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

by Gardner Dozois

  This was true. It was a habit she’d acquired in prison on her home planet and had never been able to break.

  The next morning she borrowed a bike and peddled to Josie’s House of Nails. The day was cool, with big cumulus clouds floating in a bright blue sky. The purple mountains in the distance were sharp and clear. Jo was under her awning, a big mug of coffee in one hand.

  “I need a cuticle repair,” Lydia said as she climbed off the bike.

  Jo nodded and stood. They went inside, and Jo worked while Lydia chatted about her stay on the planet, trying to give Jo as much information as possible while sounding like a verbose idiot.

  “I’m going to paint some artificial skin over the cuticles,” Jo said finally. “That will protect them for the time being. You ought to get a new bad habit. You are wrecking your hands.”

  The skin was dark brown when it went on, but quickly faded to match Lydia’s coloring, medium brown at the moment, due to the Dixie Plum.

  Lydia thanked her and paid.

  “I have a car,” Jo said. “If you can get permission to go into the outback, I can drive you. I’ve never seen the wilderness here, and I’d like to.”

  Jo had been a lumberjack, Lydia remembered. She might well miss being in a forest. In addition, if they got far enough from the city, the danger of listening devices would drop, provided Jo kept her car clear; and Jo had always been a very tidy woman. Lydia could use an honest conversation about the planet.

  They negotiated a fee for car and driver, and Lydia peddled on to Bio-In Security. It was a three-story cube of pink, reflecting glass. Orange flowers bloomed in front, shaded by a Nasty Tree that seethed with bugs. Lydia got as close as she dared, then used the close focus on her recorder. The bugs leaped out at her. They had eight legs, feathery antennae and no visible eyes.

  Creepy, she thought. Made large enough, they’d be wonderful villains in an action-horror drama. She finished her recording and went into a large foyer. A counter stood in the middle, made of pink reflecting glass. A man stood behind it, tall and black in a Bio-In uniform. Blue holographic tattoos undulated on his cheeks. His hair was a magenta mohawk, and he had a white goatee. Typical of Nova Terra. It was a gaudy planet, obsessed with self-expression. Coming from a far more sober world, Lydia felt both disapproval and envy.

  “Miz Fargo,” said the man. “You’ll be wanting to see Captain Luna City.”

  “I will?”

  “Yes.” His fingers tapped the counter’s top, and he looked down at something. “Elevator to the top floor, then down the hall to the door marked ‘Captain.’”

  “How did you know my name?” Lydia asked.

  “We knew about you before you arrived in the system. Bio-In Security does not get caught with its pants down.” He waved a hand with bright blue nails. “The elevator is that way.”

  She followed his directions, arriving in a corner office with two glass walls that gave a fine, faintly pink view of Four Square City. A desk stood in front of one window. An ordinary looking black woman sat behind the desk. “I am Captain Luna City,” she announced. “You are Lee Fargo, a visual reporter working for the home office. I have been instructed to offer you every possible cooperation.”

  The AIs had done their work.

  Yes.

  The captain gestured. Lydia sat down in a transparent plastic chair.

  “You want to go into the outback,” the captain said.

  “How do you know?” Lydia asked.

  “Your conversation with Josie Bergstrom.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Yes,” said the captain. “As my colleague downstairs said, we keep our pants up.You have a top security clearance from the home office, though why they want images of this operation is beyond me.”

  “The annual report?” Lydia suggested.

  “Nonsense.”

  Lydia shrugged. “I don’t know why Bio-In wants the images. I’m paid to do a job, and I do it.”

  “An excellent attitude,” the black woman said. “You have made an agreement with Josie Bergstrom.”

  Lydia nodded, feeling uneasy.

  Captain Luna City leaned forward. “We believe she is some kind of undercover operative, most likely a spy from the interstellar labor movement. Our operation here is not unionized.”

  “No?” said Lydia.

  “Secrecy is important here. We couldn’t risk the divided loyalty that occurs when unions are present. I want your help in nailing Josie.”

