The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books)

by Gardner Dozois

  “This is the emissary’s quarters,” the old woman announced happily. “It is also a spaceship, fueled and ready to carry us to the Great Ship.”

  At dusk, the girl didn’t believe anything the old woman claimed. But suddenly she was an expert again, and every statement only enhanced her boundless value.

  The car stopped before a walkway made from gemstone bricks.

  Out from the building—from the spaceship—came a creature with six jointed legs. Except it wasn’t a creature, it was a machine, and the human rode on a high chair inside the machine’s body. His face was grim, stern. But the girl didn’t know it then. He was as angry as a diplomat trained in the art of agreements and sweet words could ever be. But she only saw the narrow black face and the frail body shorn of its plumage and the odd little hands that didn’t like rising off the rests in his chair. He was undoubtedly alien. The new People would look ordinary next to him, if only they were standing here. But it was the human alone, and the last of the girl’s People, and he introduced himself with his name and his title and once again, his name.

  A box inside the walking machine made the best translations possible.

  The diplomat was named Rococo, which was nothing but odd noise in her ears and she forgot it immediately.

  “You have arrived,” the emissary said wearily.

  Everyone looked at the old woman, but suddenly and for no apparent reason she forgot how to speak.

  The youngest husband broke the silence. “We have a gift for you. For your species. We brought it from our home, at great cost.”

  “I don’t want it,” Rococo said.

  The old woman roused herself. With a quiet, tense voice, she said, “Take the box to him now. Take it.”

  “It is alien,” said the older husband. “We found this artifact in the throat of a dead volcano.”

  “Very valuable,” the other husband shouted.

  Rococo stared at the gray box. “Leave it there,” he ordered.

  But the People were not listening or refused to understand. Terrific costs had been paid so that they could drag the box off the wagon and over the railcar’s railing, metal screeching against metal as the alien wonder was dropped on the gemstones beside the mechanical feet.

  Staring at the old woman, the emissary said, “I told you. What did I tell you? I was exceptionally clear about what I could and couldn’t do for you.”

  From a special pouch came the key. But the woman was too nervous, and she didn’t care who opened the treasure.

  The girl found the key in her hand.

  “We can’t take just anybody onboard the Ship,” the human insisted. Then with a thought, he caused a mechanical arm to unfold and reach down, grabbing the girl by her wrist.

  She dropped the key.

  “I have made agreements,” said the human. “Following galactic law, we have binding arrangements with the most advanced species on this world. My species has purchased the right to begin terraforming your nearest moon, and in thanks for this blessing, we will give carry a small, small, small population of local People to a world that they will be able to colonize.

  “This is binding and legal and I told you all of that before,” he said. “I was honest. When did I mislead you? I told you not to bother with this pathetic migration, and you came anyway. I talked to you a hundred times in the night, warning you to turn around and head home again before it was too late. If I wasn’t stationed here alone, I would have sent subordinates to the basin just to explain things to your flock. Which I should have done myself, and I see that now. I regret it all, yes.”

  The youngest husband grabbed the key, and with a blur of motion unfastened the lock and threw the lid over the side.

  “Look,” he shouted. “Look.”

  Rococo released the girl and grudgingly peered inside.

  The girl fell to her knees, rubbing at the aching wrist. She wanted to look inside and didn’t. Then the human beast told everyone, “This is a piece of hyperfiber, a shard of someone’s hull. Hyperfiber is the most durable, persistent, and unremarkable kind of trash in this portion of the galaxy, which means that it is worth nothing.”

  The girl shook from nerves, exhaustion, and anguish.

  Then the old woman stepped between the mechanical legs and under the arm, and with a passionate, practiced voice she said, “Of course it isn’t enough. You told me, and I believed you, yes. But I have learned about your species, your nature. You know sympathy and empathy, and just like us, you understand how great deeds demand to be recognized. We are the last of our species. We have spent everything and sacrificed almost everything to place a few of us on your ground.”

  Rococo took a deep breath, and then gasped.

  She moved her hands as a beggar would. “Take a few of us with you, please. We can select, or you can choose. I am prepared for either eventuality. But here we stand, surrounded by People who care nothing for us, and we have pushed ourselves to the brink of extinction, and if you don’t give us this one little charity, our kind will vanish from the universe forever.”

  Rococo lifted one of his hands, and he lowered it again.

  He did not know what to say next.

  The old woman turned and said, “Marvel at what we have accomplished, my People. We must celebrate this wonderful fine day.”

  Katabasis stood. What happened next wasn’t planned, but it wasn’t an accident either. She intended to throw her fist but she wanted only to make the old woman stop talking, and the woman should have been bruised and startled. But she stumbled oddly and fell sideways into the box, and the rusted red corner of steel struck at the worst point on her head, and she died.

  The two husbands and then the others attacked the girl.

  With every mechanical arm and half of the legs, the emissary dragged the murderer away from the People. Then he threw curses and threats of much worse, hauling his prisoner back inside the ship where he intended to wait for some inspiration that would give him a route out of this miserable trap.

