The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  The herders had already scattered. With hectic gestures they maneuvered their weavers to hide behind them, while some broke and ran for the entrance, shrilling a warning.

  “Wait!” Asper yelled. “The Blessed is in the ghost’s thrall. We have to rescue her! Get Renke, hurry!”

  “It’s alright.” I made two steps towards them to show I was free to go. “He’s nonaggressive.”

  It was a futile effort. Most of them were crazed with fear, clogging the narrow entrance tube or fleeing along the walls of the dome. Asper, though, not only came for me, but managed to bully a fellow herder to march with him towards much more ghost activity than any of them had ever seen.

  “Asper, you have to watch this!” I backed off towards the glass-like screen. “We were all wrong about the weavers.”

  He grabbed my arm.

  “Hey!” Orion drifted closer.

  Without letting go, Asper jumped. I stumbled and was caught by his friend, who dragged me to my feet without any respect for shoulder joints and their natural resistance to jerking. I hissed.

  “Hey!” Orion said, louder now. “I cannot tolerate violence in here. This is a place of peace and learning. Now, behave yourselves and release Mink!”

  A collective gasp rippled through the herders as they heard the ghost speak my name, and I used their surprise to detach myself.

  I could not let them take me. When they got me out of this dome, there would be no turning back and setting this right. Truss would die, unsung and alone, and I would not bring a new weaver and a new vision to the tribe. I tried to back away and babbled incoherent things that probably did nothing to convince them I was not ghost-shifted beyond repair. Orion’s warnings became increasingly pressing.

  When Renke’s fighters joined the fray, they pushed the fleeing herders back in and moved towards me, crests rising as Orion drifted in between us as if to shield me.

  Then, cutting through the very fabric of this old, untouched space, I saw the glint of a spear flying. Renke’s verdigris green collar-feathers were tied to its shaft. It passed right through Orion, to bury itself in the screen containing the vision. A web of cracks appeared, and the light within died.

  Orion’s voice shrilled, distorted and much louder than before. “Stop damaging the equipment, and leave Mink alone, now! She’s under my protection.”

  In the silence that followed, a rustling sound came up. It was a sound we knew, but it had a wrongness to it that made everyone freeze. Instead of the chaotic concert of individual clinks and whirrs, we heard our weavers march in unison. They came scuttling from all corners, flowing together like some big machine assembling itself. I knew this behavior, I had observed it moments before in the vision, but it was uncanny to see it executed, as if they had developed a shared, single-minded purpose all of a sudden. The others just stared, but some called out to their weavers, gesturing them back to no avail.

  I froze when I saw what their purpose turned out to be. They all came up to me, smoothly parting around me and flowing into a new formation, climbing upon each other and surrounding me with a barrier of spiky metal.

  And they were ready to defend. Asper and the other herders tried to intervene as the fighters tore into the formation, and they all got burned by spurts of heated material, seared by cutting-lights, sparks flying off their scales. They had absolutely no experience with the way the herds behaved now, like a single organism lashing out.

  I tried to climb over my living protection, ready to leave with the tribe to end this. “Orion!” I cried. “Stop. Please!”

  “Habitat security initiated, please cooperate.”

  “Orion?”

  But he didn’t respond to me anymore.

  And I remembered the most important thing a scout has to recognize: the point when fighting would only lead to greater loss. I sounded the Rush. “Flee! This is a Clusterhaunt!”

  Renke took up my tune, aggressively, urging on the herders who still called their weavers. I don’t know what really made them break and run in the end. It could have been the herder who recognized the carapace of her weaver and tried to yank it out of the formation, only to get cut so badly we had to carry her. Limping and crying, we fled, and Asper’s look was so hurt and betrayed I wanted to camouflage out of his sight. When I reached the entrance tube as part of the last group supporting and dragging each other, I thought I heard a faint whisper from the dome. “Safety can only be guaranteed in the habitat. Staying is recommended.”

