Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

by Rich Horton

  One by one the Levers are finishing up and heading to the cleansing room, some of them whispering and giving me looks as strange as the ones I got outside from the Sculpted. I rush to try to complete the minimal requirements before the place fills up with Inclined Planes, but in vain. I'm not quite done when Nicodemus and another Plane named Amos arrive. I see them from across the room, over the tops of three ranks of machines. I duck my head but too late. Nic spots me and hurries over.

  The station next to mine is empty, abandoned just moments before. Nic, his face cautiously friendly, slides into the seat, leaving Amos to fidget awkwardly in the aisle before us. “Selah, Jude,” Nic says.

  "Selah,” I say, mouth dry.

  Nic begins some warmup stretches of his arms and back. “You weren't at schola today,” he says.

  I look straight ahead, pumping away with my arms in bellows mode, but Amos is right there staring at me so I focus on my knees instead. “No,” I say.

  "Malachi heard you were outside,” Nic says.

  "Yeah, at the hub,” Amos says.

  "He said you had a job."

  A wary hope fills Nic's voice, but whether it's hope that the rumors or true or simply hope that I'll talk to him, I can't tell. Either way, I can't look at him. I can't look at his golden hair, his glistening shoulders, his wise blue eyes. But I can't not answer.

  "That's right,” I say gruffly. “I guess you won't see me much in class anymore."

  "Is it true about the Sculpted?” Amos says. He's a skinny kid and he practically dances from foot to foot. “They drink blood instead of water?"

  "Amos, I see a free machine over there,” Nic says with a jerk of his head.

  "But—"

  "I'm nearly done here,” I say.

  "Better hurry, Amos."

  I can't see Nic's face, but I hear the tone of warning in his voice, and I see the answering expression of querulousness on Amos's face. Amos stalks off, even as I fight down the unwelcome surge of warm emotion in my chest.

  I rest for a twelve-count, saying nothing, then embark on another bellows set.

  Nic has launched into a set of cherrypickers. “So what's with you, Jude?” he says between reps.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've been avoiding me for a couple of weeks now. What did I do?"

  I sigh, clinging to the handgrips and letting my upper body sag. “It's not you, Nic."

  "Then what is it? Is it about this job?"

  What am I supposed to tell him? That I've started to worry I like him too much? I can hardly express the thought even to myself.

  "It's not about the stupid job,” I say, though I'm aching to tell him about everything I've seen and done today. I cut my set short and stand up, infuriated. “Great Builder, you're so—so—oh, flashcan it!"

  I rush to the cleansing room with all the dignity I can muster, which isn't much, aware of all the eyes on me. In the quick glimpse I caught of Nic before I fled, there was hurt and concern. He hadn't yet broken a sweat.

  I try to put him out of my head among the straggling Levers in the steam-filled shower. I try to conjure the illusion of camouflage I felt in the showers at the hub, as if I could hide myself amongst my Sculpted crewmates and never be seen. Here I feel anxious and wrong, like I don't belong. But I certainly don't belong there.

  Scanting my cleansing, I dress quickly and hurry into the main corridor. The crowds here are about as thick as they ever get but seem downright sparse compared to outside. People stride lightly from their duties back to their branches, men and women, boys and girls, as evening stretches toward the dinner hour. I envy them their apparent lack of care.

  "Jude, Jude,” hails a gentle voice, and I raise my head. I hadn't realized my neck had bent as if in stronger gravity.

  It's Sariah, a Pulley my age who's walking the other way. “Oh, selah,” I say.

  She takes my sleeve and draws me to the side of the corridor. “Missed you at schola,” she says, voice low. Not that we have any of the same classes, but the boys and girls do see each other at lunch. Often I've wished I could learn the simpler skills the girls ply, like producing rough fabrics on machines the men construct, but the one occasion on which I expressed such a desire to my father is one I'm not likely to forget. I was younger then and hadn't learned better.

  "I wasn't there,” I say tiredly.

  "I know,” she says, a look of eager horror on her face. “You were outside. Helena saw you go this morning. So what was it like?"

