The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  And then he turned off his hand flash and waited in the darkness.

  Time passed, over twenty minutes according to the flashing yellow numerals on his sleeve display. From time to time he took a swipe with the bar to keep his muscles warm and supple. He was feeling better and thought that the drug had almost worn off.

  Martinez had begun to believe that the Torminel had gone elsewhere when he heard a thump on the far side of the wall on which he was standing, followed by a metallic clang on the door. His heart gave a leap and he felt the sizzle of adrenaline along his nerves. He made sure his feet were firmly in the handholds and cocked the pry bar over his right shoulder.

  There were another pair of thuds against the door or the warehouse wall. Martinez felt the vibration against his feet. He heard speech but couldn’t make out the words. Then the latching mechanism began to creak open.

  And jammed. The tangle of strapping was working.

  He heard voices from the other side, more urgent this time, and then there was a kind of slamming noise from the mechanism, and the hatch popped open.

  Martinez blinked in the light pouring in from one of the big hand lights. He was suddenly aware of sweat patches all damp under his raised arms, and the fact that his mouth was painfully dry again. He couldn’t understand why there was so much moisture under his arms when there was none in his mouth.

  “It’s him,” one of the Torminel said in an urgent whisper. “He did that, with the tape. He’s in there.”

  “My lord?” the other called. “Lord Inspector? You can come out. Everything is safe.”

  There was a moment in which the Torminel waited for an answer, and then he told his partner, “Hold my legs while I go in.”

  Martinez felt cramps in his feet where they were braced in the handholds. He shifted the pry bar slightly.

  The Torminel appeared in the hatch. His back was to Martinez, and he was peering dead ahead, into the long tunnel surrounded on all sides by shipping containers. He had a flash in one hand and a stun baton in the other. A light on the stun baton winked amber.

  The blade of the pry bar caught the Torminel in the side of the head and hurled him violently into the hatch coaming. The flash flew from his limp fingers and tumbled, casting wild strobing lights across the expanse of the warehouse. The stun baton tumbled in another direction. A line of irregular crimson blobs flew from the Torminel’s head and resolved themselves as they flew into perfect spherical droplets of blood.

  Someone pulled the Torminel out of the hatchway, and then there was a sudden squalling noise that froze Martinez’s blood, and the second Torminel appeared. Her hair stood on end in her rage and her head looked like a giant puffball with huge angry dark eyes and ferocious white fangs. She knew where Martinez was and one hand clutched the sill of the hatch while the other stabbed at Martinez with a stun baton.

  Martinez snatched his shod foot out of the hand grip to keep the baton from hitting his leg. He swung the pry bar, but the Torminel managed to cushion the impact with one arm. She flew against the hatch coaming anyway, but bounced back with the stun baton thrust out like a sword blade. Martinez swung again, awkward with only one foot to anchor him.

  This time he connected with the Torminel’s head, but the impact jerked his stockinged foot out of the hand grip and sent him spinning slowly toward a side wall. The Torminel drifted limp in the hatchway. Her fur had relaxed and become smooth again.

  Martinez hit a bright orange shipping container and bounced. Before he got clear he managed to push wildly with one foot and get himself on a trajectory more or less for the hatchway. His breath rasped in his throat. The pry bar felt slippery in his hands.

  Somebody pulled the unconscious Torminel out of the hatchway. Martinez’s heart sank at the knowledge that there was at least one more assassin.

  One of the stun batons floated toward him and he snatched at it with one hand, careful to take it by the safe end. He looked at the read-outs and saw that the baton was charged and set at maximum.

  He looked at the hatch again and he saw that he was going to miss it, drifting past without getting close enough to seize one of the hand grips. For a few seconds Martinez was going to be in plain sight of whoever was on the other side, and then he would have to wait till he hit the far wall and push off again.

  His fists clenched around his two weapons. His eyes were fixed on the hatchway as it came closer, at the erratic bouncing light that danced through the opening.

  He drifted slowly past and narrowed his eyes against the light. On the other side, Lady Marcella Zykov wrestled with the limp form of one of the Torminel, trying to lash him down to a hand grip with his own belt.

  Marcella looked at Martinez and with an expression of great annoyance on her face reached into a pocket and came up with a pistol. The pistol was small and made of plastic and red in color.

  Martinez threw the stun baton at her. The reaction sent him tumbling slowly backwards. The pistol made a vast noise and Martinez felt the heat of the bullet flying past his chin.

  Martinez craned his neck frantically to keep track of what was happening. The recoil of the pistol had pitched Marcella backwards, rotating at much greater speed than Martinez, and as her legs flew up to replace her head the stun baton struck her on the back of the thigh. There was a crackle and a sudden electric snap of ozone. Marcella gave a cry and spasmed into a foetal ball as her stronger flexors won the battle over her extensors.

  Martinez lost track of her as he flew past the hatch. He hit a shipping container and jumped off for the hatch. When he arrived at the hatch he checked his motion, lined up on the distant form of Marcella tumbling end over end, and launched himself for her, the pry bar poised over his head like a battle-axe.

