The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  In Closing

  I always try to end these introductions on a positive note. I must say that the above list of people we love and lost in 2018 makes that a bit more challenging, but as we mourn those have left us, we also must celebrate the new writers making their way through the field.

  Each year, I try to single out a new/new-ish author that has impressed me, and I believe to be someone you should be watching for. This year, I’m selecting someone who might just have been the most prolific author publishing short fiction in 2018. I published several stories by D.A. Xiaolin Spires (daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com) last year, but at some point, it started to feel like she was regularly announcing new sales or appearing in something I was reading. Volume is not necessarily connected to quality, but she’s regularly accomplishing both and only getting better. I look forward to reading more of her stories in the future. I hope you will too!

  Simone Heller lives on an island in the Danube River, in a town near Munich, Germany. For most of her life, she’s been lucky enough to make a living from science fiction by selling it, translating it, and writing it. She almost became a biologist, but graduated in linguistics and cultural studies instead. Most of her time is spent in fictional worlds, with travels in the real world whenever possible. And the rest is browsing history. Find her at www.missnavigator.com.

  WHEN WE WERE STARLESS

  Simone Heller

  When we set out to weave a new world from the old, broken one, we knew we pledged the lives of our clutches and our clutches’ clutches to wandering the wastes. Season after season, our windreaders find us a path through the poison currents, and our herds scuttle over molten glass seas and pockmarked plains into the haunted places where the harvest is plentiful. We move swiftly, outpacing vapors and packs of wild dogs alike, leaving only the prints of our tails in acrid sands.

  This wasn’t entirely true; we left other things, too, dear and precious. But this was how it was told by the elders when the veiled moon was high and we were cuddled up with our cozy-stones.

  On the moonless nights, though, they spoke of ghosts: beckoning wraithlights and treacherous silent ones, and all the other types we had classified; and the multitudes that still waited for our soothing hands out among the ruins. They spoke of ghosts like they were the ones to handle them, when it was always me.

  So when Warden Renke strode up to my resting place on the outskirts of the half-shaped camp, the stark white paint of her dread-screen slapped on in haste, I knew what she needed.

  “Someone found another ghost, yes?” My longing glance went to the grub’n’root stew some kind soul had left next to the pack serving as my pillow, still lukewarm from a hot stone placed at the bottom of the bowl. I reached for the harness with my tools instead.

  “It’s in the dome structure to the East. Asper ventured there in search of the light metals his weaver prefers. He meant no harm; he knows we need every spare part he can churn out. Said he saw strange lights.”

  “Alright.” It could be nothing, or just another minor ghost which I would have laid to rest before the deep-night chill encroached. I stood and fingered my engraved pliers, waiting for Renke to disappear like they all did when it came to my work. But the Warden fixed me, her pupils mere slits.

  “Eat your fill first, Blessed. We need you to stay strong. Truss won’t be able to step in for you.”

  And he hadn’t stepped in for years now, since the day he became a respected member of the tribe, but I didn’t say that.

  “How is he?” I asked instead.

  Renke looked back to where the first weaverspun tentpoles came together, as if she could see the pallet there, the thin mat of woven vines stained with blood. “He’s barely conscious. You should visit him as soon as you’ve cleansed yourself.”

  It could well be my last chance. One shift in the weather, and we’d be running again, leaving our excess baggage behind. Truss never passed up an opportunity to teach a lesson, so it would probably be me he’d ask for the Song of Passing, and I was afraid it would be more than I could take. People’s hearts, as hardened and as barred as they were, were a different matter from the hearts of ghosts. I took one big mouthful of stew and swallowed. “I’ll take care of this ghost, Warden. This spot will serve as a fine resting place and see us recovered to full strength.”

  Renke cast a doubtful glance down at her freshly spun leg brace, for she, too, hadn’t walked away unscathed. “Report to me when it’s done. I’ll put harvesting on hold, so hurry. No way to know how long the winds will grant us.”

  The run-in with the rustbreed had not been my fault. I was a good enough scout—I scoured inaccessible ruins for scarce materials, and I never ran the tribe into the lairs of the befouled crablion or let anyone’s mind become ghost-shifted. But when the heat-baked ground of a salt flat we were crossing was suddenly riddled with burrower holes, a full legion of the writhing, rearing centipedal creatures already upon us, all I could do was to change the gentle hum of the Lope Concord to the jarring trill of the Rush and find us a path out of this trap. The air had been filled with the dry stick sounds of the rustbreed’s milling legs and the sharp smell that went for communication among them. But for all their legs, we were the better runners, and we made it. Barely. The hindquarters of our sole gearbeast were a fused mass of metal and dried fluids from a rustbreed feeder, and I didn’t want to think about Truss’ side, which had been similarly exposed. Others, like Renke, had been burned badly, too, but he had been the only one to suffer a bite and get the corrosive substance under his scales.

