The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales from Fantasy Adventures

UNCERTAIN WORLD, by Eric Brown

Marshall sat on the balcony overlooking the bay, waiting as he’d waited patiently for the past two days. The sun set, and the stars came out above this strange new Earth. In the distance, along the coast, he made out the whitewashed adobe dwellings rising up the hillside. In the night sky, between Lupus and Scorpius, in low orbit, was the Christmas bauble brightness of his ship.

He stood and strode to the edge of the patio, as he’d done half a dozen times during the past forty-eight hours. A pair of Africans in kaftans smiled benignly up at him. Two other guards were stationed at the back of the villa, enforcing his house arrest.

He was on the coast of what had been Africa. Down below, on the sea-front wall, families promenaded, couples walked arm in arm. The sight of them created an ache in his chest. He had never felt so alone in his life, not even in deep space, in the photon sleet of the supernova where he’d lost his crew — all but his diminutive Thai deputy commander, Ki.

Where was she now?

They had separated him from Ki as soon as they had come down in the shuttle close to what had been Freetown, and he hadn’t seen her since. He had been debriefed — though they hadn’t called it that — by a woman as tall, attenuated and ebon as a Masai warrior. She had called herself Tem, and had asked him about his mission: How long ago had they set off from Earth? What had been their aim?

Incredulous at her ignorance, he had told her.

“And you say that your ship carried five thousand frozen colonists?” She spoke English, but heavily accented, so that Marshall was forced to concentrate to make out each word.

“Suspended would be a better description. They consume no food, nor use amenities when suspended. At journey’s end, when we found a suitable colony world, they’d be awoken. At least, that was the plan.”

The woman had asked how it was that he had set off from Earth two hundred years ago, and yet he seemed no older now than forty?

“We travelled at the speed of light,” he began. “You mean, you haven’t heard of Einstein?”

She had shaken her head, the simple gesture speaking volumes, and blandly asked, “And did you discover life out there, habitable planets?”

He had answered truthfully: no, and no…and asked questions of his own: What had happened to the Luna receiving station, to the United Space Corporation? And what had they done with Ki?

She had merely smiled and said, “In time, Mr. Marshall. In time,” and left him alone in the villa, angry and curious and not a little frightened.

What place for him in a world without the USC? It had been bad enough returning home having discovered neither alien life forms, nor colonizable worlds. But to return to an Earth that was ignorant of the original mission…!

What had happened in the two centuries they had been away?

He hit the balcony rail and almost wept.

That night he dreamed of the supernova again. He heard the scream of the ruptured solar magnetosphere, the transmitted cries of his team as they realized they were doomed.

The primary had blown while his team were investigating a planet that had shown evidence of life. The world and his team — twelve good men and women — had perished in the merciless radiation blast-front, and he had had no option but to light out of the system with his deputy, Ki Pandaung, and head for Earth, defeated.

He came awake weeping with grief, then remembered where he was.

In the morning he awoke to the intense dazzle of sunlight, and reached out. His hand encountered the coolness of a bed empty but for himself: no Ki.

They had come together during the homeward flight. They had always been close, but duty had filled their time and thoughts with other matters. Now, with no duty, and time on their hands, they had sought solace in each other, and the solace had been lifesaving.

He showered and moved to the kitchen. While he slept, the table had been laid with cereal and fruit. Last night he had stepped into the kitchen to find that a cold meal had been prepared for him, brought in, presumably, while he brooded on the balcony. Tonight he would remain in the kitchen, to catch his keeper in the act and demand some explanations.

He ate, and the food tasted wrong. As ever it was too sweet, with a chemical tang, and he wondered if his diet of shipboard nutrients for the past ten years had left him with an intolerance of real food. After the meal he felt nauseous.

He moved to the patio and stood staring down at the paved sea-walk, where citizens strolled in the bright sunlight. Loneliness swept over him in a wave.

