The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Eunice said nothing. The whales were heading north, on their usual migration route, along a path that coincided with the coastline. If she could latch on to one of them, finding a place where she could ride unnoticed, she could cling there for as long as possible, traveling hundreds of kilometers without expending any additional energy. All she had to do was get to them now.

  She was nearly there. Forcing herself to her limits, she gave everything that she had to one final push—

  —and failed. The pod was faster than she was, and the idea had come to her too late. Eunice surfaced, her six eyes searching in all directions. The sun was high in the sky, but she saw nothing but empty ocean.

  As Eunice looked in the direction that the pod had gone, one of the whales sounded. A white plume appeared above the water, followed by its broad back, and she caught a glimpse of the paired flukes of its tail before the ocean closed over it again. She managed to mark the path along which it was moving. If this was their migration route, it would be a promising line to follow, as countless whales gave their bodies to its invisible shadow under the waves.

  Eunice added this to her store of data and sank down. If riding a living whale would be denied to her, she thought, she would travel on the backs of the dead. Every language had its own word for the ocean, and in one ancient tongue, she recalled from her lessons, it had been called the whale road.

  Days and weeks passed, and there were times when the way forward felt endless. Yet there was no denying that she was getting closer. Occasionally, Eunice allowed herself to feel hopeful—and then one last complication made her wonder if she had been deceiving herself all along.

  It happened when she was retracing her steps to another whale fall. Eunice was still five kilometers away when she found herself faltering. At first, she thought that it was her imagination, but as she continued to slow, she realized that there was no denying it. She was running out of energy, long before she should have reached the end of her range, and if she failed now, she would never make it back.

  In the end, she was saved by a stroke of luck. She was moving south, on the return leg of an excursion, which gave her another way to cover the remaining distance. Adjusting her buoyancy, she rose from her usual position near the seabed. At this level, she would be unable to detect any new falls, but this was less important than returning to the one that she knew was there.

  When Eunice was three hundred meters from the surface, she felt the oceanic current, which was sweeping its way south. She powered down, retaining only her navigational systems and the bare minimum of maneuverability, and allowed herself to drift this way for four kilometers. As soon as dead reckoning told her that she was near the last known fall, she descended.

  Eunice made it back with almost nothing to spare. As Wagner went to work, she anchored herself and pondered this new development. It had been only a matter of time before she experienced a breakdown, but this was less a straightforward malfunction than a reduction of capacity. She had been feeling tired in recent days, which she had chalked up to a combination of nervousness and uncertainty, but now she had to acknowledge that her range had indeed fallen.

  There were several possible explanations, none of which was pleasant to contemplate. She suspected that a battery issue was to blame—by now, her power banks had been depleted and recharged hundreds of times—but it might also be a combination of factors. Wagner’s fuel cells could have suffered a loss of efficiency, and it might even be the result of the shark attack, which could have caused unseen damage that had become evident only now.

  Eunice ran a series of diagnostics, which uncovered nothing useful. All that remained was to quantify the problem. Once Wagner had recharged, instead of setting out in search of another whale fall, she conducted a test, moving in a tight circle around her present location until her power faded. It took less than forty laps. Checking the distance that she had covered, she found that her range had fallen from thirty kilometers to around twenty-five.

  The numbers were unforgiving. Based on her own data, the average distance between whale falls in this part of the ocean was ten kilometers. If her range fell much further, she would no longer be able to cover that distance without the risk of failure. The calculus of survival, which had always been unfavorable, had grown worse. Now every trip would be an even greater gamble.

  It left her with a hard choice. If her range was reduced below twenty kilometers, or if she was stranded between falls, she would have no choice but to stop. She would keep going until she could travel no farther, and then she would float to the surface, switch on her emergency beacon, and power down, hoping that someone would find her before this last transmission died.

  She shared none of this with Wagner, who grew even more silent, as if conserving his strength for the challenges to come. They were almost home, but now her progress became inexorably slower, tracing a curve that approached but might never reach its goal. She tried to focus instead on each step, and she managed for a while to put the map out of her mind.

  One day, Eunice came across a whale fall that was different than the others. Looking for a resting spot along its spinal column, she noticed that hoops of some stiff material had been attached to its rib cage, and it took her only a second to realize that they were artificial.

  Wagner seemed surprised that she hadn’t issued her usual instructions. “What is it?”

  “Hold on.” Eunice tried to think. The hoops were made of metal, which had oxidized into red heaps of rust. Occasionally, she had found carcasses skewered with harpoons, but this was something else.

  The answer gradually came to her. These metal hoops were ballast, and the whale had been sunk here deliberately. It was an experimental whale fall. Because natural falls were hard to find in the open ocean, she recalled, scientists had sunk carcasses on purpose to study them over time. It meant that human beings had been here before her, and that she was close to civilization.

