Year’s Best SF 15 (19 page)

Malin had been figuring out ways of reducing the P-factor interference (essentially, stray thoughts) that disturbed the wake of a collision. It had been observed that certain transiters, paradoxically, seemed to
dream
in non-duration. There were brainstates, neuronal maps that cognitive analysis translated as weird images, emotional storms, flashes of narrative. It was rich stuff, but all useless crap, since everything had the signature of internally generated perception. But
why
were some transiters having these dense and complex dreams? What did it mean?

What if you flip the gestalt, see the noise as signal?

 

Malin searched in forbidden territory, the personal files of the Damned. Alone in a virtual archive room, in the middle of the night, she felt herself watched. She looked over her virtual shoulder and, inevitably, there was Caterina—leaning against a filing cabinet, dark hair a shining tumble: hands in the pockets of a white silk dressing-gown.

Malin's avatar wore nubbly old Rocketkid pyjamas.

‘Of course, you can explain yourself,' said the vision. ‘You wouldn't be doing something so illegal and unprofessional if you didn't have very good reason. Do you know how much trouble you're in?'

Malin nodded. ‘Yes, but these files are banned because of data protection, nothing scientific, and I'm not looking at personal information. I think I'm onto something. See here—' She shared her view. ‘See this? Hyper-development in the
anterior insula
, and the
frontal operculum
? That's not uncommon, it indicates a natural-born, life-experience augmented talent for handling virtual worlds: a gamer, a fantasist, a creative scientist. I have a group of these people, all showing the same very unusual P-stream activity in the event-wake. The backwash of the collision, that is. Like layers of new neuronal architecture—'

‘What's that extraordinary
spike
?'

‘That's what I'm talking about.'

‘But these are induction scans, decades old. Are you telling me that what happened in the Collider retroactively
appeared
in their files?'

‘Yep, it's entanglement effect. We get them, spooky effects. In terms of intentionality, we're
very
close to the Torus.'

Ouch. Traditionalists, Malin reminded herself, were
repelled
by the strangeness of the new science.

The boss did not flinch. ‘What d'you think's going on?'

Desperation generates blinding insight. Back in the JANET lab, Malin had seen, grasped,
guessed
, that Caterina Marie Skodlodowska really was on their side. Her questions were tough, but that was because she had hardliners to convince at home. She wanted the Torus to live!

Malin drew a breath. ‘I've been trying to eliminate “stray thoughts” from the information-volume where we'd hope to find S-traces from the remote site. Probability-tunnelling back to us. In certain cases I'm seeing P-fragments of extraordinary complexity. I think they're mapping the equation of the transit. When you have a problem that's too big to handle, subsitituting imagery for the values is a useful technique.'

Caterina paid attention. ‘You mean, like a memory palace?'

‘Yes! I think I'm seeing prepared minds, impelled by the collision with the mind/matter barrier to
know
what's happening: where they're going and how. They're experiencing, processing this knowledge as a virtual world!'

‘That sounds dangerously like meddling with the supernatural.'

It's a bit late to worry about that, thought Malin, exasperated, and forgetting that Cat was not the enemy. Down all the millennia, people like you have said science is ‘challenging the Throne of God.' The funny thing is, your ‘God' doesn't seem to mind. Your ‘God' keeps saying to us,
Hey, wonderful! You noticed! Follow me, I have some other great stuff to show you
—

‘Not supernatural, purely neurology. Brain-training. We could do the work here on the Panhandle. We need to be able to handle complex virtual worlds, so we have the equipment. We're just not allowed to ramp it up, because of that
“destroying the fabric of reality” thing, you know, creating exotic brainstates close to the Torus.'

‘I see you've given this some thought,' said Caterina, without a sign of alarm. ‘There would certainly be some risk.'

‘I think it's worth it. What's happening here, in these files, is involuntary and uncontrolled. If we could get people to do the trick voluntarily, we'd have your repeatable experiment! I could be a candidate myself, I've spent enough time in virtuality—'

‘You could turn yourself into a quantum computer?'

