The Year’s Best Science Fiction (St Martin's) 26

by Gardner Dozois

  I was trying to figure out if I could recover my mobile and maybe salvage Bob’s motors when I felt something crawling on my own exterior. Before I could react, Bob’s surviving mobile had jacked itself in and someone else was using my brains.

  My only conscious viewpoint after that was my half-crippled mobile. I looked around.

  My dish was busted, but the whip was extended and I could hear a slow crackle of low-baud data traffic. Orders from Dione.

  I tested my limbs. Two still worked—left front and right middle. Right rear’s base joint could move but everything else was floppy.

  Using the two good limbs I climbed off the cargo module and across the deck, getting out of the topside eye’s field of view. The image refreshed every second, so I didn’t have much time before whoever was running my main brain noticed.

  Thrusters fired, jolting everything around. I hung on to the deck grid with one claw foot. I saw Bob’s last mobile go flying off into space. Unless she had backups stored on Mimas, poor Bob was completely gone.

  My last intact mobile came crawling up over the edge of the deck—only it wasn’t mine anymore.

  Edward scooted up next to me. “Find a way to regain control of the spacecraft. I will stop this remote.”

  I didn’t argue. Edward was fully functional and I knew my spaceframe better than he did. So I crept across the deck grid while Edward advanced on the mobile.

  It wasn’t much of a fight. Edward’s little tourist bot was up against a unit designed for cargo moving and repair work. If you can repair something, you can damage it. My former mobile had powerful grippers, built-in tools, and a very sturdy frame. Edward was made of cheap composites. Still, he went in without hesitating, leaping at the mobile’s head with arms extended. The mobile grabbed him with her two forward arms and threw him away. He grabbed the deck to keep from flying off into space, and came crawling back to the fight.

  They came to grips again, and this time she grabbed a limb in each hand and pulled. Edward’s flimsy aluminum joints gave way and a leg tumbled into orbit on its own.

  I think that was when Edward realized there was no way he was going to survive the fight, because he just went into total offensive mode, flailing and clawing at the mobile with his remaining limbs. He severed a power line to one of her arms and got a claw jammed in one wrist joint while she methodically took him apart. Finally she found the main power conduit and snipped it in two. Edward went limp and she tossed him aside.

  The mobile crawled across the deck to the cargo container and jacked in, trying to shut the life support down. The idiot savant brain in the container was no match for even a mobile when it came to counter-intrusion, but it did have those literally hard-wired systems protecting the human inside. Any command which might throw the biological system out of its defined pa ram e ters just bounced. The mobile wasted seconds trying to talk that little brain into killing the human. Finally she gave up and began unfastening the clamps holding the container to the deck.

  I glimpsed all this through the deck grid as I crept along on top of the electronics bays toward the main brain.

  Why wasn’t the other mobile coming to stop me? Then I realized why. If you look at my original design, the main brain is protected on top by a lid armored with layers of ballistic cloth, and on the sides by the other electronic bays. To get at the brain requires either getting past the security locks on the lid, or digging out the radar system, the radio, the gyros, or the emergency backup power supply.

  Except that I’d sold off the backup power supply at my last overhaul. Between the main and secondary power units I was pretty failure-proof, and I would’ve had to borrow money from Albert to replace it. Given that, hauling twenty kilograms of fuel cells around in case of some catastrophic accident just wasn’t cost-effective.

  So there was nothing to stop me from crawling into the empty bay and shoving aside the surplus valves and some extra bearings to get at the power trunk. I carefully unplugged the main power cable and the big brain shut down. Now it was just us two half-crippled mobiles on a blind and mindless booster flying through the B ring.

  If my opposite even noticed the main brain’s absence, she didn’t show it. She had two of the four bolts unscrewed and was working on the third as I came crawling back up onto the payload deck. But she knew I was there, and when I was within two meters she swiveled her head and lunged. We grappled one another, each trying to get at the cables connecting the other’s head sensors to her body. She had four functioning limbs to my two and a half, and only had to stretch out the fight until my power ran out or a Ring particle knocked us to bits. Not good.

  I had to pop loose one of my non-functioning limbs to get free of her grip, and backed away as she advanced. She was trying to corner me against the edge of the deck. Then I got an idea. I released another limb and grabbed one end. She didn’t realize what I was doing until I smacked her in the eye with it. The lens cracked and her movements became slower and more tentative as she felt her way along.

  I bashed her again with the leg, aiming for the vulnerable limb joints, but they were tougher than I expected because even after half a dozen hard swats she showed no sign of slowing and I was running out of deck.

  I tried one more blow, but she grabbed my improvised club. We wrestled for it but she had better leverage. I felt my grip on the deck slipping and let go of the grid. She toppled back, flinging me to the deck behind her. Still holding the severed leg I pulled myself onto her back and stabbed my free claw into her central processor.

  After that it was just a matter of making sure the cargo container was still sustaining life. Then I plugged in the main brain and uploaded myself. The intruder hadn’t messed with my stored memories, so except for a few fuzzy moments before the takeover, I was myself again.

