The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  We were packed together like rice in sushi. At first I couldn’t do anything for my patients, because I couldn’t move.

  Two of them died right there, and with great difficulty we extracted the corpses and threw them into the sea, making a little more room so that Colonel Kohn at last found a place to sit inside.

  I discovered that eleven of us were on that little flyer, which was built to handle four plus luggage. That it stayed aloft at all was quite wonderful. I feared, however, that the excess fuel consumption might drop us into the sea before we reached the shuttleport.

  It was the darkest part of the night, and I shall not soon forget the trip. Sometimes a soft moan, the rank marshy smell of human bodies that have been sweating with fear. The odor of blood. Fortunately, the wounded were in shock from their injuries and burns, and lay quiet.

  Exhaustion was our great friend, and I suddenly opened my eyes to find that I had been sleeping, and that a pale gray misty dawn had begun to filter through the clouds.

  Soon every eye was trying to pierce the veils of rain for our first sight of the promontory and the egg-shaped green dome. What we would find there no one knew—whether it had been attacked, whether its two guards survived—and I was thinking also of the months that must elapse before the next supply ship came.

  It is no light thing to be at war with a whole world.

  And then I saw something—I saw something—I saw a smooth geometrical shape rising out of the clouds and mist, and it was still there, the portal by which humans enter and leave Bela. I thought: Oh, that we may yet leave it alive!

  ITEM (11) Extract from the Bela Shuttleport Log

  7.56. Have spoted 2 flyers approtching. Linda and me didnt hardly have time to jump out the sack and put our draws on when they come boncing down on to the pad and a bunch of people come spiling out. Memo: file complant with Krebs re (1) unskeduled flyte and (2) overloded flyers. (Singed) Cpl Vizbee, Securty.

  ITEM (12) From Colonel Kohn’s Notebook

  Vizbee and Smelt are looking pretty sour and disheveled, and give us minimum help carrying the wounded. They keep saying they take orders only from Mack and I have to get a bit rough to convince them they now take orders from me.

  We number twenty-two, of whom nine are too seriously injured to work or fight.

  Brief tour of inspection shows a freezer stocked with foodstuffs for the guards and the loading parties who used to bring in the ingots. I ask Antonelli to check it out. He says that if all the wounded recover, we’ll starve before the supply ship gets here.

  Medicines: the shuttleport has a small dispensary, but Anna looks grim when she inventories the drug locker. I suspect Vizbee and Smelt have been into it for recreational purposes, though of course they deny it.

  The port contains about three hundred square meters of floor space. Walls and floor are thick translucent duroplast — solid stuff, nothing will break in. Power source: another antique reactor housed in its own dome and accessible by a protected corridor.

  Escape possibilities: We now have three flyers, but the two we brought with us are almost out of fuel — that overloaded last trip, among other things. The flyer V&B came down in is usable, with enough fuel for a return flight to Zamók, where, of course, we don’t dare go. One dismantled flyer remains there—I hope beyond repair.

  Outside it is, surprise, raining. The pad is wet and shining. There’s a bare space, maybe half a hectare in all, where everything except a kind of lichen has been killed off by the retros of incoming and departing shuttles.

  Beyond are gray rocks and clumps of stunted trees. A neck of barren land connects us to the shore and the usual gray-green-purple wall of jungle.

  Situation summary: We’re in good shape, with ample space, bedded down warm and dry, with lights on and medical care and nothing to do but wait for the supply ship. It’s due in about sixty-seven days—local days, that is. If it’s late (and it often is) we’ll be living on air and water. Lots of water.

  The first need is to increase food supplies somehow.

  I call on Jamal and Antonelli to help me search the peninsula. Jamal wears his patented scowl but obeys scrupulously, which is all I ask for. We take our weapons, just in case.

  We complete our circuit in under an hour. It’s not much of a place. I doubt it’s more than a couple of square kilometers of volcanic slag. You can hear the sound of surf everywhere. The beaches are gray shingle or black sand.

