COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Fantasy: The Best of the Year (2006 Edition) is copyright © 2006 by Wildside Press, LLC.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Please see end of this book for individual story copyright information.
THE YEAR IN FANTASY, by Rich Horton
Every year, as I read through my list of favorite stories, I attempt to find trends, themes, and motifs that define the world of fantasy. And almost every year I find that writers, especially at the shorter lengths, remain stubbornly individual, and don’t particularly hew to any party lines. So I’m not sure what overarching story themes defined 2005.
One thing that is undeniable, however, is the way in which Fantasy has become part of the pop culture mainstream. Of course this was already obvious with the popularity of the Harry Potter books and movies, and the Lord of the Rings book and movies. But this year we saw contemporary fantasy writers, nurtured within the genre, being praised highly at such places as Time magazine. Neil Gaiman’s new novel Anansi Boys was respectfully reviewed in Time and became a best seller. Time also called George R. R. Martin the best writer of epic fantasy alive. And Time and Salon both listed Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners as among the best books of the year, regardless of genre. And speaking of mainstream
acceptance of Fantasy, I’m delighted to include a story from The New Yorker, George Saunders’s CommComm,
which is at the same time a satire of present day military bureaucracy and a quite moving ghost story.
I did notice a couple of mini-trends,
if you will. I saw a great many retellings of fairy tales, usually with either a feminist or an ironic gloss. This isn’t precisely new, but I sensed that there were more such this year than typical. And I saw several ironic examinations of superheroes. (Perhaps in part this is a response to movies such as The Incredibles.) I’ve included one story in the superhero category: Michael Canfield’s Super-Villains,
which adds age and sex roles to the concerns of superheroes. No story here is precisely a fairy-tale retelling though Gregory Feeley’s in a sense follows on from Jack and the Beanstalk,
and the stories by Goss, Schaller and Taaffe all riff at least somewhat on fairy tale/folk tale traditions.
What if anything does this mean? It is often said that Fantasy is backward looking, in that its settings tend to reflect historical or quasi-historical times. (This is certainly true with fairy tales, and it seems also true, though the historical times
are much more recent, with superhero stories.) But just as Science Fiction stories that are set in the future usually reflect contemporary concerns, so too do Fantasy stories set in a version of the past. Indeed, the fairy tale retellings (certainly the best of them) are trying to examine what meaning traditional fairy tales have in our present-day life, and the superhero stories are usually placing relatively ordinary contemporary people in superhero
situations—their reactions to having superpowers inevitably reflect their own, often quite mundane, lives.
And so with the fantasy stories here, which I believe reflect the very best short fantasy currently being published. We do see a couple of stories that look back fairly explicitly to older models: Elizabeth Bear’s Wax
recalls Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, with a couple of quite effective variations, while Neil Gaiman’s Sunbird
is in part delightful hommage to R. A. Lafferty. And the older model
for Peter Beagle’s Two Hearts
is his own novel, the lovely and moving The Last Unicorn (1968), to which the new story is a sequel of sorts. But in all these cases the stories, for all that they have older models, are absolutely fresh and contemporary in flavor. (Which is not to forget that such an older story as The Last Unicorn, which I read within the past couple of months, remains fresh and unique.)
The border between SF and Fantasy remains thin, and a few stories here wander very close to that dividing line. Paul Di Filippo’s The Emperor of Gondwanaland
extrapolates from contemporary social science ideas about micronations,
with a fantastical, and explicitly Borgesian, twist. Matthew Hughes’s The Gist Hunter
is one of a series of stories set in the age just prior to the age depicted by Jack Vance in his classic The Dying Earth, itself one of the canonical early examples of science fantasy
. Gene Wolfe’s Comber
is set in a strange world where cities are islands on a huge ocean—there is no scientific explanation for this ocean, no place in our universe to locate this ocean—but, given that premise, there is no explicit magic
in the story itself. Joe Murphy’s The Secret of Broken Tickers
has characters who are in a sense robots: but surely it is magic making them live!
