The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24

by Gardner Dozois

“I understand why Naomi would want to escape. Of course she’d try to flee. But the woman I knew had a talent for guessing where the tunnel would turn next. Throwing everything into a long journey out to the edge of inhabited space . . . well, coming all of the way out to Makemake strikes me as desperate, at best. And at worst, suspicious.”

  An unwelcome question had been asked. The chief responded by invoking his rank, stiffening his tail while the hands became fists. “Desperation is the perfectly normal response now. Sir. You don’t see the intelligence reports that I am forced to endure. You don’t study the elaborate simulations and their predictions for continuing troubles. At least ninety percent of the solar system’s population has been extinguished. At least. Worlds have been ruined, fortunes erased, but sitting inside this careful peace of ours, you cannot appreciate how miserable and frantic and sick these minds are . . . those tortured few who have managed to survive until this moment.”

  Charitably, Simon said, “I agree. I don’t know how it would feel.”

  The chief sighed. Regretting the present tone, he admitted, “I have nothing but respect for you, sir. Respect wrapped around thanks. What would we have done without your talents? What if you had found your way to another Kuiper world . . . to Varuna, perhaps? Today they would have a great atum working miracles with limited resources, and we would have to turn aside every soul for lack of room and food and precious air?”

  Varuna had been a disaster – too many refugees overtaxing the barely-begun terraforming work. But Makemake, and Suricata society in particular, had endured this nightmare rather well. Simon knew this game. With feigned conviction, he said, “You would have done fine without me. You are a marvelous and endlessly inventive people.”

  His host smiled too long.

  “May I ask another question?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the security chief.

  “Why am I here? You’ve identified your prisoner. And since I haven’t seen her for at least eight hundred years — ”

  “Nine hundred and five Martian years,” the chief interjected.

  “I don’t see any role for me to play.” Simon stroked the small gray beard that covered half of his thoroughly human face. “Unless of course you want my testimony at the trial.”

  “No,” the chief blurted.

  Simon waited, his patience fraying.

  “The trial was concluded several hours ago. The judges have announced the sentence. Nothing remains now but the execution of the prisoner.”

  “Ah.” Simon nodded. “You brought me here as a courtesy?”

  The black eyes gazed at him, hoping to say nothing more.

  But despite many decades of living among these souls, the atum couldn’t quite piece together the clues. What would have been obvious to any native citizen of this cold, isolated world was invisible to him. Finally, with honest confusion, Simon confessed, “I don’t know what you want.”

  “It is what the prisoner wants.”

  “Which is?”

  “Naomi has memorized our laws,” the chief confessed. “And she somehow learned that you were living here.”

  The atum began to feel ill.

  “She has invoked a little-used code, naming her executioner.”

  “I won’t,” said Simon.

  But the Suricata was a deeply social species. Choice did not exist in their civil code. Duty to their city and their world was seamless. And no less could be expected from those who came to live in their cathedrals of ice and bright air.

  “If you refuse this honor,” the chief said flatly, “then we will be forced to begin banishment procedures.”

  Simon took a moment to let the possibilities eat at him.

  “She wants me to kill her,” he muttered quietly.

  “To my mind,” the chief replied stiffly, “the woman is already dead. With this gesture, you will be completing the act.”

  In a multitude of places, including inside at least one atum’s mind, there were precise and effective plans for the transformation of this little world. Makemake was named for a Polynesian god of creation. Specifically, for a deity worshipped by the isolated citizens of Easter Island, which as land-masses went, was arguably the most remote portion of the earth colonized by the first human species. If the war hadn’t erupted during the last century, Makemake’s transformation would have begun. A dozen artificial suns were delivered while Mars was dying again. They were in orbit, patiently waiting orders to ignite. This early step could easily be taken: Turning methane snows into a thin atmosphere clinging to a body barely half the size of Pluto. But even that modest step brought danger. Why make yourself a prize to distant but vicious enemies? Eight decades of unmatched struggle had ravaged richer worlds, and if not for the thin traffic of refugees that still managed to limp their way out into this cold, lightless realm, there wouldn’t be any traffic whatsoever.

