The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  Rasali waited silently, coiling and uncoiling a rope in her hands; beside her stood two women and a dog: dealers in spices returning from the plantations of Gloth, the dog whining and restless. Kit was burdened with document cases filled with vellum and paper, rolled tightly and wrapped in oilcloth. Rasali seated the merchants and their dog in the ferry’s bow, then untied and pushed off in silence. Kit sat near her.

  She stood at the stern, braced against the scull. For a moment he could pretend that this was water they moved on and he half expected to hear sloshing; but the big paddle made no noise. It was so silent that he could hear her breath, the dog’s nervous panting aft, and his own pulse, too fast. Then the Crossing slid up the long slope of a mist dune and there was no possibility that this could be anything but mist.

  He heard a soft sighing, like air entering a once-sealed bottle. It was hard to see so far, but the lingering light showed him a heaving of the mist on the face of a neighboring dune, like a bubble coming to the surface of hot mud. The dome grew and then burst. There was a gasp from one of the women. A shape rolled away, too dark for Kit to see more than its length.

  “What—” he said in wonder.

  “Fish,” Rasali breathed to Kit. “Not small ones. They are biting tonight. We should not have come.”

  It was night now; the first tiny moon appeared, scarcely brighter than a star, followed by other stars. Rasali oared gently across through the dunes, face turned to the sky. At first he thought she was praying, then realized she was navigating. There were more fish now, and each time the sighing sound, the dark shape half-seen. He heard someone singing, the voice carrying somehow to them, from far behind.

  “The fishers,” Rasali said. “They will stay close to the levees tonight. I wish . . .”

  But she left the wish unspoken. They were over the deep mist now. He could not say how he knew this. He had a sudden vision of the bridge overhead, a black span bisecting the star-spun sky, the parabolic arch of the chains perhaps visible, perhaps not. People would stride across the river, an arrow’s flight overhead, unaware of this place beneath. Perhaps they would stop and look over the bridge’s railings, but they would be too high to see the fish as any but small shadows, supposing they saw them at all, supposing they stopped at all. The Big Ones would be novelties, weird creatures that caused a safe little shiver, like hearing a frightening story late at night.

  Perhaps Rasali saw the same thing, for she said suddenly, “Your bridge. It will change all this.”

  “It must. I am sorry,” he said again. “We are not meant to be here, on mist.”

  “We are not meant to cross this without passing through it. Kit—” Rasali said, as if starting a sentence, and then fell silent. After a moment she began to speak again, her voice low, as if she were speaking to herself. “The soul often hangs in a balance of some sort: tonight, do I lie down in the high fields with Dirk Tanner or not? At the fair, do I buy ribbons or wine? For the new ferry’s headboard, do I use camphor or pearwood? Small things, right? A kiss, a ribbon, a grain that coaxes the knife this way or that. They are not, Kit Meinem of Atyar. Our souls wait for our answer, because any answer changes us. This is why I wait to decide what I feel about your bridge. I’m waiting until I know how I will be changed.”

  “You can never know how things will change you,” Kit said.

  “If you don’t, you have not waited to find out.” There was a popping noise barely a stone’s throw to starboard. “Quiet.”

  On they moved. In daylight, Kit knew, the trip took less than an hour; now it seemed much longer. Perhaps it was; he looked up at the stars and thought they had moved, but perhaps not.

  His teeth were clenched, as were all his muscles. When he tried to relax them, he realized it was not fear that cramped him, but something else, something outside him. He heard Rasali falter. “No. . . .”

  He recognized it now, the sound that was not a sound, like the lowest pipes on an organ, a drone so low that he couldn’t hear it, one that turned his bones to liquid and his muscles to flaked and rusting iron. His breath labored from his chest in grunts. His head thrummed. Moving as though through honey, he strained his hands to his head, cradling it. He could not see Rasali except as a gloom against the slightly lesser gloom of the mist, but he heard her pant, tiny pain-filled breaths, like an injured dog.

