The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Edition

by Rich Horton

  3 Ms. Po caught the bug by arranging a meeting with one of the company’s ‘spreaders’: these were individuals (often students), who were paid small sums, plus a free cure after seven days, to take on the relevant pathology and walk amongst the general population disseminating it. This individual later unsuccessfully sued the Guardian for damages, claiming that he had not given his explicit consent to involvement in the story.

  4 ‘Open ended’ bugs, against which the unmedicated body had no chance of developing aboriginal antibodies, and which prolonged cold/flu symptoms indefinitely—until the sufferer bought the necessary medication—did not appear on the market until 2051. It was unusual for an individual actively to seek out a ‘spreader’; usually infection was passed by inadvertent contact in a public place.

  5 This section as a whole, and this sentence is particular, does not carry the unanimous imprimatur of the authors. ‘Bangladeshi Conflict’ was agreed by a narrow majority, over ‘Asian Continental War’ and ‘First Asian Continental War’, both of which are in common online usage.

  6 АПУ scholars wanted this clause replaced with ‘Casualties have been sustained, but precise figures have not been agreed’. In the Russian and Ukrainian translation of this paper the АПУ phrasing has been preferred, and the RPSL phrasing relegated to a footnote.

  7 The original draft included the parenthesis ‘ . . . (such that some have dubbed this war ‘commercial competition pursued via military means, see Gharzai 2099) . . . ’ АПУ scholars wanted this clause deleted entirely; RPSL scholars wanted it retained. Citing it in a footnote was the compromise agreed upon, with the added consideration that this footnote not be cited by any third party as indicative of the official conclusion of this paper.

  8 A majority of АПУ scholars dissent from this opinion, but have agreed to let it stand provided the second clause beginning ‘but . . . ’ after the comma was added.

  9 RPSL scholars preferred the phrase ‘It is inevitable . . . ’

  10 A speculative second paragraph has been retained only in footnote form: ‘it does not require a crystal ball to see which way Trademark Bugs will develop. The Porter Rules hold less and less legal force, and if not robustly defended will vanish entirely in the next few years. If that happens, then there will be no legal sanction preventing the big three—or any of the smaller companies—from spreading modified cancers, auto-immune or other lethal pathologies and charging large amounts for the relevant cures. Corporations exist to maximise profit, not human happiness; and this would be a way of deriving the greatest amount of profit. As it says in the Bible, skin for skin, all that a man hath he will give for his life. What safeguards exist to prevent these corporations from acting in this way? What Bill of Rights or Constitution exists to restrain them? What Magna Carta did they sign?’

  A Better Way to Die

  Paul Cornell

  Cliveden is one of the great houses of Greater Britain. It stands beside the Thames in Buckinghamshire, at the end of the sort of grand avenue that such places kept and made carriages fly up, when carriages were the done thing. In the extensive forests, a Grand Charles tree from the Columbian colonies has been grown into the shape of a guest house. The yew tree walk leads down to a boathouse that has, painted on its ramp, dated, descending notches of where the water once rose, taken at the flood. The ramp has twice now been extended to reach the river. From the house itself, one can look out over the parterre to a one hundred and eighty degree horizon of what were once flood meadows, now seamless farmland. The view of the other half of the world is that which one would expect of a hunting estate. There is a smooth, plunging hill, kept clear to present targets on the horizon, with trees either side, towards which the game can break. There are hides for beaters. There is a balcony that looks down on the yard, from which favours can be thrown and bloods scored. At certain times of the year you will hear the reports of guns, the calling of the hounds and the sohos of those on the chase, unimpeded by fence or ditch. The gutters of the forecourt are there to catch the blood.

  Hamilton often worked out of uniform, so he knew the great estates. They were where royalty risked a social life outside of their palaces, still requiring careful eyes beside them. They were where were hauled those individuals who had lost so much of their souls in the great game that they had actually changed sides. Houses like this were where such wretched people would be allowed to unburden themselves, their words helping to reset the balance that their actions had set swinging. Houses like this were also where officers like himself were interviewed following injury or failure. And finally, always finally, they were places from where such as he sometimes did not return. They were the index that ran alongside the London and abroad half of an out of uniform man’s life, the margin in which damning notes were made. Such buildings were the physical manifestation of how these things had always been done, the plans of them a noble motto across the English countryside. Those words could be read even if your face was in the mud. Especially then. In the circumstances in which Hamilton now found himself, that thought reassured him. But still, he could not make himself ready to die.

  He’d found the invitation on his breakfast table: the name of the estate and a date which was that same day. The handwriting was in the new style, which meant that no hand had been near it, that it had been spoken onto the card as if by God. He could not decide anything based upon it. Except that the confidence of this gesture indicated that, despite everything, those who had power over him still did not doubt who they were and what they could do.

