The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  The marks of human ageing were visible in her wrinkled face, her white head-hair and the sunken, over-large sockets of her pale eyes. But signs of age can be deceptive. Boaaz also saw something universal – something any priest often has to deal with, yet familiarity never breeds contempt.

  Jewel, Isabel inclined her head. She had read his silent judgement. “You seem to be a doctor as well as a priest,” she said, in a tone that rejected sympathy. “My health is as you have guessed. Let’s change the subject.”

  She asked him how he liked Butterscotch, and how Mars compared with Shet: bland questions separated by little unexplained pauses. Boaaz spoke of his mineral-hunting plans, and the pleasures of travel. He was oddly disturbed by his sense that the room was crowded: he wanted to look behind him, to be sure there were no occupants in that row of splendid chairs. But he was too old to turn without a visible effort, and he didn’t wish to be rude. When he remarked that Isabel’s home (she had put him right on the order of her name) was rather isolated she smiled – a weary stretching of the lips.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. I’m not short of company.”

  “You have your memories.”

  Isabel stared over his shoulder. “Or they have me.”

  He did not feel that he’d gained her confidence, but before he left they’d agreed he would visit again: she was most particular about the appointment. “In ten days time,” she said. “In the evening, at the full moon. Be sure you remember.” As he returned to the waiting jitney, the vaporous outskirts of Butterscotch seemed less forbidding. He had done right to come, and thank goodness Conrad had teased him, or the poor woman might have been left without the comfort of the Void. Undoubtedly he was needed, and he would do his best.

  His satisfaction was still with him when the jitney delivered him inside the Old Station compound. He even tried a joke on one of the human children, about those decorative rock formations. Did they walk in from the desert, one fine night, in search of alcoholic beverages? The youngster took offence.

  “They were here when the station was installed. It was all desert then. If there was walking rocks on Mars, messir—” The child drew herself up to her frail, puny height, and glared at him. “We wouldn’t any of us be here. We’d go home straight away, and leave Mars to the creatures that belongs to this planet.”

  Boaaz strode off, a chuckle rumbling in his throat. Kids! But when he had eaten, in decent privacy (as a respectable Shet, he would never get used to eating in public), he decided to forgo Conrad’s company. The “old mad woman” was too much on his mind, and he found that he shuddered away from the idea of that second visit – yet he’d met Isabel’s trouble many times, and never been frightened before.

  I am getting old, thought the High Priest.

  He turned in early, but he couldn’t sleep: plagued by the formless feeling that he had done something foolish, and he would have to pay for it. There were wild, dangerous creatures trying to get into his room, groping at the mellow, pockmarked outer skin of the Old Station; searching for a weak place . . . Rousing from an uneasy doze, he was compelled to get up and make a transparency, although (as he knew perfectly well) his room faced an inner courtyard, and there are no wild creatures on Mars. Nothing stirred. Several rugged, decorative rocks were grouped right in front of him, oddly menacing under the security lights. Had they always stood there? He thought not, but he couldn’t be sure.

  The brutes crouched, blind and secretive, waiting for him to lie down again.

  “I really am getting old,” muttered Boaaz. “I must take something for it.”

  He slept, and found himself once more in the human woman’s module. Isabel seemed younger, and far more animated. Confusion fogged his mind, embarrassing him. He didn’t know how he’d arrived here, or what they’d been talking about. He was advising her to move into town. It wasn’t safe to live so close to the ancient desert: she was not welcome here. She laughed and bared her arm, crying I am welcome nowhere! He saw a mutilation, a string of marks etched into her thin human skin. She thrust the symbols at him: he protested that he had no idea what they meant, but she hardly seemed to care. She was waiting for another visitor, the visitor she had been expecting when he arrived the first time. She had let him in by mistake, he must leave. They are from another dimension, she cried, in that hoarse, hopeless voice. They wait at the gate, meaning to devour. They lived with me once, they may return, with a tiny shift of the Many Dimensions of the Void.

