The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (138 page)

“Yes, I can understand that, and that you did what you did altruistically. They were moral genocides. But our intention was never to use it as a weapon – if it had been, wouldn’t we have used it on you?”

Silence in the darkness beyond dark.

“Explain then.”

“I have one more demonstration.”

The mathematics were critical now. The scalarity generator devoured cometary mass voraciously. If there were not enough left to allow him to return them home . . . Trust number, Oga. You always have. Beyond the edge of the universe, all you have is number. There was no sensation, no way of perceiving when he acitivated and deactivated the scalarity field, except by number. For an instant, Oga feared number had failed him, a first and fatal betrayal. Then light blazed down onto the dark ice. A single blinding star shone in the absolute blackness.

“What is that?”

“I pushed a single proton beyond the horizon of this horizon. I pushed it so far that space and time tore.”

“So I’m looking at . . .”

“The light of creation. That is an entire universe, new born. A new big bang. A young man once said to me, “Every particle will be so far from everything else that it will be in a universe of its own. It will
be
a universe of its own.” An extended object like this comet, or bodies, is too gross, but in a single photon, quantum fluctuations will turn it into an entire universe-in-waiting.”

The two men looked up a long time into the nascent light, the surface of the fireball seething with physical laws and forces boiling out.
Now you understand
, Oga thought.
It’s not a weapon. It’s the way out. The way past the death of the universe. Out there beyond the horizon, we can bud off new universes, and universes from those universes, forever. Intelligence has the last word. We won’t die alone in the cold and the dark.
He felt the light of the infant universe on his face, then said, “I think we probably should be getting back. If my calculations are correct – and there is a significant margin of error – this fireball will shortly undergo a phase transition as dark energy separates out and will undergo catastrophic expansion. I don’t think that the environs of an early universe would be a very good place for us to be.”

He saw portly Cjatay smile.

“Take me home, then. I’m cold and I’m tired of being a god.”

“Are we gods?”

Cjatay nodded at the microverse.

“I think so. No, I know I would want to be a man again.”

Oga thought of his own selves and lives, his bodies and natures. Flesh indwelled by many personalities, then one personality – one aggregate of experience and memory – in bodies liquid, starship, nanotechnological. And he was tired, so terribly tired beyond the universe, centuries away from all that he had known and loved. All except this one, his enemy.

“Tejaphay is no place for children.”

“Agreed. We could rebuild Tay.”

“It would be a work of centuries.”

“We could use the Aeo Taea Parents. They have plenty of time.”

Now Cjatay laughed.

“I have to trust you now, don’t I? I could have vapourized you back there, blown this place to atoms with my missiles. And now you create an entire universe . . .”

“And the Enemy? They’ll come again.”

“You’ll be ready for them, like you were ready for me. After all, I am still the enemy.”

The surface of the bubble of universe seemed to be in more firenetic motion now. The light was dimming fast.

“Let’s go then,” Cjatay said.

“Yes,” Oga said. “Let’s go home.”

OGA, RETURNING

HONORABLE MENTIONS

2008

Forrest Aguirre, “The Auctioneer and the Antiquarian, or, 1962,”
Asimov’s
, June.

Brian W. Aldiss, “Peculiar Bone, Unimaginable Key,”
Celebrations
.

Lee Allred, “And Dream Such Dreams,”
Otherworldly Maine
.

Erik Amundssen, “Turnipseed,”
Fantasy
, March 3.

Charlie Anders, “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word,”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, 22.

_____, “Suicide Drive,”
Helix 7
.

Lou Antonelli, “The Witch of Waxahachie,”
JBU
, April.

Catherine Asaro, “The Spacetime Pool,”
Analog
, January/February.

Neal Asher, “Mason’s Rats: Auto Tractor,”
Solaris Book of SF II
.

_____, “Mason’s Rats: Black Rat,”
Solaris Book of SF II
.

_____, “Owner Space,”
Galactic Empires
.

_____, “The Rhine World’s Incident,”
Subterfuge
.

Paolo Bacigalupi, “Pump Six,”
F&SF
, September.

Kage Baker, “Caverns of Mystery,”
Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy
.

_____, “I Begyn As I Mean to Go On,”
Fast Ships, Black Sails
.

_____, “Running the Snake,”
Sideways in Crime
.

_____, “Speed, Speed the Cable,”
Extraordinary Engines
.

Peter M. Ball, “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga,”
Dreaming Again
.

