The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  4. The Sport of Kings

  The day of the drop dawned bright and cold—at least it was bright and cold when I went out on the balcony beside the carport to suit up for my ride.

  Somewhat to my surprise, Miss Feng was already up and waiting for me with a hot flask of coffee, a prophylactic sober-up, and a good-luck cigar. "Is this competition entirely safe, Sir?" she enquired as I chugged my espresso.

  "Oh, absolutely not," I reassured her, "but I'll feel much better afterward! Nothing like realizing you're millimeters away from flaming meteoritic death to get the old blood pumping, what?"

  "One couldn't say." Miss Feng looked doubtful as she accepted the empty flask. "One's normal response to incendiary situations that get the blood pumping is a wound dressing and an ambulance. Or to keep the employer from walking into the death trap in the first place. Ahem. I assume Sir intends to survive the experience?"

  "That's the idea." I grinned like an idiot, feeling the familiar pulse of excitement. It takes a lot to drive off the black dog of depression, but dodging the bullet tends to send it to the kennels for a while. "By the way, if Laura calls could you tell her I'm dying heroically to defend her virtue or something? I'll see her after—oh, that reminds me! Abdul al-Matsumoto has invited us—all the survivors, I mean—to a weekend party at his place on Mars. So if you could see that the gig is ready to leave after my drop as soon as I've dressed for dinner, and I don't suppose you could make sure there's a supply of food for the little monster, could you? If we leave him locked in the garret dungeon he can't get into trouble, not beyond eating the curtains—"

  Miss Feng cleared her throat and looked at me reproachfully. "Sir did promise his sister to look after the beast in person, didn't he?"

  I stared at her, somewhat taken aback. "Dash it all, are you implying . . . ?"

  Miss Feng handed me my pre-emptive victory cigar. She continued, in a thoughtful tone of voice: "Has Sir considered that it might be in his best interests—should he value the good opinion of his sister—to bring Jeremy along? After all, Lady Fiona's on Mars, too, even if she's preoccupied with the après ski circuit. If by some mischance she were to visit the Emir's palace and find Sir sans Jeremy it might be more than trivially embarrassing."

  "Dash it, you're right. I suppose I'll have to pack the bloody pachyderm, won't I? What a bore. Will he fit in the trunk?"

  Miss Feng sighed, very quietly. "I believe that may be a remote theoretical possibility. I shall endeavor to find out while Sir is enjoying himself not dying."

  "Try beer," I called as I picked up my surfboard and climbed aboard the orbital delivery jitney. "Jeremy loves beer!" Miss Feng bowed as the door closed. I hope she doesn't give him too much, I thought. Then the gravity squirrelizer chittered to itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet, and tried to rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and waited for orbit. I wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of my proposed course of action—there are few predicaments as grim as facing a mammoth with a hangover across the breakfast table—but Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort, and I supposed I'd just have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath, waited another sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of hostile vacuum.

  The drop went smoothly—as I suppose you guessed, or I wouldn't be here to bend your ear with the story, what? The adrenaline rush of standing astride a ten-centimeter-thick surfboard as it bumps and vibrates furiously in the hypersonic air-flow, trying to throw you off into the blast-furnace tornado winds of re-entry, is absolutely indescribable. So is the sight of the circular horizon flattening and growing, coming up to batter at your feet with angry fists of plasma. Ah, what rhapsody! What delight! I haven't got a poetic bone in my body, but when you tap into Toadsworth outside of the clubhouse's suppressor field that's the kind of narcotic drivel he'll feed you. I think he's a jolly good poet, for an obsessive-compulsive clankie with a staircase phobia and knobbly protrusions; but, at any rate, a more accurate description of competitive orbital re-entry diving I haven't heard from anyone recently.

  A drop doesn't take long. The dangerous stage lasts maybe twenty minutes from start to finish, and only the last five minutes is hot. Then you slow to subsonic velocity and let go of your smoldering surfboard, and pray to your ancestors that your parachute is folded smartly, because it would be mortifying to have to be rescued by the referee's skiff. Especially if they don't get to you until after you complete your informal enquiry into lithobraking, eh?

