My own womb remains empty, though some of my fellow Teysanzians continue to drop hints that I should fill it soon, as a collapse-fearing, dutiful citizen. My cyba augments still keep my chances of bearing a child up, but even they’ll wind down with my body. I wonder if I’d be so ostracized on Earth, or Jaltara-Lafneik, for doing as I please with my insides and outsides.
My boots crunch in the crumbled obsidian of Shuyedan’s stone. I pick up pebbles of its skin and toss them, sending stray kilunpa glittering into the air. I’m in unexplored territory, the farthest I’ve been from Teysanzi. Shuyedan-18’s tag failed during its battle with Urdhema, so it took a while to find the remains. Across the collapsed ceilings of the lifecastle’s skin—mindcarvings of nude human bodies, multiple sexes, apart and together. Accretions from three years of observance, and evidence that others had come here to be witnessed by Shuyedan-18, unclothed in their tents, having sex, het and non-het. A new ritual. A new tradition between human and extraterrestrial. Looking at these newer carvings makes something click in me, like a clock starting, counting away from and towards something at the same time.
Then, I find the spine of the first human shapes to grace Shuyedan’s back, now grainy with age, more beautiful because of it. I’ll always recognize them. Frozen in their dance, their small moment of intimacy, ecstasy. Their faces have worn away to pits and nubs, some of their limbs stumps. But still recognizable. Still intact. Shuyedan never erased us from its skin, never forgot its first glimpse of humanity unclad.
“Teysanzi-central,” I say into my helmet. “Shuyedan-18 ruins located. Something to see. Recording now. Recommend cordon, salvage for preservation and study. Will proceed to scraping ikan residue. Observing the famous erotic mindcarvings, the original ones—two human women in coitus, replicated over and over, as if passing in time. The muses.” I listen to myself breathe inside the helmet. No one at the terminal. Slackers. I go on talking. All transmissions are recorded.
“Advise further experiments—nudist tent colonies out in the hinterlands. Rampant hedonism for the benefit of the lifecastles,” I pause, thinking about this.
“Hear me out, actually. Shuyedan-18 is the first one to actively observe us, to remember human form long enough to keep its mindcarvings of us preserved in such detail. I think it’s because it saw us naked, without surface suits, interacting together. It recognised something in us, something alive. Vulnerable. Maybe visual body language is a way for us to communicate with the vitanbiyet. Especially newly separated ones. Dirty Old Man’s gone, rest its soul, along with, I hope, its wretched nickname. But there are other lifecastles. I think, central, that this is the beginning of a long friendship,” I smile into the mic.
My fellow muse, gone.
“Additional. Reporting witnessing, approximately three point five years prior, to Shuyedan-18, ankhalyan. That’s me in the carvings, one of the original muses. You heard right.” I switch off the comm system, feeling light-headed. Maybe now they’ll send me back to Earth, where overpopulation can take good old-fashioned non-hets like me.
Earth. Perhaps I was always nan tizan, and just never admitted it.
I look up at the empty spot between the stars where the Krasnikov Gate graces the sky, invisible to the naked eye. I wonder what it would look like collapsing.
I know they can’t do anything to me. I’m a citizen. Block me from progressing up the career ladder, becoming a supervisor, going into active city governance? Sure. But we’re endangered, us Teysanzians. They need me. I’m staying, till the end of this world if it comes. I’ll outlive every last human bastard in Teysanzi so I can sip champagne alone under the ruins of my sweet Shuyedan-18.
I bend down to look at the spine of Mis and Tanis fucking and decaying in the dim red sunlight. One of them has her head thrown back, black neck open to the drifting rain, mouth open. It is clearly Mi, though only to me. Under her, the other woman with her eyes closed, mouth a placid line. Me. I run my fingers across Mi’s face, and my gloved fingertips come away black.
“Vitanbiyet Shuyedan had a dream of love,” I say to her, and let the rain run down my hand.
Bannerless
CARRIE VAUGHN
New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Narville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The “Kitty” books include Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, Kitty’s House of Horrors, Kitty Goes to War, Kitty’s Big Trouble, Kitty Steals the Show, Kitty Rocks the House, and a collection of her “Kitty” stories, Kitty’s Greatest Hits. Her other novels include Voices of Dragons, her first venture into Young Adult territory, a fantasy, Discord’s Apple, Steel, and After the Golden Age. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Inside Straight (a Wild Cards novel), Realms of Fantasy, Jim Baen’s Universe, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and elsewhere; her non-Kitty stories have been collected in Straying from the Path. Her most recent books include a new “Kitty” novel, Kitty in the Underworld, and Dreams of the Golden Age, a sequel to After the Golden Age. She lives in Colorado.
Here she offers us a believable look at a society struggling to put itself back together, in a better and more just form, after a climate-driven catastrophe that almost wipes out the human race.