‘I
am
a quantum computer,' said Malin (and heard herself, arrogant and bewildered as Buonarotti). ‘That's what consciousness is, like the universe: a staggering mass of simultaneous, superimposed calculations—'

Caterina's avatar was ripping through the data. ‘You're saying that some of the Damned made successful transits. Why didn't they come back?'

‘Would you?'

‘Good point.'

‘Theoretically there's no problem about “coming back.” Imagine a stretched elastic. It
wants
to rebound. The difficulty should be
staying
, at the remote site, I mean. That is, until we have a presence there, to anchor people in the new reality. Another station.'

‘What about the Lost? Why didn't they “rebound”?'

They died, thought Malin. They were annihilated, unless they had this fortuitous ability; or at least someone in the party did.

‘I don't know.'

That strange glow rose in Caterina's eyes (her virtual eyes); which Malin had seen before and could not quite interpret.

‘Well…I think you've set us a challenge, Malin.'

 

So they were off, Malin the possible JANET and her polar opposite. Skodlodowska chose the destination. She decided they might as well go for the big prize: one of the Transportation planets, where they should find Earth-type conditions. Maybe they'd meet some of the Damned! The science teams,
in a fever of hope, prepared to fire-up the Torus. The fact-finders stayed in their quarters, and communications with Earth (as far as Lou could discover) continued undisturbed. It looked as if Caterina wasn't telling her Flat-Earth bosses that she planned to take this crazy leap into the void.

Malin spent hours in the neuro-labs, getting her brain trained under the supervision of Dr. Fortune, gamer-lord of the Panhandle's virtualities.

‘You're fraternising with the enemy,' he warned her.

‘Fraternising's a dirty word. I'm offering the hand of friendship.'

‘You'll be sorry. You don't know what she really wants.'

‘She wants to make a transit, obviously. It's her secret dream.'

‘Yes, but
why
?'

‘I'm hoping it's the everlasting fame and glory,' said Malin.

The mystery bothered her, too.

 

All transiters, even the humble ‘prospectors' had to do some brain-training. They were schooled in handling, visualising, internalising their survival kit: so that the pressure suit, rations, air supply would transit with them, imprinted on the somatosensory cortex; and they wouldn't turn up naked in hard vacuum. Malin had to do a lot more. She was building her memory palace, a map for the equation of the transit. They had decided, playing safe, that it should be a starship. Visualise this, Malin. Choose the details and imprint them. Internalise this skin, this complex exo-skeleton. The ship is the journey. You are the ship, and you are with your crew, inside the ship—

‘Conditions for supporting
human
life?' wondered Caterina. ‘Is that necessary? Why not a completely new body and chemistry?'

‘Maybe it could be done,' said Malin. ‘Not easily. We unravel S from P by mathematical tricks in the lab, but consciousness and embodiment evolved together. They're inextricable, far as we can tell.'

‘So on the other side, it's the real me, who I always was?'

‘Yeah, I suppose.'

They had lain down like prospectors, in the Buonarotti couches in the transit chamber: and they had ‘woken up' on board. Malin remembered the transition, vaguely as a dream, but she'd forgotten it was real. Reality was the ship, the saloon, their cabins; the subliminal hum of the great engines. Malin's desk of instruments, the headset that fastened on her cranium, sending ethereal filaments deep into her brain. She was the Navigator.

Caterina, of course, was the captain.

They lived together, playing games, preparing food, talking away the long idle hours, as they crossed the boundless ocean of information—

‘My name isn't really Skodlodowska,' Cat confessed.

‘I didn't think it was!'

‘I liked you straight away, Mal, because you're so
normal
, except kind of unisex. I'm sorry, but I find bodymods unnatural and repulsive—'

Oh yeah?, thought Malin: but she understood. Caterina hadn't chosen her genemods. She had been compelled, by pressures no Reformer could understand, to make herself into a beautiful, risk-loving woman.

‘My
thoughts
are very perverse,' she said, solemnly.

Caterina snorted. They giggled together: and Malin shyly reached out to take the captain's hand.

