The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  He stood up quickly.

  “Livia,” he said. “I have to get back to the city.”

  Livia turned back.

  “You’re joking,” she said. “Solidarity’s been blown, Cicero. We’ve lost track of the dealers’ ship; they’ve deployed about half a thousand decoys and automated fighters over our heads, and Equity’s running the gauntlet of them right now, trying to get into position to pick us up. We’re leaving this system, Cicero; Outreach is leaving.” She glanced at her display again. “Eighteen minutes, now.” Raising her voice, she said: “Lucius – can we move him?”

  Marius answered for himself.

  “I can walk,” he said. “Just – let’s get away from here.”

  “Right.” Livia moved to the door and looked up into the rain.

  “Livia – ” Cicero said.

  “Argue with me on the lander,” she said. A safety line dropped down from above; Livia caught it and clipped it to her suit. The pupal form of a rescue harness followed, and she secured it to one of the handrails.

  “Here,” she said, stepping aside.

  Cicero heard the lander’s fans surge and whine as they fought to keep the lander airborne and to compensate for the violent winds. He made his way carefully to the door, the wind-driven rain stinging his face. The hull of the lander was a smooth gray curve overhead, its open hatch bright and welcoming, surrounded by white emergency lights.

  He looked down. Below – far below – the storm-waves were a dark gray, darker than the lander’s hull, gray topped with greenish foam. On one side, the rock of the Imaz rose above them, much taller, and much closer than Cicero would have thought. On the other, the cliff was a long shadow, and when Cicero tried to follow its line down to where the curve of the great bay should have begun, where he should have been able to make out some trace of the city, the storm dissolved everything.

  “Marius,” he said suddenly. “You first.”

  Marius limped up to the door.

  “Sure?” he said.

  Cicero nodded to the rescue harness. “Go on,” he said. “I’m . . .” not leaving, he started to say, but his voice failed:

  Marius put a hand on Cicero’s shoulder, and Cicero saw that he knew.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “Go on,” said Cicero.

  Marius smiled. He started to step into the rescue harness. Then he glanced at something over Cicero’s shoulder, and the smile left his face.

  “Down!” he yelled, shoving Cicero aside.

  Cicero stumbled and fell back into the tram car. There was a shot, somehow louder than any of the barrage that had filled the car a few minutes earlier; and when Cicero looked up he saw the Special up on one knee, pistol held steady in both hands. The Special’s eyes met Cicero’s, and the pistol moved, and Cicero saw his death there, in a small circle of blackness.

  Cicero froze.

  Then stun bolts hit the Special from three sides, and the pistol fell from nerveless fingers.

  It took Cicero a moment to get to his feet; his muscles didn’t want to work.

  He turned to thank Marius, but there was no one there.

  And when he moved to the door and looked out, there was no one there either.

  Only the lander’s futile lights, and the storm-waves, and the rain.

  Thalia didn’t know how long she waited. She slept for a while, head down on the table; the chair wasn’t comfortable, but it was more comfortable than the cold concrete of the floor.

  At one point the lights flickered, and there were raised voices in the hall, but she was unable to make out the words. At another point a guard in a green uniform brought in a tray with a bowl of oily fish soup and a cup of bad tea. The guard didn’t answer any of Thalia’s questions, or even look her in the eye.

  When the door of her cell opened, Thalia expected the Special. Instead there were two armed guards, and another man. The man was on the late side of middle age, and despite his height – he was rather short – walked with a stoop. His hair, where it was not gray, was an odd shade of yellow, like dry leaves. He was wearing a matte gray coat that was not quite like anything Thalia had ever seen before, and he looked as tired as she herself felt.

  It was some moments before she recognized him as the man from the Special’s photograph of the library steps.

  The guards went out, and closed the door behind them.

  “Sorry about this,” the man said. The words were clear, but his accent was as strange as his coat. “My name’s Allen Macleane. I’m with Marginal LLC.” He made a strange gesture, holding out his right hand with the fingers together and the palm perpendicular to the floor.

