The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  The sky of Mars arced above him, the slightly fish-eyed horizon giving it a bulging look, like the whitish cornea of a great, blind eye. Dust suffused the view through his visor with streaks of blood. He was in an eroded crater, which could be a dangerous feature. But no warnings had flashed up, and the buggy wasn’t settling. He stepped down: his boots found crust in a few centimeters. Gastropods crept about, in the distance he could see a convocation of trucks: he was back in the mining fields. He watched a small machine as it climbed a stromatolite spire, and “defecated” on the summit.

  Inside that spoil-tower, in the moisture and chemical warmth of the chewed waste, the real precursors were at work. All over the mining regions, “stromatolites” were spilling out oxygen. Some day there would be complex life here, in unknown forms. The Martians were bringing a new biosphere to birth, from native organic chemistry alone. Absurd superstition, absurd patience. It made one wonder if the settlers really wanted to change their cold, unforgiving desert world—

  A shadow flicked across his view. Alarmed, he checked the sky: fast-moving cloud meant a storm. But the sky was cloudless; the declining sun cast a rosy, tourist-brochure glow over the landscape. Movement again, in the corner of his eye. Boaaz spun around, a maneuver that almost felled him, and saw a naked, biped figure, with a smooth head and disturbingly spindly limbs, standing a few metres away: almost invisible against the tawny ground. It seemed to look straight at him, but the “face” was featureless—

  The eyeless gaze was not hostile. The impossible creature seemed to Boaaz like a shadow cast by the future. A folktale, waiting for the babies who would run around the Martian countryside; and believe in it a little, and be happily frightened. Perhaps I’ve been afraid of nothing, thought Boaaz, hopefully. After all, what did it do, the horrid thing I almost saw in that chair? It reached out to me, perhaps quite harmlessly . . . But there was something wrong. The eyeless figure trembled, folded down, and vanished like spilled water. Now he saw that the whole crater was stirring. Under the surface shadow creatures were fleeing, limbs flashing in the dust that was their habitat. Something had terrified them. Not Boaaz, the thing behind him. It had hunted him down and found him here, far from all help.

  Slowly, dreadfully slowly, he turned. He saw what was there.

  He tried to speak, he tried to pray. But the holy words were meaningless, and horror seized his mind. His buggy had vanished, the beacon on his chest refused to respond to his hammering. He ran in circles, tawny Devils rising in coils from around his feet. He was lost, he would die, and then it would devour him—

  Hours later, young Conrad (struck by an uncharacteristic fit of responsibility) came searching for the old fellow, tracking his suit beacon. Night had fallen, deathly cold. The High Priest crouched in a shallow gully, close to the crater where Conrad had spotted his deserted buggy; his suit scratched and scarred as if something had been trying to tear it off him, his parched, gaping screams locked inside his helmet—

  The High Priest struggled free from troubling dreams, and was bewildered to find his friend the Aleutian curled informally on the floor beside his bed. “Hallo,” said Conrad, sitting up. “I detect the light of reason. Are you with us again, Reverend?”

  “What are you doing in my room—?”

  “Do you remember anything? How we brought you in?”

  “Ahm, haham. Overdid it a little, didn’t I? Oxygen starvation panic attack, thanks for that, Conrad, most grateful. Must get some breakfast. Excuse me.”

  “We need to talk.”

  Boaaz drew his massive head down into his neck-folds, the Shet gesture that stood for refusal, but also submission. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “I knew you’d see sense. No, this is about something serious. We’ll talk this evening. You must be starving, and you need to rest.”

  Boaaz checked his eyeball screen, and found that he had lost a day and a night. He ate, rehydrated his hide, and retired to bed again: to reflect. The Mighty Void had a place for certain psychic phenomena, but he had no explanation for a “ghost” with teeth and claws, a bodiless thing that could rend carbon fibre . . . In a state between dream and waking, he trudged again the chance avenue of stromatolites. Vapour hung in the thin air, the spindly towers bent their heads in menace. Isabel Jewel’s module waited for him, so charged with fear and dread it was like a ripe fruit, about to burst.