A shipboard romance, what could be more natural? What could be more likely to anchor them in the faux-reality, and keep them safe? Dr. Fortune had warned them that they would be scared, that what was ‘really happening' was utterly terrifying; and it would bleed through. But what frightened them most, even in the closing phase, when Malin never left her desk, and the starship, rocked by soundless thunders, seemed to be trying to fall apart, was the fear that they would be enemies again, on the other side.

 

Landfall was like waking. Malin was lying on what seemed to be a mudbank, among beds of reeds as tall as trees. The air smelt marshy, acrid. She turned on her side, she and Cat smiled at each other, rueful and uncertain.

They got to their feet, and stared at each other.

Skodlodowska's beautiful white scientist-suit was somewhat altered: wider across the shoulders, flat in the chest, narrow in the hips. Malin wore her ordinary station jumper, a little ragged at the wrist and ankle cuffs.

‘Oh my God,' gasped Malin. ‘We made it!'

‘I'm a
man
,' whispered Caterina, in tones of horror.

‘Yeah, and I'm a woman. Shame, I always hoped I was an intersex in a woman's body, deep down. It's much
cooler
to be an inter! But hey, nobody's perfect. Cat, pay attention, we're here, we did it!'

Malin had started skipping about, wildly excited.

‘I thought breaking the barrier would give me my
true
body—'

‘Oh for God's sake, come on! We've done it! The repeatable experiment! Interstellar scheduled flights start here!'

Four slender bipedal figures had appeared, beyond a gleaming channel that didn't quite look like water. Scanty golden fur covered their arms and shoulders, longer fur was trained and dressed into curls in front of their ears, and they wore clothing. They kept their distance, murmuring to each other.

In that moment, still in the penumbra of the collision, Malin saw the future. She knew that she would be the first Navigator, carrying unprepared minds safely through the unreal ocean. She would see the Buonarotti Transit become a network, trained crews an elite, and these weird voyages frequent; though never routine. She saw, with a pang of loss, that the strangeness of the universe was her birthright: but there was another world, of brittle illusions and imaginary limits, that was forever beyond her reach.

But Caterina was shaking fit to tear herself apart, and Malin suddenly realized that what had happened to the Lost could
easily
happen again, to the two of them. Quickly, rebound. Set the controls, the mental switches.

Return.

Gene Wolfe lives in Barrington, Illinois. He is one of the genre's most widely respected writers about whom much praise has been written. Much of his finest shorter fiction was collected this year in
The Best of Gene Wolfe
(2009). Perhaps the writer who has praised him best is Neil Gaiman who said, “Gene Wolfe is the smartest, subtlest, most dangerous writer alive today, in genre or out of it. If you don't read this book you'll have missed out on something important and wonderful and all the cool people will laugh at you.” His new fantasy novel,
The Sorcerer's House,
will be published in 2010. His previous novel, Lovecraftian SF, was
An Evil Guest
(2008). A new SF novel is coming in 2011. But meanwhile, Wolfe continues to write excellent short fiction, adding to his already substantial body of influential work.

“Donovan Sent Us” appeared in
Other Earths,
edited by Nick Gevers, an alternate history anthology containing a number of first-rate stories. In Wolfe's story, set in the World War II era and in the tradition of Philip K. Dick's
Man in the High Castle—
or perhaps in this case more like Philip Roth's
The Plot Against America—
Germany won but has not taken over the U.S. And so “Wild Bill” Donovan sends an agent to German-occupied England to rescue a very significant person. This is a story full of unpleasant political surprises, and more.

T
he plane was a JU 88 with all the proper markings, and only God knew where Donovan had gotten it. “We're over London,” the man known as Paul Potter murmured. Crouching, he peered across the pi lot's shoulder.

Baldur von Steigerwald (he was training himself to think of himself as that) was crouching as well. “I'm surprised there aren't more lights,” he said.

“That's the Thames.” Potter pointed. Far below, starlight—only starlight—gleamed on water. “Over there's where the Tower used to be.” He pointed again.

“You think they might keep him there?”

