The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “There is no doubt?” he asked her, for even when she had placed the two images side by side, Hassan could not be sure. Not so the Intelligence, which, considering only data, was not distracted by strangeness.

  “None at all. The images are identical down to the last eigenface. The surveyor in your road party is the same individual who followed the flight of the drone on the night the Blue Planet rose.”

  Soong, listening, said, “Remarkable! First Batinite twice seen.”

  Hassan picked up the first image and saw again the headball turned against the grain of that agitated crowd. “I do not trust coincidence,” he said. “I think he has been taking vectors on each sighting of a heat trail, and has set out to find their source.”

  Iman sensed his troubled mind. “Should we prepare to evacuate?”

  “No!” said Bashir.

  “When you are more seasoned, young cousin,” Hassan told him, “you may give the orders.” To Iman: “Not yet. But all may depend on what is under the tarp on his wagon.”

  Which was, as they learned a few days later, a hot-air balloon. Klaus was delighted. “Ja! Very like Bismarck’s age. Railroads, telegraphs, sailing ships with steam, and now balloons. The technological congruence! Think what it implies!”

  Hassan did not wait to hear what it implied but walked off by himself, away from the tele-pilot booths and the tent flaps snapping in the dry mountain breeze. Iman followed at a distance. He paused at the shimmering gate and passed a few words with Khalid that Iman did not hear. Then he continued through the meadow, his legs kicking up the sparkling colored pollen from the knee-high flowers, until he reached the place where the wonderfall plummeted from very the top of the world. There he stood in silence gazing into the hidden depths of the pool. Mist filled the air, saturated it, until it seemed only a more tenuous extension of the pool itself. After watching him for a while, Iman approached and stood by his side.

  Still he said nothing. When a few moments had gone past, Iman took his hand in hers; not in any forward way, but as one person may comfort another.

  “I wonder where it goes?” he said at last, his voice distant beneath the steady roar. “All the way into the heart of the world, I think. But no one will ever know. Who could enter that pool without being crushed under by the force of the water? Who could ever return against that press to tell us?”

  “Will you order evacuation?” She had to bend close to his ear to make herself heard.

  “Do you think we should?”

  “I think we should meet these people.”

  Hassan turned to regard her, which brought them very close together. The better to hear over the roar, he told himself.

  “We are not forbidden contact,” Iman insisted. “Circumstances vary from world to world. When to make contact is a judgment each captain must make.”

  “Though few are called upon to make it. I never have. Concannon never did. Life is rare. Sentient life rarer still. Sentient life robust enough to endure contact, a jewel. Your flying flowers were not sentient.”

  “No. They were only beautiful.”

  He laughed. “You are as hidden as this world.”

  “Shall I remove the hijab?” Fingers twitched toward her head-scarf.

  He reached out and held her wrists, keeping her hands still. “It is not the hijab that hides you. You could remove all of your clothing and reveal nothing. Are the Batinites beautiful, too? You told us that once.”

  “Yes. Yes they are, in their own way. But they prepare for war and cry defiance; and dance when enemies make friends; and sometimes, in the dark, they kill themselves. How can we go and never know who they are?”

  Hassan released her and, stooping, picked up a fallen branch of six-elder wood. Like all such vegetation in that place, it was punkish in its texture, breaking easily into corded strings and fibers. “It doesn’t matter.” Then, seeing as she had not heard him over the roar of the falls, he came very close to her face. “Our curious friend will have his balloon aloft before we could gather up this scatter of equipment and pack it away. And we cannot hide ourselves in this meadow, if he can see our heat. So the decision to initiate contact is his, not mine, whether he knows it or not.” He threw the branch into the churning waters of the pool, and the maelstrom took it and it was gone. Hassan stared after it for a while, then turned to go. Iman placed her hand in the crook of his arm and walked with him.

  She said when they were away from the wonderfall and voices could be voices once again and neither shouts nor whispers, “One other thing, you could do.”

