The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maya said. “He’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t care about Hunter.”

  Mistaking what she meant, Maya smiled through her tears. “You know what? I don’t care either.” She came over and hugged Thorn tight. “I’m not really a bad mother, am I, Thorn?”

  Cautiously, Thorn said, “No . . .”

  “People just don’t understand us. We’re a team, right?”

  Maya held out her hand for their secret finger-hook. Once it would have made Thorn smile, but she no longer felt the old solidarity against the world. She hooked fingers anyway, because she was afraid Maya would start to cry again if she didn’t. Maya said, “They just don’t know you. Damaged child, poppycock – you’re tough as old boots. It makes me awestruck, what a survivor you are.”

  “I think we ought to get ready to leave,” Thorn said.

  Maya’s face lost its false cheer. “I can’t leave,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I love him.”

  There was no sensible answer to that. So Thorn turned away to go up to her room. As she passed the closed door of Hunter’s office, she paused, wondering if she should knock. Wondering if she should turn in the most notorious Gminta collaborator still alive. All those millions of dead Alloes and Vinds would get their justice, and Hunter would be famous. Then her feet continued on, even before she consciously made the decision. It was not loyalty to Magister Pregaldin, and it was not resentment of Hunter. It was because she might need that information to buy her own safety.

  The sound of breaking glass woke her. She lay tense, listening to footsteps and raised voices below in the street. Then another window broke, and she got up to pull back the curtain. The sun was orange, as always, and she squinted in the glare, then raised her window and climbed out on the roof.

  Below in the street, a mob of white-clad Incorruptibles was breaking windows as they passed; but their true target obviously lay deeper in the Waste. She watched till they were gone, then waited to see what would happen.

  From somewhere beyond the tower fans of the park she could hear shouts and clanging, and once an avalanche-like roar, after which a cloud of dust rose from the direction of Weezer Alley. After that there was silence for a while. At last she heard chanting. Fleeing footsteps passed below. Then the wall of Incorruptibles appeared again. They were driving someone before them with improvised whips made from their belts. Thorn peered over the eaves to see more clearly and recognized their victim – Ginko, the heshe from the Garden of Delights, completely naked, both breasts and genitals exposed, with a rope around hisher neck. The whips had cut into the delicate paisley of Ginko’s skin, exposing slashes of red underneath.

  At a spot beneath Thorn’s perch, Ginko stumbled and fell. A mass of Incorruptibles gathered round. Two of them pulled Ginko’s legs apart, and a third made a jerking motion with a knife. A womanlike scream made Thorn grip the edge of her rooftop, wanting to look away. They tossed the rope over a signpost and hoisted Ginko up by the neck, choking and clawing at the noose. The body still quivered as the army marched past. When they were gone, the silence was so complete Thorn could hear the patter of blood into a pool on the pavement under the body.

  On hands and knees she backed away from the edge of the roof and climbed into her bedroom. It was already stripped; everything she valued or needed was in her backpack, ready to go. She threw on some clothes and went down the stairs.

  Maya, dressed in a robe, stopped her halfway. She looked scattered and panicky. “Thorn, we’ve got to leave,” she said.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t want us here anymore. He’s acting as if we’re some sort of danger to him.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Some other planet. Someplace without men.” She started to cry.

  “Go get dressed,” Thorn told her. “I’ll bring some food.” Over her shoulder she added, “Pack some clothes and money.”

  With her backpack in hand, Thorn raced down to the kitchen.

  She was just getting out the dolly for the ice owl’s refrigerator when Maya came down.

  “You’re not taking that, are you?” Maya said.

  “Yes, I am.” Thorn knelt to shift the refrigerator out from under the table, and only then noticed it wasn’t running. Quickly, she checked the temperature gauge. It was in the red zone, far too high. With an anguished exclamation, she punched in the lock code and opened the top. Not a breath of cool air escaped. The ice pack on top was gurgling and liquid. She lifted it to see what was underneath.

