The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  She and Dzhun kissed and Selina sat down, nodding at Stef.

  “Hell of a night,” she said to them and the world in general. “I did a dozen guys.”

  “Oh, Selina,” said Dzhun. “Honey, I do a dozen on my way to work.”

  Yamashita clapped his hands and bowed to announce himself to the fromazhi—the big cheeses. It was the morning meeting of the Secret Emergency Committee that had been formed to deal with the wormholer theft.

  Yama’s boss, Oleary, Deputy Controller of the Lion Sector, grunted a welcome, adding, “You know these people, I’m sure.”

  Considering that he was talking about the Solar System Controller, her deputy the Earth Controller, her Chief of Security, and Admiral Hrka of the Far Space Service, that was inadequate to say the least.

  The SSC was Xian Xi-Qing, a small woman with a parchment face, tiny hands and dull gold and jade rings stacked two and three to a finger. She was famous for many things, her three husbands, her stable of male concubines, the ruthlessness and cleverness that had kept her alive and in power for decades.

  She glared at Yama and demanded abruptly, “We’ve heard from Kathmann. At least he’s caught somebody. What are you doing about this wormholer business? I’ve heard rumors the conspiracy originated in your sector.”

  Yama took his time seating himself on a backless chair known as the shozit, or hot seat. The grandees faced him behind a Martian gilt table surrounded by an invisible atmosphere of power. Admiral Hrka, Yama noted, wasn’t even wearing his nine stars. That was the ultimate sign of status. Nobody needed to see his rating.

  Among the bureaucrats, the admiral looked and probably felt out of place. Hrka usually dealt with the arcane business of moving in Far Space—using inertial compensators and particle beam trans-lightspeed accelerators, navigating by mag space forcelines and staging chronometric reentries where an error of a microsecond could put him deep inside the glowing core of a planet. He was accustomed to using atomlasers that could melt steel at half a million clicks, launching supertorps at near-light velocities and converting the enemies of his species into plasma thinner than the solar wind.

  Now he found himself face to face with a threat that might enable one fragile human to undo his world and render all his knowledge and bravery pointless. He looked as if he longed to be in Far Space now, where even if he was a thousand light years from anyplace he knew where he was.

  Seated to one side was Kathmann, Yama’s opposite number in Earth Security. He resembled a files technician, with his pointed head and fat neck. He wore replacement eyes and the plastic corneas glittered blankly.

  Quietly Yama laid out the steps taken so far to locate members of Crux. The notion that the conspiracy had grown up in the Lion Sector remained unproven, yet diligent inquiries were underway on all the Sector’s two hundred and thirty-six inhabited worlds. All available mag space transponder circuits had been cleared for this one task. Enough energy to light Ulanor for six weeks had already been poured into the message traffic. The whole business was necessarily slow; even at maximum power, a message routed through mag space from the farthest planets of the Sector took more than seventy standard hours to reach Earth.

  And so on. Actually he had nothing to report and his aim was to make nothing sound like something. When he was done the fromazhi, who knew bureaucratic boilerplate when they heard it, just sat there looking bored. Only Kathmann spoke up.

  “All your inquiries are on offworlds?”

  “Certainly. That’s where our authority begins and ends.”

  “You’re not invading my territory, using unofficial agents here on Earth?”

  Yama was shocked.

  “Onor kolleg, eto ne’legalni!” he exclaimed. “Honored colleague, that’s illegal!”

  Kathmann raised one fat fist and stared at Yama with eyes like worn silver halfkhan pieces.

  “Remember, Colonel, this hand holds the keys to the White Chamber!” Yama raised his own much solider fist.

  “And this one, Colonel Kathmann, has killed a thousand enemies of the State!”

  The spat had Admiral Hrka grinning.

  “Simmer down, boys,” he said, while the Earth Controller, a man named Ugaitish, muttered into his beard, “Spokai, spokai. Take it easy.”

  “What I want to know,” said Oleary in a fretful tone, “is why anybody built this goddamn gadget in the first place. If it didn’t exist it couldn’t be stolen.”

