The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  “But you must. As I said, the weavers are not mine to give back. When I initiated habitat security, they were integrated in the defense matrix. I can command them to repair while there is no threat, but I can’t undo their integration. Security is automated.”

  I didn’t understand, and I didn’t care. I shook my head.

  Orion waited very patiently by my side while I came up with other plans. Waited very patiently while I cried. And waited very patiently while I added one or three defects by kicking things.

  But the world was less patient. It barged in on me when Asper crashed through the entrance, the fear in his voice overshadowed by the greater horror that must have driven him to brave the Clusterhaunt’s lair yet again.

  “Blessed!” he cried. “You have to lead us in the Rush, now! The camp was breached by a rustbreed vanguard. They have followed us.”

  We were nomads, and we didn’t get to keep things. Not even dreams.

  So I tried to shake it all off while I followed Asper into a nightmare. People were securing exhausted young ones to their chests or trying to force up the wounded, while right in the middle of the camp Renke and her fighters fell back against the rustbreed despite battling fiercely. Vanguard attacks were meant to delay and cripple until the arrival of the colony, and if they had to impale their sinuous bodies on our weapons to shower us in acids, they would do just that. Already the ground sizzled with ochre blood.

  Everybody made way to let me take my place at the head of the column, to lead us on the quickest path out into the open, where we could outrun them. But my eyes searched for Truss’ pallet, where he would die alone, as was his duty. And my mind went back to the dome, to my voice rising up through its stillness, stirring the dust of centuries.

  I knew a safe place right under our noses. I could still get us out without anyone being left behind.

  “No need to run,” I told those nearest to me. “Bring your young ones into the dome. It’s safe, I promise. The Clusterhaunt will protect us.” They didn’t move, of course, but I went on, louder now. “I bargained for our protection. Our weavers will defend us in the dome. You have seen what they are capable of! These walls are indestructible. It is our best and only chance! Go!”

  Most of them muttered madness at me, but some snuck glances at the dome, leaving our formation with tentative steps. Others kept looking at the elders.

  “Get back!” the windreader yelled, ushering them on. “Don’t listen to this ghost-shifted rambling. We run!”

  “But the Blessed is right!” I hadn’t noticed Asper staying with me in the fray. He had leapt onto a crumbling wall, waving his heat cloak like a banner. “Our weavers are in there. I won’t leave them. I say let’s go and make a stand there! We’ve got nothing to lose.”

  I saw the eyes of the herders shift. Terrified, yes, but flecked with mad determination as they grabbed what they had dropped in the wake of the attack and started to run for the dome, a few first, but drawing more and more after them. And I saw Renke lose every battle she was in and buckle when she finally called her fighters to her side to cover our retreat.

  And just like that, the tribe was on the move. I went to find Truss and lifted his dry, grunting weight upon my shoulders. He didn’t quite struggle, but he did snarl.

  “Don’t you dare and deny me my choice. Leave me, and do what the tribe needs of you.”

  “I am,” I snapped. “And you can thank me later, or still make use of your choice then.”

  He huffed, but sagged against me in defeat. The tribe had decided, after all. Just beyond the tube entrance, their courage left them, though, and they all stopped dead in their tracks. The space was brimming with ghost activity. “Orion!” I shouted, shouldering my way to the front, Truss still with me. “Where are you?”

  “Mink!” The ghost blinked to life in all his silvery splendor between two shafts of light in the middle of the dome, making my people surge back against the walls. “I’m glad you came back! Come on, everything is prepared for the show.”

  “We’re not here for the show. Please, Orion, you have to protect us. There’s rustbreed at the threshold, and my people need shelter. Help us!”

  The spear fighters defending the entrance shot frantic looks at Orion as he drifted closer, but the Warden called them back in line with a disdainful growl and motioned others to move up as replacements, should they fall.

  “I see,” Orion said, and my heart leapt when I felt his lighthearted nature yield to the gentle profoundness I had come to trust. “Harm to visitors is to be avoided at all costs. Initiating habitat sealing.”