  My eyes are already straying down the corridor toward escape. How can I explain what it was like today? I'm too confused. “It's the Wrecker's workshop out there, truly,” I say, pulling away. “Look, I'm sorry, but I need to get home."

  She lays a cool hand on my arm. She's very pretty with her enviably long yellow hair, and she's nearly as tall as I am. “Jude, what's wrong?” she asks, her face close to mine, eyes filled with concern. “Was it that horrible? You can tell me."

  I want to weep. I have friends, sure, or I did, but what I've never had is someone I can confide in, someone I can really trust and open up to. That's all I want.

  "Sariah—"

  I feel her eyes searching my face, but I can't quite meet her gaze. “What is it?” she says.

  "I—” Am I really going to say it? She's always been nice to me, kind. I glance up quickly. “What do you think about Nic?"

  "Nicodemus?” A little crease appears between Sariah's fine eyebrows. “He's okay, he's nice. Why?"

  I shake my head, my stomach turning inside out. “It's just—you know, he's such a great guy..."

  I trail off as her eyes get a little wider. “Oh,” she says quietly, almost in wonder.

  "I mean, he's been my best friend for such an incredibly long time,” I say.

  She nods slowly, focused on some inner vision. “No, no, I see. I get it."

  "So, you know..."

  "Who would have thought?” The ghost of a pensive smile touches the corner of her mouth. She kisses me suddenly on the cheek. “Thank you, Jude. Thank you. I'll talk to you later."

  With that she trails off down the corridor, yellow hair billowing in the quarter-g, leaving me to wonder desolately what in space just happened.

  * * * *

  Thomas is waiting for me at the cabin, reading the Manual. He looks pointedly at his chronometer as the hatch closes behind me. “I expected you sooner,” he says.

  "I stopped for devotions on the way back,” I say. “I thought I might be too tired later."

  He nods, accepting this, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “How was it today?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Fine, I guess."

  "Did you work hard?"

  "I think I did."

  "Crew treat you okay?"

  I take off my cap and rub my head. I don't want to get into it all with Thomas. “They were fine. They didn't pay me much mind."

  Thomas closes his Manual, a finger marking his place. “You be polite around them, Jude, but keep your thoughts to yourself. That's the way to stay true among the Sculpted."

  "I will,” I say, though already I feel duplicitous.

  Thankfully, that seems to close that subject. The only other thing Thomas seems to want to know before he goes back to his reading is when I expect to be paid—something I haven't given much of a thought to. I assumed that was something he would have worked out with Renny already.

  I prepare our dinner on the foldout stovetop, a stew of ground meat, beans, and vegetables. The activity proves more calming and centering to me than devotions did. But that night as I drift toward sleep, my mind keeps turning back to the women in the locker room, and to the wooden chest bolted to the deck not two feet from my head. Kaiya's chest.

  * * * *

  The Screw is a peculiar machine, partaking directly as it does of aspects of the Axle, the Inclined Plane, and the Wedge, and often requiring application of the Lever to fulfill its purpose. This is fitting, given its function as the aspect that both joins together and eleva
tes, and as a representation of the way in which men and women join together in holy communion with the Builder to ignite the spark of life.

  Sacred as it is, I've always been a little embarrassed by the Screw, a little wary of it. Maybe if that were my ward I'd have a better understanding of it, a healthier attitude toward it, but I've never been quite comfortable with its symbolic freight. Love and apotheosis strike me as less the Screw's nature than doing violence to whatever surface it encounters.

  I find it difficult to credit that I will ever come to completely trust and adore the Screw.

  * * * *

  My work schedule is seven days on and three off—one full s-week as reckoned by the Sculpted. My first “weekend” falls on a Thursday through Saturday by the Guild calendar, which means schola every day while I'm supposed to be taking a break. Neither my long stretches without a day of rest nor my falling behind at schola seems to bother Thomas much, but it bothers me. When I dare bring this up, he tells me the Builder is blessing us for our sacrifice—though I don't see what sacrifice it is that he's making.

