The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four

by Jonathan Strahan

  "Just asking," Random called after her.

  When she burst into the kitchen, Al was arranging a layer of lasagna noodles in a casserole. Yet another of her favorite dishes; Mariska should have known something was wrong. She gasped when he looked over his shoulder at her. His eyes were shiny and his cheeks were wet.

  "You knew." She could actually hear herself panicking. "She wants to drag me off to some stinking rock twenty light years away and you knew."

  "I didn't. But I guessed." The weight of his sadness knocked her back onto one of the dining room chairs. "She stopped by right after you left. She's looking for you."

  "I'm not here."

  "Okay." He picked up a cup of shredded mozzarella and sprinkled it listlessly over the noodles.

  "You can't let her do this, Al. You're my daddy. You're supposed to protect me."

  "It's a term contract, Mariska. I'm already in the option year."

  "Slag the contract. And slag you for signing it. I don't want to go."

  "Then don't. I don't think she'll make you. But you need to think about it." He kept his head down and spooned sauce onto the lasagna. "It's space, Mariska. You're a spacer."

  "Not yet. I haven't even passed tomatoes. I could wash out. I will wash out."

  He sniffed and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

  "I don't understand," she said. "Why are you taking her side?"

  "Because you're a child and she's your legal parent. Because you can't live here forever." His voice climbed unsteadily to a shout. Al had never shouted at her before. "Because all of this is over." He shook the spoon at their kitchen.

  "What do you mean, over?" She thought that it wasn't very professional of him to be showing his feelings like this. "Answer me! And what about Jak?"

  "I don't know, Mariska." He jiggled another lasagna noodle out of the colander. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

  She stared at his back. The kitchen seemed to warp and twist; all the ties that bound her to Al were coming undone. She scraped her chair from the table and spun down the hall to her room, bouncing off the walls.

  "Hello Mariska," said her room as the door slid shut. "You seem upset. Is there anything I can . . . ?

  "Shut up, shut up, shut up."

  She didn't care if she hurt her room's feelings; it was just a stupid persona anyway. She needed quiet to think, sort through all the lies that had been her life. It must have been some other girl who had drawn funny aliens on the walls or listened to the room tell stories—lies!—about a space captain named Mariska or who had built planets inhabited by unicorns and fairies and princesses in her room's simspace. She didn't belong here. Not in this goddamn room, not on the moon, not anywhere.

  Then it came to her. She knew what she had to do. Only she wasn't sure exactly how to do it. But how hard could going deep be? It was in her genes—her mother's genes. Slag her. Everyone was so worried that she would go deep without really meaning to. So that must mean that she could. That's how the fossils had done it, before there were hibernation pods and proper euthermic arousal protocols.

  She didn't know what good going deep would do her. It was probably stupid. Something a kid would do. But that was the point, wasn't it? She was just a kid. What other choice did she have?

  She lay back on her bed and thought about space, about stepping out of the airlock without anything on. Naked and alone, just like she had always been. The air would freeze in her lungs and they would burst. Her eyes would freeze and it would be dark. She would be as cold as she had ever been. As cold as Natalya Volochkova, that bitch.

  "The earth is up," the room murmured. "And I am always up. Is Mariska ready to get up yet?"

  Mariska shivered from the cold. That wasn't right. Her room was supposed to monitor both its temperature and hers.

  "The earth is up, and I am always up," cooed her room. It wasn't usually so patient.

  Mariska stretched. She felt stiff, as if she had overdone a swim. She opened her eyes and then shut them immediately. Her room had already brought the lights up to full intensity. It was acting strangely this morning. Usually it would interrupt one of her dreams, but all that she had in her head was a vast and frigid darkness. Space without the stars.

  Mariska yawned and slitted her eyes against the light. She was facing the shelf where Feodor Bear sat. "Dobroye utro," it said. The antique robot bumped against the shelf twice in a vain attempt to stand. "Good morn-ing Mar-i-ska." There was something wrong with its speech chip; it sounded as if it were talking through a bowl of soup.

