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

by Gardner Dozois

  “Smoke,” the voice said.

  The other adult Nots began climbing to their feet, looking where the first Not looked, repeating the “smoke” squawk again and again.

  Before he turned, Mercer knew that his island was burning. But he wasn’t particularly surprised, since it was such a hot dry summer. The forested uplands had plenty of fuel, but he knew that the healthiest of the giant trees could resist the flames. Probably one of the south drainages was on fire, he decided. That’s where they came first and hit hardest . . .

  But that guess was completely wrong.

  His hilly end of the island stood on the horizon, the eastern region just out of view. The thick column of smoke sprang from a single blaze, and its position meant either that the sea north of his territory was on fire — a strict impossibility — or the Nots’ lands beyond were caught up in some unlikely, tremendous blaze.

  He leaped to his feet.

  That’s when the Nots saw him. And that’s when they began to scream — a single reflexive chorus splitting the air, everyone using one of the few words that had arisen during these last hundred millennia:

  “Eater-of-Bone!” cried the little creatures. “Eater-of-Bone!”

  11

  Twenty-seven humans.

  More than once she counted the running bodies, never believing the tally but the impossible number always waiting at the end of her count.

  Twenty-seven, and every last one of them was an adult.

  Not in any experience of hers, nor even inside any old, unlikely story, had she heard of so many people sharing one another’s air. Except for Mercer’s fables about lost colonies and left-behind worlds, that is. How could so many mouths find enough food? How could so many skulls share the same destination? And her best guess was that there were six or maybe seven women, which meant the extra men were laying awake nights, plotting ways to win or steal what was as valuable to them as any nourishment.

  She watched how they ran, studying their gaits and weighing their packs by the bounce. Every last one of them carried guns, usually a long rifle, and they kept their distance from one another, as if expecting somebody to fire on them any moment. They were determined people with a goal, a mission. They had to be running toward Mercer’s half of the island. But no, that reasonable, wrong assumption was soon thrown aside. They were steering for the Nots, and in particular, for those long fingery bays where the big stone buildings stood just above the high water mark.

  The strangers never looked back.

  What mattered to them lay straight ahead.

  But even when she was certain that they couldn’t see her, she remained behind the parasite plant, counting her breaths and watching the runners grow too tiny to see anymore, and that’s when she finally eased out into the open again, staring at her bulging pack.

  Except for the guns and ammunition, she left everything.

  She didn’t run as fast as the others, and she followed a different line, retracing her own steps as the sun lifted and the heat lifted and the sea’s skin responded by growing fiercely hot and dry beneath bare toes. The day reached noon. The Nots would be outside now, basking in the sun. Every so often, she changed her mind and told her legs to stop, and when they refused, she became confused. Where was her trusted fearfulness hiding? How would returning accomplish anything at all? But she was relieved as well as puzzled. Fanciful, improbable plans swirled inside a head that had never been so rested or well fed, and she kept returning to the simple faith that her intuitions actually knew what they were doing.

  The first explosion sounded like the crack of a dried pegpoke.

  She stopped running and listened, and just when she decided that the sea was making the snapping noise — a consequence of tides and currents abusing the thick skin — she saw half a dozen flashes of light and the bright yellow lick of flames rising up from the shoreline.

  The Nots’ buildings were burning.

  She knelt on the sea and watched, silently telling herself to turn now, turn and go back. The mainland beckoned, and a life of relative wealth and constant invention.

  But then a traitorous thought pushed her back onto the suicidal path.

  She imagined Mercer.

  This creature that she barely knew was inside her. She could see him, and she heard his smooth old voice talking to no one but her. He was weepy and furious about what was happening to his Nots, to his island. One life had spent eons in a tiny place, and all those habits had gathered on the soul because of it . . . an illusion of eternity that meant more to him than any sensible notion . . . and she had absolutely no doubt how he would react to this brutal assault.

  More buildings began to burn.

  Even across such a distance, she heard the Nots’ wild screams.

  She rose again, and her shoulders slumped, and she managed to take half a dozen steps backward. Then a single fanheart dove out of the smoke-pierced sky, spotting her and diving close to shout nothing that made sense and that she understood nonetheless.

  Again, she ran toward the island.

  She felt trapped inside a strange woman. Reasonable terror and brilliant cowardice had been tossed aside. With the fanheart circling overhead, she finally reached the shore. The tide was high. Open, weed-choked water lay between her and a mudstone bank. She didn’t hesitate, feet plunging into the warm deep edge of the sea. One arm pulled and both legs kicked, and she held the stubby rifle high until her left foot kicked the sharp lip of bedded stone, slicing open the skin behind her toes. Then she hurried up the bank and into the great forest that welcomed her with shade and the rich smell of burning flesh. Kneeling for a moment, she pushed at the cut until it was healed. The wind was blowing down the length of the island. Through gaps in the canopy, she saw black smoke and glimpses of an afternoon sun. Obviously her enemies knew much about the island and its inhabitants. An army like this could be everywhere, but she filled only one little place, forever shifting and never unaware. When she reached a familiar trail, she paused long enough to convince herself that only her feet and Mercer’s had passed this way. Then she crept down to his front door, discovering that each of the booby-traps remained active, untouched.

