The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  Bishop sat in a rented cubic room at the port’s only hotel and watched what Hyperion transmitted to his screen. For a few days, this was their pattern. The shaman didn’t find the ship it was looking for, nor any trace of it, nor traces of the passengers. There were a lot of other things Bishop saw that disturbed him, but he was protected, by his distance, the recorder, and the fact that these troubling things were not his immediate mission. There were many shadows here, like the ink-stained Mars twilight, moving splatters that now and again coagulated around a place or a person. He started to type, wrote “haunted?” He managed to read the report in bits and pieces. He struggled to wash, to shave, to function in between. He drank something called scotch that was alcohol with synthetic flavoring. It was good. It did the job. Beside “haunted?” he copied the most loathsome and mysterious of the names of things that Hyperion had identified. Cracklegrackle. His nerves jangled. He tried turning the screen on himself, but only when the ’jack wasn’t there. He looked old. A fucking wreck, to be honest. He was amazed.

  “They only affect those who wish to be affected,” the shaman insisted as they ate together on their last, fruitless night.

  “But how?” Bishop pushed his food around the bag it had come in, squashing it between his fingers and thumb.

  The answer was so unexpected and ridiculous that it silenced him. “Through the hands and feet, the crown or base of the spine. Never mind that. These rumors of laboratories open in the midstream; any surgery is available there. We should look into that.”

  Bishop agreed; what else could he do? They moved to a lesser port, and then a lesser one, the last place that pretended to be commercial operations. There was no hotel, just some rented rooms in a storehouse. Bishop began to run out of money, and sanity. He couldn’t bring himself to contact work and explain his absence. He thought only about Tabitha. He drank to avoid feeling. He took pills for regimented sessions of oblivion. Sometimes he watched the Mars journey again on his screen. Those strange floating films of color absorbed his attention more and more. The more he watched them, the more he saw that their movements seemed sinister and far from random. He saw himself pass through them and tried to remember if they had changed him.

  He’d felt nothing. Nothing. Hyperion’s statements about the people seemed more and more unlikely. He felt it was a wild-goose chase. Perhaps he had been paid to lead Bishop out here where he couldn’t make trouble, and strand him. Perhaps the Terraform had bought the Greenjack off. This ran through his mind hourly. Only the transmissions of the ’jack’s travels kept him going.

  Then one day, months after they had set out, he got the call.

  “I found her.”

  “Is she…”

  “Alive.”

  He scrabbled to get clean clothes, to clean himself, to get sober. He was full of joy, full of terror. The hours passed like eons. The ’jack brought a ship—one he saw this time, an Ironhorse Jackrabbit with barely enough space to fit them aboard. It yawned and they walked into its shark-like mouth. It held them there, one bite from vacuum death, and blinked them to the cloud streams of Jupiter. He barely noticed.

  “Are those things here?”

  “Everywhere, Mr. Bishop,” Hyperion said.

  “What things?” the Jackrabbit asked.

  “Energies,” the Greenjack said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  There was some bickering about the return journey. Bishop couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Where is she?” He gripped the Greenjack’s thorny arm. Its scaly skin was like a cat’s tongue, strangely abrasive. Around him, floating, the few human visitors to this place looked lost. Tabitha was none of them. They all looked through portholes into the gauzy films of the planet’s outer atmosphere streaming past below their tiny station. It looked like caramel coffee. Outside, various Forged were docked and queued. People had conversations in the odd little cubicles, like airlocks, that dotted the outside of the structure. Sometimes the doors flashed and then opened. People came out, went in, on both sides of the screen wall that separated the two environments—of in-station and freezing space—from one another.

  “This way,” the ’jack said. He reached out and laid his tough paw across the back of Bishop’s gripping hand for a second, then led him with a kick and drift through the slight pull of the planet’s gravity well to one of those lit doorways.

  Bishop peered inside, looking for her. The shaman followed him in. The room was empty.

  He turned. “She’s not here!”

