The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  I explain what I think Michel has been killed for, and how much I need to see it if it still exists. Jospin looks steadily at me, then reaches into her beltpouch and takes out a pillbox.

  “For PMS,” she explains with a faint smile. She shakes out, not a pill, but a memory cube and hands it over.

  “He asked me to hide it,” she explains. “He said not to give it to anybody. He didn’t say why.”

  “I don’t know why either,” I tell her. “But I hope to find out. Many thanks, and” (speaking as impressively as I can) “don’t . . . say . . . anything about this.”

  In Anna’s lab we play the cube and, yes, it’s the copy Michel made for himself of the Spider’s exploration of the subsurface passages of Zamók.

  “We’ve seen this already,” says Anna, disappointed.

  “But perhaps not all of it.”

  As before, we settle down head-to-head to watch. Once again the little robot descends a slot half a meter wide. Once again pictures of garish creatures in bizarre attire wobble past. We enter familiar rooms, leave them, walk three-leggedly down corridors, enter other rooms.

  I’m beginning to get worried. The trouble with intuition is that until you test it, an error looks just as convincing as the truth.

  “I don’t see anything n – ” Anna’s beginning when I yell something, maybe “Shit!”

  We both stare breathlessly at the screen.

  The Spider is entering a room we’ve never seen before. Slowly it pans the walls and ceiling with its HI-light. We’re looking at a sacrifice. As with medieval paintings or comic strips, a series of scenes tells a story.

  Unlike our Aztecs, the Arkies had metal weapons, the favorite being an implement with a long handle ending in a curved blade on one side and a spike on the other. With one of these gadgets a priest ceremoniously sacrifices one of his own kind to whatever gods he believes in.

  The method is familiar; a fatal blow delivered with the spike against the back or top of the head. Only he does a follow-up, splitting the skull with the axe, after which the believers gather to eat the brain.

  The victims don’t seem to be resisting; light streams from their faces and rainbows encircle them with full-spectrum haloes. Above them god figures hover, radiating light; in the last scene, they welcome the sacrificial victim to Valhalla.

  “Looks like a retirement dinner,” I remark unfeelingly.

  “No,” says Anna. “They’re not cannibalizing for food. It’s magic. They’re acquiring wisdom. They aren’t murdering anybody, not in their own minds. They’ve sacrificed somebody they respect, made him a god, and now the tribe is sharing his knowledge and strength – oh!”

  For the second time in a few minutes she’s been interrupted, this time by herself. As for me, I am, as they say, struck dumb. Whatever I expected to see in the underground, it isn’t this.

  The Spider has emerged from the room with the images of sacrifice. In the corridor just beyond, a human child is lying against the wall – a tiny, an improbably tiny girl with golden hair.

  For a moment I think I’m going mad. Then Anna says, “It’s a doll,” breaking the spell.

  And with that, of course, the whole case opens before my mind.

  Anna and I are outside in the rain. We stroll to the power station with its comforting roar of turbines and its EM fields to mess up listening devices.

  We lean our heads together and whisper, reviewing the evidence.

  A child can get down the steps into the underground, can take her doll and a flashlight, can see the paintings.

  Perhaps, surrounded by busy adults who fundamentally don’t give a damn about her, she spends a lot of time down there. She meets other small beings her own size. She plays with and loses her toy.

  Mack grew up on Bela, the only human who ever did.

  Mack is physically powerful. She’s nobody’s friend, yet she represents security. Somebody, turning and seeing her coming up from behind, would feel only relief – whew, I’m safe – but nobody would stop to chat with her.

  They’d turn and walk on. And feel only one stunning blow before the darkness.

  Anna talks about Michel, what a terrible thing it must have been even for a mass murderess to realize that for safety’s sake she had to kill the nearest approach she knew to human affection.

  I’m more concerned with how she caught on to him. “I bet the kid got careless, made a copy of his cube and left the images in a backup memory, where she found them.”

  “Mack’s insane,” whispers Anna.