  He had picked it up with none of the anticipation he might once have felt, just a dull, resigned dread. This was the answer to a question he hadn’t put into words. He had started to feel a deeper anger, nameless, useless, than any he had felt before. He knew what he was owed, but had become increasingly sure he wouldn’t receive it. The fact of him being owed it would be seen now as an impertinent gesture on his part, a burden on those who had invested elsewhere. He had one request now, he’d decided, looking at the card in his numb fingers: he would ask to be sent to contribute to some hopeless cause. But perhaps those were only to be found in the blockade now, and if they didn’t want him, they especially wouldn’t want him there. Still, he’d held onto that thought through dressing appropriately and packing for the country. But then even that hope had started to feel like treachery and cowardice. The condemned man must not have anything to ask of the executioner. That was the beginning of pleading.

  And yet hope stayed with him. It played on him. His own balance ate at him as he prepared. A fool, he told himself, would assume he was on his way to Cliveden to be given what he was owed. To at least be thanked for all these years and given a fond farewell. He made sure he was not hoping for that.

  Now he watched from the carriage as it swung down towards the avenue that led to Cliveden. He saw nobody in the grounds, not a single worker on the fields. That was extraordinary. Normally, they would be out there in numbers, waving to any carriage from their enormous harvesters and beaters and propulsion horses. Hamilton had no idea how many servants it took to maintain an estate like Cliveden, but it must be numbered in the hundreds. There would traditionally be too many, in fact, ‘a job for every man and several of those jobs are lounging about just in case’ as some wag had put it. On the two occasions when he’d seen an officer die in such places, it had been done (in one case like an accident, in another, and that was a scene he’d take to his grave, like a suicide) in the grounds, away from the eyes of the help. You didn’t need to clear them all out. But no, he stopped himself: surely this was just the larger version of what he’d seen at Keble? He was making new horrors for himself with no new evidence.

  The carriage settled onto the end of the drive, and Hamilton stepped down onto the gravel. His knee spasmed and he nearly fell. Getting old. He wondered if they were watching this, and killed a thought that he didn’t care. He did. He must. It had been an affectation to take a carriage, he realised, when, in moments, these days, he could have
walked down a tunnel from his rooms in London. And he’d brought a valise, as if he was unwilling, should he need to dress for dinner, to return there in the same way to do so. He was silently making statements with these actions. Stubborn statements. Like he’d made, as if with the intention of ending his service, that night at Keble. This new realisation angered him more than anything else had. Only fools and criminals didn’t know why they did things. It seemed that he was no longer strong enough to hold that fate at bay. To arrive here as someone who bowed to the command of those other voices within one, to pain or desire or selfishness, to have allowed those threats to the balance to have grown within oneself, and to only realise it on this threshold . . . it was an invitation to the powers in this house to strike him down. And they would be right to do so.

  He allowed himself to smile at the relief of that thought. They would be right to do so. If he could accept that, all would be well. He had brought the valise. He would not baulk and desperately fly to return it, like a panicked undergraduate. If he suddenly did, or said, or hinted at anything not of his own volition, but that had come out of the other half of him that should be under his control, then the balance could still be restored at the cost of his life. He didn’t have to worry about that.

  But the thought still came to him: those with his life in their hands didn’t seem to value the balance so much these days, did they?

  That thought was like a far greater death that lay in wait.

  If the world was tempting him into plucking at his own house of cards, it was because that was all everyone seemed to be doing now. He was hesitating on this drive, actually hesitating. He had seen his life as a house of cards.

  Perhaps the world was dying too.

  Perhaps everyone his age felt that.

  But surely nobody had ever felt it in circumstances like these?

  The carriage finally moved off. He made himself step forward, looking down at the valise now inescapably in his hand.

  He found he had orders in his eyes. He wasn’t to go into the house, but into the forest.

  He made his way down a winding path to the edge of the woods. It was overcast, but the shadows from inside the forest were slanting at impossible angles, as if somewhere in there someone was lighting a stage.

  He walked into the forest.

  The path took him past fallen trees, not long ago cut down, by a logger who was now absent. He stopped to listen. The sounds of nature. But no sawing, no distant echo of metal on wood, no great machines. Strange that the effect could be so complete.

  He came to the edge of a clearing. Here was where the strange light was coming from. It seemed to be summer here, because the light was from overhead. The air was warmer. Hamilton kept his expression steady. He walked slowly into the centre, and saw the trees that shouldn’t be here. He wanted to follow etiquette, but that was difficult when those one was addressing had abandoned propriety. It was as if they had grabbed the ribbon of his duty and then leapt down a well. He felt like bellowing at them. He felt awful that he felt like bellowing at them.

  He addressed the tallest of the trees. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  It had been just a few weeks ago that he’d been invited to meet Turpin at Keble. His commanding officer had been a guest of the Warden, and had asked Hamilton to join him at High Table. This had seemed at the time the most natural thing in the world, Keble being where Hamilton himself had been an undergraduate. He’d driven down to Oxford as always, had the Porters fuss over the Morgan as always. He’d stopped for a moment outside the chapel, thinking about Annie; the terrible lack of her. But he could still look at the chapel and take pleasure in it. He’d been satisfied with his composure, then. At that time he’d already been on leave for several weeks. He should have realised that had been suspiciously long. And before that he’d been used for penny ante jobs, sent on them by junior officers, not even allowed to return to the Dragoons, who were themselves on endless exercises in Scotland. He really should have understood, before it had been revealed to him, that he was being kept away from something.

