Year's Best SF 8

by David G. Hartwell

  Geisen motioned Ailoura into a secluded corner of the kitchens and revealed everything to her. His account prompted low growls from the bestient that escaped despite her angrily compressed lips. Geisen finished resignedly by saying, “And so, helpless to contest this injustice, I leave now to seek my fortune elsewhere, perhaps even on another world.”

  Ailoura pondered a moment. “You say that your brother offered you a servant from our house?”

  “Yes. But I don’t intend to take him up on that promise. Having another mouth to feed would just hinder me.”

  Placing one mitteny yet deft hand on his chest, Ailoura said, “Take me, Gep Stoessl.”

  Geisen experienced a moment of confusion. “But Ailoura—your job of raising me is long past. I am very grateful for the loving care you gave unstintingly to a motherless lad, the guidance and direction you imparted, the indulgent playtimes we enjoyed. Your teachings left me with a wise set of principles, an admirable will and optimism, and a firm moral center—despite the evidence of my thoughtless transgression a moment ago. But your guardian duties lie in the past. And besides, why would you want to leave the comforts and security of Stoessl House?”

  “Look at me closely, Gep Stoessl. I wear now the tabard of the scullery crew. My luck in finding you here is due only to this very demotion. And from here the slide to utter inutility is swift and short—despite my remaining vigor and craft. Will you leave me here to face my sorry fate? Or will you allow me to cast my fate with that of the boy I raised from kittenhood?”

  Geisen thought a moment. “Some companionship would indeed be welcome. And I don’t suppose I could find a more intimate ally.”

  Ailoura grinned. “Or a slyer one.”

  “Very well. You may accompany me. But on one condition.”

  “Yes, Gep Stoessl?”

  “Cease calling me ‘Gep.’ Such formalities were once unknown between us.”

  Ailoura smiled. “Agreed, little Gei-gei.”

  The man winced. “No need to regress quite that far. Now, let us return to raiding my family’s larder.”

  “Be sure to take some of that fine fish, if you please, Geisen.”

  No one knew the origin of the tame strangelets that seeded Chalk’s strata. But everyone knew of the immense wealth these cloistered anomalies conferred.

  Normal matter was composed of quarks in only two flavors: up and down. But strange-flavor quarks also existed, and the exotic substances formed by these strange quarks in combination with the more domestic flavors were, unconfined, as deadly as the more familiar antimatter. Bringing normal matter into contact with a naked strangelet resulted in the conversion of the feedstock into energy. Owning a strangelet was akin to owning a pet black hole, and just as useful for various purposes, such as powering star cruisers.

  Humanity could create strangelets, but only at immense cost per unit. And naked strangelets had to be confined in electromagnetic or gravitic bottles during active use. They could also be quarantined for semipermanent storage in stasis fields. Such was the case with the buried strangelets of Chalk.

  Small spherical mirrored nodules—“marbles,” in the jargon of Chalk’s prospectors—could be found in various recent sedimentary layers of the planet’s crust, distributed according to no rational plan. Discovery of the marbles had inaugurated the reign of the various Houses on Chalk.

  An early scientific expedition from Preceptimax University to the Shulamith Wadi stumbled upon the strangelets initially. Preceptor Fairservis, the curious discoverer of the first marble, had realized he was dealing with a stasis-bound object and had unluckily managed to open it. The quantum genie inside had promptly eaten the hapless fellow who freed it, along with nine-tenths of the expedition, before beginning a sure but slow descent toward the core of Chalk. Luckily, an emergency response team swiftly dispatched by the planetary authorities had managed to activate a new entrapping marble as big as a small city, its lower hemisphere underground, thus trapping the rogue.

  After this incident, the formerly disdained deserts of Chalk had experienced a land rush unparalleled in the galaxy. Soon the entire planet was divided into domains—many consisting of noncontiguous properties—each owned by one House or another. Prospecting began in earnest then. But the practice remained more an art than a science, as the marbles remained stealthy to conventional detectors. Intuition, geological knowledge of strata, and sheer luck proved the determining factors in the individual fortunes of the Houses.

