Sideways In Crime Read online

  SIDEWAYS IN CRIME:--An Alternate Mystery Anthology

  Edited by LOU ANDERS

  First published 2008 by Solaris

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84416-566-7

  Sideways in Crime: An Alternate Mystery Anthology © 2008 Lou Anders

  “Introduction” © 2008 by Lou Anders

  “Running the Snake” © 2008 by Kage Baker

  “Via Vortex” © 2008 by John Meaney

  “Fate and the Fire-lance” © 2008 by Stephen Baxter

  “The Blood of Peter Francisco” © 2008 by Paul Park

  “The Adventure of the Southsea Trunk” © 2008 by Cryptic Inc.

  “G-Men” © 2008 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Sacrifice” © 2008 by Mary Rosenblum

  “Murder in Geektopia” © 2008 by Paul Di Filippo

  “Chicago” © 2008 by JonCG Ltd.

  “The Sultan’s Emissary” © 2008 by Theodore Judson

  “Worlds of Possibilities” © 2008 by Pat Cadigan

  “A Murder in Eddsford” © 2008 by S.M. Stirling

  “Conspiracies: A Very Condensed 937-Page Novel” © 2008 by Mike Resnick & 1632, Inc.

  “The People’s Machine” © 2008 by Tobias S. Buckell

  “Death on the Crosstime Express” © 2008 by MonkeyBrain Inc.

  With love.

  For Marsha Adams Anders, Who has forgotten more about the mystery genre than I will ever learn. This one’s for you, Mom.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, thanks are due to George Mann and Christian Dunn, and the rest of the crew at Solaris Books, who were good enough to believe in this project. I’d also like to thank Robert J. Sawyer and Norman Spinrad, for the use of their words in my introduction and for being such stellar guys. A universe or two of thanks to Michael Moorcock, whose inspiration and influence cannot be discounted. Then there’s Bob Eggleton and Darius Hinks for a great cover. I am thrilled to have “my first Eggleton,” and I hope it isn’t my last. I’m grateful also to S.M. Stirling, for sending me two great stories before anyone else sent one. When you read the one I chose, I’m sure you’ll want to hunt down the other as well. Finally, infinite thanks are due to my wife and child, for their enduring love, patience, and support. I’m grateful to be in the universe where they are in my life. Without them, the mystery of existence wouldn’t be nearly so compelling or pleasant as it is.

  Introduction: Worlds of If:--Lou Anders

  Every good story begins with a question, but not every question is the same. In mystery, that question is traditionally rendered as “Who dunnit?” A crime has been committed, and the journey of our narrative will be to discover who did what to who, where and why. Certainly, there are a thousand variations on this theme, but unraveling the mystery is at the heart of the story’s promise and thrill. In the sister genre of science fiction, the question is a somewhat broader “What if?” An alteration in our contemporary reality is postulated--What if aliens invade? What if teleportation becomes a viable means of travel? What if a new drug made it impossible to lie?--and the story that follows explores the ramifications for humanity of this new development. The mystery here is in figuring out what makes the world of the story different from the world we know and then examining the light that those differences cast on our everyday notions of society and self.

  Who and what. Mystery and science fiction. The two genres actually share a lot in common, beyond loyal readers and their own dedicated section of the bookstore. Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, who, incidentally also won the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, put it best in an interview with John Scalzi (posted on Ficlets.com, June 27, 2007): “Science fiction and mystery are not an unnatural pairing--indeed, I’ve always thought that science fiction has way more in common with mystery than it does with fantasy. SF and mystery, after all, both prize rational thinking and both require the reader to pick up artfully salted clues about what is really going on--although in SF that’s mostly because of the narrative conceit we use.”

  “SF is, as I like to say, the mainstream literature of an alternate reality--it’s written as if for an audience of people already familiar with the milieu of the story. Of course, you can’t really do that--a tour de force like A Clockwork Orange requires a glossary, because the book is gibberish without it, since no one really is familiar with its milieu, and so the dropping of clues and hints is crucial, and, just as in a mystery, they have to be inserted so transparently, without drawing attention to themselves, that the reader doesn’t even consciously notice them.”