  “It was some idiots at the University,” said Ugaitish. “They just had to see if the theory worked. They applied for a permit, all very legal, and some minor official gave them an oké for the materials, which are pretty exotic. There’s no use putting them in the White Chamber,” he added, waving a hand to shut Kathmann up.

  Xian agreed. “Typical academics. All they know is what they know. Not an atom of common sense.”

  “Besides,” Ugaitish added, “the academics were the ones who reported the theft. Except for that, nobody would know anything about it.”

  “They should be beheaded anyway,” Kathmann growled, “to get rid of the dangerous knowledge in their brains. A laser can do it in five seconds, and there you are.”

  Yama’s sharp eyes intercepted the glance that passed among the fromazhi. Kathmann made them uneasy—a man who knew too much and executed too readily. Yama filed away this insight for future reference.

  “At this point, beheading is not the issue,” declared Hrka. “Let me sum up. A woman, name unknown, took a commercial ship, probably somewhere in the Lion Sector—now there’s a big volume of space to cover—and traveled to Earth, where she has, perhaps, contacted a group of terrorists who intend to obliterate our world by changing the past. The group has a functional wormholer, calls itself Crux, and in the most overpoliced human society since the fall of the Imperial Chinese People’s Republic nobody knows who they are or where they are. Have I stated the situation clearly?”

  Xian glared first at him, then at the two cops in turn.

  “You better find them,” she said, “or I’ll put you both in the White Chamber.”

  She let that sink in, then said more formally: “Honored security chiefs, we permit you to go.”

  When they were gone, Xian told the others, “We need information now. Ugaitish is putting out a public call for help. We don’t have to tell everything, just that a gang of terrorists called Crux is on the loose, planning to kill many innocent people.”

  “Is that wise?” worried Oleary. “Informing the masses seems like an extreme step to me.”

  “If we don’t, the politicians will. I have to brief the President and the Senate today, and what do you think will happen then?”

  “Much smoke, much heat, no light,” said Hrka fatalistically. “Well, we’d better catch these bastards. The whole world order as we know it exists only because of the Time of Troubles. Without that, everything would be different.”

  The fromazhi stared at each other. “Great Tao,” said Ugaitish, “if these scoundrels succeed—even if we continue to exist at all, we might be anything. Coolies, prisoners, offworld scum!”

  “Ask for help,” Oleary told Xian. “If necessary, beg.”

  After his night in the District, Stef needed sleep. Yet he spent a couple of hours at his mashina, checking his regular contacts for hints of terrorist groups. He heard gossip about lunatics who wanted to blow up Genghis’ tomb, but nothing of interest to him. So he went to bed.

  The daytime noises rising from Golden Horde Street had no power to keep him awake. He had slept away too many days, sunk in the half light admitted from the roofed balcony, embracing rumpled bedcovers in the brown shadows of afternoon. In a few minutes he drifted off, but not for long.

  He woke suddenly thinking he must have shit on himself. He reached for his pistol just as a crushing furry weight fell on him.

  The ceiling light went on and the Darksider rolled Stef over and sat on his back. For an agonized few moments he couldn’t breathe at all, while the creature, aided by a human Stef
never saw clearly, thrust his hands into a kang and locked the wrists. Then the Darksider rose, bent down over its gasping victim and lifted him so that the kang could be clamped on his neck as well. A four-fingered, two-thumbed hand gripped his hair and pulled him to a sitting position.

  Spots drifted before his eyes in a red torrent that slowly cleared. Stef was sitting naked on the bed with a black plastic kang clamped on his wrists and neck. His faint hope that this might be a nightmare died. The Darksider was standing bowlegged by the bed and scratching its chest. The human seemed to be wearing a polizi uniform; he kept to the shadows just beyond the limits of Stef’s vision. Head immobilized, Stef tried to twist his body to get a view of his captor, but without success.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Your guide, Mr. Steffens. I’m here to show you something you never saw before.”

