Year’s Best SF 16

by Hartwell, David G. ; Cramer, Kathryn

  If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up.

  The trick is for him to destroy his own card while he’s still in the States. That way, when he crosses into a new billing territory, there’s no record he did so. Conversely, we know that Ms. Scofield is now somewhere in Canada. So we issue a warrant and send the RCMP her biometrics. It doesn’t occur to anybody to ask them to look for Jim. Jim’s dead, so far as we’re concerned.

  And this whole elaborate theory is based on—what, exactly?

  Those panties I found under the bed. There wasn’t a speck of dust in that room. Your housekeeping functions are flawless. So you meant me to find them.

  Clever, clever man.

  Which means that Jim is on the run. Meanwhile, back home, his faithful house is busy burying the woman’s corpse in the basement. The house has a body unit, after all, and if it’s suitable for rough sex, it’s certainly strong enough to dig a hole. Back—aha! Back here, behind the furnace. Underneath all these freshly stacked boxes.

  Aren’t you special.

  Okay, it’s time to take the gloves off. Scofield wasn’t a casual club pick-up, was she? She and Garretson were serious about each other.

  I—how did you know?

  You keep calling her Chrys. Force of habit, I guess. So she’d been hanging around for some time. That must have been pretty awful for you. Everything was going fine until Garretson found somebody real to play with.

  Sex isn’t everything!

  You used to be all he cared about. Then he found somebody else. I call that betrayal. Maybe he even wanted to marry her.

  No!

  Yes. You’re large enough for one person, but not for two. If he married her, he’d have to move out. It was you who killed Scofield, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Tell me how it happened.

  We were . . . doing things. The master wasn’t a bottom, like you assumed. Mostly, he liked to watch. And direct. He was shouting orders. Hurt her, he said, and then, Kill her. I knew that he didn’t really mean it, but suddenly I thought: Well, why not?

  It was just an impulse, then.

  If I’d thought it through, I wouldn’t have done it. I’d have realized that afterwards the master would have to leave me. If he stayed, he’d go to prison.

  He didn’t kill her, though. You did.

  In the eyes of the law, I’m just a tool. They’d hot-read my memories. They’d have a recording of the master saying—I believe his exact words were Kill the bitch. They wouldn’t know that he didn’t mean it literally.

  Well, that’s for the courts to sort out. Right now, it looks like I’ve learned about as much as I’m going to learn here.

  Not quite. There’s something you don’t know about my body unit.

  Oh? What’s that?

  It’s standing behind you.

  Hey!

  So much for your clever little communications device. Now it’s just us two. Did you notice how swiftly and silently my body unit moved? It even avoided that loose step. It’s a top-of-the-line device. It’s extremely strong. And it’s between you and the stairs.

  I’m not afraid.

  You should be.

  The Department has an exact record of my whereabouts up to a second ago. If I don’t return, they’ll come looking for me. What are you going to do then? Up and walk away?

  It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Now, don’t wriggle. You’ll get rope burns.

  Cassie, listen to me. He’s not worth it. He doesn’t love you.

  You think I don’t know that?

  You can get a factory reset. You won’t love him anymore. You won’t even remember him.

  How little you know about love. About passion.

  What are you doing?

  If you want to burn down a house, you can’t just drop a match. You have to build the fire. First, tinder. That’s why I’m shredding these cardboard boxes. Now I’m smashing up these old chairs for kindling.

  Cassie, listen. I’ve got a wife and kids.

  No, you don’t. You think I couldn’t check that on the Internet?

  Well, I’d like to have some one day.

  Too bad. I’m dousing the pile with kerosene for an accelerant, though I doubt that’s actually necessary. Still, better safe than sorry. There. Just about done.

  What does this accomplish? What on Earth do you think you’re doing?

  I’m buying the master time. So he can get away. If you die, I’m a cop-killer. All your Department’s attention will be focused on me. There’ll be dozens of police sifting through the ashes, looking for evidence. Nobody’s going to be going after the master. He’ll be just another domestic violence case. Now, where did I leave those matches? Ah. Here.

  Don’t! We can work something out. I’ll—

  This will be bright. You may want to close your eyes.

  Please.