“They couldn't,” Potter said. “It's been blown all to hell.”

Von Steigerwald said nothing.

“All London's been blown to hell. England stood alone against Germany—and England was crushed.”

“The truth is awkward, Herr Potter,” von Steigerwald said. “Pretty often, too awkward.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Listening mostly to the steady throbbing of the engines, von Steigerwald shrugged.

“A damned bloody Kraut, and you call me a liar.”

“I'm just another American,” von Steigerwald said. “Are you?”

“We're not supposed to talk about this.”

Von Steigerwald shrugged again. “You began it,
mein herr.
Here's the awkward truth. You can deny it if you want to. England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India,
Burma, and Northern Ireland stood—alone if you like—against Germany, Italy, Austria, and Vichy. They lost, and England was crushed. Scotland and Wales were hit almost as hard. Am I wrong?”

The JU 88 began a slow bank as Potter said, “Franco joined Germany at the end.”

Von Steigerwald nodded. “You're right.” He had not forgotten it, but he added, “I forgot that.”

“Spain didn't bring down the house,” Potter conceded.

“Get back by the doors,” the pilot called over his shoulder. “Jump as soon as they're open all the way.”

“You're really English, aren't you?” von Steigerwald whispered as they trotted back toward the bomb-bay doors. “You're an English Jew.”

Quite properly, Potter ignored the question. “It was the Jews,” he said as he watched the doors swing down. “If Roosevelt hadn't welcomed millions of European Jews into America, the American people wouldn't—” The rest was lost in the whistling wind.

It had not been millions, von Steigerwald reflected before his chute opened. It opened, and the snap of its silk cords might have been the setting of a hook. A million and a half—something like that.

He came down in Battersea Park with his chute tangled in a tree. When at last he was able to cut himself free, he knotted ornamental stones into it and threw it into the Thames. His jump suit followed it, weighted with one more. As it sunk, he paused to sniff the reek of rotting corpses—paused and shrugged.

Two of the best tailors in America had done everything possible to provide him with a black
Schutzstaffel
uniform that would look perfectly pressed after being worn under a jump suit. Shivering in the wind, he smoothed it as much as he could and got out his black leather trench coat. The black uniform cap snapped itself into shape the moment he took it out, thanks to a spring-wire skeleton. He hid the bag that had held both in some overgrown shrubbery.

The Luger in his gleaming black holster had kept its loaded magazine in place and was on safe. He paused in a
moonlit clearing to admire its ivory grips and the inlaid, red-framed, black swastikas.

There seemed to be no traffic left in Battersea these days. Not at night, at least, and not even for a handsome young S.S. officer. A staff car would have been perfect, but even an army truck might do the trick.

There was nothing.

Hunched against the wind, he began to walk. The Thames bridges destroyed by the blitz had been replaced with pontoon bridges by the German Army—so his briefer had said. There would be sentries at the bridges, and those sentries might or might not know. If they did not—

Something coming! He stepped out into the road, drew his Luger, and waved both arms.

A little Morris skidded to a stop in front of him. Its front window was open, and he peered inside. “So. Ein taxi dis is? You vill carry me, ja?”

The driver shook his head vehemently. “No, gov'nor. I mean, yes, gov'nor. I'll take you anywhere you want to go, gov'nor, but it's not a cab.”

“Ein two-vay radio you haff, drifer.”

The driver seemed to have heard nothing.

“But no license you are haffing.” Von Steigerwald chuckled evilly. “You like money, doh. Ja? I haf it. Goot occupation pounds, ja? Marks, also.” He opened a rear door and slid onto the seat, only slightly impeded by his leather coat. “Where important prisoners are, you take me.” He sat back. “
Macht schnell!
”

The Morris lurched forward. “Quick as a wink, gov'nor. Where is it?”

“You know, drifer.” Von Steigerwald summoned all of his not inconsiderable acting ability to make his chuckle that of a Prussian sadist, and succeeded well enough that the driver's shoulders hunched. “De taxi drifers? Dey know efery-ding, everywhere. Make no more troubles vor me. I vill not punish you for knowing.”

