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

by Gardner Dozois

  “That’s what I’m here to decide. I promise you, she and the baby won’t come to any harm. But I need to understand what’s happened. Did you know she’d cut out her implant?”

  He stared at the tabletop. “No, I didn’t know that.” If he had known, he could be implicated, so it behooved him to say that. But Enid believed him.

  “Jess, I want to understand why she did what she did. Her household is being difficult. They tell me she spent all her spare time with you.” Enid couldn’t tell if he was resistant to talking to her, or if he simply couldn’t find the words. She prompted. “How long have you been together? How long have you been intimate?” A gentle way of putting it. He wasn’t blushing; on the contrary, he’d gone even more pale.

  “Not long,” he said. “Not even a year. I think … I think I know what happened now, looking back.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  “I think … I think she needed someone and she picked me. I’m almost glad she picked me. I love her, but … I didn’t know.”

  She wanted a baby. She found a boy she liked, cut out her implant, and made sure she had a baby. It wasn’t unheard of. Enid had looked into a couple of cases like it in the past. But then, the household reported it when the others found out, or she left the household. To go through that and then stay, with everyone also covering it up …

  “Did she ever talk about earning a banner and having a baby with you? Was that a goal of hers?”

  “She never did at all. We … it was just us. I just liked spending time with her. We’d go for walks.”

  “What else?”

  “She—wouldn’t let me touch her arm. The first time we … were intimate, she kept her shirt on. She’d hurt her arm, she said, and didn’t want to get dirt on it—we were out by the mill creek that feeds into the pond. It’s so beautiful there, with the noise of the water and all. I … I didn’t think of it. I mean, she always seemed to be hurt somewhere. Bruises and things. She said it was just from working around the house. I was always a bit careful touching her, though, because of it. I had to be careful with her.” Miserable now, he put the pieces together in his mind as Enid watched. “She didn’t like to go back. I told myself—I fooled myself—that it was because she loved me. But it’s more that she didn’t want to go back.”

  “And she loves you. As you said, she picked you. But she had to go back.”

  “If she’d asked, she could have gone somewhere else.”

  But it would have cost credits she may not have had, the committee would have asked why, and it would have been a black mark on Frain’s leadership, or worse. Frain had them cowed into staying. So Aren wanted to get out of there and decided a baby would help her.

  Enid asked, “Did you send the tip to Investigations?”

  “No. No, I didn’t know. That is, I didn’t want to believe. I would never do anything to get her in trouble. I … I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  “No, Jess. Do you know who might have sent in the tip?”

  “Someone on the local committee, maybe. They’re the ones who’d start an investigation, aren’t they?”

  “Usually, but they didn’t seem happy to see me. The message went directly to regional.”

  “The local committee doesn’t want to think anything’s wrong. Nobody wants to think anything’s wrong.”

  “Yes, that seems to be the attitude. Thank you for your help, Jess.”

  “What will happen to Aren?” He was choking, struggling not to cry. Even Bert, standing at the wall, seemed discomfited.

  “That’s for me to worry about, Jess. Thank you for your time.”

  At the dismissal, he slipped out of the room.

  She leaned back and sighed, wanting to get back to her own household—despite the rumors, investigators did belong to households—with its own orchards and common room full of love and safety.

  Yes, maybe she should have retired before all this. Or maybe she wasn’t meant to.

  “Enid?” Bert asked softly.

  “Let’s go. Let’s get this over with.”

  * * *

  Back at Apricot Hill’s common room, the household gathered, and Enid didn’t have to ask for Aren this time. She had started to worry, especially after talking to Jess. But they’d all waited this long, and her arrival didn’t change anything except it had given them all the confirmation that they’d finally been caught. That they would always be caught. Good for the reputation, there.

  Aren kept her face bowed, her hair over her cheek. Enid moved up to her, reached a hand to her, and the girl flinched. “Aren?” she said, and she still didn’t look up until Enid touched her chin and made her lift her face. An irregular red bruise marked her cheek.

  “Aren, did you send word about a bannerless pregnancy to the regional committee?”

  Someone, Felice probably, gasped. A few of them shifted. Frain simmered. But Aren didn’t deny it. She kept her face low.

  “Aren?” Enid prompted, and the young woman nodded, ever so slightly.

  “I hid. I waited for the weekly courier and slipped the letter in her bag, she didn’t see me; no one saw. I didn’t know if anyone would believe it, with no name on it, but I had to try. I wanted to get caught, but no one was noticing it; everyone was ignoring it.” Her voice cracked to silence.

  Enid put a gentle hand on Aren’s shoulder. Then she went to Bert, and whispered, “Watch carefully.”

  She didn’t know what would happen, what Frain in particular would do. She drew herself up, drew strength from the uniform she wore, and declaimed.

  “I am the villain here,” Enid said. “Understand that. I am happy to be the villain in your world. It’s what I’m here for. Whatever happens, blame me.