  Which is why every science fiction author is a natural born mystery writer, whether they know it or not. There’s another genre that has close parallels with science fiction--and often overlapping readerships--and that’s the genre of historical fiction. The skills necessary to invoke another time and place in the minds of the reader are the same, whether one is trying to conjure the details of life in the Twenty-Fourth Century or the Fourteenth. In both situations, the writer must take nothing for granted and must “artfully salt” all those everyday realities--from the trivial to the monumental--that the writer of contemporary fiction may take for granted. This takes a certain skill to do, and affords a particular joy to read, which may explain both why time travel stories to the past are a popular conceit of science fiction scribes and why there is some degree of crossover in the readership of science fiction and historical novels.

  This brings us to the most obvious intersection of science fiction and historical fiction, the alternate history. Certainly the alternate history was not invented by Philip K. Dick, but it was his landmark The Man in the High Castle, which postulated a San Francisco in an America overrun by Nazis, which brought such attention to the form. As Norman Spinrad writes in “The Multiverse,” in the April/May 2008 issue of his On Books columns for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, “Indeed, despite all the alternate world stories that have been written afterward and the few that were written before, it is Dick’s classic novel of a world in which the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II, and the alternate reality within it in which they didn’t, The Man in the High Castle, which really opened the door for the alternate history story as a subset of ‘science fiction,’ as well, in a way, at least in literary terms, for a certain kind of ‘fantasy’ as a subset of ‘SF’

  “In literary terms, science fiction, or speculative fiction if you will, is by definition the literature of the could-be-but-isn’t, and fantasy by definition is the literature of the demonstrably impossible, and the alternate history story takes place in a region between, a fictional reality in which the laws of mass and energy may be the same as in our own, but which never ‘happened.’“

  Spinrad goes on to point out that Dick did not just craft the definitive counterfactual tale. In his novel, the character of Mr. Tagomi has a vision of our reality, a world in which Germany lost World War II. In showing that both worlds could exist simultaneously, Spinrad credits Dick with introducing the “multiverse” as science fiction rather than fantasy.

  The term “multiverse” was created by pioneering American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), who also gave us the term “stream of consciousness,” though he intended it to describe different psychological states. It was science fiction and fantasy master Michael Moorcock who, independently of James, conceived the term to describe a universe of near-infinite parallel worlds for a story called “The Sundered Worlds” (published in Science Fiction Adventures, December 1962). Moorcock’s use became the prevailing definition of the term, and has entered the popular consciousness to such a degree that it is now on the lip of every quantum physicist. In fact, this notion that our universe may be only one
of a transfinite number of such realities, all stacked up against each other, each only a few quantum decisions distance from its neighbor, is rapidly gaining credence as the most likely explanation for the mysteries of quantum mechanics. As mind-boggling a concept as the multiverse is, Occam’s razor increasingly comes down in its favor. This means that the “alternate history” may be graduating to the front of the line in cutting edge, relevant science fiction. Far from being simply a fanciful conceit in the service of a good story (as many see notions like teleportation and the faster-than-light drive, seeming implausibilities that simplify some of the problems of space opera), tales of histories that diverged from our own are now explorations of the vanguard of contemporary scientific thinking. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise to learn that the counterfactual narrative has recently become the subject of widespread mainstream attention. In 2004, Philip Roth published his acclaimed/winning The Plot Against America, and more recently, Michael Chabon has given us The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Predictably, the Roth was published without any recognition that he was writing within an established tradition, though Chabon is much more generous and knowledgeable in the acknowledgment of his genre roots. Furthermore, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle was one of four novellas chosen for a prestigious Library of America collection of his works, assembled and with a preface from literary darling Jonathan Lethem.

