The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He thought about getting a tattoo on his face. Deciding what it ought to look like occupied his thoughts for the next couple of hours, as Bill sat silent across from him, staring at the monitors and twisting his hands together in his lap.

  Then:

  “Something’s moving!” said Bill, pointing at the backup cam monitor.

  Ford spotted it: something gleaming, sunlight striking off a vehicle far back in their dust-wake.

  “Yowie! It’s another Hauler!” he said. “Billy’s saved!”

  He slowed Beautiful Evelyn and turned her around, so the plume of dust whirled away and they could see the other vehicle more clearly.

  “It’s not a Hauler,” said Bill. “It’s just a cab. Who is that? That’s nobody I know.”

  “Who cares?” said Ford, pounding on the console in his glee. “They’ll know how to get back to the road!”

  “Not if they’re lost too,” said Bill. The stranger was barreling toward them quite deliberately and they could see it clearly now: a freighter’s cab with no tank attached, just the tang of the hookup sticking out behind, looking strange as some tiny insect with an immense head. It pulled up alongside them. Bill hit the comm switch and cried, “Who’s that?”

  There was a silence. Then a voice crackled through the speakers, distorted and harsh: “Who’s that crying ‘who’s that?’ Sounds like a youngster.”

  Ford leaned over and shouted, “Please, we’re lost! Can you show us how to get back to the road?”

  Another silence, and then:

  “Two little boys? What’re you doing out here, then? Daddy had a mishap, did he?”

  Bill gave Ford a furious look. Ford wondered why, but said:

  “Yes, sir! We need to get him to the infirmary, and our nav system went out in the storm! Can you help us?”

  “Why, sure I can,” said the voice, and it sounded as though the speaker were smiling. “Mask up now, kids, and step Outside. Let’s talk close-up, eh?”

  “You jackass,” muttered Bill, but he pulled on his mask.

  When they slid down out of the cab they saw that the stranger had painted his cab with the logo CELTIC POWER and pictures of what had been Celtic knots and four-leaved clovers, though they were half scoured away. The hatch swung up and a man climbed out, a big man in a psuit also painted in green and yellow patterns. He looked them over and grinned within his mask.

  “Well, hello there, kids,” he said. “Gwill Griffin, at your service. Diamond prospector by trade. What’s the story?”

  “Bill’s dad had a blowout,” said Ford. “And we were trying to get him back, but we’ve lost the road. Can you help us, please?”

  “A blowout?” The man raised his eyebrows. “Now, that’s an awful thing. Let’s have a look at him.”

  “You don’t need—“ began Bill, but Mr. Griffin had already vaulted up into Beautiful Evelyn’s cab. Bill and Ford scrambled after him. By the time they had got in he was already in the back, leaning down to peer at Billy.

  “Dear, dear, he’s certainly in trouble,” he said. “Yes, you’d better get him back to Mons Olympus, and no mistake.” He looked around the inside of the cab. “Nice rig he’s got here, though, isn’t it? And a nice full tank of C02, I take it?”

  “Yeah,” said Ford. “It happened right as we were finishing up. Do you know how to, er, recalibrate nav systems?”

  “No trouble at all,” said Mr. Griffin, shoving past them and into the seat at the console. Bill watched him closely as he punched it up and set in new figures. “Poor little lads, lost on your own Outside. You’re lucky I found you, you know. The road’s just five kilometers east of here, but you might have wandered around forever without finding it.”

  “I knew we had to be close,” said Ford, though he did not feel quite the sense of relief he might have, and wondered why.

  “Yes; terrible things can happen out here. I saw your rig in the middle of nowhere, zigzagging along, and I said to myself: ‘Goddess save me, that must be Freeze-Dried Dave!’ I’ve seen some strange things out here in my time, I can tell you.”

  “Who’s Freeze-Dried Dave?” asked Ford.

  “Him? The Demon Hauler of Mare Cimmerium?” Mr. Griffin turned to him, pushing his mask up. He was beardless and freckled, though he wore a wide mustache, and was not as old as Ford had thought him to be at first.

  “Nobody knows who Freeze-Dried Dave was; just some poor soul who was up here in the early days, and they say he died at the console whilst on a run, see? And his cab’s system took over and went on Autopilot. They think it veered off the road in a storm and just kept rovering on, and every time the battery’d wear out it’d sit somewhere until another storm scoured the dust off the solar cells. Then it’d just start itself up again.”

  Ford realized what was making him uneasy. The man sounded like an actor in a holo, like somebody who was speaking lines for an effect.

  “Some prospectors found it clean out in the middle of nowhere, and went up to it and got the hatch to open. There was Freeze-Dried Dave still sitting inside her, shriveled up like; but no sooner had they set foot to the ladder than she roared to life and took off, scattering ‘em like bowling pins. And what do you think she did then? Only swerved around and came back at ‘em, that’s what she did, and mashed one into the sand while the others ran for their lives.

