Science Fiction: The Year's Best (2006 Edition). Аластер Рейнольдс

fast. Then somebody was banging on our screen door. It was Gretta. When Delia let her in, she burst out into tears. Which surprised me. I wouldn’t have pegged Everett as that kind of guy.

      I made some coffee while Delia guided her into a kitchen chair, and got her some tissues, and soothed her down enough that she could tell us why she’d thrown Everett out of her house. It wasn’t anything he’d done apparently, but something he’d said.

      “Do you know what he told me?” she sobbed.

      “I think I do,” Delia said.

      “About timelike—”

      “—loops. Yes, dear.”

      Gretta looked stricken. “You too? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell everybody?”

      “I considered it,” I said. “Only then I thought, what would folks do if they knew their actions no longer mattered? Most would behave decently enough. But a few would do some pretty bad things, I’d think. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.”

      She was silent for a while.

      “Explain to me again about timelike loops,” she said at last. “Ev tried, but by then I was too upset to listen.”

      “Well, I’m not so sure myself. But the way he explained it to me, they’re going to fix the problem by going back to the moment before the rupture occurred and preventing it from ever happening in the first place. When that happens, everything from the moment of rupture to the moment when they go back to apply the patch separates from the trunk timeline. It just sort of drifts away, and dissolves into nothingness—never was, never will be.”

      “And what becomes of us?”

      “We just go back to whatever we were doing when the accident happened. None the worse for wear.”

      “But without memories.”

      “How can you remember something that never happened?”

      “So Ev and I—”

      “No, dear,” Delia said gently.

      “How much time do we have?”

      “With a little luck, we have the rest of the summer,” Delia said. “The question is, how do you want to spend it?”

      “What does it matter,” Gretta said bitterly. “If it’s all going to end?”

      “Everything ends eventually. But after all is said and done, it’s what we do in the meantime that matters, isn’t it?”

      The conversation went on for a while more. But that was the gist of it.

      Eventually, Gretta got out her cell and called Everett. She had him on speed dial, I noticed. In her most corporate voice, she said, “Get your ass over here,” and snapped the phone shut without waiting for a response.

      She didn’t say another word until Everett’s car pulled up in front of her place. Then she went out and confronted him. He put his hands on his hips. She grabbed him and kissed him. Then she took him by the hand and led him back into the house.

      They didn’t bother to turn on the lights.

      * * * *

      I stared at the silent house for a little bit. Then I realized that Delia wasn’t with me anymore, so I went looking for her.

      She was out on the back porch. “Look,” she whispered.

      There was a full moon and by its light we could see the Triceratops settling down to sleep in our backyard. Delia had managed to lure them all the way in at last. Their skin was all silvery in the moonlight; you couldn’t make out the patterns on their frills. The big trikes formed a kind of circle around the little ones. One by one, they closed their eyes and fell asleep.

      Believe it or not, the big bull male snored.

      It came to me then that we didn’t have much time left. One morning soon we’d wake up and it would be the end of spring and everything would be exactly as it was before the dinosaurs came. “We ever did get to Paris or London or Rome or Marrakesh,” I said sadly. “Or even Disneyworld.”

      Without taking her eyes off the sleeping trikes, Delia put an arm around my waist. “Why are you so fixated on going places?” she asked. “We had a nice time here, didn’t we?”

      “I just wanted to make you happy.”

      “Oh, you idiot. You did that decades ago.”

      So there we stood, in the late summer of our lives. Out of nowhere, we’d been given a vacation from our ordinary lives, and now it was almost over. A pessimist would have said that we were just waiting for oblivion. But Delia and I didn’t see it that way. Life is strange. Sometimes it’s hard, and other times it’s painful enough to break your heart. But sometimes it’s grotesque and beautiful. Sometimes it fills you with wonder, like a Triceratops sleeping in the moonlight.

      BANK RUN, by Tom Purdom

      Sabor was sitting in the passenger shack with his concubine when his personal assistant spotted the other boat. Sabor was devoting half his attention to the concubine and half to the numbers on his information display—a form of multitasking that combined his two major interests.

      Choytang rested his hand on Sabor’s shoulder. He pointed toward the rear window and Sabor immediately dimmed the numbers floating in front of his eyes.

      The other boat was fueled by coal and propelled by a screw. It was moving approximately three times faster than the solar-powered paddlewheel transport that was carrying Sabor and his two companions up the lake. Eight soldiers were formed up on the right side. The six soldiers in the front row were lean hardbodies. The two soldiers standing behind them were massives who looked like they could have powered their boat with their own muscles. Their tan uniforms were accented with chocolate helmets and crossbelts—a no-nonsense, low contrast style that had become the trademark of one of the more expensive costumers on the planet.

      Sabor’s wristband had been running his banking program, as usual. The display was presenting him with the current status of the twelve-hour loan market. Twelve-hour loans were routine transactions—accounting maneuvers that maintained reserves at an acceptable level—and he usually let his alter run his operations in the twelve-hour market. He always checked it at least twice a day, however, to make sure his competitors hadn’t developed an unpleasant surprise.

      Sabor’s concubine had already activated her own display. “There’s a fishing commune called Galawar about four kilometers from here,” the concubine reported. “You financed a dam and a big breeding operation for them. Their militia setup gets its real-life practice pursuing poachers and running rescue patrols. They can probably have a small force here eight minutes after their watch master initiates assembly.”

      Sabor returned the twelve-hour market to his alter and replaced it with the latest figures on the current status of the Galawar loan. “I’ll talk to our captain. See if you can exercise your charms on the appropriate officers of the commune.”

      The captain had isolated herself in her control shack fifteen minutes after her boat had left the dock. She was sprawling in a recliner with her eyes fixed on the top of a window and her attention focused on the material her personal display was imprinting on her optic nerves.

      “I’m afraid I may be about to cause you some trouble,” Sabor said. “I registered a counterfeit identity when I boarded your boat. My true name is Sabor Haveri. As you probably know, I’m the proprietor of the bank that furnishes your company its primary line of credit.”

      The captain had looked tall when she had been stretched across her recliner but she looked even taller when she stood up. She had been operating lake boats for eighteen years, but the information in the public databanks had made it clear her boating work was primarily a money job. Most of the entries Sabor had collected from the databanks had highlighted her exploits as a member of one of the top aquatic hunting clubs on the lake. She would create an awesome vision standing