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

by Gardner Dozois

  She didn’t know the precise translation, but that single sharp word would mean her.

  A human monster.

  Which she was. A horrible murderous creature, and she was running loose in the village now. Little ellipsoid homes appeared, low-built and solid, made from stacked stone blocks and living earth, skins of water set out in the yards, absorbing the weak sunlight. She found dozens of Nots trapped in moments of very ordinary life, and in ways she had never felt before, she was envious. There was comfort in this place, alien but recognizable. She ran down a street of foot-packed mud, straight into the heart of a tiny community — a rough lonely place perched on the brink of a monster-infested wilderness. Yet here lived souls that enjoyed the luxury of dry shelter and a world of food that they raised for themselves, their brief, endless lives punctuated with countless little feasts.

  Her enemies wouldn’t follow her into this dangerous realm, she hoped.

  But they did. From the street behind her came gunfire and screams, the screams growing louder as her pursuers drew close. Then she heard the booming thuds of a single drum set in the village center — a great bowl of wood covered with the exoskins of ancestors. Someone was beating the drum with authority, warning the populace of monsters running loose. Now the children and elderly would hide. Every able body would race indoors long enough to retrieve a spear, or maybe a bow and lucky arrow, and then they would rush out again to stab at a trio of organisms that were impossible to kill.

  Two determined enemies became a mob of a hundred and two. She couldn’t run faster, and then her legs slowed even more, turning clumsy. She had never breathed this deeply, but all the oxygen in the world couldn’t cure the kind of fatigue eating away at her muscle and reflexes. She was stupid with exhaustion. Straight ahead of her, a tall Not stepped out of his home, and she was slow enough that he had ample time to aim what looked like a very long arrow. She saw the creature’s face, the skin nearly black with the purple and the glassy beak exposed when the nervous lips pulled back, and she saw the arrow fly off the bow and heard the thunk and knew full well that she should leap to one side or the other, spoiling the shot. But despite trying to react, she couldn’t. The arrow’s head was hard, well-sharpened sapphire that cut through her poncho and the skin just beneath her tiny left breast, meeting the ribs and then bouncing. But the blade didn’t fall free. She felt the impact and spun around, astonished by how easily her balance was lost. More Nots were emerging from their little houses. She saw anger and terror. Or she saw nothing. Who could say what the Nots felt, in any situation, in any given day? But she imagined them being fearful, and then brave because of their fear. They saw her stumble and nearly drop to the ground, and maybe a dozen of them were holding sharp implements that could be used to hack at a monster such as her, reducing her to shreds before she could find her feet again.

  But she didn’t lose her balance completely.

  Her last hand caught the packed mud and pushed, and her bare toes bit deep and helped shove her into full stride again. Then the hand lifted and blindly broke the arrow shaft and pulled it from her chest, tossing it aside before the muddy hand dug into the gore, pulling out the jagged gemstone.

  The little road came to empty ground that led out toward a gray wet sky. She ran, and a thrown rock struck her in the back, between her shoulder blades. More rocks fell on the street with hard squishing sounds. Then all at once the shouting changed complexion. It took her a moment to realize that the faces had turned away, and now every mouth was cursing the monsters chasing after her.

  It was astonishingly easy, this irrational and useless belief that the Nots had taken sides in another species’ contest.

  But that’s exactly what she felt.

  Unable to help herself, she paused at the edge of the village, and she breathed and turned around while placing her hand against one knee and bending forward, drinking at the dense air while her little Nots made their stand.

  A hundred voices shouted insults, or they begged the gods for help, or they tried to coax bravery out of every hiding cousin and lover and brother.

  The thunk-thunk-thunk of bows was a sweet noise.

  Then the crowd charged at the two monsters, hoes and simple clubs lifting high and then dropping, battering one another as much as their mortal enemies.

  She felt distant; she felt safe.

  Even when she knew she was wrong, she entertained a bold little confidence that produced the best smile in days and days and days.

  Then the hard pop of human guns began, and the nearly instantaneous booms of explosives. Concussions broke against her face. What kept the blasts from being louder were all those packed brave foolish and doomed bodies filling up the street. Nots flew back into Nots, and all their bravery was lost in an instant. The villagers tried to run and couldn’t, packed too close, and the young man and the young woman shot another ten or twelve rounds at point-blank range, accepting the burns and bony shrapnel that was sure to come from that tactic.

  The one-armed girl took a tentative step backward.

  Whole exoskins were ripped free of their bodies, and voices died in the midst of screaming, and then the mob dissolved into panicked figures fleeing and others falling, and the humans emerged from the carnage, shouting at their assailants with a few old Not curses.

  She knew to run but couldn’t.

  Spellbound, she stared at bodies not too unlike hers. These monsters were peppered with arrows and at least one long spear, and knife wounds and gashes from heavy rocks. But the man and woman were far stronger than her, and larger, and what would have dropped her ten times just made them angrier and more sure.

  It was the bride who took time to kneel and aim carefully.

  As her gun kicked, the one-armed girl — her target — remembered to leap sideways.

