The Year's Best Science Fiction--Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Yes,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I hate the dzaiiree and rajhinee and their unclean interbreeding and their alhothma.”

  My Babel can’t provide a sensible translation of ‘alhothma.’ I stay with the topic at hand. “But not the Reformationists?”

  She shakes her chin from side to side, as a horse would, imitating the human gesture to ensure my understanding. “No. They are my enemies, but their actions are sensible to me.”

  “Do you hate humans?”

  “I will learn easily enough,” she says. “My point is that we both have a concept of hate. Other species’ do not. Bnebene have evolved beyond such things. Pa’or know only acquisitiveness. Jaendreil know only fear and the courage of conquering it. Other species go to war because they are driven to it. Humans and krithkinee go to war because hate makes it a choice.” She makes the chopping gesture with her fighting hand. “But this is all in the future. Today our interests are in alignment.”

  * * *

  She picks up that thread of conversation on the ride back to the manor. “It is a peculiarity of humans that you weaken yourselves voluntarily.”

  I’m in good humour after my successful meeting with the botanists. Meychezhek told them that they were pleased by my gift and, if my grasp of krithkinee non-verbal cues is sound, it did indeed seem to be the case.

  “How so?” I ask.

  “Because you accommodate yourself to your weakest member. You devote resources to ensure the survival of individuals who would not otherwise live. This weakens your species.”

  “That is evolved social behaviour,” I say. “Frailty is not synonymous with lack of social value.”

  She chops with her hand. “No. It is counter to natural behaviour. A pack runs at the pace of its second weakest member. The weakest falls behind, and the pack becomes stronger. This is the krithkinee way.”

  She pushes her lower jaw forward, ruminating. At length, she continues, “It is widely known that humans permit the survival of alhothmanee, as the dzaiiree-rajhinee do. I would dismiss it as a slander, if I had not seen for myself that it is true.”

  The translation that my Babel provides for ‘alhothmanee’ doesn’t make sense. “Divided souls?”

  She nods, and suddenly I see that Meychezhek is intensely uncomfortable. “The sharing of a womb by multiple offspring,” she says. Her lips peel back from her teeth in an expression that seems a direct analogue for a human grimace of disgust. “Allowing such offspring to survive.”

  “Multiple births are not allowed to survive?”

  “Only one,” she says.

  * * *

  There’s a parable, of which there are several versions across the various bahdaree and junkharee cultures. It tells of twin siblings who, by the madness and deception of their birth mother, were both permitted to live. The son was raised as the heir of her father, a provincial dhar. The daughter, hidden by his mother and fostered to a childless noble house, was trained to become a lord’s wife.

  The fortunes of both houses—birth and adoptive—were dogged by ill luck, which escalated to provincial catastrophe when the son inherited her father’s title and was subsequently, unwittingly, married to her sister. Only when he was dying of plague did their mother confess to his crime. The sister-wife promptly committed suicide, so that his brother-husband’s fortunes could be restored. By this act of sacrifice, the soul that had been shared by the twins was made whole and the fortunes of the dhar’s house and province restored.

  The story serves both as justification of racial bigotry and reinforcement of male subservience. Twins are rare among krithkinee and contemporary medical science allows for the selective abortion of early term foetuses. Only among the most traditionally minded badharee and junkharee is abortion of alhothmanee still applied—to borrow the dry if distasteful descriptor of one ethnographer—“post-natally.”

  * * *

  I stay to talk with Pathkemey after my next riding lesson, while the children try to lead the recalcitrant staigegee back to the stables.

  “Your father thinks there will be a great war between our species,” I say, in response to a comment of hers about future trade.

  “She is wise, my father,” Pathkemey replies, her eyes on the children.

  “Do you fear it, too?”

  She stiffens, then rounds on me as if she can’t believe what I’ve just asked. Her chin comes up and her head crest rises.

  For a terrifying moment, I’m certain she’s going to assault me, and my only thought is to pray to God that I’ll survive it. I can’t even begin to muster the words to apologise. The children huddle together, looking from Pathkemey to me. Without another word, she turns and strides away.

