The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Prospects worsen drastically.”

  Ekatarina ducked her head. “All right, what’s likely to be our most pressing new problem?”

  “The unafflicted components will demand to know more about the war on Earth. They’ll want the media feeds restored immediately.”

  “I could rig up a receiver easily enough,” Gunther volunteered. “Nothing fancy, but…”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “Hah? Why not?”

  “Gunther, let me put it to you this way: What two nationalities are most heavily represented here?”

  “Well, I guess that would be Russia and—oh.”

  “Oh is right. For the time being, I think it’s best if nobody knows for sure who’s supposed to be enemies with whom.” She asked the CMP, “How should I respond?”

  “Until the situation stabilizes, you have no choice but distraction. Keep their minds occupied. Hunt down the saboteurs and then organize war crime trials.”

  “That’s out. No witch hunts, no scapegoats, no trials. We’re all in this together.”

  Emotionlessly, the CMP said, “Violence is the left hand of government. You are rash to dismiss its potentials without serious thought.”

  “I won’t discuss it.”

  “Very well. If you wish to postpone the use of force for the present, you could hold a hunt for the weapon used on Bootstrap. Locating and identifying it would involve everyone’s energies without necessarily implicating anybody. It would also be widely interpreted as meaning an eventual cure was possible, thus boosting the general morale without your actually lying.”

  Tiredly, as if this were something she had gone over many times already, she said, “Is there really no hope of curing them?”

  “Anything is possible. In light of present resources, though, it cannot be considered likely.”

  Ekatarina thought the peecee off, dismissing the CMP. She sighed. “Maybe that’s what we ought to do. Donkey up a hunt for the weapon. We ought to be able to do something with that notion.”

  Puzzled, Gunther said, “But it was one of Chang’s weapons, wasn’t it? A schizomimetic engine, right?”

  “Where did you hear that?” she demanded sharply.

  “Well, Krishna said … he didn’t act like … I thought it was public knowledge.”

  Ekatarina’s face hardened. “Program!” she thought.

  The CMP came back to life. “Ready.”

  “Locate Krishna Narasimhan, unafflicted, Cadre Five. I want to speak with him immediately.” Ekatarina snatched up her panties and shorts, and furiously began dressing. “Where are my damned sandals? Program! Tell him to meet me in the common room. Right away.”

  “Received.”

  * * *

  To Gunther’s surprise, it took over an hour for Ekatarina to browbeat Krishna into submission. Finally, though, the young research component went to a lockbox, identified himself to it, and unsealed the storage areas. “It’s not all that secure,” he said apologetically. “If our sponsors knew how often we just left everything open so we could get in and out, they’d—well, never mind.”

  He lifted a flat, palm-sized metal rectangle from a cabinet. “This is the most likely means of delivery. It’s an aerosol bomb. The biological agents are loaded here, and it’s triggered by snapping this back here. It’s got enough pressure in it to spew the agents fifty feet straight up. Air currents do the rest.” He tossed it to Gunther who stared down at the thing in horror. “Don’t worry, it’s not armed.”

  He slid out a slim drawer holding row upon gleaming row of slim chrome cylinders. “These contain the engines themselves. They’re off-the-shelf nano-weaponry. State of the art stuff, I guess.” He ran a fingertip over them. “We’ve programmed each to produce a different mix of neurotransmitters. Dopamine, phencyclidine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, met-enkephalin, substance P, serotonin—there’s a hefty slice of Heaven in here, and—” he tapped an empty space—”right here is our missing bit of Hell.” He frowned, and muttered, “That’s curious. Why are there two cylinders missing?”

  “What’s that?” Ekatarina said. “I didn’t catch what you just said.”

  “Oh, nothing important. Um, listen, it might help if I yanked a few biological pathways charts and showed you the chemical underpinnings of these things.”

  “Never mind that. Just keep it sweet and simple. Tell us about these schizomimetic engines.”

  It took over an hour to explain.