  What saved her was the range, which was too close. And it was the tiny distance that she had moved sideways, insuring that the single round passed into the guts but missed the spine or hips or ribs. It hit hard and dug into her and through her, and her first impression was that some heavy old piece of her body had been removed. At last, she was light again and full of energy. In that half-moment before the explosion, she could tell herself that she was blessed. And then came the white-hot blast that threw her forward, that casual violence shoving her into the wet face of the road.

  She died, but only for a moment.

  Then she was aware enough to know that her back was scorched, and her hair, and her clothes were blown away and her guts were battered or missing entirely. She came back into life unaware of how much time had passed, but then sitting up, she realized that only a moment or two was lost. The human man was just beginning to run at her, and his pretty mate stood and smiled, and the severed arm carried in the pack twisted and grabbed at the sky — a blind reflexive gesture that wouldn’t last much longer.

  She rose to her feet somehow.

  So much of her belly was missing that she had to use her one arm to keep herself upright, that meal of chewed wax dripping free even after the bleeding had stopped. She turned and began to do what passed for running. Neither quick nor graceful, she headed into the open country. Her only advantage was that pain and deprivation had stolen away all of her good sense. Any rational mind would have given up now. But she had nothing left except instinct, and both legs remained intact, and maybe the hunters were too confident or too injured to put an end to this chase. Maybe the Nots had counterattacked. She didn’t know. Crossing a pasture of hair-vetch, at some point she stumbled her way onto a spine of eroded gneiss that quickly narrowed. But she couldn’t see beyond her next two steps, what with the rain falling harder suddenly and the invisible sun setting and her own numbing desire to do nothing but keep her eyes half closed, dancing with sleep until that moment when her left foot stepped into the open air, dragging her body and other leg over the sudden lip of cliff.

  Twice on the tumbling journey down, she struck boulders. Then the cliff pulled away, and she fell past beside thick beds
of slates and mudstones undermined by an ocean that she had never seen before and didn’t see now — a realm of deep cool nearly living water topped with a winter-starved skin that split when her body, led by her unconscious head, finally struck.

  2

  The limp, burnt body was a prize too rich to ignore. Fish licked the salty flesh and bit hard into the rusty red muscle. But even tiny meals made throats burn and bellies sicken, and the indigestible was often spat out again. Her proteins were unlike anything natural, spun from amino acids peculiar to distant worlds and immortal beings. Her stubborn blood was laced with antioxidants often toxic to the local biology. Buried inside her chemical bonds were the scarcest, most dangerous metals and lanthanides and heavy halogens. And worst of all, between her dead cells slept fleets of machine-like phages. If just one of those ingested phages lost its ancient safeguards, then it would duplicate itself at a staggering pace — billions of machines trying mightily to transform native flesh into the healthy body of a human female. But even with those dangers, her body was steadily bitten and masticated and then vomited up again. Nervous systems failed; metabolisms collapsed. Her drifting corpse created a zone of misery, the dark winter water full of twitching fins and abortions as well as a succession of increasingly grim fish kills. But that slaughter proved endurable for some species, and for a lucky few, there was uncommon wealth. Deep-swimmers tasted the mayhem, and once the rough soup was diluted enough, they rose up to drink their fill. A flight of hack-a-leens descended on the water’s skin, claws cutting through and the long necks leading down to where they would nab tiny, precious meals. After two nights and a day, the deep expanse of the bay had absorbed much of her potassium and phosphorus, while her stolen iron and calcium fueled a million quiet wars; and during the second day, a remarkable midwinter bloom made the water glow with a vivid, milky light.

  Much as it had in life, the woman’s body continued to wander. Bloodless and burnt, gutted and chewed upon — yet she felt nothing. Many days and nights passed without being noticed. Occasionally one of her dark eyes would open, but the mind behind it perceived nothing but a vague cold gray. In tiny, ineffectual steps, intricate mechanisms would strive to make repairs to her body, or at least staunch the steady losses. A sleeping organ might wake for a moment, pushing ions into important places and spinning a few new proteins; but even tiny actions were a waste, and the work quickly ended. Processes rather like rot took hold, causing her flesh to bloat. She floated with her back up and her dead face down, the final arm and her legs spread wide. With the barest metabolism, her temperature matched that of the winter sea. The nameless river supplied the first steady push that carried her out of the bay, and the tides pulled her farther from the land. Then a wild storm broke, shredding the last of the summer skin. Waves rose up in high neat rows, marching toward a horizon she could neither see nor imagine, and what little remained of the woman was carried out into a realm as empty and black as space.

  Each season had its wealth, its champions. Winter was dark but deliciously wet, and with the skin peeled off the wind-churned water, oxygen passed freely into the deepest realms. The muddy floor of the ocean was home to a nation: a thousand unimagined beasts, at least not imagined by the dead woman. These were huge creatures, and by any measure, their minds were substantial. Winter was their time to rise to the surface, feeding and breeding. Soon they discovered the mystery drifting above their home, and with sonar and then giant blue-black eyes, they studied the intruder with care. There was perhaps a passing resemblance of form, but this was no Not. That was one point of agreement. Ancient tales spoke of monsters descending from the sky, but that must have been a different species from this creature. The corpse carried no trace of wings. Nothing about the visitor seemed grand or special, and after so much abuse, even her original shape was a subject of considerable debate.

