Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

by Rich Horton

"I had it pressed into the underlying matter: the countries of my youth. That's on the other side. On this side is the reverse of the recto. It's the anti-Europe. But landscaped, of course. Water and biomass and air added; not just nude to space. No, no. It's ready. Sometime soon I'll live over this side for a while."

  "The anti-Europe,” said Vins. The cold seemed to be slowing his thought processes. He couldn't work it out.

  "Stamp an R in a sheet of gold, and the other side will have a little—standing proud,” he said. “You know that. Stamp a valley in one side of a sheet and you get a mountain on the other side."

  The light was almost strong enough to see. That grey predawn light, so cool and fine and satiny.

  "Stamp a homo neanderthalis out of the hominid base matter,” Ramon Harburg Guthrie said, as if talking to himself, “and you stamp out a backwards-facing homo sapiens on the verso.” This seemed to amuse him. He laughed, at any rate.

  Vins put a knuckle to his eyes, and rubbed away some of the chill of the night. His features were—just—visible in the grey of the pre-dawn: a long nose, small eyes, a sawn-off forehead and eggshell cranium above it. Like a cartoon-drawing of a sapiens. Like a caricature from a schoolbook. A stretched out, elfin figure. A porcelain and anorexic giant.

  "You're not welcome,” Guthrie said, one final time. “This world is forbidden to you and your sort. I'll find your crewmates, and give them the sad news. But I'll deal with you first, and I'm sorry to say it, because I'm not a bloodthirsty sort of fellow. But what can I do? But—trespassers—will be—’ and he raised his right hand.

  This was the moment when Vins found out for sure what that right hand contained. It was a weapon, of course; and Vins was already ahead of the action. He pushed forward on his muscular neanderthal legs, moving straight for the human: but then he jinked hard as his sore ankle permitted him, ninety-degrees right. The lurch forward was to frighten Ramon Harburg Guthrie into firing before he was quite ready; the jink to the right was to make sure the projectile missed, and give him a chance of making it to the long grass.

  But Ramon Harburg Guthrie was more level-headed than that. It's true he cried out, a little yelp of fear as the bulky neanderthal loomed up at him, but he kept his aim reasonably steady. The weapon discharged with a booming noise and Vins’ head rang like a gong. There was a disorienting slash of pain across his left temple and he span and tumbled, his bad ankle folding underneath him. There was a great deal of pain, suddenly, out of nowhere, and his eyes weren't working. The sky had been folded up and propped on its side. It was grey, drained of life, drained of colour. But it wasn't on its side; Vins was lying on the turf beside the rock, and it was the angle at which he was looking at it.

  There was a throb. This was more than a mere knock. It was a powerful, skull-clenching throb.

  Nevertheless when Ramon Harburg Guthrie's leg appeared in Vins’ line of sight, at the same right-angle as the sky, he knew what it meant. This was no time to be lying about, lounging on the floor, waiting for the coup-de-grace of another projectile in the—

  He was up. He put all his muscular strength into the leap, and it was certainly enough to surprise Ramon Harburg Guthrie. Vins’ shoulder, coming up like a piston upstroke, caught him under the chin, or against the chest, or somewhere (it wasn't easy to see); and there was an ooph sound in Vins’ left ear. He brought his heavy right arm round as quick as he could, and there was a soggy impact of fist on flesh. Not sure which part of flesh; but it was a softer flesh than Vins's thick-skin-pelt. It was a more fragile bone than the thick stuff that constituted Vins's brain pan. Although, as he had said, the thickness didn't mean that there was any compromise in size.

  The next thing that happened was that Vins heard a rushing noise. He looked where Ramon Harburg Guthrie had been, and there was only a thread, string wet and heavy with black phlegm, and it wobbled as if blown in the dawn breeze, and when Vins looked up he saw this string attached to the shape of a flying human male. The string broke and then another spooled down, angling now because the flying man (propelled by whatever powerpack he was wearing, whatever device it was that lifted him away from the pull of the artificial gravity) was flying away to the north.

