The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Is naaawwt.”

  Camron sighed. “Maybe Father isn’t willing to pay to have you educated, Jessie, but he’s sent me to school. Three times. ‘The world of Virga is a hollow pressure-vessel, five thousand miles in diameter.’”

  One big bubble was approaching the floor. Sunlight leaned across the window, a beam of gold from distant Candesce that was pinioning one spot of sky as the ring-shaped wooden town rotated through it. After a few seconds the beam flicked away, leaving the pearly shine of cloud-light.

  “The whole world’s a bubble,” repeated Camron, “and all our suns are man-made.”

  Jessie knew the smaller suns, which lit spherical volumes only a few hundred miles diameter, were artificial: they’d once flown past one at night, and he’d seen that it was a great glass-and-metal machine. Father had called it a “polywell fusion” generator. But surely the greatest sun of all, so ancient it had been there at the beginning of everything, so bright and hot no ship could ever approach it – “Not Candesce,” said Jessie. “Not the sun of suns.”

  Camron nodded smugly. “Even Candesce. ’Cept that in the case of Candesce, whoever built it only made so many keys – and we lost them all.” Another shaft of brilliance burst into the laundry room. “People made Candesce – but now nobody can turn it off.”

  The bubble flared in purples, greens, and gold, an inch above the floorboards.

  “That’s just silly,” scoffed Jessie. “’Cause if the whole world were just a bubble, then that would make it —”

  The bubble touched the floor, and vanished.

  “— mortal,” finished Camron. He met Jessie’s eye, and his look was serious.

  Jessie shivered and wiped at his mouth. Dried blood had caked there. His whole chest ached, his head was pounding, and he felt so weak and nauseous he doubted he’d have been able to stand if he’d been under gravity.

  He hung weightless in a strange fever-dream of a forest, with pale pink tree trunks that reached past him to open into, not leaves, but a single stretched surface that had large round or oval holes in it here and there. Beyond them he could see sky. The tree trunks didn’t converge onto a clump of soil or rock as was usual with weightless groves, but rather tangled their roots into an undulant plain a hundred yards away from the canopy.

  The light that angled through the holes shone off the strangest collection of life forms Jessie had ever seen. Fuzzy donut-shaped things inched up and down the “tree” trunks, and mirror-bright birds flickered and flashed as the light caught them. Something he’d taken to be a cloud in the middle distance turned out to be a raft of jellyfish, conventional enough in the airs of Virga, but these were gigantic.

  The whole place reeked, the sharp tang reminding Jessie of the jars holding preserved animal parts that he’d seen in the one school he briefly attended as a boy.

  He was just under the skin of the capital bug. The jet volunteers had taken turns squinting through the Mistelle’s telescope, each impressing on him- or herself as many details of the giant creature’s body as they could. Jessie recalled the strange skin that patched the monster’s back; it’d had holes in it.

  It was through these holes that they’d caught glimpses of something that might be a wrecked ship. As the fog of pain and exhaustion lifted, Jessie realized that he might be close to it now. But where were the others?

  He twisted in midair and found a threadlike vine or root within reach. Pulling himself along it (it felt uncomfortably like skin under his palms) he reached one of the “tree trunks” which might really be more analogous to hairs for an animal the size of the capital bug. He kicked off from the trunk, then off another, and so manoeuvered himself through the forest and in the direction of a brighter patch.

  He was so focused on doing this that he didn’t hear the tearing sound of the jet until it was nearly on him. “Jessie! You’re alive!” Laughter dopplered down as a blurred figure shot past from behind.

  It was Chirk, her canary-yellow jacket an unmistakable spatter against the muted colours of the bug. As she circled back, Jessie realized that he could still barely hear her jet; he must be half-deaf from the bug’s drone.

  Chirk was a good ten years older than Jessie, and she was the only woman on the missile team. Maybe it was that she recognized him as even more of an outsider than herself, but for whatever reason she had adopted Jessie as her sidekick the day she met him. He indulged her – and, even three months ago, he would have been flattered and eager to make a new friend. But he hid the blood in his cough even from her – particularly from her – and remained formal in their exchanges.