  She disabled them, and before she entered, she set them again.

  But waiting beside the door itself — that great slab of ruby rock — sat a little wooden box that she didn’t recognize.

  She began to step back, and then thought better of it.

  Standing on the only ground she trusted, she called out. Ten times, she risked making the kinds of noise that should have drifted through the house’s breathing holes. Mercer would have heard her with her first word, and where was he? Gone already, she decided. But she yelled an eleventh time regardless, and that was when a body kicked the ground behind her, and his careful, very soft voice asked, “What are you doing?”

  She turned.

  He was dressed for war. A huge man with muscles and tough bone, he nonetheless looked tiny inside unfamiliar armor and beneath the various munitions. Steel boots covered his feet. The ancient mask was as clear as clean water. His face was exactly as she had expected: A tight jaw and the red beard and the squinting, uncompromising eyes, little beads of sweat running through the whiskers and the throat jumping a little as the voice said, “I thought you’d left me.”

  “No,” she lied.

  Dark, skeptical eyes stared at nothing but her eyes.

  “I did leave,” she finally admitted. “But I changed my mind.”

  He insisted on saying nothing.

  “I saw them coming,” she explained. Then she reported their numbers and the equipment that she had seen and the arrow-certainty of their motion.

  Mercer’s only response was a slight silent nod.

  Once again, she looked at his gear. Where did all that shiny armor come from? She hadn’t seen it hanging in the armory, she realized. And his rifle was different from the others, although she couldn’t decide exactly what made it so unlikely. So strange.

  Sensing those
questions, he said, “Hyperfiber.”

  What was that word?

  “I stole several sheets of it when I abandoned the colony.” He rapped hard on the flat breastplate. “This was scavenged off our starship.”

  “Your gun?”

  “I designed it and built it myself.” He aimed at the sky, adding, “It has an exceptionally long reach and some very special shells.”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “See?” He pulled one bullet from the breech and tossed it up.

  She caught it, astonished by its weight.

  “Metal,” he said.

  The object was long and tapered at one end, its smooth face reflecting the world around it.

  He said, “That one is lead and silver, mostly.”

  “I don’t care,” she repeated. “You can’t beat them.”

  “You think I should run away?”

  But she knew he wouldn’t. And that was why she shook her head. “We can go underground,” she said. “We’ll fight them when they come here.” She almost believed those words, and every other crazy utterance that spilled out of her mouth. She and Mercer had their booby traps and the hard old hill, plus a maze of tunnels in which to hide. Their armory and living quarters were stocked and ready for a long, long siege. Sure, an army of monsters was coming, but they’d brought only what they could carry, and most of them were men, and eventually their little peace with one another would break down, and they would fight with each other instead of the two of them.

  “Why did you come back?” he interrupted.

  He might as well have asked about the far side of the White Moon. She had no ready answer, or even a half-convincing lie.

  “You did leave me,” he pointed out. “And then you didn’t.”

  It made no sense to her either.

  She admitted, “I don’t know why.”

  He dropped his gaze.

  Then she said, “Maybe,” before her voice fell away.

  “Maybe what?”

  Every breath tasted of smoke and burning Nots. She managed a deep breath before saying, “I’m pregnant.”

  If anything, he looked offended. He shook his head, saying, “Then I’ll ask again. Why? Why endanger yourself and the baby?”

  There was no answer to give.

  Looking at her own hands, she had to admit, “I don’t know this person.”

  “Maybe what it was . . . is . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  She said, “What?”

  “No.”

  “What?” she pressed.

  Then she took a sloppy step forward.

  The new trap was triggered, a simple gun inside that wooden box aimed at her back. A copper bullet was driven past her ribs and through her ribs and heart, and she dropped hard on her rump, feeling nothing but warmth and surprise.

  Mercer leaped, dropping the rifle and slashing the air with a diamond sword. An insulated wire ran from the box to her chest, and he cut the wire an instant before a staggering jolt of electricity ran up into the wound, cooking her insides. Then he knelt and yanked at the bullet until it dropped free, and gently, he set a hand over the tidy little hole.

  “I don’t think your siege plan is awful,” he finally admitted. “But whoever they are, these people know me. I’m sure of that. My guess? One of their women lived here, long ago. Or some old girlfriend of mine talked to one of the men and told too much. Either way, they’re probably prepared for a long fight. So if I am going to beat them, I have to do it now. Today. Before everyone’s dead but them and me.”

  He had to save his Nots, he meant.

  She coughed hard, tasting the sweet iron in her blood.

  He pulled off his helmet and kissed her twice, and then he opened the ruby door and dragged her limp body inside. Then he kissed her once again, on the belly that betrayed no trace of a baby yet.

  “You’ll heal quickly enough,” he promised.

  She already felt her toes wiggling.

  “These other monsters have made plans,” he allowed. “Careful plans. But then again, there’s one element they won’t see coming.”

  “Me?”

  “When you have your legs again,” he began.

  “What do you want?”

  He told her.

  She nodded, coughing one last time.

