The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “I see … I see.”

  “Syllobene, my dear, whatever happens, remember we were great friends, and had adventures together, and saved each other’s lives. And if you do something bad to me, remember I know it isn’t really you; it’s just an accident because we’re so different. I … I’ve never had a friend I loved more, Syl. So good-bye, and remember it all with joy if you can.”

  A sound of sobbing. “G-goo-bye, dear Coati Cass. I am so sad with all my being that it is through me that badness has come. Being friends with you has lifted my life to lightness I never dreamed of. If I survive, I will tell my people how good and true Humans are. But I don’t think I will have that chance. One way or another, I will end my life with yours, Coati Cass. Above all, I do not wish to bring more trouble on Humans.

  “Syl.…” Coati says thoughtfully. “If you mean that about going together, there’s a way. Do you mean it?”

  “Y-yes. Yes.”

  “The thing is, in addition to what happens to us, our ship will be a menace to anybody, Human or whatever, who gets at it. It’s sort of our duty not to do a thing like that, you know? And I really don’t want to go on as a zombie. And I see that beautiful yellow sun out there, the sun we saw all those days and nights down on the planet … like it’s waiting for us … Syl?”

  “Coati, I understand you.”

  “Of course, there’re a lot of things I wanted to do; you d-did, too—maybe this is the b-big one—”

  The recorder lapses to a fuzzy sound.

  “Something has been erased,” the deputy says.

  It comes back in a minim or two with Coati’s voice saying, “—didn’t need to hear all that. The point is, we’ve decided. So—ow! Oh-h-h—ow! What?”

  “Coati!” The small voice seems to be screaming. “Coati, I’m losing—I’m losing myself! Something wants to hurt you, to stop you—to make you go into cold-sleep—I’m fighting it—Oh, forgive me, forgive me—”

  “OW! Hey, I forgive you, but—Oh, ouch! Wait, hold it, baby, I just have to set our course, and then I’ll hop right into the chest. I have to set the computer; try to understand.”

  Undecipherable noise from the alien. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the unmistakable sound of a young Human voice humming fills the room.

  “I know that tune,” the computer chief says suddenly. “It’s old—wait—yes. It’s ‘Into the Heart of the Sun.’… She’s trying to tell us what she’s doing without alerting that maniacal parasite.”

  “We’d better listen closely,” the deputy observes superfluously.

  A moment later the humming gives place to a softly sung bar of words—yes, it’s ‘Into the Heart of the Sun.’ It ends in a sharp yelp. “Hey, Syl, try not to, please—”

  “I try! I try!”

  “We get into cold-sleep just as soon as I possibly can. Don’t hurt me, you doppelgänger, or I’ll make a mistake and you’ll end up as fried spores—Owwwww! For an amateur, you’re a little d-devil, Syl.” The voice seems to be trying to conceal the wail of real agony. Exec is reminded of the wounded patrolmen he tended as a young med-aid long ago during the Last War.

  “I just have to regoogolate the fribilizer that keeps us from penetrating high g-fields,” says Coati. “You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

  Her own throat growls at her. “Hurry.”

  “That’s an old nonsense phrase,” Computers speaks up. “‘Googolating the fribilizer’—she’s trying to tell us she’s killing the automatic-drive override. Oh, good girl.”

  “And now I must send this message pipe off. It’s in your interests, Syl; it shows you doing all those useful things. And I have to heat it first—Oh, ow—please let me, Syl, please try to let m-me—”

  Sounds that might be a heat oven, roughly handled, punctuated by yelps from Coati. Her father is gripping his chair arms so hard they creak.

  “Yes, I know that big yellow sun is getting pretty hot and bright. Don’t let it worry you. If we go close by it, we’ll save a whole leg of our trip. It’s the only neat thing to do. Han Lu Han, anybody there? Here, I’ll pull the bow blinds.

  “And now the cassettes from Boney and Ko go in the pipe—ow!—and where’s that little one from their bow camera? Syl, try to tell your primitive self you’re just slowing me down with these jabs. Please, please—Ah, here it is. And out come the spores—I mean, the seeds that were in there.… That pipe is hot!

  “And now it’s time to say good-bye, put this in the pipe, and climb into the chest. I really hope the pipe’s frequency can pull it through these g’s. On second thought, maybe I’d like to see where we’re going while it lasts. As long as I can stand the pain, I think I’ll stay out and watch.”

