The Very Best of the Best

by Gardner Dozois

  It’s riding an in-out skeet, which can slip through a jellie double-wall without causing a blowout. JovOp uses them to deliver messages they consider sensitive—whatever that means—and that’s what we thought it was at first.

  Then it lights up and we’re looking at this image of a two-stepper dressed for broadcast. He’s asking one question after another on a canned loop; in a panel on his right, instructions on how to record, pause, and playback are scrolling on repeat.

  The jellie asks if we want to get rid of it. We toss the whole thing in the waste chute, skeet and all, and the jellie poops it out as a little ball of scrap, to become some scavenger’s lucky find.

  Later, Dubonnet files a report with JovOp about the unauthorised intrusion. JovOp gives him a receipt but no other response. We’re all expecting a reprimand for failing to detect the skeet’s rider before it got through. Doesn’t happen.

  “Somebody’s drunk,” Bait says. “Query it.”

  “No, don’t,” says Splat. “By the time they’re sober, they’ll have to cover it up or their job’s down the chute. It never happened, everything’s eight-by-eight.”

  “Until someone checks our records,” Dubonnet says and tells the jellie to query, who assures him that’s a wise thing to do. The jellie has been doing this sort of thing more often lately, making little comments. Personally, I like those little touches.

  Splat, however, looks annoyed. “I was joking,” he says, enunciating carefully. They can’t touch you for joking no matter how tasteless, but it has to be clear. We laugh, just to be on the safe side, except for Aunt Chovie who says she doesn’t think it was very funny because she can’t laugh unless she really feels it. Some people are like that.

  Dubonnet gets an answer within a few minutes. It’s a form message in legalese but this gist is, We heard you the first time, go now and sin no more.

  “They all can’t be drunk,” Fred says. “Can they?”

  “Can’t they?” says Sheerluck. “You guys have crewed with me long enough to know how fortune smiles on me and mine.”

  “Spoken like a member of the Church of The Four-Leaf Horseshoe,” Glynis says.

  Fred perks right up. “Is that that new casino on Europa?” he asks. Fred loves casinos. Not gambling, just casinos. The jellie offers to look it up for him.

  “Synchronicity is a real thing, it’s got math,” Sheerluck is saying. Her colour’s starting to get a little bright; so is Glynis’s. I’d rather they don’t give each other ruby-red hell while we’re all still in the jellie. “And the dictionary definition of serendipity is, ‘Chance favours the prepared mind.’”

  “I’m prepared to go home and log out, who’s prepared to join me?” Dubonnet says before Glynis can sneer openly. I like Glynis, vinegar and all, but sometimes I think she should have been a crab instead of an octopus.

  * * *

  OUR PRIVATE QUARTERS are supposed to have no surveillance except for the standard safety monitoring.

  Yeah, we don’t believe that for a nano-second. But if JovOp ever got caught in the act, the unions would eat them alive and poop out the bones to fertilise Europa’s germ farms. So either they’re even better at it than any of us can imagine or they’re taking a calculated risk. Most sushi claim to believe the former; I’m in the latter camp. I mean, they watch us so much already, they’ve gotta want to look at something else for a change.

  We share the typical octo-crew quarters—eight rooms around a large common area. When Fry was with us, we curtained off part of it for her but somehow she was always spilling out of it. Her stuff, I mean—we’d find underwear bobbing around in the lavabo, shoes orbiting a lamp (good thing she only needed two), live-paper flapping around the room in the air currents. All the time she’d spent out here and she still couldn’t get the hang of housekeeping in zero gee. It’s the sort of thing that stops being cute pretty quickly when you’ve got full occupancy, plus one. I could tell she was trying, but eventually we had to face the truth: much as we loved her, our resident girl-thing was a slob.

  I thought that was gonna be a problem but she wasn’t even gone a day before it felt like there was something missing. I’d look around expecting to see some item of clothing or jewellery cruising past, the latest escapee from one of her not-terribly-secure reticules.

  * * *

  “SO WHO WANTS to bet that Fry goes octo?” Splat says when we get home.

  “Who’d want to bet she doesn’t?” replies Sheerluck.

