Al Sarrantonio - Redshift

REDSHIFT

EXTREME VISIONS OF SPECULATIVE FICTION

edited by

al sarrantonio

A ROC BOOK

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

First Printing, December 2001 10 98765432

acknowledgments to Maurice Richardson and the Exploits of Engelbrecht, with permission of the publisher, Savoy Books, Manchester,

|§fjn REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Redshift: extreme visions of speculative fiction / edited by Al Sarrantonio.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-451-45859-1 (acid-free paper)

1. Science fiction, American. I. Sarrantonio, Al.

PS648.S3 R4 2001

813'.0876208—dc21 2001041639

Printed in the United States of America Set in Janson Text Designed by Eve L.

Kirch

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imaginations or are

used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or

introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To Harlan, of course

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I've said this before: No book is an island; and this particular one owes much to a few

special people. My thanks to:

Beth, always there, who put up with another one;

Julie Kristian, who hunted (and found!) gold;

Laura Anne Gilman, editor supreme;

Kathleen Bellamy, who gently persevered;

Dan Simmons, for reasons within;

Joe Lansdale, who wrote one toodamnlong—and for duty above and beyond;

Larry Niven, for making me think;

Ralph Vicinanza, who, again, piloted the agent's ship;

And editors, the quiet heroes of the field who, almost always unheralded, got or get it done:

Terry Carr, David G. Hartwell, Ellen Datlow, Damon Knight, Bob Silverberg, Gardner

Dozois, Gordon Van Gelder, Pat LoBrutto, Susan Allison, Ginger Buchanan, Sharon Jarvis,

Melissa Singer, Amy Stout, Harriet McDougal, Jennifer Brehl, John Douglas, Scott Edelman,

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Stan Schmidt, Jeanne Cavelos ...

Too many to name.

CONTENTS

Introduction

On K2 with Kanakaredes Dan Simmons

The Building Ursula K. Le Guin

Froggies Laura Whitton

What We Did That Summer Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg

A Slow Saturday Night at the Surrealist Sporting Club

Michael Moorcock

In Xanadu Thomas M. Disch

Commencement Joyce Carol Oates

Unique Visitors James Patrick Kelly

BIack TuIip Harry Turtledove

Belief P. D. Cacek

In the Un-Black Stephen Baxter

Weeping Walls Paul Di Filippo

Anomalies Gregory Benford

Captive Kong Kit Reed

Feedback Robert E. Vardeman

Between Disappearances Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Resurrection David Morrell

Cleopatra Brimstone Elizabeth Hand

Burros Gone Bad Peter Schneider

Pockets Rudy Rucker and John Shirley

Ave de Paso Catherine Asaro

Road Kill Joe Haldeman

Ting-a-Ling Jack Dann

'Bassador Catherine Wells

Ssoroghod's People Larry Niven

Two Shot Michael Marshall Smith

Billy the Fetus Al Sarrantonio

Viewpoint Gene Wolfe

Fungi Ardath Mayhar

Rhido Wars Neal Barrett, Jr.

INTRODUCTION

Redshift: Doppler effect evidenced by a move toward the red end of the

spectrum, indicating motion away from Earth—as in an expanding universe.

An expanding universe: that's what this book is about. To put it as simply as possible, what

you now hold in your hands (we hope and pray) is the finest original sf anthology of the last

twenty-five years—and the future of speculative fiction.

PART ONE: WHAT

In 1998, while assembling my last anthology, 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, I

set myself a new goal: to put together, at the turn of the millennium (the real new millennium

which began in 2001) a huge original anthology of speculative fiction stories. My initial

inspiration was Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, the publication of which in 1967 changed

the science fiction field forever. Much of what Ellison codified in that book—the pushing of

envelopes, the annihilation of taboos, the use of experimental prose—had been in the air for

some time (after all, this was the sixties), but he was the first to nail it between two

hardcovers* with a force and will that made it irrefutable. Science fiction (Ellison used the

term "speculative fiction" to describe this blossoming mutation that, by its very nature of

openness, contained elements of fantasy, horror, and brush strokes of just about every other

genre, as well as the techniques of conventional and experimental so-called "literary"