Central to today’s publishing world is the importance of the small presses. Here we see a story from a small-press anthology: Wheatland Press’s TEL: Stories, edited by Jay Lake, gives us Gregory Feeley’s Fancy Bread,
a meditation on economic history, of all subjects, featuring Jack (of the beanstalk) as a main character. And the extremely fecund world of small desktop-published ’zines has produced stories like Eric Schaller’s Three Urban Folk Tales,
a delightful linked set of short-shorts about such things as postmen and rats in love, from the most established of the small ’zines, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Also, Sonya Taaffe’s On the Blindside,
from Flytrap, is an intense story of a woman about to get married, confronting an old lover who represents a familiar fantasy trope. And then there is Holly Phillips, who published a collection with this very firm, Prime, consisting mostly of brand-new stories, such as the striking By the Light of Tomorrow’s Sun,
in which a young man returns to his childhood home to deal with a dark mystery in his grandfather’s past.
Also central to the new world of Fantasy publishing is online publishing. Last year was the last year for the best SF/Fantasy fiction site ever, Ellen Datlow’s Sci Fiction. It’s a terrible loss for the field that it’s gone, and in its last year it published as usual some outstanding work. Here we have Jane,
Marc Laidlaw’s stark tale of an isolated family with a hidden and significant back story, and the portentous results of a terrible crime the father is driven to. Also Steve Rasnic Tem’s Invisible,
a wrenching and true allegory of a couple whose social invisibility becomes matched by physical invisibility. And Pat Cadigan’s delightful Is There Life After Rehab?
, a wicked clever look at substance abuse recovery for a group abusing rather a different than typical substance.
In the absence of Sci Fiction perhaps the most established online fiction source is Strange Horizons, and from there we see Theodora Goss’s Pip and the Fairies,
in which Pip confronts her memories of her late mother and her childhood, lived in poverty as her mother produced stories of a girl in fairy land—Pip herself? And Fortean Bureau has been a neat online source for the past couple of years, nominally following the weird tradition of Charles Fort: from there we see Samantha Henderson’s Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died,
a sardonic and affectionate look at alternate lives (and of course deaths) for the great author.
For one reason or another this book doesn’t feature much traditional heroic fantasy. Of course much of the best heroic fantasy is confined to novels—it is a form that seems to demand scope. But there is still strong stuff at shorter lengths, and Richard Parks’s Empty Places
features a thief and a wizard and a queen in a fairly traditional fantasy world: but with a non-traditional resolution and a quite individual theme.
Where is Fantasy going? It’s never easy to say. But the best of our writers are always going to intriguing places—as the stories to follow will amply demonstrate.
PIP AND THE FAIRIES, by Theodora Goss
Why, you’re Pip!
She has gotten used to this, since the documentary. She could have refused to be interviewed, she supposes. But it would have seemed— ungrateful, ungracious, particularly after the funeral.
Susan Lawson,
read the obituary, "beloved author of Pip and the Fairies, Pip Meets the Thorn King, Pip Makes Three Wishes, and other Pip books, of ovarian cancer. Ms. Lawson, who was sixty-four, is survived by a daughter, Philippa. In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Susan Lawson Cancer Research Fund." Anne had written that.
Would you like me to sign something?
she asks.
White hair, reading glasses on a chain around her neck—too old to be a mother. Perhaps a librarian? Let her be a librarian, thinks Philippa. Once, a collector asked her to sign the entire series, from Pip and the Fairies to Pip Says Goodbye.
That would be so kind of you. For my granddaughter Emily.
A grandmother, holding out Pip Learns to Fish and Under the Hawthorns. She signs them both To Emily, may she find her own fairyland. From Philippa Lawson (Pip).
This is the sort of thing people like: the implication that, despite their minivans and microwaves, if they found the door in the wall, they too could enter fairyland.
So,
the interviewer asked her, smiling indulgently, the way parents smile at their children’s beliefs in Santa Claus, did you really meet the Thorn King? Do you think you could get me an interview?
