Search Worlds Without End

Activist Elizabeth Devane wished for an end to nuclear weapons. Surely, she thought, if they'd known what they were unleashing, the scientists of the Manhattan Project would never have created such a terrible instrument of destruction. But during a protest action, the unthinkable happened: a flash of light, a silent confusion, and Elizabeth awakes to find herself alone in a desolate desert arroyo... and almost fifty years in the past. June 1944. Los Alamos, New Mexico. While the Allies battle in the Pacific and begin the Normandy invasion in Europe, Nazi Germany deviates from the timeline Elizabeth knows and uses its newfound nuclear arsenal against America. Somehow, someway, Elizabeth has been given the chance to put the genie back in the bottle... yet could she--should she--attempt the greatest sabotage in history?

It's 1962, in Trinity, Nevada, a small town on the edge of the desert, home to a military base serving the nuclear testing grounds.

Van Lopez and his brother Andy have enough to do keeping their truck running and the local criminal gang happy to be concerned about nuclear tests. Van has dreams, or - he's not sure what to call them - that he cannot explain or forget, but when he sees mysterious lights in the sky, he struggles to make sense of what now feel like his earliest memories.

On the day of the atomic test, the nuclear blast brings down something over Trinity that wasn't supposed to be there - something not of this world. Now Van is running for his life, pursued by a murderous Soviet agent and government forces bent on keeping all he has seen - and all he has remembered - from getting out. Romances and rivalries come to a head as he fights for the things he cares about most, and in that final battle he may have to make allies of his oldest enemies.

"Our people are survivors," Calliope's great-grandmother once told her of their Puebloan roots--could Bisabuela's ancient myths be true?

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared--or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. The impossible suddenly real, Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn babies into this uncertain new world.

Rooted in indigenous oral-history traditions and contemporary apocalypse fiction, Trinity Sight asks readers to consider science versus faith and personal identity versus ancestral connection. Lyrically written and utterly original, Trinity Sight brings readers to the precipice of the end-of-times and the hope for redemption.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1984, and was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 102, November 2018. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), edited by Gardner Dozois, Best SF of the Year #14 (1985), edited by Tery Carr, and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Trinity and Other Stories (1985), Future Perfect: Six Stories of Genetic Engineering (2012) and The Best of Nancy Kress (2015).

Table of Contents:

• Explaining Nancy Kress - (1985) - essay by Gene Wolfe
• With the Original Cast - (1982) - novelette
• Casey's Empire - (1981) - shortstory
• Talp Hunt - (1982) - shortstory
• Against a Crooked Stile - (1979) - shortstory
• Explanations, Inc. - (1984) - shortstory
• Shadows on the Cave Wall - (1981) - novelette
• Ten Thousand Pictures, One Word - (1984) - shortstory
• Night Win - (1983) - novelette
• Borovsky's Hollow Woman - (1983) - novelette by Jeff Duntemann and Nancy Kress
• Out of All Them Bright Stars - (1985) - shortstory
• Trinity - (1984) - novella

In the midst of a Third World War nuclear holocaust, a United States president battles his successor to preserve humanity, Russia is in turmoil, and a B-52 carrying nuclear warheads and an ill-assorted crew heads toward the U.S.S.R.

The year is 1507, and severe famine strikes a small town in Germany. A friar arrives from a large city, claiming that the town is under the spell of witches in league with the devil. He brings with him a book called the Malleus Maleficarum--"The Witch's Hammer." It is a guide to gaining confessions of witchcraft. The friar promises he will identify the guilty woman who has brought God's anger upon the town, burn her, and restore bounty.

The elderly Güde Müller suffers stark and frightening visions; none in the village knows this, and Güde herself worries that the sharpness of her mind has begun to fade. Yet of one thing she is absolutely certain: She has become an object of scorn and a burden to her son's wife. In these desperate times, her daughter-in-law would prefer one less hungry mouth at the family table. As the friar turns his eye on each member of the tiny community, Güde dreads what her daughter-in-law might say to win his favor, and that her secret visions will be revealed.

Control. Precision. Family. These are the principles that drive Silver Mercant. At a time when the fledgling Trinity Accord seeks to unite a divided world, with Silver playing a crucial role as director of a worldwide emergency response network, wildness and chaos are the last things she needs in her life. But that's exactly what Valentin Nikolaev, alpha of the StoneWater bears, brings with him.

Valentin has never met a more fascinating woman. Though Silver is ruled by Silence--her mind clear of all emotion--Valentin senses a whisper of fire around her. That's what keeps him climbing apartment buildings to be near her. But when a shadow assassin almost succeeds in poisoning Silver, the stakes become deadly serious... and Silver finds herself in the heart of a powerful bear clan.

Her would-be assassin has no idea what their poison has unleashed...

Security specialist Bowen Knight has come back from the dead. But there's a ticking time bomb in his head: a chip implanted to block telepathic interference that could fail at any moment--taking his brain along with it. With no time to waste, he should be back on land helping the Human Alliance. Instead, he's at the bottom of the ocean, consumed with an enigmatic changeling...

