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

by Gardner Dozois

  The Sovereign did something to the controls, and the groundcar started up with a low hum. Ashiban went around to the passenger side, climbed in, and before she could even settle in the seat the groundcar was moving and they were off.

  At first Ashiban sat tense in the passenger seat, turned as best she could to look behind. But after a half hour or so of cautious, bumpy going, it seemed to her that they were probably safely away. She took a deep breath. Faced forward again, with some relief—looking back hadn’t been terribly comfortable for her neck or her back. Looked at the Sovereign, driving with utter concentration. Well, it was hardly a surprise, now Ashiban thought of it. The Sovereign had grown up down here, doubtless groundcars were an everyday thing to her.

  What next? They needed to find out where that town was. They might need to defend themselves some time in the near future. Ashiban looked around to see what there might be in the car that they could use. Back behind the seats was an assortment of tools and machines that Ashiban assumed were necessary for farming on a planet. A shovel. Some rope. A number of other things she couldn’t identify.

  A well between her seat and the Sovereign’s held a tangled assortment of junk. A small knife. A doll made partly from pieces of fabricator plastic and partly from what appeared to be bits of an old, worn-out shirt. Bits of twine. An empty cup. Some sort of clip with a round gray blob adhesived to it. “What’s this?” asked Ashiban aloud.

  The Sovereign glanced over at Ashiban. With one hand she took the clip from Ashiban’s hand, flicked the side of it with her thumb, and held it out to Ashiban, her attention back on the way ahead of them. Said something.

  “It’s a translator,” said the little blob on the clip in a quiet, tinny voice. “A lot of weevils won’t take their handheld into town because they’re afraid the constable will take it from them and use the information on it against their families. Or if you’re out working and have your hands full but think you might need to talk to a weevil.” A pause, in which the Sovereign seemed to realize what she’d said. “You’re not a weevil,” said the little blob.

  “It’s not a very nice thing to say.” Though of course Ashiban had heard Raksamat use slurs against the Gidanta, at home, and not thought twice about it. Until now.

  “Oh, Ancestors!” cried the Sovereign, and smacked the groundcar steering in frustration. “I always say the wrong thing. I wish Timran hadn’t died, I wish I still had an interpreter.” Tears filled her eyes, shone in the dim light from the groundcar controls.

  “Why are you swearing by the Ancestors?” asked Ashiban. “You don’t believe in them. Or I thought you didn’t.” One tear escaped, rolled down the Sovereign’s cheek. Ashiban picked up the end of the old dishcloth that was currently draped over the girl’s shoulder and wiped it away.

  “I didn’t swear by the Ancestors!” the Sovereign protested. “I didn’t swear by anything. I just said oh, Ancestors.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. “Wait,” said the Sovereign then. “Let me try something. Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “This: Ancestors. What did I say?”

  “You said Ancestors.”

  “Now. Pingberries. What did I say?”

  “You said pingberries.”

  The Sovereign brought the groundcar to a stop, and turned to look at Ashiban. “Now. Oh, Ancestors!” as though she were angry or frustrated. “There. Do you hear? Are you listening?”

  “I’m listening.” Ashiban had heard it, plain and clear. “You said oh, pingberries, but the translator said it was oh, Ancestors. How did that happen?”

  “Pingberries sounds a lot like … something that isn’t polite,” the Sovereign said. “So it’s the kind of swear your old uncle would use in front of the in-laws.”

  “What?” asked Ashiban, and then, realizing, “Whoever entered the data for the translator thought it was equivalent to swearing by the Ancestors.”

  “It might be,” said the Sovereign, “and actually that’s really useful, that it knows when I’m talking about wanting to eat some pingberries, or when I’m frustrated and swearing. That’s good, it means the translators are working well. But Ancestors and pingberries, those aren’t exactly the same. Do you see?”

  “The treaty,” Ashiban realized. “That everyone thinks the other side is translating however they want.” And probably not just the treaty.