  The owl was no longer nested snugly in ice. It had shifted, tried to open its wings. There were scratches on the insulation where it had tried to peck and claw its way out. Now it lay limp, its head thrown back. Thorn sank to her knees, griefstruck before the evidence of its terrifying last minutes – revived to life only to find itself trapped in a locked chest. Even in that stifling dark, it had longed for life so much it had fought to free itself. Thorn’s breath came hard and her heart labored, as if she were reliving the ice owl’s death.

  “Hurry up, Thorn,” Maya said. “We’ve got to go.”

  Then she saw what had happened. The refrigerator cord lay on the floor, no longer attached to the wall outlet. She held it up as if it were a murder weapon. “It’s unplugged,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Maya said, distracted. “I had to plug in the curling iron. I must have forgotten.”

  Rage rose inside Thorn like a huge bubble of compressed air. “You forgot?”

  “I’m sorry, Thorn. I didn’t know it was important.”

  “I told you it was important. This was the last ice owl anywhere. You haven’t just killed this one, you’ve killed the entire species.”

  “I said I was sorry. What do you want me to do?”

  Maya would never change. She would always be like this, careless and irresponsible, unable to face consequences. Tears of fury came to Thorn’s eyes. She dashed them away with her hand. “You’re useless,” she said, climbing to her feet and picking up her pack. “You can’t be trusted to take care of anything. I’m done with you. Don’t bother to follow me.”

  Out in the street, she turned in the direction she never went, to avoid having to pass what was hanging in the street. Down a narrow alley she sprinted, past piles of stinking refuse alive with roaches, till she came to a narrow side street that dog-legged into the park. On the edge of the open space she paused under a portico to scan for danger; seeing none, she dashed across, past the old men’s chess tables, past the bench where she had met Magister Pregaldin, to the entrance of Weezer Alley.

  Signs of the Incorruptibles’ passage were everywhere. Broken glass crunched underfoot and the contents of the shops were trampled under red dirt shoeprints. When Thorn reached the Garden of Delights, the entire street looked different, for the building had been demolished. Only a monstrous pile of rubble remained, with iron girders and ribs sticking up like broken bones. A few people climbed over the ruin, looking for survivors.

  The other side of the street was still standing, but Magister Pregaldin’s door had been ripped from its hinges and tossed aside. Thorn dashed up the familiar stairs. The apartment looked as if it had been looted – stripped bare, not a thing of value left. She walked through the empty rooms, dreading what she might find, and finding nothing. Out on the street again, she saw a man who had often winked at her when she passed by to her lessons. “Do you know what happened to Magister Pregaldin?” she asked. “Did he get away?”

  “Who?” the man said.

  “Magister Pregaldin. The man who lived here.”

  “Oh, the old Vind. No, I don’t know where he is.”

  So he had abandoned her as well. In all the world, there was no one trust-worthy. For a moment she had a dark wish that she had exposed his secret. Then she realized she was just thinking of revenge.

  Hoisting her pack to her shoulder, she set out for the waystation. She was
alone now, only herself to trust.

  There was a crowd in the street outside the waystation. Everyone seemed to have decided to leave the planet at once, some of them with huge piles of baggage and children. Thorn pushed her way in toward the ticket station to find out what was going on. They were still selling tickets, she saw with relief; the crowd was people waiting for their turn in the translation chamber. Checking to make sure she had her copy of Maya’s credit stick, she joined the ticket line. She was back among her own kind, the rootless, migrant elite.

  Where was she going? She scanned the list of destinations. She had been born on Capella Two, but had heard it was a harshly competitive place, so she decided against it. Ben was just an ice-ball world, Gammadis was too far away. It was both thrilling and frightening to have control over where she went and what she did. She was still torn by indecision when she heard someone calling, “Thorn!”

  Clarity was pushing through the crowd toward her. “I’m so glad we found you,” she said when she drew close. “Maya was here a little while ago, looking for you.”

