The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “Is this about looking at books or making babies, Daya?” Bakti looked crestfallen.

  She straightened, embarrassed. “The baby, of course.”

  “No, I get it.” He waved a finger at her. “I’m crooked and cranky and mothers shut their eyes tight when we kiss.” He reached for the wine bottle. “Those are novels.” He nodded at the shelf. “But no, nothing from Earth.”

  They spent the better part of an hour browsing. Bakti said Daya could borrow some if she wanted. He said reading helped pregnant mothers settle. Then he told her the story from one of them. It was about a boy named Huckleberry Flynn, who left his village on Novy Praha to see his world but then came back again. “Just like your mother did,” he said. “Just like you could, if you wanted. Someday.”

  “Then you could tell stories about me.”

  “About this night,” he agreed, “if I remember.” His grin was seductive. “Will I?”

  “Have you gotten any books from them?” She glanced out the dark window toward the river. “Maybe they’d want to trade with you?”

  “Them?” he said. “You mean our visitors? Some, but digital only. They haven’t got time for nostalgia. To them, my books are as quaint as scrolls and clay tablets. They asked to scan the collection, but I think they were just being polite. Their interests seem to be more sociological than literary.” He smirked. “I understand you have been spending time across the river.”

  She shrugged. “Do you think they are telling the truth?”

  “About what? Their biology? Their politics?” He gestured at his library. “I own one thousand, two hundred and forty-three claims of truth. How would I know which is right?” He slid the book about the boy Huckleberry back onto the shelf. “But look at the time! If you don’t mind, I’ve been putting off dinner until you arrived. And then we can make a baby and a memory, yes?”

  By the time Daya left him snoring on his rumpled bed, the spectators had all gone home for the night. There was still half of the love feast left but the warming dish was beginning to dry it out. She hurried down the Farview Hill to the river.

  Many honors had come to Latif over the years and with them great wealth. He had first served as village eldest when he was still a young man, just thirty-two years old. In recent years, he mediated disputes for those who did not have the time or the money to submit to the magistrates of the blue city. The fees he charged had bought him this fine house of three rooms, one of which was the parlor where he received visitors. When she saw that all the windows were dark, she gave a cry of panic. It was nearly midnight and the house was nothing but a shadow against the silver waters.

  On the shore beyond, the surreal bulk of the starship beckoned.

  Daya didn’t even bother with front door. She went around to the bedroom and stood on tiptoes to knock on his window. Tap-tap.

  Nothing.

  “Latif.” Tap-tap-tap. “Wake up.”

  She heard a clatter within. “Shit!” A light came on and she stepped away as the window banged open.”

  “Who’s there? Go away.”

  “It’s me, Daya.”

  “Do you know what time it is? Go away.”

  “But I have our love feast. You knew this was the night, I sent a message.”

  “And I waited, but you took too damn long.” He growled in frustration. “Can’t you see I’m asleep? Go find some middle who’s awake.”

  “No, Latif. You’re my last.”

  He started with a shout. “You wake me in the middle of night . . . ” Then he continued in a low rasp. “Where’s your sense, Daya, your manners? You expect me to be your last? You should have said something. I take fathering seriously.”

  Daya’s throat closed. Her eyes seemed to throb.

  “I told you to move to the city, didn’t I? Find fathers there.” Latif waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he stuck his head out the window to see her better. “So instead of taking my best advice, now you want my semen?” He waited again for a reply; she couldn’t speak. “I suppose you’re crying.”

  The only reply she could make was a sniffle.

  “Come to the door then.”

  She reached for his arm as she entered the darkened parlor but he waved her through to the center of the room. “You are rude and selfish. Daya.” He shut the door and leaned against it. “But that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

  He turned the lights on and for a moment they stood blinking at one another. Latif was barefoot, wearing pants but no shirt. He had a wrestler’s shoulders, long arms, hands big as dinner plates. Muscles bunched beneath his smooth, dark skin, as if he might spring at her. But if she read his eyes right, his anger was passing.

