The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3

by Neil Clarke

  Whatever the situation, it was time to call to Amund.

  The mortal hadn’t moved for hours. Sitting on the high ground, he nodded down at her while pulling a hand across his mouth, as if pushing his jaw closed. Then he stood, one arm and then both arms helping him lift the backpack and kit, and as he walked down the brief hill, Mere noticed what was different about Amund. The local gravity was intense, and the man had to be tired, but she thought that she saw the beginnings of a swagger riding on those short, careful steps.

  The river had fallen silent. Sacks of salty water gathered on its surface, proteins inside the sacks weaving structures that quickly linked with their neighbors. Then the water was yanked away from the sacks, with a shrill keening screech, leaving behind a peculiar and mostly dry object that looked like a boat and smelled exactly like fresh meat.

  Mere didn’t believe any good news, but Rococo was a portrait of enthusiasm. Looking back at the mortal, he shouted, “We have a yacht now.”

  Amund was smiling and then he wasn’t.

  Winking at Mere, Rococo said, “Every world looks better when you don’t have to walk it. Don’t you agree?”

  The gift was no yacht. The object resembled ancient pontoon boats, except unlike any vessel cobbled out of animal hides or spun boron, this boat would never float. Certainly not like two bottles riding on a current. The river was semi-solid and denser than water, the darkest blue flesh marbled with little white threads and spinning red wheels of light. To her bare palm, the creature was warm enough to be pleasant and a little stubborn when shoved. A person could walk across its surface, but only for as long as the river cooperated. On a whim, it could liquefy. That’s what the old videos showed. Whenever it wished, the river could engulf the pontoons and platform and then everybody on board. That grim prospect had to be in Rococo’s mind too. Yet the man didn’t hesitate to walk across the blueness and climb on board, practically running from one end to the other. Following warily, Mere found a wood-like platform edged with simple low rails. There were three cabins, each with a flat roof and its own walls, and one door that could be swung closed. And there was a fourth room with nothing inside but a toilet. The biggest shock was how planned everything was, functional and unadorned yet entirely useable, perhaps even comfortable.

  What should the two of them offer in response? Praises and thanks, perhaps. With few hard threats against anyone who might try to set a trap. Rococo and Mere shared glances, trying to guess each other’s mind.

  Amund had reached the shoreline.

  And the blue flesh rippled, pontoons rising up on newborn ridges. This must be how they would move. What wasn’t a river would carry them on its wiggling skin, and what wasn’t a river valley would pass on both sides. Mere didn’t want to make guesses, much less fall for wrong speculations, but a sudden confidence shook away some of her doubts.

  She looked at Amund again.

  The mortal seemed to prefer the shore.

  Like muscle, like people, a living river preferred to find easy routes. That’s why their distributions resembled earthly rivers. Born in the sea, lazy flesh was pushed wherever the climbing was easiest, which meant following existing drainages. Living tissues absorbed rain and glacial melt as well as the minerals and every organic treat. Each creature fed on an extraordinary range of energy sources. Sunlight and wild insects were food. Infrared radiation from the ground was food. But the most coveted meals were from beneath the ocean floor and the high mountains. Piezoelectric and geothermal. That’s what delivered true, trustworthy power.

  To Mere, this was a wonderland. Regardless of what life brought, death tomorrow or in another ten million years, she might never experience an entity so strangely remarkable as this.

  That sounded like belief, didn’t it?

  She laughed to herself.

  Rococo noticed, and for one reason or many, he laughed with her.

  Then both looked at the shoreline, at Amund.

  Was he going to balk at the ride? No. His hesitations ended with a few long steps across the river. Then he was standing beside them, saying nothing, letting the pack and kit fall to the deck, but breathing hard while staring at Mere.

  Something was different, was wrong.

  Possibilities offered themselves. Mere accepted none of them, but her intention was to flat-out ask their companion about his mood.

  Except there wasn’t time for questions.

  Looking past both of them, Amund called out, “I’m ready.”

  The boat that wasn’t a boat shivered.