  There was a high overcast as I came hurtling in across Utah, and I think I might have accidentally zigged instead of zagging a little too firmly as I tried to see past a wall of cloud ahead and below me, because when my fireball finally dissipated I found myself skidding across the sky about fifty kilometers off course. This would be embarrassing enough on its own, but then my helmet helpfully highlighted three other competitors—Abdul among them!—who were much closer to the target zone. I will confess I muttered an unsportingly rude word at that juncture, but the game's the thing and it isn't over 'til it's over.

  In the end I touched down a mere thirty-three thousand meters off-base, and a couple of minutes later the referees ruled I was third on target. Perry O'Peary—who had been leading me—managed to make himself the toast of the match before he reached the tropopause by way of a dodgy ring seal on his left knee. Dashed bad play, that, but at least he died with his boots on—even if they were glowing red-hot and welded to his ankles.

  I caught a lift the rest of the way to the drop base from one of the referee skiffs. As I tromped across the dusty desert floor in my smoldering armor, feeling fully alive for the first time in weeks, I found the party already in full swing. Abdul's entourage, all wearing traditional kimonos and burnooses, had brought along a modified camel that widdled champagne in copious quantities. He held up a huge platinum pitcher: "Drinks are on me!" he yodeled as Tolly Forsyth and some rum cove of a Grand Vizier—Toshiro Ibn Cut-Throat, I think—hoisted him atop their shoulders and danced a victory mazurka.

  "Jolly good show, old son!" I called, ditching my helmet and gloves gratefully and pouring a beaker of bubbly over my steaming head. "Bottoms up!"

  "B'm's up undeed!" Abdul sprayed camel flux everywhere in salute. He was well into the spirit of things, I could tell; indeed, the spirit of things was well into him.

  Ibn Cut-Throat's kid brother sidled up behind me. "If Ralphie-sama would care to accompany me to His Majesty's brother's pleasure barge, we will be departing for Mars as soon as the rest of the guests arrive," he intimated.

  "Rest of the guests? Capital, capital!" I glanced round in search of my clankie doxy, but there was no sign of Laura. Which was dashed strange, for she'd normally be all over me by this point in the proceedings: my nearly being turned off in front of an audience usually turned her on like a knife-switch. "Who else is coming?"

  "Lots of people." Ibn Cut-Throat Junior looked furtive: "It's a very big party, as befits the prince's birthday. Did you know it was his birthday . . . ? It's a theme party, of course, in honor of the adoptive ancestors of his ancient line, the house of Saud."

  Abdul al-Matsumoto is as much an authentic prince of Araby as I am a scion of the MacGregor, but that's the price we all pay for being descended from the nouveau riche who survived the Great Downsizing hundreds of years ago. Our ancestors bought the newly vacated titles of nobility, and consequently we descendants are forced to learn the bally traditions that go with them. I spent years enduring lessons in dwarf-tossing and caber-dancing, not to mention damaging my hearing learning to play the electric bagpipes, but Abdul has it worse: he's required by law to go around everywhere with a tea-towel on his head and to refrain from drinking fermented grape juice unless it's been cycled through the kidneys of a re-engineered dromedary. This aristocracy lark has its down side, you mark my words.

  "A theme party," I mused, removing my face from my cup. "That sounds like fun. But I was pl
anning on taking my gig. Is that okey-dokey, as they say? Is there room in the imperial marina?"

  "Of course," said the vizier, leering slightly as a shapely femme wearing a belly-dancer's costume sashayed past. I noticed with distaste his hairless face and the pair of wizened testicles on a leather cord around his neck: some people think too much testosterone makes a cove stupid, but there's such a thing as going too far, what? "Just remember, it's a fancy-dress party. The theme is the thousand nights and one night, in honor of and for the selection of His Excellency's newest concuboid. His Excellency says you should feel free to bring a guest or two if you like. If you need an outfit—"

  "I'm sure my household wardrobe will be able to see to my needs," I said, perhaps a trifle sharply. "See you there!"

  Ibn Cut-Throat bowed and scraped furiously as he backed away from me. Something odd's going on here, I realized, but before I could put my finger on it there was a whoosh and I saw the familiar sight of my gig—well, actually it's Uncle Featherstonehaugh's, but as he's not due back for six years I don't think that matters too much—descending to a perfect three-point landing.

  I walked over to it slowly, lost in thought, only to meet Miss Feng marching down the ramp. "I didn't know you could fly," I said.