  “So?” She stopped on the air, ten feet away, and extended her hand. “Take a lift from a lady?”

  Jessie hesitated. “Did they find the wreck?”

  “Yes!” She almost screamed it. “Now come on! They’re going to beat us there – the damned Mistelle itself is tearing a hole in the bug’s back so they can come up alongside her.”

  Jessie stared at her, gnawing his lip. Then: “It’s not why I came.” He leaned back, securing his grip on the stalk he was holding.

  The bug was turning ponderously, so distant sunlight slid down and across Chirk’s astonished features. Her hand was still outstretched. “What the’f you talking about? This is it! Treasure! Riches for the rest of your life – but you gotta come with me now!”

  “I didn’t come for the treasure,” he said. Having to explain himself was making Jessie resentful. “You go on, Chirk, you deserve it. You take my share too, if you want.”

  Now she drew back her hand, blinking. “What is this? Jessie, are you all right?”

  Tears started in his eyes. “No, I’m not all right, Chirk. I’m going to die.” He stabbed a finger in his mouth and brought it out, showed her the red on it. “It’s been coming on for months. Since before I signed on with Emmen. So, you see, I really got no use for treasure.”

  She was staring at him in horror. Jessie forced a smile. “I could use my jet, though, if you happen to have seen where it went.”

  Wordlessly, she held out her hand again. This time Jessie took it, and she gunned the engine, flipping them over and accelerating back the way Jessie had come.

  As they shot through a volume of clear air she turned in her saddle and frowned at him. “You came here to die, is that it?”

  Jessie shook his head. “Not yet. I hope not yet.” He massaged his chest, feeling the deep hurt there, the spreading weakness. “There’s somebody here I want to talk to.”

  Chirk nearly flew them into one of the pink stalks. “Someone here? Jess, you were with us just now. You heard that . . . song. You know nobody could be alive in here. It’s why nobody’s ever gotten at the wreck.”

  He nodded. “Not a —” He coughed. “Not a person, no —” The coughing took over for a while. He spat blood, dizzy, pain behind his eyes now too. When it all subsided he looked up to find they were coming alongside his jet, which was nuzzling a dent in a vast rough wall that cut across the forest of stalks.

  He reached for the jet and managed to snag one of its handlebars. Before he climbed onto it he glanced back; Chirk was looking at him with huge eyes. She clearly didn’t know what to do.

  He stifled a laugh lest it spark more coughing. “There’s a precipice moth here. I heard about it by chance when my family and me were doing a performance in Batetran. It made the newspapers there: Moth Seen Entering Capital Bug.”

  “Precip – Precip moth?” She rolled the word around in her mouth. “Wait a minute, you mean a world-diver? One of those dragons that’re supposed to hide at the edges of the world to waylay travellers?”

  He shook his head, easing himself carefully onto the jet. “A defender of the world. Not human. Maybe the one that blew up the royal palace in Slipstream last year. Surely you heard about that.”

  “I heard about a monster. It was a moth?” She was being uncharacteristically thickheaded. Jessie was ready to forgive that, considering the circumstances.

  She showed no signs
of hying off to her well-deserved treasure, so Jessie told her the story as he’d heard it – of how Admiral Chaison Fanning of Slipstream had destroyed an invasion fleet, hundreds of cruisers strong, with only seven little ships of his own. Falcon captured him and tortured him to find out how he’d done it, but he’d escaped and returned to Slipstream, where he’d deposed the Pilot, Slipstream’s hereditary monarch.

  “Nobody knows how he stopped that invasion fleet,” said Chirk. “It was impossible.”

  Jessie nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. But I found out.”

  Now she had to hear that story, but Jessie was reluctant to tell her. He’d told no one else because he trusted no one else, not with the location of one of the greatest secrets of the world. He trusted Chirk – she had her own treasure now – yet he was still reluctant, because that would mean admitting how he’d been wedged into a dark corner of Rainsouk Amphitheater, crying alone when the place unexpectedly began to fill with people.