*<<Mike Moorcock, of course, put the phenomenon between two soft magazine covers in

the mid-sixties with New Worlds magazine in the U.K., which gave sustenance to the New

Wave movement that fomented this whole revolution. fiction) had been evolving; after the

publication of Dangerous Visions, the new monster stood on its hind legs roaring, fully

born.>>

The monster continued to roar; in 1973 there came a second volume from Ellison, Again,

Dangerous Visions, and throughout the next decade and beyond, numerous other

anthologies—as well as whole series of anthologies, such as Orbit edited by Damon Knight

(the first numbers of which actually predated Dangerous Visions), New Dimensions edited by

Robert Silverberg, and Universe edited by Terry Carr—continued to nurture this melding of

the hard and soft sciences in fiction, as well as its literary maturity of style. There were many

others. Even into the eighties and nineties, venturesome editors, such as Ellen Datlow, with her

fantasy-inspired, sexually liberating anthologies, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, with his

Starlight series (three volumes, as I write this) continued to elevate the field.

The magazines, too, absorbed the new gestalt, and, over the years, have continued to

evolve.*

*<<For much better, deeper, and finer discussions of these developments, there are far

better sources than me. Start with Clute and Nicholls's Science Fiction Encyclopedia, either in

print or on CD-ROM as Grolier Science Fiction: The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science

Fiction, which includes video and audio clips.>>

Given this history, was there really a need for another "cutting edge" original sf anthology,

here in 2001? What would be the reasons for putting together such a book?

I had one damned good reason for jumping into such a project. Two, actually.

But one's a secret—for now.

PART TWO: WHY

The "Ellison Revolution," it seems to me, had four goals: the breaking of taboos, the

presentation of new ways of telling stories, the expansion of the sf field, and—well, I'll keep

the fourth one in my back pocket for now, since it happens to dovetail with one of my own

reasons for doing this book.

As for taboos, someone asked me: What taboos are left to break in an era when the media

discuss the president performing sex acts in the oval office? There do seem to be, even in

science fiction, precious few taboos to break these days.+

+<<I do think there are a few pieces in this book that would have had a hard time finding a

home, specifically due to content, even in this day and age. Even though there have been

numerous original anthologies devoted to all kinds of former "taboo" subjects, the magazines,

in particular, which still publish the lion's share of sf short fiction, are still averse to certain

types of stories. Then again, as I've been told, taboos do change with the times, don't they?

What's political incorrectness if not a new taboo? >>

And as for new ways of telling stories, there's also really little left to discuss. By now, just

about every style from Ulysses to Ulysses S. Grant has been tried in sf—with mixed results. To

my mind, there are plenty of ways to tell a story. If what you have in the end are pretty words

that make no discernible pattern or narrative, well, that ain't a story, even if you call it

"experimental." The truth is, whatever works works—as long as it works.

Those two goals were pretty much reached—and, as you already realize, a long time ago.

What about the third goal of the ER (Ellison Revolution): the expansion of the sf field?

Ah, finally, something to work with in the year of 2001.

The question must be asked: Now that it's pretty much absorbed the soft sciences, the

literary avant-garde, and the humanities, is the sf field so staid, so settled, that there's nowhere

left for it to be pushed to?

Of course not.

Never.

The sf field is by its very nature the luckiest of literary forms—its basic subject matter, the

sciences, whether soft or hard, are always themselves evolving. Even though the ER brought in

all kinds of new subject matter, there is a built-in factor in sf that ensures that it will never get

old. The sciences—soft or hard—are continually providing the field with new ideas.*

*<<And vice versa-as someone once said: "First come the dreamers." Need I mention any

name beyond that of Jules Verne?>>

Science fiction has built-in forward momentum.

My first reason for putting this book together—the continued revolutionary expansion of

sf—is not only valid, but also vital. Hopefully this project will present a blueprint for the

future.

What about my second reason—the secret one?

Well... I think I'll keep it a secret for just a bit longer.

First we need to find out the most important thing: how the writers reacted when I

approached them with this nutty idea of mine.

PART THREE: HOW

Thus girded and armed with my idea for a huge new book of speculative fiction stories that

would expand the field and possibly change its future, I stumbled forth into the world to present

it to the only people who mattered: the best sf writers in the world.

