“That’s Chicago,” she whispered, unable to pull her eyes away. Tsing stepped beside her and nodded.
“That’s where you grew up, isn’t it?” His smile broadened. “I told you I was taking you home.” Before she could stop him, Tsing put his hands against his helmet, gave it a sharp twist, then lifted the bulky headgear off and tucked it under his arm. His dark hair was damp with sweat.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Maybe.” He grinned. “Probably. Does it really matter? Open your visor, Jenine. Stop denying yourself. Admit it. This is what you’ve been searching for. Everything can be different this time. Anything you want, yours for the taking.”
She felt the dream sweep through her, the sweetness of the moment palpable. Tsing was right, wasn’t he? What good did it do to deny what she saw, whether it made sense or not? How long had she been running from herself? Slowly, her hands rose to her helmet. She placed her fingers firmly against the hard plastic, took a long swallow of the rubber-tinged air, then closed her eyes. Her forearms tensed as she started to twist.
“No.” She let her hands drop to her sides. “This isn’t right.”
Her eyes fluttered open. Gone was city and the elegantly carved chamber, the narrow corridor replacing it, the only light the harsh white burn from her helmet lamp. At her feet a body in a heavy excursion suit lay sprawled on the rough stone floor.
“Paul?” She crouched beside the body and rolled it over. Tsing’s visor was closed, but she had no way of knowing if he was alive or dead. Frantically, she groped for the carry sack, but found nothing. She rose stiffly to her feet and looked back the way she had came. The sack lay crumpled at the top of the stairs leading downward. She rushed to it, gathered it in her cold fingers, then hurried back to Tsing. Shaking, she changed his oxygen cannister and battery, then shook him. “Can you hear me?”
A muffled groan answered in her speakers. She forced herself not to cry in sheer relief. Still hampered by the tight space, Jenine pulled the woozy Tsing to his feet, and holding him under the shoulders, guided him toward the stairs.
Snow met her headlamp, Titan’s cold surface just outside the rectangular doorway. Too narrow to walk abreast, Jenine kept one hand on Tsing’s arm as she led him toward the exit.
“Almost there,” she said, coaxing him along.
“No …” His breath was labored. “Need to go back.”
“We are going back. Just a little farther to the ship.” Her boot brushed against something, and she glanced down, relieved to see the oxygen tanks she had exchanged from Kvass and Morrissy lying where she had left them. Somehow they vindicated her memory. “Come on, Paul. We can do this.”
“Can’t leave.” He tried to pull away. “Not yet.”
“Listen to me. We’re both low on air. We need to get back to the ship.” The wind forced a swirling tongue of snow into the passage. Tiny pellets struck her helmet as she ducked under the lintel back into the world beyond the Wall. Night was falling as Titan slid into Saturn’s shadow, the gas giant a hazy crescent stretching from ground to zenith. In the deepening shadows, the lights from the lander played hypnotically against the ice. She paused a moment to stretch the kinks from her back, grateful to finally be free of the enigmatic structure. A flash of light at the lander brought her up cold.
“What the hell are they doing?” Horrified, she watched the attitude jets flash in sequence. Suddenly, she understood. Morrissy was preflighting the craft for launch. She twisted around so fast she nearly lost her balance, and grabbed Tsing’s wrist. “Come on! They’re going to leave without us.”
She broke into a slow jog, hampered by the odd gravity and the still woozy Tsing. He pulled against her, dragging her back toward the doorway.
“We can’t leave. Not now. Not after I’ve found the way home.” With a twist, he broke free. Jenine tried to grab him, but he was already out of reach.
“Damn it, Paul!” She stood, torn by indecision, and watched his stumbling, retreating form. Two hundred meters still lay between herself and the lander. Even if she could stop Tsing, she couldn’t physically drag him to the ship. Her only hope now lay in stopping Morrissy from launching. A pounding, throbbing pain built inside her skull. A quick glance at her suit monitor confirmed her suspicion. Her own oxygen supply was nearly gone. Decision made, she turned toward the lander, calling frantically over the radio as she skip-walked across the frozen ground.
