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

by Gardner Dozois

  By the end of the day, the two new pylons had been set and hardened, and the bots were more than half-done pre-chewing the night’s meal for the horgs. This time, we’d be putting out only fifty kilos of pods and a hundred and fifty kilos of shredded bark and leaves. Lazz had selected six small trees across the edges of the forest—one anchorwood, two redbarks, a whitemarch, a wailing willow, and a bower-tree. After taking a few branches from each, he’d scattered fresh seeds in fertilizer pods to apologize for the assault. Forest horgs were known to chew into all of these species during the barest periods of winter, but most of the rest of the year they ignored them, so we knew the chaff would be edible without being overstimulating.

  Because of the day’s efforts, dinner was flashed from the freezer. Charlie baked fresh bread and Lazz whomped up some of his best tomato-gravy and we washed the whole thing down with Grampa’s special beer, which was only special because he said so. It had the same familiar honeyed overtaste as everyone else’s special brew.

  That night’s video revealed a scattering of horgs feeding placidly. Not a whole herd, but enough to justify the effort. Maybe two dozen. The important thing, no fights broke out, although the monitors reported that the animals were experiencing more irritability than we would have liked. Lazz and Charlie decided to reduce the proportion of glitter-bush pods even more for the next day’s feed.

  After second breakfast, we met again with Mr. Costello. While he didn’t express any disappointment—on the contrary, he remained delighted with the progress we were making—he did wonder aloud that the horgs were finishing the feed too quickly, leaving nothing to attract the rest of the herd. Eventually, Finn realized he was asking us to put out more food to attract more horgs. But it was our idea, of course. We had enough chaff to handle tonight’s feed, but we’d need a lot more for the days to come.

  Lazz and Charlie took one of the trucks north to select more trees. They planned to hit several different groves and would be gone all day, perhaps even two days. Mr. Costello asked why they couldn’t just take whole trees from the nearby slopes and they had to explain to him that the tree roots held the soil in place. If they deforested a slope, the winter storms would wash the entire hill down into the valley below. Aside from the inconvenience that might represent to those of us who lived in the area, it could also change the migratory patterns of various small herds—and nobody would appreciate having horgs wandering through their fields. Most settlers had chosen their sites specifically to stay away from the migration routes.

  Marlie and Trina put out the evening feed for the horgs, spreading it thin and wide. That took a few hours, more time than anyone expected, so the rest of us made do with sandwiches and coffee. It was a long night. Because Charlie was gone, I handled the day’s journal-keeping. Not just the personal stats and billables, but the log as well. We logged everything. The family journal was a way of not having to depend on anyone’s memory. The notes we were making about horg behavior would be very valuable—not just for us, but for anyone else who wanted to download the public half of our records. We didn’t make a lot of local money from our logs, but we had a sizable offworld audience and the royalties did add up over time. Grampa wouldn’t let us spend any royalties unless it was an emergency—that money always got folded back into the portfolio. The job was to be self-sufficient on what we could make from the land. I had a thought we might be worth a lot more than Grampa ever let on, but I had no right to ask. Not yet.

  We were reviewing the videos even before first breakfast now, gathering around the displays with coffee and fresh donuts to watch an accelerated record, only slowing down to real time if something interesting or unusual popped up on any of the screens. Today we were seeing a much bigger gathering of horgs. At any given time, there were thirty-some animals on the stage, but the total was greater than that—at least a dozen moewsnuffled cautiously around the edges. Not the hundreds Mr. Costello had promised, but certainly enough to demonstrate that he could attract a crowd.

  Too much of a crowd, actually. Horgs are always hungry. After cleaning the floor of the feeding deck, they started snuffling up the slope toward the trucks. While it was unlikely that any of the animals would attack the vehicles, they could still do considerable damage. They could knock a vehicle on its side and rip out the undercarriage, just out of pure horgish malevolence. There was a lot of history—with pictures suitable for Goblin Night. Also known as Gobblin’ Night, when all the mini-horgs swarmed. We usually had two or three days’ warning, enough time to get home, lock all the doors and windows, and hide under the blankets.

