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

by Gardner Dozois

  Do-ane glanced at Jopale, eyes narrowed, as if blaming him for making public what she had told him in the strictest confidence.

  But he hadn’t said one word.

  “She and her friend here thought that I was napping,” Rit confessed. “But I wasn’t. I heard every word they said.”

  Do-ane looked embarrassed, shrinking a little bit, and her tiny hands nervously wrestled with one another.

  Jopale tried to find a reply—gentle words to help deflate the palpable tension. But then a hard prolonged shock came through the ground, everybody’s legs bending, and the land beneath them fell several meters in one steady, terrifying moment.

  When the falling sensation ended, the old woman asked Do-ane, “Would you explain that, dear? What just happened?”

  “This ridge,” Do-ane began, opening her hands again. “We’re standing on the last slab of the Tanglelands. It’s the largest slab, and it reaches back to the east, deep underwater, ending up under Left-of-Left.” Like a teacher, she used hands to help explain. “As the ground above is burned away, and as methane rushes to the open surface, this land’s foundation is being torn loose.”

  As if to prove her words, the ridge shook again.

  Jopale looked over his shoulder, but Master Brace had slipped away. He was standing beside the worm, he and the two drivers busily manipulating a leather sack filled with some kind of dense liquid. The sack was connected to a hose, and the hose fitted into a needle large enough to push through two grown men. The trio was having trouble with the work, and noticing Jopale, the caretaker cried out, “Sir, would you help us? Just for a moment. She knows we’re up to something, and she isn’t cooperating.”

  The others glanced at Jopale, surprised he would be called, and perhaps a little impressed.

  The worm had stopped against the trail’s closer edge. But there were still a few steps of greased ground to cross. Generations of worms had laid down this thick impermeable oil—the same white gunk that its wild counterparts used to lubricate their enormous tunnels. On soft-soled shoes, Jopale let himself slide down to the creature. He hadn’t touched a worm since he was a boy, and he didn’t relish touching one now. He could smell oil and worm sweat—a rich mingling of distinct odors—and he looked up at the vestigial limb, crooked and thin and held flat against the huge gray body.

  “Take this extra wand, sir,” said Brace. “Like I’m doing. Just stroke her belly, if you will.”

  The rubber wand ended with a metal electrode, batteries strapped to a spicewood handle. The drivers had set a tall ladder beside the worm, spikes driven through the oil and into the ground. The woman driver climbed quickly and her colleague followed—a boyish fellow carrying the enormous needle as if it was a spear. The ladder was topped by a narrow platform. The woman grabbed the limb and pulled hard, and Brace ran his wand back and forth against the worm’s slick belly, small blue flashes producing what must be a pleasurable tingle.

  The woman forced the limb to extend.

  “Why there?” Jopale asked, mimicking the old man’s motions.

  “It’s a good blood-rich site,” he said quickly, as if speaking one long word. “And besides, there’s no time to open the usual veins.”

  The other passengers had come to watch and listen. Except for Do-ane, who drifted to the far end of the platform, studying her magnificent fire.

  “Is this a drug?” Jopale wanted to know.

  “I like the word ‘medicine,’ “ the caretaker admitted. Patting the sack, he said, “We keep this stuff for drivers more than for the worm. Of course, there’s enough in this sack to kill a thousand people. But what it is—“

  Somebody cursed, and a second voice shouted, “Watch out!”

  The long needle fell between Jopale and Brace, landing flat on the oil.

  “It’s a stimulant, sir.” The caretaker picked up the needle, and with a quick voice explained, “It will make our girl faster, and she won’t need sleep, and it may well kill her. But of course, we don’t have any choice now.”

  “I suppose—“

  “Two more favors, sir. Please?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the needle up. All right?” Then he asked for a second favor; promising, “It should help quite a lot.”

  Jopale had never enjoyed heights, but he didn’t hesitate. There were twenty rungs to manage, and the breeze seemed to grow stronger as he climbed higher. Over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the crew returning from the warehouse, nothing worth stealing in their hands. Then Jopale was standing on the narrow platform, and the driver had the vestigial limb extended as far as she could, and her assistant took the needle with both hands, starting to jab its tip into the exposed flesh while shouting, “Now!”

  A tiny pump began to sing.

  “The hand, sir,” Brace called out. “Please, sir.”

  The worm’s arm was tiny compared to its enormous body, but it was far longer than any human limb. Perched on the end of it were three lingers fused into a knobby extrusion and a stiff little finger beside it. And there was a thumb, too. Not every worm possessed thumbs; Jopale had read that odd fact once or twice. And more unusual, this particular thumb could move, at least well enough to curl around his hands as he clasped hold of the worm. Then he squeezed its hand as tight as he could, trying to make certain that his grip was noticed, letting the great beast feel a little more ease, at least until the medicine found its home.

