The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  In the real world, though, Thursday would still announce itself as Thursday in the drones’ internal clocks. And that very fact would be enough to tell the drones’ software that they were out of VR and moving through the land of flesh and blood.

  Natalie couldn’t be sure that D-day would arrive on schedule, but she had no choice but to trust the swindlers to accomplish their first, enabling feat exactly as they’d planned it all along.

  7

  “THIS SHOULD BE our last call,” Natalie told Sam.

  “There are two ways I could take that,” he joked.

  “Take it the good way.”

  “So they’re happy with your work?” Sam tried to make that sound like a joke, too, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “I’ve had no complaints.”

  “I always knew you’d end up as a mob accountant.”

  “Ha!” She’d had a summer job once that included book-keeping for a small construction firm with a shady reputation, but every transaction that had crossed her desk had appeared entirely legitimate.

  “Stay strong,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Sam just nodded and lowered his eyes. She cut the link.

  Natalie waited five more minutes, for six o’clock sharp. If the market trigger was coming, Lewis’s people would have recognized the early signs of its onset hours ago, but she’d had no idea what to look for, and she hadn’t wanted to attract suspicion by trawling the financial news. It would be impossible to load an entirely new copy of the drones’ software via infrasound in less than two days – but in less than an hour, an experienced team might be able to write and deliver a small patch that neutralized the effects of her sabotage.

  There would be no moment of perfect safety. Natalie used the collaboration software to send a message: Flaw in the code for target C. Need to discuss urgently.

  Twenty seconds later, her phone rang.

  “What are you talking about?” Lewis demanded angrily.

  “It hasn’t started executing yet, has it?” Natalie did her best to sound businesslike: she was acknowledging her screw-up, but she was still the voice of authority when it came to these drones, and she was asking for the state of play in order to salvage the situation as rapidly as possible.

  “Of course it’s executing!” Lewis snapped.

  Natalie couldn’t hold back a smile of relief. The software would be impossible to patch now.

  “Why did you think it wouldn’t start?” Lewis was baffled. “We got the confirmation hum. The drones are wide awake and running what we loaded. What’s this about?”

  Natalie said, “If the drones in target C’s house don’t catch sight of me and my brother – fully ambulatory, with our usual gaits – alone in a room with that woman before eleven a.m., things are going to play out a little differently than they did in the simulations.”

  Lewis understood immediately. “You stupid bitch –”

  “No,” Natalie cut him off. “Stupid would have been trusting you.”

  “We’ll kill you both,” he said coldly. “We can live without the yield from one target.”

  “Can you live without the yield from all the targets who’ll be warned off when this woman raises the alarm? When the drones fly up to her and drop the fake wallet right in front of her face?”

  To his credit, Lewis only took a few seconds to give up on the idea of more threats and bravado. “Be on the street outside your building in five minutes.” He cut off the call.

  Natalie put the phone down. Her whole body was trembling. She went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face, then left her apartment and sprinted down the stairs.

  THE BLACK CAR that came for her had tinted passenger windows. Lewis opened the rear door and motioned for her to join him. Sam was sitting by the left window; he glanced across at her anxiously.

  “This is what will happen,” Lewis told Natalie as they sped away. “You’re going to drive a car toward the target’s house. Another driver will rearend you in a hit-and-run: plenty of noise and crumpled panels, but you won’t be hurt. You and your brother will walk from the wreckage, knock on the target’s door, and ask her to call an ambulance. We’ll spoof the 911 connection, so no ambulance will come until we put in the call ourselves. You’ll play a wilting Southern flower, and at some point you’ll be invited in to wait.”

  Natalie was incredulous. “She won’t invite us in straight away?” Lewis clenched his teeth, then spoke. “Have you ever been to Nassau County, Long Island?”

  “Can we fly Business Class?” Sam wondered.

  Lewis reached into a sports bag on his lap and drew out a pair of blindfolds. Minutes later, the traffic sounds around them receded. They were bundled out of the car, led across the tarmac and up a set of stairs into what must have been a private jet. Natalie felt the plane taxying before she’d been guided to her seat, and ascending before she’d fumbled the belt into place. It would take almost three hours to reach New York; if they hit so much as an unexpected head wind, Lewis might decide to cut his losses and drop them from the plane.

  “I should have told them earlier,” she whispered to Sam. “I’m sorry.”

  She’d been fixated on the risk that she’d spring the revelation too early. “Why do we have to visit this woman?” he asked.

  Natalie talked him through the whole thing, from the heist itself to the dead-man switch she’d installed at the last moment.

  “You couldn’t have found a way to get us to Paris instead?” Sam joked. “They set you up,” Natalie stressed. “They only loaned you the money so they could rope me in if they had to.”

  “I know,” he said. “I get it.”

  “So whatever happens now, it’s not on you.”

  Sam laughed. “Seriously? You thought I was going to blame myself?” As soon as the wheels hit the ground, someone grabbed Natalie’s elbow.

  “How’s the time?” she enquired.

  “Local time’s ten twenty-seven,” Lewis replied.