  But right now we had curious horgs wandering up the slopes. Not far enough—not yet, not last night—but tonight? Maybe. And the next night—certainly. Hungry horgs search and scavenge. Wake up a horg’s appetite and you’re asking for trouble. Something else Mr. Costello didn’t know.

  We had an emergency meeting on his deck. He served iced tea and English biscuits. “Oh my, yes, the video was very disturbing. It’s a good thing the video cameras have a three-hundred-sixty-degree view or we’d have never known the creatures were wandering up the slope. Thank you, Jerrid, for your wonderful cameras.” He looked to Grampa. “Will we have to stop feeding them now?”

  Grampa didn’t bother with his pipe today. He said, “It won’t do any good. Three nights now you’ve been laying out glitter-pods. Even if the place didn’t already reek with the scent of the crushed leaves, they’ll still be coming back. Looking for more. They ain’t stupid. You train ’em to come for food, they’ll come.”

  “Well…” said Mr. Costello. “Well, well, well. This will be a challenge. Perhaps there’s some way to keep the horgs from wandering off the feeding floor, some way to keep them from wandering up the hill, some way to keep them where they are and away from the trucks.”

  “We could put a fence up,” said Finn.

  “Do you think that would work?” Mr. Costello’s face lit up.

  Finn was thinking it over. “We could carve out a berm. I suppose we could have a ’dozer lifted out. It’d be expensive, though. And I’m not sure it would stop ’em. If a horg is determined to go over something, he goes over it. If he wants to go through it, he goes through it. Those paddle-feet, they have claws as long as your forearm—they’re good for slashing open each other’s bellies, but they’re also for digging into the ground, especially frozen ground—that’s how the horgs survive the outer-winters. They dig into huge communal burrows. You know those holes you saw from space, the ones that looked like craters? Horg-nests.”

  Mr. Costello listened patiently to Finn’s monolog, then turned to Jerrid. “I think you packed something that might work—”

  Jerrid nodded. “We have twenty bolts of carbon monofilament, triple-knit—” He looked to Finn. “It’s very lightweight and essentially unbreakable. We can spray it with shelterfoam and it’ll harden nicely.” He pointed at the silk-looking hangings that sheltered Mr. Costello’s deck. “I brought plenty, in case we needed to build a tented enclosure—”

  “Ahh,” said Finn. He looked down the slope. “I see … we stretch a length of it between the first two towers, from one to the other and back again, then spray it to harden it, and we create a visual barrier between the feeding deck and the slope.”

  “That’s a marvelous idea!” Mr. Costello clapped his hands in glee.

  Jerrid looked to Finn. “You know horgs. Will it work?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Before the sun hit zenith, Jerrid’s bots were stringing the first lengths of triple-knit. By the time siesta was over, they were already prepping the shelterfoam tanks. We watched them from the deck while we ate second lunch. “That’s gonna be a tall wall,” said Grampa.

  Finn said, “It’s a visual cliff. It should keep them focused on the food instead of the hill.”

  Grampa puffed his pipe. “If nothin’ else, Mr. Costello has proven that you can train a horg to eat. Whether or not he can train ’em to butcher themselves, that’ll be a
whole other thing, won’t it?”

  Charlie and Lazz arrived late in the day with three huge trailers of wood for the shredders. They’d circled through six forests, taking branches from the outliers and the rogues. They’d left the mother-trees alone. No sense pissing off the woodlands. The trees on Haven could be friendly—or they could make life hell for you. As soon as a forest felt alarm, the surrounding trees would start releasing threat-pheromones. That would attract huge swarms of things that bite. It would also encourage local bugs and birds, lizards, and slugs to transform into their more hostile forms. An angry forest was no place for any creature not part of the rage. And if the forest got angry enough, all those different swarms would go into a feeding frenzy. Even the horgs wouldn’t be safe—that’s how the forests protected themselves from aggressive herds. Checks and balances everywhere. Don’t push the on-button if you don’t know where the off-button is.

