The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  Jenny walked around to the door and entered. She found that the water sacs were full and chilled and drew a long drink. The water tasted faintly of salt. She took another swallow, then dampened a rag with a bit more of the tangy stuff to wipe away the dried blood. Then she went to work.

  The bundle bugs crawled out of the city, crossed Distinguished Opposition Bridge beneath the watching eye of bears floating overhead, then described a right-angle turn along the levy to their dumping grounds. Soma and the Kentuckians lay hidden in the brushy wasteland at the edge of the grounds, waiting.

  The Owl placed a hand on Japheth’s shoulder, pointing at a bundle bug just entering the grounds. Then the Owl rose to his knees and began worming his way between the bushes and dead appliances.

  “Soma Painter,” whispered Japheth. “I’m going to have to break your jaw in a few minutes and cut out as many of her tentacles as we can get at, but we’ll knit it back up as soon as we cross the river.”

  Soma was too far gone in the paste to hold both of the threats in his mind at the same time. A broken jaw, Crows in the capital. He concentrated on the second.

  “The bears will scoop you up and drop you in the Salt Lick,” Soma said. “Children will climb on you during Campaign and Legislators will stand on your shoulders to make their stump speeches.”

  “The bears will not see us, Soma.”

  “The bears watch the river and the bridges, ‘and’ – ”

  “ – ‘And their eyes never close,’ ” finished Japheth.

  “Yes, we’ve seen the commercials.”

  A bundle bug, a large one at forty meters in length, reared up over them, precariously balanced on its rearmost set of legs. Soma said, “They’re very good commercials,” and the bug crashed down over them all.

  Athena’s data realm mirrored her physical realm. One-to-one constructs mimicked the buildings and the citizenry, showed who was riding and who was being ridden.

  In that numerical space, the Kentuckians’ math found the bridge. The harsh light of the bears floated above. Any bear represented a statistically significant portion of the Governor herself, and from the point of view of the math, the pair above Distinguished Opposition Bridge looked like miniature suns, casting probing rays at the marching bundle bugs, the barges floating along the Cumberland, and even into the waters of the river itself, illuminating the numerical analogs of the dangerous things that lived in the muddy bottom.

  Bundle bugs came out of the city, their capacious abdomens distended with the waste they’d ingested along their routes. The math could see that the bug crossing through the bears’ probes right now had a lot of restaurants on its itinerary. The beams pierced the dun-colored carapace and showed a riot of uneaten jellies, crumpled cups, soiled napkins.

  The bugs marching in the opposite direction, emptied and ready for reloading, were scanned even more carefully than their outward-bound kin. The beam scans were withering, complete, and exceedingly precise.

  The math knew that precision and accuracy are not the same thing.

  “Lowell’s death has set us back further than we thought,” said Japheth, talking to the four Crows, the Owl, and, Soma guessed, to the bundle bug they inhabited. Japheth had detailed off the rest of the raiding party to carry the dead boy back north, so there was plenty of room where they crouched.

  The interior of the bug’s abdomen was larger than Soma’s apartment by a factor of two and smelled of flowers instead of paint thinner. Soma’s apartment, however, was not an alcoholic.

  “This is good, though, good good.” The bug’s voice rang from every direction at once. “I’m scheduled down for a rest shift. You-uns was late and missed my last run, and now we can all rest and drink good whiskey. Good good.”

  But none of the Kentuckians drank any of the whiskey from the casks they’d cracked once they’d crawled down the bug’s gullet. Instead, every half hour or so, they poured another gallon into one of the damp fissures that ran all through the interior. Bundle bugs abdomens weren’t designed for digestion, just evacuation, and it was the circulatory system that was doing the work of carrying the bourbon to the bug’s brain.

  Soma dipped a finger into an open cask and touched finger to tongue. “Bourbon burns!” he said, pulling his finger from his mouth.

  “Burns good!” said the bug. “Good good.”

  “We knew that not all of us were going to be able to actually enter the city – we don’t have enough outfits, for one thing – but six is a bare minimum. And since we’re running behind, we’ll have to wait out tonight’s anthem in our host’s apartment.”

