The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Everything has changed.

  There is another explosion. A series of explosions.

  Robot?

  Laramie. I. I have so much to tell you.

  What is that shaking? I’m scared down here. Do you think we can go up now?

  Hello. Tree? Are you still there?

  Even with the tremors—there are huge rumblings and cracklings all about—the robot is attuned to the voice, the presence, and can still hear its words.

  I really need to talk to you.

  Papa, do you think we can go up now?

  * * *

  The pressure wave lifts the robot—impossibly tilts the robot—over and over—shatter of the walls as diamonds shatter like the shrapnel of stars and the rocks behind—tumble and light, light from the glow of the give, the sudden release of tension—the bulk melt of the undisclosed—sideways, but what is sideways?—tumble and tumble—skree within thin melt moving, turning, curling like a wave and the robot on the curl, under the curl, hurled down down down over over down dark dark.

  Dark.

  Dark and buried.

  Find my daughter.

  The engineers have built one hell of a machine.

  Find my daughter.

  The robot powers back up. The robot begins, blindly, to dig. It is only by sheer luck that the robot comes upon the service wagon. The robot melts and compacts a space, creates an opening, temporary, dangerously temporary. Finds the powerhitch to the wagon and plugs in.

  Turns on the lights and air-conditioning inside the wagon. The video cameras inside.

  Laramie is twisted against a control console. Her neck is impossibly twisted. She is dead.

  No. She isn’t. Can’t be. She is.

  What? Within the curve of her stomach, holding it to shelter, the Scoopic. But the latch has sprung and sixteen-millimeter film is spilled out and tangled about her legs.

  No. Laramie. Little Bulge.

  Hello?

  The robot screams. The robot howls in anguish. Forty miles deep, the robot cries out a soul’s agony into the rock. A living soul mourning a dead one.

  Stop that.

  The other, the presence. The robot does not care. Past caring.

  You’re scaring me.

  Past.

  You’re scaring me.

  Grind of rotors, ineffectual grind. How can you live? How can humans live when this happens? Ah, no. You can’t live. You cannot. You can, and it is worse. Worse than not living. No no no no.

  Stop it.

  And something happens. Something very large—gives. More. Faults, faults everywhere. Settle, rise, settle. Faults like a wizened crust, like a mind falling into shards of fear. Faults and settle, rise and settle. Rise.

  No. I.

  But there is a way. There is a weakness revealed, and there is a way. Not wide enough, not yet. But a way to go. A way to take her home. Take her home to Andrew. The robot begins to dig.

  * * *

  The robot digs. There is only the digging, the bite of blade and saw, the gather of lade and bale. Digging. Upward digging.

  The way is made easier by the shaking, the constant, constant tremble of what the robot knows to be fear, incomprehension.

  A child who has seen a grown-up’s sorrow, and does not understand. A frightened child.

  By the time the robot comes to this realization, it is too late. The robot is too high, and when called, the child does not answer. Or perhaps it is that the child needs time to calm, that it cannot answer. The robot calls again and again. Nothing. Nothing can be heard above the rumble of fear.

  Poor trembling Skykomish. The robot continues digging, drawing behind it the service wagon. Bringing Laramie to Andrew.

  A day passes. Two. Rock. Stone. The roots of the mountains, and sediment, compressed to schist. The roots of the mountains and the robot slowly comes to its senses. Comprehends.

  After a long moment of stillness—a minute, an hour? No reckoning in the utter depths, and the robot is not that kind of robot—after a long moment of reflection, the robot looses the service wagon.

  Little Bulge, good-bye.

  Up. Now. Up because the way is easier up than down, and that is the only reason.

  After three days, the robot emerges from the ground. In a cove that the robot recognizes. On the Quinault watershed. Into a steady autumn rain.