  Meanwhile the Chabon novel is a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool “Who dunnit?”--a novel with the double-barreled pleasure for the reader of unraveling both the mystery of the narrative and the mystery of the history. This intriguing combination of historical, mystery, and science fiction is the impetus for the anthology you now hold in your hands, an entire book’s worth of “alternate mystery” stories that might one day constitute a sub-subgenre of their own. But, as Charles Fort (1874-1932), the American champion of the unexplained and no stranger to uchronia himself, once wrote, “It’s steam engines when it comes steam engine time.” Certainly, we are in the midst of steam engine time for the alternate history novel. Presented here, then, are fifteen stories by sixteen wonderful authors, set in universes just around the corner from our own, where steam engine time came early, came late, or came not at all. And in each of them, our two questions--”What if?” and on top of that, “Who dunnit?”

  Running the Snake:--Kage Baker

  Famous for her “Company” time-travel stories, a sequence which spans eight novels, two short story collections, and several related tales, Kage writes that twenty years immersed in Elizabethan history “has paid off handsomely” in affording her a working knowledge of period speech and details she mines for her fiction. Her fans, amongst whose number I most definitely count myself, would agree. The story that follows is not a “Company” tale, but it might be my favorite of her short works to date.

  Will Shaxpur stood before the queen, trying not to look at her breasts. This was difficult, as they were bare, painted bright blue and court custom dictated he raise his eyes no higher than her knees, where (she being a lady of advanced years) they happened to be resting, like a pair of elderly robins.

  He twisted his hat in his hands. “I can’t imagine how it happened, Ma’am.”

  “Can’t you?” The Living Boudicca, Andraste Twdwr, high queen of Greater Brithan, leaned back. “We find that hard to believe. You were defrocked for imagining, as we have heard.” She nodded at her chief druid, Volsinghome.

  Volsinghome smiled balefully. “Expelled, Madam. For having the temerity to imagine he could improve the sacred texts.”

  “It was only the hymns,” said Will. “I made them scan. And, er, adjusted the imagery a little.”

  “And, having blasphemed, you were sent from the sacred island in disgrace, and now you damn your soul by persuading weak-minded fools to abandon our ancient gods--” Volsinghome’s tirade was cut short as the queen raised her hand.

  “We will thank you to remember, little druid, that it has pleased us to welcome strangers and their faiths. And if it pleases us, it pleases our gods.” She fixed her gimlet stare on Will once more. “Now, boy. Tell me how it was my son-in-law was found dead in the temple of Glycon.”

  He had been working Temple Street, minding the horses of wealthy worshippers. Will found that a smile and a bow as he handed back the reins might earn him a thrown copper. However, a smile, a bow, and an apt quotation from Homer--or Catullus, or the Mahabbarata, or the Avesta, depending on the place from which the patron had emigrated--got him silver at least, and the patrons remembered him. Now and again patrons gathered around and challenged him to other tricks of memory, and of course he could recite as much as they wanted of anything he knew.

  Busker economies being precarious at best, his fellows on the street had suffered from the competition. One afternoon, after holding a crowd spellbound with the Thebaid, Will was gleefully scooping coins from the pavement into his hat when he encountered four pairs of feet planted across the remainder of his earnings. He looked up, and his heart sank.

  There stood Wat the fire-eater, and Bran the juggler, and Empidocles who did sleight-of-hand tricks, and most notably there stood Soumaoro the African balladeer, who was seven feet tall and wore a model of Cleopatra’s barge in his wild hair. When singing, he would sway his head in such a manner that the barge rocked to and fro, exactly as though it sailed black foaming seas, to such striking effect that until lately he had been the top earner in the street.

  “You. Shaxpur,” he said. “We hear there are lots of people who appreciate poetry on the other side of the river. We think you should go there.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Southwark. Will blinked up at him.