  We walk out on the rocky neck that connects us to the shore. The water’s shallow on one side where the sand has built up, but deep on the other. Could be a fine fishing spot. I’m sure we can fabricate some tackle.

  I’ve surf-fished on coasts like this, and for a moment it all seems halfway familiar—the sea air and the smell of the deep and the sting of salt in the flying drops of spray.

  Jamal turns back toward the shuttleport, but I walk a few steps on with Antonelli. He begins to tell me something, shouting to be heard over the crash of the waves.

  “Sometimes I dream about retiring to an island. Just me, a good library, a wine cellar, a bot or two to do the dirty work—”

  Aagh!

  The deep erupts and something huge and black falls with a weight that shakes the rocks.

  It’s big, big as an orca, and it has broad flippers in front and four huge splayed tusks. It takes Antonelli’s whole head in its mouth and thrusts with the flippers and slides back into the water, dragging him under. The wind flings a geyser of foam into my face. I wipe my eyes and the last thing I see are the man’s legs thrashing deep down like the arms of a squid.

  Antonelli’s gone. Just like that. The kelplike odor of the deep mingles for an instant with the fiery smell of lions. Then there’s only wind and salt and Jamal is dragging me away.

  Behind us something big roils the surface of the sea and there’s a great bellowing roar, Aa! Aa! Aa! Aa!

  ITEM (13) From Dr. Li’s Report

  Nothing of this tragedy was audible inside the dome.

  I’d done what I could for my patients and was trying to comfort a young woman named Mbasa, concealing my fear that she might be permanently blind.

  To treat this one injury properly, we needed a set of replacement eyes, fetal-monkey stem cells to regrow the damaged optic nerves, and the services of a skilled neurotransplant surgeon. We had none of the above. And there were other cases even more serious than this one.

  Then Colonel Kohn appeared in the doorway, white-faced and soaking wet. He gestured for me to follow him. I gave him a blanket, made fresh hot tea and met him in the station’s departure lounge. In one corner Eloise and Jamal were hugging each other as if they never intended to let go. The colonel sat hunched over, wrapped in his blanket like a beggar, and sucked greedily at the steaming tea.

  “The Cousins have a cousin we knew nothing about,” he said, and told me of Antonelli’s death. “The trouble with the worst-case scenario is there’s usually a worser one. How are your patients?”

  I replied that at least four and possibly as many as seven would not survive.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  I looked at him and saw a man who was both familiar and strange. Despite his professional toughness, he had always seemed to me a humane man. Now I was seeing another side of him. Though he still trembled with the cold, his face was bleak and hard as the rocks of this nameless island.

  “It’s a good thing,” he muttered, “that we have a big freezer. We’re going to run out of food, Anna, and we’re under siege and can’t get any more. Once our supplies are gone, we’ll have no choice but to eat our dead.”

  We sat quietly together, sipping tea, while the profound depth of our dehumanization sank in. Suddenly I knew that I could not face the coming ordeal alone.

  I brought him another cup, plus fifty milligrams of Serenac, which he obviously needed. There was nothing else I could do for him, except go to bed with him and hold him and keep him warm. At that moment I resolved to do so, if he would have me.

  ITE
M (14) From Colonel Kohn’s Notebook

  I see it’s been several weeks since I made an entry, so let me try to catch up. Much has happened, also little. Anna and I have become lovers—a development that was a surprise, at least to me.

  By default we’ve also become the rulers of our tiny besieged colony. As Anna predicted, four people have died of their wounds and two more I are moribund. With Antonelli gone, that leaves seventeen of us, soon to be fifteen.

  In all we’ve suffered almost 99 percent casualties. Even if some people at Main Base or the mining camp or the smelter have escaped into the jungle, they won’t survive there long. They’ll be killed, or they’ll simply starve.

  All the senior engineers being dead, I appointed Jamal as technical officer. His business is to keep the place working. I know he has long-term plans for revenge. I humiliated him in front of Eloise with that long-ago punch, and he’s one of those people who never, never, never forget. Well, I need his brains, courage, and knowhow, and in return he can have his revenge.

