Year's Best SF 17

by David G. Hartwell

  The same aides pretended to be unconcerned. No newcomer, even one with bottomless pockets, could steal what rightfully belonged to their candidate. They claimed the billionaire might get thirty-five percent, maybe forty. But at this late date, with so much momentum on their side, there was no way a new player could win the contest.

  The governor was less sure. Gambling was dangerous, regardless of whose money or reputation was at stake. The surest course to victory was to keep Morris in the race. As it happened, the governor’s wife was good friends with a retired mayor in the other camp. One discreet call brought news about an emergency meeting of party leaders taking place in a little city west of the capital. The governor was on the road within the hour, and at his urging, the state patrol officer at the wheel covered a hundred miles in a little more than an hour.

  Another swimming pool had been commandeered for duty—this pool closed for repairs, the contractor home for the weekend. Twenty tense, irritated political beasts were sitting around one uncharacteristically quiet candidate. Whatever had been said just seconds ago was still hanging in the air. Nobody wanted to look at anybody else. Nobody wanted to be here, and every person was desperate to find some route by which they could escape a situation that was only growing worse.

  That was the scene that the governor walked into.

  He smiled and said, “Hello,” and then nodded, successfully crafting a face and persona that could not have looked more ignorant or less dangerous.

  It was Morris who acted thrilled to see him. “Hello, sir. How are you?”

  Alarm spread among the others. The meeting had gone badly, but here was the enemy, grinning like an idiot. It almost made them happy. Almost. A couple of the younger men stood, as did the ex-mayor, and she shook the governor’s hand first and asked about his wife, feigning ignorance to camouflage her involvement in his arrival.

  The governor spoke to everyone by name.

  Then after ninety seconds of intense, utterly empty small talk, the newcomer asked for a moment or two with their candidate. It was a matter of state business, he implied. It was important, he promised. Then he shook half of their hands as they filed away, and he looked hard at Morris; and after a very long pause, he said, “If I didn’t know better, I would believe they were trying to figure out some easy way to have you killed.”

  “Everything but that,” the professor allowed.

  “Of course they’re all wishing you would die. Natural causes, or whatever.”

  Morris looked old and pale.

  “Are you going to quit?”

  “No.”

  “Then again, they could just dump you as their official man, bringing in the rich capitalist. Your margin would shrink to five percent, if that. And at that point your party might convince itself that this is a campaign.”

  It was a warm and stuffy room, and Morris shivered.

  “Stay,” said the governor.

  “What?”

  “In the race. I don’t want you sitting on the sidelines.”

  “Because you want to win.”

  “And you want lightning to strike. But you need to ask yourself: ‘What would I accept as lightning? What would constitute enough of a blow against the odds and common sense to make this shitty process worthwhile?’ ”

  Morris hunched lower. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “You have plans. You claim you do, and I for one believe you.” The governor leaned close enough to pat the man on the knee, but he kept his hands to himself. “You have a strategy for when everything goes wrong. When the glaciers turn to steam and zombies hit the streets. There’s enough detail in your speeches and the interviews to make me think you’ve done tons of preparation, that there’s some elaborate set of contingencies ready to be unleashed. Like what? When the Federal government starts falling down, the governor grabs special powers for the office?”

  “Before that,” Morris said.

  “Really?”

  “The state constitution isn’t all that flexible, but there’s some old statutes from the Cold War days. Before the national government is in ruins, the governor has to call in the legislature. It’s going to take time to make ready. The National Guard is a start, but we’ll need a militia and training and officials making informed decisions. There’s going to have to be road blocks on every highway, and refugee camps that can be effectively policed, and that’s just part of what has to be done.”

  The governor hid his smile. “All right,” he said encouragingly.

  “And human labor,” Morris blurted. “Backbones and muscle will be essential. Because coal plants are going to be shut down, if only because we won’t be able to guarantee the deliveries from Wyoming, and gasoline and fuel oil will have to be rationed, and supply lines maintained, and there’s going to have to be a horse-breeding program through the ag school.”

  “I see.”

  Morris smiled as if embarrassed, but he couldn’t stop talking. “Honestly, this is awful stuff. I try to be kind in my Human Labor chapter … but I’m talking about the kinds of servitude left behind in the Dark Ages. Or in Mississippi.”

  “You have chapters?”

  “I have a very big book,” Morris said.

  “How big?”

  “Fifteen hundred pages, plus charts.”

  “Charts?”

  “Several hundred. And a PowerPoint presentation.”

  The governor wasn’t startled or upset, or much of anything. But he took a moment, giving the matter considerable thought before saying, “Okay, this is my offer. My deal. Give me your book. And I want every last copy of your research, too. Then you continue with your campaign, and to keep your associates happy enough, I want you to soften your message. Let’s keep the billionaires out of our business. And when this race is over, I promise—I do promise you—I will keep your work as a resource, and I’ll even put you on my staff if the nightmare comes. Is that a worthy enough solution to satisfy you, Dr. Hersh?”

