The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

by Gardner Dozois

  “For how long?” she asked. “These festivities . . . have they been going on for days?”

  “A little longer than three months, miss.”

  She had no appetite; nonetheless, she lifted her utensils and made the proper motions, reminding herself that three months of continuous parties would be nothing to these people. Three months was a day to them, and what did they do with their time? So much of it, and such a constricted existence. What had Tyson once told her? The typical citizen of Earth averages less than one off-world trip in eighty years, and the trends were toward less traveling. Spaceflight was safe only to a degree, and these people couldn’t stand the idea of being meters away from a cold, raw vacuum.

  “Cowards,” Tyson had called them. “Gutted, deblooded cowards!”

  Looking about, she saw the delicate twists of green leaves vanishing into grinning mouths, the chewing prolonged and indifferent. Except for Opera, that is. Opera saw her and smiled back in turn, his eyes different, something mocking about the tilt of his head and the curl of his mouth.

  She found her eyes returning to Opera every little while, and she wasn’t sure why. She felt no physical attraction for the man. His youth and attitudes made him different from the others, but how much different? Then she noticed his dinner – cultured potatoes with meaty hearts – and that made an impression on Pico. It was a standard food on board the Kyber. Opera was making a gesture, perhaps. Nobody else was eating that bland food, and she decided this was a show of solidarity. At least the man was trying, wasn’t he? More than the others, he was. He was.

  Dessert was cold and sweet and shot full of some odd liquor.

  Pico watched the others drinking and talking among themselves. For the first time, she noticed how they seemed subdivided – discrete groups formed, and boundaries between each one. A dozen people here, seven back there, and sometimes individuals sitting alone – like Opera – chatting politely or appearing entirely friendless.

  One lonesome woman rose to her feet and approached Pico, not smiling, and with a sharp voice, she declared, “Tomorrow, come morning . . . you’ll live forever. . . !”

  Conversations diminished, then quit entirely.

  “Plugged in. Here.” She was under the influence of some drug, the tip of her finger shaking and missing her own temple. “You fine lucky girl . . . Yes, you are. . . !”

  Some people laughed at the woman, suddenly and without shame.

  The harsh sound made her turn and squint, and Pico watched her straightening her back. The woman was pretending to be above them and uninjured, her thin mouth squeezed shut and her nose tilting with mock pride. With a clear, soft voice, she said, “Fuck every one of you,” and then laughed, turning toward Pico, acting as if they had just shared some glorious joke of their own.

  “I would apologize for our behavior,” said Opera, “but I can’t. Not in good faith, I’m afraid.”

  Pico eyed the man. Dessert was finished; people stood about drinking, keeping the three-month-old party in motion. A few of them stripped naked and swam in the green pond. It was a raucous scene, tireless and full of happy moments that never seemed convincingly joyous. Happy sounds by practice, rather. Centuries of practice, and the result was to make Pico feel sad and quite lonely.

  “A silly, vain lot,” Opera told her.

  She said, “Perhaps,” with a diplomatic tone, then saw several others approaching. At least they looked polite, she thought. Respectful. It was odd how a dose of respect glosses over so much. Particularly when the respect wasn’t reciprocated, Pico feeling none toward them. . . .

  A man asked to hear more stories. Please?

  Pico shrugged her shoulders, then asked, “Of what?” Every request brought her a momentary sense of claustrophobia, her memories threatening to crush her. “Maybe you’re interested in a specific world?”

  Opera responded, saying, “Blueblue!”

  Blueblue was a giant gaseous world circling a bluish sun. Her first thought was of Midge vanishing into the dark storm on its southern hemisphere, searching for the source of the carbon monoxide upflow that effectively gave breath to half the world. Most of Blueblue was calm in comparison. Thick winds; strong sunlight. Its largest organisms would dwarf most cities, their bodies balloonlike and their lives spent feeding on sunlight and hydrocarbons, utilizing carbon monoxide and other radicals in their patient metabolisms. Pico and the others had spent several months living on the living clouds, walking across them, taking samples and studying the assortment of parasites and symbionts that grew in their flesh.

