The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Tyler laughed. “If it had been a steak, they would have lost.” They continued hiking for a while. “That story isn’t about love. It’s about the poor man beating the rich man.”

  Erno considered it. “Maybe.”

  “So what have you learned from that book? Anything?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of killing—it’s like the writers are obsessed with killing. The characters kill for fun, or sport, or money, or freedom, or to get respect. Or women.”

  “That’s the way it was back then, Erno. Men—”

  Tyler’s voice was blotted out by a tone blaring over their earphones. After fifteen seconds an AI voice came on:

  “SATELLITES REPORT A MAJOR SOLAR CORONAL MASS EJECTION. PARTICLE FLUX WILL BEGIN TO RISE IN TWENTY MINUTES, REACHING LETHAL LEVELS WITHIN THIRTY. ALL PERSONS ON THE SURFACE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY SEEK SHELTER. REFRAIN FROM EXPOSURE UNTIL THE ALL CLEAR SOUNDS.

  “REPEAT: A MAJOR SOLAR RADIATION EVENT HAS OCCURRED. ALL PERSONS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY TAKE SHELTER.”

  Both of them stopped. Erno scanned the sky, frantic. Of course there was no difference. The sun threw the same harsh glare it always threw. His heart thudded in his ears. He heard Tyler’s deep breaths in his earphones.

  “How insulated is this shack?” he asked Tyler. “Can it stand a solar storm?”

  Tyler didn’t answer for a moment. “I doubt it.”

  “How about the mine? Is there a radiation shelter? Or a tunnel?”

  “It was a strip mine. Besides,” Tyler said calmly, “we couldn’t get there in twenty minutes.”

  They were more than an hour south of the colony.

  Erno scanned the horizon, looking for some sign of shelter. A crevasse, a lava tube—maybe they’d run out of air, but at least they would not fry. He saw, again, the threads of the cable towers to the east.

  “The cable line!” Erno said. “It has radiation shelters for the cable cars all along it.”

  “If we can reach one in time.”

  Erno checked his clock readout. 0237. Figure they had until 0300. He leapt off due east, toward the cable towers. Tyler followed.

  The next fifteen minutes passed in a trance, a surreal slow motion broken field race through the dust and boulders toward the pylons to the east. Erno pushed himself to the edge of his strength, until a haze of spots rose before his eyes. They seemed to move with agonizing slowness.

  They were 500 meters from the cable pylon. 300 meters. 100 meters. They were beneath it.

  When they reached the pylon, Erno scanned in both directions for a shelter. The cable line was designed to dip underground for radiation protection periodically all along the length of its route. The distance between the tunnels was determined by the top speed of the cable car and the amount of advance warning the passengers were likely to get of a solar event. There was no way of telling how far they were from a shelter, or in which direction the closest lay.

  “South,” Tyler said. “The colony is the next shelter north, and it’s too far for us to run, so our only shot should be south.”

  It was 0251. They ran south, their leaps no longer strong and low, but with a weary desperation to them now. Erno kept his eyes fixed on the horizon. The twin cables stretched above them like strands of spider’s web, silver in the sunlight, disappearing far ahead where the next T pylon stood like the finish line in a race.

  The T grew, and suddenly they were on it. Beyond, in its next arc, the cable swooped down to the horizon. They kept running, and as they drew closer, Erno saw that a tunnel opened in the distance, and the cable ran into it. He gasped out a moan that was all the shout he could make.

  They were almost there when Erno realized that Tyler had slowed, and was no longer keeping up. He willed himself to stop, awkwardly, almost pitching face first into the regolith. He looked back. Tyler had slowed to a stroll.

  “What’s wrong?” Erno gasped.

  “Nothing,” Tyler said. Though Erno could hear Tyler’s ragged breath, there was no hurry in his voice.

  “Come on!” Erno shouted.

  Tyler stopped completely. “Women and children first.”

  Erno tried to catch his breath. His clock read 0304. “What?”

  “You go ahead. Save your pathetic life.”

  “Are you crazy? Do you want to die?”