“Four-eight November, come in.” The effort of speaking cost her, stealing precious gulps of air. “Morrissy, please, respond.”
A red glow built beneath the craft, a shimmering blush as the engines came online. Daring the blast that would certainly scorch her to cinders should Morrissy launch while she stood outside, she threw herself against the airlock’s outer door and pounded her fists on the heavy plate, desperate to get the panicked deputy’s attention.
“Morrissy! Listen to me!”
Her chest ached, the fear and lack of air overwhelming. Jenine felt as if she was drowning inside her helmet. A rhythmic shudder pulsed through the hull. An image of herself engulfed in flames as the craft broke ground flashed through her mind. Desperate, she looked for shelter, but saw only the pot-hunter’s derelict ship fifty meters away. Out of options, she dashed toward the gaping hatchway.
The craft was dark within, the walls rimed with ice. Jenine fell on the ramp, bruised her knee, but staggered to her feet and blundered down the short corridor toward the cockpit. Like the rest of the ship, the control panel was frosted, the systems long dead. She fell more than sat into the pilot’s chair. Out the corner of her eye she saw blue-white flame spread beneath her own ship, the lander quivering as Morrissy powered up.
“You bastard,” she shouted over the radio. “Damn you, you stupid, stupid bastard.”
The chair felt rock hard beneath her, the padding frozen solid. Her headache had worsened, her air supply nearly gone. Silently, she laughed at the irony. At least she understood how the frozen corpse wearing her excursion suit wound up inside the abandoned ship. She clenched her fists in frustration and shut her eyes.
“No. I refuse to believe this is happening.”
Jenine took a long, slow breath, the air sour as it wheezed in and out of the helmet’s overworked regulator, then opened her eyes once more. A grim smile crept across her face. She was still inside the Wall, less than a meter from the exit. Paul Tsing stood behind her, weaving drunkenly on his feet. Outside, past the narrow opening, the lander sat alone, the pot-hunter’s ship vanished. She took Tsing by the wrist.
“Let’s get back to the lander.”
“But …”
“No,” she said firmly and led him outside. Wind tore at her, driving her sideways as she struggled toward the craft. Snow swirled, at times so heavy it blinded her, but she held to the flashing orange strobe and trudged on. A vague shape took form, the lander a slumbering dragon in the gloom. Tsing said nothing as they reached the airlock, but stood complacently beside her as she raised her arm and pounded three sharp knocks against the hatch.
“Captain Tsing?” A nervous voice blared inside her helmet. Jenine breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s me, Morrissy. I’ve got Paul. Cycle us through, okay?”
The airlock slid open. Jenine helped Tsing inside, then followed him into the cramped chamber. The effort was nearly beyond her. The outer door resealed. Air whistled around her as the lock emptied then refilled with fresh oxygen. Finally, the inner door slid aside. Morrissy and Kvass stood just inside, waiting for them. Jenine pushed Tsing through the hatchway, then popped her helmet off. The musty, recycled air tasted sweeter than springtime. Feeling stronger, she nodded at Tsing.
“Help him. He’s suffering from hypoxia.”
Together, they removed Tsing’s helmet, then led him to the nearest couch and eased him down. His hair was matted, his skin pale, but his eyes looked clearer.
“Thank God you came back when you did,” Kvass said. Jenine thought she heard a note of guilt in his
reedy voice. “Control’s been calling for more than an hour. They want to know if we need another ship to come down?”
“No.” Jenine shook her head firmly. “Tell them we’re okay. No, wait. I’ll tell them myself in a minute.” Somehow, she wasn’t surprised that communication had returned.
“Ma’am?” Morrissy shuffled his boots nervously. “What about Bruner? Shouldn’t we go back outside and retrieve …” He hesitated. “Retrieve his body?”
Jenine glanced across the narrow aisle at Tsing. He caught her eye and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. He understood. So did she. Somewhere inside that labyrinth, somehow, Bruner was still alive, still contemplating whether to jump from the high doorway or die from asphyxiation. All she had to do was find him. The thought sent a chill through her. The memory of that cityscape glimpsed from the hidden balcony was still too fresh, too seductive. Anything that could be contemplated could be found there, but only at a price. Madness lay in that direction. She turned back to face Morrissy.
