The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  Then he sat, stretching his legs out before him.

  “Maybe this sounds smug,” he said. “But for the last half-day or so, I’ve been telling myself that I was always part of some big plan. Your aspect gets loose. The leopard picks it up with his front paw. Some careful scheme puts the cat where he can find me, and he cuts me, and I get infected, and after running wild and getting strong, I find my brother. Then Matt gives me a heads-up and points me on my way.

  “Except that’s not how it works, is it?

  “If there was a fancy plan, it could be discovered. It could be fooled with or a million things could go wrong naturally, or maybe the gains wouldn’t match the hope. And that’s why real intelligence doesn’t bother with plans. You don’t, I bet. You’ve got a set of goals and principles and no end of complications, and everything changes from minute to second, and what the smart mind does is bury itself inside the possibilities and hope for the best.”

  Bloch paused, listening to nothing. Maybe the world outside was still shaking, but he felt nothing. Probably nobody was listening, but he had nothing else to do with his day. Pulling his legs in, he crossed them, Indian-style.

  “I’m here because I’m here,” he said. “Your enemy didn’t go looking for a mentally defective human who couldn’t feel fear. It’s just chance that you’re not facing down that blonde girl or the leopard or maybe a little penguin. Any creature would have worked, and I shouldn’t take this personally.

  “But I bring something odd and maybe lucky to this table. I don’t get scared, and that’s an advantage. When everybody else charges around, hands high and voices screaming, I’m this clear-eyed animal watching everything with interest. When you bounced along Pender, I saw people wrestling with every kind of fear. You were dumped into the water, and I studied Mr. Rightly’s face. Then there’s my mother who gets scared on her happiest day, and the government people and the professors trying to deal with you and each other, and everybody and everything else too. I’ve been paying attention. I doubt if anybody else has. The world’s never been this lost or this terrified, and during these last couple days, I’ve learned a great deal about the pissing of pants.”

  Bloch paused for a moment. Then he said. “I would make a lousy soldier. Matt told me that more than once. ‘If you don’t get scared, you get your head shot off,’ he said. Which means, Mr. Monster, that you’re probably sick with worry now, aren’t you? A good soldier would have to have some feat. You’re little more than nothing to your enemy. You’re just one grunt-soldier, in his hole and facing down an army. Except that army isn’t the real monster either. From what I’ve been told, the invader is pretty much sure to lose. No, the scary boy in this story is what turns the sun against its planet, scorching all this down to where everything is clean again. Clean but nearly dead. The monster is those laws and customs trying to keep the galaxy from getting consumed by too much life trying to do everything at once. That’s the real beast here. You know it and your enemy would admit as much, I bet, and that’s not the only similarity you two have.

  “Yeah, I think you must be shit-in-your-pants scared. Aren’t you?”

  Bloch stood again. The message had to be delivered, and he would do that on his feet. That felt best. He straightened and shook his arms, a heart indistinguishable from his original heart beating a little faster now. Then with the gravelly voice, he said, “Your enemy wants you to fight. It expects nothing but your best effort, using every trick and power to try to delay him. But your walls are going to collapse. He will absorb you and push to the Pacific and those next battles, and nothing will be won fast enough, and then the sun is going to wash this world with so much wild raw energy.

  “Your enemy doesn’t believe in plans,” Bloch said. “But possibilities are everywhere, and I’m bringing you one of the best. Not that it’s perfect, and maybe you won’t approve. But the pain and terror are going to look a little more worthwhile in the end, if you accept what I am offering you.

  “I have a set of aspects inside me. They’re hiding other aspects, and I think they might be inside my stomach.

  “You’ll have to cut me open to find them, and sorry, I can’t help you decipher them. But you’re supposed to hold them until you’re beaten, and then you can choose to accept your enemy’s offer. Or refuse it. The decision is going to be yours. But talking for my sake and the survival of most everybody I know and love, I sure hope you can find the courage to push the fear aside.

  “Shove the terror where it doesn’t get in the way.

  “And make your decision with those eyes open. Would you do that much for me, please?”

  Bloch stopped talking.

  He wasn’t standing in the bubble anymore. He was floating in a different place, and there was no telling how much time had passed, but the span felt large. Bloch floated at one end of an imprecise volume that was a little real but mostly just a projection – one enormous realm populated by tens of millions of earthly organisms.

  Closest were the faces he knew. His mother and Mr. Rightly were there, and the scientists and that blonde girl whose name he still didn’t know. And the camel had been saved, and the rest of the surviving zoo animals, and two hundred thousand humans who in the end were pulled from their basements and off their front porches. The penguins hadn’t made it to town in time, and the leopard was still dead, and Matt eventually died in the Pacific – an honored fighter doing what he loved.

  Billions of people were lost. They had been gone for so long that the universe scarcely remembered them, and nobody ever marked their tragic passing. But inside this contrived, highly compressed volume, his species persisted. The adventure continued. Another passenger asked to hear Simon Bloch’s story, and he told it from the beginning until now, stopping when he had nothing to add, enjoying the stares and the respectful silence.

  Then he turned, throwing his gaze in a better direction.

