The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  At dusk, with a gold moon shining overhead, he returned to the limestone church and stood in the doorway as a young man in black fussed around the altar.

  "Evening, Padre," Dale said.

  O'Grady stared at him as if trying to place the countenance. "Yes," he said at last. "You must be the spaceman." His eyes had the smallest pupils Dale had ever seen, mere pinpricks, though with a curious, inviting depth. "Strange visitor from another planet, eh?" He waved the American inside. "Dale, isn't it?" He did not pause for a reply. "What can I do for you, Dale?"

  "It's about Rodriguez," Dale said. "A friend of mine. He died in an accident."

  "The, ah, the Aquarius pilot, yes?"

  Dale nodded. He put his hands in his pockets. The air felt heavier in here. "This..." he said. "Well… This is where his people were from, I guess you'd say."

  O'Grady moved down among the pews. He smelt faintly of the sacristy. "Rodriguez," he said carefully. "Not really many of them this side of the Shannon."

  "Fitzpatricks," said Dale, "on his mother's side. Grandparents came out a long time ago. I don't know when."

  "Well, how about that," O'Grady said. "An Irish astronaut. Now isn't that something?"

  "He was hardly Irish," Dale said.

  "If he could play for the soccer team he was Irish," the priest said firmly.

  Dale couldn't help but smile at the man's excitement. "That's not really the point."

  "That's always the point." He was back on the altar now, pottering around, adjusting the position of plates and candles and embroidery to suit his own baffling idiosyncrasies.

  "No," said Dale, following to the edge of the marble steps. "The point is… I brought him home. It's what he wanted."

  The priest's frantic motions ceased. His eyes drifted across the empty chapel and then back to Dale. "I didn't know there was a body," he said.

  "There wasn't."

  "Then –"

  Dale allowed himself sit down in the front pew. "Most of what was recovered was unidentifiable," he said. "The temperatures, the impact. The undifferentiated remains were interned in Arlington."

  "And those that were... differentiated?"

  Dale removed the small black canister from his jacket and stood it on the seat beside him. "Identified remains were returned to family," he said. "But Rodriguez didn't have family."

  O'Grady looked at the small metal can. He very gently picked it up, surprised at its weight. "And this –"

  "The surviving remains of Commander Mike Rodriguez, USN. NASA Astronaut Group 19."

  The priest blessed himself.

  "We flew off the Truman together in the war," Dale said.

  O'Grady frowned.

  "That's what you do in a war, Padre. But wanting to go into space, that was different. We go in peace and all that?"

  O'Grady was quiet for a long moment. "It occurs to me," he said at last, "that there's something I should show you." Still holding the canister, he led Dale back into a dark corner of the church, through an old low door with a gothic arch.

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see." The priest started on the tight spiral of the bell tower stairs and Dale trailed after him, his hand feeling the way along the undressed stone. It was dark and cold, the walls showing evidence of damp, and at the top was a cramped, shuttered room, the floor of which had been boarded out. There was no bell.

  "We replaced it," O'Grady said, as if reading Dale's mind. He patted a fat loudspeaker affixed with brackets to the wall. "Bullhorn," he said, delighted with himself. "You'd never know the difference."

  "Then what do you use this place for?"

  "Ah…" O'Grady knelt by the far wall, beside a long bundle Dale had failed to notice. "I use it for this," the priest said, unwrapping the canvass and displaying its contents to the American.

  "A telescope?"

  O'Grady grinned.

  "You have a telescope?"

  "Help me set it up." He passed Dale the tripod and then the mount as he went about inspecting the reflector.

  Dale stood the tripod in the centre of the floor and began locking it into place.

  "A little higher," the priest said. "Yes, there. Perfect." He handed Dale the telescope itself. "Here," he said. "You know how to do this?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Great." He stood back and began to open up the wooden shutters.

  The bright night streamed in, and beneath the colour of the moon Dale could see the grey hills rolling off above the village. O'Grady caught him staring and took over assembly of the telescope.

  "The Burren," the priest said. "Bare stone for as far as you can see. No soil only in the cracks between the rocks, no rivers or lakes. Not enough water to drown a man, not enough wood to hang him –"

  "And not enough flat ground for him to land his aircraft." Dale shook his head and smiled. "Rock and mountains and boulders and dust."

  "Sorry?"

  "Something Rodriguez told me once."

  "You know," O'Grady said quietly, "you can't wear the armband forever."

  "Copy that." Dale thought about the hearings, the investigation, the names cut into the granite wall at Kennedy. He thought about those pieces of Aquarius laid out across the hangar floor, little more than scrap and garbage. Rodriguez, the tone of his voice; no worry or no anger, just surprise. Uh-oh.

  There was nothing anybody could have done.

  "Here," O'Grady said, stepping back from the telescope. The American took his place above the instrument, turned the focus slightly and watched another world jump sharply into view. The Moon, itself a great mirror bathing in the sun; its soft mountains rising off romantic maria, the Ocean of Storms, the Sea of Rains, the Lakes of Excellence and Perseverance…

  "Man," Dale said, "that's beautiful."

