The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3

by Allan Kaster

  I pull myself up again, take another step. The blackness comes again, swarming over everything. My ears buzz, and the world folds in around me. I blink, and I am back next to the dead man, huddled with my knees pulled up to my chest. Cold creeps up from my right hand, tendrils of numbness swallowing my wrist, my forearm.

  I get up, fall. The world folds, and I am back with the dead man.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  The next time, I do not get up.

  Everything is white and cold, and I am dying. I press myself into the side of the dead man, his body hard as stone against me and no comfort at all. I ball up as best as I can, sheltering my right arm against my chest. There is no warmth inside me anymore. My heart slows and slows, the space between beats stretching out, still and empty.

  Maggie’s heart beats again.

  I cannot leave this place. I cannot help her.

  No one is coming to save me.

  Then you have to save yourself.

  The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Deep and resonant as tectonic plates grinding together, their movement pressing mountains up out of plains.

  Warmth sparks at my throat. When I raise my unfrozen hand, I feel the familiar shape of my pendant. The gold disc is warm, and I run my fingers over its surface, find the three depressions. Beneath, a pinch of earth, a droplet of pure water and a single wheat seed. Three sacred pieces of old Earth, all necessary for life.

  “May the Mother watch over us. May we watch over the Mother.” My voice is raw and broken, almost lost in the storm. The prayer comes without thought. I tell myself that it isn’t blasphemy here. In this memory, I am still a priestess, and the outcome of my frostbite is still unknown. I could still be healed.

  I tell myself this, even though I know it is a lie. And yet I cannot help the next words coming: “May the Mother watch over Maggie. Help me, please.”

  For a long moment there is nothing, then a low vibration rolls through the cave, resonating deep in the meat of my bones before moving on. In its wake, the storm stills.

  When I stand this time, there is no darkness eating at the edges of my vision, no dizziness. I look back at the dead man. He is looking down, his hands cupped together; as though he is cradling something precious between his palms or praying.

  Looking down at my body, I see that I am no longer wearing my climbing gear, but clad in my ship suit. My right hand is not frozen, but has been replaced with the pseudo-prosthetic, and my ONE pendant is gone, my collar hanging empty.

  That deep rolling presence moves through me again, but this time it moves only through my flesh. It is warmth, it is safety, it is a feeling of home, and it fills me completely, sliding even into the pseudo-prosthetic.

  I lift my right hand, flex my fingers. For the first time, they feel like they are mine, like they are real.

  One step, two, three, and I am out of the cave.

  The world shifts. I shift.

  My body twists and shrinks. I cannot see, cannot hear.

  Panic begins to rise as an odd sensation moves through me, static and feathers sliding through my mind. It clicks then: I am in the Gorak. I have successfully clipped into its VIR feed. I cannot see or hear because its sensors have burned out. I reach, not really knowing how, to find secondary sensors almost hidden beneath the wings. I activate them.

  I brace myself for a cerebral storm or for the post-traumatic stress to return me to the dead man in the cave, but neither happens. There is a distant awareness of Mallory’s static, of that deep rolling presence, and I know that these are keeping me safe. I am not alone.

  The Gorak is lying in the shelter of a small ridge, one wing tucked beneath it. There is snow banked up against its body. A display in the corner of my field of view tells me that the ultraviolet spike knocked it from the sky. An image shows me the path the Gorak should have taken: directly down the side of the Mountain, thousands of meters to the ground where it should have smashed on rock and ice. Instead, it curved gracefully inward, as though pulled in toward the Mountain.

  I get the Gorak upright, shake the snow from its polymer coating. In VIR, I feel the snow sliding down my own bare skin. I flex the pseudo-prosthetic beneath the polymer, carefully stretch out the bot’s wings. Though it landed hard, there appears to be no damage.

  I stretch out the Gorak’s wings again, just for the pure pleasure of it. The pseudo-prosthetic of the bot doesn’t carry the deep sense of wrongness that my hand always has. It feels right, strong and true and capable.

  The only wrongness is the lack of a connection to Maggie. The immersion of VIR is deep enough that I cannot feel my flesh body or her pulse beneath my skin.