  The shaman pointed at the panel in the reinforced floor. Some Jupiterian Forged was on the other side.

  Bishop looked at Hyperion, because he didn’t want to look at the window, but he floated toward it, his hands and feet betraying him as they pressed suddenly against the clear portal, and, on the far other side, across six sheets of various carbonates, glass, and vacuum, the Forged pressed its own hands toward his open palms.

  Jupiter was no place for a human being. They died there in droves. Even the Forged, who had been engineered before birth to thrive in its vicious atmosphere and live lives as glorified gas farmers fell prey to its merciless storms. The upper cloud layer was never more than minus one twenty Celsius. Large creatures didn’t operate that well at those temperatures, even ones that were mostly made of machine and chemical technologies so far removed from the original human that they were unrecognizable components of life. But Tupac, the motherfather, was able to create children who lived here, even some who dived far down to the place where hydrogen was a metal; scientists with single-minded visions. Tupac’s efforts had advanced human knowledge and experience to the limit of the material universe.

  Bishop’s senses didn’t stretch that far. He stared into eyes behind shields of methane ice that were nothing like his own, in a face that was twice the size of his, blue, bony, and metallic and more like the faceplate of a robot fish than anything else. Narrow arms, coated in crablike exoskeletal bone, reached out for him. The hands were five-digit extensions, covered in strange, sucker-like skin that clung easily to the glass. Behind that, the body was willowy, ballooning, tented like clothes in the wind, patterned like a mackerel. Jellyfish and squid were in its history somewhere, micro-precise fiber-engineering and ultracold processor tech its true parents.

  “She has a connection to Uluru,” Hyperion said quietly, naming the virtual reality that all the Forged shared. When their bodies could not meet, in mind they could get together anytime. “I can put it to your screen.”

  Bishop turned then. “You’re not seriously suggesting this…thing…is my daughter?”

  “There is a market for living bodies of any kind in the Belt. Old humans are particularly preferred for the testing of adaptive medical transformation. Technicians there have a mission to press beyond any restraint and develop their skills to make and remake any living tissues…”

  He exploded with a kind of laugh. “But you can’t make Forged. Not like that.”

  Hyperion was silent for a moment. “They say it is important to become self-adaptive, that they are the next step beyond Forged. They will be able to remake themselves in any fashion without experiencing discontinuity of consciousness. Any flesh or machine will be incorporated if it is willed. The Actualized…”

  “But it can’t be her!” His stare at the shaman was too wide. His eyes hurt. Against his will, he found himself turning, looking through the walls at the creature’s blinkless stare. Its face had no expression. It had no mouth or nose. Gill-like extensions fluttered behind its head like ruffles of voile. Its octopid hands pressed, pressed. Its nose touched the plate. Hyperion was holding the screen out to him.

  He took it in nerveless hands. They were so limp he could hardly turn it.

  “Davis tried to turn Wan in, once they reached Volatility, the port on Ceres. But the Forged Police there are all sympathizers. Wan and McKnight sold him, split the money…”

  On the screen was the standard summer garden that Uluru created for all such meetings, a place
for avatars to stand in simulated sunlight amid the shelter of shrubs and trees. Running through it, watermarked, was the background that Bishop could really see, the reality he was standing in. In front of the monstrous creature attached to the window stood Tabitha, in jeans and the yellow T-shirt with the T. rex on it that he bought her at some airport lounge some lifetime ago. Her soft brown hair moved in the nonexistent breeze. He touched the screen to feel the texture of her perfect skin.

  “Daddy.” The lips moved to whisper. Through her hazel eyes, the great void eyes of the fish stared.

  It was only an avatar. You could make these things easily. The photographs were even in his recorder. The voice was only like hers, it wasn’t really hers. There must be hundreds of standard tracks of her in the archives somewhere. These things were simple to fake.

  He thrust the screen back at Hyperion, though it was his, and tried to muster some shred of dignity. “Summon the ship.”

