The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  Iowa was half-beautiful, half-bleak. Some fields looked tended, genetically tailored crops planted in fractal patterns and the occasional robot working carefully, pulling weeds and killing pests as it spider-walked back and forth. But there were long stretches where the farms had been abandoned, wild grasses and the spawn of last year’s crops coming up in ragged green masses. Entire neighbourhoods had pulled up and gone elsewhere. How many farmers had accepted the Transmutation, in other countries or illegally? Probably only a fraction of them, Blaine knew. Habit-bound and suspicious by nature, they’d never agree to the dismantlement of their bodies, the transplantation of their crusty souls. No, what happened was that farms were simply falling out of production, particularly where the soil was marginal. Yields were still improving in a world where the old-style population was tumbling. If patterns held, most of the arable land would soon return to prairie and forest. And eventually, the entire human species wouldn’t fill so much as one of these abandoned farms . . . leaving the old world entirely empty . . . if those patterns were allowed to hold, naturally . . .

  Unlike Winemaster, Blaine kept neither hand on the wheel, trusting the AIs to look after him. He spent most of his time watching the news networks, keeping tabs on moods more than facts. What had happened in Kansas was still the big story. By noon, more than twenty groups and individuals had claimed responsibility for the attack. Officially, the Emergency Federal Council deplored any senseless violence – a cliché which implied that sensible violence was an entirely different question. When asked about the government’s response, the President’s press secretary looked at the world with a stony face, saying, “We’re investigating the regrettable incident. But the fact remains, it happened outside our borders. We are observers here. The Shawnee Nest was responsible for its own security, just as every other Nest is responsible . . .”

  Questions came in a flurry. The press secretary pointed to a small, severe-looking man in the front row – a reporter for the Christian Promise organization. “Are we taking any precautions against counterattacks?” the reporter inquired. Then, not waiting for an answer, he added, “There have been reports of activity in the other Nests, inside the United States and elsewhere.”

  A tense smile was the first reply.

  Then the stony face told everyone, “The President and the Council have taken every appropriate precaution. As for any activity in any Nest, I can only say: We have everything perfectly well in hand.”

  “Is anything left of the Shawnee Nest?” asked a second reporter.

  “No.” The press secretary was neither sad nor pleased. “Initial evidence is that the entire facility has been sterilized.”

  A tenacious grey-haired woman – the perpetual symbol of the Canadian Newsweb – called out, “Mr Secretary . . . Lennie –!”

  “Yes, Cora . . .”

  “How many were killed?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to answer that question, Cora . . .”

  “Your government estimates an excess of one hundred million. If the entire Nest was sterilized, as you say, then we’re talking about more than two-thirds of the current U.S. population.”

  “Legally,” he replied, “we are talking about machines.”

  “Some of those machines were once your citizens,” she mentioned.

  The reporter from Christian Promise was standing nearby. He grimaced, then muttered bits of relevant Scripture.

  “I don’t think this is the time or place to debate what life is or isn’t,” said the press secretary, juggling things badly.

  Cora persisted. “Are you aware of the Canadian position on this tragedy?”

  “Like us, they’re saddened.”

  “They’ve offered sanctuary to any survivors of the blast –”

  “Except there are none,” he replied, his face pink as granite.

  “But if there were? Would you let them move to another Nest in the United States, or perhaps to Canada . . . ?”

  There was a pause, brief and electric.

  Then with a flat cool voice, the press secretary reported, “The McGrugger Bill is very specific. Nests may exist only in sealed containment facilities, monitored at all times. And should any of the microchines escape, they will be treated as what they are . . . grave hazards to normal life . . . and this government will not let them roam at will . . . !”

  Set inside an abandoned salt mine near Kansas City, the Shawnee Nest had been one of the most secure facilities of its kind ever built. Its power came from clean geothermal sources. Lead plates and intricate defence systems stood against natural hazards as well as more human threats. Thousands of government-loyal AIs, positioned in the surrounding salt, did nothing but watch its borders, making certain that none of the microchines could escape. That was why the thought that local terrorists could launch any attack was so ludicrous. To have that attack succeed was simply preposterous. Whoever was responsible for the bomb, it was done with the abeyance of the highest authorities. No sensible soul doubted it. That dirty little nuke had Federal fingerprints on it, and the attack was planned carefully, and its goals were instantly apparent to people large and small.

  Julian had no doubts. He had enemies, vast and malicious, and nobody was more entitled to his paranoias.

  Just short of Illinois, the Buick made a long-scheduled stop.

  Julian took possession of his clone at the last moment. The process was supposed to be routine – a simple matter of slowing his thoughts a thousandfold, then integrating them with his body – but there were always phantom pains and a sick falling sensation. Becoming a bloated watery bag wasn’t the strangest part of it. After all, the Nest was designed to mimic this kind of existence. What gnawed at Julian was the gargantuan sense of Time: A half an hour in this realm was nearly a month in his realm. No matter how brief the stop, Julian would feel a little lost when he returned, a step behind the others, and far more emotionally drained than he would ever admit.

