The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The water was glacially cold and mineral-rich—as predicted—but it also carried a delicious hint of free oxygen. Not predicted, and marvelous. Navren, remaining at his lover’s side, said, “Impossible,” giggled, then began offering explanations. A catalytic reaction between water and metal ions? Or water and hot magma? Or water and life…? Though that last speculation was absurd—where would the energy come from?—and he giggled again, for emphasis.…

  Befitting his role, Ejy remained in the lab, standing nearly motionless with his false face showing confidence and a well-honed pleasure.

  Life was easy to find, and it too held surprises. The biomass was two or three hundred times higher than predicted. But more astonishing were the natives themselves. A stereomicroscope focused on them. Projected images swam in the air above the central lab table. As if injured, Lilké gasped aloud. Bacteria were darting along like grains of enchanted rice, seeping a kind of firefly light as they moved. Even Sarrie, standing her ground in the narrow doorway, knew their significance: These bugs were a different species, operating on some radically different, spendthrift metabolism.

  The rest of the audience grew silent, watching over Sarrie’s shoulder or using portable monitors. A baffling moment, and holy…!

  Without warning, something else glided into view. A monster, perhaps. It was burly and vast, and powerful, remaining blurred until the automatic focus could engage, recalibrating data made from bent light, the monster suddenly defined, suddenly utterly familiar.

  It was a protozoan. Sarrie knew a sophisticated organism when she saw it. That general design had been repeated on a multitude of worlds, always with great success. The nucleus and engorged food vacuoles lay within a sack of electric broth. A thick golden pelt of cilia beat too rapidly for an eye to follow, obeying the simplest reflexes. Without conscience or love, the monster hovered, feasting on the hapless, minuscule bacteria. Then it moved again, without warning, covering some enormous distance—the width of an eyelash, perhaps—and passing out of view before the lenses could respond.

  One of the fouchians gave a deep moan, his voice box asking, “How? How, how, how?”

  Explanations were obvious, and inadequate. The fossil ocean from a million years ago had been replaced by another ocean, richer by any measure: Oxygen metabolisms; rapid growth and motility; the extravagance of trophic levels. But how could a new ocean evolve so quickly? Lilké claimed that’s exactly what had happened, then she just as quickly dismissed the idea. No! Their borehole had to be situated directly above some local paradise. A volcano. A vent site. Whatever the physical cause, free oxygen was being generated in this one locale. In tiny amounts, no doubt. The bulk of the unseen ocean was exactly as the ice had promised, she maintained—cold and dark, and impoverished, and content with its poverty.

  Navren made fun of the free oxygen. His magma and metal-ion hypotheses had been half-jokes, nothing more. Under these circumstances, he admitted that he couldn’t see any trick that would split water molecules, and his features seemed to sharpen as his frustrations grew.

  Sarrie enjoyed the befuddlement, part of her wishing this moment wouldn’t end.

  But wise old Ejy knew exactly what to do. Obviously this new world had mysteries, delicious ones, and everyone needed to work as one to solve them. He began to move, dispensing assignments. Humans and fouchians were sent where they could help, or at least where they brought the least distraction. Sarrie knew enough about biological instruments to help Lilké prepare specimens for mapping; and Ejy, perhaps wishing to heal wounds between friends, ordered his young Voice into the lab, hovering nearby while Lilké gave instructions, both humans pretending to cooperate for the moment.

  Sarrie worked with DNA drawn from a protozoan’s nucleus, making it legible for their machinery. Lilké was already reading genes from the oxygen-loving bacteria. Silence was followed by curses. With the mildest of voices, Ejy asked what was wrong. Lilké said, “Nothing.” Then after more transcriptions, she amended herself. “Somehow, I don’t know how … I managed to contaminate this sample, Artisan Ejy…!”

  Ejy’s face was sympathetic, but his voice was all barbs and disappointment. “That doesn’t sound like you, Lilké. Now does it?”

  The mission’s geneticist turned to Sarrie. “Is your sample ready yet?” Nearly, yes. “Let me finish up. And you get started on another bacterium. Go on.”