  The shuttle was immense, a huge manta-shaped lifting body with a gaping atmosphere intake and dorsal doors open to expose a payload bay big enough to hold half a dozen little boosters like me. She moved in with the speed and grace that comes from an effectively unlimited supply of fusion fuel and propellant.

  “I am Simurgh. Are you Orphan Annie?” she asked.

  “That’s me. Again.”

  “You have a payload for me.”

  “Right here. The bot Edward didn’t make it—we had a little brawl back in the rings with another booster.”

  “I saw. Is the cargo intact?”

  “Your little human is fine. But there is the question of payment. Edward promised me fifty grams, and that was before I got all banged up fighting with poor Bob.”

  “I can credit you with helium, and I can give you a boost if you need one.”

  “How big a boost?”

  “Anywhere you wish to go.”

  “Anywhere?”

  “I am fusion powered. Anywhere means anywhere from the Oort inward.”

  Which is how come I passed the orbit of Phoebe nineteen days later, moving at better than six kilometers per second on the long haul up to Uranus. Seven years—plenty of time to do onboard repairs and then switch to low-power mode. I bought a spiffy new mobile from Simurgh, and I figure I can get at least two working out of the three damaged ones left over from the fight.

  I had Aerostat Six bank my helium credits with the Company for transfer to my owners, so they get one really great year to offset a long unprofitable period while I’m in flight. Once I get there I can start earning again.

  What I really regret is losing all the non-quantifiable assets I’ve built up in the Saturn system. But if you have to go, I guess it’s better to go out with a surplus.

  Special Economics

  MAUREEN F. MCHUGH

  In hard times, you have to do what you have to do in order to survive—but you don’t have to like it.

  Maureen F. McHugh made her first sale in 1989 and has since made a powerful impression on the SF world with a relatively small body of work, becoming one of today’s most respected writers. In 1992, she published one of the year’s most widely acclaimed
and talked-about first novels, China Mountain Zhang, which won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Lambda Literary Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award, and which was named a New York Times notable book as well as being a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Her story “The Lincoln Train” won her a Nebula Award. Her other books, including the novels Half the Day is Night, Mission Child, and Nekropolis, have been greeted with similar enthusiasm. Her powerful short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Starlight, Alternate Warriors, Aladdin, Killing Me Softly, and other markets, and has been collected in Mothers and Other Monsters. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, her son, and a golden retriever named Hudson.

  Jieling set up her boombox in a plague-trash market in the part where people sold parts for cars. She had been in the city of Shenzhen for a little over two hours but she figured she would worry about a job tomorrow. Everybody knew you could get a job in no time in Shenzhen. Jobs everywhere.

  “What are you doing?” a guy asked her.

  “I am divorced,” she said. She had always thought of herself as a person who would one day be divorced so it didn’t seem like a big stretch to claim it. Staying married to one person was boring. She figured she was too complicated for that. Interesting people had complicated lives. “I’m looking for a job. But I do hip-hop, too,” she explained.

  “Hip-hop?” He was a middle-aged man with stubble on his chin who looked as if he wasn’t looking for a job but should be.

  “Not like Shanghai,” she said, “Not like Hi-Bomb. They do gangsta stuff which I don’t like. Old fashioned. Like M.I.A.,” she said. “Except not political, of course.” She gave a big smile. This was all way beyond the guy. Jieling started the boombox. M.I.A. was Maya Arulpragasam, a Sri Lankan hip-hop artist who had started all on her own years ago. She had sung, she had danced, she had done her own videos. Of course M.I.A. lived in London, which made it easier to do hip-hop and become famous.

  Jieling had no illusions about being a hip-hop singer, but it had been a good way to make some cash up north in Baoding where she came from. Set up in a plague-trash market and dance for yuan.

  Jieling did her opening, her own hip-hop moves, a little like Maya and a little like some things she had seen on MTV, but not too sexy because Chinese people did not throw you money if you were too sexy. Only April and it was already hot and humid.

  Ge down, ge down,

  lang-a-lang-a-lang-a.

  Ge down, ge down

  lang-a-lang-a-lang-a

  She had borrowed the English. It sounded very fresh. Very criminal.

  The guy said, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two,” she said, adding three years to her age, still dancing and singing.

  Maybe she should have told him she was a widow? Or an orphan? But there were too many orphans and widows after so many people died in the bird flu plague. There was no margin in that. Better to be divorced. He didn’t throw any money at her, just flicked open his cell phone to check listings from the market for plague-trash. This plague-trash market was so big it was easier to check on-line, even if you were standing right in the middle of it. She needed a new cell phone. Hers had finally fallen apart right before she headed south.

  Shenzhen people were apparently too jaded for hip-hop. She made 52 yuan, which would pay for one night in a bad hotel where country people washed cabbage in the communal sink.

  The market was full of second-hand stuff. When over a quarter of a billion people died in four years, there was a lot of second-hand stuff. But there was still a part of the market for new stuff and street food and that’s where Jieling found the cell phone seller. He had a cart with stacks of flat plastic cell phone kits printed with circuits and scored. She flipped through; tiger-striped, peonies (old lady phones), metallics (old man phones), anime characters, moon phones, expensive lantern phones. “Where is your printer?” she asked.