  The engines were molecule-sized chemical factories, much like the assemblers in a microfactory. They had been provided by the military, in the hope Chang’s group would come up with a misting weapon that could be sprayed in an army’s path to cause them to change their loyalty. Gunther dozed off briefly while Krishna was explaining why that was impossible, and woke up sometime after the tiny engines had made their way into the brain.

  “It’s really a false schizophrenia,” Krishna explained. “True schizophrenia is a beautifully complicated mechanism. What these engines create is more like a bargain-basement knockoff. They seize control of the brain chemistry, and start pumping out dopamine and a few other neuromediators. It’s not an actual disorder, per se. They just keep the brain hopping.” He coughed. “You see.”

  “Okay,” Ekatarina said. “Okay. You say you can reprogram these things. How?”

  “We use what are technically called messenger engines. They’re like neuromodulators—they tell the schizomimetic engines what to do.” He slid open another drawer, and in a flat voice said, “They’re gone.”

  “Let’s keep to the topic, if we may. We’ll worry about your inventory later. Tell us about these messenger engines. Can you brew up a lot of them, to tell the schizomimetics to turn themselves off?”

  “No, for two reasons. First, these molecules were hand-crafted in the Swiss Orbitals; we don’t have the industrial plant to create them. Secondly, you can’t tell the schizomimetics to turn themselves off. They don’t have off switches. They’re more like catalysts than actual machines. You can reconfigure them to produce different chemicals, but…” He stopped, and a distant look came into his eyes. “Damn.” He grabbed up his peecee, and a chemical pathways chart appeared on one wall. Then beside it, a listing of major neurofunctions. Then another chart covered with scrawled behavioral symbols. More and more data slammed up on the wall.

  “Uh, Krishna…?”

  “Oh, go away,” he snapped. “This is important.”

  “You think you might be able to come up with a cure?”

  “Cure? No. Something better. Much better.”

  Ekatarina and Gunther looked at each other. Then she said, “Do you need anything? Can I assign anyone to help you?”

  “I need the messenger engines. Find them for me.”

  “How? How do we find them? Where do we look?”

  “Sally Chang,” Krishna said impatiently. “She must have them. Nobody else had access.” He snatched up a light pen, and began scrawling crabbed formulae on the wall.

  “I’ll get her for you. Program! Tell—”

  “Chang’s a flick,” Gunther reminded her. “She was caught by the aerosol bomb.” Which she must surely have set herself. A neat way of disposing of evidence that might’ve led to whatever government was running her. She’d have been the first to go mad.

  Ekatarina pinched her nose, wincing. “I’ve been awake too long,” she said. “All right, I understand. Krishna, from now on you’re assigned permanently to research. The CMP will notify your cadre leader. Let me know if you need any support. Find me a way to turn this damned weapon off.” Ignoring the way he shrugged her off, she said to Gunther, “I’m yanking you from Cadre Four. From now on, you report directly to me. I want you to find Chang. Find her, and find those messenger engines.”

  Gunther was bone-weary. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a good eight hours’ sleep. But he managed what he hoped was a confident grin. “Received.”

  * * *

  A madwoman should not have b
een able to hide herself. Sally Chang could. Nobody should have been able to evade the CMP’s notice, now that it was hooked into a growing number of afflicted individuals. Sally Chang did. The CMP informed Gunther that none of the flicks were aware of Chang’s whereabouts. It accepted a directive to have them all glance about for her once every hour until she was found.

  In the west tunnels, walls had been torn out to create a space as large as any factory interior. The remotes had been returned, and were now manned by almost two hundred flicks spaced so that they did not impinge upon each other’s fields of instruction. Gunther walked by them, through the CMP’s whispering voices: “Are all bulldozers accounted for? If so … Clear away any malfunctioning machines; they can be placed … for vacuum-welded dust on the upper surfaces of the rails … reduction temperature, then look to see that the oxygen feed is compatible…” At the far end a single suit sat in a chair, overseer unit in its lap.

  “How’s it going?” Gunther asked.

  “Absolutely top-notch.” He recognized Takayuni’s voice. They’d worked in the Flammaprion microwave relay station together. “Most of the factories are up and running, and we’re well on our way to having the railguns operative too. You wouldn’t believe the kind of efficiencies we’re getting here.”

