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

by Gardner Dozois

  "It must be a horrid thing, losing everyone who loves you."

  "But someone still loves her," he countered. Then he paused, thinking hard about everything again.

  "Tell me," he said. "What is your species-strain?"

  "Is that important?"

  "Probably not," said Pamir.

  The AI described its pedigree, in brief.

  "What's your lot number?"

  "I do not see how that matters."

  "Never mind," he said, walking away from their patient. "I already know enough as it is."

  Pamir ate a small meal and drank some sweet alien nectar that left him feeling a little sloppy. When the head cleared, he slept for a minute or an hour, and then he returned to the bedroom and the giant bed. Sorrel was where he had left her. Her eyes were closed now, empty hands across her belly, rising and falling and rising with a slow steady rhythm that he couldn't stop watching.

  "Thank you."

  The voice didn't seem to belong to anyone. The young woman's mouth happened to be open, but it didn't sound like the voice he expected. It was sturdy and calm, the old sadness wiped away. It was a quiet polite and rather sweet voice that told him, "Thank you," and then added, "For everything, sir."

  The eyes hadn't opened.

  She had heard Pamir approach, or felt his presence.

  He sat on the bed beside her, and after a long moment said, "You know. You'd be entitled to consider me—whoever I am—as being your main suspect. I could have killed the husbands. And I certainly put an end to you and Cre'llan."

  "It isn't you."

  "Because you have another suspect in mind. Isn't that it?"

  She said nothing.

  "Who do you believe is responsible?" he pressed.

  Finally, the eyes pulled open, slowly, and they blinked twice, tears pooling but never quite reaching the point where they would flow.

  "My father," she said.

  "He killed your husbands?"

  "Obviously."

  "He's light-years behind us now."

  Silence.

  Pamir nodded, and after a moment, he asked, "What do you know about your father?"

  "Quite a lot," she claimed.

  "But you've never seen him," he reminded her.

  "I have studied him." She shook her head and closed her eyes again. "I've examined his biography as well as I can, and I think I know him pretty well."

  "He isn't here, Sorrel."

  "No?"

  "He emigrated before you were even born."

  "That's what my mother told me, yes."

  "What else?" Pamir leaned closer, adding, "What did she tell you about the man… ?"

  "He is strong and self-assured. That he knows what is right and best. And he loves me very much, but he couldn't stay with me." Sorrel chewed on her lip for a moment. "He couldn't stay here, but my father has agents and ways, and I would never be without him. Mother promised me."

  Pamir just nodded.

  "My father doesn't approve of the Faith."

  "I can believe that," he said.

  "My mother admitted, once or twice… that she loved him very much, but he doesn't have a diplomat's ease with aliens. And his heart can be hard, and he has a capacity to do awful things, if he sees the need…"

  "No," Pamir whispered.

  The pale blue eyes opened. "What do you mean?"

  "Your father didn't do any of this," he promised. Then he thought again, saying, "Well, maybe a piece of it."

  "What do you mean — ?"

  Pamir set his hand on top of her mouth, lightly. Then as he began to pull his hand back, she took hold of his wrist and forearm, easing the palm back down against lips that pulled apart, teeth giving him a tiny swift bite.

  A J'Jal gesture, that was.

  He bent down and kissed the open eyes.

  Sorrel told him, "You shouldn't."

  "Probably not."

  "If the murderer knows you are with me — "

  He placed two fingers deep into her mouth, J'Jal fashion. And she sucked on them, not trying to speak now, eyes almost smiling as Pamir calmly and smoothly slid into bed beside her.

  XV

  One of the plunging rivers pulled close to the wall, revealing what it carried. Inside the diamond tube was a school of finned creatures, not pseudofish nor pseudowhales, but instead a collection of teardrop-shaped machines that probably fused hydrogen in their hearts, producing the necessary power to hold their bodies steady inside a current that looked relentless, rapid and chaotic, turbulent and exceptionally unappealing.

  Pamir watched the swimming machines for a moment, deciding that this was rather how he had lived for ages now.