  “Printer’s Alley is two miles from the Parthenon,” said the Owl, nodding at Soma.

  Japheth nodded. “I know. And I know that those might be the two longest miles in the world. But we expected hard walking.”

  He banged the curving gray wall he leaned against with his elbow. “Hey! Bundle bug! How long until you start your shift?”

  A vast and disappointed sigh shuddered through the abdomen. “Two more hours, bourbon man,” said the bug.

  “Get out your gear, cousin,” Japheth said to the Owl. He stood and stretched, motioned for the rest of the Crows to do the same. He turned toward Soma. “The rest of us will hold him down.”

  Jenny had gone out midmorning, when the last of the fog was still burning off the bluffs, searching for low moisture organics to feed the garage. She’d run its reserves very low, working on one thing and another until quite late in the night.

  As she suspected from the salty taste of the water supply, the filters in the housings between the tap roots and the garage’s plumbing array were clogged with silt. She’d blown them out with pressurized air – no need to replace what you can fix – and reinstalled them one, two, three. But while she was blowing out the filters, she’d heard a whine she didn’t like in the air compressor, and when she’d gone to check it she found it panting with effort, tongue hanging out onto the workbench top where it sat.

  And then things went as these things go, and she moved happily from minor maintenance problem to minor maintenance problem – wiping away the air compressor’s crocodile tears while she stoned the motor brushes in its A/C motor, then replacing the fusible link in the garage itself. “Links are so easily fusible,” she joked to her horse when she rubbed it down with handfuls of the sweet-smelling fern fronds she’d intended for her own bed.

  And all the while, of course, she watched the little car, monitoring the temperatures at its core points and doing what she could to coax the broken window to reknit in a smooth, steady fashion. Once, when the car awoke in the middle of the night making colicky noises, Jenny had to pop the hood, where she found that the points needed to be pulled and regapped. They were fouled with the viscous residue of the analgesic aero the owner had spread about so liberally.

  She tsked. The directions on the labels clearly stated that the nozzle was to be pointed away from the engine compartment. Still, hard to fault Soma Painter’s goodhearted efforts. It was an easy fix, and she would have pulled the plugs during the tune-up she had planned for the morning anyway.

  So, repairings and healings, lights burning and tools turning, and when she awoke to the morning tide sounds the garage immediately began flashing amber lights at her wherever she turned. The belly-grumble noises it floated from the speakers worried the horse, so she set out looking for something to put in the hoppers of the hungry garage.

  When she came back, bearing a string-tied bundle of dried wood and a half bucket of old walnuts some gatherer had wedged beneath an overhang and forgotten at least a double handful of autumns past, the car was gone.

  Jenny hurried to the edge of the parking lot and looked down the road, though she couldn’t see much. This time of year the morning fog turned directly into the midday haze. She could see the city, and bits of road between trees and bluff line, but no sign of the car.

  The garage pinged at her, and she shoved its breakfast into the closest intake. She didn’t open her head t
o call the police – she hadn’t yet fully recovered from yesterday afternoon’s interview. She was even hesitant to open her head the little bit she needed to access her own garage’s security tapes. But she’d built the garage, and either built or rebuilt everything in it, so she risked it.

  She stood at her workbench, rubbing her temple, as a see-through Jenny and a see-through car built themselves up out of twisted light. Light Jenny put on a light rucksack, scratched the light car absently on the roof as she walked by, and headed out the door. Light Jenny did not tether the car. Light Jenny did not lock the door.

  “Silly light Jenny,” said Jenny.

  As soon as light Jenny was gone, the little light car rolled over to the big open windows. It popped a funny little wheelie and caught itself on the sash, the way it had yesterday when it had watched real Jenny swim up out of her government dream.

  The light car kept one headlight just above the sash for a few minutes, then lowered itself back to the floor with a bounce (real Jenny had aired up the tires first thing, even before she grew the garage).

