The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  It was hard work, tricky, too. I didn’t think I had the time to rig a quick belay before Dactyl got there. At least the grapple was light, three kilos at most, but as it swung wider and wider it threatened to pull me off at each end of its swing, especially as the corner formed by the barrier concentrated the wind somewhat.

  Finally the grapple raised far enough on the swing away from the corner. As it dropped to the bottom of its swing I began pulling it in. As the moment arm decreased the grapple sped up, gaining enough speed to flip up above the edge of the overhang. I had no idea how thick the overhang was or even if there was something up there for the grapple to catch on. I held my breath.

  There was a distant clinking noise as it struck something and the rope slackened. For an instant I thought it was dropping back down and I was scared because I was already off balance and I didn’t know how far Dactyl was behind me. Then the rope stopped moving and the grapple didn’t drop into sight.

  I risked a quick look behind. Dactyl was still a hundred meters away. I took the rope and moved back around the corner, pulling the rope cautiously tight. As luck would have it, with the line pulled over, Dactyl wouldn’t be able to see any part of the rope until he rounded the corner.

  It took me two minutes to tie the lower end of the rope around a roughing cube and then to two more cubes for backup. Then I recklessly dropped from cube to cube until I was three stories down and hidden behind a Bernoulli exhaust vent.

  He stuck his head around the corner almost immediately. Saw the dangling line and tugged it hard. The ten-kilo test line hidden above the barrier held. Dactyl clipped a beaner over the line and leaped out, almost like a flying squirrel, his hands reaching for the rope. He was halfway out before his full weight hit the rope.

  The ten kilo test snapped immediately. I heard his indrawn breath, but he didn’t swear. Instead, as he arched down, he tried to twist around, to get his legs between him and the face as he swung into it.

  He was only partially successful, slamming hard into the corner of a roughing cube, one leg taking some of the shock. I heard the breath leave his lungs in an explosive grunt and then he was sliding down the rope toward the unattached end, grabbing weakly to stop himself, but only managing to slow the drop.

  I moved like a striking snake.

  I was already lower down the tower from where he’d hit the wall and took three giant strides from cube to cube to get directly beneath him. Then he was off the end of the rope and dropping free and my hand reached out, snared his climbing harness, and I flattened myself atop the cube I was on.

  For the second time that day I nearly dislocated my shoulder. His weight nearly pulled me off the tower. The back of my shirt suddenly split. I heard his head crack onto the cube and he felt like a sack of dirt, lifeless, but heavy as the world.

  It took some time to get him safely onto the cube and lashed in place.

  It took even longer to get my second grapple up where the first one was. It seemed my first attempt was a fluke and I had to repeat the tiring process six more times before I could clip my ascenders to the rope and inchworm up it.

  The building had narrowed above the barrier, to something like 150 meters per side. I was on the edge of a terrace running around the building. Unlike the recreation balconies below, it was open to the sky, uncaged, with only a chest high railing to contain its occupants. Scattered artfully across the patio were lounge chairs and greenery topped planters.

  I saw a small crowd of formally dressed men and women mingling on the west terrace, sheltered from the northeast wind. Servants moved among them with trays. Cocktail hour among the rich, the influential, and the cloudy.

  I pulled myself quickly over the edge and crouched behind a planter, pulling my rope in and folding my grapples.

  The terrace areas unsheltered by the wind seemed to be deserted. I looked for cameras and IR reflectors and capcitance wires but I didn’t see any. I couldn’t see any reason for any.

  Above me, the face of the tower rose another five hundred meters or so, but unlike the faces below, there were individual balconies spotted here and there among the roughing cubes. On more than one I could see growing plants, even trees.

  I had more than a hundred floors to go, perhaps 400 meters.

  My arms and legs were trembling. There was a sharp pain in the shoulder Dactyl had kicked, making it hard for me to lift that arm higher than my neck.

