The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  He came up behind the engineers as they were shining their flashlights at the smoking ruin that used to be a transformer. “Something caused it to arc,” one said. Bogdan was kneeling a few meters away. He stood up and dangled a mutilated padlock in the beam of his flashlight. “Somebody’s got bolt-cutters.”

  All eyes turned to Gennady.

  He backed away. “Now, wait a minute. I was with you.”

  “You could have set something to blow and then come back to the trailer,” said one of the engineers. “It’s what I would have done.”

  Gennady said nothing; if they thought he’d done it they wouldn’t be looking for Nadine. “Grab him!” shouted one of the engineers. Gennady just put out his hands and shook his head as Bogdan took hold of his wrists.

  “It’s not what I would have done,” Gennady said. “Because this would be the result. I am not so stupid.”

  “Oh, and I am?” Bogdan glared at him. At that moment one of the engineers put his walkie-talkie to his ear and made a shushing motion. “We found the – what? Sir, I can’t hear what –”

  The distorted tones of the voice on the walkie-talkie had been those of Achille, but suddenly they changed. Nadine said, “I have your boss. I’ll kill him unless you go to the center of the floor and light the barrel-fire so I can see you.”

  The engineers gaped at one another. Bogdan let go of Gennady and grabbed at the walkie-talkie. “Who is this?”

  “Someone who knows what you’re up to. Now move!”

  Bogdan eyed Gennady, who shrugged. “Nothing to do with me.”

  There was a quick, heated discussion. The engineers were afraid of being shot once they were out in the open, but Gennady pointed out that there was actually more light around the wall, because that’s where the sodium lamps were. “She doesn’t want to see us clearly, she just wants us where it’ll be obvious which way we’re going if we run,” he said.

  Reluctantly, they began edging toward the shadowed center of the tower. “How can you be so sure?” somebody whined. Gennady shrugged again.

  “If she’d wanted to kill her brother, she would have by now,” he pointed out.

  “Her what?”

  And at that moment, the gunfire started.

  It was all upstairs, but the engineers scattered, leaving Gennady and Bogdan standing in half-shadow. Had Octav stayed up top? Gennady couldn’t remember. He and Bogdan scanned the gallery, but the glare from the sodium lamps hid the trailer. After a few seconds, Gennady heard the metallic bounce of feet running on the mesh surface overhead. It sounded like two sets, off to the right.

  “There!” Gennady pointed to the left and began running. Bogdan ran too, and quickly outpaced him; at that point Gennady peeled off and headed back. There was another set of stairs nearby, and though the engineers were there, they were huddling under its lower steps. He didn’t think they’d stop him, nor did they as he ran past them and up.

  Bogdan yelled something inarticulate from the other side of the floor. Gennady kept going.

  “Nadine? Where are you?” She’d been running in a clockwise direction around the tower, so he went that way too, making sure now that he was making plenty of noise. He didn’t want to surprise her. “Nadine, it’s me!”

  Multiple sets of feet rang on the gallery behind him. Gennady took the chance that she’d kept going up, and mounted the next set of steps when he came to them. “Nadine!” She’d be among the scrubbers now.

  He reached the top and hesitated. Why would she come up here? It was the cliché thing to do: in movies, the villains always went up. Gennady tried to push past his confusion and worry to picture the layout of the tower. He remembered the two inspection elevators just as a rattling hum started up ahead.

  By the time he reached the yellow wire cage, the elevator car was on its way up. Next stop, as far as he knew, was the top of the tower. Nadine could hold it there, and maybe that was her plan. There wouldn’t be just the one elevator, though, not in a structure this big. Gennady turned and ran for the other side of the tower.

  He could hear somebody crashing up the steps from the lower levels. “Malianov!” shouted Octav.

  He was a good quarter of the way around the curve from Gennady, so Gennady paused and leaned on the rail to shout, “I’m here!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m right on her heels!”

  “Stop! Come down! Leave it to us.”