  “I will take custody of Aren and her child. When the rest of my business is done, I’ll leave with her and she’ll be cared for responsibly. Frain, I question your stewardship of this household and will submit a recommendation that Apricot Hill be dissolved entirely, its resources and credits distributed among its members as warranted, and its members transferred elsewhere throughout the region. I’ll submit my recommendation to the regional committee, which will assist the local committee in carrying out my sentence.”

  “No,” Felice hissed. “You can’t do this, you can’t force us out.”

  She had expected that line from Frain. She wondered at the deeper dynamic here, but not enough to try to suss it out.

  “I can,” she said, with a backward glance at Bert. “But I won’t have to, because you’re all secretly relieved. The household didn’t work, and that’s fine—it happens sometimes—but none of you had the guts to start over, the guts to give up your credits to request a transfer somewhere else. To pay for the change you wanted. To protect your own housemates from each other. But now it’s done, and by someone else, so you can complain all you want and rail to the skies about your new poverty as you work your way out of the holes you’ve dug for yourselves. I’m the villain you can blame. But deep down you’ll know the truth. And that’s fine too, because I don’t really care. Not about you lot.”

  No one argued. No one said a word.

  “Aren,” Enid said, and the woman flinched again. She might never stop flinching. “You can come with me now, or would you like time to say good-bye?”

  She looked around the room, and Enid wasn’t imagining it: The woman’s hands were shaking, though she tried to hide it by pressing them under the roundness of her belly. Enid’s breath caught, because even now it might go either way. Aren had been scared before; she might be too scared to leave. Enid schooled her expression to be still no matter what the answer was.

  But Aren stood from the table and said, “I’ll go with you now.”

  “Bert will go help you get your things—”

  “I don’t have any things. I want to go now.”

  “All right. Bert, will you escort Aren outside?”

  The door closed behind them, and Enid took one last look around the room.

  “That’s it, then
,” Frain said.

  “Oh no, that’s not it at all,” Enid said. “That’s just it for now. The rest of you should get word of the disposition of the household in a couple of days.” She walked out.

  Aren stood outside, hugging herself. Bert was a polite few paces away, being non-threatening, staring at clouds. Enid urged them on, and they walked the path back toward town. Aren seemed to get a bit lighter as they went.

  They probably had another day in Southtown before they could leave. Enid would keep Aren close, in the guest rooms, until then. She might have to requisition a solar car. In her condition, Aren probably shouldn’t walk the ten miles to the next way station. And she might want to say good-bye to Jess. Or she might not, and Jess would have his heart broken even more. Poor thing.

  * * *

  Enid requisitioned a solar car from the local committee and was able to take to the Coast Road the next day. The bureaucratic machinery was in motion on all the rest of it. Committeeman Trevor revealed that a couple of the young men from Apricot Hill had preemptively put in household transfer requests. Too little, too late. She’d done her job; it was all in committee hands now.

  Bert drove, and Enid sat in the back with Aren, who was bundled in a wool cloak and kept her hands around her belly. They opened windows to the spring sunshine, and the car bumped and swayed over the gravel road. Walking would have been more pleasant, but Aren needed the car. The tension in her shoulders had finally gone away. She looked up, around, and if she didn’t smile, she also didn’t frown. She talked, now, in a voice clear and free of tears.

  “I came into the household when I was sixteen, to work prep in the canning house and to help with the garden and grounds and such. They needed the help, and I needed to get started on my life, you know? Frain—he expected more out of me. He expected me to be his.”

  She spoke as if being interrogated. Enid hadn’t asked for her story, but listened carefully to the confession. It spilled out like a flood, like the young woman had been waiting.

  “How far did it go, Aren?” Enid asked carefully. In the driver’s seat, Bert frowned, like maybe he wanted to go back and have a word with the man.

  “He never did more than hit me.”

  So straightforward. Enid made a note. The car rocked on for a ways.

  “What will happen to her, without a banner?” Aren asked, glancing at her belly. She’d evidently decided the baby was a girl. She probably had a name picked out. Her baby, her savior.

  “There are households who need babies to raise who’ll be happy to take her.”

  “Her, but not me?”

  “It’s a complicated situation,” Enid said. She didn’t want to make Aren any promises until they could line up exactly which households they’d be going to.

  Aren was smart. Scared, but smart. She must have thought things through, once she realized she wasn’t going to die. “Will it go better, if I agree to give her up? The baby, I mean.”

  Enid said, “It would depend on how you define ‘better.’”

  “Better for the baby.”

  “There’s a stigma on bannerless babies. Worse some places than others. And somehow people know, however you try to hide it. People will always know what you did and hold it against you. But the baby can get a fresh start on her own.”

  “All right. All right, then.”

  “You don’t have to decide right now.”

  Eventually, they came to the place in the road where the ruins were visible, like a distant mirage, but unmistakable. A haunted place, with as many rumors about it as there were about investigators and what they did.

  “Is that it?” Aren said, staring. “The old city? I’ve never seen it before.”

  Bert slowed the car, and they stared out for a moment.

  “The stories about what it was like are so terrible. I know it’s supposed to be better now, but…” The young woman dropped her gaze.

