The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Back in the cockpit I saw Ulriss Fire was now drawing into the station shadow. Structural members jutted out all around and ahead I could see an old-style carrier shell, like a huge hexagonal nut, trailing umbilicals and docking tunnel connected to the curve of one bubble unit. Unseen, the grabship inserted my vessel into place and various clangs and crashes ensued.

  “Okay, you can power up your airlock now—nothing else, mind.”

  I did as instructed, watching the display as the airlock connected up to an exterior universal lock, then I headed back to scramble out through the Ulriss Fire’s airlock. The cramped interior of the carrier shell smelled of mold. I waited there, holding onto the knurled rods of something that looked like a piece of zero-g exercise equipment, eyeing brownish splashes on the walls while a saucer-shaped scanning drone dropped down on a column and gave me the once-over, then I proceeded to the docking tunnel, which smelled of urine. Beside the final lock into the bubble unit was a payment console, into which I inserted the required amount in New Carth Shillings. The lock opened to admit me and now I was of no further interest to station personnel. Others had come in like this. Some of their ships still remained docked. Some had been seized by those who owned the station to be broken for parts or sold on.

  Clad in a coldsuit, Jael trudged through a thin layer of CO2 snow toward the gates of the Arena. Glancing to either side, she eyed the numerous ships 2 down on the granite plain. Other figures were trudging in from them too and a lucky few were flying toward the place in gravcars. She’d considered pulling her trike out of storage, but it would have taken time to assemble and she didn’t intend staying here any longer than necessary.

  The entry arches—constructed of blocks of water ice as hard as iron at this temperature—were filled with the glimmering menisci of shimmer-shields, probably scavenged from the wreckage of ships floating about in the Graveyard, or maybe from the surface of one of the depopulated worlds. Reaching one of the arches, she pushed through a shield into a long anteroom into which all the arches debouched. The floor was flat granite cut with square spiral patterns for grip and a line of airlock doors punctuated the inner wall. This whole setup was provided for large crowds, which this place had never seen. Beside the airlock she approached was a teller machine of modern manufacture. She accessed it through her right-hand aug and made her payment electronically. The thick insulated lock door thumped open, belching vapor into the frigid air, freezing about her and falling as ice dust. Inside the lock, the temperature rose rapidly. CO2 ice ablated from her boots and clothing, and after checking the atmosphere reading down in the corner of her visor she retracted visor and hood back down into the collar of her suit.

  Beyond the next door was a pillared hall containing a market. Strolling between the stalls she observed the usual tourist tat sold in such places in the Polity, and much else besides. There, under a plasmel dome, someone was selling weapons, and beyond his stall she could hear the hiss and crack of his wares being tested in a thick-walled shooting gallery. There a row of food vendors were serving everything from burgers to alien arthropods you ate while they were still alive and that apparently gave some kind of high. The smell of coffee wafted across, along with tobacco, cannabis, and other more esoteric smokes.

  All around the walls of the hall, stairs wound up to other levels, some connecting above to the tunnels leading to the arena itself, others to the pens and others to private concerns. She knew where to go, but had some other business to conduct first with a dealer in biologicals. Anyway, she didn’t want the man she had specifically come here to see to think she was in a hurry, or anxious to buy the item he had on offer.

  The dealer’s emporium was built between four pillars, three floors tall and reaching the ceiling. The lower floor was a display area with four entrances around the perimeter. She entered and looked around. Aisles cut to a central spiral stair between tanks, terrariums, cages, display cases, and stock-search screens. She spotted a tank full of Spatterjay leeches, “Immortality in a bite! Guaranteed!,” a cage in which big scorpionlike insects were tearing into a mass of purple and green bones and meat, and a display containing little tubes of seeds below pictures of the plants they would produce. Mounting the stairs, she climbed to the next floor where two catadapts were studying something displayed on the screens of a nanoscope. They looked like customers, as did the thin woman who was peering into a cylindrical tank containing living Dracocorp augs. On the top floor, Jael found who she was looking for.

  The office was small, the rest of the floor obviously used for living accommodation. The woman with a severe skin complaint, baggy, layered clothing, and a tricorn hat, sat back with heavy snow boots up on her desk, crusted fingers up against her aug while she peered at screens showing views of those on the floors below. She was nodding—obviously conducting some transaction or conversation by aug. Jael stepped into the room, plumped herself down in one of the form chairs opposite, and waited. The woman glanced at her, smiled to expose a carnivore’s teeth, and held up one finger. Wait one moment.

  Her business done, the woman took her feet off the desk and turned her chair so she was facing Jael.

  “Well, what can I do for you?” she asked, utterly focused. “Anything under any sun is our motto. We’re also an agent for Dracocorp and are now branching out into cosmetics.”

  “Forgive me,” said Jael, “if I note that you’re not the best advert for the cosmetics.”

  The woman leant an elbow on the table, reached up, and peeled a thick dry flake of skin from her cheek. “That’s because you don’t know what you’re seeing. Once the change is complete my skin will be resistant to numerous acids and even to vacuum.”

  “I’m here to sell,” said Jael.