  * * * *

  WORMS

  Then they were moving again. The pace felt swift, but the worm was sliding down a considerable slope. Without landmarks, the casual eye had trouble discerning their true speed. But later, when they were crossing a flat empty plain, Jopale was sure they were making swift progress. Wandering up into the throat again, he listened to the hard swift beating of the heart, and he was sure that, whatever else, the creature’s body was expending a fabulous amount of energy.

  Returning to the stomach, he found every passenger gathered around Do-ane. “Show us that book of yours,” Rit was saying. “Show us your machine.”

  “We’re very interested,” said the rich woman’s companion. Then with a wink, he asked, “What harm would it do?”

  People were scared and miserable and desperate for any distraction.

  Jopale sat next to Do-ane.

  She seemed to consider the possibilities. Then she said, “Here,” and opened the book to a fresh page—a page showing photographs of giant chambers and smooth-walled tunnels. Holding her torch above, she explained what she had already told Jopale, and a little more. “We think these were living quarters. It’s hard to realize how big everything… but this is a colleague of mine, here, standing in the background…”

  The scientist was little more than a dot on the grayish landscape.

  “If this machine was a ship that traveled between the stars, as some believe… as I believe… then its engines would have produced an acceleration, and this would have been the floor.” She pulled a fond finger over the image. “This was taken ten years ago. Do you see the dirt in the corner?”

  Some people nodded, but those in the back could see nothing.

  Do-ane turned the page. The next image was a large black-and-white photograph showing a skull and ribs and a very long backbone that had curled up in death. The earlier colleague was present again, standing on the giant skull. And again, he was still little more than a dot on this bizarre landscape.

  “That’s a dead worm,” Jopale whispered.

  Do-ane glanced at him, then at the others.

  “This machine came from another star,” Rit said, repeating her verdict.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “A spaceship, you’re saying?”

  “It seems obvious—“

  “And that’s where our worms came from, too?” The tall man was kneeling on the other side of her, his expression doubtful but focused. “They came from this spaceship of yours?”

  Do-ane said, “Yes.”

  Then she said, “No.”

/>   “Which is it?” Rit demanded.

  The young woman sighed. And then a second time, she sighed. Finally she looked up, telling everyone, “Suppose that we built a starship, and we went out hunting for a new home. Even a machine as powerful as this needs a great deal of time to cross from one sun to the next. And if that new sun didn’t happen to have an inviting world, we’d have to travel farther. And if that next sun didn’t offer a home, then we would have to travel farther still. And if we could never find a planet like our old home, at some point, wouldn’t we have to make do with the best world that was in reach?”

  Jopale tried to study the worm’s skeleton.

  “I don’t know any of this as fact,” she said. “But we’ve learned this much. This starship’s crew was nothing like us. Not like people, or anything simply organic.” She ran a finger along the edge of the fossil skull. “What looks like bone is not. It’s ceramic and very tough, ancient beyond anything we can measure. And what organs we find aren’t livers or hearts or lungs. They’re machines, and we can’t even begin to decipher how they might have functioned when they were slipped inside a living body.”

  Rit started to make a comment, then thought better of it.

  “These creatures were built from metals and ceramics, plus rare earth elements that exist to us only in the tiniest amounts. Scarce beyond measure. But if you look deeper into the galaxy, into the spiral arms, you see suns with more metals than our sun has. And presumably, the worlds circling them are built from similar bones.”

  She breathed, breathed again.

  “Our sun, you see… it is very large and bright, and it is metal poor and rather young. By many measures, it won’t live long at all. Less than a billion years, which is a short time in the universe.” She lifted her torch higher, allowing more people to see the bizarre skeleton. “I don’t know any of this for sure. I’m telling you a story, and maybe it’s all wrong. But what I think happened… what many of my colleagues, the true geniuses in this endeavor, feel is self-evident… is that this starship journeyed all the way to our world and could go no farther. It landed on the Ocean and tasted the water, tasted the air, and its crew took what they had in reach. Metals were scarce, as were silicon and all the other heavy elements. But at least they could borrow the oldest genetics inside their own bodies. To build a full functioning ecosystem, they wove a thousand new species. Humans. Mockmen. Copper-eels and many-mouths. Plus all the little scramblers. And they used the other species that were brought with them. We’ve found spores and dead seeds on the ship, so we’re sure that our ancestors brought plants with them. They devised giant plants that could thrive on the Ocean’s surface, roots reaching deep to bring up the scarce minerals. And think of our forest roaches, too. We have found little versions of them dead in the ship’s darkest corners, hiding in the cracks. Incredible as it sounds, perhaps they rode here as pests.”

  “But where are the human bones?” Jopale asked.

  She looked at him, her face sad for a brief moment, but then drifting into a cautious amusement.

  “I mean the crew that piloted this starship,” Jopale continued. “What finally happened to them?”

  Judging by the murmurs, others had made the same obvious assumption.

