The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Read online

  But then the light from the vivid spark of a tiny blue sun had turned to pins and needles in my November-white skin, forcing me back into the shade. My face, when I touched it, was already starting to peel.

  Jesus. Stupid.

  And what if? What if a lot of things. What if the air here had been deadly poison? What if there’s some disease here a human being could catch? What if I’m already dead and merely waiting to fall down?

  Yeah, yeah, I know. The guy in the story never dies. Except the one in that Faulkner story the teacher made fun of, when we studied it in tenth grade English Lit class. What’re we supposed to imagine? she’d said. He’s carrying paper and pen, taking notes as he jumps in the river and drowns?

  From space, the planet had looked like a yellow-gray ball, almost featureless. Oh, there was a tiny white ice cap at the visible pole. A few pale clouds near what looked like some isolated mountain peaks. A canyon here, a dune-field there. Mars without the rust?

  Arrakis, I thought. I’d enjoyed the five-part serial in Analog, though I was mighty pissed off about the stupid format changes Campbell was playing with, going from digest to some standard magazine size, then back again, fucking up my collection. I remember I wondered if the Dune world had started out as Mars, if maybe Herbert realized at some point that the solar system was too small for the story.

  I thought about my bedroom. My bed. The little desk. Bookcases full of children’s hardcovers, the stuff from Grandpa’s attic, the paperbacks and magazines I was buying down at Drug Fair, Amazing and Fantastic, Worlds of If . . .

  Out in the sun, the land crabs had buckets and little self-propelled wheelbarrow things, were shoveling up patches of mauve sand. Melange? Whatever it was, it went no more than a few centimeters deep. I sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything like cinnamon. Whatever this place was, it mainly smelled like fireworks. Gunpowder. It smells like gunpowder.

  From the Ob Deck, I’d been able to see something that looked like a city, way off on the horizon, low white buildings, dazzling in the sun. A circle of my fingertip had brought them close. Adobe? No sign of movement, some of the buildings looking weathered and worn, the ruins of Koraad perhaps.

  Miles off, anyway. I could wait ’til nightfall, and it’d take maybe three or four hours to get there, tops. Yeah? And what if the starship leaves without you? What then? I thought about Galactic Derelict suddenly. No. I never wanted to be one of Andre Norton’s dickless boys. Let’s have a Heinlein adventure, at least.

  Or maybe I can grow up to be John Grimes after all? Is there a beautiful spy somewhere waiting for me? Jesus. Grow up. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to last another week!

  What if this was a Larry Niven story? What if we land on a planet that has a habitable point? I pictured myself running down the ramp, out onto the sand. Then the deadly winds of We Made It would come up and there I’d be, on my way to fucking Oz.

  After a bit, I turned and went on up the ramp. Look out the window. Watch the baby dinosaurs or something. One thing you know: The saucer will leave, the starship will fly, and, sooner or later, we’ll be somewhere else. And, another thing: Who owns all this shit? The robots? Not bloody likely, cobber. Maybe this thing is like some super-sophisticated Mariner probe. And, sooner or later, it’ll take its samples on home.

  What happens when they find me in the collection bag?

  Watching the land crabs gather up Spice, I suddenly wished for . . . something. Anything. Wished I’d see a sandworm in the distance. Wished for Paul Atreides to come riding up? No. Chani, maybe?

  I’m guessing it was maybe three weeks before we made the next landfall – no, planetfall’s the right word – three weeks in which I got really sick of plain breadfruit. Somewhere along the way, I got up the nerve to cook and eat a few little lizards, which turned out to be mainly bones, and salty as kippered herring snacks, finally moving on to a two-foot brown snake I’d caught.

  Didn’t taste like chicken, more like fish I guess, but the oily juice that cooked out of it made the breadfruit taste okay.

  The next planet was . . . what’d we used to say in junior high? Cool as a moose. I crept down the ramp, uselessly cautious, and stood there with my mouth hanging open. What can I say? Earthlike but alien?

