The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  While they were dressing in their cushiony railgun suits, Rafiel paused to listen to the scream of a capsule accelerating up the rails to escape velocity. Alegretta stopped what she was doing, too, to look at him. “Are you sure you can handle this?” she asked. His offhand wave said that he was very, very sure. She checked him carefully as he got into each item of the railgun clothes. What they wore was important—no belts for either of them, no brassiere for Alegretta, slippers rather than shoes, no heavy jewelry—because the seven-gee strain would cost them severely for any garment that pressed into their flesh or constrained their freedom. When Alegretta was satisfied about that, she got to the serious problem of fitting baskets to the cats.

  “Will she be all right?” Rafiel asked anxiously, looking at Nicolette—meaning, really, will the almost-baby in her belly be all right?

  “I’ll make her be all right,” Alegretta promised, checking the resilience of the padding with her knuckles. “That’ll do. Anyway, cats stand high-gee better than people. You’ve heard stories of them falling out of tenth-story windows and walking away? They’re true—sometimes true, anyway. Now let’s get down to the loading platform.”

  That was busier than Rafiel had expected. Four or five other passengers were saying good-byes to friends on the platform, but it wasn’t just people who were about to be launched into space. There were crates and cartons, all padded, being fitted carefully into place in the cargo section, and servers were strapping down huge Dewars of liquid gas. “Inside,” a guard commanded, and when they were in the capsule a steward leaned over them to help with the straps and braces. “Just relax,” he said, “and don’t turn your heads.” Then he bent to check the cat baskets. The kitten was already asleep, but her mother was obviously discontented with what was happening to her. However, there wasn’t much she could do about it in the sweater-like restraint garment that held her, passive.… No, Rafiel thought, not a sweater; more like a straitjacket—

  And then they were on their way.

  The thrust squeezed all the breath out of Rafiel, who had not fully remembered what seven gees could do to him. The padded seat was memory plastic and it had molded itself to his body; the restraints were padded; the garments were without wrinkles or seams to cut into flesh. But still it was seven gees. The athletic dancer’s body that had never gone over seventy-five kilograms suddenly and bruisingly weighed more than half a ton. Breathing was frighteningly difficult; his chest muscles were not used to expanding his ribcage against such force. When he turned his head, ever so minutely, he was instantly dizzied as the bones of the inner ear protested being twisted so viciously. He thought he was going to vomit; he forced himself to breathe.

  It lasted only for a few minutes. Then they were free. The acceleration stopped. The railgun had flung the capsule off its tip, and now they were simply thrown free into the sky, weightless. The only external force acting on the railgun launch capsule now was the dwindling friction of the outside air; that pressed Rafiel’s body against the restraining straps at first, but then it, too, was gone.

  “Congratulations, dear Rafiel,” said Alegretta, smiling. “You’re in space.”

  * * *

  Once they had transhipped to a spacecraft it was eight days to Mars-orbit, where Hakluyt hung waiting for them. There were a few little sleeping cabins in the ship, in addition to the multi-bunk compartments. The cabins were expensive, but that was not a consideration for Rafiel, who was well aware that he had far more money than he would ever live to spend. So he and Alegretta and the cats had their own private space, just the four of them—or five, if you counted the little cluster of cells that was busily dividing in the white cat’s belly, getting ready to become a person.

  Their transport was a steady-thrust spacecraft, accelerating at a sizeable fraction of a gee all the way to turnaround, and decelerating from then on. It was possible to move around the ship quite easily. It was also pointless, because there was nothing much to do. There was no dining room, no cabaret, no swimming pool on the aft deck, no gym to work out in. The servers brought meals to the passengers where they were. Most of the passengers spent their time viewing vid programs, old and new, on their personal screens. Or sleeping. In the private cabin Rafiel and Alegretta had several other options, one of which was talking; but even they slept a lot.

  More than a lot.

