The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Turner studied his screen.

  IF QMONITOR(FMONS(2)) EQ O THEN RETURN(‘TOO SMALL’)

  TOGO = GRIPPER-OPENING + MIN-OFS-QPOSITION (GRIPPER)

  DMOVE(XYZ#(GRIPPER), (-TOGO/2*HANDFRAME) (2,2)) #(TOGO), FMONS(2));

  This was more like it! Despite its low-powered crudity, AML was becoming obsessive with him, its rhythyms sticking like poetry. He picked up his coffee-cup, thinking: REACH-GRASP-TOGO ‡ (MOUTH) + SIP; RETURN.

  The sluggishness of Brunei had vanished overnight once he’d hooked to the Net. The screen had eaten up his life. A month had passed since his first bootleg run. All day he worked on AML; at night he went home to trade electronic mail with Seria.

  Their romance had grown through the Net; not through modern video, but through the ancient bulletin board’s anonymous green text. Day be day it became more intense, for it was all kept in a private section of memory, and nothing could be taken back. There were over a hundred messages on their secret disks, starting coolly and teasingly, and working slowly up through real passion to a kind of mutual panic.

  They hadn’t planned it to happen like this. It was part of the dynamic of the Net. For Seria, it had been a rare chance to escape her role and talk to an interesting stranger. Turner was only looking for the kind of casual feminine solace that had never been hard to find. The Net had tricked them.

  Because they couldn’t see each other. Turner realized now that no woman had ever known and understood him as Seria did, for the simple reason that he had never had to talk to one so much. If things had gone as they were meant to in the West, he thought, they would have chased their attraction into bed and killed it there. Their two worlds would have collided bruisingly, and they would have smiled over the orange juice next morning and mumbled tactful goodbyes.

  But that wasn’t how it had happened. Over the weeks, it had all come pouring out between them: his family, her family, their resentment, his loneliness, her petty constraints, all those irritants that ulcerate a single person, but are soothed by two. Bizarrely, they had more in common than he could have ever expected. Real things, things that mattered.

  The painfully simple local Net filtered human relations down to a single channel of printed words, leaving only a high-flown Platonic essence. Their relationship and grown into a classic, bloodless, spiritual romance in its most intense and dangerous sense. Human beings weren’t meant to live such roles. It was the stuff of high drama because it could very easily drive you crazy.

  He had waited on tenterhooks for her visit to the shipyard. It had taken a month instead of two weeks, but he’d expected as much. That was the way of Brunei.

  “Hello, Maple Syrup.”

  Turner started violently and stood up. “Seria!”

  She threw herself into his arms with a hard thump. He staggered back, hugging her. “No kissing,” she said hastily. “Ugh, it’s nasty.”

  He glanced down at the shipyard and hauled her quickly out of sight of the window. “How’d you get up here?”

  “I sneaked up the stairs. They’re not looking. I had to see you. The real you, not just words on a screen.”

  “This is crazy.” He lifted her off the ground, squeezing her hard. “God, you feel wonderful.”

  “So do you. Ouch, my medals, be careful.”

  He set her back down. “We’ve got to do better than this. Look, where can I see you?”

  She gripped his hands feverishly. “Finish the boat, Turner. Brooke wants it, his new toy. Maybe we can arrange something.” She pulled his shirt tail out and ran her hands over his midriff. Turner felt a rush of arousal so intense that his ears rang. He reached down and ran his hand up the back of her thigh. “Don’t wrinkle my skirt!” she said, trembling. “I have to go on camera!”

  Turner said, “This place is nowhere. It isn’t right for you, you need fast cars and daiquiris and television and jet trips to the goddamn Bahamas.”

  “So romantic,” she whispered hotly. “Like rock stars, Turner. Huge stacks of amps and mobs at the airport. Turner, if you could see what I’m wearing under this, you’d go crazy.”

  She turned her face away. “Stop trying to kiss me! You Westerners are weird. Mouths are for eating.”

  “You’ve got to get used to Western things, precious.”

  “You can’t take me away, Turner. My people wouldn’t let you.”

  “We’ll think of something. Maybe Brooke can help.”

  “Even Brooke can’t leave,” she said. “All his money’s here. If he tried, they would freeze his funds. He’d be penniless.”