  How the strangelets—plainly artifactual—came to be buried beneath Chalk’s soils and hardpan remained a mystery. No evidence of native intelligent inhabitants existed on the planet prior to the arrival of humanity. Had a cloud of strangelets been swept up out of space as Chalk made her eternal orbits? Perhaps. Or had alien visitors planted the strangelets for unimaginable reasons of their own? An equally plausible theory.

  Whatever the obscure history of the strangelets, their current utility was beyond argument.

  They made many people rich.

  And some people murderous.

  In the shadow of the Tasso Escarpments, adjacent to the Glabrous Drifts, Carrabas House sat desolate and melancholy, tenanted only by glass-tailed lizards and stilt-crabs, its poverty-overtaken heirs dispersed anonymously across the galaxy after a series of unwise investments, followed by the unpredictable yet inevitable exhaustion of their marble-bearing properties—a day against which Vomacht Stoessl had more providently hedged his own family’s fortunes.

  Geisen’s zipflyte crunched to a landing on one of the manse’s grit-blown terraces, beside a gaping portico. The craft’s doors swung open and pilot and passenger emerged. Ailoura now wore a set of utilitarian roughneck’s clothing, tailored for her bestient physique and matching the outfit worn by her former charge, right down to the boots. Strapped to her waist was an antique yet lovingly maintained variable sword, its terminal bead currently dull and inactive.

  “No one will trouble us here,” Geisen said with confidence. “And we’ll have a roof of sorts over our heads while we plot our next steps. As I recall from a visit some years ago, the west wing was the least damaged.”

  As Geisen began to haul supplies—a heater-cum-stove, sleeping bags and pads, water condensers—from their craft, Ailoura inhaled deeply the dry tangy air, her nose wrinkling expressively, then exhaled with zest. “Ah, freedom after so many years! It tastes brave, young Geisen!” Her claws slipped from their sheaths as she flexed her pads. She unclipped her sword and flicked it on, the seemingly untethered bead floating outward from the pommel a meter or so.

  “You finish the monkey work. I’ll clear the rats from our quarters,” promised Ailoura, then bounded off before Geisen could stop her. Watching her unfettered tail disappear down a hall and around a corner, Geisen smiled, recalling childhood games of strength and skill where she had allowed him what he now realized were easy triumphs.

  After no small time, Ailoura returned, licking her greasy lips.

  “All ready for our habitation, Geisen-kitten.”

  “Very good. If the bold warrior will deign to lend a paw…?”

  Soon the pair had established housekeeping in a spacious, weatherproof ground floor room (with several handy exits), where a single leering window frame was easily covered by a sheet of translucent plastic. After distributing their goods and sweeping the floor clean of loess drifts, Geisen and Ailoura took a meal as their reward, the first of many such rude campfire repasts to come.

  As they relaxed afterward, Geisen making notes with his stylus in a small pocket diary and Ailoura dragging her left paw continually over one ear, a querulous voice sounded from thin air.

  “Who disturbs my weary peace?”

  Instantly on their feet, standing back to back, the newcomers looked warily about. Ailoura snarled until Geisen hushed her. Seeing no one, Geisen at last inquired, “Who speaks?”

  “I am the Carrabas marchwarden.”

  The man and bestient relaxed a trifle. “Impossible,” said Geisen. “Ho
w do you derive your energy after all these years of abandonment and desuetude?”

  The marchwarden chuckled with a trace of pride. “Long ago, without any human consent or prompting, while Carrabas House still flourished, I sunk a thermal tap downward hundreds of kilometers. The backup energy thus supplied is not much, compared with my old capacities, but has proved enough for sheer survival, albeit with much dormancy.”

  Ailoura hung her quiet sword back on her belt. “How have you kept sane since then, marchwarden?”

  “Who says I have?”

  Coming to terms with the semideranged Carrabas march-warden required delicate negotiations. The protective majordomo simultaneously resented the trespassers—who did not share the honored Carrabas family lineage—yet on some different level welcomed their company and the satisfying chance to perform some of its programmed functions for them. Alternating ogreish threats with embarrassingly humble supplications, the marchwarden needed to hear just the right mix of defiance and thanks from the squatters to fully come over as their ally. Luckily, Ailoura, employing diplomatic wiles honed by decades of bestient subservience, perfectly supplemented Geisen’s rather gruff and patronizing attitude. Eventually, the ghost of Carrabas House accepted them.