  The protozoan was genetically complex. Even in an expert’s grip, interpretations took time. Lilké entered a near-trance, skimming across long, long stretches of base pairs, trying to decipher the codes. And Sarrie tried to convince herself that her friend deserved absolute control. This was Lilké’s lab, after all. Only a selfish, inadequate organic would feel angry about being pushed aside. Pushed like an untrustworthy child. Yet she wasn’t a child, and she was confident in her abilities … except for some reason she couldn’t work, or think, and her hands trembled as if some degenerative condition were eating at her nervous system.

  “What the fuck’s wrong?” Lilké shouted.

  Sarrie was startled, a vial slipping from her fingers and bouncing, then rolling out of reach.

  “We’ve got a major contamination problem,” Lilké explained, embarrassed to tears. “I’ll need to clean up and start over. I’m sorry, Artisan Ejy. As soon as I can track down the problem, I’ll run more samples. But I can’t do shit just now…!”

  The Artisan did not speak, or move.

  The women watched him, waiting for his sage advice or the perfect encouragement. Yet he remained silent for an astonishing length of time. The old-man face was hard and flat, inert as a mask, but behind the eyes was a flickering, hints of a swift elegant mind being applied to intricate, uncompromising programs.

  Then he spoke. With the mildest of voices, he asked, “From where does your contamination come?”

  “From us,” Lilké muttered. “These codes and the genes … they’re all Terran…!”

  The Artisan nodded, contriving a smile. “But of course,” he replied, “there’s another conclusion supported by your data. Yes?”

  In a whisper, Lilké said, “No.”

  Ejy stared at Lilké. He didn’t blink or offer another word, waiting until the geneticist finally, grudgingly said, “Maybe.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sarrie confessed.

  No one seemed to hear her.

  “What other conclusion?” Her voice was soft, weak. Useless.

  Lilké shook her head, telling Sarrie, “That there’s no contamination. Our data are perfectly valid.”

  But if Sarrie was extracting earthly DNA, that meant … no…!

  Ejy turned to Sarrie, the dead face opening its mouth, saying nothing. The eyes were what spoke, surprise and pain mixed with pity.

  Why pity? she asked herself.

  And then she understood everything. Not just what was in the ocean far beneath the cold hard ice, but what was in the mind of the machine, the mind behind those pitying eyes.

  FIVE

  News of the discovery spread at a fever’s pace.

  And one fever-induced explanation was produced almost immediately: The microbes came from the Great Web. One of its Earthly habitats must have sprung a leak—a common enough event in those ancient structures—and the escaping water froze, tiny ice crystals set free to wander the universe, hitching a ride on one of their probes, or maybe just carried along on the chill starlight.

  It was an inventive, ludicrous explanation. Yet both fouchians and most of the humans tried to believe it just the same. Everyone knew that the Earth was far away, and dead; there was no reason to mention it. Of course the Web was to blame. That was the consensus. Improbabilities were better than impossibilities. In voices growing more feeble by the moment, the crew promised each other that eons of tranquility and purpose wouldn’t be threatened, at least not because of some damned little bugs swimming in an ocean nobody had even seen yet.

  Ejy remained quiet about the pregnant snowflake, panspermian nonsense. And quiet about a
lmost everything else too.

  He wandered from lab to lab, then out to the borehole itself; but he rarely offered encouragement, much less advice, watching the organics with a peculiar intensity, leaving everyone ill-at-ease.

  It was Navren who asked the obvious: What were the odds that a pregnant snowflake would come here? And how would frozen spores migrate through kilometers of solid ice? And even if they found the means, then where did the damned bugs get their energy and free oxygen? And how did they become so common so quickly?

  But geniuses are nothing if not clever.

  A second explanation was built from scratch. This was a training mission, people reasoned. Ejy, the great old Artisan, was simply testing them. The microbes had been planted. Who knew what else was falsified? Perhaps every team endured this kind of trickery. It had been generations since the last important field mission, right? Absolutely! But the sweetest advantage of this explanation was that Navren could ask any question, find any flaw, and none of it mattered. This was an elaborate practical joke, nothing else, and at some point, probably in a minute or two, Ejy would tell the truth, and everyone would laugh themselves sick.