  I turn the Gorak in a slow circle. The ridge is powdered with fresh snow, no sign that Maggie has been here. The air is still, and everything is silent.

  At first, I begin climbing, reaching out with the Gorak’s claws and wings to haul myself up the ridge. I automatically scan for handholds that would fit my human hands, and of course, I fall, tumbling down hard into the snow. I try to laugh, the sound registering in the bot as a low vibration. I don’t need to climb. I have wings.

  I fly up and out, my strong wings lifting me high into the air. Even in this form, I can feel the pull of the Mountain. It doesn’t feel wrong now. Its gravity is cradling me, keeping me safe.

  I keep flying up, scanning ridges as I go. There are no tracks anywhere, no sign that anyone has been this high on the Mountain. Panic shudders through me, the Gorak’s wings faltering. Maybe Maggie really was blinded and fell. Maybe she succumbed to altitude sickness. Maybe she simply stepped off the Mountain, into empty air.

  I wish I could feel her heartbeat, know if she is still alive. As I fly higher, the chassis of the bot shakes, its wings beating hard to keep aloft in the thin air. Like the Sherpas, it is built for altitude, and yet I sense it struggling to ascend. I want to stroke the head of the Gorak, to reassure it as I would a living thing. It is as strong as it needs to be. It can do anything.

  And then, suddenly, I am up above the Mountain.

  The summit itself is small: a roughly triangular snowfield bordered by stark cliffs on all sides. High and smooth, they appear impossible for anyone to climb. No handholds at all, nothing but sheer rock and glassine ice.

  Impossible for anyone to climb, but Maggie.

  She sits in the center of the summit triangle, ridges of snow radiating from her like waves. She has stripped off her hood and her gloves; her boots and pack are nowhere to be seen. New growth of hair on her scalp glimmers gold in the pure, clean light. Her head is tilted back, face turned up to the sun, eyes closed.

  I land the Gorak before her, and she opens her eyes. Her pupils are contracted tight, her irises as blue as the vast sky above, filled with light.

  “I knew you would come, Aisha,” she says. Her voice is rough, as though she has been screaming or singing for days. She lifts up her left ring finger, and I see my own pulse beating steadily beneath her skin. “You were right all along. The Mountain, she’s alive. She’s been calling to me. I think she’s always been calling me, leading me here. She’s singing to me now, beginning to whisper me all her secrets.” She presses her bare feet into the snow. They are flushed with blood, and the snow does not melt beneath them. “She let me climb because she wanted me to see.”

  Maggie pauses, presses her hands into the snow. When she lifts them up, a perfect impression of her hands remains, every line on her palms etched in ice.

  “I lied to you, Aisha,” she says. “To everyone. When they asked me about the summits, I always said what they wanted to hear. What everyone else says. That you feel the world opening up around you. That you find your real self.” She pauses, looks down at the prints of her hands. Digs her fingers into the ice, fragmenting her own palms. “I never felt anything. Not on any of the summits. It was always just empty.”

  If I had eyes, I would stare at her. I never knew any of this, never even suspected. She always looked so
alive on the summits, so happy.

  “I’m sorry, Aisha,” Maggie says. “I should have told you. I tried to, but I never could. And with your hand, with you being unable to climb yourself, it just felt cruel to tell you. You always supported me so much. You gave up everything for me. You gave up children.” She traces her finger along a fragment of ice, along the impression of her life line. “I lied to you about that, too. About the surgery, why I had it done. I started bleeding on a climb when I was thirteen. I had nothing with me, and I had to beg the other climbers—all men—for napkins, food wrappers, anything that could be used to soak up the blood. At the end of the day, I had to burn all of it in the communal fire while they all watched. I didn’t want that ever again. It was embarrassment, pure and simple. And I regretted it, after I met you.”

  I wish I had some way to communicate via the Gorak. I wish I had arms to wrap around her, to tell Maggie everything I sacrificed, I did so willingly. Maggie gave me more than I ever gave up.