  All of us worked late into the evening, shredding wood, mixing in glitter-pods, and spreading small piles of feed across the polycrete. Well, the bots actually did the work, but we stayed up to supervise. It was a big job and we couldn’t risk a bug in our programming.

  The horgs were already gathering downslope even before the last bot trotted out of the way. They snuffled and grunted, annoyed but curious. They approached cautiously. Horgs are suspicious by nature. The lights, the wall, the piles of feed—that was alien to their experience. But on the other hand, a free meal is a free meal.

  Finn wasn’t certain that a single fence would deter the horgs, so he stayed up late to keep watch. He armed two bots with pepper spray and positioned them at the top of the slope. But most of the horgs were too interested in dinner to be concerned. A couple sniffed around the edges of the fence, looking to see if there was food beyond, but Finn had sprayed the perimeter upslope of the fence, and that appeared to be enough to deter further exploration.

  By the time the rest of us woke up for mid-meal, Finn was ready to crash. Trina volunteered to take over the rest of the watch, and after updating the logs, I went back to our compartment in the second truck, expecting to find Finn snoring like a jelly-badger. Instead, he was awake and waiting for me.

  “I haven’t showered,” I protested.

  “No problem. I’ll shower with you. We’ll save water.”

  There’s only one way to win an argument with Finn. You wrap yourself up in his arms and say, “Yes, honey, you’re right.” So I did. And we did. And then we did it again, just to make sure.

  And finally, afterward, with me lying on top of his big broad chest, feeling very satisfied and very comfortable, I said, “Aren’t you sleepy yet?”

  “I took a wide-awake.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Not good enough. Why’d you stay up?” I repeated.

  “For you,” he said, stroking my back. “For us. For this. I don’t want us to get so busy we forget to be us. What about you? Are you tired?”

  “I’ll stay up with you. For as long as I can.”

  He stroked my brush cut. “I miss your hair.”

  “You liked it long?”

  “Very much.”

  “You never said. All right. I’ll let it grow out.” I kissed his left nipple. Then the right one, so it wouldn’t feel neglected.

  He knew me too well. “You don’t like having your hair long?”

  “It’s extra work, especially if I color-glow.”

  “You don’t have to do it for me.”

  “If it makes you happy—”

  “Will it make you happy?” Even in the dark, I could see the intensity of his expression.

  “Making you happy makes me happy.”

  “I can see I’m not going to win this argument—”

  “Oh? Are we having an argument? Wait. I’ll get my flak jacket and helmet. No kissing below the belt—”

  He pulled me back down on top of him. “You do whatever you want.” He held me there for a long time, making that purring noise in his chest that attracted me to him in the first place. He never told me how he did it and I suspected an augment he wasn’t telling me about.

  Finally, I lifted up, I straddled him, and looked down. “I do have to ask you something?”

  “Uh-oh, I know that tone.”

  “No.” I slapped his chest playfully. “This is serious.”

  “What?”

  “Would you like me to change back? Do you like me better as a boy or a girl?”

  “I like you in my bed. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. It isn’t. I want to be the best you ever had. I want us to be perfect. I’m—” I looked at the ceiling but the answer wasn’t there, either, so I looked back to him and admitted, “It’s what you said. I don’t want us to stop being us.”

  He sighed. Not quite exasperated. Not yet. But I knew that sigh. “Aren’t you happy?” he said.

  “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life—”

  “Then why are you worrying about the plumbing?”

  “Because I want to make you as happy as I am—”

  “You’ve already done that.” He said, “If you want to change, then change. If you don’t, then don’t. Whichever, I’ll still find a way to make you scream loud enough to wake up Grampa.” Abruptly, he stopped and stared up at me. “Wait—are you asking me if I want to change?”