  The ruined place I had led us into was vast and violent, some of its canyons carved by storms and some designed by its unholy builders long ago. We had been following these shadowed paths for hours, paths I would have preferred to scout before bringing in the tribe. As it was, I had to lay ghosts to rest on the run, which was a contradiction in and of itself.

  I skirted the camp, listening to the whirring sounds of dozens of weavers busily spinning pots and ropes and all the things we would need to shelter and recover. Bits of Asper’s cleansing chant drifted over the jagged scenery. He would be fine. Surely he had run at first sight, not even checking if it was a real ghost, or just a reflection on an unexpectedly untarnished surface. It took more than that to risk ghost-shifting. But the tribe was skittish. He would sing half of the night.

  Out of the rubble and partially collapsed buildings around the camp, two ruined structures protruded into the upper airs like teeth, broken and half-melted. Loose material flung up by the poison winds had merged with the original walls like flowstone.

  No such thing marred the surface of the dome. Its sides were certainly blackened like everything else, and even blacker holes yawned where some of its hexagonal segments were missing, but the telltale pockmarks to determine downwind shelter were nowhere to be seen. It loomed over the rubble as if to claim some things were unbreakable, no matter what. We would prove it wrong, if I had my way and we stayed. Because that was what we did; we cleansed the ruins by harvesting them, by feeding their very substance to our weavers and rendering it pure and useful to be sold to the settler townships up in the mountains.

  Only this time we would need every scrap for ourselves to survive.

  The entrance to the dome structure was a narrow, curved tube. When I reached a barrier of two thin, clear panes of glass, they swished apart almost soundlessly, releasing a draft of cool air from within. Asper must have been desperate if he had gone beyond that. I took a moment to camouflage and darted through, curling my tail in case of nasty surprises; this would have been a stupid way to lose it. At some point in the past, granules of debris had blown in, but the layer was thin and petered out after a few paces. When the portal closed smoothly behind me, one side grated a little bit on a piece of gravel that must have been displaced by my feet.

  My gaze was drawn upwards. The air of the dome was still, the evening light eerily peaceful as it filtered through the once transparent segments. Gone was the cleansing singsong,
gone were the high winds keening in cavity-riddled structures. It wasn’t that there was no indication of violence in this place: the tail end of a colossal metal tube still hanging from steel cords fastened around its tapered nose had fallen and destroyed all manners of tables and glass cases on the floor. But it was as if it had happened centuries ago, and peace had been found in its arrangement.

  Anyone with a healthy fear of ghosts would have gone looking for the one whose invisible hand had moved the glass panes. I knew better. I was not after an inferior ghost tied to this entrance—my prey would be haunting the vast space, where the light was murky and the shadows were glistening. I went straight in to look for the veins that spoke of ghost activity, for the hiding places of ghost organs, stored away in boxes for protection.

  Uncomfortably chilly layers of air enshrouded glittering heaps of shards. Once, I might have felt out of place, an unwelcome disturbance. But I had left my fear of ghosts behind like an old skin a long time ago, and what I had found instead was the unforeseen, and sometimes pure beauty.

  The tribe never knew. To them, beauty meant nothing. I could have shown them the brightest colors and patterns on my skin, and all they ever wanted were the dulled hues of sand and ashes, all the better to pick clean ruins like this one.

  In the end I found absolutely no sign of a ghost inhabiting this space. I resigned myself to take care of the entrance and let go of my camouflage.

  When I turned around there was something where there had been no one. Like a person, a solitary figure leaned on one of the undamaged glass cases. The light pooled strangely around it, and when I flicked my tongue, the smell, the heat, and the heartbeat were all my own and told me no other living being was in here with me.

  “Hello, little explorer,” it said with a clear, slightly hollow voice.

  The ways ghosts reacted to people were mostly limited to precise, fatal attacks, if they were of the aggressive kind, or simple things like manipulating doors or following every move with a single red eye in the shell they animated, observant even in afterlife.

  This one drifted over to me, mimicking a walk on two legs as best it could, lacking a tail. Its whole body was obscured by a bulky, silvery layer of clothing, its head round like a bowl. It seemed insubstantial, a ghost of subtle dangers. My breath quickened, but I stood my ground. When there was but a pace between us, I lifted my hand to rap my knuckles against the semi-translucent head-bowl with just a hint of bright eyes behind. The ghost quivered slightly as my fingers passed right through it, and on my skin I felt an almost imperceptible sensation of heat.