  “They made it home to tell the tale. There’s many a Hauler since then who’s seen her, thundering along on her own business off the road, with that dead man rattling around inside. Some say it’s Dave’s ghost driving her, trying to find his way back to Settlement Base. Some say it’s the freighter herself, that her system’s gone mad with sorrow and wants to kill anyone gets close enough, so they don’t take her Dave away. You’ll never find a prospector like me who’ll go anywhere near her. Why it’s bad luck even to see her.” He winked broadly at Ford.

  “We need to get my dad to the infirmary,” said Bill, clearing his throat. “Thanks for helping us. Let’s go, okay?”

  “Right,” said Mr. Griffin, masking up again. “Only you’d best let me do a point-check on your freighter first, don’t you think? That was quite a storm; could be all sorts of things gummed up you don’t know about. Wouldn’t want to have a breakdown out here, eh?”

  “No, sir,” said Ford. Mr. Griffin jumped down from the cab. Bill was preparing to jump after him, but he held up his hand.

  “Now, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “You lads sit in there and watch the console. I’m going to test the tread relays; that’s the surest thing will go wrong after a storm, with all those little magnetic particles getting everywhere and persuading the relays to do things they shouldn’t. Could cause all your wheels to lock on one side, and you don’t want that to happen at speed! You’d roll and kill yourselves for sure. I’ll just open the panel and run a quick diagnostic; you can give me a shout when the green lights go on.”

  “Okay,” said Bill, and climbed back in and closed the hatch. As soon as it was closed, he swore, and kept swearing. Ford stared at him.

  “What are you on about?” he demanded. “We’re safe now.”

  “No, we Woody aren’t,” said Bill. “Gwill Griffin, my butt. I know who that guy is. His name’s Art Finlay. He was one of Mother’s Boys. She fired him last year. He liked to go into the holding cell and slap guys around. He thought nobody was looking, but the cameras caught him. So all that old-diamond-prospector-with-his-tall-tales stuff was so much crap. So’s the PanCeltic accent; he emigrated up here from some place in the Americans on Earth.”

  “So he’s a phony?” Ford thought of the inexplicably creepy feeling the stranger had given him.

  “Yeah. He’s a phony,” said Bill, and reached over to switch on the comm unit. “How are those relays?” he said.

  “Look fine,” was the crackly answer. “Your daddy took care of this rig, sure enough. Look at the console, now, lads; tell me when the green lights go on.”

  They stared at the panel, and in a moment: “They�
�re on,” chorused Bill and Ford.

  “Then you’re home and dry.”

  “Thanks! We’re going to go on now, okay?” said Bill.

  “You do that. I’ll just follow along behind to be sure you get home safe, eh?”

  “Okay,” said Bill, and shut off the comm. “Get going!” he told Ford. “Five kilometers due east. We ought to be able to see it once we get over that rise. Let’s leave this guy way behind us.”

  Ford started her up again, and Beautiful Evelyn rolled forward. She picked up speed and he charged her at the hill, feeling a wonderful sense of freedom as she zoomed upward. Bill cut into his reverie by yelling:

  “The camera’s been changed!”

  “Huh?”

  “Look,” said Bill, pointing up at the left-hand monitor. It was no longer showing Beautiful Evelyn’s port side and a slice of ground, as it had been; now there was only a view of the northern horizon. “He moved the lens. Move it back!”

  “I don’t know how!” Ford leaned in, flustered, as Bill jumped up and reached past him to stab at the controls that would align the camera lenses. Beautiful Evelyn’s side came back into view.

  “She looks all right,” said Ford. “And, hey! There’s the High Road! Hooray!”

  “No, she doesn’t look all right!” said Bill. “Look! He left the relay panel open! How come the telltale warning isn’t lit?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ford.

  “Of course you don’t know, you flaming idiot,” said Bill, shrill with anger. “And here he comes!”

  Ford looked up at the backup cam and saw Mr. Griffin’s cab advancing behind the freighter; then the image switched to the left-hand camera, as it moved up on Beautiful Evelyn’s port side. It drew level with the open panel. They watched in horror as the cab’s hatch swung down. They saw Mr. Griffin, masked up, leaning out.

  “He’s going to do something to the panel!” shrieked Bill.

  “Oh, no, he won’t,” said Ford, more angry than he had ever been in his life. Without a second’s hesitation, he steered Beautiful Evelyn sharply to the left. She more than sideswiped Mr. Griffin; with a terrific crash, she sent his cab spinning away, rolling over and over, and they saw him go flying out of it. Beautiful Evelyn lurched and sagged. They rumbled to a stop. They sat for a moment, shaking.

  “We have to go see,” said Bill. “Something’s wrong.”

  They masked up and went Outside.

  * * * *

  9

  Beautiful Evelyn’s foremost left tire had exploded. There was a thick crust of polyceramic around the wheel, but nothing else. It must have sent pieces flying in all directions when it burst. Ford gaped at it while Bill ran down to the open panel. Ford heard a lot of swearing. He turned and saw Bill tearing something loose, and holding it up.

  “Duct tape,” said Bill. “He put a piece of duct tape over the warning sensor.”