  The blindfolds stayed on as they boarded a second car. When it screeched to a halt and Lewis tugged the dark band up from Natalie’s eyes, she squinted out into a fluorescent-lit mechanics’ workshop. Half a dozen men in overalls were standing beside a hydraulic jack, watching the new arrivals.

  Lewis motioned to her to leave the car. “This is what you’ll be driving.” He gestured at a white sedan a few meters away. “You rented this at the airport; there are used boarding passes in the glove compartment, and some luggage with clothes and toiletries in the trunk. I don’t care what your cover story is – why you’re in New York, where you were heading – but you should give your real names. And make sure you don’t distract the target from the trigger, or do anything else stupid. Don’t even think about driving away; we can immobilize the vehicle remotely, and the crash that follows would be a whole lot worse than the one we’ve discussed.”

  “I don’t have the address,” Natalie realized.

  “The GPS has already been programmed. The house number is one hundred and seven; don’t get confused and knock anywhere else.”

  “What if someone else offers to help us?”

  Lewis said, “The street will be as good as empty. The crash will be right outside her door.”

  Natalie turned to Sam, who’d joined her on the floor of the workshop. “Are you OK with this?”

  “As opposed to what?”

  Lewis walked up to Sam and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry about the déjà vu, but it will make the whole thing more authentic.”

  Sam stared at him. Natalie felt the blood draining from her face. The waiting men converged on Sam, one of them carrying a wrench.

  Sam didn’t fight them, he just bellowed from the pain. When everyone separated the bandage was gone from his finger and his wound was dripping blood.

  Lewis said, “Better put that in your pocket for the drive, so no one sees it before the crash.”

  THE FIGURES ON Natalie’s watch had turned blue, to remind her that it had
auto-synched to the new time zone. It was ten forty-six. The GPS estimated two minutes to their destination. They’d be outside the house in plenty of time – but they needed to be seen by the drones, indoors.

  She glanced over at Sam. He was still pale, but he looked focused. There weren’t many cars on the tree-lined streets, and Natalie had yet to spot a single pedestrian. The houses they were passing were ostentatious enough, if not exactly billionaires’ mansions. But then, half the point of putting assets into digital currency was keeping a low profile.

  “Destination in fifteen seconds,” the GPS announced cheerily. Natalie resisted glancing in the rear-view mirror as she braked. The red pickup that had been following them since the garage slammed into the back of the sedan.

  The airbags inflated like giant mushroom caps sprouting in time-lapse. Natalie felt the seat belt dig into her shoulder, but when her ears stopped ringing she took stock of her sensations and found no real pain.

  “You OK?” she asked Sam. She could hear squealing tires as the truck did a U-turn and departed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Our phones were in the hands-free docks,” she reminded him. “The airbags are blocking them.”

  “We’ve just been in a crash,” Sam said. “No one’s going to ask us where our phones are.

  Natalie got her door open and clambered out. They were right beside the mailbox of number one hundred and seven.

  As Sam joined her, his severed finger exposed, the front door opened and target C ran out toward them.

  “Are you all right? Is anyone else in the car?”

  Natalie said, “I’m OK. It’s just me and my brother.”

  “Oh, he’s bleeding!” C was carrying her phone; she hit some keys then raised it to her ear. “A traffic accident. The other driver’s cleared off. No ... they’re both walking, but the young man’s hand... that’s correct.”

  She lowered the phone and motioned to them to approach. “Please, come inside. They said the ambulance will be a few minutes.”

  Sam pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around the stump of his finger. He couldn’t quite look their Good Samaritan in the eye as he stepped through the doorway.

  Target C led them into her carpeted living room, unfazed by Sam’s blood. “Please, take a seat. I’ll bring you some water.”

  “Thank you.” When the woman had left, Natalie checked her watch. It was ten fifty-three. The six drones would be performing sweeps of all the rooms where she and Sam might plausibly have ended up, mostly staying near the ceiling out of people’s normal lines of sight. She looked up, and after ten or fifteen seconds she saw it: her own tiny, loyal slave, confirming her safety before fetching its brothers to resume the original plan.

  “Are we safe now?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should warn her,” he suggested.

  Natalie was torn. Lewis’s people might still come after them, whatever they did. But which action would nudge the odds in favor of survival: enraging their enemies, but weakening them too by depriving them of part of their haul, or placating them but making them stronger?

  “We can’t risk it,” she whispered.

  Target C came into the room with a pitcher of water on a tray. She poured two glasses and handed them to her guests. “I can’t believe that maniac just drove off,” she said. She gazed forlornly at Sam’s hand. “What happened?”

  “I was opening the glove compartment,” Sam replied. “The doors on those things are like guillotines.”

  Target C’s phone beeped: not a ring tone, but some kind of alert. She spent a few seconds trying to ignore it, then lost the fight and examined the screen. Natalie could almost read the woman’s deliberations from the movement of her eyes and the changing set of her jaw. This was the trigger: either a grave threat to her wealth, or an irresistible opportunity.

  The woman looked up. “I’m so rude. My name’s Emily.”

  “Natalie.”

  “Sam.”

  “Are you folks from around here?”

  “New Orleans.”

