The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “Will they find them?” I asked.

  Mam shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  There was a lot to do to get ready for the outrunners besides hiding the best whisak. Mam had us count the kegs, even Veronique. Then when we all three finally agreed on a number she wrote it in her tally book. “So we know how much we sell,” she said.

  We were just finishing counting when outrunners came with Ayudesh. They came into the front. First the wind like a wild dog sliding around the door and making the fires all sway. Then Ayudesh and then the outrunners. The outrunners looked short compared to Ayudesh. And they looked even harder than we did. Their cheeks were winter red. Their felts were all dark with dirt, like they’d been out for a long time.

  “Hie,” said one of the men, seeing my mother. They all grinned. People always seemed surprised that they were going to trade with my mam. The outrunners already smelled of whisak so people had finally made them welcome. Or maybe someone had the sense to realize that if they gave them drink we’d have time to get things ready. Maybe my da.

  My mam stood as she always did, with her arms crossed, tall as any of them. Waiting them out.

  “What’s this,” said the man, looking around. “Eh? What’s this? It stinks in here.” The distillery always stank.

  They walked around, looked at the kegs, poked at the copper tubing and the still. One stuck his finger under the drip and tasted the raw stuff and grimaced. Ayudesh looked uncomfortable, but the teachers always said that the distillery was ours and they didn’t interfere with how we ran it. Mam was in charge here.

  Mam just stood and let them walk all around her. She didn’t turn her head to watch them.

  They picked up the brand. “What’s this?” the man said again.

  “We mark all our kegs with the eye of Uukraith,” Mam said.

  “Woman’s work,” he said.

  He stopped and looked at Veronique. He studied her for a moment, then frowned. “You’re no boy,” he said.

  Veronique looked at me, the whites of her eyes bright even in the dimness, but she didn’t say anything.

  He grinned and laughed. The other two outrunners crowded close to her and fingered the slick fabric of her sleeve, touched her hair. Veronique pulled away.

  The first outrunner got bored and walked around the room some more.

  He tapped a keg. Not like Mam thumped them, listening, but just as if everything here were his. He had dirty brown hair on the backs of his hands. Everywhere I looked I was seeing people’s hands. I didn’t like the way he put his hands on things.

  Then he pointed to a keg, not the one he was tapping on but a different one, and one of the other men picked it up. “Is it good?” he asked.

  My mam shrugged.

  He didn’t like that. He took two steps forward and hit her across the face. I looked at the black packed dirt floor.

  Ayudesh made a noise.

  “It’s good,” my mam said. I looked up and she had a red mark on the side of her face. Ayudesh looked as if he would speak but he didn’t.

  The outrunner grabbed her braid – she flinched as he reached past her face – and yanked her head. “It’s good, woman?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice coming almost airless, like she could not breathe.

  He yanked her down to her knees. Then he let go and they all went out with the keg.

  Ayudesh said, “Are you all right?” Mam stood back up again and touched her braid, then flipped it back over her neck. She didn’t look at any of us.

  People were in the schoolhouse. Ayudesh sat on the table at the front and people were sitting on the floor talking as if it were a meeting. Veronique’s teacher was sitting next to Ayudesh and Veronique started as if she was going to go sit with him. Then she looked around and sat down with Mam and Tuuvin and me.

  “So we should just let them take whatever they want?” Harup said. He wasn’t clowning now, but talking as a senior hunter. He sat on his heels, the way hunters do when they’re waiting.

  Ayudesh said, “Even if we could get guns, they’re used to fighting and we aren’t. What do you think would happen?”

  Veronique was very quiet. She sat down between Tuuvin and me.

  “If we don’t stand up for ourselves, what will happen?” Harup said.

  “If you provoke them they’ll destroy us,” Ayudesh said.