  “Did he damage the, whatzis, the relays?” Ford looked in concern at the open panel, with no idea what he was seeing inside.

  “No. You nailed him in time. But if he’d bashed them with something once we’d come up to speed, we’d have flipped over, just like he said. Then all he’d have had to do was move in and pick over the wreck. Help himself to the tank. Tell anybody who asked questions a story about some ‘poor little dead lads’ he’d found out here.” Bill looked over at the dust rising from the wreck of Griffin’s cab.

  He bent and picked up a good-sized rock.

  Ford followed his gaze.

  “You think he’s still alive?” he said, shuddering.

  “Maybe,” said Bill. “Get a rock. Let’s go find out.”

  But he wasn’t alive. They found him where he’d fallen, nine meters from his cab.

  His mask had come off.

  “Oh,” said Ford, backing away. “Oh—“

  He turned hastily and doubled up, vomiting into his mask. Turning, he ran for the freighter. Scrambling in and closing the hatch, he groped his way to the lavatory and pulled his mask off. He vomited again, under Billy’s blank gaze.

  He had cleaned himself up a little and stopped crying by the time he heard Bill coming back.

  “Can you mask up?” Bill asked him, over the commlink.

  “Yeah—“ said Ford, his voice breaking on another sob. Hating himself, he pulled the mask on and heard the hatch open. Bill climbed in.

  “We might be okay,” said Bill. “I had a look at his rig. Same size tires as ours. Maybe we can change one out.”

  “Okay,” said Ford. Bill looked at him.

  “Are you going to be all right? You’re green.”

  “I killed a guy,” said Ford.

  “He was trying to kill us,” said Bill. “He deserved what he got.”

  “I know,” said Ford, beginning to shiver again. “It’s just—the way it looked. The face. Oh, man. I’m going to see it when I close my eyes at night, for the rest of my life.”

  “I know,” said Bill, sounding tired. “That was how I felt, the first time I saw somebody die like that.”

  “Does it happen a lot?”

  “To Haulers? Yeah. Mostly to new guys.” Bill stood up. “Come on. Blow your nose and let’s go see if we can change the tire.”

  Walking out to the wreck, Ford began to giggle weakly.

  “We really blew his nose for him, huh?”

  * * * *

  The cab had come to rest upright. Its hatch had been torn away, and the inside was a litter of tumbled trash and spilled coffee that had already frozen. Ford made a step of his hands so Bill could climb up and in.

  “I don’t see any lug nuts,” Ford said, looking at the nearest tire. “How do we get them off?”

  “They’re not like tractor tires,” said Bill crossly, punching buttons on the console. “Crap. All the electronics are fried. There’s supposed to be an emergency release, though. Ours is under the console, because it’s a Mitsubishi. This is a Toutatis. Let me look around in here…”

  Ford glanced over his shoulder in the direction in which the dead man lay. He looked back hurriedly and gave an experimental tug at the tire. It felt as immovable as a ten-ton boulder. He reached in and got his arms around it, and pulled as hard as he could.

  “I think maybe this is it,” said Bill, from inside the cab. “Stand clear, okay?”

  Ford let go hastily and tried to scramble away, but the tire shot off the axle as though it had been fired from a cannon.

  It caught him in the stomach. He was thrown backward two meters, and fell sprawling on the ground, too winded to groan.

  “Dumbass,” said Bill, looking down. He jumped from the cab and pushed the tire off Ford. “I said stand clear. Why doesn’t anybody ever listen to me?”

  Ford rolled over, thinking he might have to throw up again. He got painfully to his hands and knees. Bill was already rolling the tire toward Beautiful Evelyn, so Ford struggled to his feet and followed.

  He held the tire upright, standing well clear of the axle when Bill fired off the burst one. It shot all the way over to the wreck. Then Bill got back down, and, together, they lifted the tire up and slammed it into place. They drove down to the road, between two boulders, and turned north again.

  “Look, you need to get over it,” said Bill, who had been watching Ford. “It’s not like you meant to kill him.”

  “It’s not that,” said Ford, who was gray-faced and sweating. “My stomach really hurts, is all.”

  Bill leaned close and looked at him.

  “Your psuit says something’s wrong,” he said.

  “It does?” Ford looked down at himself. How had he missed that flashing yellow light? “It’s like it’s shrinking or something. It’s so tight I can almost not breathe.”

  “We have to stop,” said Bill.

  “Okay,” said Ford. Beautiful Evelyn coasted to a stop and sat there in the middle of the road, as Bill climbed over and stared intently at the diagnostic panel on the front of Ford’s psuit. He went pale, but all he said was:

 
“Let’s trade places.”

  “But you can’t drive her,” Ford protested.

  “If we’re on the straightaway and there’s no wind, I can sort of drive,” said Bill. He dove into the back, as Ford crawled sideways into his seat, and came out a moment later with one of the little tube-bags. “Stick your arm up like this, okay?”

  Ford obeyed, and watched as Bill plugged the tube into the psuit’s port. “So that’ll make me feel better?”