People had to save the valley.
Why shouldn’t they? A rational part of Jopale knew what was at stake—what almost every long-term prediction said was inevitable. But he couldn’t shake his selfish need to enjoy the next cycle and the rest of his life. This ground had always been a part of him. Why wouldn’t he want it saved? Let other people lose their little places. Let the Continent die everywhere but here. That’s what he told himself as he walked down the path, the perfumed rag pressed against his nose and mouth, a self-possessed optimism flourishing for those next few steps.
Where the gases hadn’t reached, epiphytes still flourished. Each tree stood apart from its neighbors, like the hair on the head of an elderly mockman. That made for a tall open forest, which in turn allowed the land to receive its share of sunlight. A flock of day-yabbers watched him from the high branches, leathery wings folded close, bright blue eyes alarmed by nothing except his presence. Giant forest roaches danced from crevice to crevice. Wild scramblers hid in nests of hair and woven branches, calling out at him with soft mournful voices. Then the path bent and dropped, and everything changed. More yabbers lay dead beneath their perches, and countless silverfish and juvenile worms had crawled up out of their holes before dying. A giant golden gyretree—one of Jopale’s favorite specimens—was already turning black at its base. But the air was breathable again, the wind having blown away the highest poisons. Jopale wished he had his breathing mask, but had left it inside his house, floating in a cupboard somewhere close to his dead lover. That woman had always been good company. But in death, she had grown unreal, abstract and distant. Walking around a next turn in the trail, Jopale found himself imagining her funeral and what delicate role he might play. And that was when he saw the wild scramblers that had fled the rising gas, but not fast enough. They belonged to one of the ground-dwelling species; he wasn’t sure which. They had short hairy bodies and long limbs and little hands that reached out for nothing. Crests of bright blue fur topped the otherwise naked faces. The gases had stolen away their oxygen, then their lives. Already they were beginning to swell and turn black, lending them a strange, unfamiliar appearance; and when Jopale looked into their miserable little faces, he felt a sharp, unbearable fear.
In death more than life, those scramblers resembled human beings.
Here was the moment when everything changed for this scholarly gentleman—this creature of tradition and habit, of optimism and indifference. Gazing into those smoky green eyes and the wide mouths choked by their fat purple tongues, he saw his own future. That he didn’t love the dead woman was important: If they were married and had children, and if his family had died today, Jopale would have felt an unrelenting attachment to this tiny corner of the world. In their honor, he would have ignored the urge to run away, remaining even as the land splintered and bled poisons and turned to dust and dead water.
But escape was what he wanted. The urge was sudden and irresistible. And later, when he examined what was possible, Jopale discovered only one solution that gave him any confidence.
If he sold his parents’ land to his surviving neighbors and relatives, and if he bled his savings blue… then he could abandon the only home he had ever known, and forsake the sun, as well as abandoning all of those foolish little scramblers who couldn’t see past their next little while…
* * * *
WORLD’S EDGE
The great worm had come to a stop, but its muscles continued to shiver, long ripples traveling the length of the body, its misery made all the more obvious by a deep low moan that Jopale didn’t hear so much as he felt it in his bones.
World’s Edge: In some past eon, the city stood on the Continent’s shoreline, nothing beyond but darkening skies and bottomless water. For generations, this great port had served as a home for fishermen, and more importantly, for the brave souls who journeyed onto the trackless sea-hunting giant rust-fins and the copper eels and vicious many-mouths. Fortunes were made from every carcass brought home—great masses of inedible meat and iron-rich bone pushed into furnaces and burned away, leaving nothing behind but a few dozen kilos of precious metal. But new islands were always being born, oftentimes half a world away, and they grew as they wandered, eventually slamming into this coastline and sticking fast. Removed from its livelihood, the once great city fell into hard times. Most of the neighboring towns vanished completely. But World’s Edge managed to survive, clinging to its outmoded name, and when times and the world’s growing population demanded it, the city blossomed again, new industries and a relentless sense of commerce producing a metropolis where two million people could live out their busy, unexceptional lives.
Birth and growth, followed by death and rebirth—no story told by Man was as important as this.
Then the Continent suddenly drifted west, and again, World’s Edge wore the perfect name.