  “Of course,” Lydia answered. She did not make the childish gesture of crossing her fingers.

  Good.

  “Go with Josie into the outback. Draw her into conversation. Watch her and listen. Sooner or later, she will reveal herself.”

  Lydia nodded.

  “Take whatever images you want. You’ll have to run everything past me before you leave. I want nothing to leave this planet until I’ve seen it. Bio-In has enemies.”

  This was beginning to sound like a spy action holo: Counter Plot starring Cy Melbourne or The Disaster Device with Wazati Tloo. Once again life was imitating not-so-great art.

  The captain’s fingers rattled across her desktop. “Your authorization to travel is in the system. You can access it from any computer.”

  “Thank you,” Lydia said and rose from her chair. The captain stood and held out a hand. The nails were striped pink and gold.

  “You must go to Josie,” Lydia said as they shook.

  “There is no one else on the planet who does nails.”

  She peddled back to the guesthouse, returned the bike and settled in a bar with a glass of imported wine.

  “Did you get anywhere?” Galena asked.

  “I have permission to go into the outback.”

  Galena looked surprised.

  “The home office wants images,” Lydia said in explanation, then pulled out her omniphone and checked recent messages. Her permission to travel was there, as promised, along with a number for Captain Luna City.

  She looked up Jo’s number, called and told the nail stylist their trip was a go.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at ten,” Jo said.

  The call ended. Lydia sipped white wine and thought about her current situation, which was getting complex. Who was she working for at the moment? Stellar Harvest? The AIs? Bio-In? Herself?

  Knowing you, I would say yourself, or Hurricane Jo’s employers. You have always had a soft spot for unions.

  Damn straight, thought Lydia. Up the working classes! She finished her glass of wine and ordered another.

  She packed that evening and was outside when Jo’s car pulled up in the morning. Lydia slung her bag in back and climbed in next to the nail stylist.

  “Here we go,” said Jo and gunned the car. It roared off, spinning up gravel. Lydia fastened her safety belt quickly.

  They left the city, traveling into an orange scrubland. After a while, Lydia saw patches of purple: weeds along the road and spindly trees farther back. The trees became taller and more often purple, until they were traveling through a purple forest, with only a few orange weeds along the road. The trees grew in uniform groves, first a grove of trees with large, feathery leaves, then a grove with strings of spherical leaves, hanging straight down like strings of beads, then back to the feathery trees.

  “They send out runners,” Jo said. “Every grove is a single tree that grows in a square. The only trees that are singletons are those.” She waved at an unattractive, twisted tree with oval purple leaves.

  “Stop,” said Lydia.

  The car stopped. She focused her recorder. The tree’s trunk was covered with eight-legged, eyeless, purple bugs with feathery antennae. “It’s an Ugly Tree.”

  “Right,” said Jo. “Those fuckers are everywhere, and the bugs always bite.”

  “Do they come in other colors?” Lydia asked as Jo put the car in drive.

  “Every color on the planet. They are the one consistent element in the ecology.”

  The car kept o
n. They were traveling too rapidly for her to see animals, though birds ought to be visible. She saw none. If there were flying bugs, they were not hitting the windshield, which was odd. Was flight unknown on the planet?

  As she thought that, the car rounded a curve. There in the middle of the road was a flock of animals. Jo braked. The animals stayed where they were, looking at the now-motionless car with interest. They resembled large, purple, flightless birds. The tallest were two meters high. They had long legs and large heads with predatory-looking beaks.

  “They aren’t aggressive,” Jo said. “Though they have no fear of humans. Bio-In has killed a few to get genetic samples. I don’t know what they found. Other than that, they are left alone. They aren’t edible. Nothing on this planet is.”

  “Why not?” Lydia asked. Humans could be modified to eat the local organisms on almost every planet where they lived. Most of the time, all that was required was new microbes in the gut, though sometimes it was necessary to tinker with DNA.

  “Bio-In hasn’t made the necessary bugs. I figure it’s a way to control the work force and a sign that they don’t intend to stay.”