  The woman sat back, not quite so focused now. “I see. Well, we’re always prepared to take a look at what … people have to offer.”

  Jael removed a small sample tube from her belt cache, placed it on the desk edge and rolled it across. The woman took it up, peered inside, a powerful lens clicking down from her hat to cover her eye.

  “Interesting. What are they?”

  Jael tapped a finger against her right-hand aug. “This would be quicker.”

  A message flashed across to her, giving her a secure loading address. She transmitted the file she had compiled about the seeds gathered on that dusty little planet where she had obtained her real prize. The woman went blank for a few minutes while she ran through the data. Jael scanned around the room, wondering what security there was here.

  “I think we can do business—once I’ve confirmed all this.”

  “Please confirm away.”

  The woman took the tube over to a combined nanoscope and multispectrum scanner and inserted it inside.

  Jael continued, “But I don’t want money, Desorla.”

  Desorla froze, staring at the scope’s display. After a moment she said, “This all seems in order.” She paused, head bowed. “I haven’t heard that name in a long while.”

  “I find things out,” said Jael.

  Desorla turned and eyed the gun Jael now held. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me where Penny Royal is hiding.”

  Desorla chuckled unconvincingly. “Looking for legends? You can’t seriously—”

  Jael aimed and fired three times. Two explosions blew cavities in the walls, a third explosion flung paper fragments from a shelf of books, and a metallic tongue bleeding smoke slumped out from behind. Two cameras and the security drone—Jael had detected nothing else.

  “I’m very serious,” said Jael. “Please don’t make me go get my doctor’s bag.”

  Broeven took one look at me and turned white, well, as pale as a Krodorman can get. He must have sent some sort of warning signal, because suddenly two heavies appeared out of the fug from behind him—one a boosted woman with the face of an angel and a large grey military aug affixed behind her ear, the other an ophidapt man who was making a point of extruding the carbide claws from his finger
tips. The thin guy sitting opposite Broeven glanced round, then quickly drained his schooner of beer, took up a wallet from the table, nodded to Broeven, and departed. I sauntered over, turned the abandoned chair round, and sat astride it.

  “You’ve moved up in the world,” I said, nodding to Broeven’s protection.

  “So what do I call you now?” he asked, the whorls in the thick skin of his face flushing red.

  “Rho, which is actually my real name.”

  “That’s nice—we didn’t get properly acquainted last time we met.” He held up a finger. “Gene, get Rho a drink. Malt whisky do you?”

  I nodded. The woman frowned in annoyance and departed. Perhaps she thought the chore beneath her.

  “So what can I do for you, Rho?” he inquired.

  “Information.”

  “Which costs.”

  “Of course.” I peered down at the object the guy here before me had left on the table. It was a small chainglass case containing a strip of chameleoncloth with three crab-shaped and, if they were real, gold buttons pinned to it. “Are those real?”

  “They are. People know better than to try cheating me now.”

  I looked up. “I never cheated you.”

  “No, you promised not to open the outer airlock door if I told you what you wanted to know. My life in exchange for information and you stuck to your side of the deal. I can’t say that makes me feel any better about it.”

  “But you’re a businessman,” I supplied.

  “But I’m a businessman.”

  The boosted woman returned carrying a bottle of ersatz malt and a tumbler that she slammed down on the table before me, before stepping back. I can’t say I liked having her behind me. I reached down and carefully opened a belt pouch, feeling the tension notch up a bit. The ophidapt partially unfolded his arms and fully extended his claws. I took out a single blue stone and placed it next to the glass case. Broeven eyed the stone for a moment then picked it up between gnarled forefinger and thumb. He produced a reader and placed the etched sapphire inside.

  “Ten thousand,” he said. “For what?”

  “That’s for services rendered—twenty-three years ago—and if you don’t want to do further business with me, you keep it and I leave.”

  He slipped the sapphire, and the glass case, into the inner pocket of his heavy coat, then sat upright, contemplating me. I thought for a moment he was going to get up and leave. Trying to remain casual, I scanned around the interior of the bar and noticed it wasn’t so full as I’d remembered it being and everyone seemed a bit subdued, conversations whispered and more furtive, no one getting shit-faced.

  “Very well,” he said. “What information do you require?”

  “Two things: first I want everything you can track down about gabbleducks possibly in or near the Graveyard.” That got me a rather quizzical expression. “And second I want everything you can give me about Jael Feogril’s dealings over the last year or so.”

  “A further ten thousand,” he said, and I read something spooked in his expression. I took out another sapphire and slid it across to him. He checked it with his reader and pocketed it before uttering another word.

  “I’ll give you two things.” He made a circular gesture with one finger. “Jael Feogril might be dealing out of her league.”

  “Go on.”

  “Them … a light destroyer … Jael’s ship docked with it briefly only a month ago, before departing. They’re still out there.”

  I realized then why it seemed so quiet in the bar and elsewhere in the station. The people here were those who hadn’t run for cover, and were perhaps wishing they had. It was never the healthy option to remain in the vicinity of the Prador.

  “And the second thing?”