  10

  Clients walked past them and rode past them, some for the second and third time. It seemed that the story of the landslide and long subsequent march had gained a brief measure of fame. Everyone who met them on the trail, including their porters, asked when they would arrive at City West. Would it be today or tomorrow or maybe the day after? Katabasis promised they would finish tomorrow, probably late in the day, and then the other porter, the human, would name the clearing where they planned to camp tonight, begging the others to please leave it empty because they needed quiet even more than they needed food.

  Save for two acid-polished jackets of bioceramic matter, their packs were nearly empty. They had one torch but no food and no bedding, and they drank their water straight from the river, and even the excess grams of fabric had been cut away from the packs and clothes, left behind in the jungle along with at least half of their body mass. They were battered gaunt skeletons taking tiny strides. They were crazy souls and heroes, and strangers were so impressed by what they knew of the story that they would turn short of the trail’s end and come back around again, just to see them once more with their own mesmerized eyes.

  Several clients mentioned that groups were gathering. Well-wishers would be waiting tomorrow at the edge of City West, and there might even be a small ceremony complete with treats suitable for brave, tenacious creatures like them.

  By day’s end, they were close enough to the City to hear individual voices mixed in with the normal urban sounds. Varid smelled food on the wind, his belly aching even worse. But as promised, they made their night’s camp. Several tents had been left behind, each wearing notes and good wishes, and the two porters selected the largest tent and set the torch inside, turned up to full brightness, and when night arrived and the City changed its pitch, moving into nocturnal affairs, they climbed into the open and shouldered the cut-apart packs, carrying their clients down the dark, well-walked trail.

  Neither porter fell in that last stretch.

>   The next six hundred meters took half of the night, but suddenly the jungle ended and the sky opened up, revealing a welcoming banner written in the human language. Apparently no one was certain about Katabasis’ native language. But someone had managed to spell her name in the original Greek, which made her feel just a little sorry for slipping past this way. Then they slowly, slowly crept their way to the first street, and she waved for a capcar, telling it that they were carrying two people needing to be given some rather extensive medical help.

  Three kilometers were covered in two minutes. Autodocs were waiting at the entranceway, along with one of the habitat’s landlords whose duty was to make certain that no paying customers had died.

  “I left two porters under the mountain,” Katabasis said.

  “We know everything,” he said testily. “As soon as arrangements can be made, we will start to dig.”

  Varid stared at the man and then turned to his colleague.

  She put a finger in his mouth, which she had learned was a very good way to keep the man from talking.

  The landlord belonged to that second species of People. He was a young man when the human emissary arrived, walking in the bug-carriage down the avenues of his home world. Now he was grown but would never grow old—a giant well-fed beast sporting purple and blue plumage. He and his kind had purchased the habitat for almost nothing. They had excellent minds for business and a natural flair for selling their wares, and the strange slow-motion nightmare that had just been lived by these two pathetic creatures was very good for business. The habitat was an investment to help pay for extras needed when they finally reached the colony world. That was the only reason why he didn’t shout his disapproval. It was enough to offer a few gestures that were very similar to those used by Katabasis’ species, leaving no doubt about his state of mind and how small his regard was for this hero and her monkey friend.

  Perri and Quee Lee were left in the care of autodocs.

  Katabasis removed her finger from the little wet mouth. Back inside the cap-car, she asked for the nearest dock, and they rode in silence. Then they slowly climbed out, and using a calm, reasoned tone, Varid mentioned that he would like something enormous to eat.

  The salty little sea was home to one odd fish, tough as could be and worth any price. Katabasis suggested that for a dinner, and her companion bought ten kilos, both smoked and raw, and then they boarded the first ferry they could find, starting across the flat dark water.

  They ate, and after a time Varid turned to her. “He looked like you.”

  “But we aren’t the same,” she said.

  He nodded, and waited.

  “We’re like two species of monkeys,” she said.

  He stopped nodding. His face went blank in that way that she envied, as if he had the power to wash away his past and any urgent thoughts of the moment, existing in a quiet realm that she could only wish to know.

  Then with no warning, Varid asked, “How did you come here?”

  She considered. She leaned a long ways forward, and after one deep breath told the ferry to stop in the middle, please, and drift with the current and wait.

  She killed the old woman once again, except not in her dreams but with words and a small sorry thrust of the fist.

  Varid chewed at the raw fish, saying nothing.

  “The human carried me inside his ship,” she said, “and for two days he fed me and fed the People outside, and he spoke to them and to me and finally decided on a course of action and inaction. What I had endured was beyond any human experience, and he could not believe what we had accomplished. The local species—those standing thick on this world and the nearby volcanoes—were durable, yes, but not nearly as resilient as us. Against every instinct, he decided that we had proved our worth, and with that in mind, he would personally return the People to their former home. The buildings were still standing. With repairs, enough fans and dew-catchers could feed a small rebirth. And later, when human terraformers arrived in force, the People would supply most of the labor and all of the tenacity to making the inhospitable moon into a wondrous garden.”