  There was a difference I hadn’t known, between separating myself from the tribe and being separated from the tribe. Oh, I was still with them, but I was kept off to the side, under guard. My status was unclear. Outcast, probably; a prisoner, surely; still useful, maybe.

  Renke had screamed into my face, asking who would spin her a new spear, now that there was not a single weaver left. Asper had not spoken at all, but he surely cursed the day the tribe had acquired the clutch of supposedly blessed eggs that had hatched me. Others had said it aloud: “She who runs on her own shall no longer sing with us.” And Truss had been loudest of all. “Is this how I taught you to serve your foster-tribe? You doom us all with your shrewd ideas. You shame me. You deny me my contribution to our survival, just because you’re too sappy to accept what has to be done.”

  He might still get his chance to die all alone now.

  My body’s warmth seeped into the night-cooled ground. I was a miserable, pale heap, bound to a cracked column to protect everyone, including myself, from the mad bouts of my ghost-shifted mind. And as I stared up into the murky morning sky, still clear of the minor color shifts and scattered light that preceded a new wind, I knew they were right. I had been ghost-shifted. I had been blinded. The stars were not real. There was nothing but blackness up there.

  I had been wrong all the time, dreaming of greatness and of knowing everything. I had chased visions and embraced change like it was just a pretty color I could wear, while secretly smiling at the superstition the herders held against me, never letting me approach a weaver. Now the weavers were taken, because I had lied. Because I had failed to see that they were right.

  Not that anybody took the time to lay the blame at my feet—they would be crest-over-tails planning their next steps. I could hear them arguing. But it was just a waste of energy. Even if we stood a chance, we would never fight the one thing that let us thrive: our herds, our cleansers, our silvery lifeblood in this wrecked land.

  Of course, without weavers, we would soon all be ghosts. And it would be a long drag down. We would wander the plains, deprived of our purpose, deprived of our calling and our sustenance. We hadn’t needed the weavers to change the world, really, but as a reason to tread on, to lay claim to hostile territory, to sustain our foolish, desolate, stubborn way of living. We had never seen what they really were, until now that they were gone, and I was the only one . . .

  No.

  I had to give up this delusion. I had never been the only one. I knew nothing.

  To the disgruntled huffing of my guard, I started a cleansing song. It was too late for that, but I had to do something to steer my mind from the tantalizing vision, from the dread and the despair.

  When I heard the soft thud of footpads on the ground, I thought somebody might try to gag me. But next came a strangled sound from my guard while a weaverspun chain dug into her trachea; that made me jerk out of my song.

  Under a cover of black fabric I recognized the loam-spotted greens of Asper’s scales. My first thought was that he had come to personally punish me, and when he stepped closer, I expected him to tell me he wanted me gone, that he couldn’t bear to feed me one more share of spicy mothfry after all I had done.

  “They’re gone, because of you. Poor Peshk needs a brace, because of you, and I can’t build one, because of you.” He stared down at me for a moment, his tail lashing. I cringed, which made him snarl even more. “What is it with you, crazy scout?” He took off his heat cloak and dropped it near the shadowed corner I was curled up
in. “You’re all sickly white.”

  I hooked the cloak with one claw and drew it to me cautiously. “It’s . . . it’s my mood, yes?”

  “Then snap out of it! You’ll need your skill after you’ve warmed up.” He swallowed, as if the next thing he was going to say had a foul taste to it. “They are debating. But it all ends up the same—we’re going to leave. Hoping to reach the settler townships and seek refuge there. They’re packing already. We’re abandoning our weavers.” He took out a small trimming knife. “Can’t let that happen. Can’t just leave my Tineater serving this Clusterhaunt. So I figured you’d be the one to come up with another idea. I saw you talk to that ghost. Like it made sense. Maybe you’re shifted, and surely you’re as unclean as a cesspool full of ground poison, but you’ve got a knack for communicating with this thing.” With one swift slash, he cut through my rope.

  I didn’t move, just sat numbly, completely baffled. And I wondered if everybody had this one breaking point that made them fall from grace. “This might not be in the tribe’s best interest,” I said softly. “What if I don’t come back and you’ll have to run without a scout?”

