Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition

by Rich Horton

  The coal burner had overcome their captain's best efforts. It was lying almost parallel with the right side of their boat, with a three-meter gap separating the two hulls. The hardbodies were lined up with their guns at port arms. They were obviously primed to jump as soon as their boat's sidewise drift brought them close enough. The nine swans covered their helmets and torsos with a blanket of hammering wings.

  The hardbodies reacted with the remorseless calm that had been built into their personalities. Their right hands dropped off their guns and gripped the swans around their necks. The two massives reached into the storm of writhing feathers and applied their oversized muscles to the necks the hardbodies had neglected.

  "Have the captain open the right loading hatch,” Purvali said. “Enough for us to shoot out."

  Sabor started moving toward the hatch while he was still pipping the captain. The hatch creaked open and they each took a single hardbody and poured moles into his armor. They had to shoot upward at a steep angle, through the commotion created by the swans, but a hit anywhere on the armor would wear it down.

  Dead swans dropped into the water in front of Sabor. The gap between the two hulls narrowed. The side of the other boat loomed over them. On Sabor's display, the omniscient eye of the electronic system presented him with a less pessimistic picture. Three hardbodies had dropped out of the line—presumably to recharge their armor. Two swans were still defying the pitiless hands closing around their necks.

  Three hardbodies jumped across the gap. Boots pounded on the deck over Sabor's head. He scurried away from his firing position and aimed his gun at the hatch he had used to enter the hold.

  A hardbody suddenly started firing his gun. The display responded to the shift in Sabor's attention and presented him with two figures in skintight wetsuits. Two more figures were crowding in behind them. In the water, just a few meters from the boat, three seal riders were standing on their mounts as they poured a stream of projectiles into the hardbodies.

  * * * *

  "I requested a son who was restless and adventurous,” Sabor's mother had told him. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when he tells me he wants to put twenty-two light years between himself and all the pleasures he's been enjoying since his eyes first registered the light."

  "As far as I can tell,” Sabor had responded, “the only pleasures I'm leaving behind are the pleasures that are irrevocably associated with my family. The only difference between the ship and the home I've been honored to share with you and my sisters is the fact that the ship will be moving away from the sun instead of traveling around it. I'll have almost every luxury I have here. We'll still have fabricators when we reach Fernheim. The first thing I'm going to fabricate after we make landfall is a bottle of Talini."

  Sabor had been fifty-two when he had broken the news. His mother had been reigning over their family enterprises for almost a century. Billions of neils and yuris bounced around the cities of the asteroid belt during every twenty-four hour day-period and their economists estimated that thirty percent of the total visited their databanks during its rambles.

  Rali Haveri was a placid woman for all her power. She had produced him, Sabor believed, because she felt her life needed a dash of turbulence. Adventurous people stirred her. Most of her temporary consorts had been self-centered erratics.

  Sabor had reached maturity in an environment that surrounded him with gentle music, decorous parties, and amiable personalities. Alajara had been one of the pleasantest cities in the asteroid belt—a mansion inhabited by ten thousand people who were all employees of his family's business. Sabor mastered three musical instruments, pursued his hobbies and enthusiasms with equipment that would have made most professionals groan with envy, and dallied with his choice of concubines when he reached the appropriate age. His mother and his older sisters took care of the details that generated the family income.

  There had been a time when many visionaries thought the fabricator would make bankers obsolete. Press the right buttons and your magic box would generate a fully cooked roast on demand. Press another combination and it would extrude furniture for your dwelling place, clothes for your body, and toys for the idle hours it had bestowed on your life. Why would anyone need money?

  Fortunately, it hadn't quite worked out that way. Fabricators had been universal household appliances for two centuries and Sabor's family was still engaging in its traditional business. The introduction of the fabricator had disrupted Earth's economic system for approximately two decades. It had triggered a catastrophic massive deflation. Prices and wages had tumbled by seventy percent, by most calculations. But when the turbulence had subsided, Sabor's family had still been negotiating loans and pulling profits out of microscopic variations in interest rates.