  It gave him a shock when she used the terms of his religion. Was she drawn to the Abyss? Had he begun to give her instruction? The fog in his mind was very distressing, how could he have forgotten something like that? Then he recalled, with intense relief, that she had been to Speranza. She was no stranger to the interstellar world, she must have learnt something of Shet belief . . . But relief was swamped in a wave of dread: Isabel was looking over his shoulder. He turned, awkward and stiff with age. A presence was taking shape in one of the chairs. It was big as a bear, bigger than Boaaz himself. Squirming tentacles of glistening flesh reached out, becoming every instant more solid and defined—

  If it became fully real, if it touched him, he would die of horror—

  Boaaz woke, thunder in his skull, his whole body pulsing, the blood thickened and backing up in all his veins. Dizzy and sick, on the edge of total panic, he groped for his First Aid kit. He fumbled the mask over his mouth and nostril-slits, with trembling delicates that would hardly obey him, and drew in great gulps of oxygen.

  Unthinkable horrors flowed away, the pressure in his skull diminished. He dropped onto his side, making the sturdy extruded couch groan; clutching the mask. It was a dream, he told himself. Just a dream.

  Rationally, he knew that he had simply done too much. Overexertion in the thin air of the outskirts had given him nightmares: he must give his acclimatization treatment more time to become established. He took things easy for the next few days, pottering around in the mining fields just outside the Enclosure – in full Martian EVA gear, with a young staff member for a guide. Pickings were slim (Butterscotch was in the Guidebook); but he made a few pleasing finds.

  But the nightmare stayed with him, and at intervals he had to fight the rooted conviction that it had been real. He had already made a second visit, there had been something terrible, unspeakable . . . His nights continued to be disturbed. He had unpleasant dreams (never the same as the first), from which he woke in panic, groping for the oxygen that no longer gave much relief.

  He was also troubled by a change in the behaviour of the hotel staff. They had been friendly, and unlike the miners they never whispered or stared. Now the children avoided him, and he was no genius at reading human moods, but he was sure there was something wrong. Anu, the lad who took Boaaz out to the desert, kept his distance as far as possible; and barely spoke. Perhaps the child was disturbed by the habit of looking behind him that Boaaz had developed. It must look strange, since he was old and it was difficult. But he couldn’t help himself.

  One morning, when he went to make his usual guilty inspection of that inner courtyard, the station’s manager was there: staring at a section of wall where strange marks had appeared, blistered weals like raw flesh wounds in the ceramic skin.

  “Do you know what’s causing that effect?” asked Boaaz.

  “Can’t be weathering, not in here. Bugs in the ceramic, we’ll have to get it reconfigured. Can’t understand it. It’s supposed to last forever, that stuff.”

  “But the station is very old, isn’t it? Older than Butterscotch itself. You don’t think the pretty rocks in here had anything to do with the damage?” Boaaz tried a rumble of laughter. “You know, child, sometimes I think they move around at night!”

  The rock group was nowhere near the walls. It never was, by daylight.

  “I am twenty years old,” said the Martian, with an odd look. “Old enough to know when to stay away from bad luck, messir. Excuse me.”

  He hurried away, leaving Boaaz very puzzled and uneas
y.

  He had come here to collect minerals, therefore he would collect minerals. What he needed was an adventure, to clear his head. It would be foolhardy to brave the Empty Quarter of Mars in the company of a frightened child: perhaps equally foolhardy to set out alone. He decided he would offer to go exploring with the Aleutian, who took a well-equipped station buggy out into the wild red yonder almost every day.

  Conrad would surely welcome this suggestion.

  Conrad was reluctant. He spoke so warmly of the dangers, and with such concern for the Shet’s age and unsuitable metabolism, that Boaaz’s pride was touched. He was old, but he was strong. The nerve of this stripling, suggesting there were phenomena on Mars that an adult male Shet couldn’t handle! Even if the stripling was a highly experienced young immortal—

  “I see you prefer to ‘go solo’. I would hate to disturb your privacy. We must compare routes, so that our paths do not cross.”

  “The virtual tour is very, very good,” said the Aleutian. “You can easily and safely explore the ancient ‘Arabia Terra’ with a fully customized avatar, from the comfort of your hotel room.”