  The ranking atum thought about these weighty matters, and he considered his own enormous luck – not just to survive the War, but to then discover a life that gave him authority and privilege beyond any that he’d ever known.

  Simon usually took pleasure from his walks on the surface. There was majesty to this realm of cold and barren ice. The black sky was unmarred by clever lights and ship traffic, giving it an enduring appeal. The glimmers and flashes of great weapons weren’t visible any longer. Neither surviving Camp was able to marshal those kinds of monstrosities today. Which was why the determined mind could forget, looking at the ember that was the sun and seeing nothing else but the faint dot that was Jupiter, believing any story but the miserable one where almost every life was destroyed, and every world, including the earth, was at the best only barely, painfully habitable.

  “What are you doing?” asked a sharp, impatient voice.

  “As little as I can,” he admitted to his companion.

  “Focus,” she implored.

  “I should.”

  “You haven’t changed at all, have you, Simon? You still can’t make yourself do the distasteful work.”

  “That’s my finest flaw,” he replied.

  The humor was ignored, such as it was. Her own focus was relentless, her shrewdness undiminished, and as always, Naomi had her sights locked on some self-important goal. Stopping abruptly, she told him, “I didn’t select you just because we were once friends and colleagues. No, Simon. I picked you because you are perhaps the most consistent creature that I’ve ever known.”

  “What do you want, Naomi?”

  “Not yet,” she teased. Then she began to walk again, marching vigorously toward the small, undistinguished crater where for years now prisoners like her had been executed.

  Naomi and Simon were the same size, give or take a few grams. But in a calculated bid to ingratiate herself with her now-defeated Camp, she long ago surrendered every hint of her human form. The woman resembled a scorpion, complete with the jointed limbs and an elaborate, supremely graceful tail folded up beneath her lifesuit. Her carapace was designed to withstand a hard vacuum, but not the cold. Her suit was heated, and a simple recyke system kept her green blood fully oxygenated. Disable either, and she would die slowly and without fuss. The chief and various experts had advised Simon to cripple both systems and hasten the act. But ice crystals and suffocation were astonishingly violent acts, if only at the cellular level. Simon held his own opinions about how to commit murder, and much as he hated this wicked business, he would carry out the execution however he damn well pleased.

  Seemingly without fear, the scorpion scuttled across the ice.

  Ignorant eyes might imagine Simon as the doomed soul. And indeed, many eyes were watching their approach. Cameras supplied by both Camps had been unpacked and activated for this singular occasion. The machines were witnesses, hardened links and a multitude of security safeguards linking them to the solar system. In principle, nobody could be fooled by what happened next, unless what they wanted was to be fooled.

  Simon took longer strides, catching the prisoner just short of the crater
wall.

  And Naomi slowed abruptly, her adrenalin or its equivalent suddenly failing her. Eerily human eyes glanced up at Simon, and on their private channel, she said, “I’ve always liked you.”

  He was startled but careful not to show it.

  “I know how that sounds, and I know you don’t believe me. But from the first time we met, I have held the greatest respect for your abilities.”

  “Where was that?” he asked.

  “The first time?”

  “I’m old,” he admitted. “Remind me.”

  She didn’t simply mention about Venus. With astonished detail, Naomi described a dry meeting between members of an air-plankton team – the kind of routine nonevent that Simon would forget in a week, at most. “You made skeptical comments about our work. Perceptive, illuminating comments, when you look back at the moment now.”

  “That impressed you?”

  “In a peculiar fashion, you seemed more secure than the rest of us. More honest, less willing to compromise yourself with the politics.”

  He shrugged, saying nothing.

  “I’m sure you took notice: I was a flirt and shameless when it came to working the rooms. And I don’t think that ten Simons would have held as much ambition as I carried around in those times.”

  “Probably not,” he conceded.

  “Did you ever want to sleep with me?”

  “No,” he lied.