  Big eyes filled with tears, and laughing sadly, Morris confessed, “You know, I’m about the last person you’d want to be governor.”

  He didn’t need to worry.

  And thirteen days after the state’s final election, the same Kashmiri separatists drove a heavy truck into Delhi, unleashing a fifty-kiloton device that may or may not have been supplied by elements inside the Pakistani military. The war lasted two weeks, killing millions while injecting soot into the stratosphere, and just as the world situation couldn’t appear any worse, a substantial portion of the West Antarctic ice field decided to begin its majestic and inevitable slide into a rapidly rising ocean.

  The funeral was held on the highest hill outside the capital. It was an overcast November morning, but a Lakota shaman and a Lutheran minister worked together, convincing the rain to stay away. The tomb was the most splendid and ornate structure built in forty years. For his genius, the Mexican architect was awarded citizenship and five acres of bottomland. Oxen trains carried the granite from Colorado, but every block of limestone was native. State engineers had overseen the project. Estimates varied, but as many as two hundred guest workers died in order to make the target date. Yet the Old Man had rallied, recovering from the cancer. The tomb had to be mothballed until he was eighty-two, and that’s when the only autocrat the state had ever known passed away in his sleep.

  His body had lain in state for three days. Well-wishers brought dried flowers and religious offerings and prayers, and delicate embroidery intended for the leader’s six daughters and two youngest wives. Disgruntled individuals managed a few incidents, but nothing of note. The Land’s Militia took charge of security, sweeping the tomb grounds for bombs and poisons. This was to be an enormous day, and to help ensure peace, five thousand individuals were rounded up under the Quarantine Laws. Some twenty thousand chairs and benches were placed on the wet grass, and they weren’t enough. Supporters rode bikes from the farthest corners of the state, while neighboring autocrats and strongmen and self-appointed generals traveled to the cap
ital in motor vehicles and several working airplanes. Despite rumors of immortality, the Old Man had died. His rivals were relieved, and they were definitely hungry for opportunity. What mattered was to meet the son who had been given reins to this flush and wet and very green state—a kingdom that by every past measure was poor, and compared with every other corner of the sickly world, was enviably wealthy.

  The new governor was thirty-nine and ready. His stride showed the world his measured confidence, and his voice was a booming, masterly instrument. Without break and almost without water, he told the full story of his father, reciting the history of their Free State, including three wars and one famine, and the legendary Eastern Incursion that brought back several nuclear weapons—each traded for gold and seed as well as the race horses that became the basis of the world’s best cavalry. Then the young man pulled back the clock to days that few remembered. Of course he repeated the story of his dear father working the fields as a child, wearing his hands bloody doing exactly the same jobs required of every school age boy and girl today. There were twenty stories of sacrifice and toughness, and he told the fake tales with the same sure voice that he used with those that were a little true. Then he concluded by mentioning the Old Man as a golfer—an average-looking fellow underestimated by every opponent, but blessed with a grace and strength that endured until his last day.

  That is when the new governor stopped talking.

  Five different religious authorities gave appropriate prayers, and the Shadow Riders brought the body and its long wagon up to the tomb. There were more prayers to come, and ceremonies, and the new governor had settled in to endure all of it. But a face caught his eye—a pretty woman that he didn’t remember yet felt familiar. He asked for the woman’s name. Hersh, was it? Of course he knew who she was. It was the granddaughter—a minor figure in small-town politics out in wheat country.

  He made a request and then slipped back into the still-open tomb.

  Miss Hersh was brought to him. Flustered but trying to appear brave, she watched him, probably fearing the rumors told about him. But no, he was going to behave, certainly today and in this place. Not that he was superstitious, but the tomb stood around them, and even his voice was more hushed than usual. “I want to show you something,” he said. “It’s something you might have heard about. Something that will definitely interest you.”

  “What?” she asked quietly.

  Many of the Old Man’s effects were to be buried with him, preserved for future historians and whatnot. Inside one steel box were crystals meant to absorb moisture and a single enormous manuscript, plus two flash-drives and the hard-drive that had written the entire work.

  “Is that my grandfather’s?”

  The governor nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  “It is,” she agreed. “This is the template to everything. It is.”

  He let her dream, and then with a firm, stern voice, he said, “No.”

  “No?” She looked again. “Why is it still wrapped in plastic? I’ve heard. My father told me. It was wrapped in plastic when Grandpa gave it to your father, and I think that’s his signature there.”

  “It’s never been opened.”

  “Did the governor use the flash-drives?”

  “No.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Never.” And the new governor laughed. “I know the myth. But this is the truth: Years ago, my father showed me the sealed manuscript and the drives and everything. ‘That poor professor,’ he told me. ‘Dr. Hersh believed he had something of genuine value.’ ”

  The young woman was trembling, and maybe she was about to cry.