_____, “On Finding the Photographs of My Former Loves,”
Fantasy
, June 2.

Tony Ballantyne, “Undermind,”
Subterfuge
.

Jamie Barras, “The Endling,”
Interzone
, April.

Neal Barrett Jr., “Radio Station Saint Jack,”
Asimov’s
, August.

_____, “Slidin’,”
Asimov’s
, April/May.

Laird Barron, “The Lagerstatte,”
Del Rey Book of SF
.

William Barton, “In the Age of the Quiet Sun,”
Asimov’s
, September.

Lee Battersby, “In from the Snow,”
Dreaming Again
.

Stephen Baxter, “Eagle Song,”
Postscripts 15
.

_____, “Fate and the Fire-Lance,”
Sideways in Crime
.

_____, “The Ice War,”
Asimov’s
, September.

_____, “The Jubilee Plot,”
Celebrations
.

_____, “Repair Kit,”
The Starry Rift
.

_____, “The Seer and the Silverman,”
Galactic Empires
.

Peter S. Beagle, “King Pelles the Sure,”
Strange Roads
.

_____, “The Rabbi’s Hobby,”
Eclipse Two
.

_____, “The Tale of Junko and Sayur,”
OSC’sIGMShow
, July.

_____, “What Tale the Enchantress Plays,”
A Book of Wizards
.

Elizabeth Bear, “The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder,” Tor.com.

_____, “Shoggoths in Bloom,”
Asimov’s
, March.

_____, “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,”
Del Rey Book of SF
.

Chris Beckett, “Greenland,”
Interzone 218
.

_____, “Poppyfields,”
Interzone 218
.

Peter J. Bentley, “Loop,”
Cosmos
, February/March.

Beth Bernobich, “Air and Angels,”
Subterranean
, Spring.

_____, “The Golden Octopus,”
Postscripts 15
.

Deborah Biancotti, “Watertight Lies,”
2012
.

Michael Bishop, “Vinegar Peace, or, the Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage,”
Asimov’s
, July.

Terry Bisson, “Captain Ordinary,”
Flurb 5
.

_____, “Catch ’Em in the Act,”
Del Rey Book of SF
.

_____, “Private Eye,”
F&SF
, October/November.

_____, “The Stamp,”
Lone Star Stories
, April.

Jenny Blackford, “Trolls’ Night Out,”
Dreaming Again
.

Russell Blackford, “Manannan’s Children,”
Dreaming Again
.

Moal Blaikie, “Offworld Friends Are Best,
GUD
, Spring.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke, “The Whale Below,”
Fast Ships, Black Sails
.

Michael Blumlein, “The Big One,”
Flurb 6
.

_____, “The Roberts,”
F&SF
, July.

Aliette de Bodard, “The Dragon’s Tears,”
Electric Velocipede
, 15/16.

_____, “Horus Ascending,”
OSC’sIGMShow
, April.

Ben Bova, “Moon Race,”
JBU
, December.

_____, “Waterbot,”
Analog
, June.

Richard Bowes, “AKA St Marks Place,”
Del Rey Book of SF
.

_____, “The Cinnamon Cavalier,”
Fantasy
, April 21.

_____, “If Angels Fight,”
F&SF
, February.

Scott Bradfield, “Dazzle Joins the Screenwriter’s Guild,”
F&SF
, October/November.

Marie Brennan, “A Heretic by Degrees,”
OSCIMS
, December.

_____, “A Mask of Flesh,”
Clockwork Phoenix
.

David Brin, “Shoresteading,”
JBU
, October.

Keith Brooke, “Hannah,”
Extraordinary Engines
.

_____, “The Man Who Built Heaven,”
Postscripts 15
.

Corey Brown, “Child of Scorn,”
Electric Velocipede
, 15/16.

Eric Brown, “Sunworld,”
Solaris Book of SF II
.

John Brown, “From the Clay of His Heart,”
OSC’sIGMShow
, April.

Molly Brown, “Living with the Dead,”
Celebrations
.

Simon Brown, “The Empire,”
Dreaming Again
.

_____, “Oh, Russia,”
2012
.

Tobias S. Bucknell, “Manumission,”
JBU
, April.

