The New Space Opera

by Gardner Dozois

  Leaving streaks and flecks of blood. Qai kicked the board into a hard brake, leaped over the skidding sled as it banged into the wall, and skimmed down the corridor in long, flat strides, slamming both palms into the wall to kill his momentum as he reached her, dropping to his knees.

  She breathed. Qai let his breath out in a rush even as his fingers probed gently, feeling for the grate of broken bones, wincing at the instant swelling where the sled had struck her, above her small, flat breasts. She had cut her scalp right at the hairline when she hit the wall, and blood gleamed on her face, purplish in the moss-light. Her left collarbone had broken. He felt the small irregularity, checked her shoulders, arms. Didn’t find any other breaks, just cuts and scrapes from the rough ice of the wall. Chewing his lip, he rocked back on his heels, thinking hard. As a visitor with a visa chip, she’d get care in the Ice Palace, at the visitors’ enclave. But if he brought her there, they’d detain him until she regained consciousness. Just in case he himself had assaulted her or she wanted to press charges. Tourism brought in precious credit and tourists were highly protected. Moss miners were not. He checked her pulse again. He could leave her here and someone would find her. What she would say about the accident, he didn’t know. It would be enough.

  As Qai started to stand, a flicker of motion at the far reaches of his vision caught his eye, a shadowy figure, nearly invisible in the dim moss-glow. He recognized matted gray hair and the hood of a ragged tunic. The sweeper. From Karina’s plaza.

  They had followed her, had been working hard while she slept her way up from the platforms, in hibernation in her shielded cocoon. Probabilities spun through his head. If he was accused of killing a tourist, the Ice Palace would sic all of Security on him. They’d start with Karina because too many people knew about them.

  Their methods were . . . efficient.

  Karina wouldn’t know enough to survive the questioning, he guessed. Even as these conclusions clicked into place, he was heaving Gerta’s unconscious body onto the sled, securing it with a spare cargo net, arranging her arm so that the collarbone wouldn’t take too much stress. Leaping onto his idling board, he toed it into motion, then kicked up the speed. Leaning forward, frigid corridor air whipping tears into his eyes, he fought the erratic tug of the overloaded sled as it tried to pull him into the wall. He didn’t dare slow down. The sweeper wouldn’t be working alone. He’d have someone on a board. And they’d be armed. They had the power behind them to bring a weapon onto the Snow Queen and get away with it.

  He passed a narrow natural ice-crevice patched with yellow moss, began counting as another crevice flashed past on his right. Four . . . five . . . he caught a faint whiff of sulfur and moisture, risked a nanosecond glance behind, saw nothing. He’d have to stay low, near sea level. Gerta couldn’t take the ultrathin atmosphere nearer the surface. Qai kicked the board into a slewing turn, braced himself for the jerk of the sled, hoped that she was still unconscious, crouched and rode the board as it bucked, stabilizers whining with strain.

  With a centimeter to spare, he made the turn, the sled straightening out behind him, barely kissing the wall as he accelerated down the natural. Blue and green moss patched this one without even a streak of yellow, filling the narrow, wandering natural with a thick, oppressive twilight. Qai took the first secondary fissure antispinward that didn’t feel like a dead end, turned north, then spinward, weaving a random path through the fissures that webbed the ice, stretching his senses to the limit, praying that he didn’t run out of width before he crossed a big natural. He was lost now, really lost, but that’s what it would take to lose their pursuers.

  A faint, shimmering hum tickled his awareness. Purple moss. It only grew in naturals that opened to sea, where an upwelling brought warmer water up from the deep vents, exhaling warm, oxygen-laden air into an ice cavern. He eased the board into the narrow fissure, the rippled texture of the ice here glowing a soft blue that slowly darkened to purple. Ahead, open water gleamed like a gash, black as the night between the stars. The natural fissure widened, wall smoothed and pocked from the upwelling warmth and moisture. A wide shelf of smooth ice ringed the open upwell. This was an older, stable upwell then. The cavern had probably reached its mature and stable size and the likelihood of ice falls would be minimal. Qai let his board drift to a halt on the flat and shut it down. As the hum of its power plant faded, the sounds of the Snow Queen filled the thick quiet; the lap and suck of the sea, the deep groan of the ice itself, and the rich, contemplative song of the moss.