“We can bring the body back later, before the next launch window. But not tonight.”
“Ma’am …” Again, Morrissy paused. He chewed on his lip, as if he couldn’t bring himself to frame the question. “What is that place?”
“You mean the Wall?” She thought about the question. She could have told him that it was Hell. She almost said it was Heaven. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“What do we tell them when they ask what happened down here?” Kvass inched closer. Jenine looked up at him and held his gaze, then smiled.
“The truth,” she said. “We just tell them the truth.”
Kiosk
BRUCE STERLING
Here’s a visit to a powerful and surprising near future where one key invention makes all the difference—in ways that nobody ever even thought that it would.
One of the most powerful and innovative new talents to enter SF in the past few decades, Bruce Sterling sold his first story in 1976. By the end of the ’80s he had established himself, with a series of stories set in his exotic “Shaper/Mechanist” future, with novels such as the complex and Stapledonian Schismatrix and the well-received Islands in the Net (as well as with his editing of the influential anthology Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology and the infamous critical magazine Cheap Truth), as perhaps the prime driving force behind the revolutionary “Cyberpunk” movement in science fiction, and also as one of the best new hard-science writers to enter the field in some time. His other books include a critically acclaimed non-fiction study of First Amendment issues in the world of computer networking, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier ; the novels The Artificial Kid, Involution Ocean, Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, Distraction, Zeitgeist, The Zenith Angle, and a novel in collaboration with William Gibson, The Difference Engine; an omnibus collection (it contains the novel Schismatrix as well as most of his Shaper/Mechanist stories), Schismatrix Plus; a non-fiction study of the future, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next 50 Years; and the landmark collections Crystal Express, Globalhead, A Good Old-fashioned Future, and Visionary in Residence. His most recent book is a massive retrospective collection, Ascendancies : The Best of Bruce Sterling. His story “Bicycle Repairman” earned him a long-overdue Hugo in 1997, and he won another Hugo in 1997 for his story “Taklamakan.” His stories have appeared in our First through Eighth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-third Annual Collections.
I
The fabrikator was ugly, noisy, a fire hazard, and it smelled. Borislav got it for the kids in the neighborhood.
One snowy morning, in his work gloves, long coat, and fur hat, he loudly power-sawed through the wall of his kiosk. He duct-taped and stapled the fabrikator into place.
The neighborhood kids caught on instantly. His new venture was a big hit.
The fabrikator made little plastic toys from 3-D computer models. After a week, the fab’s dirt-cheap toys literally turned into dirt. The fabbed toys just crumbled away, into a waxy, non-toxic substance that the smaller kids tended to chew.
Borislav had naturally figured that the brief lifetime of these toys might discourage the kids from buying them. This just wasn’t so. This wasn’t a bug: this was a feature. Every day after school, an eager gang of kids clustered around Borislav’s green kiosk. They slapped down their tinny pocket change with mittened hands. Then they exulted, quarreled, and sometimes even punched each other over the shining fab-cards.
The happy kid would stick the fab-card (adorned with some glossily fraudulent pic of the toy) into the fabrikator’s slot. After a hot, deeply exciting moment of hissing, spraying, and stinking, the fab would burp up a freshly minted dinosaur, baby doll, or toy fireman.
Foot traffic always brought foot traffic. The grown-ups slowed as they crunched the snowy street. They cast an eye at the many temptations ranked behind Borislav’s windows. Then they would impulse-buy. A football scarf, maybe. A pack of tissues for a sneezy nose.
Once again he was ahead of the game: the only kiosk in town with a fabrikator.
The fabrikator spoke to him as a veteran street merchant. Yes, it definitely meant something that those rowdy kids were so eager to buy toys that fell apart and turned to dirt. Any kiosk was all about high-volume repeat business. The stick of gum. The candy bar. The cheap, last-minute bottle-of-booze. The glittery souvenir key chain that tourists would never use for any purpose whatsoever. These objects were the very stuff of a kiosk’s life.