  An inaudible command brought in our herds. From all directions, they converged upon the entrance, the staccato of clinking legs made it sound like we had acquired an army. Smoothly they flowed into precise lines, passing down chunks of material to the tube opening where the silvery creatures began to weave upwards from the ground, and downwards from the ceiling. Most herders just stared in astonishment, but some whooped and called their weavers’ names, and a few ventured out to gather rubble for them. Not every fragment went into the quickly growing wall, though. Some ended up in scalding spurts directed at our enemies.

  It was messy. Three weavers were thrown back in a spray of acid as they clung to the red-tipped mandibles of a rustbreed soldier to keep it from rearing. One of our fighters went down, hundreds of chitinous legs crawling over him. He was still screaming long after he had been pulled back out.

  But soon there was only room left for a single rustbreed to squeeze through, and then not even that. The entrance was sealed, and we stood in silence, apart from the occasional thud when one of the creatures flung itself against the freshly spun concrete slab.

  The tribe huddled together in the open space of the dome, eyeing me, the elders, and Orion. Some lowered the young ones to the floor, still holding their hands. Some flicked their tongues.

  “What now, little foster-hatch?” I was kneeling next to Truss, trying to check his bandages. He slapped my hands away, but he was no longer bristling with fury, his crest drooping in concern instead. “Seems we are not to become rustbreed sustenance yet. But what do we eat? We don’t have a grub’s worth of food with us, and they won’t go away as long as their prey is so close.”

  I looked up into the fearful faces of my tribe, who had trusted me in a way I would never have thought possible. “We have our weavers. And we have Orion. Surely there is something we can come up with.”

  It took a long time to get them to talk. Half of them still believed the Clusterhaunt had set this as a trap for us, and they were unwilling to go near it. A few even snuck on their dread-screen, which they had brought with them of all things. Orion was no help either, curiously hovering close, displaying some tricks to get the attention of the young ones. The tribe had settled into an uneasy camp formation, a few lone bug-catcher lamps marking a perimeter, its guards clearly at a loss.

  Those lamps gave us an idea at last. As soon as I had gotten the herders to talk not about our predicament or the implications of conversing with a Clusterhaunt, but about the glorious things their weavers could build together, they were unstoppable. Ideas flew back and forth, with Orion chiming in with detailed knowledge.

  “These possibilities, Blessed . . . Mink!” Asper clasped my upper arm as if I weren’t the uncleanest being he had ever met. Still, I was not one of them. I had no clue what exactly they planned to build, but the gleam in Asper’s eyes told me it would be magnificent. “There is enough plastics in here to burn the whole colony to the ground!”

  In our lamps, we used a burning paste spun from plastics. The weavers would tunnel deep and build some contraption to saturate the ground the rustbreed crawled upon and burrowed in, until all that was needed was a single spark, while we sat safely here in our indestructible dome.

  “Of course you will have to learn to control the ATUs for this project, little engineers,” Orion told them. “I can’t do it for you.”

  The herders were too agitated to notice
, but his tone alerted me. There had been a calm finality in Orion’s words that suggested he was not planning to participate.

  “Why not?” Asper asked. “I’d like to learn, but we are in a tight spot right now. I’d prefer to be educated when nothing tries to break in and eat me.”

  “Nothing will breach these walls, little engineer. But you won’t be able to learn from me afterwards. There are rules, hard-coded rules I have to adhere to. I cannot order the ATUs to break down the interior of my visitor center to form flammable components. I cannot add defects. Habitat destruction is beyond my authorization. As is sending the weavers out of the habitat to tunnel as long as they are integrated in the defense matrix. You have to take your weavers back. Mink knows how.”

  I jumped up from the resting place I had found when they had gone into technical details. “I told you no, Orion!”