  By the time the car had stopped, Julian was in full control of the body. His body, he reminded himself. Climbing out into the heat and brilliant sunshine, he felt a purposeful stiffness in his back and the familiar ache running down his right leg. In his past life, he was plagued by sciatica pains. It was one of many ailments that he hadn’t missed after his Transmutation. And it was just another detail that someone had thought to include, forcing him to wince and stretch, showing the watching world that he was their flavour of mortal.

  Suddenly another old pain began to call to Julian.

  Hunger.

  His duty was to fill the tank, then do everything expected of a road-weary driver. The rest area was surrounded by the Tollway, gas pumps surrounding a fast food/playground complex. Built to handle tens of thousands of people daily, the facility had suffered with the civil chaos, the militias and the plummeting populations. A few dozen travellers went about their business in near-solitude, and presumably a team of state or Federal agents were lurking nearby, using sensors to scan for those who weren’t what they seemed to be.

  Without incident, Julian managed the first part of his mission. Then he drove a tiny distance and parked, repeating his stiff climb out of the car, entering the restaurant and steering straight for the rest room.

  He was alone, thankfully.

  The diagnostic urinal gently warned him to drink more fluids, then wished him a lovely day.

  Taking the advice to heart, Julian ordered a bucket-sized ice tea along with a cultured guinea hen sandwich.

  “For here or to go?” asked the automated clerk.

  “I’m staying,” he replied, believing it would look best.

  “Thank you, sir. Have a lovely day.”

  Julian sat in the back booth, eating slowly and mannerly, scanning the pages of someone’s forgotten e-paper. He made a point of lingering over the trite and trivial, concentrating on the comics with their humanized cats and cartoonish people, everyone playing out the same jokes that must have amused him in the very remote past.

  “How’s i
t going?”

  The voice was slow and wet. Julian blanked the page, looking over his shoulder, betraying nothing as his eyes settled on the familiar wide face. “Fine,” he replied, his own voice polite but distant. “Thank you.”

  “Is it me? Or is it just too damned hot to live out there . . .?”

  “It is hot,” Julian conceded.

  “Particularly for the likes of me.” The man settled onto a plastic chair bolted into the floor with clown heads. His lunch buried his little table: three sandwiches, a greasy sack of fried cucumbers, and a tall chocolate shake. “It’s murder when you’re fat. Let me tell you . . . I’ve got to be careful in this weather. I don’t move fast. I talk softly. I even have to ration my thinking. I mean it! Too many thoughts, and I break out in a killing sweat!”

  Julian had prepared for this moment. Yet nothing was happening quite like he or anyone else had expected.

  Saying nothing, Julian took a shy bite out of his sandwich.

  “You look like a smart guy,” said his companion. “Tell me. If the world’s getting emptier, like everyone says, why am I still getting poorer?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the way it feels, at least.” The man was truly fat, his face smooth and youthful, every feature pressed outward by the remnants of countless lunches. “You’d think that with all the smart ones leaving for the Nests . . . you’d think guys like you and me would do pretty well for ourselves. You know?”

  Using every resource, the refugees had found three identities for this man: He was a salesman from St Joseph, Missouri. Or he was a Federal agent working for the Department of Technology, in its Enforcement division, and his salesman identity was a cover. Or he was a charter member of the Christian Promise organization, using that group’s political connections to accomplish its murderous goals.

  What does he want? Julian asked himself.

  He took another shy bite, wiped his mouth with a napkin, then offered his own question. “Why do you say that . . . that it’s the smart people who are leaving . . . ?”

  “That’s what studies show,” said a booming, unashamed voice. “Half our people are gone, but we’ve lost ninety per cent of our scientists. Eighty per cent of our doctors. And almost every last member of Mensa . . . which between you and me is a good thing, I think . . . !”

  Another bite, and wipe. Then with a genuine firmness, Julian told him, “I don’t think we should be talking. We don’t know each other.”

  A huge cackling laugh ended with an abrupt statement:

  “That’s why we should talk. We’re strangers, so where’s the harm?”

  Suddenly the guinea hen sandwich appeared huge and inedible. Julian set it down and took a gulp of tea.

  His companion watched him, apparently captivated.

  Julian swallowed, then asked, “What do you do for a living?”

  “What I’m good at.” He unwrapped a hamburger, then took an enormous bite, leaving a crescent-shaped sandwich and a fine glistening stain around his smile. “Put it this way, Mr Winemaster. I’m like anyone. I do what I hope is best.”

  “How do you –?”

  “Your name? The same way I know your address, and your social registration number, and your bank balance, too.” He took a moment to consume half of the remaining crescent, then while chewing, he choked out the words, “Blaine. My name is. If you’d like to use it.”

  Each of the man’s possible identities used Blaine, either as a first or last name.

  Julian wrapped the rest of his sandwich in its insulated paper, watching his hands begin to tremble. He had a pianist’s hands in his first life but absolutely no talent for music. When he went through the Transmutation, he’d asked for a better ear and more co-ordination – both of which were given to him with minimal fuss. Yet he’d never learned how to play, not even after five hundred days. It suddenly seemed like a tragic waste of talent, and with a secret voice, he promised himself to take lessons, starting immediately.

