The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  "What is the woman's name?"

  "Why? Didn't you hear me the first time?"

  "Sorrel, you claimed." He pretended to concentrate, and then with a little too much certainty said, "I do not know this ape-woman."

  "Is that so?" Pamir shook his head. "She knows you."

  "She is mistaken."

  "So then how did you know she was human? Since I hadn't quite mentioned that yet."

  The question won a blustery look from the big black eyes. "What are you implying to me, little ape-man?"

  Pamir laughed at him. "Why? Can't you figure it out for yourself?"

  "Are you insulting me?"

  "Sure."

  That won a deep silence.

  With a fist only a little larger than one of the alien's knuckles, Pamir wrapped on the diamond door. "I'm insulting you and your ancestors. There. By the ship's codes and your own painful customs, you are now free to step out here, in the open, and beat me until I am dead for a full week."

  The giant shook with fury, and nothing happened. One mouth expanded, gulping down deep long breaths, while the other mouth puckered into a tiny dimple —a harum-scarum on the brink of a pure vengeful rage. But Gallium forced himself to do nothing, and when the anger finally began to diminish, he gave an inaudible signal, causing the outer two doors to drop and seal tight.

  Pamir looked left and then right. The narrow avenue was well-lit and empty, and by every appearance, it was safe.

  Yet the creature had been terrified.

  One more time, he paged his way through Sorrel's journal. Among those husbands were two harum-scarums. No useful name had been mentioned in the journal, but it was obvious which of them was Gallium. Lying about his fear was in character for the species. But how could a confirmed practitioner of this singular faith deny that he had even met the woman?

  Pamir needed to find the other husbands.

  A hundred different routes lay before him. But as harum-scarums liked to say, "The shortest line stretches between points that touch."

  Gallium's security system was ordinary, and it was porous, and with thousands of years of experience in these matters, it took Pamir less than a day to subvert codes and walk through the front doors.

  "Who is with me?" a voice cried out from the farthest room.

  In J'Jal, curiously.

  Then, "Who's there?" in human.

  And finally, as an afterthought, the alien screamed, "You are in my realm, and unwelcome." In his own tongue, he promised, "I will forgive you, if you run away at this moment."

  "Sorrel won't let me run," Pamir replied.

  The last room was a minor fortress buttressed with slabs of high-grade hyperfiber and bristling with weapons, legal and otherwise. A pair of rail-guns followed Pamir's head, ready to batter his mind if not quite kill it. Tightness built in his throat, but he managed to keep the fear out of his voice. "Is this where you live now? In a little room at the bottom of an ugly home?"

  "You like to insult," the harum-scarum observed.

  "It passes my time," he replied.

  From behind the hyperfiber, Gallium said, "I see an illegal weapon."

  "Good. Since I'm carrying one."

  "If you try to harm me, I will kill you. And I will destroy your mind, and you will be no more."

  "Understood," Pamir said.

  Then he sat—a gesture of submission on almost every world. He sat on the quasi-crystal tiling on the floor of the bright hallway, glancing at the portraits on the nearby walls. Harum-scarums from past ages stood in defiant poses. Ancestors, presumably. Honorable men and women who could look at their cowering descendant with nothing but a fierce contempt.

  After a few moments, Pamir said, "I'm pulling my weapon into plain view."

  "Throw it beside my door."

  The plasma gun earned a respectful silence. It slid across the floor and clattered to a stop, and then a mechanical arm unfolded, slapping a hyperfiber bowl over it, and then covering the bowl an explosive charge set to obliterate the first hand that tried to free the gun within.

  The hyperfiber door lifted.

  Gallium halfway filled the room beyond. He was standing in the middle of a closet jammed with supplies, staring at Pamir, the armored plates of his body flexing, exposing their sharp edges.

  "You must very much need this work," he observed.

  "Except I'm not doing my work," Pamir replied. "Frankly, I've sort of lost interest in the project."

  Confused, the harum-scarum stood taller. "Then why have you gone to such enormous trouble?"

