Year's Best SF 2

by David G. Hartwell

  He had all his life to waste: he would never go to school, never work, never breed. Station would lodge, clothe and feed him until he died. It was his right and his curse, and he no longer questioned it. He was twelve and looked no more than nine or ten, though sometimes inside he felt much older. He had lived his whole life inside the town, except for a short trip to a farm when he was five, but he had not liked the endless acres of plants growing in the dirt. Apart from that, there were only two other places in Station: the Sea to the north, which scared him, and the desert far to the south, where no one went save Engineering.

  When starships came to Station they halted straight above the town; at night, you could see them far overhead, glowing shapes like far-away glass toys. Shuttles left the ships to land at the field, in the southwest quarter of the town.

  When they landed, townspeople were there to welcome the sinners. Caspar was often among them, caring not that some townspeople resented his presence. The sinners were glad to see new faces, and often he got kissed or whirled around in the grip of some particularly huge sinner. He liked that; it made him feel more intensely alive, somehow.

  Karl had been gone with the fishing boats two days. Flikka had forgiven him, and the way she set the plates on the table spoke of how she yearned for his return. No ship had come to the world from overspace, and so she had no one to confess. She played cards with Caspar, keeping a strict tally of their respective wins that extended back almost a year. A year during which a second had passed for the people in the painting, one of whom, if she was Grandfather's wife, must be Grandmother, although she was astonishingly younger than him—but those matters left Caspar befuddled and he preferred not to think about them.

  They had been playing Hop-Jack; Flikka was distracted and Caspar had won three games in a row. He was busily dealing when Perle, who was Confession also, knocked at the door. Flikka rose from the table and let the young woman in, then they sat down together. Perle was used to Caspar and ignored him as if he wasn't there. He didn't mind it so much since he could tell it was sincere disinterest, and not the hidden contempt most people felt.

  “Fucking rain again,” Perle said. She had a gutter mouth and a reputation for being loose. Caspar enjoyed her visits because she and Flikka always laughed loud, and gossiped outrageously. They let him listen because they felt he wouldn't understand, and besides, he couldn't repeat anything.

  “Fucking rain, and cold. I'm telling you, it might damn well snow tomorrow,” Perle said.

  “They never let it snow. If it gets really that cold, they'll adjust the sun's output.”

  “I wish it would snow, just once. It's not the same if you just see it in tapes.”

  “You were just complaining about the cold. Make up your mind, girl.”

  “Ah, don't give me trouble, Flik. I had the shit-worst sinners the last ship and I'm still sore.”

  “That wouldn't happen if you didn't bed them afterwards.”

  “Hey. Just the cute ones, all right? You should try it sometimes; you're too much the prude, Flik. Besides, I had my cramps, so I didn't do nothing of the sort.”

  “So what got you sore?”

  “It's this guy. Not one of the big ones, but tall, all spidery and thin, with a neck that didn't stop, you know? Nice eyes, though, kind of purple. Anyway, he comes in at the door, and I think this is gonna be an easy one, right? He doesn't look like he's got much on his conscience. So I let him in, we chat, and already his eyes are getting wet. I think, fuck, he hasn't had it for a long time, or it's worse than I thought. So I put him down on the bed, and hook him in, and I work him over, and out comes a little sin, then another. You know, I lied to my mother and made her cry, sort of thing. And then he goes quiet, and I think that's it, he didn't have anything else, it was like when you gotta piss in a hurry but all you have is a coupla drops.

  “And then, shit, he bends backwards like a bow-and-arrow, and he gives this scream that stops up my ears, it's so loud, and he screams again, and he tears out from the fucking straps, and hits me one across the chest, it knocks my fucking wind out. I'm sitting on the floor, trying to catch my breath, and he's still screaming and twisting on the bed, and out comes the fucking biggest sin, the recorder's indicator goes off the scale. I stand up, and I'm still bent over, and he's bumping around on the bed, and I'm afraid the leads are gonna tear loose before he's done, and he begins to speak. He calms down just enough so I can get the restraints on him again, and I'm lying on top of him to add my weight, and I'm still out of breath, and I'm thinking I should hit the emergency switch, and he says, in my ear, the most fucking weird thing I ever heard.