  A battle-axe wasn’t needed. He caught Marcella easily enough and found that she was frozen into her ball and barely conscious. With some effort he levered the pistol out of her clenched fist.

  Once he had the pistol he was reasonably certain that he was in possession of the only firearm on Chee Station.

  He intended to take full advantage of this position.

  “It was panic,” Martinez said. “Marcella saw the message and panicked.”

  “That would be the message addressed to me, from my friend Bernardo in the Ministry,” Terza said. The scent of her breakfast coffee floated agreeably on the air. “The message informing me of the principal owners of the Meridian Company, and that in the emergency we had rather forgotten about. Lord Ehl got a look at the contents as it got routed through the communication center at Meridian Command, and he intercepted it.” She lifted the corner of a napkin tucked around a pastry in a silver wire basket, and offered it. “This is the last. Would you like it?”

  “Thank you,” said Severin. He took the pastry and waved away a pair of large purple bees that were hovering over the jam. He spread jam and turned to Martinez.

  “But why did Lord Ehl intercept the message?”

  “Because his name was on it. He owns something like four percent of the company, and his Tir-bal clan owns more. They’re clients of Lord Pa’s Maq-fan clan, which is heavily invested as well.”

  Terza sipped her coffee. “Every time Lord Ehl approved an overrun on Chee Station, his net worth grew that much larger.”

  Severin chewed his pastry as he gazed through the oak alley at the distant Rio Hondo. The rising sun had outlined each leaf in silver. The shadows beneath the oaks were very dark. Tart and sweet flavors exploded on his tongue.

  “I suppose Marcella’s name was on the list, too,” he said. “That’s why she panicked.”

  “Marcella had two percent,” Martinez said.

  “Two percent hardly seems worth killing someone over,” Terza said.

  Martinez looked at her. “Marcella’s very focused on outcomes,” he said. “Processes don’t matter as much, they’re just a means to an end. If there’s a reward, she grabs it; if there’s an obstacle, she removes it. We should have taken note of the efficient way she cleaned Lord Muk
erji of his money.

  “And once she was caught,” he added, “once I got her gun and had her tied up with strapping, she began working toward a new outcome, which was a lessening of her sentence. She confessed to everything and blamed it all on Pa and Lord Ehl. So that once I’d restarted the station, and had Lord Ehl and a company of military constables come up from the surface, I was able to put Lord Ehl under arrest as soon as he stepped out of the elevator doors.”

  “So far,” Severin said, “our players have four percent and two percent. Who really owns the Meridian Company?

  “Allodorm had ten percent,” Terza said. “He got it when the Meridian Company bought out his engineering company. But the largest owner was Cassilda’s father, Lord Zykov, followed by other members of the Zykov clan.”

  Surprise murmured through Severin’s veins. “Must be interesting to be robbed by your in-laws,” he said.

  “Not just robbed,” Terza said. “Lord Zykov’s plan was to bankrupt the Chee Company, then buy the remnants with its own money.”

  Severin turned his head at the sound of footsteps coming out of the house. Lord Roland Martinez strolled toward them, a wry smile on his lips. He was dressed casually, in a blousy white cotton shirt and faded red baggy drawstring trousers.

  “How’s Cassilda?” Terza asked.

  “The doctor says she won’t deliver for a few hours yet.”

  Cassilda had gone into labor the previous evening.

  Roland leaned over his brother’s shoulder to peer into the silver wire breakfast. “Didn’t you leave me any breakfast?”

  “We didn’t know you’d be coming,” Terza said. “You can call the kitchen.”

  “I don’t have a comm unit on me,” Roland said. “Gare, could you call the kitchens and get me some pastry and a pair of shirred duck eggs?” He sat heavily in one of the whitewashed metal chairs.

  Martinez, looking resigned, made the call on his sleeve comm. Severin finished his pastry and freshened his coffee from the silver pot. He looked at Roland.

  “Yes?” Roland said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You had a question on your face.”

  “I—” Severin started, and then decided to take a more tactful approach. “It must be hard for you, with Lady Cassilda about to give birth and her father sitting on a pile of money he’s stolen from you.”

  Roland grinned. “No. That makes it easier, actually.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, then looked at Severin.

  “It’s very simple,” he said. “I don’t know if Lord Zykov gives a damn about Marcella or not, but if he ever wants to see his daughter again, or see his grandchild ever, he’ll do exactly what we tell him.”

  Severin felt his mouth hanging open, and closed it. “I see,” he said.

  “You understand,” Roland said, “Allodorm and Lord Pa got too greedy—they didn’t just cheat us, they cheated the Fleet. And that’s not civil or corporate law, that’s a violation of the Praxis, and the penalties are torture and death. Cassilda had some stock in the Meridian Company, and we can make a case against her.”

  Can you do that? Severin wondered.

  Apparently he could.

  “Any case is amazingly easy,” Roland went on. “There’s scads of information—we had inspectors on the ground, and other informers as well, but they all reported to Marcella, and she sat on the information and told the others that adjustments were being made.”

  “Plus of course the conspirators are all informing on one another,” Martinez said.

