The man was insane, or nearly so.
“It’s just that in times like these…” Rit took a moment to compose himself. “When disaster reigns, deceitful souls prosper. Have you noticed? Criminals rise up like worms inside dead wood. They come from below to hurt good people, for profit and for fun.”
There was an obvious, ominous counter to that logic. “We’ve never seen times as bad as these,” Jopale said.
That observation earned a terrified but respectful look from his companion. “I suppose that’s so.”
“Why go to so much trouble to mislead us? With the worst happening, in far-off places now and maybe here soon… even a despicable thief knows he wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy his money…”
“Unless he doesn’t believe he will die.” Rit leaned across the table, putting his bony face close to Jopale’s face. “Most people still don’t appreciate their mortality. They read about the deaths of strangers. Places they don’t know are poisoned or burning. But until their lungs are sick and their skin is cooking, they think their chances are exceptionally good.”
There were stubborn souls in the world, yes. Jopale knew a history teacher—a brilliant man by any measure—who had openly mocked him. “Nothing ever changes in the world,” the colleague had claimed. “The Continent will shatter here and there, and some old islands will be destroyed. But others islands will survive, along with the people riding them. That is the irrefutable lesson of our past, Jopale. Our world is tough, our species is lucky, and both will survive every onslaught.”
Jopale nodded for a moment, as if accepting that remembered lecture. Then with an honest conviction, he reminded Rit, “There are easier and much cheaper ways to fool people. And steal a fortune in the process, I might add.”
His companion gave a grudging nod.
“I am like you,” Jopale continued, knowing that he wasn’t anything like this crazy fellow. “I’ve had some suspicions, yes. I wanted to know: Were the New Isles really as strong and smartly designed as their builders claim them to be? So I made inquiries before committing my money. And yes, the New Isles do exist. They were built at the Port of Krauss, at the main shipyard. The last Isle was launched just a year ago, and it’s still being towed to its final destination. I even spoke to workers at the Port, using a radiophone. And while they couldn’t promise that the Isles were located in safe places, or that I had an open berth waiting for me and my mockman, they were definite about one issue: They had done their best work, fabricating the largest, strongest ships humans had ever known.”
Jopale glanced at the cover of his book. From the bluffs overlooking the unlit ocean, someone had taken a photograph showing a wide vessel built from tough old wood. Some of the strongest, most enduring land in the world had been cut free of the Continent and floated into position, then carved into a cumbersome but durable ensemble of hulls and empty chambers. And to make the Isle even stronger, a fortune in refined metals had been fashioned into cables and struts and long nails that were fixed throughout the Isle’s body. Metal was what Port of Krauss was famous for—the rare elements that could be filtered from the cold dark seawater. With the best alloys in the world, insulated tanks were built, and they were filled with methane and dangled far beneath each Isle, using the sea’s own pressure and cold to help keep the gas liquefied. That gas would eventually power lights and hydroponics, with enough energy in reserve to tear the seawater apart… to carve hydrogen from the precious oxygen, allowing everyone to breathe without any cumbersome masks.
With the surety of a good teacher, Jopale dismissed Rit’s concerns. “These are genuine sanctuaries, and my new home is waiting for me. I just have to get there now. And I feel quite sure that I will.”
Saying those words, he believed them.
Rit seemed to take it all to heart. He put away his map and found his own copy of the member’s handbook, opening it to one of his favorite pages.
Finally, Jopale began to eat his meal. He had purchased two scrambler hands, fried but not too greasy, and a whitish lump of sweetcake and cultured algae in a salty soup, all washed down with a tall bottle of fermented sap imported from the Earlands. The drink was the most expensive item on the limited menu, and it was the most appreciated. The hard kick of the liquor was already working on his mood when his companion spoke again, using a sorry little voice to ask, “But what if?”
“What if what?” Jopale responded testily.
“What if these thieves and con artists did believe this world was coming to an end? And by promising berths to us and maybe a million others like us, they earned enough money to finance their own salvation.”
Jopale grimaced, breathing through his teeth.
“What if a New Isle is waiting, but not for us?” Rit persisted.
Jopale felt a smile emerge on its own. Then with a bitter laugh, he told lüs traveling companion, “Well then. Then we aren’t in any worse shape than the rest of the world. Now are we?”
* * * *
ON AGAIN
Jopale had always excelled at school, including respectable grades earned in each of the three sciences. But he never achieved a profound understanding of genetics or selective forces. He learned what was absolutely necessary, relying on his clear memory when it came to the standard exams. Introductory classes demanded little else, while the high-level courses—those rarefied environments where professors wanted more than disgorged fact and holy equations—had never been in his future.
But one lesson Jopale took from science was this: Mockmen were wondrous creatures, pliable and creative by every genetic measure.