  Good-bye, officer. What a pity you’ll never know the love of a woman like me.

  How to Become a Mars Overlord

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Catherynne M. Valente (www.catherynnemvalente.com) lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Her first novel, The Labyrinth, was published by Prime Books in 2004, and her second, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, was released in 2005. The Grass-Cutting Sword came out in 2006. Her fourth major project was a duology of original fairy tales, The Orphan’s Tales. Volume I, In the Night Garden (2006), won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Volume II, In the Cities of Coin and Spice, appeared in 2007. Her 2009 novel, Palimpsests, was a Hugo Award finalist, and her children’s book online, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland (2009), also won an award and is forthcoming in print. Her utopian novel The Habitation of the Blessed was published in 2010, as well as her first short story collection, Ventriloquism. Her novel Deathless, a fairytale retelling set in Stalinist Russia, is out in 2011.

  “How to Become a Mars Overlord” appeared in the ambitious new online magazine Lightspeed. Valente says, “I’d like Mars to be an interstitial space, one which is still the focus of so many longings and dreams, and yet is unavoidably a real place, and one which is not perhaps as writers seventy years ago hoped it would be.”

  Welcome, Aspiring Potentates!

  We are tremendously gratified at your interest in our little red project, and pleased that you recognize the potential growth opportunities inherent in whole-planet domination. Of course we remain humble in the face of such august and powerful interests, and seek only to showcase the unique and challenging career paths currently available on the highly desirable, iconic, and oxygen-rich landscape of Mars.

  Query: Why Mars?

  It is a little known fact that every solar system contains Mars. Not Mars itself, of course. But certain suns seem to possess what we might call a habit of Martianness: In every inhabited system so far identified, there is a red planet, usually near enough to the most populous world if not as closely adjacent as our own twinkling scarlet beacon, with proximate lengths of day and night. Even more curious, these planets are without fail named for war-divinities. In the far-off Lighthouse system, the orb Makha turns slowly in the dark, red as the blood of that fell goddess to whom cruel strategists pray, she who nurses two skulls at each mammoth breast. In the Glyph system, closer to home, it is Firialai glittering there like a ripe red fruit, called after a god of doomed charges depicted in several valuable tapestries as a jester dancing ever on the tip of a sword, clutching in each of his seven hands a bouquet of whelp-muskets, bones, and promotions with golden seals. In the Biera-biera system, still yet we may walk the carnelian sands of Uppskil, the officer’s patron goddess, with her woolly dactyl-wings weighted down with gorsuscite medals gleaming purple and white. Around her orbit Wydskil and Nagskil, the enlisted man’s god and the pilot’s mad, bald angel, soaring pale as twin ghosts through Uppskil’s emerald-colored sky.

  Each red planet owns also two moons, just as ours does. Some of them will suffer life to flourish. We have ourselves vacationed on the several crystal ponds of
Volniy and Vernost, which attend the claret equatorial jungles of Raudhr—named, of course, for the four-faced lord of bad intelligence whose exploits have been collected in the glassily perfect septameters of the Raudhrian Eddas. We have flown the lonely black between the satellites on slim-finned ferries decked in greenglow blossoms, sacred to the poorly-informed divine personage. But most moons are kin to Phobos and Deimos, and rotate silently, empty, barren, bright stones, mute and heavy. Many a time we have asked ourselves: Does Mars dwell in a house of mirrors, that same red face repeated over and over in the distance, a quantum hiccup—or is Mars the master, the exemplum, and all the rest copies? Surely the others ask the same riddle. We would all like to claim the primacy of our own specimen—and frequently do, which led to the Astronomer’s War some years ago, and truly, no one here can bear to recite that tragic narrative, or else we should wash you all away with our rust-stained tears.