  When, at their destination, they were docking with the habitat shuttlecraft Rafiel, puzzled, counted back and realized that he had only slept twice on the trip. They had to have been good long sleeps—two or three full twenty-four-hour days at a time; and that was when he realized that Alegretta had doped him to make him sleep as long as possible.

  13

  On board the Hakluyt, Alegretta disappears as soon as Rafiel is settled in. She can’t wait to see what damage her deputy may have done to her precious engines. This leaves Rafiel free to explore the habitat. There’s no thrust on Hakluyt’s engines yet, just the slow roll of the habitat to distinguish up from down. That’s a bit of a problem for everybody. All habitats spin slowly so that centrifugal force will supply some kind of gravity. But when Hakluyt starts to move they’ll stop the spin because they won’t need it any more. The “down” the spin has provided them—radially outward from the central axis of the cylindrical habitat—will be replaced by a rearward “down,” toward the thruster engines in the stern. Consequently, every last piece of furnishing will have to be rearranged as walls become floors and floors walls. Rafiel is having a lot of trouble with his orientation. Besides the fact that half the fittings have already been relocated, the light-gee pull is strange to him. Because he has spent so little time in low-gee environments he instinctively holds on to things as he walks, though really the feeling isn’t much different from being on, say, the Moon. (But Rafiel hasn’t been even there for nearly half a century.) Once he gets used to these things, though, he’s fascinated. Everything so busy! Everyone in such a hurry! The whole ship’s complement has turned out to finish loading, even small children—Rafiel is fascinated to see how many children there are. Young and old, they can’t wait to start on their long interstellar journey—and aren’t very patient with people (even very famous people) who happen to get in their way.

  * * *

  By the time Rafiel had been three days on Hakluyt he was beginning to get used to the fact that he didn’t see much of Alegretta. Not when she was awake, at least. When she was awake all she seemed to have time for was to check on his vital signs and peer into her computer screen when she’d stuck sensors to his chest and make sure he was taking his spansules. Then she was off again, looking harried.

  They did sleep together, of course, or at least they slept in the same bed. Not necessarily at the same times. Once or twice Rafiel came back to their tiny compartment and found her curled up there, out cold. When she felt him crawl in beside her she reached out to him. He was never quite certain she was awake even when they made love—awake enough to respond to him, certainly, and for a few pleased mumbles when they were through, but nothing that was actually articulate speech.

  It was almost good enough, anyway, just to know that she was nearby. Not quite; but still it was fascinating to explore the ship, dodging the busy work teams, trying to be helpful when he could, to stay out of the way, at least, when he couldn’t. The ship was full of marvels, not least the people who crewed it (busy, serious, plainly dressed and so purposeful). A special wonder was the vast central space that was a sort of sky as the habitat rotated (but what purpose would it serve when they were under way?). The greatest wonder of all was Hakluyt itself. It was going to go where no human had ever, ever gone before.

  Everything about the ship delighted and astonished. Rafiel discovered that the couch in their room became a bed when they wanted it to, and if they didn’t want either it disappeared entirely into a wall. There was a keypad in the room that controlled air, heat, lights, clock, messages—might run all of Hakluyt, Rafiel was amused to think, if he only knew wh
at buttons to push. Or if all the things worked.

  The fact was, they didn’t all work. When Rafiel tried to get a news broadcast from Earth the screen produced a children’s cartoon, and when he tried to correct it the whole screen dissolved into the snow of static. The water taps—hot, cold, potable—all ran merely cold.

  When he woke to find exhausted Alegretta trying to creep silently into their bed, he said, making a joke, “I hope the navigation system works better than the rest of this stuff.”

  She took him seriously. “I’m sorry,” she said, weary, covetously eyeing the bed. “It’s the powerplant. It wasn’t originally designed to drive a ship, only to supply power for domestic needs. Oh, it has plenty of power. But they located the thing midships instead of at the stern, and we had to brace everything against the drive thrust. That means relocating the water reservoirs—don’t drink the water, by the way, dear; if you’re thirsty, go to one of the kitchens—and— Well, hell,” she finished remorsefully. “I should have been here.”