  But she didn’t seem to care, eyes closing while the hard face nodded wistfully. “If I’d paid attention to you . . . if I had let myself learn from you . . . my life would have turned out quite a bit better, I think.”

  It might have been a different life, or perhaps not. Simon realized long ago that no matter how creative or well informed the soul might be, there was no way to see the future that rose even from the wisest of decisions: Ignorance as epiphany, and with that, freedom from regret.

  They reached the lip of the crater together – two tiny entities on the brink of a neat flat-bottomed bowl. Suddenly he was in the lead, his pseudo-adrenalin rising out of a gland that was among his youngest. With a dry, tight voice, he said, “You named me. You claim that there’s a reason. And if you don’t tell me why, I’ll be happy.”

  “But I have to tell you,” Naomi replied.

  “I can’t help you,” he warned. “Maybe you think that I’ve got power here, but I don’t. Or that I’m not strong enough to do this, and I’ll lose my will, and then the Suricata would give up trying to punish you — ”

  “I don’t expect your help or your weakness,” she interrupted. “You are a soft-hearted creature. But that isn’t why I selected you.”

  “Soft-hearted,” he heard, and the image mysteriously gnawed at him.

  Naomi continued, saying, “The two of us, Simon . . . we atums have seen a great deal during our extraordinary careers.”

  He took a long bounce, ending up on a flat stretch of rock-hard water ice. “I suppose we have, yes.”

  “My career,” she began.

  He forced himself to slow, glancing up at the cameras hovering against the eternal night sky.

  “Being an atum is a blessing, and I feel blessed. I know how it looks now, the insanity that drove us into the Camps. Using our knowledge about building worlds to kill the worlds instead. But think of the history that these eyes have witnessed. The geniuses that I’ve known and our important work, and the foolish tragedies too . . . everything that comes with remolding and giving life to dozens and hundreds of worlds, little and great . . .”

  “What is it, Naomi?”

  “I kept a diary,” she muttered.

  “Many do.”

  “But my diary is far more complete than the others,” she maintained. “From the first entry, I’ve used only the best methods, the most thorough tricks. This isn’t just text and images, Simon. I underwent scans of my mind, uploaded memories, censoring nothing. Nothing. And then I employed a military-grade AI to act as an overseer and voice. This is my life, the splendid as well as the awful, and I don’t think any citizen in any venue has ever achieved the scale that I’ve managed.”

  “And my role?”

  “I’ll tell you where I hid it,” she admitted. “You’re good and decent, Simon, and you can appreciate the value of this kind of testimony. Ten thousand years from today, won’t the citizens be hungry to understand the people who shaped their history – those who first colonized the solar system?”

  He glanced up at the sun and that feeble band of dust riding on the ecliptic, much of it created by explosions and obliterating impacts. “You’re certain there’s going to be an audience then?”

  “We’ve made our mistakes,” she conceded. “But this war will end. And shouldn’t we give our descendants every lesson possible? ‘Don’t do as we did,’ we will tell them.”

  “I did nothing too terrible,” he maintained.

  Suddenly Naomi ran short of praise for her executioner. With her voice breaking, she pointed out, “No, you’re just as guilty as me, Simon.”

  “Despite my good opinions,” he countered.

  “A billion clever insights accomplish nothing, if the voice that mutters them isn’t compelling enough to change one action.”

  They were near the crater’s center, the execution ground defined by a neat black circle as well as pits made by the blasts of weapons and warm bodies rapidly growing cold. Reach that line, and their private line would fail. Only an unsecured public line would allow them to speak to one another. Simon felt his face filling with blood – the blush marking just a portion of his deep, conflicted feelings. He tried to keep his voice under control, but each word came out hard and tense. “It’s time, Naomi. I’m going to stop your oxygen and heater now, and we can walk the rest of the way together.”

  “My diary?”

  He didn’t answer. “Your carapace is a fine insulator,” he said. “And if I’m right, we’ll have several minutes before you spend your last breaths.”

  “But you will rescue my diary, won’t you? I tell you where it is, and you can use it however you want. As a historical record, if you want — ”

  “And only for that reason,” he muttered.

