The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Syl, you have just as much technology in your way as we do. Imagine going back and forth from the molecular to the molar scales!”

  “Yes. It is a big learning. Very frightening the first time, when we’re taught to visit.”

  “You said there were other Eea in Boney and Ko?”

  “Yes … but I couldn’t establish good contact, and they controlled everything. That’s why I slipped away, when I understood about the message device.”

  Coati grins. “I can understand that, Syl. But you took an awful chance.”

  She feels the elfin hands nod her head emphatically. “You are my savior.”

  “Oh, well. I didn’t know it. But if I had known it, I would have got you off there, Syllobene. I couldn’t have let you die in space.”

  A feeling of indefinable warmth and real happiness glows within her. Coati understands. There is genuine friendship between her and her tiny alien passenger.

  The recorder has been clicking away as they talked. But of course it won’t show her feelings. Pity.

  “Just for the record,” she says formally, “I have, uh, subjective reasons to believe that this alien has sincere feelings of friendship for me. I mean for me, not just as a convenience. I think that’s important. I feel the same toward Syl.”

  It’s time to set CC-One down. With all care, Coati jockeys her little ship in above the big supply tug and comes down neatly beside it. Nothing untoward shows up. That must mean that Boney and/or Ko were really in wobbly condition when they came in.

  The atmosphere tests out green, but still she suits up for her first trip out. As her ports open, she gets her first good look at the DRS.

  “Their ramp’s down,” she tells the ‘corder. “And, hey, the port’s ajar! Not good. I’m going in.… Hello! Hello in there!… Oh!”

  Her voice breaks off. Sounds of footsteps, squeaks of ports being pulled.

  “Oh, my. What a mess. There were gloves on the ramp—and the inside looks like they didn’t clean anything up for a long time. I see food dishes and cassettes and a suit—wait, two suits—in a heap on the deck, as if they’d just jumped out of them. Oh, dear, this looks like trouble … I think somebody threw up here.… There’re a lot of those goldy seeds around everywhere, too.”

  She prowls the cabin, reporting as she checks the sleep chests and anyplace a man-sized body could be. Nothing. And the big cargo hold is empty, too, except for a carton of supplies bound somewhere.

  She comes outside, saying, “I think I should try to find them. The ground here is soft, like peat, with low vegetation or whatever, and I can see trampled places. There’s one big place that looks like a trail leading”—she checks her bearings—“leading north, of all things. The atmosphere is highly Human-compatible, lots of oxy. I have my helmet off. So I’m going to try to follow their trail. But just in case I get into trouble, I think I better send this record off first. It has all about Syl’s planet on it. Lords, I wish I could send it from the surface. I guess I’ll have to lift above atmosphere. I’m taking some of their message pipes over to my ship. So here goes. It’s the only neat thing to do.”

  She sighs, clicks off, and gets back into her ship.

  Preparing to lift off, she says, “You’re very quiet, Syllobene. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes. But I am—I am afraid.”

  “Afraid of what? Walking around on a strange planet? Listen, I do have a hand weapon in case we run into big, wild, vicious beasts. But I don’t think there’s anything like that around here. Nothing for a carnivore to eat.”

  “No … I am not afraid of the planet. I fear … what you will find.”

  Coati is maneuvering her ship up for a fast single orbit and return. “What do you mean, Syl?” she asks a trifle absently.

  “Coati, my friend”—it sounds weird to hear her name in her own voice—“I wish to wait until you search. Perhaps I am wrong. I hope so.”

  “Well-ll, green, if you must,” Coati is preoccupied with opening a message pipe. “Oh, bother, there’s some of those little yellow dust seeds in here. How do I clear them out? I don’t want to kill them—you say they can live in space, like you—but I don’t think they should get loose in FedBase, do you?”

  “No! No!”

  “Look, I’m sorry about your seeds. I just want to make them get out of this pipe. How do I do that?”

  “Heat. High heat.”

  “Huh … oh, I know.” She clicks the recorder on and tells it what she’s doing. “I’m going to put the pipe in my food heater and run the heater up to 120 degrees C. That won’t hurt the cassette.… All right, I’m taking it out with tongs. By the gods, there’re a couple of those seeds coming out of the ‘corder as it gets near heat. All out, you. I will now end this record as I remove the cassette to send. CC-One signing off, before returning to planet to search for B and K.”

