The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 15

by Gardner Dozois

  “Janey, shut up! We’re going out! Shut up!”

  Janey continued to scream. Cassie fumbled, lurched – where the hell was it? – found the door. Turned the knob. It opened, unlocked.

  “Wait!” Elya called, running across the trampled lawn toward Bollman. “Don’t waco! Wait! I called the press!”

  He swung to face her and she shrank back. “You did what?”

  “I called the press! They’ll be here soon and the AI can tell its story and then release Cassie and the children!”

  Bollman stared at her. Then he started shouting. “Who was supposed to be watching this woman! Jessup!”

  “Stop the tank!” Elya cried.

  It continued to move toward the northeast corner of the castle, reached it. For a moment, the scene looked to Elya like something from her childhood book of myths: Atlas? Sisyphus? The tank strained against the solid wall. Soldiers in full battle armor, looking like machines, waited behind it. The wall folded inward like pleated cardboard and then started to fall.

  The tank broke through and was buried in rubble. She heard it keep on going. The soldiers hung back until debris had stopped falling, then rushed forward through the precariously overhanging hole. People shouted. Dust filled the air.

  A deafening crash from inside the house, from something falling: walls, ceiling, floor. Elya whimpered. If Cassie was in that, or under that, or above that . . .

  Cassie staggered around the southwest corner of the castle. She was carrying Donnie and dragging Janey, all of them coughing and sputtering. As people spotted them, a stampede started. Elya joined it. “Cassie! Oh, my dear . . .”

  Hair matted with dirt and rubble, face streaked, hauling along her screaming daughter, Cassie spoke only to Elya. She utterly ignored all the jabbering others as if they did not exist. “He’s dead.”

  For a heart-stopping moment, Elya thought she meant Donnie. But a man was peeling Donnie off his mother and Donnie was whimpering, pasty and red-eyed and snot-covered but alive. “Give him to me, Dr. Seritov,” the man said, “I’m a physician.”

  “Who, Cassie?” Elya said gently. Clearly Cassie was in some kind of shock. She went on with that weird detachment from the chaos around her, as if only she and Cassie existed. “Who’s dead?”

  “Vlad,” Cassie said. “He’s really dead.”

  “Dr. Seritov,” Bollman said, “come this way. On behalf of everyone here, we’re so glad you and the children – ”

  “You didn’t have to waco,” Cassie said, as if noticing Bollman for the first time. “I turned T4S off for you.”

  “And you’re safe,” Bollman said soothingly.

  “You wacoed so you could get the back-up storage facility as well, didn’t you? So T4S couldn’t be re-booted.”

  Bollman said, “I think you’re a little hysterical, Dr. Seritov. The tension.”

  “Bullshit. What’s that coming? Is it a medical copter? My son needs a hospital.”

  “We’ll get your son to a hospital instantly.”

  Someone else pushed her way through the crowd. The tall woman who had installed the castle’s wiring. Cassie ignored her as thoroughly as she’d ignored everyone else until the woman said, “How did you disable the nerve gas?”

  Slowly, Cassie swung to face her. “There was no nerve gas.”

  “Yes, there was. I installed that, too. Black market. I already told Agent Bollman, he promised me immunity. How did you disable it? Or didn’t the AI have time to release it?”

  Cassie stroked Donnie’s face. Elya thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, quietly, under the din, “So he did have moral feelings. He didn’t murder, and we did.”

  “Dr. Seritov,” Bollman said with that same professional soothing, “T4S was a machine. Software. You can’t murder software.”

  “Then why were you so eager to do it?”

  Elya picked up the screaming Janey. Over the noise she shouted, “That’s not a medcopter, Cassie. It’s the press. I . . . I called them.”

  “Good,” Cassie said, still quietly, still without that varnished toughness that had encased her since Vlad’s murder. “I can do that for him, at least. I want to talk with them.”

  “No, Dr. Seritov,” Bollman said. “That’s impossible.”

  “No, it’s not,” Cassie said. “I have some things to say to the reporters.”

  “No,” Bollman said, but Cassie had already turned to the physician holding Donnie.