  “Of course not. I want you to go in first.”

  “Why?”

  “If you can’t figure it out by now, I can’t explain it, Erno. It’s a story for a man.”

  Erno stood dumbstruck.

  “Come out here into the sunshine with me,” Tyler said. “It’s nice out here.”

  Erno laughed. He took a step back toward Tyler. He took another. They stood side by side.

  “That’s my man Erno. Now, how long can you stay out here?”

  The sun beat brightly down. The tunnel mouth gaped five meters in front of them. 0307. 0309. Each watched the other, neither budged.

  “My life isn’t pathetic,” Erno said.

  “Depends on how you look at it,” Tyler replied.

  “Don’t you think yours is worth saving?”

  “What makes you think this is a real radiation alert, Erno? The broadcast could be a trick to make us come back.”

  “There have been warnings posted for weeks.”

  “That only makes it a more plausible trick.”

  “That’s no reason for us to risk our lives—on the chance it is.”

  “I don’t think it’s a trick, Erno. I’ll go into that tunnel. After you.”

  Erno stared at the dark tunnel ahead. 0311. A single leap from safety. Even now lethal levels of radiation might be sluicing through their bodies. A bead of sweat stung his eye.

  “So this is what it means to be a man?” Erno said softly, as much to himself as to Tyler.

  “This is it,” Tyler said. “And I’m a better man than you are.”

  Erno felt an adrenaline surge. “You’re not better than me.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “You haven’t accomplished anything.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve accomplished. Go ahead, Erno. Back to your cave.”

  0312. 0313. Erno could feel the radiation. It was shattering proteins and DNA throughout his body, rupturing cell walls, turning the miraculously ordered organic molecules of his brain into sludge. He thought about Alicia, the curve of her breast, the light in her eyes. Had she told her friends that he had hit her? And his mother. He saw the shock and surprise in her face when the book hit her. How angry he had been. He wanted to explain to her why he had thrown it. It shouldn’t be that hard to explain.

  He saw his shadow reaching out beside him, sharp and steady, two arms, two legs and a head, an ape somehow transported to the moon. No, not an ape—a man. What a miracle that a man could keep himself alive in this harsh place—not just keep alive, but make a home of it. All the intellect and planning and work that had gone to put him here, standing out under the brutal sun, letting it exterminate him.

  He looked at Tyler, fixed as stone.

  “This is insane,” Erno said—then ran for the tunnel.

  A second after he sheltered inside, Tyler was there beside him.

  FOURTEEN

  They found the radiation shelter midway through the tunnel, closed themselves inside, stripped off their suits, drank some water, breathed the cool air. They crowded in the tiny stone room together, smelling each other’s sweat. Erno started to get sick: he had chills, he felt nausea. Tyler made him sip water, put his arm around Erno’s shoulders.

  Tyler said it was radiation poisoning, but Erno said it was not. He sat wordless in the corner the nine hours it took until the all-clear came. Then, ignoring Tyler, he suited up and headed back to the colony.

  FIFTEEN

  So that is the story of how Erno discovered that he was not a man. That, indeed, Tyler was right, and there was no place for men in the Society of Cousins. And that he, Erno, despite his grievances and rage, was a cousin.
/>   The cost of this discovery was Erno’s own banishment, and one thing more.

  When Erno turned himself in at the constabulary headquarters, eager to tell them about GROSS and ready to help them find Tyler, he was surprised at their subdued reaction. They asked him no questions. They looked at him funny, eyes full of rage and something besides rage. Horror? Loathing? Pity? They put him in the same white room where he had sat before, and left him there alone. After a while the blond interrogator, Mona, came in and told him that three people had been injured when Tyler and Erno had blown the vacuum seal while escaping. One, who had insisted on crawling after them through the escape tunnel, had been caught in there and died: Erno’s mother.

  Erno and Tyler were given separate trials, and the colony voted: they were to be expelled. Tyler’s banishment was permanent; Erno was free to apply for readmission in ten years.