  The miners and their families were subdued tonight. The sound of their merrymaking was a dull murmur in the private lounge, where Boaaz and the Aleutian met. The residents’ bar steward arranged a nested “trolley” of drinks and snacks, and left them alone. Boaaz offered his snifter case, but the Aleutian declined.

  “We need to talk,” he reminded the old priest. “About Isabel Jewel.”

  “I thought we were going to discuss my scare in the desert.”

  “We are.”

  Strengthened by his reflections, Boaaz summoned up an indignant growl. “I can’t discuss my parishioner with you. Absolutely not!”

  “Before we managed to drug you to sleep,” said Conrad, firmly, “you were babbling, telling us a horrible, uncanny story . . . You went into detail. You weren’t speaking English, but I’m afraid Yarol understood you pretty well. Don’t worry, he’ll be discreet. The locals don’t meddle with Isabel Jewel.”

  “Yarol?”

  “The station manager. Sensible type for a human. You met him the other day in your courtyard, I believe. Looking at some nasty marks on the wall?”

  The Shet’s mighty head sank between his shoulders. “Ahaam, in my delirium, what sort of thing did I say?”

  “Plenty.”

  Conrad leaned close, and spoke in “Silence” – a form of telepathy the immortals only practiced among themselves; or with the rare mortals who could defend themselves against its power. My friend, you must listen to me. What we share will not leave this room. You’re in great danger, and I think you know it.

  The old priest shuddered, and surrendered.

  “You underestimate me, and my calling. I am not in danger!”

  “We’ll see about that . . . Tell me, Boaaz, what is a ‘bear’?”

  “I have no idea,” said the old priest, mystified.

  “I thought not. A bear is a wild creature native to Earth, big, shaggy, fierce. Rather frightening. Here, catch—”

  Inexplicably, the Aleutian tossed a drinking beaker straight at Boaaz: who had to react swiftly, to avoid being smacked in the face—

  “Tentacles,” said Conrad. “I don’t think you find them disgusting, do you? It’s an evolutionary quirk. Your people absorbed some wiggly-armed ocean creatures into your body-plan, aeons ago, and they became your ‘delicates.’ Yet what you saw in Isabel Jewel’s module was ‘a bear with tentacles’, and it filled you with horror. Just as if you were a human, with an innate terror of snakey-looking things.”

  Boaaz set the beaker down. “What of it? I don’t know what you’re getting at. That vision, however I came by it, was merely a nightmare. In the material world I have visited her once, and saw nothing at all strange.”

  “A nightmare, hm? And what if we are dealing with someone whose nightmares can roam around, hunt you down and tear you apart?”

  Boaaz noticed that his pressure suit was hanging on the wall. The slashes and gouges were healing over (a little late for the occupant, had the attacker persisted!). He vaguely remembered them taking it off him, exclaiming in horrified amazement.

  “Tear me apart? Nonsense. I was hysterical, I freely admit. I suppose I must have rolled about, over some sharp rocks.”

  The Aleutian’s black eyes were implacable. “I suppose I’d better start at the beginning . . . I was intrigued by the scraps you read out from ‘Isabel Jewel’s’ file. Somebody suspected of insanity. That’s a very grim suspicion, in a certain context. When I saw how changed and disturbed you were, after your parish visit, I instructed my Speranza agent to see what it could dig up about an ‘Isabel Jewel’, lately settled on Mars.”
>
  “You had no authority to do that!”

  “Why not? Everything I’m going to tell you is in the public domain, all my agent had to do was to make the connection – which is buried, but easy to exhume – between ‘Isabel Jewel’, and a human called ‘Ilia Markham’ who was involved in a transit disaster, some thirty or so standard years ago. A starship called The Golden Bough, belonging to a company called the World State Line, left Speranza on a scheduled transit to the Blue Torus Port. Her passengers arrived safely. The eight members of the Active Complement, I mean the crew, did not. Five of them had vanished, two were hideously dead. The Navigator survived, despite horrific injuries, long enough to claim they’d been murdered. Someone had smuggled an appalling monster on board, and turned it loose in the Active Complement’s quarters—”

  There were chairs, meant for humans, around the walls of the lounge. The Aleutian and the Shet preferred a cushioned recess in the floor. Boaaz noticed that he no longer needed to look behind him. That phase was over.