  * * *

  The obvious next step was to visit the hidden ocean. A blunt diamond balloon was assembled in the machine shop. It was a submersible, crude but proven in a thousand seas. It had room on board for two cramped humans. Navren and Lilké were originally slated for the dive. But Ejy ordered the seats removed, then picked one of the fouchians to go in their place.

  No explanation was necessary, yet he offered several. Experience. Expendability. And the light-sensitive fouchian eyes.

  Reasonable enough, people told each other. The fouchian was probably a coconspirator in the practical joke. Suddenly a false exuberance took hold of them. The borehole out on the ice had been capped, there was warm breathable air beneath the tentlike structure. The chosen fouchian drove himself out in one of the mission’s three big-wheeled buggies, and without the slightest ceremony forced his way through the tiny hatch—like a fat rat through a knothole. Spontaneous applause broke out in the galley. Everyone was in the galley, save for the submersible pilot. When the submersible was lowered into the hole—a vapor-shrouded puddle nearly eight kilometers deep—most of the audience cheered aloud, telling themselves that everything would be answered soon, and with answers, everything would return to normal.

  Navren acted distant, and exactly like Ejy, he rarely spoke, and when he did speak, his comments were brief and remarkably bland.

  Sarrie kept her eyes on Navren. She sat close to him in the crowded galley, practically ignoring the banks of monitors on the far wall. Video images and raw data enthralled most of the humans. Vacuous conversation came and went. The ship’s reactors were still heating the borehole’s water. Its ice walls were smooth, translucent. Spotlights dove into the pure ice, shattering on ancient fissures, sudden rainbows forming and fading as the submersible continued its descent. And with that same false exuberance, people commented on the beauty of their seemingly simple surroundings, and wasn’t the universe a marvel…?

  Navren didn’t insult their sentimentality. He sat beside Lilké, holding his lover’s hand with a wrestler’s grip. Sometimes he would lean in close to her, making some comment about the oxygen levels or other dissolved treasures. But most of the time he just watched the monitors, his face tense yet strangely happy, his eyes missing nothing even when nothing at all happened.

  Sarrie watched the monitors through his face.

  When the submersible left the borehole, entering open water, there was more applause. But softer now, somehow less genuine. Navren blinked and took a breath, as if preparing for a long swim. Away from the ice there was much less to see. The spotlights reached out for hundreds of meters, finding nothing. Yet the tension in the galley doubled, then doubled again. Navren lifted Lilké’s hand as if to kiss it, then hesitated. In a smooth and astonished voice, he said, “Look at the oxygen now. Look.” Then he gently took a flap of his own skin into his mouth, and he bit down hard enough to make himself wince, to make his eyes tear.

  The ocean floor remained remote, unimaginable. It would take forever to reach, which was unfair. More than once, in a quiet way, someone would whisper, “I wonder what’s supposed to happen next.” Because it was all a test, of course. Conceived by the Artisans. Run by Ejy. An elaborate means of determining something about this very young, very inexperienced team.

  The fouchian was still a full kilometer from the bottom when he reported seeing a distinct glow. Built from many little lights, he claimed. And probably an illusion, since the lights were arranged in a definite pattern, as regular as the vertices on graph paper—

  “Have him cut his spotlights!” Navren shouted. “Tell him, Ejy!”

  But the Artisan, standing at the back of the galley, must have already given the order on a private channel. Suddenly the monitors were filled with black water. The native glow was magnified a thousandfold. Suddenly the submersible was a tiny balloon floating above a rolling landscape, narrow towers erected at regular intervals, each one perhaps two hundred meters tall, capped like a mushroom and a brilliant light thrown down from the cap at what seemed to be trees.

  No, not trees. Lilké told everyone, “They look like kelp, or something similar.” Then an instant later, “Growing in rows. Columns. Do you see?” Then she screamed, “It’s a farm! Someone’s cultivating seaweed down there!”

  Sarrie looked at her best friend, then Navren, and she felt a warm weakness spreading through her.

  Navren turned, glancing over his shoulder at Ejy.

