Forever Yours, Anna

Forever Yours, Anna

By Kate Wilhelm

« Hello, Anna, » he said softly, and tension seeped from him; the ache that had settled in behind his eyes vanished; he forgot the traffic jams coming home from Long Island, forgot the bickering his children seemed unable to stop.

He took the letters to the living room and sat down to read them through for the first time. Love letters, passionate letters, humorous in places, perceptive, intelligent. Without dates it was hard to put them in chronological order, but the story emerged. She dad met Mercer in the city; they had walked and talked, and he had left. He had come back, and this time they were together for a weekend and became lovers. She sent her letters to a post office box; he did not write to her, although he left pages of incomprehensible notes in her care. She was married or lived with someone, whose name had been cut out with a razor blade every time she referred to him. Mercer knew him, visited him apparently. They were even friends and had long serious talks. She was afraid; Mercer was involved in work that was dangerous, and no one told her what it was. She called Mercer her mystery man and speculated about his secret life, his family, his insane wife or tyrannical father, or his own lapses into lycanthropy.

Gordon smiled. Anna was not a whiner or a weeper; but she was hopelessly in love with Mercer and did not know where he lived, where he worked, what danger threatened him, anything about him except that when he was with her, she was alive and happy. And that was enough. Her husband understood and wanted only her happiness, and it was destroying her, knowing she was hurting him so much, but she was helpless.

Forever yours, Anna

He pursed his lips and reread one. “My darling, I can`t stand it. I really can`t stand it any longer. I dream of you, see you in every stranger on the street, hear your voice every time I answer the phone. My palms become wet, and I tingle all over, thinking it`s your footsteps I hear. You are my dreams. So, I told myself today, this is how it is? No way! Am I silly schoolgirl mooning over a television star? At twenty-six! I gathered up all your papers and put them in a box giggling.You can’t send a Dear John to a post office box number. What if you failed to pick it up and an inspector opened it finally? I should entertain such a person? They are all gray and dessicated, you know, those inspectors. Let them find their own entertainment! What if they deciphered your mysterious squiggles and discovered the secret of the univerdse? Do any of them deserve such enlightenment? No! I put everything back in (ecised) safe….”

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins’ Press, New York)

Dream Baby

Dream Baby

By Bruce McAllister

He looks at me and his voice changes now, as if on cue. He wants me to feel what he is feeling, and I do, I do. I can’t look away from him and I know this is why he is CO.

“It is almost impossible to reproduce them in a laboratory, Mary, and so these remarkable talents remain mere anecdotes, events that happen once or twice within a lifetime – on a brother, a mother, a friend, a fellow soldier in war. A boy is killed on Kwajalein in 1944. That same night his mother dreams of his death. She has never before dreamed such a dream, and the dream is too accurate to be me a coincidence. He dies. She never has a dream like it again. A reporter for a major newspaper kooks out the terminal window at the Boeing 707 he is about to board. He has flown a hundred times before, enjoys air travel, and has no reason to be anxious today. As he looks through the window the plane explodes before his very eyes. He can hear the sound ringing in his ears and the sirens rising in the distance; he can feel the heat of the ignited fuel on his face. Then he blinks. The jet is as it was before – no fire, no sirens, no explosion. He is shaking – he has never experienced anything like this in his life. He does not board the plane, and the next day he hears that its fuel tanks exploded, on the ground, in another city, killing ninety. The man never has such a vision again. He enjoys air travel in the months, and years, ahead, and will die of cardiac arrest on a tennis court twenty years later. You can see the difficulty we have, Mary.”

“Yes,” I say quietly, moved by what he’s said.

“But our difficulty doesn’t mean that your dreams are any less real, Mary. It doesn’t mean that what you and the three hundred like you in the small theater of war are experiencing isn’t real.”

“Yes,” I say.

He gets up.

Dream Baby. Illustration by Elena

“I am going to have one of my colleagues interview you, if that’s all right. He will ask you questions about your dreams and he will record what you say. The tapes will remain in my care, so there isn’t any need to worry, Mary.”

I nod.

“I hope that you will view your stay here as deserved R&R, and as a chance to make contact with others who understand what it is like. For paperwork’s sake, I’ve assigned you to Golf Team. You met three of its members on your flight in, I believe. You may write to your parents as long as you make reference to a medevac unit in Pleiku rather than to our actual operation here. Is that clear?”.

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins’ Press, New York)

Rachel in Love

Rachel in Love

By Pat Murphy

The rain lets up. The clouds rise like fairly castles in the distance, and the rising sun tints them pink and gold and gives them faling red banners. Rachel remembers when she was younger and Aaron read her the story of Pinnochio, the little pupper who wanted to be a boy. At the end of his adventures, Pinnochio, who has been brave and kind, gets his wish. He becomes a real boy.

Rachel had cried at the end of the story and when Aaron asked why, she had rubbed her eyes on the backs of her hairy hands. – I want to be a real girl, she signed to him. – A real girl.

“You are a real girl,” Aaron had told her, but somehow she had never believed him.

