Year's Best Scifi 5 Part 35

In the meantime, he still had his researches. He had picked out three evolutionary lines that looked interesting. One line had apparently filled the same ecological niche the pig family had exploited on Earth.

The others raised questions about the way predators and prey interacted over the millennia.

They were good subjects. They would keep him occupied for decades. He had now lived over three hundred years. Nothing lasted forever. He had his whole life ahead of him.

Valour

CHRIS BECKETT.

There is a Chris Beckett website open to all the Chris Becketts in the world, but it is hosted by another Chris Beckett and does not include this one. David Pringle, editor of Interzone where this story was first published, had only an e-mail address, from which messages bounced. I was able to get a response to contracts to reprint, but no information other than a mailing address in Cambridge, England, so I must consider this writer the elusive Chris Beckett.

This story, however, is quite concretely SF, of the dead-pan ironic sort, perhaps a descendant of William Tenn's cla.s.sic, "The Emanc.i.p.ation of Earth." What if the aliens sent us an intelligible, sophisticated message, and no one much cared?

Here comes Vincent. Here he comes through the stratosphere on the Lufthansa shuttle: a shy, thin young Englishman, half-listening to the recorded safety instructions.

"Drinks, anyone? Drinks?" says the hostess: blonde, with high heels, makeup and a short, tight dress.

Vincent reminds himself, with a certain eerie jolt, that she isn't human. She's a synthetik-a robot clothed in living tissue. Lufthansa uses them on all their flights now. So do Air France and Alitalia. They are cheaper than real women, they do not require time off, and they are uniformly beautiful...

"Disconcerting, isn't it?" says the pa.s.senger next to him, an elderly German with a humorous mouthand extraordinarily mobile eyebrows. "You find yourself admiring them without really thinking about it-and then suddenly you remember they are only machines."

Vincent smiles just enough to avoid impoliteness. He does not enjoy chatting to strangers.

Unfortunately his companion does not feel the same.

"My name is Gruber," says the elderly German, extending a large friendly hand. "Heinrich Gruber, I am a student of philosophy. How about you?"

"I'm a computer scientist."

"Really? Where?"

"Cambridge usually, but I'm taking a sabbatical in Berlin."

Gruber chuckles. "Cambridge! Cambridge! The silicon city, the city of the disembodied mind!"

And as if to disa.s.sociate himself from any charge of being disembodied, he cranes round to stare at the comely bottom of the robot hostess as she stoops to take a bottle out of her trolley. He turns back to Vincent, eyebrows wriggling with amus.e.m.e.nt: "And yet if she was a real human hostess and you and I were sitting here quietly eyeing her up the way men do, would the position really be so different? It would not be her soul after all that was on our minds?" The eyebrows arch up triumphantly. Vincent colours slightly.

"Soul? I see you are a dualist," says Vincent, with a little laugh, so as to move the subject onto less personal ground.

Gruber frowns. "Dualist? My dear fellow, I study the philosophy of the Ca.s.siopeians. I am a trialist through and through!"

Vincent smiles politely, looks at his watch, opens his laptop and starts to tap keys so as to discourage Gruber from carrying on the conversation. Conversation is such hard work. It involves having to be someone.

"Your wife?" asks Gruber, nodding at the small picture sellotaped in the corner of the computer's keyboard.

"My girlfriend," says Vincent, for some reason blus.h.i.+ng as he glances at the image of Lizzie. "She's a computer scientist too, back in Cambridge."

Gruber smiles his amiable, knowing smile. He takes out a battered paperback and reads, glancing across from time to time at the young Englishman whose hands dart so quickly over the keyboard and whose eyes s.h.i.+ne as he studies the rich, multicoloured patterns on his screen.

Darkness starts to fall outside. Stars appear: Orion, Taurus. An evening meal is served by the pretty robots.

"They make their flesh from genetically modified sh.e.l.lfish tissue, I believe," says Gruber loudly, swivelling stiffly round in his seat to look at the hostess, "Patella Aspera, the common limpet. It's good at sticking on to things!"