And she answered as he, and the parents who had purchased the boxed set, were expecting. I’m afraid the Thorn King is a very private person. But I’ll mention that you were interested.
Being Pip, after all these years.
Maintaining the persona.
Her mother never actually called her Pip. It was Pipsqueak, as in, Go play outside, Pipsqueak. Can’t you see Mommy’s trying to finish this chapter? Mommy’s publisher wants to see something by Friday, and we’re a month behind on the rent.
When they finally moved away from Payton, they were almost a year behind. Her mother sent Mrs. Payne a check from California, from royalties she had received for the after-school special.
Philippa buys a scone and a cup of coffee. There was no café when she used to come to this bookstore, while her mother shopped at the food co-op down the street, which is now a yoga studio. Mrs. Archer used to let her sit in a corner and read the books. Then she realizes there is no cup holder in the rental car. She drinks the coffee quickly. She’s tired, after the long flight from Los Angeles, the long drive from Boston. But not much farther now. Payton has stayed essentially the same, she thinks, despite the yoga studio. She imagines a planning board, a historical society, the long and difficult process of obtaining permits, like in all these New England towns.
As she passes the fire station, the rain begins, not heavy, and intermittent. She turns on the windshield wipers.
There is Sutton’s dairy, where her mother bought milk with cream floating on top, before anyone else cared about pesticides in the food chain. She is driving through the country, through farms that have managed to hold on despite the rocky soil. In the distance she sees cows, and once a herd of alpacas. There are patches too rocky for farms, where the road runs between cliffs covered with ivy, and birches, their leaves glistening with rain, spring up from the shallow soil.
Then forest. The rain is heavier, pattering on the leaves overhead. She drives with one hand, holding the scone in the other (her pants are getting covered with crumbs), beneath the oaks and evergreens, thinking about the funeral.
It was not large: her mother’s co-workers from the Children’s Network, and Anne. It was only after the documentary that people began driving to the cemetery in the hills, leaving hyacinths by the grave. Her fault, she supposes.
The interviewer leaned forward, as though expecting an intimate detail. How did she come up with Hyacinth? Was the character based on anyone she knew?
Oh, hyacinths were my mother’s favorite flower.
And letters, even contributions to the Susan Lawson Cancer Research Fund. Everyone, it seems, had read Pip and the Fairies. Then the books had gone out of print and been forgotten. But after the funeral and the documentary, everyone suddenly remembered, the way they remembered their childhoods. Suddenly, Susan Lawson was indeed beloved.
Philippa asked Anne to drive up once a week, to clear away the letters and flowers, to take care of the checks. And she signed over the house. Anne was too old to be a secretary for anyone neater than Susan Lawson had been. In one corner of the living room, Philippa found a pile of hospital bills, covered with dust. She remembers Anne at the funeral, so pale and pinched. It is good, she supposes, that her mother found someone at last. With the house and her social security, Anne will be all right.
Three miles to Payne House. Almost there, then. It had been raining too, on that first day.
Look,
her mother said, pointing as the Beetle swerved erratically. If she looked down, she could see the road though the holes in the floor, where the metal had rusted away. Is that why she has rented one of the new Beetles? Either nostalgia, or an effort to, somehow, rewrite the past. There’s Payne House. It burned down in the 1930s. The Paynes used to own the mills at the edge of town,
now converted into condominiums, Mrs. Archer’s successor, a woman with graying hair and a pierced nostril, told her, and one night the millworkers set the stables on fire. They said the Paynes took better care of their horses than of their workers.
What happened to the horses?
She can see the house from the road, its outer walls burned above the first story, trees growing in some of the rooms. She can see it through both sets of eyes, the young Philippa’s and the old one’s. Not really old of course, but— how should she describe it?—tired. She blames the documentary. Remembering all this, the road running through the soaked remains of what was once a garden, its hedges overgrown and a rosebush growing through the front door. She can see it through young eyes, only a few weeks after her father’s funeral, the coffin draped with an American flag and the minister saying fallen in the service of his country
although really it was an accident that could have happened if he had been driving to the grocery store. And through old eyes, noticing that the rosebush has spread over the front steps.