  The creature didn’t move from its floating position at his side. “Mr. Bishop…”

  “You’ve fooled me long enough with your chat and your lines and your little premade adventure complete with faked body, but I see through it now, if you can stand the irony of that, and I’m going. I find no evidence to confirm any of your ridiculous suggestions.” He was so angry that he could barely speak. Bits of spit flew off him and floated, benign and silly bubbles in the slowly circulating air. “Really, this was one step too far! I bought it hook, line, and sinker until now. I suppose you were trying to see how far I could be drawn. Well, a long way! Perhaps you were going to get some money for bringing the Institute into disrepute and scandal when I made some case with it for your insane claims about good and evil and possession and…your goose-chase. Yes. You took advantage of me. I was weak…” There was a sound in his head, that black hum. He could hear something in it. An identifiable noise. Definite. Sure.

  “Bishop,” the creature snapped.

  “…Daddy!” came the faint call from the screen as it tumbled down past the shaman’s side and clattered against the cabin wall.

  The black hum was laughing at him, a dreadful sound. It hurt his chest. It hurt everywhere. He was furious. His skin was red-hot, he couldn’t think of where to go. What a fool he’d been. “How dare you. How dare you…”

  Suddenly, the hideous gargoyle hissed, a low, menacing sound. “I have done what I said I would. I have found your daughter. I have no interest in your views…”

  Bishop was glaring around wildly. He made a shooing motion. “Get away! You won’t mock me anymore! Stupid, hideous creatures!” He began to thump the glass panels where the Jupiter creature’s hands were stuck. It didn’t move, just stared at him with its hidden, empty eyes. “You!” he turned on Hyperion. “Make it go away!”

  The Greenjack looked at him flatly, and even with its expressive handicap, he could feel its disgust. “Mr. Bishop, I urge you to look again, and listen. Your daughter…”

  “It’s not even possible!” Bishop kicked strongly for the door. Behind him, the recorder tumbled, ricocheting, out of control, the voice that came out of it growing fainter.

  “Daddy!”

  The door controls, they were too complicated for him. He couldn’t figure them out. He turned and lashed out wildly, thinking the Greenjack was closer than it was. It caught the recorder easily from its spin and held it out to him, contempt in its every line.

  Bishop took the little machine and smashed it against the wall until it stopped making any noise.

  Beyond the clear wall, the Jupiterian was letting go slowly, suckers peeling off one by one. Its eyes had frosted over strangely, white cracks visible across the ice surfaces, spreading until they shrouded the whole orbit. Its head moved back from the pane and dipped. At the same moment, the door opened.

  Bishop was out in a second. He couldn’t breathe. Not at all. His chest was tight. There was no damn oxygen. There must have been a malfunction. He gripped the handrails, gasping, the blood pounding in his eyes. “Oxygen!” he cried out. “There’s no air!” In his ears was the black hum.

  Hyperion passed him, gliding slowly. It was holding the recorder, and ignored Bishop’s outburst. It started talking, and as Bishop had to listen to it, unable to go anywhere, he heard the black sound forming itself into a shape.

  “I think that although you have broken the speakers and the screen, the memory is probably unharmed. It will not be possible to locate and arrest Davis as he has been scrapped for parts. Tabitha says that Wan and McKnight disposed of him first, before they went into the Belt proper. Wan wanted her to be rendered as well, but McKnight said there would be a lot more for a whole live subject. They were planning out how to create a trafficking chain and where to get more people for it from. She was taken to some facility about one hundred and twenty degrees off Earth vector. They wanted to make her as far from the original human as possible, to prove their accomplishments, but also because they thought it was fitting for humans to end up like the Forged out here have all ended, as slave workers in the materials industry. She isn’t like the other Forged of course, she’s just a fabrication. Her links to Uluru are very limited. She has no real contact other than voice and some vision with anyone else. And the Forged here are mostly rebel sympathizers. She tried to call you, but the networks out this way are very bad and none of the regular channels would carry her messages anyway, because she is marked as a risk to the survival of the Actualist movement. It took a great deal of trouble to get her to come here. It is dangerous. She risked everything. And she didn’t want to see you. It took days to persuade her that if you came there might be sufficient evidence to reopen the case and bring the Earthside police out here to pursue it.”