  “So, Mr Winemaster . . . where are you heading . . . ?”

  Julian managed another sip of tea, grimacing at the bitter taste.

  “Someplace east, judging by what I can see . . .”

  “Yes,” he allowed. Then he added, “Which is none of your business.”

  Blaine gave a hearty laugh, shoving the last of the burger deep into his gaping mouth. Then he spoke, showing off the masticated meat and tomatoes, telling his new friend, “Maybe you’ll need help somewhere up ahead. Just maybe. And if that happens, I want you to think of me.”

  “You’ll help me, will you?”

  The food-stuffed grin was practically radiant. “Think of me,” he repeated happily. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  For a long while, the refugees spoke and dreamed of nothing but the mysterious Blaine. Which side did he represent? Should they trust him? Or move against him? And if they tried to stop the man, which way was best? Sabotage his car? Drug his next meal? Or would they have to do something genuinely horrible?

  But there were no answers, much less a consensus. Blaine continued shadowing them, at a respectful distance; nothing substantial was learned about him; and despite the enormous stakes, the refugees found themselves gradually drifting back into the moment-by-moment business of ordinary life.

  Couples and amalgamations of couples were beginning to make babies.

  There was a logic: Refugees were dying every few minutes, usually from radiation exposure. The losses weren’t critical, but when they reached their new home – the deep cold rock of the Canadian Shield – they would need numbers, a real demographic momentum. And logic always dances with emotion. Babies served as a tonic to the adults. They didn’t demand too many resources, and they forced their parents to focus on more manageable problems, like building tiny bodies and caring for needy souls.

  Even Julian was swayed by fashion.

  With one of his oldest women friends, he found himself hovering over a crystalline womb, watching nanochines sculpt their son out of single atoms and tiny electric breaths.

  It was only Julian’s second child.

  As long as his daughter had been alive, he hadn’t seen the point in having another. The truth was that it had always disgusted him to know that the children in the Nest were manufactured – there was no other word for it – and he didn’t relish being reminded that he was nothing, more or less, than a fancy machine among millions of similar machines.

  Julian often dreamed of his dead daughter. Usually she was on board their strange ark, and he would find a note from her, and a cabin number, and he would wake up smiling, feeling certain that he would find her today. Then he would suddenly remember the bomb, and he would start to cry, suffering through the wrenching, damning loss all over again.

  Which was ironic, in a fashion.

  During the last nineteen months, father and daughter had gradually and inexorably drifted apart. She was very much a child when they came to the Nest, as flexible as her father wasn’t, and how many times had Julian lain awake in bed, wondering why he had ever bothered being Transmutated. His daughter didn’t need him, plainly. He could have remained behind. Which always led to the same questions: When he was a normal human being, was he genuinely happy? Or was his daughter’s illness simply an excuse . . . a spicy bit of good fortune that offered an escape route . . . ?

  When the Nest was destroyed, Julian survived only through more good fortune. He was as far from the epicentre as possible, shielded by the Nest’s interior walls and emergency barricades. Yet even then, most of the people near him were killed, an invisible neutron rain scrambling their minds. That same rain had knocked him unconscious just before the firestorm arrived, and if an autodoc hadn’t found his limp body, then dragged him into a shelter, he would have been cremated. And of course if the Nest hadn’t devised its elaborate escape plan, stockpiling the Buick and cloning equipment outside the Nest, Julian would have had no choice but to remain in the rubble, fighting to survive the next moment, and the next.
r />   But those coincidences happened, making his present life feel like the culmination of some glorious Fate.

  The secret truth was that Julian relished his new importance, and he enjoyed the pressures that came with each bathroom break and every stop for gas. If he died now, between missions, others could take his place, leading Winemaster’s cloned body through the needed motions . . . but they wouldn’t do as well, Julian could tell himself . . . a secret part of him wishing that this bizarre, slow-motion chase would never come to an end . . .

  The Buick stayed on the Tollway through northern Illinois, slipping beneath Chicago before skipping across a sliver of Indiana. Julian was integrated with his larger self several times, going through the motions of the stiff, tired, and hungry traveller. Blaine always arrived several minutes later, never approaching his quarry, always finding gas at different pumps, standing outside the rest rooms, waiting to show Julian a big smile but never uttering so much as a word in passing.

  A little after midnight, the Buick’s driver took his hand off the wheel, lay back and fell asleep. Trusting the Tollway’s driving was out of character, but with Blaine trailing them and the border approaching, no one was eager to waste time in a motel bed.

  At two in the morning, Julian was also asleep, dipping in and out of dreams. Suddenly a hand took him by the shoulder, shaking him, and several voices, urgent and close, said, “We need you, Julian. Now.”

  In his dreams, a thousand admiring faces were saying, “We need you.”

  Julian awoke.

  His cabin was full of people. His mate had been ushered away, but his unborn child, nearly complete now, floated in his bubble of blackened crystal, oblivious to the nervous air and the tight, crisp voices.