Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (40 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Come, we both have work—”

“Do you think I am a fool?” I answered, with unexpected heat. “Or ignorant? Or that the generation after yours would somehow forget the old stories? What did you take me for? Do you think that I’m not Russian?”

She rocked back. And this time, after a moment’s indecision, she did me the honor of contemplating my words. Understanding them.

All over both planet Earth and the solar system, humanity was coming to terms with harsh reality. With the way of the Coss, whose conquest swept aside such fragile things as “enlightenment,” or democracy, or the liberal way of viewing a gracious, benign universe.

That narrow age had flared so successfully, so brilliantly, it created a mass delusion. That all people might have worth, freedom, and unlimited prospects. That competition might be so open, fair, individual, and courteous that it becomes indistinguishable from joyful cooperation. That anyone’s child might become as great as any other.

For a time, it seemed that Hawaii or California might be archetypes for a new, endlessly golden age—a sunny beach of prosperity, progress, and opportunity. How few were those who pointed out the chief lesson of history—that ninety-nine percent of human generations had endured a far more classic, more archetypical human social structure.

First tribal chiefdoms . . . and then feudalism.

Mighty lords, applying total power over helpless vassals. During the Enlightenment Summer, some fools—Americans, especially— naïvely thought the long era of noble oppressors was over and done for good. In fact, they still, insanely, call feudalism an aberration, unstable and untenable, instead of the way that nature conspires with the strong.

And so, rebelling against the Coss time and again, Americans have died like wheat in the field.

But Russians never forgot. Amid the brightest days, even when others called us gloomy and dour, we knew. The tartars, the czars, the commissars and oligarchs . . . they murmured in our sleep, never letting us forget. And when the Coss came in overwhelming strength, reestablishing a feudal order—only with an alien caste on top—we Russians knew our options. There were . . . and are . . . and always will be just two.

To knuckle under, and survive.

Or to fight, but with the grinding, stoical patience of Pyotr Alexeyevich, or of Tolstoy. Or Lenin.

“We know the stories,” I told my mother, standing with her under vacuum- bright constellations. “How women used to plod for hundreds, even thousands of kilometers, following muddy roads . . . and then metal railroad tracks . . . slogging into far Siberia. Working to get by, doing laundry till their hands bled, moving from village to village to find the work camps. The gulags. Whereupon, each day when the train whistle blew—”

As if I had commanded it, a throbbing vibration shuddered underfoot and our audios picked up the throaty radio call—a five minute warning from the Nicholas III.

“The women gathered by the village siding where the locomotive stopped for water. They would hurry to the flat cars, loaded high with timber cut by prisoners. And they searched, combing the logs with their eyes and groping in among them with their hands.

“What was it they were looking for, mother? Can you tell me, honestly, at long last, what you came out here to seek?”

I bent and caught her eyes with mine. Haggard from years of sleepless worry, hers glistened with defiant pride.

“Initials,” she said with little breath, then adding softly. “Carved into the raw wood . . . by prisoners.”

And then, straightening her back.

“Proof that they survived.”

So.

My suspicion was confirmed. Her added reason for all this— the one that had gone unspoken.

No single justification was sufficient for all this, especially dragging her children into the wilderness. Not the full release promised by Coss Law. Not the strength that Yelena and I would attain—if we survived. Nor the practical experience, dealing with a new harsh world.

Only . . . might this one, added to the others, tip the scale?

It did. Just barely. Enough for me to nod. To understand. To accept.

And to know.

The Yankees would never learn. Fooled by their brief, naïve time of childishly unlimited dreams, they believed deep down in happy endings and the triumph of good. They would keep rebelling till the Coss left no Americans alive.

We Russians are different. Our expertise? We persist. Resist! But with measured, cynical care. And each defeat is simply preparation.

That truth, I had already known. Only now it filled my soul.

We are the people who know how to outlast the Coss.

And so I took my mother by the hand, leading her to the place that I had found, where Cyrillic letters lay deep-incised along the bared trunk of a crystal tree. And I watched her face bloom with sudden hope, with sunlit joy. And I knew, at last, what lesson this place taught.

To endure.

David Brin is a scientist, inventor, and New York Times bestselling author. With books translated into twenty- five languages, he has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, and other awards. A film directed by Kevin Costner was based on David’s novel The Postman. Other works have been optioned by Paramount and Warner Bros. David’s science- fictional Uplift saga explores gene tic engineering of higher animals, like dolphins, to speak. His new novel from Tor Books is Existence. More information is available at his website: www.davidbrin.com/existence.html.

As a scientist/futurist, David is seen frequently on television shows such as The ArchiTechs, Universe, and Life After People (the most popular show ever on the History Channel)— with many appearances on PBS, BBC, and NPR. An inventor with many patents, he is in demand to speak about future trends, keynoting for IBM, Google, Procter & Gamble, SAP, Microsoft, Qualcomm, the Mauldin Group, and Casey Research, all the way to think tanks, Homeland Security, and the CIA. See: www.davidbrin.com/speaker.html.

With degrees from Caltech and the University of California San Diego, Dr. Brin serves on advisory panels ranging from astronomy, NASA innovative concepts, nanotech, and SETI to national defense and technological ethics. His nonfiction book The Transparent Society explores the dangers of secrecy and loss of privacy in our modern world. It garnered the prestigious Freedom of Speech Prize from the American Library Association.

GENE WOLFE

A
dele helped George, Mike, Ted, and Sy put up the Putman Shelter. (Not that they needed her help.) Afterward, she left them to stand on a high rock at the edge of the sea and look out over the water. The waves were regular, small, and smooth, the water blue and dark with mystery. A bird flew somewhere overhead, weeping endlessly over an imagined sorrow. Adele looked for it, but never caught sight of it. In her thoughts, it was a gull, white and pearl-gray, lost against the high clouds.