  The spaceport, if that’s what it was, was just a plain, concrete apron, not much bigger than the helicopter pad next to the Pentagon, sitting next to what looked like a walled city. Not a medieval city, not an ancient Roman city. The walls were plain and unadorned, no crenella-tions, no battlements, no towers. White concrete walls, pierced by a few open gates on the side I could see. Egyptian Memphis, I remembered, had been called something like Ineb-Hed by the natives. White Walls.

  The buildings I could see over the wall were low and white and square.

  Overhead, the sky was dark green, green as paint, with little brown clouds floating here and there. The sun, if sun it was, was a dim red ball halfway up the sky, banded like Jupiter, with mottled splotches here and there. Sunspots? Starspots? Maybe it’s a planet, and that’s reflected light.

  Away from the city, the land was all low forest, things not much like trees, grayish, bluish, a reddish-purple that I realized with a flush of pleasure might be the heliotrope of Amtor. Things moving in the shadows, inside the forest. Pod-shaped things. Plants with lips.

  The land crab robots were coming out of the saucer now, forming up by rank and file, so when they set off, heading for the nearest city gate, I walked along beside. What the hell? If they start to leave, I’ll follow them back. Safe enough.

  It was gloomy in the city, a city full of gray-green shadows. Gloomy and motionless, reminding me of the scene where Gahan of Gathol walks into a seemingly deserted Manator. Sure. And the land crabbots’d make pretty good Kaldanes?

  That filled up my head with long-running images of Ghek, crawling through the Ulsio warrens of Manator.

  I looked in an open doorway, yelped, tripped over my own feet, and wound up on my knees, staring, heart pounding. Jesus Christ! Well, at least it wasn’t moving.

  The thing, when I got close to it, was about three feet tall, looking like it was made of black leather. There were staring black leather eyes. Black leather fangs. Black leather hands shaped like a three-fingered mechanical grab.

  I touched it, wondering what the hell I’d do if it woke up and turned out to really be a thrint. Fuck. I’d do whatever it wanted, I guess, and that would be that. It didn’t budge, no matter how hard I pushed, nor did it have a bit of give to it. Cold black metal, glued to the ground.

  Statue, maybe? Or just another switched-off robot?

  What the hell is going on here?

  Where is everyone?

  Back out on the street, the land crabs were gone. Okay. Look around a bit more, then get the hell on back to the saucer. I went on up the street to the end, where it came to some kind of octagonal plaza. There was something that looked like an empty fountain in the middle, beyond it a domed building made mostly of glass, lots of tempting shadows inside.

  The glass doors, when I tried them, swung right open, so I went on in.

  Inside it was all broad aisles, floor carpeted in a patterned nappy monochrome the same color as the sky, and lining the aisles were . . . I don’t know. Exhibits? Things like pictures anyway. Dioramas. Blocks of stuff like glass or Lucite, with motionless objects inside. Animals, I think. Some things that could only have been machines. Things that were clearly paintings of the “thrintun,” looking like they were walking around the city, doing whatever.

  So are those the aliens? Are they all in some kind of stasis? Suspended animation?

  I suddenly found myself wishing there’d been more variability in the stories I’d been reading since I learned how to read. But the stories had been pretty much self-similar, as though the writers, without any source of new ideas, could only copy each other, over and over again.

  In the middle of the building, taking up a big space under the dome, was a flat, tilted spiral shape, made of what looke
d like metallic dust, hanging motionless in the air. Like the Andromeda galaxy, blue and red and white and . . . my mouth went dry. Star map!

  I walked round and round the thing, peering inside, trying to recognize something, anything, but it looked like every spiral galaxy illustration I’d ever seen. All of them. Or none. For all I knew, it could be NGC 7006 and here I was, beyond the farthest star.

  On the other side of the spiral was an aisle lined with things that looked like model spaceships. Some of them looked pretty much like what humans were building, back on Earth. Look here. It’s a couple of thrintun sitting in a sort of Gemini capsule. Not quite, but close. And this? A thrint climbing down on the dusty surface of some moon or another?

  The ships got more and more advanced, until I suddenly wondered where the flying saucers were. Ah. Right here. Right at the end. Here’s a flying saucer, surrounded by thrintun with things like guns, surrounded by thrintish tanks and cannons . . . surely, standing on the rim of the saucer, I’d see one of my familiar gorts?