  I nearly gave it up. I thought about putting down my pack, unbuckling my climbing harness, and stretching out on one of these lounge chairs. Perhaps later I’d take a drink off of one of those trays.

  Then a guard would come and escort me all the way to the ground.

  Besides, I could do a hundred stories standing on my head, right? Right.

  The sun was completely down by the time I reached 700 but lights from the building itself gave me what I couldn’t make out by feel. The balconies were fancy, sheltered from the wind by removable fairings and jutting fins. I kept my eye out for a balcony with fruit trees, just in case. I wouldn’t climb all the way up to 752 if I didn’t have to.

  But I had to.

  There were only four balconies on 752, one to each side. They were the largest private balconies I’d ever seen on the tower. Only one of them had anything resembling a garden. I spent five minutes looking over the edge at planter after planter of vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and trees. I couldn’t see any lights through the glass doors leading into the building and I couldn’t see any peaches.

  I sighed and pulled myself over the edge for a closer look, standing upright with difficulty. My limbs were leaden, my breath still labored. I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears, and I still couldn’t see any peaches.

  There were some green oranges on a tree near me, but that was the closest thing to fruit I could see. I shivered. I was almost two kilometers above sea level and the sun had gone down an hour ago. My sweat soaked clothes were starting to chill.

  Something was nagging me and, at first, the fatigue toxins wouldn’t let me think clearly. Then an important fact swam into my attention.

  I hadn’t checked for alarms.

  They were there, in the wall above the railing, a series of small reflectors for the I/R beams that I’d crawled through to enter the balcony.

  Time to leave. Long past time. I stepped toward the railing and heard a door open behind me. I started to swing my leg up over the edge when I felt something stick me in the side. And then the universe exploded.

  All the muscles on my right side convulsed spasmodically and I came down onto the concrete floor with a crash, slamming my shoulder and hip into the ground. My head was saved from the same fate by the backpack I wore.

  Taser, I thought.

  When I could focus, I saw the man standing about three meters away, wearing a white khaftan. He was older than I was by decades. Most of his hair was gone and his face had deep lines etched by something other than smiling. I couldn’t help comparing him to Mad Molly, but it just wasn’t the same. Mad Molly could be as old but she didn’t look anywhere as nasty as this guy did.

  He held the taser loosely in his right hand. In his left hand he held a drink with ice that he swirled gently around, clink, clink.

  “What are you doing here, you disgusting little fly?”

  His voice, as he asked the question, was vehement and acid. His expression didn’t change though.

  “Nothing.” I tried to say it strongly, firmly, reasonably. It came out like a frog’s croak.

  He shot me with the taser again. I caught the glint on the wire as it sped out, tried to dodge, but too late.

  I arched over the backpack, my muscles doing things I wouldn’t have believed possible. My head banged sharply against the floor. Then it stopped again.

  I was disoriented, the room spun. My legs decided to go into a massive cramp. I gasped out loud.

  This seemed to please him.

  “Who sent you? I’ll know in the end. I can do this all night long.”

&nb
sp; I said quickly, “Nobody sent me. I hoped to get some peaches.”

  He shot me again.

  I really didn’t think much of this turn of events. My muscles had built up enough lactic acid without electro-convulsive induced contractions. When everything settled down again I had another bump on my head and more cramps.

  He took a sip from his drink.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said. “Nobody would risk climbing the outside for peaches. Besides, there won’t be peaches on that tree for another five months.” He pointed the taser. “Who sent you?”

  I couldn’t even talk at this point. He seemed to realize this, fortunately, and waited a few moments, lowering the taser. Then he asked again, “Who sent you?”

  “Get stuffed,” I told him weakly.

  “Stupid little man.” He lifted the taser again and something smashed him in the arm, causing him to drop the weapon. He stooped to pick it up again but there was a streak of gray and the thud of full body contact as someone hit him and bowled him over onto his back.

  I saw the newcomer scoop up the taser and spin sharply. The taser passed over my head and out over the railing.