  "Good morning, dear Mariska," said her room. "Today is Wednesday, November 23, 2163. You have no bookings scheduled for today.

  That couldn't be right. The date was way off. Then she remembered.

  The door slid open. She blinked several times before she could focus on the woman standing here.

  "Mariska?"

  Mariska knew that voice. Even though it had a crack to it that her room had never had, she recognized its singing accent.

  "Where's Al?" When she sat up the room seemed to spin.

  "He doesn't live here anymore." The woman sat beside her on the bed. She had silver hair and a spacer's sallow complexion. Her skin was wrinkled around the eyes and the mouth. "I can send for him, if you like. He's just in Muoi Zone." She seemed to be trying on a smile, to see if it would fit. "It's been three years, Mariska. We couldn't rouse you. It was too dangerous."

  She considered this. "Jak?"

  "Three years is a long time."

  She turned her face to the wall. "The room's voice—that's you. And the persona?"

  "I didn't want to go to Delta Pavonis, but I didn't have a choice. I'm a spacer, dear, dear Mariska. Just like you. When they need us, we go." She sighed. "I knew you would hate me—I would have hated me. So I found another way to be with you; I spent the two months before we left uploading feeds. I put as much of myself into this room as I could." She gestured at Mariska's room.

  "You treated me like a kid. Or the room did."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd be gone this long."

  "I'm not going to that place with you."

  "All right," she said. "But I'd like to go with you, if you'll let me."

  "I'm not going anywhere." Mariska shook her head; she was still felt groggy. "Where would I go?"

  "To the stars." said Natalya Volochkova. "They've been calling you. Alpha Centauri. Barnard's. Wolf. Lalande. Luyten. Sirius."

  Mariska propped herself on a elbow and stared at her. "How do you know that?"

  She reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Mariska's forehead. "Because," she said, "I'm your mother."

  THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN

  Holly Black

  Holly Black is the author of the bestselling "The Spiderwick Chronicles". Her first story appeared in 1997, but she got attention with her debut novel, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale. She has written eight "Spiderwick" novels, three novels in her "Modern Faerie Tale" sequence, including Andre Norton Award winner Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, and two books in the Good Neighbors series of graphic novels. Black's most recent books are her first short story collection, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories and a new novel, White Cat, the first book in "The Curse Workers" series.

  Matilda was drunk, but then she was always drunk anymore. Dizzy drunk. Stumbling drunk. Stupid drunk. Whatever kind of drunk she could get.

  The man she stood with snaked his hand around her back, warm fingers digging into her side as he pulled her closer. He and his friend with the open-necked shirt grinned down at her like underage equaled dumb, and dumb equaled gullible enough to sleep with them.

  She thought they might just be right.

  "You want to have a party back at my place?" the man asked. He'd told her his name was Mark, but his friend kept slipping up and calling him by a name that started with a D. Maybe Dan or Dave. They had been smuggling her drinks from the bar whenever they went outside to smoke—drinks mixed sickly sweet, that dripped down her throat like candy
.

  "Sure," she said, grinding her cigarette against the brick wall. She missed the hot ash in her hand, but concentrated on the alcoholic numbness turning her limbs to lead. Smiled. "Can we pick up more beer?"

  They exchanged an obnoxious glance she pretended not to notice. The friend—he called himself Ben—looked at her glassy eyes and her cold-flushed cheeks. Her sloppy hair. He probably made guesses about a troubled home life. She hoped so.

  "You're not going to get sick on us?" he asked. Just out of the hot bar, beads of sweat had collected in the hollow of his throat. The skin shimmered with each swallow.

  She shook her head to stop staring. "I'm barely tipsy," she lied.

  "I've got plenty of stuff back at my place," said MarkDanDave. Mardave, Matilda thought and giggled.

  "Buy me a forty," she said. She knew it was stupid to go with them, but it was even stupider if she sobered up. "One of those wine coolers. They have them at the bodega on the corner. Otherwise, no party."