Jopale considered the ironies as he carried his bags to the front of the intestine, then out through an artificial sphincter fitted into the worm’s side. From there, it was a short climb to the station’s high wooden platform. A bright sign flashed from the top of the greeting arch, displaying the present atmospheric readings, followed by the cheery promise, “No hazards, none foreseen.” The sun hovered just above the eastern horizon, stratospheric clouds and low pollution obscuring only a portion of its fierce glare. Squinting, Jopale faced the sun. At least two large balloons were visible in the sky, suspended on long ropes, spotters busily watching the land for geysers or more subtle ruptures. Behind him, long shadows stretched toward lands rendered unfit for normal life. Not that nothing and no one could live out there… but still, Jopale felt as if he was standing on the brink of a profound desolation, and that image struck him in some innate, profoundly emotional fashion…
The caretakers walked on top of their friend and along the concave, heavily greased trail, examining the worm’s gray skin and poking its long tired muscles, sometimes using electric wands but mostly employing nothing but their bare hands. The worm’s reflexes were slow. The old caretaker said as much to the younger workers. “She’s gone too far with too many in her empty bellies,” Master Brace complained, gesturing at the milling passengers. “She needs half a cycle at least, and all she can eat.”
Jopale realized their delay would be longer than he had anticipated. Pulling two tickets from his traveler’s belt, he carefully read the deeply legal language. If he didn’t reach Port of Krauss within another fifteen cycles, the worm’s owners would refund half of the value of the first ticket. But that was an inconsequential gesture, all things considered. Because the second ticket promised him a small cabin onboard a methane-fueled ship that would leave for the New Isles two cycles later. Punctuality was his responsibility. If he was late, the ticket was worthless. And Jopale would be trapped in the Port with every other refugee, shepherding the last of his money while absorbing news from around the world, hoping that the coming nightmare would take its time and he could eventually purchase a new berth on some later, unpromised vessel.
What good would fear do him now? Or rage?
“No good at all,” he said with a stiff voice, turning his back to the sun.
The station was a strangely quiet place. The only other worms were small or plainly ill, and even those specimens were pointed west, aimed at the darkness, as if waiting for the order to flee. Besides caretakers, the only human workers were soldiers. Older men, mostly. Disciplined and probably without families—exactly the sort of people to be trusted in the worst of times. Two soldiers stood farther up the worm, guarding the sphincter leading into the stomach. Mockmen waited in the darkness. Each creature had its owner’s name tattooed on its forearms and back. Humans had to come forward to claim what was theirs, and even then, the soldiers questioned them with suspicious voices—as if somebody might try to steal one of these creatures now.
The mysterious young woman was standing with the other passengers, her book in one arm, eyes pointed in the general direction of the unloading.
�
�Which is yours?” Jopale asked.
She didn’t seem to hear the question. Then he realized that her gaze reached past the mockmen, bright tan eyes staring at the night lands, her mind probably traveling on to her destination.
“Good Mountain, is it?” Jopale asked.
“I’m sorry, no.” She was answering his first question, smiling in his general direction. “I don’t own any of these creatures.”
Jopale had brought a mockman from home, to help with his bags and his life, as well as giving him this ready excuse to stand where he was, chatting with this young woman.
With a quiet, gentlemanly voice, he offered his name.
She nodded and said, “Yes. Good Mountain.”
They had found a pattern. He would ask some little question, and she would answer his former question.
“The word ‘mountain,’ “ he said. “Do you know what it means?”
She smiled now, glancing at his face. “Do you?”
He allowed himself the pleasure of a wise nod. “It is an ancient word,” he answered. “The oldest texts employ it. But even by then, the word had fallen into a rotten disuse.”
“Really?”
“We have words for ridges and hills. With great clarity, we can describe the color and quality of any ground. But from what we can determine, using our oldest sources, ‘mountain’ implies a titanic uplifting of something much harder than any wood. Harder and more durable, and a true mountain rises high enough to puncture the sky. At least according to some expert interpretations.”
She laughed, very softly. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“That’s why they picked the name,” she explained.
Jopale didn’t understand, and his expression must have said as much.
“Of course, there’s no actual mountain there,” she admitted. “It’s just a flat plain shoved high by a set of faults and buoyant substrates. But there was a time, long ago, when the Continent pushed in from every side, and an entire island was buried. Buried and carried a long ways under the sea.”
The woman liked to explain things. Was she a teacher?
“Interesting,” Jopale offered, though he wasn’t convinced that it was.
“That island is like a mountain in reverse, you see. It extends a long ways below the waterline. Like a fist sticking out from the bottom of the Continent, reaching deeper into our ocean than any other feature we know of.”
“I see,” he muttered.
But why would she call it, “Our ocean”? How many oceans were there?
“That’s why the science station was built there,” she explained. “ ‘A good mountain to do research.’ That what my colleagues used to joke.”
“What kind of research?” he asked.
“Land distortions and water cycles, mostly. And various experts who work with that submerged ground.”
He said, “Really?” with a false enthusiasm.
The woman nodded, returning to her distant stare.
“Is that your specialty?” he asked, trying to read the binding of her book. “Prehistoricislands?”
