The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Then without sound, he carefully mouthed the words:

  “Our. Mission. Is. Canceled.”

  Ludicrous. Wasn’t it just beginning?

  Ejy was standing under the largest monitor, facing the raucous youngsters. A radio pulse from him made the screen go black, and with a delicate firmness, he demanded silence. Then when the prattle continued, he raised his voice, saying, “Look at me now. Look here.”

  Ejy would explain everything, Sarrie believed.

  This was the standard hazing, doubtlessly employed since the Web was born. On its first mission, every young team was tricked into believing that they’d found some viable splinter of humanity among the stars. Sarrie could believe it. Absolutely. She even felt a smile coming, anticipating Ejy’s first words and his crisp laugh. “I fooled you,” he might tell them. “I made you believe the impossible, didn’t I?”

  But the old machine said nothing about tricks. Instead, speaking with a cool formality, he repeated the words, “Look at me.”

  The silence was sudden, absolute.

  “Before our submersible breaks the surface,” he told them, “I want our ship’s systems prepared for launch.”

  No one spoke, but the silence changed its pitch. If anything, it grew larger, flowing out of the galley, spreading over the glacial world.

  “And please,” said the Artisan, “prepare for cold-sleep. Each of you, as always, is responsible for your own chamber.”

  The second fouchian, filling the galley’s far corner, lifted a powerful digging hand, pointing a claw at Ejy. “I assume this is a precaution,” said his voice box. “You wish us ready to leave should the natives prove hostile.”

  The Artisan said, “No.”

  People turned and turned again, looking for anyone who seemed to understand that reply.

  “No, we will launch,” said Ejy. “In one hundred twenty-eight minutes. And each of you will place yourself into cold-sleep—”

  “Artisan Ejy,” the fouchian interrupted, “you don’t mean me, of course.”

  “But I do. Yes.”

  The nose tendrils straightened and paled—an expression of pure astonishment. “But who will pilot our ship?”

  “I am more than capable,” Ejy reminded him, and everyone.

  Sarrie found herself weak and shaky. Turning to Navren, she hoped for one good tough question. She wasn’t alone. But the genius sat quietly with his lover, and Lilké held his hand with both of hers, neither of them seemingly involved in anything happening around them.

  Ejy admitted, “Our mission has taken an unexpected turn.”

  Sarrie tried to swallow, and failed, then looked at the Artisan. His smile meant nothing. The eyes couldn’t appear more dead. And the words came slowly, too much care wrapped around each of them.

  “It has been a wonderful day,” he promised. “But you are too young and inexperienced to carry this work to its next stage—”

  We’re as old and experienced as anyone else! Sarrie thought.

  “I congratulate each of you. I love each of you. You are my children, and I thank you for your hard work and precious skills.”

  Why did those words terrify her…?

  Then she knew why. Ejy was looking at each of their faces, showing them his perfect smile; but he could never quite look at Sarrie, unwilling to risk showing their Voice his truest soul.

  SIX

  With no technical duties, Sarrie filled her time shoving her few possessions into the appropriate cubbyholes, cleaning her scrupulously clean cabin, then making sure that her cold-sleep chamber was ready to use. It was. But nearly an hour remained until they launched, which was too long. Sarrie considered placing herself into cold-sleep now. She went as far as undressing, then climbing into the slick-walled chamber, fingers caressing one of the ports from which chilling fluids would emerge, bathing her body, invading her lungs, then infiltrating every cell, suspending their life processes until she would be indistinguishable from the dead.

  A seductive, ideal death. Responsibilities would be suspended. She wouldn’t have to prove her value to this mission and the Web, and there wouldn’t be the daily struggle with loneliness and self-doubt. Even if she never woke—if some unthinkable accident killed this body, this soul—then the best in her would simply be reborn again, brought up again under Ejy’s enlightened care, and why was she sad? On no day did a child of Heaven have any right to be sad.

  In the end, she decided to wait, climbing from the chamber and reaching for her clothes … and she noticed a familiar and bulky beetlelike form standing in the hallway, watching her now and possibly for a long while.

  Sarrie gave a start, then whispered, “Ejy?”

