The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Ipan.”

  “I never would have believed a chimp could, could…”

  “I doubt anyone’s been immersed this long. Not under such stress, anyway. It all just, well, it came out.”

  He picked up Ruben’s weapon and studied the mechanism. A standard pistol, silenced. Ruben had not wanted to awaken the rest of the Station. That was promising. There should be people here who would spring to their aid. He started toward the building where the Station personnel lived.

  “Wait, what about Ruben?”

  “I’m going to wake up a doctor.”

  They did—but Leon took him into the vessel room first, to work on Ipan. Some patchwork and injections and the doctor said Ipan would be all right. Only then did he show the man Ruben’s body.

  The doctor got angry about that, but Leon had a gun. All he had to do was point it. He didn’t say anything, just gestured with the gun. He did not feel like talking and wondered if he ever would again. When you couldn’t talk you concentrated more, entered into things. Immersed.

  And in any case, Ruben had been dead for some time.

  Ipan had done a good job. The doctor shook his head at the severe damage.

  Kelly looked at him oddly throughout the whole time. He did not understand why, until he realized that he had not even thought about helping Ruben first. Ipan was himself, in a sense he could not explain.

  But he understood immediately when Kelly wanted to go to the Station wall and call to Sheelah. They brought her, too, in from the wild darkness.

  * * *

  A year later, when the industrial conspiracy had been uncovered and dozens brought to trial, they returned to the Excursion Station.

  Leon longed to lounge in the sun, after a year of facing news cameras and attorneys. Kelly was equally exhausted with the rub of events.

  But they both immediately booked time in the immersion chambers and spent long hours there. Ipan and Sheelah seemed to greet their return with something approximating joy.

  Each year they would return and live inside the minds. Each year they would come away calmer, somehow fuller.

  Leon’s analysis of sociohistory appeared in a ground-breaking series of papers, modeling all of civilization as a “complex adaptive system.” Fundamental to the intricately structured equations were terms allowing for primordial motivations, for group behavior in tension with individual longings, for deep motivations kindled in the veldt, over a thousand millennia ago. This was exact, complex, and original; his papers resounded through the social sciences, which had finally been made quantitative.

  Fifteen years later the work received a Nobel prize, then worth 2.3 million New Dollars. Leon and Kelly spent a lot of it on travel, particularly to Africa.

  When questioned in interviews, he never spoke of the long trek he and Kelly had undergone. Still, in his technical papers and public forums, he did give chimpanzees as examples of complex, adaptive behavior. As he spoke, he gave a long, slow smile, eyes glittering enigmatically, but would discuss the subject no further.

  THE DEAD

  Michael Swanwick

  We’ve been worried about technological unemployment for decades, but, as the bleak and elegant story that follows suggests, now there may be another threat to your job security: dead people. They’re back from the grave and looking for work.…

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and has gone on to become one of the most popular and respected of all that decade’s new writers. He has several times been a finalist for the Nebula Award, as well as for the World Fantasy Award and for the John W. Campbell Award, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and last year he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves.” His other books include his first novel, In the Drift, which was published in 1985, a novella-length book, Griffin’s Egg, and 1987’s popular novel Vacuum Flowers. His critically acclaimed short fiction has been assembled in Gravity’s Angels and in a collection of his collaborative short work with other writers, Slow Dancing Through Time. His most recent book is a new novel, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He’s just completed a new novel, Jack Faust. He’s had stories in our Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, and Thirteenth Annual Collections. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter, and their son Sean.

  Three boy zombies in matching red jackets bused our table, bringing water, lighting candles, brushing away the crumbs between courses. Their eyes were dark, attentive, lifeless; their hands and faces so white as to be faintly luminous in the hushed light. I thought it in bad taste, but “This is Manhattan,” Courtney said. “A certain studied offensiveness is fashionable here.”

  The blond brought menus and waited for our order.

