The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2

by Gordon Van Gelder

  It was a bright warm summer morning, but there hadn’t been twenty cars in the last hour, most of them sporting local plates.

  The militia boys blanked their comics and put them on the wrong shelves, then walked out the front door, one saying, “Bye now,” as he passed the clerk.

  “Sure,” the old woman growled, never taking her eyes off a tiny television screen.

  The boys might simply be doing their job, which meant they were harmless. But the state militias were full of bullies who’d found a career in the last couple years. There was no sweeter sport than terrorizing the innocent traveler, because of course the genuine refugee was too rare of a prospect to hope for.

  Winemaster vanished into the men’s room.

  The boys approached the black Buick, doing a little dance and showing each other their malicious smiles. Thugs, Blaine decided. Which meant that he had to do something now. Before Winemaster, or whoever he was, came walking out of the toilet.

  Blaine climbed out of the tiny booth.

  He didn’t waste breath on the clerk.

  Crossing the greasy pavement, he watched the boys using a police-issue lock pick. The front passenger door opened, and both of them stepped back, trying to keep a safe distance. With equipment that went out of date last spring, one boy probed the interior air, the cultured leather seats, the dashboard and floorboard and even an empty pop can standing in its cradle. “Naw, it’s okay,” he was saying. “Get on in there.”

  His partner had a knife. The curled blade was intended for upholstery. Nothing could be learned by ripping apart the seats, but it was a fun game nonetheless.

  “Get in there,” the first boy repeated.

  The second one started to say, “I’m getting in—” But he happened to glance over his shoulder, seeing Blaine coming, and he turned fast, lifting the knife, seriously thinking about slashing the interloper.

  Blaine was bigger than some pairs of men.

  He was fat, but in a powerful, focused way. And he was quick, grabbing the knife hand and giving a hard squeeze, then flinging the boy against the car’s composite body, the knife dropping and Blaine kicking it out of reach, then giving the boy a second shove, harder this time, telling both of them, “That’s enough, gentlemen.”

  “Who the fuck are you—?” they sputtered, in a chorus.

  Blaine produced a badge and ID bracelet. “Read these,” he suggested coldly. Then he told them, “You’re welcome to check me out. But we do that somewhere else. Right now, this man’s door is closed and locked, and the three of us are hiding. Understand?”

  The boy with the surveillance equipment said, “We’re within our rights.”

  Blaine shut and locked the door for them, saying, “This way. Stay with me.”

  “One of their nests got hit last night,” said the other boy, walking. “We’ve been checking people all morning!”

  “Find any?”

  “Not yet—”

  “With that old gear, you won’t.”

  “We’ve caught them before,” said the first boy, defending his equipment. His status. “A couple, three different carloads . . .”

  Maybe they did, but that was months ago. Generations ago.

  “Is that yours?” asked Blaine. He pointed to a battered Python, saying, “It better be. We’re getting inside.”

  The boys climbed in front. Blaine filled the back seat, sweating from exertion and the car’s brutal heat.

  “What are we doing?” one of them asked.

  “We’re waiting. Is that all right with you?”

  “I guess.”

  But his partner couldn’t just sit. He turned and glared at Blaine, saying, “You’d better be Federal.”

  “And if not?” Blaine inquired, without interest.

  No appropriate threat came to mind. So the boy simply growled and repeated himself. “You’d just better be. That’s all I’m saying.”

  A moment later, Winemaster strolled out of the store. Nothing in his stance or pace implied worry. He was carrying a can of pop and a red bag of corn nuts. Resting his purchases on the roof, he punched in his code to unlock the driver’s door, then gave the area a quick glance. It was the glance of someone who never intended to return here, even for gasoline—a dismissive expression coupled with a tangible sense of relief.

  That’s when Blaine knew.

  When he was suddenly and perfectly sure.