  Loud sounds of the cassette being handled.

  “Good-bye, all. To my folks, oh, I do love you, Dad and Mum. Maybe somebody at FedBase can explain—OW!! Oh … Oh … I can’t … Hey, Syl, is there anybody you want to say good-bye to? Your mentor?”

  A confused vocalization, then, faintly: “Yes.…”

  “Remember Syl. She’s the real stuff, she’s doing this for Humans. For an alien race. She could have stopped me, believe it.… Bye, all.”

  A crash, and the recorder goes to silence.

  “Han Lu Han,” says the xenobiologist quietly into the silence. “He was that boy in the Lyrae mission. ‘It’s the only really neat thing to do.’ He said that before he took the rescue run that killed him.”

  Exec clears his throat. “Myr Cass, we will send a reconnaissance mission to check the area. But I fear there is no reason to believe, or hope, that Myr Coati failed in her plan to eliminate the contagious menace of herself, her passenger, and the ship by flying into a sun. By the end of the message, she was close enough to feel its heat, and it was doubtless the effect of the gravity that delayed this message pipe so much longer than the preceding one, which was sent only a few days earlier. She had, moreover, carefully undone the precautions that prevent a ship on automatic drive from colliding with a star. Myr Cass, when confronted by a terrifying and painful dilemma capable of causing great harm to others, your daughter took the brave and honorable course, and we must be grateful to her.”

  Silence, as all contemplate the sudden ending of a bright young life. Two bright young lives.

  “But you said she was alive and well when the message was sent.” Coati’s father makes a last, confused protest.

  “Sir, I said she was compos mentis and probably in her ship,” the deputy reminds him.

  “Thank the gods her mother didn’t come here.…”

  “You can pinpoint the star she was headed for?” Exec asked Charts.

  “Oh, yes. The B-K coordinates are good.”

  “Then, if nobody has a different idea, I suggest that it be appropriately named in the new ephemeris.”

  “Coati’s Star,” says Commo. People are rising to leave.

  “And Syllobene,” a quiet voice says. “Have we forgotten already?”

  “Myr Cass, I think you may perhaps prefer to be alone for a moment,” Exec tells him. “Anytime you wish to see me, I’ll be at your service in my office.”

  “Thank you.”

  Exec leads his deputy out, and opts for a quiet lunch in their small private dining room. Added to the list of things that were on his mind before he entered the conference chamber to hear Coati’s message are now the problem of when and how to contact the Eea; how to determine the degree of danger from their seeds or spores, in space near the promising GO suns; the Lost Colony question; whether to quarantine the area; and whether there is any chance of any seeds in FedBase itself from the earlier messages. Also, a sample of the chemical that Syllobene had immunized Coati with would seem to be a rather high priority.

  But behind all these practical thoughts, an image floats in his mind’s eye, accompanied by the sound of a light young voice humming. It’s the image in silhouette of two children—one Human, the other not—advancing steadfastly, hand in hand, toward an inferno of alien solar fire. />
  BRUCE STERLING

  Dinner In Audoghast

  Here’s another fascinating story by Bruce Sterling, whose “Green Days In Brunei” appears elsewhere in this book.

  This time he reminds us that while prophets may indeed be without honor in their own countries, they remain, after all, prophets …

  DINNER IN AUDOGHAST

  Bruce Sterling

  “Then one arrives at Audoghast, a large and very populous city built in a sandy plain.… The inhabitants live in ease and possess great riches. The market is always crowded; the mob is so huge and the chattering so loud that you can scarcely hear your own words.… The city contains beautiful buildings and very elegant homes.” DESCRIPTION OF NORTHERN AFRICA, Abu Ubayd al-Bakri (1040-1094 A.D.)

  * * *

  Delightful Audoghast! Renowned through the civilized world, from Cordova to Baghdad, the city spread in splendor beneath a twilit Saharan sky. The setting sun threw pink and amber across adobe domes, masonry mansions, tall, mud-brick mosques, and open plazas thick with bristling date-palms. The melodious calls of market vendors mixed with the remote and amiable chuckling of Saharan hyenas.

  Four gentlemen sat on carpets in a tiled and whitewashed portico, sipping coffee in the evening breeze. The host was the genial and accomplished slave-dealer, Manimenesh. His three guests were Ibn Watunan, the caravan master; Khayali, the poet and musician; and Bagayoko, a physician and court assassin.

