The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3

by Neil Clarke

  “One, I don’t think you know yourself very well, and two, I liked you much better when we were on the same side.”

  “I’m going to let you meditate on that second bit some other time. In the meantime, let’s get out of here.”

  Meng swallowed. “They’ll shoot us down the moment we get clear of the doors, you know.”

  “Just go, Meng. I’ve got friends. Or did you think I teleported onto this station?”

  “At this point I wouldn’t put anything past you. Okay, you’re webbed in, I’m webbed in, here goes nothing.”

  The maneuver drive grumbled as the Moonsweet Blossom blasted its way out of the bay. No one attempted to close the first set of doors on them. Jedao wondered if the priest was still scrabbling after her hairpins, or if it had to do with the more pragmatic desire to avoid costly repairs to the station.

  The Moonsweet Blossom had few armaments, mostly intended for dealing with high-velocity debris, which was more of a danger than pirates if one kept to the better-policed trade routes. They wouldn’t do any good against Du Station’s defenses. As signals, on the other hand—

  Using the lasers, Jedao flashed HERE WE COME in the merchanter signal code. With any luck, Haval was paying attention.

  At this point, several things happened.

  Haval kicked Teshet in the shin to get him to stop watching a mildly pornographic and not-very-well-acted drama about a famous courtesan from 192 years ago. (“It’s historical so it’s educational!” he protested. “One, we’ve got our signal, and two, I wish you would take care of your urgent needs in your own quarters,” Haval said.)

  Carp 1 through Carp 4 and 7 through 10 launched all their shuttles. Said shuttles were, as Jedao had instructed, full of variable-coefficient lubricant programmed to its liquid form. The shuttles flew toward Du Station, then opened their holds and burned their retro thrusters for all they were worth. The lubricant, carried forward by momentum, continued toward Du Station’s turret levels.

  Du Station recognized an attack when it saw one. However, its defenses consisted of a combination of high-powered lasers, which could only vaporize small portions of the lubricant and were useless for altering the momentum of quantities of the stuff, and railguns, whose projectiles punched through the mass without much effect. Once the lubricant had clogged up the defensive emplacements, Carp 1 transmitted an encrypted radio signal with the command that caused the lubricant to harden in place.

  The Moonsweet Blossom linked up with Haval’s merchant troop. At this point, the Blossom only contained two people, trivial compared to the amount of mass it had been designed to haul. The merchant troop, of course, had just divested itself of its cargo. The nine heptarchate vessels proceeded to hightail it out of there at highly non-freighter accelerations.

  Jedao and Meng swept the Moonsweet Blossom for bugs and other unwelcome devices, an exhausting but necessary task. Then, at what Jedao judged to be a safe distance from Du Station, he ordered Meng to slave it to Carp 1.

  The Carp 1 and Moonsweet Blossom matched velocities, and Jedao and Meng made the crossing to the former. There was a bad moment when Jedao thought Meng was going to unhook their tether and drift off into the smothering dark rather than face their fate. But whatever temptations were running through their head, Meng resisted them.

  Haval and Teshet greeted them on the Carp 1. After Jedao and Meng had shed the suits and checked them for needed repairs, Haval ushered them all into the business office. “I didn’t expect you to spring the trademoth as well as our Shuos friend,” Haval said.

  Meng wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “What about the rest of the crew?” Teshet said.

  “They didn’t make it,” Jedao said, and sneezed. He explained about Meng’s extracurricular activities over the past thirteen years. Then he sneezed again.

  Haval grumbled under her breath. “Whatever the hell you did on Du, Sren, did it involve duels?”

  “‘Sren’?” Meng said.

  “You don’t think I came into the Gwa Reality under my own”—sneeze— “name, did you?” Jedao said. “Anyway, there might have been an incident …”

  Meng groaned. “Just how good is your Tlen Gwa?”

  “Sort of not, apparently,” Jedao said. “I really need to have a word with whoever wrote the Tlen Gwa course. I thought I was all right with languages at the basic phrase level, but was the proofreader asleep the day they approved it?”