  “Yes,” Thalia said. “I know. Does this mean you’ve won?”

  Macleane’s face reddened, and his hand dropped. He shook his head. “Do you mind if I sit down?” he said.

  Wordlessly, Thalia gestured toward the other chair, and Macleane took it.

  “Thanks,” he said. He looked down for a moment; his fingers traced designs on the table. “I understand your friend Cicero was rescued,” he said, looking up. “I thought you’d want to know that. His people hit the tram that was taking him out to the Imaz.”

  Thalia’s heart leapt.

  “Does that mean – ” she began.

  “Does that mean they won?” Macleane said. “Not exactly. We destroyed one of their ships; the other one’s running. Past the orbit of Herodias now, and still accelerating at two Gs. They won’t be back any time soon.” He sighed. “But that doesn’t mean we won, either. Our ship, our only ship, is crippled, maybe destroyed; we’re trapped here. Without the ship, we’ve got no way to contact our own people, and anyhow they’re too far away to help. All we’ve got left in orbit is machines we can’t control. Everyone who was on the ship is dead; my own brother is dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Thalia said. But she was barely listening; she was thinking about the distances between the stars, and about the Semard professor’s new theory of light and time.

  Oh, Cicero, she thought. Oh, my heart.

  He might as well be dead, she thought, that’s what this means; he’ll never be back.

  But then she thought: No, that’s not what it means at all. It means he’s alive, out there somewhere; and if they keep going, he’ll be alive still, when I’m an old woman and can no longer remember his face, he’ll still be young, preserved in slow time like amber, out there between the stars, chasing the light.

  And that was a reason to be thankful. That was a reason to go on.

  She realized that tears were running down her cheeks.

  I have to pull myself together, she thought. This man will think I’m crying for his brother.

  But she looked up into Allen Macleane’s lined face and saw that he was wiser than that.

  “We both lost,” Macleane said gently. “You’ve won, don’t you see? The people of Salomé have won.”

  “What do you mean?” Thalia said.

  “We came here thinking you were a bunch of barbarians,” Macleane said. “Primitives. I’m sure Outreach – your friend Cicero’s people – thought the same way. We didn’t take you seriously, you see. When you, I mean the Travallese government, moved against us, we figured that Outreach was behind it, just like they figured we were behind the government’s moves against them.” He smiled. “Both of us were watching each other so carefully, we forgot there was a third party at the table – you. You played us off against each other beautifully, and we never knew you were doing it.”

  “Mr. Macleane,” Thalia said. “I’m not a player in your game. I’m not even a pawn. I’m a spectator. I have only the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sorry,” Macleane said. “I didn’t mean you, personally. But your people have got us right where they want us. There are only about twenty of us left. If we’re going to survive here it’s going to be on their charity.”

  “Not my people, Mr. Macleane.” Thalia lifted her manacled hands. “Charity isn’t what the Senate o
f Travalle is noted for.”

  “I know,” Macleane said. “They’ll milk us for everything we’ve got. History, stellar geography, basic science. Technology; weapons, especially, and spacecraft, so they can deal with the next alien arrival on their own terms.” He shook his head. “They don’t understand what they’re up against.”

  “I’m not one of you, Mr. Macleane,” she said. “I’m not Travallese, either. If Cicero was against you, then so am I. What does this have to do with me?”

  “They tell me you’re good at mathematics,” Macleane said.

  “I’m amazing at mathematics,” said Thalia.

  Macleane smiled.

  “Would you like a job?”

  They’d had to sedate Cicero to get him aboard the lander. Livia wasn’t happy about that, and trouble would undoubtedly come of it later. But clearly, he’d been raving, demanding to be left aboard the wrecked tram car, even after the locals had shot Marius.