  Emily nodded, as if she’d guessed as much already. “Where is that ambulance?” She turned to Sam. “Are you in agony? I have Tylenol. But maybe you’ve suffered some other injury that could make that the wrong thing to take?”

  Sam said, “It’s all right. I’ll wait for the paramedics.”

  Emily thought for a few seconds. “Let me just check in the medicine cabinet, so I know exactly what I’ve got.”

  “Thank you,” Sam replied.

  Natalie watched her leave, and saw her take the turn toward the study where the wallet was held in its safe. The fake would already be waiting on top of a bookcase, invisible to anyone of normal height. The drones would be watching, parsing the scene, determining when the safe had been opened and the wallet taken out.

  Water began drumming against stainless steel, far away in the kitchen. Natalie heard Emily curse in surprise, but she didn’t run out of the study immediately.

  Three seconds, four seconds, five seconds. The sound of the torrent was hard to ignore, conjuring images of flooded floors and water damage. Most people would have sprinted toward the source immediately, dropping almost anything to attend to it.

  Finally, Natalie heard the hurried footsteps as Emily rushed to the kitchen. She could not have had time to execute whatever actions the trigger had inspired – but she had certainly had time to put the wallet back in the safe. Nothing else explained the delay. With strangers in the house – and more expected soon, from the emergency services – she wasn’t going to leave the keys to her fortune lying around unattended.

  It took Emily a few minutes to assess the situation in the kitchen – unsalvageable by merely tinkering with the faucet – then go to the water mains and shut off the flow at its source. She returned to the living room drying her hands on a towel.

  “That was bizarre! Something just... burst.” She shook her head. “We’ve only got Tylenol,” she told Sam. She took her phone from her pocket. “Do you think I should call them again?”

  Sam said, “It’s not like I’m having a heart attack. And who knows what else they’re dealing with?”

  Emily nodded. “All right.” She waited a few seconds, then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I just need to clean up. Before it soaks through...” Natalie said, “We’re fine, really.”

  Emily left the room, to avail herself of the opportunity to move some of her money around. Whether the market signal proved misleading or not, the outcome was unlikely to ruin her. But the drones were helpless now; there’d be no prospect of them making the switch.

  Natalie stared at the carpet, trying to assess the situation. She’d shafted Lewis’s gang – entirely by mistake, and only partially: Emily would have no suspicions, no reason to raise the alarm and derail the rest of the heist. Lewis might well deduce exactly what had happened. But what would that lead to? Leniency? Forgiveness?

  After half an hour, with still no ambulance, Emily phoned 911 again. “They said there was nothing in the system!” she told Natalie. “That fills you with confidence!”

  The paramedics declared that Sam needed to go into the emergency department. One of them spent a couple of minutes searching the wreck for his severed fingertip, while the other waxed lyrical on the wonders of microsurgery, but in the end they gave up. “It must have got thrown out and some dog took it.”

  An hour later, while Natalie was dealing with paperwork at the hospital, two uniformed police approached her. “We had a report of a hit-and-run,” the older cop said.

  “Can you protect us?” Natalie asked him. “If we’re being watched by someone dangerous?”

  The cop glanced at his partner. “You’re shaken up, I understand. But this was probably just some drunken fool too cowardly to own up to what he’d done. Nothing you should be taking personally.”

  Natalie’s teeth started chattering, but she forced herself to speak.

  “They kidnapped my brother,” she sai
d. “I’ll tell you everything – but I need to know: if they can see everywhere, and reach anywhere, how are you going to protect us?”

  I MET A MAN WHO WASN’T THERE

  K. J. Parker

  K.J. Parker was born long ago and far away, worked as a coin dealer, a dogsbody in an auction house and a lawyer, and has so far published thirteen novels including the Fencer, Scavenger, and Engineer trilogies, four standalone novels, and a handful of short stories including World Fantasy Award winning novellas “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” and “Let Maps to Others”. Parker’s short story collection Academic Exercises was published to widespread acclaim in 2014, and new stand-alone novel Savages should appear shortly. Married to a lawyer and living in the south west of England, K.J. Parker is a mediocre stockman and forester, a barely competent carpenter, blacksmith and machinist, a two-left-footed fencer, lackluster archer, utility-grade armorer, accomplished textile worker and crack shot. K.J. Parker is not K.J. Parker’s real name. However, if K.J. Parker were to tell you K.J. Parker’s real name, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.

  “APPARENTLY,” I SAID, “you can teach me how to walk through walls, stop the flow of time and kill people with a single stare.” I waited. He didn’t say anything. “Is that right?”

  The cuff of his left sleeve was frayed, but had been expertly darned. His eyes were pale blue. He had a disappointingly weak chin. There was a book lying closed on the table in front of him, but I was too far away to read the title. And only a leaking roof makes that pattering sound. “Yes,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I didn’t believe him. “I’ll go for that,” I said. “When do I start?”

  He frowned ever so slightly. “I’m afraid it’s not as straightforward as that,” he said.

  Not what I’d expected. “There’s a problem?”

  “Oh yes.” There’s a certain sort of calm serenity I find extremely irritating.