The Year's Best Science Fiction - Thirty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “It meant we didn’t have to set up camp in the forest,” the man said. “It’s dry in here, and there’s a lot less animal life—or was, till recently. Believe me, this place isn’t interesting. Just corridors and rooms, going a long way back into the cliff. All empty, except for the debris left by animals. Bones and dry leaves and dried-out feces.”

  Mike came back with a tray, carafe and coffee cups. He or she poured coffee. There was a slight chill in the room, and it was pleasant to hold the warm cup and sip the hot coffee. Ash’s cut fingers still stung a little.

  “The question is, what will we do with you?” the first man said.

  “National Geographic will be concerned if we vanish,” Jason said. He sounded anxious.

  “Accidents happen in the outback,” Mike said in his or her high voice.

  “I was recording and uploading my images, until your hologram told me to stop,” Maggie put in. “The material went to the nearest comsat, which belongs—I believe—to Petrograd. I assume the comsat sent it on to our office in Venusport. The message was encrypted to prevent piracy. But our office can decode it. They will have done so by now.”

  “They know about the circle,” Jason added. “And the robot you put in the lodge.”

  “What robot?” the man asked.

  “The bug. The scorpion. It had wires.”

  Mike was leaning against a wall, cup in hand. The nameless man looked over, frowning. “Not ours,” Mike said. “Petrograd must be spying on itself.”

  Baby stirred in his cage. Ash reached a finger to scratch him and—in the same movement—undid the lock on the door. No one seemed to notice except Baby, who looked interested and alert.

  She wondered about ventilation and ways to escape, looked around and saw a rectangle cut in the stone of one wall just below the ceiling. It was long and narrow with vertical bars made of the same stone as the wall. As she watched, a pair of antennae poked out between two of the bars. The animal followed. A scorpion, of course. The pale gray body suggested it was a cave scorpion, as did the lack of obvious eyes.

  She watched as its front legs scrabbled to get a grip on the slick stone. It failed and fell, landing with an audible ‘tock.’ The nameless man spun in his chair, then was up and stamping the scorpion over and over. It wasn’t even that big, Ash thought. No more than twenty centimeters.

  The man remained bent over for several moments. “Oh god, I hate them.”

  “They are carrion eaters,” Arkady said. “Living off the debris of pterosaur colonies that nest on cliffs and in shallow caves. Their bite does little harm to humans.”

  “I hate them,” the man repeated.

  “He has a phobia,” Mike said. “Cave scorpions don’t bother me.”

  The nameless agent straightened up. “The tunnels connect with caves. The damn things have discovered they can live off us. They’re all over.”

  “But hardly a serious problem,” Arkady said.

  “We also have fire scorpions,” Mike put in.

  The nameless agent twitched at the name. Mike smiled slightly. Ash had the impression he enjoyed his colleague’s fear.

  “That is a problem,” Boris said. “But you shouldn’t have them. They live in the forest, not in caves.”

  “They’ve bred with the cave scorpions,” the nameless man said. His voice sounded constricted, as if fear had robbed him of breath.

  “They can’t have,” Arkady said. “They are different species, living in different environments.”

  The two men exchanged glances and were silent.

  After a moment, Boris said harshly, “You were not satisfied with robot scorpions. You have played with DNA and created a new species in violation of numerous laws.”

  “Not the laws on Earth,” Mike said.

  “You are on Venus,” Boris pointed out. “And in Petrograd.”

  “I don’t think we need to talk about this.”

  “Yes, we do,” Arkady replied. “And not just here. You are in very serious violation of several treaties. Venus and Earth need to know about this.”

  The nameless agent pulled out a handgun, aiming it at Arkady. The gun was shaking. Ash could see that clearly. The gun, the shaking hand, the room, the other people were all unnaturally sharp and clear.

  “Go,” she said to Baby. The pterosaur was out in a moment, flapping onto the agent’s head and clawing. The gun went off with a loud—very loud—sound. Arkady dove at the man, taking him down. The gun spun across the floor, away from Arkady and the nameless agent.

  “Stop that,” Mike said.