  On the ground under the rim of the saucer were models of about two dozen creatures, every one of them different.

  Yep. That’d be the thrintun being welcomed to the Galactic Federation, right? Pleased at how clever I was, I started walking back toward the useless star map. Hey, if I’m lucky, it’s my galaxy, and I’m not so far from home after all. Right. What the fuck am I going to do, walk back to Earth?

  I stopped by the model of the moon lander. Maybe that was their moon? It was a pretty primitive spaceship, looking a lot like the earliest designs of the Apollo lunar excursion module. Moon. I tipped my head back, trying to look out through the dome, wondering if I’d spot a crescent somewhere in the dark green sky.

  Very dark green sky.

  Felt my mouth go drier than I would’ve thought possible. No sun, though I could see a flush of red in the sky, off to one side. So how the fuck long have I been in here, anyway?

  I walked back up the aisle, around the spiral galaxy, back down the other aisle and out the door. Despite the fact that it was starting to get a little cool out, I felt myself start to sweat, armpits suddenly growing spongy and damp. Well. Started to walk back the way I thought would lead to the spaceport. Just get outside the walls. You’ll find it.

  I started to run, making little gagging sounds, throat suddenly sore, feeling like I was going to start crying, like a little kid lost in a supermarket.

  And my little flying saucer popped up above the walls right in front of me, hung there for just a second, then dwindled away into the dark green sky and was gone.

  I stood there, looking up, feeling the hot tears start down my cheeks, vision blurring, and whispered, “I always do something stupid, don’t I? Just like Daddy says.” I rubbed the tears from my eyes, suddenly angry, and thought, There you go, champ. Murray’ll be so fucking jealous now, won’t he?

  I awoke, opening my eyes on a flood of vermilion sunshine coming in through the window, falling on me like a spotlight, and wished, just this once, I could be one of those people who wake up confused, not knowing where they are. I couldn’t really remember the dream, something about school, I think, and had a nice hard-on, probably nothing to do with any images I’d seen in my sleep.

  Christ. Mouth so fucking dry.

  I rolled over on my side, feeling dizzy, headachy, hungry, looking around the room. The wall-to-wall carpet I’d slept on was pale gray, softer and fuzzier than the stuff in my parents’ house. Mom’s house, nowadays. Dark green walls, with brown trim. Stuff like furniture, odd-shaped couches and chairs and little tables I was kind of afraid to touch, for no reason I could put my finger on.

  Stories. Too many stories. What if.

  I’d wandered around for a while as it’d gotten darker, wondering what the fuck I was going to do, watching the sky fill up with unfamiliar stars. Finally knelt and drank some water from the gutter. Bitter metallic stuff, tasting way worse than the water in Marumsco Creek. And I’d gotten sick as a dog the last time I’d drunk from the creek, coming down with a high fever that resolved into tonsillitis, resulting in a shot and some pills and five days of missed school.

  I remembered Murray looking at me with bemused contempt. How come you’re sick all the time, Wally?

  I don’t know.

  After a while, in the dark, it started to rain, hot stuff that scalded in my eyes, burned on my scalp, making me run for the nearest shelter, which happened to be something like a porch, on something like a house, in something like a suburban neighborhood. No, not suburban. Small town. Like the neighborhoods in 1930s movies. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. When I tried the door, it’d opened, and I’d gone in, sat down in the middle of the floor, just sat there in the dark, listening to the rain, wondering if they had thunder and lightning here.

  I got up, feeling stiff and tired, rubbing my empty stomach. Almost flat now. At this rate, I’d soon be as skinny as when I was a little kid. I’d always wanted that. What had made me get fat anyway? Starting to hang around with Murray and eat whatever and whenever he ate? I remember Mom was glad when I stopped being so thin.

  There was a little room off what I thought of as the parlor, small, windowless, airless, and in the light of day I could see there was something like a stone sink, beside a little hole in the floor. Maybe the thrintun couldn’t sit down and just squatted over the hole? No, wait. Thrintun regurgitate their waste, so they’d lean over the hole and . . .