  “I thought you’d be pleased.” She tried a grin. It bounced off him.

  “Honored, yes. Pleased, not at all. You think you can just issue commands and we jump? You have the right to ask, and I have the right to refuse. Even at the last minute.”

  At fifty-three, Latif was still one of the handsomest men in the village. Daya had often wondered if that was one reason why everyone trusted him. She looked for some place to put the warming dish down.

  “No,” he said, “don’t you dare make yourself comfortable unless I tell you to. Why me?”

  She didn’t have to think. “Because you have always been kind to me and my mother. Because you will tell the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. And because, despite your years, you are still the most beautiful man I know.” This time she tried a smile on him. It stuck. “All the children you’ve fathered are beautiful, and if my son gets nothing but looks from you, that will still be to his lifelong advantage.” Daya knew that in the right circumstance, even men like Latif would succumb to flattery.

  “You want me because I tell hard truths, but when I say you should move away, you ignore me. Does that make sense?”

  “Not everything needs to make sense.” She extended her love feast to him. “Where should I put this?”

  He glided across the parlor, kissed her forehead and accepted the dish from her. “Do you know how many have asked me to be last father?”

  “No.” She followed him into the great room.

  “Twenty-three,” he said. “Every one spoke to me ahead of time. And of those, how many I agreed to?”

  “No idea.”

  “Four.” He set it on a round wooden table with a marble inset.

  “They should’ve tried my ambush strategy.” She shrugged out of her pack. “I’ve got wine.” She handed him the bottle of Xino she had picked for him.

  “Which you’ve been drinking all night, I’m sure. You know where the glasses are.” He pulled the stopper. “And who have you been drinking with?”

  “Ganth, first.”

  Latif tossed the stopper onto the table. “I’m one-fourth that boy’s father . . . ” He rapped on the tabletop. “ . . . but I don’t see any part of me in him.”

  “He’s handsome.”

  “Oh, stop.” He poured each of them just a splash of the Xino and offered her a glass. She raised an eyebrow at his stinginess.

  “It’s late and you’ve had enough,” he said. “It is affecting your judgment. Who else?”

  “Bakti.”

  “You surprise me.” They saluted each other with their glasses. “Does he really have Earth books?”

  “He says not.”

  “He makes too many stories up. But he’s sound—you should have started with him. Ganth is a middle father at best.”

  Both of them ran out of things to say then. Latif was right. She had finished the first two bottles with the other fathers, and had shared an love feast with them and had made love. She was heavy with the weight of her decisions and her desires. She felt like she was falling toward Latif. She pulled the cover off the warming dish and cut a square of her love feast into bite-sized chunks.

  “Just because I’m making a baby doesn’t mean I can’t go away,” she said.

  “And leave the fathers behind?”

  “That
’s what my mother did.”

  “And did that make her happy? Do you think she had an easy life?” He shook his head. “No, you are tying yourself to this village. This little, insignificant place. Why? Maybe you’re lazy. Or maybe you’re afraid. Here, you are a star. What would you be in the blue city?”

  She wanted to tell him that he had it exactly wrong. That he was talking about himself, not her. But that would have been cruel. This beautiful foolish man was going to be the last father of her baby. “You’re right,” Daya said. “It’s late.” She piled bits of the feast onto a plate and came around to where he was sitting. She perched on the edge of the table and gazed down at him.

  He tugged at one of the ribbons of her sleeve and she felt the robe slip off her shoulder. “What is this costume anyway?” he said. “You’re wrapped up like some kind of present.”

  She didn’t reply. Instead she pushed a bit of the feast across her plate until it slid onto her fork. They watched each other as she brought it to her open mouth, placed it on her tongue. The room shrank. Clocks stopped.

  He shuddered, “Feed me, then.”