  “Okay! I’ll be right there.” He ran on, and reached the other elevator before Octav had reached the last flight of steps. Gennady wrenched the rusty outer cage door open, but struggled with the inner one. He got in and slammed it just as Octav thundered up. Gennady hit the UP button while Octav roared in fury; but three meters up, he hit STOP.

  “Octav. Don’t shoot at me, please. I’ll send the cage back down when I get to the top. I just need a minute to talk with Nadine, is all.”

  In the movies there’d be all kinds of wild gunplay happening right now, but Octav was a professional. He crossed his arms and glowered at Gennady through the grid flooring of the elevator. “Where’s she going?” he demanded.

  “Damned if I know. Up.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Someplace she can talk to her brother alone, I’m thinking. Reason with him, threaten him, I don’t know. Look, Octav, let me talk to her. She might shoot you, but she’s not going to shoot me.”

  “It really is Nadine? Achille’s sister? Do you know her?”

  “Well, remember that story I told last night about Azerbaijan and the nukes? We worked together on that. You know she’s with the IAEA too. You never met her?”

  There was an awkward pause. “What happened in the trailer?” Gennady asked. “Did she hurt him?” Octav shook his head.

  “She was yelling,” he said. “I snuck around the trailer and came in through the bathroom window. But I got stuck.”

  Gennady stifled a laugh. He would have paid to see that; Octav was not a small man.

  “I took a shot at her but she ran. Might have winged her, though.”

  Gennady cursed. “Octav, that’s your boss’s sister.”

  “He told me to shoot!”

  There was another awkward pause.

  “I’m sure she doesn’t mean to harm him,” said Gennady, but he wasn’t so sure now.

  “Then why’s she holding him at gunpoint?”

  “I don’t know. Look, just give me a minute, okay?” He hit UP before Octav could reply.

  He’d gotten an inkling of the size of the tower when they’d inspected it by helicopter, but down at the bottom, the true dimensions of the place were obscured by shadow. Up here it was all vast emptiness, the walls a concrete checkerboard that curved away like the face of a dam. It was all faintly lit by a distant, indigo-silver circle of sky. On the far side of this bottomless amphitheater, the other elevator car had a good lead on him. Nadine probably wouldn’t hear him now if he called out to her.

  The elevator frameworks ended at tiny balconies about halfway up the tower. Nadine’s cage was slowing now as it neared the one on the far side.

  Gennady shivered. A cool wind was coming up from below, and it went right through the gridwork floor and flapped his pant legs. There wasn’t much to it yet, but it would get stronger.

  He watched as Nadine and Achille got out of the other elevator. A square of brightness appeared – a door opening to the outside – and they disappeared through it.

  When his own elevator stopped he found he was at a similar little balcony. There was nothing here but the side-rails and a gray metal utility door, with crash bars, in the outer concrete wall. The sense of height here was utterly physical; he’d feel it even if he shut his eyes, because the whole tower swayed ever so gently, and the moving air made it feel like you were falling. Gennady sent the elevator back down and leaned on the crash bar.

  Outside it was every bit as bad as he’d feared. The door let onto a narrow catwalk that ran around the tower in both directions. He remembered seei
ng it from the helicopter, and while it had looked sturdy enough from that vantage, in the gray dawn light he could see long streaks of rust trailing down from the bolts that held it to the wall.

  He swallowed, then tested the thing with his foot. It seemed to hold, so he began slowly circling the tower. This time, he tried every step before committing himself, and leaned on the concrete wall, as far from the railing as he could get.

  Now he could hear a vague sound, like an endless sigh, rising from below. That, combined with the motion of the tower, made it feel as if something were rousing down in the wall-less maze that filled the black valley.

  After a couple of minutes the far point of the circle hove into view. Here was something he hadn’t seen from the helicopter: a broadening of the catwalk on this side. At this point it became a wide, reinforced platform, and on it sat a white and yellow trailer. That was utterly incongruous: Gennady could see the thing’s undercarriage and wheels sitting on the mesh floor. It had probably been hauled up here by helicopter during the tower’s construction.