  Fabricators could provide you with the basics at a ridiculously low cost but they still needed energy and raw materials. They needed programs that directed their operations and time to run the programs. And there were commodities that couldn't be manufactured by the best machines available. Fabricators couldn't manufacture social status. Fabricators couldn't engage in the genetic manipulations and the years of post-natal management that produced personalities like Purvali and Choytang. Above all, fabricators couldn't manufacture expertise and imagination. They couldn't design their own programs. They couldn't visualize the new products that would make consumers lust after the programs that would produce them.

  Money, Rali Haveri liked to remind him, was essentially irrational. It had value because people agreed it had value. She had placed two million yuris in Sabor's account when he had established his residence on the Carefree Villa and everyone on the starship had agreed he could use it to buy goods and services and make loans. They had accepted it as money through three rests and four awakes and they had continued to accept it when he had landed on Fernheim. They even accepted the additional numbers his mother had radioed him since he had landed on the planet. The fact that every message had to travel for twenty-two years made no difference. Human societies needed some sort of monetary system and he was the son of a woman who could obviously bless him with any sum he could reasonably desire. The financial system in the solar system even recognized the numbers he transmitted when he paid his mother the interest she charged him.

  "I would be avoiding my maternal responsibilities if I didn't demand interest,” Rali had lectured him across the light years. “I'm only imposing the same discipline on you that I would try to impose on myself—the same discipline the solar financial system imposes on me."

  Sabor reentered the boathouse and dropped into a corner two minutes after the captain returned their boat to the main channel. Purvali ran a test on the boathouse fabricator and ordered pharmaceutical drinks that would moderate their emotional stress. Colonel Jina's immobilized soldiers were being relieved of their armor and weapons and placed on the deck of the other boat. The boat itself would be turned around and sent back upstream under its own control.

  The Primary Coordinator had already advised Colonel Jina he could pick up his soldiers’ equipment in two days. There would be no request for ransom or damages.

  "We try to maintain good business relations with Colonel Jina,” the Primary Coordinator had explained. “We usually use his services when we hire guards for our more valuable shipments."

  Purvali swayed toward Sabor with a drinking cup in her hand. He held up three fingers as she bent over him.

  "We have three projects we have to advance simultaneously,” Sabor said. “We have to organize our fellow bankers into a united front, we have to find a weakness we can exploit, and we have to prepare for a sojourn in the splendors of the unterrestrialized wilderness. I'll start work on number one. I want you to work on the others. Assume we'll embark on our wilderness holiday as soon as we're properly equipped."

  Purvali checked her display. “They only have eight widemounts in the whole commune."

  "Try to purchase four. I'd like to pack a few comforts."

  The effects of
the drink flowed through Sabor's muscles and nerves. His display projected his own image in front of him and he observed his delivery as he created his message to his three colleagues.

  "I regret to tell you that I have just fended off an armed attack financed by Possessor Kenzan Khan. I believe we should immediately suspend all dealings with Kenzan Khan. I will be taking other actions shortly but I believe an unequivocal display of unity is absolutely essential."

  He paused the recording and took another swallow of his drink. Purvali had flavored it with banana and coconut—an aroma he had treasured since he had first savored it sometime around his fifth birthday.

  "Kenzan has become obsessed with his long term feud with Possessor Dobryani. He wants to mount an armed occupation of the land around the mouth of Winari Brook. Kenzan and Dobryani have both been eyeing that area and Kenzan has convinced himself Dobryani is preparing to seize it by force. He wants me to finance the purchase of one hundred soldiers. I have decided I have to refuse. I've been subsidizing his excesses since he first took control of his possession. I have reached my limit. Firm action is absolutely necessary."

  The attachments included a statement by the Coordinator of Galawar, visuals of the encounter with Colonel Jina's force, and a copy of the message from Kenzan Khan that had convinced Sabor he had to evacuate his primary apartment in Tale Harbor.