  “Where is she now?” Thorn asked, scanning the crowd.

  “She left again.”

  “Good,” Thorn said.

  “Thorn, she was frantic. She was afraid you’d get separated.”

  “We are separated,” Thorn said implacably. “She can do what she wants. I’m on my own now. Where are you going, Clarity?”

  Bick had come up, carrying their ticket cards. Thorn caught her hand to look at the tickets. “Alananovis,” she read aloud, then looked up to find it on the directory. It was only eighteen light-years distant. “Can I come with you?”

  “Not without Maya,” Clarity said.

  “Okay, then I’ll go somewhere else.”

  Clarity put a hand on her arm. “Thorn, you can’t just go off without Maya.”

  “Yes, I can. I’m old enough to be on my own. I’m sick of her, and I’m sick of her boyfriends. I want control of my life.” Besides, Maya had killed the ice owl; Maya ought to suffer. It was only justice.

  She had reached the head of the line. Her eye caught a name on the list, and she made a snap decision. When the ticket seller said “Where to?” she answered, “Gmintagad.” She would go to see where Jemma Diwali had lived – and died.

  The translation chamber on Gmintagad was like all the others she had seen over the years: sterile and anonymous. A technician led her into a waiting room till her luggage came through by the low-resolution beam. She sat feeling cross and tired, as she always did after having her molecules re-assembled out of new atoms. When at last her backpack was delivered and she went on into the customs and immigration facility, she noticed a change in the air. For the first time in years she was breathing organically manufactured oxygen. She could smell the complex and decay-laden odor of an actual ecosystem. Soon she would see sky without any dome. The thought gave her an agoraphobic thrill.

  She put her identity card into the reader, and after a pause it directed her to a glass-fronted booth where an immigration official in a sand-colored uniform sat behind a desk. Unlike the air, the man looked manufactured – a face with no wrinkles, defects, or stand-out features, as if they had chosen him to match a mathematical formula for facial symmetry. His hair was neatly clipped, and so, she noticed, were his nails. When she sat opposite him, she found that her chair creaked at the slightest movement. She tried to hold perfectly still.

  He regarded her information on his screen, then said, “Who is your father?”

  She had been prepared to say why her mother was not with her, but her father? “I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

  “Your records do not state his race.”

  His race? It was an antique concept she barely understood. “He was Capellan,” she said.

  “Capellan is not an origin. No one evolved on Capella.”

  “I did,” Thorn stated.

  He studied her without any expression at all. She tried to meet his eyes, but it began to seem confrontational, so she looked down. Her chair creaked.

  “There are certain types of people we do not allow on Gmintagad,” he said.

  She tried to imagine what he meant. Criminals? Disease carriers? Agitators? He could see she wasn’t any of those. “Wasters, you mean?” she finally ventured.

  “I mean Vinds,” he said.

  Relieved, she said, “Oh, well that’s all right, then. I’m not Vind.” Creak.

  “Unless you can tell me who your father was, I cannot be sure of that,” he said.

  She was speechless. How could a father she had never known have any bearing on who she was?

  The thought that they might not let her in made her stomach knot. Her chair sent out a barrage of telegraphic signals. “I just spent 32 years as a lightbeam to get here,” she said. “You’ve got to let me stay.”

  “We are a sovereign principality,” he said calmly. “We don’t have to let anyone stay.” He paused, his eyes still on her. “You have a Vind look. Are you willing to submit to a genetic test?”

  Minutes ago, her mind had seemed like syrup. Now it bubbled with alarm. In fact, she didn’t know her father wasn’t Vind. It had never mattered, so she had never cared. But here, all the things that defined her – her interests, her aptitudes, her internal doubts – none of it counted, only her racial status. She was in a place where identity was assigned, not chosen or created.

  “What happens if I fail the test?” she asked.

  “You will be sent back.”

  “And what happens if I don’t take it?”

  “You will be sent back.”

  “Then why did you even ask?”

