Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction

by Hamilton, Peter F. ; Reynolds, Alastair; Macleod, Ken; Baxter, Stephen; Sullivan, Tricia; di Filippo, Paul; Roberts, Adam; Cadigan, Pat; Tidhar, Lavie; Whates, Ian

  Rachel Wang lifted her phone to read the blunt, concise message left on the glowing screen. Sorry. No go, it said. Seeing Nick.

  With a sigh, she shoved her cell back in her pocket and looked out the double glass doors at the slick pavement outside. Though it had stopped raining an hour ago, the sky was still cloudy and dim. The atmosphere was supposed to clear by tomorrow morning, in which case she would be flying up to the station. She needed to be on board the Ark for its final run of checks. As Earth’s first colony ship, the launch of the Ark would be a moment for the history books.

  The journey was set to take decades, and the captaincy would be a heavy responsibility, probably lasting as long as the captain lived. There had been hundreds of candidates from across the globe, and the commission had finally settled on her. She and her crew would be sailing into deep space, farther than humanity had ever gone – and they would not be coming back. Rachel had said all her good-byes to family and friends... all except for Kelly, her sister.

  “Were you waiting for someone?”

  It was David Silver, the supervising doctor of the colony ship. He was in his thirties, like most of the command team. The commission had deemed it desirable to find exceptional staff who would be able to remain at their posts for decades to come and pass on their specialized knowledge to the next generation. The lower-ranking members of the crew were allowed a greater spread in age, so that turnover due to retirement did not cripple the crew all at once.

  “Not anymore,” said Rachel, with a disgruntled shake of her head. She would have thought her only sister could have made room in her evening for her. It wasn’t as if they could meet again next week, next month, or even twenty years from now.

  “Hey, David?” she said suddenly. “I never asked, but is your family coming along on the Ark?”

  He grinned and nodded. “Wife, kids, even parents. They won’t be heading up for a couple more weeks, but they’ll all be there. What about yours?”

  Rachel shook her head, and tried to hide her disappointment with a smile. “My parents are pleased for me, but they’re happy right here. And I’m still single, so...” She shrugged.

  “Not to worry,” he said, stepping up to the sliding door. “There are going to be plenty of single men on the Ark. I’m sure a good-looking captain will have her pick of them.”

  She fell into step alongside him. They took the shuttle to the apartment complex where most of the crew had lived ever since being selected for the program. Now that she had accepted Kelly wasn’t meeting her, there was no reason to wait in the command center.

  “I’m sure it won’t be that easy,” she said lightly. “After all, who’s going to want to date” – she wrinkled her nose – “an officer?”

  “Why not? Are you going to throw them in the brig for expressing interest?”

  She laughed and let the subject drop.

  Though a myriad of cultures would be represented on the Ark, she knew they wouldn’t all remain intact during the ship’s long journey to their destination. For the moment they were one great pot of heterogeneity, but give it a generation, maybe two, and eventually their cultures would almost certainly melt together, forming something entirely new for their new home. And she didn’t like to think that her descendants would forget their past, their heritage.

  Like Kelly.

  “Weren’t you going on about some sort of Chinese holiday this week?” asked David. “Is that over now?”

  “It’s actually later this week, but we’re going to be in space by then. If you were thinking of picking up some mooncake, you can still do that. Buying mooncake for the Mooncake Festival’s like buying eggnog for Christmas. You can always do it a couple weeks early.”

  David smiled. “Only if it tastes like gefilte fish.”

  She made a face. “Do you really like that?”

  “Not really,” he admitted.

  “Then why –?”

  “Because if my wife and I don’t make it, our children and their children will never taste gefilte fish, and even if they don’t like it any better than I do, that’s part of who we are.”

  “We may become a whole new culture by the end of the voyage,” said Rachel.

  “That’s okay. We can never forget who we are, and what we came from,” said David. “I’m a Jew. It doesn’t matter whether I believe or deny it, the world knows I’m a Jew. They’ve been killing my people for four thousand years. You think people who hate me were fooled because my grandfather changed his name from Silverstein to Silver?” He smiled in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run on like that.”

  “It’s all right,” said Rachel. “I have a culture and heritage that I don’t want to lose or forget either.”

  She and Kelly had fought as children over the mooncake. The flaky crusts of the mooncake covered a paste of black bean or lotus seed, and inside the paste would be a delicious salted egg yolk. But the yolk would never be in the exact middle, so when their father cut the little cake into quarters for each member of the family someone would always get more yolk than the rest.

  Rachel frowned. Kelly probably wasn’t even eating mooncake this year. Some second generation immigrants followed dutifully in their parents cultural footsteps. Others couldn’t wait to go mainstream. Kelly was the latter; dating an endless string of white boyfriends, even forgetting how to write her own name in Chinese. One had to assimilate, Rachel knew that – but like David, not like Kelly, who wouldn’t even be seeing her older sister off on a voyage that would take a lifetime.