  “What?”

  “The inside of the White Chamber.”

  At a gesture, the Darksider tossed a sack over Stef’s head and pulled a cord tight around his neck. A hypodermic gun spat at his shoulder and he had a horrifying sense that his whole body was melting into a cold and lifeless fluid before darkness descended.

  He would have preferred not to wake up, but wake he did. Still in the kang, still with the sack over his head. Of course you’re not comfortable, he told himself. You’re not supposed to be comfortable. He had no idea how long he’d been here, except that he was thirsty and hungry. No idea where “here” was, except somewhere in the warrens of the White Chamber.

  He had urinated at some point and was sitting in the wet. The cell was so small that his knees were folded up against his chest. His icy toes pressed against metal that was probably the door. The cell was narrower than the kang, and Stef had to sit with his body twisted. There was no way to move, no way to rest. As the hours passed, agonizing pains began to shoot through his back and side. Breathing became difficult. He began suffering waves of panic at the thought that the polizi would leave him here until he slowly suffocated. The panic made things worse; he started to hyperventilate, and every breath stabbed him like a knife. He tried to calm himself, counting slow shallow breaths that didn’t hurt so much.

  Then voices approached along a corridor outside the cell. Faint hope was followed by stomach-knotting fear. They might let me go; it was all a mistake; Yama will get me out. No, Yama doesn’t know anything and anyway he doesn’t control the polizi. They’re coming to torture me.

  The voices came close. Two techs were discussing a “client,” as they called their victims. Voices neutral, atonal like the voices of two black boxes.

  “Maybe twenty cc of gnosine would do it.”

  “I dunno. This client is a tough case.”

  “Maybe needles in the spinal marrow …”

  They were gone. A faint noise in the distance remained unidentifiable until a door in the corridor slid open. Then Stef heard a whimpering, sobbing sound that made all the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Extreme agony, he thought—beyond screaming.

  The door slid shut again and the sound became a low meaningless murmur. Human footsteps approached again. Two voices.

  “Just wonderful, Doctor. I never thought she’d break.”

  “Sometimes a combination of therapies is essential.”

  They too were gone. Doctors. Technicians. Therapies. Clients. The language of the Chamber. We are not sadists, we are scientists performing a distasteful but necessary function in the cause of justice. Try the gnosine, try the needles, try everything in combination. Promise the clients life; after you’ve worked on them for a while, promise them death.

  When the polizi came at last, they came in silence. Without the slightest warning the door clanged open. Somebody yelled, “Get the scum! Get the piece of shit!”

  A Darksider grabbed Stef’s legs and dragged him into the hall and the wrench on his cramped limbs made him scream. Then the animal was dragging him down the hall by the heels while boots kicked at Stef’s ribs and head.

  The kang knocked against the walls and floor. A human hand grabbed his testicles and twisted and he screamed again, louder than before. Then somebody, a crowd of them, human and inhuman, seized the ends of the kang and dragged him to his feet.

  “Walk! Walk, you piece of shit! Walk!”

  He couldn’t and fell and somebody kicked him hard in the groin and this time he did no screaming. He was unconscious.

  He woke with intense light in his eyes. He was sitting in a hard duroplast chair and the sack was off his head. His eyes burned; agony rose in waves from his groin. Somebody in hard boots stamped on the bare toes of his left foot.

  Stef wasn’t thinking any longer, he was living in nothing but the conviction that every second some new pain would strike. What next, what next? Hands seized the kang and pulled it back. Other hands, some human, some inhuman, grabbed his ankles and stretched out his legs. In the blazing light he was halfblind, absolutely helpless. Somebody touched his breastbone and he moaned and his stomach knotted, expecting the blow.

  Nothing happened. The light dimmed. Gradually his eyes cleared. A man with a pointed head was standing before him. The man had plastic eyes that went blank when he moved his head. There was no crowd of tormentors, only two thuggi from Earth Central and one Darksider. One of the thuggi gave the other a piece of candy and they stood there, chewing. The Darksider scratched its furry backside against a wall.