  “He says ‘Forgive me, spirits of the Eld, for I have sinned against you. In the darkest phase of the long night, I entered my second mate's family sanctum and I modulated its flame so it would burn brighter for those of her sept. It was done out of love, this I swear. I admit my guilt. I beg to be absolved.’ And I swear, those were his exact fucking words. I listened to the recording often enough, I know them by heart.”

  Flikka had crossed her arms and tilted her head. I don't know if I should believe you was what it said to Caspar.

  “What did it mean?”

  “Damned if I know, Flik. But I think it's a very, very old sin, you know? Something from the dawn of time, so old we can't understand it anymore.”

  “What's a soul that old doing hanging around overspace?”

  “Hey, you think you understand the great beyond, maybe? Nobody does.”

  “So you got a sinner with a two-thousand-year-old sin on his conscience.”

  “That's what I think.”

  “You gave the recording to Administration?”

  “Yeah, but I duped it before, it was just too weird. I know, I know, it's illegal. Like nobody ever does it, eh?”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nothing. They'll review it when they have the time. Like next fucking year.”

  Two days later, around mid-afternoon, a starship came into orbit. When they heard the announcement over the radio, Caspar and Flikka interrupted their game of Hop-Jack. She went to her room to change into her work clothes; he went directly to the landing field.

  It was warmer than it had been, and the sky for once was completely clear. Caspar ran tirelessly and soon reached the landing field. A shuttle was descending from orbit. Along with half a hundred others, he watched it touch down, scorching the ground with its engines. Afterwards, it stayed motionless for a few minutes, then extended wheels and began to roll slowly toward one end of the field. When it stopped again, a hatch opened and nearly fifty sinners came out.

  They were mostly unmodified; only a dozen or so diverged noticeably from human-normal. The townspeople came forward to greet them, and the sinners greeted them with pleasure. Some asked for immediate confession, some wanted to go gambling; many sought bed partners, but did not say so in words. Caspar looked from one sinner to the other, smiling at all of them. Then he found someone very special. She was a young girl, some years younger than Flikka, and this was unusual. She was short, and she had reddish-blond hair that reminded him of his own. She was looking around delightedly. Caspar, grinning, came toward her.

  She noticed him, smiled back, said “Hello, I'm Aurinn. And you?” Caspar opened his mouth and pointed to his dead tongue, shaking his head. As he had guessed, she did not pull back in disgust, but accepted him as he was.

  “Well…can you show me where there's a park? I want to see plants growing in real earth.”

  He nodded with enthusiasm and took her right hand in his left one. He dragged her along through the streets until they came to the park he liked best, a small but lovely square of greenness. Aurinn knelt at the edge of the path and breathed the smell of the grass reverently. Caspar danced onto the grass; the girl stifled a scandalized gasp. “No! Don't…oh, that's right, you're allowed to do that here. Well.…” And she joined him, a strange grin on her face. Then she stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky. Caspar sat down next
to her and peered down into her face.

  “It's so nice to be outside again! Even though this isn't a real planet, it's almost like one. It's kind of like being on Earth. You've never been to Earth, have you? Neither have I. I was born on Wolf's Hoard, and I never traveled anywhere. Until now. I got a commission on the Callisto. This is my first voyage. See?”

  She held up a pendant that rested on her chest. It was a squat metal cylinder, with a shiny disc at one end. She sat up, turned the disc toward him; then she stopped.

  “Oh, wait. You've lived here all your life. I must be the ten-thousandth first-timer to show you her first punch-through.”

  Caspar shook his head no. Then he raised his clenched left hand, flashed it open twice, then showed two more fingers.

  “I'm the twelfth one?”

  He shook his head patiently, signed twelve again and pointed to himself.

  “Oh. You're twelve years old.” He nodded. “So,” she said, “how many first-timers have you spoken to?”

  He raised one finger and then pointed to her.