  “Not me,” says Glynis, so sour I can feel it in my crop. I’m thinking she’s going to start again with the crab act, pinch, pinch, pinch but she doesn’t. Instead, she air-swims down to the grotto, sticks to the wall with two arms and folds the rest up so she’s completely hidden. She misses our girl-thing and doesn’t want to talk at the moment, but she also doesn’t want to be completely alone, either. It’s an octo thing—sometimes we want to be alone but not necessarily by ourselves.

  Sheerluck joins me at the fridge and asks, “What do you think? Octo?”

  “I dunno,” I say, and I honestly don’t. It never occurred to me to wonder but I’m not sure if that’s because I took it for granted she would. I grab a bag of kribble.

  Aunt Chovie notices and gives me those big serious eyes. “You can’t just live on crunchy krill, Arkae.”

  “I’ve got a craving,” I tell her.

  “Me, too,” says Bait. He tries to reach around from behind me and I knot him.

  “Message from Dove,” says Dubonnet just before we start wrestling and puts it on the big screen.

  There’s not actually much about Fry, except that she’s coming along nicely with another dec to go before she’s done. Although it’s not clear to any of us whether that means Fry’ll be all done and good to go, or if Dove’s just referring to the surgery. Then we get distracted with all the rest of the stuff in the message.

  It’s was full of clips from the Dirt, two-steppers talking about Fry like they all knew her and what it was like out here and what going out for sushi meant. Some two-steppers didn’t seem to care much but some of them were stark spinning bugfuck.

  I mean, it’s been a great big while since I was a biped and we live so long out here that we tend to morph along with the times. The two-stepper I was couldn’t get a handle on me as I am now. But then neither could the octo I was when I finished rehab and met my first crew.

  I didn’t choose octo—back then, surgery wasn’t as advanced and nanorectics weren’t as commonplace or as programmable so you got whatever the doctors thought gave you the best chance of a life worth living. I wasn’t too happy at first but it’s hard to be unhappy in a place this beautiful, especially when you feel so good physically all the time. It was somewhere between three and four J-years after I turned that people could finally choose what kind of sushi they went out for, but I got no regrets. Any more. I’ve got it smooth all over.

  Only I don’t feel too smooth listening to two-steppers chewing the air over things they don’t know anything about and puking up words like abominations, atrocities, and sub-human monsters. One news program even runs clips from the most recent re-make of The Goddam Island Of Fucking Dr. Moreau. Like that’s holy writ or something.

  I can’t stand more than a few minutes before I take my kribble into my bolthole, close the hatch, and hit soundproof.

  A little while later, Glynis beeps. “You know how ’way back in the extreme dead past, people in the Dirt thought everything in the universe revolved around them?” She pauses but I don’t answer. “Then the scope of human knowledge expanded and we all know that was wrong.”

  “So?” I grunt.

  “Not everybody got the memo,” she says. She waits for me to say something. “Come on, Arkae–are they gonna get to see Okeke-Hightower?”

  “I’d like to give them a ride on it,” I say.

  “None of them are gonna come out here with us abominations. They’re all gonna cuddle up with each other in the Dirt and drown in each other’s shit. Until they all
do the one thing they were pooped into this universe to do, which is become extinct.”

  I open the door. “You’re really baiting them, you know that?”

  “Baiting who? There’s nobody listening. Nobody here except us sushi,” she says, managing to sound sour and utterly innocent both at the same time. Only Glynis.

  * * *

  I MESSAGE DOVE to say we’ll be Down Under for at least two J-days, on loan to OuterComm. Population in the outer part of the system, especially around Saturn has doubled in the last couple of J-years and will probably double again in less time. The civil communication network runs below the plane of the solar disk and it’s completely dedicated—no governments, no military, just small business, entertainment, and social interaction. Well, so far, it’s completely dedicated but nobody’s in any position for a power grab yet.

  OuterComm is an Ice Giants operation and originally it served only the Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune systems. No one seems to know exactly where the home office is—i.e. which moon. I figure even if they started off as far out as Uranus, they’ve probably been on Titan since they decided to expand to Jupiter.