  O'Grady took a turn and murmured his agreement while Dale stood back and looked up at the sky. Mark-one eyeball, they called it in flight school. Sometimes there's just no substitute.

  "There," he said suddenly, raising his arm to the southern sky where a new star bloomed and flew in a short arc before fading back again into the darkness. "The Space Station," Dale said. "Will you look at that."

  The priest peered up just in time. "Impressive," he said.

  Dale laughed. "I could have gone there once, you know."

  "You can't still go?"

  "I suppose. Take a ride with the Russians. Ah, but it wouldn't be the same. I'm a pilot, an explorer. I'm not a hitchhiker."

  O'Grady nodded.

  "You know," Dale said, "I can still remember going to the Space Centre as a kid and asking my mom if I could stay up all night when they landed the first man on Mars." He laughed. "I really thought they'd do it too. Hell, I thought I'd get to do it once I joined the programme."

  "Could happen yet."

  "Maybe," said Dale, "but then again maybe it's as well I'm out. Space is hungry, Padre. This business, it devours people. I've been devoured by it. It mightn't hurt to take the time to…" He trailed off. "I don't know."

  "Yes you do."

  The astronaut smiled. "To consider it, I suppose. To get my head around it."

  O'Grady leaned back against the wall. "You know," he said, "I'll bury your friend here if you like. But are you sure that's what he wanted?"

  Dale stared at the canister where the priest had placed it on the floor and wondered at the sad strange journey which had brought it here, all the questions which surrounded it. He looked out through the open shutters, across the otherworldly hills. Nothing was certain anymore, nothing at all.

  Rodriguez, if he could have seen him, would have laughed his ass off.

  Soon after that he left O'Grady in the tower. There'd been a chaplain of the same mould aboard the Truman, he recalled; could get inside your head like nobody's business. It was not a shock to find another here; priests were all of a kind, Dale thought, though even so there was something very likeable about O'Grady. Not the astronomy or even the rudimentary philosophy. No, it was completely separate. He dar
ed to call it enthusiasm and immediately felt bad.

  Making his way down the narrow stairs and out through the church, Dale found Bartley and McGovern waiting outside for him, the latter with the palm of his hand pressed firm against the wall.

  "Heard you'd finally gone to see the priest," McGovern said.

  "This one was worried for ya," Bartley added, shaking his head.

  McGovern shrugged. "Civility never broke a man's jaw."

  "Clearly you've never been in a pilots' ready room," Dale said. "But thank you, Gerry. I appreciate it."

  "Come on now," said Bartley. "Tell us, is your business done?"

  "My business is done here," he said. "But I've got one more thing to do, if you want to join me…"

  "You'll stand us the line?" the old man asked with a wink.

  Dale grinned, the keys to his rental car already in his hand. "Sure."

  Ten minutes later they were out of the village, crystal moonlight making everything unreal as they drove into the Burren. The pale-faced sky-child of earlier was gone, as was the golden hue of dusk, the moon's disc having slipped to a colder, sterner blue which cast long, chaotic shadows all round them. Hills squeezed the twisting road and each shape was another sculpture in a garden of demented stone where everything became reverent and cruel. In a field by the road with the light streaming through it, the silhouette of a horse stood proud on the hilltop. Dale thought he glimpsed an empty saddle on its back but couldn't know for sure. They drove on.

  He remembered, back in training, Rodriguez and himself; still young men, men who had fought together, who had chosen a most dangerous profession.

  "You'll take me back to Houston?" Dale had said.

  "If you take me back to County Clare."

  Beer-bottle necks had clinked at the arrangement, but Dale never thought he'd have to see it through, never once reckoned that he'd end up here with his friend in a metal can.

  "What'd'ya think," McGovern said. "Does this look good?"

  Dale nodded, "Yeah." He pulled in from the road and stopped the engine. Everything was silent. Leaning over the steering wheel, he stared into the sky where the spirit of his friend flew free. The image of disintegration was burned into his mind. The whirling debris, the cloud of vapour when the remaining hydrogen and oxygen collapsed against each other. Aquarius, he thought; the water carrier.

  The president had made a speech which came back to him from time to time. "The cause for which they died will go on," he'd said. "Our journey into space will continue." He quoted it to Bartley and McGovern.

  "Always liked him," Bartley said. "A good lad, now. A good lad."

  "Yes," said Dale, who had met him once, a tall, sad man whose ambition had surpassed his reach. "I guess he always seemed to be." He picked up the canister and opened the door of the car. "Let's go." He led them out onto the bare shoulder, through the stile and up into a steep, rocky field. There was no soil, or very little anyway, and it was odd, he thought, to recognise the kind of features he had been trained to see on lunar missions, erratics and stratigraphic markers. He picked up a stone from the rough surface and turned it over in his hand.

  "What's that?" McGovern asked.

  "The technical term is FLR. At least according to Rodriguez."

  "FLR?"

  "Funny Looking Rock." He smiled as he dropped it to the ground. Rodriguez always said that levity was appropriate in a dangerous trade and he was right, Dale realized, as he picked his way through loose stones, careful not to lose his footing on the crumpled ground. One had to be able to laugh at one's self, at the job, at the danger.