  “Good thing we did that,” she tells Syl as she closes the pipe and puts it in the lock to be blown out. “Here goes the air.—And there goes the pipe! I hope the Base frequency reaches this far.… Yes, it does. Neat, how the little thing knows where to go. Bye-bye, you.… Funny, I’m getting a feeling like we’re a long, long ways from anywhere. Being a space adventurer can be a trifle spooky.” She noses the ship over into landing mode, thinking, “I’m going down to hike over a strange planet looking for two people who, face it, may be dead.…

  “Syllobene?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really glad I have you for a friend here. Hey, maybe there’s another thing your people could do … I mean, for credits: Going with lonely space people on long trips!”

  “Ah.…”

  “I was just joking.… Or was I?”

  Soon they are back on the planet, beside the abandoned DRS. Coati puts on planetary weather gear and tramping shoes. It’s sunny but bleak outside. She packs a week’s rations and some water, although the ground is spongy-wet. Then she clips the recorder to her shoulder and carefully loads it with a fresh cassette.

  * * *

  A long time later, after Coati has been officially declared missing, that same fresh cassette, its shine somewhat dimmed, is in the hands of the deputy to the exec of FedBase 900. It is about to be listened to by a group of people in the exec’s conference room.

  Weeks before, the message that Coati had lifted off-planet to send had arrived at FedBase. The staff has heard all about Syllobene and the Eea, and the Eeadron, and the Dron, and all the other features of Syllobene’s planet Nolian, and her short trip with Boney and Ko; they have left Coati and her brain passenger about to go back down to the unnamed planet on which sits Boney and Ko’s empty ship.

  One of the group of listeners now is not of FedBase.

  When that first message had come in, the exec had signaled the Cass family, and Coati’s father is now in the room. He looks haggard; he has worn out his vocabulary of anger—particularly when he found that no rescue mission was being planned.

  “Very convenient for you, Commander,” he had sneered. “Letting a teenage girl do your dirty work. I say it’s your responsibility to look for your own missing men, and to go get my daughter out of there and free her from that damn brain parasite. You should never have let her go way out there in the first place! If you think I’m not going to report this—”

  “How do you suggest I could have stopped her, Myr Cass? She injected herself of her free will into an ongoing search, without consulting anyone. If anyone is to blame for her being out here, it’s you. It was your responsibility to have some control over your daughter’s travels in that ship you gave her. Meanwhile my responsibility is to my people, and I’m not justified in risking another ship pursuing a Federation citizen on her voluntary travels.”

  “But that cursed alien in her—”

  “Yes. To be blunt about it, Myr Cass, your daughter is already infected, if that’s the word, and she has given us evidence of the great mobility and potential for contagion of these small beings. We have probably already lost the men who
first visited them. Now I suggest we quiet down and listen to what your daughter has to say. It may be that your concerns are baseless.”

  Grumblingly, Cass senior subsides.

  “This message pipe has been heated, too,” says the deputy. “The plastic shows it. From which we can infer that she was compos mentis and possibly in her own ship when she sent it.”

  The recording starts with a few miscellaneous bangs and squeaks.

  “I’ve decided to take another look at B-K’s ship before I start,” Coati’s voice says. “Maybe they left a message or something.”

  The ‘corder clicks off and on again.

  “I’ve been hunting around in here,” says Coati. “No message I can see. There’s a holocam focused on the cabin, but it’s been turned off. Hey, I bet the Feds like to keep an eye on things, for cases like this. I’ll root around by the shell.”

  Clicks—off, on.

  “I’ve spotted what I think is another holocam up in the bow; I heard it click.… How can I get at it? Oh, wait, maybe from outside.” Off, on. “Yo-ho! I got it. It’s in time-lapse mode; I think it caught the terrain around the ship. We’ll just take it over to my ship and run it.”

  Click—off.

  Exec shifts uneasily. “I believe she’s discovered the planetary recorder. I’m not sure the two men knew it was there.”