  “And I want this to be a quick trip,” Amund commanded.

  Suddenly the boat rose even higher, and they were streaking downstream.

  Laughing, Rococo sounded like a nervous boy.

  Mere felt warm and afraid.

  Meanwhile the man in charge seemed to relish their reactions, stepping between them as a smile came and then faded again, a slight embarrassment offered with the hard words, “For the moment, both of you are under my protection.”

  What was this?

  And the man in charge said, “Madam, I want you to know. I’m looking forward to sleeping with you.”

  7.

  Leaving his homeworld, bound for duty aboard the Great Ship, the youngster envisioned his life as a sequence of long leaps through darkness, with spectacles and wonders waiting at the end.

  That was a self-absorbed notion, and deserved. The Great Ship commanded respect as well as envy, and it was in the best interest of every world to enthrall the Ship’s diplomats. As the ultimate tourist, Rococo was sure to be afforded every comfort, every grace. Standing on the windswept lip of an endless canyon, walking the sacred glen past the sacred desert, or, if the mood struck, riding what wasn’t a whale into the depths of a frigid methane sea: Those were memorable events from his first thousand years.

  But spectacle rises only so high. Even an intensely curious mind grows numb to vistas and symphonies and all of those rich, sweet stinks. And every grand majesty eventually becomes nothing but another good day.

  Yet this living river …

  The beast was like nothing else.

  And their journey to the coast?

  Without the high stakes, this voyage would have been momentous. But the perils were close and impossible to forget. Amund, for instance. The man was dying. Age was murdering him, and the omnipresent radiation, and the capricious will of an alien had elevated him to a high, utterly ridiculous station. But for how long? Meanwhile the two immortals were stripped of every resource, nothing to aid them but considerable experience and the fact that one of them had survived worse disasters than this. Which was Mere. Rococo had never experienced any mission this harrowing. But why would he? Diplomats weren’t explorers. The captains didn’t toss his kind into shit-storms. And in particular, they wouldn’t risk Rococo, one of their best. Not for an adventure with less than 2 percent chance of survival. Which was his estimate, weighing what he knew and what his guts said.

  “Two percent,” he mentioned to Mere.

  She stared at the living river and the swiftly passing shoreline. Having outlived at least one world, he assumed she would generate a more optimistic number. But no, she surprised him.

  With confidence, she said, “I don’t know.”

  “It’s an estimate,” he allowed.

  Then she warned him, “Guesses are just another danger.” And on that cryptic note, she turned away, walking into the cabin that she was sharing with the dying man.

  Rococo remained on the bow of what wasn’t a boat. Boats were buoyant, but there was nothing to float on here. What wasn’t a river carried them where it wished, and it was wishing them toward the ocean, usually at speeds that drove strong winds into his face. Everything in sight was one creature, a wonder of salt-infused gel and migrating impulses, bioelectric currents and free oxygen, plus reflexes and crosspurposed desires and whatever memories happened to have survived the recent nightmare. Unless every memory had endured, which was possible. Who knew? A field te
am and labs and AI savants running free. That’s what they needed, and that was impossible. This river was safe from study, and a man riding the swift nonboat couldn’t understand what he was seeing, much less appreciate what he couldn’t see, and that was another reason why Rococo found himself spellbound.

  The beast had grown wider and presumably much deeper over the last few days. More than three kilometers across, the blue-black gelatin appeared slick and dark and exceptionally nonreflective. Water always invited the sky, but this wasn’t water. They rode on a ribbon of meat and reflex and furious power. And where true rivers were flat, this creature made itself tall, flexing into a ridge that carried tiny people and their tiny prison where it wanted, as quickly or as slowly as it wished. Now, for instance. Rococo felt the sudden change of direction. What wasn’t a current swept him close to what wasn’t a shoreline, and he stared at a scraggly false forest of sessile bodies waving long tendrils at him or at the sky. Maybe they were feeding on airborne plankton, or perhaps this was something else entirely. Watching the forest dance, he realized that the tip of each tendril was cracking like a whip. Bits of tissue were torn loose, and the bits rose high and then fell until wings sprouted and those new bodies flew away, dissolving into the thick alien sky.