  “Eat it,” one beast suggested.

  “I will not,” its companion replied.

  “Why not?”

  “It is not dead.”

  Only detritus and their own children were suitable food.

  “But it is dead,” the first creature argued. “Have you seen it move? In all of the time we have danced here, has the creature taken any action?”

  Just then, the dead eyes opened.

  Perhaps the sound of whistling voices woke her. Perhaps it was chance. Whatever the reason, the right eye came alive, followed by the left, and the mind behind the eyes fell out of its coma just enough to perceive two vast shapes drifting beneath, carefully keeping their giant selves out of reach.

  The two watery beasts stared up at her, perplexed and intrigued.

  Weakly, she managed to kick both of her rotted, bloated legs. And the last bits of muscle made her arm flinch, pulling her hand against her belly, gingerly touching the still-gaping hole.

  “It lives,” the first beast decided.

  But its companion was less sure. “Perhaps that was a reflex.”

  Whatever the carcass was, it was unnatural. And it was evil. No other conclusion was possible.

  “We should destroy it,” said the first beast.

  “But why?”

  “To rid the world of an abomination.”

  There was a compelling logic to that opinion, yes.

  “Consider the honor,” the first beast argued.

  “I give this honor to you,” said its companion.

  Slowly, the first beast swam upward and opened its broad mouth and then inhaled, neatly pulling the carcass into its wide throat and then its belly. Then with a lying voice, it said, “Delicious.”

  “Really?”

  “You must eat the next one of these,” it argued. “You will never taste anything like it, I promise.”

  Phages designed to defend and repair human flesh suddenly woke, bathed in free oxygen and eager to work. But even worse were the rare elements carried in the dead blood — heavy metals freed by the stomach acids, effortlessly spreading into every cell inside that exceptionally long body. Bright cries of misery carried back into the depths. Every recent meal was thrown out of the anguished mouth and anus. Then before nightfall, thankfully, the poor creature was dead.

  Consumed by acids and smaller than ever, the human corpse calmly resumed its facedown floating.

  The surviving beast grieved for its lost friend and wrestled with its own guilt, and then in a moment of despairing bravery, it vowed that if this monster couldn’t be destroyed, at least it would be removed from the ocean.

  The nearest land was an island, black and rough and rain-soaked, and when the tide was high, the water beside its shore was open and very deep. Carrying the monster on its head, the beast swam close and then flung the danger as far as possible, watching with satisfaction as the immortal body landed on a tall stack of rocks. And there it did nothing but lie in a motionless heap, those tiny black alien eyes neither opened nor closed, nothing to see but the rain and darkness and their inevitable doom.

  3

  The cistern was overflowing, and before it was capped it needed to be laced with copper salts — a useful trick to keep thieves out of the stored rainwater. That’s why the man was kneeling in the gully. The fanhearts spotted him and dropped through the tall trees, screaming some nonsense about a mysterious visitor. Then the flock’s white-throated elder settled on the slope above, long wings spread wide and her throat twisting to say one alien word. “Human,” the bird managed with a crackling squawk. “Human, human, human!”

  The man poured in the last of the salt. Then he looked up, and with a rough approximation of the fanheart language, he asked, “Where?”

  “Rookery, dawnward, pillars,” she reported in her own tongue. And when he did nothing, she said again, “Human.”

  His companions meant well. But in matters like these, they were almost always wrong. What they’d found could be any sort of creature cast up on the shoreline, or it was nothing at all. But most likely it was a dead Not— some fisherman tossed from his boat, probably. Fanhearts were incurable o
ptimists. They loved to make large promises, hoping for a taste of his praise.

  Before anything else, what he needed to do was fit the sapphire plug into the cistern’s mouth, and then he covered the plug with plastic and clay and random rocks, hiding its presence. Then he finally climbed to his feet, telling them, “Thanks. Human will go view.”

  The flock was thrilled that their ancient friend might believe them. They drew furious circles overhead, voices bright and enthusiastic. The rookery was an easy flight but a long walk, and the pillars in question stood beyond the barricade. Preparation was important. On the remote possibility they were right, the human climbed down the hillside and stepped inside his home. There he filled a large pack with supplies, selecting one gun to carry and two more for his belt. Then he donned a fresh poncho and secured his front door before walking out from under the shadow of the old gyreboy, attacking the cold chilled rain.

  With eyes closed, he could have walked the next thousand steps. This portion of the island was so much his own that it felt as if his soul extended past his flesh, embracing the corundum hills and the crumbling beds of mudstone and the mature black forest that fed the wild game that lived as it wished, knowing nothing of genuine danger. This was a retreat, a private paradise. One creature ruled here, and the creature’s reputation was considerable— a titanic and fearless monster known well by the local Nots. “The Giant”, they had dubbed their human, or whistles to that effect: Even among his horrible species, he was huge and strong — the ultimate monster — and the tiny natives knew better than risk slinking into his dark realm.

  The man walked smoothly, with grace and economy, his swollen pack creaking as the straps rubbed and the baggage shifted.