The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  But the screw was still turning, more rapidly than the vanes overhead: which seemed superior to the English models, so turned (if slowly) in even slight winds. Malcolm imagined the miller discovering the wedged sluice-gate in the morning, and wading in to remove the brick. He slid further into the water and felt for the pin. His fingers encountered only slippery smoothness, and he was suddenly weak. Immersion, he thought dizzily, would only open further his wound.

  He climbed out with difficulty, then failed to get a second torch lit. Drenched and shaking fingers let the flint drop, and Malcolm could feel his sleeves drip on the touchwood. Very well, he thought: Some acts are fit only for darkness. He felt for another brick, feeling as though he were about to smash a fine watch.

  He held the brick before him as he crept toward the gearing, thinking: If I fumble, I’ll lose my hand. The brick brushed a moving surface, which knocked it almost from his grasp. Suppressing a scream, Malcolm leaned toward the source of the grinding roar, then gritted his teeth and thrust his hand into it.

  Something seized the brick from his fingers, and he snatched his hand back. The gears screamed like a stabbed pig, and the shaft above groaned with dismay. Teeth splintered, and the gears slipped, snapping more teeth. With a shearing sound the vertical shaft was suddenly turning free, and the screw was still.

  Malcolm was sobbing with fear, which rushed now into his heart just as the water in the tailrace was now flowing back into the field. It was only after a minute that he heard clumping overhead. Of course: The miller, resident in the mill itself, was coming forth to investigate.

  He scrambled out from beneath the trestle, into wind and rain. How soon before the miller, investigating his broken gears, noticed the jammed gate and shut it? How fully could the field flood meanwhile?

  Malcolm slipped and fell in mud, then crawled toward the sluice. It was raining harder now, and he could hear the miller’s shouts, and see faint light from a window above. The sluice-gate had swung to as the upflow ceased, and was now open only by a brick’s width. Malcolm saw a wooden bench a dozen feet away and toppled it into the sluice, wedging the gate wide open. The exertion and pain nearly caused him to fall in after it.

  Had other ponds been polluted? Delft’s drinking water came from the Schie, so seemed immune from infection. Had Pitcairn visited other cities on his way in from the Hague? Did his coat of foul pockets contain bottles of other plagues? Malcolm could not know.

  A thump resounded through the trestle: not from above, where the miller was now throwing open the door, but below, in the stilled screw assembly. Unsocketed at the top like a disjointed chicken leg, the screw was being pushed out of place by the water flowing down it. A log nudged over a cataract, it tilted from its trough, and the rush of water was suddenly louder.

  Jubilance filled Malcolm, jostling horror. The polder would be flooded before workmen stopped the sluice, its miasmal damps a shallow lake. Malcolm realized that he was looking at the sky, rain pelting his face. His back was very cold.

  Was the air blowing in the storm being cleansed of infection by the rain? One could collect rainwater in a basin, examine it beneath the microscope for animalcula. But would the naturalists conduct such an experiment to identify and exterminate the creatures, or to breed them? Water in his eyes, Malcolm apprehended a world changed unforeseeably by the wresting of light, a watchcase prised open by naturalists yet unborn: men who knew that nature’s secrets lay open to those who focus finely, children of the lens.

  THE LONGER VOYAGE

  Michael Cassutt

  As a print author, Michael Cassutt is mostly known for his incisive short work, but he has worked intensively in the television industry over the past few decades, where he is a major Mover and Shaker. He was co–executive producer for Showtime’s The Outer Limits—where he won a CableAce Award for best dramatic series—and also served in the same capacity for the series StrangeLuck, as well as having worked on Max Headroom, The Twilight Zone, and many other television series. His books include the novels The Star Country and Dragon Season; the anthology Sacred Visions, coedited with Andrew M. Greeley; and a nonfiction book Who’s Who in Space: The First 25 Years. He also collaborated with the late astronaut Deke Slayton on Slayton’s autobiography Deke!, and is currently writing a novel about the space program.

