The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  WE CANNOT WAIT LONG. TONIGHT WE AND THE NORTH MUST BEGIN THE JOURNEY TO OUR FEEDING TIME.

  The voice of Air Human rumbled through the water. It sounded like a distant, throbbing engine. OUR FINEST GREETINGS, ANTHONY. I AND TWO NOTCHES WILL TRAVEL NORTH TOGETHER. THEN WE AND THE OTHERS WILL FEED.

  Annoyance slammed into Anthony. Philana had abducted his whale. Clenching his teeth, he typed a civil reply:

  Please give our kindest greetings to our hungry brothers and sisters in the north.

  By the time he transmitted his speech his anger had faded. Two Notches’ departure was inevitable in the next few days, and he’d known that. Still, a residue of jealousy burned in him. Philana would have the whale’s company on its journey north: he would be stuck here by Las Madres without the keen whale ears that helped him find the Dwellers.

  Two Notches’ reply came simultaneously with a programmed reply from Philana. Lyrics about greetings, hunger, feeding, calves, and joy whined through the water, bounced from the cold layer. Anthony looked at the hash his computer made of the translation and laughed. He decided he might as well enjoy Two Notches’ company while it lasted.

  That was a strange message to hear from our friend, Two Mouths, he typed. “Notch” and “mouth” were almost the same phrase: Anthony had just made a pun.

  Whale amusement bubbled through the water. TWO MOUTHS AND I BELONG TO THE MOST UNUSUAL FAMILY BETWEEN SURFACE AND COLD WATER. WE-ALL AND AIR BREATHE EACH OTHER, BUT SOME OF US HAVE THE BAD FORTUNE TO LIVE IN IT.

  The sun warmed Anthony’s shoulders in spite of the cool air. He decided to leave off the pursuit of the Dwellers and spend the day with his humpback.

  He kicked off his shoes, then stepped down to his cooler and made himself a sandwich.

  * * *

  The Dwellers never came out from beneath the cold layer. Anthony spent the afternoon listening to Two Notches tell stories about his family. Now that the issue of hunger was resolved by the whale’s decision to migrate, the cold layer beneath them became the new topic of conversation, and Two Notches amused himself by harmonizing with his own echo. Sings of Others arrived in late afternoon and announced he had already begun his journey: he and Two Notches decided to travel in company.

  NORTHWARD HOMING! COLD WATERING! REUNION JOYOUS! The phrases dopplered closer to Anthony’s boat, and then Two Notches broke the water thirty feet off the port beam, salt water pouring like Niagara from his black jaw, his scalloped fins spread like wings eager to take the air … Anthony’s breath went out of him in surprise. He turned in his chair and leaned away from the sight, half in fear and half in awe … Even though he was used to the whales, the sight never failed to stun him, thrill him, freeze him in his tracks.

  Two Notches toppled over backwards, one clear brown eye fixed on Anthony. Anthony raised an arm and waved, and he thought he saw amusement in Two Notches’ glance, perhaps the beginning of an answering wave in the gesture of a fin. A living creature the size of a bus, the whale struck the water not with a smack, but with a roar, a sustained outpour of thunder. Anthony braced himself for what was coming. Salt water flung itself over the gunwale, struck him like a blow. The cold was shocking: his heart lurched. The boat was flung high on the wave, dropped down its face with a jarring thud. Two Notches’ flukes tossed high and Anthony could see the mottled pattern, grey and white, on the underside, distinctive as a fingerprint … and then the flukes were gone, leaving behind a rolling boat and a boiling sea.

  Anthony wiped the ocean from his face, then from his computer. The boat’s auto-baling mechanism began to throb. Two Notches surfaced a hundred yards off, spouted a round cloud of steam, submerged again. The whale’s amusement stung the water. Anthony’s surprise turned to joy, and he echoed the sound of laughter.

  I’m going to run my boat up your backside, Anthony promised; he splashed to the controls in his bare feet, withdrew the drogue and threw his engines into gear. Props thrashed the sea into foam. Anthony drew the microphones up into their wells, heard them thud along the hull as the boat gained way. Humpbacks usually took breath in a series of three: Anthony aimed ahead for Two Notches’ second rising. Two Notches rose just ahead, spouted, and dove before Anthony could catch him. A cold wind cut through Anthony’s wet shirt, raised bumps on his flesh. The boat increased speed, tossing its head on the face of a wave, and Anthony raced ahead, aiming for where Two Notches would rise for the third time.