  It was Dactyl.

  The man in the khaftan saw Dactyl’s face then and said, “You!” He started to scramble to his feet. Dactyl took one sliding step forward and kicked him in the face. The man collapsed in a small heap, his khaftan making him look like a white sack with limbs sticking out.

  Dactyl stood there for a moment looking down. Then he turned and walked slowly back to me.

  “That was a nasty trick with the rope.”

  I laughed, albeit weakly. “If you weren’t so lazy you would have made your own way up.” I eyed him warily, but my body wasn’t up to movement yet. Was he going to kick me in the face, too? Still, I had to know something. “How did you pass me down there, below the barrier? You were exhausted, I could see it.”

  He shrugged. “You’re right. I’m lazy.” He flipped a device off his back. It looked like a gun with two triggers. I made ready to jump. He pointed it up and pulled the trigger. I heard a chunk and something buried itself in the ceiling. He pulled the second trigger and there was a whining sound. Dactyl and gun floated off the floor. I looked closer and saw the wire.

  “Cheater,” I said.

  He laughed and lowered himself back to the floor. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  I told him.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No.”

  He laughed then and walked briskly through the door into the tower.

  I struggled to stand. Made it. I was leaning against the railing when Dactyl came back through the door with a plastic two-liter container. He handed it to me. It was ice cold.

  “What’s this?”

  “Last season’s peaches. From the freezer. He always hoards them until just before the fresh ones are ready.”

  I stared at him. “How the hell did you know that?”

  He shrugged, took the peaches out of my hand and put them in my pack. “Look, I’d get out of here before he wakes up. Not only does he have a lot nastier things than that taser, but security will do whatever he wants.”

  He swung up over the edge and lowered himself to arm’s length. Just before he dropped completely from sight he added something which floated up with the wind.

  “He’s my father.”

  * * *

  I started down the tower not too long after Dactyl. Physically I was a wreck. The taser had exhausted my muscles in a way that exercise never had. I probably wasn’t in the best shape to do any kind of rope work, but Dactyl’s words rang true. I didn’t want anybody after me in the condition I was in, much less security.

  Security is bad. They use copters and rail cars that run up and down the outside of the building. They fire rubber bullets and water cannon. Don’t think this makes them humane. A person blasted off a ledge by either is going to die. Security is just careful not to damage the tower.

  So, I did my descent in stages, feeling like an old man tottering carefully down a flight of stairs. Still, descent was far easier than ascent, and my rope work had me down on the barrier patio in less than ten minutes.

  It was nearing midnight, actually lighter now that the quarter moon had risen, and the patio, instead of being deserted, had far more people on it than it had at sunset. A few people saw me coiling my rope after my last rappel. I ignored them, going about my business with as much panache as I could muster. On my way to the edge of the balcony I stopped at the buffet and built myself a sandwich.

  More people began looking my way and talking. An elderly woman standing at one end of the buffet took a long look at me, then said, “Try the wontons. I think there’s really pork in them.”

  I smiled at her. “I don’t know. Pork is tricky. You never know who provided it.”

  Her hand stopped, a wonton halfway to her mouth, and stared at me. Then, almost defiantly, she popped it into her mouth and chewed it with relish. “Just so it’s well cooked.”

  A white clad steward left the end of the table and walked over to a phone hanging by a door.

  I took my sandwich over to the edge and set it down while I took the rope from the pack. My legs trembled slightly. The woman with the wontons followed me over after a minute.

  “Here,” she said, holding out a tall glass that clinked. “Ice tea.”

  I blinked, surprised. “Why, thank you. This is uncommonly kind.”

  She shrugged. “You look like you need it. Are you going to collapse right here? It would be exciting, but I’d avoid it if I were you. I think that nasty man called security.”

  “Do I look as bad as all that?”

  “Honey, you look like death warmed over.”