  “Wrong time for regrets,” Asper snarled, and he sounded strangely like Truss to me, when he had taught a lesson. Then he tossed me my tools and turned around to sit next to the guard and check on her. “Go make some sweet talk to this ghost of yours, or rip its heart out. I don’t care. Just get Tineater back to me. Bring the weavers, or don’t come back at all.”

  The moment I moved out of reach, he took up the cleansing song I had abandoned.

  There were many reasonable things I could have wished for as I passed through the yawning portal into the dome again: that I knew a secret tune to make the weavers follow me out just like that; that I had Truss at my side, to hold me back with a sharp hiss from making yet another stupid mistake; that I could run, run the plains with my tribe and our herds whole and sound, and leave this place alone.

  I might face the true power of the Clusterhaunt now, not the gentle inducements of the being I had dubbed Orion.

  A name it hadn’t responded to any longer after it had turned on us. I was very much afraid that any bond Asper relied upon might have existed in my imagination only.

  Foolish as I was, the thing I really wished for was that it hadn’t forgotten my name.

  But Orion was nowhere to be seen. I could tell, because in plain daylight the murky darkness of the dome wasn’t absolute. High up, where some of its ceiling panels were missing, shafts of light sliced down all the way to the ground in cascades of dancing dust motes. And there was a flurry of ghost activity. Faintly blinking lights, ghostly chatter emanating from various objects, all clocked to the clinking and whirring of the weavers. It was every sane person’s nightmare, but I was beyond fear.

  Or so I thought, because when Orion did descend upon me out of thin air, I blanched, flinched, and pinched my tail under a metal pedestal I knocked over while fighting for balance. Before I could lift it, two weavers scuttled over and hoisted it back up. I very slowly backed away.

  “Little explorer Mink, adding some defects again, aren’t you? But don’t you worry. Mistakes happen, and I’ve got so much help now.” Orion drifted closer and lowered his voice. “We’re not officially reopened yet. You are a regular visitor, though. And I’m so glad to see you’re back, and unharmed, too, so I’m willing to make an exception. A special tour just for you, what do you say?”

  Part of me wanted just that, to lose my unhinged, ghost-shifted self in visions. I swallowed. “Actually, I’m not here to visit you. I’m here for the weavers.” I indicated three of the creatures, spinning upwards from the floor, thread after thread, grabbing shards with their long legs to absorb and fuel their weaving while building something that looked like it would go on top of the pedestal. “They don’t belong in here. They are the herds of my tribe, you see, and we need them back.”

  “Weavers? You have a knack for names, little explorer Mink. But you must understand the ATUs are no playthings, and they are doing what they are made for. They are not mine to give back. But they do good work, and they are well cared for. Just imagine how many visitors will take delight in this place after all those pesky defects are behind us.”

  I took a deep breath. I very much detested breaking things. And it had been nice, nice to get to know someone who wasn’t aware of the brokenness of the world, who didn’t live under the constant pressure of survival. It had been nice, but it was the only leverage I had. “There is something you should know.” I worked my jaw for a moment, like something old and awful was lodged between my teeth. “They are not coming. Nobody is coming. There are no visitors anymore.”

  “Little explorer!” Orion’s gloved hand went up to his bowl-shaped head. “What are you saying? That’s nonsense. Right?”

  I came close to him, and I wished I could have reached up and taken the sides of the bowl in my hands, to look into those elusive eyes. And to have something to cling to, because it hurt, what I had to do. “It’s true. Look at all those defects. And believe me, you got off lightly in here. The defects outside are numberless.”

  And I sung him the oldest parts of the Tribesong, the way the elders had sung it to me as a hatchling, lest I forgot how the world became broken and the reign of demons had ended when they choked on their own corrupted breath, after their insatiable thirst for knowledge had undone them.