  Had he seen this before? Inside the videos sent by the original river, did Rococo ever observe this talent?

  No.

  A skill unleashed during the rebuilding phase? Rococo suspected Mere would feel just as ignorant as he did. No, there was a person to ask, but he was inside his cabin with his lover. This world didn’t bother speaking to diplomats or exobiologists. Only Amund was given that honor, and only on the river’s schedule. “Next time the two of you chat,” Rococo should say. “Ask about the tendrils sprouting wings. Would you please?”

  He smiled out of habit and held tight to the railing. The river had yanked itself as high as ever, Rococo perched at the edge of what looked like a wet purple cliff, and that’s when the sessile forest vanished. Busy life was instantly replaced with what looked like a dead city. Blockish shapes resembled buildings, and there were signs of fire that must have burned hotter as they continued downstream, the black outlines of foundations sketched on the blasted ground, and then long reaches of filthy irradiated glass. Cities were human inventions, and of course this world never had cities. But a facility must have stood here, a sprawling factory where the previous river refined metals and wove the antennae that spoke to the Great Ship, and maybe the bones of those early starships. Maybe this was an intentional side trip, one man shown the devastation wrought by some very bad thoughts. Or maybe this was all chance. Either way, the blast zone impressed him. Rococo estimated distances and the megatons, both of which were substantial. And then the glass vanished, the river spreading into a gelatinous purple lake inside a crater, and Rococo couldn’t stop thinking about what a nuclear device would do to his tiny, perpetually scared mind.

  Suddenly that 2 percent chance of survival felt wildly optimistic. He suffered that revelation and then embraced it. Freedom always came when the odds were at their worst. There was no getting off this world. The new river didn’t trust them, and maimed as it was, it had enough power to demand whatever it believed was best, and that included ignoring the two creatures that could transform its future in the most amazing ways.

  Holding his breath, Rococo listened to his thoughts.

  Far out on the lake, the beast was pulling itself into what looked like a mountain, and then it lifted the prison and prisoners until they were at the summit, hundreds of meters above the land. That’s when they stopped, and a great voice rose from below, shaking the world as it called out, “Amund.”

  A few moments passed before the naked man appeared, obviously interrupted from pleasures that didn’t appreciate interruptions.

  Rococo continued to hold his breath, his body tingling, alternate metabolisms waking as the last of his oxygen was spent.

  Still naked, Amund hurried down the blue slope, and where nobody else could hear him, he paused, speaking a few words while waving his hands.

  Mere emerged, wearing clothes and a watchful, unreadable expression.

  Rococo breathed again.

  The sugar inside his flesh began to burn, the tingling becoming a general warmth, and once again, his thoughts shifted. He wanted to speak to Mere. Honestly and unheard. But that meant using a tongue that the creature beneath them couldn’t understand.

  More breathing, more thinking.

  The luddy continued to wave his hands, chatting happily with one of the largest creatures in the galaxy.

  Rococo cleared his throat. “I’m thinking of that bal’tin proverb.”

  The bal’tin were familiar to both of them, and that included a language that this world couldn’t have heard.

  Mere stared at him.

  Rococo offered a brief statement that sounded like music.

  Straightening her back, the woman smiled and then let the smile fall away. This hadn’t been a long meeting. Amund was already returning to the prison, marching uphill because his great friend wouldn’t think of making the journey easy for aging legs. How much radiation was punching up from the lake floor? Probably quite a lot. The entire world was saturated with fallout, and Amund was halfway dead, and even if the cancers didn’t kill him, it was only a matter of decades before he was finished.

  With those bleak thoughts swirling, Rococo offered another bal’tin proverb. “Doom and eggs, doom and eggs,” he sang. “Our souls are the boxes that carry forth the doom and the eggs.”

  As he spoke, he realized that he was crying.

  When did the tears start?