  “Then I’ll stay here,” he said recklessly. “Sooner or later we’ll have our chance.”

  “And give up all your money, Turner?”

  He shrugged. “You know I don’t want it.”

  She smiled sadly. “You tell me that now, but wait till you see your real world again.”

  “No, listen—”

  Lights flashed on in the yard.

  “I have to go, they’ll miss me. Let go, let go.” She pulled free of him with vast, tearing reluctance. Then she turned and ran.

  * * *

  In the days that followed, Turner worked obsessively, linking subroutines like data tinkertoys, learning as he went along, adding each day’s progress to the master program. Once it was all done, and he had weeded out the redundance, it would be self-sustaining. The robots would take over, transforming information into boats. He would be through. And his slow days in Brunei would be history.

  After his job, he’d vaguely planned to go to Tokyo, for a sentimental visit to Kyocera corporate headquarters. He’d been recruited through the Net; he’d never actually seen anyone from Kyocera in the flesh.

  That was standard practice. Kyocera’s true existence was as data, not as real estate. A modern multinational company was not its buildings or its stock. Its real essence was its ability to pop up on a screen, and to funnel that special information known as money through the global limbo of electronic banking.

  He’d never given this a second thought. It was old hat. But filtering both work and love-life through the screen had left him feeling Netburned. He took to long morning walks through Brunei Town after marathon sessions at the screen, stretching cramped muscles and placing his feet with a dazed AML deliberation: TOGO = DMOVE(KNEE)+ - QPOSITION(FOOT).

  He felt ghostlike in the abandoned streets; Brunei had no nightlife to speak of, and a similar lack of muggers and predators. Everybody was in everyone else’s lap, doing each other’s laundry, up at dawn to the shrieks of kampong roosters. People gossiped about you if you were a mugger. Pretty soon you’d have nightsoil duty and have to eat bruised mangos.

  When the rain caught him, as it often did in the early morning, he would take shelter in the corner bus stations. The bus stops were built of tall glass tubes, aquaculture cylinders, murky green soups full of algae and fat, sluggish carp.

  He would think about staying then, sheltered in Brunei forever, like a carp behind warm glass. Like one of those little bonsai trees in its cramped and cosy little pot, with people always watching over you, trimming you to fit. That was Brunei for you: the whole East, really: wonderful community, but people always underfoot and in your face.…

  But was the West any better? Old people locked away in bursting retirement homes … Soaring unemployment, with no one knowing when some robot or expert system would make him obsolete … People talking over televisions when they didn’t know the face of the man next door.…

  Could he really give up the West, he wondered, abandon his family, ruin his career? It was the craziest sort of romantic gesture, he thought, because even if he was brave or stupid enough to break all the rules, she wouldn’t. Seria would never escape her adat. Being royalty was worse than Triad.

  A maze of plans spun through his head like an error-trapping loop, always coming up empty. He would sit dazedly and watch the fish circle in murky water, feeling like a derelict, and wondering if he was losing his mind.

  * * *


  Privy Councilor Brooke bought the boat. He showed up suddenly at the shipyard one afternoon, with his claque of followers. They’d brought a truckload of saplings in tubs of dirt. They began at once to load them aboard the greenhouse, clumping up and down the stepladders to the varnished deck.

  Brooke oversaw the loading for a while, checking a deck plan from the pocket of his white silk jacket. Then he jerked his thumb at the glassed-in front of the data center. “Let’s go upstairs for a little talk, Turner.”

  Mercifully, Brooke had brought his hearing aid. They sat in two of the creaking, musty swivel-chairs. “It’s a good ship,” Brooke said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I knew it would be. It was my idea, you know.”

  Turner poured coffee. “It figures,” he said.

  Brooke cackled. “You think it’s a crazy notion, don’t you? Using robots to build tubs out of cheap glue and scrubwood. But your head’s on backwards, boy. You engineers are all mystics. Always goosing God with some new Tower of Babel. Masters of nature, masters of space and time. Aim at the stars, and hit London.”

  Turner scowled. “Look, Tuan Councilor, I did my job. Nothing in the contract says I have to share your politics.”