  Stunned by his grazed head it took Vins a second to figure out what he was seeing. The string was a drool of blood falling from a wound he, Vins, had inflicted on the head of Ramon Harburg Guthrie. “Clearly,” he said aloud, as he put a finger to his own head-wound, “clearly he's still conscious enough to be operating whatever fancy equipment is helping him fly away.” His fingers came away jammy with red.

  "Clearly I didn't hit him hard enough."

  The sun was up now. In the new light Vins found the gun that, in his pain and shock, and in his hurry to get away, Ramon Harburg Guthrie had dropped.

  * * * *

  The sixth morning

  Whilst the figure of the sapiens was still visible, just, in the northern sky Vins hurried inside the shuttle; he pulled out some food, the first aid pack, some netting. It all went into a pack, together with the gun.

  When he came out the sapiens was nowhere to be seen.

  His head was hurting. His ankle was hurting.

  He hurried away through the long grass, following the path that Murphy had originally made. He didn't want to leave a new trail, one that would (of course!) be obvious from the air; but he didn't want to loiter by the shuttle. Who knew what powers of explosive destruction Ramon Harburg Guthrie could bring screaming out of the sky? It was his world, after all.

  There were a number of lone trees growing high out of the grass before the forest proper began, and Murphy's old track passed by one of these. Vins let the first go, stopped at the second. He clambered into the lower branches, and shuffled along the bough to ensure that the leaves were giving him cover. He scanned the sky, but there was nothing.

  There was time, now, to tend to himself. He pulled a pure-pad from the first aid and stuck it to the side of his head, feeling with his finger first. A hole, elliptically shaped, like the mouth of a hollow reed cut slantways across. Blood was pulsing out of it. Blood had gone over the left of his face, glued itself into his six-day-beard, made a plasticky mat over his cheek. He must look a sight. But he was alive.

  He ate some food, and drank more than he wanted; but it wouldn't do to dehydrate. Exsanguinations provoke dehydration. He knew that. He was a scientist.

  The leaves on the tree were plump, dark-green, cinque-foil. There were very many of them, and they rubbed up against one another and trembled and buzzed in the breeze. The sky was a high blue, clear and pure.

  * * * *

  The sixth afternoon

  He dozed. The day moved on.

  He heard somebody approaching, tramping lustily out of the forest. Presumably not Ramon Harburg Guthrie then.

  It was Murphy. He could hardly have been making a bigger racket. Vins’ strong fingers pulled up a chunk of bark from the bough upon which he rested, and when Murphy came underneath the tree he threw it down upon him.

  "Quiet,” he hissed. “You want to get us killed?"

  "No call to throw pebbles at me,” said Murphy, in a hurt voice, his head back.

  "It was bark, and it was called for. Come up here and be quick and be quiet."

  * * * *

  When he was up, and when Murphy had gotten past the point of repeating “What happened to your head? What did you do to your head? There's blood all over your head"—Vins explained.

  Murphy thought about this. “It makes sense."

  "Where did you get to, anyway?"

  "I was exploring!” cried Murphy, in a large, self-justifying voice.

  "Keep quiet!"

  "You're not the captain, and neither you aren't,” said Murphy. “You're not the one to tell me don't go exploring. Are we scientists? I've been down to the sea, to where the surf grinds thunder out of the beach. All manner of shells and...” He stopped. “This feller shot you?"

  "It's his world."

  He peered close at Vins�
� head. “That's some trepanning he's worked on you. That's some hole."

  "He made it, and he says we're not allowed here. He'll kill all four of us. We can't afford to be blundering about."

  "He's threatening murder. That would be murder."

  "It surely is."

  "And is he,” asked Murphy, “not concerned to be committing murder upon us?"

  "He's homo sapiens,” said Vins. “I told you."

  "And so you did. It's hard to take in. But it explains...” He trailed off.

  "What does it explain?"

  "This is an artefact, of course it is. That'll be the strange sky, that'll explain it. The stars don't move, or hardly, because it doesn't rotate. The sun—that'll be an orbiting device; flying its way around and about. Maybe a mirror—maybe a crystal globe refracting sunlight to produce a variety of effects.” He seemed pleased with himself. “That explains a lot."

  "You sound like Edwards,” said Vins.

  "Don't you be insulting my family name in suchwise fashion!"

