The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3

by Neil Clarke

  There was no answer, but then again I had expected none. We had been distant enemies, then closer enemies, and for a short time we had been something other than enemies, although I suppose it would be stretching a point to say that we had become friends. Allies in adversity, perhaps. Two unwilling souls pitched into the same crushing predicament.

  I thought about fear, and wondered how it was for Greymouth. Fear was a strange thing. You might think that a fearless soldier would be the best soldier of all, willing to accept any hazard, even the likelihood of certain death. But a fearless soldier knows no restraint. A fearless soldier will throw themselves into the fray without a moment’s consideration, even when their actions are militarily valueless. A fearless soldier is a weapon without a safety lock.

  No. Our leaders–our Battle-Queens and Two-Minds–must surely have come to the same independent conclusion. Fear is useful. More than useful: necessary. Spice your soldiers with a little fear and they make fewer mistakes.

  Greymouth felt it. So did I.

  “Yes.”

  It was the soundless expression of an idea, but it was not at all like the inner voice of my head. The word had bloomed sharp and bright as if a small mine had just gone off inside my skull, lighting it up from within.

  “Greymouth?” I asked.

  “I think we sense each other, Battle-Mother. How odd it is to have your thoughts flowering inside me.”

  “How is this possible?”

  “I do not know. But if the native organism has penetrated both our suits, both our bodies, and formed a connective network between our nervous systems …” Greymouth’s chain of thoughts quenched out.

  “It’s all right. I don’t have a better theory. And I think you must be right. But if that’s the case then the network must be doing a lot more than simply wiring our minds together. It must be processing, translating idiosyncratic representations from one internal schema to another. Bridging vast gulfs of mental representation. How is it doing that? More to the point, why? What possible evolutionary pressure could ever have selected for this capability?”

  “It is happening, Battle-Mother. Perhaps the wisest thing would be to accept it. Unless, of course, you are merely a figment of my own terrified imagination.”

  “I don’t feel like a figment. Do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I was thinking about being alone,” I went on. I was speaking, for now, but I had the sense that before very long even speaking would be superfluous, as the network extended its consolidation of us. “I didn’t like it. It was better when we were able to talk.”

  “Then it is very fortunate indeed,” Greymouth said, “that one of us did not kill the other.”

  8.

  My faceplate displays were nearly all dimmed-out, locomotive and life-support power nearly drained. In a very short while the struggling refrigeration system would fail and the atmosphere’s heat would lance its way through to me. I hoped it would be fast.

  “We will die here,” Greymouth said, his thoughts bursting into my head like a chain of novae, each flare stained with a distinct emotional hue. Acceptance, regret, sadness, a kind of shivering awe. To die was a strange enough thing, even for a soldier. To die like this, in the black crush of a superjovian, on a tomb of floating rock, one enemy bound to the next by a glowing tracery of living matter: that was a strangeness beyond anything we had been prepared for.

  “Maybe they’ll find us some day.”

  “Maybe they will not.” But after a silence that could have been minutes or hours, for all that I had any clear grasp on time’s passing, Greymouth added: “I hope that they will. I hope that they will find us together here and think of what became of us. Your side or mine, I do not think it will matter. They will see us and realise that we chose not to kill. We chose not to destroy. That we chose this better path.”

  “Do you think that’ll change their minds?”

  The nova flare conveyed a prickle of emerald green, what I had begun to think was wry amusement, or bitter irony. “If minds are capable of changing.”

  “Do you think they are?”

  “Ours have changed.”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “They have.”

  “Then there is hope, Battle-Mother. Not much, but more than we had any right to expect.”

  “Greymouth,” I said. “Can you still move? Just a little?”

  “Not much of me. And any movement will only draw power from my central reserve.”

  “I know. It’s the same here. I’m down to my last few drops. We’re very different, aren’t we? But put two soft-bodied creatures inside metal armour and drop them into a thousand atmospheres, and we’re more alike than we knew.”

  “I do not see how moving will be of much benefit to either of us,” Greymouth said.

  More systems faded from my faceplate. What remained was a litany of dire warnings, and even those were faint and flickering. It seemed warmer than only a few moments before. Had the thermal regulation already failed?

  “It won’t be of any benefit to us,” I said. “Not at all. But I’m thinking of those who come after us–those who’ll find us.”

  “If they find us.”

  “They will. I believe it. Call it an act of faith, whatever you wish. But this system’s too useful for either side to be left alone for long. They’ll come, and they’ll probe this atmosphere again, and they’ll find the floating mountains, and they’ll find traces that don’t belong. Metallic echoes, technological signatures. Two bodies. Greymouth and Battle-Mother.”

  “Next to each other. Dead and gone. They will know nothing of our thoughts, nothing of what has passed between us.”

  “They won’t need to.”

  I moved my arm. It was sluggish, my suit barely responsive. I felt as if I was using all my own strength to fight the metal prison in which I lay. Only a few faint symbols remained on my faceplate. An ominous silence now filled my suit, where before there had been the labouring of the overloaded life-support system. It was done, expired. Each breath I took would be staler and warmer than the last.