  Anyway, their technology is crazy-great. It still takes something over forty minutes for Hello to get from the Big J to Saturn and another forty till you hear, Who the hell is this? but you get less noise than a local call on JovOp. JovOp wasn’t too happy when the entertainment services started migrating to OuterComm and things got kind of tense. Then they cut a deal: OuterComm got all the entertainment and stayed out of the education business, at least in the Jovian system. So everything’s fine and JovOp loans them anything they need like a big old friendly neighbour but there’s still plenty of potential for trouble. Of all kinds.

  The Jovian system is the divide between the inner planets and the outer. We’ve had governments that tried to align with the innies and others that courted the outies. The current government wants the Big J officially designated as an outer world, not just an ally. Saturn’s been fighting it, claiming that Big J wants to take over and build an empire.

  Which is pretty much what Mars and Earth said when the last government was trying to get inner status. Earth was a little more colourful about it. There were two-steppers hollering that it was all a plot by monsters and abominations—i.e. us—to get our unholy limbs on fresh meat for our unholy appetites. If Big J got inner planet status, they said, people would be rounded up in the streets and shipped out to be changed into unnatural, subhuman creatures with no will of their own. Except for the most beautiful women, who would be kept as is and chained in brothels where—well, you get the idea.

  That alone would be enough to make me vote outie, except the Big J is really neither outie nor innie. The way I see it, there’s inner, there’s outer, and there’s us. Which doesn’t fit the way two-steppers do things because it’s not binary.

  * * *

  THIS WAS ALL sort of bubbling away at the back of my mind while we worked on the comm station but in an idle sort of way. I was also thinking about Fry, wondering how she was doing, and what shape she’d be in the next time I saw her. I wondered if I’d recognise her.

  Now, that sounds kind of silly, I guess because you don’t recognise someone that, for all intents and purposes, you’ve never seen before. But it’s that spiritual thing. I had this idea that if I swam into a room full of sushi, all kinds of sushi, and Fry was there, I would know. And if I gave it a little time, I’d find her without anyone having to point her out.

  No question, I loved Fry the two-stepper. Now that she was sushi, I wondered if I’d be in love with her. I couldn’t decide whether I liked that idea or not. Normally I keep things simple: sex, and only with people I like. It keeps everything pretty smooth. But in love complicates everything. You start thinking about partnership and family. And that’s not so smooth because we don’t reproduce. We’ve got new sushi and fresh sushi, but no sushi kids.

  We’re still working on surviving out here but it won’t always be that way. I could live long enough to see that. Hell, there are still a few OG around, although I’ve never met them. They’re all out in the Ice Giants.

  * * *

  WE’RE HOME HALF a dec before the first Okeke-Hightower impact, which sounds like plenty of time but it’s close enough to make me nervous. Distances out here aren’t safe, even in the best top-of-the-line JovOp can. I hate being in a can anyway. If anyone ever develops a jellie for long-distance travel, I’ll be their best friend forever. But even in the can, we had to hit three oases going and coming to refuel. Filing a flight plan guaranteed us a berth at each one but only if we were on time. And there’s all kinds of shit that could have made us late. If a berth was available we’d still get it. But if there wasn’t, we’d have to wait and hope we didn’t run out of stuff to breathe.

  Bait worked the plan out far enough ahead to give us generous ETA windows. But you know how it is—just when you need everything to work the way it’s supposed to, anything that hasn’t gone wrong lately suddenly decides to make up for lost time. I was nervous all the way out, all through the job, and all the way back. The last night on the way back I dreamed that just as we were about to re-enter JovOp space, Io exploded and took out everything in half a radian. While we were trying to figure out what to do, something knocked us into a bad spiral that was gonna end dead centre in Big Pink. I woke up with Aunt Chovie and Splat peeling me off the wall—so embarrassing. After that, all I wanted to do was go home, slip into a jellie, and watch Okeke-Hightower meet Big J.

  By this time, the comet’s actually in pieces. The local networks are all-comet news, all the time, like there’s nothing else in the solar system or even the universe for that matter. The experts are saying it’s following the same path as the old Shoemaker-Levy and there’s a lot of chatter about what that means. There those who don’t think it’s a coincidence and Okeke-Hightower is actually some kind of message from an intelligence out in the Oort cloud or even beyond, and instead of letting it crash into Big J, we ought to try catching it, or at least parts of it.