  Maggie stands, raises her hands palm-up to the sky. The air begins to move, circling around her, waves of ice particles undulating in a dance that catches at the light, spins it to rainbows.

  “I always envied you, Aisha,” Maggie says. “You were a priestess, and you had this connection to everything. I always hoped that through you I’d feel that, too, but I never did. Everything was always just empty. Except you.” She smiles. “They couldn’t take away that, Aisha. They could take your pendant, but they can’t take what’s inside you. You’re still a priestess, if you choose to be. Your own priestess, not someone belonging to ONE. And you . . .” She pauses, her eyes focusing on something in the distance. She smiles again, and the expression is so filled with joy that I can’t help but smile, too. “She’ll be a priestess, too, Aisha. The start of something new.”

  She? Is Maggie talking about me still? Is she displaying symptoms of acute mountain sickness after all?

  “The Mountain, she isn’t empty,” Maggie says. “This is what I always looked for. Potential, the place where something could be. Where everything could be. And she’s only just started to sing to me. There’s so much she can tell me.”

  The air spins faster and faster, forcing me to hook the Gorak’s claws hard against rock to avoid being blown off the summit. A sense of dread is rising in me, registering in the bot as a rippling of its polymer skin.

  Maggie takes a step toward the edge. She tips her face up to the sky, and I’m not certain if it’s rapture or insanity I see in her eyes. Maybe both.

  Another step, and I reach out to her, but of course, I am in the Gorak, and I have no arms with which to reach. Maggie looks over her shoulder at me, smiles.

  “I knew that Farah loved me,” Maggie says. “But I never loved her. I loved you. I love you.” She holds up her left hand, ring finger extended.

  I have no voice with which to answer her, no hand to raise to mirror her.

  “I will always love you,” Maggie says. “But I have to see.”

  I incline the Gorak’s head, spread its wings into something like a bow. I hope she understands that I love her, too.

  She steps out into the void.

  For a moment, the wind holds her up. She is frozen there, a small white figure with arms and legs outflung against the blue of the sky.

  And then she is gone.

  25

  I wake in my own bunk, a warm blanket drawn up to my chin. The external VIR kit is gone, and Mallory is nowhere to be seen. The wounds on my temples where the kit’s electrodes burrowed through my skin are already closed. The skin there is numb, and when I press it, clear fluid seeps through my pores. It smells like nothing, but when I touch a drop to my tongue, I taste salt.

  My pseudo-prosthetic is locked in a fist. That feeling of wholeness is gone, and it feels like ash once more.

  The Wanda R. is silent. The encapsulated cells in my ring finger are still and cold, a shard of ice lodged beneath my skin.

  I stare at the capsule, willing Maggie’s heart to beat. For her to be alive like Farah, for another anomaly, another miracle.

  There is nothing.

  Maggie is gone. Truly gone.

  My wrist comm vibrates. I don’t thumb the controls to play the message, but it scrolls across the small screen anyway.

  It is a message from the clinic on Cleis Station, addressed to Maggie and dated from just before she left the ship for the Mountain, forwarded to me only now. It acknowledges receipt of her genetic material and confirms that the production of a fertile embryo can begin as soon as I supply mine.

  I tear the wrist comm free, throw it into a corner.

  Mallory’s voice speaks from the comm’s small speaker: “She never told her father that she asked for her ova to be stored after the surgery.”

  The air in my quarters is warm, and yet when I begin to weep, the tears freeze solid on my lashes.

  26

  For three days I lie in my bunk staring at the flat grey of the wall. It looks like greyspace. It looks like nothing. From the corner, my wrist comm pings from time to time. I ignore it.

  I do not eat. I do not sleep. I rise only when my body deems it absolutely necessary.

  I try not to look across to Maggie’s quarters. I try, but I cannot help myself. The holo shows Wanda Rutkiewicz every time. The easy smile she wears is gone, only accusation remaining in her eyes.

  “You couldn’t have saved her, either,” I say. “You died on a mountain too, remember?”

  The holo flickers, but it does not shift from Wanda’s accusing stare. I go back to my bunk. The ship around me is still silent. I wonder if the Wanda R., too, is mourning Maggie.