  “No,” I say. “She’s a native. Like the Arkies. She’s helping them reclaim their world. When we go, she’ll stay here with them. That’s what she really wants – to be rid of us, and stay here forever.”

  The rain patters around us. It’s getting dark, or darker. The power station roars and shakes. My imagination’s doing acrobatics.

  Suddenly I’m seeing in a whole new light that missile attack on Krebs, the one that conspicuously missed, while scaring the shit out of its target.

  What if the whole episode was intended to make him feel surrounded by enemies, make him more dependent on her? And whose missile was it, anyway?

  She said she was “chatting” with him in Security when it hit. She wouldn’t lie about something like that – too easy to check. And I’m sure Michel wouldn’t have fired it. Suddenly I’m remembering her other subordinates, Corporal Vizbee and Private Smelt.

  Voilà! I think, in honor of Michel.

  At last breathing all that oxygen is paying off – I’m in ecstasy, making connections, when Anna interrupts with a practical question. “What are you going to do?”

  “Confront her, accuse her, arrest her. And I’m going to grab those two grungy enlisted people of Mack’s. There’s something I want to ask them.”

  “You won’t get Vizbee and Smelt,” she says. “They were just in to pick up supplies. Right after they helped her shake the place down, she sent them back to the shuttleport.”

  “Then it’s Mack alone.”

  I’m a happy man. I’m about to crack my case and go the hell home and my ego’s purring. When I get back to Earth, I’m thinking, I’ll take a long vacation – preferably in Death Valley.

  “You’re really confident, aren’t you?” she asks with an odd inflection. I peer at her, curious.

  “Spit it out, Anna,” I say. “This is no time to be feminine.”

  “Well, I think you’re underestimating her. And this world. You don’t seem to realize that she’s not just a lone criminal. We’ve already had Thoms and Szczech attacked at an outstation. And think of Ursasus terribilis – what if the Arkies control the local carnivores? What if they’ve already used them twice to try to kill you?”

  Goddamn women anyway. They have a gift for imagining worst-case scenarios. “If you’re right, I’ll have to move fast.”

  “When will you arrest her?”

  “Now. Right this minute. Want to come along?”

  As we hurry back into the maze, she’s muttering, “There’s something else. I know there’s something we haven’t thought of.”

  But I’m not really listening. First I use a public machine to call Jamal and Eloise.

  “Do you feel energetic?” I ask.

  Jamal looks baffled. “I guess so. Why?”

  “I may need a little assistance. In my room. For something important and possibly a mite dangerous.”

  He looks at me with narrowed eyes, suspicious of anyone in authority. Eloise comes up behind him.

  “We’ll be there,” she says over his shoulder. I break the connection.

  “Don’t hurry, just in case we’re being watched,” I tell Anna, and we move with what, I believe, is legally termed deliberate speed through the usual throng, anonymous in spite of their name tags: Ellenbogen, Menshnikoff, Nguyen, Rice-Davies.

  In my bedroom we check the terrace outside, then exit and head for Security. I try the electronic key Michel gave me and it doesn’t work.

  “Shit,” I
profoundly comment. “She’s changed the settings on the lock. Stand back.”

  The impact slug knocks out the lock and I kick the door open. The gun rack is empty. At the same moment my eyes fall on the monitor that shows Michel’s room.

  Oh, Christ.

  So while I was busy solving my case, so goddamn sure of myself, she was watching us, changing the lock, removing the weapons.

  Did she take the missiles, too? I check hastily. One’s gone; the other four are still locked in. But she’s removed the detonators so I can’t arm them. Who’s serving this match?

  All things considered, Anna’s voice is remarkably calm as she says, “Look outside.”

  My friend the bearpig – or his cousin – is coming over the parapet. He uses his claws like grappling hooks, climbs easily despite his weight of maybe three hundred kilos. As he moves into the light pouring from my quarters I see sticking through his coarse yellowish fur a million black spines, like a hedgehog’s. The guy’s armored as well as armed.