  The boys saw nothing incriminating. But the one who’d held the knife was quick to say the obvious: A man with Blaine’s credentials could get his hands on the best EM sniffers in the world. “Get them,” he said, “and we’ll find out what he is!”

  But Blaine already felt sure.

  “He’s going,” the other one sputtered. “Look, he’s gone—!”

  The black car was being driven by a cautious man. Winemaster braked and looked both ways twice before he pulled out onto the access road, accelerating gradually toward I-29, taking no chances even though there was precious little traffic to avoid as he drove north.

  “Fuck,” said the boys, in one voice.

  Using a calm-stick, Blaine touched one of the thick necks; without fuss, the boy slumped forward.

  “Hey!” snapped his partner. “What are you doing—?”

  “What’s best,” Blaine whispered afterward. Then he lowered the Python’s windows and destroyed its ignition system, leaving the pair asleep in the front seats. And because the moment required justice, he took one of their hands each, shoving them inside the other’s pants, then he laid their heads together, in the pose of lovers.

  The other refugees pampered Julian: His cabin wasn’t only larger than almost anyone else’s, it wore extra shielding to help protect him from malicious high-energy particles. Power and shaping rations didn’t apply to him, although he rarely indulged himself, and a platoon of autodocs did nothing but watch over his health. In public, strangers applauded him. In private, he could select almost any woman as a lover. And in bed, in the afterglow of whatever passed for sex at that particular moment, Julian could tell his stories, and his lovers would listen as if enraptured, even if they already knew each story by heart.

  No one on board was more ancient than Julian. Even before the attack, he was one of the few residents of the Shawnee Nest who could honestly claim to be DNA-made, his life beginning as a single wet cell inside a cavernous womb, a bloody birth followed by sloppy growth that culminated in a vast and slow and decidedly old-fashioned human being.

  Julian was nearly forty when Transmutations became an expensive possibility.

  Thrill seekers and the terminally ill were among the first to undergo the process, their primitive bodies and bloated minds consumed by the micro-chines, the sum total of their selves compressed into tiny robotic bodies meant to duplicate every normal human function.

  Being pioneers, they endured heavy losses. Modest errors during the Transmutation meant instant death. Tiny errors meant a pathetic and incurable insanity. The fledging Nests were exposed to heavy nuclei and subtle EM effects, all potentially disastrous. And of course there were the early terrorist attacks, crude and disorganized, but extracting a horrible toll nonetheless.

  The survivors were tiny and swift, and wiser, and they were able to streamline the Transmutation, making it more accurate and affordable, and to a degree, routine.

  “I was forty-three when I left the other world.” Julian told his lover of the moment. He always used those words, framing them with defiance and a hint of bittersweet longing. “It was three days and two hours before the President signed the McGrugger Bill.”

  That’s when Transmutation became illegal in the United States.

  His lover did her math, then with a genuine awe said, “That was five hundred and twelve days ago.”

  A day was worth years inside a Nest.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “Why did you do it? Were you bored? Or sick?”

  “Don’t you know why?” he inquired.

  “No,” she squeaked.


  Julian was famous, but sometimes his life wasn’t. And why should the youngsters know his biography by heart?

  “I don’t want to force you,” the woman told him. “If you’d rather not talk about it, I’ll understand.”

  Julian didn’t answer immediately.

  Instead, he climbed from his bed and crossed the cabin. His kitchenette had created a drink—hydrocarbons mixed with nanochines that were nutritious, appetizing, and pleasantly narcotic. Food and drink were not necessities, but habits, and they were enjoying a renewed popularity. Like any credible Methuselah, Julian was often the model on how best to do archaic oddities.

  The woman lay on top of the bed. Her current body was a hologram laid over her mechanical core. It was a traditional body, probably worn for his pleasure; no wings or fins or even more bizarre adornments. As it happened, she had selected a build and complexion not very different from Julian’s first wife. A coincidence? Or had she actually done research, and she already knew the answers to her prying questions?