  According to her map, she was still a long way from home, but she was unable to resist taking a look. After Wagner had powered up, Eunice rose to the surface. They were far from land, and there was no sign of human activity, but when she turned on her radio, it was with an unusual degree of anticipation. She remembered how it sounded close to shore—she often heard noise from other sources, even if nothing was directly transmitting to her—and now she listened to it anxiously.

  There was nothing there, but she felt her hopes rise. It had been so long since she had seen any trace of humanity that even this vestige of it, long since abandoned, seemed like a message. For the first time in weeks, she allowed herself to think that she might make it, and as she descended again, she realized that she had been waiting for a sign without knowing it.

  Finally, on a day like any other, she arrived at her last whale fall. Checking her position, she found that she was thirty kilometers from home. Nothing was visible up top—the shore was just over the horizon—and her radio was still out of range. But there was no question that she was close.

  Returning to the whale fall, Eunice forced herself to proceed carefully. Now that her destination was only a stone’s throw away, she wanted to go for it at once, but she knew that she had to be more careful than ever. There would be no more falls where she could rest. In shallow waters, a carcass would float, not sink, which meant that this was as far as she would get on the whale road.

  After Wagner had attached himself again, they left the fall and headed east. Eunice allowed herself to look back once at the warren of fallen bones, knowing that she might never see one again, and then she turned to face what was coming. The rules of the game had changed. She had thirty kilometers to cover and an effective range of around twenty-five, so she had to draw on all of her available resources, which came down to herself and the current.

  Eunice swam under her own power until she had reached the strait that led to home. It was two hundred and fifty meters deep, and at the bottom, where she had to remain, it was outside the realm of sunlight. She rooted herself t
o the silt and waited for a full day, at minimum power, monitoring the water around her. As she had expected, during the flood tide, the current moved east, in her intended direction of travel. The rest was a matter of timing.

  When the tide turned in her favor again, she released herself, allowing the current to carry her along. Drifting in this fashion, with her higher functions switched off, she covered close to twelve kilometers in six hours. Then she anchored herself again to wait out the ebb tide.

  She did this eight times over four days. When her navigational system told her that she had entered the sound, she resisted the temptation to rise at once. A complicated path lay ahead through shallow water, calling for infinite delicacy, and she had to save every last scrap of her strength.

  Eunice paced herself, tracking her location as she waited to give herself to the current. This part required many separate attempts. Sometimes she was carried half a kilometer or more, but usually it was far less. It saved energy, but it also drained the stores of patience that she had cultivated so for so long.

  Ten kilometers remained. She estimated that had enough power to cover the distance along a straight line, but energy would also be used up in maneuvering, and after one final calculation, she made her choice. There would be no turning back from here, but first she had something to say to Wagner. “Thank you.”

  If Wagner processed this statement, he said nothing. She released herself from where she had been clinging to the bottom and shot forward, using all of the power that she had been reserving until now.

  The path was difficult. She had to thread her way through a series of bays and cuts, and although the route was clear in her head, it was hard to follow while expending the minimum amount of energy, and once or twice, to her intense frustration, she miscalculated and had to double back.

  Each mistake had a price, and as her errors accumulated, she felt herself losing power sooner than she had expected. She was almost there, but she was weakening. As despair overtook her, she prepared to use her final burst of energy to reach the surface, either to be found or to see the sun one last time—

  She felt Wagner stir. They were in shallow water, far from the crushing pressure of the bathyal zone, and something in the freedom that it afforded seemed to awaken an old memory.

  As Eunice faded, Wagner unfolded the tiny pectoral fins tucked to either side of his body. Under favorable conditions, he was designed to mimic a manta ray, and now he extended his wings, transforming himself from a ring into a rhombus. Eunice felt him probing gently around in her brain, seeking the map as they began to glide forward. He spoke in her head. “Hold on.”

  Eunice lacked the strength to respond. Wagner could do little more than keep them on course, with their speed reduced to a crawl, but they were moving. She sensed that they were close, and the memory of the tether that stood for home expanded so forcefully in her mind’s eye that it took her a second to understand that it was no longer just her imagination.

  She looked through the water, which seemed cloudy and dark. There was something up ahead. A slender vertical line stood before her, dividing the scene in half like the mark of a draftsman’s pencil. It was the charging station.

  Eunice floated up. As Wagner quietly corrected their angle of ascent, she reached the power unit at the top. For a second, she wondered whether this might all be a dream, unfolding in the safety of a whale fall, or one last hallucination, compressed into the instant before the shark’s jaws clamped down—

  She latched on. At once, she felt a pure infusion of energy. It was just as sweet as she remembered, and as she drank deeply, the spokes of her sixfold mind were filled with disbelief, gratitude, relief, and nameless other feelings that seemed to fuse together into a single glowing wheel.

  As Eunice felt her consciousness returning, she saw that the cloudiness of the water, which she had thought was the product of her exhaustion, was still there. Something was strange about the light. Looking up at the ripples of sun overhead, she saw that they were only a few meters below the surface. Her charge was incomplete, but she was unable to wait any longer.