A glance around the station proved that truism. Most of the mockmen were big creatures, two or three times larger than a grown human. They had been bred for compliance and power when necessary and a minimal metabolism to help reduce the food bills. Yet some of these creatures were small and slender as a child. And a few of the kitchen workers were quicker than any human being—a blessing in this hurlyburly business. What’s more, no two of them could be confused for each other, even though they might be siblings or a parent and grown child. All had an oval face and a protruding chin beneath a small, seemingly inadequate mouth. Yet each face was unique. Jopale’s own girl had descended from giants that lived for generations on his family farm—a generalist by design and by training, her head topped with beastly red hair, a dramatic chin hanging from the parabolic jaw, and blue inhuman eyes gazing out at a world full of motion and incomprehensible purpose. If the creature had a voice, she would have commanded a vocabulary of several hundred easy words. But of course the larynx was pierced when she was a baby, leaving her able to communicate only with simple gestures and vaguely human expressions. A creature of habit and duty, his mockman was too simple to understand the dire state of the world—an ignorance that Jopale couldn’t help but envy, at least now and again.
“Everything with a spine arose from a common ancestor,” he had learned long ago. His biology professor—an ancient woman blessed with her own sturdy backbone—explained to the class, “A single creature must have been the originator of us all. On some ancient continent, long dead and rotted away, this precursor to humans ran about on two legs, climbing up into the saprophytes and epiphytes, grabbing what food it could with its primitive hands.”
“Like a scrambler?” a student had asked.
Jopale didn’t ask the question, thankfully. The professor reacted with a click of the tongue and a sorry shake of her head. “Hardly,” she replied. “Scramblers are as far removed from our founding species as we are. As the mockmen are. Flying yabbers, copper eels, plus everything else you can name… all of these species would look at that vanished organism as being its very distant ancestor. That is, if simple beasts could ever think in such abstract terms.”
“But where did the first vertebrates come from?” another student inquired. “From the sea? Or from some earlier continent?”
“Nobody knows,” the professor replied. Then with the surety of age, she added, “And nobody
will ever discover that unnecessary answer. Since there’s no way to study the matter any further than it has been studied by now.”
* * * *
Jopale had been sitting in the station for several hours, changing position as the plastic chair pushed against his rump. At that moment, he happened to be thinking about his biology teacher, long dead, and about the nature of surety. And to stave off boredom, he was studying the astonishing diversity of false humans who sat and walked among those who were real.
Suddenly a short, homely mockman entered the dining hall. It was female, dressed in the stiff uniform of a station worker. And like with a few of her species, some quirk of genetics had swollen her skull, giving her a genuine forehead under a cap of thick black hair. That forehead was remarkable enough. But then the newcomer opened her mouth, revealing a clear and exceptionally strong voice.
“The westbound worm is rested and ready,” she sang out, the clarity of each word taking travelers by surprise. “Leave by way of the door behind me, sirs and madams. If you have a ticket. You must have a ticket. The westbound worm is fed and eager. She will be leaving shortly, my friends.”
Most of the room stood up.
“That wasn’t as long as I feared.” An elderly woman wearing elegant clothes and amber gems was smiling at her good fortune. “I was ready to sit for quite a while longer,” she admitted to her companion.
A handsome man, perhaps half her age, muttered, “I wonder why this is.”
The rich woman had to laugh at him. “It’s because we are special, darling. What more reason do you need?”
Jopale was among the last to reach the open doorway. Soldiers were waiting, carefully examining each ticket and every piece of identification. Meanwhile, the uniformed mockman stood beside the long line, smiling happily. Why did that creature make him feel so uneasy? Was it her face? Her voice? No, what bothered Jopale was the way she stared at the other faces, black eyes settling only on those who were human.
“Good journey,” she said to Jopale.
Then to Rit, who was directly behind him, she said, “You are in trustworthy hands, sir. No need to worry.”
She could read the man’s fear.
A one-in-a-million creature, thought Jopale. Or there was another explanation, and far more sordid, too. Glancing over his shoulder, he wondered if she could be a hybrid—a quirk of biology that wasn’t destroyed at birth, but instead was fed and trained for this halfway demanding task. Nothing like her would ever happen in his homeland. It wasn’t allowed. But World’s Edge was a different part of the world, and Jopale’s long journey had taught him many lessons, including that every place had its own culture, and cultures were defined by odd little customs understandable only to themselves.
“This way, this way!” the old caretaker cried out.
Jopale showed the soldiers what they wanted to see, his own mockman standing silently to his right.
Master Brace was at the end of the long platform, shouting for the passengers and waving both arms. Even at a distance, his face betrayed a look of genuine concern. Something bad must have happened. But their giant worm lay motionless on the greased trail, apparently sleeping. Its intestine was still jammed full of half-digested food. The worm’s bloated shape said as much, and looking through the plastic windows, Jopale saw a rich dark mixture of masticated wood pulp and sweet knuckle-roots, happy muscles pressing the feast into new positions, the elastic walls working on the stubborn chunks and bubbles.
The passengers were being led up toward the stomach.
Jopale was disgusted, but compliant. The wealthy woman who talked about being special was now first to complain. Shaking an accusing finger at the caretaker, she said, “I did not pay for an acid bath.”