The first thing he would demand, when the woman returned, was that he be reunited with Ki. It was bad enough to be denied freedom on an Earth he little understood — and which, presumably, did not understand him — but to be alone in this ordeal was intolerable, quite apart from the fact that he was worried for his lover’s welfare.

He wanted to cry out to the people down below, “What kind of world have you made in my absence? What kind of world, ignorant of Einstein and starships and science?”

He smiled. They would stare up at him, uncomprehending.

A noise, from the villa at his back, startled him. The woman, come to resume her ignorant questioning?

He hurried from the patio.

He found the intruder in the kitchen, and automatically assumed that he had caught the person who replenished his table.

She was short, black, shaven-headed. She dropped into a defensive crouch when he entered the room.

“Don’t move!” he called out. He pointed to a chair. “Sit down right there and tell me what the hell’s going on.”

Instead of obeying, she straightened and smiled at him. She approached and held out her hand. “Commander Marshall. You don’t know how privileged I feel to make your acquaintance at last. I have come to get you out of here.” She spoke with the same thick accent as the first woman.

Bemused, he shook the proffered hand. “You have?”

“Explanations later,” the women said. “Follow me.”

She slipped from the kitchen. He followed. A veranda at the back of the villa looked out over rising scrubland, with a margin of jungle in the distance. She tapped down the steps, paused at the bottom, and gestured for him to follow. There was no sign of the guards.

He hurried after the woman, up the incline and into the jungle. A worn path led through the undergrowth, leaves overhead blocking out the sun and creating an aqueous twilight.

He caught up with her and panted, “How did you…? The guards?”

“They are our people,” she said quickly over her shoulder.

It felt wonderful to be moving again, though a small voice at the back of his mind did question the wisdom of trusting this woman over the one who had imprisoned him. In a situation of total ignorance, which devil to trust?

The climb eased off. They came to a crest and began dropping. Within minutes, the woman parted leaves to reveal the broad, sluggish width of a chocolate-brown river.

A small wooden boat was moored to a tree stump. The woman drew it to the bank and clambered in, offering a hand to assist Marshall. After a fractional hesitation, he took it and seated himself opposite her.

At the bow, she lowered an amazingly ancient two-stroke engine, its battered prop beating the water as ineffectively as an egg whisk. To his surprise, the boat moved slowly upstream, the woman at the tiller keeping it in the shadow of the overhanging vegetation.

Marshall said, “Now will you explain yourself?”

The woman smiled in the half-light. “Where would you like me to begin?”

“For a start.… Do you know the whereabouts of my colleague, Ki Pandaung? They parted us as soon as we landed.”

She stared back at him with big, black eyes, and nodded fractionally. “We’re attempting to free your deputy commander,” she said.

“Who are you? Where are you taking me? What’s happened to the world while I’ve been away?” He thought about how the woman had greeted him. “And presumably you’ve heard of me? So you aren’t as ignorant as my jailers?”

Her smile widened. “That would be difficult, Commander. Where to begin?” She looked back quickly, over her shoulder, her quick eyes scanning the tangled riverbank. She faced him again. “I’m Buchi. That’s not my real name — in case you’re recaptured and they question you. I work for the resistance.”

“The resistance?” he echoed. “The resistance to what?”

“To the ruling hegemony, the Artecrats, as we call them. You’re an embarrassment to them — which is why they’re killing you.”

He stared at her. “Killing?”

“Your food,” she said matter-of-factly, “was poisoned. You would have been dead in another two days.”

He thought of the meals he had taken so far, the nausea that had followed. “Where are you taking me?”

She laughed at that. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Commander!”

He nodded. “Okay, we’ll pass on that.” He considered his next question. “But can you tell me what’s happened to the Earth I left?”

He eyes darkened at the question, and she nodded. “That would be a pleasure.”She nudged the tiller. They drew even closer to the bank, puttering quietly through the dappled shade.