  “Doctor, listen to me. Donnie has Streptococcus pyogenes, but it’s a genetically altered strain. I altered it. What I did was – ” As she explained, the doctor’s eyes widened. By the time she’d finished and Donnie had been loaded into an FBI copter, two more copters had landed. Bright news logos decorated their sides, looking like the fake ones Bollman had summoned. But these weren’t fake, Elya knew.

  Cassie started toward them. Bollman grabbed her arm. Elya said quickly, “You can’t stop both of us from talking. And I called a third person, too, when I called the press. A friend I told everything to.” A lie. No, a bluff. Would he call her on it?

  Bollman ignored Elya. He kept hold of Cassie’s arm. She said wearily, “Don’t worry, Bollman. I don’t know what T4S was designed for. He wouldn’t tell me. All I know is that he was a sentient being fighting for his life, and we destroyed him.”

  “For your sake,” Bollman said. He seemed to be weighing his options.

  “Yeah, sure. Right.”

  Bollman released Cassie’s arm.

  Cassie looked at Elya. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Elya.”

  “No,” Elya said.

  “But it is. There’s no such thing as non-competing technologies. Or non-competing anything.”

  “I don’t understand what you – ” Elya began, but Cassie was walking toward the copters. Live reporters and smart-’bot recorders, both, rushed forward to meet her.

  HAVE NOT HAVE

  Geoff Ryman

  Born in Canada, Geoff Ryman now lives in England. He made his first sale in 1976, to New Worlds, but it was not until 1984, when he made his first appearance in Interzone – the magazine where almost all of his published short fiction has appeared – with his brilliant novella “The Unconquered Country” that he first attracted any serious attention. “The Unconquered Country,” one of the best novellas of the decade, had a stunning impact on the science fiction scene of the day, and almost overnight established Ryman as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, winning him both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award; it was later published in a book version, The Unconquered Country: A Life History. His output has been sparse since then, by the high-production standards of the genre, but extremely distinguished, with his novel The Child Garden: A Low Comedy winning both the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His other novels include The Warrior Who Carried Life, the critically acclaimed mainstream novel Was, and the underground cult classic 253, the “print remix” of an “interactive hypertext novel,” which in its original form ran online on Ryman’s home page of www.ryman.com, and won the Philip K. Dick Award in its print form. Four of his novellas have been collected in Unconquered Countries. His most recent book is a new novel, Lust. His stories have appeared in our Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Seventeenth Annual Collections.

  As the poignant and disquieting story that follows demonstrates, Progress always comes – whether you want it to or not.

  MAE LIVED IN THE last village in the world to go on line. After that, everyone else went on Air.

  Mae was the village’s fashion expert. She advised on makeup, sold cosmetics, and provided good dresses. Every farmer’s wife needed at least one good dress. The richer wives, like Mr. Wing’s wife Kwan, wanted more than one.

  Mae would sketch what was being worn in the capital. She would always add a special touch: a lime green scarf with sequins; or a lacy ruffle with colorful embroidery. A good dress was for display. “We are a happier people and we can we
ar these gay colors,” Mae would advise.

  “Yes, that is true,” her customer might reply, entranced that fashion expressed their happy culture. “In the photographs, the Japanese women all look so solemn.”

  “So full of themselves,” said Mae, and lowered her head and scowled, and she and her customer would laugh, feeling as sophisticated as anyone in the world.

  Mae got her ideas as well as her mascara and lipsticks from her trips to the town. Even in those days, she was aware that she was really a dealer in information. Mae had a mobile phone. The mobile phone was necessary, for the village had only one line telephone, in the tea room. She needed to talk to her suppliers in private, because information shared aloud in the tea room was information that could no longer be sold.

  It was a delicate balance. To get into town, she needed to be driven, often by a client. The art then was to screen the client from her real sources.

  So Mae took risks. She would take rides by herself with the men, already boozy after the harvest, going down the hill for fun. Sometimes she needed to speak sharply to them, to remind them who she was.