  The Artisan said nothing, did nothing.

  Navren opened his mouth, words framed. Carefully, slowly, he turned forward again, taking one more deep breath, then remarked with all the sarcasm he could muster:

  “Goodness! I wonder whose farm this is!”

  * * *

  The fouchian, crammed into that tiny submersible, utterly alone, began to beg for guidance. Should he investigate the unexpected forest? Should he snip off samples? Surely no one would miss a few brown leaves, he advised. Then he adjusted the focus on his cameras, revealing that the nearest water was filled with life: Clouds of plankton; schools of jerking copepods and delicate shrimp; and a single fish, long as a forearm and nearly transparent.

  The placement of its fins, gills, spine, and pulsing pale heart were exactly the same as Earthly fish. Sarrie knew enough taxonomy to feel certain. But the transparency of its meat gave her hope. No pigment in the blood implied an alien physiology, which was exactly what she hoped to see … except Lilké quickly and thoroughly dashed any hopes, turning to Navren to tell him and the room, “I don’t know the species, but I know their cousins. Icefish. Very low-energy. No hemoglobin. They lived on the shoulders of Antarctica, bodies laced with antifreeze, oxygen dissolving straight into their plasma.”

  Again, in fouchian squeaks and translated human syllables, the pilot begged for instructions. Directions. Purpose.

  Artisan Ejy was as rigid as a statue. No doubt he was hard at work, his mind spliced directly into the ship’s main computers. The black-crystal eyes were superfluous, and vacant, and seemed to lend him the appearance of utter helplessness. But with the fouchian’s next words—“Do I continue my descent?”—he moved again, suddenly tilting his head, smiling for perhaps half a moment too long. Then with a calmness that unnerved the entire room, he told the pilot, “No.” The old-man face was overly serene, if that was possible. “No, you’ve seen enough. Come back now. Back through the borehole, please.”

  The fouchian hesitated for an instant, then dropped his ballast.

  Silence in the galley became a soft murmur.

  And within the murmur: Excitement, confusion, and the ragged beginnings of a stunning new explanation.

  A wondrous explanation, it was. Always unthinkable, until now.

  “It’s Terran life,” Sarrie heard, from all sides.

  “And someone has high technology,” people whispered. Sang
.

  “Who could have imagined it?” said a voice behind Sarrie.

  She turned, eager to confess to a lack of creativity. But as she spoke she spied Navren placing both hands around Lilké’s head, pulling her close and saying a word into her ear, then two more words, or three, and kissing the lobe softly.

  Something about that tenderness was perplexing. Almost terrifying.

  Then someone else—in the distance, from beside the tiny beverage counter—shouted in a clear, joyous voice, “Humans! That would explain everything! On this world somewhere … could they be…?”

  The word human held magic, potent and ancient, dangerous beyond all measure.

  As a chorus, a dozen voices responded by saying:

  “Humans are extinct! Everywhere but on the Web.”

  But the engrained words held no life, no fire. Spoken, they dispersed into an atmosphere filled with electricity and possibilities. Two dozen youngsters were suddenly free to jump to their feet, asking the obvious:

  “What if other humans escaped the Wars?”

  Sarrie found herself standing, almost jumping, hands clasped over her open mouth. She couldn’t speak. The great Voice was mute and lost. She could barely think, struggling to piece together clues that led to the inescapable conclusion—

  Ejy moved, walking down the galley’s only aisle. Only he seemed immune to the excitement, every step slow, even stately, the smile on his rubbery face never larger or less believable. It was the greatest discovery in eons—a pivotal moment in the Web’s glorious history—and he resembled a grandfather strolling down his garden path.

  An engineer beside Sarrie took her by the arm, pulling hard as she jumped up and down. “What a training mission! Can you believe it? Oh, Sarrie … who would have guessed…?!”

  Again, the Voice glanced over at Navren.

  Suddenly he seemed old. Older than Ejy, even. He sat among the wild children, his expression black, thin mouth trembling, the eyes tracking sideways until they intersected with Sarrie’s eyes.

  He willed himself to smile—a brief, bleak attempt.