The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books)

by Gardner Dozois

  I leave a message for Dove saying we’re back and getting ready to watch the show. What comes back is an auto-reply saying she’s out of the office, reply soonest. Maybe she’s busy with Fry, who probably has comet fever like everyone else but maybe even more so, since this will be like the big moment that kicks off her new life. If she’s not out of the hospital, I hope they’ve got a screen worthy of the event.

  We all want to see it with our naked eyes. Well, our naked eyes and telescopes. Glynis is bringing a screen for anyone who wants a really close-up look. Considering the whole thing’s gonna last about an hour start to finish, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. It could save us some eyestrain.

  When the first fragment hits, I find myself thinking about the sensors that fell into the atmosphere. They’ve got to be long gone by now and even if they’re not, there’s no way we could pick up any data. It would all be just noise.

  Halfway through the impacts, the government overrides all the communication for a recorded, no-reply announcement: martial law’s been declared, everybody go home. Anyone who doesn’t is dust.

  This means we miss the last few hits, which pisses us off even though we all agree it’s not a sight worth dying for. But when we get home and can’t even get an instant replay, we start wondering. Then we start ranting. The government’s gonna have a lot of explaining to do and the next election ain’t gonna be a love-fest and when did JovOp turn into a government lackey. There’s nothing on the news—and I mean, nothing, it’s all re-runs. Like this is actually two J-days ago and what just happened never happened.

  “Okay,” says Fred, “what’s on OuterComm?”

  “You want to watch soap operas?” Dubonnet fumes. “Sure, why not?”

  We’re looking at the menu when something new appears: it’s called the Soledad y Gottmundsdottir Farewell Special. The name has me thinking we’re about to see Fry in her old two-stepper incarnation but what comes up on the screen is a chambered Nautilus.

  “Hi, everybody. How do you like the new me?” Fry says.

  “What, is she going to law school?” Aunt Chovie says, shocked.

  “I’m sorry to leave you a canned good-bye because you’ve all been so great,” Fry goes on and I have to knot my arms together to keep from turning the thing off. This doesn’t sound like it’s gonna end well. “I knew even before I came out here that I’d be going out for sushi. I just couldn’t decide what kind. You guys had me thinking seriously about octo—it’s a pretty great life and everything you do matters. Future generations—well, it’s going to be amazing out here. Life that adapted to space. Who knows, maybe someday Jovian citizens will change bodies like two-steppers change their clothes. It could happen.

  “But like a lot of two-steppers, I’m impatient. I know, I’m not a two-stepper anymore and I’ve got a far longer lifespan now so I don’t have to be impatient. But I am. I wanted to be part of something that’s taking the next step—the next big step—right now. I really believe the Jupiter Colony is what I’ve been looking for.”

  “The Jupiter Colony? They’re cranks! They’re suicidal!” Glynis hits the ceiling, banks off a wall, and comes down again.

  Fry unfurls her tentacles and lets them wave around freely. “Calm down, whoever’s yelling,” she says, sounding amused. “I made contact with them just before I crewed up with you. I knew what they were planning. They wouldn’t tell me when, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that the Okeke-Hightower impact was the perfect opportunity. We’ve collected some jellies, muted them, and put in yak-yak loops. I don’t know how the next part works, how we’re going to hitch a ride with the comet—I’m not an astrophysicist. But if it works, we’ll seed the clouds with ourselves.

  “We’re all chambered Nautiluses on this trip. It’s the best form for packing a lot of data. But we’ve made one small change: we’re linked together, shell-to-shell, so we all have access to each other’s data. Not too private but we aren’t going into exile as separate hermits. There should still be some sensors bobbing around in the upper levels—the Colony’s had allies tossing various things in on the sly. We can use whatever’s there to build a cloud-borne colony.

  “We don’t know for sure it’ll work. Maybe we’ll all get gravitated to smithereens. But if we can fly long enough for the jellies to convert to parasails—the engineers figured that out, don’t ask me—we might figure out not only how to survive but thrive.

  “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to let you know. Not until we get around the interference problem. I don’t know much about that, either, but if I last long enough, I’ll learn.

  “Dove says right now, you’re all Down Under on loan to OuterComm. I’m going to send this message so it bounces around the Ice Giants for a while before it gets to you and with any luck, you’ll find it not too long after we enter the atmosphere. I hope none of you are too mad at me. Or at least that you don’t stay mad at me. It’s not entirely impossible that we’ll meet again some day. If we do, I’d like it to be as friends.

  “Especially if the Jovian independence movement gets—” she laughs. “I was about to say, ‘gets off the ground.’ If the Jovian independence movement ever achieves a stable orbit—or something. I think it’s a really good idea. Anyway, good bye for now.

  “Oh, and Arkae?” Her tentacles undulate wildly. “I had no idea wormy would feel so good.”

  We just got that one play before the JCC blacked it out. The feds took us all in for questioning. Not surprising. But it wasn’t just Big J feds—Dirt feds suddenly popped up out of nowhere, some of them in-person and some of them long-distance via comm units clamped to mobies. The latter is a big waste unless there’s some benefit to having a conversation as slowly as possible. Because even a fed on Mars can’t do anything about the speed of light—it’s still gonna be at least an hour between the question and the answer, usually more.