  “So in return for not laying the information before the Legion of Diligence,” Roland said, “we’re asking for half of Lord Zykov’s interest in the company, plus all of Lord Pa’s, and Allodorm’s, and Marcella’s. Lord Pa will pay us a large fine, enough to knock him flat for some time. Marcella and Allodorm will be locked up until we’re reasonably certain we’ve wrung out of them every zenith they possess.”

  “And the first thing I did,” Martinez said, “was procure Lord Ehl’s resignation from the Fleet.”

  Roland shrugged, as if this was of no concern. “We’ll have his shares, too, of course.” He adopted a contemplative look. “I’m thinking of having Lord Zykov pass over his elder daughter and make Cassilda his heir. So everything comes to us in the end.”

  Martinez looked at his brother with dissatisfaction showing in his narrowed eyes. “Speaking as the one who got shot at,” he said, “I’m not sure I’m happy that everyone gets off with just fines and spankings. I wonder what you’d have done if Marcella had actually succeeded in killing me.”

  Again Severin felt a line of tension between the two brothers, and thought again that the two might not like each other very much.

  Roland very coolly raised his coffee to his lips. “I suppose that after Marcella was good and bankrupt,” he said, “she might have had an accident.”

  Martinez looked at Roland for a moment, then shrugged. Terza reached over and patted his hand.

  “Thanks to Commander Severin,” she said, “we’re not concerned with that outcome.”

  “Not so much me,” Severin said, “as—” Then, “Commander?”

  A tight little smile played across Roland’s lips. “You will not find us ungrateful, my lord. We’ve spoken to the higher echelon of the Exploration Service here, and explained in some detail our considerable admiration for you, and my understanding is that you’ll be promoted and given Surveyor once it’s out of dock.”

  Severin goggled at him. You can do that? he wondered.

  “In addition,” Martinez said, “my father is granting you several sections of prime Chee real estate. You should have a very rich estate to retire to when you leave the Service.”

  “And I believe there will be a substantial cash reward from the Chee Company,” Roland said. “Though I understand we’ll have to get your superiors’ permission.”

  Severin’s mind whirled. “But,” he said, “I didn’t really do that much.”

  “Other than save the Chee Company’s entire investment?” Roland smiled.

  “I shut off the pulsar, yes, but the reason that Captain Martinez hasn’t joined the Great Masters is that he insisted that what I did with Titan remain secret. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  Martinez grinned. “I had to protect my investments,” he said.

  Severin looked at him. “My lord?”

  “I took the money I won from Lord Mukerji and bought every futures contract on Chee from the poor fools Allodorm and Pa sold them to,” Martinez said. “Some will be worthless, no doubt, but I believe I’m now a rich man.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled out at the world. “I’ve never actually had money of my own before,” he said. “It’s all come from Terza or my father. I wonder what I’ll do with it?”

  “The possibilities are staggering,” Terza murmured.

  Martinez looked at his brother. “And of course some of the fines from the conspirators will go to reimburse the investors who were cheated.”

  Roland was annoyed. “They were gambling, really. It’s not as if they can complain. It was the futures market, for all’s sake.”

  “Roland.” The voice was firm.

  Roland flapped his hands. “Very well. If you insist. But if you go on this way, you’re going to make me wish Marcella were a better shot.”

  Martinez smiled. “I seek only perfect justice for the entire universe.”

  “Ah!” Roland said happily. “My shirred eggs!”

  A smiling white-haired servant brought Roland his breakfast and another basket of pastry. Terza looked at Severin from over the rim of her coffee cup.

  “Will you be seeing Lady Liao while Surveyor’s in dock?” she asked.

  Severin darted a glance to the opal ring on his finger. Does everyone know? he wondered.

  “I’ve sent her a message,” he said. “But I imagine a lot will depend on her schedule.” And her husband’s.

  “Any plans for the meantime?” Terza asked.

  “Well,”
Severin said, “I’m thinking of building a puppet theater.”

  There was a moment of silence broken only by the calls of morning birds.

  “That’s original,” Martinez murmured.

  “Do you think so?” Severin asked. “Let me tell you about it.”

  And, as the long morning stretched before them, he did.

  —With thanks for technical assistance to

  Michael Run, Kristy Dyer, and Bob Norton

  summation: 2004

  In spite of the fact that some people have been sitting by the graveside impatiently waiting for SF to “die” for the entire twenty-first century, to date the genre actually seems to be in pretty good shape, both commercially and artistically, with the total number of books published going up, not down. Many SF titles are selling well, new SF lines are coming into existence, and the old established ones are looking pretty solid (only the troubled magazine market seems to be really hurting).

  If anything, the market is expanding, not contracting, at least at the small-press level. Lou Anders, former editor of Argosy, is starting an ambitious new SF line for Prometheus Publishing, called Pyr Books. Mike Resnick has been named executive editor of BenBella Books and is starting new lines there of SF and SF-related nonfiction. Red Deer Press of Calgary launched a new SF imprint called Robert J. Sawyer Books, edited by Sawyer himself. Newly named editor in chief of Phobos Books, John J. Ordover, is expanding the SF line there as well. MonkeyBrain Press is also bringing out a new line of genre-related nonfiction titles.