  Qai stepped off the board, his legs trembling now. Squatting on the ice, forehead against his knees, he drew a long slow breath. Another. Focused on the wandering song of the moss. Yes, this cavern was stable.

  “Wilmar?”

  He started at her whisper. “Gerta.” What do you say? Hello? “Hello.” He almost laughed because it was so . . . inappropriate. “I hoped you’d still be out. I’m sorry.” He straightened stiffly, his muscles aching with the aftereffects of adrenaline.

  “I can’t believe . . . I found you.” She gasped.

  “You’ve got a broken collarbone.” He stumbled to the sled, released the webbing that held her. “I’ll give you something for the pain as soon as I can. Here.” He slid an arm beneath her shoulders. “Slide off easy. Your ice suit should keep you warm long enough for me to get things set up.”

  “Wil? How can you be so . . .” She gasped again as he eased her off the sled and onto the ice. “How can you act so . . . so matter-of-fact?”

  “I’m not. Just give me some time, okay?” He yanked the main webbing off the sled, tossed it aside. He let himself sink into the familiar routines of setting up camp, inflating the tent, setting up his cookpad, dropping the filter’s tube into the midnight sea. As he leaned over the water, a Milky Way of tiny golden stars whirled in slow motion deep within the blackness. Starfish. Way down. Briefly mesmerized, Qai watched the slow spiral of the thousands of distant creatures spinning out their lives in the warm, Europan sea. Then, without warning, they vanished.

  Eaten. All at once. Qai shivered. The filter bottle was filling up. He pulled it out of the sea, tipped the liter of clear, drinkable water into his teakettle, and set it on the cookpad. Instantly the droplets of water on its outer surface sputtered into steam. While the water was heating from the focused microwave beam, he found his packet of dried rose moss, measured a generous pinch into his mug. Then he rose, scanning the soft walls and ceiling of the domed space in the purple-lavender glow of the moss.

  “What are you doing, Wil?”

  He flinched at his name. “I’m Qai now, all right? I’m looking for young purple moss. It stimulates healing . . . it’s almost as good as enhanced healing in a hospital.” He spied a magenta-purple tracery of a new growth, pulled his ice knife from its sheath and dug a palmful of delicate threads from the spongy ice. The kettle was boiling. He dumped the fresh moss on top of the powdered rose, poured steaming water into the mug, and watched the moss dissolve into a dull lavender liquid. He added a heaping spoon of precious sugar crystals, lifted all the way from the orbital platforms. Hesitated, than added another.

  “I’m cold.” Gert sucked in her breath as she sat up.

  “I need to put a sling on your arm. You have tried moss before, right?” Although it was unlikely she was one of the rare homozygous allergics.

  “Of course. Everyone has tried it at least once.” She sounded defensive.

  “Drink this.” Qai knelt beside her with the steaming cup. “It’ll make you stop hurting and it’ll start the healing process.”

  She took the cup awkwardly with her left hand, her face paling as the broken collarbone ground. “Damn, it hurts.” She sniffed the mug. “Smells like sulfur.”

  “Everything smells like sulfur here.” He smiled in spite of himself because . . . she was Gerta. Still. “In case you hadn’t noticed.” And fresh moss tasted bad even to him after all his years here. “It’s got some rose moss in it too. That blocks pain perception.”r />
  “Rose moss?” She blinked. “That’s more precious than anything, on Earth. People take it to dream.”

  “Drink it.”

  She blinked at his tone, but sipped the brew. Made a considering face, but the heavy lacing with expensive sugar worked. She lifted her good shoulder in a tiny shrug and drank it all. Gagged a bit, swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. “Why did you hit me?” She peered at him over the rim of the mug, breathing too fast in spite of the nano–red cells sucking oxygen out of the air in her lungs.

  “Because you ran in front of me, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is an ice world with minimal gravity.” He sighed. “I couldn’t just slam on the brakes. Why did you run in front of me?”

  “To stop you.” Her blue eyes narrowed.

  Ice blue. That memory surfaced with the feel of a kick to the gut. That’s what he would have called the color of her eyes. But ice had so many more colors. Now it seemed simplistic, a child’s word. But then . . . he had been a child. “Why did you come here?”