  "My usual employer requires a full pilot's qualification, Sir. Military unrestricted license with interstellar wings and combat certification." She cleared her throat: "Among other skills." She took in my appearance, from scorched ablative boots to champagne hairstyle: "I've taken the liberty of laying out Sir's smoking jacket in the master stateroom. Can I suggest a quick shower might refresh the parts that Sir's friends' high spirits have already reached?"

  "You may suggest anything you like, Miss Feng, I have complete confidence in your professional discretion. I should warn you I have a guest tagging along, but he won't be any trouble. If you show him to the lounge while I change, we shall be able to depart promptly. I don't suppose you've heard anything from Laura?"

  She shook her head minutely. "Not so much as a peep, Sir." She stepped aside. "So, I'm to set course for Mars as soon as the guest is aboard? Very good, Sir. I shall be on the bridge if you need me."

  It appeared that Miss Feng was not only an accomplished butler, but a dashed fine pilot as well. Would miracles never cease?

  5. Miss Feng serves the Wrong Beer

  Uncle Featherstonehaugh's boat is furnished in white oak panels with brass trim, ochre crushed velvet curtains, and gently hissing gas lamps. A curving sofa extends around the circumference of the lounge, and for those tiresome long voyages to the outer system there are cozy staterooms accessible through hidden sliding panels in the walls. It is a model of understated classical luxury in which a cove and his fellows can get discreetly bladdered while watching the glorious relativistic fireworks in the crystal screen that forms the ceiling. However, for the journey to Abdul's pleasure dome on Mars it suffered from three major drawbacks. For one thing, in a fit of misplaced bonhomie I'd offered Edgestar Wolfblack a lift, and old Edgy wasn't the best company for a post-drop pre-prandial, on account of his preferred tipples being corrosive or hypergolic, or both. Secondly, Laura was still making her absence felt. And finally, as the icing on the cake, so to speak, Miss Feng had locked Jeremy in the luggage compartment. He was kicking up a racket as only a sober dwarf mammoth with a hangover can, and I could barely hear myself think over the din.

  "Dash it all, how much beer did you give him?" I asked my butler.

  "Two liters, Sir," Miss Feng replied. "Of the rather elderly Bragote from the back of your uncle's laboratory. I judged it the least likely to be missed."

  "Oh dear God!" I cried.

  "Bragh-ought?" echoed Edgy, as a plaintive squeal and a loud thud echoed from the under floor bay. By the sound of things Jeremy was trying to dash his brains out on the undercarriage. (Unfortunately a dwarf mammoth's skull is thick enough to repel meteors and small anti-matter weapons.)

  "Was that a mistake?" Miss Feng enquired, unexpectedly tentatively.

  I sighed. "You're new to the household, so I suppose you weren't to know this, but anything Uncle Featherstonehaugh brewed is best treated as an experiment in creative chemical warfare. He was particularly keen on the Bragote: it's a mediaeval recipe and it requires a few years to mature to the consistency of fine treacle, but once you dilute the alcohol it's an excellent purgative. Or so I'm told," I added hastily, not wanting to confess to any teenage indiscretions.

  "Oh dear." Her brow wrinkled. "One suspected it was a little past its prime. There is another firkin in the hold, just in case it becomes necessary to sedate Jeremy again."

  "I don't think that will work," I said regretfully. "He's not entirely stupid. Uncle was working on a thesis that the Black Death of 1349 wasn't actually a plague but a hangover."

  "Blackdeath? Is no posthuman of that nomenclature in my clade," Edgy complained.

  BUMP went the floor beneath my feet, causing my teeth to vibrate. "Only two hours to Mars," Miss Feng observed. "If Sir will excuse me, I have to see to his costume before arrival." She retreated into one of the staterooms, leaving me alone with old Edgy and the pachydermal punctuation.

  6. Pleasure Domes of Mars: A Primer

  I arrived on Mars somewhat rattled, but physically none the worse for wear. Miss Feng had rustled up a burnoose, djellaba, and antique polyester two-piece for me from somewhere, so that I looked most dashing, absolutely in character as a highly authentic Leisure Suit Larry of Arabia. I tried to inveigle her into costume, but she demurred: "I am your butler, Sir, not a partygoer in my own capacity. It wouldn't be right," she said, tucking an emergency vial of after-shave in my breast pocket. It's hard to argue with such certainty, although I have a feeling that she only said it because she didn't approve of the filmy harem pants and silver chainmail brassiere I'd brought along in hope of being able to tempt Laura into them. Edgestar we dressed in a rug and trained to spit on demand: he could be my camel, just as long as nobody expected him to pass champagne through his reactor's secondary coolant circuit. Jeremy emerged from storage pallid and shaking, so Miss Feng and I improvised a leash and decided to introduce him as the White Elephant. Not that a real White Elephant would have menaced the world with such a malign, red-rimmed glare—or have smelled so unpleasantly fusty—but you can't have everything.