  The light car revved its motor excitedly. Then, just a gentle tap on the door, and it was out in the parking lot. It drove over to the steps leading down to the beach, hunching its grill down to the ground. It circled the lot a bit, snuffling here and there, until it found whatever it was looking for. Before it zipped down the road toward Nashville, it circled back round and stopped outside the horse’s stall. The light car opened its passenger door and waggled it back and forth a time or two. The real horse neighed and tossed its head at the light car in a friendly fashion.

  Jenny-With-Grease-Beneath-Her-Fingernails visited her horse with the meanest look that a mechanic can give a horse. The horse snickered. “You laugh, horse,” she said, opening the tack locker, “but we still have to go after it.”

  Inside the bundle bug, there was some unpleasantness with a large glass-and-pewter contraption of the Owl’s. The Crow Brothers held Soma as motionless as they could, and Japheth seemed genuinely sorry when he forced the painter’s mouth open much wider than Soma had previously thought possible. “You should have drunk more of the whiskey,” said Japheth. There was a loud, wet, popping sound, and Soma shuddered, stiffened, fainted.

  “Well, that’ll work best for all of us,” said Japheth. He looked up at the Owl, who was peering through a lens polished out of a semiprecious gemstone, staring down into the painter’s gullet.

  “Have you got access?”

  The Owl nodded.

  “Talk to your math,” said the Crow.

  The math had been circling beneath the bridge, occasionally dragging a curiosity-begat string of numbers into the water. Always low-test numbers, because invariably whatever lived beneath the water snatched at the lines and sucked them down.

  The input the math was waiting for finally arrived in the form of a low hooting sound rising up from the dumping grounds. It was important that the math not know which bundle bug the sound emanated from. There were certain techniques the bears had developed for teasing information out of recalcitrant math.

  No matter. The math knew the processes. It had the input. It spread itself out over the long line of imagery the bundle bugs yielded up to the bears. It affected its changes. It lent clarity.

  Above, the bears did their work with great precision.

  Below, the Kentuckians slipped into Nashville undetected.

  Soma woke to find the Kentuckians doing something terrible. When he tried to speak, he found that his face was immobilized by a mask of something that smelled of the docks but felt soft and gauzy.

  The four younger Crows were dressed in a gamut of jerseys and shorts colored in the hotter hues of the spectrum. Japheth was struggling into a long, jangly coat hung with seashells and old capacitors. But it was the Owl that frightened Soma the most. The broad-chested man was dappled with opal stones from collar bones to ankles and wore nothing else save a breech cloth cut from an old newspaper. Soma moaned, trying to attract their attention again.

  The blue-eyed boy said, “Your painter stirs, Japheth.”

  But it was the Owl who leaned over Soma, placed his hand on Soma’s chin and turned his head back and forth with surprising gentleness. The Owl nodded, to himself, Soma guessed, for none of the Crows reacted, then peeled the bandages off Soma’s face.

  Soma took a deep breath, then said, “Nobody’s worn opals for months! And those shorts,” he gestured at the others, “Too much orange! Too much orange!”

  Japheth laughed. “Well, we’ll be tourists in from the provinces, then, not princes of Printer’s Alley. Do I offend?” He wriggled his shoulders, set the shells and circuits to clacking.

  Soma pursed his lips, shook his head. “Seashells and capacitors are timeless,” he said.

  Japheth nodded. “That’s what it said on the box.” Then, “Hey! Bug! Are we to market yet?”

  “It’s hard to say, whiskey man,” came the reply. “My eyes are funny.”

  “Close enough. Open up.”

  The rear of the beast’s abdomen cracked, and yawned wide. Japheth turned to his charges. “You boys ready to play like vols?”

  The younger Crows started gathering burlap bundles. The Owl hoisted a heavy rucksack, adjusted the flowers in his hat, and said, “Wacka wacka ho.”

  In a low place, horizon bounded by trees in every direction, Jenny and her horse came on the sobbing car. From the ruts it had churned up in the mud, Jenny guessed it had been there for some time, driving back and forth along the northern verge.