  With a shrug and a soft laugh, he continued the long walk up the path, moving past a collection of modest apartments. The library was just a few meters farther along—a tiny portal carved into the smooth black basaltic wall. Its significance was so well hidden that a thousand sightseers passed this point every day, perhaps pausing at the edge of the precipice to look down, but more likely continuing on their walk, searching richer views. Pamir turned his eyes toward the closed doorway, pretending a mild curiosity. Then he stood beside the simple wall that bordered the outer edge of the trail, hands on the chill stone, eyes gazing down at the dreamy shape of the Little-Lot.

  The massive cloud was the color of butter and nearly as dense. A trillion trillion microbes thrived inside its aerogel matrix, supporting an ecosystem that would never touch a solid surface.

  The library door swung open—J'Jal wood riding on creaky iron hinges.

  Pamir opened a nexus and triggered an old, nearly forgotten captain's channel. Then he turned towards the creaking sound and smiled. Sorrel was emerging from the library, dressed in a novice's blue robe and blinking against the sudden glare. The massive door fell shut again, and quietly, she said to him, "All right."

  Pamir held a finger to his closed mouth.

  She stepped closer and through a nexus told him, "I did what you told me."

  "Show it."

  She produced the slender blue book.

  "Put it on the ground here."

  This was her personal journal—the only volume she was allowed to remove from the library. She set it in front of her sandaled feet, and then asked, "Was I noticed, do you think?"

  "I promise. You were seen."

  "And do we just wait now?"

  He shook his head. "No, no. I'm far too impatient for that kind of game."

  The plasma gun was barely awake when he fired it, turning plastic pages and the wood binding into a thin cloud of superheated ash.

  Sorrel put her arms around herself, squeezing hard.

  "Now we wait," he advised.

  Not for the first time, she admitted, "I don't understand. Still. Who do you think is responsible?"

  Again, the heavy door swung open.

  Without looking, Pamir called out, "Hello, Leon'rd."

  The J'Jal librarian wore the same purplish-black robe and blue ponytail, and his expression hadn't changed in the last few days —a bilious outrage focused on those who would injure his helpless dependents. He stared at the ruins of the book, and then he glared at the two humans, focusing on the male face until a vague recognition tickled.

  "Do I know you?" he began.

  Pamir was wearing the same face he had worn for the last thirty-two years. A trace of a smile was showing, except around the dark eyes. Quietly, fiercely, he said, "I found my wife, and thanks for the help."

  Leon'rd stared at Sorrel, his face working its way through a tangle of wild emotions. "Your wife?" he sputtered.

  Then he tipped his head, saying, "No, she is not."

  "You know that?" Pamir asked.

  The J'Jal didn't respond.

  "What do you know, Leon'rd?"

  For an instant, Leon'rd glanced back across a shoulder—not at the library door but at the nearby apartments. The man was at his limits. He seemed frail and tentative, hands pressing at the front of his robe while the long toes
curled under his bare feet. Everything was apparent. Transparent. Obvious. And into this near-panic, Pamir said, "I know what you did."

  "No," the J'Jal replied, without confidence.

  "You learned something," Pamir continued. "You are a determined scholar and a talented student of other species, and some years ago, by design or by dumb luck, you unraveled something. Something that was supposed to be a deep, impenetrable secret."

  "No."

  "A secret about my wife," he said.

  Sorrel blinked, asking, "What is it?"

  Pamir laughed harshly. "Tell her," he advised.

  The blood had drained out of Leon'rd's face.

  "No, I agree," Pamir continued. "Let's keep this between you and me, shall we? Because she doesn't have any idea, either—"

  "About what?" the woman cried out.

  "She is not your wife," the librarian snapped.

  "The hell she isn't." He laughed. "Check the public records. Two hours ago, in a civil ceremony overseen by two Hyree monks, we were made woman and male-implement in a legally binding manner—"

  "What do you know about me?" Sorrel pressed.

  Pamir ignored her. Staring at the J'Jal, he said, "But somebody else knows what we do. Doesn't he? Because you told him. In passing, you said a few words. Perhaps. Unless of course you were the one who devised this simple, brutal plan, and he is simply your accomplice."