  The thrumming in his body pounded at his bones now, dissolving them. He wanted to cry out, but there was no air left in his lungs. He realized suddenly that something beneath them was raising itself into a mound. Mist piled at the boat’s sides. I never got to finish the bridge, he thought. And I never kissed her. Did Rasali have any regrets?

  The mound roiled and became a hill, which became a mountain obscuring part of the sky. The crest melted into curls of mist, and there was a shape inside, large and dark as night itself, slid, and followed the collapsing. It seemed still, but he knew that was only because of the size of the thing, that it took ages for its full length to pass. That was all he saw before his eyes slipped shut.

  How long he lay there in the bottom of the boat, he didn’t know. At some point, he realized he was there; some time later he found he could move again, his bones and muscles back to what they should be. The dog was barking. “Rasali?” he said shakily. “Are we sinking?”

  “Kit.” Her voice was a thread. “You’re still alive. I thought we were dead.”

  “That was a Big One?”

  “I don’t know. No one has ever seen one. Maybe it was just a Fairly Large One.”

  The old joke. Kit choked on a weak laugh.

  “Shit,” Rasali said in the darkness. “I dropped the oar.”

  “Now what?” he said.

  “I have a spare, but it’s going to take longer and we’ll land in the wrong place. We’ll have to tie off and then walk up to get help.”

  I’m alive, he did not say. I can walk a thousand miles tonight.

  It was nearly dawn before they got to Nearside. The two big moons rose just before they landed, a mile south of the dock. The spice traders and their dog went on ahead while Kit and Rasali secured the boat. They walked up together. Halfway home, Valo came down at a dead run.

  “I was waiting, and you didn’t come—” He was pale and panting. “But they told me, the other passengers, that you made it, and—”

  “Valo.” Rasali hugged him and held him hard. “We’re safe, little one. We’re here. It’s done.”

  “I thought. . . .” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Valo, please, I am so tired. Can you get the Crossing up to the dock? I am going to my house, and I will sleep for a day, and I don’t care if the Empress herself is tapping her foot, it’s going to wait.” She released Valo, saluted Kit with a weary smile, and walked up the flank of the levee. Kit watched her leave.

  The “Imperial seal” was a letter from Atyar, some underling arrogating authority and asking for clarification on a set of numbers Kit had sent – scarcely worth the trip at any time, let alone across mist on a bad night. Kit cursed the capital and Empire and then sent the information, along with a tautly worded paragraph about seals and their appropriate use.

  Two days later, he got news that would have brought him across the mist in any case: the caravan carrying the first eyebars and bolts was twelve miles out on the Hoic Mine Road. Kit and his ironmaster Tandreve Smith rode out to meet the wagons as they crept southward, and found them easing down a gradual slope near Oud village. The carts were long and built strong, their contents covered, each pulled by a team of tough-legged oxen with patient expressions. The movement was slow, and drivers walked beside them, singing something unfamiliar to Kit’s city-bred ears.

  “Ox-tunes. We used to sing these at my aunt’s farm,” Tandreve said, and sang:

  “Remember last night’s dream,

  the sweet cold grass, the lonely cows.

  You had your bollocks then.”

  Tandreve chuckled, and Kit with her.

  One of the drivers wandered over as
Kit pulled his horse to a stop. Unattended, her team moved forward anyway. “Folks,” she said, and nodded. A taciturn woman.

  Kit swung down from the saddle. “These are the chains?”

  “You’re from the bridge?”

  “Kit Meinem of Atyar.”

  The woman nodded again. “Berallit Red-Ox of Ilver. Your smiths are sitting on the tail of the last wagon.”

  One of the smiths, a rangy man with singed eyebrows, loped forward to meet them, and introduced himself as Jared Toss of Little Hoic. They walked beside the carts as they talked, and he threw aside a tarp to show Kit what they carried: stacks of iron eyebars, each a rod ten feet long with eyes at each end. Tandreve walked sideways as she inspected the eyebars; she and Jared soon lost themselves in a technical discussion, while Kit kept them company, leading Tandreve’s forgotten horse and his own, content for the moment to let the masters talk it out. He moved a little forward until he was abreast of the oxen. Remember last night’s dream, he thought, and then: I wonder what Rasali dreamt?