As if, driving down this road, she were traveling into the past. She felt this also, sitting beside the hospital bed, holding one pale hand, the skin dry as paper, on which the veins were raised like the roots of an oak tree. Listening to the mother she had not spoken to in years.
I have to support us now, Pipsqueak. So we’re going to live here. Mrs. Payne’s going to rent us the housekeeper’s cottage, and I’m going to write books.
What kind of books?
Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to start writing and see what comes out.
How did it begin? Did she begin it, by telling her mother, over her milk and the oatmeal cookies from the food co-op that tasted like baked sawdust, what she had been doing that day? Or did her mother begin it, by writing the stories? Did she imagine them, Hyacinth, the Thorn King, the Carp in the pond who dreamed, so he said, the future, and the May Queen herself? And, she thinks, pulling into the drive that leads to the housekeeper’s cottage, what about Jack Feather? Or did her mother imagine them? And did their imaginations bring them into being, or were they always there to be found?
She slams the car door and brushes crumbs from her pants. Here it is, all here, for what it is worth, the housekeeper’s cottage, with its three small rooms, and the ruins of Payne House. The rain has almost stopped, although she can feel a drop run down the back of her neck. And, not for the first time, she has doubts.
One room was my mother’s, one was mine, and one was the kitchen, where we took our baths in a plastic tub. We had a toaster oven and a crock-pot to make soup, and a small refrigerator, the kind you see in hotels. One day, I remember having soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course, when the electricity was turned off, none of them worked. Once, we lived for a week on oatmeal cookies.
The interviewer laughed, and she laughed with him. When they moved to California, she went to school. Why doesn’t she remember going to school in Payton? She bought lunch every day, meatloaf and mashed potatoes and soggy green beans. Sometimes the principal gave her lunch money. She was happier than when the Thorn King had crowned her with honeysuckle. Young Pip,
he had said, I pronounce you a Maid of the May. Serve the May Queen well.
That was in Pip Meets the May Queen. And then she stops—standing at the edge of the pond—because the time has come to think about what she has done.
What she has done is give up The Pendletons, every weekday at two o’clock, Eastern Standard Time, before the afternoon talk shows. She has given up being Jessica Pendleton, the scheming daughter of Bruce Pendleton, whose attractive but troublesome family dominates the social and criminal worlds of Pinehurst.
How did your mother influence your acting career?
She did not answer, By teaching me the importance of money.
Last week, even a fan of The Pendletons recognized her as Pip.
She has given up the house in the hills, with a pool in the backyard. Given up Edward, but then he gave her up first, for a producer. He wanted, so badly, to do prime time. A cop show or even a sitcom, respectable television. I hope you understand, Phil,
he said. And she did understand, somehow. Has she ever been in love with anyone— except Jack Feather?
What has she gained? She remembers her mother’s cold hand pulling her down, so she can hear her whisper, in a voice like sandpaper, I always knew they were real.
But does she, Philippa, know it? That is why she has come back, why she has bought Payne House from the Payne who inherited it, a Manhattan lawyer with no use for the family estate. Why she is standing here now, by the pond, where the irises are about to bloom. So she can remember.
The moment when, in Pip and the Fairies, she trips over something lying on the ground.
Oh,
said a voice. When Pip looked up she saw a girl, about her own age, in a white dress, with hair as green as grass. You’ve found it, and now it’s yours, and I’ll never be able to return it before he finds out!
What is it?
asked Pip, holding up what she had tripped over: a piece of brown leather, rather like a purse.
It’s Jack Feather’s Wallet of Dreams, which he doesn’t know I’ve taken. I was just going to look at the dreams—their wings are so lovely in the sunlight—and then return it. But ‘What You Find You May Keep.’ That’s the law.
And the girl wept bitterly into her hands.