  “What?”

  “We have the laser pistols in the bus lockers. You could burn a hole in his balloon before he even rises from the ground.”

  “Yes. A hole mysteriously burned through the fabric. A fine way to conceal our presence.”

  “As you said, we can not conceal ourselves in any case. To burn his balloon would buy us the time to leave unobserved.”

  “Yes . . . but that’s not what you want.”

  “No, I want to meet them; but you need to consider all your options.”

  “Can the Intelligence translate adequately for a meeting?”

  “Who can know that until we try?”

  Hassan laughed. “You are becoming like me.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “It is terrible. One Hassan is more than enough. One Iman will barely suffice.”

  The others had gathered at the pavilion, some at the ropes, as if awaiting the command to strike camp. The ultralight technicians were gathered in a group at one end of the camp. Whichever the decision, they would be leaving on the next supply run. Bashir caught Hassan’s eye and there was a pleading in his face. Only Soong remained engrossed in his instruments. The world could end. God could clap his hands and mountains dissipate like the clouds, and Soong would only monitor the opacity and the density of their vapors.

  To the technicians, Hassan gave a comp-pad containing his interim report and told them to carry it straight to the director’s office on their return. “I’ve called for a contact follow-up team.” Bashir and some of the others let out a cheer, which Hassan silenced with a glare. “I think our Batinite balloonist has shown sufficient enterprise that he deserves the fruit of it. But this decision has come on us too quickly and I dislike being rushed.”

  Passing Mizir on the way to his own pavilion, Hassan clapped his old colleague on the shoulder. “Once we have established contact, you will no longer need wonder about this world’s ecology. Their own scholars will give you all the information you want.”

  Mizir shook his head sadly. “It won’t be the same.”

  Later, Hassan noticed that Soong had not moved from his monitors. Through long acquaintance, Hassan knew that this was not entirely unworldliness on the man’s part. So he joined the other at the astronomy board, though for several moments he did not interrupt Soong’s concentration, allowing his presence to do for a question.

  After a while, Soong said as if to the air, “At first, I think: moonlet. Strange skies, these, and we not know all out there. But orbit very low. Ninety-minute orbit.” He pointed to a tiny speck of light that crossed the screen. “Every ninety minute he come back. Yesterday five. Today, ten, maybe twelve.”

  “What are they?” Hassan asked. “You said moonlets?”

  “Only see when catch sunlight. Maybe many more, not see.”

  “Perhaps al-Batin has a ring of small moons . . .” But Soong was shaking his head.

  “Two big moons sweep low-orbit free.”

  “Then what . . .?”

  “Men go to moon, long time past. Go to Mars. I think now we see . . .”

  “Rocket ships?” Hassan stood up, away from the screen where last night’s telescope data replayed and looked into the pale, cloud-shrouded sky. “Rocket ships,” he whispered.

  “I think,” said Soong, “from Blue Planet.”

  Soong’s discovery added another layer of urgency to the team’s activities. “A second sapient, and in the same
system!” said Iman. “Unprecedented,” said Mizir. “We should leave, now,” said Klaus; and Yance agreed: “We can stay hid from the folks here, but maybe not from these newcomers.”

  “We have to stay!” Bashir cried. Soong himself said nothing more than that this would complicate matters, and it seemed as if the complications bothered him quite more than other possibilities. Hassan retreated to his tent to escape the din and there he pondered matters.

  But not too long. There was the balloonist to consider. Balloons and space ships, and here the Earthlings sat with a Nagy hypergate and vehicles that could travel in the wrong direction – and it was the Earthlings who were considering flight. There was something very funny about that. When Hassan emerged from his tent, everyone else stopped what he or she was doing and turned toward him in expectation. “Prepare for D&D,” was all he said and turned back into his tent. He heard someone enter behind him and knew before turning that it was Iman.

  Iman said, “Destruction and demolition? But . . .”