“I dunno, gov'nor, and that's the honest.”

Von Steigerwald's Luger was still in his right hand. Leaning forward once more, he pressed its muzzle to the driver's
head and pushed off the safety. “I vill not shoot now, drifer. Not now, you are too fast drifing, ja? Ve wreck. Soon you must stop, doh. Ja? Traffic or anodder reason. Den your prain ist all ofer de vindshield.”

“G-gov'nor…”

“Ja?”

“My family. Timmy's only three, gov'nor.”

“Longer dan you he lifs, I hope.”

The Morris slowed. “The bridge, gov'nor. There's a barricade. Soldiers with guns. I'll have to stop.”

“You vill not haf to start again, English pig.”

“I'm takin' you there. Only I'll have to stop for 'em.”

“You take me?”

“Right, gov'nor. The best I know.”

“Den vhy should I shoot?” Flicking the safety on, von Steigerwald holstered his Luger.

The Morris ground to a stop before the barricade. Seeing him in the rear seat, two gray-clad soldiers snapped to attention and saluted.

He rolled down a rear window and (in flawless German) asked the corporal who had just saluted whether he wished to examine his papers, adding that he was in a hurry.

Hastily the corporal replied that the
standartenführer
might proceed at once, the barricade was raised, and the Morris lurched ahead as before.

“Vhere is dis you take me, drifer?”

“I hope you're goin' to believe me, gov'nor.” The driver sounded painfully sincere. “I'm takin' you the best I know.”

“So? To vhere?”

“Tube station gov'nor. The trains don't run anymore.”

“Of dis I am avare.”

The driver glanced over his shoulder. “If I tell you I don't know, you won't believe me, gov'nor. I don't, just the same. What I think is that they're keeping them down there.”

Von Steigerwald rubbed his jaw. Did real Prussians ever do that? The driver would not know, so it hardly mattered. “Vhy you t'ink dis, drifer?”

“I've seen army trucks unloading at this station, gov'nor. Cars park there and Jerry—I mean German—officers get
out of them. The driver waits, so they're not going to another station, are they?” As the little Morris slowed and stopped, the driver added, “'Course, they're not there now. It's too late.”

“You haf no license vor dis taxi,” von Steigerwald said. His tone was conversational. “A drifer's license you haf, doh. Gif dat to me.”

“Gov'nor…”

“Must I shoot? Better I should spare you, drifer. I vill haf use vor you. Gif it to me.”

“If I don't have that, gov'nor…”

“Anoder you vould get. Hand it ofer.”

Reluctantly, the driver did.

“Goot. Now I gif someding.” Von Steigerwald held up a bill. “You see dis vellow? Herr Himmler? He is our
Reichsführer.
Dere are numbers, besides. Dos you see also, drifer?”

The driver nodded. “Fifty quid. I can't change it, gov'nor.”

“I keep your license, dis you keep. Here you vait. Ven I come out—” Von Steigerwald opened the rear door of the Morris. “You get back de license and anodder of dese.”

As he descended the steps of the underground station, he wondered whether the driver really would. It would probably depend, he decided, on whether the driver realized that the fifty-pound occupation note was counterfeit.

To left and right, soiled and often defaced posters exhorted Englishmen and Englishwomen to give their all to win a war that was now lost. In one, an aproned housewife appeared to be firing a rolling pin. Yet there were lights—bright electric lights—in the station below.

It had been partitioned into offices with salvaged wood. Each cubicle was furnished with a salvaged door, and every door was shut. Gray-uniformed soldiers snapped to attention as von Steigerwald reached the bottom of the stair and demanded to see their commandant.

He was not there, one soldier explained. Von Steigerwald ordered the soldier to fetch him, and the soldier sprinted up the stair.

 

When the commandant arrived, he looked tired and a trifle rumpled. Von Steigerwald did his best to salute so as to make it clear that an S.S. colonel outranked any mere general and proffered his orders, reflecting as he did that it might be possible for him to shoot the general and both sentries if the falsity of those orders was detected. Just possible, if he shot very fast indeed. Possible, but not at all likely. The burly sentry with the Schmeisser submachine gun first, the thin one who had run to get the commandant next. Last, the commandant himself. If—

The commandant returned his orders, saying that
Herr
Churchill was not at his facility.