  "No!" Leon'rd screamed. "I did not dream anything."

  "I might believe you." Pamir glanced at Sorrel, showing a tiny wink. "When I showed him an image of one of your dead husbands, his reaction wasn't quite right. I saw surprise, but the J'Jal eyes betrayed a little bit of pleasure, too. Or relief, was it? Leon'rd? Were you genuinely thrilled to believe that Sele'ium was dead and out of your proverbial hair?"

  The librarian looked pale and cold, arms clasped tight against his shivering body. Again, he glanced at the nearby apartments. His mouth opened and then pulled itself closed, and then Pamir said, "Death."

  "What did you say?" Leon'rd asked.

  "There are countless wonderful and inventive ways to fake your own death," Pamir allowed. "But one of my favorites is to clone your body and cook an empty, soulless brain, and then stuff that brain inside that living body, mimicking a very specific kind of demise."

  "Sele'ium?" said Sorrel.

  "What I think." Pamir was guessing, but none of the leaps were long or unlikely. "I think your previous husband was a shrewd young man. He grew up in a family that had lived among the harum-scarums. That's where his lineage came from,' wasn't it, Leon'rd? So it was perfectly natural, even inevitable, that he could entertain thoughts about killing the competition, including his own identity…"

  "Tell me what you know," Sorrel begged.

  "Almost nothing," Pamir assured. "Leon'rd is the one who is carrying all the dark secrets on his back. Ask him."

  The J'Jal covered his face with his hands. "Go away," he whimpered.

  "Was Sele'ium a good friend of yours and you were trying to help? Or did he bribe you for this useful information?" Pamir nodded, adding, "Whatever happened, you pointed him toward Sorrel, and you must have explained, 'She is perhaps the most desirable mate on the Great Ship —

  A sizzling blue bolt of plasma struck his face, melting it and obliterating everything beyond.

  The headless body wobbled for a moment and then slumped and dropped slowly, settling against the black wall, and Leon'rd leaped backwards, while Sorrel stood over the remains of her newest husband, her expression tight but calm —like the face of a sailor who has already ridden through countless storms.

  XVI

  Sele'ium looked like a pedestrian wandering past, his gaze distracted and his manner a little nervous. He seemed embarrassed by the drama that he had happened upon. He looked human. The cold blond hair and purplish-black skin were common on high-UV worlds, while the brown eyes were as ordinary as could be. He wore sandals and trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and he stared at the destroyed body, seeing precisely what he expected to see. Then he glanced at Sorrel, and with a mixture of warmth and pure menace, he said, "You do not know… you cannot… how much I love you…"

  She recoiled in horror.

  He started to speak again, to explain himself.

  "Get away!" she snapped. "Leave me alone!"

  His reaction was to shake his head with his mouth open—a J'Jal refusal —and then he calmly informed her, "I am an exceptionally patient individual."

  Which wrung a laugh out of her, bitter and thin.

  "Not today, no," he conceded. "And not for a thousand years, perhaps. But I will approach you with a new face and name —every so often, I will come to you —and there will be an hour and a certain heartbeat when you come to understand that we belong to one another—"

  The corpse kicked at the empty air.

  Sele'ium glanced at what he had done, mildly perturbed by the distraction. Then slowly, he realized that the corpse was shrinking, as if it were a balloon slowly losing its breath. How odd. He stared at the mysterious phenomenon, not quite able to piece together what should have been obvious. The headless ruin twitched hard and then harder, one shrinking leg flinging high. And then from blackened wound rose a puff of blue smoke, and with it, the stink of burnt rubber and cooked hydraulics.

  With his left hand, Sele'ium yanked the plasma gun from inside his shirt—a commercial model meant to be used as a tool, but with its safeties cut away—and he turned in a quick circle, searching for a valid target.

  "What is it?" Leon'rd called out.

  "Do you see him — ?"

  "Who?"

  The young J'Jal was more puzzled than worried. He refused to let himself panic, his mind quickly ticking off the possible answers, settling on what would be easiest and best.