  “Really? Well, then, d'you want to see the punch-through?” He nodded and smiled, and Aurinn activated the recording. On the disc appeared a small image, mostly black space, with here and there the hard pinpricks of stars. Then fields of color began to wash across the picture; the pattern of the stars distorted itself. Suddenly the blackness crumbled in an eruption of yellow light, blew away like flakes of soot. The image was all yellows and reds now, spiral patterns unfolding and getting constantly more intricate.

  “This is overspace,” said Aurinn. “You feel so strange when you punch through; like tingles all through your body, and then it's like you're hanging down over a pit that goes down forever— You want to throw up and laugh all at once, and sometimes it feels like you've lived a thousand thousand years and you're so old nothing has meaning anymore.…”

  She stopped speaking, words failing her. The pattern of her limbs, her trembling smile, the rhythm of her breathing, said It was the most wonderful and horrible thing I will ever experience. I never want to feel it again, and I can't wait until the next time.

  The visual recording went on. The red-and-yellow spirals had become so intricate the whole field was a shimmering orange. Then the spirals coarsened, the image trembled, and black space began to show through flickering cracks, like inverted lightning bolts.

  “We travelled for nearly a week, but that part's been compressed. It's all the same, anyway. Now this is just before we arrived. It was hard to find your station, it's so small and it has so little mass. See how we had to try three times before we punched back out? Now, we get it right.”

  The disc showed a black egg against a yellow-and-red background. Inside the egg was a blazing dot of light and some distance from the dot a small sphere, blue on top, green around its waist, gray and tan on the bottom.

  “This is your world,” said Aurinn. “It's so small I couldn't believe it at first. Captain said you could fit a million of them inside Wolf's Hoard.”

  Caspar watched the end of the visual recording. The ship achieved orbit around the sphere, which had now grown quite large. He failed to understand how any world could be a million times larger; he was sure that Aurinn had misunderstood her Captain's explanations.

  The recording ended. Aurinn grinned at him and expressed a wish to see one of the games palaces. Caspar had a different idea. Since he could not speak it, he merely tugged on her hand and drew her on.

  He led her across Maar Square and along the twisting street, until they reached Flikka's workhouse. Flikka looked at them through the window and motioned toward the door.

  “Hey, no, I don't want to go there!” Aurinn was mildly upset. Caspar pulled again on her hand. “No, kid, I don't need to go there. I haven't got any sins on my conscience.”

  Flikka opened the door herself. “I'm free and at your service, sister.”

  “Sorry, Ma'am, but I don't need to be confessed. This kid seems to think so, and he won't understand.”

  “He's my brother Caspar. Are you saying you've already confessed?”

  “No. I don't need any confession. When you're young, you don't get as many sins, and I'm only fifteen. So I didn't get any this voyage. I'm just lucky.”

  “Sister,” said Flikka, with a worried frown, “confession isn't like getting a haircut. You don't take chances with it. Especially not on your first voyage.”

  “But I don't have any sins on my conscience! I don't have any of the symptoms. I tell you, I'm clean!”

  Something in the slope of her shoulders spoke of fear and denial. Caspar grew very worried; he looked urgently at Flikka and tried to tell her she must not let Aurinn go.

  “I believe you, sister. But my brother's still concerned for you. Why don't you step inside, and we can do a quick scan to show you're clean? It'll only take a moment, and besides, if you've been scanned once before, it's easier to get confessed afterwards. It will only be a minute or two.”

  Caspar could see Aurinn vacillating. Flikka had lied about the process being easier if one had been scanned before, but the young girl could not tell. Eventually she swallowed her fears and nodded acceptance.

  They stepped inside. Flikka's manner was soothing and friendly; the girl relaxed slightly. Caspar did not know whether he should stay or not. He was afraid, but he didn't want to desert Aurinn. He swallowed his own fears and resolved to remain.

  Flikka led Aurinn to the comfortable bed. She made Aurinn lie down, adjusted leads at her temples and on the crown of her head. The girl fidgeted. When Flikka pulled out the restraints, Aurinn protested out loud.