  “I scared you. I apologize.” The machine’s words were warm and wet, in stark contrast to the mechanical body. “I came here to ask for your help. Will you help me? I need a Voice—”

  “Of course.” Ejy must have changed his mind. Jumping to her feet, she started pulling on her trousers. “If there are humans nearby, I’m sure I can talk to them. We should start with underwater low-frequency broadcasts. In all the dead languages. I want to send audio greetings, and maybe some whale-style audio pictures of us—”

  “No.” A ceramic hand brushed against her cheek, then covered a bare shoulder. “I want you to speak with Lilké, I know that you and she have been at odds, but I know, too, she still feels close to you.”

  “Lilké?”

  “Speak calmly. Rationally. And when you can, gain a sense of her mind.” He paused for a moment, then admitted, “This is unexpected, yes. Remarkable, and unfair. But when you’re finished, return here. Here. As soon as possible, please.”

  The hand was withdrawn.

  Sarrie whispered, “Yes.” She knelt, unfolding her shirt, then thinking to ask, “Where is Lilké?”

  “In Navren’s cabin,” he answered.

  “Navren—?”

  “Is elsewhere.”

  The Voice pulled on her shirt, again wishing that she was cold and asleep, deliciously unaware. Then something in his last words caught her attention. “Where is Navren now?”

  “I don’t know,” the Artisan replied.

  The machine within, linked to every functioning system on the ship, confessed to Sarrie, “I cannot see him. And to tell the truth, I haven’t for a little while.”

  * * *

  Lilké expected her arrival.

  That was Sarrie’s first conclusion—an insight born not from innate talent, but friendship.

  They showed one another smiles, Sarrie claimed the cabin’s only seat, then she tried to offer some pleasant words … and Lilké spoiled the mood, remarking, “I guessed Ejy would send you.”

  “Why?”

  She wouldn’t say why. Red eyes proved that Lilké had been crying, but the skin around them had lost their puffiness. She had been dry-eyed for a long while.

  Opening a low cubbyhole, she removed a homemade device, pressing its simple switch, a high-pitched hum rising until it was inaudible and the cabin’s lights dimmed in response.

  “Now,” Lilké said, “we can speak freely.”

  “Navren isn’t here.”

  “I don’t know where he is, but I know what he’s doing.” She took a seat on the lower bunk, always leaning forward, ready to leap up at any time. “He and the others are working—”

  “What others?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  Sarrie hesitated, then said, “I want to understand. For my sake, not Ejy’s.”

  “I’m disappointed with you. I thought you’d be better at this game.” The geneticist shook her head, a wan smile appearing. Vanishing. “Answer a question for me, Sarrie. What have we found here?”

  “Earth life. High technology.” She hesitated before adding, “Some evidence, rather indirect, that other people survived the Wars.”

  “On a ship like ours, you mean.” Lilké looked at the low ceiling as if it were fascinating. “A second starship. And its crew left the sun behind, and the Milky
Way, coming here to settle this hidden sea … is that what you believe?”

  “It is possible.”

  “Two starships, and we cross paths here?”

  Sarrie said nothing.

  “Calculate the odds. Or I can show you Navren’s calculations.”

  “There’s another possibility.” She paused, waiting for Lilké to glance her way, a thin curiosity crossing her face. “The Artisans brought us here intentionally. They heard something, perhaps eons ago. A beacon, a leaked signal. Nothing definite, but certainly reason to come here.”

  “Why would humans leave the galaxy?”

  Some cultures might relish the idea of this empty wilderness. An ascetic appeal; a spiritual chill; the relative safety of islands far from the galaxy’s distractions. Sarrie devised her explanation in an instant, then thought again. Better to point out the obvious. “We left it behind, didn’t we?”

  Lilké dismissed the obvious, shrugging and changing subjects. “Why have we always been sure that our home solar system died?”

  “We watched its destruction,” Sarrie replied.

  “How did we do that?”

  “Our ancestors did. With probes.”

  “Machines sending coded signals, received and translated by still more machines—”

  “What are you implying?”

  Instead of answering, Lilké posed more questions. “But what if the wars weren’t as awful as we were taught? What if a few worlds survived, perhaps even the Earth continued on … and our species recovered, then built starships and colonies…?”