  Both of the guys laughed. She tried to laugh with them even though she knew she wasn't included in the joke. She was the joke. The trashy little slut. The girl who can be bought for a big fat wine cooler and three cranberry-and-vodkas.

  "Okay, okay," said Mardave.

  They walked down the street and she found herself leaning easily into the heat of their bodies, inhaling the sweat and iron scent. It would be easy for her to close her eyes and pretend Mardave was someone else, someone she wanted to be touched by, but she wouldn't let herself soil her memories of Julian.

  They passed by a store with flat-screens in the window, each one showing different channels. One streamed video from Coldtown—a girl who went by the name Demonia made some kind of deal with one of the stations to show what it was really like behind the gates. She filmed the Eternal Ball, a party that started in 1998 and had gone on ceaselessly ever since. In the background, girls and boys in rubber harnesses swung through the air. They stopped occasionally, opening what looked like a modded hospital tube stuck on the inside of their arms just below the crook of the elbow. They twisted a knob and spilled blood into little paper cups for the partygoers. A boy who looked to be about nine, wearing a string of glowing beads around his neck, gulped down the contents of one of the cups and then licked the paper with a tongue as red as his eyes. The camera angle changed suddenly, veering up, and the viewers saw the domed top of the hall, full of cracked windows through which you could glimpse the stars.

  "I know where they are," Mardave said. "I can see that building from my apartment."

  "Aren't you scared of living so close to the vampires?" she asked, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

  "We'll protect you," said Ben, smiling back at her.

  "We should do what other countries do and blow those corpses sky high," Mardave said.

  Matilda bit her tongue not to point out that Europe's vampire hunting led to the highest levels of infection in the world. So many of Belgium's citizens were vampires that shops barely opened their doors until nightfall. The truce with Coldtown worked. Mostly.

  She didn't care if Mardave hated vampires. She hated them too.

  When they got to the store, she waited outside to avoid getting carded and lit another cigarette with Julian's silver lighter—the one she was going to give back to him in thirty-one days. Sitting down on the curb, she let the chill of the pavement deaden the backs of her thighs. Let it freeze her belly and frost her throat with ice that even liquor couldn't melt.

  Hunger turned her stomach. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten anything solid without throwing it back up. Her mouth hungered for dark, rich feasts; her skin felt tight, like a seed thirsting to bloom. All she could trust herself to eat was smoke.

  When she was a little girl, vampires had been costumes for Halloween. They were the bad guys in movies, plastic fangs and polyester capes. They were muppets on television, endlessly counting.

  Now she was the one that was counting. Fifty-seven days. Eighty-eight days. Eighty-eight nights.

  "Matilda?"

  She looked up and saw Dante saunter up to her, earbuds dangling out of his ears like he needed a soundtrack for everything he did. He wore a pair of skin-tight jeans and smoked a cigarette out of one of those long, movie-star holders. He looked pretentious as hell. "I'd almost given up on finding you."

  "You should have started with the literal gutter," she said, gesturing to the wet, clogged tide beneath her feet. "I take my gutter-dwelling very seriously."

  "Seriously." He pointed at her with the cigarette holder. "Even your mother thinks you're dead. Julian's been crying over you."

  Matilda looked down and picked at the thread of her jeans. It hurt to think about Julian, while waiting for Mardave and Ben. She was disgusted with herself and she could only guess how disgusted he'd be. "I got Cold," she said. "One of them bit me."

  Dante nodded his head.

  That's what they'd started calling it when the infection kicked in—Cold—because of how cold people's skin became. And because of the way the poison in their veins caused them to crave heat and blood. One taste of human blood and the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised them back up again, colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever.

  "I didn't think you'd be alive," he said.

  She hadn't thought she'd make it this long either without giving in. But going it alone on the street was better than forcing her mother to choose between chaining her up in the basement or shipping her off to Coldtown. It was better, too, than taking the chance that Matilda might get loose from the chains and attack people she loved. Stories like that were in the news all the time; almost as frequent as the ones about people who let vampires into their homes because they seemed so nice and clean-cut.