  “But what?” Hassan said. “We cannot get everything into the buses quickly enough. We must destroy what we cannot take.”

  “But you had said we would stay!”

  “The equation has been altered. The risks now outweigh the opportunities.”

  “What risks?”

  “You heard Klaus. Folk with spaceships have other capabilities. We have grown careless observing the Batinites. These . . . these Azraqi will know radar, radio, laser, powered flight. Perhaps they know stealth and micromachines. I would rather they did not know of other-buses.”

  “But the chance to observe First Contact from a third-party perspective!”

  “We will stay and observe as long as possible, but with one hand on the latch-handles of our other-buses. Soong counted at least twelve ships in orbit, and the Batinites began re-arming some while ago. I do not think we will observe a First Contact.”

  The team powered down nonessentials, transferred vital samples and data to the other-buses, and policed the meadow of their artifacts. Mizir drafted the ultralight technicians, who had been acting detached about the whole affair. They reported to a different Section Chief than did the Survey Team, but the old man leered at them. “There are no idlers on-planet,” he told them. Hassan spent the evening redrafting his report.

  The next morning, Soong told him that the ships had begun to land. “One ship fire retro-burn while in telescope view. Intelligence extrapolate landing in antipodes. Other ships not appear on schedule, so maybe also deorbit.”

  Hassan passed the word for everyone to stay alert and imposed radio silence on the team. “We are no longer so remote here on our mountain as we once were. We must be cautious with our drones, with radar pings. With anything that these newcomers might be able to detect.”

  He did not suppose that there was anything especially remarkable about their alpine meadow that the orbiting ships would have studied it from aloft, but he had the tents struck – they clashed with the colors – and moved the primary monitors beneath a stand of six-cedar. He ordered Khalid and Ladawan to bring the other-buses to idle, so that they would be a little out of phase with the Right ’Brane and, in theory, impossible to detect by any but other instruments. When they had all gathered under the trees, Hassan did a head count and discovered that Bashir was missing.

  With many curses, he set out to look for him and found him by the edge of the cliff that overlooked the plains. Bashir lay prone with a pair of enhanced binoculars pressed to his eyes. Hassan, too, dropped prone upon the grass beside him – strange grass, too-yellow grass, velvety and oily and odd to the touch. Hassan remembered that he was on a distant and alien world and was surprised to realize that for a time he had forgotten.

  Bashir said, “Do you think he knows? About the ships in orbit, I mean.”

  Hassan knew his cousin was speaking of the balloonist. “He knew they were coming. They all knew. When al-Asraq came into opposition, the ships would come. Someone must have worked out the orbital mechanics.”

  “He’s coming to us to ask for help.”

  “Against the Asraqi.”

  “Yes. They are brave folk. Regimented companies in squares, firing one-shot rifles. Field cannon like Mehmet Ali had. And against what? People in space ships! What chance do they have, Hassan, unless we help them? ‘Surrender to God and do good deeds.’ Is that not what God said through his Messenger, praise be upon him?”

  “Bashir, there are nine of us, plus the technicians for the ultralight. We have no arms but the four lasers in the weapons lockers. Only Klaus has any knowledge of military theory – and it is only theory. What can we possibly do?”

  The attack was swift and brutal and came without warning. The shuttle-craft flew in low from the west, screaming over the crests of the mountains, shedding velocity over the ocean as they banked and turned. There were three of them, shaped like lozenges, their heat shields still glowing dully on their undersides. “Scramjets,” said Klaus into his headset and the Intelligence heard and compiled the observation with the visuals. “Bring the cameras to bear,” said Hassan. “Bring the cameras to bear. One is landing on the park. The second on the far side of the city. It may land in the swamp and be mired. Ladawan, we’ll take the chance. Send a drone over that way. On a narrow beam. Yance, if the invaders put anything between us and the drone, destroy the drone immediately. Where did the third shuttle go? Where is it? Klaus, your assessment!”