  “There are no ‘black box’ records to consult, after a transit disaster,” the Aleutian went on. “Nothing can be known about the false duration period. The crew construct a pseudo-reality for themselves, as they guide the ship through that ‘interval’ when time does not pass: which vanishes like a dream. But the Navigator’s accusation was taken seriously. There was an inquiry, and suspicion fell on Ilia Markham, a dealer in antiques. Her trip out to Speranza had been her first transit. On the return ‘journey’ she insisted on staying awake, citing a mental allergy to the virtual entertainment. A phobia, I think humans call it. As you probably know, this meant that she joined the Active Complement, in their pseudo-reality ‘quarters’. Yet she was unharmed. She remembered nothing, but she was charged with involuntary criminal insanity, on neurological evidence.”

  Transit disasters were infrequent, since the new Aleutian ships had come into service; but Boaaz knew of them. And he had heard that casualties whose injuries were not physical were very cruelly treated on Earth.

  “What a terrible story. Was there a . . . Did the inquiry suggest any reason why the poor woman’s mind might have generated something so monstrous?”

  “I see you do know what I’m getting at,” remarked Conrad, with a sharp look. The old priest’s head sank obstinately further, and he made no comment. “Yes, there was something. In her youth Markham had been an indentured servant, the concubine of a rich collector with a nasty reputation. When he died she inherited his treasures, and there were strong rumours she’d helped him on his way. The prosecution didn’t accuse her of murder, they just held that she’d been carrying a burden of unresolved trauma – and the Active Complement had paid the price.”

  “Eight of them,” muttered Boaaz. “And one more. Yes, yes, I see.”

  “The World State Line was the real guilty party, they’d allowed her to travel awake. But it was Ilia Markham who was consigned for life – on suspicion, she was never charged – to a Secure Hospital. Just in case she still possessed the powers that had been thrust on her by the terrible energies of the Buonarotti Torus.”

  “Was there a . . . ? Was there, ahaam, any identifying mark of her status?”

  “There would be a tattoo, a string of symbols, on her forearm, Reverend. You told us, in your ‘delirium’, that you’d seen similar marks.”

  “Go on,” rumbled Boaaz. “Get to the end of it.”

  “Many years later there was a review of doubtful ‘criminal insanity’ cases. Ilia Markham was one of those released. She was given a new name and shipped off to Mars, with all her assets. They were still a little afraid of her, it seems, although her cognitive scans were normal. They didn’t want her or anything she possessed. There’s no Buonarotti Torus in Mars orbit: I suppose that was the reasoning.”

  The old priest was silent, the folds of hide over his eyes furrowed deep. Then his brow relaxed, and he seemed to give himself a shake. “This has been most enlightening, Conrad. I am, in a sense, much relieved.”

  “You no longer believe you’re being pursued by aggressive rocks? Harassed by imaginary Ancient Martians? You understand that, barbaric though it seems, your old mad woman probably should have stayed in that Secure Hospital?”

  “I don’t admit that at all! In my long experience, this is not the first time I’ve met what are known as ‘psychic phenomena’. I have known effective premonitions, warning dreams; instances of telepathy. This ‘haunting’ I’ve suffered, this vivid way I’ve shared ‘Isabel Jewel’s’ mental distress, will be very helpful when I talk to her again . . . I do not believe in the horrible idea of criminal insanity. The unfortunate few who have been ‘driven insane’ by a transit disaster are a danger only to themselves.”

  “I felt the same, but your recent experiences have shaken my common sense.” The Aleutian reached to take a snifter, and paused in the act, his nasal flaring in alarm. “Boaaz, dear fellow, stay away from her. You’ll be safe, and the effects will fade, if you stay away.”

  Boaaz looked at the ruined pressure suit. “Yet I was not injured,” he murmured. “I was only frightened . . . Now for my side of the story. I am a priest, and the woman is dying. It’s her heart, I think, and I don’t think she has long. She is in mental agony – as people sometimes are, quite without need, if they believe they have lived an evil life – not in fear of death but of what may come after. I can help her, and it is my duty. After all, we are nowhere near a Torus.”

  The Aleutian stared at him, no longer seeming at all a mischievous adolescent. The old priest felt buffeted by the immortal’s stronger will: but he stood firm. “There are wrongs nobody can put right,” said Conrad, urgently. “The universe is more pitiless than you know. Don’t go back.”

