The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “Holy saints defend us!” cried someone on the edge of the crowd. “Run for your lives! It’s another demon cock!”

  This confused all who heard it, understandably, but only until the demon in question strode into sight.

  Golescu, who had been edging to the back of the platform with tiny little steps, smiling and sweating, saw it most clearly: a rooster, but no ordinary bird. Eight feet tall at the shoulder, tail like a fountain of fire, golden spurs, feathers like beaten gold, comb like blood-red coral, and a beak like a meat cleaver made of brass! Its eyes shone in the light of the torches with ferocious brilliance, but they were blank and mindless as any chicken’s. It beat its wings with a sound like thunder. People fled in all directions, save those who were so crazed with lust they could not be distracted from what they were doing.

  “Oh why, oh why do these things happen?” Golescu implored no one in particular. “I have such good intentions.”

  The great bird noticed the children crowded together at the front of the platform. Up until this point, they had been giggling at the behavior of their elders. Having caught sight of the monster, however, they dove under the platform and huddled there like so many mice. The bird saw them nonetheless, and advanced, turning its head to regard them with one eye and then the other. Terrified, they hurled jars of beans at it, which exploded like canisters of shot. Yet it came on, raking the ground as it came.

  And Golescu became aware that there was another dreadful noise below the cries of the children, below Buzdugan’s frenzied cursing where he lay, below the ever more distant yells of the retreating audience. Below, for it was low-pitched, the sort of noise that makes the teeth vibrate, deep as an earthquake, no less frightening.

  Something, somewhere, was growling. And it was getting louder.

  Golescu raised his head, and in a moment that would return to him in nightmares the rest of his life saw a pair of glowing eyes advancing through the night, eyes like coals above white, white teeth. The nearer they came, floating through the darkness toward the wagon, the louder grew the sound of growling. Nearer now, into the light of the torches, and Golescu saw clearly the outstretched arms, the clawing fingers caked with earth, the murderous expression, the trailing shroud.

  “Good heavens, it’s Amaunet,” he observed, before reality hit him and he wet himself. The Black Cup had failed her again after all, and so –

  “Rrrrrrrrkillyou!” she roared, lunging for the platform. Golescu, sobbing, ran to and fro only a moment; then fear lent him wings and he made one heroic leap, launching himself from the platform to the back of the chicken of gold. Digging his knees in its fiery plumage, he smote it as though it were a horse.

  With a squawk that shattered the night, his steed leaped in the air and came down running. Golescu clung for dear life, looking over his shoulder. He beheld Emil, antennae wobbling, scrambling frantically from the coffin.

  “Uncle Barbu!” wailed Emil. But Amaunet had Emil by the ankle now. She pulled him close. He vanished into the folds of her shroud, still struggling. Golescu’s last glimpse was of Amaunet lifting Emil into her bosom, clutching him possessively, horrific Madonna and limp Child.

  Golescu hugged the neck of his golden steed and urged it on, on through the night and the forest. He wept for lost love, wept for sour misfortune, wept for beauty, and so he rode in terrible glory through water and fire and pitiless starlight. When bright day came he was riding still. Who knows where he ended up?

  Though there is a remote village beyond the forests, so mazed about with bogs and streams no roads lead there, and every man has been obliged to marry his cousin. They have a legend that the Devil once appeared to them, riding on a golden cock, a fearful apparition before which they threw themselves flat. They offered to make him their prince, if only he would spare their lives.

  And they say that the Devil stayed with them a while, and made a tolerably good prince, as princes go in that part of the world. But he looked always over his shoulder, for fear that his wife might be pursuing him. He said she was the Mother of Darkness. His terror was so great that at last it got the better of him and he rode on, rather than let her catch him.

  The men of the village found this comforting, in an obscure kind of way. Even the Devil fears his wife, they said to one another. They said it so often that a man came from the Ministry of Culture at last, and wrote it down in a book of proverbs.

  But if you travel to that country and look in that great book, you will look in vain; for unfortunately some vandal has torn out the relevant page.

  SYNTHETIC SERENDIPITY

  Vernor Vinge

  Here’s a look at a computer-dominated, high-tech, high-bit-rate future that may be coming along a lot sooner than you think that it could, making members of older generations obsolete and unable to compete in society with the tech-savvy Whiz Kids surrounding them. Even in this wired-up future, though, Boys Will Still Be Boys – unfortunately.

  Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Vernor Vinge now lives in San Diego, California, where he is an associate professor of math sciences at San Diego State University. He sold his first story, “Apartness,” to New Worlds in 1965; it immediately attracted a good deal of attention, was picked up for Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr’s collaborative World’s Best Science Fiction anthology the following year, and still strikes me as one of the strongest stories of that entire period. Since this impressive debut, he has become a frequent contributor to Analog; he has also sold to Orbit, Far Frontiers, If, Stellar, and other markets. His novella “True Names,” which is famous in Internet circles and among computer enthusiasts well outside of the usual limits of the genre, and is cited by some as having been the real progenitor of cyberpunk rather than William Gibson’s Neuromancer, was a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards in 1981. His novel A Fire Upon the Deep, one of the most epic and sweeping of modern Space Operas, won him a Hugo Award in 1993; its sequel, A Deepness in the Sky, won him another Hugo Award in 2000. The last two years have seen him win two more Hugos, in two consecutive years – for his novella “Fast Times at Fairmont High” in 2003, and his novella “The Cookie Monster” in 2004 . . . and these days Vinge is regarded as one of the best of the American “hard science” writers, along with people such as Greg Bear and Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Tatia Grimm’s World, The Witling, The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime (which have been released in an omnibus volume as Across Realtime), and the collections True Names and Other Dangers and Threats and Other Promises. His most recent book is the massive collection The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge.