  Ash looked toward him. His coffee cup lay on the yellow floor, in the middle of a brown pool of coffee, and he had a gun out, pointing it at Arkady.

  Never mix with the CIA. But it was too late for that warning.

  “No,” said Alexandra. Ash was trying not to move, but she could see the ex-cop from the corner of her eye. The woman had a gun, held steadily and pointed at Mike. This was ridiculous.

  “Get the damn animal off Brian,” Mike said.

  The nameless agent was on the floor, Arkady lying across him, and Baby still on his head, biting and clawing.

  “Stop,” Ash called. “You can stop now, Baby.”

  The pterosaur flapped back to his cage, settling on top and folding his downy wings.

  “This is stupid,” Mike said. “I’m not going to shoot anyone in here, and I hope to God this lovely lady is not going to shoot me. You guys look like idiots on the floor. Get up.”

  The two men did. Arkady looked rumpled, which was his usual condition. Blood ran down the face of the nameless agent. He wiped it with one hand, making a smear.

  “We’re pulling out,” Mike added. “Petrograd knows this.”

  “Why?” asked Boris.

  “Why do they know? We told them.”

  “Why are you pulling out?”

  “The scorpions. The things are deadly, and Brian’s right. They’re all over.”

  “Am I right?” Boris said. “Did you create them?”

  Mike was silent.

  “They must have wanted something that could live in sewers and the crawl spaces of buildings,” Arkady put in. “And that was toxic. It sounds like a weapon that could be used against Petrograd.”

  “They are telling us too much,” Boris said. “They must be planning to kill us.”

  “Not while I hold this gun,” Alexandra said.

  “We’re pulling out, as I told you,” Mike said. “And there is no proof that we made the scorpions or intended to use them for anything. You Soviets are way too paranoid.”

  “How many people are left here?” Arkady asked.

  “Dozens,” said the agent named Brian.

  “Don’t be a fool. We saw no one coming in, and no one has responded to the sound of gunfire. Either you are alone, or your colleagues are not close.”

  “Three,” Mike answered. “They’re in the back rooms, destroying the equipment. When they’re done, we’ll take the last VTL.”

  Boris pulled a roll of duct tape from his vest. He tossed it to Arkady. “Tape them up.”

  “No,” said Brian. “What if more scorpions come?”

  “Too bad,” Boris said.

  The man bolted for the room’s doorway. Baby flapped onto him, clawing and shrieking, “Bad! Bad!”

  Brian stumbled. Box-like Irina grabbed his arm and pulled him around, then drove a fist into the man’s mid section. He bent up, coughing, and collapsed onto his knees. Fortunately, because Ash hated vomit, he did not throw up.

  “That’s some punch,” Mike said.

  “She used to be a stevedore,” Arkady said. “Now I will tape you up, and you will hope that none of your new, mutant scorpions arrive.”

  “I’m not phobic,” Mike replied. “And I’m not going to shoot it out with you. We don’t know what these walls are made of, but you can’t scratch them. Anything that hits them is going to bounce off.” He put his gun on the table. “We’ve been lucky so far. The last ricochet didn’t h
it anyone. I think the bullet went out the door. There’s no reason to think we’ll be lucky a second time.”

  Arkady and Irina taped the two men, while Alexandra kept her gun leveled.

  “Are you recording?” Arkady asked after they were done.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “But I’m having trouble with my radio signal here. As soon as we are outside, I will send the photos to Venusport.”

  Arkady set a knife on the table next to Mike’s gun. “It will cut the tape,” he said to Mike. “Even if your comrades don’t come looking for you, you’ll be able to get free.”

  “That may be a mistake,” Boris said.

  Arkady nodded. “We all make them. Let’s get out of here.”

  They left the room and retraced their way through the maze-like stone corridors. No one appeared, though they did encounter a scorpion, crawling over the floor. It was dirty pink with tiny eyes, thirty centimeters long and the ugliest land scorpion Ash had ever seen. Boris stepped on it hard, crushing its exoskeleton. The many legs kept scrabbling, and the mandibles twitched back and forth, but the animal’s body could not move. It was broken. “This is why we wear tall boots,” he said.

  They found the trucks where they had left them. Rain still fell heavily.