  “Our ancestors would have seen them. Leaked radio noise alone would have alerted them—”

  “Who would have seen them? Who?”

  The implication was absurd. Sarrie said, “Impossible,” without the slightest doubt.

  Yet beneath the word, simple fear was building. What if it was true? What if the Artisans, even for the best reasons, had lied to their organics? Yet she couldn’t imagine them lying for simple human reasons. Certainly not for vanity, or to be cruel.

  Sarrie had come here to read Lilké’s soul, but suddenly it was her own hidden soul that captivated her.

  “Go back to him,” said a quiet, composed voice.

  What was that?

  “Or stay here with me.” Lilké touched the Voice’s knee, promising, “If you do nothing against us, nothing happens to you.”

  A sigh. “You know I can’t stay.”

  The hand was withdrawn.

  “Ejy’s waiting,” Lilké remarked, eyes bright. Bitter. “Be with him,” she advised. “Immortals like you should stand together.”

  * * *

  Sarrie never reached the cold-sleep chambers.

  She was running, in a panic, threading her way past empty labs until every light suddenly flickered and went out.

  Sarrie halted. The darkness was seamless. Pure. But what terrified was the silence, the accustomed hum of moving air and pumps and plumbing apparently sabotaged, replaced by the galloping sound of her own breathing.

  Every on-board system was failing.

  “Rebellion,” she whispered. An ancient word, and until this moment, useless, save as a blistering obscenity.

  Days ago, in a lost age, someone had built an aquarium out of spare materials, placing it in the hallway and filling it with the deep ocean water. As Sarrie’s eyes adapted, she saw the aquarium’s faint glow, and she crept forward until her fingertips touched slick cool glass, their slightest pressure causing millions of bacteria to scream with photons, the thin ruddy glow brightening for a half-instant.

  Someone moved. Behind her.

  A great clawed hand closed over her shoulder, delicate tendrils grabbing the closer ear. “The-Nest-Is-Sour,” the fouchian squeaked. No voice box gave its thorough, artless translation. With a sorrowful chirp, he told Sarrie, “The-Loyal-Must-Escape.”

  She turned and grabbed his stubby tail, then followed, the scent of his rectum meant to reassure.

  The fouchian managed a terrific pace, fitting through narrow hatches and turns, twice nearly leaving the tiny human behind. But Sarrie never complained, never lost her grip, and when they reached the airlock, she donned her lifesuit in record time, then helped her vast companion struggle into his bulky, unwielding suit.

  Reflexes carried her out onto the ice, and there they faltered.

  Two buggies were parked in the open. With heavy limbs meant for construction work, one of the buggies was expertly and thoroughly dismantling the other. Ejy filled the buggy’s crystal cockpit. A radio-born voice told her, “Welcome.” He said, “A change of plans, child. Hurry now.”

  Sarrie lost her will. Her urgency.

  Despite the servos in her joints, she couldn’t seem to run. The fouchian scurried past, and she responded by hesitating, pulling up and looking back and up at the looming ship. A lifetime of order, of knowing exactly where and what she was, had evaporated, and Sarrie felt more sorry for herself than afraid. Even when she saw a figure appear in the open airlock, she wasn’t afraid. Then the figure lifted a tube to his shoulder, and the tube spouted flame, and she watched with a certain distant curiosity, observing a spinning lump of something fall on the hard ice and bounce and stop. Ten or twelve meters away, perhaps. A homemade device. She almost took a step closer, just to have a better look. Then she thought again, or maybe thought for the first time, turning away an instant before the bomb detonated, its blast lifting her off her feet and throwing her an astonishing distance, her arms outstretched in some useless, unconscious bid to fly.

  * * *

  “He tried to kill you,” Ejy assured. The machine and Sarrie were inside the buggy, its cabin unpressurized and she still in her lifesuit, laying on her sore left side. The fouchian was in the cockpit, protected tendrils and heavy claws happily holding the controls. “If you have doubts at all,” said Ejy’s earnest voice, “watch. I will show you.”