  YEARS AGO, GAMES and movies were for indoors, for couch potatoes and kids with overtrained trigger fingers. Now they were on the outside. They were the world. That was the main reason Miguel Villas liked to walk to school with the Radner twins. Fred and Jerry were a Bad influence, but they were the best gamers Mike knew in person.

  “We got a new scam, Mike,” said Fred.

  “Yeah,” said Jerry, smiling the way he did when something extreme was in the works.

  The three followed the usual path along the flood control channel. The trough was dry and gray, winding its way through the canyon behind Las Mesitas subdivision. The hills above them were covered with iceplant and manzanita; ahead, there was a patch of scrub oaks. What do you expect of San Diego north county in early May?

  At least in the real world.

  The canyon was not a deadzone. Not at all. County Flood Control kept the whole area improved, and the public layer was just as fine as on city streets. As they walked along, Mike gave a shrug and a twitch just so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its overlay imaging shifted into classic manga/animé: The manzanita branches morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the houses that edged the canyon were heavily timbered, with pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of Grand Duke Hwa Feen – in fact, the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle. Mike tricked out the twins in Manga costume, and spikey hair, and classic big-eye
d, small-mouthed features.

  “Hey, Jerry, look.” Mike radiated, and waited for the twins to slide into consensus with his view. He’d been practicing all week to get these visuals.

  Fred looked up, accepting the imagery that Mike had conjured.

  “That’s old stuff, Miguel, my man.” He glanced at the castle on the hill. “Besides, Howie Fein is a nitwit.”

  “Oh.” Mike released the vision in an untidy cascade. The real world took back its own, first the sky, then the landscape, then the creatures and costumes. “But you liked it last week.” Back when, Mike now remembered, Fred and Jerry had been maneuvering to oust the Grand Duke.

  The twins looked at each other. Mike could tell they were silent messaging. “We told you today would be different. We’re onto something special.” They were partway through the scrub oaks now. From here you could see ocean haze; on a clear day – or if you bought into clear vision – you could see all the way to the ocean. On the south were more subdivisions, and a patch of green that was Fairmont High School. On the north was the most interesting place in Mike Villas’ neighborhood:

  Pyramid Hill Park dominated the little valley that surrounded it. Once upon a time the hill had been an avocado orchard. You could still see it that way if you used the park’s logo view. To the naked eye, there were other kinds of trees. There were also lawns, and real mansions, and a looping structure that flew a parabolic arc hundreds of feet above the top of the hill. That was the longest freefall ride in California.

  The twins were grinning at him. Jerry waved at the hill. “How would you like to play Cretaceous Returns, but with real feeling?”

  Pyramid Hill had free entrances, but they were just for visuals.

  “That’s too expensive.”

  “Sure it is. If you pay.”

  “And, um, don’t you have a project to set up before class?” The twins had shop class first thing in the morning.

  “That’s still in Vancouver,” said Jerry.

  “But don’t worry about us.” Fred looked upward, somehow prayerful and smug at the same time. “ ‘FedEx will provide, and just in time.’ ”

  “Well, okay. Just so we don’t get into trouble.” Getting into trouble was the major downside of hanging with the Radners.

  “Don’t worry about it.” The three left the edge of the flood channel and climbed a narrow trail along the east edge of Pyramid Hill. This was far from any entrance, but the twins’ uncle worked for County Flood Control and they had access to CFC utilities – which just now they shared with Mike. The dirt beneath their feet became faintly translucent. Fifteen feet down, Mike could see graphics representing a ten-inch runoff tunnel. Here and there were pointers to local maintenance records. Jerry and Fred had used the CFC view before and not been caught. Today they blended it with a map of the local nodes. The overlay was faintly violet against the sunlit day, showing comm shadows and active high-rate links.

  The two stopped at the edge of a clearing. Fred looked at Jerry. “Tsk. Flood Control should be ashamed. There’s not a localizer node within thirty feet.”

  “Yeah, Jer. Almost anything could happen here.” Without a complete localizer mesh, nodes could not know precisely where they were. High-rate laser comm could not be established, and low-rate sensor output was smeared across the landscape. The outside world knew only mushy vagueness about this area.

  They walked into the clearing. They were deep in comm shade, but from here they had a naked-eye view up the hillside. If they continued that way, Pyramid Hill would start charging them.

  The twins were not looking at the Hill. Jerry walked to a small tree and squinted up. “See? They tried to patch the coverage with an airball.” He pointed into the branches and pinged. The utility view showed only a faint return, an error message. “It’s almost purely net guano at this point.”