  "What you need," Pamir mentioned, "is a small, well-charged plasma gun. That makes a superior weapon."

  "They are illegal and hard to come by," argued Gallium.

  "Your rail-guns are criminal, too." Just like with the front doors, there was a final door made of diamond reinforced with a meshwork of hyperfiber. "But I bet you appreciate what the shaped plasma can do to a living mind."

  Silence.

  "Funny," Pamir continued. "Not that long ago, I found a corpse that ran into that exact kind of tool."

  The alien's back couldn't straighten anymore, and the armor plates were flexing as much as possible. With a quiet voice —an almost begging voice —Gallium asked the human, "Who was the corpse?"

  "Sele'ium."

  Again, silence.

  "Who else has died that way?" Pamir asked. It was a guess, but not much of one. When no answer was offered, he added, "You've never been this frightened. In your long, ample life, you have never imagined that fear could eat at you this way. Am I right?"

  Now the back began to collapse.

  A miserable little voice said, "It just worsens."

  "Why?"

  The harum-scarum dipped his head for a moment.

  "Why does the fear get worse and worse?"

  "Seven of us now."

  "Seven?"

  "Lost." A human despair rode with that single word. "Eight, if you are telling the truth about the J'Jal."

  "What eight?" Pamir asked.

  Gallium refused to say,

  "I know who you are," he continued. "Eight of Sorrel's husbands, and you. Is that right?"

  "Her past husbands," the alien corrected.

  "What about current lovers — ?"

  "There are none."

  "No?"

  "She is celibate," the giant said with a deep longing. Then he dropped his gaze, adding, "When we started to die, she gave us up. Physically, and legally as well."

  Gallium missed his human wife. It showed in his stance and voice and how the great hand trembled, reaching up to touch the cool pane of diamond while he added, "She is trying to save us. But she doesn't know how—"

  A sudden ball of coherent plasma struck the pane just then. No larger than a human heart, it dissolved the diamond and the hand, and the grieving face, and everything that lay beyond those dark lonely eyes.

  X

  Pamir saw nothing but the flash, and then came a concussive blast that threw him off his feet. For an instant, he lay motionless. A cloud of atomized carbon and flesh filled the cramped hallway. He listened and heard nothing. At least for the next few moments, he was completely deaf. Keeping low, he rolled until a wall blocked his way. Then he started to breathe, scalding his lungs, and he held his breath, remaining absolutely still, waiting for a second blast to shove past.

  Nothing happened.

  With his mouth to the floor, Pamir managed a hot but breathable sip of air. The cloud was thinning. His hearing was returning, accompanied by a tireless high-pitched hum. A figure swam into view, tall and menacing—a harum-scarum, presumably one of the dead man's honored ancestors. He remembered that the hallway was littered with the portraits. Pamir saw a second figure, and then a third. He was trying to recall how many images there had been… because he could see a fourth figure now, and that seemed like one too many…

  The plasma gun fired again. But it hadn't had time enough to build a killing charge, and the fantastic energies were wasted in a light
show and a burst of blistering wind.

  Again the air filled with dirt and gore.

  Pamir leaped up and retreated.

  Gallium was a nearly headless corpse, enormous even when mangled and stretched out on his back. The little room was made tinier with him on the floor. When their owner died, the rail-guns had dropped into their diagnostic mode, and waking them would take minutes, or days. The diamond door was shredded and useless. When the cloud fell away again, in another few moments, Pamir would be exposed and probably killed.

  Like Gallium, he first used the J'Jal language.

  "Hello," he called out.

  The outer door was open and still intact, but its simple trigger was useless to him. It was sensitive only to pressure from a familiar hand. Staring out into the hallway, he shouted, "Hello," once again.

  In the distance, a shape began to resolve itself.

  "I am dead," he continued. "You have me trapped here, my friend."

  Nothing.

  "Do what you wish, but before you cook me, I would love to know what this is about."

  The shape seemed to drift one way, then back again.