  Meng had the grace to look embarrassed. “I may have hacked it.” “You what?”

  “If I’d realized you’d be using it, I wouldn’t have bothered. Botching the language doesn’t seem to have slowed you down any.”

  Wordlessly, Teshet handed Jedao a handkerchief. Jedao promptly sneezed into it. Maybe he’d be able to give his mother a gift of a petri dish with a lovely culture of Gwa-an germs, after all. He’d have to ask the medic about it later.

  Teshet then produced a set of restraints from his pockets and gestured at Meng. Meng sighed deeply and submitted to being trussed up.

  “Don’t look so disappointed,” Teshet said into Jedao’s ear. “I’ve another set just for you.” Then he and Meng marched off to the brig.

  Haval cleared her throat. “Off to the medic with you,” she said to Jedao. “We’d better figure out why your vaccinations aren’t working and if everyone’s going to need to be quarantined.”

  “Not arguing,” Jedao said meekly.

  Some days later, Jedao was rewatching one of Teshet’s pornography dramas while in bed. At least, he thought it was pornography. The costuming made it difficult to tell, and the dialogue had made more sense when he was still running a fever.

  The medic had kept him in isolation until they declared him no longer contagious. Whether due to this precaution or pure luck, no one else came down with the duel disease. They’d given him a clean bill of health this morning, but Haval had insisted that he rest a little longer.

  The door opened. Jedao looked up in surprise.

  Teshet entered with a fresh supply of handkerchiefs. “Well, Jedao, we’ll reenter heptarchate space in two days, high calendar. Any particular orders you want me to relay to Haval?” He obligingly handed over a slate so Jedao could look over Haval’s painstaking, not to say excruciatingly detailed, reports on their current status.

  “Haval’s doing a fine job,” Jedao said, glad that his voice no longer came out as a croak. “I won’t get in her way.” He returned the slate to Teshet.

  “Sounds good.” Teshet turned his back and departed. Jedao admired the view, wishing in spite of himself that the other man would linger.

  Teshet returned half an hour later with two clear vials full of unidentified substances. “First or second?” he said, holding them up to the light one by one.

  “I’m sorry,” Jedao said, “first or second what?”

  “You look like you need cheering up,” Teshet said hopefully. “You want on top? You want me on top? I’m flexible.”

  Jedao blinked, trying to parse this. “On top of wh—” Oh. “What’s in those vials?”

  “You have your choice of variable-coefficient lubricant or goose fat,” Teshet said. “Assuming you were telling the truth when you said it was goose fat. And don’t yell at Haval for letting me into your refrigerator; I did it all on my own. I admit, I can’t tell the difference. As Haval will attest, I’m a dreadful cook, so I didn’t want to fry up some scallion pancakes just to taste the goose fat.”

  Jedao’s mouth went dry, which had less to do with Teshet’s eccentric choice of lubricants than the fact that he had sat down on the edge of Jedao’s bed. “You don’t have anything more, ah, conventional?” He realized that was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth; he’d essentially accepted Teshet’s proposition.

  For the first time, Jedao glimpsed uncertainty in Teshet’s eyes. “We don’t have a lot of time before we’re back in heptarchate space and you have to go back to being a commander and I have to go back to being responsible,” he said softly. “Or
as responsible as I ever get, anyway. Want to make the most of it? Because I get the impression that you don’t allow yourself much of a personal life.”

  “Use the goose fat,” Jedao said, because as much as he liked Teshet, he did not relish the thought of being cemented to Teshet: It would distract Teshet from continuing to analyze his psyche, and, yes, the man was damnably attractive. What the hell, with any luck his mother was never, ever, ever hearing of this. (He could imagine the conversation now: “Garach Jedao Shkan, are you meaning to tell me you finally found a nice young man and you’re still not planning on settling down and providing me extra grandchildren?” And then she would send him more goose fat.)

  Teshet brightened. “You won’t regret this,” he purred, and proceeded to help Jedao undress.

  Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories which have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, and two British Science Fiction Association Awards. Her space opera books include The Tea Master and the Detective, a murder mystery set on a space station in a Vietnamese Galactic empire, inspired by the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Recent works include the Dominion of the Fallen series, set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which comprises The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz, 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, Locus Award finalist), and its standalone sequel The House of Binding Thorns (Ace, Gollancz).

  IN EVERLASTING WISDOM

  Aliette de Bodard

  The path to enlightenment is through obedience to wisdom, and who is wiser than the Everlasting Emperor?

  It’s the words that keep Ai Thi going, day after day—the ceaseless flow of wisdom from the appeaser within her, reminders that the Everlasting Emperor loves her and her sacrifice—that she’s doing her duty, day after day, making sure that nothing discordant or dissident can mar the harmony that keeps the Empire together.

  Her daily rounds take her through the Inner Rings of Vermillion Crab Station: she sits on the train, head lolled back against the window, thinking of nothing in particular as the appeaser does their work, sending the Everlasting Emperor’s words into passengers’ subconscious minds. Ai Thi sees the words take root: the tension leaves the air, the tautness of people’s worries and anger drains out of them, and they relax, faces slack, eyes closed, all thoughts in perfect harmony. The appeaser shifts and twists within Ai Thi, a familiar rhythm of little bubbles in her gut, almost as if she were pregnant with her daughter Dieu Kiem again.

  The worst enemy is the enemy within, because it could wear the face of your brother or mother.

  Loyalty to the Everlasting Emperor should be stronger than the worship offered to ancestors, or the respect afforded to parents.

  The words aren’t meant for Ai Thi: they go through her like running water, from the appeaser to her to the passengers on the train. She’s the bridge—the appeaser is lodged within her, but they’re an alien being and need Ai Thi and her fellow harmonisers to speak the proper language, to teach them the proper words.

  Ai Thi knows all the words. Once, they were the only thing that kept her going.

  It is the duty of children to die for their parents, and the duty of all subjects to give their life for the Everlasting Emperor—though he never asks for more than what is necessary, and reasonably borne.

  Ai Thi has only confused, jumbled memories of her implantation—a white, sterilised room that smells of disinfectant; the smooth voice of doctors and nurses, telling her to lie down on the operating table, that everything will be fine. She woke up with her voice scraped raw, as if she’d screamed for hours; with memories of struggling against restraints—but when she looked at her wrists and ankles, there was no trace of anything, not a single abrasion. And, later, alone in her room, a single, horrifying recollection: asking about painkillers and the doctors shaking their heads, telling her she had to endure it all without help, because analgesics were poison to the appeaser’s metabolism.

  Her roommate Lan says that they do give drugs—something to make the harmonisers forget the pain, the hours spent raving and twisting and screaming while the appeasers burrow into their guts.

  It’s all absurd, of course. It must be false impressions brought on by the drugs and the procedure, for why would the Everlasting Emperor take such bad care of those that serve him?

  Ai Thi remembers waking up at night after the implantation, shivering and shaking with a terrible hunger—she was alone in the darkness, small and insignificant, and she could call for help but she didn’t matter—the doctors had gone home and no one would come, no one remembered she was there. Around her, the shadows of the room seemed to twist and come alive—if she turned and looked away, they would swallow her whole, crush her until nothing was left. She reached for the rice cakes on the table—and they slid into her stomach, as thin and as tasteless as paper, doing nothing to assuage the hunger. Empty, she was empty, and nothing would ever fill that hole within her …

  Not her hunger. Not her loneliness. The appeaser’s. Cut off from the communion of their own kind, they so desperately needed contact to live, so desperately craved warmth and love.

  You’re not alone, Ai Thi whispered. You are a subject of the Everlasting Emperor, and he loves you as a father loves his children.

  You’re not alone.

  Night after night, telling them the words from her training, the ones endlessly welling up out of her, like blood out of a wound. The Everlasting Emperor was human once, but he transcended that condition. He knows all our weaknesses, and he watches over us all. He asks only for respect and obedience in return for endless love.

  You—we are part of something so much greater than ourselves: an Empire that has always been, that will always be as timeless as the Heavens. Through us—through the work of hundreds, of thousands like us, it will endure into this generation, and into the next.