  It had been CiwrilXidyla who had put together the first, most significant collection of linguistic data on Gidantan. It was her work that had led to the ease and usefulness of automatic translation between the two languages. Even aside from automatic translation, Ashiban suspected that her mother’s work was the basis for nearly every translation between Raksamat and Gidantan for very nearly a century. That was one reason why CiwrilXidyla was as revered as she was, by everyone in the system. Translation devices like this little blob on a clip had made communication possible between Raksamat and Gidanta. Had made peaceful agreement possible, let people talk to each other whenever they needed it. Had probably saved lives. But. “We can’t be the first to notice this.”

  The Sovereign set the groundcar moving again. “Noticing something and realizing it’s important aren’t the same thing. And maybe lots of people have noticed, but they don’t say anything because it suits them to have things as they are. We need to tell the Terraforming Council. We need to tell the Assembly. We need to tell everybody, and we need to retranslate the treaty. We need more people to actually learn both languages instead of only using that thing.” She gestured toward the translator clipped to Ashiban’s collar.

  “We need the translator to be better, Sovereign. Not everyone can easily learn another language.” More people learning the two languages ought to help with that. More people with firsthand experience to correct the data. “But we need the translator to know more than what my mother learned.” Had the translations been unchanged since her mother’s time? Ashiban didn’t think that was likely. But the girl’s guess that it suited at least some of the powers that be to leave problems—perhaps certain problems—uncorrected struck Ashiban as sadly possible. “Sovereign, who’s going to listen to us?”

  “I am the Sovereign of Iss!” the girl declared. “And you are the daughter of CiwrilXidyla! They had better listen to us.”

  * * *

  Shortly after the sky began to lighten, they came to a real, honest-to-goodness road. The Sovereign pulled the groundcar up to its edge and then stopped. The road curved away on either side, so that they could see only the brief stretch in front of them, and trees all around. “Right or left?” asked the Sovereign. There was no signpost, no indication which way town was, or even any evidence beyond the existence of the road itself that there was a town anywhere nearby.

  When Ashiban didn’t answer, the Sovereign slid out of the driver’s seat and walked out to the center of the road. Stood looking one way, and then the other.

  “I think the town is to the right,” she said, when she’d gotten back in. “And I don’t think we have time to get away.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ashiban protested. But then she saw lights through the trees, to the right. “Maybe they’ll drive on by.” But she remembered the young woman’s story of how a Raksamat settler had been received in the town yesterday. And she was here to begin with because of rising tensions between Gidanta and Raksamat, and whoever had shot their flier down, days ago, had fairly obviously wanted to increase those tensions, not defuse them.

  And they were sitting right in the middle of the path to the nearest Raksamat farmstead. Which had no defenses beyond a few hunting guns and maybe a lock on the front door.

  A half dozen groundcars came around the bend in the road. Three of them the sort made to carry loads, but the wide, flat cargo areas held people instead of cargo. Several of those people were carrying guns.

  The first car in the procession slowed as it approached the path where Ashiban and the Sovereign sat. Began to turn, and stopped when its lights brushed their stolen groundca
r. Nothing more happened for the next few minutes, except that the people in the backs of the cargo cars leaned and craned to see what was going on.

  “Expletive,” said the Sovereign. “I’m getting out to talk to them. You should stay here.”

  “What could you possibly say to them, child?” But there wasn’t much good doing anything else, either.

  “I don’t know,” replied the girl. “But you should stay here.”

  Slowly the Sovereign opened the groundcar door, slid out again. Closed the door, pulled her cloth up over her face, and walked out into the pool of light at the edge of the road.

  Getting out of the passenger seat would be slow and painful, and Ashiban really didn’t want to. But the Sovereign looked so small standing by the side of the road, facing the other groundcar. She opened her own door and clambered awkwardly down. Just as she came up behind the Sovereign, the passenger door of the groundcar facing them opened, and a woman stepped out onto the road.