  We both ordered pheasant. “An excellent choice,” the boy said in a clear, emotionless voice. He went away and came back a minute later with the freshly strangled birds, holding them up for our approval. He couldn’t have been more than eleven when he died and his skin was of that sort connoisseurs call “milk-glass,” smooth, without blemish, and all but translucent. He must have cost a fortune.

  As the boy was turning away, I impulsively touched his shoulder. He turned back. “What’s your name, son?” I asked.

  “Timothy.” He might have been telling me the specialité de maison. The boy waited a breath to see if more was expected of him, then left.

  Courtney gazed after him. “How lovely he would look,” she murmured, “nude. Standing in the moonlight by a cliff. Definitely a cliff. Perhaps the very one where he met his death.”

  “He wouldn’t look very lovely if he’d fallen off a cliff.”

  “Oh, don’t be unpleasant.”

  The wine steward brought our bottle. “Château Latour’17.” I raised an eyebrow. The steward had the sort of old and complex face that Rembrandt would have enjoyed painting. He poured with pulseless ease and then dissolved into the gloom. “Good lord, Courtney, you seduced me on cheaper.”

  She flushed, not happily. Courtney had a better career going than I. She outpowered me. We both knew who was smarter, better connected, more likely to end up in a corner office with the historically significant antique desk. The only edge I had was that I was a male in a seller’s market. It was enough.

  “This is a business dinner, Donald,” she said, “nothing more.”

  I favored her with an expression of polite disbelief I knew from experience she’d find infuriating. And, digging into my pheasant, murmured, “Of course.” We didn’t say much of consequence until dessert, when I finally asked, “So what’s Loeb-Soffner up to these days?”

  “Structuring a corporate expansion. Jim’s putting together the financial side of the package, and I’m doing personnel. You’re being headhunted, Donald.” She favored me with that feral little flash of teeth she made when she saw something she wanted. Courtney wasn’t a beautiful woman, far from it. But there was that fierceness to her, that sense of something primal being held under tight and precarious control that made her hot as hot to me. “You’re talented, you’re thuggish, and you’re not too tightly nailed to your present position. Those are all qualities we’re looking for.”

  She dumped her purse on the table, took out a single-folded sheet of paper. “These are the terms I’m offering.” She placed it by my plate, attacked her torte with gusto.

  I unfolded the paper. “This is a lateral transfer.”

  “Unlimited opportunity for advancement,” she said with her mouth full, “if you’ve got the stuff.”

  “Mmm.” I did a line-by-line of the benefits, all comparable to what I was getting now. My current salary to the dollar—Ms. Soffner was showing off. And the stock options. “This can’t be right. Not for a lateral.”

  There was that grin again, like a glimpse of shark in murky waters. “I knew you’d like it. We’re going over the top
with the options because we need your answer right away—tonight preferably. Tomorrow at the latest. No negotiations. We have to put the package together fast. There’s going to be a shitstorm of publicity when this comes out. We want to have everything nailed down, present the fundies and bleeding hearts with a fait accompli.”

  “My God, Courtney, what kind of monster do you have hold of now?”

  “The biggest one in the world. Bigger than Apple. Bigger than Home Virtual. Bigger than HIVac-IV,” she said with relish. “Have you ever heard of Koestler Biological?”

  I put my fork down.

  “Koestler? You’re peddling corpses now?”

  “Please. Postanthropic biological resources.” She said it lightly, with just the right touch of irony. Still, I thought I detected a certain discomfort with the nature of her client’s product.

  “There’s no money in it.” I waved a hand toward our attentive wait-staff. “These guys must be—what—maybe two percent of the annual turnover? Zombies are luxury goods: servants, reactor cleanups, Hollywood stunt deaths, exotic services”—we both knew what I meant—”a few hundred a year, maybe, tops. There’s not the demand. The revulsion factor is too great.”

  “There’s been a technological breakthrough.” Courtney leaned forward. “They can install the infrasystem and controllers and offer the product for the factory-floor cost of a new subcompact. That’s way below the economic threshold for blue-collar labor.

