The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3

by Neil Clarke

  Más himself had been less forgiving. After I turned him in, the local police superintendent let me talk to him. Más told me he hated me, called me a “fucking English turncoat.” He spat in my face.

  I told him he didn’t understand. That he had been lucky until now. Lucky he hadn’t been killed. That they hadn’t retaliated.

  I wanted to tell him we were working on things to kill them, to infect them, to turn them on each other. I wanted to tell him to wait until the harbor mouth was closed, that the nets were in place, that he could soon take to the water off Ballyvoloon every day. That I would go with him.

  But I couldn’t and none of it would have mattered anyway.

  I had betrayed him. And I found I could live with it.

  Between Más’s house and Ballyvoloon is a harbor-side walkway known simply as ‘the water’s edge.’ The pavement widens dramatically in two places to support the immense red-brick piers of footbridges that connect the old Admiralty homes, on the other side of the railway line, to the sea. I climbed the wrought iron steps to the peak and surveyed the harbor, my arms resting on the mossy capstones of the wall. The sun was rising over the eastern headland, bright and cold.

  I took the phone from my pocket and watched the coroner’s video.

  It was mostly from one angle, from a camera I had often passed high atop an antique lamppost preserved in the middle of the main street. The quality was good, no sound, but the colors of Ballyvoloon were gloriously recreated in bright sunshine. The camera looked east, past the pier and along the beach to the old town hall, now a Chinese takeaway.

  There, just visible over the roof of the taxi stand office, sat Más on his rock, whittling and chipping at a piece of wood. The email from the coroner said he had sat there all morning, but she must have supposed that I didn’t need to watch all of that.

  At 4pm, his usual knocking-off time, he stood, stretched his back in such an exaggerated way I thought I could hear the cracks of his vertebrae, and packed his things into a large, waterproof sail bag. Carrying his pink-and-white jacket over one arm, he walked toward the camera, hailing anyone he met with a wave, but no conversation.

  However, rather than cross the beach for the bar at Tom’s, he turned left down the patched concrete of the pier.

  At that time of day it was deserted. The last of the stalls had packed up, the tourists had made for their trains or their buses.

  The angle switched to another camera, on the back of the old general post office, perhaps. It showed Más standing with his toes perfectly aligned to the edge of the concrete pier’s “T.” After a few minutes, he removed several things from his pockets, folded his jacket, and placed it on the concrete.

  He opened the bag and withdrew a banana-yellow set of antique, old-petro waterproofs. He stepped into the thick, rubbery trousers before donning the heavy jacket and securing its buttons and hooks.

  He walked to the top of the rotten steps, looked up at the cathedral and made a sign of the cross. Then he descended the steps, sinking from view.

  There was nothing for more than a minute, but the video kept running, the pattern of wavelets kept approaching the shore, birds kept wheeling in the sky.

  In a series of small surges, the prow of the naomhóg emerged from under the pier, then Más’s head, his face towards the town, then the rest of his body and the boat.

  I had to hand it to him. He could have launched his vessel at dead of night from the little boathouse where he had built the others, but he chose the part of town most visible to the cameras, at a time when few people would be around to stop or report him.

  With each pull on the oars, he sculled effortlessly through the gentlest of swells, his teeth bared in joy.

  His yellow oilskins shone in contrast against the dark greens of his boat and the surrounding water as he made for the mouth of his harbor and the open sea beyond.

  “Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line, nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine.”

  —John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

  Robert Reed is the author of nearly three hundred published stories and novels. His most successful properties are wrapped around a giant star ship dubbed the Great Ship, and its mysterious cargo—an entire world named Marrow. “The Speed of Belief” is set in that universe, as is his next novel, The Dragons of Marrow. A short movie has been made from Reed’s novella “Truth.” Called Prisoner X, it is available for purchase from all the usual streaming venues. Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  THE SPEED OF BELIEF

  Robert Reed

  1.

