’—aren’t you ever definite, doctor?”
“Yes,” he said, and she got the joke and smiled. The tension dissipated a little, but only a little.
“I’m going now,” she said. “The session’s over.”
“Yes, it is, but Anne—don’t go thinking that I’m in the same camp as your mother. I think your . . . your interest in the natives and their abilities shows a genuine intellectual curiosity. And I believe you are stable enough to tell the difference between illusion and reality.”
He was rewarded with her rare smile. “Thanks.” And then, fiercely, “All that people like my mother can think to do with illusion is wall themselves away from it. Instead of exploring what good it might bring to us.”
It had not brought anything good to Mistherd, or to Shadow-of-a-Dream. Neither of them, however, had Anne’s obstinate clarity. At the same time, Luke was afraid that, in the effort to keep her from stopping therapy, he had offered her too much encouragement. Perhaps he should not have taken this assignment; he was too sick, too old. His head hurt.
“I’ll see you Tuesday,” he said to Anne. All at once, and very unprofessionally, he was eager for her to leave.
“Yes,” Anne said.
But Tuesday she was in the infirmary with flu, Luke was in bed at his hotel with chest pains, and Shadow-of-a-Dream had vanished.
“She could not have left Christmas Landing,” Chief Halford said. “I’ve reviewed the surveillance data on every penetration of the perimeter shield. All authorized.”
“I thought,” Luke said, “that you’d assigned her a twenty-four-hour guard.”
“We did. A dog, of course; we can’t afford personnel for wayward girls!”
“What happened to the dog?” Luke sat in his hotel room, as utilitarian as everything else in Christmas Landing, and tried to appear healthier than he was. He had doubled his medication, but if he went to the infirmary, he would never come out. That was not how he wanted to die.
Chief Halford—it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never heard her first name—said, “The dog was drugged.”
Luke was impressed. “Where did Shadow-of-a-Dream get drugs?”
“Her name is Carolyn and I haven’t yet found out where she got the drugs. You know Carolyn better than anyone—where do you think she might be in Christmas Landing? Dr. Cardiff and his team are very anxious to have her back.”
I’ll bet they are
, Luke thought. And so was the chief, whose reputation would not be helped by this. Luke looked at her as steadily as he could manage.
“Chief Halford, the human brain is more plastic than we once thought, especially the brains of children. Children damaged in freak accidents have shown the ability to modify neural connections in ways completely impossible for adults. I’m sure Dr. Cardiff told you this after he examined the brain scans of Hal DiSilvio and Laura Simmons.” Fire-Born and Cloud, that were.
“He did, but it isn’t very relevant to what I’m dealing with here, is it? Do you have any idea where Carolyn might be?”
“No.”
“Thank you.” She left, scowling, a competent woman only trying to do her job, and faced with forces she could not comprehend.
But we all do that every day, Luke thought. Life itself is too complex for us to fully comprehend, let alone death.
In fact, humanity had gone backwards in its ability to deal with death. Once death was carried around as a constant companion, a silent shadow that might at any moment choose to speak. People died so much younger, and so much more frequently. In childbirth, as infants, of untamed diseases, of harsh environments. There was no choice but to live with the shadow, acknowledge it, and from that had grown death’s opposite: stories of heroism and transcendence, of Valhalla and Paradise and the Elysian Fields, of beauty so strong it diminished one’s inevitable fate. From the acknowledged shadow had come the once-and-yet-to-be Arthur asleep in Avalon, had come Apollo blinding in his beauty, had come the Queen of Air and Darkness. Illusions, and yet more than illusions.
It hurt to move. Luke did so slowly, gathering only what was necessary: a warm jacket, strong boots. In the hotel lobby, a mastiff eyed him. He ignored it and went out into the street. The night was clear and moonless, the stars dimmed by the lights of the city. He caught a robo-taxi and it took him to the transition dorm.
Only on the way did he realize it was Saturday night. Onto the streets near the hotel, outwayers spilled out of the bars, into the bars. They called to each other raucously, young people who lived with hardship but not usually, thanks to modern technology, with death. In the bright holos of Christmas Landing, under the dim stars, there were no shadows. Even the northern auroras seemed faint.