  “To find you.” Tears finally gathered in the corners of those blue eyes. “I didn’t believe it. When they said you’d stolen proprietary information, when they said you’d committed murder and sold out to a competing company. That just isn’t you!” Her voice dropped. “And I knew you weren’t dead. Even when they said you were.”

  Yeah, a part of him had known always that she could not be fooled.

  “What happened, Wil? Why did you come here?”

  “Let’s get into the tent.” He eyed her critically. “You’re shivering and those tourist-weight ice suits aren’t really meant for living out here.”

  “Wil . . . Qai. This is such a trivial conversation.” She lifted her chin, her eyes already bright with the rose moss’s effect. “Just stop it. Tell me what really happened.”

  “I will.” The weight of that promise settled like stone onto his shoulders.

  He turned his back on her, unsealing the tent and touching the heat to life. The embedded fibers would keep the small, domed shelter a comfortable ten degrees Centigrade. That would be too cold for her, he thought, remembering back across the years to his first months on the ice, when he never seemed to be warm, never seemed able to catch his breath. He touched the illumination strip to life, leaving it muted, so that it filled the insulated space with a soft glow like yellow moss. Then he retrieved his med kit from the sled, along with an ice spike and mallet. On the way back to her, he detoured to the edge of the open water, hammering the spike into the ice and pulling his longline pouch from a suit pocket. Gouging a wad of purple moss from the ice, he molded it into a wad in his mouth, barely noticing the rich, sulfurous tang. The protein chains toughened and contracted as they reacted to his alkaline saliva, and he baited the three-pronged hook with the gumlike wad, dropping it into the lightless water.

  The weights pulled it down and the bait vanished almost instantly as it sank into the rich world of life below the ice. He filtered more water, and put his little cookpot onto the heating mat to boil. Gerta was drowsing by the time he reached her side, her eyes glittering with moss dreams beneath half-closed eyelids. As he knelt beside her, she smiled at him, with a sleepy waking-up smile that wrenched him back across the years and wrung him with pain. He looked away for a moment, drew a deep breath. “I need to immobilize your arm.” He let the breath out, putting her into the context of ice, cold, the heavy, sulfurous sea air. “It’s going to hurt some.”

  “That’s okay.” She sat up, her lips tightening only a bit. “I can see why that stuff costs so much. Somebody said you can get addicted.”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled. “I’ve never tried to not use it.” He touched the med kit’s lid, selected “collarbone, simple fracture” from the extensive menu. The lid shimmered, projecting a holo of a woman applying a microfiber sling to a man’s arm. He had remembered the procedure correctly. He found the wafer-thin packet of splint fabric in the kit and unfolded it. Wrapping it so that it supported her right arm, he touched the control disk, sending a tiny charge through the fibers so that they stiffened, becoming resilient enough to restrict movement of her arm without the rigidity he’d use for something like a broken leg. She caught her breath once or twice as he worked, but held still, her muscles relaxed. Even when he cleaned her cuts and scrapes with antiseptic, she didn’t flinch. The scalp cut had stopped bleeding, at least. He sealed the cut closed with liquid skin.

  Gert. Her name meant “warrior.” And he smiled. It fit her so well. “Why don’t you get into the tent.” He resealed the med kit. “It’s warm by now.”

  She got to her feet and crawled awkwardly into the tent. “Cozy.” She sat cross-legged on the insulated floor, illuminated by the light strip’s glow. “Batteries?” She looked around. “No solar power here, that’s for sure.” She giggled. “I feel drunk.”

  “You’re not used to the moss, that’s all. Here’s some water.” He put the filter bottle down beside her. “I’m going to go cook us some dinner.” He frowned. “Did you get all your inoculations before you left the Ice Palace?”

  “I did.” She looked up at him. “So I can have dinner with you and the nano in my gut will inactivate all the nasty things that would give me the runs. I feel like I must be about half nano by now. This is so crazy.” She laughed giddily. “I search for you for nearly a decade, finally find you, and we sit down and have dinner just as if we were camping out on the tundra. It’s even just as cold.” Her lips trembled. “Do you even have a reindeer stashed away? Do you remember Whiskers?”