  There was no room in Kenzan Khan's worldview for a simple clash of desires. The heart of his message was a long flood of denunciations. Possessor Dobryani wasn't opposing him merely because she wanted the same thing he wanted. She was a malevolent spirit with a compulsion to control every patch of terrestrialized land on the planet.

  "We all know what she is, Sabor,” Kenzan had proclaimed. “I've been defending myself against her attacks since the year I succeeded my uncle. The days when you can wiggle and sidestep and make your little jokes are over. Give me what I need or I'll take it. And everything else you have with it. Money isn't the only form of power."

  Kenzan had framed his message so his face would appear to be crowding against the person who received it—a juvenile trick, but it was Kenzan's childishness that made him dangerous. Kenzan's parents had apparently believed an imposing frame still had its advantages. Kenzan was over two heads taller than Sabor, with bone and muscle in proportion. Lately, he had been neglecting his physical maintenance. He had compensated by costuming himself in ornate belted robes that hid his paunch. A tangled black beard obscured his jowly cheeks.

  The robes were a convenient wrapping for a sexual impulsive. Sabor had witnessed the advantages of Kenzan's turnout during a tediously elaborate lunch. Kenzan could simply grab the nearest concubine who appealed to him, untie his robe, and indulge himself without any bothersome need to undress.

  Kenzan's uncle had been a methodical, patient man who drew his deepest satisfactions from the steady expansion of his wealth. If the uncle purchased the genome for a new type of fruit tree, he sold a hundred fruits for every bite he ate himself. He had been murdered by an heir who gorged according to his impulses, fed the leftovers to his animals and favorites, and borrowed to buy any novelty that caught his fancy. Kenzan's banquet garden was bigger than most playing fields. His stables housed two hundred of the costliest riding animals the biodesigners had managed to generate.

  Kenzan's feud with Possessor Dobryani had begun when Dobryani had stolen the genome of one of his prized meat animals. Kenzan had purchased exclusive rights to the genome from an immigrant who had stored it in his auxiliary intelligence when he had left the solar system. Kenzan had been the only possessor on the planet who served the animal on his table. He retaliated by deliberately mining titanium from a low-concentration site that ruined the view from one of Dobryani's favorite villas.

  There was no central bank on Fernheim but the four leading bankers all tried to abide by the rules a central bank would have enforced. Sabor maintained reserves that equaled eighteen percent of his loans—a conservative choice that was based on his family's most rigid traditions. The other three favored reserves of twelve to fifteen percent. Sabor's money management program borrowed from the others when his reserves dropped below his minimum and loaned to them when they were short. Money bounced between the four banks in a continuous, unending balancing act, at short-term interest rates their programs negotiated in thousandths of a percentage point. At the present moment, Sabor owed Heinrich Dobble approximately eight million yuris, at an average interest rate of 2.116 percent. The other two bankers owed Sabor twelve million.

  His display presented him with Heinrich's standard business image twelve minutes after he had dispatched his message. As usual, Heinrich was standing rigidly erect and wearing a black, high collared outfit that gave him a reassuringly formal air.

  "I'd already seen a report on the attack,” Heinrich said. “I would have thought your client was just ranting if I hadn't seen that."

  "I have to confess Kenzan took me by surprise, too. I vacated my quarters as a precaution—to give him some time to calm down."

  "How long can he last if we institute a freeze?"

  Sabor dropped his social persona and slipped into his straight business mode. He and Heinrich never wasted words. “Two to four tendays with the freeze alone. But the freeze is only a first step. I'm hoping I can neutralize him in three or four days."

  "Neutralize?"

  "Permanently. He's a spendthrift. He won't recover if I hit him hard enough."

  "If he doesn't get you under control first."

  "I'm retreating to the wilderness. First he has to locate me. Then he has to catch me."