  “No,” Brooke said. “But the sultanate could use a man like you. You’re a bricoleur, Chong. You can make do. You can retrofit. That’s what bricolage is—it’s using the clutter and rubble to make something worth having. Brunei’s too poor now to start over with fresh clean plans. We’ve got nothing but the junk the West conned us into buying, every last bloody Coke can and two-car garage. And now we have to live in the rubble, and make it a community. It’s a tough job, bricolage. It takes a special kind of man, a special eye, to make the ruins bloom.”

  “Not me,” Turner said. He was in one of his tough-minded moods. Something about Brooke made him leery. Brooke had a peculiar covert sleaziness about him. It probably came from a lifetime of evading drug laws.

  And Turner had been expecting this final push; people in his kampong had been dropping hints for weeks. They didn’t want him to leave; they were always dropping by with pathetic little gifts. “This place is one big hothouse,” he said. “Your little kampongs are like orchids, they can only grow under glass. Brunei’s already riddled with the Net. Someday it’ll break open your glass bubble, and let the rest of the world in. Then a hard rain’s gonna fall.”

  Brooke stared. “You like Bob Dylan?”

  “Who?” Turner said, puzzled.

  Brooke, confused, sipped his coffee, and grimaced. “You’ve been drinking this stuff? Jesus, no wonder you never sleep.”

  Turner glowered at him. Nobody in Brunei could mind their own business. Eyes were everywhere, with tongues to match. “You already know my real trouble.”

  “Sure.” Brooke smiled with a yellowed gleam of dentures. “I have this notion that I’ll sail upriver, lad. A little shakedown cruise for a couple of days. I could use a technical adviser, if you can mind your manners around royalty.”

  Turner’s heart leapt. He smiled shakily. “Then I’m your man, Councilor.”

  * * *

  They bashed a bottle of nonalcoholic grape juice across the center bow and christened the ship the Mambo Sun. Turner’s work crew launched her down the rails and stepped the masts. She was crewed by a family of Dayaks from one of the offshore rigs, an old woman with four sons. They were the dark, beautiful descendants of headhunting pirates, dressed in hand-dyed sarongs and ancient plastic baseball caps. Their language was utterly incomprehensible.

  The Mambo Sun rode high in the water, settling down into her new element with weird drumlike creaks from the hollow hulls. They put out to sea in a stiff offshore breeze.

  Brooke stood with spry insouciance under the towering jib sail, snorting at the sea air. “She’ll do twelve knots,” he said with satisfaction. “Lord, Turner, it’s great to be out of the penthouse and away from that crowd of flacks.”

  “Why do you put up with them?”

  “It comes with the money, lad. You should know that.”

  Turner said nothing. Brooke grinned at him knowingly. “Money’s power, my boy. Power doesn’t go away. If you don’t use it yourself, someone else will use you to get it.”

  “I hear they’ve trapped you here with that money,” Turner said. “They’ll freeze your funds if you try to leave.”

  “I let them trap me,” Brooke said. “That’s how I won their trust.” He took Turner’s arm. “But you let me know if you have money troubles here. Don’t let the local Islamic Bank fast-talk you into anything. Come see me first.”

  Turner shrugged him off. “What good has it done you? You’re surrounded with yes-men.”

  “I’ve had my crew for forty years.” Brooke sighed nostalgically. “Besides, you should have seen them in ’98, when the streets were full of Moslem fanatics screaming for blood. Molotovs burning everywhere, pitched battles with the blessed Chinese, the sultan held hostage.… My crew didn’t turn a hair. Held the mob off like a crowd of teenyboppers when they tried to rush my building. They had grit, those lads.”

  An ancient American helicopter buzzed overhead, its orange seafloats almost brushing the mast. Brooke yelled to the crew in their odd language; they furled the sails and set anchor, half a mile offshore. The chopper wheeled expertly and settled down in a shimmering circle of wind-flattened water. One of the Dayaks threw them a weighted line.

  They hauled in. “Permission to come aboard, sir!” said the crown prince. He and Seria wore crisp nautical whites. They clambered from the float up a rope ladder and onto the deck. The third passenger, a pilot, took the controls. The crew hauled anchor and set sail again; the chopper lifted off.

  The prince shook Turner’s hand. “You know my sister, I believe.”