  For months Jessie had been hearing about Rainsouk; his brothers were so excited over the prospect of performing here. Jessie was the youngest, and not much of an acrobat – he could see that in his father’s eyes every time he missed a catch and sailed on through the weightless air to fetch up, humiliated, in a safety net. Jessie had given up trying to please the family, had in fact become increasingly alone and isolated outside their intense focus and relentless team spirit. When the cough started he tried to hide it, but their little travelling house was just too small to do that for long.

  When Father found out, he was just disappointed, that was all. Disappointed that his youngest had gotten himself sick and might die. So Jessie was off the team – and though nobody said it out loud, off the team meant out of the family.

  So there he’d been, crying in the amphitheatre he’d never get to perform in, when it began to fill with black-garbed men and women.

  As he opened his mouth to refuse to tell her, Jessie found himself spilling the whole story, humiliating as it was. “These visitors, they were terrifying, Chirk. It looked like a convention of assassins, every man and woman the last person you’d want to meet on a dark night. And then the scariest of them flew out to the middle of the place and started to talk.”

  The very world was threatened, he’d said. Only he and his brothers and sisters could save it, for this was a meeting of the Virga home guard. The guard were a myth – so Jessie had been taught. He’d heard stories about them his whole life, of how they guarded the walls of the world against the terrifying monsters and alien forces prowling just outside.

  “Yet here they were,” he told Chirk. “And their leader was reminding them that something is trying to get in, right now, and the only thing that keeps it out is Candesce. The sun of suns emits a . . . he called it a ‘field,’ that keeps the monsters out. But the same field keeps us from developing any of the powerful technologies we’d need to stop the monsters if they did get in. Technologies like radar. . . . and get this:

  “It was radar that made Admiral Chaison Fanning’s ships able to run rings around Falcon Formation’s fleet. Because Fanning had found a key to Candesce, and had gone inside to shut down the field for a day.”

  Chirk crossed her arms, smiling skeptically. “Now this is a tall tale,” she said.

  “Believe it or not,” said Jessie with a shrug, “it’s true. He gave the key to the precipice moth that helped him depose the Pilot, and it flew away . . . the home guard didn’t know where. But I knew.”

  “Ahh,” she said. “That newspaper article. It came here.”

  “Where it could be sure of never being disturbed,” he said eagerly.

  “And now you’re, what? – going to duel it for the key?” She laughed. “Seems to me you’re in no state to slay dragons, Jess.” She held out her hand. “Look, you’re too weak to fly, even. Come with me. At least we’ll make you rich before . . .” She glanced away. “You can afford the best doctors, you know they —”

  He shook his head, and spun the pedals of the jet’s starter spring. “That moth doesn’t know what I overheard in the amphitheatre. That the walls of the world are failing. Candesce’s shield isn’t strong enough anymore. We need the key so we can dial down the field and develop technologies that could stop whatever’s out there. The moth’s been hiding in here, it doesn’t know, Chirk.”

  The jet roared into life. “I can’t slay a dragon, Chirk,” he shouted. “But at least I can give it the news.”

  He opened the throttle and left her before she could reply.

  They dressed as heroes. Dad wore gold and leather, the kids flame-red. Mom was the most fabulous creature Jessie had ever seen, and every night he fell in love with her all over again. She wore feathers of transparent blue plex, plumage four feet long that she could actually fly with when the gravity was right. She would be captured by the children – little devils – and rescued by Dad. They played all over the principalities, their backdrop a vast wall of spinning town wheels, green ball-shaped parks and the hithering-thithering traffic of a million airborne people. Hundreds of miles of it curved away to cup blazing Candesce. They had to be amazing to beat a sight like that. And they were.

  For as long as Jessie could remember, though, there had been certain silences. Some evenings, the kids knew not to talk. They stuck to their picture books, or played outside or just plain left the house for a while. The silence radiated from Mom and Dad, and there was no understanding it. Jessie didn’t notice how it grew, but there came a time when the only music in their lives seemed to happen during performance. Even rehearsals were strained. And then, one day, Mom just wasn’t there anymore.