But I don’t want it,
said Pip. I’d like to look at the dreams, if they’re as nice as you say they are, but I certainly don’t want to keep them. Who is Jack Feather, and how can we return his wallet?
How considerate you are,
said the girl. Let me kiss you on both cheeks—that’s the fairy way. Then you’ll be able to walk through the door in the wall, and we’ll return the wallet together. You can call me Hyacinth.
Why couldn’t she walk through the door by herself? Pip wondered. It seemed an ordinary enough door, opening from one of the overgrown rooms to another. And what was the fairy way? She was just starting to wonder why the girl in the white dress had green hair when Hyacinth opened the door and pulled her through.
On the other side was a country she had never seen before. A forest stretched away into the distance, until it reached a river that shone like a snake in the sunlight, and then again until it reached the mountains.
Standing under the trees at the edge of the forest was a boy, not much taller than she was, in trousers made of gray fur, with a birch-bark hat on his head. As soon as he saw them, he said, Hyacinth, if you don’t give me my Wallet of Dreams in the clap of a hummingbird’s wing, I’ll turn you into a snail and present you to Mother Hedgehog, who’ll stick you into her supper pot!
—From Pip and the Fairies, by Susan Lawson
How clearly the memories are coming back to her now, of fishing at night with Jack Feather, searching for the Wishing Stone with Hyacinth and Thimble, listening to stories at Mother Hedgehog’s house while eating her toadstool omelet. There was always an emphasis on food, perhaps a reflection of the toaster and crock-pot that so invariably turned out toast and soup. The May Queen’s cake, for example, or Jeremy Toad’s cricket cutlets, which neither she nor Hyacinth could bear to eat.
I hope you like crickets,
said Jeremy Toad. Pip and Hyacinth looked at one another in distress. Eat What You Are Offered,
was the Thorn King’s law. Would they dare to break it? That was in Jeremy Toad’s Birthday Party.
She can see, really, where it all came from.
I think the feud between the Thorn King and the May Queen represented her anger at my father’s death. It was an accident, of course. But she blamed him for leaving her, for going to Vietnam. She wanted him to be a conscientious objector. Especially with no money and a daughter to care for. I don’t think she ever got over that anger.
But the Thorn King and the May Queen were reconciled.
Only by one of Pip’s wishes. The other—let me see if I remember. It was a fine wool shawl for Thimble so she would never be cold again.
Weren’t there three? What was the third wish?
Oh, that was the one Pip kept for herself. I don’t think my mother ever revealed it. Probably something to do with Jack Feather. She— I—was rather in love with him, you know.
The third wish had been about the electric bill, and it had come true several days later when the advance from the publisher arrived.
Here it is, the room where she found Jack Feather’s wallet. Once, in Pip Meets the Thorn King, he allowed her to look into it. She saw herself, but considerably older, in a dress that sparkled like stars. Years later, she recognized it as the dress she would wear to the Daytime Emmys.
And now what? Because there is the door, and after all the Carp did tell her, in Pip Says Goodbye, You will come back some day.
But if she opens the door now, will she see the fields behind Payne House, which are mown for hay in September? That is the question around which everything revolves. Has she been a fool, to give up California, and the house with the pool, and a steady paycheck?
What happened, Pip?
her mother asked her, lying in the hospital bed, her head wrapped in the scarf without which it looked as fragile as an eggshell. You were such an imaginative child. What made you care so much about money?
You did,
she wanted to and could not say. And now she has taken that money out of the bank to buy Payne House.
If she opens the door and sees only the unmown fields, it will have been for nothing. No, not nothing. There is Payne House, after all. And her memories. What will she do, now she is no longer Jessica Pendleton? Perhaps she will write, like her mother. There is a certain irony in that.
The rain on the grass begins to soak through her shoes. She should remember not to wear city shoes in the country.
But it’s no use standing here. That is, she has always told herself, the difference between her and her mother: she can face facts.
Philippa grasps the doorknob, breathes in once, quickly, and opens the door.