  “As for the mooncake,” Rachel said to David, “I should be able to bring some up to the station for everyone.” It would probably be the last time she was able to eat mooncake. She was fairly certain the Ark would not be bringing along the ingredients she’d need to make it herself. There were other staff members of Asian descent, but she wasn’t sure how many of them were Chinese in particular. And even if they were, she couldn’t know if they were what she thought of as Kelly Chinese or Rachel Chinese.

  Rachel knew her parents wanted a Chinese grandchild, but she couldn’t be sure that she could give them that aboard the ship. But she would damned well be the daughter they were proud of. She was going into space on the colony ship. She would be remembered, her name recorded on the pages of history.

  “Great!” said David. “I’d like to try one. I’m sure Moses will forgive me.” He suddenly smiled. “Golda Meier I have my doubts about.”

  She smiled in return. The cakes were meant to be eaten with friends and family. It probably would be a good start to share them with the people she’d be spending the rest of her life with.

  “You know,” she said. “They’re supposed to be eaten under the light of the full moon. I think we’ll have a good view up there.”

  Suddenly Rachel found herself wondering if mooncake would have any meaning in deep space where there would no longer be any moon.

  Her apartment was all packed up. The furniture belonged to the commission, and all her personal belongings fit into two large suitcases and a backpack. The accumulations of a lifetime suddenly seemed so small and unimpressive. The only unplanned item was the bag containing three tins of mooncake that she had purchased the night before. One had already been opened. She’d been unable to help herself last night, being alone for her last night on Earth. The cake had been good: Lotus seed. Her favorite.

  She told herself that even if the Ark sailed light years away and the few Chinese on board forgot their heritage, here on Earth there were still billions of Chinese who remembered the old ways. It wasn’t as though the culture was going to disappear.

  But still... when (or if) she had children, she wanted to pass on what little she knew to them, as she was sure David passed his heritage on, as the Irish and Brazilian and Kenyan members did as well. Maybe it would only be a few broken words in their ancestral tongue, but she had to pass on something. She didn’t want her family’s heritage to die out with her, the way it would with Kelly.

  Her cel
l beeped. Open the door already.

  Kelly? It was her ID.

  Rachel walked out of her bedroom and over to the front door. She opened it to find her sister standing outside, a shopping bag in either arm and her cell phone wedged in one hand. Kelly’s hair was bleached blond, but there was no getting rid of the almond eyes and rounded face.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you,” said Rachel.

  Kelly rolled her eyes as she stepped inside. “You’re leaving later today, aren’t you?” She dropped one bag on the floor by the door. It was full of clothing with the pricetags still attached. The other she held up in front of her, the Chinese characters of the supermarket plainly marked on the bag. “You’re still my only sister and I know mooncake season is important for you, God knows why… so I thought I’d bring some. You know, to say good-bye.”

  “I’m not sure I have the time,” said Rachel. “I already packed most of my stuff. Pick-up’s in a few hours.”

  “Isn’t the silverware part of the apartment?” It was.

  How can I say no to my own sister’s peace offering? “I’ll get it,” said Rachel with a sigh. “I don’t have any tea, though. I already used it up.”

  “Water’s fine.” Kelly reached in the bag and pulled out a square tin. There was Chinese lettering all over the box, but also a white sticker listing the contents in English. Rachel was reasonably certain that if it hadn’t been there her sister would have had no idea what flavor she was buying.

  Kelly followed her into the kitchen and set the tin on the counter. “I picked this one carefully,” she said. “I know we’ve fought a lot, and I wanted to make sure you left on a good note. I want your last memory of me to be a happy one. This mooncake’s special. I got the one with double moons.”

  Rachel glanced at the box, reading its contents for the first time. There were two eggs in each cake. It was probably the most expensive box in the store.

  “So we don’t have to fight,” said Kelly.

  Rachel allowed herself a smile and pulled her into a hug. “We’ll always be different, but you’re still my sister, and I love you.”

  “I know I haven’t always been very Chinese, but I never forget mooncake day.”

  “No, you don’t,” agreed Rachel, remembering their childhood fights. She pulled out a couple of plates and a knife. “Let’s open that up and eat a cake.”

  Maybe Kelly would never be as Chinese as she hoped, but even so she hadn’t forgotten everything. Maybe, if Rachel had children on the Ark one day, they wouldn’t either.

  Rachel boarded ship a few hours later, and found herself sitting next to David.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” she said. “It has to do with what we were discussing earlier.”

  “Sure,” he said. “If I can reserve the right not to answer it.”

  “Do you have any members of your family who ignore or even deny their heritage?” she asked.

  “I think every family does,” he said.

  “What do you do about it?”

  He smiled. “You love them for what they are, and forgive them for what they’re not.”

  She leaned back, smiled, and closed her eyes, having reached the same conclusion herself upon saying goodbye to Kelly for the very last time.

  AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Award-winning author Steve Rasnic Tem is perhaps best known for his horror and dark fantasy, but along the way he has also established a reputation for writing high quality SF. Steve says he is always glad of the opportunity to write science fiction, claiming that the stories often take longer but the experience is invariably a rewarding one. Steve’s latest novel, Deadfall Hotel, chronicling what happens when nightmares seek a place of sanctuary, will be released Spring 2012 from Solaris Books.