  “Better for whom, you’re wondering?” Enid said. “When they built our world, our great-grandparents saved what they could, what they thought was important, what they’d most need. They wanted a world that would let them survive not just longer but better. They aimed for utopia knowing they’d fall short. And for all their work, for all our work, we still find pregnant girls with bruises on their faces who don’t know where to go for help.”

  “I don’t regret it,” Aren said. “At least, I don’t think I do.”

  “You saved what you could,” Enid said. It was all any of them could do.

  The car started again, rolling on. Some miles later on, Aren fell asleep curled in the back seat, her head lolling. Bert gave her a sympathetic glance.

  “Heartbreaking all around, isn’t it? Quite the last case for you, though. Memorable.”

  “Or not,” Enid said.

  Going back to the way station, late afternoon, the sun was in Enid’s face. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let it warm her.

  “What, not memorable?” Bert said.

  “Or not the last,” she said. “I may have a few more left in me.”

  The Audience

  SEAN McMULLEN

  Australian author Sean McMullen is a computer systems analyst with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and has been a lead singer in folk and rock bands as well as singing with the Victoria State Opera. He’s also an acclaimed and prolific author whose short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Interzone, Analog, and elsewhere, and the author of a dozen novels, including Voices in the Light, Mirrorsun Rising, Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, Eyes of the Calculor, Voyage of the Shadowmoon, Glass Dragons, Void Farer, The Time Engine, The Centurion’s Empire, and Before the Storm. Some of his stories have been collected in Call to the Edge, and he wrote a critical study, Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction, with Russell Blackford and Van Ikin. His most recent books are the novel Changing Yesterday and two new collections, Ghosts of Engines Past and Colours of the Soul. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

  People have been longing to make First Contact with aliens for decades, and making extensive efforts to achieve it, but as McMullen suggests here, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a hot idea after all …

  A report from humanity’s only starship should be very formal, but this report will have to be a story. Humanity’s future will depend on my ability to tell a good story, four and a half thousand years from now, so I must keep in practise. This will also be my last contact with Earth, and I want to give you an accurate and definitive account that is still a good read. Official reports are always so boring.

  * * *

  The Javelin was built in lunar orbit, and the crew was selected on a list of criteria longer than most novels. My background is in disaster recovery for large spacecraft, and that got me into the crew. Why? It is because disaster recovery experts need to have a working knowledge of literally every system: how to repair it, how to make something else do the same job, and how to do without it and not die. I had been on the disaster recovery design team for the Javelin, and I met all the other criteria. That put me just a whisker ahead of the nine thousand other candidates for the fifth and last place on the crew.

  Uneven numbers are good for breaking deadlocks when votes are taken, so there were five of us aboard the Javelin. Our life support and recycling units had been over-engineered to last a century with us awake, and almost indefinitely with the crew in suspension. Five months of acceleration were followed by a fading away into chemically induced bliss, twenty years of nothingness, then a long struggle out of jumbled, chaotic dreams. By then we were nowhere near Abyss, and still faced another five months of deceleration. One two hundredth of the speed of light may not sound like much, but we held the record for the fastest humans alive about a hundred times over.

  For some irrational reason I had expected to see something when I looked out at Abyss, yet only an absence of stars was visible, slowly rotating as the gravity habitat turned. My subconscious kept screaming that it was a
black hole, and that we would be sucked down, mangled and annihilated, but the rational part of me knew otherwise. Abyss was just a gas giant planet about the size of Jupiter, with three large moons and a thin ring system. It was special because it was not part of the solar system.

  We gathered at the gallery plate, celebrating our insertion into orbit around Abyss. Landi, the captain, was standing beside me, and we were playing our favourite game. I would make a grand statement, and she would try to cut it down to size.

  “We know it’s there because we see nothing,” I said, the frustrated author in me always on the lookout for a nice turn of phrase.

  “That’s how it was found,” said Landi. “Stellar occultation. Stars that should have been visible were not.”

  “This is the first voyage beyond the solar system, but we have not left the solar system.”

  “We’re a tenth of a light year from the sun, that’s hardly the solar system.”

  “We are in the Oort Cloud, the Oort Cloud orbits the sun, so we are still in the solar system.”

  “But Abyss is only passing through the Oort Cloud, it’s not orbiting the sun. We have matched velocity with Abyss so we are no longer part of the solar system.”

  “But we are in the Oort Cloud, so we are still within the solar system.”

  “Abyss is less than a fortieth of the distance to Alpha Centauri.”

  “Which is a hundred times further away than Pluto.”

  “Draw,” was the verdict of Mikov, our geologist.

  Saral and Fan clapped. We had been selected to be compatible yet diverse, complimenting each other’s skills. For the ten months that we had been awake, it had been like a working holiday with close friends. For my part, I would have happily spent the rest of my life on the Javelin.

  “Coffee break’s over,” said Landi. “Time to refuel.”

  * * *

  The Javelin expedition had a single point of failure, which is something that disaster recovery people hate. There was enough reaction mass to get us to Abyss and stop with our tanks practically empty. All the gas giants of the solar system had ring systems of ice, so the designers had gambled on Abyss having rings as well. The gamble had paid off, so we could refuel and eventually go home.