Mercer was still too far down the drainage.
Exposed, and caught in his own trap too.
She ran, pushing down the slope while working upstream, running out onto a bed of dried, dusty pebbles. She was above him. Even facing her, he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Walking was everything that he could manage, and he did it erect, shattered feet dragging on the rocks and the armor catching the moonlight, making him all the more obvious, and what sounded like a spongeworm squishing every time his nearly useless lungs managed to take another breath.
The army closed on their victim.
She heard the monsters talking openly, happily. An infectious mood, a kind of celebration, erased all but the last shreds of caution. She even heard two voices near the front arguing passionately about which one of them should get the final pleasure.
On her toes, she ran toward Mercer.
His helmet was missing. A burnt face managed to see her as a shape approaching, and he lifted his final pistol and tried to fire with the empty chamber, perhaps puzzled by the useless series of clicks.
She kneeled and aimed over his head, flinging half a dozen explosive rounds over his head.
The blasts flung him to the ground.
She had never heard so many humans speaking at once, and every last one of them was cursing.
“A new gun,” someone decided. “He must have stashed one.”
Nobody wanted to get battered now, at the end. So they hunkered down, waiting for Mercer to make a fresh mistake.
He was fighting to stand one last time. Lying on his chest, he looked helpless. She came close and dropped flat to put her mouth against his ear, and tasting ashes, she said, “I’m here.”
He didn’t answer. But his body seemed to relax, slightly.
She grabbed his surviving arm and tugged hard, once and then again, and he decided to obey what he felt, pulling one leg up and then his body, allowing her to slip under that arm and helping him to come upright. But every step was miserably slow. He was astonishingly, frighteningly light. Something awful had happened, and that he could heal enough to stagger this far was miraculous. But that lightness meant that a rested and strong woman, no matter how small, could push herself under his bulk and shove up hard enough to let his shattered body lay limp over her shoulders, and with her rifle in one hand and the other arm between his shrunken legs, she could run straight for nearly a hundred rapid breaths.
A dried waterfall stood like a wall before them.
Behind them, voices argued and debated and gradually pushed closer. And then as she wondered what to do, a man’s voice declared, “There’s fresh prints here. He’s got a friend.”
She bent low and swallowed an enormous amount of air, and then with a clean shove, she flung him over the brink of the dried falls.
He was unconscious now.
Shaking from fatigue, she dragged him up to where the winter currents had cut into the bank, creating a tiny shelter roofed with ruddy corundum. Into the less-burnt ear, she said, “Stay,” and then she retrieved her rifle and ran hard up the hill, terrified that she wouldn’t have time enough or that her trap had been diagnosed or that any of a thousand little mistakes could have doomed both of them.
Below her, countless rifles fired at every shadow.
She reached the fuses without drawing anyone’s fire. Time mattered, but so did precision. She used the flint lighter to light one short fuse that she had lashed around the others, and then stood back, one long breath spent wondering what to do when this didn’t work. Shoot the fuses with her rifle? Or detonate the trees one by one, maybe?
Her doubts evaporated.
Several dozen serpents sprang to life, spark and fire streaking across the dry ground, setting tiny fires before reaching the incendiary bombs. The watching post’s tree exploded first, the ancient trunk gouged out and bladders bursting, and then as more trees exploded below, the giant bent and fell, dislodging rocks as well as the explosive underbrush, the shattered mess sliding rapidly downhill.
Fifty breaths, and the hillside quit falling.
No voices were heard. No weapons, no sobs. The drainage below Mercer and the waterfall was jammed with downed timber, and as promised, much of that exposed wood was burning. Bladders had been shattered, soaking the mess with water and fire retardants. But when those desperate measures had done their best, the ancient forest burst into a single consuming blaze, hot enough to create a funeral pyre for every miserable monster trapped beneath.
With the heat, she couldn’t reach Mercer’s hiding place.
