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

by Gardner Dozois

  It’s complicated, but horgs are essential. Spider-bat swarms feed on the insects that live on horg-droppings. No horgs, no droppings, no insects, no spider-bats, no guano. If the spider-bats starve, the glitter-bushes don’t bloom, and one of Haven’s main crops disappears. And that’s only the first domino.

  But Mr. Costello wasn’t the first idjit to think he knew how to make a profit on Haven. He certainly wouldn’t be the last. We’d probably have to dig a few more holes and lay a few more wreaths at Settlement’s own Idjits’ Field before he was done. I just hoped it wouldn’t be anybody I cared about.

  So, of course, it was Grampa.

  He told us after second supper. We had arrayed ourselves at one of the long tables, the space next to the wall, so we had some privacy for conversation. Grampa was smiling happily about something but he wouldn’t say what. “Not here, not here,” and he resumed slurping his soup.

  I started to press, but Trina shook her head. She touched her lips with a forefinger, then touched the same finger to her ear, and pointed at both the table and the wall. Someone might be listening.

  I didn’t think the Jacklins would eavesdrop unless it was necessary, like someone with a history of trouble, but you never knew who else passing through might have stuck a button under the table or into the rough paneling of the big common room. So Trina was telling me this was family business and it had to stay private.

  Back in the truck, Grampa tamped his pipe carefully and puffed it to life. “Well,” he said, “we found us a rich idjit. That fellow Costello. He offered to buy our entire year’s crop of glitter-bush seedpods. Twelve percent over market, plus travel and delivery expenses—”

  “He’s the one says he’s going to catch and sell horgs?” asked Finn.

  “Ayep. That’s the one.”

  Finn shook his head. “He’ll be dead the first day he steps out the hatch—”

  “That’s fine, too. I told him there’s a rich tradition of horg-wranglin’ out here, so he’d have to pay in advance. The fool didn’t even flinch. Paid the first half right then.” Grampa patted his vest pocket, as if the actual money was resting next to his tobacco. “We get the other half on delivery.”

  Finn pursed his lips, looked around at the rest of us—me, Trina, Marlie, Charlie, and Lazz who’d just gone male again—then back to Grampa. “I wish you’d talked to us—”

  “Wasn’t any time. Couldn’t find all of you. Had to make the deal then. Too rich to say no. And he did pay up front.” As if that settled the matter.

  Grampa had seniority because he’d staked the family to get it started. He was the majority shareholder. Even better, he was smart enough with the numbers to keep us buoyant and the way he explained it, it did sound better than trucking the loads all the way to Settlement for transshipment up the beanstalk. I wasn’t going to say anything because I was the junior-est partner, but I could see by everybody’s faces I wasn’t the only one in my head about it.

  “All right,” said Grampa, “why’s everybody lookin’ so twisted?”

  Finn glanced at Trina, then at me—we’d seen Mr. Costello in the common dome too. He was waiting for either of us to say something, but as the second-ranking male, it was his responsibility first. “It’s like this,” he began. He took a deep breath. “It sounds like a good deal, I mean, it really does. But we saw Mr. Costello in the common room and … well, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. I think he’s gonna get people killed.”

  “Ayep,” said Grampa. “That’s my thinkin’, too.”

  “Takin’ advantage of a dead idjit like that—it don’t sit right.”

  Grampa puffed a cloud of sweet smoke. “He ain’t dead yet. And until some horg pokes him with a litter, his money’s just as good as the next idjit’s.”

  Finn shook his head in resignation. He knew he wasn’t going to talk Grampa out of anything. Grampa had already made the deal. We were stuck with it.

  Trina spoke up then. “It really isn’t that bad. I mean, not really. That’s a lot of money. And if he gets killed early, we’ll still have half a crop to sell. We could buy another pod or start a dome or … maybe even get a gestation tank and start a baby.”

  “Ayep,” said Grampa.

  “And…” she added slowly, “… if we don’t take the deal, someone else will. Then we lose twice. It’s money we don’t make and it’s money someone else makes.” She didn’t have to say who. We were all thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah, okay,” said Finn. “Okay, okay.” He gave up with a shrug. “When and where do we deliver?”