Vincent smiles politely, cutting into his pork chop. Synthetiks first emerged from the laboratory a couple of years previously, and they are still banned in England-Wales, though the ban is currently being challenged in the European Court. As a computer scientist he rather scorns the publicity given to the semi-human, semi-molluscan flesh. Simulated human tissue is yesterday's technology. The real technical achievement about synthetiks is the brilliant cybernetics which allow them to faithfully mimic the movements of the human body and face.

But perhaps you have to be a computer man to understand just how very clever that is.

"You English are wise to ban them of course," mutters the German philosopher, turning back to attend to his food. "What I said earlier was true but completely beside the point. The attraction between real human beings may well begin as a physical matter, but that is the mere starting point, the foundation on which the whole magnificent edifice of s.e.xual love is built. But a synthetik is a starting point for nothing, the foundation of nothing."

Vincent doesn't like conversation-with strangers. But, seeing that conversation of some sort seems inevitable, he changes the subject.

"You were saying you have made a study of the Ca.s.siopeians," he says. "I must admit I don't know much about them. I rather lost track after the news first broke, and those wonderful pictures came out.Tell me about trialism."

"You don't know much about them?! How can any educated..." Gruber makes a gesture of exasperation. "Well, I suppose I can't accuse you of being unusual in that respect! But it never ceases to amaze me that five years after the most astounding event in human history hardly anyone seems to give it a moment's thought. Would you believe, the research money for textual a.n.a.lysis is actually drying up now, though the message is still coming through clear as ever from the sky!"

Vincent feels a little ashamed. "Well, I suppose it is rather appalling when you put it like that! I guess it was when we all realized that the source was 200 lightyears away and there was no possibility at all of a dialogue or physical contact. And then it came out that it was all rather obscure philosophical ramblings and nothing that we could really use...I suppose it just became another one of those amazing things that we get used to: like cities on the moon or...or robot air hostesses with human fles.h.!.+"

The German snorts. "No doubt. But really is there any comparison between these little technological tricks that you mention and this: the discovery of other thinking minds among the stars?"

He rolls his eyes upward. "But then, no one is interested in thinking any more. You are quite right: when governments and corporations discovered that it was philosophy the Ca.s.siopeians were sending out, that really was the last straw. They'd hoped for new technologies, new sciences, new powers over the physical world...But philosophy!"

He sighs extravagantly. "In answer to your question about trialism. The Ca.s.siopeians organize the world in threes. They have three s.e.xes, three states of matter, three dimensions of s.p.a.ce, three modes of being...and above all, three great forces, struggling for dominance in the world: Valour, Gentleness and Evil."

"Not Good and Evil?"

"No, no, no. They have no concept of 'Good.' It would seem quite incomprehensible to them that we could compound two such obviously unmixable essences as Valour and Gentleness into a single word. To the Ca.s.siopeians, all three forces are equally incompatible. Gentleness tells us to do one thing, Evil tells us to do another, and Valour-it tells us to do another thing again."

Vincent smiles, with dry, polite scepticism. "I hadn't realized that the translation had got to this stage.

I thought I read somewhere there was still a lot of controversy about the text."

The German growls darkly: "Ja, ja, ja, a lot of controversy..."

As they separate in the airport, Gruber presses a card into Vincent's hand. "Come and see me while you are in the city if you have the time. It is not every day after all that you will meet a naturalized Ca.s.siopeian!"

His eyebrows bristle as he glares around at silvery robot security guards, robot porters, male and female synthetiks with bright smiles manning the airline check-in desks. "Even a genuine human being is becoming something of a rarity!"

Vincent says something insincere, but he is no longer paying attention to the peculiar old man. He has spotted his German friends, Franz and Renate.

"Vincent, how nice to see you! How are you? How is Lizzie? How is Cambridge?"

They are bright, polite, smartly dressed young people, who Vincent and Lizzie met when they spent a year in Cambridge. After the eccentric Gruber, who might at any time say something embarra.s.sing, they seem very normal and unthreatening and easy to get along with. Vincent shakes their hands and exchanges minor news. They take him out to their little electric car (fossil fuels are verboten in the new Green Berlin) and head off in the direction of their Schoneberg apartment where he is to stay till he has found accommodation of his own.