  With her, I’m certain, go my prospects here. I start to shake. I feel like a lion just looked me in the eye, enraged, and then walked away.

  The staigegee, forgotten, have ambled along the passageway to the manor’s front gate. A guard shouts in surprise and the children scatter.

  * * *

  Staigeg saddles are designed to accommodate krithkinee tails, and therefore slope down at the back. No matter how I adjust my posture, my round human backside keeps sliding off.

  It doesn’t help that I’m struggling to concentrate, terrified as I am that, with one ill-conceived question, I’ve irretrievably misstepped, wrecked my prospects of closing this trade deal and—God forbid—put myself in danger of physical harm. That Pathkemey has rebuffed my attempts to apologise and Meychezhek hasn’t had time for me, until today’s curt instruction to accompany her, has done nothing to allay my fears.

  My staigeg responds to my fidgeting by veering into the path of the guard riding beside me.

  The staigegee grunt at each other and bump their ugly heads until I get mine walking in a straight line again, apologising profusely to the other rider.

  The guard—a junkhar—stares at me, unsure how to respond. Like many krithkinee I’ve encountered, she cannot quite decide what my status is: whether she should treat me as a male, and therefore beneath her; or as an impregnator, and therefore her equal, or even superior.

  Meychezhek, having ignored me since we set out, chooses this moment to drop back. “You offended Pathkemey.”

  I begin to stammer an apology, but she waves me to silence. “Fear is a reaction of prey. It is something that happens to other beings. Not to krithkinee. As I have explained.”

  I’d realised my mistake after I watched Pathkemey march away from me. The only Junkhin word for fear—the word my Babel used—means specifically ‘hunted feeling.’ Relief floods me. Meychezhek doesn’t look or sound angry.

  My words come in a rush, “When I spoke to Pathkemey, I was thinking about your comments that there will be war between our species, and that we will learn to hate each other.”

  “You will be pleased to explain,” she says.

  And then I realise: every one of her retainers has eyes or ears turned our way. They’re completely attuned to her, even when their attention is ostensibly on clearing a path through the traffic. My stomach knots all over again.

  “I think,” I say, slowly, “that our concepts of hate differ. For humans, hate derives mainly from fear.”

  Meychezhek relaxes, the scholar in her re-engaging. The guards follow suit. “Curious,” she says. “The hatred that a krithkinee will feel for humans or jaendreil or pa’or is different to this.” She thinks for a few moments. “If a weak krithkin attacks the exposed throat of a strong krithkin it causes a sense of shock in the attacked individual. This shock triggers fury at the effrontery of the weaker individual. That lesser species will contend with us—even defeat us, on occasion—prompts the same response in many krithkinee.”

  I wonder if there are silent quotation marks around the term “lesser species.” “You think that other species are weaker than krithkinee?”

  “Of course,” she says. “As we have discussed.”

  * * *

  A commotion erupts on the balcony outside my chamber while I’m roll
ing my mat after evening prayer—several voices talking over each other in Junkhin too rapid for my Babel to catch more than snatches.

  I gather that something is happening with Yzgushin and his baby. I open my door in time to see Meychezhek stride past. Pathkemey stops me.

  “You will prefer to remain in your room.”

  I’m not at all certain that Pathkemey has forgiven me for inadvertently accusing her of cowardice. “Is everything well with Yzgushin?”

  “He is giving birth,” she says, shortly, and hurries after her father.

  I remain in the doorway, neither quite willing to return to my chamber nor daring enough to leave it. Servants dash across the courtyard, heading towards the garages. I hear the faint whine of electric motors, fading quickly as the sleds pass out through the front gate.

  It’s quiet from Yzgushin’s chamber, around the curve of the balcony. Other members of the household clump together along the balconies, above and below. In the courtyard, guards spread around the perimeter. I wonder why.

  Presently, there are sounds from the gate. A group enters the courtyard—a junkhar lord and her guards. I retreat further into the shadows of the doorway. More retinues follow the first, badharee and junkharee, lesser lords who owe patronage to Meychezhek. The guards jostle as they make space for their masters, but there’s no fighting and the crowd remains quiet. The house lights come on as the sun sets.