  “Good, huh?”

  Takayuni grinned; Gunther could hear it in his voice. “Industrious little buggers!”

  Takayuni hadn’t seen Chang. Gunther moved on.

  Some hours later he found himself sitting wearily in Noguchi Park, looking at the torn-up dirt where the kneehigh forest had been. Not a seedling had been spared; the silver birch was extinct as a lunar species. Dead carp floated belly-up in the oil-slicked central lake; a chain-link fence circled it now, to keep out the flicks. There hadn’t been the time yet to begin cleaning up the litter, and when he looked about, he saw trash everywhere. It was sad. It reminded him of Earth.

  He knew it was time to get going, but he couldn’t. His head sagged, touched his chest, and jerked up. Time had passed.

  A flicker of motion made him turn. Somebody in a pastel lavender boutique suit hurried by. The woman who had directed him to the city controller’s office the other day. “Hello!” he called. “I found everybody just where you said. Thanks. I was starting to get a little spooked.”

  The lavender suit turned to look at him. Sunlight glinted on black glass. A still, long minute later, she said, “Don’t mention it,” and started away.

  “I’m looking for Sally Chang. Do you know her? Have you seen her? She’s a flick, kind of a little woman, flamboyant, used to favor bright clothes, electric makeup, that sort of thing.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” Lavender was carrying three oxytanks in her arms. “You might try the straw market, though. Lots of bright clothes there.” She ducked into a tunnel opening and disappeared within.

  Gunther stared after her distractedly, then shook his head. He felt so very, very tired.

  * * *

  The straw market looked as though it had been through a storm. The tents had been torn down, the stands knocked over, the goods looted. Shards of orange and green glass crunched underfoot. Yet a rack of Italian scarves worth a year’s salary stood untouched amid the rubble. It made no sense at all.

  Up and down the market, flicks were industriously cleaning up. They stooped and lifted and swept. One of them was being beaten by a suit.

  Gunther blinked. He could not react to it as a real event. The woman cringed under the blows, shrieking wildly and scuttling away from them. One of the tents had been re-erected, and within the shadow of its rainbow silks, four other suits lounged against the bar. Not a one of them moved to help the woman.

  “Hey!” Gunther shouted. He felt hideously self-conscious, as if he’d been abruptly thrust into the middle of a play without memorized lines or any idea of the plot or notion of what his role in it was. “Stop that!”

  The suit turned toward him. It held the woman’s slim arm captive in one gloved hand. “Go away,” a male voice growled over the radio.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Who are you?” The man wore a Westinghouse suit, one of a dozen or so among the unafflicted. But Gunther recognized a brown, kidney-shaped scorch mark on the abdomen panel. “Posner—is that you? Let that woman go.”

  “She’s not a woman,” Posner said. “Hell, look at her—she’s not even human. She’s a flick.”

  Gunther set his helmet to record. “I’m taping this,” he warned. “You hit that woman again, and Ekatarina will see it all. I promise.”

  Posner released the woman. She stood dazed for a second or two, and then the voice from her peecee reasserted control. She bent to pick up a broom, and returned to work.

  Switching off his helmet, Gunther said, “Okay. What did she do?”

  Indignantly, Posner extended a foot. He pointed sternly down at it. “She peed all over my boot!”

  The suits in the tent had been watching with interest. Now they roared. “Your own fault, Will!” one of them called out. “I told you you weren’t scheduling in enough time for personal hygiene.”

  “Don’t worry about a little moisture. It’ll boil off next time you hit vacuum!”

  But Gunther was not listening. He stared at the flick Posner had been mistreating and wondered why he hadn’t recognized Anya earlier. Her mouth was pursed, her face squinched up tight with worry, as if there were a key in the back of her head that had been wound three times too many. Her shoulders cringed forward now, too. But still.

  “I’m sorry, Anya,” he said. “Hiro is dead. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

  She went on sweeping, oblivious, unhappy.