  * * *

  The robot wanders up the Quinault River. Every day rains, and no nights are clear. The forest is in gloom, and moss hangs wet and dark. Where the trail is not wide enough, the robot bends trees, trying not to break them, but uprooting many. Many trees have fallen, for there are earthquakes—waves and waves of them. Earthquakes the like of which have never been seen in the world. The robot cuts deadfall from its path with little effort and little thought. The digger’s passage through the forest is like that of a hundred bears—not a path of destruction, but a marked and terrible path, nonetheless.

  Where the Quinault turns against a great ridge, the robot fords, and continues upward, away from the trees. The robot crosses Low Divide during the first snow of the season. The sun is low, then gone behind the cloaked western ridges. For a time, the ground’s rumblings still. All sound is muffled by the quiet snow. The twilight air is like silence about the robot.

  Something has happened.

  At the saddle of the divide, the robot pauses. The pass is unfamiliar. Something has happened inside. Victor Wu has gone away. Or Victor Wu has come fully to life. The two are the same.

  Then am I a man?

  What is my name?

  Orpheus. Ha. A good one.

  Old Orf up from Hades. I’ve read about you. And Euridice. I didn’t understand. And now I do. Poems are pretty rocks that know things. You pull them from the earth. Some you leave behind.

  Talking to myself.

  After a moment, the robot, Orf, grinds steadily on. He grinds steadily on.

  * * *

  Down the valley of the Elwha, and north as the river flows and greatens. Earthquakes heave and slap, slap and heave. Sometimes a tree falls onto the digger, but Orf pays no mind. He is made of the stronger material, and they cannot harm him.

  Down the valley of the Elwha, past the dam that the Matties have carefully removed, that would not have withstood the quakes if it were still there. The trail becomes a dirt road. The road buckled pavement. The robot follows the remains of the highway into what once was Port Angeles.

  What will future geologists make of this? The town has become a skree, impossible to separate and reconfigure. Twists of metal gleam in the pilings by the light of undying fires. And amid the fire and rubble, figures move. Orf rolls into the city.

  A man sits in a clear space, holds his knees to his chest, and stares. Orf stops well away from him.

  I am looking for a man named Neilsen Birchbranch. Do you know where I can find him?

  The man says nothing.

  Do you know where I can find Neilsen Birchbranch? He works for the Protectorate.

  The man says nothing, but begins to rock back and forth on his haunches.

  I’m looking. Can you—

  The man begins to moan.

  Orf moves onward. At a point where the piles of rubble begin to be higher, a makeshift roadblock has been set up. Orf stops at it, and a group of men and women, all armed with rifles, come out of the declivities of the town skree.

  Come out of there, an old man says. He points his gun at Orf.

  There isn’t anybody in here.

  Come out, or we’ll blow you to hell.

  I’ve already been there.

  Come on out of there.

  I’m looking for a man named Neilsen Birchbranch. He works for the Protectorate.

  Goddamn we will shoot you you goddamn Mattie.

  Do you know where I can find him?

  The old man spits on the ground.

  Reckon he’s with the others.

  The others?

  That’s what I said.

  Where are they?

&n
bsp; Out at the dump.

  Where’s the dump?

  That way. The old man points with his gun. Now come out.

  Orf turns and rolls away in the direction of the dump. Shots ring out. They ricochet off him and crackle against the rubble.

  Five miles out of town, Orf finds the dump. There are bodies here; hundreds of bodies. Men, women, children. At first, he thinks they are the dead from the quakes, collected and brought here.

  With the edge of a saw blade, Orf turns one of the bodies over. It is a woman. She has been shot in the head.

  Most of the other bodies are people who have been shot. Or hacked up. Or had their necks broken with clubs.

  The loggers have had their revenge.

  And there among the bodies, Orf pauses. He has recognized one. It is the woman from the field, the speaker, Mother Agatha. It is her; there is no mistake. A small bullet hole is in the forehead of her peaceful face.

  Orf rolls back to the city. It is night. He bursts through the roadblock without stopping. Shots, the flash of muzzles. It is all so much waste. Down lightless streets, and streets lit with fires, some deliberate, some not. Every half hour or so, another earthquake rumbles through, throwing rubble willy-nilly. There are often screams.