  The others looked at me in puzzlement. They didn’t understand. I had not abandoned my old teacher, and I wouldn’t abandon my new one, even if he had found better students now. The stabs of jealousy I had felt since Orion had begun to focus his enthusiasm on the herders subsided, though, when he took me to the side. “I can’t give them back. So I need your help, and I’m very sorry for your inconvenience.” He hovered closer, so close that for the first time I got a look beyond the bowl and saw more than just a hint of his eyes. They were bright and very blue, luminous like the worlds I had seen in his vision. “Mink. Most curious of explorers. You should know that nothing will change if you keep clinging to the long-forgotten remnants of the past. I don’t belong here, and you know it. You opened my eyes to it. It would be a sad existence indeed to stay back with this knowledge, waiting forever. And I would have no one else lay me to rest.”

  “No! Laying to rest is for ghosts. You . . . are something else, Orion. I gave you a name. You showed me the worlds.” I flicked my tongue, affectionately now, and in affect, because it passed through him yet again.

  “Then save what’s left of me.” He drifted backwards, beckoning me to follow him. “Not these outdated projections, but what I stand for. This is my purpose after all, educating the next generation about becoming explorers, builders, spacefarers. Now go and save your tribe!”

  He had led me to the gigantic metal tube, and pointed up its sleek form. Above its upper end, where it was still fastened to the ceiling, one of the dome segments was missing, big enough for a lithe scout to squeeze through.

  I shook my head with closed eyes. Imagined one way it would all end, if I did nothing, and another, and another, all equally grim. When I finally buckled, I swallowed everything I wanted to say and turned to technicalities. “If I go, will there be enough time to teach them what they need to know?”

  “They are quite adept already. They might have used high-tech tools to build spoons, but they are master-builders in their own way. I’ll teach them everything they need to know about ATU coordination. I’ll try to attend the process as long as I can, but as you know, residual energies are nothing but a short echo.” He came closer, as if to take me in his insubstantial embrace. I wasn’t entirely sure if I really felt his warmth or just imagined it. “I’m sorry you have to do this, to go into danger for me. But I’m glad you found me, I truly am, Mink. I’m glad I was not forever alone. Now don’t you worry. Just remember, beyond the darkness, worlds are waiting.”

  What I saw when I climbed the rocket tube to the outside of the dome was a sea of writhing russet bodies. Rustbreed reek permeated the air, legs clattered like an upcoming storm. It made me understand, more than anything else, that there was no way for me to go back down and sit it out. To wait for another plan, a miracle, a change of rules, would have been madness. There was a hard-coded rule of the tribes: nobody survived a rustbreed colony. Vanguard, yes, even the first waves of the colony proper. But those below had already settled in, infesting the whole area. And yet I might be able to save everyone. Everyone alive, at least.

  I looked down through the hole in the ceiling one last time. Even Asper still shied when Orion came close to point something out, and the others kept more than a healthy distance. They did not trust him like I did, but I hoped their shared passion for the weavers and Orion’s attempts to entertain those who were not involved in building would keep the tribe from panicking.

  I turned away and camouflaged. Everybody thought it easy, that I just had to press against any random surface and magically took on its color. But it’s not like that. It is a process, a transformation, and it’s more than scale-deep. The colors are a mental thing. My whole body wanted to scream danger in bright yellows and reds, and I had to convince it to calm down. When I felt positively invisible, I took up the rope and began my treacherous way down the side of the dome.

  Even camouflaged, it was harrowing to see this dead place writhe with a host of centipedes prepared to tear me apart. After our first flight, there was not much left in my vial of extract from rustbreed scent glands, so I didn’t fiddle with droplets, but threw the whole thing to shatter far from the place where they were clustered, obsessed with this frustratingly thin wall separating them from a tribe’s worth of a feast. The whole ground seemed to ripple as they moved to investigate, and I was able to slip past the few remaining patrols.

  I was possibly the very first scout to be led to a heart-chamber by the ghost’s own words. It was located in one of the tall, broken buildings, beyond debris-strewn staircases descending far down into the bowels of the earth, into labyrinthine hallways with doors Orion had taught me to navigate. A true Clusterhaunt hideout, if there had ever been one. The entrance was signed in the way he had said it would, and I made short work of its grade-4 lock with a vial of potent acid. This was, after all, my trade.