  Emotions made her shiver, but she acted satisfied. One conspirator to another, she said, “I did genuinely like you, Simon.”

  He touched the controls on her back, powering down both systems.

  “And you’re a familiar presence,” she conceded. “If a person has to die this way, don’t you think she should be with a friend?”

  “I’m not your friend, Naomi.”

  She didn’t speak.

  Oxygen had stopped entering her blood, and in the next moment, the bitter chill of Makemake began to creep inside her. “I don’t know if I can make it to the circle.”

  “You can.”

  “Just say that you’re my friend,” she begged. “Please. I don’t want it to end this way.”

  From the satchel on his hip, Simon pulled out a small railgun, and he aimed and fired a slug of iron-clad stone into the scorpion’s brain. Naomi stiffened, and a moment later, collapsed. He grabbed a front leg and dragged her across the neat black line, then backed away to allow the cameras to descend and investigate the body with a full array of sophisticated tools. Breathing hard, he looked at the corpse, and with a steady voice he pointed out, “You helped murder hundreds of billions. And until today, you didn’t throw two nice words my way. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to help your beloved memories have any life beyond today.”

  “Thank you,” the chief said.

  He gave his thanks once and then again, and then twice more, with even greater feeling.

  Then with an air of concern, the chief continued. “This must have been hard on you. Regardless what she was and how much she deserved her fate — ”

  “It was difficult,” Simon conceded.

  The little creature seemed giddy with compassion. “This won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “But I’m here if you need me,” Simon repl
ied.

  A dark, dark joke.

  The chief nodded warily.

  “She brought it with her. Didn’t she?”

  The chief hesitated. “Brought what?”

  “Her diary. The AI with its attached memories. Naomi came here with the hope of using it as a bribe, hoping to manage a better deal for herself.” Until Simon said the words, he didn’t believe it was true, but then they were drifting in the air and he believed nothing else.

  The chief suddenly had no voice.

  “And I’m guessing that one of you two brought me into this scheme. She would tell me that the fabled diary was somewhere else, somewhere hard to reach, throwing the scent far from Makemake. Naomi must have told others about her self-recording project, not to mention leaving an ether-trail from the hospitals and various specialists brought into the project. But if I thought I had this special knowledge, and if I acted according to my good noble instincts . . . well, I can see how this would have distracted a few players while you happily sat on the prize.”

  “But why would I care?” the little man managed.

  “Because Naomi had a wealth of experience, and that’s the part of her estate you wanted. Her expertise. Once this war is finished, Makemake will be able to reinvent itself, and prosperity is going to come easier when you enjoy the free and easy guidance of a highly accomplished atum.”

  “Naomi’s dead,” the chief offered, in his own defense.

  “She is. And she isn’t. No, in her peculiar mind, I think the creature held a different interpretation of events.” Simon shrugged, the last traces of anger washing out of him. “I saw a small useless death on the ice, while she saw life inside a new mechanical mind. When you’re as greedy as Naomi, it’s amazing what you can convince yourself of . . . and who knows, maybe that old lady has a point in all of this . . . ?”

  Earth

  The purpose of the visit was to meet the next generation of atums, in classes and privately, assessing the strengths as well as the inevitable weaknesses of these graduates before they were scattered across the Unified System. But several grateful university officials came to the chief atum, begging for a public event that would earn notice and praise, both for them and their ancient institution. Simon agreed reluctantly. He would give a speech, stipulating only that his audience was kept small – a diverse assortment of students and faculty assembled in some minor lecture hall. He understood that any public event by someone of his rank would attract attention. What he wanted to escape were situations where multitudes of eager, ill-prepared souls would cling to every word, unable to tell the off-hand remark from rigid matters of policy. But his request, harmless and rational to his mind, led first to strict quotas, and when the demand proved too enormous, a lottery system where tickets were awarded and sometimes sold for fantastic sums – all for the honor of cramming inside a long hot room with forty thousand equally enthralled bodies, every eye and a few secret cameras staring at a figure as old as terraforming, or nearly so.