  “Look at it from the viewpoint of a typical factory owner. He’s already downsized to the bone and labor costs are bleeding him dry. How can he compete in a dwindling consumer market? Now let’s imagine he buys into the program.” She took out her Mont Blanc and began scribbling figures on the tablecloth. “No benefits. No liability suits. No sick pay. No pilferage. We’re talking about cutting labor costs by at least two thirds. Minimum! That’s irresistible, I don’t care how big your revulsion factor is. We project we can move five hundred thousand units in the first year.”

  “Five hundred thousand,” I said. “That’s crazy. Where the hell are you going to get the raw material for—?”

  “Africa.”

  “Oh, God, Courtney.” I was struck wordless by the cynicism it took to even consider turning the sub-Saharan tragedy to a profit, by the sheer, raw evil of channeling hard currency to the pocket Hitlers who ran the camps. Courtney only smiled and gave that quick little flip of her head that meant she was accessing the time on an optic chip.

  “I think you’re ready,” she said, “to talk with Koestler.”

  At her gesture, the zombie boys erected projector lamps about us, fussed with the settings, turned them on. Interference patterns moiréd, clashed, meshed. Walls of darkness erected themselves about us. Courtney took out her flat and set it up on the table. Three taps of her nailed fingers and the round and hairless face of Marvin Koestler appeared on the screen. “Ah, Courtney!” he said in a pleased voice. “You’re in—New York, yes? The San Moritz. With Donald.” The slightest pause with each accessed bit of information. “Did you have the antelope medallions?” When we shook our heads, he kissed his fingertips. “Magnificent! They’re ever so lightly braised and then smothered in buffalo mozzarella. Nobody makes them better. I had the same dish in Florence the other day, and there was simply no comparison.”

  I cleared my throat. “Is that where you are? Italy?”

  “Let’s leave out where I am.” He made a dismissive gesture, as if it were a trifle. But Courtney’s face darkened. Corporate kidnapping being the growth industry it is, I’d gaffed badly. “The question is—what do you think of my offer?”

  “It’s … interesting. For a lateral.”

  “It’s the start-up costs. We’re leveraged up to our asses as it is. You’ll make out better this way in the long run.” He favored me with a sudden grin that went mean around the edges. Very much the financial buccaneer. Then he leaned forward, lowered his voice, maintained firm eye contact. Classic people-handling techniques. “You’re not sold. You know you can trust Courtney to have checked out the finances. Still, you think: It won’t work. To work the product has to be irresistible, and it’s not. It can’t be.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Succinctly put.”

  He nodded to Courtney. “Let’s sell this young man.” And to me, “My stretch is downstairs.”

  He winked out.

  * * *

  Koestler was waiting for us in the limo, a ghostly pink presence. His holo, rather, a genial if somewhat coarse-grained ghost afloat in golden light. He waved an expansive and insubstantial arm to take in the interior of the car and said, “Make yourselves at home.”

  The chauffeur wore combat-grade photomultipliers. They gave him a buggish, inhuman look. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or not. “Take us to Heaven,” Koestler said.

  The doorman stepped out into the street, looked both ways, nodded to the chauffeur. Robot guns tracked our progress down the block.

  “Courtney tells me you’re getting the raw materials from Africa.”

  “Distasteful, but necessary. To begin with. We have to sell the idea first—no reason to make things rough on ourselves. Down the line, though, I don’t see why we can’t go domestic. Something along the lines of a reverse mortgage, perhaps, life insurance that pays off while you’re still alive. It’d be a step toward getting the poor off our backs at last. Fuck ’em. They’ve been getting a goddamn free ride for too long; the least they can do is to die and provide us with servants.”

  I was pretty sure Koestler was joking. But I smiled and ducked my head, so I’d be covered in either case. “What’s Heaven?” I asked, to move the conversation onto safer territory.