  I closed the door carefully behind me, then I looked around. And the moment I saw what this room was, my chest ached for Orion.

  It was a cauldron of ghosts. It was a grave.

  On its other end, massive vanes behind a metal grate streamed air into my face, sufficiently cool to immobilize anyone exhausted enough to give in to the cold. There were hearts aplenty, rack upon rack, neatly placed in their boxes. But only one was still beating.

  “Orion.” I stood transfixed by the slow pulses of light emanating from the box, placed my hand upon it like I had never been able to with his manifestation in the dome. Then I began to chant, because it was the only way to get moving again, to sink into the routine of a duty I had done so very often.

  As I took down my tool sash and put on my gloves, I sang the Song of Passing, to tell the ghost that the sins of the past would be set right and there was no reason to linger, but I soon slipped into my own verses. I sang of the vastness of the fallen world and the vastness beyond, and I hoped it was bearable because he had my voice guiding him along. I sang of worlds beyond the blackness and a bowl full of stars, and I took my engraved pliers and plucked and cut at the right places, as gently as I could and with a touch that I hoped conveyed love, not violence, until the very last bluish light on the heart slowly faded.

  A noise I had not perceived till now ground to a halt, and the breath of cool air on my face died. I let my own breath go in an anguished rush and slumped down on the lifeless heart-box, without a care for my unprotected face and arms.

  At the afterthought of residual energies, I jerked up. Maybe there was still time for a proper farewell. I forcefully banned my grieving paleness and ran.

  I came back to a darkened dome.

  I knew what to anticipate: weavers under the control of our tribe again, flowing together to use up all the interior material of the visitor center to build secretly under the earth, slowly, but steadily creating the trap. The moment the weavers came together for their task, the rustbreed were dead already, their time burning down with every spun thread of tunnel, pipe, fuel, until they faced their immolation. I should have been glad to see the plan in motion.

  Still, when I saw no ghostly lights shine from within the dome, my heart sank. I was too late. The last emanations of Orion had
occurred without me. But then I heard the music.

  Of all the things he could have repaired, of all the things he could have done with his last energies, he had chosen his beloved music. It was indeed very inspiring, swelling like the songs of a dozen tribes woven into one, ethereal, rising ever higher, tugging at the soul and then taking it along in a thunderous rush. The hexagons of the ceiling had been shaded to blackness, and I scampered down the metal tube of the rocket into a darkness speckled with the fearful eyes of my tribe under this display of ghostly power. Because there was also light.

  Lights dotted the blackness. Clear and bright, beckoning, shining through the fabric of the artificial night. A few lone pinpoints first, then scattered scintillating clusters, until an abundance of lights pulsed above us. And as I came to stand among my people on the ground and let my gaze be drawn up, it was as if the domed ceiling had dissolved into an infinite, vast space, stretching out forever before our eyes, close enough to touch if we just strove to reach it.

  None of us had ever seen the stars, but our hearts recognized them. They looked just like so many camps in the sky, bug-catcher lamps in the darkness, and I could not have been the only one to wonder what tribes lived up there.

  Nobody made a sound, and only when the surging song Orion played for us ascended into our own Paean of Manifest Horizons did they move, like a collective sigh. And I could see that he had entered their hearts now, that he had become our ghost, with this last show, his star-laden farewell. Renke was studying their faces as well, and when she caught me looking, she simply nodded her acknowledgement.

  And so when the weavers began to move, precisely coordinated, and when we began to hear the rustbreed blindly throwing themselves at the walls again, not knowing that even now their doom was in the making, and when the stars winked out in large swathes and it all went dark, our tribe sang on in the vast blackness, sang verses of new horizons and our ghost guiding us, and our voices filled the dome like an elegy, like a hymn, and took on a shape of their own, a shape of things to come.