  Varid swallowed and looked across the water. “I have an idea.”

  “I’m not finished,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “But don’t let me forget to tell you my idea, please.”

  “I will remind you.”

  She ate and he ate, and then he said, “You are here.”

  “If Rococo had left me with my People, I would have been killed. But my crime occurred on the diplomat’s ground, which was nearly the same as being on the Earth or inside the Great Ship. His laws ruled. He had the only authority. And according his laws, I needed to be tried in a fair court, which could only be found once he returned here.”

  “He saved you,” Varid said.

  “In a fashion, yes,” she said. “I was frozen inside the shuttle’s hold and defrosted on arrival and tried three years later and convicted of some lesser brutality. My sentence was short. Someone, probably Rococo himself, paid to have my body and mind rebuilt. But nobody has told me who holds this favor, which is the largest favor of all. Then as I was released from prison, the captains presented me with a bill for passage onboard the Great Ship—which will take fifty thousand years to make good, working as a porter, and that really is another gift, when you consider that you have forever to march across.”

  Her companion said nothing. He had stopped eating, and the face had shifted into another lost expression.

  “You had an idea,” she said.

  “I did,” he agreed.

  They waited.

  Just when she thought that he had forgotten the subject, Varid pushed his face close and said, “There are little passengers onboard the Ship. They are machines and intelligent parasites and such. And I have empty space inside my head. Has there ever been a porter willing to be filled with other souls, carrying his clients from the first step?”

  “No,” she said. “There never has been, no.”

  The sun was slowly coming to life overhead. She told the ferry to continue and turned back to Varid. “This is a worthy idea,” she told him. “This is definitely a notion to twist in the light, to see how it plays.”

  Once again, at last, Katabasis walked her beach.

  She couldn’t sleep. Her body felt too tired to ever rest again. She moved weakly and breathed too much, and the familiar faces of her neighbors weren’t quite certain who she was. Yet she felt stronger in every way but strength, strolling past her usual turning point and then coming back even slower. Her little house of quake-coral looked like a wonder from a distance. Two legs were sticking out of the door, and smiling with her hands and arms, she came up quietly and knelt down and looked inside.

  Varid was on his back, his eyes closed.

  She sat back and waited. Was he truly that exhausted? Was this his first real sleep in centuries? Then she leaned forward and looked again, watching the eyes bouncing under the barely closed lids.

  Once more, she sat back.

  But she couldn’t resist. There finally came the moment when she put her shrunken weight on her arms and dipped her head, brushing his salty ankles with the full rough surface of her tongue.

  THE WATER THIEF

  Alastair Reynolds

  Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, Arc, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, Century Rain, and Pushing Ice, all big sprawling space operas that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. He has written a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, and a chapbook novella, The Six Directions of Space, as well as three collections, Galactic North, Zima Blue and Other Stories, and Deep Navigation. His other novels include The Prefect, House of Suns, and Terminal World. His most recent novels are Blue Re
membered Hills, and a Doctor Who novel, Harvest of Time. Forthcoming is a new novel, On the Steel Breeze. A professional scientist with a Ph.D in astronomy, he worked for the European Space Agency in the Netherlands for a number of years, but has recently moved back to his native Wales to become a full-time writer.

  Reynolds’s work is known for its grand scope, sweep, and scale (in one story, “Galactic North,” a spaceship sets out on in pursuit of another in a stern chase that takes thousands of years of time and hundreds of thousands of light-years to complete; in another, “Thousandth Night,” ultrarich immortals embark on a plan that will call for the physical rearrangement of all the stars in the galaxy).

  Here, he offers us a small, quiet story with a sharply defined, evenly constrained setting, one that manages to find something hopeful and uplifting to say about the human spirit even when its protagonist is living in a cardboard box in a refugee camp.

  THE BOY WANTS my eye again. He’s seen me using it, setting it down on the mattress where I squat. I am not sure why he covets it so badly.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I need this. Without it I can’t work, and if I can’t work, my daughter and I go hungry.”

  He is too small to understand my words, but the message gets through anyway. I smile as he sprints away, pausing only to glance over his shoulder. Nothing would prevent the boy creeping into the shipping container and taking the eye while I am working. But he has not done that yet. Something in his face makes me think he can be trusted.

  You can’t understate the value of that, here in the refugee camp. Not that they call it that. This is a “Resource and Relocation Assistance Facility.” I have been here six years now. My daughter is twelve; she barely remembers the outside world. Eunice is a good and studious girl, but that will only get you so far. Both of us need something more. Prakash tells me that if I can accrue enough proficiency credits, we might be relocated.

  I believe Prakash. Why wouldn’t I?

  I squat down on my mattress. The shipping container has had its doors removed and holes cut in the sides. Windchimes hang from one corner of the roof, cut from buckled aluminium tent-poles. On this airless afternoon they are as silent as stalagtites.