  By my second s-week on the job, I've begun to feel comfortable and confident in null-g, and competent if not so comfortable with my fishbowl's graphic overlay. It's as if I'm looking at a raw and exposed layer of reality that should more properly be covered, or at the very least from which I should avert my eyes—though, just as in the locker room with my crewmates, doing so is practically not an option. I am on friendly terms with most of the crew, even if I can't quite bring myself to consider any of them friends. We're too different for that, both in our worldviews and in our expectations of what friendship means. For one thing, they don't seem to have a problem with the occasional tweaking of one another's anatomy in the showers. I do, as they have learned.

  I have spent most of my lunch hours and several more walks home chatting with Derek. Despite the fact that he's so obviously unlike me, he has a directness, a curiosity, and a willingness to take my arguments seriously that I can't help but like, even if I can't always effectively rebut the points he makes. I consider him a goad to make me apply myself more diligently to my studies. I retain the faith that answers exist to his objections, and if I can't find them and express them articulately then I'm hardly a worthy ambassador for the Guild.

  It's end of shift on Sevenday of my second s-week on the job when Renny calls us together in the break room. “Got some news, little stevies,” she says, executing a sort of four-handed cartwheel up a chair to perch on her favorite table. The animated chatter anticipating our weekend break quiets down.

  "Fourday and Fiveday next week we've got a special assignment coming up for anyone who wants in on it. Berth A-11, prospecting ship full of scientific samples. Very delicate, both the ship and the cargo. Berth's gonna be fully evacuated, so there's hazard pay, but only those of you rated for vacuum will be eligible. If you don't want in, that's fine—we'll have plenty to do here. But if you want in and you're not vacuum-rated, it's not too late to get that way. You can even take shift time to do it without getting docked. I just need to see your certification first thing Threeday if you want in. Understood? All right, that's it."

  Renny draws me aside as the others file off to the showers. “This is a good opportunity, kid,” she tells me in a low voice. “You're a good worker, and you sure don't want to miss out on triple pay."

  She's right, I don't. I can imagine how happy Thomas will be to see the extra credits. “How do I get vacuum-rated?” I ask, watching two tiny, distorted me's in her silvery eyeglobes. “Is there a test I take or something?"

  "Not, er, not really,” Renny says. “What it mostly entails is getting your lungs and eyes and ears vacuum-hardened. You'd be wearing a pressure suit in the berth, of course, but if it should fail you could suffocate before we got you out of there and repressurized. Regs don't let us subject you to that risk."

  My breath catches. “What you're talking about—that would mean Sculpting, wouldn't it?"

  "Just a small bit, internally."

  The pay would be welcome, but I have to shake my head. “No offense, but I can't do that. I'm very sorry."

  Renny shrugs, an elaborate motion of her hind shoulders. My reflection dances crazily in her eyes. “What can I say, kid? It's your choice, and I sure won't think any worse of you for it. But don't make the decision now. Think about it over the break. Get the details from Geoff. Talk to your old man, see what he says."

  "Right,” I say. “I already know what he'd tell me."

  "Thomas ain't a bad guy, for a Wheelie. Talk to him, kid."

  All the way to the showers, cringing, I can hear Thomas telling me the Wrecker's in me. But I can't quite shake Renny's insistence that I bring it up with him.

  * * * *

  That evening over our humble dinner I blurt it out before I can reconsider: “Renny says there's a special job next week. Extra pay, and she's pushing me to do it."

  Thomas puts down his fork. “And?” he says, glaring at me over the table.

  "And ... I'd need some small modifications. Vacuum-hardening."

  Thomas bows his head. Today's a Saturday in the Quarter, what would in other circumstances have meant half a day at schola for me and a morning of light community service for him. But neither of us follows a normal schedule now, and we're each exhausted from the labors of the day. I wait for him to speak, not chewing, heart in my throat.