  Still I reached. I stretched.

  “Greymouth,” I breathed.

  “I am reaching. It is hard, Battle-Mother. So hard.”

  “I know. But do it anyway. For both of us.”

  “They will wonder why we did this.”

  “Let them.”

  I had almost nothing left to give. I have almost nothing. For a few moments I can still hold the chain of events in my head, can still remember what it was that brought me to this moment. The war, the battle, the flight, the shield, the decimation, the loss of my squadron, my ship, my crew, all my glorious children. I think that if I hold these things with enough clarity, some trace of them may escape me, some part of Greymouth’s story as well, and between us we might leave some imprint of our memories in the living glow of the rock.

  But I cannot be sure, only that it is better to die with a good thought in one’s head than a bad one.

  That is what I am thinking when Greymouth touches my hand, and my fingers close.

  And we holdfast.

  Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-three books, including twenty-six novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent work is Tomorrow’s Kin (Tor, 2017), which, like much of her work, concerns genetic engineering. Kress’s fiction has been translated into Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read. In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad, including a visiting lectureship at the University of Leipzig and a recent writing class in Beijing. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

  EVERY HOUR OF LIGHT AND DARK

  Nancy Kress

  1668


  Delft, shrouded in rain, was uniformly gray. Hunched against the cold and wet, the artist walked from Oude Langendijk along the canal to his patron’s house. Much as he hated this sort of occasion, inside the house would be warmth, food, wine. And quiet. His own house, crowded with children, was never quiet.

  “You are welcome,” said his patron’s wife shyly as a servant took his cloak. “Pieter will be glad to see you.”

  Johannes doubted that. This celebration was not about him, nor one of his paintings, nor even the newly acquired Maes painting being shown for the first time. This celebration was about the patron: his wealth, his taste, his power. Johannes smiled at his pretty wife, another acquisition, and passed into the first of many lavishly furnished rooms, all warm from good fires.

  In this room hung one of his own paintings. Johannes glanced at it in passing, then stopped abruptly. His eyes widened. He took a candle from a table and held it close to the picture. Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet—he had painted it four years ago. Catharina had been the model. She sat, heavily pregnant, on a wooden chair, the light from an unseen window illuminating the top of her fair hair as she bent over her work. A broken toy lay at her feet, and what could be seen of her expression was somber. On the table beside her were her work basket, a glass of wine, and a pearl necklace, tossed carelessly as if she had thrown it off in discomfort, or despair. On the wall behind her was a painting-within-a-painting, van Honthorst’s Lute Player. The painstaking detail in the smaller picture, the hint of underpainted blue in Catharina’s burgundy-colored dress, the warm light on the whitewashed walls—how long it took to get that right!—all shone in the glow from Johannes’s candle.

  But he had not made this painting.

  Inch by inch, he examined it, ignoring guests who passed him, spoke to him. Lady Sewing a Child’s Bonnet was the most skillful forgery he had ever seen, but forgery it was. Did Pieter know? Presumably not, or the picture would not still be on the patron’s walls. How had it come there? Who had painted it? And—

  What should Johannes do about this?

  The decision came swiftly—he should do nothing. He owed money all over the city. He had hopes of Pieter’s commissioning another painting from him soon, perhaps tonight. The original could not have been switched with the forgery without Pieter’s consent, not in this well-guarded house, and Pieter would not welcome attention drawn to whatever scheme he was participating in. Say nothing.

  “Ah, Johannes!” said a booming voice behind him. “Admiring your own work, you vain man?”

  Johannes turned to face the guest of honor, Nicolaes Maes. “No,” he said. Maes waited, but Johannes said nothing more.

  Not now, not ever.

  2270

  Cran is working on clearances at his console when Tulia bounces into the Project room. “Cran! They chose it! They really chose it!” She grabs his hands and twirls him in circles.

  “Careful! You’ll hit the Squares!”

  She stops moving and drops Cran’s hands. He hears his own tone: sour, disapproving, a cranky old man. He sees that Tulia understands immediately, but understanding isn’t enough to erase the hurt. Torn between them, she chooses hurt.

  “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  “Of course I am,” he says, and forces a smile. And he is happy, in a way. How could he not be—Tulia is him, or at least 32 percent of her genes are. It’s the other 68 percent that prompts this terrible, inexcusable jealousy.

  She says softly, “Maybe next cycle the Gallery will choose one of your pictures.”

  It is the wrong thing to say; they both know that will never happen. Cran does not have Tulia’s talent, has perhaps no talent at all. How does she do it, produce art that is somehow fresh and arresting, after working all day at the Project’s forgeries? How? Sometimes he hates her for it. Does she know this?

  Sometimes he loves her for it. She knows this.

  Cran says, “I am happy for you. But I need to work.”

  Her eyes sharpen. She, after all, is also part of the Project. “Do you have something?”