It was quieter close to the transition dorm, located near the city perimeter to make outgoing expeditions more efficient. Most of the transients were partying in the quarter he had just left. Luke made his slow way through the lobby, then up in the elevator to the room listed for A. Halford.
“Yes?” Anne’s wary response through the closed door. Ready to be angry, but with another note underneath.
“It’s Dr. Silverstein. Please let me in, Anne. I need to see you.”
Silence. Then the door opened, almost defiantly. Luke understood. They were conducting a test.
Anne was dressed in clothes a little too warm for the evening. The guard dog assigned to her lay beside the bed, eyeing Luke. Luke gazed back, and he knew. Painfully he squatted beside the dog, looked directly into its eyes.
“Hello, Shadow-of-a-Dream.”
They were first shocked, then afraid. “How did you know?” Anne demanded. Shadow-of-a-Dream had resumed her human form, which of course she had never lost. The girl was not a shape shifter. Only the human mind was.
Luke addressed not Anne but the beautiful, naked child. “It was in the chapel—do you remember?”
A brief vision, quickly gone, and he found himself slumped on a plain wooden bench, the girl kneeling beside him
. “I thought I was dying, and I saw the same vision I’d seen from your alien caretaker, the one who raised you, outside the perimeter of the mind shield. Only this time
you
sent it, didn’t you, Shadow-of-a-Dream? Your own brain, worked on all those years and perhaps possessing more talent than most—you can cast the illusions, too. Not far and maybe not for long, but you can do it.”
Brains more plastic than we once thought
, Cardiff’s report had said,
especially the brains of children
.
Both girls, one so clearly the child of civilization and one so much the opposite, both stared mutely. Luke said, “What did you do with the dogs?”
Anne said sulkily, “Drugged. Hers and mine. We will not be guarded like criminals!”
Luke said, “You got the sleeping pills from the infirmary. While you supposedly had the flu.” He didn’t ask how she had faked the symptoms; it was easy enough with various ingested substances, and she was a researcher.
Anne said, “Don’t try to stop us!” But she was no threat. It was Shadow-of-a-Dream who held the long, wickedly sharp knife—and where had she concealed it when she wore no clothes?
“Shadow-of-a-Dream,” he said quietly, “you don’t need that. I’m not trying to stop you. I want to go with you.”
Three figures walked slowly down the corridor, open on one side to the warm summer night. The figures passed two or three people, all of whom saw a boy and girl holding hands, accompanied by their large mastiff.
The strip of bare land beyond the corridor was not surveilled; the mind-shield was deemed strong enough to keep out illusions. These illusions, however, were inside the shield. Had anyone been watching from the windows of Christmas Landing, three dogs wandered over the dirt, as dogs always did. The ground was littered with dog poop.
The mind-shield, a faint shimmer in the starlight, was under surveillance. But the dogs were not there long. They passed through the shield, and alarms began to ring. Within Christmas Landing, people responded.
“Run!” cried Shadow-of-a-Dream. Luke ran, but only a short distance was necessary.
“Go,” he gasped, and collapsed to the ground, thinking
I didn’t need boots and jacket after all
.
Shadow-of-a-Dream stopped. She looked at him, and in her eyes he saw comprehension.
Did the girl think then of Terry—Mistherd? Did she regret that he would not join her and Anne in the wild and enchanted Carheddin under the mountain? Terry’s bitterness would never permit that. More, he would consider Shadow-of-a-Dream’s return to the natives an act of weakness. But which was stronger: the mind able to reject illusion, or the one able to embrace it while still recognizing it for what it was?
Luke had a last glimpse of Shadow-of-a-Dream, lovely and wild and pagan and alien, before she vanished. The men who ran toward him through the shield saw only two shiverleaf bushes, among the many that grew just beyond the outpost. Luke saw only the stars above, not dimmed at all. He saw only the dark night, and the darker one approaching.
And then he saw the Angel of Death, as he had seen it once before on this spot, and then once again in the chapel. Shadow-of-a-Dream’s last gift, coming toward him in a blaze of white light, holding out her long slim hands. Compassionate and welcoming, erasing all illusion of fear.