  “It's okay,” said Flikka. “Regulations, that's all. I won't tighten them, see? Just fasten them loosely, like this. Come on, sister, it's scary the first time, but you don't have any sins, remember? You'll be out of them as soon as I do the scan. Okay?”

  Aurinn nodded reluctantly. Caspar held her right hand in his whole one and smiled reassurance. Flikka looked at him; her mouth twisted and her eyes said I shouldn't let you stay here; confession is a private matter. But I need you to calm her down.

  “Now shut your eyes, little sister. Don't worry, Caspar will stay by you.”

  Aurinn squinched her eyes shut. She was biting her lower lip. Flikka activated her equipment. The main screen showed a tangle of curved lines, all in various shades of green and blue. Flikka gauged it with an expert eye. “See? It doesn't hurt a bit,” she said, but it was her turn to be worried now. Caspar could not tell what the lines meant, but it seemed to him sins ought to show up in hot colors, yellow and red like the flames of hell in the legends—He had once looked at old holograms meant to depict the torments of sinners in the afterlife, and the images had stayed with him vividly.

  “Are you going to be done soon?”

  “Just a little bit longer, sister. How do you feel?”

  “All right…b-but it's like I want to cry.”

  “That's good. Everyone gets that. If you want, let it come. You'll feel better afterwards.”

  “But it's not a sin. I don't have any sins. I felt fine all through the voyage.…”

  “I know. And you never felt…strange in any way?”

  “No, I told you.” On the screen lines had appeared, strange lines, curved and recurved. They flickered, on and off. Strange lines in shimmering colors. Flikka twisted dials, pushed a button, and let one hand stray to the torso restraint. Caspar watched, wide-eyed.

  “Tell me, little sister, just so I can finish the scan: did you do anything yourself that you're embarrassed about? Any sins of your own? You know I can't repeat them to anyone, so any secret is safe with me.”

  Aurinn started to blush. “Well…Just once. I was supposed to be on watch from ten thousand to twelve thousand, and I…I skipped the last three hundred. There was nothing to watch for, it was just pointless, so.…”

  “Of course. Just a little tiny thing. Not really a sin, if you ask me. Everyone does it.” Though her tone remained calm, Flikka looked at the
screen in alarm. She swung a metal hemisphere into position above Aurinn's head, then grasped the end of a restraint with one hand. Caspar understood the meaning of the gesture and clumsily took the end of the other strap in his crippled right hand.

  Aurinn gasped. Her eyes opened, full of tears. “What's happening?” She breathed faster and faster. “What are you doing to me?”

  “Nothing, sister.” Flikka yanked on the restraint and drew it tighter. Caspar tried to copy her gesture but the strap slid out of his grasp.

  “Don't! Stop that!”

  “I'm afraid you do have a sin on your conscience, little sister. It has to come out.”

  “No! I don't have anything! I told you I didn't.…” Aurinn tried to raise her arms, but they were held by the restraint. “Take the leads off! Take them off!”

  “Don't fight it, sister. Don't fight it or it'll hurt.”

  “No…” Aurinn's words strangled to a halt. Her eyes grew fixed, and suddenly a scream tore out of her. Her legs, only loosely held by the restraint, shuddered; her heels drummed on the mattress. Flikka cursed and tightened the restraint. Caspar tried to pull away, but his hand was held in Aurinn's, which was clenched so tightly he thought she might break his fingers.

  Aurinn began to scream out words, one after the other, like an incantation torn from the depths of her being. Caspar could not understand the words; and what frightened him more was that he could make no more sense of her body's language. She yowled, as if she'd been cut by a blade, and suddenly there was a fecal stink as she voided her bowels. She screamed again, and urine began to stain the front of her trousers.

  Flikka swore in panic, hit the emergency switch that summoned Medical. Caspar, desperate, tore his hand out of Aurinn's grasp and retreated to a corner of the room. Aurinn's face was an inhuman mask. And it said nothing, nothing intelligible to him.

  And then words rushed out in a stream, words almost as meaningless as all that had preceded them: