The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “Sergey,” I said, getting up from our bench and moving away from Bryan and Lana, suddenly not wanting to be seen in elfin company. “How’s the hive-mind?”

  He looked over to Bryan and Lana in their layered furs, then back at me. He gave me a courtesy smile. “You’d be amazed at how well it’s doing.” The rest of the group nodded. I thought I recognized some of them. He closed the distance between us. “Going home for the holidays?” he asked in a conspiratorial tone.

  “Don’t know,” I said. I had some invites from my old hackerspace buddies to go on a little couch trip, but whenever I contemplated it, I felt like a fraud. I hadn’t said yes, and I hadn’t said no, but in my heart I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere. How could I look those people in the eye, knowing what I knew? Knowing, in particular, what a fraud I turned out to be?

  “Well,” Sergey said, leaning in a little closer. I could smell the vape on his breath, various long-chain molecules like a new-car smell with an undertone of obsolete tobacco. “Well,” he said again. “There’s an opening at the office. In the chaos monkey department. Looking for someone who can work independently, really knocking the system around, probing for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, pushing us out of those local optima.”

  “Sergey,” I asked, the blood draining out of my face, “are you offering me a job?”

  He smiled an easy smile. “A very good job, Lukasz. A job that pays well and lets you do what you’re best at. You get resources, paychecks, smart colleagues. You get to organize your Ftp campaigns, make it the best tool you can. We’ll even host it for you, totally bulletproof, expansible computation and storage. Analytics—well, you know what our analytics are like.”

  I did. I wondered what algorithm had suggested that he go out for a smoke at just that minute in order to be fully assured of catching me on the way home. The Termite Mound was full of cameras and other sensors, and it knew an awful lot about my movements.

  A job. Money. Friends. Challenges. Do Ftp all day long, walk away from AA’s lab and the fish-eyed games of the grad students. Walk away from my tiny dorm room. Become a zuckerbergian comet, launched out of university without the unnecessary drag of a diploma into stratospheric heights, become a name to conjure with. Lana and Bryan were behind me on the bench and couldn’t hear us, not at the whispers in which we spoke. But I was drug-paranoid sure that they could decipher our body language, even from behind the wall of synthetic psilocybin they had scaled.

  I could have a purpose, a trajectory, a goal. Certainty.

  To my horror, I didn’t turn him down. A small part of me watched distantly as I said, “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  “Of course,” he said, and smiled a smile of great and genuine goodwill and serenity. I waved goodbye to Bryan and Lana and headed back to the Termite Mound.

  The Wild and Hungry Times

  Patricia Russo

  Those were the wild and hungry times, the years (some say decades, some say centuries, some say age upon age—and some say not to trust chroniclers, especially the ones whose names begin with consonants or vowels) between the fall of Resenna, the city that once ruled half the world, and the arrival of the succeeding wave of conquerors, the new lords with their scarred faces and fast ships and unusual interest in history. They came and went, these lords who marked the significant events of their lives by incising stars on their cheeks and foreheads, their reign lasting less than two hundred years, replaced in their turn by less studious invaders from farther east, men with slower ships but more powerful weapons; however, before vanishing from the pages of our history, the scarred lords left behind them a reestablished trading network and hundreds of what the next lot called word-vaults. It is believed that this term referred to archives, or possibly schools, or possibly private libraries, or possibly multilingual dictionaries, or possibly stone halls in which epics and sagas and such were chanted or sung. There is approximately an equal amount of evidence to support each of these hypotheses, except the last, which is ludicrous. (See Ybne, The Star-Scarred Scribes, The University of Caesus Press, for a thorough debunking of the position that word-vaults were performance spaces.)

  During the wild and hungry times, the winters were always gray, and the wind blew hard in every season. Those who fished, those who farmed, those who wove, those who carved, those who tanned skins, those who made pots, those who worked with metal, those who kept to the woods and the mountains to hunt or gather or tend small flocks of grazing beasts, all suffered. Even the priests and the fortune tellers, the scryers and the sooth-finders, the blessers and the cursers, fell on hard days. (The misfortune tellers did a little better; as it was a pessimistic age, many felt it was worth parting with half a dozen eggs or a basket of vegetables in exchange for some forewarning of the next inevitable disaster.) As for curses and blessings, each family took it upon themselves to handle such matters. When a child was born, the grandparents (if they were living), the great-aunts and great-uncles (ditto), and the parents (who had less say, but were consulted) decided what blessing would be the most useful to bestow on the newborn. To give a child the gift of healing, a human bone was placed in its hand. For skill in catching fish, a fragment of an old net which had done good service was employed. For talent in coaxing plants to survive the gray and the gales, a pinch of soil. For a proficiency at thieving, a blade of grass from some other family’s stronghold would do. For an understanding of livestock, the hoof of a sheep. For aptitude in weaving, a scrap of cloth. For killing, a knife. For musical ability (entertainment being essential, particularly on long, gray winter nights), a whistle. What boon would be bestowed on the child was determined by what the family needed. Family first, family foremost, family forever, each member responsible for all the rest. It was the way they survived in the wild and hungry times. They must have thought those times would never end.

  Which brings us to:

  It was a gray day in summer. (Gray days were not confined exclusively to winter.) The wind, sharp as a rasp, laden with grains of calcite abraded from the ruins of the Resennan lighthouse (the people of the coast had dismantled most of it, using the stones to repair walls and outbuildings, leaving the sailors to their own devices—but then, sailors had been left to their own devices ever since the last lighthouse keepers had departed, taking the lamp oil with them) blew strongly from the north. Peero pulled down his hood and tied a kerchief over his mouth. The north winds were the worst. His father, sitting by the fire, said nothing. His mother looked grim. His sister, pretending to be busier than she was, wiping her son’s chin when the boy’s face was clean enough, taking the spoon out of her daughter’s hand and stirring the porridge in her bowl after the child had already started to eat it, muttered, “It’s gray today.”

  “It is,” Peero said. The kerchief tasted of old sweat; that bastard Bairen had probably borrowed it, as he had borrowed so many things, sneaking it back into Peero’s clothes-chest before slipping away. Peero supposed he should be glad Bairen had returned it at all.

  Baby brother Bairen, with his hooded eyes and his liar’s tongue. He had started filching as a toddler—scraps of food, their mother’s thimble, a button from their father’s coat. And when he was caught, he would laugh, even when father beat him, laugh like the very devil, though his eyes remained cold. As he grew older, he stopped being caught so easily; eventually he stopped getting caught at all. But this time he had been seen, in a public place, ripping a chain from a woman’s neck, then dragging her off who knew where, to do who knew what. The shame of it had struck his father speechless, until Peero had gone to the old man and said, “I will find the woman and make compensation to her.”

  His sister stopped fussing with spoons and bibs and stray bread crumbs. “You don’t have to go today.”

  “And what if it’s gray tomorrow, as well?”

  “You can wait.”

  “No, he can’t,” his father said. He continued to stare into the fire. Summer fires were lit only for cooking, but this one would burn all day. The
old man had been bringing in the wood himself, making a dozen trips to stack a great pile of it next to the hearth. Mother had frowned, but she knew, as they all did, that keeping the fire going was meant not only to dispel some of the grayness and chill the north wind brought, but also to ward Peero from harm. As soon as Peero woke, before he’d even rubbed the sleep from his eyes or used the chamber pot, his father had made him stand before the hearth, which was already blazing. Father had passed a burning brand three times around Peero’s body, following the direction of the sun, then carefully, leaning over the flames, dropped the stick into the middle of the fire. “Thank you, father,” Peero had said, though he wished the old man hadn’t done it. Peero would be the one who’d have to chop the wood to replace all that would be consumed today; it was the chore he hated the most. He knew his father meant well; he would sit all day and all night if needed, tending the fire, making sure it did not die. But he had no skill in fire-magic. Peero’s grandmother had had, or so it was said, but his father had been given a fresh-laid egg as his birth-boon; his family had wanted many children from this first-born son. Their wish had come true, after a fashion; though only three offspring had survived from those who had been born in wedlock, it was common knowledge that his father had a scattering of other children in the village, as well as in the neighboring one. Bairen, the thief, was not one of those, however much a bastard he acted. Legitimate as Peero, legitimate as his sister, the three of them coming into the world in the respectable way. And Peero was the oldest, and so the responsibility of repairing what his younger brother had done, if that were even possible, fell on him. His father was old, his body worn down by the wind and the grayness and a lifetime of working poor land; he could not walk more than half a liga without getting out of breath.

  “Why not?” his sister snapped. “He doesn’t have to go in the grayness. It might pass in a day or two. Let him wait.”

  “It is a matter of honor.”

  His sister swore under her breath. She and Peero often talked about Bairen when safely out of earshot of their parents. “That one was born wrong,” she’d say. “He should have died like the others. Grandmother and Grandfather turned the curse, but they could not remove it. It was simply twisted aside. He will never be right and he will live forever, and the wrongness in him will swell into evil.” Peero had not agreed, not completely. He’d thought his sister too harsh. Bairen was young, just entering his second year of manhood. Surely, Peero thought, people could change. And Peero did not, deep in his heart, truly believe in curses. (For an extensive discussion of the cursing methods prevalent at the time, see Gedush, Savage Maledictions and Ravenous Ill-Wishes: Uses and Misuses of the Numinous during the Interregnum Period, New Unity City University Press.)

  Their father pretended not to have heard his daughter’s muttered obscenity, but their mother gave her a hard look.

  Don’t say it, Peero thought. Not again, please.

  “When I was young, I met a bard,” his mother said.

  Peero sighed. The kerchief muffled the sound, but his sister rolled her eyes at him. They’d all heard this story a thousand times.

  “He said,” his mother continued, “that we live in wild and hungry times. I’ve always remembered that. He sang from the ballad-tree, but he also told short tales. Wild and hungry times, he said, at the beginning and at the end of one of the tales.”

  I don’t quite recall what the tale was about, Peero recited silently.

  “I don’t quite recall what the tale was about, but those words were true words. And in wild times and hungry times, when it is gray even in summer and the wind never stops blowing, we must hold on to each other, but to honor as well. Thieving is thieving, but rending is something very different. And I swear by the wind and the clouds—”

  And the rain and the roots of the whispering trees . . .

  “—and by the rain and by the roots of the whispering trees, no bit of grass was put into my baby’s hand. Not any of my babies.”

  His father poked the fire.

  “I should be setting off,” Peero said. “It’s a long walk to the marketplace.”

  His nephew opened his mouth, but his niece silenced the boy with a little shake of her head. Even they know, Peero thought. Uncle, uncle, bring us back some sweets. Not today. They knew enough not to ask.

  “I saw it myself,” his mother went on. “My mother blew a breath into his right palm, and your father’s father blew a breath into his left palm.” Breath for long life; breath because three babies had died after Peero’s sister had come into the light with a piercing squall. And after Bairen, there had been two more still-births. Mother had not had an easy life, Peero thought. Father, with his half-dozen or more bastards, hadn’t made it easier. No wonder their mother clung to Bairen, her youngest surviving child. No wonder she still thought of him as a little boy.

  “Go then, if you’re going,” his father said.

  Peero nodded. He gave his sister a nod, too, and started to move toward the door.

  “Too much,” his mother said, softly. This was not part of her usual litany. “My mother, his father, they thought they were doing good. But he always wanted more.”

  “I’m going to fix it,” Peero said. He thought about pulling down the kerchief so his mother could see his face, but then he’d only have to do it up again.

  “And next time?” She dabbed at her eyes.

  “There’ll be no next time,” his father said gruffly. “Not once I get my hands on him.”

  “Get your hands on him?” his sister snorted. “He’s never coming back here.”

  Then his mother started to cry in earnest, and that set his sister’s boy off. His father gestured to Peero to go, just go, and Peero left, shutting the door against the wails and sobs, but he still heard them despite the scream of the wind that began to buffet him as soon as he stepped outside.

  A gray day in summer, with the wind blowing hard. A day like many another, except that on this day he was going to walk to the marketplace ten ligas north, the one where the woman his brother had harmed was said to work. They put a stone in my hand when I was born, he thought. A stone for strength. Not so unusual, for a first-born. And his sister had gotten a drop of clear spring water, for clarity of sight.