  They had followed the circus from the principalities into the world’s outer realms, where the suns were spaced hundreds of miles apart and the chilly darkness between them was called “winter”.

  Jessie remembered a night lit by distant lightning that curled around a spherical stormcloud. They were staying on a little town wheel whose name he no longer remembered – just a spinning hoop of wood forty feet wide and a mile or so across, spoked by frayed ropes and home to a few hundred farm families. Mom had been gone for four days. Jessie stepped out of the hostel where they were staying to see Dad leaning out over the rushing air, one strong arm holding a spoke-rope while he stared into the headwind.

  “But where would she go?” Jessie heard him murmur. That was all that he ever said on the matter, and he didn’t even say it to his boys.

  They weren’t heroes after that. From that day forward, they dressed as soldiers, and their act was a battle.

  The capital bug was hollow. This in itself wasn’t such a surprise – something so big wouldn’t have been able to move under its own power if it wasn’t. It would have made its own gravity. What made Jessie swear in surprise was just how little there was to it, now that he was inside.

  The bug’s perforated back let in sunlight, and in those shafts he beheld a vast oval space, bigger than any stadium he had ever juggled in. The sides and bottom of the place were carpeted in trees, and more hung weightless in the central space, the roots of five or six twined together at their bases so that they thrust branch and leaf every which way. Flitting between these were mirror-bright schools of long-finned fish; chasing those were flocks of legless crimson and yellow birds. As Jessie watched, a struggling group of fish managed to make it to a thirty-foot-diameter ball of water. The pursuing birds peeled away at the last second as the punctured water ball quivered and tossed off smaller spheres. This drama took place in complete silence; there was no sound at all although the air swarmed with insects as well as the larger beasts.

  Of course, nothing could have made itself heard over the buzz of the capital bug itself. So, he supposed nothing tried.

  The air was thick with the smell of flowers, growth, and decay. Jessie took the jet in a long curving tour of the vast space, and for a few moments he was able to forget everything except the wonder of being here. Then, as he returned to his starting point, he spotted the wreck, and the Mistel
le. They were high up in something like a gallery that stretched around the “top” of the space, under the perforated roof. Both were dwarfed by their setting, but he could clearly see his teammates’ jets hovering over the wreck. The stab of sorrow that went through him almost set him coughing again. It would only take seconds and he’d be with them. At least he could watch their jubilation as they plundered the treasure he’d helped them find.

  And then what? They could shower him with jewels but he couldn’t buy his life back. At best he could hold such baubles up to the light and admire them for a while, before dying alone and unremarked.

  He turned the jet and set to exploring the forested gut of the capital bug.

  Jessie had seen very few built-up places that weren’t inhabited. In Virga, real estate was something you made, like gravity or sunlight. Wilderness as a place didn’t exist, except in those rare forests that had grown by twining their roots and branches until their whole matted mass extended for miles. He’d seen one of those on the fringe of the principalities, where Candesce’s light was a mellow rose and the sky permanently peach-tinged. That tangled mass of green had seemed like a delirium dream, an intrusion into the sane order of the world. But it was nothing to the wilderness of the capital bug.

  Bugs were rare; at any one time there might only be a few dozen in the whole world. They never got too close to the sun of suns, so they were never seen in the principalities. They dwelt in the turbulent middle space between civilization and winter, where suns wouldn’t stay on station and nations would break up and drift apart. Of course, they were also impossible to approach, so it was likely that no one had ever flown through these cathedrals walled by gigantic flowers, these ship-sized grass stalks dewed by beads of water big as houses. Despite his pain and exhaustion, the place had its way with him and he found himself falling into a meditative calm he associated with that moment before you make your jump – or, in midair, that moment before your father catches your hand.

  In its own way, this calm rang louder than any feeling he’d ever had, maybe because it was about something, about death, and nothing he’d ever felt before had grown on such a foundation.