  It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive, an old adage tells us. In the sly story that follows, which gives us an insider’s slant on an all-too-probable space program of the future, that adage might have been altered to read, It’s even better not to start to travel in the first place.…

  The last time Julian Tallet visited Node Canaveral for maintenance Ulrich Charz was Mission administrator, Mission Population was officially two thousand, three hundred, and initial operating capacity was eight years away. Since then Julian had aged six years: The new MA was Alf Riordan, Mission Pop was now authorized at an even four thousand, and initial operating capacity was twelve years away. Two improvements, two deteriorations.

  “I like the air here,” Ty said from the driver’s seat, and promptly sneezed.

  Julian didn’t, though he felt like sneezing too. He rarely thought about the air, except when he happened to see Hong Kong videos about skullduggery on Mission in which nobody ever sneezed. Mission’s air-filtration system had been under review since the first nodes were opened, but space dwellers had been sneezing an average of a hundred times a day since Mir, a century back.

  Julian didn’t have Ty’s sensitivities even though both were gen twos—born on Mission. Ty was developmentally challenged and looked like a concept for an advanced human being as imagined during the early Space Age: long, spindly arms and legs, pale complexion, head too large for his body. Mission Personnel officially deployed him as a “therapeutic test subject” and paid him a salary, but what he really did was drive Julian’s cart and make occasional observations. But, then, the citizens of the early Space Age would have called Mission a starship. And would have had it halfway to Alpha Cen by now.

  “It smells like polin,” Julian said, finding it hard to put a label on the sensation through his general fog of ill health.

  “What’s polin?”

  Julian pointed to the patch of green serving as an interface between the smooth silvery glaze of the “street” and the glassy vertical plate that hid the innards of the LockMart office just ahead. (Mission Management types here in Node Canaveral had a taste for classic Earth styles.) “It’s a grasslike vegetative matter, native to Kazakhstan. Not edible.” Ty wore a read-only patch that would help him with words like “vegetative” and even “Kazakhstan,” but it was important to add the business about lack of edibility. Especially when Ty got out of the cart and went to investigate. “Want some.”

  Julian sighed and tried, without success, to get comfortable. He was overdue for maintenance. His clothes were tight around the waist; he hated to wake up in the morning. His hair was grayer every time he looked in a mirror. At the age of thirty-eight minus one day he was facing the fact that he was as good as he was going to get at anything you cared to name: deal-making or lovemaking. There had even been moments when he would have surrendered to integration, to allow Mission Personnel to deploy him to some nice job in Commercial Support, maybe.

  The fact that he would even consider integration convinced him he had to risk maintenance. So now he lurked around a Node Canaveral contractor site, waiting for Duwayne to return from his face sweep of the maintenance center. Duwayne was fully integrated into the official Mission network as well as the many illegal and unregistered data bands that made up the undernet, but sometimes you just had to see things with your own eyes.

  “Mr. Tallet!” Ty called. Julian pried himself out of the cart and went to him. “Look what I found.” Ty was standing on the patch of polin and pointing to the window. It had been defaced with a large painted tag that said: “A. C. Death.”

  The A.C. and the Death were joined by a smudge, probably some defining punctuation, even a short word suc
h as or. Alpha Cen or Death. The only people on Mission who talked much about Alpha Cen were Management, and it pleased Julian to think of some frustrated Level E type expressing his rage at the eternal delays in this way. Nevertheless, Julian figured the tag was the work of a gen two, probably a boy about fourteen. It had a clear hand and cursive capitals, like something from an ancient handbook on penmanship. Lots of gen twos had taken up cursive writing as a way of communicating outside the net; Julian carried his own pencil and notebook for the same reason.

  Of course, for gen twos the missing punctuation would be an equals sign. Alpha Cen = Death.

  Julian’s attention was drawn by Duwayne’s return. “Now there’s a nice job,” Duwayne said, nodding at the tag as he slipped into the back seat. “I’m surprised Facilities hasn’t gotten to it.”