  “Why, certainly, gentlemen,” he said, knowing better than to argue. “If you’ll just step to one side so I can collect the rest of the take, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Take what you have and go,” said Bran, smacking one of his juggling clubs against his thigh with a meaningful look. He picked up a silver drachma with his toes, flipped it into the air, and caught it with his free hand. “We’ll collect the rest.”

  “Look, I earned that--” said Will, and broke off as he saw the dagger in Wat’s hand.

  “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever paid dues to the Guild of Street Entertainers,” said Soumaoro. “Druid. How many weeks has he been peddling his act on our street, boys?”

  Will was calculating his chances of escape when the Fates threw him a crust. A pair of arms encircled him from behind and a voice, heavily accented, screamed next to his ear: “Beware! This man is touched by all the gods! He has been chosen for a momentous destiny!”

  Will turned his head and looked into the shawl-draped face of a fat man. He had wild bulging eyes and an immense mustache. The man screamed again. “Momentous destiny, I said! Leave the money, my friend!”

  “Fortunate mortal!” chimed in a second voice. Will swiveled his eyes and saw another man to his left: young, tall, and handsome, with a mane of fair hair. “Beloved of the gods!”

  “And who might you be?” said Soumaoro, scowling.

  “Why, friend, this is Scorilo, the famed Dacian soothsayer,” said the tall youth. Will meanwhile felt himself being dragged backward by the fat man, and the youth stepped in front of them. “Look! Riches!” He held up a fistful of coins and opened his hand. As the members of the Guild of Street Entertainers scrambled for the money, Will’s rescuers hurried him away.

  In a sad-looking Roman taverna, over bowls of wine, they had made him their offer.

  “We are victims of religious persecution,” explained Alazon, the youth.

  “We fled the crushing grip of Caesarion-imposed Mithraic monotheism to the pantheistic sanctuary of your green and pleasant land, so graciously offered by your beautiful Queen of Queens,” said Scorilo.

  “We’ve been watching you for days now,” said Alazon. “Look, we said to each other, here’s an educated Brithon! Knows the classics by heart, speaks eight languages fluently, lovely speaking voice.”

  “Yet,
incredibly, he seems to be down on his luck!” said Scorilo. “How, we asked ourselves, can this possibly be?”

  Briefly, Will related the series of misunderstandings that had gotten him booted out of the druid seminary at Mona, which did, in fact, amount to more than a few rewritten hymns. When he had finished, his new friends looked at each other and smiled.

  “Mocking the bards, faking divine possession, and poaching! Can it be you haven’t a great deal of respect for the gods?” said Scorilo.

  “That might be the case,” said Will sourly. “Yet see, gentlemen, the wages of impiety. I’m as talented a man as you’ll find in a long summer’s day; I can pull your tooth, cure your fever, paint your likeness, sit in judgment on your small claims, sing you all the lays of old Rome, foretell the hour of your death, and recite a solemn prayer over your ashy bones. And, thanks to that unwise moment of levity at High Bard Amaethon’s expense, I now scramble to earn my bread in the gutter.”

  “What if impiety could be made to pay?” inquired Scorilo, with a coy leer.

  “What if, indeed? I’m listening.”

  “Well then!” Scorilo leaned across the table. “My colleague and I operated a profitable concern in Pergamum, before Caesarion XXIII sent in his priests. Given the nature of our business, it seemed like a good time to relocate.”

  “And the nature of your business was--?”

  “Soothsaying, what else?” said Alazon. “Divinations, relaying messages from the dead, that sort of thing. Scorilo’s a true prophet! Runs in the family. His great-great-several-times-great grandfather was the one who persuaded Julius Caesar to stay home the day Mark Antony was assassinated.”

  “We like to think of ourselves as purveyors of consolation,” said Scorilo. “Now, your cosmopolitan London seems a perfect place to set up shop. Unfortunately, we are strangers. We would benefit by having a native-born partner in our enterprise to advise us concerning local laws, customs, and so forth. You might be that partner.”