Enid and Bert walked the ten miles from the way station because the weather was good, a beautiful spring day. Enid had never worked with the young man before, but he turned out to be good company: chatty without being oppressively extroverted. Young, built like a redwood, he looked the part of an investigator. They talked about home and the weather and trivialities—but not the case. She didn’t like to dwell on the cases she was assigned to before getting a firsthand look at them. She had expected Bert to ask questions about it, but he was taking her lead.
On this stretch of the Coast Road, halfway between the way station and Southtown, ruins were visible in the distance, to the east. An old sprawling city from before the big fall. In her travels in her younger days, she’d gone into it a few times, to shout into the echoing artificial canyons and study overgrown asphalt roads and cracked walls with fallen roofs. She rarely saw people, but often saw old cook fires and cobbled together shantytowns that couldn’t support the lives struggling within them. Scavengers and scattered folk still came out from them sometimes, then faded back to the concrete enclaves, surviving however they survived.
Bert caught her looking.
“You’ve been there?” Bert said, nodding toward the haze marking the swath of ruined city. No paths or roads ran that way anymore. She’d had to go overland when she’d done it.
“Yes, a long time ago.”
“What was it like?”
The answer could either be very long or very short. The stories of what had happened before and during the fall were terrifying and intriguing, but the ruins no longer held any hint of those tales. They were bones, in the process of disappearing. “It was sad,” she said finally.
“I’m still working through the histories,” he said. “For training, right? There’s a lot of diaries. Can be hard, reading how it was at the fall.”
“Yes.”
In isolation, any of the disasters that had struck would not have overwhelmed the old world. The floods alone would not have destroyed the cities. The vicious influenza epidemic—a mutated strain with no available vaccine that incapacitated victims in a matter of hours—by itself would have been survivable, eventually. But the floods, the disease, the rising ocean levels, the monster storms piling one on top of the other, an environment off balance that chipped away at infrastructure and made each recovery more difficult than the one before it, all of it left too many people with too little to survive on. Wealth meant nothing when there was simply n
othing left. So, the world died. But people survived, here and there. They came together and saved what they could. They learned lessons.
The road curved into the next valley and they approached Southtown, the unimaginative name given to this district’s main farming settlement. Windmills appeared first, clean towers with vertical blades spiraling gently in an unfelt breeze. Then came cisterns set on scaffolds, then plowed fields and orchards in the distance. The town was home to some thousand people scattered throughout the valley and surrounding farmlands. There was a grid of drained roads and whitewashed houses, solar and battery-operated carts, some goats, chickens pecking in yards. All was orderly, pleasant. This was what rose up after the ruins fell, the home that their grandparents fled to as children.
“Will you let the local committee know we’re here?” Bert asked.
“Oh, no. We don’t want anyone to have warning we’re here. We go straight to the household. Give them a shock.”
“Makes sense.”
“This is your first case, isn’t it? Your first investigation?”
“It is. And … I guess I’m worried I might have to stop someone.” Bert had a staff like hers but he knew how to use his for more than walking. He had a stunner and a pack of tranquilizer needles on his belt. All in plain view. If she did her job well enough he wouldn’t need to do anything but stand behind her and look alert. A useful tool. He seemed to understand his role.
“I doubt you will. Our reputation will proceed us. It’s why we have the reputation in the first place. Don’t worry.”
“I just need to act as terrifying as the reputation says I do.”
She smiled. “Exactly—you know just how this works, then.”
They wore brown tunics and trousers with gray sashes. Somber colors, cold like winter, probably designed to inspire a chill. Bert stood a head taller than she did and looked like he could break tree trunks. How sinister, to see the pair of them approach.
“And you—this is your last case, isn’t it?”
That was what she’d told the regional committee, that it was time for her to go home, settle down, take up basket weaving or such like. “I’ve been doing this almost twenty years,” she said. “It’s time for me to pass the torch.”
“Would you miss the travel? That’s what I’ve been looking forward to, getting to see some of the region, you know?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I wouldn’t miss the bull. You’ll see what I mean.”
They approached the settlement. Enid put her gaze on a young woman carrying a basket of eggs along the main road. She wore a skirt, tunic, apron, and a straw hat to keep off the sun.
“Excuse me,” Enid said. The woman’s hands clenched as if she was afraid she might drop the basket from fright. As she’d told Bert, their reputation preceded them. They were inspectors, and inspectors only appeared for terrible reasons. The woman’s expression held shock and denial. Why would inspectors ever come to Southtown?
“Yes, how can I help you?” she said quickly, nervously.
“Can you tell us where to find Apricot Hill?” The household they’d been sent to investigate.
The woman’s anxiety fell away and a light of understanding dawned. Ah, then people knew. Everyone likely knew something was wrong, without knowing exactly what. The whole town would know investigators were here within the hour. Enid’s last case, and it was going to be all about sorting out gossip.
“Yes—take that path there, past the pair of windmills. They’re on the south side of the duck pond. You’ll see the clotheslines out front.”
“Thank you,” Enid said. The woman hurried away, hugging her basket to her chest.
Enid turned to Bert. “Ready for this?”