  “Facilities probably likes graffiti. It’s Internal Affairs that will be interested.”

  “IA probably left it there to catch the tagger,” Duwayne said.

  “IA probably put it there in the first place to target subversives.”

  Duwayne found this bit of paranoia amusing. He was compact, normal or even good-looking, but like Ty, somehow incomplete. Whereas Ty had flaws in his genetic programming, Duwayne had simply developed a bad attitude. He was officially deployed to Agon Systems, one of the many Mission contractors, as a communications specialist. Since Julian currently consulted for Agon Systems, he had inherited Duwayne.

  Ty returned to the cart as Julian asked Duwayne, “Are we clear?”

  It wasn’t Internal Affairs Julian usually worried about, but his rival contractors. “Better yet,” Duwayne said. “Somebody did a sweep for us. I’m looking at their plot now. It’s very tidy.” The cart zoomed out of the shadows and down the empty street toward maintenance.

  “Who?”

  “Somebody from Management.”

  The cart was a modified battery-powered tractor originally used to move cargo around the high bay in Node Baikonur. Crushed during one of the frequent spinquakes of years past, it had been written off until a Biker mechanic working for Julian had restored the body, replacing grappling gear with a stretched cab. It would hold four passengers, three of them comfortably.

  No one on Mission truly required motorized transport: A walk of nine hundred meters in any axis would return you to the spot you started. Unfortunately, with the various node separators, not to mention lifts and hatchways, it was impossible to walk more than twenty meters in any direction. If you traveled a lot and occasionally delivered gifts, as Julian did, a cart came in handy.

  The drive was a short one. No other vehicles were parked in front of maintenance—Management suits were officially required to travel on foot, though those that actually hewed to this rule were so few that Julian suspected he knew them all by name. And as he walked into maintenance he began to feel a bit nervous.

  There were three sections to maintenance, one for emergencies, and one each for gen ones and gen twos, who had different requirements. “So, which one is he in?” Julian asked Duwayne, meaning the person from Management. It wasn’t an entirely casual question.

  “Gen Two section.” This bit of data narrowed the possible candidates to one, and Julian suddenly felt even worse. He turned to Duwayne. “Let’s make it another day.”

  Duwayne returned from the undernet long enough to register surprise. “But we just got here! They’re already loaded for you.”

  “Let them reload another day.”

  “What about the party tomorrow?”

  Well, there was that. Before Julian could decide he saw that it was too late. The Management patient, already shaved and capped, was in the doorway, and there was no way to avoid a face. “Julian Tallet,” the man said. “I wondered what all the fuss was about.” He turned around, then paused: “Come on in. Don’t be shy.”

  Offended by the man’s attitude—”I don’t care if he is Management!”—Duwayne took a step toward him.

  But Julian held him back. “It’s all right,” Julian said. “He’s my brother.”

  * * *

  The two techs had not overtaxed themselves in helping Roy Tallet with his patches, but that changed the moment they saw Julian. Not only were they suddenly free with soothing words and attentions, but one of them managed to help Roy back to his table. “I should have arranged this deliberately,” Roy said.

  “You’ll never convince me you didn’t,” Julian said, taking his own place.

  “So many edges, Julian,” Roy said, “in such a cylindrical world.”

  To Julian this was no more accurate than most of Roy’s judgments. For one thing, Mission was not truly cylindrical, but more of a cake with layers of different shapes and diameters. Even the social model was something multidimensional. For another, Julian’s personality had fewer corners than did Roy’s … and Julian had the scans to prove it. But the new blood spurting into his veins was already having its mellowing effect. “You’re looking good,” was all he said to Roy. It almost killed him to admit it, but put the two of them side by side, and anyone would think Roy was younger.

  “Management is generous with its maintenance plan.” Both men lay back and closed their eyes. “You could have the same schedule too. All you have to do is—”

  “—Accept integration. No, thank you. I like my privacy.”

  “We have privacy.” Roy had accepted integration at the age of thirteen, when Julian was almost eleven. “Besides, that’s not the issue. It’s been twenty-five years since the divorce. You’re still punishing Dad for broken promises.”