  Night after night, until the words became part of the appeaser—burrowed into them as they had burrowed within Ai Thi’s guts—until they ceaselessly spoke in her sleep, giving her back her own words with unwavering strength.

  Beware what you read. The Quynh Federation reaches everywhere, to disseminate their lies:you cannot trust news that hasn’t been vetted.

  Ai Thi gets down at her usual station: White Crane Monastery, close to the barracks. She has one last quadrant to go through on her rounds, Eggshell Celadon, making sure that the families there understand the cost of war fought beyond the Empire’s boundaries, and the necessity of the war effort.

  As she turns into a corridor decorated with a splash of stars, she hears the footsteps behind her. A menial, going to work—a kitchen hand, like Ai Thi used to be before she volunteered—or a sweeper, supervising bots as they clean the quadrant. But at the next corridor—one that holds the machinery of the station rather than cramped family compartments—the footsteps are still here.

  She turns, briefly, catching a glimpse of hempen clothes, torn sleeves, and the glint of metal. From the appeaser, a vague guess that whoever it is is determined: the appeaser can’t read human thoughts, can’t interpret them, or the harmonisers’ and enforcers’ work would be that much simpler. What they know from human behaviour, they learned from Ai Thi.

  Captain Giang’s advice to her trainees: always choose the ground for a confrontation, rather than having choice forced on you.

  Ai Thi stops, at the middle of the corridor—no nooks or crannies, no alcoves where her pursuer can hide. Within her the appeaser is silent and still, trying to find the proper words of the Everlasting Emperor for the circumstances, gathering strength for a psychic onslaught.

  She’s expected a group of dissidents—Sergeant Bac said they were getting bolder in the daily briefing—but it’s just one person.

  A woman in shapeless bot-milled clothes, bottom of the range—face gaunt, eyes sunken deep, lips so thin they look like the slash of a knife. Her hands
rests inside her sleeves, fingers bunched. She has a knife or a gun. “Harmoniser,” the woman whispers. “How can you—how can you—”

  Ai Thi spreads her hands, to show that she is unarmed; though it isn’t true. The appeaser is her best and surest weapon, but only used at the proper time. “I serve the Everlasting Emperor.”

  The woman doesn’t answer. She merely quickens her pace. Her hand swings out, and it’s a gun that she holds, the barrel glinting in the station’s light, running towards Ai Thi and struggling to aim.

  No time.

  Ai Thi picks one saying, one piece of wisdom, from all the ones swarming in her mind. The Everlasting Emperor loves all his subjects like children, and it is the duty of children to bow down to their parents.

  Bow down.

  And she lets the appeaser hurl it like a thrown stone, straight into the woman’s thoughts. No subtlety, not the usual quiet influence, the background to everyone’s daily lives—just a noise that overwhelms everything like a scream.

  Bow down.

  The woman falters, even as her gun locks into place: there’s a sound like thunder—Ai Thi throws herself to the side, momentarily deafened—comes up for breath, finding herself still alive, the appeaser within her driving her on.

  Bow down.

  She reaches the woman, twists a wrist that has gone limp. The gun clatters to the ground. That’s the only sound in the growing silence—that, and the woman’s ragged breath. The appeaser within Ai Thi relaxes, slightly. She can feel their disapproval, their fear. Cutting it too close. She could have died. They could have died.

  Ai Thi lifts the woman to her feet, effortlessly. “You shouldn’t have done this,” she says. “Who sent you?”

  She hasn’t expected an answer—the woman’s mind should still be filled with the single message the appeaser used to drown all cognitive function—but the thin, pale lips part. “I sent myself. You—you starve us, and expect us to smile.”

  “We all sacrifice things. It’s the price to pay for safety,” Ai Thi says, automatically, and then takes another look at the woman. All skin and bones—Ai Thi is strong from training, but the woman hardly weighs anything, and her cheeks are far gaunter than even those of menials— and, as she looks into the woman’s eyes, she sees nothing but raw, naked desperation, an expression she knows all too well.