  Their starship was born while a great world died, and the chaos and rage of a solar flare had thrown it out into deepest space. Onboard were the survivors of many worlds, many tragedies, collected as a redoubt against the inevitable. The galaxy had finally fallen into that final war, but Bloch preferred to look ahead.

  In the gloom and cold between galaxies, a little thread of gas and weak suns beckoned – an island where clever survivors could make a second stab at perfection.

  It made a man think hard about his future, knowing that he was bound for such a place.

  A different man might be scared.

  But not Bloch, no.

  THE VICAR OF MARS

  Gwyneth Jones

  One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a co-winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for work exploring gender issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel White Queen, and has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with her novel Bold as Love, as well as receiving two World Fantasy Awards – for her story “The Grass Princess” and her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Café, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Ironwood, The Exhange, Dear Hill, The Hidden Ones, and Rainbow Bridge, as well as more than sixteen young adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the author of the critical study Deconstructing the Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. Her most recent books are a new SF novel, Spirit: or The Princess of Bois Dormant and two collections, The Buonarotti Quartet and The Universe of Things. She has a website at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

  In the chiller that follows, she takes us to a realistically described colonized Mars for what may – or may not �
� be a ghost story.

  THE REVEREND BOAAZ Hanaahaahn, High Priest of the Mighty Void, and a young Aleutian adventurer going by the name of “Conrad”, were the only resident guests at the Old Station, Butterscotch. They’d met on the way from Opportunity, and had taken to spending their evenings together, enjoying a snifter or two of Boaaz’s excellent Twin Planets blend in a cosy private lounge. They were an odd couple: the massive Shet, his grey hide forming ponderous, dignified folds across his skull and over his brow, and the stripling immortal, slick strands of head-hair to his shoulders, black eyes dancing with mischief on either side of the dark space of his nasal. But the Aleutian, though he had never lived to be old – he wasn’t the type – had amassed a fund of fascinating knowledge in his many lives, and Boaaz was an elderly priest with varied interests and a youthful outlook.

  Butterscotch’s hundred or so actual citizens didn’t frequent the Old Station. The usual customers were mining lookerers, who drove in from the desert in the trucks that were their homes, and could be heard carousing, mildly, in the public bar. Boaaz and Conrad shared a glance, agreeing not to join the fun tonight. The natives were friendly enough – but Martian settlers were, almost exclusively, humans who had never left conventional space. The miners had met few “aliens”, and believed the Buonarotti Interstellar Transit was a dangerous novelty that would never catch on. One got tired of the barrage of uneasy fascination.

  “I’m afraid I scare the children,” rumbled Boaaz.

  The Aleutian could have passed for a noseless, slope-shouldered human. The Shet was hairless and impressively bulky, but what really made him different was his delicates. To Boaaz it was natural that he possessed two sets of fingers: one set thick and horny, for pounding and mashing, the other slender and supple, for fine manipulation. Normally protected by his wrist folds, his delicates would shoot out to grasp a stylus for instance, or handle eating implements. He had seen the young folk startle at this, and recoil with bulging eyes—

  “Stop calling them children,” suggested Conrad. “They don’t like it.”

  “I don’t think that can be it. The young always take the physical labour and service jobs, it’s a fact of nature. I’m only speaking English.”

  Conrad shrugged. For a while each of them studied his own screen, as the saying goes. A comfortable silence prevailed. Boaaz reviewed a list of deserving “cases” sent to him by the Colonial Social services in Opportunity. He was not impressed. They’d simply compiled a list of odds and ends: random persons who didn’t fit in, and were vaguely thought to have problems.

  To his annoyance, one of the needy appeared to live in Butterscotch.

  “Here’s a woman who has been suspected of being insane,” he grumbled aloud. “Has she been treated? Apparently not. How barbaric. Has visited Speranza . . . No known religion . . . What’s the use in telling me that?”

  “Maybe they think you’d like to convert her,” suggested Conrad.

  “I do not convert people!” exclaimed Boaaz, shocked. “Should an un believing parishoner wish my guidance towards the Abyss, they’ll let me know. It’s not my business to persuade them! I have entered my name alongside other Ministers of Religion on Mars. If my services as a priest should be required at a Birth, Adulthood, Conjunction, or Death, I shall be happy to oblige, and that’s enough.”

  Conrad laughed soundlessly, the way Aleutians do. “You don’t bother your ‘flock’, and they don’t bother you! That sounds like a nice easy berth.”

  Not always, thought the old priest, ruefully. Sometimes not easy at all!

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Boaaz. Mars is a colony. It’s run by the planetary government of Earth, and they’re obsessed with gathering information about innocent strangers. When they can’t find anything interesting, they make it up. The file they keep on me is vast, I’ve seen it.”

  “Earth”, powerful neighbour to the Red Planet, was the local name for the world everyone else in the Diaspora knew as the Blue.