  The whale knew where the boat was and was able to avoid him easily; there was no danger in the game. Anthony won the race: Two Notches surfaced just aft of the boat, and Anthony grinned as he gunned his propellers and wrenched the rudder from side to side while the boat spewed foam into the whale’s face. Two Notches gave a grunt of disappointment and sounded, tossing his flukes high. Unless he chose to rise early, Two Notches would be down for five minutes or more. Anthony raced the boat in circles, waiting. Two Notches’ taunts rose in the cool water. The wind was cutting Anthony to the quick. He reached into the cabin for a sweater, pulled it on, ran up to the flybridge just in time to see Two Notches leap again half a mile away, the vast dark body silhouetted for a moment against the setting sun before it fell again into the welcoming sea.

  GOODBYE, GOODBYE. I AND ANTHONY SEND FRAGRANT FAREWELLS TO ONE ANOTHER.

  White foam surrounded the slick, still place where Two Notches had fallen into the water. Suddenly the flybridge was very cold. Anthony’s heart sank. He cut speed and put the wheel amidships. The boat slowed reluctantly, as if it, too, had been enjoying the game. Anthony dropped down the ladder to his computer.

  Through the spattered windscreen, Anthony could see Two Notches leaping again, his long wings beating air, his silhouette refracted through seawater and rainbows. Anthony tried to share the whale’s exuberance, his joy, but the thought of another long summer alone on his boat, beating his head against the enigma of the Dwellers, turned his mind to ice.

  He ordered an infinite repeat of Two Notches’ last phrase and stepped below to change into dry clothes. The cold layer echoed his farewells. He bent almost double and began pulling the sweater over his head.

  Suddenly he straightened. An idea was chattering at him. He yanked the sweater back down over his trunk, rushed to his computer, tapped another message.

  Our farewells need not be said just yet. You and I can follow one another for a few days before I must return. Perhaps you and the non-breathers can find one another for conversation.

  ANTHONY IS IN A CONDITION OF MIGRATION. WELCOME, WELCOME. Two Notches’ reply was jubilant.

  For a few days, Anthony qualified. Before too long he would have to return to port for supplies. Annoyed at himself, he realized he could as easily have victualed for weeks.

  Another voice called through the water, sounded faintly through the speakers. Air Human and Anthony are in a state of tastiest welcome.

  In the middle of Anthony’s reply, his fingers paused at the keys. Surprise rose quietly to the surface of his mind.

  After the long day of talking in humpback speech, he had forgotten that Air Human was not a humpback. That she was, in fact, another human being sitting on a boat just over the horizon.

  Anthony continued his message. His fingers were clumsy now, and he had to go back twice to correct mistakes. He wondered why it was harder to talk to Philana, now that he remembered she wasn’t an alien.

  * * *

  He asked Two Notches to turn on his transponder, and, all through the deep shadow twilight when the white dwarf was in the sky, the boat followed the whale at a half-mile’s distance. The current was cooperative, but in a few days a new set of northwest trade winds would push the current off on a curve toward the equator and the whales would lose its assistance.

  Anthony didn’t see Philana’s boat that first day: just before dawn, Sings of Others heard a distant Dweller conversation to starboard. Anthony told his boat to strike off in that direction and spent most of the day listening. When the Dwellers fell silent, he headed for the whales’ t
ransponders again. There was a lively conversation in progress between Air Human and the whales, but Anthony’s mind was still on Dwellers. He put on headphones and worked far into the night.

  The next morning was filled with chill mist. Anthony awoke to the whooping cries of the humpbacks. He looked at his computer to see if it had recorded any announcement of Dwellers, and there was none. The whales’ interrogation by Air Human continued. Anthony’s toes curled on the cold, damp planks as he stepped on deck and saw Philana’s yacht two hundred yards to port, floating three feet over the tallest swells. Cables trailed from the stern, pulling hydrophones and speakers on a subaquatic sled. Anthony grinned at the sight of the elaborate storebought rig. He suspected that he got better acoustics with his homebuilt equipment, the translation softwear he’d programmed himself, and his hopelessly old-fashioned boat that couldn’t even rise out of the water, but that he’d equipped with the latest-generation silent propellers.