  Mike shrugged. “The gap will be fixed by tonight.” Around twilight, when maintenance UAVs flitted like bats around the canyons, popping out nodes here and there.

  “Heh. Well, why don’t we help the County by patching things right now?” Jerry held up a thumb-sized greenish object. He handed it to Mike.

  Three antenna fins sprouted from the top, a typical ad hoc node.

  The dead ones were more trouble than bird poop. “You’ve perv’d this thing?” The node had Breakins-R-Us written all over it, but perverting networks was harder in real life than in games. “Where did you get the access codes?”

  “Uncle Don gets careless.” Jerry pointed at the device. “All the permissions are loaded. Unfortunately, the bottleneck node is still alive.” He pointed upwards, into the sapling’s branches. “You’re small enough to climb this, Mike. Just go up and knock down the node.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hey, don’t worry. Homeland Security won’t notice.”

  In fact, the Department of Homeland Security would almost certainly notice, at least after the localizer mesh was patched. But just as certainly they wouldn’t care. DHS logic was deeply embedded in all hardware. “See All, Know All,” was their motto, but what they knew and saw was for their own mission. They were notorious for not sharing with law enforcement. Mike stepped out of the comm shade and took a look at the crime trackers view. The area around Pyramid Hill had its share of arrests, mostly for enhancement drugs . . . but there had been nothing hereabouts for months.

  “Okay.” Mike came back to the tree and shinnied up to where the branches spread out. The old node was hanging from rotted velcro. He knocked it loose and the twins caused it to have an accident with a rock. Mike scrambled down and they watched the diagnostics for a moment. Violet mists sharpened into bright spots as the nodes figured out where they and their perv’d sibling were, and coordinated up toward full function. Now point-to-point, laser routing was available; they could see the property labels all along the boundary of Pyramid Hill.

  “Ha,” said Fred. The twins started uphill, past the property line. “C’mon, Mike. We’re marked as county employees. We’ll be fine if we don’t stay too long.”

  Pyramid Hill had all the latest touchie-feelie effects. These were not just phantoms painted by your contact lenses on the back of your eyeballs. On Pyramid Hill, there were games where you could kick lizard butt and steal raptor eggs – or games with warm furry creatures that danced playfully around, begging to be picked up and cuddled. If you turned off all the game views, you could see other players wandering through the woods in their own worlds. Somehow the Hill kept them from crashing into each other.

  In Cretaceous Returns the plants were towering gingko trees, with lots of barriers and hidey holes. Mike played the purely visual Cret Ret a lot these days, in person with the twins and all over the world with others. It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been “killed and eaten” three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got eaten. Mike was trying. He had designed a species – quick, small things that didn’t attract the fiercest of the critics. The twins had not been impressed, though they had no alternatives of their own.

  As he walked through the gingko forest, he kept his eye out for critters with jaws lurking in the lower branches. That’s what had gotten him on Monday. On Tuesday it had been some kind of paleo disease.

  So far things seemed safe enough, but there was no sign of his own contribution. They had been fast breeding and scalable, so where were the little monsters? Maybe someone had exported them. They might be big in Kazakhstan. He had had success there before. Here today . . . nada.

  Mike stumped across the Hill, a little discouraged, but still uneaten. The twins had taken the form of game-standard velociraptors.

  They were having a grand time. Their chicken-sized prey were Pyramid Hill haptics.

  The Jerry-raptor looked over its shoulder at Mike. “Where’s your critter?”

  Mike had not assumed any animal form. “I’m a time traveler,” he said. That was a valid type, introduced with the initial game release.

  Fred fla
shed a face full of teeth. “I mean where are the critters you invented last week?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Most likely they got eaten by the critics,” said Jerry. The brothers did a joint reptilian chortle. “Give up on making creator points, Miguel. Kick back and use the good stuff.” He illustrated with a soccer kick that connected with something running fast across their path. That got some classic points and a few thrilling moments of haptic carnage. Fred joined in and red splattered everywhere.

  There was something familiar about this prey. It was young and clever looking . . . a newborn from Mike’s own design! And that meant its Mommy would be nearby. Mike said, “You know, I don’t think – ”

  “The Problem Is, None Of You Think Nearly Enough.” The sound was like sticking your head inside an old-time boom box. Too late, they saw that the tree trunks behind them grew from yard-long claws.

  Mommy. Drool fell in ten-inch blobs from high above.

  This was Mike’s design scaled to the max.

  “Sh – ” said Fred. It was his last hiss as a velociraptor. The head and teeth behind the slobber descended from the gingko canopy and swallowed Fred down to the tips of his hind talons. The monster crunched and munched for a moment. The clearing was filled with the sound of splintering bones.

  “Ahh!” the monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was scarey good. Mike flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime – real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.

  The monster itself was one of Hill’s largest robots, tricked out as a member of Mike’s new species.

  The three of them looked up into its jaws.

  “Was that touchie-feelie enough for you?” the creature said, its breath a hot breeze of rotting meat. Fred stepped backwards and almost slipped on the goo.