  The home of Manimenesh stood upon the hillside in the aristocratic quarter, where it gazed down on an open marketplace and the mud-brick homes of the lowly. The prevailing breeze swept away the city reek, and brought from within the mansion the palate-sharpening aromas of lamb in tarragon and roast partridge in lemons and eggplant. The four men lounged comfortably around a low inlaid table, sipping spiced coffee from Chinese cups, and watching the ebb and flow of market life.

  The scene below them encouraged a lofty philosophical detachment. Manimenesh, who owned no less than fifteen books, was a well-known patron of learning. Jewels gleamed on his dark, plump hands, which lay cozily folded over his paunch. He wore a long tunic of crushed red velvet, and a gold-threaded skullcap.

  Khayali, the young poet, had studied architecture and verse in the schools of Timbuktu. He lived in the household of Manimenesh as his poet and praisemaker, and his sonnets, ghazals, and odes were recited throughout the city. He propped one elbow against the full belly of his two-string guimbri guitar, of inlaid ebony, strung with leopard gut.

  Ibn Watunan had an eagle’s hooded gaze and hands calloused by camelreins. He wore an indigo turban and a long striped djellaba. In thirty years as a sailor and caravaneer, he had bought and sold Zanzibar ivory, Sumatran pepper, Ferghana silk, and Cordovan leather. Now a taste for refined gold had brought him to Audoghast, for Audoghast’s African bullion was known throughout Islam as the standard of quality.

  Doctor Bagayoko’s ebony skin was ridged with an initiate’s scars, and his long, clay-smeared hair was festooned with knobs of chiselled bone. He wore a tunic of white Egyptian cotton, hung with gris-gris necklaces, and his baggy sleeves bulged with herbs and charms. He was a native Audoghastian of the animist persuasion, the personal physician of the city’s Prince.

  Bagayoko’s skill with powders, potions, and unguents made him an intimate of Death. He often undertook diplomatic missions to the neighboring Empire of Ghana. During his last visit there, the anti-Audoghast faction had conveniently suffered a lethal outbreak of pox.

  Between the four men was the air of camaraderie common to gentlemen and scholars.

  They finished the coffee and a slave took the empty pot away. A second slave, a girl from the kitchen staff, arrived with a wicker tray loaded with olives, goat-cheese, and hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with vermilion. At that moment, a muezzin yodelled the evening call to prayer.

  “Ah,” said Ibn Watunan, hesitating. “Just as we were getting started.”

  “Never mind,” said Manimenesh, helping himself to a handful of olives. “We’ll pray twice next time.”

  “Why was there was no noon prayer today?” said Watunan.

  “Our muezzin forgot,” the poet said.

  Watunan lifted his shaggy brows. “That seems rather lax.”

  Doctor Bagayoko said, “This is a new muezzin. The last was more punctual, but, well, he fell ill.” Bagayoko smiled urbanely and nibbled his cheese.

  “We Audoghastians like our new muezzin better,” said the poet, Khayali. “He’s one of our own, not like that other fellow, who was from Fez. Our muezzin is sleeping with a Christian’s wife. It’s very entertaining.”

  “You have Christians here?” Watunan said.

  “A clan of Ethiopian Copts,” said Manimenesh. “And a couple of Nestorians.”

  “Oh,” said Watunan, relaxing. “For a moment I thought you meant real feringhee Christians, from Europe.”

  “From where?” Manimenesh was puzzled.

  “Very far away,” said Ibn Watunan, smiling. “Ugly little countries, with no profit.”

  “There were empires in Europe once,” said Khayali knowledgeably. “The Empire of Rome was almost as big as the modern civilized world.”

  Watunan nodded. “I have seen the New Rome, called Byzantium. They have armored horsemen, like your neighbors in Ghana. Savage fighters.”

  Bagayoko nodded, salting an egg. “Christians eat children.”

  Watunan smiled. “I can assure you that the Byzantines do no such thing.”

  “Really?” said Bagayoko. “Well, our Christians do.”

  “That’s just the doctor’s little joke,” said Manimenesh. “Sometimes strange rumors spread about us, because we raid our slaves from the Nyam-Nyam cannibal tribes on the coast. But we watch their diet closely, I assure you.”