  Yeah, that could happen. JovOp put out a blanket no-fly–jellies only, no cans. Sheerluck suggests JovOp’s got a secret mission to grab some fragments but that’s ridiculous. I mean, aside from the fact that any can capable of doing that would be plainly visible, the comet’s been sailing around in pieces for over half a dozen square decs. There were easier places in the trajectory to get a piece but all the experts agreed the scans showed nothing in it worth the fortune it would cost to mount that kind of mission. Funny how so many people forgot about that; suddenly, they’re all shoulda-woulda-coulda, like non-buyer’s remorse. But don’t get me started on politics.

  I leave a message for Dove saying we’re back and getting ready to watch the show. What comes back is an auto-reply saying she’s out of the office, reply soonest. Maybe she’s busy with Fry, who probably has comet fever like everyone else but maybe even more so, since this will be like the big moment that kicks off her new life. If she’s not out of the hospital, I hope they’ve got a screen worthy of the event.

  We all want to see with our naked eyes. Well, our naked eyes and telescopes. Glynis is bringing a screen for anyone who wants a really close-up look. Considering the whole thing’s gonna last about an hour start to finish, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. It could save us some eyestrain.

  When the first fragment hits, I find myself thinking about the sensors that fell into the atmosphere. They’ve got to be long gone by now and even if they’re not, there’s no way we could pick up any data. It would all be just noise.

  Halfway through the impacts, the government overrides all the communication for a recorded, no-reply announcement: martial law’s been declared, everybody go home. Anyone who doesn’t is dust.

  This means we miss the last few hits, which pisses us off even though we all agree it’s not a sight worth dying for. But when we get home and can’t even get an instant replay, we start wondering. Then we start ranting. The government’s gonna have a lot of exp
laining to do and the next election ain’t gonna be a love-fest and when did JovOp turn into a government lackey. There’s nothing on the news—and I mean, nothing, it’s all re-runs. Like this is actually two J-days ago and what just happened never happened.

  “Okay,” says Fred, “what’s on OuterComm?”

  “You want to watch soap operas?” Dubonnet fumes. “Sure, why not?”

  We’re looking at the menu when something new appears: it’s called the Soledad y Gottmundsdottir Farewell Special. The name has me thinking we’re about to see Fry in her old two-stepper incarnation but what comes up on the screen is a chambered Nautilus.

  “Hi, everybody. How do you like the new me?” Fry says.

  “What, is she going to law school?” Aunt Chovie says, shocked.

  “I’m sorry to leave you a canned good-bye because you’ve all been so great,” Fry goes on and I have to knot my arms together to keep from turning the thing off. This doesn’t sound like it’s gonna end well. “I knew even before I came out here that I’d be going out for sushi. I just couldn’t decide what kind. You guys had me thinking seriously about octo—it’s a pretty great life and everything you do matters. Future generations—well, it’s going to be amazing out here. Life that adapted to space. Who knows, maybe someday Jovian citizens will change bodies like two-steppers change their clothes. It could happen.

  “But like a lot of two-steppers, I’m impatient. I know, I’m not a two-stepper anymore and I’ve got a far longer lifespan now so I don’t have to be impatient. But I am. I wanted to be part of something that’s taking the next step—the next big step—right now. I really believe the Jupiter Colony is what I’ve been looking for.”

  “The Jupiter Colony? They’re cranks! They’re suicidal!” Glynis hits the ceiling, banks off a wall, and comes down again.

  Fry unfurls her tentacles and lets them wave around freely. “Calm down, whoever’s yelling,” she says, sounding amused. “I made contact with them just before I crewed up with you. I knew what they were planning. They wouldn’t tell me when, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that the Okeke-Hightower impact was the perfect opportunity. We’ve collected some jellies, muted them and put in yak-yak loops. I don’t know how the next part works, how we’re going to hitch a ride with the comet—I’m not an astrophysicist. But if it works, we’ll seed the clouds with ourselves.