  “Sip,” he advised, handing her the drink.

  Their hands brushed against one another, shaped light touching its equivalent. What each felt was a synthetically generated sensation, basically human, intended to feel like warm, water-filled skin.

  The girl obeyed, smiling as she sipped, an audible slurp amusing both of them.

  “Here,” she said, handing back the glass. “Your turn.”

  Julian glanced at the far wall. A universal window gave them a live view of the Quik Shop, the image supplied by one of the multitude of cameras hidden on the Buick’s exterior. What held his interest was the old muscle car, a Python with smoked glass windows. When he first saw that car, three heads were visible. Now two of the heads had gradually dropped out of sight, with the remaining man still sitting in back, big eyes opened wide, making no attempt to hide his interest in the Buick’s driver.

  No one knew who the fat man was, or what he knew, much less what his intentions might be. His presence had been a complete surprise, and what he had done with those militia members, pulling them back as he did as well as the rest of it, had left the refugees more startled than grateful, and more scared than any time since leaving the Nest.

  Julian had gone to that store with the intent of suffering a clumsy, even violent interrogation. A militia encounter was meant to give them authenticity. And more importantly, to give Julian experience—precious and sobering firsthand experience with the much-changed world around them.

  A world that he hadn’t visited for more than a millennium, Nest-time.

  Since he last looked, nothing of substance had changed at that ugly store. And probably nothing would change for a long while. One lesson that no refugee needed, much less craved, was that when dealing with that other realm, nothing helped as much as patience.

  Taking a long, slow sip of their drink, he looked back at the woman— twenty days old; a virtual child—and without a shred of patience, she said, “You were sick, weren’t you? I heard someone saying that’s why you agreed to be Transmutated…five hundred and twelve days ago…”

  “No.” He offered a shy smile. “And it wasn’t because I wanted to live this way, either. To be honest, I’ve always been conservative. In that world, and this one, too.”

  She nodded amiably, waiting.

  “It was my daughter,” he explained. “She was sick. An incurable leukemia.” Again he offered the shy smile, adding, “She was nine years old, and terrified. I could save her life by agreeing to her Transmutation, but I couldn’t just abandon her to life in the Nest . . . making her into an orphan, basically . . .”

  “I see,” his lover whispered.

  Then after a respectful silence, she asked, “Where’s your daughter now?”

  “Dead.”

  “Of course . . .” Not many people were lucky enough to live five hundred days in a Nest; despite shields, a single heavy nucleus could still find you, ravaging your mind, extinguishing your very delicate soul. “How long ago . . . did it happen . . .?”

  “This morning,” he replied. “In the attack.”

  “Oh . . . I’m very sorry . . .”

  With the illusion of shoulders, Julian shrugged. Then with his bittersweet voice, he admitted, “It already seems long ago.”

  Winemaster headed north into Iowa, then did the unexpected, making the sudden turn east when he reached the new Tollway.

  Blaine shadowed him. He liked to keep two minutes between the Buick and his little Tokamak, using the FBI’s recon network to help monitor the situation. But the network had been compromised in the past, probably more often than anyone knew, which meant that he had to occasionally pay the Tollway a little extra to boost his speed, the gap closing to less than fifteen seconds. Then with the optics in his windshield, he would get a good look at what might or might not be Julian Winemaster—a stiffly erect gentleman who kept one hand on the wheel, even when the AI-managed road was controlling every vehicle’s speed and direction, and doing a better job of driving than any human could do.

