The Forever Man

The Forever Man

By Gordon R. Dickson

There was absolutely no light within the sealed interior of the alien vessel, so Jim did not see in the sense of using his eyes. Rather he felt everything within it so clearly that his mind was able to form a picture of what was there as well as if the interior had been lighted.

It was immediately apparent why the Laagi ships had the pregnant look that was so characteristic of them. The second member of the ship’s crew did not seat behind the first as in the human ships, but directly underneath the first. There was nothing between the two positions, and they were close enough that even human could have reached down, or up, as the case might be, and clasped hands with a shipmate.

But whoever had been the pilot and gunner of this ship – if indeed that was the way the Laagi divided up the duties of the two who operated the vessel – they were now long dead, even though Jim felt that the interior of the ship still held an oxygen-bearing, but unearthlike atmosphere that his body would have tolerated only with difficulty. It was a somewhat sulphurous atmosphere as far as his senses of it could tell him, but what less odorous gases it held beyond that he had no way of telling.

No telling how long the ship has been sitting there (Gordon R. Dickson). Illustration: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

The two operating positions in the ship were up front before an open space that was divided into open compartments which could have been bunks or storage spaces. The operating positions consisted essentially of two metallic-looking vertical rings encircling what looked like oversize golf tees. These had their base on flooring behind the rings and angled forward so that the cap of this tee-structure sat in the center of the ring, the cap itself tilted, so it sat horizontally – that is, parallel to the floor below.

The inside of the ring was studded with what were easily recognizable as controls, buttons and small levers. On the cap itself sat something almost indescribable ; what looked like a pile of hooplike rings of bones or cartilage from a quarter to a half-meter in diameter, enclosed with what might have been a dark, thin, leatherlike skin, that was, however, now dried and cracked open under its own weight to show hoopelike bones beneath.  It was hardly possible to relate the remains of skin that rested on and hung down from the two cup-ends with any imaginable shape of living creature.

The instruments and controls also seemed non-functioning. Experimentally, Jim willed some of the buttons and switches into movement, as he was used to doing with those in AndFriend, but nothing happened. The ship was dead – powerless. He was left with the enigma of what he had found, plus something else he could not identify and which he was not entirely sure he would have noticed if he had been there in the flesh.

It was a strangeness – a non-physical feeling that compounded the disgust he might have felt in a charnel house with a sadness of a graveside or a feeling of despair. Now that he had noticed it, it grew on him, mounting steadily from a whisper toward a scream in his mind; and he literally fled, in his point of view, to a position on the outside hull of the alien ship.

Fireflies

Fireflies

(From The Forever Man, by Gordon R. Dickson)

It was unbelievable, not only that, thought Jim, it was just about indescribable.

He and Mary and Squonk were surrounded by what could only be described as a host of innumerable invisible fireflies. Ro call them fireflies and at the same time to say they were invisible was a contradiction in terms, but it was the only way of describing them. They were invisible to any physical sight – even And Friend’s instruments did not register their presence. But his mind saw them very clearly indeed as multitudinous living points of colored lights – lights whose colors changed constantly, so that it was like standing in the midst of a rainbow in the process of sorting itself out from an endless number of tiny component parts.

And they were constantly in motion.

Not only that, but they were not only in the ship but all around it. They were in the interior space of the ship, they were partway through the hull of the ship, they were outside the ship, swarming in space and stretching off into the interstellar distance like the tail of a comet.

They went. It was a magnificent but surprisingly brief trip. Outside the ship as they now were, they were at the head of the comet’s tail of invisible yet rainbow-colored fireflies that were those of 1’s race which had chosen to come along. Illustration : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

– They see us! Like the other one!

– That one doesn’t.

– But these two do. It’s lovely to see and be seen by you.

Their voices rang in Jim’s mind, each one different and memorable. Each one audible separately for a moment before they were drowned by a perfect roar of greetings from what sounded at the very least like hundreds of thousands of such voices, all entirely individual.

Flowers of Edo

Flowers of Edo

By Bruce Sterling

All three men screeched aloud. The armless, legless monster, like a gray cloud on a tether, rolled its glassy eyes at all of them. Its steel teeth gnashed and sparks showed down its throat. It whistled again and made a sudden gnashing lurch at Onogawa.

But Onogawa’s old sword-training had soaked deep into his bones. He leapt aside reflexively, with only a trace of stagger, and gave the thing a smart overhead riposte with his pipe. The demon’s head bonged like an iron kettle. It began chattering angrily and hot steam curled from its nose. Onogawa hit it again. Its head dented. It winced, the glared at the other men.

The townsmen quickly scrambled into line behind their champion. “Get him!” Encho shrieked. Onogawa dodged a hakf0hearted snap of teeth and bashed the monster across the eye. Glass cracked and the bowl flew from Onogawa’s pipe.

But the demon had had enough. With a grumble and crunch like dying gearworks, it retreated back towards its wires, sucking itself back within them, like an octopus into its hole. It vanished, but hissing sparks continued to drip from the wire.

“You humiliated it!” Encho said, his voice filled with awe and admiration. “That was amazing!”

Monster of Edo. Illustration by Elena

“Had enough, eh!” shouted Onogawa furiously, leaning on the sill. “Easy enough mumbling your dirty spells behind our backs! But try an Imperial warrior face to face, and it’s a different story! Hah!”

“What a feat of arms!” said Yoshitoshi, his pudgy face glowing. “I’ll do a picture. Onogawa humiliates a ghoul. Wonderful!

The sparks began to travel down the wire, away from the window. Ìt`s getting away!” Onogawa shouted. “Follow me!”

He shoved himself from the window and ran headlong from the studio. He tripled at the top of the stairs, but did an inspired shoulder-roll and landed on his feet at the door. He yanked it open.

Encho followed him headlong. They had no time to lace on their leather shoes, so they kicked on the wooden clogs of Yoshitoshi and his apprentice and dashed out. Soon they stood under the wires, where the little nest of the sparks still clung. “Come down here, you rascal,” Onogawa demanded. “Show some fighting honor, you skulking wretch!”

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

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)