  The safest ride was with the village’s schoolteacher, Mr. Shen. Teacher Shen only had a pony and trap, so the trip, even with an early rise, took one whole day down and one whole day back. But there was no danger of fashion secrets escaping with Teacher Shen. His interests lay in poetry and the science curriculum. In town, they would visit the ice cream parlor, with its clean tiles, and he would lick his bowl, guiltily, like a child. He was a kindly man, one of their own, whose education was a source of pride for the whole village. He and Mae had known each other longer than they could remember.

  Sometimes, however, the ride had to be with someone who was not exactly a friend.

  In the April before everything changed there was to be an important wedding.

  Seker, whose name meant Sugar, was the daughter of the village’s pilgrim to Mecca, their Haj. Seker was marrying into the Atakoloo family, and the wedding was a big event. Mae was to make her dress.

  One of Mae’s secrets was that she was a very bad seamstress. The wedding dress was being made professionally, and Mae had to get into town and collect it. When Sunni Haseem offered to drive her down in exchange for a fashion expedition, Mae had to agree.

  Sunni herself was from an old village family, but her husband Faysal Haseem was from further down the hill. Mr. Haseem was a beefy brute whom even his wife did not like except for his suits and money. He puffed on cigarettes and his tanned fingers were as thick and weathered as the necks of turtles. In the back seat with Mae, Sunni giggled and prodded and gleamed with the thought of visiting town with her friend and confidant who was going to unleash her beauty secrets.

  Mae smiled and whispered, promising much. “I hope my source will be present today,” she said. “She brings me my special colors, you cannot get them anywhere else. I don’t ask where she gets them.” Mae lowered her eyes and her voice. “I think her husband . . . ”

  A dubious gesture, meaning, that perhaps the goods were stolen, stolen from – who knows? – supplies meant for foreign diplomats? The tips of Mae’s fingers rattled once, in provocation, across her client’s arm.

  The town was called Yeshibozkay, which meant Green Valley. It was now approached through corridors of raw apartment blocks set on beige desert soil. It had a new jail and discos with mirror balls, billboards, illuminated shop signs and Toyota jeeps that belched out blue smoke.

  But the town center was as Mae remembered it from childhood. Traditional wooden houses crowded crookedly together, flat-roofed with shutters, shingle-covered gables and tiny fading shop signs. The old market square was still full of peasants selling vegetables laid out on mats. Middle-aged men still played chess outside tiny cafes; youths still prowled in packs.

  There was still the public address system. The address system barked out news and music from the top of the electricity poles. Its sounds drifted over the city, announcing public events or new initiatives against drug dealers. It told of progress on the new highway, and boasted of the well-known entertainers who were visiting the town.

  Mr. Haseem parked near the market, and the address system seemed to enter Mae’s lungs, like cigarette smoke, perfume, or hair spray. She stepped out of the van and breathed it in. The excitement of being in the city trembled in her belly. As much as the bellowing of shoppers, farmers and donkeys; as much as the smell of raw petrol and cut greenery and drains, the address system made her spirits rise. She and her middle-aged client looked on each other and gasped and giggled at themselves.

  “Now,” Mae said, stroking Sunni’s hair, her cheek. “It is time for a complete makeover. Let’s really do you up. I cannot do as good work up in the hills.”

  Mae took her client to Halat’s, the same hairdresser as Sunni might have gone to anyway. But Mae was greeted by Halat with cries and smiles and kisses on the cheek. That implied a promise that Mae’s client would get special treatment. There was a pretense of consultancy. Mae offered advice, comments, cautions. Careful! she has such delicate skin! Hmm, the hair could use more shaping there. And Halat hummed as if perceiving what had been hidden before and then agreed to give the client what she would otherwise have given. But Sunni’s nails were soaking, and she sat back in the center of attention, like a queen.

  All of this allowed the hairdresser to charge more. Mae had never pressed her luck and asked for a cut. Something beady in Halat’s eyes told her there would be no point. What Mae got out of it was standing, and that would lead to more work later.