AFTERWORD:
I first
read Poul Anderson when I was fifteen. My mother had given me for Christmas the two-volume
Treasury of Science Fiction
, edited by Anthony Boucher, which I still have (it’s a bit battered from umpty-umpty moves). The volume included Anderson’s “Brain Wave,” in which the Earth in its movement through space moves out of an “inhibitor field” that has been affecting electromagnetic activity in the human brain for millions of years. All at once everyone is much, much more intelligent. So are the animals. This story knocked me out with its inventiveness and scope. So I reread it while looking for a universe to borrow for this anthology story, and it still knocks me out.
However, for this anthology I chose instead “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” the 1972 Hugo winner. This also is concerned with the human brain. It’s a gorgeous story but, unlike “Brain Wave,” it does not carry its characters’ fates past the revelation of what the aliens have been doing. Even in 1972 I wanted to know more: What happened to Mistherd back in “civilization”? To Shadow-of-a-Dream? And what about the fact that the human civilization Anderson had created for Roland was far less attractive than the alien illusions? It was lovely to have a chance to write this story and thus to create some answers.
A final note on writing “Outmoded Things”: Gardner Dozois is an experienced editor. I signed the contract for this story in August, 2010. This manuscript was not due until the following June. But Gardner knows writers, and so every single month he sent out a reminder: “Only nine more months until your story is due! Eight more months! Six more months and, oh, incidentally, Harry Turtledove and Stephen Baxter have already turned theirs in! They get a gold star!” It was lovely to have a chance to write this story—and the editorial nagging didn’t hurt, either.
—Nancy Kress
THE MAN WHO CAME LATE
by Harry Turtledove
Although he
writes other kinds of science fiction as well, and even the occasional fantasy, Harry Turtledove has become one of the most prominent writers of Alternate History stories in the business today, and is probably the most popular and influential writer to work that territory since L. Sprague De Camp; in fact, most of the current popularity of that particular sub-genre can be attributed to Turtledove’s own hot-ticket bestseller status.
Turtledove has published Alternate History novels such as
The Guns of the South,
dealing with a timeline in which the American Civil War turns out
very
differently, thanks to time-traveling gun-runners; the best-selling
Worldwar
series, in which the course of World War II is altered by attacking aliens; the “Basil Argyros” series, detailing the adventures of a “magistrianoi” in an alternate Byzantine Empire (collected in the book
Agent of Byzantium);
the “Sim” series, which take place in an alternate world in which European explorers find North America inhabited by hominids instead of Indians (collected in the book
A Different Flesh);
a look at a world where the Revolutionary War
didn’t
happen, written with actor Richard Dreyfuss,
The Two Georges,
and many other intriguing Alternate History scenarios. Turtledove is also the author of two multi-volume Alternate History
fantasy
series, “Videssos Cycle” and the “Krispes Sequence.” His other books include the novels
Wereblood, Werenight, Earthgrip, Noninterference, A World of Difference, Gunpowder Empire, American Empire: The Victorous Opposition, Jaws of Darkness, Ruled Britannia, Settling Accounts: Drive to the East, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, The Bridge of the Separator, End of the Beginning,
and
Every Inch a King;
the collections
Kaleidoscope, Down in the Bottomlands (and Other Places),
and
Atlantis and Other Places,
and, as editor,
The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century, The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century,
and, with Martin H. Greenberg, the
Alternate Generals
books. His most recent books include the novels
The Big Switch
and
Supervolcano!
He won a Hugo Award in 1994 for his story, “Down in the Bottomlands.” A native Californian, Turtledove has a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA, and has published a scholarly translation of a 9th-century Byzantine chronicle. He lives in Canoga Park, California, with his wife and family.
In the autumnal story that follows, a bittersweet return to the world of Anderson’s landmark fantasy novel
Three Hearts and Three Lions,
he shows us that sometimes you
can’t
go home again, even if you want to more than anything else in the world.
Alianora carried a bucket
to the well in the tiny green at the heart of the village. She needed the water. She’d used what there was in the house the night before to soak green and yellow peas. She aimed to cook up a big pot of pease porridge, and enliven the flavor with chopped onion, bits of salt pork and some fennel she’d got from a wandering trader.
Her long wool skirt almost stirred up dust as she walked along. Most village women embroidered flowers or bright birds on their linen tunics. She’d ornamented hers with dragons. Maybe—no, surely—they talked about her behind her back. Well, that was all right. They gossiped about one another the same way. And she joined in. In a place where great things never happened, what could you do but go on about small ones?