"But I've forgotten if you've ever been here before?" says Franz.

"Strangely enough no. Very provincial of me, I know, not to have visited the capital of Europa!"

The two Germans laugh, pleased.

"Come now Vincent," says Renate, "surely even an Englishman knows that the capital of Europa is Brussels!"

"Well you know what they say: the President of the Commission sits in Brussels but when he puts in aclaim for expenses it's Chancellor Kommler who signs the form."

The Germans smile. These bantering exchanges, with their little hidden barbs of jealousy, are the bread-and-b.u.t.ter of contacts between young Euro-professionals all over the continent, as they gradually shake down into a single, transnational cla.s.s.

"Well," says Franz, "how about a little tour of this city of ours before we head for home?"

They drive through bright modern streets: tidy shops, tidy parks, tastefully restored old buildings, advertis.e.m.e.nt h.o.a.rdings promoting healthy living and the avoidance of domestic accidents...(Not so different from Cambridge really, or Milton Keynes, or the modernized parts of London or Brussels, except more so.) They drive past the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. They go down the Kurfurstendamm. Franz points out the Volkskammer and the TV Tower from the gloomy days of the GDR. They drive along the boundary fence of Lichtenberg II, reputedly the largest Undercla.s.s estate in Europa, looking across with a small frisson (rather as an earlier generation might have looked across the famous Wall) at the monolithic apartment blocks within, where live the gastarbeiters, the unemployed, the outcasts of Europa's prosperous new order.

("KILL MEDITERRANEAN Sc.u.m," hisses a scrawl on a h.o.a.rding. Somewhere inside there an Albanian boy is probably being kicked senseless by Nordic lumpenproles, or a Turkish girl being gang-raped...) "Of this we are not proud," says Renate.

Then all three of them, almost simultaneously, sigh and say: "But it seems this is the price of stability."

"Ja, and we shouldn't forget that the Lichtenbergers have a guaranteed income, healthcare, roofs over their heads," says Franz as he turns the car away from the gloomy perimeter, back into the bright prosperity of the real Berlin. "It's more than you can say for the poor in most of the world."

He shrugs resignedly, defensively, and changes the subject to more cheerful things. "Now Vincent, I seem to recall you have a weakness for VR, I must show you the Phantasium. It is the Mecca for all the VR aficionados in the city."

"Sounds good!" Vincent laughs. He loves VR arcades. They make him feel 17 again. They give him a sense of wildness and dangerousness which is otherwise almost entirely lacking from his anxious, orderly life.

He and Franz plunge into the glowing electronic cave of the Phantasium, with the agreeable, conspiratorial feeling that men have when they get together without their women. (Renate has declined to come in, and headed off on another errand. Like Lizzie, she hates VR.) Of course, they have VR in Cambridge too (they also have Undercla.s.s estates), but the Phantasium is on a wholly different scale. Vincent gives a small, impressed whistle. In an enormous dark chamber, long rows of cages made of plastic tubing stretch into the distance. And in nearly every cage, a youth squirms and writhes alone inside a suspended control suit that encloses his arms, legs and face, while he battles in imaginary landscapes against cybernetic phantoms that he alone can see and touch...

Other youths wander up and down the rows, sometimes peering into small monitoring screens that give a taste of the electronic dreams and nightmares on offer: "The South Invades," "Berserkers of Islam," "Gene-Lab Catastrophe," "Pump-Action Killer," "UC Break-out!"...

"Now that last one is good," says Franz. "The subject matter is in poor taste I admit, but the graphics and tactiles are brilliant."

Vincent smiles, runs his credit card over the reader and straps himself into the control suit. Soon he is cheerfully battling against a murderous gang of immigrants and benefit-claimants who have broken out of their concrete estate and are terrorizing the good citizens in the neighbouring suburbs.

(Every educated European knows that the Social Compromise is necessary to contain inflation, but how Europa is haunted by those outcasts behind their concrete walls!) "Yeah," he agrees, climbing out. "Pretty sophisticated stuff."