  The Dirt feds who were actually here were all working undercover, keeping an eye on things, and reporting whatever they heard or saw to HQ back in the Dirt. This didn’t go down so well with most of us out here, even two-steppers. It became a real governmental crisis, mainly because no one in charge could get their stories straight. Some were denying any knowledge of Dirt spies, some were trying to spin it so it was all for our benefit, so we wouldn’t lose any rights—don’t ask me which ones, they didn’t say. Conspiracy theories blossomed faster than anyone could keep track.

  Finally, the ruling council resigned; the acting council replacing them till the next election are almost all sushi. That’s a first.

  It’s still another dec and a half till the election. JovOp usually backs two-steppers but there are noticeably fewer political ads for bipeds this time around. I think even they can see the points on the trajectory.

  A lot of sushi are already celebrating, talking about the changing face of government in the Jovian system. I’m not quite ready to party. I’m actually a little bit worried about us. We were born to be sushi but we weren’t born sushi. We all started out as two-steppers and while we may have shed binary thinking, that doesn’t mean we’re completely enlightened. There’s already some talk about how most of the candidates are chambered Nautiluses and there ought to be more octos or puffers or crabs. I don’t like the sound of that but it’s too late to make a break for the Colony now. Not that I would. Even if Fry and all her fellow colonists are surviving and thriving, I’m not ready to give up the life I have for a whole new world. We’ll just have to see what happens.

  Hey, I told you not to get me started on politics.

  HOLMES SHERLOCK

  Eleanor Arnason

  A Hwarhath Mystery

  Eleanor Arnason published her first novel, The Sword Smith, in 1978, and followed it with novels such as Daughter of the Bear King and To The Resurrection Station. In 1991, she published her best-known novel, one of the strongest novels of the ’90s, the critically acclaimed A Woman of the Iron People, a complex and substantial novel that won the prestigious James Tipree Jr. Memorial Award. He
r short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Orbit, Xanadu, and elsewhere. Her most recent books are Ring of Swords, Tomb of the Fathers, and Mammoths of the Great Plains. Her story “Stellar Harvest” was a Hugo Finalist in 2000. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

  Here, in one of her long-running series of stories about the alien hwarhath people, part of the same sequence as A Woman of the Iron People, she gives us a story about an alien woman who becomes intrigued with a human fictional character—with intriguing results.

  THERE WAS A woman who fell in love with the stories about a human male named Holmes Sherlock. Her name was Amadi Kla, and she came from a town on the northeast coast of the Great Northern Continent. It became obvious, when she was a child, that she was gifted at learning. Her family sent her to a boarding school and then to college in the capital city. There she learned several languages, including English, and became a translator, working for a government department in the capital.

  She did not translate military information, since that was done by hwarhath men in space. Nor did she translate technical information, since she lacked the requisite technical knowledge. Instead, she translated human fiction. “There is much to be learned from the stories people tell,” the foremost woman in her department said. “If we are going to understand humans, and we must understand them since they are our enemies, then we need to study their stories.”

  The fiction came out of computers in captured human warships. At first the Department of Translation picked stories out of the human computers randomly. Most were as bad as the novels read by hwarhath young men and women. But it turned out that the humans made lists of important stories, so their young people would know the stories they ought to read. Once these lists were found, the Department began to pick out famous and well-considered works for translating.

  The foremost woman said, “It may be possible to learn about a culture by reading trivial fiction. There are people who will argue that. But humans are not a trivial species. They are clearly dangerous, and we should not underestimate them. If we study their least important work, we will decide they are silly. No one who can blow apart a hwarhath warship is silly.”

  After nine years in the capital, Kla began to long for the steep mountains, fjords and fogs of her homeland. She requested permission to work from home.

  “This is possible,” the foremost woman said. “Though you will have to fly here several times a year for meetings.”

  Kla agreed, though she did not like to fly, and went home by coastal freighter.

  Her hometown was named Amadi-Hewil. It stood at the end of a fjord, with mountains rising above it. Most of the people belonged to one of two lineages, Amadi or Hewil, though there were some members of neighboring lineages; the government kept a weather station on a cliff above the fjord. The two men who cared for the station were soldiers from another continent. Of course they were lovers, since there were no other men of their age in the town. Almost all young males went into space.

  Most of the people in the town—women, girls, boys, old men and old women—lived off fishing. The cold ocean outside their fjord was full of great schools of silver and copper-colored fish, insulated with fat. There was a packing plant at the edge of the town, that froze the fish or put it in cans; smaller operations made specialty foods: dried seaweed and smoked or pickled marine animals.

  The town had rental apartments and rooms for fishers whose family homes were farther in the mountains. Kla decided to take one of these, rather than move back into one of the Amadi houses. She had gotten used to living on her own.

  Her room was furnished with a bed, a table and two chairs. There was a bathroom down the hall. She had a window that looked out on a narrow street that went steeply down toward the harbor. There were plenty of electrical inlets, which was always good. She could dock her computer and her two new lamps on any wall. A shelf along one side of the room gave her a place for books and recordings. She settled in and began to translate.