  Not that I don't know the right answer. I only have to ask myself what the Builder would say. Or my mother, I think, the tip of my nonslipper grazing the wooden chest beneath the foldout table that spans the width between the bunks. The chest contains Kaiya's clothing, which, despite the reg against storage of unnecessary mass, Thomas has never been able to bring himself to recycle. It's almost as if he's waiting for her to come back. I'm not, though. I don't have many firm memories of Kaiya, and in fact Thomas has told me so often that my mother is with the angels now that that's how I nearly always picture her: dressed in spotless white with huge feathered wings furled above her, looking down on me from on high. I know what she would think if I broached the topic of transfiguration. I know what she does think, in whatever level of the Builder's mansion she's watching me from.

  At last Thomas forks a bite of boiled potatoes and carrots into his mouth and peers at me, practically through me, from under lowered brows. “You told her no, right?"

  I flinch a little. It takes a moment for me to realize he's talking about Renny, not Kaiya. “Of course,” I say. My words feel defensive, as if he's somehow already forced me to lie to him.

  "Wrecker take that woman, anyway.” He shovels more food into his mouth and chews silently for a few bites.

  When he speaks again his voice and his eyes, unexpectedly, have softened. “Son, I know they teach us at temple never to compromise with the world, to always live as if we're with the Builder in his mansion, but in practice that's just impossible. We all make compromises—we have to, or we couldn't get by. We couldn't live. The tricky part—no, the hard part is knowing what's okay to compromise and what isn't. You have to figure out where that dividing line is—and then stay well back from it. When you try to walk it..."

  Thomas folds his hands together and stares down at the table. “Jude, son, I can tell you what happens. You fall. You tell yourself you won't, but you do.” He clears his throat, lips compressing almost convulsively. “I just want you to be happy. Maybe that's not what this world is for, but Builder knows it's what I want for you."

  His eyes rove this way and that, never meeting mine, and he clears his throat again. Once upon a time, this would have been where I edged around the table to give him an awkward hug. Tonight I can't. My soul cries for him, but I'm not a little kid anymore, and I just can't.

  We finish our meal in silence.

  * * * *

  The next day is temple, the first Sunday in three Guild weeks I've been off work. Thomas and I sit toward the back of the long, low chapel, which sits near the AD Gate at the opposite end of the Quarter fr
om the PM Gate. The bulkheads are of brushed gray metal, with three of the Six Machines etched on the left wall, three on the right, and the carpenter's square on the wall behind the pulpit.

  Inclined Plane Ward meets third every Sunday, in the late-morning slot. During Foreman Saul's sermon after the sacrament, I spot Nicodemus several rows ahead and to the right. What caught my eye was his golden head tilting back as he smiled wide at something the person next to him had whispered in his ear. The person next to him has long, shining yellow hair.

  The person next to him is Sariah.

  I blink hard for the next several minutes. I shift and fidget through the rest of the sermon. The pew is cold and rigid—dumb, unyielding matter—and no matter how I try I can't get comfortable. I'm supposed to meet the foreman for my private instruction after church, but when the service ends I rush back to the cabin instead, with a vague excuse to Thomas about my stomach.

  Two full days of schola still ahead, catching up on subjects where I'm falling further and further behind, before I get to return to work. I don't know how I'm going to make it.

  * * * *

  Wednesday comes at last, Oneday to the rest of the station, and in the break room in the early morning Renny reminds the gathered crew that we have only two days left to sign up and show vacuum certification if we want in on the special gig. She looks my way but I duck my eyes. Funny—I've spent the past two days at schola avoiding Nic and looking forward to Oneday, and now that it's here it looks like I'm going to spend the day avoiding Renny. I'm such a bent nail I can't stand myself.

  Our client today is a Thunder-class starship, Colder Equation, which we lade with supplies bound for the exomorph colony at Van Maanen's Star. It's hard work but mostly mindless, and I find my cares evaporating for the first time in days. I feel best at midshift when we break for lunch, but the rest of the day is marred by the clock in the corner of my vision, ticking down the minutes until I return to gravity's embrace.

  At shift's end, after showers, I ask Derek if he'd like to go somewhere for food. He's invited me to eat after work several times now, but I've worried not just that Thomas would find out but that I wouldn't be able to find anything appetizing in the public cafeterias. Tonight, though, I'm desperate enough to talk that I think I can overcome my food objections.