  Julian knew that Roy had used Mission net to pull up Julian’s personality scans—the one element of his life that was unavoidably integrated, since you couldn’t get maintained without being scanned. Not only was his medical data in Mission net, but also a wonderfully colored fractal-edged chart of his personality. Blue for the various intelligence and aptitude tests in addition to his grades in Mission’s school system. Green for physical data. Yellow for the blending of his parents’ scans. Red for personality map—and running through the latter two, like a regular goddamn Grand Canyon, was the black rift of his parent’s divorce.

  But Julian had his own theory about how the two Tallet boys had turned out so differently. “It’s because of broken promises,” Julian said quietly. “But not Dad’s.”

  Julian did not know when the International ExtraSolar SETI Response Initiative—better known as Mission—actually began. The official myth placed it immediately after the detection of mysterious signals from the tail of the constellation Southern Cross in Fiscal Year 2022. Those signals had been “unscrambled” and “enhanced” in a variety of ways; analysts had concluded that the signals consisted of either a “message” to the galaxy at large, or perhaps some sort of radio entertainment. Neither conclusion was universally accepted, though the fact of some signal-generating entity elsewhere in the (relatively near) galactic neighborhood was indisputable. Based on data from the Pickering series of probes (F.Y. 2049–2061) the SETI source had been provisionally assigned the name “Eden.” Whether this was strictly true, Eden had the virtue of being much more Earth-like than any body in the solar system save Earth itself.

  The more popular countermyth said that Mission was born when it finally became clear, sometime in the forties, that human beings were never going to be able to colonize Mars, not without significant reconstruction. (On the humans, that is. The idea of actually modifying a whole planet had been consigned to the same historical dumpster as communism, ethnic harmony, and free television.) The existence of an apparently Earth-like world in orbit around the star Alpha Cen A provided a goal that promised greater return for less expense than rebuilding several thousand humans, even allowing for the awesome distance of eight light-years, which meant a transit time of forty-five years using the most advanced propulsion system then conceived, the Indonesian cryofusion burner.

  Julian subscribed to a third myth, that the SETI signals were bogus and the entire Mission was a planetary pork-ba
rrel project, a means of redirecting excess capital into spinoff research and development. (The global economy had gone through an unprecedented period of robustness in the thirties, thanks to the death of the Western baby-boomer generation, which had distorted and tyrannized culture and finance for its entire seventy-five-year run.)

  The original plan, baseline F.Y. 2039, called for Mission to reach initial operating capacity—IOC—on 1 October 2086, with injection into a trans-Alpha trajectory to follow in that fiscal year. Julian Tallet was born on Mission in F.Y. 2074, when IOC was holding firm at F.Y. 2086, when there was a chance that, while Julian and the other gen twos would spend twenty or more years of their life in transit, they would still walk on the shores of Eden.

  F.Y. 2086 came and went without IOC, without departure for Alpha Cen. At the age of eighteen Julian was selected for the flight-operations track, and all his schooling from that point on concerned orbital mechanics, simulator technologies, and program management, since the design of the actual Eden landing craft would not be frozen until Mission reached the new world. As part of his flight training he was also allowed to don wings and flap around the high bay in Bike under low spin.

  For six years Julian trained as a Mission pilot, knowing he would be in his forties before he got a chance to use his skill. Then the cryofusion system designed to be installed on Mission blew up during final qualification tests, irradiating the entire Cape York test center, and killing three hundred and eleven people.

  IOC slipped from “next year” to a minimum of eight years when the Level A managers in Munich switched from cryofusion to an older technology called SteadiState, and the projected transit time, low Earth orbit to low Eden orbit, increased from twenty-five to sixty years. Even allowing for the possible Lorenz-Fitzgerald stretching of lifespan, Julian and the other gen twos realized they had no chance of ever walking on Eden. At the rate things were going, they would be lucky to live long enough to see departure.

  “You should have stayed in management and done something about it.”