  It was in this period that she discovered Holmes Sherlock. There was little crime in her town, mostly petty theft and drunken arguments. But there was plenty of fog, rain and freezing rain. The street lamps outside her window glowed through grayness; she could hear the clink and rattle of carts pulled by tsina, coming in from the country with loads of produce.

  The human stories seemed to fit with her new life, which was also her childhood life. Much human fiction was disturbing, since it dealt with heterosexual love, a topic the hwarhath knew nothing about. Holmes Sherlock lived decently with a male friend, who might or might not be his lover. While the male friend, a doctor named Watson John, eventually took up with a woman, as humans were expected to, Holmes Sherlock remained indifferent to female humans.

  The stories were puzzles, which Holmes Sherlock solved by reason. This appealed to Kla, who was not a romantic and who had to puzzle out the meaning of human stories, often so mysterious!

  After a while, she went to a local craftsman and had a pipe made. It had a bent stem and a large bowl, like the pipe that Holmes Sherlock smoked in illustrations. She put a local herb into it, which produced an aromatic smoke that was calming when taken into the mouth.

  Holmes Sherlock wore a famous hat. She did not have a copy of this made, since it looked silly, but she did take an illustration that showed his cape to a tailor. The tailor did not have the material called “tweed,” but was able to make a fine cape for her out of a local wool that kept out rain and cold. Like Holmes Sherlock, Kla was tall and thin. Wearing her cape, she imagined she looked a bit like the famous human investigator.

  For the rest, she continued to wear the local costume: pants, waterproof boots and a tunic with embroidery across the shoulders. This was worn by both women and men, though the embroidery patterns differed.

  Twice a year she flew to the capital city and got new assignments. “You are translating too many of these stories about Holmes Sherlock,” the foremost woman said. “Do it on your own time, if you must do it. I want stories that explain humanity. Therefore, I am giving you Madame Bovary and The Journey to the West.”

  Kla took these home, reading Madame Bovary on the long flight over winter plains and mountains. It was an unpleasant story about a woman trapped in a life she did not like. The woman—Bovary Emma—had a long-term mating contract with a male who was a dullard and incompetent doctor. This was something humans did. Rather than produce children decently through artificial insemination or, lacking that, through decent short-term mating contracts, they entered into heterosexual alliances that were supposed to last a lifetime. These were often unhappy, as might be expected. Men and women were not that much alike, and most alliances—even those of women with women and men with men—did not last a lifetime. The hwarhath knew this and expected love to last as long as it did.

  Bored by her “husband,” a word that meant the owner of a house, Bovary Emma tried to make herself happy through sexual liaisons with other human males and by spending money. This did not work. The men were unsatisfactory. The spending led to debt. In the end, Bovary Emma killed herself, using a nasty poison. Her “husband” lived a while longer and—being a fool with no ability to remake his life—was miserable.

  A ridiculous novel! Everyone in it seemed to be a liar or a fool or both. How could humans enjoy something like this? Yes, there was suffering in life. Yes, there were people who behaved stupidly. But surely a story this long ought to remind the reader—somewhere, at least a bit—of good behavior, of people who met their obligations, were loyal to their kin and knew how to be happy.

  Maybe the book could be seen as an argument against heterosexual love.

  When Kla was most of the way home, she changed onto a seaplane, which landed in her native fjord and taxied to dock. The fishing fleet was out. She pulled her bag out of the plane and looked around at the fjord, lined by steep mountains and lit by slanting rays of sunlight. The air was cold and smelled of salt water and the fish plant
.

  Hah! It was fine to be back!

  She translated Madame Bovary and sent it to the foremost woman via the planet’s information net. Then she went on to Journey, an adventure story about a badly behaved stone monkey. But the monkey’s crimes were not sexual, and it was obvious that he was a trickster, more good than bad, especially after he finished his journey. Unlike Bovary Emma, he had learned from experience. Kla enjoyed this translation, though the book was very long.

  While she was still working on the monkey’s story, she met a woman who lived on another floor of her rooming house. The woman was short and stocky with pale gray fur and almost colorless gray eyes. She was a member of the Hewil lineage, employed by the fishing fleet as a doctor. She didn’t go out with the boats. Instead, sick and injured fishers came to her, and the fleet paid her fees. Like Kla, she preferred to live alone, rather than in one of her family’s houses. She walked with a limp, due to a childhood injury, and she enjoyed reading.

  They began to meet to discuss books. The doctor, whose name was Hewil Mel, had read some of Kla’s translations.

  “Though I don’t much enjoy human stories. They are too strange, and I can’t tell what the moral is.”

  “I’m not sure there is one,” Kla said and described Madame Bovary.

  “I will be certain to avoid that one,” Doctor Mel said firmly. “Do you think your translation will be published?”

  “No. It’s too disturbing. Our scientists will read it and make up theories about human behavior. Let me tell you about the story I am translating now.”

  They were walking along the docks on a fine, clear afternoon. The fleet was in, creaking and jingling as the boats rocked amid small waves. Kla told the story of the monkey.