  Anna has the job of keeping the survivors alive. Eloise works under her and is rapidly turning into a capable physician’s assistant. In bright people, on-the-job training produces quick results. I see to defense and discipline, make out and enforce the duty rosters, preside over the distribution of rations (about eighteen hundred calories for the healthy, twenty-one hundred for the sick) and act generally prickish. Like Mr. Krebs in his time, I am not beloved, nor do I expect to be.

  The only serious violation of rules has been, inevitably, by Vizbee and Smelt. Ordered to turn over keys to all doors, cabinets and cupboards, they did so, but kept a duplicate set. When Anna told me that six vials of something called M2—a synthetic morphine substitute—had disappeared from the medicine cabinet, I staged a raid and found them in Vizbee’s laundry bag.

  The matter was serious, because we’re low on painkillers and have a lot of pain to kill. In a container of Smelt’s vaginal cream I also found the duplicate keys.

  My first impulse was to shoot both of them. However, Anna spoke up for mercy and the general feeling in our community seemed to be that they were too stupid to be fully accountable.

  So I held a private session with each of them, offering them life in exchange for some answers.

  Both babbled freely. Each blamed the other for firing that missile at Krebs’s quarters. Both affirmed that Captain Mack gave them the weapon and the order, which as good soldiers they had to obey, whatever their personal feelings.

  “I’m sure you understand, Sir,” says Smelt with her soapy smile.

  “Only too well.”

  I had them sign confessions, and then I tied both of them up and put them in the freezer beside the corpses. Half an hour later I took them out. They emerged wrapped in spiderwebs of ice, and when revived seemed to have gotten the message. The next time they’re going in for good, although the thought of having to eat Vizbee stew or Smelt croquettes eventually is pretty repugnant.

  Aside from that, the time has been routine. We haven’t been attacked. Those of us who hadn’t already paired off are doing so nowmost with the other sex, a few with their own. Everybody needs a companion here.

  Recreation: Hidden away in cabinets we’ve found some chess sets, tennis racquets but no balls, a game called Conquer the Galaxy—excuse me, I’d rather not—poker and blackjack and Airborne Polo programs, and old sets of greasy playing cards, some of which are marked.

  Daytimes we clean the place and tend the injured and service the machinery; at night we mark our calendars, make love and play games and gossip and feel hungry and bitch. And, as much as possible, sleep.

  Between Anna and me there’s a surprising amount of ardor, considering our mature age and marginal diet. Also a lot of caution. The conjunction of two loners of settled habits is dicey at best. And there are some physical problems, because she’s so small and I’m so large. But — in sex as in life—where there’s a will, there’s usually a way. We’ve found privacy in what used to be a storeroom. I’ve locked the door with a confiscated key. At the moment, Anna and I are lying starkers on a pile of discarded shuttlecraft cushions, warmed by proximity and by some clean mechanics’ coveralls she found in a bin and turned into bedspreads.

  Now she turns to me with a smile and lets her tiny but very capable hand settle on my arm, like a dragonfly. I think this will be all my note-taking for tonight.

  ITEM (15) Extract from a Letter of Eloise Alcerra to Her Mother

  Dearest Mama, So many things have happened to us that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, there’s been a war …

  So that’s the story to date. Now I’m working in the hospital in the shuttleport here on Bela. We only have three patients left — the others have died or have recovered as much as they’re going to here.

  I’m doubly happy when Anna (Dr. Li) declares somebody well. I’m glad that I’ve been able to help them get better, but I’m also glad that I they’ll be going on the same eighteen hundred calories as the rest of us. That way we’ll all last a bit longer.

  I’m tired all the time. Yet when I lie down I usually can’t sleep, and when I do I dream mainly about big dinners. Jamal’s the same way. He works hard, much harder than I do. Maybe as a result he’s less demanding about sex. I don’t know whether I like that or not.