  She told about sunrise on Blueblue, remembering its colors and its astounding speed. Suddenly she found herself talking about a particular morning when the landing party was jostled out of sleep by an apparent quake. Their little huts had been strapped down and secured, but they found themselves tilting fast. Their cloud was colliding with a neighboring cloud – something they had never seen – and of course there was a rush to load their shuttle and leave. If it came to that.

  “Normally, you see, the clouds avoid each other,” Pico told her little audience. “At first, we thought the creatures were fighting, judging by their roaring and the hard shoving. They make sounds by forcing air through pores and throats and anuses. It was a strange show. Deafening. The collision point was maybe a third of a kilometer from camp, our whole world rolling over while the sun kept rising, its bright, hot light cutting through the organic haze – ”

  “Gorgeous,” someone said.

  A companion said, “Quiet!”

  Then Opera touched Pico on the arm, saying, “Go on. Don’t pay any attention to them.”

  The others glanced at Opera, hearing something in his voice, and their backs stiffening reflexively.

  And then Pico was speaking again, finishing her story. Tyson was the first one of them to understand, who somehow made the right guess and began laughing, not saying a word. By then everyone was on board the shuttle, ready to fly; the tilting stopped suddenly, the air filling with countless little blue balloons. Each was the size of a toy balloon, she told. Their cloud was bleeding them from new pores, and the other cloud responded with a thick gray fog of butterfly-like somethings. The butterflies flew after the balloons, and Tyson laughed harder, his face contorted and the laugh finally shattering into a string of gasping coughs.

  “Don’t you see?” he asked the others. “Look! The clouds are enjoying a morning screw!”

  Pico imitated Tyson’s voice, regurgitating the words and enthusiasm. Then she was laughing for herself, scarcely noticing how the others giggled politely. No more. Only Opera was enjoying her story, again touching her arm and saying, “That’s lovely. Perfect. God, precious. . . !”

  The rest began to drift away, not quite excusing themselves.

  What was wrong?

  “Don’t mind them,” Opera cautioned. “They’re members of some new chastity faith. Clarity through horniness, and all that.” He laughed at them now. “They probably went to too many orgies, and this is how they’re coping with their guilt. That’s all.”

  Pico shut her eyes, remembering the scene on Blueblue for herself. She didn’t want to relinquish it.

  “Screwing clouds,” Opera was saying. “That is lovely.”

  And she thought:

  He sounds a little like Tyson. In places. In ways.

  After a while, Pico admitted, “I can’t remember your father’s face. I’m sure I must have met him, but I don’t – ”

  “You did meet him,” Opera replied. “He left a recording of it in his journal – a brief meeting – and I made a point of studying everything about the mission and you. His journal entries; your reports. Actually, I’m the best-prepared person here today. Other than you, of course.”

  She said nothing, considering those words.

  They were walking now, making their way down to the pond, and sometimes Pico noticed the hard glances of the others. Did they approve of Opera? Did it anger them, watching him monopolizing her time? Yet she didn’t want
to be with them, the truth told. Fuck them, she thought; and she smiled at her private profanity.

  The pond was empty of swimmers now. There were just a few sleepless ducks and the roiled water. A lot of the celebrants had vanished, Pico realized. To where? She asked Opera, and he said:

  “It’s late. But then again, most people sleep ten or twelve hours every night.”

  “That much?”

  He nodded. “Enhanced dreams are popular lately. And the oldest people sometimes exceed fifteen hours – ”

  “Always?”

  He shrugged and offered a smile.

  “What a waste!”

  “Of time?” he countered.

  Immortals can waste many things, she realized. But never time. And with that thought, she looked straight at her companion, asking him, “What happened to your father?”

  “How did he die, you mean?”

  A little nod. A respectful expression, she hoped. But curious.