  “I am afraid I can contribute little enough to your comfort, Gep Carrabas.” During the negotiations, the marchwarden had somehow self-deludingly concluded that Geisen was indeed part of the lost lineage. “Some water, certainly, from my active conduits. But no other necessities such as heat or food, or any luxuries either. Alas, the days of my glory are long gone!”

  “Are you still in touch with your peers?” asked Ailoura.

  “Why, yes. The other Houses have not forgotten me. Many are sympathetic, though a few are haughty and indifferent.”

  Geisen shook his head in bemusement. “First I learn that the protective omniscience of the marchwardens may be circumvented. Next, that they keep up a private traffic and society. I begin to wonder who is the master and who is the servant in our global system.”

  “Leave these conundrums to the preceptors, Geisen. This unexpected mode of contact might come in handy for us some day.”

  The marchwarden’s voice sounded enervated. “Will you require any more of me? I have overtaxed my energies, and need to shut down for a time.”

  “Please restore yourself fully.”

  Left alone, Geisen and Ailoura simultaneously realized how late the hour was and how tired they were. They bedded down in warm bodyquilts, and Geisen swiftly drifted off to sleep to the old tune of Ailoura’s drowsy purring.

  In the chilly viridian morning, over fish and kava, cat and man held a war council.

  Geisen led with a bold assertion that nonetheless concealed a note of despair and resignation.

  “Given your evident hunting prowess, Ailoura, and my knowledge of the land, I estimate that we can take half a dozen sandworms from those unclaimed public territories proved empty of strangelets, during the course of as many months. We’ll peddle the skins for enough to get us both off-planet. I understand that lush homesteads are going begging on Nibbriglung. All that the extensive water meadows there require is a thorough desnailing before they’re producing golden rice by the bushel—”

  Ailoura’s green eyes, so like Geisen’s own, flashed with cool fire. “Insipidity! Toothlessness!” she hissed. “Turn farmer? Grub among the waterweeds like some platypus? Run away from those who killed your sire and cheated you out of your inheritance? I didn’t raise such an unimaginative, unambitious coward, did I?”

  Geisen sipped his drink to avoid making a hasty affronted rejoinder, then calmly said, “What do you recommend, then? I gave my legally binding promise not to contest any of the unfair terms laid down by my family, in return for freedom from prosecution. What choices does such a renunciation leave me? Shall you and I go live in the shabby slums that slump at the feet of the Houses? Or turn thief and raider and prey upon lonely mining encampments? Or shall we become freelance prospectors? I’d be good at the latter job, true, but bargaining with the Houses concerning hard-won information about their own properties is humiliating, and promises only slim returns. They hold all the high cards, and the supplicant offers only a mere saving of time.”

  “You’re onto a true scent with this last idea. But not quite the paltry scheme you envision. What I propose is that we swindle those who swindled you. We won’t gain back your whole patrimony, but you’ll surely acquire greater sustaining riches than you would by flensing worms or flailing rice.”

  “Speak on.”

  “The first step involves a theft. But after that, only chicanery. To begin, we’ll need a small lot of strangelets, enough to salt a claim everyone thought exhausted.”

  Geisen considered, buffing his raspy chin with his knuckles. “The morality is dubious. Still—I found a smallish deposit of marbles on Stoessl property during my aborted trip, and never managed to report it. They were in a flood-plain hard by the Nakhoda Range, newly exposed and ripe for the plucking without any large-scale mining activity that would attract satellite surveillance.”

  “Perfect! We’ll use their own goods to con the ratlings! But once we have this grubstake, we’ll need a proxy to deal with the Houses. Your own face and reputation must remain concealed until all deals are sealed airtight. Do you have knowledge of any such suitable foil?”

  Geisen began to laugh. “Do I? Only the perfect rogue for the job!”