Behind her, Sy climbed onto the rock. She turned to stare at him. “We’ve got the sleeping places laid out,” Sy told her. “We’re going to draw lots for them. Winner gets first pick. You’ll want to be there.”

“No. I don’t care. I’ll take whatever’s left. I’m not going to sleep there anyway.”

“Where are you going to sleep, in that case?”

Adele smiled. “Why do you care?”

“I care, all right? The weather’s not always going to be like this. It will rain. Snow in winter.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, that’s all.” Sy was the most patient of the four. “We’ve only been here a few days. We don’t really know what it’s going to be like. This could be the best weather we’ll see all year.”

Adele decided she would sleep in the ship. “Has it really been just a few days?”

Sy hesitated. “I think so.”

“It seems so much longer. Forever.” The wind from the sea played with her auburn hair, so that it streamed toward Sy like two flags. “No, not forever. But a long time.”

“We haven’t run out of rations yet. We still have food.” It was a weak argument, and Sy’s voice showed he knew it.

When was the last time she had eaten? Her meal had been of what?

“Will we? Ever?”

“Of course we will!”

“You’re sure of that?”

Without a word, Sy began to climb back down. Adele watched him until he was safely on the beach again, and then turned back to the sea. Soundless waves washed the foot of her rock, and the unseen bird wept overhead.

What was on the other side? The silent water was too wide for her to see across. “I’ll sleep on the ship.” She was quoting a thought. The ship had to be near here. She tried to remember where.

When she tired of watching the waves, she turned to watch the men erecting the Putman Shelter. She counted them and tried to recall their names. The Putman Shelter was already much larger than she had anticipated. Once she had helped two other women erect a Putman Shelter. It took them seventeen minutes the first time, nine minutes the second. Or was that nine hours? She felt quite sure it had not seemed like nine hours, and it had been fun. They had teamed up to pull the stakes, and she had driven ropes with a big wooden mallet. It had been like Girl Scouts, she thought, and smiled.

There were five men working away now: Ted, Sy, Mike, and two Georges. She wondered where the other George came from. Perhaps he had always been there.

At least, he looked like George.

She was climbing down the rock before she realized she was going to investigate.

“Hello, Adele.” It was one of the Georges. “Glad to see you made it.”

“I was looking at the sea.” Why should she explain?

The George nodded. “Glad you were. It’s going to take a great deal of study. That’s your field, isn’t it? Marine ecology?”

Adele nodded. She recalled lying on the floor in her bedroom with Glenys. Glenys did not understand; thus she strove to explain the game. “Heads marine biology, and tails home economics. Heads interactive world history, and reverse, political science, Queen library science, and lion shield-taming.”

Or had it been Susan?

“Hell,” the George said, “we don’t really understand the ecology of the seas of Earth.”

“Or know their names.” Adele felt confident. When he said nothing, she added, “There’s the Holy Sea. It’s around Italy somewhere.”

The George laughed. “Come over and have a look at the Shelter. I want to show you the parts I worked on.”

She nodded, and his hand found hers.

“This is Entrance Seven. I really didn’t have anything to do with it. Ted, Mike, and Sven put it up before I got here, but it’s how I got in the first time I came. I was impressed by the stitching. Look here.” He ran his index finger along a seam. “Isn’t that great?”

Dutifully, Adele nodded.

“And look here.”

Adele was looking at a chair. She nodded again. It had gilt arms and a velvet back, a comfortable-looking red velvet seat.

“They used a door eraser. If it gets too cold, there’s no door.”

She sat as quietly as she could. The George was no longer paying attention to her, so why pay attention to him? There was a different view of the sea from here. The beach gave it perspective. There were no ships, no seagulls, no popcorn bags and beer cans littering the sand. Seashells? She strove to remember.

“Hello,” a new voice said. “I’m Steve. Who are you?”

She stared at him. He looked like Sy, she decided. Tall and blond. Blue eyes. But Sy was slender, wasn’t he?

Steve cleared his throat. “I guess that wasn’t polite, just asking like that. Only I, well, I wanted us to get acquainted right away.”

“I’m Adele.”

“Happy to meet you.” He smiled. “Can we be friends?”

Another question. She decided it would be best to ignore it. Five minutes into every conversation, Glenys wanted to know whether she was still a virgin. It was better to pretend it had not been said.

“I suppose you’ll want me to cook.” She was a bad cook.

“Why, no. No, I won’t, I promise.” He looked baffled. “I mean, rations heat themselves when you open the pouch, but if there was cooking that had to be done—I mean, like, suppose there’s animals on this planet and we shot an animal or something. If we had arrows, I mean, and we wanted to cook it. I’d do it. I’d be happy to. I’m a good cook.”

“I’m Adele.” She smiled.

“Yes, I know.”

“I don’t remember my last name. Isn’t that odd? I remember I had one, and that it was the same as my mother’s, but I can’t remember it.”

He smiled in return. “We left our surnames back on Earth.”

“I never had a surname, just a last name. I never knew for sure who my father was.”

Still smiling, this other Sy (who looked, she thought, less like Sy every moment) sat on the carpet. “Same here,” he said. “There was an uncle who lived with us for a while.” He laughed. “One time I asked my mother who he was, and she said he was her brother. Only another time she said he was my father’s brother.”

“Was he nice?”

“Sometimes.” The new Sy was no longer smiling. “I think he wanted to molest me, but he never got the nerve.”

“Nobody ever molested me.”

“Maybe they did and you forgot it.”