“Nearly fifty years after the Endeavor set off for the stars, the world almost ended. They called it the bio-war at the time. It wasn’t a war in the way you would understand, not nation against nation — more ideology against ideology. The casualties were unimaginable — abstract figures, Commander, so vast as to be almost meaningless. More than three quarters of the world’s population was wiped out in five years after the first bio-engineered plague was released.”

“Three quarters…,” he echoed. “Four, five billion people?”

She shrugged. “Approximately that, yes.”

“Who was responsible?”

“The disaffected, the un-enfranchised. Terrorist groups. Anarchists. Religious zealots.” She shrugged again. “They seemed to work on the principle that if they could not get what they wanted — power — then no one else should have it. After ten years, the human race was in danger of becoming extinct.”

“What happened?”

“A new order came to power. A regime as ruthless as it was determined to get what it wanted, at any cost.”

“And it wanted?”

“Stability, but not if it meant a return to the old ways. They despised the way the world had been. They blamed those in power before the bio-war for the state of the world. They set about ensuring that the war or anything like it could never happen again.”

Marshall shook his head. “How could they do that?” he asked. Humans are humans, he thought.

She raised a finger to her lips. “Shh!”

He looked over his shoulder, following the direction of her gaze. They were approaching a split in the river: a wedge-shaped island divided the muddy flow into two thick streams. Buchi nudged the tiller and they edged up the narrower, right-most stream. She scanned the bank, her eyes wide, and said nothing.

At last she cut the engine and they drifted towards the riverbank.

From between the trees, startling him, a figure emerged. Buchi threw him a rope and he made fast the boat to the bole of a palm. The man — an African — stared at Marshall with an expression that combined disbelief and awe.

Buchi gestured to Marshall, and he clambered onto the riverbank, the man assisting him with the obsequious care of a servant.

Buchi hurried through the jungle, following a worn path. Marshall was minded to ask her again where they were going, but his guide’s headlong rush through dappled sunlight and verdant shadow prevented any interrogation.

To think that just three days ago he was aboard the Endeavor, with Ki, heading home.…

Ahead, Buchi slowed, and gestured for Marshall and the African to follow suit.

Beyond Buchi, Marshall made out the shape of a small villa on a patch of raised ground. Perhaps half a dozen figures were emerging from the building — men and women, black and white — hurrying in the manner of people wanting to be away from somewhere, fast.

Among them, Marshall made out a single diminutive figure, though his head warned him against hope.

The group filed away from the villa, and Buchi gestured for Marshall and the other to follow her. Seconds later they met with the group on the path, and Buchi turned and watched Marshall, a big smile on her face, as he stopped and stared.

Seconds later Ki was in his arms, clinging to him. He was speechless, unable to bring himself to articulate the joy and relief that slammed through him.

She pulled her head back, staring at him. He took in the perfection of her feline features, high cheekbones and canted eyes. They had endured so much together, lived through such hardship. In all the universe they had only each other. He embraced her again, before Buchi touched his shoulder. “We should be moving.”

The others were already running quickly through the jungle. Hand in hand, Marshall and Ki gave chase, Buchi following.

They passed the villa, heading away from where they had left the boat, and Marshall’s curiosity increased. Buchi and her band seemed to have his interests in mind…but where were they heading? Who were these rebels? Who were the rulers of this new, remodelled world, the Artecrats, as Buchi had called them?

Ahead, the leaders were slowing. Marshall made out the scintillating glint of water through foliage. They had arrived at another stretch of river, and Ki’s liberators were climbing into a small skip powered by an engine just as rudimentary as the first.

They boat was almost full by the time Marshall, Ki and Buchi climbed on board. The others made room, shuffling up on hard slatted seats, steadying the new arrivals as they sat.

The engine kicked and the skip surged upriver, keeping to the shade.

Marshall looked around, realising that he and Ki were the center of attention. The men and women were smiling at them, almost shyly. They appeared the most ill-assorted collection of rebels that Marshall could imagine.