  “ ‘Years of work and hard scholarship on his part,’ my father said, ‘and do you know what it taught that old chemist? It taught him exactly what any good politician knows on Day One. Power and authority are built on many, many little steps.’ ”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  He watched her.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “I know you’re lying. My grandfather’s plan is what saved our state from falling apart.”

  The governor said nothing. When neither of them spoke, the tomb was wonderfully silent.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He had changed his mind.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  No, he wasn’t superstitious. The next generation was always talking about signs and omens, but to him, this place was nothing but cool and polished limestone that could use a little fun.

  Thick Water

  KAREN HEULER

  Karen Heuler (www.KarenHeuler.com) lives in New York City. She is the author of several novels, including Journey To Bom Goody (2005), The Soft Room (2004), and The Other Door (1995). Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in more than sixty literary and speculative journals and anthologies, including several “Best of” collections. She has received an O. Henry Award and has been short-listed for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the Bellwether Prize, and the Shirley Jackson award, among others. She’s published a short-story collection and three novels. Her latest novel, The Made-up Man (2011), is about a woman who sells her soul to the devil to be a man for the rest of her life—with unexpected results.

  “Thick Water,” a story on the edge between sf, horror, and surrealism, was published in Albedo One, the fine SF magazine from Ireland. A crew of four people lands on a Solaris-esque planet. Three of the four go native, but what native turns out to be is very strange indeed.

  The sunset was orange again, strange, beautiful, and serene. It had a saffron edge, then it blended down to yellows, getting milder and milder the farther it spread along the horizon. It hung there slowly, spilling its colors gently across the sky, with a thin dash of red or rose blending then fading.

  The ocean was almond-colored, and slow. The biggest problem, Jenks said, was that she couldn’t swim in it.

  “Like swimming in a pillow,” Brute snorted. “No, the biggest problem is we can’t drink it. Tired of water rations. I mean, I’m okay with water rations unless I have to look at a whole lot of water all day.”

  “See, the real problem is, you insist on calling it water. If you stopped calling it water, you’d feel right as rain.” This came from Squirrel, who always thought he had the essential point.

  “Rain,” Brute sighed, and they all stared out at the ocean, observing it. Was it water? It spread out wide against the horizon, as oceans did. But the water was thick and rolled; it was theoretically possible to walk on it, if you shifted your weight in the pockets the water formed and if you didn’t go too quickly, which would cause a widespread line of waves, or worse, one of those sinkholes that never even glugged before it covered over.

  They hadn’t touched it; they still wore suits. But they had a piece of it in a tube in the lab room, and Sibbetts was writing lots of meticulous things about it in her reports. Good for Sibbetts. Brute didn’t think they needed the suits any more; the air could be handled with just one of the simpler filters, a light mask over the nose and mouth. But Sibbetts was cautious; Sibbetts said wait.

  The trolley wasn’t due back for another year. The crew—two men, three women—had a habit of nicknaming everything, and the trolley was their name for the long-range transport.

  Jenks, who was head of the exploratory team, said, “Maybe we’re in at the beginning—you know, before life evolves.”

  “There’s some kind of seaweed on the rocks,” Darcy pointed out. He was polite and gorgeous and well bred, and Jenks—the reader in the group—had named him Darcy.

  Their colony of two and a half domes was on the first shelf of a kind of stepped ascent from the beach. Discarded containers and broken equipment were left in the open next to it. There was no wind so they weren’t careful about securing it.

  They spent half the day outside, just poking around and observing, except for Sibbetts who worked on her own inside. One day they gave themselves the task of examining the smooth, cigar-shaped stones that sat around on the lip of t
he beach.

  It was natural, after handling the stones, to want to wash the dust off their gloves. They went to the sea and cupped their hands and pulled out gobs of thick water. It amused them to carry the water around, and eventually they took some of it back to their collection of rocks. Darcy leaned over too far with his hands full, and he made it into a fake fall and rolled onto his back.

  “Now look at that sunset,” he said, pointing. His hand, blunted in its dirty tan glove, rose to the horizon.

  The sunset was a long line of shadow, a pale hue up in the sky that drove along the surface in a line. It started from one direction and then—unlike an earthly sunset which went down—it shifted around in a 180-degree arc. The light reflected off a series of moons, so it was handed across the horizon from left to right. It took hours. The sunrises were quieter, like pale ribbons. Midday was cream-colored, with hints of salmon along the edges.

  “Go get Sibbetts,” Jenks said. Squirrel ran inside, but Sibbetts wouldn’t come out.

  “She said she can see it from inside,” Squirrel reported.

  Strike one against Sibbetts, Jenks thought.

  The rocks seemed smooth, but they must have had an abrasive component to them. Darcy found, one night, a tear in two places on his right glove. He got alcohol and cleaned his hands. Of course, he should report it. He didn’t.

  Jenks found a tear in her suit, around her knee. She put it in the daily report. They were out of range, now; there was no one to check with, to discuss it with. She didn’t want to alarm her junior officers.