Those colored plastic cards with the 3-D models … . The cards had potential. The older kids were already collecting the cards: not the toys that the cards made, but the cards themselves.
And now, this very day, from where he sat in his usual street cockpit behind his walls of angled glass, Borislav had taken the next logical step. He offered the kids ultra-glossy, overpriced, collector cards that could not and would not make toys. And of course—there was definitely logic here—the kids were going nuts for that business model. He had sold a hundred of them.
Kids, by the nature of kids, weren’t burdened with a lot of cash. Taking their money was not his real goal. What the kids brought to his kiosk was what kids had to give him—futurity. Their little churn of street energy—that was the symptom of something bigger, just over the horizon. He didn’t have a word for that yet, but he could feel it, in the way he felt a coming thunderstorm inside his aching leg.
Futurity might bring a man money. Money never saved a man with no future.
II
Dr. Grootjans had a jaw like a horse, a round blue pillbox of a hat, and a stiff winter coat that could likely stop gunfire. She carried a big European shopping wand.
Ace was acting as her official street guide, an unusual situation, since Ace was the local gangster. “Madame,” Ace told her, “this is the finest kiosk in the city. Boots here is our philosopher of kiosks. Boots has a fabrikator! He even has a water fountain!”
Dr. Grootjans carefully photographed the water fountain’s copper pipe, plastic splash basin, and disposable paper pop-out cups. “Did my guide just call you ‘Boots’?” she said. “‘Boots’ as in footgear?”
“Everybody calls me that.”
Dr. Grootjans patted her translation earpiece, looking pleased. “This water fountain is the exhaust from your fuel cell.”
Borislav rubbed his mustache. “When I first built my kiosk here, the people had no running water.”
Dr. Grootjans waved her digital wand over his selections of panty hose. She photographed the rusty bolts that fixed his kiosk to the broken pavement. She took particular interest in his kiosk’s peaked roof. People often met their friends and lovers at Borislav’s kiosk, because his towering satellite dish was so easy to spot. With its painted plywood base and showy fringes of snipped copper, the dish looked fit for a minaret.
“Please try on this pretty necklace, madame! Made by a fine artist, she lives right up the street. Very famous. Artistic. Valuable. R
egional. Handmade!”
“Thank you, I will. Your shop is a fine example of the local small-to-micro regional enterprise. I must make extensive acquisitions for full study by the Parliamentary committee.”
Borislav swiftly handed over a sheet of flimsy. Ace peeled off a gaping plastic bag and commenced to fill it with candy bars, place mats, hand-knitted socks, peasant dolls in vests and angular headdresses, and religious-war press-on tattoos. “He has such variety, madame! Such unusual goods!”
Borislav leaned forward through his cash window, so as to keep Dr. Grootjans engaged as Ace crammed her bags. “Madame, I don’t care to boast about my modest local wares … . Because whatever I sell is due to the people! You see, dear doctor madame, every object desired by these colorful local people has a folk tale to tell us … .”
Dr. Grootjan’s pillbox hat rose as she lifted her brows. “A folk tale, did you say?”
“Yes, it’s the people’s poetry of commerce! Certain products appear … the products flow through my kiosk … I present them pleasingly, as best I can … . Then, the people buy them, or they just don’t buy!”
Dr. Grootjans expertly flapped open a third shopping bag. “An itemized catalog of all your goods would be of great interest to my study committee.”
Borislav put his hat on.
Dr. Grootjans bored in. “I need the complete, digital inventory of your merchandise. The working file of the full contents of your store. Your commercial records from the past five years will be useful in spotting local consumer trends.”
Borislav gazed around his thickly packed shelving. “You mean you want a list of everything I sell in here? Who would ever find the time?”
“It’s simple! You must have heard of the European Unified Electronic Product Coding System.” Dr. Grootjans tucked the shopping wand into her canvas purse, which bore an imperial logo of thirty-five golden stars in a widening spiral. “I have a smart-ink brochure here which displays in your local language. Yes, here it is: A Partial Introduction to EUEPCS Regulatory Adoption Procedures.”
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 41