  I dread the thought of our first cannibal feast. Yet it can’t be far off. Will I be able to eat human stew? Yes, of course. When you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything.

  Jamal makes ghastly little jokes about it. “You heard about the cannibal who passed his brother in the forest?” he asks, leering. Or pats my still ample backside and says, “Lunch. Hey, take that back. Lunch and dinner.

  How, and above all why, have I put up with him so long?

  At least once a day I sneak away and walk outside. I need to be alone for a while, away from the intolerably repetitive faces of my fellow prisoners. Needless to say, I stay off the beaches!

  I don’t feel so tired outside, I guess because of the enriched air, and I love the smell of the sea. Yesterday a sunbeam worked its way through the clouds and the seawind seemed to glitter with salt.

  Yet today even my walk left me feeling down. I climbed, muscles quivering, up a pile of black rock and stood for a while looking out to where the horizon line ought to be. Only it wasn’t, because the usual squalls were all around and as I turned, first the ocean and then the drenched jungle faded into the sky without a break.

  The dome isn’t our prison. This world is our prison, and I ask myself again and again if any of us will ever escape it.

  Even if we don’t, I’m sure people will come here again looking for us, and I hope they find this. Meantime I hold to the thought of you and the Earth and its sunlight and blue skies as my lifeline.

  ITEM (16) From Colonel Kohn’s Notebook

  The time until the supply ship arrives is getting short. If it’s late, ciao, good-bye, sayonara. We’re running out of food.

  So today we eat human. Two of us do the butchering, I suppose to spread the guilt around. We rotate cooking by roster, and just as I won’t name the other butcher, I won’t name the cook, other than to state that (s)he doesn’t turn a hair over the grisly task.

  In fact, once the meat is separated from the frame, it looks just like anything else. We keep the head for decent burial on Earth, assuming we ever get back there. I won’t give the name of the entree, other than to say it was someone I knew and liked. But once life has departed, we’re all just meat and might as well feed our friends. Think of it as giving the ultimate dinner party.

  The smell of cooking permeates the dome. People go about their usual duties, but they keep sniffing. Little groups talk together and I hear some high-pitched laughter. That worries me a bit. No hysterics needed here.

  Then we sit down to eat. There are two schools of thought about our protein supplement: It tastes like veal; it tastes like pork. I belong to the pork school. After the meal, everybody’s a bit frantic. Next day: We hav
e leftovers. Nobody bats an eye, and two guys ask for seconds, which I have to refuse them. Cannibalism turns out to be like any other rite of passage. The first time’s hard, the second time’s a lot easier, and after that you don’t think much about it anymore.

  However, there’s one thing we’ll all soon have to think about, and I have to admit it’s getting me down.

  ITEM (17) From Dr. Li’s Report

  The problem facing us was this: When we had eaten the dead, what then?

  I began to hear jokes about “drawing straws.” But was it a joke? Surely, I thought, if the supply ship doesn’t appear soon, we’ll have to be killed one at a time, so that hopefully a few of us—or two of us—or even one of us can return to Earth to tell our story.

  At dinner I saw Robert looking over our people with a curiously bleak face, empty of expression. I realized that he was mentally drawing up a new roster. He was arranging our people in order, from those who could be spared most easily to those without whom the whole colony would perish.

  Others understood also. I began to miss Vizbee and Smelt, and realized that they were hiding from Robert’s lethal gaze. How stupid! Surely the path of wisdom was for them to look as busy and useful as possible. But the poor wretches were just intelligent enough to realize whose names must head the list of expendables (I almost said “perishables”). And they remembered the freezer, and the shrouded bodies lying beside them.

  ITEM (18) From Colonel Kohn’s Notebook

  I’m weighing the remaining rations for the umpteenth time when Eloise puts her head in the storeroom door. She’s white as our last kilo of sugar.

  Would I step outside with her? Well, sure. I don’t ask why, because I know there’ll be a good reason.

  “Do you come out here alone?” I ask as we crunch through the lichen. “You shouldn’t.”