“Ki Pandaung,” Buchi said, “welcome to Earth.”

Ki nodded, her eyes guarded. “I hope you’ll be more open than the people who imprisoned me,” she said, glancing at Marshall.

“We’ll try to answer whatever you need to know,” Buchi said. “Already I’ve told your Commander what has happened to the world since your departure.”

“A descent into primitivism, as far as I can see,” Ki said.

Marshall detected smiles all around. Buchi said, “Exactly!”

Marshall told Ki, “Fifty years after we left Earth, a conflict called the bio-war broke out…,” and he gave her a shorter version of the story Buchi had recounted.

When he finished, he paused and looked up, across the skip at Buchi. “Which brings me to the question I was about to ask,” he said. “How did the…the Artecrats, as you call them…bring about world stability after the bio-war?”

A mutter passed through those gathered in the boat. Someone spat, significantly, into the river.

Ki took Marshall’s hand and squeezed.

Buchi said, “The world after the bio-war was a ravaged place. Countries as such no longer existed. The infrastructure of civilization was wrecked. Homo sapiens had reverted to savagery, living in tribes and preying on their neighbours. Little in the way of knowledge and culture survived.”

“Then how did the Artecrats—?” Ki began.

“A few people came together,” Buchi said. “They had a vision. They built a small community, began farming, became self-sufficient. They attracted other groups, who renounced violence for the new way. Perhaps the human race was sick and tired of conflict, of killing…at the time.” She paused, looked around at the staring eyes of her compatriots. She went on, “These people called themselves the Artecrats. They foreswore anything that smacked of the old way of life, of the old way that had brought the world to the state it was in. They renounced science and technology, or rather everything but the most rudimentary forms of technology. They used ploughs and such, but nothing mechanised. Machines were anathema, and those that used them or espoused their use were cast out — which at that time meant certain death. Society grew and prospered. Africa, where the Artecrats were based, became once more the cradle of humankind.”

Ki was shaking her head in puzzlement. “And yet you oppose the Artecrats?”

Buchi held her head up proudly. “We oppose their ignorance, their wilful renunciation of the great heritage that made our race what it was, for good and bad. The Artecrats made the fundamental mistake of citing scientific progress as the sole reason for the bio-war, without taking into consideration the politics that divided the old world.”

She paused, then went on, “Much that was great was lost when the Artecrats proscribed science and technology, my friends. But worse was to come. They were powerful, totally powerful, and their edicts went unopposed…at least to begin with. No longer satisfied with eradicating science, they set about eradicating from humanity itself the very scientific urge.”

Ki and Marshall exchanged a glance. “How could they do that?”

Buchi smiled, but without humor. “The Artecrats,” she said, “instituted a programme of genocide. They systematically put to death those people who they claimed were genetically different to themselves.”

“Genetically different?” Ki said, “but surely the Artecrats — the survivors of the bio-war — were founded on a philosophy independent of genetic difference?”

“That’s what you might think,” Buchi replied. “But the Artecrats thought otherwise. They had a theory to account for the war. They claimed to have discovered that humankind was divided in a way other than the usual established divisions, of sex, race, philosophy, etc.”

Ki shook her head. “In what way?” she said.

“Neurologically,” Buchi said. “The Artecrats claimed that humankind was divided, up here—” she touched her head “—into those that were predisposed to the arts, and those predisposed to science and technology. The old right brain, left brain dichotomy.” She smiled. “They had people…little better than witch-doctors, in our opinion…who claimed that they could detect Technos at birth. And they proceeded to cull the human race of all those with a scientific propensity.”

Marshall looked at Ki, and wondered at the world in which he found himself.

“Even today,” Buchi went on, “thousands of innocent children are butchered every month.…”

The boat slowed, the engine cutting from a steady putter to a slow chug. Marshall peered through the shade to the blinding dazzle of sunlight ahead. Heads were turning, as if in anticipation of reaching journey’s end.