  “Huh? No. I just—” My turn to stop and stare. “Do you want to change?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about it. At least, not until now. Would that make you happy?”

  I collapsed onto his chest, playfully frustrated. “Oh, great—I had to ask. Now we’re going to have gender confusion every time we get in bed. Finn, my sweetheart, my playmate, my lover, I am fine if you’re fine. I only asked because if it was something you wanted, it would be all right with me. Whatever—”

  He kissed me lightly on the top of my head. “You can stop now. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re fine. If you want to change, do it for you, I’ll still be fine. If you would like me to change, that might be fun, too. But for now, right now, with all this other business going on, let’s just take things one day at a time—okay?”

  And that’s how that part of the conversation ended. The kissing part went on for a lot longer. And somewhere after that, I fell asleep in Finn’s arms, which was always my favorite place to fall asleep. My ears turned off as I cycled down and Finn could snore like a horg all night long if he wanted.

  After first breakfast, Mr. Costello and his folks wandered over for a meeting. Nothing important, just an affirmation that everything looked like it was working out well. He agreed that we should continue feeding the horgs. The rest of the herd seemed to be gravitating this way. Perhaps within another few days we might see as many as a hundred or two hundred animals feeding each night. Perhaps we should increase the amount of feed we were putting out.

  Somehow, the way he talked about things, the way he drew us into the discussion, it always felt like we were creating the plan, not him. But that was good—it gave us ownership. It put the responsibility on us to make things work. You couldn’t fault him for that.

  Afterward, once that was settled, he sat down with me and Charlie and Finn and Grampa. “Jerrid has been working on something else. Mikla, too. They’re both so very smart about these things.”

  We listened while he meandered his way toward the punch line.

  “Y’see, this whole enterprise has to be a partnership, a team effort, don’t you agree?”

  We nodded politely, already wondering where this was leading.

  “And from time to time, we have to acknowledge that there are skills we need to add to the team. Jerrid pointed this out. Mikla, too. We’ve succeeded so well already. We’ve proven that we can direct the attention of a herd of horgs.”

  “We can feed ’em, yes,” said Finn. He did not say what his tone suggested he was thinking: Any idjit can do that.

  “If I might interrupt,” Mikla said politely. “We need to prepare for the next ph
ase of the operation, which is to set up a processing plant for the horg meat.”

  “Ah,” said Finn.

  “We’ll need to bring in processing equipment, extra bots, and a team of operators.”

  “Of course.”

  “And that means expanding our partnership.”

  “I see…” Finn said. He didn’t. Neither did the rest of us.

  “It doesn’t affect our contracts with you, of course. You’re already locked in as a supplier.”

  Jerrid spoke up then. “Mr. Costello has negotiated contracts with several other families, all of whom are ready to provide services for processing, packing, shipping, and so on.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Grampa, nodding. “It’s convenient. And it’s good for the local economy.”

  Mikla said, “However … the larger the team gets, the more complicated all of the interrelated accounting becomes. So—” Mikla looked to Jerrid.

  Jerrid said, “We’d like to streamline the financial channels. We already have a private web, to which our new partners will be added as they come aboard, of course. We’d like to use it as our primary financial network as well.”

  Finn looked to Grampa. I looked to Charlie. We all looked to each other. The question didn’t have to be asked, but I did anyway. “Why is that necessary?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Mikla said, “secrecy. Just as we’re keeping our business chatter isolated, we think we should take the same precautions with our financial transactions as well. If money is moving around, other people can use that information, possibly to our disadvantage.”

  “That kinda makes sense,” said Charlie.

  “I always thought our existing networks were secure,” said Finn.

  “For most things, they are,” said Jerrid. “But it only takes one leak to sink a ship.”

  Mr. Costello spoke up then. He had been looking from one to the other of us, especially Mikla and Jerrid, with a happy expression on his face. Now he said, “Don’t you think with this much money at stake, we should take every precaution possible to protect all of our interests?”