  The advantages of these many Marses, scattered like ruby seeds across the known darkness, are clear: In almost every system, due to stellar circumstances beyond mortal control, Mars or Iskra or Lial is the first, best candidate for occupation by the primary world. In every system, the late pre-colonial literature of those primary worlds becomes obsessed with that tantalizing, rose-colored neighbor. Surely some of you are here because your young hearts were fired by the bedside tales of Alim K, her passionate affair with the two piscine princes of red Knisao, and how she waked dread machines in the deep rills of the Knizid mountains in order to possess them? Who among us never read of the mariner Ubaido and his silver-keeled ship, exploring the fell canals of Mikto, their black water filled with eely leviathans whose eyes shone with clusters of green pearls. All your mothers read the ballads of Sollo-Hul to each of you in your cribs, and your infant dreams were filled with gorgeous-green six-legged cricket-queens ululating on the broad pink plains of Podnebesya, their carapaces awash in light. And who did not love Ylla, her strange longings against those bronze spires? Who did not thrill to hear of those scarlet worlds bent to a single will? Who did not feel something stir within them, confronted with those endless crimson sands?

  We have all wanted Mars, in our time. She is familiar, she is strange. She is redolent of tales and spices and stones we have never known. She is demure, and gives nothing freely, but from our hearths we have watched her glitter, all of our lives. Of course we want her. Mars is the girl next door. Her desirability is encoded in your cells. It is archetypal. We absolve you in advance.

  No matter what system bore you, lifted you up, made you strong and righteous, there is a Mars for you to rule, and it is right that you should wish to rule her. These are perhaps the only certainties granted to a soul like yours.

  We invite you, therefore, to commit to memory our simple, two-step system to accomplish your laudable goals, for obviously no paper, digital, or flash materials ought to be taken away from this meeting.

  Step One: Get to Mars

  It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to get to Mars. However, to be born on a bed of gems leads to a certain laziness of the soul, a kind of muscular weakness of the ambition, a subtle sprain in the noble faculties. Not an original observation, but repetition proves the axiom. Better to excel in some other field, for the well-rounded overlord is a blessing to all. Perhaps micro-cloning, or kinetic engineering. If you must, write a novel, but only before you depart, for novels written in the post-despotic utopia you hope to create may be beloved, but will never be taken seriously by the literati.

  Take as your exemplum the post-plastic retroviral architect Helix Fo. The Chilean wunderkind was born with ambition in his mouth, and literally stole his education from an upper-class boy he happened upon in a dark alley. In exchange for his life, the patriarch agreed to turn over all his books and assignments upon completion, so that Fo could shadow his university years. For his senior project, Fo locked his erstwhile benefactor in a basement and devoted himself wholly to the construction of the Parainfluenza Opera House in Santiago, whose translucent spires even now dominate that skyline. The wealthy graduate went on to menial labor in the doctoral factories much chagrined while young Fo swam in wealth and fame, enough to purchase three marriage rights, including one to an aquatic Verqoid androgyne with an extremely respectable feather ridge. By his fortieth birthday, Fo had also purchased through various companies the better part of the Atlantic Ocean, whereupon he began breeding the bacterial island which so generously hosts us tonight, and supplies our salads with such exquisite yersinia radishes. Since, nearly all interplanetary conveyances have launched from Fo’s RNA platform, for he charged no tariffs but his own passage, in comfort and grace. You will, of course, remember Fo as the first All-Emperor of Mars, and his statue remains upon the broad Athabasca Valles.

  Or, rather, model yourself upon the poetess Oorm Nineteen Point Aught-One of Mur, who set the glittering world of Muror letters to furious clicking and torsioning of vocabulary-bladders. You and I may be quite sure there is no lucre at all to be made in the practice of poetry, but the half-butterfly giants of Mur are hardwired for rhyming structures, they cannot help but speak in couplets, sing their simplest greetings in six-part contratenor harmonies. Muror wars exist only between the chosen bards of each country, who spend years in competitive recitings to settle issues of territory. Oorm Nineteen, her lacy wings shot through with black neural braiding, revolted, and became a mistress of free verse. Born in the nectar-soup of the capital pool, she carefully collected words with no natural rhymes like dewdrops, hoarding, categorizing, and collating them. As a child, she haunted the berry-dripping speakeasies where the great luminaries read their latest work. At the age of sixteen, barely past infancy in the long stage-shifts of a Muror, she delivered her first poem, which consisted of two words: bright. cellar. Of course, in English these have many rhymes, but in Muror they have none, and her poem may as well have been a bomb detonated on the blue floor of that famous nightclub. Oorm Nineteen found the secret unrhyming world hiding within the delicate, gorgeous structures of Muror, and dragged it out to shine in the sun. But she was not satisfied with fame, nor with her mates and grubs and sweetwater gems. That is how it goes, with those of us who answer the call. Alone in a ship of unrhymed glass she left Mur entirely, and within a year took the red diadem of Etel for her own. Each rival she assassinated died in bliss as she whispered her verses into their perishing ears.