How did they respond?

Quite frankly, they knocked my socks off.

To anyone who asked (few needed to), I said: "If you could influence the course of sf for the

next twenty-five years, show me that story!"

I ended up with, I think, not only a blueprint for the future, but also a primer of the changes

that have taken place since the sixties—a summation of how sf has expanded in the last

twenty-five years.

And not to dwell on this, but the number of submissions I received from

women—especially new writers—was remarkable. This is not something we would have seen

a few decades ago, for the simple reason that there weren't many women writing this stuff.

PART FOUR: (AGAIN) WHAT

Okay, enough already—what was my second reason for doing this book?

Well, that really isn't much of a secret. It's what every original anthologist wants to do:

present a big book of really good stories.

No problem there. At over 200,000 words, containing three novellas, five novelettes, and

twenty-two short stories, Redshift is easily one of the fattest original sf anthologies in some

time. I also happen to think it's one of the best. If the stories in this book are any indication, sf

will be very healthy for the foreseeable future. The diversity and quality of the pieces I

received were remarkable. The good stories that I had to turn down would nearly fill another

volume. There's something in this book for everyone—if you can't find something you like, you

must be brain-dead!

PART FIVE: WHERE

So is Redshift the finest original sf anthology of the last twenty-five years? Will it expand sf

and influence its future for the next twenty-five years?

That's for you to decide. But it is, I think, one hell of a good book of new stories.

A final question: Where are we, here at the dawn of the third millennium, in this totemic

year of 2001?

Where we always are, and want to be: on a cliff overlooking a wonderful new expanding

universe of words.

Time for me to push you in. Al Sarrantonio

January 2001

Yikes! Here's a story leading off this so-called cutting edge anthology that could have been published (minus the

naughty language) anywhere in the science fiction field in the last forty years. And by that I mean just about any

magazine or anthology— or a number of same outside the field. I could see this one in the Saturday Evening Post in

1968, for crissakes.

What gives?

I'll tell you what gives: this story is great fiction today, forty years ago, or forty years in the future. Great fiction

transcends any definition of cutting edge or New Wave.

Or genre labels.

Or any other kind of baloney.

Dan Simmons is well known to you all, or should be. He is the author of Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, The Song

of Kali, and many other sf and horror novels. He's won numerous awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, the

World Fantasy Award, and the Hugo Award, and also has conquered the spy thriller and suspense fields.

He's also responsible for the inclusion of one of the other great stories in this book, as you shall see.

But that's later; for now: enjoy the hell out of the following.

On K2 with Kanakaredes

Dan Simmons

The South Col of Everest, 26,200 feet

If we hadn't decided to acclimate ourselves for the K2 attempt by secretly climbing to the

eight-thousand-meter mark on Everest, a stupid mountain that no self-respecting climber would

go near anymore, they wouldn't have caught us and we wouldn't have been forced to make the

real climb with an alien and the rest of it might not have happened. But we did and we were

and it did.

What else is new? It's as old as Chaos theory. The best-laid plans of mice and men and so

forth and so on. As if you have to tell that to a climber.

Instead of heading directly for our Concordia Base Camp at the foot of K2, the three of us

had used Gary's nifty little stealth CMG to fly northeast into the Himalayas, straight to the

bergeschrund of the Khumbu Glacier at 23,000 feet. Well, fly almost straight to the glacier;

we had to zig and zag to stay under HK Syndicate radar and to avoid seeing or being seen by

that stinking prefab pile of Japanese shit called the Everest Base Camp Hotel (rooms US

$4,500 a night, not counting Himalayan access fee and CMG limo fare).

We landed without being detected (or so we thought), made sure the vehicle was safely

tucked away from the icefalls, seracs, and avalanche paths, left the CMG set in conceal mode,

and started our Alpine-style conditioning climb to the South Col. The weather was brilliant.

The conditions were perfect. We climbed brilliantly. It was the stupidest thing the three of us

had ever done.