  “That must be the additional small cassett in this pipe,” the deputy says.

  The recorder has come on. “It’s really small,” Coati is saying. “Hey, it’s full of your seeds, Syllobene. Those things must like cassettes. I’m threading it—here we go. Oh, my, oh, my—Syllobene!”

  “That is my home,” says Coati in what they have come to recognize as the voice of the alien speaking through Coati’s throat. “Oh, my beautiful home!… But what a marvel, how do you—”

  “Later,” Coati cuts herself off. “Later we’ll look at it all you want. Right now we have to run it ahead to where it shows this planet and maybe the two men we’re looking for.”

  “Yes—Oh, that was my mentor—”

  “Oh, gods, I’d love to look. But I’m speeding up now.” Sounds of fast clicking, incoherent small sounds from Coati’s Syllobene voice.

  “See, now they’ve taken off. It’ll be stars for a long time, nothing but the starfield.” Furious clicks. “Gods, I hope it doesn’t run out.”

  “No fear,” says the deputy. “These things are activated by rapid action in the field. When the action is as slow as a passing starfield, it reverts to its resting rate of about a frame an hour—maybe a frame a day; I forget. Only a passing rock or whatnot will speed them up briefly.”

  “Here we are,” says Coati’s voice, “I can see that great string of GO suns.… Yes, they seem to be heading in to the planet now; I’d need a scope to tell—ah! It’s getting bigger. That’s it, all right.… Closer, closer … they’re going into orbit. But Syl, look at that frame wobble. I tell you, whoever’s flying is not all right.… Oo-oops—that could be changing pilots, or maybe switching over to the rockets. Oh, dear … yes, they’re coming in like a load of gravel; I’m glad I know they made it.… Smoke now, nothing but smoke. Their torches have hit. Down—I see flames. This must be action-activated; there’ll be a pause now, but we can’t tell how long. I know this doesn’t mean much to you, Syl, but wait till the smoke clears—ah! Look, there’s the landscape we saw around the ship, right?”

  The alien voice makes a small murmur.

  “Action again—that’s the edge of the ramp. Here comes one of the men—now the other—which is which? I’ll call the tall, thin one Boney. Oh, dear gods, they’re staggering. See, they dropped those gloves. And look, the vegetation around the ship outside the burn is all untrampled. This is their first exit, of course—oh, the Boney one fell down! Could the cold-sleep have done that, have they come out too soon? I don’t think so; I think they’re sick. Look, there’s a funny place on Ko’s face, over the nose; he keeps scratching. They’re not stopping to look around or anything. This isn’t good, Syl.… Now they’re both down on their hands and knees, in the burn. Oh, I wish I could help them. Look, do you see the goldy cloud, like your spores, by the ramp?”

  A pause, with small “ohs” and murmurs.

  “They’re up now; I hope they’re not burned—why, they’re running, or trying to run! Away from the ship. Toward the trampled place we saw, only it isn’t trampled now. Oh. Boney is—and Ko—they’re stripping! What are they trying to do, take a bath? But there’s no—Oh! Oh, wait, what? Oh, no! Oh! Oh, dear gods, I don’t like this much. I thought all spacers operated under the Code. I didn’t know recon teams did sex!”

  “They don’t,” growls Exec, startling everybody.

  General stirrings in the room as Coati’s voice goes on haltingly, “Well, this is weird … I don’t much want to look at it; it’s not happy-looking like our demo teams back at school. Huh … I don’t think they know what to do, exactly.… Their faces look crazy; why, one of them has his mouth open like he was yelling or screaming. They look terrible.… Whoever’s listening to this, I’m sorry. I hope I’m not saying anything bad. But this is weird, it’s like ugly.… They have to stop soon, I hope. Oh, no—” Her voice is shaking, on the verge of some kind of outcry.

  “Oh, oh, oh—” But it’s the other voice that begins sobbing frankly now. The recorder blurs in a confusion of, “Syl! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” and “Oh, I was afraid, oh, I’m afraid, oh, Coati, it’s terrible—”

  “Yeah, it’s ugly. That’s not the way Humans really mate, Syl.”