At the end of this row of games an archway labelled "Liebespielen," marks the beginning of an inner sanctum where the games are discreetly boxed in with plywood and have names like "Oral Heaven,"

"Take Me, I'm Yours" and "l.u.s.t Unlimited." The two young men, Franz and Vincent, glance through thegateway. Franz gives a hearty, worldly laugh, slightly forced.

Later, back in Franz and Renate's apartment, Vincent retires to his room and plugs in his lap-top so it can feed and replenish itself on the nouris.h.i.+ng streams of information. Presently he calls up Lizzie.

"Oh it's you, Boo Boo dear." (How did they start these silly names?) "Did you have a good flight?"

"Not bad at all."

"What's their flat like?"

"Oh, like ours really, only bigger and more prosperous," he laughs. "Come to think of it, that sums up the difference between Germany and England pretty well: like us really, only bigger and more prosperous!"

"I've got things sorted for me to come over. Should be there in three or four weeks."

"Great."

"You don't sound very pleased, Boo Boo!"

For a moment, Vincent looks at the face of his beloved and thinks: No, I'm not. What do we really share in life except a dull little flat and an interest in computers...?

He retreats in panic from this flash of terrifying clarity. "Of course I'm pleased, Liz-Liz. It's going to seem really strange just being on my own."

"Hmmm," says Lizzie, "I think perhaps I should let you stew on your own for a week or two, Boo Boo, and see how you like it!"

Afterwards, he can't sleep. He switches on his lap-top again and tunes in to a news satellite.

Every playground in Europa, it seems, is to be resurfaced in a new rubberized substance called Childsafe, following a tragic accident in Prague when a child fell from a swing...

New standards for food hygiene are to be announced by the Commissioner for Health...

The sprawling and impoverished Federation of Central Asia is preparing once again for war with its neighbours. A vast crowd swirls round a giant statue of a soldier in heroic pose. The crowd chants.

"Death! Death! Death!" "Death to the blasphemers! Death for the Motherland is glorious indeed!"

Thousands of fists are thrust up in unison into the air. And the statue gouts real blood from a dozen gaping wounds...

(Vincent leans forward closer to the screen. All over Europa, with its safe children's playgrounds and its pure and hygienic food, healthy and well-fed people are leaning forward like him to watch this reckless energy, this crazy camaraderie with violence and misery and death...) Every day, says the reporter, people queue in their thousands to donate blood for the statue. They are generally malnourished. They can ill afford to give away their life-blood, but they keep on coming anyway. Never mind that Central Asia's hospitals have no blood to give the sick and the injured, never mind that the needles are reused again and again and AIDS is rampant, the statue's wounds must flow.

Crazy! Tragic! Obscene!

But look at the triumph in those faces, the ecstasy, the pa.s.sion!

Vincent switches off and goes to a window. Faint smudges of stars are visible in the city sky. He tries to remember which one of those constellations is Ca.s.siopeia.

Franz and Renate are conscientious hosts. They take Vincent to the museums and the historic sites.

They take him to concerts and parties. They take him one frosty night to the famous annual parade on the Unter den Linden.

The starry flag of Europa flies high over the crowds alongside the black and red and gold of the mighty German Bund. Statues and buildings loom eerily in the icy floodlights. And then, one after another under the floodlights, they come, where so many parades have come before. But these are not brown s.h.i.+rts, not goose stepping soldiers of the GDR, not missiles and rocket launchers, not bands, not Olympic athletes or dignitaries...They are creatures from prehistory, great s.h.a.ggy denizens of the Pleistocene steppes, shambling patiently one after another between the Doric columns of the Brandenburg Gate.

Mammoths!

Franz and Renate lean on the railings while the animals go by. They have seen the parade before.They watch the scene with a proprietorial air, from time to time looking round to check that their guest is suitably impressed.

Immense beasts! And they walk with such a.s.surance, such calm, muscular gravity, as if their resurrection was not an incredible and improbable feat of science, but a simple law of nature: everything returns.