  Rococo had never earned a warm smile from Mere. Until now. The tiny woman looked at him, offering a sigh while showing him such a delicious smile. She cared. She felt for him and for both of them. Perhaps she even thought about holding his hand. And there weren’t enough sensors in the Universe to measure the pleasure that smile delivered to one old and very doomed diplomat.

  8.

  Some voices wanted Amund frozen. The streakship was being fueled and provisioned, and he had minutes to prepare for a quick trip to the Ship’s port, and after that, a sudden introduction to his fellow crewmembers. But friends and strangers had to approach him before he left the Highlands. Using confident voices, they advised him to step inside a cold bottle. None of them had any firsthand experience with spaceflight, much less alien desires, but they promised that his life would be spared at the end of this adventure, and did he want to waste his youth living inside a streakship? His ex-lover was particularly adamant. The voyage was sure to be dull, and he really should freeze himself for both journeys, out and back again. But she didn’t go so far as promising to wait for him, ludicrous as that would be. Instead she offered a fetching look, saying, “I’ll have a daughter or two by then, and I know they’ll be eager to meet the most famous human ever born in the Highlands.”

  Those were the last human words spoken to Amund’s face.

  When he reached the Port Alpha, a few low-ranking machines took the trouble to offer the same advice. Deep space was full of obstacles. One shard of comet could slip past his streakship’s defenses, and the impact would slow their trajectory by several hundred meters a second. And when that happened, the liquid bodies inside would continue forward at several hundred meters every second. Thrown against the walls, Amund would be turned into dead goo. Nobody wanted that. “Sleep through the journey out, enjoy a fine adventure on the target world, and then you’re free of this ridiculous obligation,” they told him. “Another good sleep, get swaddled in kinetic buffers, and who’s bigger than you when you come home?”

  And all those pretty girls waiting, no doubt.

  Amund listened to every word, but what he heard were the selfish fears:

  These machines didn’t want their human wasted, and they certainly didn’t want to lose the four new worlds that his tiny death was going to buy.

  Washen never mentioned cold bottles, and perhaps sh
e didn’t know what her officers were suggesting. Her last moments with Amund were spent introducing the two-person crew, then with warm touches, reiterating her boundless appreciation for what one noble man was doing.

  Rococo never brought up the topic of freezing anyone. What mattered was boasting about his infinite skills as a diplomat and how he would face down the rivers. “Saving a young man’s life,” he said.

  Except he didn’t say, “Saving a graying, half-spent man’s life.” Did he?

  In a day jammed with the unforeseen, the greatest surprise was Mere. So tiny next to the captains and diplomats and everyone else. So plainly, ridiculously different. Amund didn’t think of her as pretty, yet he couldn’t stop staring at the little face that looked starved because it was starved. This body and those enormous bottomless eyes were born on a crippled starship. Amund heard that story. With a rush of words, Rococo told how she crashed on an alien world where she was tormented like a demon and worshipped like a god. Mere was human only in the most glancing fashion … but wait, she wasn’t human. Amund forgot what was obvious. This was another immortal machine who couldn’t be trusted. Those wrong eyes were full of sympathy, or she was pretending to care. Either way, she offered very few words. No talk about cold bottles or her thanks for his sacrifice or even the particulars of the mission. She just took hold of him, her hand hot and his hand suddenly feeling cold. Mere gripped him just enough to prove her unnatural strength, and then she smiled in the saddest fashion, confessing, “I like very little about this mission. Just so you understand.”

  Mere wasn’t beautiful, but gods didn’t have to wear beauty. It was enough that they were powerful, ageless entities deserving adoration and long stares, and any mortal would be stupid not to be thrilled to live in their shadows.

  The low-ranking machines were the ones that argued for the cold bottle. Those would-be deities were scrambling for anything that smelled like power. “We’re going to save you,” they promised. As if they had any role in future events. “A kidney, a hand. You give the rivers a gift, and they let the rest of you return home again. You won’t be half a year older, and then you’re the young hero leading your people to the new world.”