The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [120]
It's as if I can see them out there, like dimples in some impossibly vast waffle, each one a world, sampled across time from beginning to end.
Beside me, Maryanne said, "Not just all the worlds of the old universe, but all the worlds of all the universes that ever were, or ever could have been."
I took her hand, taking the first step on the downward trail. "All of them," I said. "And all within walking distance."
An unimaginable future?
Perhaps.
I thought I'd miss you, Paulie.
But I don't.
THE BOOKS
Kage Baker
On the same day that I received the proofs for this anthology I learned that Kage Baker had died of cancer, aged fifty-seven. This was her last completed story.
She was best known for her time-travel series about the immortal operatives of the Company, which began with her first novel, In the Garden of Iden (1997). Her steampunk novel, Not Less Than Gods (2010), details some of the secret history of the Company's Victorian-era predecessor, the Gentlemen's Speculative Society. The House of the Stag (2008) was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
With this story, written specially for this anthology, we look at a time beyond the apocalypse with the remnants of society trying to get back to life.
* * *
WE USED TO have to go a lot farther down the coast in those days, before things got easier. People weren't used to us then.
If you think about it, we must have looked pretty scary when we first made it out to the coast. Thirty trailers full of Show people, pretty desperate and dirty-looking Show people too, after fighting our way across the plains from the place where we'd been camped when it all went down. I don't remember when it went down, of course; I wasn't born yet.
The Show used to be an olden-time fair, a teaching thing. We traveled from place to place putting it on so people would learn about olden times, which seems pretty funny now, but back then ... how's that song go? The one about mankind jumping out into the stars? And everybody thought that was how it was going to be. The aunts and uncles would put on the Show so space-age people wouldn't forget things like weaving and making candles when they went off into space. That's what you call irony, I guess.
But afterwards we had to change the Show, because ... well, we couldn't have the Jousting Arena anymore because we needed the big horses to pull the trailers. And Uncle Buck didn't make fancy work with dragons with rhinesto-ne eyes on them anymore because, who was there left to buy that kind of stuff? And anyway he was too busy making horseshoes. So all the uncles and aunts got together and worked it out like it is now, where we come into town with the Show and people come to see it and then they let us stay a while because we make stuff they need.
I started out as a baby bundle in one of the stage shows, myself. I don't remember it, though. I remember later I was in some play with a love story and I just wore a pair of fake wings and ran across the stage naked and shot at the girl with a toy bow and arrow that had glitter on them. And another time I played a dwarf. But I wasn't a dwarf, we only had the one dwarf and she was a lady - that was Aunt Tammy and she's dead now. But there was an act with a couple of dwarves dancing and she needed a partner, and I had to wear a black suit and a top hat.
But by then my daddy had got sick and died so my mom was sharing the trailer with Aunt Nera, who made pots and pitchers and stuff, so that meant we were living with her nephew Myko too. People said he went crazy later on but it wasn't true. He was just messed up. Aunt Nera left the Show for a little while after it all went down, to go and see if her family - they were townies - had made it through okay, only they didn't, they were all dead but the baby, so she took the baby away with her and found us again. She said Myko was too little to remember but I think he remembered some.
Anyway we grew up together after that, us and Sunny who lived with Aunt Kestrel in their trailer, which was next to ours. Aunt Kestrel was a juggler