  Then he put on the helmet again and touched a switch, causing the faceplate to turn black as a winter night. Then quietly, tenderly, he said, “I love you. Whatever your name is, I do love you.”

  12

  Generations of laborers had invested their lives shaping a titanic block of gray-white basalt. Sapphire chisels had dug into the stone, creating the rough approximation of a human form. Then mud laced with diamond grit was used to smooth and polish, finishing arms and legs and the powerful torso, and finally, the frightful, mocking mask laid over a face that none had ever witnessed. Here was stark evidence for the power of honesty over any singular artistic genius: Every detail was rendered with relentless perfection — the hard fibers of each muscle, every vein in the menacing fists, and those gray-white eyes, big as platters, staring forever into the Nots’ homes. This was the island’s lawful ruler. Not Mercer, but this gigantic testament to fear and adoration. Without any prompting on his part, the sculptors had captured the individual hairs trailing down his long bare back, and they understood the precise angle of every bone as well as the bare human ass, and several of those exceptionally thorough creatures had even managed to replicate what was the most unremarkable male genitalia.

  Mercer slipped past the stone god, kneeling behind a long slab of polished magna-wood. Two old Nots and a child had died recently. Relatives had prepared them for the Afterlife, peeling away their exoskin to reveal spidery bodies that were treated with their family blood before being carefully laid out on the altar, waiting for the honor of being carried into the monster’s realm. A Not’s rotting flesh produced a horrific stink. Mercer held his breath, reading the sun-washed country before him. Twenty-seven invaders? That still seemed like an enormous, unlikely number. Yet he trusted the girl’s eyes, and even if she hadn’t returned to warn him, Mercer would have recognized the awful stakes. His home had been invaded, obviously. What this army wanted was nothing less than to kill him and then live here forever. And all of this smoke and carnage was nothing more, or less, than a brazen, carefully planned message meant for an audience of one.

  They were taunting him.

  One way or another, they would draw him into their fight; and somewhere in the ruins, a careful trap was being set.

  Yet that could play to Mercer’s advantage. People crouching inside secret holes often felt too safe for their own good. Whoever these invaders were, they probably expected him to sneak down through the crops and between the intact buildings. But they couldn’t where he would come from, or when. Twenty-seven pairs of eyes looking into the shadows, expecting a slinking, fearful soul . . . and that’s why Mercer forced himself to stand and breathe deeply, ignoring his nausea as well as a host of reasonable, useful fears . . .

  He ran.

  Holstered pistols bounced, but his rifle was tied securely to his left shoulder, and with his armor and light pack cinched tight, he could easily maintain this long efficient stride. Against every instinct, he kept to the perfect middle of the lane. He didn’t bother watching for hazards that he likely wouldn’t see anyway. Let the bastards hide where they wanted. What mattered were speed and surprise. His only focus was the ground straight ahead. When the lane twisted left and began to drop, he consciously lifted his pace. And where the farmland started to dissolve into the tall stone apartment buildings, Mercer pushed his body and cargo into a blurring sprint.

  Pure human genetics couldn’t have managed this relentless pace. Mercer forced his fit, well-fed body to unleash all of its talents. Metabolisms lifted while pains were obscured. His heart roared. His lungs massaged every breath. Oxygen made his bright blood sing.

  Like two streams merging, his lane joined wit
h a neighbor, and moments later he sprinted out into a wide stretch of open ground — the Nots’ version of a public plaza. The space was paved with tightly-fitted corundum stones and lined with tall mirrors that gathered the low northern sunlight. A little Stonehenge stood in the middle plaza, showing with shadow exactly where they sat inside this summer. Here was where Mercer fully expected to suffer. Some sniper would suddenly notice him and aim a little too quickly, opening fire before he was ready, and then this miserable waiting would end . . .

  Yet nothing happened.

  The next few moments of running lasted for ages, and then Mercer escaped the open ground, slipping back between tall buildings again. He was surprised. Disappointed, in a fashion. And then as he thought about the situation, he became terrified.

  Was he going to have to run back and forth like a madman, begging to be noticed?

  Or worse, could his enemies have anticipated his tactics?

  The invaders weren’t here. He thought it and then believed it: Somehow they had slipped past all the watching, friendly eyes that guarded Mercer’s forest — the fanhearts and dewlanes and such. They had lured him here, and now they would steal his home.

  He hoped Dream had healed enough to run away . . . using her legs and paranoia to keep her safe . . .

  Thinking of her, Mercer slowed his pace just a touch.

  Crack.

  The first round missed, skipping off the pavement ahead of him, bouncing and detonating with a hot red flash. His momentum carried him through the explosion. Then he jumped to the left for no reason but to jump, to ruin the next shot. But the marksman guessed right and put an explosive charge into his chest, and the blast slammed against the hyperfiber armor and every rib beneath.

  Mercer felt his feet lifting.

  Then he found himself on his back, but perfectly conscious.

  He rolled and stood and ran blindly toward the nearest door — a dozen tattler skins woven together and painted with yellow lettering that told all who passed the significance of this building. He was barely through that opening when two explosions went off together, flinging him onto the little Not stairs that led up into the nesting house.