Kaia Luna may have traded in science for being a chef, but she won't hide the facts of Bo's condition from him or herself. She's suffered too much loss in her life to fall prey to the dangerous charm of a human who is a dead man walking. And she carries a devastating secret Bo could never imagine...

But when Kaia is taken by those who mean her deadly harm, all bets are off. Bo will do anything to get her back--even if it means striking a devil's bargain and giving up his mind to the enemy...

Kidnapped as a young girl, her psychic powers harnessed by a madman, Memory lives a caged and isolated existence... until she comes face-to-face with a wolf. Labelled an empath by her bad-tempered rescuer, Memory knows that her 'gift' is nothing so bright. It is a terrible darkness that means she will always be hunted.

But Memory is free now and she intends to live. A certain growly wolf can just deal with it.

Alexei prefers to keep his packmates at bay, the bleak history of his family a constant reminder that mating, love, hope is not for him. But Memory, this defiant and fearless woman who stands toe-to-toe with him awakens the most primal part of his nature--and soon, he must make a choice: risk everything or lose Memory to a murderous darkness that wants to annihilate her from existence...

Alpha wolf Selenka Durev's devotion to her pack is equaled only by her anger at anyone who would harm those under her care. That currently includes the empaths who've flowed into her city for a symposium that is a security nightmare, a powder keg just waiting for a match.

Ethan Night is an Arrow who isn't an Arrow. Numb and disengaged from the world, he's loyal only to himself. Assigned as part of the security force at a world-first symposium, he carries a dark agenda tied to the power-hungry and murderous Consortium. Then violence erupts and Ethan finds himself crashing into the heart and soul of an alpha wolf.

Mating at first sight is a myth, a fairytale. Yet Selenka's wolf is resolute: Ethan Night, broken Arrow and a man capable of obsessive devotion, is the mate it has chosen. Even if the mating bond is full of static and not quite as it should be. Because Selenka's new mate has a terrible secret, his mind surging with a power that is a creature of madness and death...

A world devastated by change, where two people defined by their aloneness hold the fate of the Psy in their hands....

Termed merciless by some, and a robotic sociopath by others, Payal Rao is the perfect Psy: cardinal telekinetic, CEO of a major conglomerate, beautiful--and emotionless.

For Canto Mercant, family and loyalty are everything. A cardinal telepath deemed "imperfect" by his race due to a spinal injury, Canto cares for the opinions of very few--and ruthlessly protects those he claims as his own. Head of intel for the influential Mercant family, he prefers to remain a shadow in the Net, unknown and unseen. But Canto is also an anchor, part of a secretive designation whose task it is to stabilize the PsyNet. Now that critical psychic network is dying, threatening to collapse and kill the entire Psy race with it.

To save those he loves, Canto needs the help of a woman bound to him by a dark past neither has been able to forget. A woman who is the most powerful anchor of them all: Payal Rao. Neither is ready for the violent inferno about to ignite in the PsyNet... or the passionate madness that threatens to destroy them both.

Into the hearts of two fractured people in a world on the brink of a psychic Armageddon...

Silence has fallen. The Psy are free to feel emotion. Free to love. But Silence was never a prison for Ivan Mercant. The biggest threat to his future lies dormant in his brain--a psychic monster that wants only to feed. And now, the brutal leash he's kept on that monster is slipping. He prepared for this day, for the end of Ivan Mercant... but that was before he met Lei.

As primal as she is human, this wild changeling brings color into his life, laughter to his soul. Then the dream shatters in a rain of blood, in silent bodies in the snow. Lei is gone. Vanished without a trace... until he meets strangely familiar eyes across a busy San Francisco street.

Soleil Bijoux Garcia is a healer who has lost everything. She exists in a world of desolate aloneness... till the day she finds herself face-to-face with a lethal stranger. The animal who is her other half knows this man, but her memories are tattered fragments. Sorrow and a need for vengeance are all that drive her. Her mission? To kill the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard pack.

But fate has other plans. Soon, a deadly soldier who believes himself a monster and a broken healer might be all that stand between life and death for the entire Psy race....

StoneWater bears Pavel and Yakov Stepyrev have been a unit since birth, but now Pavel's life is veering in a new direction, his heart held in the hands of Arwen Mercant, a Psy empath - and the only man who has ever brought Pavel to his knees.

This is it. A point of irrevocable change. For Pavel... for Arwen... for Yakov... and for another pair of twins whose bond has a far darker history.

A low-Gradient Psy, Theodora Marshall is considered worthless by everyone but her violently powerful twin, Pax. She is the sole person he trusts in their venomous family to investigate a hidden and terrible part of their family history - an unregistered rehabilitation Centre established by their grandfather.

Places of unimaginable pain designed to psychically wipe minds, leaving the victims shells of their former selves, the Centres are an ugly vestige of the Psy race's Silent past. But this Centre was worse. Far, far worse. And now Theo must uncover the awful truth - in the company of a scowling bear named Yakov, who isn't about to take a Marshall at face value... especially a Marshall who has turned his dreams into chilling nightmares.