  A digital replayed the scene, but from the buggy’s perspective. Sarrie saw herself step toward the bomb, then turn away. Then came the blast, not as bright as she remembered it. The digital also allowed her to watch as her assailant received swift justice. Ejy had used a limb that Sarrie didn’t recognize—a fat jeweled cannonlike device—focusing a terrific dose of laser light on the rebel’s lifesuit, melting it in a moment, then evaporating the body trapped inside.

  Sarrie grimaced for a moment, then quietly, almost inaudibly, asked, “Which one? Was he?”

  Ejy gave a name.

  She remembered the face, the person. And with a kind of baffled astonishment, she asked herself: Why would an alien neurologist want to murder me?

  The machine seemed just as puzzled, in his fashion.

  “I’m the object of their hate,” Ejy promised, ready to take any burden. “Attacking you was unconscionable. It only proves how quickly things have grown ugly. Unmanageable. Tragic.”

  Sarrie discovered that she could sit upright without too much agony.

  “We never should have come here,” the machine confessed. “I blame myself. If I’d had any substantial clue as to what we would find, we wouldn’t have passed within ten parsecs of this place.”

  They would have missed the local suns altogether.

  “What about Navren?” she inquired.

  “Oh, that may be. The clever boy did notice at least one clue, didn’t he? This ocean’s heat is plainly artificial.” A pause, then with a mild but genuine delight, he proposed, “The boy had an inkling of the truth, perhaps. Even before we left 2018CC, perhaps.”

  Shaking her head, Sarrie whispered, “No.”

  She told him, “What I meant to ask … do you blame Navren at all?”

  “For following his nature? Never, no!” The faceless machine showed no recognizable emotion, but the voice seemed sickened with horror. “The errors, if there are such things, belong to the Artisans. Mostly to me, I admit. I allowed that boy too many novel genes, and worse, far too many illusions. Illusions of invulnerability, particularly.” A momentary pause, t
hen he added, “Blame is never yours, child. Or theirs. It all rests here, in me.”

  Mechanical hands gripped the armored carapace, accenting the beatific words. The cannonlike laser merely dangled off the back end like some badly swollen tail.

  Sarrie felt the buggy slow, then bounce.

  Directly ahead was the tentlike cap over the borehole, and near it, familiar and unwelcome, the prefab hut. They had bounced over an insulated pipe. They approached another, but frozen water made a serviceable ramp and the buggy was moving slowly, its oversized wheels barely noticing the impact.

  The submersible and second fouchian must be near the surface by now. Yet no fouchian shape was obediently waiting for them. And the last buggy … where was it now?

  Again they were moving, accelerating as rapidly as possible. Whatever Ejy’s plan, time seemed precious.

  Sarrie stood, half expecting to be told to sit down and keep out of sight. But no one spoke, no one cared. She walked carefully to the back of the utilitarian cabin, dancing around assorted machinery and scrap. From the wide rear window, she gazed out at the bleak ice, and above it, the dark bulk of their ship.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. And when Ejy didn’t respond in an instant, she became pointedly specific. “When can we go home?”

  “The ship is dead,” Ejy answered, his voice stolidly grave.

  “Did Navren do it—?”

  “Not entirely, Sarrie. He and his cohorts were stealing its systems, which left me with no choice. I had to put everything to sleep.”

  She said nothing.

  “Giving him a fully functional ship was unacceptable.” A pause. “You do understand, don’t you?”

  With conviction, she said, “Oh, yes.”

  Something else was visible on the ice. Something was moving toward the ship. The third buggy?

  Ejy kept speaking, in human words and fouchian squeals. “But how dead is dead? Given time and the desire, someone might regain control of any ship.” Both voices were trying to reassure. “That’s why there is one choice, one course, and you must trust me. Both of you, do you trust me?”

  The Voice tried to say, “Yes,” immediately, but the fouchian driver was faster. Louder.

  “We have supplies here. Power and food and air. We will rescue our friend and leave.” A pause. “There is a large team of fouchinas on a nearby world,” Ejy reported, now using only human words. “Accompanied by another Artisan, of course. They are exploring a pluto-class world. I have already warned them about our disaster. A reactor mishap, I have called it. At full acceleration, they will arrive in eighteen days.”