  In the open air, of course.

  "Just leave us," Leon'rd begged. "I will not stand by any longer!"

  Sele'ium threw five little bolts into the basalt wall, punching out holes and making a rain of white-hot magma.

  Somewhere below, a voice howled.

  Sorrel ran to the wall and looked down, and Sele'ium crept beside her, the gun in both hands, its reactor pumping energies into a tiny chamber, readying a blast that would obliterate everything in its path.

  He started to peer over, and then thought better of it.

  One hand released the weapon and the arm wrapped around Sorrel's waist, and when she flung her elbow into his midsection, he bent low. He grunted and cursed softly and then told her, "No."

  With his full weight, he drove the woman against the smooth black wall, and together, his face on her left shoulder, they bent and peered over the edge.

  Pamir grabbed the plasma gun, yanking hard.

  And Sorrel made herself jump.

  Those two motions combined to lift her and Sele'ium off the path, over the edge and plummeting down. Pamir's gecko-grip was ripped loose from the basalt, and he was falling with them, one hand on the gun, clinging desperately, while the other arm began to swing, throwing its fist into the killer's belly and ribs. Within moments, they were falling as fast as possible. A damp singing wind blew past them, and the wall was a black smear to one side, and the rest of Fall Away was enormous and distant and almost changeless. The airborne rivers and a thousand flying machines were out of reach and useless. The three of them fell and fell, and sometimes a voice would pass through the roaring wind —a spectator standing on the path, remarking in alarm, "Who were they?" Three bodies, clinging and kicking. Sele'ium punished Pamir with his own free hand, and then he let himself be pulled closer, and with a mouth that wasn't more than a few days old, he bit down on a wrist, hard, trying to force the stranger to release his hold on the plasma gun.

  Pamir cried out and let go.

  But as Sele'ium aimed at his face, for his soul, Pamir slammed at the man's forearm and pushed it backwards again, and he put a hard knee into the elbow, and a weapon that didn't have safeties released its stored energies, a thin blinding beam that coal
esced inside the dying man's head, his brain turning to light and ash, a supersonic crack leaving the others temporarily deafened.

  Pamir kicked the corpse away and clung to Sorrel, and she held tight to him, and after another few minutes, as they plunged toward the yellow depths of a living, thriving cloud, he shouted into her better ear, explaining a thing or two.

  XVII

  Again, it was nearly nightfall.

  Once again, Pamir sat outside his apartment, listening to the wild songs of the llano vibra. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Neighbors strolled past or ran past or flew by on gossamer wings. The janusian couple paused long enough to ask where he had been these last days, and Pamir said a few murky words about taking care of family troubles. The harum-scarum family was outside their apartment, gathered around a cooking pit, eating a living passion ox in celebration of another day successfully crossed. A collection of machines stopped to ask about the facsimile that they had built for Pamir, as a favor. Did it serve its intended role? "Oh, sure," he said with a nod. "Everybody was pretty much fooled, at least until the joke was finished."

  "Was there laughter?" asked one machine.

  "Constant, breathless laughter," Pamir swore. And then he said nothing else about it.

  A single figure was approaching. He had been watching her for the last kilometer, and as the machines wandered away, he used three different means to study her gait and face and manner. Then he considered his options, and he decided to remain sitting where he was, his back against the huge ceramic pot and his legs stretched out before him, one bare foot crossed over the other.

  She stopped a few steps short, watching him but saying nothing.

  "You're thinking," Pamir told her. "Throw me into the brig, or throw me off the ship entirely. That's what you're thinking now."

  "But we had an agreement," Miocene countered. "You were supposed to help somebody, and you have, and you most definitely have earned your payment as well as my thanks."

  "Yeah," he said, "but I know you. And you're asking yourself, 'Why not get rid of him and be done with it?'"

  The First Chair was wearing a passenger's clothes and a face slightly disguised, eyes blue and the matching hair curled into countless tight knots, the cheeks and mouth widened but nothing about the present smile any warmer than any other smile that had ever come from this hard, hard creature.