  Water dreamed of flowing downhill, and despite their bluster and brains, humans were nothing but fancy water.

  That robust, endlessly useful lesson came early. Rococo was growing up on a colony world undergoing the final stages of terraforming. Man-brewed storms were transforming the barren highlands, and knowing where the new rivers would rise, the boy would find high ridges where he could watch the churning, muck-infused flows. Majestic violence was a reliable pleasure, and he adored the painful rich stink of alien rock being torn apart. But most of all, Rococo loved his own wild panic, and standing where everybody could see him, he couldn’t help but dance along with the trembling world.

  Strangers warned the boy to be smart and step back. Friends knew that he was quite smart, and so they begged him to be more careful, please. But Rococo’s parents didn’t trust his brains or his common sense, and that’s why they simply banned their son from wandering the wastelands alone. But of course rules were nothing but treaties, and every treaty was just words wrapped around flaws. A charming lad could always convince some old fool to go with him, and then through one clever trick or another, he would slip away to do just what he wanted.

  Then one day a mountainside collapsed. Rococo was prancing joyously, and then with no warning, rock and flood swallowed him. Rancid salty mud killed the body in every little way. Oxygen metabolisms shut down. His bioceramic brain retreated inside itself. Limbs were torn off, his chest was gored, and the shattered head was finally buried under a young river delta. Blind and helpless, that remarkable mind had little choice but to consider its own nature. And that’s when Rococo began to appreciate how he was being carried through life by some very simple urges. Curiosity, for instance. That was a drug forcing him to find out what would happen next. He also had an instinctive love for mayhem, his senses coming alive only when the world turned wild. And there was always satisfaction in doing what nobody else would try, which was evidence that smug pride was the most useless, marvelous force in the Universe.

  Modern humans had engineered minds wrapped inside ageless, nearly immortal flesh. But their flesh was still mostly water. Water was a sanctuary for the ancient emotions. Love and lust, status and revenge. Those were the simple dictates in every person’s actions. Furthermore, emotion had a pathological need to string the Universe into a personal narrative. Every person lived within a story. That tale was adaptable and selfish, and it worked best if it served the soul’s needs. No matter how small, every journey demanded purpose. Just rising from the chair and crossing the room involved planning and a successful arrival. But where the average person was happy with small successes, Rococo wanted more. That’s what he decided sixty thousand years ago. Robots and family dogs were yanking his corpse out of the river mud, and his parents were weeping over and screaming at the mummified face, and AI doctors preparing to heal him completely. But the boy inside witnessed none of that drama. He was a calm soul reveling in his mighty ambitions, an epiphany born inside a temporary grave. And now he understood that he would risk anything for just the thin chance of being part of history.

  “People don’t dream,” Rococo began, as a joke and not as a joke. He felt as if he believed every word, declaring, “It’s our water that dreams, and that’s what makes us simple. Solvents are uncomplicated and transparent. Water or liquid methane, sulfuric acid or supercritical carbon dioxide. Every species is compelled by the fantasies of its broth.�
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  Pausing, he tried to gauge his audience’s reaction.

  Silent indifference held sway.

  “And nobody is better suited than me when it comes to deciphering what an organism believes,” he continued. “Knowing the beast across the table: That’s what makes the premier diplomat. Which isn’t my only skill, no. But it’s a talent, and I’m not an animal that keeps quiet about his talents. Particularly when I’m walking beside the Ship’s most famous exobiologist.”

  These were old boasts, but Rococo had never made them sound so ludicrously grand. He wanted to push the issue this morning. Eight days after their vault landed in the high country, and seven days into a desperate march across this lovely, half-dead wilderness, he was hungry for energy. Rococo wanted to kindle scorn or mocking laughter and maybe an exchange of insults. Big emotions would give everyone enough fire to keep them distracted. The question was: How would Mere react to his inspired nonsense about dreams?

