The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  At last the welcome “One kilometre” sounded, followed a few seconds later by “Up slope ahead.”

  There was indeed a slope ahead, only a few metres high but quite enough to hide what lay beyond. Tug and tank laboured up to its crest, and were promptly stopped by Pam. Her husband resumed reporting.

  “There’s a roughly oval valley below us, with a lake like the one where they tested the paraffin but a lot larger. Sen was right; the lake is about three quarters surrounded by a thicket of the same sort of plants we saw there, and its Hotsouth end is dammed in the same way. There are several low, round hills scattered over the valley. The two closest to the lake are covered with the bushes; all the others are bare. Between the two covered ones is another bare but differently coloured space extending a kilometre or so toward the bushes and lake. The overgrown area covers about five by seven kilometres. It borders the Hotnorth side of the lake, which is oval and about three kilometres by two, the long measure running Hotnorth-Hotsouth. In the bare section, directly between the two covered hills is something like a wrecked building about a hundred metres square. I can’t guess how high it may have been. Another at the Hoteast edge of the lake seems intact, has about the same area though it isn’t quite so perfectly square, and has an intact flat roof. It’s about fifteen metres high. They’re talking again; you can hear them, I suppose. They seem to want us to – Erni, what’s up?” Akmet fell silent.

  “Something wrong?” asked Ben, while the rest of Nest stopped whatever it was doing.

  “You’ll see.” It was Icewall’s voice. He had gently but firmly sent Pam drifting away from the controls, and was guiding Annie towards the nearer of the overgrown hills.

  “Thirty-four right” came from the speaker. Again. And again. Candlegrease continued straight towards the eminence. Pam managed to silence the native with a rather dishonest “Observing.”

  Tug and tank descended the valley, crossed the bare part to the nearer overgrown hill, climbed it, and came to a halt looking down on what Akmet had described as a wrecked building. From three kilometres closer, there seemed still no better way to describe it.

  The other three cried out together as Erni did a quick-stop. Then, donning a waldo, he deployed one of the smallest bugs and sent it back toward Candlegrease on the side towards the lake.

  Nic, knowing his partner best and far more experienced with the equipment than the other couple, imitated Icewall’s action; but there was no way he could make his bug catch up with the one which had started first. Erni’s mechanical servant took hold of the still unsafetied relief valve which had destroyed the other patch so far back, in the natives’ grim experiment.

  “Hold it, Erni! What do you think you’re up to?” The question came in three different voices, with the words slightly different in each, but was understood even at Nest.

  “Don’t ask silly questions – or don’t you care about Maria?”

  Nic’s lips tightened invisibly behind his breathing mask.

  “I care a lot, and so will the kids when they hear. But that’s no answer.”

  Pam was broadcasting deliberately as she cut in; she was uncertain how much the natives would understand, but it seemed worth trying. “You just want to kill a few thousand of these people to get even?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I won’t be killing anyone. This isn’t a city, it’s one creature. I can punish it – hurt it – without killing it. I can teach it to be careful. You know that, don’t you, Nic?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it, yes. I’m not sure releasing the paraffin up here won’t kill it completely. We’re at about the highest point in the valley, much of our juice is denser than the local air, and the wind is random as usual. If we do kill it, it may not be a lesson. We don’t know that there are any more of these beings on the planet. We certainly haven’t heard from any, and the satellites this one spotted and began talking to can be seen from anywhere on Halfbaked. Think that one over. All the intelligence of a world for two human lives?”

  Erni was silent for several seconds, but his servo remained motionless. At last, “You don’t know that. You can’t be sure.”

  “Of course I can’t. But it’s a plausible idea, like the one that this is a single being. Anything I can do to keep you from taking the chance, I’ll do. Think it over.”

  Pam disapproved of what sounded to her like a threat.

  “Why are you blaming these people, or this person, whichever it is, anyway? You don’t know what happened is their fault.”

  “They weren’t careful enough! Look at that wrecked building there! That’s got to be where it happened –”

  “And the dead-vegetation area downslope from it! Maybe they weren’t careful enough – how could they have been? What do they know about hydrogen compounds? What do we know about their behaviour here, except what they found out and showed us a while ago, long after the girls were gone? What –”

  “I don’t care what! All I can think about is Jessi! What she was like – what she was – and that I’ll never see her or feel her again. Someone’s got to learn!”

  “You mean someone’s got to pay, don’t you?”

  “All right, someone’s got to pay! And what do you think you can do to stop it, Dominic Wildbear Yucca, who is so disgustingly civilized he doesn’t care for the memory of the mother of his kids!”

  “Who is so disgustingly civilized he doesn’t want to admit to his kids, and his friends, that he didn’t try to keep a good friend from –”

  “Friend! How can you call yourself a –”

  “You’ll see.”

  “How?”

  What Nic would have said in answer is still unknown; he refused to tell anyone later. Pam cut in again.

  “Look! Isn’t it enough to scare them – scare it? Look what’s happening! Look at the city, or the creature, or whatever it is!”