  Livia checked her displays. The other landers, with their own cargoes of evacuees, were keeping pace. Behind them, as the dealers’ automated fighter fleet and the Outreach mission’s rear guard finished annihilating each other, the mad fireworks display of fusion bombs and antimatter explosions was finally dying out, after turning Salomé’s night into day.

  There was no telling which side, if either, had gained the upper hand back there, but it didn’t matter; neither Livia nor Galen wanted to take any more chances, and they were committed, now.

  Lucius came forward from checking on Cicero, moving slowly and cautiously under three gravities of acceleration.

  “He’ll be fine,” Livia said.

  Lucius shook his head. “But will he be fine when he wakes up?” he said.

  Livia didn’t answer, though what she thought was: Damned if I was going to come back without either of them.

  On the forward display, the violet flare of Equity’s drive died, as the starship briefly collapsed its ram field and cut its torch to allow the landers to catch up. Faster than seemed possible, the dark bulk of the ship swept up on them; they floated free for a moment as the lander’s autopilot cut their own thrust, and there was a jerk and a metallic thump as the grapples caught.

  Then the thrust built as the starship’s torch came to life again, and they ran for the safety of the deep.

  THE VOLUNTARY STATE

  Christopher Rowe

  The weird and wonderful adventure that follows gives us an overview of a society in the process of being swallowed and transformed by a strange and potent Singularity – and the story of what happens to those few who get stuck in its throat on the way down . . .

  New writer Christopher Rowe was born in Kentucky and lives there still. With Gwenda Bond, he operates a small press and edits the critically acclaimed magazine Say. His stories have appeared in SCI FICTION, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, Idomancer, Swan Sister, Trampoline, The Infinite Matrix, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, and elsewhere, and have recently been collected in Bittersweet Creek.

  SOMA HAD PARKED his car in the trailhead lot above Governor’s Beach. A safe place, usually, checked regularly by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and surrounded on three sides by the limestone cliffs that plunged down into the Gulf of Mexico.

  But today, after his struggle up the trail from the beach, he saw that his car had been attacked. The driver’s side window had been kicked in.

  Soma dropped his pack and rushed to his car’s side. The car shied away from him, backed to the limit of its tether before it recognized him and turned, let out a low, pitiful moan.

  “Oh, car,” said Soma, stroking the roof and opening the passenger door, “Oh, car, you’re hurt.” Then Soma was rummaging through the emergency kit, tossing aside flares and bandages, finally, finally finding the glass salve. Only after he’d spread the ointment over the shattered window and brushed the glass shards out onto the gravel, only after he’d sprayed the whole door down with analgesic aero, only then did he close his eyes, access call signs, drop shields. He opened his head and used it to call the police.

  In the scant minutes before he saw the cadre of blue and white bicycles angling in from sunward, their bubblewings pumping furiously, he gazed down the beach at Nashville. The cranes the Governor had ordered grown to dredge the harbor would go dormant for the winter soon – already their acres-broad leaves were tinged with orange and gold.

  “Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer’s-Alley,” said voices from above. Soma turned to watch the policemen land. They all spoke simultaneously in the sing-song chant of law enforcement. “Your car will be healed at taxpayers’ expense.” Then the ritual words, “And the wicked will be brought to justice.”

  Efficiency and order took over the afternoon as the threatened rain began to fall. One of the 144 Detectives manifested, Soma and the policemen all looking about as they felt the weight of the Governor’s servant inside their heads. It brushed aside the thoughts of one of the Highway Patrolmen and rode him, the man’s movements becoming slightly less fluid as he was mounted and steered. The Detective filmed Soma’s statement.

  “I came to sketch the children in the surf,” said Soma. He opened his daypack for the soapbubble lens, laid out the charcoal and pencils, the sketchbook of boughten paper bound between the rusting metal plates he’d scavenged along the middenmouth of the Cumberland River.

  “Show us, show us,” sang the Detective.