  “A proving ground,” Koestler said with great satisfaction, “for the future. Have you ever witnessed bare-knuckles fisticuffs?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, now there’s a sport for gentlemen! The sweet science at its sweetest. No rounds, no rules, no holds barred. It gives you the real measure of a man—not just of his strength but his character. How he handles himself, whether he keeps cool under pressure—how he stands up to pain. Security won’t let me go to the clubs in person, but I’ve made arrangements.”

  * * *

  Heaven was a converted movie theater in a run-down neighborhood in Queens. The chauffeur got out, disappeared briefly around the back, and returned with two zombie bodyguards. It was like a conjurer’s trick. “You had these guys stashed in the trunk?” I asked as he opened the door for us.

  “It’s a new world,” Courtney said. “Get used to it.”

  The place was mobbed. Two, maybe three hundred seats, standing room only. A mixed crowd, blacks and Irish and Koreans mostly, but with a smattering of uptown customers as well. You didn’t have to be poor to need the occasional taste of vicarious potency. Nobody paid us any particular notice. We’d come in just as the fighters were being presented.

  “Weighing two-five-oh, in black trunks with a red stripe,” the ref was bawling, “tha gang-bang gangsta, the bare-knuckle brawla, the man with tha—”

  Courtney and I went up a scummy set of back stairs. Bodyguard-us-bodyguard, as if we were a combat patrol out of some twentieth-century jungle war. A scrawny, potbellied old geezer with a damp cigar in his mouth unlocked the door to our box. Sticky floor, bad seats, a good view down on the ring. Gray plastic matting, billowing smoke.

  Koestler was there, in a shiny new hologram shell. It reminded me of those plaster Madonnas in painted bathtubs that Catholics set out in their yards. “Your permanent box?” I asked.

  “All of this is for your sake, Donald—you and a few others. We’re pitting our product one-on-one against some of the local talent. By arrangement with the management. What you’re going to see will settle your doubts once and for all.”

  “You’ll like this,” Courtney said. “I’ve been here five nights straight. Counting tonight.” The bell rang, starting the fight. She leaned forward avidly, hooking her elbows on the railing.

  The zombie was gr
ay-skinned and modestly muscled, for a fighter. But it held up its hands alertly, was light on its feet, and had strangely calm and knowing eyes.

  Its opponent was a real bruiser, a big black guy with classic African features twisted slightly out of true, so that his mouth curled up in a kind of sneer on one side. He had gang scars on his chest and even uglier marks on his back that didn’t look deliberate but like something he’d earned on the streets. His eyes burned with an intensity just this side of madness.

  He came forward cautiously but not fearfully, and made a couple of quick jabs to get the measure of his opponent. They were blocked and countered.

  They circled each other, looking for an opening.

  For a minute or so, nothing much happened. Then the gangster feinted at the zombie’s head, drawing up its guard. He drove through that opening with a slam to the zombie’s nuts that made me wince.

  No reaction.

  The dead fighter responded with a flurry of punches, and got in a glancing blow to its opponent’s cheek. They separated, engaged, circled around.

  Then the big guy exploded in a combination of killer blows, connecting so solidly it seemed they would splinter every rib in the dead fighter’s body. It brought the crowd to their feet, roaring their approval.

  The zombie didn’t even stagger.

  A strange look came into the gangster’s eyes, then, as the zombie counterattacked, driving him back into the ropes. I could only imagine what it must be like for a man who had always lived by his strength and his ability to absorb punishment to realize that he was facing an opponent to whom pain meant nothing. Fights were lost and won by flinches and hesitations. You won by keeping your head. You lost by getting rattled.

  Despite his best blows, the zombie stayed methodical, serene, calm, relentless. That was its nature.

  It must have been devastating.

  The fight went on and on. It was a strange and alienating experience for me. After a while I couldn’t stay focused on it. My thoughts kept slipping into a zone where I found myself studying the line of Courtney’s jaw, thinking about later tonight. She liked her sex just a little bit sick. There was always a feeling, fucking her, that there was something truly repulsive that she really wanted to do but lacked the courage to bring up on her own.