  “I . . . I do.” He leaned forward suddenly, impelled by the weight of the past that wrung his soul, kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then he fled the tent, fled the memories that fluttered like shadowy bats.

  Outside, the moist-sulfur scent of the sea banished the yesterday-bats and he pulled up his fish line. Luck smiled. A fat blue-slug squirmed mindlessly on the end of his line, the hooks embedded firmly in its thick, gelatinous flesh. Good thing Gerta couldn’t see it, he thought as he sliced it free of the hook. The severed pieces squirmed on the ice, humping blindly across the pebbled surface with surprising speed. He scooped them up and dropped them into the boiling water. They disintegrated instantly and he added a handful of dried yellow moss, turning the simmering mess an off-green that he suspected would not appeal much to Gerta.

  He tidied up the sled, covering it neatly with the cargo net, rebaited his hook, and dropped it back into the water with fresh moss bait. The blue-slug had already digested the original bait. Organisms on Europa were highly efficient at absorbing energy. Any energy. Finally, the slug stew was ready and he had run out of reasons to delay. He set the pot on the ice long enough to cool it to eating temperature, then carried it into the tent along with two spoons.

  Gerta was sitting with her back against one wall, her head tilted back. He could see the passage of years in her face, like faint shadows. She was fifty now, ten years older than he. She straightened as he entered. Tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away silently as he set the pot on the floor. “I’m afraid it’s not going to seem very tasty.” He handed her his spare spoon. “I used to buy stuff like garlic essence, curry, spices like that, to sort of hide the taste when I first came here.” He shrugged. “It costs a fortune to lift that stuff out here, though, and now the moss . . . tastes fine.”

  “Golden spoons.” She turned it over in her hands, slid a finger along the edge of the wide bowl. “I saw it everywhere in the main port.”

  “It’s sort of like fool’s gold on Earth,” he said lightly. “Sulfur and iron. Some of the sea life secrete it.”

  She didn’t answer, merely dipped the spoon into the green sludge, lifted it to her lips and sipped at it. Made a face. Sighed, and dipped a full spoon, wincing a bit as she slurped it down. “Does everything smell like sulfur here?”

  “Pretty much. It drives the energy web. The scientists think that oxygen is a latecomer. It’s slowly changing the ecosystem, but it l
ets us live down here. At least at sea level.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call this living.” She drew a deep breath, shook her head. “I feel like I’m half suffocated, like I can’t get enough air.”

  “Yeah, the oxygen content is pretty thin. Eventually, your body gets used to it . . . you just grow a lot more red blood cells to help out the nano-cells.” He scooped up stew, finding himself hungry, but then it had been a full ten-hour since he had eaten last. He had meant to eat with Karina. Closed his eyes briefly, praying to the faceless gods of infinity that his pursuers were too busy looking for him to bother with her.

  “You always loved the winter ice.” Gerta spoke dreamily, spooning up more stew. “Is that what brought you out here? Is that why you call yourself Qai?” She half smiled. “They call Europa the Snow Queen on the platforms, I found out. They told me she’s a cold, evil queen, that she draws the scum of the solar system, that no law can touch anyone here.”

  “I’d say she draws the misfits and the renegades,” Qai said lightly. “The ones that don’t fit into the more organized societies. And believe me, we have rules here, even if they aren’t laws.”

  Gerta put her spoon down and faced him, all moss-dream gone from her blue gaze in an instant. “What really happened, Wil? Did she steal your soul? This Snow Queen? Did a splinter of the mirror of evil enter your eye? And did you think I’d care?”

  “You always loved that story.” He fixed his eyes on his spoon. “Yes, that’s why I chose Qai for a new name.”

  “World Council Security contacted me,” she went on doggedly. “They told me that you stole registered experimental software, you killed someone to do it, they had a warrant for your arrest. They said you were hiding, would possibly contact me while you were waiting to sell it.” Her voice trembled. “I wouldn’t have turned you in. Didn’t you know that?”

  Sweating in his ice suit, Qai pulled the tunic off over his head, stripped off his gloves, and wriggled out of the overall bottoms. He tossed the wad of silken ice fabric aside and sat down cross-legged in his therms. “What are you doing now?” He spoke gently. “When you’re not on Europa looking for me?”