Ki said, “And you people oppose the regime of the Artecrats?”

Buchi smiled. “We call ourselves the Technos. We are the few who fell through the net, who were not ‘detected’ at birth. We exist side by side with the Artecrats, but live a shadow life studying the old ways, reviving as best we can the scientific lore of those who went before us.”

Marshall asked, “And you wish us to join you, to oppose the Artecrats, teach you what we know?”

The African laughed. Others around her smiled. “Together we will embark upon a journey to re-establish the human race to what it was, to what it should be.”

“I don’t see how that would be possible,” Ki objected, “if the Artecrats rule what’s left of Earth.”

Buchi said, “We monitored your broadcasts. We had prayed for years that you might return. When we read that you had lost your crew.…”

“What?” Marshall asked, suspicious.

Buchi merely smiled in reply and pointed ahead. The jungle to their right was thinning to reveal a flat, parched open area — a clearing familiar from their descent.

Marshall’s breath caught in his throat.

Sitting proudly in the center of the clearing, stanchioned on ram-rods like a praying mantis, was their shuttle. It had been under guard at one point, but now the guards were gathered in the margin of the jungle, a gaggle of bemused looking men watched over by a group of rebels armed with crude pistols and swords.

“We are trained in many disciplines,” Buchi said. “We will take the place of your crew, and learn as we work.”

Ki stared at him. They had returned home in despair, their mission a failure, and now they were being offered another chance.

Buchi went on, “We will head inwards, on a vector towards the core, and search until we find habitable, Earth-like planets.”

“And then?” Ki asked.

The boat slowed and nudged the bank. Buchi leapt out, assisting Marshall and Ki, followed by the others. They paused to stare up at the magnificent, rearing shape of the shuttle.

Buchi pointed at a colleague, already hurrying across the clearing towards the shuttle. The man was toting a heavy backpack. “We have devised our own device for genetically testing new-borns — this one based on scientific principles. Among the stars we will found a society of Technocrats, and the human race will fulfil its destiny.”

As Buchi set off, followed by her disciples, Ki grabbed Marshall’s arm and held him back. “They’re as bad as the Artecrats!” she said. “Can you imagine a totalitarian regime consisting of only scientists!”

“The oppressed,” Marshall murmured, “often mimic the only lead they have known.”

Tears appeared in Ki’s eyes. “And where would we fit into such a society?”

He smiled. He was a scientist by vocation. But in his heart he had always called himself an artist. On the return journey to Earth he had filled his time, quite apart from loving Ki, in writing poetry.

And Ki had created sweeping plasma graphics of the nova in a bid to purge her grief.

Ki said, “I couldn’t remain on Earth, part of a society that would rather see me dead.”

“Then we’ll join the Technos,” Marshall said, taking her hand and drawing her towards the shuttle. “Over the years ahead we’ll work to make them see the blindness of their vision.”

They ran across the clearing, beneath the merciless sun of Africa, and joined the rebels as they swarmed aboard the shuttle.

Marshall and Ki stood before the viewscreen in the control nacelle of the Endeavor, staring down at planet Earth. Buchi and her people were ensconced in their acceleration pods, sleeping children dreaming of a bright new future.

Ki knelt, examining the contents of the rebel’s backpack. She looked up at Marshall. “It’s so primitive it couldn’t detect the genetic difference between you and me!” she laughed.

“Disable the device,” Marshall ordered. “We’ll claim it was affected by the transition to light speed.”

Ki reached out and squeezed his fingers.

They strapped themselves into the control couches and Marshall took one last look at the Earth. The globe showed the blue expanse of the Atlantic ocean, with the silver shape of the American continents fitting snugly along its length, like a yin-yang symbol.

“Adieu, farewell Earth’s bliss,” Ki quoted. “This world uncertain is.…”

And then the Endeavor accelerated, and the Earth was gone.