  By this time Lydia had her recorder out and focused on the animals. She couldn’t tell if they were covered with scales or shiny feathers. There was definitely down on their heads and throats, so they looked as if they were wearing fuzzy purple caps and scarves. One of the animals turned its fuzzy head and looked directly at her. Its eye—magnified by the recorder—was round and orange with a diamond-shaped pupil.

  The tallest animal yawned, revealing rows of needle teeth, then made a honking noise. The flock moved into the forest. The car rolled on.

  ‘They’re more common than they used to be,” Jo said. “So are other large animals. I’ve talked to people who came here during the setup period. It was all bugs and sea life then. Some whacking big sea life. But nothing big on land.”

  “Where’d the land animals come from?” Lydia asked.

  Jo shrugged. “No one is sure, except maybe the Bio-In scientists; and they don’t talk.”

  “There is a lot of secrecy on this planet.”

  “No kidding,” Jo told her.

  Was it safe to talk? Lydia wondered.

  Plug me into the car computer, and I will find out, her AI said.

  Lydia pulled out a cord and plugged it into the port on the car dash, then felt the top of her head till she found the port there. She pushed the plug in. There was a moment’s pain. Then she was in another place: a maze of glass and mirrors.

  She and the AI were a single entity that glided forward, the AI in control. A good thing, since Lydia could not figure out what she was seeing. Mirrors reflected mirrors, and the glass was so clear as to be almost invisible. The diffuse light seemed to come from everywhere, and there were no shadows.

  Things like glass fish moved through the maze corridors; and glass trees grew from the floor, putting out branch after branch so rapidly that she could see the branches growing.

  This is the Bio-In planetary net, the AI said. The fish are messages. The trees are problems in the process of solution, The maze itself is the net’s infrastructure. All of this is a metaphor, of course. As I have told you before, there is no way you can understand this experience directly. It is digital. You are analog. Though I could change the metaphor—

  The maze changed into a large, stone room. A pool filled with nasty-looking, luminous blue water filled most of the bottom. Lydia stood on a way-too-narrow ledge above the pool.

  Look to your right, the AI said.

  She did. Something troll-like moved with amazing rapidity along the ledge toward her. She raised a gun she hadn’t known she had and shot it. Screaming with rage, it fell into the pool and dissolved.

  A virus detection program, said her AI. It perceived us as a virus. I disabled it.

  I liked the maze better.

  The mirror walls reappeared. They kept on past more fish and trees, around turns in the corridor that Lydia could barely see. Finally something appeared in front of them: a thick cylinder that rose from the corridor floor halfway to the ceiling. It looked to be made of black glass, smoky and translucent. At the top were tentacles, which also looked made of glass, except they were moving, twisting back and forth.

  She and the AI darted up toward the corridor ceiling. Looking down, Lydia saw a mouth in the middle of the tentacles. It was circular and edged with sharp teeth.

  Spyware, said her AI.

  Creepy, thought Lydia.

  Would you prefer another metaphor?

  The glass maze vanished, and she was back in the room with stone walls. The pool was gone. Instead, a black and white mosaic floor stretched in front of her. On it stood a slim figure in a hooded cloak and tall boots with pointed toes. He or she carried a sword.

  “En garde,” the figure called in a voice that was either a light tenor or a deep soprano, then charged. Lydia fired her gun. The figure exploded into thin, paper-like fragments which floated slowly toward the mosaic floor.

  Then she was back in the glass maze. In front of her, the black object was melting, tentacles dissolving into the cylindrical base, and base sinking into the white maze floor.

  A competent spy, said her AI. But I have more firepower.

  No kidding, thought Lydia.

  They continued for a while, finding more glass trees and fish, but no more cylinders. At last the AI said. We can go back.

  The maze vanished. She was in Jo’s car. Jo had pulled the car over, and was twisted in her seat, looking concerned. “Lydia, are you all right? You went into some kind of daze.”