But he would be safe enough where he was, she reasoned. In that damp, near-underground place, he would burn only a little and heal those new wounds before dawn, most likely. This creature that never believed in any long future found herself talking to the almost-dead man, telling him the story of his unlikely survival and imagining what he might tell her about his various adventures facing down nearly thirty of the most deadly monsters in the world.
She baked in the fire, and because she wanted to feel sure, she scanned both her slope and the facing slope, in the unlikely chance that one or two of the humans had escaped the others’ fate.
Whole trees detonated, but the opposite, north-facing slope was too wet and far too steep to catch fire.
Every once in a while, she noticed movement. But what she saw was high on the next ridge, and they plainly weren’t human shapes, and it was easiest to believe that tattlers and other animals were running through the forest.
By dawn, the giant fire was reduced to red-hot coals and a thick column of black smoke.
Rifle in hand, she began to walk toward Mercer. But even now the heat was intense. Her flesh threatened to blister, and each little breath hurt her throat and her chest.
She thought about retreating.
But then she saw the Nots braving the furnace. Fifty of them, all adults. And then she realized that no, they were just the first of several waves, and she couldn’t count how many hundreds were climbing down the opposite slope. Some of the Nots carried bladders stolen from the forest trees, busily soaking themselves and their neighbors with the cooling liquid. Like a flood, they flowed into the dried streambed, smelling the air and ground and finally discovering what they knew was somewhere close by.
Mercer was dragged out into the open.
She stopped, standing on her toes, not certain what to think but incapable of feeling much concern. His Nots must have followed the invaders up into the forbidden forest. Unseen, they had watched the last fight and the horrible fire, and now they were dragging their great protector out of his hiding place. There were so many of the tiny creatures crowding in close now. Despite a lifetime of mistrust and paranoia, she couldn’t understand what they wanted from the god they had worshipped for hundreds of generations — not until one Not lifted a stone-tipped hoe over its head, driving the cutting edge into Mercer’s burnt and helpless face.
Twenty other Nots took their swings with the same hoe, and then the pole shattered with a sharp crack.
Sapphire knives were pulled from hidden belts.
A thunderous chorus of cries rose up from the opposite slope.
Suddenly what might have been ten thousand shapes flowed out of the shadows, out from under the trees, fighting one another for the honor to help with or at least witness what was plainly a wondrous, long-anticipated event.
The girl saw nothing that happened after that.
Finally obeying her mother’s wise advice, she ran off those hills and across the summer sea, retrieving her waiting pack before continuing to the south, chasing after her new, old life.
14
Summer was nearly done when the great ruby door was finally pried open, but even then booby-traps continued killing and maiming, including the sudden release of a wicked green gas that slaughtered dozens of good citizens. After that tragedy, there was fearful talk and fearful thoughts. What if the female monster — that mutilated beast thrown out of the sea — was hiding in the hills, wai
ting to inflict her terrible revenge? Traps were built and baited with piss fungi, yet nothing touched them. The sharpest eyes and noses examined every piece of the island, but no recent trace of her or any other living Eater-of-bone was found. When the darkest, wettest days of winter descended, the Elders held a council, and it was decided that their enemies indeed had been vanquished. The ancient premonitions were true: With an ocean of patience and a handful of courage, the Nots at long last had won their well-deserved freedom.
Yet even when the monster’s lair proved toothless and empty, it was studied only with slowest possible deliberation. An intricate maze of tunnels had to be measured and marked. Room after room after room was carefully examined. Maps were drawn. Scribes made exhaustive inventories. The monster’s furniture and his elaborate wardrobe brought endless fascination. But those were normal, knowable objects. His home was littered with mysterious wonders that needed to be examined and memorized. Those rare souls with the necessary skills gazed directly at the human-built machines, and they whispered with learned voices, and then only when they felt ready did they give their honest verdict.
“We have no idea what this device does,” was the usual pronouncement.
They were the Hunters-of-unthinkable-thoughts.
