The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three

by Jonathan Strahan

  I. The Ill-Fated Mission

  Their situation was dire. A chunk of primordial iron had slashed its way through the Demon Dandy, crippling the engines and pushing life support to the brink of failure. Even worse, a shotgun blast of shrapnel had shredded one of the ship's two life-pods. The mission engineer, a glum little man who had spent twenty years mining Earth-grazing asteroids, studied the wreckage with an expert eye. There was no sane reason to hope that repairs could be made in time. But on the principle of keeping his staff busy, he ordered the robots and his new assistant to continue their work on the useless pod. Then after investing a few moments cursing God and Luck, the engineer dragged himself to the remnants of the bridge to meet with the Dandy's beleaguered captain.

  His assistant was a young fellow named Joseph Carroway.

  Handsome as a digital hero, with green eyes and an abundance of curly blond hair, Joe was in his early twenties, born to wealthy parents who had endowed their only child with the earliest crop of synthetic human genes. He was a tall, tidy fellow, and he was a gifted athlete as graceful as any dancer, on the Earth or in freefall. According to a dozen respected scales, Joe was also quite intelligent. With an impressed shake of the head, the company psychiatrist had confided that his bountiful talents made him suitable for many kinds of work. But by the same token, that supercharged brain carried certain inherent risks.

  Dipping his head in the most charming fashion, he said, "Risks?"

  "And I think you know what I'm talking about," she remarked, showing a wary, somewhat flirtatious smile.

  "But I don't know," Joe lied.

  "And I believe you do," she countered. "Without exception, Mr. Carroway, you have been telling me exactly what I want to hear. And you're very believable, I should add. If I hadn't run the T-scan during our interview, I might have come away believing that you are the most kind, most decent gentleman in the world."

  "But I am decent," he argued.

  Joe sounded, and looked, exceptionally earnest.

  The psychiatrist laughed. A woman in her early fifties, she was an overqualified professional doing routine tasks for a corporation larger and more powerful than most nations. The solar system was being opened to humanity—humanity in all of its forms, old and new. Her only task was to find qualified bodies to do exceptionally dangerous work. The vagaries of this young man's psyche were factors in her assessment. But they weren't the final word. After a moment's reflection, she said, "God. The thing is, you're beautiful."

  Joe smiled and said, "Thank you."

  Then with a natural smoothness, he added, "And you are an exceptionally lovely woman."

  She laughed, loudly and with a trace of despair, as if aware that she would never again hear such kind words from a young man.

  Joe leaned forward and, wearing the perfect smile—a strong winning grin—he told the psychiatrist, "I am a very good person."

  "No," she said. "No, Joe, you are not."

  Then she sat back in her chair, and with a finger twirling her mousy-brown hair, she confessed, "But dear God, my boy, I really would just love to have you for dinner."

  That was five months ago, and now Joe was on board a ship that had been devastated by a mindless piece of iron.

  As soon as the engineer left for the bridge, Joe kicked away from the battered escape pod. Both robots quietly reminded him of their orders. Dereliction of duty would leave a black mark on the mission report. But their assignment had no purpose except to keep them busy and Joe distracted. And since arguing with machines served no role, he said nothing, focusing on the only rational course available to him.

  The com-line to the bridge was locked, but that was a puzzle easily solved. For the next few minutes, Joe concentrated on a very miserable conversation between the ship's top officers. The best launch window was only a little more than three hours from now. The surviving pod had finite fuel and oxygen. Kilograms and the time demanded by any return voyage were the main problems. Thirty precious seconds were wasted when the captain announced that she would remain behind, forcing the engineer to point out that she was a small person, which meant they would need to find another thirty kilos of mass, at the very least.

  Of course both officers could play the hero role, sacrificing themselves to save their crew. But neither mentioned what was painfully obvious. Instead, what mattered was the naming and discarding of a string of increasingly unworkable fixes.

  Their conversation stopped when Joe drifted into the bridge.

  "I've got two options for you," he announced. "And when it comes down to it, you'll take my second solution."

  The captain glanced at her engineer, as if to ask, "Should we listen to this kid?"

  In despair, the engineer said, "Tell us, Joe. Quick."

  "The fairest answer? We chop off everybody's arms and legs." He smiled and dipped his head as he spoke, pretending to be squeamish. "We'll use the big field laser, since that should cauterize the wounds. Then our robots dope everybody up and shove us onboard the pod. With the robots remaining behind, of course."

  Neither officer had considered saving their machines.

  "We chop off our own arms?" the engineer whined. "And our legs too?"

  "Prosthetics do wonders," Joe pointed out. "Or the company can grow us new limbs. They won't match the originals, but they'll be workable enough."

  The officers traded nervous looks.

  "What else do you have?" the captain asked.

  "One crewmember remains behind."

  "We've considered that," the engineer warned. "But there's no decent way to decide who stays and who goes."

  "Two of us have enough mass," Joe pointed out. "If either one stays, everybody else escapes."

  At six foot and ninety kilos, Joe was easily the largest crewman.

  "So you're volunteering?" asked the captain, hope brightening her tiny brown face.