  Latif’s pants were still around his ankles when she rolled off him. The ribbon robe dangled off the headboard of his bed. Daya gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the tangling sperm inside her. She concentrated as her mother had taught her, and she thought she felt her cervix close and her uterus contract, concentrating the semen. At least, she hoped she did. The sperm of the three fathers would smash together furiously, breaching cell walls, exchanging plasmids. The strongest conjugate would find her eggs and then . . .

  “What if I leave the baby behind?” she said.

  “With who?” He propped himself up on an elbow. “Your mother is dead and no . . . ”

  She laid a finger on his lips. “I know, Latif. But why not with a father? Ganth might do it, I think. Definitely not Bakti. Maybe even you.”

  He went rigid. “This is an idea you get from the scientists? Is that the way they have sex in space?”

  “They don’t live in space; they just travel through it.” She followed a crack in the plaster of his ceiling with her eyes. “Nobody lives in space.” A water stain in the corner looked like a face. A mouth. Sad eyes. “What should we do about them?”

  “Do? There is nothing to be done.” He fell back onto his pillow. “They’re the ones the founders were trying to get away from.”

  “Two hundred years ago. They say things are different.”

  “Maybe. Maybe these particular scientists are more tolerant, but they’re still dangerous.”

  “Why? Why are you so afraid of them?”

  “Because they’re unnatural.” The hand at her side clenched into a fist. “We’re the true humans, maybe the last. But they’ve taken charge of evolution now, or what passes for it. We have no say in the future. All we know for sure is that they are large and still growing and we are very, very small. Maybe this lot won’t force us to change. Or maybe someday they’ll just make us want to become like them.”

  She knew this was true, even though she had spent the last few months trying not to know it. The effort had made her weary. She rolled toward Latif. When she snuggled against him, he relaxed into her embrace.

  It was almost dawn when she left his house. Instead of climbing back up Farview Hill, she turned toward the river. Moments later she stepped off Mogallo’s Wharf into the skiff she had built when she was a teenager.

  She had been so busy pretending that this wasn’t going to happen that she was surprised to find herself gliding across the river. She could never have had sex with the fathers if she had acknowledged to herself that she was going to go through with it. Certainly not with Ganth. And Latif would have guessed that something was wrong. She had the odd feeling that there were two of her in the skiff, each facing in opposite directions. The one looking back at the village was screaming at the one watching the starship grow ever larger. But there is no other Daya, she reminded herself. There is only me.

  Her lover, Roberts, was waiting on the spun-carbon dock that the scientists had fabbed for river traffic. Many of the magistrates from the blue city came by boat to negotiate with the offworlders. Roberts caught the rope that Daya threw her and took it expertly around one of the cleats. She extended a hand to hoist Daya up, caught her in an embrace and pressed her lips to Dayas’ cheek.

  “This kissing that you do,” said Roberts. “I like it. Very direct.” She wasn’t very good at it but she was learning. Like all the scientists, she could be stiff at first. They didn’t seem all that comfortable in their replaceable bodies. Roberts was small as a child, but with a woman’s face. Her blonde hair was cropped short, her eyes were clear and faceted. They reminded Daya of her mother’s crystal.

  “It’s done,” said Daya.

  “Yes, but are you all right?”

  “I think so.” She forced a grin. “We’ll find out.”

  “We will. Don’t worry, love, I am going to take good care of you. And your baby.”

  “And I will take care of you.”

  “Yes.” She looked puzzled. “Of course.”

  Roberts was a cultural anthropologist. She had explained to Daya that all she wanted was to preserve a record of an ancient way of life. A culture in which there was still sexual reproduction.

  “May I see that?”

  Daya opened her pack and produced the leftover bit of the love feast. She had sealed it in a baggie that Roberts had given her. It had somehow frozen solid.

  “Excellent. Now we should get you into the lab before it’s too late. Put you under the scanner, take some samples.” This time she kissed Daya on the mouth. Her lips parted briefly and Daya felt Robert’s tongue flick against her teeth. When Daya did not respond, she pulled back.