  “Mr. Steffens.”

  “Yes,” whispered Stef.

  “I’m sending you home now. For the future, will you remember one thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “From now on, Yamashita will continue to pay you, but in spite of that you’ll be working for me as well as for him, and I’ll expect to know everything you do and everything you discover about Crux.”

  Kathmann leaned forward and once again tapped Stef’s breastbone.

  “If you hide anything from me, I’ll know it, and I’ll bring you back here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Next time you’ll get standard treatment,” added Kathmann, straightening up. “Not the grandmotherly kindness you received this time.”

  To the thuggi he said, “Give him one more.”

  He left the room and a door closed. Behind the light the room flickered and a second Darksider Stef hadn’t seen before approached him, holding a spiked club in its paws. But that’ll kill me, he thought, and his eyes clamped shut on a final vision of the new Darksider raising the club for a smashing blow to his gut.

  He sat there blind, waiting. Then he heard them laughing at him. He opened his eyes as one of the thuggi unlocked the kang. The other was grinning. The Darksider with the club flickered, evaporated. A three-dimensional laser image, created, Stef now saw, by projectors mounted high up on the walls.

  “The boss likes to have his little joke,” the thug explained with a wink. The real Darksider was still scratching its butt. Insofar as an animal could, it looked absolutely bored.

  Outside was deep night or earliest morning. Wrapped in a blanket and shivering uncontrollably, Stef rode home in a polizi hovercar. Before dawn he was in his own bed, wracked by pain from toes to scalp. Yet he slept, and by noon was able to creep to the balcony, dragging one foot behind him. He walked bowlegged, because his scrotum was the size of a grapefruit.

  Slowly, very slowly, he prepared kif and lay down. He was starving but wouldn’t have dreamed of getting up to look for food.

  He smoked and the drug dulled everything, pain and hunger alike, and let him sleep. In all the world only kif was merciful. No wonder it was his religion.

  By nightfall Stef was minimally better. He slept long, despite nightmares that left him drenched with sweat. By morning he was functional enough to bathe (he smelled worse than a Darksider by then) and dress. Then he called Yama on his mashina, hoping the polizi would monitor his call—he wanted to remind them that he had powerful friends.

  “Stef. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted you to know
that your pal Kathmann had me in the White Chamber. I’m working for him now, too.”

  “That son of a bitch. He hurt you much?”

  “It wasn’t a picnic. But I’ve been through worse.”

  “Yeah, I know you’re a survivor. Well, I guess we got to share anything we find out with Earth Central. But I’m going to see Kathmann and tell him if he grabs you again, I’ll send Oleary to see Xian herself. You got anything broken, like bones?”

  “No.”

  “Well, at least the miserable bastard went light on you.”

  Stef next called a neighborhood babaku shop and ordered food. Then he found his pistol, made sure it was loaded, and returned to his kif pipe.

  On the balcony he smoked and thought about ways to kill Kathmann. He had two people on his list now: Dyeva, because she wanted to destroy his world, Kathmann because he had—well, not tortured Stef; what had happened was too trivial to be called torture. No, Kathmann had simply been getting his attention in the inimitable polizi way.

  This wasn’t the first time in his life that Stef had been completely abased and humiliated. But he decided now that it was to be the last. He pointed his pistol at the wall and said, “Phut.”

  After Dyeva, Kathmann was next.

  That evening Professor Yang again stood before his mashina, which was set to Transmit and Record. A memory cube nestled in the queue. Lights arranged by his servant illuminated Yang against a background of ancient books that had been imprinted on the wall by a digital image-transfer process. (Real books were too expensive for a scholar to afford.)

  Watching the interest indicator with a sharp eye, Yang launched into the second lecture of his course, Origin of Our World. His subject today was the response to the Troubles: the slow repopulation of the Earth by humans and the reintroduction of hundreds of extinct animal species whose DNA had fortunately been preserved for low-gravity study on Luna.