  Boaaz was here to minister to souls. Conrad was here – he claimed – purely as a tourist. The fat file the humans kept might suggest a different story, but Boaaz had no intention of prying. Aleutians, the Elder Race, had their own religion; or lack of one. As long as he showed no sign of suffering, Conrad’s sins were his own business. The old Shet cracked a snifter vial, tucked it in his holder, inhaled deeply, and returned to the eyeball-screen that was visible to his eyes alone. The curious Social services file on Jewel, Isabel reappeared. All very odd. Careful of misunderstandings, he opened his dictionary, and checked in detail the meanings of English words he knew perfectly well.

  wicked . . .

  old woman . . .

  insane . . .

  Later, on his way to bed, he examined one of the fine rock formations that decorated the station’s courtyards. They promised good hunting. The mining around here was of no great worth, ferrous ores for the domestic market, but Boaaz was not interested in commercial value: he collected mineral curiosities. It was his passion, and one very good reason for visiting Butterscotch, right on the edge of the most ancient and interesting Martian terrain. If truth be known, Boaaz looked on this far-flung Vicarate as an interesting prelude to his well-earned retirement. He did not expect his duties to be burdensome. But he was a conscientious person, and Conrad’s teasing had stung.

  “I shall visit her,” he announced, to the sharp-shadowed rocks.

  The High Priest had travelled from his home world to Speranza, capital city of the Diaspora, and onward to the Blue Planet Torus Port, in no time at all (allowing for a few hours of waiting around, and two “false duration” interludes of virtual entertainment). The months he’d spent aboard the conventional space liner Burroughs, completing his interplanetary journey, had been slow but agreeable. He’d arrived to find that his Residence, despatched by licensed courier, had been delayed – and decided that until his home was decoded into material form, he might as well carry on travelling. His tour of this backward but extensive new parish happened to concentrate on prime mineral-hunting sites: but he would not neglect his obligations.

  He took a robotic jitney as far as the network extended, and proceeded on foot. Jewel, Isabel lived out of town, up against the Enclosure that kept tolerable climate and air quality captive. As yet unscrubbed emissions lingered here in drifts of vapour; the thin air had a lifeless, paradoxical warmth. Spindly towers of mine tailings, known as “Martian Stromatolites”, stood in groups, heads together like ugly sentinels. Small mining machines crept about, munching mineral-rich dirt. There was no other movement, no sound but the crepitation of a million tiny ceramic teeth.

  Nothing lived.

  The “Martians” were very proud of their Quarantine. They farmed their food in strict confinement, they tortured off-world travellers with lengthy decontamination. Even the gastropod machines were not allowed to reproduce: they were turned out in batches by the mine factories, and recycled in the refineries when they were full. What were the humans trying to preserve? The racial purity of rocks and sand?

  Absurd superstition, muttered the old priest, into his breather. Life is life!

  Jewel, Isabel clearly valued her privacy. He hadn’t messaged her in advance. His visit would be off the record, and if she turned him away from her door, so be it. He could see the isolated module now, at the end of a chance “avenue” of teetering stromatolites. He reviewed the file’s main points as he stumped along. Old. Well travelled, for a human of her caste. Reputed to be rich. No social contacts in Butterscotch, no data traffic with any other location. Supplied by special delivery at her own expense. Came to Mars, around a local year ago, on a settler’s one-way ticket. Boaaz thought that must be very unusual. Martian settlers sometimes retired to their home planet; if they could afford the medical bills. Why would a fragile elderly person make the opposite trip, apparently not planning to return?

  The dwelling loomed up, suddenly right in front of him. He had a moment of selfish doubt. Was he committing himself to an endl
ess round of visiting random misfits? Maybe he should quietly go away again . . . But his approach had been observed, a transparent pane had opened. A face glimmered, looking out through the inner and the outer skin; as if from deep, starless space.

  “Who are you?” demanded a harsh voice, cracked with disuse. “Are you real? Can you hear me? You’re not human.”

  “I hear you, I’m, aah, ‘wired for sound’. I am not a human, I am a Shet, a priest of the Void, newly arrived, just making myself known. May I come in?”

  He half-hoped that she would say no. Go away, I don’t like priests, can’t you see I want to be left alone? But the lock opened. He passed through, divested himself of the breather and his outer garments, and entered the pressurized chamber.

  The room was large, by Martian living standards. Bulkheads must have been removed, probably this had once been a three-or four-person unit: but it felt crowded. He recognised the furniture of Earth. Not extruded, like the similar fittings in the Old Station, but free-standing: many of the pieces carved from precious woods. Chairs were ranged in a row, along one curved, red wall. Against another stood a tall armoire, a desk with many drawers, and several canvas pictures in frames; stacked facing the dark. In the midst of the room two more chairs were drawn up beside a plain ceramic stove, which provided the only lighting. A richly patterned rug lay on the floor. He couldn’t imagine what it had cost to ship all this, through conventional space in material form. She must indeed be wealthy!

  The light was low, the shadows numerous.

  “I see you are a Shet,” said Jewel, Isabel. “I won’t offer you a chair, I have none that would take your weight, but please be seated.”

  She indicated the rug, and Boaaz reclined with care. The number of valuable, alien objects made him feel he was sure to break something. The human woman resumed (presumably) her habitual seat. She was tall, for a human: and very thin. A black gown with loose skirts covered her whole body, closely fastened and decorated with flourishes of creamy stuff, like textile foam, at the neck and wrists.