  Do-ane shook her head. Then she said, “No,” with a grim finality. “Think if you can in these terms: You fly from star to star. Your body is as much a machine as it is flesh. And everything you need comes to you with the help of your loyal machinery. With that kind of freedom, you can acquire any shape that you wish. Which is why you might allow your limbs to grow smaller with the eons, and why you perhaps would decide, finally, to let yourself become a worm.

  “Assuming that we began as human beings, of course. Or something that resembles humans, back on that other world of ours. “This lost, unnamable home.”

  * * * *

  GOOD MOUNTAIN

  Caretakers began to hurry through the stomach, in twos and threes, carrying buckets of salve and sacks of buffering agents back into the now-empty intestines. Jopale guessed what this meant, and he felt sure when another pair of caretakers arrived, hurriedly dismantling the latrine and its privacy curtain. But where would the worm’s next meal come from, and how much time would they spend waiting for her to eat her fill?

  Capping the nearly filled latrine, the caretakers began wrestling it towards the esophagus. That was when Jopale decided to confront them, and that was when Master Brace finally reappeared.

  The old caretaker wore a grimacing smile. He tried to wink at Jopale, and then he noticed Do-ane sitting among the passengers, flipping from page to page in her enormous book.

  “Are we stopping now?” Jopale asked.

  Brace nodded. With a distracted voice, he said, “There’s an emergency locker up ahead. Always stocked with knuckle-roots and barrels of sap. Or at least it’s supposed to be stocked.”

  His voice fell away.

  “How long will this take?” Jopale wanted to know.

  Brace heard something in his tone. Speaking with absolute surety, he admitted, “My girl needs food. Badly. If we don’t give her sugar, we won’t make it off this wasteland. Fire or not.”

  Jopale nodded. “All right. I see.”

  “Good Mountain,” said the caretaker. “That’s where we’re stopping.”

  A dozen faces looked up.

  Realizing that he had been noticed, Brace straightened his back and took a deep breath. Then without hesitation, he said, “Everyone will disembark. The feeding will be done as fast as possible. And from this point, everyone rides on top of the worm. Up where the mockmen are sitting now.”

  The old woman bristled. “But where will my mockmen ride?”

  “They will not, madam.” With squared shoulders, the caretaker faced the spoiled creature, explaining to her and to everyone, “This is an emergency situation, if ever there was. And I’m using the powers of my office, madam. Do not try to stop me.”

  The woman shrank a little bit.

  But her companion, smelling his duty, climbed to his feet. “We can’t just leave these creatures behind,” he argued.

  Brace smiled. Then he laughed, quietly and with considerable relish. And he opened his arms while gesturing at the surrounding stomach, admitting, “Oh, I don’t intend to leave them. Not at all.”

  * * * *

  There was no station at Good Mountain, abandoned or otherwise. There wasn’t even an auxiliary trail for a worm to pull to one side. But the foundations for homes were visible, plus markings lain out to define a network of streets. The only signs of recent habitation were the promised locker—an underground facility little bigger than a worm’s stomach—and standing to the north, a beacon tower built of wood and capped with an enormous bone-lined bowl. A reservoir of fats and cured sap was burning slowly, yellow flames swirling with the wind. In other times, this would have been the brightest light for a hundred kilometers—a navigation point to help any lost souls. But the firestorm to the east made the fire seem quite weak. Against that rushing, sizzling wall of scorching fire and vaporized wood, everything about the world seemed small and feeble.

  The wind was blowing harder now, and with it came a chill from the west, causing Jopale to shiver.

  Caretakers worked frantically, breaking open the locker, rolling barrel after barrel onto the trail directly in front of the worm. And other caretakers ordered the mockmen off the worm’s back, gathering them together on the dusty, dry ground, loud voices warning them not to take another step.

  Jopale thought he could hear the firestorm, even though it was still ten or twenty kilometers behind them.

  It sounded like water, oddly enough. Like a strong current flowing over a brink, then falling fast.

  Do-ane appeared suddenly, almost close enough to touch him. Her boots were buttoned. Her book was cradled under one arm. She studied his face for a moment. Then she regarded the firestorm with the same speculative intensity. And finally, she said to Jopale, “Come with me.”

  H
e wasn’t surprised. For a long while now, he had imagined this invitation and his response. But what startled him was his own reaction, feeling decidedly unsure about what to do.

  “My colleagues are there now,” she continued, pointing at the still-distant tower. “Behind the beacon is a little hut, and there’s a shaft and elevator that will drop us all the way to the starship—“

  “What about me?” Rit interrupted.

  Do-ane gave him a moment’s glance. She seemed unprepared for his entirely natural question.

  “Your starship is huge,” Rit reminded her. “Huge and empty. Don’t you think your friends would welcome me, too?”

  She tried to speak.

  Then the old wealthy woman stepped forward. “There isn’t much time, miss. Where’s this sanctuary of yours—?”