  It had been in the Warden’s rooms at Keble that Turpin had first appeared in his life, all those years ago, had first asked him about working out of uniform. To some people, he’d said, the balance, the necessary moment by moment weighing and shifting of everything from military strength to personal ethics that kept war from erupting between the great nations and their colonies right across the solar system, was something felt, something in the body. This had been a couple of years before the medical theologians had got to work on how the balance actually was present in the mind. Hamilton had recognised that in himself. Turpin had already been then as Hamilton had always known him, his face a patchwork of grown skin, from where he’d had the corners knocked off him in the side streets of Kiev and the muck-filled trenches of Zimbabwe.

  But on entering the Warden’s rooms on this later occasion, after decades of service, Hamilton had found himself saluting a different Turpin. His features were smooth, all trace of his experience removed. Hamilton had carefully not reacted. Turpin hadn’t offered any comment. “Interesting crowd this evening, Major,” he’d said, nodding to indicate those assembled under the Warden’s roof. Hamilton had looked. And that had been, now he looked back to it, the moment his own balance had started to slide dangerously towards collapse.

  Standing beside the dress uniforms and the evening suits and the clerical collars had been a small deer.

  It was not some sort of extraordinary pet. Its gaze had been following the movements of a conversation, and then it was taking part in it, its mouth forming words in a horribly human way. Hamilton had looked quickly over to where a swirl of translucent drapery had been chatting with the Chaplain. Nearby, a circling pillar of . . . they had actually been continuously falling birds, or not quite birds, but the faux heraldic devices often displayed by the Foreigners whose forces were now encircling the solar system. He’d guessed that the falling was the point, rather than the . . . he’d wanted to call it a dress . . . being a celebration of the idea that the Foreigners might flock together and make their plans in great wheeling masses. The pillar held a glass of wine, supported somehow by all those shapes dropping past it. These creatures were all ladies, Hamilton had assumed. Or rather, hoped.

  “It’s all the rage at the Palace,” said Turpin. “It’s all relative this, and relative that.”

  Hamilton hadn’t found it in him to make any sensible comment. He’d heard about such things, obviously. Enough to disdain them and move on to some other subject. That the new King had allowed, even encouraged this sort of thing, presumably to the continuing shame of Elizabeth . . . he’d stopped himself. He was thinking of the Queen, and he could not allow himself to feel so intimate with what she might or might not think of her husband.

  “Not your sort of thing?” asked Turpin.

  “No, sir.”

  Turpin paused a moment, considering, and offered a new tack. “The Bodlean is, I believe, now infinite.”

  “Good for it.”

  Turpin had nodded towards the corner. “So. What about him?”

  He was indicating a young man, talking to a beautiful woman. Hamilton’s first thought had been that he was familiar. Then he had realised. And had first found the anger that hadn’t left him since. This was what downed Foreigner vessels had brought here. Of course it wouldn’t all be used for frippery. Or perhaps now frippery had invaded war.

  It had been like looking at the son he’d never had, at his own face without everything time had written on it. There was for a moment a ghost of a thought that they’d taken away from him that moment of seeing a son. That had been the first of the many ghosts.

  The hair was darker. The body was thinner, more hips than shoulders. The boy had worn not uniform, but black tie, so they hadn’t managed, or perhaps even wished, to get him into the regiment. The young woman the boy was talking to had nudged him, and he had looked towards Hamilton. It was the shock of running into a mirror. The eye
s were the same. He hadn’t known what his own expression had been in that instant, but the younger version of him had worn a smile as he made eye contact. It hadn’t been in the slightest bit deferential. It wasn’t attractive, either. But Hamilton had recognised it. He contained his anger, knowing that this boy would be able to read him like a book. Hamilton had had no idea that such things were now possible. This must be a very secure gathering, for the two of them to be seen together. The boy had expected this. He had been allowed that.

  He had turned back to his superior officer with a raised eyebrow. “Who’s the girl?”

  Turpin had paused for a moment, pleasingly, taken aback by Hamilton’s lack of comment about the boy. “Her name is Precious Nothing.”

  “Parents who like a challenge?”

  “Perhaps it was a memento mori. She’s—”

  “With the College of Heralds, yes.” Hamilton had seen the colours on her silk scarf, which was one hell of a place to put them.

  “Well, only just about, these days. She’s a senior Herald, but she’s been put on probation.”

  “Because of him.” Hamilton found the idea of a Herald being linked to such a peculiar creature as the boy utterly startling. Heralds decided what breeding was, what families and nations were. The College held the records of every family line, decided upon the details of coats of arms, were the authority on every matter of grand ceremony and inheritance. Of course, every other week now one heard rumours that the College was on the verge of dissolution or denunciation, as they tried and failed to find some new way to protest at the new manners. They seemed continually astonished that His Majesty was being advised this badly. Some of this conflict had even reached the morning plates. But it had always gone by the evening editions. To Hamilton, the idea of parts of the body public fighting each other was like the idea of a man punching himself in the face. It was a physical blasphemy that suited this era as an index of how far it had all gone.