  The night before he left, Erno, accompanied by a constable, was allowed to visit his home. Knowing how completely inadequate it was, he apologized to his sister, his aunt and cousins. Aunt Sophie and Nick treated him with stiff rectitude. Celeste, who somehow did not feel the rage against him that he deserved, cried and embraced him. They let him pack a duffel with a number of items from his room.

  After leaving, he asked the constable if he could stop a moment on the terrace outside the apartment before going back to jail. He took a last look at the vista of the domed crater from the place where he had lived every day of his life. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. His mother seemed everywhere around him. All he could see was her crawling, on hands and knees in the dark, desperately trying to save him from himself. How angry she must have been, and how afraid. What must she have thought, as the air flew away and she felt her coming death? Did she regret giving birth to him?

  He opened his eyes. There on the terrace stood the recycler he had thrown pebbles at for years. He reached into his pack, pulled out Stories for Men, and stepped toward the bin.

  Alicia came around a corner. “Hello, Erno,” she said.

  A step from the trash bin, Erno held the book awkwardly in his hand, trying to think of something to say. The constable watched them.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he told Alicia.

  “I know you didn’t mean this to happen,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I meant. It happened.”

  On impulse, he handed her the copy of Stories for Men. “I don’t know what to do with this,” he said. “Will you keep it for me?”

  The next morning they put him on the cable car for Tsander. His exile had begun.

  To Become a Warrior

  CHRIS BECKETT

  British writer Chris Beckett is a frequent contributor to Interzone and has just made a sale to Asimov’s Science Fiction. A former social worker, he’s now a university lecturer living in Cambridge, England. He has had stories in our Ninth and Nineteenth Annual Collections.

  Sometimes it’s not enough just to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, too. And that can be a lot more difficult than you think it’s going to be ...

  Where I live it’s the Thurston Fields estate only we just call it the Fields. Which it’s what they call a Special Category Estate which is crap for a start because everyone knows it’s a dreg estate and we’re the dreggies. Which is we’re the ones they haven’t got any use for, yeah? I mean fair enough, I can’t hardly read and write as such. Which I’ve never had a job or nothing only once I had a job in this tyre and exhaust place. Like a job creation scheme? Only I was late the second day—right?—and the manager, he only told me to do something about my attitude, so I fucking smacked him one, didn’t I?

  And I’ll tell you what mate, not being funny or nothing, but if you never lived on a dreg estate you’ve got no idea what it’s like. You might think you have but you haven’t. I’ll tell you one thing about it, the Department runs your life. The DeSCA, yeah? The deskies we call them. Which you get different kinds, like housing deskies which if you’re some girl who gets pregnant, they’re the ones who get you a flat. (Mind you, if you’re a bloke and you want a flat you’ve got to find some slag and say you love her and that, know what I mean?) And you get teacher deskies, and benefits deskies. You even get deskie police. But I tell you what, mate, the ones we really hate are the fucking social worker deskies. Like they try to be so nice and understanding and that, all concerned about you—know what I mean?—but next thing they’re taking your fucking kid away.

  Like my girlfriend Kylie, well my ex-girlfriend because I dumped her, didn’t I? Which she had her kid Sam taken off her and she went fucking mental, know what I mean? I mean, fair play, he is a whinging little git and at first I thought, great, all day in bed and no distractions. But it did her head in and she was crying and that, and she was down the Child Welfare every day and she didn’t want fucking sex no more or nothing so I thought to myself, I can’t hack this, I’ll go fucking mental, know what I mean?

  (Which then she tried to top herself which her mum said was down to me but it never. It was the fucking deskies.)

  Anyway, one day I was down the Locomotive with my mates when this geezer comes in—yeah?—and he only had a skull tattooed all over his face! I mean like so his face looked like a skull, yeah? Which my mate Shane goes, “Shit, look at that!” This bloke he looked well hard, but—yeah?—we must have had twelve pints each minimum, so I thought to myself, fuck it. And I go up to this skull geezer—right?—and go like, “Who the fuck are you?” (Shane was pissing himself, the prat. He thought it was hysterical. He thought old skull face there was going to beat the shit out of me.)