I’ve been waiting forever and a day,
said Hyacinth, yawning. She had fallen asleep beneath an oak tree, and while she slept the squirrels who lived in the tree had made her a blanket of leaves.
I promised I would come back if I could,
said Pip, and now I have.
I’m as glad as can be,
said Hyacinth. The Thorn King’s been so sad since you went away. When I tell him you’re back, he’ll prepare a feast just for you.
Will Jack Feather be there?
asked Pip.
I don’t know,
said Hyacinth, looking uncomfortable. He went away to the mountains, and hasn’t come back. I didn’t want to tell you yet, but—the May Queen’s disappeared! Jack Feather went to look for her with Jeremy Toad, and now they’ve disappeared too.
Then we’ll have to go find them,
said Pip.
—From Pip Returns to Fairyland, by Philippa Lawson
COMBER, by Gene Wolfe
The news whispered by his radio this morning was the same as the news when he and Mona had gone to bed: the city had topped the crest, and everything was flat and wonderful—if only for a day or two. You’re flat yourselves,
he told it softly, and switched it off.
Mona was still asleep when he had shaved and dressed, her swollen belly at rest on the mattress, her face full of peace, and her slow inhalations loud to his acute hearing. He grabbed a breakfast bar on his way through the kitchen and wondered how the hell he could start the car without waking her up.
There was a ball on the driveway, a chewed-up rubber ball some dog had stopped chasing when it had stopped running. He picked it up and bounced it off the concrete. It bounced a few more times and settled down to rest again, as round as Mona, though not quite as happy. He tossed it into the car and followed it.
Press the accelerator, let it up, twist the key. The little engine purred to life as if it knew its work would be easy today. The suburb passed in a familiar blur.
From the tollway, he eyed the tall buildings that marked the center of the city. The last crest had come before he was born (the crest of a wholly different wave, something he found hard to imagine) but he knew that not one of those spumecatchers had been built then. Now the city might have to pay for its pride and the convenience of having so many offices close together. Pay with its very existence, perhaps.
The brass inclinometer he had bought when he had foreseen the danger the year before was waiting for him when he reached his desk, solidly screwed to the desktop, its long axis coinciding exactly with the direction of motion of the plate. He squinted at the needle, and at last got out a magnifying glass. Zero. It seemed supernatural: a portent.
A memo taped to his monitor warned him that the new angle which will soon grow steep
would be the reverse of what it called the accustomed angle.
Everything was to be secured a second time with that new angle in mind. Workmen would make the rounds of all offices. He was asked to cooperate for the good of the company. He tossed the memo, woke his processor, and opened Mona’s private dream house instead. His design was waiting there to be tinkered with, as it would not have been if anyone in authority had found it.
Okay if I look at your gadget?
It was Phil, and Phil looked without waiting for his permission. Flat,
Phil said happily, and laughed. The plate’s flat. First time in my life.
The last time, too.
He closed Mona’s dream-house. For either one of us.
Phil rubbed his hands. It will all be different. Entirely different. A new slant on everything. Want to go up to the roof, ol’ buddy? Should be a great view.
He shook his head.
It would be very different indeed, he reflected when Phil had left, if the plate overturned. As it very well might. If the building did not break up when it hit the water, it would point down and would be submerged. Water would short out the electrical equipment, probably at once; and in any event, the elevators would no longer operate. Rooms and corridors might (or might not) hold some air for a few hours— most it down on what were now the lower floors. He might, perhaps, break a window and so escape; if he lived long enough to rise to street level, the edge of the plate, and air, would be what? Thirty miles away? Forty?
Back home, Mona would have drowned. If the plate were going to turn over, he decided, it would be better if it did it while he was at home with her. Better if they died together with their unborn child.
* * * *
Next day the inclinometer was no longer on zero, and the chewed ball he had left on his desk had rolled to one side; as he wrote letters and called contacts, as he began to sketch the outline of his next project, he watched the space between the end of the needle and the hair-thin zero line grow.