By late on the third afternoon we had reached the South Col, that narrow, miserable,

windswept notch of ice and boulders wedged high between the shoulders of Lhotse and

Everest. We activated our little smart tents, merged them, anchored them hard to ice-spumed

rock, and keyed them white to keep them safe from prying eyes.

Even on a beautiful late-summer Himalayan evening such as the one we enjoyed that day,

weather on the South Col sucks. Wind velocities average higher than those encountered near

the summit of Everest. Any high-climber knows that when you see a stretch of relatively flat

rock free of snow, it means hurricane winds. These arrived on schedule just about at sunset of

that third day. We hunkered down in the communal tent and made soup. Our plan was to spend

two nights on the South Col and acclimate ourselves to the lower edge of the Death Zone

before heading down and flying on to Concordia for our legal K2 climb. We had no intention of

climbing higher than the South Col on Everest. Who would?

At least the view was less tawdry since the Syndicate cleaned up Everest and the South Col,

flying off more than a century's worth of expedition detritus—ancient fixed ropes, countless

tent tatters, tons of frozen human excrement, about a million abandoned oxygen bottles, and a

few hundred frozen corpses. Everest in the twentieth century had been the equivalent of the old

Oregon Trail—everything that could be abandoned had been, including climbers' dead friends.

Actually, the view that evening was rather good. The Col drops off to the east for about four

thousand feet into what used to be Tibet and falls even more sharply—about seven thousand

feet—to the Western Cwm. That evening, the high ridges of Lhotse and the entire visible west

side of Everest caught the rich, golden sunset for long minutes after the Col moved into shadow

and then the temperature at our campsite dropped about a hundred degrees. There was not, as

we outdoors people like to say, a cloud in the sky. The high peaks glowed in all their

eight-thousand-meter glory, snowfields burning orange in the light. Gary and Paul lay in the

open door of the tent, still wearing their therm-skin uppers, and watched the stars emerge and

shake to the hurricane wind as I fiddled and fussed with the stove to make soup. Life was good.

Suddenly an incredibly amplified voice bellowed, "You there in the tent!"

I almost pissed my thermskins. I did spill the soup, slopping it all over Paul's sleeping bag.

"Fuck," I said.

"God damn it," said Gary, watching the black CMG—its UN markings glowing and

powerful searchlights stabbing—settle gently onto small boulders not twenty feet from the tent.

"Busted," said Paul.

Hillary Room, Top of the World, 29,035 feet

Two years in an HK floating prison wouldn't have been as degrading as being made to enter

that revolving restaurant on the top of Everest. All three of us protested, Gary the loudest since

he was the oldest and richest, but the four UN security guys in the CMG just cradled their

standard-issue Uzis and said nothing until the vehicle had docked in the restaurant

airlock-garage and the pressure had been equalized. We stepped out reluctantly and followed

other security guards deeper into the closed and darkened restaurant even more reluctantly. Our

ears were going crazy. One minute we'd been camping at 26,000 feet, and a few minutes later

the pressure was the standard airline equivalent of 5,000 feet. It was painful, despite the UN

CMC's attempt to match pressures while it circled the dark hulk of Everest for ten minutes.

By the time we were led into the Hillary Room to the only lighted table in the place, we

were angry and in pain.

"Sit down," said Secretary of State Betty Willard Bright Moon.

We sat. There was no mistaking the tall, sharp-featured Blackfoot woman in the gray suit.

Every pundit agreed that she was the single toughest and most interesting personality in the

Cohen Administration, and the four U.S. Marines in combat garb standing in the shadows

behind her only added to her already imposing sense of authority. The three of us sat, Gary

closest to the dark window wall across from Secretary Bright Moon, Paul next to him, and me

farthest away from the action. It was our usual climbing pattern.