  “Ten days after harvest. The high savannah, the north end, Little Summerland. Then twenty klicks west into the bush. Reckless Meadow.”

  Finn swiveled around and brought up a navigation display. He studied the map for a moment, scratching his head. “Terrible close to the mating fields. It’s a heavy-grazing area.”

  “Ayep. If you wanna catch horgs, you gotta go where the horgs are.”

  Finn turned back to Grampa, folding his arms. “He doesn’t expect us to help, does he? Because otherwise—”

  “Not to worry. Told him that up front. We’re not wranglers. We’ll sell him the crop, nothing else. No bots. No riders. No shooters.”

  “And he agreed?”

  Grampa puffed his pipe some more before answering. “Says he doesn’t need bots, riders, or shooters. Just a couple of cargo-loaders.”

  “Then how’s he plan to—?”

  “He didn’t say.” Grampa grinned. “Gonna be a fun time, huh?”

  With the up-front money from Mr. Costello, Grampa and Finn and Lazz bought three new bots, replacement parts, a new toolkit, two heavyweight weapons, two suits of body armor, several cases of repellents, four banks of high-powered dazzlers, a hundred meters of shock-fence, and several cases of extra fuel cells. We restocked the larders and the med-kits as well.

  And we updated our libraries, too. Winter was long and brutal. We had to create much of our own entertainment. Last year, we’d staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream; this year we were plannin’ a suite of Third symphonies—we’d agreed on Beethoven, Copland, Saint-Saëns, but were still arguing about Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Shostakovich, Williams, Sibelius, and Mahler. We’d probably end up doing them all. Winter was long and brutal.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Costello was busy on his own, circling around, taking advantage of the Jubilee gathering, meeting as many families as he could. We figured he was making other deals, but nobody was talking. We had a nondisclosure clause, so we assumed everyone else did, too. Eventually, Mr. Costello had some mysterious crates choppered in from Settlement and loaded immediately into his big black trucks.

  Jubilee lasted two extra days; we weren’t the only ones buying and loading, and a lot of us had to wait for the trucks from Settlement to arrive with everything the Jacklins didn’t have to hand. Mr. Costello had pumped a lot of cash into the local economy and most folks were happy to tilt an extra pint or two in his name. By the time the last kegs had been drained, Jacklin’s shelves were just about spare. Everybody bought gifts for everybody. We passed out our family gifts on Goodbye Morning, right after first breakfast, just before dawn, with all the usual teasing and laughter.

  Finn surprised me with that blue dress he said showed off my calves. I bought him hair and body brushes for the shower, along with the promise that I’d personally demonstrate their proper use. He grinned and said, “You didn’t buy those for me, you bought ’em for you.” I ducked my head so he wouldn’t see me smiling and blushing, but he was right.

  It was tradition that we all chip in to buy Grampa a fresh supply of his favorite sweet-smelling tobacco and a new pipe to smoke it in. We couldn’t pull out until he puffed it to life and pronounced it good. “This is good,” he’d say. “Life is good. Okay, let’s roll. Let’s see what happens next.”

  The trip back to Homestead was uneventful. Charlie and Marlie had been monitoring and managing the bots the whole trip. Except for one busted voltivator, swarm-confidence was
high and the bushes were sparkling. It looked like an early harvest—a big harvest, too.

  Glitter-bush leaves are long. Morning dew collects on the leaves, the leaves curl lengthwise to hold the wetness in. As the day heats up, the leaves dry into needles. Bite the end of a needle and you can suck out the water—not much, but you won’t die of thirst, either. Chew a lot of needles and you can rehydrate almost as fast as you sweat. That’s why horgs and all the other critters come hunting. It’s easier than searching for a water hole.

  But if the needle is left alone, if no one eats it, it starts to secrete its oils into the water, and what you get is kinda like honey, only better because bees didn’t walk around in it. And if you wait long enough, each needle develops a seed within the oil-honey, and the seeds are even more valuable. That’s why glitter-bushes are such a profitable crop. The leaves are edible, the honey is perfect, and the seeds are delicious.