  "It's a thousand miles across,” said Vins. “It's a flat disc. I don't know how he generates the gravity. It's clearly not by mass."

  "So you met an actual breathing homo sapiens?” asked Murphy, as one might ask you met a unicorn? you met a cyclops?

  "I think,” said Vins, “that he was expecting me to ... I don't know. To worship him as a god."

  Murphy hooped with laughter, and then swallowed the noise before Vins could shush him. “Why on sweet wide water would he want such a thing?"

  "He said that he—he said that they—uplifted us,” said Vins. “Brought us out of the evolutionary dustbin, that sort of thing. Taught us the language. Left us their culture, save us the bother of spending thousands of years making our own. He was implying, I think, that we owed them."

  "Did you ever read Frankenstein's monster's story? That's a homo sapiens way of thinking,” said Murphy. “There's something alien in all that duty, indebtedness, belatedness, you-owe-me rubbish. But what you should've said to him, what you should have said, is: my right and respectfulness, sir, didn't Shakespeare uplift you out of the aesthetic blankness of the middle ages? Didn't Newton uplift you out of the ignorance of the dark ages, give you the power to fly the spaceways? Do you worship Newton as a god? Course you don't—you say thank you and tap at your brow with your knuckles and you move on."

  "It's all a dim age,” agreed Vins. He was referring to the elder age. It was something in the past, like the invention of the wheel or the smelting of iron, but only a few cranks spent too much time bothering about it. Too much to do.

  "How could you fail to move on? What sort of a person would you be? An ancestor-worshipper, or something like that."

  "They withdrew from the world,” said Vins. “It's vacant possession. It's ours, now. All the rainy, stony spaces of it."

  "And I say this is the same, this place we've stumbled into. I say this murphytopia is the same case—it's vacant possession."

  He was quiet for a while. Vins was scanning the sky through the branches, looking for devices in the sky. Planes and such.

  "I say it's ours and I say the hell with him,” said Murphy, rolling his fist through the air .

  "Here,” repeated Vins. “It's forbidden us. He says it's forbidden to us."

  "He says?” boomed Murphy, climbing up on his legs on the bough to shout the phrase at the manufactured sky. “And who's he to stop us?"

  "Will you hush?” snapped Vins.

  The sky was a clear watercolour wash from high dark blue to the pink of the low eastern sky. There were a few thready horizontal clouds, like loose strands of straw. The sun itself; or whatever device it was that circled the world to reflect sunlight upon it, was a small circle of chilli-pepper red.

  "It is beautiful here,” said Murphy, sitting down again on the turf.

  "It's mild,” agreed Vins.

  "Does that mean that those old children's stories are true?” Murphy asked. “About them, and messing up the climate, and just walking away?"

  "Who knows?"

  "But this is what bugs me,” said Murphy. “If they had the—if they have the capacity to build whole new worlds, like this one, and provide it with a beautiful climate, you know, why not simply sort out the climate on Earth? Why not reach their godlike fingers into the ocean flow and the air-stream and dabble a bit and return the Earth to a temperate climate?"

  Vins didn't answer this at first; didn't think it was really addressed to him. But Murphy wouldn't let it go.

  "Left the mess and just ran away. Cold and snow and rain and deserts of broken rock. That's downright irresponsible. Why not mend the mess they'd made? Why not?"

  "I suppose,” said Vins, reluctantly, “it's easier to manage a model like this one. Even a largescale model, like this one. The climate of the whole Earth—that's a chaotic system, isn't it? That's not a simple circular body of air a thousand miles across, that's a three-dimensional vortex tends of thousands of miles arc by arc. Big dumb object, he called it."

  "He?"

  "Maybe they can't crack the problem of controlling chaotic systems, any more than we can. He is the homo sapiens I met. When I said he called it that, I meant Ramon Harburg Guthrie called it that."

  "Doesn't sound very godlike at all."

  "No."

  "And doesn't excuse them from fleeing their mess."

  "I wasn't suggesting that it did."

  "And what were you suggesting?"

