Year's Best SF 8

by David G. Hartwell

  The bird stripped the shark of its blade-legs and armored mandibles and flew off with the bleeding and writhing torso, probably to feed to its chick. Hirald stood up and reappeared; a tall woman in a tight-fitting body-suit, webbed with cooling veins and hung with insulated pockets. On her back she carried a desert survival pack, to create the right impression. Likewise, the formidable singun went into a button-down holster that looked as if it might hold only a simple projectile weapon. She removed her goggles and mask, tucking them away in one of her many pockets before moving on across the sand. Her thin features, blue eyes, and long blond hair were exposed to oven temperatures and skin-flaying ultraviolet. So it had been for many weeks now. Occasionally she drank some water, just in case someone was watching.

  He was called, inevitably, Snow, but with his mask and dust robes it was not immediately evident that he was an albino. The mask, made from the shell of a terrapin, was what identified him. That, and a tendency to leave corpses behind. The current reward for his stasis-preserved testicles was twenty thousand shillings, or the equivalent value in copper or manganese or other precious metals. Many had tried for that reward, and such was their epitaph: they tried.

  Snow understood that there might be bounty-hunters waiting at the water station. They would have weapons, strength, and skill. Balanced against this was the crippling honor code of the Andronache. Snow had all the former and none of the latter. Born on Earth so long ago that he doubted his memories, he had long since dispensed with anything that might impede his survival. Morality, he often argued, is a purely human invention, only to be indulged in times of plenty. Another of his little aphorisms ran something along the lines of: “If you’re up Shit Creek without a paddle, don’t expect the coastguard.” His contemporaries on Vatch never knew what to make of that one, unsurprisingly as Vatchians had no use for words like creek, paddle or coast.

  The station was a metallic ovoid mounted ten meters above the ground on a forest of scaffolding. Nailing it to the ground was the silvery tube of the geothermal energy tap that powered the transmuter—which made it possible for humans to exist on this practically waterless planet. The transmuter took complex compounds, stripped them of their elementary hydrogen, and combined that with the abundant oxygen given off by the dryform algae that turned all the sands of Vatch violet. Water was the product, but there were many interesting by-products: rare metals and strange silica compounds were among the planet’s main exports.

  As he topped the final dune Snow raised his image-intensifier and scanned ahead. The station was truly a small city, the center of commerce, the center of life. He frowned under his mask. Unfortunately, he needed water for the last stage of his journey, and this was the only place he could get it.

  Snow strode down the face of the dune to where a dusty track snaked toward the station. By the roadside a water-thief lay dying at the bottom of a condensation jar. His blistered fingers scratched at the hot glass. Snow passed by, ignoring him. It was a harsh punishment, but how else to treat someone who regarded his fellow human beings as no more than walking water-flasks? As he neared the station, cries from the rookery of hawkers and stall-holders in the ground city reached out to him, and he could see the buzz of activity in the scaffold maze. Soon he entered the noisy life of the ground city; a little after that he passed through the moisture lock of the Sand House.

  A waiter spoke to Snow, “My pardon, master. I must see your tag. The Androche herself has declared the law enforceable by a two-month branding. The word is that too many outlaws now survive on the fringe.” The man could not help staring at Snow’s pink eyes and bloodless face.

  “No problem, friend.” Snow fumbled through his robes to produce his micro-etched identity tag and handed it over. The waiter glanced at the briefly revealed leather-clad stump that terminated Snow’s left arm, and pretended not to notice. He put the tag through his portable reader and was much relieved when no alarm sounded. Snow was well aware that not everyone was checked like this, only the more suspicious-looking customers.

  “What would you like, master?”

  “A liter of chilled lager.”

  The waiter looked at him doubtfully.

  “Which I will pay for now,” Snow added, handing over a ten shilling note. The waiter, obviously alarmed at such a large sum in cash, hurried off with it as quickly as he could. Many eyes followed his progress when he returned with a liter of lager in a thermos stein with combination locked top, for here was an indication of wealth.

  Snow would not have agreed. He had worked it out. A liter of water would have cost only two shillings less, and the water lost through sweat evaporation little different. Two shillings, plus a little, for imbibing fluid in a much more pleasant form.

  He had nearly finished his liter and was relishing the sheer cellular pleasure of rehydration when the three entered the Sand House. He recognized them as killers immediately, but before paying the slightest attention to them he drained every last drop of lager from the frictionless vessel.

  “You are Snow, the albino,” the first said, standing before his table. Snow observed her and felt a leaden inevitability. Even after all these years he could not shake his aversion to killing women—or this time, young girls. She could not have been more than twenty. She stood before him attired in monofilament coveralls and weapons harness. Her face was elfin under a head of cropped, black hair spiked out with goldfleck grease.

  “No, I’m not,” he said, and turned his attention elsewhere.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” she said with a tiredness beyond her years. “I know who you are. You are an albino and your left hand is missing.”

  He returned his attention to her. “My name is Jelda Conley. People call me Whitey. I have often been confused with this Snow you refer to, and it was on one such occasion that I lost my hand. Now please leave me alone.”