  * * *

  He caught the shift’s last jitney back to the Center. It felt good to be home again. Miiko Ezumi had decided to loot the outlying factories of their oxygen and water surpluses, then carved a shower room from the rock. There was a long line for only three minutes’ use, and no soap, but nobody complained. Some people pooled their time, showering two and three together. Those waiting their turns joked rowdily.

  Gunther washed, grabbed some clean shorts and a Glavkosmos tee-shirt, and padded down the hall. He hesitated outside the common room, listening to the gang sitting around the table, discussing the more colorful flicks they’d encountered.

  “Have you seen the Mouse Hunter?”

  “Oh yeah, and Ophelia!”

  “The Pope!”

  “The Duck Lady!

  “Everybody knows the Duck Lady!”

  They were laughing and happy. A warm sense of community flowed from the room, what Gunther’s father would have in his sloppy-sentimental way called Gemütlichkeit. Gunther stepped within.

  Liza Nagenda looked up, all gums and teeth, and froze. Her jaw snapped shut. “Well, if it isn’t Izmailova’s personal spy!”

  “What?” The accusation took Gunther’s breath away. He looked helplessly about the room. Nobody would meet his eye. They had all fallen silent.

  Liza’s face was grey with anger. “You heard me! It was you that ratted on Krishna, wasn’t it?”

  “Now that’s way out of line! You’ve got a lot of fucking gall if—” He controlled himself with an effort. There was no sense in matching her hysteria with his own. “It’s none of your business what my relationship with Izmailova is or is not.” He looked around the table. “Not that any of you deserve to know, but Krishna’s working on a cure. If anything I said or did helped put him back in the lab, well then, so be it.”

  She smirked. “So what’s your excuse for snitching on Will Posner?”

  “I never—”

  “We all heard the story! You told him you were going to run straight to your precious Izmailova with your little helmet vids.”

  “Now, Liza,” Takayuni began. She slapped him away.

  “Do you know what Posner was doing?” Gunther shook a finger in Liza’s face. “Hah? Do you? He was beating a woman—Anya! He was beating Anya right out in the open!”

&n
bsp; “So what? He’s one of us, isn’t he? Not a zoned-out, dead-eyed, ranting, drooling flick!”

  “You bitch!” Outraged, Gunther lunged at Liza across the table. “I’ll kill you, I swear it!” People jerked back from him, rushed forward, a chaos of motion. Posner thrust himself in Gunther’s way, arms spread, jaw set and manly. Gunther punched him in the face. Posner looked surprised, and fell back. Gunther’s hand stung, but he felt strangely good anyway; if everyone else was crazy, then why not him?

  “You just try it!” Liza shrieked. “I knew you were that type all along!”

  Takayuni grabbed Liza away one way. Hamilton seized Gunther and yanked him the other. Two of Posner’s friends were holding him back as well.

  “I’ve had about all I can take from you!” Gunther shouted. “You cheap cunt!”

  “Listen to him! Listen what he calls me!”

  Screaming, they were shoved out opposing doors.

  * * *

  “It’s all right, Gunther.” Beth had flung him into the first niche they’d come to. He slumped against a wall, shaking, and closed his eyes. “It’s all right now.”

  But it wasn’t. Gunther was suddenly struck with the realization that with the exception of Ekatarina he no longer had any friends. Not real friends, close friends. How could this have happened? It was as if everyone had been turned into werewolves. Those who weren’t actually mad were still monsters. “I don’t understand.”

  Hamilton sighed. “What don’t you understand, Weil?”

  “The way people—the way we all treat the flicks. When Posner was beating Anya, there were four other suits standing nearby, and not a one of them so much as lifted a finger to stop him. Not one! And I felt it too, there’s no use pretending I’m superior to the rest of them. I wanted to walk on and pretend I hadn’t seen a thing. What’s happened to us?”

  Hamilton shrugged. Her hair was short and dark about her plain round face. “I went to a pretty expensive school when I was a kid. One year we had one of those exercises that’re supposed to be personally enriching. You know? A life experience. We were divided into two groups—Prisoners and Guards. The Prisoners couldn’t leave their assigned areas without permission from a guard, the Guards got better lunches, stuff like that. Very simple set of rules. I was a Guard.