  Two more steps, and then the tiny woman stopped walking. Staring at the horizon, not at him, she said nothing. A native bug landed on her head and then flew away again, and she said nothing. They had a destination and a timetable, but it was more important to make everyone wait. Then, as if addressing the horizon, she said, “Water doesn’t dream, and only an idiot would think so.”

  Diplomats could smile on command—either a human grin or some disarming, alien-inspired expression. But Rococo never lost sight of ultimate destinations. Whatever happened, he wanted to become Mere’s lover, and at this point in the negotiations, smiles would diminish his odds. Frictions were essential, and that’s why he bristled. “Don’t try to insult me,” he warned. “I’ve destroyed worlds because someone insulted me.”

  Not true, although he had seen a few worlds die.

  Mere finally looked at him. “Have I ever told you?” she asked. “You’re a silly, pretentious man, and you have no deep understanding of any creature besides your ridiculous, self-important self.”

  A good swing. He granted her that much.

  “But simple ideas are pushing us,” he maintained. “They shove us across worlds and through the aeons. You’ve seen it, Mere. More than anyone, you’ve experienced what ideas do to the tiny soul. Yet you still won’t concede the truth. That I know something useful. Because you’re stale and stubborn and full of pride. The ancient, wondrous Mere.”

  The woman’s gaze returned to the horizon. Rugged, ice-clad mountains rose into the dusty sky. A valley was resting at the mountains’ feet, and all of that ground should have been the darkest blue-black. But the valley was mostly gray, the air stinking of cinders more than life, and knowing the tragic reasons why, a weaker soul might have sat down and quit.

  But there weren’t any weaklings in this group.

  Mere had a starved slip of a body that never grew tired, and she had big lovely eyes that looked human and looked alien, managing the trick inside the same glance. The ageless lady had endured the most spectacular life: Raised by extinct, deeply peculiar aliens, she carried a unique outlook toward the Universe. And later, having survived the long, unlikely voyage to the Great Ship, she became the captains’ favorite instrument to investigate the most alien worlds.

  Rococo also had considerable experience with every sort of creatures. He was the Ship’s first diplomat, after all. And like a lot of observers, he held the opinion that despite being human, Mere was a species of One.

  They didn’t have time to stand, yet the woman stood. For another precious minute, nobody moved. Then Mere finally turned, looking at Rococo when she said, “Water doesn’t dream, you idiot. It’s the salt.”

  “The salt?”

  “Water’s the container. Ions passing across borders. That’s where our simple lives come from. We’re walking, talking salt.”

  Ah. She was teasing him.

  Rococo’s laugh was honest, but he cut it short for effect.

  Then the captivating woman turned to the third person in their ranks. “Amund, what do you think? Is it water that dreams, or is it salt?”

  Amund wasn’t immortal. A luddy by birth and by outlook, he rarely showed any patience for these long debates.

  Until now.

  The man turned serious. Hands opened and then closed, forming fists. The aging face turned harsh, but the eyes were soft. “You’ve got your shit backward,” the luddy stated. “There’s just one dream. Water and salt, people and rivers. And all of us obey the dream.”

  There was no bioceramic brain inside him, just water and salt, and Amund had come here for one exceptionally awful reason. Except the reason had gone missing, and regardless of what happened to his ancient companions, he was certain to die without fulfilling his purpose.

  Three people traveling across a half-dead world.

  How could anything so simple become so complicated?

  Wildfires had remade the land. Combustive wildfires, not nuclear blasts. At least not here. But the dense native air was heavily oxygenated, and the bedrock had been scorched clean of its forests and soil. Which made the walking easier, yes. Just another two days, plus the usual delays for Amund’s fatigue, and they finally reached the valley and the river. Only it wasn’t the river they would have hoped for. Spring water and melted snow fell into a body that made no noise beyond bubbles chewing at pitched rock. The waterscape was thinly populated, every swimming creature ready to eat its neighbors. But of course the water knew how to move, and that was another stroke of luck.