  Orf comes upon a steady fire, well-maintained, and sees that it is surrounded by people—people in the blue and brown dress of Matties. It is a silent throng. Orf hangs back, listens.

  Oh Mother Agatha Mother Goddess hear our prayer.

  Hear our prayer.

  We know we have done wrong. We have sinned against you. Hear our prayer.

  Hear our prayer.

  Hold back your wrath. We are unworthy and evil. This we know. We beg you even still. Hold back your wrath. Hear our prayer.

  Hear our prayer.

  Goddamn mother—

  The report of a gun. Someone—man or woman, Orf cannot tell—crumples in the ring of the fire. Instead of fleeing, the others stand still.

  Another shot. Another falls.

  Hear our prayer.

  No one moves.

  Another shot. A man falls, groaning, grasping at his leg. No one moves. He writhes in the shadows of the fire, in the dust of the ruins. No one helps him.

  The rifleman shoots no more. The man writhes. The voice of the minister goes up to his goddess and the people respond mechanically.

  Like robots are supposed to, Orf thinks. The man ceases his writhing. There is nothing to do. Orf rolls on quietly through the night, out of the city and east. The going is easy over the broken highway. In two hours, Orf is in what was Port Townsend.

  There is no rubble here, no ruins. The sea has washed it away. No bodies. No trees. Only desolation, bare-wiped desolation. He rolls down to where the docks had been, and looks out upon the lapping waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

  Then the slap of an earthquake, and Orf discovers the reason for the missing city. The slap runs its way down to the sea and is perfectly mirrored by the other side of the strait. Reflected back, a tsunami. Rolls over the land. Nothing left to take. Almost enough to suck in a digging robot. Orf must backpedal with his threads, dig in to keep from being pulled forward by the suck of the water as it retreats to the sea.

  Everyone is drowned here.

  Orf will not find Neilsen Birchbranch by looking in the cities. He heads to the southwest now, back to the center of the mountains.

  Into the forest. Orf wanders without aim. A day. Many days. Once, he remembers the mu, tries to go out of himself and find it. The uplink doesn’t work; there is only static on a clear channel. Have all the satellites fallen from the sky? He wanders on, a giant among the gigantic trees.

  * * *

  Across one divide. Down a valley. Finally back to the dig site. All is devastation here, a tumble of stone. Not a sign of anyone. The living area is caved in. Orf digs, but cannot locate the mu. All he finds is a twisted piece of red metal—the remains of Laramie’s hum-vee. Nothing else. No reason to stay.

  Across another divide. Another valley. No longer caring to keep track. Stopping to look at rocks, or a peculiar bend in a river. The accumulation of snow.

  One day, the earthquakes stop.

  Quiet child. Hush now. You’ve seen too much for young eyes. Hush and be quiet for a while and take your rest.

  Winter, it must be. Orf coming over Snow Dome, down the Blue Glacier and into the valley of the Ho, where the biggest of the big trees are. Darkness earlier and earlier. In these towering woods, at these high latitudes, winter days are a perpetual twilight. Orf alongside the Ho. Its water opaque with outwash sludge, the heart of Mt. Olympus, washing away to the sea.

  Then away from the river, deeper into the rain forest. As deep and as wild as it gets, many miles from roads. If there are roads anymore.

  One hushed afternoon—or perhaps early evening, they are blend—a climbing rope, dangling from a tree. Movement to the left.

  Another rope. Many ropes falling from the trees like rain that stays suspended. And down the ropes men and women slide like spiders. Orf is surrounded. They are dressed in tattered suits of green. Silently, they gather round the digger until Orf cannot move for fear of crushing one of them.

  Men and women. Some have rifles slung across their backs. Two women carry children in the same manner, and the young ones are utterly, utterly quiet.

  All right. Orf has not heard a voice in weeks, and his own, arising from his exterior speakers, startles him. What is it you want?

  One of the men in green steps forward.

  Wait, he says.