  But the skull guy just laughs.

  And he was like, “I’m Laf, who the hell are you?”

  So I go, “I’m Carl. What kind of name is Laf for fuck’s sake?”

  And he was like, “Watch it mate,” only he was laughing, know what I mean? And he goes, “It’s short for Olaf. It’s a warrior’s name, alright? I’m a warrior of Dunner I am.”

  Which I’ll tell you what, back then I didn’t know what the fuck he meant but I didn’t want to look like a prat or nothing so I just go, “Warrior of Dunner, huh?” (You know, American and that).

  And he laughs and goes, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you mate?”

  So I go, “No I don’t, mate, but I reckon you’re talking out of your arse.”

  But he just kind of looks round the pub at the blokes slagging each other off by the pool table and at the kids arsing about on the machines and at that old slag Dora with her wrecked fucking face who comes in every night and drinks till they chuck her out.

  So he looks all round—right?—and then he looks back at me and he’s like, “This place is shit isn’t it?”

  And I’m like, “Yeah?” Because, like, I can see what he means in a way but I drink there every bloody night.

  And he goes, “Want to come and meet some of my mates?”

  And I’m, “Yeah okay.”

  And he’s, “Only I’ve taken a liking to you Carl. I liked the way you came over like that. More bottle than your mates there.”

  Well then we walk straight out past Shane and Derek and they’re like trying to make out it’s hysterical—yeah?—but really they’re bloody gobsmacked, aren’t they?

  And Derek goes, “Where the fuck are you going Carl?”

  But I don’t know, do I?

  * * *

  Laf’s got his car out there—it’s like a really old Mondeo—and, it was well good, we ton across the estate at 90, with the windows down and the music on full blast (Well the police don’t bother with the Fields at night, only if there’s a riot or something.)

  And we go up Thurston Road, right up near the wire where there is them three big old tower blocks—yeah?—which are all sealed off and that because they’ve been like condemned. (I mean: they’ve always been condemned and sealed off like that since I was a kid, because of asbestos or something, I think.)

  Me and my mates, we’ve tried to get into tho
se places but they’re like not just boarded up they’re steeled up—yeah?—with metal plates and that. Only it turns out that Laf and his mates have managed to get into one of them called Progress House. Like there’s a kind of service door or something round the back which it still looks like it’s locked up but they can get in and out, yeah?

  Inside it was really dark and echoey and it smelt of piss. You couldn’t see nothing but Laf goes charging off up the stairs: one floor, two floors, three floors ...

  “Wait for me,” I go.

  But Laf just laughs and he’s like, “You’ll have to get fitter than that, mate, if you want to be a warrior of Dunner.”

  Those places are like twelve stories high, yeah? Which right at the top they’d opened up a flat. You could smell the puff smoke from a floor below. Which there’s this room in there, like a cave—yeah?—with candles and that, and weird pictures on the wall, and there are Laf’s mates, three of them: one fat bloke in one corner, one really evil-looking bloke with greasy black hair in the other corner and then this boffy-looking fucker in the middle. And he’s got glasses on and he’s rolling up a spliff.

  “Good evening,” he goes, really posh. And he’s like, “Welcome to Progress House. This is Gunnar” (that was the fat one), “this is Rogg and my name is Erik. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  I look at Laf and I’m like, “Who the fuck is this?”

  And Laf don’t say nothing in words but he’s kind of frowning at me—right?—like he’s going, “Respect, man! This geezer is well hard, know what I mean?”

  (Which, like, he’s got a skull all over his face!)

  Erik laughs, “A word of advice, Carl. Laf has chosen to let you into our little secret. We do that from time to time, because we are, well, we’re missionaries in a way.” (I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. I thought missionary meant, like, sex with the geezer on top, know what I mean?)

  “But if you were to reveal our secret to anyone else without our permission, goes boffy Erik, “I personally will kill you. I mean that quite literally. And I assure you that what I have just said is not a threat but a promise.”