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

by Gardner Dozois

  With similar minds, they had similar talents.

  Though her head was emptier than his, he might mention . . . speaking of past experiences as well as a multitude of bad old habits.

  “Five difficult summers,” he allowed.

  Winter meant open water, and water brought boats. But they were usually small craft piloted by lost fishermen or raiders navigating through the starless rain, using the taste of the land to guide them here. For the island, summer brought relative peace. Yet this year was the exception, and the water barrier would soon vanish. And just as critical, life on the mainland was going to be hard. The heat would be brutal. Cataclysmic fires would push through the interior. What if all the Nots in the world one night dreamed of escape, and then every last one of them decided to march across the water, hunting for safer land?

  And Nots weren’t even the most dangerous threat.

  Mercer said as much with his southward glance, lips tight and one hand playing with the red stubble of his hair.

  The girl woke early that next morning, alone in bed, and after a pissing into the special wooden bowl, she tracked him through his enormous house. Using scent and toe prints in the dust, she found her way to a huge yet cramped room normally hidden behind a bland beige slab of corundum. Here was Mercer’s armory — an enormous stockpile of weapons of every age, every design. On the racks and deep shelves and stacked in neat, scrupulously organized heaps were enough implements to make an army of killers. Slaughtering Nots was usually easy work. A long blade of tempered glass proved effective in most circumstances, particularly when wearing the nanoarmor that hung from high hooks — breastplates and helmets, breeches and leggings designed to shrug off all but the worst blows from the natives. But something — an intuition; a nightmare; some private voice — had compelled Mercer to clean the firing mechanisms and test the aim of several fancy, terrible weapons that she understood too well.

  With a fingertip, she touched the diamond barrels and plastic triggers and the carved wooden stocks that fit against only a human shoulder. Some instinctive piece of her was scared, warning her that she didn’t belong here, begging her to flee before the ghosts of this place woke.

  Mercer stared at the rifle in his big hands. “Last night, I had an exceptionally lousy dream,” he confessed.

  “Dreams have meaning,” she told him.

  He made a rough, dismissive sound.

  “They tell you what you won’t hear any other way,” she assured.

  “And it’s always the same message. You’re worried about something real, and your mind finds a lazy way to remind you.”

  “In my dreams,” she began.

  Then she hesitated.

  He closed the rifle’s breech and looked up, watching her eyes. More out of politeness than curiosity, he asked, “What about your dreams?”

  “That’s how the dead speak to us.”

  He looked almost relieved. “You believe that?”

  “My dead speak,” she continued. “My mother, and others too.”

  “Memories,” he said with a shrug. “That’s all they are.”

  “No, no,” she insisted. “They come from the Afterlife.”

  He repeated the doubtful grunt.

  But not a whisper of skepticism lay in her voice. “The dead come to help me find my way.”

  Mercer wanted to laugh. She saw that in his careful face, in the hard grip of his hands. But he decided to push the topic back to where it began. “I don’t want to worry you. And probably nothing will come of this. But today, before anything else, I want you to find three good guns that fit your body, your tastes. Your talents. This is a haphazard collection, but I can adapt my munitions. Whatever you choose, we will make it work.”

  Most of the guns belonged to distinct, easily recognized species. They could be grouped by age and shape and the quality of their materials, and by the quirky designs of their barrels and firing mechanisms, plus the occasional flourish left behind by famous, nameless builders, all of whom were long dead. Humans had spread across this world, but they were never common. Few had the skills, much less the tools, to create machinery like this. But there were the occasional lush times, and the gifted craftsman would outfit an extended family and even its allies. As a rule, these weapons were tough, easy to repair and deeply cherished. In her life, she had held three guns, only one of which was loaded. But inside this room, she counted a hundred guns and then stopped counting. Each one could throw a kinetic round or an explosive charge over long distances. In a marksman’s grip, they would disable their target by shredding muscles and organs and temporarily shattering every human bone.

  “How many have come here?” she asked.

  Mercer pretended not to hear.

  “How many of us have you have faced?” she persisted. “Do your dreams remember?”

  Given any choice, he would evade that question. But then he looked at her, just for a moment, and she saw several emotions swirling behind his eyes, including a self-astonished pride.

  “Three hundred and thirteen,” he allowed.

  “They walked here?”

  “Some did.” He nodded. “Most came in winter, sailing their own boats. But our species has more trouble than Nots do when it comes to navigating without stars or good maps. Besides, my fanhearts always spot those raiders first, and I’m usually waiting for them when they make landfall.”

  She watched his jaw tighten, eyes narrowing.

  “Summers are worse,” he allowed. “Fanhearts have to fly north to feed over open water. So I don’t have the usual eyes. And with clear skies, the humans can know where they are heading, and if they also have a plan . . .”

  His voice trailed away.

  This ancient creature was a marvel: By his admission, he had defeated more than three hundred monsters, and he had survived every battle, managing to steal away their weapons and ammunition and who knew what other tools that had been carried here from the distant coast.

  She wondered what was lurking inside the other locked rooms.