  Not all the seeds germinate, though. Only the ones that pass through a horg’s gut. So there’s the other reason we need horgs. Just not too many. But the numbers cycle up and down, up and down, because that’s the way the whole thing works, so when they’re up, we have to cull the herds the best we can. If we get to the carcass quick enough, we’ll butcher it—but usually the rest of the herd is right there. They’re omnivores. They’re not just carrion-eaters, they’re cannibals. Another reason to be disgusted.

  But if we can get in there fast enough to slice off the drumsticks, the tails, the shoulders, the flanks, the ribs, and the belly muscles, sometimes the heart and tongue, we’ll hang the meat, cure it, smoke it, age it, whatever, and maybe make a bit of cash off it. But we won’t eat it ourselves.

  Some people—mostly offworlders—say horg steak is a delicacy. That’s because they don’t know horgs. They say the meat has a sweet aftertaste, probably from the glitter-bush needles. Like I said, they can have my share. The one time I tried it, I puked it all up—and I had diarrhea for three days, too. Horg is tough and greasy and gamey. You have to tenderize it and marinate it and cover it with sauce to make it edible. But there’s some people who like that, I guess. Or maybe it’s just that it’s expensive and exotic. Or maybe it’s because of the side effects. Dunno. Supposedly something in the meat is mildly hallucinogenic and just as supposedly it makes people horny, too, so even if they’re not crazy about the taste, that’s not the reason they’re eating it.

  Anyway—summer storms chased us all the way back to Homestead. Not the worst we’d ever seen, but ferocious enough to slow us down. Flash floods scoured Narrow Canyon and the Rumpled River was raging impassible. We had to take the long way around, crossing at The Hump, and we spent the better part of the night parked lee side of Ugly Ridge. Frustrating to be so close to Homestead, but it couldn’t be helped.

  We’d spent two extra days at Jubilee and lost another half-day coming back, but after the storm passed, the forecast promised a few weeks of milder weather, so we wouldn’t have to dock and lock the trucks. We could start rigging them immediately for the trek to Reckless Meadow.

  When we finally did get back, dawn was just turning the eastern sky pink and the underside of the cloud-ceiling loomed purple. It wasn’t the best start for the day but it could have been worse. Three of the bots were mired in mud and the rest were worrying around, trying to keep the bushes from leaving the meadow.

  We unpacked the new bots first, activated them, then rushed to extract the ones that were stuck. It took the entire morning, all of us scrambling to contain the herd, barely getting them settled in and re-rooted and watered before the heat of midday. We didn’t even try to plan harvest until after siesta and second lunch.

  Charlie and Marlie woke up early to switch out the herding reflectors on six of the bots, installing the new harvest tools and collection baskets. I ran some numbers, and if the ground dried out enough we could complete most of the harvesting in two nights.

  After harvest, the bushes would start getting hungry. We could take a few days to herd them back to the willows, or make up the time by dredging a couple loads of guano and delivering it to the meadow. That’d given us good results before, plus a head start on the next harvest, but it would also upset the local balance. We might have to let these fields go fallow for a season or two, maybe plant some darkberries up here and let the bushes gather on the lower slopes instead—that would mean extra work patrolling for horgs, but if Mr. Costello was right, he’d be thinning out the herds enough to give us a break in the up-down cycle. But using the lower slopes for a whole summer would open up a lot more range, meaning we could raise more bushes and expand the homestead.

  If Mr. Costello didn’t get himself killed first.

  Right now, we figured him for just another fellow with more money than sense, but if he wanted to throw some of that cash in our direction, we’d bring out the big baskets to hold it all.

  As soon as the bots were charged and refitted, we set them trimming. You don’t want to take too many needle-leaves—the bushes need the water—but you want to take the fattest and sweetest pods because the horgs are picky and those are the ones they like most. Those are the ones most likely to germinate after a quick trip through the gut.

  The best harvest time is siesta and afternoon, while the pods are heat-sealing. Charlie and Marlie and Lazz napped midmorning so they could work through siesta. Finn and Trina and I took the afternoon shift. We ate first supper when the shadows started stretching east and then began prepping the trucks for Restless Meadow, packing everything we knew we’d need and a bunch more stuff we hoped we wouldn’t. Always makes for an easier trip that way. We finally pulled out with five vans full of ripe pods, chilled but not frozen.