  To return home, Rococo needed to reach this river’s end. He dropped the pack that was carrying their survival kit, and wading in up to his waist, he pulled off his shirt and extended the sleeves, setting the garment on its back.

  “Do us the favor, friend,” he said. “Learn to float.”

  Living clothes were popular with a few sentients—commensal skins and engineered organics, plus slaves worn for one brutal tradition or another. This shirt wasn’t alive, but the fabric carried a tiny mind and many useful talents, including a genius for rebuilding itself into useful and unuseful forms. Gathering dissolved minerals and little breaths of air, the garment expanded and inflated itself, and the man stood over it, offering suggestions and then his approving silence.

  Rococo’s home world was massive and bathed in UV light, and that environment had dictated his carefully tailored frame: The long body and short powerful limbs, plus a chest harkening back to an age when power was carried as muscle and big ribs wrapped around the mortal heart. Projecting a sense of youth, his bare skin was brilliantly black in the day’s glare. That handsome face never needed adjustment, an elegant ooid wrapped around widely spaced, deeply purple eyes. His teeth were gold and the gray hair never grew past the point where the nubs were barely felt, and he had a smart voice that could shout until the sky rang, or the voice might say very little and say it softly and everybody heard the words just the same.

  Mere wasn’t even a third his size, yet she enjoyed her own power. The black hair was thick and grown long, and her body was as tough as hyperfiber, or at least seemed to be. This woman had outlived her homeworld, and serving the Great Ship, she had traveled alone to the most bizarre realms, risking her life many times. It was easy to believe that no other human, alive or lost to history, was as wondrously peculiar as her, or a tenth as lucky, or a millionth as blessed.

  Mere knelt where the river was swiftest, toes to the water, her hands coaxing her shirt to change its form.

  Rococo had no choice. Her breasts wanted to be seen, and he watched them until he could feel them under his hands. His imagination did the caressing, and enjoying this one immortal pleasure, he smiled.

  Then he noticed the luddy staring at her too.

  Funny. A man could admire any lady, knowing that he might never touch her. And despite pride and his own high opinions of himself, that same man could accept celibacy all the way home to the Great Ship.

  But this was too much of a stare. Amund wasn’t just giving a polite, appreciative glance. No, the mortal was very serious
about his lust. A butcher carving his way to the bone. That’s what he looked like. Not a vicious stare, or cold, but definitely immune to humor or other distractions. To Amund, nothing in the Universe mattered as much as a creature older than hundreds of generations of luddies.

  “Amund,” said Rococo.

  Nothing changed. The voice that couldn’t be ignored was being ignored.

  Again, louder this time, the diplomat said, “Amund.”

  A name old beyond old.

  The thin, sunburnt face turned slowly, grudgingly looking at his competitor’s face. A brain with more water than thought needed time to frame its response. Giving him no time, Rococo said, “Just as we planned. Wet your shirt and we start floating downstream before sunset.”

  Saying nothing, Amund kicked off a pair of freshly grown boots and stepped past the bare-chested Mere, clambering down a steeply cut bank, frigid water quickly to his chest, to his chin. Then a pained voice yelled, “Hey, shirt.”

  He said, “Make me a boat or drown me. You decide which.”

  2.

  Amund was little more than a boy when the captain came to his home. But that boy had a finished body, and being healthy as well as crafty-smart, he had several young women already helping plan out his promising life.

  His future seemed to be locked inside one kind of wonderful, and Amund thought that he understood what his story would be. But then Washen strode into the Highland of Little Sins. That was a remarkable occasion on its own merit. Captains never visited the sanctuary, certainly not a captain as powerful and famous as this entity. Knowing voices claimed that she was one of the Master Captain’s favorites, and Washen brought a famous history as well as that very famous face. Amund knew the face well enough to recognize it from the high ledge. That’s where the children were told to gather while the important adults stood below, forming a neat half-circle around an immortal machine carrying a lady’s face and a god’s invincible powers.