  “Now, now, you’re a cheeky one, aren’t you?” It turned with me as I began to walk around it, cautiously, looking for the veins tethering its body to its heart. “I understand you’re curious, and I encourage you heartily to experiment. But your experience will be better if you refrain from touching me.”

  The way it reacted to me, seemed to talk directly to me, was disconcerting. I felt a lump grow in my throat. Even now there were no veins. They could still be under the floor, but I somehow doubted it. I had seen a few Untethered before, even sought them out. They didn’t need to animate objects, but moved through thin air with a fluid grace. I knew they could be laid to rest with a bit of work; I just chose not to whenever possible. The world always felt lessened by their passing.

  “I don’t see a tag on you, little explorer.” The ghost’s voice came from slightly above. So maybe it had stored its lungs somewhere. Finding them would at least be a start. “Would you mind telling me your name to avoid confusion?”

  I looked up at the strange specter in surprise. No amount of singing would redeem me in the eyes of my tribe if I volunteered my name to a ghost. Granted, I did talk to ghosts. It was a one-sided conversation, a game of pretending at its best. This ghost wouldn’t even register my name, a name nobody had bothered to use since I became Blessed. What harm could it do, to whisper and hear it swallowed up by the still air of the dome?

  I flicked my tongue. “Mink. My name is Mink.”

  The round head bobbed enthusiastically. “Welcome, Mink! Now, would you like to see the stars?”

  A flutter of anxiety rose in my stomach. This was more than a mere reaction; this was interaction. For a short moment, I felt this was not a ghost, but something else altogether, something alive and very old and dangerous. I fought my unease with a snort. “Stars? You’re trying to trick me with fancy tales the elders tell to hatchlings, yes?”

  “That’s what most come for, but we can certainly look at something else. The rocket, maybe? Or one of the landers?” It drifted off a little bit, hands clasped behind its back. With a swooshing noise, the soft glow of wraithlights grew throughout the dome, in at least five different places. There were sounds as well, sounds I recognized: ghosts, many upon many of them, animating contraptions, whining in high voices. A legion of ghosts, seemingly springing into action in unison.

  I shielded my eyes and staggered back, caught myself on one of the tables, shaken. Such a conglomerate of ghosts would take days to be laid to rest. Our wounded might not have days; they depended on the herds’ output before the windreader called us off.

  The untethered ghost had moved to hover next to me. “You seem upset, little explorer Mink. Is there something wrong? Something I can do for you?”

  I held my face still buried in my hands and looked at the ghost through my fingers. Was it trying to help me? All I had ever been taught told me to run now, but I had never been the student Truss or the other elders had envisioned. “That’s impossible . . .”

  “Let’s try some music to lift your spirits.” The ghost drifted back and forth expectantly. When nothing happened and I began to wonder if I should have said or done something, it heaved a great sigh. “Uh . . . I’m very sorry, little explorer Mink . . . some things seem to be amiss here. I thought I had just the right music for you. But now I can’t play any at all, and I just don’t seem to be able to fix this defect. Ah. I shouldn’t be all sad when I need to cheer you up, right? Don’t you worry. I’ll find a work-around.”

  “You miss your music?” I had always suspected some ghosts liked music, and tried to use this to my advantage. But this ghost had offered me consolation; it seemed genuinely upset it couldn’t act on it. I didn’t seek an advantage when I suggested: “I could sing for you.”

  Truss would have called me ghost-shifted or straight out mad at this point. I had nothing yet, not even a classification, just a growing sense of unease and a lot of work cut out for me. But there were many ways to a ghost’s heart, and a nonaggressive, calming approach might work just as well as exhausting oneself by tearing out every wall panel for clues. Or maybe I was just trying to rationalize my own desperate need for a song.

  It took some time to find my voice, because, yes, I had sung to ghosts before, but never for a whole legion of them. Soon enough I found the center of the dome was an excellent place to stand and sing.

  I did not sing a ghost song, but one of ours. The melody of the Paean of Manifest Horizons rose strongly in the empty air, and it was more uplifting than the somber tones of the Song of Passing I usually sang in the forsaken places of the world, while making them a little bit more forsaken. It wasn’t until after the first verse I noticed the second voice accompanying mine in perfect harmony. At first I was puzzled and amused to sing alongside those hidden lungs of the ghost. Then I felt my spirit lifted in a way I had not expected: not to chant alone amongst the rubble of a past age, but to have a voice other than mine echoing, countering, running ahead in joy. When I reshaped the tune into a jubilating variation and the ghost followed suit without pause, though, the dread feeling crept upon me again, made my voice veer off into a warning warble. I faltered, and the ghost sang the ending notes on its own.