  Pamir jerked one of the dead arms off the floor. Then he started to position it, laying the broad palm against the wall, close to the door's trigger. But that was the easy part of this, he realized.

  "You're a clever soul," he offered. "Allow a human to open the way for you. I outsmart the harum-scarum's defenses, and then you can claim both of us."

  How much time before another recharge?

  A few seconds, he guessed.

  The corpse suddenly flinched and the arm dropped with a massive thunk.

  "Shit," Pamir muttered.

  On a high shelf was a plate, small but dense as metal. He took hold of it, made a few practice flings with his wrist, and then once again called out, "I wish you would tell me what this is about. Because I haven't got a clue."

  Nothing.

  In human, Pamir said, "Who the hell are you?"

  The cloud was clearing again, revealing the outlines of a biped standing down the hallway, maybe ten meters from him.

  Kneeling, Pamir again grabbed the dead arm. Emergency genes and muscle memory began to fight against him, the strength of a giant forcing him to grunt as he pushed the hand to where it was set beside the trigger. Then he threw all of his weight on the hand, forcing it to stay in place. For a moment, he panted. Then he grabbed the heavy plate with his left hand, and with a gasping voice, he said, "One last chance to explain."

  The biped was beginning to aim.

  "Bye-bye, then."

  Pamir flipped the plate, aiming at a target barely three meters away. And in the same instant, he let the dead hand fall onto the trigger. A slab of hyperfiber slid from the ceiling, and the final door was shut. It could withstand two or three blasts from a plasma gun, but eventually it would be gnawed away. Which was why he flipped the plate onto the floor where it skipped and rolled, clipping the edge of the shaped charge of explosives that capped his own gun.

  There was a sudden sharp thunder.

  The door was left jammed shut by the blast. Pamir spent the next twenty minutes using a dead hand and every override to lift the door far enough to crawl underneath. But a perfectly symmetrical blast had left his own weapon where it lay, untouched beneath a bowl of mirror-bright hyperfiber.

  His enemy would have been blown back up the hallway.

  Killed briefly, or maybe just scared away.

  Pamir lingered for a few minutes, searching the dead man's home for clues that refused to be found, and then he slipped back out into the public avenue —still vacant and safe to the eye, but possessing a palpable menace that he could now feel for himself.

  XI

  A ninety-second tube ride placed him beside Sorrel's front door. The apartment addressed him by the only name it knew, observing, "You are injured, sir." Performing its own rapid examination, a distinct alarm entered into an otherwise officious voice. "Do you know how badly you are injured, sir?"

  "I've got a fair guess," Pamir allowed, an assortment of shrapnel still buried inside his leg and belly, giving him a rolling limp. "Where's the lady?"

  "Where you left her, sir. On the patio."

  Everyone was terrified, it seemed, except for her. But why should she worry? Sorrel had only been knifed by a quick-and-dirty thief, which on the scale of crimes was practically nothing.

  "Have her come to her bedroom."

  "Sir?"

  "I'm not talking to her in the open. Tell her."

  "What about her friend — ?"

  "Another husband is dead."

  Silence.

  "Will you tell her—?" Pamir began.

  "She is already on her way, sir. As you have requested." Then after a pause, the apartment suggested, "About Gallium, please… I think you should deliver that sorry news…"

  He told it.

  She was dressed now in slacks and a silk blouse made by the communal spiders of the Kolochon district, and her bare feet wore black rings on every toe, and while she sat on one of the dozens of self-shaping chairs, listening to his recount of the last brutal hour, her expression managed to grow even more sad as well as increasingly detached. Sorrel made no sound, but always there was a sense that she was about to speak. The sorry and pained and very pretty face would betray a new thought, or the pale eyes would recognize something meaningful. But the mouth never quite made noise. When she finally uttered a few words, Pamir nearly forgot to listen.

  "Who are you?"

  Did he hear the question correctly?