  “The location of the only gabbleduck in the Graveyard, which I can give you without even doing any checking, since I’ve already given it to Jael Feogril.”

  After he’d provided the information I headed away—I had enough to be going on with, and maybe, if I moved fast … I paused on my way back to my ship, seeing that Broeven’s female heavy was walking along behind me, and turned to face her. She walked straight past me, saying, “I’m not a fucking waitress.”

  She seemed in an awful hurry.

  On the stone floor two opponents faced off. Both were men, both were boosted. Jael wondered if people like them ever considered treatment for excessive testosterone production. The bald-headed thug was unarmed and resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath, twin-pupil eyes fixed on his opponent. The guy with the long queue of hair was also unarmed, though the platelike lumps all over his overly muscled body were evidence of subcutaneous armor. After a moment they closed and began hammering at each other again, fists impacting with meaty snaps against flesh, blows blocked and diverted, the occasional kick slamming home, though neither of them was really built for that kind of athleticism.

  Inevitably, one of them was called Tank—the one with the queue. The other was called Norris. These two had been hammering away at each other for twenty minutes to the growing racket from the audience, but whether that noise arose from the spectators’ enjoyment of the show or because they wanted to get to the next event was debatable.

  Eventually, after many scrappy encounters, Tank managed to deliver an axe kick to the side of Norris’s head and laid him out. Tank, though the winner, needed to be helped from the arena too, obviously having overextended himself with that last kick. Once the area was clear, the next event was announced and a gate opened somewhere below Jael. She observed a great furry muscular back and wide head as a giant mongoose shot out. The creature came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the arena and stood up to the height of a man on its hindquarters. Jael discarded her beer tube and stood, heading over toward the pens. The crowd was now shouting for one of the giant cobras the mongoose dispatched with utterly unamazing regularity. She wasn’t really all that interested.

  The doors down into the pens were guarded by a thug little different to those who had been in the ring below. He was there because previous security systems had often been breached and some of the fighters, animal, human, or machine, had been knobbled.

  “I’m here to see Koober,” said Jael.

  The man eyed her for a moment. “Jael Feogril,” he said, reaching back to open the door. “Of course you are.”

  Jael stepped warily past then descended the darkened stair.

  Koober was operating a small electric forklift on the tines of which rested the corpse of a seal. He raised a hand to her then motored forward to drop the load down into one of the pens. Jael stepped over and peered down at the ratty-looking polar bear that took hold of the corpse and dragged it back across the ice to one corner, leaving a gory trail.

  Koober, a thin hermaphrodite in much-repaired mesh inlaid overalls, leapt off the forklift and gestured. “This way.” He led her down a stair into moist rancid corridors then finally to an armored door that he opened with a press of his hand against a palm lock. At the back of the circular chamber within, squatting in its own excrement, was the animal she had come to see—thick chains leading from a steel collar to secure it to the back wall.

  A poor-looking specimen, about the size of a Terran black bear, its head was bowed low, the tip of its bill resting against the ground. Lying on the filthy stone beside it were the dismembered remains of something obviously grown hastily in a vat—weak, splintered bones and watery flesh, tumors exposed like bunches of grapes. While Jael watched, the gabbleduck abruptly hissed and heaved its head upright. Its green eyes ran in an arc across its domed head, there were twelve or so of them: two large egg-shaped ones toward the center, two narrow ones below these like underscores, two rows of small round ones arcing out to terminate against two triangular ones. They all had lids—the outer two blinking open and closed alternately. Its conjoined forelimbs were folded mummylike across the raised crosshatch ribbing of its chest, its gut was baggy and veined, and purple sores seeped in its brown-green skin.
/>   “And precisely how much did you want for this?” inquired Jael disbelievingly.

  “It’s very rare,” said Koober. “There’s a restriction on export now and that’s pushed prices up. You won’t find any others inside the Graveyard, and those running wild on Polity worlds have mostly been tagged and are watched.”

  “Why then are you selling it?”

  Koober looked shifty—something he seemed better at doing than looking after the animals he provided for the arena. “It’s not suitable.”

  “You mean it won’t fight,” said Jael.

  “Shunder-club froob,” said the gabbleduck, but its heart did not seem to be in it.

  “All it does is sit there and do that. We put it up against the lion”—he pointed at some healing claw marks in its lower stomach—“and it just sat there and starting muttering to itself. The lion tried to jump out of the arena.”

  Jael nodded to herself, then turned away. “Not interested.”

  “Wait!” Koober grabbed her arm. She caught his hand, turned it into a wrist lock, forcing him down to his knees.

  “Don’t touch me.” She released him.

  “If it’s a matter of the price—”

  “It’s a matter of whether it will even survive long enough for you to get it aboard my ship, and even then I wonder how long it will survive afterward.”

  “Look, I’ll be taking a loss, but I’m sure we can work something out … .” Inside, Jael smiled. When the deal was finally struck she allowed that smile out, for even if the creature died she might well net a profit just selling its corpse. She had no intention of letting it die. The medical equipment, and related gabbleduck physiology files aboard Kobashi should see to that, along with her small cargo of frozen Masadan grazers—the gabbleduck’s favored food.