  Ailoura came cleanly to her feet, although she could not repress a small grunt at an arthritic twinge provoked by a night on the hard floor. “Let us collect the strangelets first, and then enlist his help. With luck, we’ll be sleeping on feathers and dining off golden plates in a few short weeks.”

  The sad and spectral voice of the abandoned marchwarden sounded. “Good morning, Gep Carrabas. I regret keenly my own serious incapacities as a host. But I have managed to heat up several liters of water for a bath, if such service appeals.”

  The eccentric caravan of Marco Bozzarias and his mistress Pigafetta had emerged from its minting pools as a top-ofthe-line Baba Yaya model of the year 650 PS. Capacious and agile, larded with amenities, the moderately intelligent stilt-walking cabin had been designed to protect its inhabitants from climatic extremes in unswaying comfort while carrying them surefootedly over the roughest terrain. But plainly, for one reason or another (most likely poverty) Bozzarias had neglected the caravan’s maintenance over the twenty-five years of its working life.

  Raised now for privacy above the sands where Geisen’s zipflyte rested, the vehicle-cum-residence canted several degrees, imparting a funhouse quality to its interior. Swellings at its many knee joints indicated a lack of proper nutrients. Additionally, the cabin itself had been patched with so many different materials—plastic, sandworm hide, canvas, chitin—that it more closely resembled a heap of debris than a deliberately designed domicile.

  The caravan’s owner, contrastingly, boasted an immaculate and stylish appearance. To judge by his handsome, mustachioed looks, the middle-aged Bozzarias was more stage-door idler than cactus hugger, displaying his trim figure proudly beneath crimson ripstop trews and utility vest over bare hirsute chest. Despite this urban promenader’s facade, Bozzarias held a respectable record as a freelance prospector, having pinpointed for their owners several strangelet lodes of note, including the fabled Gosnold Pocket. For these services, he had been recompensed by the tightfisted landowners only a nearly invisible percentage of the eventual wealth claimed from the finds. Despite his current friendly grin, it would be impossible for Bozzarias not to harbor decades-worth of spite and jealousy.

  Pigafetta, Bozzarias’ bestient paramour, was a voluptuous, pink-skinned geisha clad in blue and green silks. Carrying perhaps a tad too much weight—hardly surprising, given her particular gattaca—Pigafetta radiated a slack and greasy carnality utterly at odds with Ailoura’s crisp and dry efficiency. When the visitors had entered the cabin, before either of the humans could intervene, Geisen and Bozzarias
had been treated to an instant but decisive bloodless catfight that had settled the pecking order between the moreauvians.

  Now, while Pigafetta sulked winsomely in canted corner amid her cushions, the furry female victor consulted with the two men around a small table across which lay spilled the stolen strangelets, corralled from rolling by a line of empty liquor bottles.

  Bozzarias poked at one of the deceptive marbles with seeming disinterest, while his dark eyes glittered with avarice. “Let me recapitulate. We represent to various buyers that these quantum baubles are merely the camel’s nose showing beneath the tent of unconsidered wealth. A newly discovered lode on the Carrabas properties, of which you, Gep Carrabas—” Bozzarias leered at Geisen, “—are the rightful heir. We rook the fools for all we can get, then hie ourselves elsewhere, beyond their injured squawks and retributions. Am I correct in all particulars?”

  Ailoura spoke first. “Yes, substantially.”

  “And what would my share of the take be? To depart forever my cherished Chalk would require a huge stake—”

  “Don’t try to make your life here sound glamorous or even tolerable, Marco,” Geisen said. “Everyone knows you’re in debt up to your nose, and haven’t had a strike in over a year. It’s about time for you to change venues anyway. The days of the freelancer on Chalk are nearly over.”

  Bozzarias sighed dramatically, picking up a reflective marble and admiring himself in it. “I suppose you speak the truth—as it is commonly perceived. But a man of my talents can carve himself a niche anywhere. And Pigafetta had been begging me of late to launch her on a virtual career—”

  “In other words,” Ailoura interrupted, “you intend to pimp her as a porn star. Well, you’ll need to relocate to a mediapoietic world then for sure. May we assume you’ll become part of our scheme?”