  A thin cry breaches the dusk. It sounds like the croak of some baby bird, nothing like a human infant.

  Then a second cry joins the first.

  The click of the bolt on Yzgushin’s door makes me jump. Pathkemey emerges and stands to one side. Her father follows, one infant voice growing louder as she does.

  Meychezhek moves to the balcony rail and holds up the baby in her hands. Tiny limbs flail. The legs and fighting arms don’t have their claws yet. The child’s mouth is open wide, its eyes tight shut. Its voice fills the hollow core of the manor house. The other baby, left with its mother, has quieted.

  Alhothman.

  I think, for a disbelieving moment, that Meychezhek will simply cast the child down into the courtyard. The watchers seem to hold their breaths. Meychezhek turns the baby over in her hands, leans her head down and bites the back of its neck. Its cries cease, abruptly. When she lifts up her face, her mouth is bloody.

  There’s a murmur of approval from the courtyard—from the junkharee. The badharee lords are stiff-faced.

  My stomach heaves. The lords bow their heads, touching their chins to their chests before they begin to file out. Meychezhek raises her gaze. Her eyes catch the light as she spies me in my doorway.

  Bile rises. I turn and flee.

  * * *

  She seeks me out before dawn. One of the servants must have reported me packing. It’s the first time she’s come to my chamber, rather than calling me to attend her.

  “You have found your reason to hate.”

  “No.” For a second, I can see nothing in her but an animal that killed its own offspring—killed, like an animal, with its own teeth. My gorge rises again and I need a moment to compose myself. “My own kind…” I’d been about to say “commit such atrocities”. I change it to, “My own kind do comparable things.”

  “And do you hate those that do?”

  I’m terrified that I’ll lose the last of my self-control, that I’ll insult her beyond toleration, like a monkey flailing defiance at a panther. “Why that way?” I manage. “Why not in the womb, early?”

  “I am Dhar, and badharee,” she says. “It had to be seen.”

  “Your own child. How could you?”

  “It was for my child. The alhothman had to be ended so that my child’s soul could be made whole. For my people, too, and the Empire. Because I am Dhar, and badharee.”

  “And if I told you that I am a twin, would you ‘end’ me?”

  “Your alhothma would not be for me to repair. You would have to leave my house and no trade would be possible with you or your combine.” Her tone is patient, like Pathkemey’s during riding lessons. The notion that she’s being tolerant of me is unbearable.

  I draw myself up. “I thank you for the hospitality of your house, Dhar. I regret that I must leave.”

  “You have concluded your business?”

  She knows very well that I have nothing remotely resembling a contract for trade with the botanists. “Sufficiently well,” I say.

  She remains where she is for several seconds longer, her gaze holding me.

  I see disappointment there, and I feel like a fool. I know I can’t tolerate, can’t abide, what I’ve witnessed, and yet, still, her tolerance makes me feel like a fool.

  Meychezhek lifts her chin and is gone.

  A Salvaging of Ghosts

  ALIETTE DE BODARD

  Aliette de Bodard is a software engineer who lives and works in Paris, where she shares a flat with two Lovecraftian plants and more computers than warm bodies. Only a few years into her career, her short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Realms of Fantasy, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Writers of the Future, Coyote Wild, Electric Velocipede, The Immersion Book of SF, Fictitious Force, Shimmer, and elsewhere, and she has won the British SF Association Award for her story “The Shipmaker,” the Locus Award, and the Nebula Award for her stories “The Waiting Stars” and “Immersion.” Her novels include Servant of the Underworld, Harbinger of the Storm, and Master of the House of Darts, all recently reissued in a novel omnibus, Obsidian and Blood. Her most recent novel was another British SF Association–winner, The House of Shattered Wings. Coming up is a sequel, The House of Binding Thorns. Her Web site, www.aliettedebodard.com, features free fiction, thoughts on the writing process, and entirely too many recipes for Vietnamese dishes.

