The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [232]
She tried to save me with instruction in the lunar truth, drawn from a massive volume in silver boards that had theological footnotes to explicate almost every holy word. Dickinson's oriole had become the trickster god, Pepe, who cheated as he enchanted. Dian was not only the Moon Mother but also the soul who selected her own society of those who lived to earn their place with her in paradise. The book itself was her letter to the world that never wrote to her.
I was unconverted until one day when I was walking with the robot in the garden and stepped of the path to pick a purple flower. The robot said "Noot, noot," and took the flower from me, but it had failed to see me palm a little ball of crumpled paper. When I was able to spread it out in the privacy of my bathroom, it was a note from Tanya, written on a blank page torn from her notebook.
They want to think we're crazy, though they have trouble explaining how we got here in a sort of craft they never saw before. My witch doctor has a theory. He's trying to convince me that we came from South America, which has not yet been colonized. He talks of a lost party that set out a couple of centuries ago to fight the black insects there. The expedition seems to have ended with a crash into the Amazon rain forest in an area the insects were just invading. Rescue efforts failed, but he believes we must be descendants of survivors. He thinks we somehow salvaged or repaired the wrecked craft that brought us back. If we want to get out of here, I think we'd better go along.
I rolled the paper up and dropped it next day where I had found it. In the end we all went along, though Arne held out until Dian was allowed to persuade him. He grumbled bitterly till he found work on a Nile dredge, improving the channel and turning a swamp into new land for docks and warehouses. He says he is happier now than he ever was twiddling his thumbs on the Moon.
Although the ages seem to have erased every relic of our own times, these people are eagerly searching their own past for evidence of the Holy Clones. They have given Dian a museum position, where she can make good use of her skills at restoring and preserving antiquities and perhaps finally establish herself as an inspired interpreter of holy writ.
Pepe qualified for a pilot's license while Tanya studied methods for the control of the predatory insects. They are gone now with a new expedition to reclaim the Americas.
Although all the history I know is heresy, sternly outlawed here, I've found a university job as a janitor. It gives me access to radio equipment that can reach the lunar station. We can't help hoping that our own silver colossi will endure to watch this new Egypt grow into a finer civilization than our own ever was. Yet Tycho must be kept alive, lest disaster strikes again.
WORLD WITHOUT END
F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre
This final trilogy of stories takes us right to the far ends of existence on Earth.
Fergus Gwynplaine Maclntyre is a Scottish-born writer, playwright and journalist, long resident in the United States. His work, often humorous and noted for its detailed research and rigorous plotting, has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. His books include the novel The Woman Between the Worlds (1994) and a collection of humorous imaginings Maclntyre's Improbable Bestiary (2005).
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HE STOLE MY death. After all these long years I forget his face. I remember his hands, the long tapering fingers holding the hypodermic shaft and pressing its needle into my skinny-skank arm as I beg him to give me a drug I never tried before. Ooh, yeah. Too right, that's good.
When I met him, back in 2023,1 was a street bint: selling my snatch to kerb-crawlers and other pervs, just to get enough dosh to buy my next high. When the ecstasy wore off and I came down again, I'd go back on the game again. Another night, another street.
Now I've got