  He rears up, freeing his forepaws for action. Then he moves bowleggedly yet with disturbing speed around the screen and a scream tells me that Eloise and Jamal have arrived there.

  I fling open Security’s door and run outside, Anna following. But before I can fire, the beast takes what looks like a tremendous punch from an invisible fist, right on the snout. He rears up, flops over and lies twisting on the Incan stonework.

  The great skull is ruined. One eye stares at Anna and me with helpless rage before it films over. The body smells like the lion cage at a zoo – an acrid, sulfurous, somehow fiery odor.

  I look into my room and Jamal’s standing there in the approved shooter’s crouch, holding a pistol in both hands, index finger on the firing stud.

  “Where’d you get that?” I ask after we’ve all greeted each other.

  “Swiped it from my boss’s locker. I didn’t see any good reason why the senior guys should have protection and El and I shouldn’t.”

  “Good for you. Look, we have something of a situation here.” I explain.

  The four of us huddle. We’ve got two weapons. Each has fired once, leaving fifteen shots each. Mack’s got a dozen weapons and all the spare ammo. She knows Main Base backward and forward, and however she calls her friends – those in the jungle, and those in the passages down below – she’s undoubtedly doing it now.

  Touching my forehead in salute, I tell Anna, “You were right. This is the worst-case scenario.”

  She’s standing there as if in a trance, looking like a statue of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.

  “There’s more,” she murmurs.

  So much for mercy.

  “I’ve just realized,” she goes on. “The larvae. Two hundred thousand genes.”

  I don’t understand, even though I know what she’s referring to. Eloise and Jamal are, of course, looking absolutely blank. But Anna now speaks with calm professional assurance, as if she’s telling somebody they need to get their triglycerides down.

  “The larvae must be the basic form. They must hatch from some kind of spore with a really tough capsule to survive the extreme heat and cold. Something triggers development into different forms – partly it must be temperature, but I’m sure it’s more complicated than that. The Arkies are one form and Mayakovsky’s medvedi are another and the carnivore Jamal shot is another. And there may be more.

  “They’re all cousins, so to speak. That’s how they dominate their environment and survive the fantastic changes that happen here on Bela . . .”

  Silence follows. Then the quiet voice insists, “Don’t you see?”

  “Unfortunately,” I say, “yes.”

  We try to put out a warning.

  Eloise has just settled down at the huge console in Security and spoken a first word of command when a sound of distant thunder comes through the shattered terrace door and the machine and the monitors and the lights all go out.

  I step to the other door, the one leading into the corridor, and fling it open. It’s dark inside Main Base, almost as dark as on the wet and dusky terrace outside. Battery-fed emergency lights are flickering on and beginning to glow redly. People are standing around, looking baffled, their faces purplish as if they had lupus. I turn back with my latest bad news.

  “Mack just used her missile on the power station. Zamók’s been shut down. All of it.”

  We head into the corridor and try to spread the alarm by word of mouth. It’s not easy. The maze is more confusing than ever. Everywhere people are milling around, bitching about the power failure. Many were headed for the dining hall; complaining they’ll have to eat cold rations tonight.

  We try shouting, telling them an attack is about to begin, telling them if they’ve got weapons to join us, if not go to the dining hall and lock the doors. People crowd around us, trying to decide if we’re crazy.

  Some of them have never seen me before. Anna they know, but so what? She’s just the doc. Jamal and Eloise are too young to count.

  Where are their leaders? they want to know. Where’s Krebs, where are the senior engineers – above all, where’s Captain Mack?

  “What does Captain Mack say?” a young guy demands. “I mean, she’s in charge of security, right?”

  “Captain Mack has already killed twenty people and is about to kill a lot more,” I inform him, biting off my words.

  The fact that I’m getting pissed off doesn’t make this unpalatable news any more believable. Yet some people take alarm and start to hasten away. Even if we’re nuts, the lights are out; something’s clearly wrong.

  Others stand around arguing. Some are belligerent – what the hell are we saying? Who the hell do we think we are? Are we trying to start a panic just because there’s an equipment failure? Somebody will fix it. That’s what engineers do, right?

  Then comes a shout. “Doc Li! Come quick! The Controller’s been shot!”

  And that does it. Suddenly the toute ensemble gets to them. The shadows, the dim red lights, the air growing stuffy, the palpable anxiety, Jamal and me waving weapons and talking about an attack, warning them against Captain Mack – and now somebody’s yelling that the Controller’s shot.

  So they hated him, and they hated her, so what, they’re the symbols of command and control, right? If they’re hostile or wounded or dead, everything’s coming apart, right?

  Suddenly they panic. And they bolt. They’re like cattle scared by lightning. I see shadowy people caroming into one another, knocking one another down. Running into half-dark corridors, headed for I don’t know where. Some for the dining hall, some bolting for cover in their rooms.

  The guy who yelled for Anna fights his way to us where we stand together, waiting for the hall to clear. He’s Senior Engineer Antonelli, and I met him for the first and only time on the day I arrived here. He’s armed, and I’m glad to see him.

  Anna asks, “Is it true Krebs has been shot?”

  “Yes. I found him in his office and – ”

  He never gets to finish. Somewhere in the maze, people start screaming. There are roars and howls. People start running out of the corridors they ran into not five minutes ago. A chunky young woman trots up.

  “Arkies are coming up through the floors,” she gasps. “And there’s some kind of big animal loose.”

  We hurry to the dining hall. About twenty people have gathered there, two with guns. They’re using furniture to barricade the doors, of which there are four. The only light comes from the emergency system.

  “Stay here,” I tell everybody. I tap Antonelli. “You’re in charge.”

  “I know that,” he snaps.

  “Where are you going?” asks Anna.

  “To snatch a flyer if I can. The only reserves we have are at Alfa, and we’re going to need them.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not. These people may need a doctor.”

  “You couldn’t find your way with the lights on. How about with them off?”

  Eloise steps u
p and says quietly, “I’ll go with him.”

  To this Jamal objects so violently that I lose patience and, while he’s ordering Eloise not to move a muscle, I give him a short left to the point of his dark stubbly chin. He drops like a stone.

  I tell Antonelli, “When he wakes up, tell him we’ll be back with reinforcements.”

  In the dark corridor, Eloise says, “I suppose you had to do that.”

  After we’ve walked a few meters, she adds, “He’s such a dickhead, I’ve often wanted to punch him out myself.”

  Of course Anna was right. If I’d tried to find my way out of the maze I’d have gotten hopelessly lost.

  Eloise, on the other hand, turns out to be one of those irritating people who always know exactly where they are and the precise azimuth to follow to get anywhere else. When I compliment her, she says, “I’m part homing pigeon.”

  There’s a body in the way, the back of the head caved in. It’s nobody I know, but Eloise gives a little muted cry before we hurry on.

  “Know him?”

  “Oh, yes. Before I . . . met Jamal.”

  Something roars up ahead. I’m smelling an odor like lions. I pull her into a dark doorway and we wait. Something big lurches past, making the floor creak, thick coarse fur and spines rasping the wall with a sound like a wire brush. Then a patter of footsteps, a chink of metal and a rapid warbling as varied as a mockingbird’s song, only deeper.

  Everything fades into the distance. A woman screams. There’s a little popping sound – an impact weapon. A roar.

  Eloise whispers, “You notice something? The Cousins – that’s what Anna called them, wasn’t it? – all smell kind of alike. The big ones and the little ones. Maybe that’s how they recognize their own kind.”

  Right, they all have the lion smell, as penetrating as burning sulfur, and why not? They all must have the same basic body chemistry. An idiot rhyme runs through my head: If you stink alike, you think alike.

  The birdlike voice of the Arkies fascinates Eloise. “Maybe there’s only one ‘word’ in their language,” she whispers, “that long sweet whistle, and the rising and falling tones make the differences in meaning.”