  A pair of parachutes was painted on the side of the trailer. They were gray in this light, but probably pink in daylight.

  Now he heard shouting – Achille’s voice. Gennady tried to hurry, but the catwalk felt flimsy and the breeze was turning into a wind. He made it to the widened platform, but that was no better since it also had open gridwork flooring and several squares of it were missing.

  “Nadine? It’s Gennady. What’re you doing?”

  “Stop her!” yelled Achille. “She’s gone crazy!”

  He took the chance and ran to the trailer, then peeked around its corner. He was instantly dazzled by intense light – flare-light, in fact – lurid and almost bright green. He squinted and past his sheltering fingers saw it shift around, lean up, and then fade.

  “Stop!” Achille sounded desperate. Gennady heard Nadine laugh. He edged around the corner of the trailer.

  “Nadine? It’s Gennady. Can I ask what you’re doing?”

  She laughed again, sounding a little giddy. Gennady blinked away the dazzle-dots and spotted Achille. He was clutching the railing and staring wide-eyed as Nadine pulled another flare out of a box at her feet.

  She’d holstered her pistol and now energetically pulled the tab from the flare. She windmilled her arm and hurled it into the distance, laughing as she did it. Gennady could see the bright spark following the last one down – but the vista here was too dizzying and he quickly brought his eyes back to Nadine.

  “Found these in the trailer,” she said. “They’re perfect. Want to help?” She offered one to him. Gennady shook his head.

  “That’s going to cause a fire,” he said. She nodded.

  “That’s the idea. Did you bring a radio? We dropped ours. Achille here has to radio his people to shut down the tower.” She looked hopeful, but Gennady shook his head. “We’ll have to wait for that new bodyguard, then,” she said, “He’s sure to have one. Then we can all go home.”

  The good news was, she didn’t look like she was on some murderous rampage. She looked determined, but no different from the Nadine he’d known five years ago. “We can?” said Gennady. “This is just a family fight, is that it? Achille’s not going to press charges, and the others aren’t going to talk about it?”

  She hesitated. “Come on, can’t you let me have my moment? You of all people should be able to do that.”

  “Why me of all people?”

  She smiled at him past smoke and vivid pink light. “’Cause you’ve already saved the world a couple times.”

  She turned to throw another flare.

  “Not the world,” Gennady said – only because he felt he had to say something to keep her talking. “Azerbaijan, maybe. But... all this,” he gestured at the falling flares, “seems like a bit much for having your brother get into a fight with your date.”

  “No. No!” She sounded hugely disappointed in him. “This isn’t about that little incident with Kafatos, is it Achille?” Achille flung up his free hand in exasperation; his other still tightly held the rail. “Although,” Nadine went on, “I’m afraid I might have given brother dear the big idea myself, a couple of days before.”

  “What idea?” Gennady looked to Achille, who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “When he told me about the tower project and said he wanted to use the Putorana Plateau as a carbon sink, I told him about the Permian extinction. He was fascinated – weren’t you, Achille? But he really lit up when I told him that though it was heat shock that undoubtedly killed many of the trees on the planet, it was something else that finished off the rest.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nadine pointed down, at the disc of plastic-roofed forest below them. “You drove through it on the way up here. It’s out there, trying to get into our lungs, our systems...”

  “The fungus?”

  She nodded. “A specific breed of it. It covered Earth from pole to pole during the Permian. It ate all the trees that survived the heat... conifer trees, tough as they were. And here’s the thing: it’s still around today.” Again she nodded at the forest. “It’s called Rhizoctonia, and Achille’s been farming a particularly nasty strain of it here for two years.”

  Gennady looked at Achille. He was remembering how the day had gone – how Achille seemed to be building his restart schedule around prevailing winds, rather than the integrity of the tower’s systems.

  If you wanted to cultivate an organism that ate wood and thrived in dry heat, you’d want a greenhouse. They were perched above the biggest greenhouse in central Asia.