  The girl stepped back, confused. The Andronache honor code did not allow for creative lying. Snow glanced past her and noted one of her companions speaking to the owner, who had sent the nervous waiter over. The lies would not be enough. He watched while the owner called over the waiter and checked the screen of his tag reader. The companion approached the girl, whispered in her ear.

  “You lied to me,” she said.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did!”

  This was getting ridiculous. Snow stared off into the distance and ignored her.

  “I challenge you,” the girl said.

  There, it was said. Snow pretended he had not heard her.

  “I said, ‘I challenge you!’.”

  By the code she could now kill him. It was against the law but accepted practice. Snow felt a sinking sensation as she stepped back.

  “Stand and face me, coward.”

  With a tiredness that was wholly genuine Snow rose to his feet. She snatched her slammer. Snow reacted. She hit the floor on her back, the front of her monofilament coverall punctured and a smoking hole between her pert little breasts. Snow stepped past the table, past her, and was almost at the moisture lock before anyone could react.

  It rested on the violet sands at the edge of a spaceport, which was scattered with huge flying-wing shuttles, outbuildings and hangars. It stood between the spaceport and the sprawl of Vatchian buildings linked by moisture-sealed walkways and the glass domes that covered the incongruous green of the parks. And in no way did it resemble any of the structures around it. It could be found on a thousand planets of the human Polity, and it was the reason for the spread of the human race across the galaxy.

  The runcible facility was a mirrored sphere fifty meters across, seemingly prevented from rolling away by two L-shaped buffers to either side. All around it, the glass-roofed embarkation lounges were puddles of light. Within the sphere, the Skaidon gate performed its miracle every few minutes: bringing in quince-mitter travelers from all across the polity, and sending them away again.

  Beck stood back from the arrivals’ entrance and through it watched the twin h
orns of the runcible on its dais of black glass. He watched the shimmer of the cusp between those horns and impatiently checked his watch, not that they could be late—or early. They would arrive on the nanosecond. The runcible AI would see to that. Precisely on time a man stepped through the shimmer, a woman, another man, another woman. They matched the descriptions he had been given, and his greeting was effusive as they came through to the lounge.

  “Your transport awaits outside,” he told them, hurrying them to exit. Beck’s employer did not want them to stay in the city. He wanted them out, those were Beck’s instructions; among others. Once they were in the hover transport, the man he took to be the leader caught hold of his shoulder.

  “The weapons,” he said.

  “Not here, not here,” Beck said nervously, and took the transport out of the city.

  Out on the sand Beck brought the transport down. Once the four climbed out, he joined them at the back of the vehicle, from which he took a large case. He was sweating, and not just from the heat.

  “Here,” he said, opening the case.

  The man reached inside and took out a small, shiny pistol, snubnosed and deadly-looking.

  “The merchant will meet you at the pre-arranged place, if he manages to obtain the information he seeks,” Beck said. He did not know where that was, nor what the information was. The merchant had not taken him that far into his trust. It surprised him that he had been allowed even the knowledge that hired killers were on Vatch.

  The man nodded as he inspected the pistol, smiled sadly, then pointed the pistol at Beck.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Beck tried to say something just as he became aware of the arm coming round his face from the man who had moved behind him. A grip like iron closed around his head, locked, wrenched and twisted. Beck hit the sand with his head at an angle it had never achieved in life. He made some choking sounds, shivered a little, died.

  Snow halted as two proctors came in through the lock. They stared past him to the corpse on the floor. The elder of the two, gray-bearded and running to fat, but with weapons that appeared well-used and well looked-after, spoke to him.

  “You are Snow,” he said.

  “Yes,” Snow replied. This man was not Andronache.

  “A challenge?”

  “Yes.”

  The man nodded, assessed the two Andronache at the bar, then turned back to the moisture lock. It was not his job to pick up the corpses. There was an organization for that. The girl would be in a condensation jar within the hour.

  “The Androche would speak with you. Come with me.” To his companion he said, “Deal with it. Her two friends look like they ought to spend a little time in detention.”

  Snow followed the man outside.

  “Why does she want to see me?” he asked as they strode down the scaffolded street.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  Conversation ended there.

  The Androche, like all in her position, had apartments in the station she owned. The proctor led Snow to a caged spiral stair and unlocked the gate. “She is above.”

  As Snow climbed the stair the gate clanged shut behind him.

  The stairway ended at a moisture-lock hatch next to which depended a monitor and screen unit. Snow pressed the call button and waited. After a few moments a woman with cropped, gray hair and a face that was all hard angles peered out at him.

  “Yes?”

  “You sent for me.”

  The woman nodded and the lock on the hatch clunked open. After spinning the handle Snow stepped back as the hatch rose on its hinge to allow him access. He climbed into a short, metal-walled corridor that ended at a single panel door of imported wood. It looked like oak to Snow—very expensive. Pushing the door open, he entered.

  The room was filled with a fortune in antiques: a huge dining table surrounded by gate-leg chairs; plush eighteenth-century furniture; oil paintings on the walls; hand-woven rugs on the floor.

  “Don’t be too impressed. They’re all copies.”

  The Androche approached from a drinks cabinet carrying two glasses half filled with an amber drink. Snow studied her. She was an attractive woman. He estimated her age as somewhere between thirty-five and a hundred and ninety. She wore a simple toga-type dress over an athletic figure, and at her hip she carried an antique—or replica—revolver.

  “You know my name,” Snow observed as he accepted the drink.

  “I am Aleen,” she replied.

  Snow hardly heard her. He was relishing his first sip.

  “My God, whiskey,” he said, eventually.

  “Yes,” Aleen acknowledged, before gesturing to a nearby sofa. They moved there and sat facing each other.

  “Well, I’m here. What do you want?”

  “Why is there a reward of twenty-five thousand shillings for your testicles?”

  “Best ask Merchant Baris that question. But I see it was rhetorical. You already know the answer.”

  Aleen nodded.

  Snow leaned toward her. “I would be glad to know that answer too,” he admitted.

  Aleen smiled, Snow leaned back, annoyed.

  “There is a price,” he said flatly.

  “Isn’t there always? There is a man. He is the Chief Proctor here. His name is David Songrel.”

  “You want me to kill him.”

  “Of course. Isn’t that what you are best at?”

  Snow kept silent as Aleen lay back against the edge of the sofa, then regarded him over her drink. “That is not all I want from you.”

  He turned and gazed at her and at that moment she lifted her feet up onto the sofa so that he could see that she wore nothing under the dress. Does she shave, Snow wondered, or is she naturally hairless there? He also wondered what it was that turned her on: his white body and pink eyes? Other women had said it was almost like being made love to by an alien. Or was it that he was a killer? Probably a bit of both.

  “Part of the price?”

  She nodded and set her glass to one side, then she slid closer to him on the sofa and hooked one leg over the back of it.

  “Now,” she said, reaching up and opening her toga to display breasts just like those of the girl he had killed. Snow searched himself for an adverse reaction to that; finding none, he stood up and unclipped his dust robes.

  “You’re white as paper,” Aleen said in amazement as he peeled off his undersuit, but when her eyes strayed to the covered stump terminating his left arm, she made no comment.

  “Yes,” Snow agreed as he knelt between her legs and bowed down to run his tongue round her nipples. “A blank page,” he went on as he worked his way down. She caught his head.

  “Not that,” she said. “I want you inside me, now.”

  Snow obliged her, but was puzzled at something he had heard in her voice. No love-making then: just the act itself. Perhaps she wanted white-skinned children.

  Hirald called out before approaching the fire. It had been her observation that the Andronache got rather twitchy if you walked into one of their camps unannounced. As she walked in she was surprised to see that these weren’t locals. Hirald noted two men and two women wearing monofilament survival suits that looked to be of Martian manufacture. She also pretended not to notice the weapons that one of the men had hastily covered on her arrival. She walked to the fire and squatted down. One of the women tossed on another crabbird carapace and watched her through the flames.

  The man who had covered the weapons, a tall Marsman with caste markings tattooed on his temples, was the first to speak. “You’ve come a long way?” he asked.

  “Not so far as you,” Hirald said. She looked from him across the flames to the woman. Her face also bore caste marks. The other couple were a black man with incongruous blue eyes, and a woman who had caps over the neural plugs behind her ears. She was corporate then—from one of The Families.

  Hirald went on, “But why have you come here, I wonder?”

  “We search,” the black said intently. “Perhap
s you can help us. We search for one who is called Snow. He is an albino.”

  They all stared at Hirald.

  “I have heard of him,” Hirald said, “and I have heard that many people look for him. I do not know where he is though.”

  The woman with the neural plugs looked suspicious. Hirald quickly asked, “You are after the reward, then?”

  The four glanced to each other, then the Marsman smiled to himself and casually reached for one of the covered weapons beside him. Hirald glanced at the Corporate woman, who stared back at her.

  “Jharit, no.”

  Jharit stopped with his hand by the covering. “What is it, Canard Meck?”

  The woman, now identified as a member of the Jethro Manx Canard Corporate Family, slowly shook her head, still staring at Hirald.

  “We have no dispute with you,” she said. “But we would prefer it if you left our camp, please.”

  “She might tell him,” Jharit protested.

  Canard Meck glanced to him and said, “She is product.”

  Jharit snatched his hand from the weapons and suddenly looked very frightened. He flinched as Hirald rose to her feet. Hirald smiled.

  “I mean no harm, unless harm is meant.”

  She strode out into the darkness without checking behind. No one moved. No one reached for the weapons.

  Snow removed the pistol from its holster in his dust robes and checked the charge reading. As was usual it was nearly full. The bright sunlight of Vatch acting on the photo-voltaic material of his robes kept the weapon constantly powered up through the socket in the holster. The weapon was a matt black L, five millimeters thick with only a slight depression where a trigger would normally have been. It was keyed to Snow. No one else could fire it. Rather than firing projectiles, as did most weapons on Vatch, this weapon discharged a beam of field-accelerated protons, but they could still make large holes in anyone Snow cared to point it at.