  “I can send the recordings now,” Maggie said.

  “Do it,” Jason said. “I am going to write an exposé that will rip those guys apart. They were ready to kill us.”

  They ran for the trucks, climbed in and pulled out, going along the track away from the ruins.

  Ash could feel her heart beating rapidly. Her mouth was dry, and she was shaking. Fear fighting with amazement. She had been inside ruins built by aliens, and she had escaped from the CIA. What a day!

  Baby was in his cage, shivering and repeating “bad, bad” over and over in a quiet voice.

  “Okay,” Ash said after her heart slowed down. “What was that about?”

  Arkady leaned forward and checked the truck radio, which was off. “We knew the CIA was here, and that they had some kind of agreement with the Petrograd executive committee. We knew about the circles. And we had this.” He handed her a tablet. On the screen was a piece of sculpture, deeply worn and barely recognizable as a person. It had two arms and two legs, all long and thin, the legs together and the arms folded across the chest. The person’s torso was short and wide, its neck long and narrow, its head wedge-shaped.

  “This might be expressive distortion,” Arkady said. “Or it might be an alien. It is only ten centimeters long. It was found in outback in the early days of settlement, and it ended in the Petrograd Museum. The curators thought it was fake. It remained in the collection, but was never investigated.”

  “We learned about it and put it together with the circles,” Boris said. “Do you have any idea how much money Petrograd could make from tourism, if we had authentic alien ruins?”

  “Who are you?” Ash asked.

  “People who want to embarrass the executive committee,” Arkady said. “Can you imagine what Lenin would have said about that collection of petty bureaucrats? Now National Geographic will publish its exclusive. With luck, there will be a huge stink. The Petrograd Soviet will decide to remove the executive committee, and the CIA will be so embarrassed that it will leave Aphrodite Terra.”

  “That’s too much to hope,” Boris growled.

  “Maybe,” Arkady replied. “In any case, we couldn’t pass up the chance. The entire Solar System pays attention to the National Geographic.”

  “What about the bug in the lodge?” Ash asked. “Mike said it wasn’t one of theirs.”

  “It was CIA, but they didn’t put it in the lodge. Some of our farmworkers found it crawling in the fields, heading toward Petrograd, and sent for the police. They captured it. I brought it with us,” Boris said. “We wanted Nat Geo to see what we had to put up with. Poisonous robot spies! They are a crime against nature and peaceful co-existence!”

  The truck was bumping over the rough road, among dripping trees, while rain beat on the windows. Looking back, she saw the other truck, dim in the rain.

  “I feel as if everything has been fake,” she told the two men. “You set up the robot scorpion, and you set up discovering the circle.”

  Arkady said, “The circles are real, and they are not impact craters, though we don’t know what they are. Ball courts? Fish ponds? Temples?

  “And the tunnels are real. We didn’t know about them, but now they will be famous.”

  Boris added, “Those idiots on the executive committee were so afraid that they let the CIA camp on a site of system-wide historical importance. We have been slowly dying when we could have made a fortune from tourism. Why would anyone go to Venusport, when they can come here and see alien ruins?” He was silent for a moment, then added. “We’ll have to get rid of their damn pink scorpions. That won’t be easy. And then take a serious look. Who knows what may be in the caves and circles? More statues like the one in the museum? Maybe even a skeleton?”

  “Who are you guys?” Ash asked.

  Arkady laughed. “I am myself. Arkady Volkov of Volkov Tours. Boris is a part-time employee.”

  “What else does he do?”

  “I’m an analyst for the political police,” Boris replied. “But my hours have been cut, due to the Soviet’s cash flow problems—which we would not have, if we had more tourists.”

  “Or if the executive committee stopped listening to American economists,” Arkady added. “I don’t want a lecture on economics,” Boris said. “I needed a second job. Arkady gave me one.”

  “And Irina and Alexandria?” Ash asked.

  “Ordinary working people,” Arkady said.

  “Could the CIA really have been stupid enough to create a new kind of scorpion?” Ash asked.

  “Remember that no one has ever gone broke by underestimating the intelligence of Americans,” Arkady said.