  He turned on his speakers. Sure enough, he got more audio interference from Philana’s sled than he received from his entire boat.

  While making coffee and an omelette of mossmoon eggs Anthony listened to the whales gurgle about their grandparents. He put on a down jacket and stepped onto the boat’s stern and ate breakfast, watching the humpbacks as they occasionally broke surface, puffed out clouds of spray, sounded again with a careless, vast toss of their flukes. Their bodies were smooth and black: the barnacles that pebbled their skin on Earth had been removed before they gated to their new home.

  Their song could be heard clearly even without the amplifiers. That was one change the contact with humans had brought: the males were a lot more vocal than once they had been, as if they were responding to human encouragement to talk—or perhaps they now had more worth talking about. Their speech was also more terse than before, less overtly poetic; the humans’ directness and compactness of speech, caused mainly by their lack of fluency, had influenced the whales to a degree.

  The whales were adapting to communication with humans more easily than the humans were adapting to them. It was important to chart that change, be able to say how the whales had evolved, accommodated. They were on an entire new planet now, explorers, and the change was going to come fast. The whales were good at remembering, but artificial intelligences were better. Anthony was suddenly glad that Philana was here, doing her work.

  As if on cue she appeared on deck, one hand pressed to her head, holding an earphone: she was listening intently to whalesong. She was bundled up against the chill, and gave a brief wave as she noticed him. Anthony waved back. She paused, beating time with one hand to the rhythm of whalespeech, then waved again and stepped back to her work.

  Anthony finished breakfast and cleaned the dishes. He decided to say good morning to the whales, then work on some of the Dweller speech he’d recorded the day before. He turned on his computer, sat down at the console, typed his greetings. He waited for a pause in the conversation, then transmitted. The answer came back sounding like a distant buzzsaw.

  WE AND ANTHONY WISH ONE ANOTHER A PASSAGE FILLED WITH SPLENDID ODORS. WE AND AIR HUMAN HAVE BEEN SCENTING ONE ANOTHER’S FAMILIES THIS MORNING.

  We wish each other the joy of converse, Anthony typed.

  WE HAVE BEEN WONDERING, Two Notches said, IF WE CAN SCENT WHETHER WE AND ANTHONY AND AIR HUMAN ARE IN A CONDITION OF RUT.

  Anthony gave a laugh. Humpbacks enjoyed trying to figure out human relationships: they were promiscuous themselves, and intrigued by ways different from their own.

  Anthony wondered, sitting in his cockpit, if Philana was looking at him.

  Air Human and I smell of aloneness, unpairness, he typed, and he transmitted the message at the same time that Philana entered the even more direct, WE ARE NOT.

  THE STATE IS NOT RUT, APARTNESS IS THE SMELL, Two Notches agreed readily—it was all one to him—and the lyrics echoed each other for a long moment, aloneness, not, unpairness, not. Not. Anthony felt a chill.

  I and the Dwellers’ speech are going to try to scent one another’s natures, he typed hastily, and turned off the speakers. He opened his case and took out one of the cubes he’d recorded the day before.

  Work went slowly.

  * * *

  By noon the mist had burned off the water. His head buzzing with Dweller sounds, Anthony stepped below for a sandwich. The message light was blinking on his telephone. He turned to it, pressed the play button.

  “May I speak with you briefly?” Philana’s voice. “I’d like to get some data, at your convenience.” Her tone shifted to one of amusement. “The condition,” she added, “is not that of rut.”

  Anthony grinned. Philana had been considerate enough not to interrupt him, just to leave the message for whenever he wanted it. He picked up the telephone, connected directory assistance in Cabo Santa Pola, and asked it to route a call to the phone on Philana’s yacht. She answered.

  “Message received,” he said. “Would you join me for lunch?”

  “In an hour or so,” she said. Her voice was abstracted. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “When you’re ready. Bye.” He rang off, decided to make a fish chowder instead of sandwiches, and drank a beer while preparing it. He began to feel buoyant, cheerful. Siren wailing sounded through the water.