She knew about great things. She’d lived through a dragon’s onslaught, something of which few mortals could boast. (Not that she
did
boast—what point to it?) She’d met elflords and sorceresses and high nobles of the human kind as well . . . and here she was, wed to the smith who’d forged the iron hoops that bound the bucket’s oaken staves.
Sometimes she wondered whether the war against Chaos that had engulfed the whole world thirty years before was meant to bring nothing more splendid than countless villages, all of them places where great things never happened, scattered through plains and forests. But what better result could the war have birthed? If ordinary folk were able to live ordinary lives free from anything worse than ordinary fears, didn’t things wag the way they should?
She smiled when she passed the smithy. Theodo waved back through the open door. He was never too busy to look out whenever someone went by. Part of that came from having two strapping sons learning the trade. Part sprang from life in a place like this. Anything that chanced was perforce noticeable and interesting, because not much did.
The smile stayed on Alianora’s face as she walked on. Theodo was a good man, a kind man. He’d never struck her in anger, never once. He’d clouted Einhard and Nithard only when they’d really and truly earned it. His hands might be scarred and callused and hard, but they were gentle in the quiet dark. A good man. A kind man. Perhaps not the most exciting man God ever made, but . . .
“I’ve had enough excitements, enough and to spare,” Alianora whispered fiercely. Her own work-roughened hands tightened on the bucket’s handle. Having magic-dashing cold iron in the family, so to speak, wasn’t such a bad thing even today.
No, not half. The blue gloaming that warded Faerie folk from the daylight they could not bear had retreated many leagues after Chaos’ latest grand assault on the lands of Law went awry. Yet still you could see it on the horizon from here. It had even moved forward again, a little, once or twice, in the years since then. Law’s nature, after all, was to forget and to forgive. Chaos did neither, it seemed, and found more agents within Law’s borders to work its will than would ever be so in reverse.
Not that all wizardry was wicked. Oh, no! Alianora’s smile subtly changed. Her daughter Alianna wore the white, feathered swan-may’s tunic these days, and wore it wondrous well. Somewhere in the priests’ holy Book it said there was a time for everything, and there as elsewhere the Book spoke true.
Alianora knew without—too much—resentment that her own time for the swan-may’s tunic lay behind her. Three decades and four children (one tiny body had lain in hallowed ground since before its first saint’s day, an unending sadness) had widened the hips to which that tunic once clung. She’d lost two teeth and gained wrinkles; encroaching gray streaked and dulled her red hair.
But when she dreamt of flying, she knew whereof she dreamt! Everyone flew in dreams. Almost everyone had to imagine what it was like. Alianora
knew
the wind beneath her wings,
knew
the joy of soaring on streams of warm air gusting up from the ground,
knew
the wonder of freedom and speed in three dimensions.
She glanced up into the watery sky to see if she might catch a glimpse of Alianna. No; wherever her daughter flew today, it was not near here. Just as well. Who didn’t want to fly wide when young, to streak over the fields and the meadows and the dark woods beyond? A village was for settling down, for later. When you were Alianna’s age, you thought later never came. You thought all kinds of things when you were Alianna’s age.
Here was the green, and the stone-ringed well. Behind Alianora, Theodo’s hammer rang against the anvil. The iron he beat into shape there wouldn’t be cold, not yet. As always, she hoped he wouldn’t come home nursing a burn. He was careful, but once in a while everyone slipped.
Four or five women stood near the well. Berthrada’s twin blond boys toddled by her feet. One of them stooped and plucked up some grass or maybe a bug and stuck it in his mouth. She hadn’t seemed to be watching, but she grabbed him, thrust a finger in there, and got rid of whatever it was. Mothers had, and needed, eyes in the back of the head. Berthrada swatted her son on the bottom, not too hard, and set him down again.
Alianora nodded to the women as she came up. They nodded back. It wasn’t quite as if she’d been born and raised here, even if her husband had. She’d been places and done things they were just as well pleased not to know too much about. And the brief, form-fitting swan-may’s tunic that had been hers and was now mostly Alianna’s brought a whiff of scandal with it.
Still and all, she lived here quietly enough, as she had for many years now. She made eyes at no man but her own. Her sons would be catches; no doubt of that. So Ethelind, the miller’s wife, said, “Have you heard the latest about Walacho and his poor sorry family?”