  A word about Abdul's digs. Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger brother of the Emir of Mars, lives in a madly gothic palace on the upper slopes of Elysium Mons, thirteen kilometers above the dusty plain. Elysium Mons is so big you'd hardly know you were on a mountain, so at some time in the preceding five centuries one of Abdul's more annoying ancestors vandalized the volcano by carving out an areophysical folly, a half-scale model of Mount Everest protruding from the rim of the caldera. Thus, despite the terraforming that has turned the crumbly old war god into a bit of a retirement farm these days, Abdul's pleasure dome really is a dome, of the old-fashioned do not break glass, do not let air out (unless you want to die) variety.

  Ground Control talked Miss Feng down into the marina below the sparkly glass facets of the dome, then sent a crawler tunnel to lock on to the door before old Edgy could leap out onto the surface and test his vacuum seals.

  The door opened with a clunk. "Let's go, what?" I asked Jeremy. Jeremy sat down, swiveled one jaundiced eye toward me, and emitted a plaintive honk. "Be like that, then," I muttered, bending to pick him up. Dwarf mammoths are heavy, even in Martian gravity, but I managed to tuck him under my arm and, thus encumbered, led the way down the tube toward Abdul's reception.

  If you are ever invited to a party by a supreme planetary overlord's spoiled playboy of a younger brother, you can expect to get tiresomely lost unless you remember to download a map of the premises into your monocle first. Abdul's humble abode boasts 2,428 rooms, of which 796 are bedrooms, 915 are bathrooms, 62 are offices, and 147 are dungeons. (There is even a choice of four different Planetary Overlord Command Bunkers, each with their own color-coordinated suite of Doomsday Weapon Con
trol Consoles, for those occasions on which one is required to entertain multiple planetary overlords.)

  If the palace was maintained the old-fashioned way—by squishie servants—it would be completely unmanageable: but it was designed in the immediate aftermath of the Martian hyper-scabies outbreak of 2407 that finished off those bits of the solar system that hadn't already been clobbered by the Great Downsizing. Consequently it's full of shiny clicky things that scuttle about when you're not watching and get underfoot as they polish the marble flags and repair the amazingly intricate lapis lazuli mosaics and re-fill the oil lamps with extra-virgin olive oil. It still needs a sizable human staff to run it, but not the army you'd expect for a pile several sizes larger than the Vatican Hilton.

  I bounced out of the boarding tube into the entrance hall and right into the outstretched arms of Abdul, flanked by two stern, silent types with swords, and a supporting cast of houris, hashishin, and hangers-on. "Ralphie-san!" he cried, kissing me on both cheeks and turning to show me off to the crowd. "I want you all to meet my honored guest, Ralph MacDonald Suzuki of MacDonald, Fifth Earl of That Clan, a genuine Japanese Highland Laird from old Scotland! Ralphie is a fellow skydiver and all-around good egg. Ralph, this is—harrumph!—Vladimir Illich of Ulianov, Chief Commissar of the Soviet Onion." Ulianov grinned: under the false pate I could see it was our old drinking chum Boris the Tsarevitch. "And this—why, Edgy! I didn't recognize you in that! Is it a llama? How very realistic!"

  "No, is meant to be a monkey," explained Wolfblack, twirling so that his false camel-skin disguise flapped about. I opened my mouth to tell him that the barrel Miss Feng had strapped to his back to provide support for the hump had slipped, but he turned to Abdul: "You like?"

  "Jolly good, that outfit!"

  "Pip-pip," said Toadsworth, whirring alongside with a glass of the old neurotoxins gripped in one telescoping manipulator. I think it might have been a high-bandwidth infoburst rather than a toast, but due to my unfortunate hereditary allergy to implants I'm very bad at spotting that kind of thing. "Which way to the bar, old fellow?"