  Iowa was half-beautiful, half-bleak. Some fields looked tended, genetically tailored crops planted in fractal patterns and the occasional robot working carefully, pulling weeds and killing pests as it spider-walked back and forth. But there were long stretches where the farms had been abandoned, wild grasses and the spawn of last year’s crops coming up in ragged green masses. Entire neighborhoods had pulled up and gone elsewhere. How many farmers had accepted the Transmutation, in other countries or illegally? Probably only a fraction of them, Blaine knew. Habit-bound and suspicious by nature, they’d never agree to the dismantlement of their bodies, the transplantation of their crusty souls. No, what happened was that farms were simply falling out of production, particularly where the soil was marginal. Yields were still improving in a world where the old-style population was tumbling. If patterns held, most of the arable land would soon return to prairie and forest. And eventually, the entire human species wouldn’t fill so much as one of these abandoned farms . . . leaving the old world entirely empty . . . if those patterns were allowed to hold, naturally . . .

  Unlike Winemaster, Blaine kept neither hand on the wheel, trusting the AIs to look after him. He spent most of his time watching the news networks, keeping tabs on moods more than facts. What had happened in Kansas was still the big story. By noon, more than twenty groups and individuals had claimed responsibility for the attack. Officially, the Emergency Federal Council deplored any senseless violence—a cliché which implied that sensible violence was an entirely different question. When asked about the government’s response, the President’s press secretary looked at the world with a stony face, saying, “We’re investigating the regrettable incident. But the fact remains, it happened outside our borders. We are observers here. The Shawnee Nest was responsible for its own security, just as every other Nest is responsible . . .”

  Questions came in a flurry. The press secretary pointed to a small, severe-looking man in the front row—a reporter for the Christian Promise organization. “Are we taking any precautions against counterattacks?” the reporter inquired. Then, not waiting for an answer, he added, “There have been reports of activity in the other Nests, inside the United States and elsewhere.”

  A tense smile was the first reply.

  Then the stony face told everyone, “The President and the Council have taken every appropriate precaution. As for any activity in any Nest, I can only say: We have everything perfectly well in hand.”

  “Is anything left of the Shawnee Nest?” asked a second reporter.

  “No.” The press secretary was neither sad nor pleased. “Initial evidence is that the entire facility has been sterilized.”

  A tenacious gray-haired woman—the perpetual symbol of the Canadian Newsweb—called out, “Mr. Secretary . . . Lennie—!”

  “Yes, Cora . . .”

  “How many were killed?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to answer that question, Cora . . .”

  “Your
government estimates an excess of one hundred million. If the entire Nest was sterilized, as you say, then we’re talking about more than two-thirds of the current U.S. population.”

  “Legally,” he replied, “we are talking about machines.”

  “Some of those machines were once your citizens,” she mentioned.

  The reporter from Christian Promise was standing nearby. He grimaced, then muttered bits of relevant Scripture.

  “I don’t think this is the time or place to debate what life is or isn’t,” said the press secretary, juggling things badly.

  Cora persisted. “Are you aware of the Canadian position on this tragedy?”

  “Like us, they’re saddened.”

  “They’ve offered sanctuary to any survivors of the blast—”

  “Except there are none,” he replied, his face pink as granite.

  “But if there were? Would you let them move to another Nest in the United States, or perhaps to Canada . . .?”

  There was a pause, brief and electric.

  Then with a flat cool voice, the press secretary reported, “The McGrugger Bill is very specific. Nests may exist only in sealed containment facilities, monitored at all times. And should any of the microchines escape, they will be treated as what they are . . . grave hazards to normal life . . . and this government will not let them roam at will . . .!”

  Set inside an abandoned salt mine near Kansas City, the Shawnee Nest had been one of the most secure facilities of its kind ever built. Its power came from clean geothermal sources. Lead plates and intricate defense systems stood against natural hazards as well as more human threats. Thousands of government-loyal AIs, positioned in the surrounding salt, did nothing but watch its borders, making certain that none of the microchines could escape. That was why the thought that local terrorists could launch any attack was so ludicrous. To have that attack succeed was simply preposterous. Whoever was responsible for the bomb, it was done with the abeyance of the highest authorities. No sensible soul doubted it. That dirty little nuke had Federal fingerprints on it, and the attack was planned carefully, and its goals were instantly apparent to people large and small.