  I felt my intestines cramp. So now I’ve got to shit. Great.

  One step forward and I stopped, sweat beading on my brow, asshole clenching. I was afraid to squat over the hole. What if I slipped and fell in and couldn’t get out? What if it flushed with a death ray? No, wait. Shit’s not alive enough to merit a death ray. Disintegrator? “Man, how did I get so goofy? No wonder nobody at school likes me.”

  I’ll go outside and do it on the sidewalk, I guessed.

  Next to the toilet hole, there was an obvious bathtub, made of the same gray stone as the sink, with a little row of glassy “buttons” above one end. Light panel controls? I touched one. There was a hiss, and the tub started to fill up, though I couldn’t see anything like a faucet, smoky fluid welling up from nowhere, filling the room with a familiar sharp, ugly smell.

  Sulfuric acid? I certainly recognized the smell from first-period Chemistry class. Wonder how that’s going? My lab partner had been a big beefy guy named Al, full of dumb jokes, who was a shot-putter and discus thrower on the track and field team.

  There was another room that looked like a kitchen, by what had to be the back door, though it was on the side of the building, just like the back door to my parents’ house. Something like a little oven sitting on the counter, an oven with a door. When I opened it, no gas jets or electric resistance heating elements, only a skinny light bulb thingy.

  Right. I remembered my sister Millie’s Easy Bake Oven cooked perfectly well with a hundred-watt light bulb. Scrambled eggs. Teeny-tiny biscuits. A birthday cake the size of a deck of cards. If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve . . .

  Nothing like a refrigerator? There was a long, narrow trough under the one window, the kitchen sink maybe? A roll of plain white paper towels hanging from the wall next to it. Great. Murray’s mom had started using them, though at my house we still used cloth dish towels that would start to stink long before they went in the hamper. Dishrags, my mom said.

  When I touched one of the glass buttons over the trough, it quickly filled up with a bubbly gray, acid-smelling sludge. I stood there, paralyzed, knowing not to touch it, and thought, Right. Destination: Universe! “The Enchanted Village.”

  Is that where I am now, in an A.E. Van Vogt story?

  Angry at myself, I tore the paper towels from their holder and went back through the house to the living room, intending to go out the front door. Hell, at least I’ve got toilet paper now and . . .

  “Yow!” I hit my head on the wall as I stepped back, turning, trying to run. Stopped, willing my heart to quiet down, making my
self turn back and look.

  It was a bipedal man-shape, not quite a gort but similar, no more than four feet tall, standing beside the open front door, staring at me with two glowing red glass eyes. No, not really like a gort. Feet like a bird. Three-fingered hands. No, two fingers and a thumb, just like a thrint, but far, far more gracile.

  Is the damned thing humming? No. Silent.

  I stammered, swallowed, then said, “Henry Stanley, I presume?”

  Nothing.

  “Hey, buddy. Sorry to have to tell you I’m not David Livingstone. Just a lost little dipshit has got himself in a pile of trouble.”

  The head turned just a bit, red lenses focusing on my face, seeming to look right into my eyes. Then it said, “Beeoop-click, zing?”

  Really. I said, “Pleased to meetcha.”

  Oh, hell. My guts cramped hard, released from terror, and I quickly walked to the door, the robot turning to face me as I edged around it. I walked out onto the sidewalk, avoiding the stringy blue and yellow grass of the lawn, which had wriggled and tried to grab my shoes as I’d walked across it last night, got out into the street and started to pull down my pants. Thought better of it, kicked off my shoes and pulled my pants off entirely.

  I squatted on the pavement, suddenly really glad I had the paper towels. The mossy stuff from the woods I’d used on the starship had been really scratchy. Jesus, I wish I could have a fucking bath!

  When I looked up, the robot was standing on the porch, watching me.

  By the time dusk came round again, dark green sky flushed red in what I thought of as the west as the fat red planet-star sank through the horizon, I was exhausted, dragging my ass out one of the deserted city’s radial roads, away from downtown, back out into the burbs. We’d been out to the spaceport, with its little patch of empty, unmarked concrete, then back to the museum, where we’d looked at every fucking exhibit, looking for a clue. Any clue.