  “Stop talking like a guidebook,” rumbled Boaaz. “I’ve survived in tougher spots than this. I shall make my arrangements with the station today.”

  “You won’t mind me mentioning that all the sentient biped peoples of Shet are basically aquatic—”

  “Not since our oceans shrank, about two million standard years ago. I am not an Aleutian, I have no memory of those days. And if I were ‘basically aquatic’, that would mean I am already an expert at living outside my natural element.”

  “Oh well,” said Conrad at last, ungraciously. “If you’re determined, I suppose it’s safer if I keep you where I can see you.”

  The notable features of the ancient uplands were to the north: luckily the opposite direction from Isabel’s dour location. The two buggies set out at sunrise, locked in tandem; Conrad in the lead. As they passed through the particulate barrier of the Enclosure, Boaaz felt a welcome stirring of excitement. His outside cams still showed quiet mining fields, ever-present stromatolites: but already the landscape was becoming more rugged. He felt released from bondage. A few refreshing trips like this, and he would no longer be haunted. He would no longer be compelled to turn, feeling those ornate chairs lined up behind him, knowing that the repulsive creature of his dream was taking shape—

  “It’s a dusty one,” remarked Conrad, over the intercom. “Often is, around here, in the northern ‘summer’. And there’s a storm warning. We shouldn’t go far, just a loop around the first buttes, a short EVA, and home again. . . .”

  Boaaz recovered himself with a chuckle. His cams showed a calm sky, healthily tinged with blue; his exterior monitors were recording the friendliest conditions known to Mars. “I’m getting ‘hazardous storm probability’ at near zero,” he rumbled in reply. “Uncouple and return if you wish. I shall make a day of it.”

  Silence. Boaaz felt that he’d won the battle.

  Conrad had let slip a few too many knowledgeable comments about Martian mineralogy, in their friendly chats. Of course he wasn’t “purely a tourist”: he was a rock hound himself. He’d been scouring the wilds for sites the Guidebook and the Colonial Government Mineral Survey had missed, or undervalued. Obviously he’d found something good, and he didn’t want to share.

  Boaaz sympathised wholeheartedly. But a little teasing wouldn’t come amiss, as a reward for being so untrusting and secretive!

  The locked buggies dropped into layered craters, climbed gritty steppes. Boaaz buried himself in strange-sounding English-language wish lists; compiled long ago, in preparation for this trip. Hematite nodules, volcanic olivines, exotic basalts, Mössbauer patterns, tektites, barite roses. But whatever he carried back from the Red Planet, across such a staggering distance, would be treasure – bound to fill his fellow hounds at home with delight and envy.

  Behind him the empty chairs were ranged in judgement. That which waits at the gates was taking form. Boaaz needed to look over his shoulder but he did not turn. He knew he couldn’t move quickly enough, and only the sleek desert-survival fittings of the buggy would mock him—

  Escaping from ugly reverie, he noticed that Conrad was deviating freely from their pre-logged route. Most unsafe! But Boaaz didn’t protest. There was no need for concern. They had life support, and Desert Rescue service beacons that couldn’t be disabled. He examined his CGMS maps instead. There was nothing marked that would explain Conrad’s diversion: how interesting! What if the Aleutian’s find was “significantly anomalous”, or commercially valuable? If so, they were legally bound to leave it untouched, beacon it, and report it—

  But I shan’t pry, thought Boaaz. He maintained intercom silence, as did Conrad, until at last the locked buggies halted. The drivers disembarked. The Aleutian, with typical bravado, was dressed as if he’d been optimized before birth for life on Mars: the most lightweight air supply; a minimal squeeze-suit under his Aleutian-style desert thermals. Boaaz removed his helmet.

  “I hope you enjoyed the scenic route,” said Conrad, with a strange glint in his eye. “I hate to be nannied, don’t you? We are not children.”

  “Hmm. I found your navigation, ahaam, enlightening.”

  The Aleutian seemed to be thinking hard about his next move.

  “So you want to stop here, my friend?” asked Boaaz, airily. “Good! I suggest we go our separate ways, rendezvous later for the return journey?”