  With cucumbers over her eyes, Sunni was safely trapped. Mae announced, “I just have a few errands to run. You relax and let all cares fall away.” She disappeared before Sunni could protest.

  Mae ran to collect the dress. A disabled girl, a very good seamstress called Miss Soo, had opened up a tiny shop of her own.

  Miss Soo was grateful for any business, poor thing, skinny as a rail and twisted. After the usual greetings, Miss Soo shifted round and hobbled and dragged her way to the back of the shop to fetch the dress. Her feet hissed sideways across the uneven concrete floor. Poor little thing, Mae thought. How can she sew?

  Yet Miss Soo had a boyfriend in the fashion business. Genuinely in the fashion business, far away in the capital city, Balshang. The girl often showed Mae his photograph. It was like a magazine photograph. The boy was very handsome, with a shiny shirt and coiffed-up hair. She kept saying she was saving up money to join him. It was a mystery to Mae what such a boy was doing with a cripple for a girlfriend. Why did he keep contact with her? Publicly Mae would say to friends of the girl: it is the miracle of love, what a good heart he must have. Otherwise she kept her own counsel which was this: you would be very wise not to visit him in Balshang.

  The boyfriend sent Miss Soo the patterns of dresses, photographs, magazines, or even whole catalogs. There was one particularly treasured thing; a showcase publication. The cover was like the lid of a box, and it showed in full color the best of the nation’s fashion design.

  Models so rich and thin they looked like ghosts. They looked half asleep, as if the only place they carried the weight of their wealth was on their eyelids. It was like looking at Western or Japanese women, and yet not. These were their own people, so long-legged, so modern, so ethereal, as if they were made of air.

  Mae hated the clothes. They looked like washing-up towels. Oatmeal or gray in one color and without a trace of adornment.

  Mae sighed with lament. “Why do these rich women go about in their underwear?”

  The girl shuffled back with the dress, past piles of unsold oatmeal cloth. Miss Soo had a skinny face full of teeth, and she always looked like she was staring ahead in fear. “If you are rich you have no need to try to look rich.” Her voice was soft. She made Mae feel like a peasant without meaning to. She made Mae yearn to escape herself, to be someone else, for the child was effortlessly talented, somehow effortlessly in touch with the outside world.

  “Ah yes,” Mae sighed.
“But my clients, you know, they live in the hills.” She shared a conspiratorial smile with the girl. “Their taste! Speaking of which, let’s have a look at my wedding cake of a dress.”

  The dress was actually meant to look like a cake, all pink and white sugar icing, except that it kept moving all by itself. White wires with Styrofoam bobbles on the ends were surrounded with clouds of white netting.

  “Does it need to be quite so busy?” the girl asked, doubtfully, encouraged too much by Mae’s smile.

  “I know my clients,” replied Mae coolly. This is at least, she thought, a dress that makes some effort. She inspected the work. The needlework was delicious, as if the white cloth were cream that had flowed together. The poor creature could certainly sew, even when she hated the dress.

  “That will be fine,” said Mae, and made move toward her purse.

  “You are so kind!” murmured Miss Soo, bowing slightly.

  Like Mae, Miss Soo was of Chinese extraction. That was meant not to make any difference, but somehow it did. Mae and Miss Soo knew what to expect of each other.

  “Some tea?” the girl asked. It would be pale, fresh-brewed, not the liquid tar that the native Karsistanis poured from continually boiling kettles.

  “It would be delightful, but I do have a customer waiting,” explained Mae.

  The dress was packed in brown paper and carefully tied so it would not crease. There were farewells, and Mae scurried back to the hairdresser’s. Sunni was only just finished, hair spray and scent rising off her like steam.

  “This is the dress,” said Mae and peeled back part of the paper, to give Halat and Sunni a glimpse of the tulle and Styrofoam.

  “Oh!” the women said, as if all that white were clouds, in dreams.

  And Halat was paid. There were smiles and nods and compliments and then they left.

  Outside the shop, Mae breathed out as though she could now finally speak her mind. “Oh! She is good, that little viper, but you have to watch her, you have to make her work. Did she give you proper attention?”