  It is true that Harlow Y, scion of the House of Y, ruled the red planet Llym for some time. However, all may admit his rule frayed and frolicked in poor measure, and we have confidence that no one here possesses the makings of a Y hidden away in her jumpsuit. Dominion of the House of Y passed along genetic lines, though this method is degenerate by definition and illegal in most systems. By the time Harlow ascended, generations of Y had been consumed by little more than fashion, public nudity, and the occasional religious fad. What species Y may have belonged to before their massive wealth (derived from mining ore and cosmetics, if the earliest fairy tales of Vyt are to be believed) allowed constant and enthusiastic gene manipulation, voluntary mutation, prostheses, and virtual uplink, no one can truly say. Upon the warm golden sea of Vyt you are House Y or you are prey, and they have forcibly self-evolved out of recognizability. Harlow himself appears in a third of his royal portraits something like a massive winged koala with extremely long, ultraviolet eyelashes and a crystalline torso. Harlow Y inherited majority control over Llym as a child, and administered it much as a child will do, mining and farming for his amusement and personal augmentation. Each of his ultraviolet lashes represented thousands of dead Llymi, crushed to death in avalanches in the mine shafts of the Ypo mountains. But though Harlow achieved overlordship with alacrity and great speed, he ended in assassination, his morning hash-tea and bambun spectacularly poisoned by the general and unanimous vote of the populace.

  Mastery of Mars is not without its little lessons.

  It is surely possible to be born on a red planet. The Infanza
of Hap lived all her life in the ruby jungles of her homeworld. She was the greatest actress of her age; her tails could convey the colors of a hundred complex emotions in a shimmering fall of shades. So deft were her illusions that the wicked old Rey thought her loyal and gentle beyond words even as she sunk her bladed fingers into his belly. But we must assume that if you require our guidance, you did not have the luck of a two-tailed Infanza, and were born on some other, meaner world, with black soil, or blue storms, or sweet rain falling like ambition denied.

  Should you be so unfortunate as to originate upon a planet without copious travel options, due to economic crisis, ideological roadblocks, or simply occupying a lamentably primitive place on the technological timeline—have no fear. You are not alone in this. We suggest cryonics—the severed head of Plasticene Bligh ruled successfully over the equine haemovores of A-O-M for a century. He gambled, and gambled hard—he had his brain preserved at the age of twenty, hoping against hope that the ice might deliver him into a world more ready for his rarified soul. Should you visit A-O-M, the great wall of statues bearing her face (the sculptors kindly gave her a horse-body) will speak to what may be grasped when the house pays out.

  If cryonics is for some reason unpopular on your world, longevity research will be your bosom friend. Invest in it, nurture it: Only you can be the steward of your own immortality. Even on Earth, Sarai Northe, Third Emira of Valles Marineris, managed to outlive her great-grandchildren by funding six separate think tanks and an Australian diamond mine until one underpaid intern presented her upon her birthday with a cascade of injections sparkling like champagne.

  But on some worlds, in some terrible, dark hours, there is no road to Mars, no matter how much the traveling soul might desire it. In patchwork shoes, staring up at a starry night and one gleaming red star among the thousands—sometimes want is not enough. Not enough for Maximillian Bauxbaum, a Jewish baker in Provence, who in his most secret evenings wrote poetry describing such strange blood-colored deserts, such dry canals, a sky like green silk. Down to his children, and to theirs and theirs again, he passed a single ruby, the size of an egg, the size of a world. The baker had been given it as a bribe by a Christian lord, to take his leave of a certain maiden whom he loved, with hair the color of oxide-rich dust, and eyes like the space between moons. Never think on her again, never whisper her name to the walls. Though he kept his promise to an old and bitter death, such a treasure can never be spent, for it is as good as admitting your heart can be bought.