  “I must.” Boaaz rose, ponderously. He patted the Aleutian’s sloping shoulder, with the sensitive tips of his right-hand delicates. “I think I’ll turn in. Goodnight.”

  Boaaz had been puzzled by the human woman’s insistence that he should return “in ten days, in the evening, at the full moon”. The little moons of Mars zipped around too fast for their cycles to be significant. He had looked up the Concordance (Earth’s calendar was still important to the colony), and wondered if the related date on Earth had been important to her, in the past.

  By the time he left his jitney, in the lonely outskirts of Butterscotch, he’d thought of another explanation. People who know they are dying, closely attuned to their failing bodies, may know better than any doctor when the end will come. She believes she will die tonight, he thought. And she doesn’t want to die alone. He quickened his pace, and then turned to look back – not impelled by menace, but simply to reassure himself that the jitney hadn’t taken itself off.

  He could not see the tiny lights of Butterscotch. The vapours and the swift twilight had caused a strange effect: a mirage of great black hills, or mountains, spread along the horizon. Purple woods like storm clouds crowded at their base, and down from the hills came a pale, winding road. There appeared to be a group of figures moving on it, descending swiftly. The mirage shifted, the perspective changed, and Boaaz was now among the hills. Black walls stood on either side of the grey road, the figures rushed towards him from a vanishing point; from an infinite distance at impossible speed. He tried to count them, but they were moving too fast. He realized, astonished, that he was going to be trampled, and even as he formulated that thought they were upon him. They rushed over him, and were swallowed in a greater darkness that swallowed Boaaz too. He was buried, engulfed, overwhelmed by a foul stench and a frightful, suffocating pressure—

  He struggled, as if trying to rise from very deep water: and then the pressure was gone. He had fallen on his face. He picked himself up with difficulty, and checked himself and his gear for damage. “The dead do not walk,” he muttered. “Absurd superstition!” But the grumbling tone became a prayer, and he could hear his own voice shake as he recited the Consolation. “There is no punishment, there is only the Void, embracing all, accepting all. The monste
rs at the gates are illusion. There are no realms beyond death, we shall not be devoured, the Void is gentle . . .”

  The mirage had dissipated, but the vapours had not. He was positively walking through a fog, and each step was a mysterious struggle, as if he were wading through a fierce running tide. Here I am for the third time, he told himself, encouragingly, and then remembered that the second visit had been in a nightmare. A horror went through him: was he dreaming now? Perhaps the thought should have been comforting, but it was very frightening indeed: and then someone coughed, or choked: not behind him, but close beside him, invisible in the fog.

  Startled, he upped his head and shoulder lights. “Is anybody there?”

  The lights only increased his confusion, making a kind of glory on the mist around him. His own shadow was very close, oversized, and optical illusion gave it strange proportions: a distinct neck, a narrow waist, a skeletal thinness. It turned. He saw the thing he had seen in the desert. A human male, with small eyes close-set, a jutting nose, lined cheeks, and a look of such utter malevolence it stopped Boaaz’s blood. Its lower jaw dropped. It had far too many teeth, and a terrible, appallingly wide gape. It raised its jagged claws and reared towards him. Boaaz screamed into his breather. The monster rushed over him, swamped him, and was gone.

  It was over. He was alone, shaken in body and soul. The pinprick lights of the town had reappeared behind him: ahead was that avenue of teetering stromatolites. “Horrible mirage!” he announced, trying to convince himself. He was breathing in gasps. The outer lock of the old woman’s module stood open, as if she had seen him coming. The inner lock was shut. He opened it, praying that he would find her still alive. Alive, and sharing with him, by some mystery, the nightmare visions of her needless distress; that he knew he could conquer—

  The chairs had moved. They were grouped in a circle around the stove in the centre of the room. He counted: yes, he had remembered rightly, there were eight. The “old, mad” human woman sat in her own chair, withered like a crumpled shell, her features still contorted in pain and terror. He could see that she had been dead for some time. The ninth chair was drawn up close to hers. Boaaz saw the impression of a human body, printed in the dented cushions of the back and seat. It had been here.