“What now?” Alianora asked sadly, working on the crank to bring up a bucket of well water. Any sensible man drank beer instead when he could; if you drank water all the time, you pretty much begged for a flux of the bowels. Walacho wasn’t such a sensible man. He drank to get drunk, and when he got drunk he got mean. He did things he was sorry for later, which helped him as much as it did anyone else.
Before Ethelind could come out with—or embroider upon—the juicy details of his latest rampage, Berthrada pointed out to the edge of the woods and exclaimed, “Look! A stranger’s coming!”
Ethelind shot her a dirty look. Walacho’s ordinary folly would have to wait for another time. Strangers didn’t come to the village every day, or every week, either. This one might give folk here things to talk about till the next one showed up.
He tramped along with determined strides, like a man who has been traveling for a long time and knows he may have to keep going longer yet. He was a big man, tall and broad through the shoulders. He wore a green plaid wool shirt with a stand-and-fall collar; sturdy, snug-fitting trousers dyed a blue not quite that of woad; and ankle-length brown leather boots. A scabbarded sword hung on his left hip, a sheathed knife on his right.
“Well, heaven knows I’ve seen worse,” Berthrada murmured when he was still a little too far away to hear her.
“He’s too old for you, dear,” Ethelind said, also softly. She freighted the last word with poisonous sweetness.
No matter how catty that made her, it didn’t make her wrong. The stranger’s fair hair—so far, telling how much gray it held was hard—receded at the temples. Harsh grooves scored his forehead and the skin between his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. When you got a good look at it, his nose had a distinct dent.
When Alianora got a good look at that dent, it was as if someone had punched her, hard, on the point of the chin. She sagged. Her hands slipped off the crank. It spun backwards, and almost did clip her in the face. She wondered if she would even have noticed. She’d already been hit harder than that.
“Holger,” she said, and groped for the stone wall around the well to help steady herself.
His eyes snapped sharply toward her. They were blue as she remembered, blue as a deep lake seen from the sky when she soared above it in swan’s guise. But he had not known her till she spoke his name. Grief flamed within her for that.
“Alianora?” he said. “Is it really you at last?” Blood drained from his weathered face, leaving it lich-pale.
“Aye,” she answered. She’d told him she loved him, there in the ruined church of St. Grimmin’s. And he’d taken the sword Cortana, which he’d found hidden there, and he’d ridden forth on his great black horse, and he’d broken the forces of Chaos, for they could not stand against him and what he bore.
And that was thirty long years ago now, even if it sometimes seemed like yesterday. It might seem so, but seeming was not reality.
“My dear,” he said. “My love.” He took a step in her direction. The village women stared avidly, their eyes wide as saucers. Even Berthrada’s twins peeped out from behind their mother’s skirts.
Alianora straightened. It was like taking a wound. Once the first shock passed, you steadied—if it wasn’t mortal, of course. “You never came back to me,” she said, as if that were all the explanation she needed. Perhaps it was. No one died of a broken heart, regardless of how many people wished they could.
Holger’s hands dropped. He had started to get his color back. Now he whitened again. “I couldn’t, dammit,” he mumbled, staring down at the grass and dirt between his feet. “The magics that brought me here swept me back to the world where I’d lived before. I was needed there, too, it turned out.”
She believed him absolutely. That more than one world might require the services of such a hero . . . Well, who could doubt it? In the end, though, what difference did it make? Two worlds might need Holger, but so had she—then. “You never came back to me,” she repeated, this time adding, “I thought sure I would never see you again.”
He cocked his head to one side. A small, tight, crooked smile came and went. “You don’t talk the way you used to,” he said, sliding away from what she’d told him.
She knew what he meant. When he’d known her before, she’d had a thick back-country burr. It wasn’t the way folk in the villages around here spoke. To fit in better, she’d softened the burr as much as she could.
“I’ve dwelt in these parts a long time now,” she said, talking the way she talked.
“I know. I’ve been trying to get to these parts for a long time now.” Holger stared off toward the horizon, and toward the blue Faeries gloaming darkening one stretch of it. “I’ve been to a lot of places—a lot of worlds. But Something or Somebody kept holding me away from this one. I can make a pretty good guess Who, too.”