  “Mid-twenty-first-century equivalent,” the German said. “Scramjet SSTOs. Look for smart bombs, laser targeting, hopper-hunters. High-density flechette rifles with submunitions. Oh, those poor bastards. Oh, those poor bastards!” Black flowers blossomed in the sky. “The Havenites have their field guns to maximum elevation. Low-energy shells bursting in the air . . . but too low to matter. Ach, for an AA battery!”

  “You are choosing sides, Klaus.”

  The technologist lowered his binoculars. “Yes, naturally,” he snapped, and the binoculars rose again.

  “It is not our quarrel,” Hassan said, but the Roumi was not listening to him.

  “The second shuttle is in the swamp,” Ladawan reported. “I do not think the Havenites expected that. They have few defenses on that side.”

  “I do not think the Asraqi expected so, either,” Klaus said. “These shuttles have only the limited maneuverability. More than the first American shuttles, but not much more. They may have little choice in where they land.”

  “Where did the third one go?” Hassan asked.

  Bashir raised an ululation. “It was hit! It was hit! It flew into a shell burst. It’s down in the surf.”

  “A lucky shot,” said Klaus, but he too raised a fist and shook it at the sky.

  “Listen to them cheer in the City,” said Iman, who was monitoring the ears that they had planted during their long observation and study.

  The other two shuttles released missiles, which flew into the City, and two of the tallest buildings coughed and shrugged and slid into ruin. Smoke and flame rose above the skyline. Hassan turned to Iman. “Did the cheering stop?” he asked, and Iman turned away from him.

  “No, show me,” Klaus said to Soong, bending over the screen where the drone’s feed was displayed. The Chinese pointed. Here. Here. Here. Klaus turned to Hassan.

  “I was wrong. The third shuttle made by intent the ocean landing. They have triangulated the City. Park. Swamp. Ocean. Look at it out there. See? It floats. They must be for both the water or ground landing designed.”

  Soong said, “Ah! I find radio traffic. Feeding data stream to Intelligence.” He put the stream on audio and everyone in the team paused to listen for a moment. There was something liquid, something squishy, about the sounds. Frogs croaking, iguanas barking. Not computer signals, but voices. The sounds had an analog feel to them.

  Bashir said, “The balloon is up.”

  Hassan turned to stare at him. “Are you certain? The man must be mad. To go up in this? Iman, Bashir, Khalid. Go to the cliff. I wi
ll come shortly.” Hassan could not take his eyes from the dying city. Upping the magnification on his binoculars, he saw troops emerge from the first shuttle, the one that had landed in the park. “Close images!” he cried. “I want close images of those people.”

  “There are not very many of them,” Mizir ventured.

  “There do not need to be very many of them,” Klaus told him. “These will be light airborne infantry. They are to hold a landing zone for the mother ship.”

  “You’re guessing,” Hassan said.

  “Ganz natürlich.”

  The landing force scattered into teams of three and fanned across the park. The Asraqi were bipedal, shorter than the Batinites, stockier. They wore flat black uniforms of a leathery material. Helmets with masks covered their faces – if anything like faces lurked under those masks. Skin, where it showed, was scaled and shiny. “Reptiloids,” said Mizir, half-delighted to have a new race to study but not, under the circumstances, fully so. “The works of God are wonderfully diverse, but he uses precious few templates.”

  “Speculate,” Hassan said. “What am I seeing?”

  “The helmets are heads-up displays,” Klaus said. “The mother ship has in Low Orbit satellites placed and the Lizards receive on the battle space, the information.”

  “If they are reptiloid,” said Mizir, “they would likely come from a dry place.”

  Klaus pursed his lips. “But Earth has many aquatic reptiles, not so? And al-Asraq is watery.”

  “So it does!” cried Mizir, “but there are yet deserts. Besides, those may be fish scales. Amphibians. What do you expect from me from the glimpse of a single bare arm!”