  He had come to believe that it meant very little. If he was strong, it was because he had always been expected to be strong. As for his sister’s clearness of vision—he had to admit that nothing had gone wrong with her eyes, so far. But if she truly had any of the deeper sort of sight, she used it badly. She did not comfort people; she scolded them and frightened them. If you go hunting today, she’d told her husband the winter before last, you’ll be caught by a snowstorm; the ice ravens will peck out your eyes before they start on your lips and your nose. Don’t be stupid. Stay here and help my brother chop wood. And her man had flinched, but then covered his fear with anger, telling her he would do as he pleased, and meat was worth more than wood. He left with a quiver full of arrows and two seasoned bows, and what was left of him was found a week later. If she had indeed seen his death, she could have warned him in a gentler way. But Peero had realized from her infant days that there was little gentleness in his sister.

  He did not know the name of the woman from whom his brother had stolen, but he had a description, given by a witness to the event to—whispered to, most likely, with a great deal of superficial sympathy and much hidden glee—his mother’s cousin. Gossip made the world go round. The best news was bad news. Peero could picture the expression on the cousin’s face when he told mother that her youngest child, who had been the subject of rumor for years, had attacked a defenseless vendor in broad daylight (such as it was—language changed more slowly than reality) and in full view of dozens of bystanders.

  That was the only part Peero found difficult to understand. Bairen was both clever and skilled. How could he have been so reckless? It was almost as if he’d wanted to be seen.

  His mother had passed the tale on to him. A plain-lo
oking woman, mother said. Short graying hair, a rather prominent nose. She usually sold greenstuffs and preserved fruits, with the occasional basket of wild mushrooms or sleep-weed on offer. None of these facts made her stand out (though the cousin had added that the woman sometimes, perhaps, he wouldn’t swear to it, provided other sorts of herbs, herbs that women used to control their men—whether that was rumor or fact, it didn’t help identify her, either), but there was one detail that would. The last two fingers of her left hand were missing—chopped off above the second knuckle. Though his mother’s cousin didn’t know the vendor’s name, he knew several stories about how she had lost her fingers—got her hand stuck in a fur trader’s trap on one of her herb-gathering expeditions, was one; another, that she’d had them severed as punishment for selling rotten vegetables (or for selling a decoction that sickened the client, a relative of an important man), or that it had happened when she was new-born, and her fool of a grandfather had thought to give her fire-control with a live coal, causing the fingers to have to be amputated. Peero didn’t care which story was true, or even if any of them were. The missing fingers were important only as a distinguishing feature.

  Even on gray summer days, vendors and customers went to market. Even when the hard wind was laden with grit from eroding ruins, people had to buy and sell, people had to make a living, people had to eat.

  And families were responsible for taking care of each other, but also for keeping order among their own members. The transgression of one stained all. His sister was right, Peero thought. Bairen would not return to the family home. Most likely, Bairen had gone north, to the coast. With any luck, a ship would take him aboard, carry him away someplace no one knew his name—or his family. With better luck, the damn ship would sink.

  Perhaps Bairen’s public display of thievery and worse was his way of saying goodbye.

  That was the way people lived in the wild and hungry times, between the collapse of the Resennan empire and the arrival of the new masters. We know because these new masters possessed a scholarly bent, or at least a caste of them did, curious about history and stories, that wrote annals and narratives and chronicles, and left word-vaults for the people who came after them, even if we are not completely sure what word-vaults are. It is from them that we know both facts and tales about the wild and hungry times. The account presented here is taken from the scrolls discovered in the second year of the reign of Prince Thury, eighty-some years ago, by the scholar known as Neitta the Younger. (Neitta the Elder’s work was unfortunately lost in the sacking of Dowsan by Prince Thury’s forces. There is a reference in one of Neitta the Younger’s texts to copies having been made of her mother’s work, but to date none have been located.) We gratefully acknowledge the pioneering work of Neitta the Younger, whose translation has been revised, annotated, and rendered into modern language by the current writer.