  When I sang no more, Orion was silent for a very long time. He didn’t even hover or flicker. I tried to stay equally unmoved. The tribe, the herds, the running, hearts thumping up our chest. That was what mattered. Not a ghost and his grieving.

  “I was built to teach,” he stated finally, his voice unquavering and strong, and I thought that maybe his hidden lungs weren’t built to produce the sobs buried underneath. “I was built to inspire new achievements. If it’s all gone, and I’m all alone . . . why am I still here?”

  I had no answer for him. Ghosts despised the living, that was why, and I knew that he did not.

  Orion looked up again, a hint of eyes gleaming under the bowl. “But you. You will come? You, and your . . . tribe. You returned, after all. You want to learn.”

  I laughed. It sounded like choking. Learning was what had gotten me into this wretched situation in the first place. “No, Orion. We won’t. I’m sorry. My tribe is fear-stricken by your presence. You have proven yourself a true Clusterhaunt by taking our weavers. You are the doom of my people.”

  “But everything will be fine in here soon,” he insisted. “Zero defects. And you’ll like the stars. I promise—”

  “Orion. There are no stars.” I had the distinct feeling that I was about to tear his heart out with words alone, and I had to speak around the lump in my throat. “The veiled moon is a silvery blotch gliding through the upper fumes. And the stars, they are gone so long they are not even in the Tribesong; a whisper of clear lights, shining through the dark fabric of the night to give us comfort. But we can’t afford to believe in comfort. There is only blackness.”

  “Is that so?” Orion moved again, and this was the first time he tried to touch me. His fingers passed through my cheek, leaving faint traces of heat. “You should believe in comfort. It makes you reach out again after you fall. How else would you advance? When we set out to reach the stars, there were many who would have held us back. It’s a risk, they said. A waste. But we sent our eyes up into the skies, and we saw worlds up there. We have always had to cross the blackness, Mink, and it has always been vast and intimidating. We have always fallen. But this place is a monument to our resilience, and it has seen visitors from afar, who brought back the evidence of those worlds. As its guardian, I was never intended to go myself, but I saw the blackness could be crossed. And you should have trust in that, too, Mink.”

  My mind went back to those pristine, luminous worlds of the vision, and there was comfort in the thought of them out there. I could not condemn this comfort, even if it made my heart want to reach out and find a way to get
there. Even if I needed to embrace ghost-shifting to get only one step closer. And I did. “Show me.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back and nodded gravely. After a while, a weaver came scuttling out of the gloom to stand close to me and pinch me in the upper calf. In one of its legs, it held something, pressing it urgently into my hand as soon as I crouched. I looked at the smooth oval in my palm, then back at Orion.

  “Your Memory Vault. I told you not to forget it next time you leave.”

  “I’m not leaving. I want you to show me your vision.”

  Orion shook his head. “No. Not only you. Bring your tribe. Let me show them. Only this one time. I am not your enemy. But this is the price I demand for giving back the weavers.”

  Never would the elders bring what was left of our tribe into the lair of the Clusterhaunt again. Never would they trust my word, ghost-shifted as I was. And yet. I wanted them to see. I wanted to be with them again, and that would never happen when my dreams lived among the stars, while theirs still had to cross the blackness. “I’ll try, but my voice in the Tribesong is small.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I heard you sing. There’s nothing wrong with your voice. Just use it. Educate them.”

  He was right. They needed to know, and I had never made the effort to tell them anything. It had been easier for me, and easier for them, to carry on as we had always done. But there were other worlds, worlds not lost to corruption and poison. This was a vision as true as any prediction of our windreader. This was hope. It would be hard work, but I had to make them understand. Even if it meant breaking what was left of trust and love. Even if the only thing to speak in my favor was the prospect of a happy reunion with our herds.

  Then Orion explained to me in detail how I would get the weavers back after the performance. If I hadn’t believed him before, I would have done so now, because it was a sound plan. It was, in fact, a plan I had executed many times before. And as soon as I grasped what he wanted me to do, I threw up my hands and said: “No. I won’t do that, Orion.”