  Watunan smiled uncomfortably. “There is always something new out of Africa. One hears the oddest stories. Hairy men, for instance.”

  “Ah,” said Manimenesh. “You mean gorillas, from the jungles to the south. I’m sorry to spoil the story for you, but they are nothing better than beasts.”

  “I see,” said Watunan. “That’s a pity.”

  “My grandfather owned a gorilla once,” Manimenesh said. “Even after ten years, it could barely speak Arabic.”

  They finished the appetizers. Slaves cleared the table and brought in a platter of fattened partridges, stuffed with lemons and eggplants, on a bed of mint and lettuce. The four diners leaned in closer and dexterously ripped off legs and wings.

  Watunan sucked meat from a drumstick and belched politely. “Audoghast is famous for its cooks,” he said. “I’m pleased to see that this legend, at least, is confirmed.”

  “We Audoghastians pride ourselves on the pleasures of table and bed,” said Manimenesh, pleased. “I have asked Elfelilet, one of our premiere courtesans, to honor us with a visit tonight. She will bring her troupe of dancers.”

  Watunan smiled. “That would be splendid. One tires of boys on the trail. Your women are remarkable. I’ve noticed that they go without the veil.”

  Khayali lifted his voice in song. “When a woman of Audoghast appears/The girls of Fez bite their lips,/The dames of Tripoli hide in closets,/And Ghana’s women hang themselves.”

  “We take pride in the exalted status of our women,” said Manimenesh. “It’s not for nothing that they command a premium market price!”

  In the marketplace, downhill, vendors lit tiny oil lamps, which cast a flickering glow across the walls of tents and the watering troughs. A troop of the Prince’s men, with iron spears, shields, and chain-mail, marched across the plaza to take the night watch at the Eastern Gate. Slaves with heavy water-jars gossiped beside the well.

  “There’s quite a crowd around one of the stalls,” said Bagayoko.

  “So I see,” said Watunan. “What is it? Some news that might affect the market?”

  Bagayoko sopped up gravy with a wad of mint and lettuce. “Rumor says there’s a new fortune-teller in town. New prophets always go thro
ugh a vogue.”

  “Ah yes,” said Khayali, sitting up. “They call him ‘the Sufferer.’ He is said to tell the most outlandish and entertaining fortunes.”

  “I wouldn’t trust any fortune-teller’s market tips,” said Manimenesh. “If you want to know the market, you have to know the hearts of the people, and for that you need a good poet.”

  Khayali bowed his head. “Sir,” he said, “live forever.”

  It was growing dark. Household slaves arrived with pottery lamps of sesame oil, which they hung from the rafters of the portico. Others took the bones of the partridges and brought in a haunch and head of lamb with a side-dish of cinnamon tripes.

  As a gesture of esteem, the host offered Watunan the eyeballs, and after three ritual refusals the caravan-master dug in with relish. “I put great stock in fortune-tellers, myself,” he said, munching. “They are often privy to strange secrets. Not the occult kind, but the blabbing of the superstitious. Slave-girls anxious about some household scandal, or minor officials worried over promotions—inside news from those who consult them. It can be useful.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Manimenesh, “perhaps we should call him up here.”

  “They say he is grotesquely ugly,” said Khayali. “He is called ‘the Sufferer’ because he is outlandishly afflicted by disease.”

  Bagayoko wiped his chin elegantly on his sleeve. “Now you begin to interest me!”

  “It’s settled, then.” Manimenesh clapped his hands. “Bring young Sidi, my errand runner!”

  Sidi arrived at once, dusting flour from his hands. He was the cook’s teenage son, a tall young black in a dyed woollen djellaba. His cheeks were stylishly scarred and he had bits of brass wire interwoven with his dense black locks. Manimenesh gave him his orders; Sidi leapt from the portico, ran downhill through the garden, and vanished through the gates.

  The slave-dealer sighed. “This is one of the problems of my business. When I bought my cook she was a slim and lithesome wench, and I enjoyed her freely. Now years of dedication to her craft have increased her market value by twenty times, and also made her as fat as a hippopotamus, though that is beside the point. She has always claimed that Sidi is my child, and since I don’t wish to sell her, I must make allowance. I have made him a freeman; I have spoiled him, I’m afraid. On my death, my legitimate sons will deal with him cruelly.”