  The story that follows is another in her long series of “Xuya” stories, taking place in the far-future of an Alternate World where a high-tech conflict is going on between spacefaring Mayan and Chinese empires. In the suspenseful tale that follows, we visit a starship lost and shipwrecked in the maze of Deep Space, where reality itself changes from moment to moment, and meet a woman willing to risk her future for the slimmest chance of reclaiming the past.

  Thuy’s hands have just closed on the gem—she can’t feel its warmth with her gloves, but her daughter’s ghost is just by her side, at the hole in the side of the ship’s hull, blurred and indistinct—when the currents of unreality catch her. Her tether to The Azure Serpent, her only lifeline to the ship, stretches; snaps.

  And then she’s gone, carried forward into the depths.

  * * *

  On the night before the dive, Thuy goes below decks with Xuan and Le Hoa. It’s traditional; just as it is traditional that, when she comes back from a dive, she’ll claim her salvage and they’ll have another rousing party in which they’ll drink far too many gems dissolved in rice wine and shout poetry until The Azure Serpent’s Mind kindly dampens their incoherent ravings to give others their sleep—but not too much, as it’s good to remember life; to know that others onship celebrate surviving one more dive, like notches on a belt or vermillion beads slid on an abacus.

  One more. Always one more.

  Until, like Thuy’s daughter Kim Anh, that one last dive kills you and strands your body out there, in the dark. It’s a diver’s fate, utterly expected; but she was Thuy’s child—an adult when she died, yet forever Thuy’s little girl—and Thuy’s world contracts and blurs whenever she thinks of Kim Anh’s corpse, drifting for months in the cold alien loneliness of deep spaces.

  Not for much longer; because this dive has brought them back where Kim Anh died. One last evening, one last fateful set of drinks with her friends, before Thuy sees her daughter again.

  Her friends … Xuan is in a bad mood. No gem-drinking on a pre-dive party, so she nurses her rice wine as if she wishes it contained other things, and contributes only monosyllables to the conversation. Le Hoa, as usual, is elated; talking too m
uch and without focus—dealing with her fears through drink, and food, and being uncharacteristically expansive.

  “Nervous, lil’ sis?” she asks Thuy.

  Thuy stares into the depth of her cup. “I don’t know.” It’s all she’s hoped for; the only chance she’ll ever get that will take her close enough to her daughter’s remains to retrieve them. But it’s also a dangerous dive into deep spaces, well into layers of unreality that could kill them all. “We’ll see. What about you?”

  Le Hoa sips at her cup, her round face flushed with drink. She calls up, with a gesture, the wreck of the mindship they’re going to dive into; highlights, one after the other, the strings of gems that the scanners have thrown up. “Lots of easy pickings, if you don’t get too close to the wreck. And that’s just the biggest ones. Smallest ones won’t show up on sensors.”

  Which is why they send divers. Or perhaps merely because it’s cheaper and less of an investment to send human beings, instead of small and lithe mindships that would effortlessly survive deep spaces, but each cost several lifetimes to build and properly train.

  Thuy traces, gently, the contours of the wreck on the hologram—there’s a big hole in the side of the hull, something that blew up in transit, killing everyone onboard. Passengers’ corpses have spilled out like innards—all unrecognisable of course, flesh and muscles disintegrated, bones slowly torn and broken and compressed until only a string of gems remains to mark their presence.

  Kim Anh, too, is gone: nothing left of Thuy’s precocious, foolhardy daughter who struggled every morning with braiding her hair—just a scattering of gems they will collect and sell offworld, or claim as salvage and drink away for a rush of short-lived euphoria.

  There isn’t much to a gem—just that familiar spike of bliss, no connection to the dead it was salvaged from. Deep spaces strip corpses, and compress them into … these. Into an impersonal, addictive drug.

  Still … still, divers cannibalise the dead; and they all know that the dead might be them, one day. It’s the way it’s always been done, on The Azure Serpent and all the other diver-ships: the unsaid, unbreakable traditions that bind them all.