  “Teacher,” Harup said, spreading his hands as if he was telling a story. “Stabros are not hunting animals, eh. They are not sharp toothed like haunds or dogs. Haunds are hunters, packs of hunters, who do nothing but hunt stabros. There are more stabros than all the haunds could eat, eh. So how do they choose? They don’t kill the buck stabros with their hard toes and heads, they take the young, the old, the sick, the helpless. We do not want to be haunds, teacher. We just want the haunds to go elsewhere for easy prey.”

  Wanji came in behind us, and the fire in the boxstove ducked and jumped in the draft. Wanji didn’t sit down on the table, but as was her custom, lowered herself to the floor. “Old hips,” she muttered as if everyone in the room wasn’t watching her. “Old women have old hips.”

  When I thought of Kalky, the old woman who makes the souls of everything, I thought of her as looking like Wanji. Wanji had a little face and a big nose and deep lines down from her nose to her chin. “What happened to you, daughter?” she asked my mam.

  “The outrunners came to the distillery to take a keg,” Mam said.

  I noticed that now the meeting had turned around, away from Ayudesh on the table towards us in the back. Wanji always said that Ayudesh was vain and liked to sit high. Sometimes she called him ‘High-on.’ “And so,” Wanji said.

  My mother’s face was still red from the blow, but it hadn’t yet purpled. “I don’t think the outrunners like to do business with me,” Mam said.

  “One of them hit her,” I said, because Mam wasn’t going to. Mam never talked about it when my da hit her, either. Although he didn’t do it as much as he used to when I was Bet’s age.

  Mam looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if she was angry with me or not.

  Harup spread his hands to say, ‘See?’

  Wanji clucked.

  “We got the three-year-old whisak in the cellar,” Mam said.

  I was looking but I didn’t see my da.

  “What are they saying,” Veronique asked.

  “They are talking,” I said, and had to think how to say it, “about what we do, but they, eh, not, do not know? Do not know what is right. Harup want guns. Wants guns. Ayudesh says guns are bad.”

  “Wanji,” Tuuvin whispered, “Wanji, she ask – eh,” and then in our own tongue, “tell her she was asking your mam what happened.”

  “Wanji ask my mother what is the matter,” I said.

  Veronique looked at Tuuvin and then at me.

  “Guns are bad,” Veronique said.

  Tuuvin scowled. “She doesn’t understand,” he said.

  “What?” Veronique said, but I just shook my head rather than tell her what Tuuvin had said.

  Some of the men were talking about guns. Wanji was listening without saying anything, resting her chin on her head. Sometimes it seemed like Wanji didn’t even blink, that she just turned into stone and you didn’t know what she was thinking.

  Some of the other men were talking to Ayudesh about the whisak. Yet, Harup’s wife, got up and put water on the boxstove for the men to drink and Big Sherep went out the men’s door in the back of the schoolhouse, which meant he was going to get whisak or beer.

  “Nothing will get done now,” Tuuvin said, disgusted. “Let’s go.”

  He stood up and Veronique looked up at him, then scrambled to her feet.

  “Now they talk, talk, talk,” I said in English. “Nothing to say, just talk, you know?”

  Outside there were outrunners. It seemed as if they were everywhere, even though there were really not that many of them. They watched Veronique.

  Tuuvin scowled at them and I looked at their gun
s. Long black guns slung over their backs. I had never seen a gun close. And there was my da, standing with three outrunners, holding a gun in his hands as if it were a fishing spear, admiring it. He was nodding and grinning, the way he did when someone told a good hunting story. Of course, he didn’t know that one of these people had hit Mam.

  Still, it made me mad that he was being friendly.

  “We should go somewhere,” Tuuvin said.

  “The distillery?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, “they’ll go back there.” And he looked at Veronique. Having Veronique around was like having Bet, you always had to be thinking about her. “Take her to your house.”

  “And do what?” I asked. A little angry at him because now he had decided he wasn’t going back with us.

  “I don’t know, teach her to sew or something,” he said. He turned and walked across to where my dad was standing.