  “I know this is hard now. You’re very brave to help us this way, Daya.” The scientist took her hand and squeezed. “But someday they’ll thank you for what you’re doing.” She nodded toward the sleepy village across the river. “Someday soon.”

  Cimmeria:

  From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology

  Theodora Goss

  Remembering Cimmeria: I walk through the bazaar, between the stalls of the spice sellers, smelling turmeric and cloves, hearing the clash of bronze from the sellers of cooking pots, the bleat of goats from the butcher’s alley. Rugs hang from wooden racks, scarlet and indigo. In the corners of the alleys, men without legs perch on wooden carts, telling their stories to a crowd of ragged children, making coins disappear into the air. Women from the mountains, their faces prematurely old from sun and suffering, call to me in a dialect I can barely understand. Their stands sell eggplants and tomatoes, the pungent olives that are distinctive to Cimmerian cuisine, video games. In the mountain villages, it has long been a custom to dye hair blue for good fortune, a practice that sophisticated urbanites have lately adopted. Even the women at court have hair of a deep and startling hue.

  My guide, Afa, walks ahead of me, with a string bag in her hand, examining the vegetables, buying cauliflower and lentils. Later she will make rice mixed with raisins, meat, and saffron. The cuisine of Cimmeria is rich, heavy with goat and chicken. (They eat and keep no pigs.) The pastries are filled with almond paste and soaked in honey. She waddles ahead (forgive me, but you do waddle, Afa), and I follow amid a cacophony of voices, speaking the Indo-European language of Cimmeria, which is closest perhaps to Iranian. The mountain accents are harsh, the tones of the urbanites soft and lisping. Shaila spoke in those tones, when she taught me phrases in her language: Can I have more lozi (a cake made with marzipan, flavored with orange water)? You are the son of a dog. I will love you until the ocean swallows the moon. (A traditional saying. At the end of time, the serpent that lies beneath the Black Sea will rise up and swallow the moon as though it were lozi. It means, I will love you until the end of time.)

  On that day, or perhaps it is another day I remember, I see a man selling Kalashnikovs. The war is a recent memory here, and every man has at
least one weapon: Even I wear a curved knife in my belt, or I will be taken for a prostitute. (Male prostitutes, who are common in the capital, can be distinguished by their khol-rimmed eyes, their extravagant clothes, their weaponlessness. As a red-haired Irishman, I do not look like them, but it is best to avoid misunderstandings.) The sun shines down from a cloudless sky. It is hotter than summer in Arizona, on the campus of the small college where this journey began, where we said, let us imagine a modern Cimmeria. What would it look like? I know, now. The city is cooled by a thousand fountains, we are told: Its name means just that, A Thousand Fountains. It was founded in the sixth century BCE, or so we have conjectured and imagined.

  I have a pounding headache. I have been two weeks in this country, and I cannot get used to the heat, the smells, the reality of it all. Could we have created this? The four of us, me and Lisa and Michael the Second, and Professor Farrow, sitting in a conference room at that small college? Surely not. And yet.

  We were worried that the Khan would forbid us from entering the country. But no. We were issued visas, assigned translators, given office space in the palace itself.

  The Khan was a short man, balding. His wife had been Miss Cimmeria, and then a television reporter for one of the three state channels. She had met the Khan when she had been sent to interview him. He wore a business suit with a traditional scarf around his neck. She looked as though she had stepped out of a photo shoot for Vogue Russia, which was available in all the gas stations.

  “Cimmeria has been here, on the shores of the Black Sea, for more than two thousand years,” he said. “Would you like some coffee, Dr. Nolan? I think our coffee is the best in the world.” It was—dark, thick, spiced, and served with ewe’s milk. “This theory of yours—that a group of American graduate students created Cimmeria in their heads, merely by thinking about it—you will understand that some of our people find it insulting. They will say that all Americans are imperialist dogs. I myself find it amusing, almost charming—like poetry. The mind creates reality, yes? So our poets have taught us. Of course, your version is culturally insensitive, but then, you are Americans. I did not think Americans were capable of poetry.”