  Even Erni took his eyes from the screen of his servobug. For the first and only time since the native’s hydrocarbon experiment, they clearly saw the dandelion seeds. Hordes of them, rocketing up from every part of the overgrown area, catching the swirling, wandering winds, many falling back to the ground close to their launch points, but some being carried up and away in every direction.

  The woman saw Erni’s distraction, and pressed home her argument. “They want to save what they can! Those things really are seeds. They scatter them when the parent is in danger, or knows it’s dying!”

  “You – you don’t know that either.” Erni sounded almost subdued, and certainly far less frenzied than a few seconds earlier. Nic began to hope, and waited for Pam to go on.

  Erni’s attention now was clearly on the scenery rather than his bug. Even though he still had his hands in the waldos, there was a very good chance that Dominic’s bug could knock the other away from the valve in time.

  Nic took what seemed to him a better chance by passing up the opportunity. Pam was silent, so he finally spoke softly.

  “I can forgive your cracks about my not caring, because I do care and know how you feel. But what you want to do is just the same sort of angry, thoughtless thing as those words, isn’t it?”

  Erni’s answer seemed irrelevant.

  “If it’s scared, why doesn’t it ask me to stop?”

  “Using what words?” asked Pam softly.

  “Me unclear.” The native utterance partly overlapped the woman’s, and proved the most effective sentence of the argument.

  Slowly, Erni drew his hands from the waldo gloves, and gestured Akmet to take over the bug’s control.

  “Better try to get ‘we’ across while you’re at it, Pam,” was all he said. He let himself drift away from controls and window.

  “Me and we unclear. One at a time.”

  Pam might have been smiling behind her mask. She did look hesitantly at her companions, especially Erni. Then she tried her explanation. Numbers, after all, had long been in the common vocabulary.

  “Observe Annie closely. Me, one animal. We, more than one animal. Four anim
als in Annie.”

  Erni made no objection, but added quietly, “No valve danger. Which way?”

  “Right.” Erni, now thoroughly embarrassed, glanced around at the others as though asking whether they really trusted him to drive. The other men were concentrating on the bugs outside, the woman seemed to be watching the putative seeds. They were mostly settled back to the ground or blown out of sight by now. No more were being launched, apparently. Maybe the suggested explanation had been right, but even its proponent was sceptical. Maybe they were some sort of weapon . . .

  It soon became obvious that Annie was being led to the other shed-like structure. This one was at the edge of the lake but somewhat down slope from the overgrown areas. There seemed a likely reason, though not the only possible one, for this: care. No one suggested this aloud to the driver. It seemed too obvious that Jellyseal had, during unloading, wrecked the first building and killed much of the being or population which formed the copse.

  As they followed instructions along the edge of the overgrown area, bunch after bunch of tangled branches waved close past Annie’s windows. Looking in? None of them doubted it. Pam continued alternately reporting and teaching, describing their path and surroundings to Nest and reacting to observations through the window with remarks like “One animal driving. One animal talking. Two animals moving bugs.”

  They were guided around the structure to the lower side. This was open, and Annie was directed to enter. The far side, toward Hotnorth, could be seen to be open also, and though there was much growth within, there was plenty of room for tug and tank. Erni dragged his charge within.

  “Stop.” Since there was an opening in front, he obeyed, though he remained alert. The bugs operated by Akmet and Nic had come in too, and all four explorers watched, not without an occasional glance forward, as the doorway behind was plugged more and more tightly by growing branches and finally, as nearly as either bug could see, became airtight.

  “Carbon hydride stop.” Reading between the words, the bug handlers detached Candlegrease. Erni eased Annie forward. Three things started to happen at once, all interesting for different reasons.

  Flattened bladders appeared among the branches and were borne toward Candlegrease’s valves. Apparently the paraffin was not to be exposed to local air this time.

  A wall of tangled growth began to form between Annie and her tow, without waiting for the bugs to get back to the tug. Nic and Akmet, after a quick but silent look at each other, abandoned the machines. There were plenty more, and there seemed no objection to their being “observed” at leisure by the natives.

  The doorway ahead began to fill with a similar block. This also caused human reaction. Erni sent the tug grinding firmly forward.

  “Oxygen hydride stop.”

  No attention was paid to this. In a few seconds Annie was outside, with a patch of torn and flattened vegetation behind where the growing wall had been.

  “Water stop.”

  Pam remained calm, and Erni did not stop until they were a hundred metres from the lab, as they all now thought of it. Pam explained.

  “Water stop danger for animals.”

  The native voice did not respond at once, and after some seconds Cloud’s voice reached them from Nest.

  “Y’know, Pam dear, I think you’ve just faced your friend outside with the problem of what an individual is. Don’t be surprised if you have to restate that one.”

  The woman answered promptly and professionally.

  “You mean my friend or friends. You’re hypothesizing still. Let’s call this one Abby, and start looking around for Bill –”

  “Water next time.”

  “Water next time,” she agreed.

  “All right, it’s – they’re – she’s civilized,” muttered Erni after a moment.