By Friday the needle was no longer near zero, and there were intervening marks which he did not trouble to read. Because on Friday, at not-quite eleven o’clock of that bright and still almost-level morning, Edith Benson called to say that Mona had gone into labor while they chatted across the fence, and that she had driven Mona to the hospital.
He took some time off. By the time he returned to his desk, the needle was no more than a pencil’s width from the peg. It seemed to him to tremble there, and he was reminded of his conversation with the proprietor of the little shop in which he had bought the inclinometer. He had asked why the scale went no further; and the proprietor had grinned, showing beautifully regular teeth that had certainly been false. Because you won’t be there to look at it if she goes farther than that,
the proprietor had told him.
A note taped to his desk informed him that he had neglected to set the brake on his swivel chair. It had pushed open the door of his office and crashed into Mrs. Patterson’s desk. He apologized to her in person.
At quitting time, the space between the point of the needle and the peg would admit three of his business cards, but not four.
That evening he and Mona sat up until their son’s next feeding, talking about colleges and professions. It would be up to Adrian to choose, they agreed on that. But would not their own attitudes, the training the gave him, and their very table-talk, influence Adrian’s choices? At ten they kissed, looked in on Adrian, and kissed again.
Goodnight, honey,
Mona said; and he, knowing that she did not want him to watch, Goodnight, darling.
* * * *
As he combed his hair the next morning, he found that his thoughts, which should have been focused on work, were full of Adrian—and the plate. More and taller buildings would go up when this was over. More and taller building would be built, that was to say, if there was anyone left alive to plan and build them. His firm would have a part of that, and would profit by it. Those profits would contribute to his profit-sharing plan.
He shrugged, rinsed his comb, and put it away. The new and wonderful house that he himself had designed—with a den and a sewing room, and enough bedrooms for five children—would not be quite so far off then.
At work, he found the needle not quite so near the peg as it had been. Three business cards slipped into the opening easily. Four would just clear.
Up on the roof, a little knot of his coworkers were marveling at the vastness of the tossing green waters that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The secretary with the gold pince-nez gripped his arm. I come up here every morning. We’ll never be able to see anything like this again, and today will be the last day we’re this high up.
He nodded, trying to look serious and pleased. The secretary with the gold pince-nez was the CEO’s, and although he had seen her often he had never spoken to her—much less been spoken to.
An executive vice president laid large soft hands on his shoulders. Take a good long look, young man. If it sticks with you, you’ll think big. We always need people who think big.
He said, I will, sir.
Yet he found himself looking at the people who looked, and not at the boundless ocean. There was the freckled kid from the mailroom who whistled, and over there the pretty blonde who never smiled.
All alone at the very edge of the gently slanting roof, was old Parsons. Hadn’t Parsons retired? Clearly Parsons had not; and Parsons had set up a tarnished brass telescope on a tripod—a telescope through which he peered down into the watery abyss that had opened before the city, not out at the grandeur of the horizon.
Something in the water?
Parsons straightened up. Sure is.
What is it?
Gnarled fingers stroked bristling, almost invisible white whiskers. That,
Parsons said slowly, is what I’m trying to figure, young feller.
A whale?
he asked.
Parsons shook his head. Nope.
’Tain’t that. You might think it’d be easy to figure, with a good glass. But ’tain’t. Parsons stepped aside.
You want to look?"
He bent as Parsons had and made a slight adjustment to the focus.
It was a city, or a town at least, nestled now in the trough. Narrow streets, roofs that seemed to be largely of red tiles. A white spire rose above its houses and shops, and for an instant—only an instant, it seemed to him that he had caught the gleam of the gold cross atop the spire.
He straightened up, swallowed as though his throat and stomach had some part in absorbing what he had just seen, and bent to look again.
Something white fluttered and vanished above one red roof. A pigeon, he felt certain. There were pigeons as well as gulls there, circling above the houses and shops; pigeons that no doubt nested in the eaves and scavenged the town’s streets for whatever food might be found in them.