  “Now what have you done to yourself?” she asked, dismounting. The car turned to her and shuddered. Its front left fender was badly dented, and its hood and windshield were a mess of leaves and small branches.

  “Trying to get into the woods? Cars are for roads, car.” She brushed some muck off the damaged fender.

  “Well, that’s not too bad, though. This is all cosmetic. Why would a car try to go where trees are? See what happens?”

  The horse called. It had wandered a little way into the woods and was standing at the base of a vast poplar. Jenny reached in through the passenger’s window of the car, avoiding the glassy knitting blanket on the other side, and set the parking brake. “You wait here.”

  She trotted out to join her horse. It was pawing at a small patch of ground. Jenny was a mechanic and had no woodscraft, but she could see the outline of a cleft-toed sandal. Who would be in the woods with such impractical footwear?

  “The owner’s an artist. An artist looking for a shortcut to the Alley, I reckon,” said Jenny. “Wearing funny artist shoes.”

  She walked back to the car, considering. The car was pining. Not unheard of, but not common. It made her think better of Soma Painter that his car missed him so.

  “Say, horse. Melancholy slows car repair. I think this car will convalesce better in its own parking space.”

  The car revved.

  “But there’s the garage still back at the beach,” said Jenny.

  She turned things over and over. “Horse,” she said, “you’re due three more personal days this month. If I release you for them now, will you go fold up the garage and bring it to me in the city?”

  The horse tossed its head enthusiastically.

  “Good. I’ll drive with this car back to the Alley, then – ” But the horse was already rubbing its flanks against her.

  “Okay, okay.” She drew a tin of salve from her tool belt, dipped her fingers in it, then ran her hands across the horse’s back. The red crosses came away in her hands, wriggling. “The cases for these are in my cabinet,” she said, and then inspiration came.

  “Here, car,” she said, and laid the crosses on its hood. They wriggled around until they were at statute-specified points along the doors and roof. “Now you’re an ambulance! Not a hundred percent legal, maybe, but this way you can drive fast and whistle sirenlike.”

  The car spun its rear wheels but couldn’t overcome the parking brake. Jenny laughed. “Just a minute more. I need
you to give me a ride into town.”

  She turned to speak to the horse, only to see it already galloping along the coast road. “Don’t forget to drain the water tanks before you fold it up!” she shouted.

  The bundles that were flecked with root matter, Soma discovered, were filled with roots. Carrots and turnips, a half dozen varieties of potatoes, beets. The Kentuckians spread out through the Farmer’s Market, trading them by the armload for the juices and gels that the rock monkeys brought in from their gardens.

  “This is our secondary objective,” said Japheth. “We do this all the time, trading doped potatoes for that shit y’all eat.”

  “You’re poisoning us?” Soma was climbing out of the paste a little, or something. His thoughts were shifting around some.

  “Doped with nutrients, friend. Forty ain’t old outside Tennessee. Athena doesn’t seem to know any more about human nutrition than she does human psychology. Hey, we’re trying to help you people.”

  Then they were in the very center of the market, and the roar of the crowds drowned out any reply Soma might make.

  Japheth kept a grip on Soma’s arm as he spoke to a gray old monkey. “Ten pounds, right?” The monkey was weighing a bundle of carrots on a scale.

  “Okay,” grunted the monkey. “Okay, man. Ten pounds I give you . . . four blue jellies.”

  Soma was incredulous. He’d never developed a taste for them himself, but he knew that carrots were popular. Four blue jellies was an insulting trade. But Japheth said, “Fair enough,” and pocketed the plastic tubes the monkey handed over.

  “You’re no trader,” said Soma, or started to, but heard the words slur out of him in an unintelligible mess of vowels. One spring semester, when he’d already been a TA for a year, he was tapped to work on the interface. No more need for scholarships.

  “Painter!” shouted Japheth.

  Soma looked up. There was a Crow dressed in Alley haute couture standing in front of him. He tried to open his head to call the Tennessee Highway Patrol. He couldn’t find his head.