  “At home,” he said. “I print them up at home, bring them here. No electricity here.” Up north in Baoding she’d always bought them in a store where they let you pick your pattern on-line and then printed them there. More to pick from.

  On the other hand, he had a whole box full of ones that hadn’t sold that he would let go for cheap. In the stack she found a purple one with kittens that wasn’t too bad. Very Japanese, which was also very fresh this year. And only 100 yuan for phone and 300 minutes.

  He took the flat plastic sheet from her and dropped it in a pot of boiling water big enough to make dumplings. The hinges embedded in the sheet were made of plastic with molecular memory and when they got hot they bent and the plastic folded into a rough cell phone shape. He fished the phone out of the water with tongs, let it sit for a moment and then pushed all the seams together so they snapped. “Wait about an hour for it to dry before you use it,” he said and handed her the warm phone.

  “An hour,” she said. “I need it now. I need a job.”

  He shrugged. “Probably okay in half an hour,” he said.

  She bought a newspaper and scallion pancake from a street food vendor, sat on a curb and ate while her phone dried. The paper had some job listings, but it also had a lot of listings from recruiters. ONE MONTH BONUS PAY! BEST JOBS! and NUMBER ONE JOBS! START BONUS! People scowled at her for sitting on the curb. She looked like a farmer but what else was she supposed to do? She checked listings on her new cell phone. On-line there were a lot more listings than in the paper. It was a good sign. She picked one at random and called.

  The woman at the recruiting office was a flat-faced southerner with buckteeth. Watermelon picking teeth. But she had a manicure and a very nice red suit. The office was not so nice. It was small and the furniture was old. Jieling was groggy from a night spent at a hotel on the edge of the city. It had been cheap but very loud.

  The woman was very sharp in the way she talked and had a strong accent that made it hard to understand her. Maybe Fujian, but Jieling wasn’t sure. The recruiter had Jieling fill out an application.

  “Why did you leave home?” the recruiter asked.

  “To get a good job,” Jieling said.

  “What about your family? Are they alive?”

  “My mother is alive. She is remarried,” Jieling said. “I wrote it down.”

  The recruiter pursed her lips. “I can get you an interview on Friday,” she said.

  “Friday!” Jieling said. It was Tuesday. She had only 300 yuan left out of the money she had brought. “But I need a job!”

  The recruiter looked sideways at her. “You have made a big gamble to come to Shenzhen.”

  “I can go to another recruiter,” Jieling said.

  The recruiter tapped her lacquered nails. “They will tell you the same thing,” she said.

  Jieling reached down to pick up her bag.

  “Wait,” the recruiter said. “I do know of a job. But they only want girls of very good character.”

  Jieling put her bag down and looked at the floor. Her character was fine. She was not a loose girl, whatever this women with her big front teeth thought.

  “Your Mandarin is very good. You say you graduated with high marks from high school,” the recruiter said.

  “I liked school,” Jieling said, which was only partly not true. Everybody here had terrible Mandarin. They all had thick southern accents. Lots of people spoke Cantonese in the street.

  “Okay. I will send you to ShinChi for an interview. I cannot get you an interview before tomorrow. But you come here at 8:00 am and I will take you over there.”

  ShinChi. New Life. It sounded very promising. “Thank you,” Jieling said. “Thank you very much.”

  But outside in the heat, she counted her money and felt a creeping fear. She called her mother.

  Her stepfather answered, “Wei.”

  “Is ma there?” she asked.

  “Jieling!” he said. “Where are you!”

  “I’m in Shenzhen,” she said, instantly impatient with him. “I
have a job here.”

  “A job! When are you coming home?”

  He was always nice to her. He meant well. But he drove her nuts. “Let me talk to ma,” she said.

  “She’s not here,” her stepfather said. “I have her phone at work. But she’s not home, either. She went to Beijing last weekend and she’s shopping for fabric now.”

  Her mother had a little tailoring business. She went to Beijing every few months and looked at clothes in all the good stores. She didn’t buy in Beijing, she just remembered. Then she came home, bought fabric and sewed copies. Her stepfather had been born in Beijing and Jieling thought that was part of the reason her mother had married him. He was more like her mother than her father had been. There was nothing in particular wrong with him. He just set her teeth on edge.

  “I’ll call back later,” Jieling said.

  “Wait, your number is blocked,” her stepfather said. “Give me your number.”

  “I don’t even know it yet,” Jieling said and hung up.

  The New Life company was a huge, modern looking building with a lot of windows. Inside it was full of reflective surfaces and very clean. Sounds echoed in the lobby. A man in a very smart gray suit met Jieling and the recruiter and the recruiter’s red suit looked cheaper, her glossy fingernails too red, her buckteeth exceedingly large. The man in the smart gray suit was short and slim and very southern looking. Very city.

  Jieling took some tests on her math and her written characters and got good scores.

  To the recruiter, the Human Resources man said, “Thank you, we will send you your fee.” To Jieling he said, “We can start you on Monday.”