  The journey down to Restless Meadow took two and a half days, stopping along the way to install several new monitoring stations and a couple of drone-nests. Skyballs are useful but the weather on Haven limits when they can fly. There’s maybe a hundred-klick range on good days, that’s a three-hour window. So we put the drone-nests in a hexagonal grid with overlapping edges and try to get coverage whenever the winds permit. We can track the local herds and are getting better at predicting the migratory packs. Some horgs migrate, some don’t—still working that out, but we think it’s the brooding horgs that get territorial.

  By the time we arrived, Mr. Costello had already set up his camp, with his big black trucks parked on the slope overlooking the meadow. One of them opened onto a large deck with a roof of silk-looking fabric. There were chairs around a table, and even a pitcher of lemonade and glasses laid out.

  Mr. Costello signaled us to pull up beside. We anchored our trucks, dismounted, and met him on his deck. He invited us to sit with a wave and poured lemonade for all of us as if this were just another autumn day in back-home dusty Illinois—a place we’d all heard of but none of us had ever been. What the hell, it was lemonade.

  “Things are going very well, very well indeed,” he said. “You should be very pleased, very proud, indeed, yes.” One of his two associates—the one who looked vaguely military—came out then with a fresh pitcher of lemonade, and Mr. Costello introduced her. “This is Mikla. Mikla, please welcome our new partners. Please tell me if I have all your names right—”

  Mr. Costello went on to explain, “Mikla will be handling the accounting, making sure that everyone is taken care of. And Jerrid, he’s our tech—he’s working on the communications gear. We have such good news to share. Jerrid has created a new communications web.”

  Finn grunted. “We already have one—”

  “Yes, of course. But Jerrid believes we should have a private web just for our partners. He says we need secure channels for our business operations. If other people can see what we’re doing, we’ll have competition. Don’t you think we should delay that as long as possible?”

  Grampa nodded, but Finn looked skeptical. “Most folks don’t go pryin’ into other folks’ business. Ain’t polite. There’s not a lot of secrets on Haven, anyway. Maybe secrets are an offworld thing. But if it conc
erns y’that much, y’could just use the regular channels with a smidge of encryption. Nobody’ll bother then.”

  “A very good suggestion, yes. Thank you, Finn.” Mr. Costello pretended to think about it, then frowned and said, “But don’t you think a flurry of encrypted messages might make people suspicious? Suspicious enough to want to find out what we’re up to?”

  “Aye, there is that.” Finn shrugged.

  “This way they won’t even know that we’re talking to each other. Wouldn’t you agree that’ll be safer for everyone?”

  Finn nodded—reluctantly, but he nodded. “I see your point.”

  Mr. Costello reached over and poured Finn more lemonade. “Thank you, Finn. Jerrid worked very hard to set up a private communication network for us. He’ll be pleased that you see the value of his work.”

  We sat there for a while longer, exchanging pleasantries, until finally Charlie asked, “But the horgs, Mr. Costello—how do you intend to catch them? You know, it’s not safe to go out hunting them. The whole herd will turn on you.”

  Mr. Costello nodded agreement. “Yes, thank you. You’re not the first to point that out. I was thinking—well, Jerrid and Mikla and I were thinking that it would be easier if the horgs came to us.”

  “So you’re gonna lure ’em here with glitter-pods…?”

  Mr. Costello pointed down the slope. Three of his bots were already at work, installing two thick masts about fifteen meters apart, anchoring them in the ground as deep as they were tall. The pylons looked heavy enough, even our worst winter storms wouldn’t budge them. They glinted like carbonized-polycrete, the bots were wrapping them in tree-bark to hide the metallic finish. But Mr. Costello pointed past them. “You see that level area, down there? Just beyond the posts? Where the bots have laid a polycrete floor? That would be a good place to put out some glitter-pods, yes?”

  Charlie shrugged. “One place is as good as another. The horgs’ll find ’em wherever.”

  “How much do you think would be a good appetizer?”