  Philana’s yacht maneuvered over to his boat just as Anthony finished his second beer. Philana stood on the gunwale, wearing a pale sweater with brown zigzags on it. Her braid was undone, and her brown hair fell around her shoulders. She jumped easily from her gunwale to the flybridge, then came down the ladder. The yacht moved away as soon as it felt her weight leave. She smiled uncertainly as she stepped to the deck.

  “I’m sorry to have to bother you,” she said.

  He offered a grin. “That’s okay. I’m between projects right now.”

  She looked toward the cabin. “Lunch smells good.” Perhaps, he thought, food equaled apology.

  “Fish chowder. Would you like a beer? Coffee?”

  “Beer. Thanks.”

  They stepped below and Anthony served lunch on the small foldout table. He opened another beer and put it by her place.

  “Delicious. I never really learned to cook.”

  “Cooking was something I learned young.”

  Her eyes were curious. “Where was that?”

  “Lees.” Shortly. He put a spoonful of chowder in his mouth so that his terseness would be more understandable.

  “I never heard the name.”

  “It’s a planet.” Mumbling through chowder. “Pretty obscure.” He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I’m from Earth.”

  He looked at her. “Really? Originally? Not just a habitat in the Sol system?”

  “Yes. Truly. One of the few. The one and only Earth.”

  “Is that what got you interested in whales?”

  “I’ve always been interested in whales. As far back as I can remember. Long before I ever saw one.”

  “It was the same with me. I grew up near an ocean, built a boat when I was a boy and went exploring. I’ve never felt more at home than when I’m on the ocean.”

  “Some people live on the sea all the time.”

  “In floating habitats. That’s just moving a city out onto the ocean. The worst of both worlds, if you ask me.”

  He realized the beer was making him expansive, that he was declaiming and waving his free hand. He pulled his hand in.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “about the last time we talked.”

  She looked away. “My fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He realized he had almost shouted that, and could feel himself flushing. He lowered his voice. “Once I got out here I realized…” This was really hopeless. He plunged on. “I’m not used to dealing with people. There were just a few people on Lees and they were all … eccentric. And everyone I’ve met since I left seems at least five hundred years old. Their attitudes are so…” He shrug
ged.

  “Alien.” She was grinning.

  “Yes.”

  “I feel the same way. Everyone’s so much older, so much more … sophisticated, I suppose.” She thought about it for a moment. “I guess it’s sophistication.”

  “They like to think so.”

  “I can feel their pity sometimes.” She toyed with her spoon, looked down at her bowl.

  “And condescension.” Bitterness striped Anthony’s tongue. “The attitude of, oh, we went through that once, poor darling, but now we know better.”

  “Yes.” Tiredly. “I know what you mean. Like we’re not really people yet.”

  “At least my father wasn’t like that. He was crazy, but he let me be a person. He—”

  His tongue stumbled. He was not drunk enough to tell this story, and he didn’t think he wanted to anyway.

  “Go ahead,” said Philana. She was collecting data, Anthony remembered, on families.

  He pushed back from the table, went to the fridge for another beer. “Maybe later,” he said. “It’s a long story.”

  Philana’s look was steady. “You’re not the only one who knows about crazy fathers.”

  Then you tell me about yours, he wanted to say. Anthony opened the beer, took a deep swallow. The liquid rose again, acid in his throat, and he forced it down. Memories rose with the fire in Anthony’s throat, burning him. His father’s fine madness whirled in his mind like leaves in a hurricane. We are, he thought, in a condition of mutual trust and permanent antagonism. Something therefore must be done.

  “All right.” He put the beer on the top of the fridge and returned to his seat. He spoke rapidly, just letting the story come. His throat burned. “My father started life with money. He became a psychologist and then a fundamentalist Catholic lay preacher, kind of an unlicensed messiah. He ended up a psychotic. Dad concluded that civilization was too stupid and corrupt to survive, and he decided to start over. He initiated an unauthorized planetary scan through a transporter gate, found a world that he liked, and moved his family there. There were just four of us at the time, dad and my mother, my little brother, and me. My mother was—is—she’s not really her own person. There’s a vacancy there. If you’re around psychotics a lot, and you don’t have a strong sense of self, you can get submerged in their delusions. My mother didn’t have a chance of standing up to a full-blooded lunatic like my dad, and I doubt she tried. She just let him run things.