  Opera said, “He used an extremely toxic poison, self-induced.” He gave a vague disapproving look directed at nobody. “A suicide at the end of a prolonged depression. He made certain that his mind was ruined before autodocs and his own robots could save him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yet I can’t afford to feel sorry,” he responded. “You see, I was born according to the terms of his will. I’m ninety-nine percent his clone, the rest of my genes tailored according to his desires. If he hadn’t murdered himself, I wouldn’t exist. Nor would I have inherited his money.” He shrugged, saying, “Parents,” with a measured scorn. “They have such power over you, like it or not.”

  She didn’t know how to respond.

  “Listen to us. All of this death talk, and doesn’t it seem out of place?” Opera said, “After all, we’re here to celebrate your return home. Your successes. Your gifts. And you . . . you on the brink of being magnified many times over.” He paused before saying, “By this time tomorrow, you’ll reside inside all of us, making everyone richer as a consequence.”

  The young man had an odd way of phrasing his statements, the entire speech either earnest or satirical. She couldn’t tell which. Or if there was a which. Maybe it was her ignorance with the audible clues, the unknown trappings of this culture. . . . Then something else occurred to her.

  “What do you mean? ‘Death talk . . .’”

  “Your friend Tyson died on Coldtear,” he replied. “And didn’t you lose another on Blueblue?”

  “Midge. Yes.”

  He nodded gravely, glancing down at Pico’s legs. “We can sit. I’m sorry; I should have noticed you were getting tired.”

  They sat side by side on the grass, watching the mallard ducks. Males and females had the same vivid green heads. Beautiful, she mentioned. Opera explained how females were once brown and quite drab, but people thought that was a shame, and voted to have the species altered, both sexes made equally resplendent. Pico nodded, only halfway listening. She couldn’t get Tyson and her other dead friends out of her mind. Particularly Tyson. She had been angry with him for a long time, and even now her anger wasn’t finished. Her confusion and general tiredness made it worse. Why had he done it? In life the man had had a way of dominating every meeting, every little gathering. He had been optimistic and fearless, the last sort of person to do such an awful thing. Suicide. The others had heard it was an accident – Pico had held to her lie – but she and they were in agreement about one fact. When Tyson died, at that precise instant, some essential heart of their mission had been lost.

  Why? she wondered. Why?

  Midge had flown into the storm on Blueblue, seeking adventure and important scientific answers; and her death was sad, yes, and everyone had missed her. But it wasn’t like Tyson’s death. It felt honorable, maybe even perfect. They had a duty to fulfill in the wilderness, and that duty was in their blood and their training. People spoke about Midge for years, acting as if she were still alive. As if she were still flying the shuttle into the storm’s vortex.

  But Tyson was different.

  Maybe everyone knew the truth about his death. Sometimes it seemed that, in Pico’s eyes, the crew could see what had really happened, and they’d hear it between her practiced lines. They weren’t fooled.

  Meanwhile, others died in the throes of life.

  Uoo – a slender wisp of a compilation – was incinerated by a giant bolt of lightning on Miriam 2, little left but ashes, and the rest of the party continuing its descent into the superheated Bottoms and the quiet Lead Sea.

  Opaltu died in the mouth of a nameless predator. He had been another of Pico’s lovers, a proud man and the best example of vanity that she had known – until today, she thought – and she and the others had laughed at the justice that befell Opaltu’s killer. Unable to digest alien meats, the predator had sickened and died in a slow agonizing fashion, vomiting up its insides as it staggered through the yellow jungle.

  Boo was killed while working outside the Kyber, struck by a mote of interstellar debris.

  Xon’s lifesuit failed, suffocating her.

  As did Kyties’s suit, and that wasn’t long ago. Just a year now ship time, and she remembered a cascade of jokes and his endless good humor. The most decent person on board the Kyber.

  Yet it was Tyson who dominated her memories of the dead. It was the man as well as his self-induced extinction, and the anger within her swelled all at once. Suddenly even simple breathing was work. Pico found herself sweating, then blinking away the salt in her eyes. Once, then again, she coughed into a fist; then finally she had the energy to ask, “Why did he do it?”

  “Who? My father?”

  “Depression is . . . should be . . . a curable ailment. We had drugs and therapies on board that could erase it.”

  “But it was more than depression. It was something that attacks the very old people. A kind of giant boredom, if you will.”

  She wasn’t surprised. Nodding as if she’d expected that reply, she told him, “I can understand that, considering your lives.” Then she thought how Tyson hadn’t been depressed or bored. How could he have been either?

  Opera touched her bad leg, for just a moment. “You must wonder how it will be,” he mentioned. “Tomorrow, I mean.”

  She shivered, aware of the fear returning. Closing her burning eyes, she saw Tyson’s walk through the bacterial mat, the loose gray chunks spinning as the currents carried them, lending them a greater sort of life with the motion. . . . And she opened her eyes, Opera watching, saying something to her with his expression, and she unable to decipher any meanings.

  “Maybe I should go to bed, too,” she allowed.

  The park under the tent was nearly empty now. Where had the others gone?

  Opera said, “Of course,” as if expecting it. He rose and offered his hand, and she surprised herself by taking the hand with both of hers. Then he said, “If you like, I can show you your quarters.”

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  It was a long painful walk, and Pico honestly considered asking for a robot’s help. For anyone’s. Even a cane would have been a blessing, her hip never having felt so bad. Earth’s gravity and the general stress were making it worse, most likely. She told herself that at least it was a pleasant night, warm and calm and perfectly clear, and the soft ground beneath the grass seemed to be calling to her, inviting her to lay down and sleep in the open.

  People were staying in a chain of old houses subdivided into apartments, luxurious yet small. Pico’s apartment was on the ground floor, Opera happy to show her through the rooms. For an instant, she considered asking him to stay the night. Indeed, she sensed that he was delaying, hoping for some sort of invitation. But she heard herself saying, “Rest well, and thank you,” and her companion smiled and left without comment, vanishing through the crystal front door and leaving her completely alone.

  For a little while, she sat on her bed, doing nothing. Not even thinking, at least in any conscious fashion.

  Then she realized
something, no warning given; and aloud, in a voice almost too soft for even her to hear, she said, “He didn’t know. Didn’t have an idea, the shit.” Tyson. She was thinking about the fiery man and his boast about being the second generation of star explorers. What if it was all true? His parents had injected a portion of a former Tyson into him, and he had already known the early worlds they had visited. He already knew the look of sunrises on the double desert world around Alpha Centauri A; he knew the smell of constant rot before they cracked their airlocks on Barnard’s 2. But try as he might –

  “ – he couldn’t remember how it feels to be disassembled.” She spoke without sound. To herself. “That titanic and fearless creature, and he couldn’t remember. Everything else, yes, but not that. And not knowing had to scare him. Nothing else did, but that terrified him. The only time in his life he was truly scared, and it took all his bluster to keep that secret – !”

  Killing himself rather than face his fear.

  Of course, she thought. Why not?

  And he took Pico as his audience, knowing she’d be a good audience. Because they were lovers. Because he must have decided that he could convince her in his fearlessness one last time, leaving his legend secure. Immortal, in a sense.

  That’s what you were thinking . . .

  . . . wasn’t it?

  And she shivered, holding both legs close to her mouth, and feeling the warm misery of her doomed hip.

  She sat for a couple more hours, neither sleeping nor feeling the slightest need for sleep. Finally she rose and used the bathroom, and after a long careful look through the windows, she ordered the door to open and stepped outside, picking a reasonable direction and walking stiffly and quickly on the weakened leg.

  Opera emerged from the shadows, startling her.

  “If you want to escape,” he whispered, “I can help. Let me help you, please.”

  The face was handsome in the moonlight, young in every fashion. He must have guessed her mood, she realized, and she didn’t allow herself to become upset. Help was important, she reasoned. Even essential. She had to find her way across a vast and very strange alien world. “I want to get back into orbit,” she told him, “and find another starship. We saw several. They looked almost ready to embark.” Bigger than the Kyber, and obviously faster. No doubt designed to move even deeper into the endless wilderness.