  I finished playing out the rope and clipped on my brake-bars. “I’m afraid you’re right.” I took a bite out of the sandwich and chewed quickly. I washed it down with the tea. It wasn’t one of Mad Molly’s roast pigeons but it wasn’t garbage, either.

  “You’ll get indigestion,” the woman warned.

  I smiled and took another large bite. The crowd of people staring at me was getting bigger. There was a stirring in the crowd from over by the door. I took another bite and another swig, then swung over the edge. “We must do this again, sometime,” I said. “Next time, we’ll dance.”

  I dropped into the dark, jumping out so I could swing into the building. I didn’t reach it on the first swing, so I let out more rope and pumped my legs. I came within a yard of the tower and swung out again. I felt better than before but was still weak. I looked up and saw heads looking over the edge at me. Something gleamed in the moonlight.

  A knife?

  I reached the wall and dropped onto a roughing cube, unbalanced, unsure of my purchase. For a moment I teetered, then was able to heave myself in toward the wall, safe. I turned, to release one end of the rope, so I could snake it down from above.

  I didn’t have to. It fell from above, two new ends whipping through the night air.

  Bastards. I almost shouted it, but it seemed better to let them think I’d fallen. Besides, I couldn’t be bothered with any action so energetic. I was bone weary, tired beyond reaction.

  For the next hundred stories I made like a spider with arthritis, slow careful descents with lengthy rests. After falling asleep and nearly falling off a cube, I belayed myself during all rest stops. At one point I’m sure I slept for over an hour because my muscles had set up, stiff and sore. It took me another half hour of careful motion before I was moving smoothly again.

  Finally I reached Mad Molly’s, moving carefully, quietly. I unloaded her supplies and the peaches and put them carefully inside her door. I could hear her snoring. Then, leaving my stash under her house as usual, I climbed down, intending to see Fran and make her breakfast.

  I didn’t make it to Fran’s.

  In the half dark before the dawn they came at me.

  This is the place for a good line like “they came on me like
the wolf upon the fold” or “as the piranha swarm.” Forget it. I was too tired. All I know is they came at me, the Howlers did. At me, who’d been beaten, electroshocked, indigested, sliced at, and bone wearified, if there exists such a verb. I watched them come in dull amazement, which is not a suit of clothes, but an amalgam of fatigue and astonished reaction to the last straw on my camellian back.

  Before I’d been hurt and felt the need to ignore it. I’d been challenged and felt the need to respond. I’d felt curiosity and felt the need to satisfy it. I’d felt fear and the need to overcome it. But I hadn’t yet felt what I felt now.

  I felt rage, and the need to express it.

  I’m sure the first two cleared the recreation balcony, they had to. They came at me fast unbelayed and I used every bit of their momentum to heave them out. The next one, doubtless feeling clever, landed on my back and clung like a monkey. I’d passed caring, I simply threw myself to the side, aiming my back at the roughing cube two meters below. He tried, but he didn’t get off in time. I’m grateful though, because the shock would have broken my back if he hadn’t been there.

  I don’t think he cleared the rec balcony.

  I ran then, but slowly, so angry that I wanted them to catch up, to let me use my fists and feet on their stubborn, malicious, stupid heads. For the next ten minutes it was a running battle only I ran out of steam before they ran out of Howlers.

  I ended up backed into a cranny where a cooling vent formed a ledge some five meters deep and four meters wide, when Dactyl dropped into the midst of them, a gray blur that sent three of them for a dive and two more scrambling back around the edges.

  I was over feeling mad by then and back to just feeling tired.

  Dactyl looked a little tired himself. “I can’t let you out of my sight for a minute, can I?” he said. “What’s the matter? You get tired of their shit?”

  “Right…” I laughed weakly. “Now I’m back to owing you.”

  “That’s right, suck-foot. And I’m not going to let you forget it.”

  I tottered forward then and looked at the faces around us. I didn’t feel so good.

  “Uh, Dacty.”