  Which added fuel to the growing guilt in Rafiel. He took a chance. “I want to help,” he said.

  “How?” she asked immediately—woundingly, just as he had feared she would.

  He flinched and said, “They’re loading more supplies—fresh wing-bean seeds this morning, I hear. At least I can help shift cargo!”

  “You can not,” she said in sudden alarm. “That’s much too strenuous! I don’t want you dying on me!” Then, relenting, she thought for a moment. “All right. I’ll talk to Boretta, he’s loadmaster. He’ll find something for you—but now, please, let me come to bed.”

  * * *

  Boretta did find something for him. Rafiel became a children’s care-giver in one of the ship’s nurseries, relieving for active duty the ten-year-old who had previously been charged with supervising the zero-to-three-year-olds.

  It was not at all the kind of thing Rafiel had had in mind, but then he hadn’t had much of anything very specifically in his mind, because what did Hakluyt need with a tap-dancer? But he was actually helping in the effort. (The ten-year-old he relieved was quite useful in bringing sandwiches and drinks to the sweating cargo handlers.) Rafiel found that he liked taking care of babies. Even the changing of diapers was a fairly constructive thing to do. Not exactly aesthetic, no. Extremely repetitious, yes, for the diapers never stayed clean. But while he was doing it he thought of the task as prepaying a debt he would owe to whomever, nine months later, would be changing the diapers of his own child.

  The ten-year-old was nice enough to teach Rafiel the technical skills he needed for the work. More than that, he was nice enough to be acceptably impressed when he found out just who Rafiel was. (“But I’ve seen you on the screen! And you’ve got a new show coming out—when? Soon?”) The boy even brought his older brother—a superior and taller version of the same, all of thirteen—around to meet this certified star. When Rafiel had a moment to think of it, between coaxing a two-year-old to take her nap and attempting to burp a younger one, it occurred to him that he was—yes, actually—quite happy. He liked all these strange, dedicated, space-faring people who shared the habitat with him. “Strange” was a good word for them, though. Unlike all the friends and colleagues he’d spent his life with, these Hakluytians spoke unornamented English, without loan words, without circumlocutions. They had basically unornamented bodies, too. Their clothes were simply functional, and even the youngest and best-looking wore no jewels.

  When Rafiel had pondered over that for a while an explanation suddenly occurred to him. These people simply didn’t have time for frills. Astonishing though the thought was, these immortal people were in such a hurry to do things that, even with eternities before them, they had no time to waste.

  * * *

  The day before Hakluyt was to leave, Alegretta somehow stole enough time from her duties to go with Rafiel to the birthing clinic, where they watched the transfer of their almost-child from Nicolette’s tiny belly to the more than adequate one of a placid roan mare. It was a surgical spectacle, to be sure, but peaceful rather than gruesome. Even Nicolette did not seem to mind, as long as Alegretta’s hand was on her head.

  On the way back to their cabin, Alegretta was silent. Stranger still, she was dawdling, when always she was in a hurry to get to the work that she had to do.

  Rafiel was aware of this, though he was continually distracted by passersby. The ten-year-old had spread the word of his fame. It seemed that every third person they passed, however busy, at least looked up and nodded or called a friendly greeting to him. After the twentieth or thirtieth exchange Rafiel said, “Sorry about all this, Alegretta.”

  She looked up at him curiously. “About what? About the fact that they like you? When’s this Oedipus going to be released?”

  “In about a week, I think.”

  “In about a week.” It wasn’t necessary for her to point out that in a week Hakluyt would be six days gone. “I think a lot of these people are going to want to watch it,” she said, musing. “They’ll be really sorry you aren’t here so they can make a fuss over you when it’s on.”

  Rafiel only nodded, though for some inexplicable reason internally he felt himself swelling with pleasure and pride. Then he bent close to her, puzzled at the low-pitched thing she had said. “What?”