  Joe said, "No," with a flat, unaffected voice. "I'm sorry. Did I say anything about volunteers?"

  Suddenly the only sound was the thin wind caused by a spaceship suffering a thousand tiny leaks.

  One person among the crew was almost as big as Joe.

  The engineer whispered, "Danielle."

  Both officers winced. Their colleague was an excellent worker and a dear friend, and Danielle also happened to be attractive and popular. Try as they might, they couldn't accept the idea that they would leave her behind, and without her blessing, at that.

  Joe had anticipated their response. "But if you had a choice between her and me, you'd happily abandon me. Is that right?"

  They didn't answer. But Joe was new to the crew, and when their eyes dropped, they were clearly saying, "Yes."

  He took no offense.

  With a shrug and a sigh, Joe gave his audience time enough to feel ashamed. Then he looked at the captain, asking, "What about Barnes? He's only ten, maybe eleven kilos lighter than me."

  That name caused a brief exchange of glances.

  "What are you planning?" asked the engineer.

  Joe didn't respond.

  "No," the captain told him.

  "No?" asked Joe. "'No' to what?"

  Neither would confess what they were imagining.

  Then Joe put on a horrified expression. "Oh, God," he said. "Do you really believe I would consider that?"

  The engineer defended himself with soft mutters.

  Joe's horror dissolved into a piercing stare.

  "There are codes to this sort of thing," the captain reminded everybody, including herself. "Commit violence against a fellow crewmember, I don't care who it is . . . and you won't come home with us, Mr. Carroway. Is that clear enough for you to understand?"

  Joe let her fume. Then with a sly smile, he said, "I'm sorry. I thought we wanted the best way to save as many lives as possible."

  Again, the officers glanced at each other.

  The young man laughed in a charming but very chilly fashion—a moment that always made empathic souls uneasy. "Let's return to my first plan," h
e said. "Order everybody into the machine shop, and we'll start carving off body parts."

  The captain said, "No," and then looked for a good reason.

  The engineer just shrugged, laughing nervously.

  "We don't know if that would work," the captain decided. "People could be killed by the trauma."

  "And what if we had to fly the pod manually?" the engineer asked. "Without hands, we're just cargo."

  An awful option had been excluded, and they could relax slightly.

  "Okay," said Joe. "This is what I'm going to do: I'll go talk to Barnes. Give me a few minutes. And if I don't get what we want, then I will stay behind."

  "You?" the captain said hopefully.

  Joe offered a firm, trustworthy, "Sure."

  But when he tallied up everyone's mass, the engineer found trouble. "Even with Barnes gone, we're still five kilos past our limit. And I'd like to give us a bigger margin of error, if I can."

  "So," said Joe. "The rest of us give blood."

  The captain stared at this odd young man, studying that dense blond hair and those bright hazel eyes.

  "Blood," Joe repeated. "As much as we can physically manage. And we can also enjoy a big chemically induced shit before leaving this wreck."

  The engineer began massaging the numbers.

  Joe matter-of-factly dangled his leg between the officers. "And if we're pressed, I guess I could surrender one of these boys. But my guess is that it won't come to that."

  And in the end, it did not.

  Three weeks later, Joe Carroway was sitting in the psychiatrist's office, calmly discussing the tragedy.

  "I've read everyone's report," she admitted.

  He nodded, and he smiled.

  Unlike their last meeting, the woman was striving to maintain a strict professional distance. She couldn't have foreseen what would happen to the Demon Dandy or how this employee would respond. But there was the possibility that blame would eventually settle on her, and to save her own flesh, she was determined to learn exactly what Joe and the officers had decided on the bridge.

  "Does your face hurt?" she inquired.

  "A little bit."

  "How many times did he strike you?"

  "Ten," Joe offered. "Maybe more."

  She winced. "The weapon?"

  "A rough piece of iron," he said. "Barnes had a souvenir from the first asteroid he helped work."

  Infrared sensors and the hidden T-scanner were observing the subject closely. Examining the telemetry, she asked, "Why did you pick Mr. Barnes?"

  "That's in my report."

  "Remind me, Joe. What were your reasons?"

  "He was big enough to matter."

  "And what did the others think about the man?"

  "You mean the crew?" Joe shrugged. "He was one of us. Maybe he was quiet and kept to himself—"

  "Bullshit."

  When he wanted, Joe could produce a shy, boyish grin.

  "He was different from the rest of you," the psychiatrist pointed out. "And I'm not talking about his personality."

  "You're not," Joe agreed.

  She produced images of the dead man. The oldest photograph showed a skinny, homely male in his middle twenties, while the most recent example presented a face that was turning fat—a normal consequence that came with the most intrusive, all-encompassing genetic surgery.

  "Your colleague was midway through some very radical genetic surgery."

  "He was," Joe agreed.

  "He belonged to the Rebirth Movement."

  "I'm sorry. What does this have to do with anything?" Joe's tone was serious. Perhaps even offended. "Everybody is human, even if they aren't sapiens anymore. Isn't that the way our laws are written?"

  "You knew exactly what you were doing, Joe."

  He didn't answer.

  "You selected Barnes. You picked him because you understood that nobody would stand in your way."