  Heinrich frowned. “How much time have you spent in the wilderness, Sabor?"

  "I've been funding expeditions for twenty standard years. I probably understand the survival requirements better than some of the gadabouts I've bankrolled."

  "You can't hire fifty soldiers and surround yourself with a solid defense?"

  "And where would I place my temporary fortress? The Primary Coordinator has given me permission to disembark in Galawar. He hasn't told me I can stay there. We're dealing with a random force, Heinrich. Kenzan could attack me even if he knew I had him outnumbered five to one. He could turn a place like Galawar into a disaster."

  "Kenzan's irrationality is one of the factors I'm weighing. I could find myself in a very serious situation if I oppose him and he gets your resources under control."

  "And you'll find yourself in a worse position if I give in to his demands. He isn't going to stop with one extortion. He doesn't know how to stop."

  "I intend to look after myself, Sabor. I reserve the right to reappraise my options. At any time."

  They entered the wilderness five hours after they stepped onto the Galawar docks. A twelve-meter electric hedge separated the terrestrialized land from the native ecosystem. On the terrestrial side of the barrier, they were surrounded by rose bushes, vegetable gardens, and fields covered with high yield fuel vines. On the wilderness side, thick tree trunks towered over the hedge. Cold autumn sunlight spread across leaves that had become white and translucent as the season had advanced. The trees on Fernheim produced leaves that tended to be smaller and paler than the leaves of terrestrial trees—a response, presumably, to the dizzying pace of the planet's year. Every organism on Fernheim had to speed through seasons that were only half as long as the seasons on Earth.

  The gate in the bottom of the hedge had been designed with a grudgingly narrow aperture. Their widemounts passed through it in single file, with their carriers scraping the leaves. Choy led the way, with Sabor in the second position.

  Widemounts had been created by reducing the size of the terrestrial elephant and modifying the chemical foundations of its temperament. Sabor's widemount barely reached the top of his head but its broad back and columnar legs could support a load that included Sabor and all the equipment that would keep a civilized human reasonably content with his lot. The fourth widemount carried an extra fabricator, extra prefabricated supplies, and twelve bot
tles of wine that Sabor had ordered from Galawar's communal fabrication facility.

  Sabor had linked his display to Purvali's. He could monitor her survey of Kenzan Khan's financial situation while he concentrated his attention on the normal complexities of his business. Half his display tracked the ebb and flow of the planetary high-yield market. The other half presented him with Purvali's attempts to untangle the web of loans and expenditures that dominated Kenzan's economic life.

  "There are times when the speed of light limitation has its comforts,” Sabor said. “I can imagine what my mother would say if she knew I'd been loaning real money to someone with that kind of balance sheet."

  A cloud of birds had surrounded Sabor's widemount as soon as he had passed through the barrier hedge. Fluttering bodies banged against the transparent upper half of the carrier. Flocks of ground birds scurried away from the relentless plod of his animal's legs. The pale leaves created a subtly alien atmosphere that many humans found disturbing.

  His auxiliary intelligence fed him data about the birds and the different species of trees—some of it information that had been collected by expeditions he had financed. Most of the settlers on the planet were primarily interested in making homes for themselves but a small minority had been captivated by the opportunity to study a new biological system. Mankind had discovered four life-bearing worlds so far. Two were examples of parallel evolution—the life forms roughly resembled the life forms on Earth. Fernheim was one of the parallel worlds but it had its share of anomalies. Earth had never passed through an age dominated by birds. Fernheim had reached that stage without generating an age of giant reptiles—a finding that had set evolutionists twittering as soon as the first glimpses of the fossil record had filtered back to the solar system.

  Purvali was linking every loan Kenzan had been given with the items he had spent it on. She had started with a thorough analysis of Kenzan's accounts with Sabor. From there she would move on to the public records. Kenzan liked to brag. The public databases contained detailed information on every animal, food, woman, or grandiose display that had sucked purchasing power out of his accounts.