“Now I’m curious. Let’s go.”
Apricot Hill was on a nice acreage overlooking a pretty pond and a series of orchards beyond that. There was one large house, two stories with lots of windows, and an outbuilding with a pair of chimneys, a production building—Apricot Hill was centered on food processing, taking in produce from outlying farms and drying, canning, and preserving it for winter stores for the community. The holding overall was well lived in, a bit run-down, cluttered, but that could mean they were busy. It was spring—nothing ready for canning yet. This should have been the season for cleaning up and making repairs.
A girl with a bundle of sheets over her arm, probably collected from the clothesline the woman had mentioned, saw them first. She peered up the hill at their arrival for a moment before dropping the sheets and running to the house. She was wispy and energetic—not the one mentioned in the report, then. Susan, and not Aren. The heads of the household were Frain and Felice.
“We are announced,” Enid said wryly. Bert hooked a finger in his belt.
A whole crowd, maybe even all ten members of the household, came out of the house. A rough looking bunch, all together. Old clothes, frowning faces. This was an adequate household, but not a happy one.
An older man, slim and weather-worn, came forward and looked as though he wished he had a weapon. This would be Frain. Enid went to him, holding her hand out for shaking.
“Hello, I’m Enid, the investigator sent by the regional committee. This is my partner, Bert. This is Apricot Hill, isn’t it? You must be Frain?”
“Yes,” he said cautiously, already hesitant to give away any scrap of information.
“May we step inside to talk?”
She would look like a matron to them, maybe even head of a household somewhere, if they weren’t sure she didn’t have a household. Investigators didn’t have households; they traveled constantly, avenging angels, or so the rumors said. Her dull brown hair was rolled into a bun, her soft face had seen years and weather. They’d wonder if she’d ever had children of her own, if she’d ever earned a banner. Her spreading middle-aged hips wouldn’t give a clue.
Bert stood behind her, a wall of authority. Their questions about him would be simple: How well could he use that staff he carried?
“What is this about?” Frain demanded. He was afraid. He knew what she was here for—the implications—and he was afraid.
“I think we should go inside and sit down before we talk,” Enid said patiently, knowing full well she sounded condescending and unpleasant. The lines on Frain’s face deepened. “Is everyone here? Gather everyone in the household to your common room.”
With a curt word Frain herded the rest of his household inside.
The common room on the house’s ground floor was, like the rest of the household, functional without being particularly pleasant. No vase of flowers on the long dining table. Not a spot of color on the wall except for a single faded banner: the square of red and green woven cloth that represented the baby they’d earned some sixteen years ago. That would be Susan—the one with the laundry outside. Adults had come into the household since then, but that was their last baby. Had they wanted another child badly enough that they didn’t wait for their committee to award them a banner?
The house had ten members. Only nine sat around the table. Enid took her time studying them, looking into each face. Most of the gazes ducked away from her. Susan’s didn’t.
“We’re missing someone, I think?” Enid said.
The silence was thick as oil. Bert stood easy and perfectly still behind her, hand on his belt. Oh, he was a natural at this. Enid waited a long time, until the people around the table squirmed.
“Aren,” Felice said softly. “I’ll go get her.”
“No,” Frain said. “She’s sick. She can’t come.”
“Sick? Badly sick? Has a doctor seen her?” Enid said.
Again, the oily silence.
“Felice, if you could get her, thank you,” Enid said.
A long stretch passed before Felice returned with the girl, and Enid was happy to watch while the group grew more and more uncomfortable. Susan was trembling; one of the men was hugging himself. This was as awful a gathering as she had ever seen, and her previous case had been a murder.
When Felice brought Aren into the room, Enid saw exactly what she expected to see: the older woman with her arm around a younger woman—age twenty or so—who wore a full skirt and a tunic three sizes too big that billowed in front of her. Aren moved slowly, and had to keep drawing her hands away from her belly.
She might have been able to hide the pregnancy for a time, but she was now six months along, and there was no hiding that swell and the ponderous hitch in her movement.
The anger and unhappiness in the room thickened even more, and it was no longer directed at Enid.
She waited while Felice guided the pregnant woman to a chair—by herself, apart from the others.
“This is what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Frain demanded, his teeth bared and fists clenched.
“It is,” Enid agreed.
“Who told?” Frain hissed, looking around at them all. “Which one of you told?”
No one said anything. Aren cringed and ducked her head. Felice stared at her hands in her lap.
Frain turned to Enid. “Who sent the report? I’ve a right to know my accuser—the household’s accuser.”
“The report was anonymous, but credible.” Part of her job here was to discover, if she could, who sent the tip of the bannerless pregnancy to the regional committee. Frain didn’t need to know that. “I’ll be asking all of you questions over the next couple of days. I expect honest answers. When I am satisfied that I know what happened here, I’m authorized to pass judgment. I will do so as quickly as possible, to spare you waiting. Frain, I’ll start with you.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction - Thirty-Third Annual Collection Page 35