Sharply, von Steigerwald declared that he had been told otherwise.

The commandant shook his head and repeated politely that Churchill was not there.

Where was he, then?

The commandant did not know.

Who would know?

The commandant shrugged.

The commandant was to return to bed. Von Steigerwald, who would report the entire affair to the
Reichsführer-SS
, intended to inspect the facility. His conclusions would be included in his report.

The commandant rose.

Von Steigerwald motioned for him to sit again. He,
Standartenführer
von Steigerwald, would guide his own tour.

He would not see everything if he did, the commandant insisted; even in explosive German, the commandant sounded defeated. Sergeant Lohr would show him around. Sergeant Lohr had a flashlight.

Sergeant Lohr was the burly man with the submachine gun.

The prisoners were not held in the tunnels themselves, Lohr explained as he and von Steigerwald walked along a dark track, but in the rolling stock. There were toilets in the cars, which had been railway passenger cars before the war. If the
Standartenführer—

“The cars were squirreled away down here to save them from German bombs,” a new voice said. “The underground had been disabled, but there was sound trackage left, so why not? I take it you understand English, Colonel?”

In the near-darkness of the tunnel, the shadowy figure who had joined them was hardly more than that: a man of medium size, shabbily dressed in clothing too large for him.

“
Ja
,” von Steigerwald replied. “I speak it vell. It is vor dis reason I vas sent. Und you are…?”

For a moment, Lohr's flashlight played on the shabby man's face, an emaciated face whose determined jaw jutted above a wattled neck. “Lenny Spencer, Colonel. At your service.”

Lohr grunted—or perhaps, growled.

“I'm a British employee, sir. A civilian employee of your army and, if I may be permitted a trifle of boldness, a man lent to you by His Majesty's occupation government. Far too many of my German friends speak little English. I interpret for them, sir. I run errands and do such humble work as my German friends judge beneath them. If I can be of any use to you, Colonel, I shall find my happiness in serving you.”

Von Steigerwald stroked his chin. “Dis place you know, ja?”

The shabby man nodded. “Indeed I do, Colonel. Few, if I may say it, know the facility and its prisoners as well as I.”

“Goot. Also you know Herr Churchill. He vas your leader in de var, so it must be so. He ist here. Dis I know. In Berlin he ist wanted, ja? I am to bring him. Show him to me. At vonce!”

The shabby man cowered. “Colonel, I cannot! Not with the best will in the world. He's gone.”

“So?” Von Steigerwald's hand had crept to his Luger, lifting the shiny leather holster flap and resting on the ivory grip; he allowed it to remain there. “The truth you must tell now,
Herr
Schpencer. Odervise it goes hard vit you. He vas here?”

The shabby man nodded vigorously. “He was, Colonel. He was captured in a cellar in Notting Hill. So I've been informed, sir. He was brought here to recover from his wounds, or die.”

“He ist dead? Dis you say? Vhy vas not dis reported?” Von
Steigerwald felt that he needed a riding crop—a black riding crop with which to tap his polished boots and slash people across the face. Donovan should have thought of it.

“I don't believe he is dead, Colonel, but he is no longer here.” The shabby man addressed Sergeant Lohr in halting German, asking him to confirm that Churchill was no longer there.

Sullenly, Lohr declared that he had never been there.

“Neider vun I like,” von Steigerwald declared, “but you, Schpencer, I like more petter. He vas here? You see dis?”

“Yes indeed, Colonel.” The shabby man had to trot to keep pace with von Steigerwald's athletic strides. “He seemed much smaller here. Much less important than he had, you know, on my wireless. He was frightened, too. Very frightened, I would say, just as I would have been myself. Pathetic at times, really. Fearful of his own fear, sir. You know the Yanks' saying? I confess I found it ironic and somewhat amusing.”