  But she didn’t ask, turning away from him, pulling a particular gun off its wooden rack.

  Behind the rack sat a row of thick glass tanks, filled with something green, each topped with an elaborate valve.

  She touched one tank.

  “Don’t,” he cautioned.

  She pulled her hand away slowly.

  “Chlorine gas,” he explained. “Awful, wonderful stuff. It would force our bodies into alternate metabolisms, and we’d have to regrow our lungs before we could take a normal breath again.”

  She nodded, wondering where the gas came from. “Is it for Nots?”

  “If there’s a lot of them, and if the wind offers to help me.”

  She nodded without comment. The gun in her hands had a long thin barrel, designed to send a tiny charge across considerable distances. The diamond barrel had a trace of yellow, and it was slick on the outside, and she knew immediately which species of gun this was.

  “That’s too big for you,” he mentioned.

  Too big by a lot, she thought.

  “You’d be happier with something stubby. Accurate enough, but small, and with a lot more punch.” He stopped working long enough to pull two candidates off another rack.

  But she kept staring at the weapon in her hands.

  “I saw two guns just like this,” she mentioned. “And not that long ago.”

  “Where was that?”

  She smiled at him. “Where did this come from?”

  “The same as every other gun. From the mainland.”

  Mercer might know quite a lot about the Nots, understanding their clads and sect-families. But the politics of human monsters seemed rather more mysterious to him.

  “After you destroy their bodies,” she began.

  He waited, and then asked, “What do I do with them?”

  “With those immortal brains, yes.”

  They watched each other’s face.

  She was a tiny, tiny fraction of this man�
��s age, and she lacked his experiences and all of his hard-earned wisdom. But her life, such as it was, had taught her what mattered most. With confidence, she said, “If I was in you, I’d take everything that I could use of them. Everything. Then I’d walk out on the sea with their heads, and where I knew it was very deep, I would tie rocks to them and cut a hole through the water’s skin, and I’d drop them down where nothing would ever find them.”

  The man flinched.

  Then with a tone edging near embarrassment, Mercer admitted, “I’ve considered that. A few times. But it seems like too much.”

  “So what do you do?”

  With the wide barrel of what would become her favorite gun, Mercer pointed at the floor. “I have another room, a special room,” he admitted. “Where I keep their skulls, labeled and safe.”

  Flashing a little smile, she asked, “Where are they?”

  “No.” He spoke quietly, yet the voice could not have been sharper. Some line of trust was being defined. “Dream, no. Never. And please don’t ask me that again.”

  9

  She watched the dense black skin cover the sea, and she didn’t quit asking herself when would be the best time to run. Because she knew that she couldn’t stay in this little place forever. A summer as remarkable as this might never come again. Yes, she was thriving for now. Her body had never been so healthy or felt half this strong. But to stand two moments on the same patch of rock felt unnatural. The life that she knew — the hard, inspired, honest, unburdened life that her mother had taught her — beckoned. Perhaps if this Mercer man were ordinary, or even just comprehensible, she would want to linger. But he was different from any human she had ever known — a strange and unimaginably ancient creature, secretive beyond all reason and far too in love with his ancient ways.

  When Mercer wasn’t working, he was busily thinking new projects to attack. In his home were rooms filled with vats, and he would build hot fires and breathe the smoky fumes, enduring that misery while he refined some peculiar metal or semiconductor or odd salt. In the depths of the hill were a series of connected rooms filled with the turbines that gave light and electricity. One distant room, isolated and sealed, was where he made his fresh explosives and special, Not-killing poisons. One great long chamber was his “shop,” and it was full of complicated machines that did little more than sleep. But occasionally he would wake one of the machines, using it to repair some broken device or shape a useful piece of sapphire or build an entirely new machine that had no function except to impress his guest. He even boasted that he could weave nanofibers and culture pure diamond, although he didn’t presently have the time or need. And of course he was constantly leaving her, for a day and sometimes for longer, attending to one of the nameless but very important tasks that involved his Nots or the surrounding sea.

  It was a time-eating burden, being the monster deity.

  But when he returned home again, Mercer enjoyed his rest. Sitting on a chair or in their shared bed, he loved to reach inside his cavernous head, offering another tale about vanished ages and invisible worlds. As a rule, his stories had no ends and usually no discernable lesson. Often they were little more than noise. Yes, the old man was unquestionably bright, and his life on this island was an astonishing accomplishment; but sometimes she wondered if the human mind wasn’t as durable as he claimed: Some kind of erosion or madness was infecting his soul. He had become such an expert at living one very narrow life that he couldn’t see his sorry decay, much less conjure up any fresh answers to questions long set aside.

  And the man had his rules: Some were small, others enormous, but they were usually unbreakable. He didn’t want her crossing the barricade, ever. Which was fine, since she wanted nothing to do with his precious Nots. But there so many rooms that she couldn’t enter either, and so many topics that were strictly forbidden. She didn’t need to know anything about the original human colony. The names of his old friends and lovers couldn’t matter less to her. But knowing that she was forbidden to ask about his Dead only made her want to know more. And worse still, Mercer began to control what she ate and how much. That was for the sake of her body, he claimed. And maybe he was right. But even when she was a child, no one had so thoroughly defined her life. Even her mother had let her explore and make her own spectacular blunders, preparing her daughter for that day when every last taboo would be lifted.