  After years ofrepetition,waking up in some altered state had become the expected outcome of long, uninterrupted slumber. Since childhood, Tom had come to think of sleep as practically a means of transportation. If ill or depressed he’d take to his bed forthat healing power of sleep, reviving at some point forward in time, in a better place, a healthier frame of mind.

  So when he regained consciousnessthis time in a brilliant haze of light he was not extremely concerned, even when he saw an enormous plant maybe eight feet tall – some sort of succulent bromeliad, he believed – moving about in the room, its long fleshy leaves touching tables and racks, picking up bottles and tools, its flexible stamen waving. Near the top of the plant the leaves had widened into shoulders, where some sort of brightly-lit chandelier was mounted.

  Clearly he should have screamed, or been overwhelmed by anxiety, and in some compartment of his mind he was. But the trauma was muted, the terror inaccessible.

  The plant waved a cluster of long filamentsin Tom’s direction, emitting a high-pitched, scraping sound. Now feeling the beginnings of concern, heattempted to escape. But he appeared to be paralyzed, his limbs oblivious to urgent commands. He wasn’t strong enough to even cover his ears.

  The scraping ceased. “I apologize,” said a voice inside his head. “I had not activated your implant.”

  Tom managed to twist his neck slightly in order to find the source of the voice, whether a presence or some visible speaker grille. He found nothing, but noticed that the handles on the tools, the vessels on the tables, were distorted, as if melted. He was hallucinating, then. Maybe he’d eaten something toxic.

  The plant moved with unbelievable rapidity, as an octopus had moved across the ocean floor in a nature documentary he’d seen recently, and now leaned over him. “I will help you into a sitting position,” it – the voice inside his head – said.

  The leaves were cool and firm against his skin. One curled its tip around his shoulder and pulled, while another supported his back, and yet another pressed against his forehead as if to prevent his skull from flopping forward, which seemed unnecessary until he was actually upright and felt the heaviness. He noticed among the fleshy leaves numerous strands of wire or cable of varying thickness, some lit with flickering arrays, some ribbed, some featureless. Whatever they were, these additional appendages were not organic.

  Now Tom was unsettled. But something was obviously working in his system to suppress the panic.

  “Please maintain a state of calm. I will ask you questions. There are no right or wrong answers. I will help you make a safe transition into your next phase. You are feeling some anxiety. For your safety we treated your systems to decrease your level of anxiety. These treatments did not affect your cognitive abilities in any way.”

  Tom was now very clear about one thing – the voice was coming from inside this gigantic plant. “I will begin. What is the last thing you remember before you…” There was a pause, and a little bit of that scraping noise bled through. “Before you entered your sleep phase.”

  Tom used to exercise to help him sleep. Sometimes he tried heated milk, medications. But not the last time. The last time he’d been lying on a bed before surgery. “I was hooked up to an IV. They were going to do something with my inner ear. The right, no, the left side. I had been losing my balance for a very long time. That last month it had gotten much, much worse – just sitting up made me ill. The surgery was supposed to be… um.” He swallowed. His mouth was like a cloth pocket containing a dried-out, forgotten tongue. The plant inserted a long straw into his mouth. He searched apprehensively for the other end of the straw, but could not find it. His mouth filled with cool liquid. “The surgery was supposed to be a simple procedure. Later, I woke up, but I didn’t really wake up. Everything was so hazy, and the room seemed to be full of people – at least I could hear their… distorted echoes – but I couldn’t see anyone.” He could feel that distant fear approaching. It would arrive very soon now.

  “We have repaired… your condition,” it said. “I will answer those questions I have answers for. But please answer these first.”

  Tom took a deep breath and looked around. The room appeared sterile, and there were
recognizable tubes, containers, liquids, instruments – with handles and other attachments distorted and unlike anything he’d ever seen before. But they made a kind of sense, given the nature of the creature before him, who gave an impression of floating on a mop of fine roots. He understood now that this plant-thing was in constant, subtle movement – its leaves, stems – gently flowing, changing shape in a way that emphasized this impression of floating. He also saw that a thin layer of greenish liquid coated the floor, streaked and shiny like some sort of lubricant.

  There were objects on tables around the room. Tom thought he recognized the shell of an old toaster, some random auto parts, maybe a radio, what might have been a fragment of toilet bowl – all so stained and rusty, so worn that they might have been dredged out of the ocean mud.

  “You were suspended.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “You were placed in a state… cannot translate… cannot translate. You were placed in a condition of suspended animation. The technology was primitive then, but there have been… cannot translate. There have been survivors. Cannot translate. Did they make promises to you concerning the eventual outcome?”

  “What? No… I told you. It was just supposed to be a simple procedure. No one said anything about suspended animation or anything like that. I didn’t agree to anything but my ear operation!”

  There was a very long pause. Tom felt increasingly uncomfortable, but periodic waves of cold moving through his body calmed him. Finally the plant spoke again. “Many of the records from this facility… cannot translate. Incomplete. Your record is incomplete. But they indicate that a mishap occurred. An anomalous event. An error was made during surgery. You could not be revived. Subsequently an agreement was reached.”