  “That would be fine,” said Conrad. “I’ll call you.”

  Boaaz rode his buggy around an exquisite tholeiitic basalt group – a little too big to pack. He disembarked, took a chipping, and analysed it. The spectrometer results were unremarkable: the sum is greater than the parts. Often the elemental makeup, the age, and even the extreme conditions of its creation, can give no hint as to why a rock is beautiful. His customized suit was supple. He felt easier in it than he did in his own, ageing hide: and youthfully weightless – without the discomfiting loss of control of weightlessness itself. Not far away he could see a glittering pool, like a mirage of surface water that might mark a field of broken geodes. Or a surface deposit of rare spherulites. But he wanted to know what the Aleutian had found. He wanted to know so badly that in the end he succumbed to temptation, got back in the buggy and returned to the rendezvous: feeling like a naughty child.

  Conrad’s buggy stood alone. Conrad was nowhere in sight, and no footprints led away from a nondescript gritstone outcrop. For a moment Boaaz feared something uncanny, then he realized the obvious solution. Still consumed by naughty curiosity, he pulled the emergency release on Conrad’s outer hatch. The buggy’s life-support generator shifted into higher gear with a whine, but the Aleutian was too occupied to notice. He sat in the body-clasping driver’s seat, eyes closed, head immobilized, his skull in the quivering grip of a cognitive scanner field. A compact flatbed scanner nestled in the passenger seat. Under its shimmering virtual dome lay some gritstone fragments. They didn’t look anything special, but something about them roused memories. Ancient images, a historical controversy, from before Mars was first settled—

  Boaaz quietly maneuvered his bulk over to Conrad’s impromptu virtuallab, and studied the fragments carefully, under magnification.

  He was profoundly shocked.

  “What are you doing, Conrad?”

  The Aleutian opened his eyes, and took in the situation.

  The wise immortals stay at home. Immortals who mix with lesser beings are dangerous characters, because they just don’t care. Conrad was completely brazen.

  “What does it look like? I’m digitizing pretty Martians for my scrapbook.”

  “You aren’t digitizing anything. You have taken biotic traces from an unmapped site. You are translating them into information-space code, with the intent of removing them from Mars, hidden in your consciousness. That is absolutely illegal!”

  “Oh, grow up. It’s a scam. I’m not kidnapping Martian babies. I�
��m not even kidnapping ancient fossilized bacteria, just scraps of plain old rock. But fools will pay wonderfully high prices for them. Where’s the harm?”

  “You have no shame, but this time you’ve gone too far. You are not a collector, you’re a common thief, and I shall turn you in.”

  “I don’t think so, Reverend. We logged out as partners today, didn’t we? And you are known as an avid collector. Give me credit, I tried to get you to leave me alone, but you wouldn’t. Now it’s just too bad.”

  Boaaz’s nostril slits flared wide, his gullet opened in a blue-ish gape of rage. He controlled himself, struggling to maintain dignity. “I’ll make my own way back.”

  He resumed his helmet.

  Before long his anger cooled. He recognized his own ignoble impulse to spy on a fellow collector. He recognized that perhaps Conrad’s crime was not truly wicked, just very, very naughty. Nevertheless, those controversial “biotic traces” were sacred. The nerve of that young Aleutian! Assuming that Boaaz would be so afraid of being smeared in an unholy scandal, he would make no report–

  When this got out! What would the Archbishop think!

  Yet what if he did keep quiet? Conrad had come to Butterscotch with a plan, no doubt he had ways of fooling the neurological scanners at the spaceport. If Conrad wasn’t going to get caught, and nobody was going to be injured—

  What should he do?

  That which waits at the gates was taking shape in an empty chair. It waits for those who deny good and evil, and separates them from the Void, forever—

  He could not think clearly. Conrad’s shameless behaviour became confused with the nightmares, the disturbed sleep and uneasy wakening. Those marks on the wall of the inner courtyard . . . He must have room, he could not bear this crowded confinement. He stopped the buggy, checked his gear, and disembarked.