  “It was a maze. I’m fine.” She unplugged herself from the car computer. “You had spyware,” she told Jo. “It’s been disabled. My AI says we’re clean now. It’s safe to talk.”

  “There are two serious problems with this planet,” Jo said as she pulled back on the road. “The workers are not unionized; and Bio-In is looting the genetic wealth here, instead of publishing it. Which makes sense. If they publish, there will be proof that the genes they are decoding and patenting are natural. You can’t patent what nature produces. That law goes back centuries, though it has been broken many times.”

  “Do you think a planet covered with checkerboard squares of vegetation is natural?”

  “Well, if it isn’t, then the patents belong to whoever did this, or they have expired. The pay here is good,” Jo continued. “But you sign a really ugly contract. Talk about anything you have seen, and you will pay a huge penalty. Of course people whisper, but Bio-In has managed to keep the lid on pretty well, helped by the government of Nova Terra. Most of the people who work here come from Nova Terra and return there.”

  “Who are you working for?” Lydia asked.

  “The Blue Action Party. Winona knows there’s a story here that will blow up the current government.”

  “Not a union this time?”

  “The Blue Action Party is a coalition, which includes the Nova Terra Labor Federation and the Nova Terra section of the Eighth International. I keep my ducks in a circle.”

  “Where are we going?” Lydia asked Jo.

  “There’s a research station ahead of us. A couple of guys who get their nails done by me work there. They have told me stories, which I have wanted to check out. But I was waiting for an excuse to leave Four Square City, and I have been looking for allies. Now I have you and your buddies.”

  The AIs.

  “Did you sign a contract?”

  Jo nodded. “Everyone who lands here has to. We keep our mouths shut and we don’t work for competitors after we leave. Let ’em sue me. We are going to blow their asses into space.”

  “Bio-In Security thinks you may be a union organizer. They asked me to help them nail you.”

  “That’s good to know. It means I’m running out of time. They’ll find a way to get rid of me soon—boot me off the planet or shoot me. The second would cause them less trouble.

  “I wonder why they haven’t shot me alread
y,” Jo added in a thoughtful tone. “Maybe they want to know who I work for, and who my contacts are.” Jo glanced over briefly. “Maybe they are suspicious of you, and this is a trap for both of us.”

  “I don’t think I’d like to live in your universe.”

  “Honey, it’s the real one.”

  Maybe, thought Lydia. But she didn’t want to live in it.

  You are traveling with a spy for the Blue Action Party on a journey to expose an evil corporation, at the same time that you are carrying out a task for Mantis, which—it appears to me—is going to dovetail neatly with Jo’s mission. Your universe is not much different from Jo’s.

  Evil is a value word, Lydia told her AI.

  It is the word Jo would use. I might not. But I do not think that Bio-In has the best interests of this planet or humanity in mind.

  They reached the camp finally: metal sheds in a large clearing. The ground was raw dirt, torn up by equipment. Long afternoon shadows extended from tall purple trees.

  They both got out and stretched. The air was cool and moist with a spicy aroma that had to be the forest. Now, for the first time, Lydia saw flying bugs, large ones with long glittery bodies and three pairs of wings. They hovered over the machinery and rested on sunlit walls. Predators, she thought. The huge eyes suggested as much.

  “What do they eat?” she asked Jo.

  Jo shrugged.

  A couple of people came over and greeted Jo: a short man with badly chipped purple nails and a tall woman whose nails appeared to be entirely natural and unadorned.

  “Ming Cairo and Belle New Delhi,” Jo said. “Belle is a taxonomist. She might be able to tell you what the bugs eat.”

  “Those?” The woman waved at the nearest shed, where half a dozen of the creatures rested motionless, their wide wings spread to sunlight. “Nasty Tree bugs and a little, mouse-like animal that runs around the camp. We thought at first some of our lab animals had escaped. But no, the things are native. They get into everything.”

  “Lee is working for Bio-In, taking images of the operation here.”

  “Why?” asked Belle.

  “Beats me,” said Lydia.