  Bishop gulped. “You’ve done a very thorough job, I’ll give you that.”

  The Greenjack made a clacking noise. It spoke in a calm, reasonable manner, as if Bishop were perfectly lucid. “I have not been able to trace the routes of Davis, Wan, or McKnight yet but I think they will be easy to find. I hope you understand, Mr. Bishop, that I do not require your permission to pursue the investigation or to make my findings known to the authorities. I also advise against your attempting to return to Earth alone. Many of the Forged here who would have you believe that they are honest taxis are pirates like Wan has aspired to become. The going rate for a live Old Monkey human in the Belt is upward of fifty thousand standard dollars. I doubt you have the finances to buy yourself out of trouble, even if they wanted you to.”

  The terrible pulse of the black hum wouldn’t let him think. Bishop reeled against the bulkhead, the rail gripped in his slippery fingers. He was heroic. “We must rescue her. We can take her back. Find a way. I can raise the money on Earth. The police can arrest those responsible and the government will…”

  “The government is well aware of the situation,” Hyperion said. “Returning Tabitha Earthside and attempting remodeling would be tantamount to a declaration of civil war out here. They will do no such thing. You know it as well as I do. Pull yourself together.” It handed him his screen, which it had repaired somehow. Aside from a cracked screen and broken speakers, it seemed all right. “This is your evidence. It is our only hard evidence, aside from the Uluru recording I have made, but, of course, those involved are Forged, so they are suspect.” This admission of bigotry in the judicial system seemed to make it tired. “If you do not act, there will be no justice of any kind.”

  Bishop held the screen without turning beyond the home page. He heard his own voice babbling, “We could kill them. McKnight, you can find him…”

  Hyperion waited a few moments. “Tabitha is an extraordinary person, Mr. Bishop. Although it is a mystery how she has sprung from you. She understands your feelings. You have hurt her deeply and this makes me dislike you very much. After what she has been through, your rejection is by far the most damaging thing that has happened here. And now, you are seeking to spread misery further by your stupidity. The energy wells out here are all very dark. A few lights shine. Tabitha
Bishop is one of them. You are now claiming that one of the energies is responsible for your weakness. I find that contemptible. Pull yourself together!”

  “You! You could find them and kill them and you won’t do it! Just this superstitious, religious babble. You bring me here to show me…to show me…Here, here!” He tried to get the screen to focus on him. “Show me now. I know it’s there. That thing. Show…” but Bishop could not finish. The words had cannoned into each other behind his tongue and exploded there into an unpronounceable summons for hell. Cracklegrackle.

  He wanted very much to be dead. The shame was unbearable. He could not carry it. On Earth, he would have been on his face, on his knees; here he was floating, curled up tight into a ball.

  The shaman waited. “You are not possessed, Mark. You are simply hysterical. Your future with your daughter is your own choice. However, we must take the recording back to Earth and submit it to the police there. Then we will have done our part. I, at least, will do so. You must hurry. She has to leave in a moment.”

  Behind Bishop’s eyes, the blackness was shot with red. He snarled at Hyperion, silently, and then, inch by inch, he hauled himself to the cubicle door, again with that will that wasn’t his, no it wasn’t.

  His joints hurt. His throat was so tight. He couldn’t breathe. Inside. The rails. The flat expanse of glass. The slices of clear shielding. The coffee-colored clouds miles below, as soft and gentle as thistledown. Dirt on the floor. They ought to clean this place. It was so hard to see through the handmarks, the footprints, the wear and tear on the old polycarbonate. It was so hard to see through the glass and the frozen methane that melted and ran to keep her sight clear, then froze, then melted again so that she was always half-blind. It was so hard to see through his tears.

  JOHN SCALZI

  THE TALE OF THE WICKED