  “I am the Sovereign of Iss,” announced the Sovereign. Murmured the translator clipped to Ashiban’s shirt. “Just what do you think you’re doing here?” Attempting more or less credibly to sound imperious even despite the one hand holding the cloth over her face, but the girl’s voice shook a little.

  “Glad to see you safe, Sovereign,” said the woman, “but I am constable of this precinct and you are blocking my path. Town’s that way.” She pointed back along the way the procession of groundcars had come.

  “And where are you going, Constable,” asked the Sovereign, “with six groundcars and dozens of people behind you, some of them with guns? There’s nothing behind us but trees.”

  “There are three weevil farmsteads in those woods,” cried someone from the back of a groundcar. “And we’ve had it with the weevils thinking they own our planet. Get out of the way, girl!”

  “We know the Raksamat tried to kill you,” put in the constable. “We know they shot down your flier. It wasn’t on the news, but people talk. Do they want a war? An excuse to try to kill us all? We won’t be pushed any farther. The weevils are here illegally, and they will get off this planet and back to their ships. Today if I have anything to say about it.”

  “This is CiwrilXidyla’s daughter next to me,” said the Sovereign. “She came here to work things out, not to try to kill anyone.”

  “That would be the CiwrilXidyla who translated the treaty so the weevils could read it to suit them, would it?” asked the constable. There was a murmur of agreement from behind her. “And wave it in our faces like we agreed to something we didn’t?”

  Somewhere overhead, the sound of a flier engine. Ashiban’s first impulse was to run into the trees. Instead, she said, “Constable, the Sovereign is right. I came here to try to help work out these difficulties. Whoever tried to kill us, they failed, and the sooner we get back to work, the better.”

  “We don’t mean you any harm, old woman,” said the constable. “But you’d best get out of our way, because we are coming through here, whether you move or not.”

  “To do what?” asked Ashiban. “To kill the people on those farmsteads behind us?”

  “We’re not going to kill anybody,” said the constable, plainly angry at the suggestion. “We just want them to know we mean business. If you won’t move, we’ll move you.” And when neither Ashiban nor the Sovereign replied, the constable turned to the people on the back of the vehicle behind her and gestured them forward.

  A moment of hesitation, and then one of them jumped off the groundcar, and another few followed.

  Beside Ashiban the Sovereign took a shaking breath and cried, “I am the Sovereign of Iss! You will go back to the town.” The advancing people froze, staring at her.

  “You’re a little girl in a minor priesthood, who ought to be home minding her studies,” said the constable. “It’s not your fault your grandmother made the mistake of negotiating with the weevils, and it’s not your fault your aunt quit and left you in the middle of this, but don’t be thinking you’ve got any authority here.” The people who had leaped off the groundcar still hesitated.

  The Sovereign, visibly shaking now, pointed at the constable with her free hand. “I am the voice of the planet! You can’t tell the planet to get out of your way.”

  “Constable!” said one of the people who had come off the groundcar. “A moment.” And went over to say something quiet in the constable’s ear.

  The Sovereign said, low enough so only Ashiban could hear it, “Tell the planet to get out of the way? How could I say something so stupid?”

  And then lights came sweeping around the lefthand bend of the road, and seven or eight groundcars came into view, and stopped short of where the constable stood in the road.

  A voice called out, “This is Delegate Garas of the Terraforming Council Enforcement Commission.” Ashiban knew that name. Everyone in the system knew that name. Delegate Garas was the highest-ranking agent of the Gidantan Enforcement Commission, and answered directly to the Terraforming Council. “Constable, you have overstepped your authority.” A man stepped out from behind the glare of the lights. “This area is being monitored.” The sound of a flier above, louder. “Anyone who doesn’t turn around and go home this moment will be officially censured.”

  The person who had been talking to the constable said, “We were just about to leave, Delegate.”

  “Good,” said the delegate. “Don’t delay on my account, please. And, Constable, I’ll meet with you when I get into town this afternoon.”