Because Yakov is the great-grandson of a foreseer, and he has seen Theo die in an unstoppable surge of blood. Night after night after night...

Daughter of two ruthless high-Gradient telepaths, Auden Scott is not the child her Psy parents wanted or expected, even before her brain injury. Her thoughts are scattered, her memories fuzzy - or just terrifyingly blank. The only thing she knows for certain is that she must protect her unborn baby... a baby she has no recollection of conceiving and who draws an unnerving depth of interest from her dead mother's closest associates.

Leopard alpha Remi Denier is a man driven by the primal instinct to protect. Protect his pack, protect his allies... and protect the mysterious woman who has become a most unlikely neighbor. With eerie eyes that see too much and a scent that alters in ways disturbing and impossible, Auden Scott is the enemy... but nothing about this strange Psy is what it seems, and Remi's feline heart is as fascinated by her as his human half.

Then Auden asks Remi to help her shatter the wall of secrets that is the Scott bloodline. What they unearth will reveal a nightmare beyond imagination. This time, the battle is to the death...

This sequel to Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper continues the story of a young man who has been sentenced to death, and then exiled, for his magical abilities.

As Gair struggles with grief over the loss of the only home he had known, and his beloved, he is walking into a conflict that's greater and more deadly than he or his mentor ever anticipated. A storm of unrest is spreading across the land and they are going to be caught up in it—at a moment when Gair's hold on his magic, his greatest defense and most valuable tool, is starting to slip....

The Rim rebellion was glorious--and doomed from the start. Brilliant Rim Confederation Navy spaceship captain Jared Clement skuttled his career and professional life by joining the rebels against the overwhelming force of the 5 Suns Alliance. The rebel cause was just. That didn't matter. Ten years later, Clement regrets nothing, but would prefer to be left alone to his thoughts and drink. But a new chance to command a ship of incredible potential is thrust in his lap--humanity's first truly faster-than-light vessel.

The destination: Trinity, a newly discovered star system where strange signs of possible spacefarers may lead to humanity's first alien encounter. Or to interstellar war. Humanity is on the brink of a new age, and everything depends on one crusty starship captain, his gritty crew, and the Beauregard, a ship that was never meant to wage war turned into a weapon-bristling battleship that will either propel humanity to ultimate destruction--or into a new starfaring age of exploration and conflict.

And along the way, a noble lost cause--one Captain Jared Clement--may finally get his revenge. And find his redemption.

Jared Clement has returned to Trinity, not as a mere ship captain but as a Five Suns Fleet Admiral. With his promotion comes increased responsibility that weighs heavy on his shoulders: 30,000 settlers are leaving the dying planets of the Rim, his home, and resettling next to the natives of the planet Bellus.

Clement is responsible for those lives and the lives of the natives, Trinity's children, and for building a better future for them all. But when his migrant fleet arrives in the Trinity system, they are faced with enemies both old and new. Former Fleet Admiral Elara DeVore has escaped her exile on the planet Alphus and vanished into parts unknown. Soon, however, Clement discovers she has a new fleet and a new ally, the Solar League from Earth. The Solar League has arrived with a massive fleet and plans on taking Trinity for itself, forcing the Five Suns to surrender. With just a small military fleet to accompany the migrants, Clement is faced with the almost impossible task of defending both his people and the natives from becoming slaves of the Solar League.

Deep in the folklore of Tallinor lies a dark legend of betrayal and destruction. It is the story of a powerful sentient called Orlac who almost destroyed the entire land. Even now, many centuries later, any sentient who is discovered is subjected to the barbaric practice of bridling and branding. But in a village far from the royal city a young scribe, Torkyn Gynt, blazes with untold power and healing abilities which go undetected. Tor agrees to be apprenticed to the Royal Physic Merkhud and with that decision Tor takes the first step towards his destiny. Armed with only his wits and a pouch of mysterious stones given to him by his parents, Tor must trust in the falcon Cloot and in Lys, the mysterious dreamspeaker, to guide him on a journey that will test his courage and his heart.

Saved from death by Merkhud's Spiriting, sentient Torkyn Gynt lives in hiding both from his enemies and Alyssa, the woman who loved him and now believes him dead. But Orlac is about to break free and only the Trinity can stop him wreaking vengeance. Who are they?

The Paladin are reunited in the Heartwood and the Trinity is revealed at last. But what is the key to the secret that will unlock their power? The Land is in peril and they are helpless to save it.Tor and Alyssa are surrounded by danger. Their old enemy Goth is still free and causing pain and suffering wherever he goes. Alyssa's nemesis, Xantia, returns to haunt her. And the ruthless god Orlac has installed himself on the throne of Cipres and now turns his attention to hunting down Tor, determined to kill him and those he loves.The battle lines are set for the final confrontation between the two most powerful sentients ever to walk the Land.