The sun rises higher and illuminates the broken rock turrets of the desert. There is a magic in this barren land of unassuming grandeur. Some cultures send their young people to the desert to seek visions and guidance, searching for true thinking spawned by the opening of the place, the loneliness, the beauty of emptiness.

Rachel drowses in the warm sun and dreams a vision that has the clarity of truth. In the dream, her father comes to her. “Rachel,” he says to her, “it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you. You’re my daughter.”

A girl in love. Illustration by Elena

– I want to be a real girl, she signs.

“You are real”, her father says. “And you don’t need some two-bit drunken janitor to prove it to you.” She knows she is dreaming, but she also knows that her father speaks the truth. She is warm and happy, and she doesn’t need Jake at all. The sunlight warms her and a lizard watches her from a rock that lies on the floor of the cave. Idly, she scratches on the dark red sandstone wall of the cave. A lopsided heart shape. Within it, awkwardly printed: Rachel and Johnson, leaving scores of fine lines on the smooth rock surface. Then, late in the morning, soothed by the warmth of the day, she sleeps.

…

Shortly after dark, an elderly rancher in a pickup truck spots two apes in a remote corner of his ranch. They run away and lose him in the rocks, but not until he has a good look at them. He calls the police, the newspaper, and the Primate Center.

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins`s Press, New York)

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs

By Walter Jon Williams

President Gram considered this. ”Memories,” she said. “You’ve been using the term, but I’m not sure I understand.“

“Stored information is vast, and even though human bodies are large we cannot always have all the information we need to function efficiently even in our specialized tasks,” Drill said. “Our human brains have been separated as to function. I have a Lowrain, which is on my spinal cord above my pelvis. Lowbrain handles motor control of my lower body, routine monitoring of my body’s condition, eating, excretion, and sex. My perceptual centers, short-term memory, personality, and reasoning functions are handled by the brain in my skull – the classical brain, if you like. Long-term and specialized memory is the function of the large knob you see moving on my head, my Memory. My Memory records all that happens in great detail, and can recapitulate it any point. It has also been supplied with information concerning the human species’ contacts with other non-human groups. It attaches itself easily to my nervous system and draws nourishment from my body. Specific memories can be communicated from one living Memory to another, or if it proves necessary I can simply give my Memory to another human, a complete transfer. I have another Memory aboard that I’m not using at the moment, a pilot Memory that can navigate and handle Ship, and I wore this Memory while in transit. I also have spare memories in case my primary Memories fall ill. So you see, our specialization does not rule out adaptability – and piece of information needed by any of us can easily be transferred, and in far greater detail than by any mechanical medium.”

“So you could return to your base and send out pilot Memories to out planets,” Gram said. « Memories that could halt your terraforming ships. »

« That is correct. »

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins`s Press, New York)

Dinosaur. Photo by Elena

At the Cross-Time Jaunters’ Ball

At the Cross-Time Jaunters’ Ball

By Alexander Jablokov

The various portions of the Chancellery Gardens of Laoyin harmonized not only in space, but in time. The arrangement of dells and lily ponds, of individual Dawn Redwoods, laboriously dug, full grown, in the fastness of Old China and brought here up the Lao River, which I knew as the Columbia, in barges built for the purpose, of stone temples with green bronze cupolas, and of spreads of native prairie, seemingly engaged in a devious wilderness but actually existing because of the efforts of dedicated gardeners, took on meaning only when observed at a receptive stroll. I emerged from the yellow-green of a stand of ginkgoes, descended a gorge alongside a stream, and arrived at the rocky shore of a lake, its verge guarded by cunningly twisted pines and Amur maples. I trod the gravel path further, and felt uneasy. While I strolled, too many others strode purposefully, usually in tight groups of three or four. The vistas were ignored by men who muttered and gestured to each other. Either trouble was brewing, or the inhabitants of this Shadow had decidedly odd ideas of how to enjoy a sunny afternoon in the park.

A Bodhisattva blessed my exit with bland beneficence. In contrast to the serene order of the Chancellor`s garden, the city streets beyond were a tangle. What had been intended as triumphal throughfares were blocked every hundred paces by merchant`s stalls, religious shrines or entire shanty towns, complete with chickens and screaming children. Under other circumstances, it would have been a swirling, delightful mess.

Two loonies. Photo by Elena

However, the streets had the same feeling of oppression as the park. Everywhere there were knots of people discussing dark matters. A scuffle broke out between two groups, one with dark skin and bulbous, deformed Mayan heads, shouting loudly and striking out clumsily, the other short, sibilant, with narrow carlike eyes and flat noses, darting with precisely placed energy. Suddenly abashed by the attention they aroused, both groups melted into the surrounding crowds.

”The Prince is dead.” Everywhere I heard the murmur. `The Prince murdered. Vengeance, for our Prince. Where is his murderer?” He must be found. He must be killed. The. Prince. Is. Dead.” Each word was a call of anguish.

I emerged onto a wide street that had been kept clear. Flat fronted buildings of basalt bulked on either side, all identical.

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins`s Press, New York)