The caretaker had discarded his charm. He looked tired and perhaps a little scared, not to mention short of patience. “Her stomach isn’t hungry anymore,” he said with a loud, slow voice. “And it’s thoroughly buffered, madam. You’ll be comfortable enough inside there. I promise.”
“But my mockmen—“
“Will ride above, in the open air.” Brace gestured impatiently. The pilothouse was fixed on top of the long blind head, and behind it were ropes and straps and simple chairs. With a loud voice, Brace told every passenger, “If we waited for my baby to empty her bowels, we’d remain here until the next cycle. Which might be just as well. But word just came up from One-Time—“
An earlier stop, two cycles to the east.
“A new fissure has broken open there. The situation is dicey. And since there’s room enough inside the stomach, I’m sure you can see… this is the best answer to our many problems… !”
The passengers turned together, gazing toward the east. While everyone was busily filling his own belly, the bright face of the sun had been covered over. Distant clouds seemed thicker than natural and blacker, and the clouds were rising up like a great angry wall, towering over the green land that these people had only recently journeyed across.
A purposeful panic took hold of the crowd.
Jopale claimed his belongings from his mockman and ordered her to climb on top of the worm. Then he passed through the cramped sphincter and into the stomach, sniffing the air as an afterthought, pleased to find it fresh enough and even a little scented. The shaggy pink floor was a little damp but not truly wet. Worm stomachs were shorter than the duodenum, and most of the floor had been claimed. A simple latrine stood in back. Do-ane sat alone in the middle of the remaining space, hiking boots beside her. She showed Jopale a polite smile, nothing more. Where else could he go? Nowhere. Claiming the empty stomach to her right, he threw open his traveling blanket and inflated his pillow. Setting the pillow on the highest portion of his floor, he tried to ignore her. Then Rit knelt on the other side of the young woman, carefully laying out his blanket, preparing his fragile nerves for the next leg of this very long journey.
Jopale was terrified, genuinely terrified, right up until the moment when the alarms were sounded.
The sharp wailing of sirens began in the distance, diluted and distorted by the worm’s body. Then the station’s sirens joined in, and the floor rolled ominously. Was it a quake, or was the worm waking? Probably both reasons, he decided. Then the stomach sphincter closed, choking off the worst of the noise, and the giant creature gulped air into its long lungs and into its empty belly, needing little prompting to begin squirming against the trail’s slick surface. Rolling muscle and the long powerful tail created a sound unlike any other in nature. Jopale was reminded of a thick fluid being forced down a very narrow drain. Slowly, slowly, the creature built its momentum, the trail’s oils eliminating most of the friction, allowing its bulk to gradually become something swift and relentless.
Passengers held their air masks in their hands, waiting for instructions or the telltale stink of a gas cloud. Because there had to be gas somewhere close. A quake wasn’t reason enough to sound the city’s alarms. Yet curiously, in the midst of this obvious emergency, Jopale felt much calmer. He knew he had to remain vigilant and clearheaded. And gas was only an inconvenience to a man with the proper equipment. Standing beside one of the few stomach windows, he watched the station vanish behind them, replaced by broad government buildings and assorted shops, and then suddenly, by countless homes stacked three deep and set beside narrow, shade-drenched streets. A few mockmen were walking with purposeful shuffles; otherwise no one appeared in the open. Most of the homes were shuttered and sealed. If poisons were boiling up from below, private detectors would smell them, and people would huddle inside their little safe rooms, breathing filtered air or oxygen from bottles, or breathing nothing but the increasingly stale air. An awful experience, Jopale knew. There was no more helpless feeling in the world. Yet his overriding emotion now was a tremendous, almost giddy relief.
He had escaped again, just in time.
Do-ane joined him. The window was quite tiny, not designed for looking outside, but instead to let in sunlight and allow the caretakers to monitor th
e mockmen who normally rode here. Do-ane stood on her toes to look outside. She seemed prettier when she was nervous, and rather more appealing. In her hand was the most sophisticated gas-gauge that Jopale had ever seen. In a whisper, she said, “Hydrogen sulfide.”
His own confidence fell to pieces. Methane was awful—suffocating and flammable—but the putrid hydrogen sulfide gas was far worse. There were places beneath the Continent where the dissolved oxygen had been exhausted. The living wood and dark currents couldn’t freshen that water any more. And different types of rot took hold there, anaerobic bacteria creating a sour poison that could kill within minutes.
The city kept sliding past.
“Is that a body?” she asked suddenly.
What might be a mockman was lying on its side, tucked against the foundation of a long house. Or was it just trash dressed in a blanket? Jopale wasn’t sure, and then they had passed both the body and the street. With his own quiet voice, he said, “It was nothing.”
“It was human,” Do-ane said.
“A sleeping mockman,” he offered. “Or a dead one, maybe. But that means nothing. Disease or age, or boys out damaging property, maybe.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection Page 61