  The outrunners took two more kegs of whisak and got loud. They stuck torches in the snow, so the dog’s harnesses were all glittering and winking, and we gave them a stabros to slaughter and they roasted that. Some of the Sckarline men like my da – and even Harup – sat with them and drank and talked and sang. I didn’t understand why Harup was there, but there he was, laughing and telling stories about the time my da got dumped out of the boat fishing.

  Ayudesh was there, just listening. Veronique’s grandfather was out there, too, even though he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  “When will they go?” Veronique asked.

  I shrugged.

  She asked something I didn’t understand.

  “When you trade,” she said, “trade?”

  “Trade,” I said, “trade whisak, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “When you trade whisak, men come? Are you afraid when you trade whisak?”

  “Afraid?” I asked. “When Scathalos come, yes.”

  “When other people come, are you afraid?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Just Scathalos.”

  She sat on my furs. My mam was on the bed and Bet had gone to sleep. Mam watched us talk, sitting cross-legged and mending Bet’s boots. She didn’t understand any English. It felt wrong to talk when Mam didn’t understand, but Veronique couldn’t understand when I talked to Mam, either.

  “I have to go back to my hut,” Veronique said. “Ian will come back and he’ll worry about me.”

  Outside the air was so cold and dry that the inside of our noses felt it.

  “Don’t you get tired of being cold?” Veronique asked.

  The cold made people tired, I thought, yes. That was why people slept so much during winterdark. I didn’t always know what to say when Veronique talked about the weather.

  “We tell your teacher, you sleep in our house, yes?” I offered.

  “Who?” she said. “You mean Ian? He isn’t really my teacher like you mean it. He’s my professor.”

  I tried to think of what a professor might be, maybe the person who took you when your father died? It always seemed English didn’t have enough words for different relatives, but now here was one I didn’t know.

  The outrunners and the Sckarline hunters were singing about Fhidrhin the hunter and I looked up to see if I could make out the stars that formed him, but the sky had drifting clouds and I couldn’t find the stars.

  I couldn’t see well enough, the light from the bonfire made everyone else just shadows. I took Veronique’s hand and started around the outside of the circle of singers, looking for Ayudesh and Veronique’s teacher or whatever he was. Faces glanced up, spirit faces in the firelight. The smoke blew our way and then shifted, and I smelled the sweat smell that came from the men’s clothes as they warmed by the fire. And whisak, of course. The stabros was mostly bones.

  “Janna,” said my da. His face was strange, too, not human, like a mask. His eyes looked unnaturally light. “Go on back to your mother.”

  “Veronique needs to tell the offworlder that she’s staying with us.”

  “Go on back to the house,” he said again. I could smell whisak on him, too. Whisak sometimes made him mean. My da used to drink a lot of whisak when I was young, but since Bet was born he didn’t drink it very often at all. He said the mornings were too hard when you got old.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I kept looking for Veronique’s grandfather and he got angry he would probably hit me. I nodded and backed away, pulling Veronique with me, then when he stopped watching me, I started around the fire the other way.

  One of the outrunners stumbled up and into us before we could get out of the way. “Eh – ?”

  I pulled Veronique away but he gripped her arm. “Boy?”

  His breath in her face made her close her eyes and turn her head.

  “No boy,” he said. He was drunk, probably going to relieve himself. “No boy, outsider girl, pretty as a boy,” he said. “Outsider, they like that? Eh?”

  Veronique gripped my hand. “Let go,” she said in English.

  He didn’t have to speak English to see she was afraid of him.

  “I’m not pretty enough for you?” he said. “Eh? Not pretty enough?” He wasn’t pretty, he was wiry and had teeth missing on one side of his mouth. “Not Sckarline? With their pretty houses like offworlders? Not pretty, eh?”

  Veronique drew a breath like a sob.

  “Let go of her, please,” I said, “we have to find her teacher.”

  “Look at the color of her,” he said, “does that wash off? Eh?”

  “Do you know where her teacher is?” I asked.

  “Shut up, girl,” he said to me. He licked his thumb and reached towards her face. Veronique raised her hand and drew back, and he twisted her arm. “Stand still.” He rubbed her cheek with his thumb and peered closely at her.