“Oh, no.” She passed the heavy book to her other arm.
“Then what do you do?”
It was an exceptionally reasonable question, but she was a peculiar creature. Smiling as if nothing had ever been funnier, she said, “Do-ane.” She wasn’t quite looking at his face, telling him, “That is my name.”
He didn’t have a ready response.
“You told me yours. I assumed you wanted to know mine.”
“Thank you,” Jopale muttered.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t say anything else.”
He nodded and shrugged. And then his mockman emerged from the stomach: A mature female with big blue eyes riding high on her broad stoic face. Jopale had recently purchased her from a cousin, replacing the mockmen he had lost when the valley flooded. For her species, she was smart and adaptable. By any standard, she was loyal, and in countless domestic tasks, she was helpful. And like every passenger from the worm’s stomach, she smelled of acid and other unpleasant secretions. But at least this creature didn’t want to play word games, or dance silly secrets before his eyes.
Jopale spoke to one of the soldiers, proving his ownership to everyone’s satisfaction.
“My bags,” he ordered.
The creature snatched each by its rope handle.
“This way,” he said. Then with a minimal nod, he excused himself from Do-ane, pushing through the station, searching for some place where the noble refugee might eat a fit meal.
* * * *
PARANOIA
Dining halls next to worm stations were rarely elegant. World’s Edge was an exception: Using the local wood, artisans had carved long blocks into a series of omega-shaped beams, each a little different from the others, all linked like ribs to form a single long room. Woven gyre-tree branches created a porous roof. Heavy planks had been bleached white and laid out for a floor, each fastened to the foundation with solid pins made of dense black knot-wood. The tables and chairs were brightly colored, orange and gold predominating, everything made from slick new plastics—one of those expensive programs underwritten by some well-meaning government agency, public moneys helping lock away a few breaths of methane into this more permanent form. The usual indoor epiphytes clung to the overhead beams—vigorous plants with dark leaves that thrived in the artificial light, their fingerlike roots drinking nothing but the travelers’ nervous breathing. Jopale noticed a familiar figure planted at one end of a busy table, accompanied by two mockmen that sat backwards on turned-around chairs, eating their rations off their laps—a common custom in many places.
“May I join you?” asked Jopale.
“Please.” The man was tall even when he was sitting, and unlike practically everyone else in the place, he wasn’t eating. His old map was opened up before him, and with long fingers and sharpened nails, he measured and remeasured the distances between here and Port of Krauss.
Jopale set down his platter and handed his mockman two fresh rations of syrup-and-roach. The big female settled on the floor, legs crossed, hands and mind focused on the screw-style lids on both wooden jars.
Unsure what to say, Jopale said nothing. But silence proved uncomfortable, which was why he eventually picked the most obvious topic. “So why are you going to Port of Krauss?”
The thin man glanced up for a moment, apparently startled.
“You are going there, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry then,” said Jopale. “I just assumed—“
“My trip doesn’t end there,” the thin man continued. “I have business, of a kind… business in another place…”
“The New Isles?”
Surprise turned to pleasure. “Are you going there too?”
Jopale nodded.
“Well, good. I knew there had to be others. Wonderful!”
Somehow that revelation didn’t bring comfort. Jopale had the impression that his companion was difficult, and the idea of traveling with him across the rest of the Continent and then out over the Ocean felt daunting, if not out and out unpleasant.
“I need somebody to keep my confidence up,” the tall man proclaimed.
What did confidence have to do with anything?
“My name is Rit.”
“Jopale.”
Rit didn’t seem to hear him. Glancing over his shoulder, he observed, “There aren’t any people working in the kitchen. Did you notice?”
Only mockmen were cooking and washing dishes. There wasn’t even an overseer walking among them, keeping order.
“I don’t know if I could make myself go to work,” Jopale admitted. “All that’s happening, even if it’s far from here—“
“Not that far away,” Rit interrupted.
“What? Has the news changed?”
“Aren’t things awful enough as they are?” The tall man shuddered, then steered clear of that dangerous subject. He licked his lips and star
ed down at the big map, fingers stretched wide. Then with a tight voice, he asked the lines and tiny dots, “You do believe in the Isles, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The narrow face twisted. “But have you ever seen the Isles? Or do you know anyone who’s actually visited them?”
Jopale had never considered the possibility. “What do you mean? How could they not exist?” He immediately reached for the only book in his personal satchel—a leather-bound, professionally printed volume full of photographs and exhaustive explanations. With his voice rising, he said, “I haven’t heard anything like that. Not even the rumor of a rumor.”
Rit shook his head and began to fold up his map, saying to no one in particular, “I’m sorry. I have these panics. Always have.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection Page 60