  “Of course. So are you,” answered Dominic. All three looked at him sharply, but he ignored the couple.

  “You wouldn’t really have turned that valve, would you?”

  The younger man was silent for several seconds. “I don’t think so,” he said at last.

  “We didn’t really talk you out of it, did we?”

  “I guess not. That’s the funny part. Once I was where I could do it, I – I don’t know; I guess having the power, knowing I was in charge and no one could stop me – well, that was enough.” He paused. “I think. Then the arguments distracted me, and I realized you’d sneaked your bug close enough so you probably could have stopped me. And I didn’t care that you could.

  “Nic, I’ll help you tell the kids, if you’ll tell me why getting even can seem so important.”

  “We’d better tell them that, too. If we can figure it out. Y’know, I’m not sure I would’ve stopped you.”

  The Treeferns listened sympathetically, and since they were also human not even Pam thought to ask why Jellyseal’s failure was the natives’ fault.

  EVERYWHERE

  Geoff Ryman

  Science fiction is sometimes criticized for concentrating too much on the dystopian and the apocalyptic, on the bleak pessimistic future, on how awful things are going to be in the years ahead, but occasionally a story set in a viable-feeling Utopian future does see print – a future that seems like it might actually come to pass, with luck, one that gives us hope that living in the 21st century and beyond might not be so bad after all – although usually, as in the brilliant little story that follows, to the people who actually live in that future, it’s not utopia at all, just everyday life: nothing special, no big deal, just the way things are. Which, of course, is the way utopias feel to those lucky enough to live inside them . . .

  Born in Canada, Geoff Ryman now lives in England. He made his first sale in 1976, to New Worlds, but it was not until 1984, when he made his first appearance in Interzone (the magazine where almost all of his published short fiction has appeared) with his brilliant novella “The Unconquered Country” that he first attracted any serious attention. “The Unconquered Country”, one of the best novellas of the decade, had a stunning impact on the science fiction scene of the day, and almost overnight established Ryman as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, winning him both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award; it was later published in a book version, The Unconquered Country: A Life History. His output has been sparse since then, by the high-production standards of the genre, but extremely distinguished, with his novel The Child Garden: A Low Comedy winning both the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His other novels include The Warrior Who Carried Life, the critically acclaimed mainstream novel Was, and a collection of four of his novellas, Unconquered Countries. His most recent book is the underground cult classic 253, the “print remix” of an “interactive hypertext novel” that in its original form ran on-line on Ryman’s homepage of www.ryman-novel.com; call it what you will, novel or print remix, 253 recently won the Philip K. Dick Award.

  WHEN WE KNEW Granddad was going to die, we took him to see the Angel of the North.

  When he got there, he said: It’s all different. There were none of these oaks all around it then, he said, Look at the size of them! The last time I saw this, he says to me, I was no older than you are now, and it was brand new, and we couldn’t make out if we liked it or not.

  We took him, the whole lot of us, on the tram from Blaydon. We made a day of it. All of Dad’s exes and their exes and some of their kids and me aunties and their exes and their kids. It wasn’t that happy a group to tell you the truth. But Granddad loved seeing us all in one place.

  He was going a bit soft by then. He couldn’t tell what the time was any more and his words came out wrong. The mums made us sit on his lap. He kept calling me by my dad’s name. His breath smelt funny but I didn’t mind, not too much. He told me about how things used to be in Blaydon.

  They used to have a gang in the Dene called Pedro’s Gang. They drank something called Woodpecker and broke people’s windows and they left empty tins of pop in t
he woods. If you were little you weren’t allowed out cos everyone’s mum was so fearful and all. Granddad once saw twelve young lads go over and hit an old woman and take her things. One night his brother got drunk and put his fist through a window, and he went to the hospital, and he had to wait hours before they saw him and that was terrible.

  I thought it sounded exciting meself. But I didn’t say so because Granddad wanted me to know how much better things are now.

  He says to me, like: the trouble was, Landlubber, we were just kids, but we all thought the future would be terrible. We all thought the world was going to burn up, and that everyone would get poorer and poorer, and the crime worse.

  He told me that lots of people had no work. I don’t really understand how anyone could have nothing to do. But then I’ve never got me head around what money used to be either.

  Or why they built that Angel. It’s not even that big, and it was old and covered in rust. It didn’t look like an Angel to me at all, the wings were so big and square. Granddad said, no, it looks like an airplane, that’s what airplanes looked like back then. It’s meant to go rusty, it’s the Industrial Spirit of the North.

  I didn’t know what he was on about. I asked Dad why the Angel was so important and he kept explaining it had a soul, but couldn’t say how. The church choir showed up and started singing hymns. Then it started to rain. It was a wonderful day out.

  I went back into the tram and asked me watch about the Angel.

  This is my watch, here, see? It’s dead good isn’t it, it’s got all sorts on it. It takes photographs and all. Here, look, this is the picture it took of Granddad by the Angel. It’s the last picture I got of him. You can talk to people on it. And it keeps thinking of fun things for you to do.