_____, “The People’s Machine,”
Sideways in Crime
.

_____, “Resistance,”
Seeds of Change
.

Mark Budz, “Faceless in Gethsemane,”
Seeds of Change
.

Sue Burke, “Spiders,”
Asimov’s
, March.

Pat Cadigan, “Found in Translation,”
Myth-Understandings
.

_____, “Jimmy,”
Del Rev Book of SF
.

_____, “The Mudlark,”
JBU
, October

_____, “Tales from the Big Dark: Lie of the Land,”
Subterfuge
.

_____, “Worlds of Possibilities,”
Sideways in Crime
.

James L. Cambias, “The Dinosaur Train,”
F&SF
, July.

Alan Campbell, “The Gadgey,”
Strange Horizons
, 5/5.

Jeff Carlson, “Long Eyes,”
Fast Forward II
.

Paul Carlson, “Shotgun Seat,”
Analog
, July/August.

Isobelle Carmody, “Perchance to Dream,”
Dreaming Again
.

Von Carr, “The Black-Iron Drum,”
Fantasy
, November 17.

Paul Chafe, “The Guardian,”
Transhuman
.

A. Bertram Chandler, “Grimes and the Gaijin Daimyo,”
Dreaming Again
.

Robert R. Chase, “The Meme Theorist,”
Analog
, October.

_____, “Not Even the Past,”
Analog
, January/February.

_____, “Soldiers of the Singularity,”
Asimov’s
, September.

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation,”
Eclipse Two
.

Deborah Coates, “How to Hide a Heart,”
Strange Horizons
, 1/21.

_____, “The Whale’s Lover,”
Asimov’s
, January.

David B. Coe, “Cassie’s Story,”
OSC’sIGMShow
, July.

Paul Collins, “Lure,”
Dreaming Again
.

Tina Connolly, “The Bitrunners,”
Helix 9
.

Brenda Cooper, “Blood Bonds,”
Solaris Book of SF II
.

Constance Cooper, “Called Out to Snow Crease Farm,”
Strange Horizons
, 7/28.

_____, “The Wily Thing,”
Black Gate
, Spring.

Paul Cornell, “Catherine Drewe,”
Fast Forward II
.

_____, “Michael Laurtis Is Drowning,”
Eclipse Two
.

Gary Couzens, “Jubilee Summer,”
Subterfuge
.

Albert E. Cowdrey, “Inside Story,”
F&SF
, October/November.

_____, “The Overseer,”
F&SF
, March.

_____, “Poison Victory,”
F&SF
, July.

_____, “A Skeptical Spirit,”
F&SF
, December.

_____, “Thrilling Wonder Stories,”
F&SF
, May.

Ian Creasey, “Cut Loose the Bonds of Flesh and Bone,”
Asimov’s
, September.

Dave Creek, “Stealing Adriana,”
Analog
, October.

John Crowley, “Conversation Hearts,”
Subterranean Press
.

Julie Czerneda, “The Gossamer Mage,”
JBU
, December.

Don D’Ammassa, “The Natural World,”
Analog
, January/February.

Tony Daniel, “Ex Cathedra,”
Eclipse Two
.

Rowena Cory Daniells, “Purgatory,”
Dreaming Again
.

Jack Dann, “Under the Shadow of Jonah,”
Postscripts 15
.

Dennis Danvers, “The Angel’s Touch,”
OSC’sIGMShow
, April.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton, “The Lanes of Camberwell,”
Dreaming Again
.

Rjurik Davidson, “Twilight in Caeli-Amur,”
Dreaming Again
.

Stephen Dedman, “Lost Arts,”
Dreaming Again
.

_____, “Teeth,”
Clarkesworld
, March.

Bella De La Rosa, “Nora,”
Fantasy
, September 15.

A. M. Dellamonica, “Five Good Things About Meghan Sheedy,”
Strange Horizons
, April 21–28.

Paul Di Filippo, “iCity,”
Solaris Book of SF II
.

_____, “Murder in Geektopia,”
Sideways in Crime
.

_____, “Professor Fluvius’s Palace of Many Waters,”
Postscripts 15
.

Cory Doctorow, “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away,” Tor.com.

Terry Dowling, “The Fooley,”
Dreaming Again
.

_____, “Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose,”
Eclipse Two
.

Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald, “Philologos, or, Murder in Bistrita,”
F&SF
, February.