  “We met at the filming,” Turner said.

  “Ah yes. Good footage, that.”

  Brooke, with miraculous tact, lured the prince into the greenhouse. Seria immediately flung herself into Turner’s arms. “You haven’t written in two days,” she hissed.

  “I know.” Turner said. He looked around, quickly to make sure the Dayaks were occupied. “I keep thinking about Vancouver. How I’ll feel when I’m back there.”

  “How you left your Sleeping Beauty behind in the castle of thorns? You’re such a romantic, Turner.”

  “Don’t talk like that. It hurts.”

  She smiled. “I can’t help being cheerful. We have two days together, and Omar gets seasick.”

  * * *

  The river flowed beneath their hulls like thin gray grease. Jungle leaned in from the banks; thick, clotted green mats of foliage over skinny, light-starved trunks, rank with creepers. It was snake country, leech country, a primeval reek stewing in deadly humidity, with air so thick that the raucous shrieks of birds seemed to cut it like ripsaws. Bugs whirled in dense mating swarms over rafts of slime. Suspicious, sodden logs loomed in the gray mud. Some logs had scales and eyes.

  The valley was as crooked as an artery, snaking between tall hills smothered in poisonous green. Sluggish wads of mist wreathed their tops. Where the trees failed, sheer cliffs were shrouded in thick ripples of ivy. The sky was gray, the sun a muddy glow behind tons of haze.

  The wind died, and Brooke fired up the ship’s tiny alcohol engine. Turner stood on the central bow as they sputtered upstream. He felt glazed and dreamy. Culture shock had seized him; none of it seemed real. It felt like a television. Reflexively, he kept thinking of Vancouver, sailboat trips out to clean pine islands.

  Seria and the prince joined him on the bow. “Lovely isn’t it?” said the prince. “We’ve made it a game preserve. Someday there will be tigers again.”

  “Good thinking, Your Highness,” Turner said.

  “The city feeds itself, you know. A lot of the old paddies and terraces have gone back to jungle.” The prince smiled with deep satisfaction.

  With evening, they tied up at a dock by the ruins of a riverine city. Decades earlier, a flood had devastated the t
own, leaving shattered walls, where vines snaked up trellises of rusting reinforcement rods. A former tourist hotel was now a ranger station.

  They all went ashore to review the troops: Royal Malay Rangers in jungle camo, and a visiting crew of Swedish ecologists from the World Wildlife Fund. The two aristocrats were gung-ho for a bracing hike through the jungle. They chatted amiably with the Swedes as they soaked themselves with gnat and leech repellent. Brooke pleaded his age, and Turner managed to excuse himself.

  Behind the city rose a soaring radio aerial and the rain-blotched white domes of satelite dishes.

  “Jamming equipment,” said Brooke with a wink. “The sultanate set it up years ago. Islamic, Malaysian, Japanese—you’d be surprised how violently people insist on being listened to.”

  “Freedom of speech,” Turner said.

  “How free is it when only rich nations can afford to talk? The Net’s expensive, Turner. To you it’s a way of life, but for us it’s just a giant megaphone for Coca-Cola. We built this to block the shouting of the outside world. It seemed best to set the equipment here in the ruins, out of harm’s way. This is a good place to hide secrets.” Brooke sighed. “You know how the corruption spreads. Anyone who touches it is tempted. We use these dishes as the nerve center of our own little Net. You can get a line out here—a real one, with video. Come along, Turner. I’ll stand Maple Syrup a free call to civilization, if you like.”

  They walked through leaf-littered streets, where pigs and lean, lizard-eyed chickens scattered from underfoot. Turner saw a tattooed face, framed in headphones, at a shattered second-story window. “The local Murut tribe,” Brooke said, glancing up. “They’re a bit shy.”

  The central control room was a small white concrete blockhouse surrounded by sturdy solar-panel racks. Brooke opened a tarnished padlock with a pocket key, and shot the bolt. Inside, the windowless blockhouse was faintly lit by the tiny green and yellow power-lights of antique disk drives and personal computers. Brooke flicked on a desk lamp and sat on a chair cushioned with moldy foam rubber. “All automated, you see? The government hasn’t had to pay an official visit in years. It keeps everyone out of trouble.”