  After that night on the mist, Rasali seemed to have no bad days. She took people the day after they arrived, no matter what the weather or the mist’s character. The tavern-keepers grumbled at this a bit, but the decrease in time each visitor stayed in town was made up for by the increase in numbers of serious-eyed men and women sent by firms in Atyar to establish offices in the towns on the river’s far side. It made things easier for the bridge, as well, since Kit and others could move back and forth as needed. Kit remained reluctant, more so since the near-miss.

  There was enough business for two boats, and Valo volunteered to ferry more often, but Rasali refused the help, allowing him to ferry only when she couldn’t prevent it. “The Big Ones don’t seem to care about me this winter,” she said to him, “but I can’t say they would feel the same about tender meat like you.” With Kit she was more honest. “If he is to leave ferrying, to go study in the capital maybe, it’s best sooner than later. Mist will be dangerous until the last ferry crosses it. And even then, even after your bridge is done.”

  It was Rasali only who seemed to have this protection; the fishing people had as many problems as in any year. Denis Redboat lost his coracle when it was rammed (“By a Medium-Large One,” he laughed in the tavern later: sometimes the oldest jokes were the best), though he was fished out by a nearby boat before he had sunk too deep. The rash was only superficial, but his hair grew back only in patches.

  Kit sat in the crowded beer garden of The Deer’s Heart, watching Rasali and Valo build a little pinewood skiff in the boatyard next door. Valo had called out a greeting when Kit first sat down, and Rasali turned her head to smile at him, but after that they ignored him. Some of the locals stopped by to greet him, and the barman stayed for some time, telling him about the ominous yet unchanging ache in his back; but for most of the afternoon, Kit was alone in the sun, drinking cellar-cool porter and watching the boat take shape.

  In the midsummer of the fourth year, it was rare for Kit to have the afternoon of a beautiful day to himself. The anchorages had been finished for some months. So had the rubble-fill ramps that led to the arched passages through each pillar, but the pillars themselves had taken longer, and the granite saddles that would support the chains over the towers had only just been put in place.

  They were only slightly behind on Kit’s deadlines for most of the materials. More than a thousand of the eyebars and bolts for the chains were laid out in rows, the iron smelling of the linseed oil used to protect them during transit. More were expected in before winter. Close to the ramps were the many fish-skin ropes and cables that would be needed to bring the first chain across the gap. They were irreplaceable, probably the most valuable thing on the work sites, and were treated accordingly, and were kept in closed tents that reeked.

  Kit’s high-work specialists were here, too: the men and women who would do the first perilous tasks, mostly experts who had worked on other big spans or the towers of Atyar.

  But everything waited on Rasali, and in the meantime, Kit was content to sit and watch her work.

  Valo and Rasali were not alone in the boatyard. Rasali had sent to the ferry folk of Ubmie, a hundred miles to the south, and they had arrived a few days before: a woman and her cousin, Chell and Lan Crosser. The strangers had the same massive shoulders and good looks the Ferrys had, but they shared a faraway expression of their own; the river was broader at Ubmie, deeper, so perhaps death was closer to them. Kit wondered what they thought of his task – the bridge would cut into ferry trade for many hundreds of miles on either side, and Ubmie had been reviewed as a possible site for the bridge – but they must not have resented it or they would not be here.

  Everything waited on the ferry folk: the next major task was to bring the lines across the river to connect the piers – fabricating the chains required temporary cables and catwalks to be there first – but this could not be rushed: Rasali, Valo, and the Crossers all needed to feel at the same time that it was safe to cross. Kit tried not to be impatient, and in any case he had plenty to do – items to add to lists, formal reports and polite updates to send to the many interested parties in Atyar and in Triple, instructions to pass on to the rope-makers, the masons, the road-builders, the exchequer. And Jenner: Kit had written to the capital and the Department of Roads was offering Jenner the lead on the second bridge across the river, to be built a few hundred miles to the north. Kit was to deliver the cartel the next time they were on the same side, but he was grateful the officials had agreed to leave Jenner with him until the first chain on this bridge was in place.