  * * *

  The Commission agents settled Ashiban and the Sovereign into the back of a groundcar, and poured them hot barley tea from a flask. The tea hardly had time to cool before Delegate Garas slid into the passenger seat in front and turned to speak to them. “Sovereign. Elder.” With little bows of his head. “I apologize for not arriving sooner.”

  “We had everything under control,” said the Sovereign, loftily, cloth still held over her face. Though, sitting close next to her as Ashiban was, she could feel the Sovereign was still shaking.

  “Did you now. Well. We only were able to start tracking you when we found the crash site. Which took much longer than it should have. The surveillance in the High Mires and the surrounding areas wasn’t functioning properly.”

  “That’s a coincidence,” Ashiban remarked, drily.

  “Not a coincidence at all,” the delegate replied. “It was sabotage. An inside job.”

  The Sovereign made a small, surprised noise. “It wasn’t the weev … the Raksamat?”

  “Oh, they were involved, too.” Delegate Garas found a cup somewhere in the seat beside him, poured himself some barley tea. “There’s a faction of Raksamat—I’m sure this won’t surprise you, Elder—who resent the illegal settlers for grabbing land unauthorized, but who also feel that the Assembly will prefer certain families once Raksamat can legally come down to the planet, and between the two all the best land and opportunities will be gone. There is also—Sovereign, I don’t know if you follow this sort of thing—a faction of Gidanta who believe that the Terraforming Council is, in their turn, arranging things to profit themselves and their friends, and leaving everyone else out. Their accusations may in fact be entirely accurate and just, but that is of course no reason to conspire with aggrieved Raksamat to somehow be rid of both Council and Assembly and divide the spoils between themselves.”

  “That’s a big somehow,” Ashiban observed.

  “It is,” Delegate Garas acknowledged. “And they appear not to have had much talent for that sort of undertaking. We have most of them under arrest.” The quiet, calm voice of a handheld murmured, too low for Ashiban’s translator clip to pick up. “Ah,” said Delegate Garas. “That’s all of them now. The trials should be interesting. Fortunately, they’re not my department. It’s Judicial’s problem now. So, as I said, we were only able to even begin tracking you sometime yesterday. And we were already in the area looking for you when we got a call from a concerned citizen who had overheard pla
ns for the constable’s little outing, so it was simple enough to show up. We were pleasantly surprised to find you both here, and relatively well.” He took a drink of his tea. “We’ve let the team tracking you know they can go home now. As the both of you can, once we’ve interviewed you so we know what happened to you.”

  “Home!” The Sovereign was indignant. “But what about the talks?”

  “The talks are suspended, Sovereign. And your interpreter is dead. The Council will have to appoint a new one. And let’s be honest—both of you were involved mainly for appearance’s sake. In fact, I’ve wondered over the last day or two if you weren’t brought into this just so you could die and provide a cause for trouble.”

  This did not mollify the Sovereign. “Appearance’s sake! I am the Sovereign of Iss!”

  “Yes, yes,” Delegate Garas agreed, “so you told everyone just a short while ago.”

  “And it worked, too,” observed Ashiban. Out the window, over the delegate’s shoulder, the sun shone on the once again deserted road. She shivered, remembering the cracked flier windshield, the pilot slumped over the controls.

  “You can’t have these talks without me,” the Sovereign insisted. “I’m the voice of the planet.” She looked at Ashiban. “I am going to learn Raksamat. And AshibanXidyla can learn Gidantan. We won’t need any expletive interpreter. And we can fix the handheld translators.”

  “That might take a while, Sovereign,” Ashiban observed.

  The Sovereign lifted the cloth covering her mouth just enough to show her frown to Ashiban. “We already talked about this, AshibanXidyla. And I am the Voice of Iss. I will learn quickly.”

  “Sovereign,” said Delegate Garas, “those handheld translators are a good thing. Can you imagine what the past hundred years would have been like without them? People can learn Raksamat, or Gidantan, but as AshibanXidyla points out, that takes time, and in the meanwhile people still have to talk to each other. Those handheld translators have prevented all sorts of problems.”