  He gave a regulation smile. If she had measured it with a ruler, it would have been perfect. She stood up, and the chair sounded like it was laughing. “All right. Where do I go?”

  They took her blood and sent her into a waiting room with two doors, neither of which had a handle. As she sat there idle, the true rashness of what she had done crept up on her. It wasn’t like running away on-planet. Maya didn’t know where she had gone. By now, they would be different ages. Maya could be dying, or Thorn could be older than she was, before they ever found each other. It was a permanent separation. And permanent punishment for Maya.

  Thorn tried to summon up the righteous anger that had propelled her only an hour and 32 years before. But even that slipped from her grasp. It was replaced with a clutching feeling of her own guilt. She had known Maya’s shortcomings when she took the ice owl, and never bothered to safeguard against them. She had known all the accidents the world was capable of; and still she had failed to protect a creature that could not protect itself.

  Now, remorse made her bleed inside. The owl had been too innocent to meet such a terrible end. Its life should have been a joyous ascent into air, and instead it had been a hellish struggle, alone and forgotten, killed by neglect. Thorn had betrayed everyone by letting the ice owl die. Magister Pregaldin, who had trusted her with his precious possession. Even, somehow, Jemma and the other victims of Till Diwali’s crime – for what had she done but re-enact his failure, as if to show that human beings had learned nothing? She felt as if caught in an iron-bound cycle of history, doomed to repeat what had gone before, as long as she was no better than her predecessors had been.

  She covered her face with her hands, wanting to cry, but too demoralized even for that. It seemed like a self-indulgence she didn’t deserve.

  The door clicked and she started up at the sight of a stern, rectangular woman in a uniform skirt, whose face held the hint of a sneer. Thorn braced for the news that she would have to waste another 32 years on a pointless journey back to Glory to God. But instead, the woman said, “There is someone here to see you.”

  Behind her was a familiar face that made Thorn exclaim in joy, “Clarity!”

  Clarity came into the room, and Thorn embraced her in relief. “I thought you were going to Alananovis.”

  “We were,” Clarity said, “but we decided we couldn’t just s
tand by and let a disaster happen. I followed you, and Bick stayed behind to tell Maya where we were going.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Thorn cried. Now the tears that had refused to come before were running down her face. “But you gave up 32 years for a stupid reason.”

  “It wasn’t stupid for us,” Clarity said. “You were the stupid one.”

  “I know,” Thorn said miserably.

  Clarity was looking at her with an expression of understanding. “Thorn, most people your age are allowed some mistakes. But you’re performing life without a net. You have to consider Maya. Somehow, you’ve gotten older than she is even though you’ve been traveling together. You’re the steady one, the rock she leans on. These boyfriends, they’re just entertainment for her. They drop her and she bounces back. But if you dropped her, her whole world would dissolve.”

  Thorn said, “That’s not true.”

  “It is true,” Clarity said.

  Thorn pressed her lips together, feeling impossibly burdened. Why did she have to be the reliable one, the one who was never vulnerable or wounded? Why did Maya get to be the dependent one?

  On the other hand, it was a comfort that she hadn’t abandoned Maya as she had done the ice owl. Maya was not a perfect mother, but neither was Thorn a perfect daughter. They were both just doing their best.

  “I hate this,” she said, but without conviction. “Why do I have to be responsible for her?”

  “That’s what love is all about,” Clarity said.

  “You’re a busybody, Clarity,” Thorn said.

  Clarity squeezed her hand. “Yes. Aren’t you lucky?”

  The door clicked open again. Beyond the female guard’s square shoulder, Thorn glimpsed a flash of honey-gold hair. “Maya!” she said.

  When she saw Thorn, Maya’s whole being seemed to blaze like the sun. Dodging in, she threw her arms around Thorn.

  “Oh Thorn, thank heaven I found you! I was worried sick. I thought you were lost.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Thorn kept saying as Maya wept and hugged her again. “But Maya, you have to tell me something.”