  "Then what are you doing looking for me?" she asked. Dante had lived down the street from her family for years, but they didn't hang out. She'd wave to him as she mowed the lawn while he loaded his panel van with DJ equipment. He shouldn't have been here.

  She looked back at the store window. Mardave and Ben were at the counter with a case of beer and her wine cooler. They were getting change from a clerk.

  "I was hoping you, er, wouldn't be alive," Dante said. "You'd be more help if you were dead."

  She stood up, stumbling slightly. "Well screw you too."

  It took eighty-eight days for the venom to sweat out a person's pores. She only had thirty-seven to go. Thirty-seven days to stay so drunk that she could ignore the buzz in her head that made her want to bite, rend, devour.

  "That came out wrong," he said, taking a step toward her. Close enough that she felt the warmth of him radiating off him like licking tongues of flame. She shivered. Her veins sang with need.

  "I can't help you," said Matilda. "Look, I can barely help myself. Whatever it is, I'm sorry. I can't. You have to get out of here."

  "My sister Lydia and your boyfriend, Julian, are gone," Dante said. "Together. She's looking to get bitten. I don't know what he's looking for . . . but he's going to get hurt."

  Matilda gaped at him as Mardave and Ben walked out of the store. Ben carried a box on his shoulder and a bag on his arm. "This guy bothering you?" he asked her.

  "No," she said, then turned to Dante. "You better go."

  "Wait," said Dante.

  Matilda's stomach hurt. She was sobering up. The smell of blood seemed to float up from underneath their skin.

  She reached into Ben's bag and grabbed a beer. She popped the top, licked off the foam. If she didn't get a lot drunker, she was going to attack someone.

  "Jesus," Mardave said. "Slow down. What if someone sees you?"

  She drank it in huge gulps, right there on the street. Ben laughed, but it wasn't a good laugh. He was laughing at the drunk.

  "She's infected," Dante says.

  Matilda whirled toward him, chucking the mostly empty can in his direction automatically. "Shut up, asshole."

  "Feel her skin," Dante said. "Cold. She
ran away from home when it happened and no one's seen her since."

  "I'm cold because it's cold out," she said.

  She saw Ben's evaluation of her change from damaged enough to sleep with strangers to dangerous enough to attack strangers.

  Mardave touched his hand gently to her arm. "Hey," he said.

  She almost hissed with delight at the press of his hot fingers. She smiled up at him and hoped her eyes weren't as hungry as her skin. "I really like you."

  He flinched. "Look, it's late. Maybe we could meet up another time." Then he backed away, which made her so angry that she bit the inside of her own cheek.

  Her mouth flooded with the taste of copper and a red haze floated in front of her eyes.

  Fifty-seven days ago, Matilda had been sober. She'd had a boyfriend named Julian and they would dress up together in her bedroom. He liked to wear skinny ties and glittery eye shadow. She liked to wear vintage rock t-shirts and boots that laced up so high that they would constantly be late because they were busy tying them.

  Matilda and Julian would dress up and prowl the streets and party at lockdown clubs that barred the doors from dusk to dawn. Matilda wasn't particularly careless; she was just careless enough.

  She'd been at a friend's party. It had been stiflingly hot and she was mad because Julian and Lydia were doing some dance thing from the musical they were in at school. Matilda just wanted to get some air. She opened a window and climbed out under the bobbing garland of garlic.

  Another girl was already on the lawn. Matilda should have noticed that the girl's breath didn't crystallize in the air, but she didn't.

  "Do you have a light?" the girl had asked.

  Matilda did. She reached for Julian's lighter when the girl caught her arm and bent her backwards. Matilda's scream turned into a shocked cry when she felt the girl's cold mouth against her neck, the girl's cold fingers holding her off balance.

  Then it was as though someone slid two shards of ice into her skin.

  The spread of vampirism could be traced to one person—Caspar Morales. Films and books and television had started romanticizing vampires and maybe it was only a matter of time before a vampire started romanticizing himself.