At the beginning of time and the world, a lady Not had watched the monster throw rocks into the bay, and from the action, she had somehow discerned an important piece of his greater purpose. She had urged her people to mimic his insanity that next year. And her descendants learned from the monster how to build the dam and drain the bay and then carefully scrape up a white film, vanishingly thin that meant so much to the invincible Eater-of-bone.
It was the Hunters who always studied what refused to be understood. To strengthen their talents, they formed a narrow sect-family, gradually improving their blood line — countless generations of wizard-like savants whose culminating moment was to stand together in the heart of that cave-like home, debating the purpose and merits of this piece of brass and of that broken cylinder of cultured diamond.
At winter’s end, a fleet of raiding Nots landed near the burnt remains of the mineral works. But before they could move off the shoreline, they were struck dead by a rain of aluminum bullets and tiny bombs.
That day, a new force sat upon the world.
Then came the holy first night of summer. Much talk had been invested in the proper best way to mark this event. One young Hunter — a lady Not with an astonishing talent for holding the odd and unimaginable behind her fiery eyes — argued successfully for a reversal of the traditional ceremony. As a nation, the Nots streamed past the uprooted statue of their vanquished god, and they passed through new gaps cut in the barricade, and then holding tight to a respectful silence, they marched up into the hill country. The strongest carried the weakest; no one was left behind. At the lead was the courageous young male who had first struck at their sworn enemy, his only weapon being the common, now famous hoe.
What he carried tonight, nestled in careful hands, resembled a round stone, grayish in color and surprisingly light in weight, decorated with a multitude of folds and little fissures mirroring the ancestral mind of human beings.
The Hunters followed closely behind, carrying the twenty-seven souls of the wicked, blessed invaders.
Into the lair went the honored leaders.
The rest of the Nots waited silently in the darkness of the forest, crowded beneath a giant gyreboy tree.
Twenty-eight monsters were carried into a distant room.
Set about that room, in neat rows and labeled in a precise, still unreadable tongue, were more than three hundred Eaters-of-bone — the previous residents of this common grave.
Some Nots had argued for sinking all of these horrors in the sea.
But other voices had won out, at least for the moment. And to make that moment eternal, the young Hunter reminded all in her presence that little was known about the creatures they were at war with. The origins and magic of these demons remained deep mysteries. But time was deeper, and patience could be eternal. Using the relics in the monster’s sanctuary, some future generation might finally tease away all of the ignorance, and wiser souls would find themselves holding all of the tools used by their unwelcome visitors.
Who could say where the next billion years would lead?
Perhaps someone of power would find a compelling reason to give these dead monsters their faces again, and their limbs, and their animal voices.
But not their freedom, she hoped.
As did all of the good Nots . . .
15
“My name is . . .” she began.
“Mother,” said the boy, grinning.
“Are you sure?”
And he laughed at one of their oldest, most cherished jokes. Of course she was his mother, and that was the only name she would even need from him. It was still just the two of them working as one. Other solitary humans lived in this forest of sky-hugging trees. But since these were relatively wealthy times for monsters, at least in this one northern corner of the world, there was no serious fighting. Nor were there any treaties of alliance, either. Cooperation demanded need, and none of the resident monsters saw good reasons to join forces, even for a day.
“I want a story,” the young boy said.
They were sitting in the dark, under the tattler skin, listening to the rain hit and flow off onto the muddy ground.
Mother said, “All right.”
“Which story?” he asked eagerly.
“The island,” she promised.
“About my father?”
“What about your father?”
“I want to hear how he saved you and cared for you . . . right up until . . .” Then his young voice trailed off into a sad, practiced silence.
“Another night, I think.”
“Then what will you tell me?”
She wrapped her arms around her tough little monster, and she squeezed him until both of them ached, and after a while she said, “I am going to tell you about the stars, and about the universe beyond the stars, and our great species, and the wonders you can see only with our mind’s eyes . . .”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
2012
Michael Alexander, “The Children’s Crusade,” F&SF, May/June.