  He pushed all this from his mind. Later, he said to the things, half-apologetically; I’ll deal with you later. For now, just let me sit in the sun and watch other people work.

  The sun slanted peach-gold through the oak’s leaves before Rasali and Valo finished for the day. The skiff was finished, an elegant tiny curve of pale wood and dying sunlight. Kit leaned against the fence as they threw a cup of water over its bow and then drew it into the shadows of the boat house. Valo took off at a run – so much energy, even after a long day; ah, youth—as Rasali walked to the fence and leaned on it from her side.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  She rolled her neck. “I know. We make good boats. Are you hungry? Your busy afternoon must have raised an appetite.”

  He had to laugh. “We finished the pillar – laid the capstone this morning. I am hungry.”

  “Come on, then. Thalla will feed us all.”

  Dinner was simple. The Deer’s Heart was better known for its beers than its foods, but the stew Thalla served was savory with chervil, and thick enough to stand a spoon in. Valo had friends to be with, so they ate with Chell and Lan, who were as light-hearted as Rasali. At dusk, the Crossers left to explore the Nearside taverns, leaving Kit and Rasali to watch heat lightning in the west. The air was thick and warm, soft as wool on their skin.

  “You never come up to the work sites on either side,” Kit said suddenly, after a comfortable, slightly drunken silence. He inspected his earthenware mug, empty except for the smell of yeast.

  Rasali had given up on the benches, and sat instead on one of the garden tables. She leaned back until she lay supine, face toward the sky. “I’ve been busy, perhaps you noticed?”

  “It’s more than that. Everyone finds time, here and there. And you used to.”

  She laughed. “I did, didn’t I? I just haven’t seen the point, lately. The bridge changes everything, but I don’t see yet how it changes me. So I wait until it’s time. Perhaps it’s like the mist.”

  “What about now?”

  She rolled her head until her cheek lay against the rough wood of the tabletop: looking at him, he could tell, though her eyes were hidden in shadows. What did she see, he wondered: what was she hoping to see? It pleased him, but made him nervous.

  “Come to the tower, now, tonight,” he said. “Soon everything changes. We pull the ropes across, and make the chains, and hang the sup
ports, and lay the road – everything changes then, it stops being a project and becomes a bridge, a road. But tonight, it’s still just two towers and a bunch of plans. Rasali, climb it with me. I can’t describe what it’s like up there – the wind, the sky all around you, the river.” He flushed at the urgency in his voice. When she remained silent, he added, “You change whether you wait for it or not.”

  “There’s lightning,” she said.

  “It runs from cloud to cloud,” he said. “Not to earth.”

  “Heat lightning.” She sat up suddenly, nodded. “So show me this place.”

  The work site was abandoned. The sky overhead had filled with clouds lit from within by the lightning, which was worse than no light at all, since it ruined their night vision. They staggered across the site, trying to plan their paths in the moments of light, doggedly moving through the darkness. “Shit,” Rasali said suddenly in the darkness, then: “Tripped over something or other.” Kit found himself laughing for no apparent reason.

  They took the internal stairs instead of the scaffold that still leaned against the pillar’s north wall. Kit knew them thoroughly, knew every irregular turn and riser; he counted them aloud to Rasali as he led her by the hand. They reached one hundred and ninety four before they saw light from a flash of lightning overhead, two hundred and eighteen when they finally stepped onto the roof, gasping for air.

  They were not alone. A woman squealed; she and the man with her grabbed clothes and blankets and bolted with their lamp naked and laughing down the stairs. Rasali said with satisfaction, “Sera Oakfield. That was Erno Bridgeman with her.”

  “He took his name from the bridge?” Kit asked, but Rasali said only, “Oh,” in a child’s voice. Silent lightning painted the sky over her head in sudden strokes of purple-white: layers of cloud glowing or dark.

  “It’s so much closer.” She looked about her, walked to the edge, and looked down at Nearside. Dull gold light poured from doors open to the heavy air. Kit stayed where he was, content to watch her. The light (when there was light) was shadowless, and her face looked young and full of wonder. After a time, she walked to his side.