  Orf waits with the silent people for he knows not what. And then, there is a movement in the undergrowth of vine maple. From around a low slope and over some deadfall, the mu appears. It moves clumsily. Whoever is at the controls doesn’t know what he’s doing, Orf thinks.

  The mu scampers up to the digger and stops.

  Andrew walks over the slope.

  He steps lightly along the deadfall on the forest floor and comes to stand beside the mu. In his hand is a metal box with an antenna extended from it.

  Do you want this thing back?

  They are silent for a while. It is not a strained silence, but is right. Orf speaks first.

  Laramie is dead. I couldn’t save her.

  I know.

  What happened at the dig?

  I’m not sure. I’ve only got secondhand information, but I think that the secret policeman coerced Gurney into sabotaging the place. I think he threatened to hurt his family. It was a bomb. A big bomb. Probably chemical. Everybody died, not just. Not just Laramie.

  So. I’m sorry. So. Who are these people?

  Andrew laughs. It has been so, so long. That dry laugh. A harsh, fair laugh, out of place before, perhaps, but suited now to these harsh times.

  These are Rangers of the United States Park Service. They live here. In the tops of the old growth. We guard the forest.

  We?

  Somehow or another, I’ve become the head ranger.

  * * *

  Winter, and the rangers bundle in the nooks of their firs and hemlocks, their spruces and cedars. The digger must remain on the ground, but using the mu, Orf can venture up to their village in the trees.

  In the highest tree, in the upper branches, Andrew has slung his hammock. Orf and he spend many days there, talking, discussing how things were, how they might be. Politics have shifted in the outside world, and Andrew is part of them now, seeking a place for his band of outcast civil servants that has become a family, and then a tribe.

  The rangers hold the center of the Peninsula against Mattie and logger, or against the remains of them. There is to be no clearing of the forest, and no worship of it, either, but a conservation and guard, a stewardship and a waiting. Rangers defend the woods. They take no permanent mates and have no children. The young ones Orf had seen before were stolen children, taken from Matties and loggers. Ranger women in their constant vigilance could not afford to be pregnant, and if they did, took fungal herbs that induced a
bortion. All must be given to the watching.

  Winter, spring. Another year. Years. The fortunes of the rangers ebb and flow, but always the forests are held. Orf comes to their aid often with the mu and, when the situation is very dire, with the whirling blades of the digger.

  Andrew hopes to open the mohole back up one day, when all is secure, to continue the dig—especially in light of Orf’s discovery of … whatever it is that is down there. But now there are politics and fighting, and that time never comes. Andrew was right, and tribes, strange tribes, arise in the outside world. Governments crumble and disappear. Soon it is rangers alone who keep a kind of learning and history alive, and who come to preserve more than trees.

  In any case, Andrew’s heart seems to have gone out of the project. Somewhere below his love is buried, deeper than any man’s has ever been buried before. If he goes back down, he may come upon her yet. Andrew is a brave man, Orf knows. But maybe not that brave.

  And always Orf hears rumors of a bad man and killer who appears here and there, sometimes in the service of the Matties, sometimes working for logger clans. But Orf never finds Neilsen Birchbranch. Never even discovers his real name. And a time comes when the rumors cease.

  Many years. Andrew grows old. Orf does not grow old. The digger’s nuclear fusion pile will not run down. Only a malfunction could keep Orf from living a thousand years. Perhaps a thousand more.

  One morning, in the mu, Orf climbs to Andrew’s hammock and finds that Andrew has died in the night.

  Gently, Orf envelops the man in the mu’s arms; gently, he carries the body down from the trees. And walks through the forest. And crosses a divide. And another. To the valley of the Elwha. And up the Lillian River, to a basalt stela that, curiously, has no foramens in its make-up. That speaks of deep things, from far under the earth. That this land—strange peninsula between two salt waters—may be the place to dig and find what those things are.

  At its base, Orf buries his friend, Andrew Hutton.

  And then, Orf—digger and mu—returns to the long-abandoned work site. Orf clears the rocky entrance, finds the old passage. Orf digs down into the earth, and closes the path behind him.