On the expensive teak table in front of Secretary Bright Moon were three blue dossiers. I

couldn't read the tabs on them, but I had little doubt about their contents: Dossier #1, Gary

Sheridan, forty-nine, semi-retired, former CEO of SherPath International, multiple addresses

around the world, made his first millions at age seventeen during the long lost and rarely

lamented dot-corn gold rush of yore, divorced (four times), a man of many passions, the

greatest of which was mountain climbing; Dossier #2, Paul Ando Hiraga, twenty-eight, ski

bum, professional guide, one of the world's best rock-and-ice climbers, unmarried; Dossier #3,

Jake Richard Pettigrew, thirty-six, (address: Boulder, Colorado), married, three children,

high-school math teacher, a good-to-average climber with only two eight-thousand-meter peaks

bagged, both thanks to Gary and Paul, who invited him to join them on international climbs for

the six previous years. Mr. Pettigrew still cannot believe his good luck at having a friend and

patron bankroll his climbs, especially when both Gary and Paul were far better climbers with

much more experience. But perhaps the dossiers told of how Jake, Paul, and Gary had become

close friends as well as climbing partners over the past few years, friends who trusted each

other to the point of trespassing on the Himalayan Preserve just to get acclimated for the climb

of their lives.

Or perhaps the blue folders were just some State Department busy-work that had nothing to

do with us.

"What's the idea of hauling us up here?" asked Gary, his voice controlled but tight. Very

tight. "If the Hong Kong Syndicate wants to throw us in the slammer, fine, but you and the UN

can't just drag us somewhere against our will. We're still U.S. citizens. . . ."

"U.S. citizens who have broken HK Syndicate Preserve rules and UN World Historical Site

laws," snapped Secretary Bright Moon.

"We have a valid permit . . . ," began Gary again. His forehead looked very red just below

the line of his cropped white hair.

"To climb K2, commencing three days from now," said the Secretary of State. "Your

climbing team won the HK lottery. We know. But that permit does not allow you to enter or

overfly the Himalayan Preserve, or to trespass on Mount Everest."

Paul glanced at me. I shook my head. I had no idea what was going on. We could have

stolen Mount Everest and it wouldn't have brought Secretary Betty Willard Bright Moon flying

around the world to sit in this darkened revolving restaurant just to slap our wrists.

Gary shrugged and sat back. "So what do you want?"

Secretary Bright Moon opened the closest blue dossier and slid a photo across the polished

teak toward us. We huddled to look at it.

"A bug? "said Gary.

"They prefer Listener" said the secretary of state. "But mantispid will do."

"What do the bugs have to do with us?" said Gary.

"This particular bug wants to climb K2 with you in three days," said Secretary Bright Moon.

"And the government of the United States of America in cooperation with the Listener Liaison

and Cooperation Council of the United Nations fully intend to have him ... or her . . . do so."

Paul's jaw dropped. Gary clasped his hands behind his head and laughed. I just stared.

Somehow I found my voice first.

"That's impossible," I said.

Secretary Betty Willard Bright Moon turned her flat, dark-eyed gaze on me. "Why?"

Normally the combination of that woman's personality, her position, and those eyes would

have stopped me cold, but this was too absurd to ignore. I just held out my hands, palms

upward. Some things are too obvious to explain. "The bugs have six legs," I said at last. "They

look like they can hardly walk. We're climbing the second tallest mountain on earth- And the

most savage."

Secretary Bright Moon did not blink. "The bu— The mantispids seem to get around their

freehold in Antarctica quite well," she said flatly. "And sometimes they walk on two legs."

Paul snorted. Gary kept his hands clasped behind his head, his shoulders back, posture

relaxed, but his eyes were flint. "I presume that if this bug climbed with us, that you'd hold us

responsible for his safety and well-being," he said.

The secretary's head turned as smoothly as an owl's. "You presume correctly," she said.

"That would be our first concern. The safety of the Listeners is always our first concern."

Gary lowered his hands and shook his head. "Impossible. Above eight thousand meters, no

one can help anyone."

"That's why they call that altitude the Death Zone," said Paul. He sounded angry.

Bright Moon ignored Paul and kept her gaze locked with Gary's. She had spent too many

decades steeped in power, negotiation, and political in-fighting not to know who our leader

was. "We can make the climb safer," she said. "Phones, CMGs on immediate call, uplinks . . ."

Gary was shaking his head again. "We do this climb without phones and medevac capability

from the mountain."

"That's absurd . . .," began the secretary of state.

Gary cut her off. "That's the way it is," he said. "That's what real mountaineers do in this

day and age. And what we don't do is come to this fucking obscenity of a restaurant." He

Al Sarrantonio - Redshift

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