  Nadine hoisted up the box of flares and stalked off along the catwalk. “I need to make sure the whole fungus crop goes up. You need to make sure Achille’s engineers close the windows, or the heat’s all going to come up here. See you in a bit.” She disappeared around the curve of the tower; a short time later, Gennady saw a flare wobble up and then down into the night.

  He turned to Achille, who had levered himself onto his feet. “Is she crazy? Or did we really come here to bomb Kafatos’s forest with spores?”

  Achille glared defiantly back. “So what if we did? It’s industrial espionage, sure. But he screwed me over to start with, made a secret deal with the oligarchs to torpedo my bid. Fair’s fair.”

  “And what’s to prevent this rhyzoctithing from spreading? How’s it supposed to tell the difference between Kafatos’s trees and the rest of the forest?” Achille looked away, and suddenly Gennady saw it all – the whole plan.

  “It can’t, can it? You were going to spread a cloud of spores across the whole northern hemisphere. Every heat-shocked forest in Asia and North America would fall to the Rhizoctia. Biological sequestration of carbon would stagger to a stop, not just here but everywhere. Atmospheric carbon levels would shoot up. Global warming would go into high gear. No more talk about mitigation. No more talk about slowing emissions on a schedule. The world would have to go massively carbon-negative, immediately. And you own all the patents to that stuff.”

  “Not all,” he admitted. “But for the useable stuff, yeah.”

  A metallic bong bong bong sound came from the catwalk opposite the direction Nadine had taken. Moments later Octav showed up. He was puffing, obviously spooked by the incredible drop, but determined to help his boss. “Where is she?”

  “Never mind,” said Achille. “Have you got a walkie-talkie?” Octav nodded and handed it over.

  “Hello hello?” Achille put the thing to his ear, other hand on his other ear, and paced up and down. Octav was staring at the parachutes painted on the trailer.

  “What is that?” he said, assuming, it seemed, that Gennady would know.

  “Looks like they were expecting tourists. Base jumping off a solar updraft tower?” From up here, you’d be able to slide down the valley thermals to the river far below. “I guess it could be fun.”

  “I can’t get a signal,” said Achille. “You,” he said to Octav, “go after her!”

 
“You can’t get a signal because you’re outside. They’re inside.” Gennady pointed at the door in the side of the tower as Octav pounded away along the catwalk. “Try again from next to the elevator.” Achille moved to the door and Gennady made to follow, but as Achille opened it a plume of smoke poured out. “Oh, shit!”

  The tower had been designed to suck up air from the surrounding forest. It was already pulling in smoke from the fires Nadine had lit with her flares. And she was moving in a circle, trying to ensure that the entire bull’s-eye of whitened pines caught.

  “Yes! Yes!” Achille was gasping into the radio, ducking out of the smokefilled tower every few seconds to breathe. “You have to do it now! The whole forest, yes!” He glanced at Gennady. “They’re trying to get to the trailer, but they’d have to fix the transformer first and there’s too much smoke, I don’t know if they’re going to make it.”

  Gennady looked down at the forest; lots of little spot fires were spreading and joining up into larger orange smears and lozenges. If Nadine made it all the way around, they’d be trapped at the center of a firestorm. “We’re stuck too.”

  “Maybe not.” Achille ran to the trailer, which turned out to be full of cardboard boxes. They rummaged among them, finding more flares – not useful – and safety harnesses, cables and crampons and, “Ha!” said Achille, holding up two parachutes.

  “Is that all?”

  The billionaire kicked around at the debris. “Yeah, you’d think there’d be more, but you know we never got this place up and running. These are probably the test units. Doesn’t matter, there’s one for me, one for you.”

  “Not Nadine?” Or Octav? Achille shot him an exasperated look. She was his own sister, but he obviously didn’t care. Gennady took the chute he offered, with disgust. He and Octav and Nadine could play rock-paperscissors for it, but if he won, he decided, he’d give it to Nadine when she came back around – if only to see the expression on Achille’s face.