  “An ancient Egyptian vase, on Square Three. Go look.” She looks, frowning. “We cannot reproduce that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s inside a tomb. We can Transfer a lump of rock and no one would ever know.”

  We could Transfer one of my sculptures, which are just as dreadful as my paintings.

  “The tomb was never opened before—”

  “No.” No one ever names the Madness, if naming can be avoided. Even in a deliberately rational society—legally rational, culturally rational, genetically rational to whatever extent the geneticists can manage—superstitions seep in like moondust in airlocks. No one says the word aloud.

  “Well, that’s wonderful!” Tulia says. “Has the Director vetted it? Have you done the clearances?”

  “Yes, he did, and I’m completing them now. When … when is your Gallery presentation?”

  “Tuesday. I’ll go now. I just wanted to tell you about … about my painting.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Cran says, lying, hoping she doesn’t realize that. Sixty-eight percent foreign genes.

  Tulia leaves. Cran de-opaques the window wall and stares out. The Project is housed in its own dome, and sometimes the bleak lunar landscape calms him when he feels equally bleak. Not, however, this time.

  On the horizon, the lights of Alpha Dome are just visible below stars in the black sky. Alpha was the first, the only dome to exist when the Madness happened on Earth. Six thousand lunar colonists, half of them scientists. They had the best equipment, the best scientific minds, the best planners. Earth had those who could not qualify; Earth had too many people and too many wars; Earth had the ability to create genetically boosted bioweapons so powerful that when the Madness began as just another war, it quickly escalated. In three months everyone on Earth was dead. How could they do that, those Terrans of two centuries ago? Those on Alpha watched in horror. There was nothing they could do except what they did: shoot down both incoming missiles and incoming, infected escapees.

  He was not there, of course. He’s old, but not that old. How long does it take for guilt to evaporate? Longer than two hundred years. Alpha Dome grew to sixteen more domes. If he squints hard, he might be able to see the robots constructing Sigma Dome on the western horizon, or the sprays of dirt thrown up from the borers digging the connecting tunnels. But through all the construction, all the genetic tinkering, all the amazing scientific progress, the guilt has not gone away. We humans murdered our own species. Thus, the Project.

  Or perhaps, Cran thinks, that’s wrong. There is, after all, a strong but polite political faction—all Luna’s political factions are polite, or else they don’t exist—that says the Project should be discontinued and its resources committed to the present and the future, not to rescuing the past. So far, this has not happened.

  It takes Cran nearly an hour to finish the complicated clearance procedures for the Egyptian vase. He finds it hard to concentrate.

  The clearances are approved almost immediately. They are, after all, only a formality; the Director, who is the Project’s expert on art of the ancient world, has already inspected the image glowing in Square Three. Cran has worked a long day and it’s late; he should go home. But he likes working alone at night, and he has the seniority to do so. He gazes at the vase, this exquisite thing that exists in dark beneath tons of rock in a buried tomb a quarter-million miles and three millennia away. A core-formed glass vessel, three inches high, its graceful, elaborately decorated curves once held perfumed ointment or scented oils. Perhaps it still does.

  The Project room is lined with Squares, each a six-foot cube. Some of the Squares are solid real-time alloys; some are virtual simulations; some are not actually there at all—not in time or space. The Project is built on chaos theory, which says that the patterns of spacetime contain something called “strange attractors,” a mathematical concept that Cran doesn’t understand at all. He is, after all, a Project technician,
not a physicist. A senior, trusted technician who will never be an artist.

  Why Tulia? Why not me?

  One of those questions that, like the Madness, has no answer.

  2018

  The guard at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., made his early morning rounds. He unlocked each room, peered in, and moved on. He had worked there a long while and prided himself on knowing exactly what each exhibit held at any given time.

  He unlocked a gallery, glanced in, and stopped cold.

  Not possible.

  This room held the Gallery’s five Vermeers. At present, two were on loan. The other three should be on the off-white walls in their protected frames. They were.

  But—

  “Oh my God,” the guard said under his breath, and then very loudly. His hands shook as he pressed the alarm on his pager.

  2270

  The Transfer happens, as always, blindingly fast. One moment Square Three holds a small stone. The next it holds a delicate purple vase trimmed in gold.

  Cran doesn’t touch it. He follows protocol and calls two members of the Handler Staff. Despite the hour, they both rush to the Project room. Marbet Hammerling’s eyes water, an extravagance that Cran deplores even as he understands it.

  Salvaging anything from the past is a slow, difficult, emotional triumph. Humanity’s artistic heritage lay decaying on a deserted and contaminated Earth; nothing can be brought from the present without bringing contamination with it. But thanks to the genius of the Rahvoli Equations and the engineers who translated them to reality, some things can be saved from the past. Only things less than six cubic feet; only things deemed worthy of the huge expenditure of energy; only things non-living; only things replaced in Transfer by a rough equivalent in weight and size; only replacements that will not change the course of the timestream that has already unfolded. Otherwise, the Transfer simply did not happen. The past could only be disturbed so much.