  Vins coughed. “I'll tell you—I'll say what I'm suggesting. Ramon Harburg Guthrie said that the elder sapiens, the wealthiest thousands, fled throughout the system. They built themselves little private utopias of all shapes and sizes. They're living there now, or their descendents are. But these should be our lands. Why would we struggle on with the wastelands and the ice—or,” and he threw his hands up, “or Mars, for crying-in-the-wilderness, Mars?” He spoke as an individual who had lived two full terms on Mars: once during his compulsory military training and once during his scientific education. He knew whereof he spoke: the extraordinary cold, the barrenness, the slow and stubborn progress of colonisation. “Why would we be trying to bully a life out of Mars, of all places, if the system is littered with private paradises like this one?"

  "I like the cut of your jib, the shape of your thinking, young Vins,” said Murphy, saluting him and then shaking his hand. “But what of the man who scratched your head, there? What of that bold sapiens-fellow himself?"

  "He thinks he's hunting us,” said Vins. There was something nearly sadness in his voice, a species of regret. “He doesn't yet realise.” He pulled the gun out of the bag.

  * * * *

  They sat for a while in silence. From time to time Murphy would go “Remind me what we're waiting for, here?” and Vins would explain it again. “He'll come back,” he said. “He'll get his skull bandaged, or get it healed-up with some high-tech magic-ray, I don't know. But he'll be back. He has to eliminate all four of us before we can put a message where others can hear it."

  "And shouldn't we be doing that? Putting the message out there for others to know where we are—to know that such a place as here even exists?"

  "That would require us to stay...” prompted Vins.

  "Stay in the shuttle,” said Murphy. “I see. So you reckon he'll? You think he'll?"

  "What would you do? He came before with some sort of personal flying harness, like a skyhook. And a handgun. He'll come back heavier. He'll hit the ship first, to shut that door firm."

  "But I guess we already tried the radio. Broadcast, I mean. But who'd be listening? Who'd be monitoring this piece of sky? Nobody.” He picked some bark from the bough and crumpled it to papery shards between his strong fingers. “I suppose,” he continued, “that this homo sapiens feller, he's not to know how long we've been here. For all he knows we just crashed here, this morning. Or we've been here a month."

  "He'll have to take his chances,” agreed Vins. “He'll come back and hammer the ship, smash and dint
it into the dirt."

  "Then what?"

  "There are several ways it could go. If he's smart, if he were as smart as me, he'd lay waste to the whole area. I'd scorch the whole thousand square mile area."

  "But he lives here!"

  "He lives on the other side. He don't need here. But he won't do that. He's attached to it, he's sentimentally connected with the landscape. Its beauty. With its vacuity and its possibility. He won't do that. So, if he's smart, he'll do the second best option."

  "Which is what?"

  "He'll wait until dark, and then overfly the area with the highest-power infrared detection he can muster. He'd pick out our body heat. Or, at least, it would be hard for us to disguise that."

  "You think he'll do that?"

  Vins bared his teeth, and then sealed his lips again. “No, I don't think so. He'll want to hunt us straight down. He'll blow the ship and then come galloping down these paths we've trailed through the long grass. He'll try and hunt us down. He'll have armour on, probably. Big guns. He'll have big guns with fat barrels."

  "Other people? Other sapiens?"

  "That,” said Vins, “is the real question. That's the crucial thing. He called this world me topia. Does that suggest to you, Murphy, a solitary individual, living perhaps with a few upgraded cats and dogs, maybe a metal-mickey or two?"

  "I've no notion."

  "Or does it suggest a population of a thousand sapiens, or a hundred thousand, living in the clean open spaces on the far side of this disc—living a medieval Europe, perhaps? Riding around dressed in silk and hunting the white stag?"

  "I've really no notion."

  "And neither have I. That'll be what we find out."

  "You're a regular strategos,” said Murphy, and he whistled through his two front teeth. “A real strategic thinker. You're wasted in the sciences, you are. And then?"

  "Then?"

  "Then what?"

  "Well,” said Vins. “That'll depend, of course. If it's just him, I don't see why we don't take the whole place to ourselves. There's a lot of fertile ground here, a lot of settlement potential for people back home. And if it's more than just him—"

  "Maybe the far side is crawling with homo sapiens."