Been lookin’ on my old computer at home,
Parsons said. There’s views of various places on there, if you know where to look. My guess is Les Sables-d’Olonne. Mind now, I’m not sayin’ I’m right. Just my guess, I said. You got one?
He shook his head. If—It’ll be out of the way, won’t it? By the time we get there? The next wave will pick it up first, won’t it?
As he spoke, he discovered that he did not believe a word of it.
Can’t say.
Parsons scratched his bristling jaw. Pretty slow, generally, goin’ up. Slidin’ down’s faster ’n blazes, and you go a long way.
Turning his head, he spat. We’re heading right at it.
If it wasn’t, if it was still in the way… And we hit—
Might bust our plate. I dunno. I phoned up one of them geologists. They’re s’posed to know all about all that. He said he didn’t know neither. Depend on how fast each was goin’. Only you ought to think ’bout this, young feller—ain’t a buildin’ on ours that could stand it if we bump with much speed a-tall. Knock ’em flat, ever’ last one of ’em.
Reluctantly he nodded. You’re right, it will. May I ask who you called, sir?
"Doctor Lantz, his name was. Said don’t talk about it, only he don’t have any right to give me orders. Old Parsons appeared to hesitate.
Won’t matter to me. I’ll be gone long before. You might still be around, though, a healthy young feller like you."
Yes,
he said. Images of the baby, of Adrian, filled his mind; he continued to talk almost by reflex. I asked about the geologist because I know a geologist. Slightly. I’ve gotten to know him slightly. His name isn’t Lantz, though. It’s Sutton. Martin Sutton. He lives one street over from us.
He had debated the matter with himself for more than an hour before telephoning Sutton. You know some things I need to know, Marty,
he said when the preliminaries were complete, and I’m going to pick your brain, if you’ll let me. This city or town or whatever it is in the trough—are we going to hit it?
There was a lengthy silence before Sutton said, You know about it, too.
Correct.
They’ve kept it off TV. They’ll keep it out of the papers, if they can. I wonder how many people know.
I have no idea. Are we, Marty?
That’s not my field. I’m a geologist, okay? I study the plate.
But you know. Are we?
Sutton sighed. Probably. How’d you find out?
I looked though a telescope, that’s all. There’s a town down there. Or a small city—take your pick. It’s got fields and gardens around it. What are the odds?
Sutton’s shrug was almost audible. One in ten, maybe.
One in ten of hitting?
No. One in ten of missing. They were calling it one in five yesterday. You mustn’t tell anybody I’ve told you, okay?
I won’t. But they told you. So you could tell them whether our plate would break?
Another silence, this one nearly as long as the first. Then: Yeah.
They did, but that wasn’t the main reason. What’s the other thing? It might help if you’d tell me.
For God’s sake keep it under your hat.
Even over the phone, Sutton sounded desperate.
I will, I swear. What is it?
They wanted to talk about the feasibility of breaking up the other plate in advance. You know—the one we’re going to hit.
I understand. Go on.
Suppose we could do it. Suppose we could break it into three pieces. They’d drift apart, and we might not hit all three.
He nodded slowly to himself. And even if we did, three small shocks wouldn’t be as damaging as one big one.
Right.
Sutton seemed a little less nervous now.
They’ll try to prepare for them too, of course. We’ve got a crew going through our offices double-bolting everything. Steel boots to hold the legs of the desks, and they’re screwing our file cabinets to the walls as well as the floor. I was watching it a few minutes ago.
I suppose we’ll get that here too,
Sutton said, but it hasn’t started yet.
Your superiors don’t know.
I guess not.
I see. I suppose mine have been asked whether it would practical to reinforce certain buildings. One more question, please, Marty, and it may be the last one. Would what they asked you about be feasible? Breaking up the plate we’re going to hit like that?
"I think so. Probably.… Listen, I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I’d like to get it off my chest. First, I’ve had to assume that their plate’s pretty much like