  “No,” says Syl’s tones, “I don’t mean that. I mean we—oh, oh—” And she’s sobbing again.

  “Listen, Syl!” Coati gulps back alien tears, cuts her off. “I think you know something you aren’t telling me! You tell me what’s frightening you this instant, or I’ll—I’ll bash my own brains so hard it’ll shake you loose. See?”

  There’s the sound of a hard slap on flesh, and then a sudden sharp outcry.

  “Hey—what—you hurt me, Syl. I th-thought you never—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the alien voice moans. “I p-panicked when you said you would harm yourself—”

  “Or harm you, huh? Look, I can stand a lot of pain if I have to. You tell me right now what’s got into those men. Look, they’ve collapsed again. Tell me!”

  “It—It’s the young ones.”

  “The young what?”

  “The young Eea—from s-seeds in th-the ship.”

  “But you said there were grown-up Eea in each of the men. Didn’t they keep the seeds off, like you did for me?”

  “They—Oh, Coati, I told you, they were very old. They must have died, and the seeds went into the men. I saw them getting feeble. That’s when I got frightened and I-left. Before the Humans went in cold-sleep.… Oh, Coati, it’s so horrible—I feel so bad—”

  “Hush up now, Syl, and let me understand. What could seeds do?”

  “Seeds hatch, when they’re in—they hatched into young ones. With no mentors, no one to train them, they’re like wild animals. They grow. They eat—they eat anything. And then in the cold-sleep, some of them must have matured. No teachers, no one to teach them discipline. Oh, the others should have known the seeds and spores would seek hosts, they should have seen that those visitors who went with them were too old. B-but nobody knew how long, how far.… When I began to understand how long a time it was going to be, I knew something bad would happen. And I c-couldn’t do anything; they wouldn’t listen to me. So I-I ran away.” The alien is convulsing Coati with sobs.

  “Well-ll.…” Long sigh from Coati. “Oh, dear gods, the poor men. You mean the young ones just ate their brains out?”

  “Y-yes, I fear so. As if they were Dron. Worse, because no teachers.”

  “And that sex stuff—that was the mature ones making them do it?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes! Like wild animals. We’re taught strictly to control it; we’re shown. It takes much training to be fully Eea. Even
I am not fully trained.… Oh, I wish I’d died there in space instead of seeing this—”

  “Oh, no. Brace up, Syl. It’s not your fault. Nobody who isn’t used to space could grasp how long the distances are. They probably thought it would be like a long trip in your country.… Oh, look—the men have gotten up. God, they’re holding each other up; their legs keep going out of control. Motor centers gone, maybe. They’re going—they went up that path north; only it wasn’t a path then. They’re making the path, trampling.… That’s where we go, Syl, unless this shows them coming back. It’ll have to be soon; we’re almost at where the camera stopped. I wish I knew how long ago this was. The sun looks kind of different, and the colors of the vegetation, but that could be the camera. I’m going to speed up. Syl, stop crying, honey; it’s not your fault.”

  Rapid clicking from the recorder.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Coati’s voice says. “Still nothing. I doubt they came back. Nothing—wait, what’s that? Oh, my goodness, it’s the wake—it’s our ship landing. Well! I don’t think I want to see us, do you? Let’s take out this cassette and go.”

  Click.

  In the executive office the deputy stops the recorder for a moment.

  “Is that clear to everyone?”

  Grunts of assent answer him.

  “I think this casts a new light on the potentials of Coati’s little friend’s race,” the medical officer says. “I suggest that we all keep a sharp eye open for anything that looks like grains of yellow powder, in case the young woman’s heat treatment did not completely clean out this pipe. Or the preceding one. Her initial precautions were very wise.”

  Before he’s finished speaking, Exec has turned on stronger lights. There is a subdued shuffling as people look themselves over, brushing at imaginary golden spots.

  “Gods, if a pipeful of that stuff had got loose in here, and nobody warned!” Xenology mutters. “H’mm … Boney and Ko.”

  “Yes,” Exec understands Xenology’s shorthand. “If we get any indication that their ship lifted off, we have some hard decisions to make. I gather the seeds can affix themselves to the outside of space vessels, too. Well, we’d best continue and see what our problem is.”