  “Damn,” he said, pleased. “How come the old man isn’t dark?”

  “Maybe they are different clans,” I said.

  He stared at her as if weighing what I’d said. As if thinking. Although he actually looked too drunk to do much thinking. Then he leaned forward and tried to kiss her.

  Veronique pushed him away with her free arm. He staggered and fell, pulling her down, too.

  “Let go!” she shrieked.

  Shut up, I thought, shut up, shut up! Give in, he’s too drunk to do much. I tried to pull his arm off, but his grip was too strong.

  “What’s this?” another outrunner was saying.

  “Fohlder’s found some girl.”

  “It would be fucking Fohlder!”

  Veronique slapped at him and struggled, trying to get away.

  “Hey now,” Ayudesh was saying, “hey now, she’s a guest, an offworlder.” But nobody was paying attention. Everybody was watching the outrunner wrestle with her. He pinned her with her arms over her head and kissed her.

  Veronique was crying and slapping. Stop it, I kept thinking, just stop it, or he won’t let you alone.

  Her grandfather tried to pull the outrunner off. I hadn’t even seen him come up. “No no no no no,” he was saying as if scolding someone. “No no no no no—”

  “Get off him,” another outrunner hauled him away.

  Ayudesh said, “Stop! She is our guest!”

  “She’s yours, eh?” someone said.

  “No,” Ayudesh said, “she should be left alone. She’s a guest.”

  “Your guest, right. Not interested in the likes of us.”

  Someone else grunted and laughed.

  “She likes Sckarline better, eh?”

  “That’s because she doesn’t know better.”

  “Fohlder’ll show her.”

  You all stink like drunks, I wanted to scream at them, because they did.

  “Think she’s dark inside like she is outside?”

  “Have to wait until morning to see.”

  Oh, my da would be so mad at me, the stupid bitch, why didn’t she stop, he was drunk, he was drunk, why had she slapped at him, stupider than Bet, she was as stupid as Bet my little sister, I was suppo
sed to be taking care of her, I was supposed to be watching out for her, my da would be so mad –

  There was the bone crack of gunfire and everybody stopped.

  Harup was standing next to the fire with an outrunner gun pointed up, as if he were shooting at Fhidrhin up there in the stars. His expression was mild and he was studying the gun as if he hadn’t even noticed what was going on.

  “Hey,” an outrunner said, “put that down!”

  Harup looked around at the outrunners, at us. He looked slowly. He didn’t look like he usually did, he didn’t look funny or angry, he looked as if he were out on a boat in the ice. Calm, far away. Cold as the stars. He could kill someone.

  The outrunners felt it too. They didn’t move. If he shot one of them, the others would kill him, but the one he shot would still be dead. No one wanted to be the one that might be dead.

  “It’s a nice piece,” Harup said, “but if you used it for hunting you’d soon be so deaf you couldn’t hear anything moving.” Then he grinned.

  Someone laughed.

  Everybody laughed.

  “Janna,” Harup said, “take your friend and get us more whisak.”

  “Fohlder, you old walking dick, get up from that girl.” One of them reached down and pulled him off. He looked mad.

  “What,” he said, “what.”

  “Go take a piss,” the outrunner said.

  Everyone laughed.

  iii

  Veronique stayed with me that night, lying next to me in my blankets and furs. She didn’t sleep. I don’t think. I was listening to her breath. I felt as if I should help her sleep. I lay there and tried to think if I should put my arm around her, but I didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to be touched.

  And she had been a stupid girl, anyway.

  She lay tense in the dark. “Are you going to be a teacher?” I asked.

  She laughed. “If I get out of here.”

  I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. ‘Get out of here’ meant to make someone leave. Maybe she meant if she made herself.

  “You come here from Earth?” I asked. To get her to talk, although I was tired of lingua and I didn’t really want to think about anything.

  “My family came here from Earth,” she said.

  “Why?”