  “I said, you could be here,” Alegretta repeated. “I mean, if you wanted to. If you didn’t mind not going back to the Earth, ever, because—oh, God,” she wailed, “how can you say ‘Because you’re going to be dead in a few weeks anyway so it doesn’t really matter where you are’ in a loving way?”

  She stopped there, because Rafiel had put a gentle finger to her lips.

  “You just did,” he said. “And of course I’ll come along. I was only waiting to be asked.”

  14

  Fewer than thirty-six hours have passed since Hakluyt’s launch, but all that time its stern thrusters were hard at their decades-long work of pushing the ship across interstellar space. By now it is already some fifteen million kilometers from its near-Martian orbit and, with every second that passes, Alegretta’s lukewarm-fusion jets are thrusting it several hundred kilometers farther away. The reactors are performing perfectly. Still, Alegretta can hardly bear to let the controls and instruments that tell her so out of her sight. After the pre-launch frenzy, Hakluyt’s five thousand pioneers are beginning to catch up on their sleep. So is Alegretta.

  * * *

  Rafiel tried to make no noise as he pulled on his robe and started toward the sanitary, but he could see Alegretta beginning to stir in her sleep. Safely outside their room he was more relaxed—at least, acted relaxed, nodding brightly to the people he passed in the hall. It was only when he was looking in the mirror that the acting stopped and he let the fatigue and discomfort show in his face. There was more of it every day now. The body that had served him for ninety-odd years was wearing out. But, as there was absolutely nothing to be done about that fact, he put it out of his mind, showered quickly, dressed in the pink shorts and flowered tunic that was the closest he had to Hakluyt-style clothing and returned to their room. By then Alegretta was sitting dazedly on the edge of the bed, watching Nicolette, at the foot of the bed, dutifully licking her kitten.

  “You should have slept a little longer,” he said fondly.

  She blinked up at him. “I can’t. Anyway”—she paused for a yawn—”there’s a staff meeting coming up. I ought to decide what I want to put in for.”

  Rafiel gently pushed the cats out of the way and sat down companionably next to her. They had talked about her future plans before. He knew that Alegretta would have to be reassigned to some other task for the long trip. Unless something went seriously wrong with the reactors there would be little for her to do there. (And if, most improbably, anything did go seriously wrong with them in the space between the stars, the ship would be in more trouble than its passengers could hope to survive.) “What kind of job are you looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve been
thinking of food control, maybe,” she said frowning. “Or else waste recycling. Which do you think?”

  He pretended to take the question seriously. He was aware that both jobs were full-time, hands-on-assignments, like air and water control. If any of those vital services failed, the ship would be doomed in a different way. Therefore human crews would be assigned to them all the time the ship was in transit—and for longer still if they found no welcoming planet circling Tau Ceti. But he knew that there was nothing in his background to help Alegretta make a choice, so he said at random: “Food control sounds like more fun.”

  “Do you think so?” She thought that over. “Maybe it is, sort of, but I’d need a lot of retraining for aeroponics and trace-element management. The waste thing is easier. It’s mostly plumbing, and I’ve got a good head start on that.”

  He kissed her. “Sleep on it,” he advised, getting up.

  She looked worriedly up at him, remembering to be a doctor. “You’re the one who should be sleeping more.”

  “I’ve had plenty, and anyway I can’t. Manfred will be waiting for me with the babies.”

  “Must you? I mean, should you? The boy can handle them by himself, and you look so tired.…”

  “I’m fine,” he said, trying to reassure the person who knew better than he.

  She scolded, “You’re not fine! You should be resting.”

  He shook his head. “No, dearest, I really am fine. It’s only my body that’s sick.”

  He hadn’t lied to her. He was perfectly capable of helping with the babies, fine in every way—except for the body. That kept producing its small aches and pains, which would steadily become larger. That didn’t matter, though, because they had not reached the point of interfering with tending the children. The work was easier than ever now, with the hectic last-minute labors all completed. The ten-year-old, Manfred Okasa-Pennyweight, had been allowed to return to the job, which meant that now there were two of them on the shift to share the diapering and feeding and playing.