  The girl didn’t often guess at the future, but when her mind drifted, she could imagine herself remaining here for years, and perhaps many years. But the next instant always brought an obvious, dangerous question: Why would a man such as Mercer live alone? She wasn’t the first woman to find her way to his front door and not make herself into his enemy. But he was evasive when telling her how many others there had been. With words and long glances, he implied that every guest eventually returned to the mainland. But she had to wonder what happened if the love had turned sick. Maybe those past lovers hadn’t left him. Maybe their bioceramic brains were labeled and stacked inside the forbidden tomb.

  Her working plan was to wait until a few days before winter, and then slip away without warning. That’s why she stole nothing but tiny items that wouldn’t be missed. Yet she compiled a longer list of treasures — items too important to leave behind — and when the time came, she planned to grab them up too.

  There was a favorite rifle that threw big explosive rounds, and a quiet pistol that fired kinetic rounds, and she knew a sack already filled with both flavors of ammunition.

  She planned to steal vials from his stocks of minerals, but only a sampling of the full inventory — if she were too greedy, she reasoned, then he would probably have to chase after her.

  A tattler skin shelter.

  Tools, of course.

  Spare clothes.

  And enough dried piss-fungus to keep her belly full for thirty days. If she could carry all of that, she resolved, and if she reached land before the storms and darkness descended, that would ensure an easy winter and a better summer than any she had ever known.

  As long as she kept her guns and used the ammunition sparingly, she would be a powerful force in the worlds of Nots and of humans.

  If if if if if . . .

  But which country was best? In her head was a loose conglomeration of facts and offhanded words that came from every voice she had ever heard. But there was a painful lack of precision. What she needed was a map, drawn out and defined in terms that she could understand. She had owned and lost a few simple maps in her days. In Mercer’s living quarters was an odd machine that showed images that resembled maps. The lines and incomprehensible writing always made her eyes ache. But when he left one morning on some grand errand, she set to work trying to memorize some kind of maze — an interwoven array of tunnels and rooms far larger than his little house. But the only image resembling a world proved gray and dry and strangely smooth, save for a few odd mountains standing high above one hemisphere.

  By some means or another, Mercer discovered what she had been doing in his absence, and he was pleased. That smooth world seemed to be another one of his endless fascinations.

  “What is this object?” he asked, bringing the gray world back onto the screen. “Any guesses, Dream?”

  It was obviously important. But since Mercer responded best to ignorance, she shrugged and said, “No. No guesses.”

  “I came from here.”

  “Is that the earth?” she asked doubtfully.

  Her response saddened him. He shook his head for a moment before saying, “It’s not a world. It is a starship.”

  “You came here on that ball?”

  “Hardly.”

  She waited, knowing the rest would soon emerge.

  And it did. For a long while, he talked about an ancient, empty vessel found drifting between the galaxies, and he explained how humans had claimed it for themselves and then took their glorious prize on a long circular voyage around the galaxy. He had ridden inside that ship for a long time, and then in a much, much tini
er vessel, he had come here.

  “This ball moves in a circle?”

  “If it’s still on course,” he said. “Yes.”

  “So it will eventually find us here,” she concluded.

  He shook his head. “The starship never came this way to begin with, and I doubt that its captains would be interested in a place as remote and impoverished as this. I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry? Are your hands steering this fat ship?”

  “The Great Ship. That’s its name.”

  Which was not much of a name, she decided, in secret. With a dismissive shrug, she pointed out, “Whatever this ball is . . . if it isn’t coming back here, then it might as well not exist . . . and why waste your time thinking about it . . . ?”

  It was her mother who warned her that she was going to have a baby. And in that same urgent dream, she told her that the child was destined to die. But then the dead woman laughed, reminding her that every child meets that fate. The trick was to feed both of them well enough to assure a strong birth, and then she should teach her son — and it would be a boy — everything of practical substance. Then if the boy were fortunate as well as strong, that sorry last day could be avoided for the next thousand hard and wondrous years.

  Then the young woman woke, discovering that it was the middle of the night, the man lying close beside her.

  Now what?

  Her first instinct was to run and run now. A life of ceaseless wandering demanded nothing less. But she was trapped, at least for the moment. Caught in the bed of this slumbering giant, she had no choice but keep still, breathing softly, carefully considering her reasons for whatever she did next.

  Nutrition was everything for the developing fetus.

  Mercer could lecture for days about tiny, nameless organs and essential rare-earths and how exceptionally difficult it was for a body to build a new mind. But she didn’t need fancy ideas to appreciate how selfish and rude the unborn were. They absorbed the wealth from every bite of food, every sip of water. And if that thievery weren’t adequate, they would happily reach inside their poor mother’s bones, stripping away her own reserves of precious elements.