  Detaching herself from the power unit, she covered the last step of her journey, surfacing to look at what she had traveled four thousand kilometers to reach. Below the water, she sensed Wagner waiting for her to speak.

  The charging station was anchored in a sheltered part of the sound, not far from the quay where two research vessels, one twice the size of the other, were berthed. Both were still there, but they were not what she remembered. They were listing to one side, and the bottoms of their hulls were solid masses of rust, their upper levels discolored by brownish streaks and lesions of flaking paint.

  Lowering her eyes, Eunice saw for the first time that the waters of the sound were overgrown with mats of seaweed and feathery milfoil. Beyond the quay stood a gray concrete building with a copper roof and rectangular slits for windows. It had been the backdrop for her memories for as long as she could remember, but now the side facing her was covered in a tangled growth of ivy. Mounds of bird droppings were encrusted on its eaves.

  Eunice stared at the other buildings by the shore. All were overgrown and abandoned. A road ran alongside the water, its asphalt buckled, tall weeds topped by yellow flowers growing in the cracks. The city had been reclaimed, with a new stage appearing as the old idea of order passed away.

  She switched on her radio. Instead of the random noise that she had usually heard in the city, there was nothing at all. As she scanned every frequency, searching for signs of life, she wondered if her radio had been broken all along, and it was only gradually that she understood the truth.

  James had told her that they were running out of time. Eunice had thought that he was speaking of their work together, but it occurred to her now that he had been referring to something else. All the voices in the world had been silenced, not just the men and women, but even those who were like her on land. Their circuitry had not survived the event that had erased their designers.

  But one place had been spared. Whatever had caused this devastation had occurred when she and her sisters were in the bathyal zone. James had said it himself. The ocean is a buffer. A refuge—

  She sank down again to the charging station, which had continued to generate power all this time, shielded by two meters of water. Her numbness faded, replaced by grief, and she saw that she was no longer alone.

  At first, it was only a shadow. As Eunice watched, a familiar shape emerged from the gloom. She stared, at a loss for words, as the others appeared one by one, until all seven were facing her in silence.

  Wagner had been waiting patiently for her to say something. “What did you see?”

  As she thought of the ruined city, she wasn’t sure what to tell him. Then she realized that she had seen something much like it before.

  “Another whale fall,” Eunice said. And then she swam over to meet her sisters.

  The Fine Print

  by Chinelo Onwualu

  Red dust swirled about the black vehicle as it slid silently into the village. Nuhu was sitting among the other men under the giant flame tree in the village square, sipping sorghum beer and gossiping aimlessly. He watched with dread as the driverless car hummed to a stop just beyond them. Its clean, glossy lines looked out of place in the desiccated landscape. A crowd of children gathered to look at the car, but scurried off when the door opened.

  The woman who emerged was not exactly what Nuhu was expecting. Tall and fair, she wore a modest red hijab and black abaya. It was not until she was close that he could tell that her kohl-rimmed eyes had no irises or pupils.

  “Who is Nuhu Aliyu Danbatta here?” she called out. Nuhu’s beer turned to mud in his mouth. The other men suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere and crept away hastily. He was tempted to feign ignorance and pretend he was another, but that never worked. The question was merely a formality; she knew exactly who he was. They always knew.

  “I am he,” he said, standing.

  She regarded
him without expression. “I am your final notice,” she said. Nuhu felt the cold hand of despair grip his heart. His legs felt weak and he forced himself to remain upright. “You have three days.”

  “Wait, wait, let’s discuss this,” he said, unashamed of the note of desperate pleading that had crept into his voice. “Please.”

  “There is nothing to discuss. The terms of the contract are clear.”

  “But he’s my son . . . ” his voice trailed away as he stared into her blank face. This was futile, he realised. How could she, a spell made flesh, possibly understand? She turned to walk away and a surge of anger rose in him.

  “This is not fair!” he screamed at her retreating form.

  She paused and turned back. A flicker of something passed over her face.

  “Fair?” she echoed. There was an air of detached anger to her, as if the ire that briefly distorted her features was not her own. Nuhu knew he was hearing the voice of the elemental being that animated her. “How is this not fair? When you sealed the contract, just what did you think would happen?”

  A sudden hope surged through him. This was the first time any of them had ever spoken to him beyond their protocols and he lunged at the slim chance this invited.

  Crossing to close the space between them, he dropped his voice to a pleading whisper. “Please, ask me for anything else; I will give it. Don’t do this.”

  “Three days,” the spell said. “Give him up peacefully or I will be forced to fulfil my mandate.”

  The woman strode back to the driverless car and got in. With a near silent whoosh, the car drove off.

  Nuhu’s stomach roiled and a wave of nausea overcame him. He barely had time to lurch to the space behind Mallam Bello’s hut before he vomited the sorghum beer. Wiping his mouth with the edge of his keffiyeh, he began to cry.