  Again, she asked, "Who are you?" Then she leaned forward, the blouse dipping in front. "You aren't like any environmental technician I've known, and I don't think you're a security specialist either."

  "No?"

  "You wouldn't have survived the fight, if you were just a fix-it man." She almost laughed, a little dimple showing high on the left cheek. "And even if you had lived, you would still be running now."

  "I just want you to point me in the safest direction," he replied.

  She didn't respond, watching him for what seemed like an age. Then sitting back in the deep wide chair, she asked, "Who pays you?"

  "You do."

  "That's not what I mean."

  "But I'm not pushing too hard for my wages," he offered.

  "You won't tell me who?"

  "Confess a few things to me first," he replied.

  She had long hands, graceful and quick. For a little while, the hands danced in her lap, and when they finally settled, she asked, "What can I tell you?"

  "Everything you know about your dead husbands, and about those who just happen to be alive still." Pamir leaned forward, adding, "In particular, I want to hear about your first husband. And if you can, explain why the Faith of the Many Joinings seemed like such a reasonable idea."

  XII

  She had seen him earlier on the voyage and spoken with him on occasion—a tall and slender and distinguished J'Jal man with a fondness for human clothes, particularly red woolen suits and elaborately knotted white silk ties. Cre'llan seemed handsome, although not exceptionally so. He was obviously bright and engaging. Once, when their boat was exploring the luddite islands in the middle of the Gone-A-Long Sea, he asked if he might join her, sitting on the long chaise lounge beside hers. For the next little while —an hour, or perhaps the entire day—they chatted amiably about the most ordinary of things. There was gossip to share, mostly about their fellow passengers and the boat's tiny crew. There were several attempts to list the oceans that they had crossed to date, ranking them according to beauty and then history and finally by their inhabitants. Which was the most intriguing port? Which was the most ordinary? What aliens had each met for the first time? What were their first impressions? Second impressions? And if they had to live for the next thousand years in one of these little places, which would they choose?

  Sorrel would have eventually forgotten the day. But a week later, she agreed to a side trip to explore Gr
eenland.

  "Do you know the island?"

  "Not at all," Pamir lied.

  "I never made sense of that name," Sorrel admitted, eyes narrowing as if to reex-amine the entire question. "Except for some fringes of moss and the like, the climate is pure glacial. The island has to be cold, I was told. It has to do with the upwellings in the ocean and the sea's general health. Anyway, there is a warm current upwind from it, which brings the moisture, and the atmosphere is a hundred kilometers tall and braced with demon-doors. The snows are endless and fabulous, and you can't sail across the Gone-A-Long Sea without visiting Greenland once. At least that's what my friends told me."

  "Was Cre'llan in your group?"

  "No." Somehow that amused her. She gave a little laugh, adding, "Everybody was human, except for the guide, who was an AI with a human-facsimile body."

  Pamir nodded.

  "We power-skied up onto the ice during an incredibly hard snowfall. But then our guide turned to us, mentioning that it was a clear day, as they went. And we should be thankful we could see so much."

  At most, they could see twenty meters in any direction. She was with a good friend—a child of the Great Ship like Sorrel, but a thousand years older. Sorrel had known the woman her entire life. They had shared endless conversations and gone to the same fine parties, and their shopping adventures had stretched on for weeks at a time. They always traveled together. And in their combined lives, nothing with real substance had occurred to either of them.

  The glacier was thick and swiftly built up by the waves of falling snow. Sorrel and her companion skied away from the rest of the group, scaling a tall ridge that placed them nearly a kilometer above the invisible sea. Then the snow began to fall harder—fat wet flakes joining into snowballs that plunged from the white sky. They were skiing close together, linked by a smart-rope. Sorrel happened to be in the lead. What happened next, she couldn't say. Her first guess, and still her best guess, was that her friend thought of a little joke to play. She disabled the rope and untied herself, and where the ridge widened, she attempted to slip ahead of Sorrel, probably to scare her when she was most vulnerable.

  Where the friend fell was a bit of a mystery.