  "Woah," he said, catching his toe in one of the great, deep cracks which slithered everywhere.

  Bartley sniggered. "You alright there, Dale?"

  "Yeah," the American said. "Thanks."

  They were on the true Burren now, a vast, wrinkled plain of undulating stone weathered into near oblivion. A kaleidoscope of grey, it spread on and on, beyond history, beyond the night, out of sight beyond Dale's unrelenting dreams. Behind them, the few stray streetlights of the village sparkled in the distance, and, above, the wash of moonlight made it seem another world entirely.

  It was, Dale decided, as good a place as any. "Here," he said.

  Beside him Bartley nodded. "When they buried my brother it wasn't like this," he said, "it was a fine spring day."

  Dale and McGovern both turned to look at him, startled by his openness.

  "He was a hero," Bartley went on. "Of the kind they name streets after, you know? Brought down a lot of them lot here at the time."

  "The Tans," McGovern said. "The British."

  "Aye," said Bartley. "And they'd men from his column there to see him away, draping the tricolour across his box, a few of them with rifles that they let off. The noise of it all," he said. "Twas a fierce honour."

  Dale cast him an unsure look. "You're not… armed now, are you Bartley?"

  The old man laughed, a booming ho-ho as loud as any shot. "Not at all. Not at all, a'course. I'm just saying, you know, the moment should be marked."

  "And what had you in mind?" McGovern asked.

  Bartley grinned, and with great effort brought himself to his full height. He raised his right arm and bent his elbow, bringing his hand to his head in a salute. McGovern quickly did the same.

  Dale nodded, and carefully he opened up the flask, tipping its cremated contents out onto the breeze. The cloud flattened out at once, dove towards the rocky pavement and then took flight, specks of ash like busy stars exploding all around him while the world turned overhead. Dale straightened up and saluted too, the remains of Rodriguez taking wing into the night.

  When it was over he brought his hand down and, behind him, his two friends mumbled something as they let their own arms fall, Bartley rubbing at his shoulder.

  "We should take a stroll now," McGovern said quietly.

  "What?" Bartley said.

  "You know, as we're here, we should give Dale the air of the place."

  "Ah, will you not be —"

  "No," Dale said. He laid his hand on Bartley's shoulder. "I'd like that." He was tired, that was true, it was late, and yet some new energy was coming to him. It compelled him to move, to walk, to see what he could find.

  "Well then," McGovern said, "come on so," and he led them out across the hillside.

  They were at last, Dale thought, the crew he had imagined, ambling across this odd terrain with the strange, loping gait required to leap from one great limestone block to another. Step-by-step the three of them picked their way across the broken surface, away from the road, away from the lights of the village and everything that Dale had come to know. This was a separate place, severe and beautiful and altogether alien. There, in the stone, were red and orange tints which he could not explain. In the sky, the universe's mechanism whirled while the three men drifted on, and, as the grey rock fell off toward the close horizon, they could have been walking on the moon.

  COPYRIGHT

  "Some Desperado" by Joe Abercrombie. © Copyright 2013 by Joe Abercrombie. Originally published in Dangerous Women. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Master Conjurer" by Charlie Jane Anders. © Copyright 2013 by Charlie Jane Anders. Originally published in Lightspeed, October 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Kormak the Lucky" by Eleanor Arnason. © Copyright 2013 by Eleanor Arnason. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Social Services" by Madeline Ashby. © Copyright 2013 by Madeline Ashby. Originally published in An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Herons of Mer de l'Ouest" by M. Bennardo © 2013 Copyright by M. Bennardo. Originally published in Lightspeed, February 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang. © Copyright 2013 by Ted Chiang. Orig
inally published in Subterranean, Fall 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Zero for Conduct" by Greg Egan. © Copyright 2013 by Greg Egan. Originally published in Twelve Tomorrows. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Sleeper and the Spindle" by Neil Gaiman. © Copyright 2013 by Neil Gaiman. Originally published in Rags and Bones. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and the author's agent.

  "Cave and Julia" by M. John Harrison. © Copyright 2013 by M. John Harrison. Originally published in Cave and Julia (Kindle Single). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Ink Readers of Doi Saket" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. © 2013 Copyright by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Originally published in Tor.com, 24 April 2013. Translated from the Dutch by Lia Belt. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Promise of Space" by James Patrick Kelly. © Copyright 2013 by James Patrick Kelly. Originally published in Clarkesworld, September 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Road of Needles" by Caitlín R. Kiernan. © Copyright 2013 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Originally published in Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Effigy Nights" by Yoon Ha Lee. © Copyright 2013 by Yoon Ha Lee. Originally published in Clarkesworld, January 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Entangled" by Ian R. Macleod. © Copyright 2013 by Ian R. Macleod. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 2013. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Queen of Night's Aria" by Ian McDonald. © Copyright 2013 by Ian McDonald. Originally published in Old Mars. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "Water" by Ramez Naam. © Copyright 2013 by Ramez Naam. Originally published in An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

  "The Irish Astronaut" by Val Nolan. © Copyright 2013 by Val Nolan. Originally published in Electric Velocipede 26. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.