——and K. C. Ball, “The Moon Belongs to Everyone,” Analog, December.
Molshree Ambastha, “Kalyug Amended,” Breaking the Bow.
Charlie Jane Anders, “Intestate,” Tor.com, December 17.
Eleanor Arnason, “The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times,” F&SF, July/August.
Chet Arthur, “The Sheriff,” F&SF, September/October.
Kate Bachus, “Things Greater Than Love,” Strange Horizons, March 19.
Dale Bailey, “Mating Habits of the Late Cretaceous,” Asimov’s, September.
Neelanjana Banerjee, “Exile,” Breaking the Bow.
John Barnes, “Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sign,” Edge of Infinity.
Neal Barrett, Jr., “Trash,” Postscripts 26/27.
Stephen Baxter, “A Journey to Amasia,” Arc 1.1.
——, “Obelisk,” Edge of Infinity.
——, “Project Herakles,” Analog, January/February.
Peter S. Beagle, “The Ape-Man of Mars,” Under the Moons of Mars.
——, “Great-Grandmother in the Cellar,” Under My Hat.
——, “Olfort Dapper’s Day,” F&SF, March/April.
Elizabeth Bear, “The Death of Terrestrial Radio,” Shoggoths in Bloom.
——, “No Decent Patrimony,” Rip-Off!.
——, “The Depths of the Sky,” Edge of Infinity.
——, “Faster Gun,” Tor.com, August 8.
——, “The Salt Sea and the Sky,” Brave New Love.
Chris Beckett, “The Caramel Forest,” Asimov’s, December.
Gregory Benford, “The Sigma Structure Symphony,” Tor.com, March 28.
Michael Bishop, “Unfit for Eden,” Postscripts 26/27.
Holly Black, “Little Gods,” Under My Hat.
Michael Blumlein, “Bird Walks in New England,” Asimov’s, July.
——, “Twenty Two and You,” F&SF, March/April.
Gregory Norman Bossart, “The Telling,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nov 29.
Elizabeth Bourne, “Beasts,” Interzone 240.
Ben Bova, “A Country for Old Men,” Going Interstellar.
Richard Bowes, “A Member of the Wedding of Heaven and Hell,” Apex Magazine, March 6.
——, “The Queen and the Cambion,” F&SF, March/April.
——, “Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns,” Lightspeed, May.
Keith Brooke, “War 3.01,” Lightspeed, February.
Eric Brown, “The Scribe of Betelgeuse V,” Postscripts 26/27.
Tobias S. Buckell, “Press Enter to Execute,” Fireside, Spring.
——, “A Tinker of Warhoon,” Under the Moons of Mars.
Karl Bunker, “The Remembered,” Interzone 242.
Pat Cadigan, “In Plain Sight,” The Future Is Japanese.
Jack Campbell, “Highland Reel,” Rip-Off!.
Tracy Canfield, “The Chastisement of Your Peace,” Strange Horizons, January 30.
Sarah K. Castle, “The Mutant Stag at Horn Creek,” Analog, July/August
Adam-Troy Castro, “My Wife Hates Time Travel,” Lightspeed, September.
Rob Chilson, “The Conquest of the Air,” Analog, July/August.
Gwendolyn Clare, “All the Painted Stars,” Clarkesworld, January.
David Ira Cleary, “Living in the Eighties,” Asimov’s, April/May.
Geoffrey W. Cole, “Cradle and Ume,” New Worlds, September 2.
James S. A. Corey, “Drive,” Edge of Infinity.
Paul Cornell, “The Ghosts of Christmas,” Tor.com, December 19.
——, “A New Arrival at the House of Love,” Solaris Rising 1.5.
Matthew Corradi, “City League,” F&SF, May/June.
Stephen D. Covey, “The Road to NPS,” E, “Ninety Thousand Horses,” Analog, January/February.
Albert E. Cowdrey, “Asylum,” F&SF, May/June.
——, “The Goddess,” F&SF, September/October.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books) Page 112