  Soma flipped through the sketches. In black and gray, he’d drawn the floating lures that crowded the shallows this time of year. Tiny, naked babies most of them, but also some little girls in one-piece bathing suits and even one fat prepubescent boy clinging desperately to a deflating beach ball and turning horrified, pleading eyes on the viewer.

  “Tssk, tssk,” sang the Detective, percussive. “Draw filaments on those babies, Soma Painter. Show the lines at their heels.”

  Soma was tempted to show the Detective the artistic licenses tattooed around his wrists in delicate salmon inks, to remind the intelligence which authorities had purview over which aspects of civic life, but bit his tongue, fearful of a For-the-Safety-of-the-Public proscription. As if there were a living soul in all of Tennessee who didn’t know that the children who splashed in the surf were nothing but extremities, nothing but lures growing from the snouts of alligators crouching on the sandy bottoms.

  The Detective summarized. “You were here at your work, you parked legally, you paid the appropriate fee to the meter, you saw nothing, you informed the authorities in a timely fashion. Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer’s-Alley, the Tennessee Highway Patrol applauds your citizenship.”

  The policemen had spread around the parking lot, casting cluenets and staring back through time. But they all heard their cue, stopped what they were doing, and broke into a raucous cheer for Soma. He accepted their adulation graciously.

  Then the Detective popped the soapbubble camera and plucked the film from the air before it could fall. It rolled up the film, chewed it up thoughtfully, then dismounted the policeman, who shuddered and fell against Soma. So Soma did not at first hear what the others had begun to chant, didn’t decipher it until he saw what they were encircling. Something was caught on the wispy thorns of a nodding thistle growing at the edge of the lot.

  “Crow’s feather,” the policemen chanted. “Crow’s feather Crow’s feather Crow’s feather.”

  And even Soma, licensed for art instead of justice, knew what the fluttering bit of black signified. His car had been assaulted by Kentuckians.

  Soma had never, so far as he recalled, painted a self-portrait. But his disposition was melancholy, so he might have taken a few visual notes of his trudge back to Nashville if he’d thought he could have shielded the paper from the rain.

  Soma Between the Sea and the City, he could call a painting like that. Or, if he’d decided to choose that one clear moment when the sun had shown through the towering slate clouds, Soma Between Storms.

  Either image would have shown a tall young man in a b
road-brimmed hat, black pants cut off at the calf, yellow jersey unsealed to show a thin chest. A young man, sure, but not a young man used to long walks. No helping that; his car would stay in the trailhead lot for at least three days.

  The mechanic had arrived as the policemen were leaving, galloping up the gravel road on a white mare marked with red crosses. She’d swung from the saddle and made sympathetic clucking noises at the car even before she greeted Soma, endearing herself to auto and owner simultaneously.

  Scratching the car at the base of its aerial, sussing out the very spot the car best liked attention, she’d introduced herself. “I am Jenny-With-Grease-Beneath-Her-Fingernails,” she’d said, but didn’t seem to be worried about it because she ran her free hand through unfashionably short cropped blond hair as she spoke.

  She’d whistled for her horse and began unpacking the saddlebags. “I have to build a larger garage than normal for your car, Soma Painter, for it must house me and my horse during the convalescence. But don’t worry, my licenses are in good order. I’m bonded by the city and the state. This is all at taxpayers’ expense.”

  Which was a very great relief to Soma, poor as he was. With friends even poorer, none of them with cars, and so no one to hail out of the Alley to his rescue, and now this long, wet trudge back to the city.

  Soma and his friends did not live uncomfortable lives, of course. They had dry spaces to sleep above their studios, warm or cool in response to the season and even clean if that was the proclivity of the individual artist, as was the case with Soma. A clean, warm or cool, dry space to sleep. A good space to work and a more than ample opportunity to sell his paintings and drawings, the Alley being one of the other things the provincials did when they visited Nashville. Before they went to the great vaulted Opera House or after.