  “This seems way too Byzantine,” Ash added.

  Boris gave a rasping laugh. “Arkady’s ancestors came from some damn place in Central Asia. But I am Russian, and Russians are the heirs of Byzantium.”

  They made it back to the pillbox lodge at nightfall. Arkady and Boris checked the parking space with flashlights and called all clear. They went in through the rain.

  Arkady turned on the fire, as the rest of them pulled off their wet jackets and hung them up to dry.

  “I’ll start dinner,” Alexandra told them. “Irina, will you help?”

  The ex-cop and the ex-stevedore went into the kitchen. Ash sat down in front of the fire, Baby’s cage on the floor next to her. Baby climbed on top of the cage. “Hungry.”

  She found a piece of chow and gave it to him.

  “Hunt,” he said.

  “Not now.”

  Jason and Maggie joined her, the journalist settling into a chair, the Leica standing on her four silver legs, her long neck stretched out, head turning as she made another recording.

  “I think we can call the trip successful,” Jason said. “We have discovered the first evidence of intelligent aliens, and I have a dramatic story about fighting the CIA.”

  “I suspect the CIA part of the story will vanish,” Arkady said. “But you will have the alien ruins.”

  “I’ll fight for the entire story,” Jason said. “It’s outrageous that we were threatened by our own government.”

  “We’ll go back to Petrograd,” Arkady said. “I will show you a piece of sculpture at the museum, and you might be interested in talking to the Soviet’s executive committee. Ask them what they were thinking to let the CIA perch in the most important piece of archeology in the Solar System. God knows what kind of damage they may have done! War—overt or covert—is not good for art or history.”

  Boris set a bottle of fruit brandy on the table, along with four glasses. “I’ll go back. I have worked as an exterminator. I want to know what’s in the tunnels and the caves, aside from vermin; and I will enjoy getting rid of those damn pink scorpions.”

&
nbsp; After dinner, in her bedroom, Ash considered the journey. She was a little buzzed from alcohol and shaky from adrenalin. But nothing was happening now. She could finally think.

  The circles and tunnels could not have been faked. She was less certain about the figurine. It didn’t have the glassy surface of the stone in the circle and the tunnels; and even if the government in Moscow hadn’t been interested in science, it would have been interested in an alien figurine. That had to have some kind of propaganda value. Unless they were afraid of it. Would fear have made them put it in a museum and forget it?

  It would be easy to fake something as small as the figurine. Arkady said it was in the Petrograd Museum, but he could have bought it with him, planning to plant it near the circle for Jason to find. That and the toxic scorpion in the lodge would have given National Geographic its big story. With luck, the story would have forced the CIA out and brought down the executive committee.

  She could imagine Arkady learning who the client was and hurriedly putting together an elaborate con. Never trust a Leninist entirely. And she could imagine him as completely honest. As far as she knew, he always had been.

  Well, if the figurine was fake, that would be discovered, probably quickly.

  But the ruins had to be real. She lay there, her light still on, considering the possibility that humanity was not alone. Where were the aliens now? In the Solar System? Or had they moved on? And what difference would knowledge of them make to Earth, shambling toward destruction? Or to Venus, tied to Earth and maybe unable to survive on its own? Ash had no idea. But the world—the two worlds—had suddenly become more interesting and full of possibility

  “Turn light off,” said Baby, hunched in his cage. “Sleep.”

  THE END

  Author’s Note: Our Venus rotates backward compared to most planets in the Solar System, and its day is longer than its year. The current theory is it was dinged by something big early in the development of the System. The ding turned it backwards and slowed its rotation. In my alternative history, this ding did not happen. My Venus rotates forward and has a day about as long as that of Earth or Mars. This rotation gives it a magnetic field, which our Venus does not have. The field prevents—at least in part—the development of the planet’s current toxic greenhouse atmosphere. In addition, there was a ding that didn’t happen in our history, at least as far as we know. A body—possibly two—hit Earth after life had developed there, then went on to hit Venus, depositing Earth microbes. As a result, my Venus has blue-green algae, and this over time gave it an atmosphere comparable to Earth. The similarity of Venusian life to life on Earth is due to the shared genetic history.