  Joe's only response was the trace of a grin at the corners of his mouth.

  "Where did you meet with Barnes?"

  "In his cabin."

  "And what did you say to him?"

  "That I loved him," Joe explained. "I told him that I was envious of his courage and vision. Leaving our old species was noble. Was good. I thought that he was intriguing and very beautiful. And I told him that to save his important life, as well as everybody else, I was going to sacrifice myself. I was staying behind with the robots."

  "You lied to him."

  "Except Barnes believed me."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "When you told him you loved him . . . did you believe he was gay?"

  "He wasn't."

  "But if he had been? What would you have done if he was flattered by your advances?"

  "Oh, I could have played that game too."

  The psychiatrist hesitated. "What do you mean?"

  "If Barnes preferred guys, then I would have seduced him. If I'd thought there was enough time, I mean. I would have convinced him to remain behind and save my life. Really, the guy was pretty easy to manipulate, all in all. It wouldn't have taken much to convince him that being the hero was his idea in the first place."

  "You could have managed all that?"

  Joe considered hard before saying, "If I'd had a few days to work with, sure. Easy. But you're probably right. A couple hours wasn't enough time."

  The psychiatrist had stopped watching the telemetry, preferring to stare at the creature sitting across from her.

  Quietly, she said, "Okay."

  Joe waited patiently.

  "What did Mr. Barnes say to you?" she asked. "After you professed your love, how did he react?"

  "'You're lying.'" Joe didn't just quote the man, but he sounded like him too. The voice was thick and a little slow, wrapped around vocal chords that were slowly changing their configuration. "'You've slept with every damn woman on this ship,' he told me. 'Except our dyke captain.'"

  The psychiatrist's face stiffened slightly.

  "Is that true?" she muttered.

  Joe gave her a moment. "Is what true?"

  "Never mind." She found a new subject to pursue. "Mr. Barnes's cabin was small, wasn't it?"

  "The same as everybody's."

  "And you were at opposite ends of that room. Is that right?"

  "Yes."

  By birth, Barnes was a small man, but his Rebirth had given him temporary layers of fat that would have eventually been transformed into new tissues and bones, and even two extra fingers on each of his long, lovely hands. The air inside that cubbyhole had smelled of biology—raw and distinctly strange. But it wasn't an unpleasant odor. Barnes had been drifting beside his bed, and next to him was the image of the creature he wanted to become—a powerful, fur-draped entity with huge golden eyes and a predator's toothy grin. The cabin walls were covered with his possessions, each lashed in place to keep them out of the way. And on the surface of what was arbitrarily considered to be the ceiling, Barnes had painted the motto of the Rebirth movement:

  TO BE TRULY HUMAN IS TO BE DIFFERENT.

  "Do you want to know what I told him?" asked Joe. "I didn't put this in my report. But after he claimed I was sleeping with those women . . . do you know what I said that got him to start pounding on me . . . ?"

  The psychiatrist offered a tiny, almost invisible nod.

  "I said, 'I'm just playing with those silly bitches. They're toys to me. But you, you're nothing like them. Or like me. You're going to be a spectacular creature. A vision of the future, you lucky shit. And before I die, please, let me blow you. Just to get the taste of another species.'"

  She sighed. "All right."

  "And that's when I reached for him—"

  "You're heterosexual," she complained.

  "I was saving lives," Joe responded.

  "You were saving your own life."

  "And plenty of others, too," he pointed out. Then with a grin, he added, "You don't appreciate what I was prepared to do, Doctor. If it meant saving the
rest of us, I was capable of anything."

  She once believed that she understood Joe Carroway. But in every possible way, she had underestimated the man sitting before her, including his innate capacity to measure everybody else's nature.

  "The crew was waiting in the passageway outside," he mentioned. "With the captain and engineer, they were crowding in close, listening close, trying to hear what would happen. All these good decent souls, holding their breaths, wondering if I could pull this trick off."

  She nodded again.

  "They heard the fight, but it took them a couple minutes to force the door's lock. When they got inside, they found Barnes all over me and that lump of iron in his hand." Joe paused before asking, "Do you know how blood looks in space? It forms a thick mist of bright red drops that drift everywhere, sticking to every surface."

  "Did Mr. Barnes strike you?"

  Joe hesitated, impressed enough to show her an appreciative smile. "What does it say in my report?"

  "But it seems to me. . . . " Her voice trailed away. "Maybe you were being honest with me, Joe. When you swore that you would have done anything to save yourself, I should have believed you. So I have to wonder now—what if you grabbed that piece of asteroid and turned it on yourself? Mr. Barnes would have been surprised. For a minute or so, he might have been too stunned to do anything but watch you strike yourself in the face. Then he heard the others breaking in, and he naturally kicked over to you and pulled the weapon from your hand."

  "Now why would I admit to any of that?" Joe replied.

  Then he shrugged, adding, "But really, when you get down to it, the logistics of what happened aren't important. What matters is that I gave the captain a very good excuse to lock that man up, which was how she cleared her conscience before we could abandon ship."

  "The captain doesn't look at this as an excuse," the psychiatrist said.

  "No?"

  "Barnes was violent, and her conscience rests easy."