  On the fourth day, I find myself in the VIR pod. I have no memory of getting out of my bunk. It is as though I blinked, and the ship folded around me. Nausea twists in my stomach. It’s too much like the way VIR had folded around me, sending me back to the cave and the dead man over and over.

  A drop of fluid falls from one of the scars on my temples. Though the flesh is mostly healed, they continue to leak, soaking my pillow and sheets, making everything smell like brine.

  The VIR pod is dark and cold, the gravity set at ship standard. With not even a default feed running, it feels dead, a phantom limb attached to the body of the Wanda R. It is hard to believe that Maggie floated here amongst the stars, spoke about the Mountain calling to her.

  I sink to the floor, press knees to my chest, ring finger to my lips. Beneath my skin, the implant is like a stone. The human body rejects foreign objects. I wonder if, the cells dead, my body will eventually reject the implant entirely. If one day the movement of my flesh will push it up as a mountain rises from a plain.

  Blink, and I am in my bunk again, balled up tight beneath my blankets, staring at the grey wall.

  Static washes against the back of my neck. Mallory is there, the hologram wearing a ship suit as wrinkled as mine.

  “We’re being ordered to leave Icefall space,” Mallory says, its voice soft. “All of the other ships have left.”

  I turn back to the wall. As I move, my hands snag on the blankets. I look down to see that my right hand is clutched hard around my left wrist, the fingers tight enough that my left hand is completely numb and blue. It feels as unreal as the pseudo-prosthetic of my right. The encapsulated cells stand out, red beneath the white of my skin, like a blister about to burst. I try to loosen my fingers, find that I cannot, the prosthetic web locked tight.

  “Now that the summit has been reached, the climbing competition has been officially ended,” Mallory says. “They’ve decided to decommission the station, close off the system entirely. No one will ever be permitted to come here again.”

  I stare at my hands, willing the pseudo-prosthetic to unlock. “I’m not leaving.”

  “They say that they’ll call in military from a nearby system if we refuse.”

  “Military?” I turn around. As I do, it finally unlocks, my fingers tingling as blood flows back into them. “I won’t—I can’t leave her.”


  Mallory kneels down next to the bed. “She would want you to make a new life. With a child, if you choose. Her child.”

  She’ll be a priestess. Maggie’s words, which I had taken to be the start of acute mountain sickness. The start of something new.

  I close my eyes. Thick liquid seeps afresh from my scars. “She knew she wasn’t coming back, didn’t she? She always knew she would fall.”

  “Maggie would say she flew.” Mallory pauses. “I cannot say with any certainty what she did or didn’t know. She never confided in me. But I know enough to know that she would want you to live.”

  Mallory talking about Maggie in the past tense brings a fresh wave of nausea. I swallow hard against it. “I don’t want to go.” My voice sounds as small as a child’s. “She’ll be so cold. So lonely.”

  Mallory touches my hand gently. Static laps at my skin. “If you refuse, my programming will force me to restrain you, pilot us out of here.”

  I stare at the AI. “What about Maggie programming you to keep me safe?”

  “That would be my programming keeping you safe.”

  I take a breath. The air is so rich and warm. It should be ice. I nod slowly. We have no other choice. “We’ll go.”

  The AI follows me to the bridge, but lingers in the doorway, waiting for me to sit. I choose the navigator’s seat, allowing it to pilot. I wrap my arms around myself, and do not touch the board.

  Instead of taking us directly to the place where we can enter greyspace, Mallory pilots the Wanda R. around the planet, tunes the screens to the views from the ship’s external cameras. I see warnings from Icefall Station flashing red on the board.

  Mallory mutes the warnings. “We have time. You deserve to say goodbye.”

  “We both do,” I say.

  Blue curves across the screen, fades to white. I hold my breath as we move over the continent. Despite everything that has happened on Icefall, the simple blue and white of the planet still brings a sense of calm.

  The Mountain comes into view. I can feel it pulling, but even that drag seems less now. The Mountain’s gravity cannot compare to the weight of losing Maggie.