The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “You mean, you only wash when you’re at the Empress?”

  Now it was Bill’s turn to flush with embarrassment.

  “Yeah.”

  Ford tried to keep his dismay from showing, but he wasn’t very good at hiding his feelings. “You mean I can’t have a bath until we get back?”

  “No. You can’t. I guess people wash themselves every day in the Long Acres, huh?” said Bill angrily.

  Ford nodded. “We have to. It stinks too bad if we don’t. Because there’s, er, manure and algae and, er, the methane plant, and… we work hard and sweat a lot. So we shave and wash every day, see?”

  “Is that why the MAC haven’t got any hair?”

  “Yeah,” said Ford. He added, “Plus my dad says hair is a vanity. Means being a showoff, being flash.”

  “I know what it means,” said Bill. He was silent a moment, and then said:

  “Well, you won’t be sweating much out here. Freezing is more like it. So you’ll have to cope until we get back to the Empress. It’ll only be two weeks.”

  Two weeks? Ford thought of what his dad and mum would say to him when he turned up again, after being missing for so long. His mouth dried, his heart pounded. He wondered desperately what kind of lie he might tell to get himself out of trouble. Maybe that he’d been kidnapped? It had almost really happened. Kidnapped and taken to work in the iron mines, right, and… somehow escaped, and…

  Billy retreated to his Gamebuke again, as Ford sat there trying to imagine what he might say. The stories became wilder, more unbelievable, as they grew more elaborate; and gradually he found himself drifting away from purposeful lies altogether, dreamily wondering what it might be like if he never went back to face the music at all.

  After all, Sam was going to do it; Sam was clever and funny and brave, and he was walking away from the Collective to a new life. Why couldn’t Ford have a new life too? What if he became a Hauler, like Billy, and lived out the rest of his life up here where there were no limits to the world? Blatchford the MAC boy would vanish and he could be just Ford, himself, not part of anything. Free.

  * * * *

  5

  It took them most of a week to get to Depot South. Ford enjoyed every minute of it, even getting used to the idea of postponing his bath for two weeks. Mostly he rode up front with Billy, as Bill stayed in the back sulking. Billy told him stories as they rocketed along, and taught him the basics of driving the freighter; it was harder than driving a tractor but not by as much as Ford would have thought.

  “Look at you, holding our Evelyn on the road!” said Billy, chuckling. “You are one strong kid, for your age. Li’l Bill can’t drive her at all yet.”

  “I’m a better navigator than you are!” yelled Bill from the back, in tones of outrage.

  “He is, actually,” said Billy. “Best navigator I ever saw. Half the time I have to get him to figure coordinates for me. You ever get lost in a storm or anything, you’ll wish you had Li’l Bill there with you.” He looked carefully into the back to see if Bill was watching, and then unzipped a pouch in his psuit and took out a small bottle. Quickly he shook two tiny red pills into his palm and popped them into his mouth.

  “What’re those?” Ford asked.

  “Freddie Stay-awakes,” said Billy in a low voice. “Just getting ready for another night shift. We’re going to set a new record for getting to the Depot, man.”

  “We don’t have to hurry or anything,” said Ford. “Really.”

  “Yeah, we do,” said Billy, looking uncomfortable for the first time since Ford had known him. “Fun’s fun, and everything, but… your people must be kind of wondering where you are, you know? I mean, it was a good idea to get you away from Mother’s Boys and all, but we don’t want people thinking you’re dead, huh?”

  “I guess not,” said Ford. He looked sadly up at the monitor, at the wide open world. The thought of going back into the Tubes, into the reeking dark of the cowsheds and the muddy trenches, made him despair.

  * * * *

  Depot South loomed ahead of them at last, a low rise of ice above the plain. At first, Ford was disappointed; he had expected a gleaming white mountain, but Billy explained that the glacier was sanded all over with red dust from the windstorms. As the hours went by and they drew closer, Ford saw a low-lying mist of white, from which the glacier rose like an island. Later, two smaller islands seemed to rise from it as well, one on either side of the road.

  “There’s old Jack and Jim!” cried Billy. “We’re almost there, when we see Jack and Jim.”

  Ford watched them with interest. As they drew near, he laughed; for they looked like a pair of bearded giants hacked out of the red stone. One was sitting up, peering from blind hollow eyes and holding what appeared to be a mug clutched to his stomach. The other reclined, with his big hands folded peacefully on his chest.

  “How’d they get there?” he exclaimed, delighted.

  “The glacier deposited them,” said Bill, who had come out of the back to see.

  “No! No! You have to tell him the story,” said Billy gleefully. “See, Jack and Jim were these two Haulers, come up from Australia. So they liked their beer cold, see? Really cold.

  “So they go into the Empress, and Mother, she says, Welcome, my dears, have a drop of good cheer, warm buttery beer won’t cost you dear. But Jack and Jim, both he and him, they liked their beer cold. Really cold!

  “Says one to the other, like brother to brother, there must be a place in this here space where a cobber can swill a nice bit of chill, if he likes his beer cold. Really cold.

  “So they bought them a keg, and off they legged it for the Pole, the pole, where it’s nice and cold, and they chopped out a hole in the ice-wall so, and that keg they stowed in the ice, cobber, ever so nice. And it got cold. Really cold.

  “So they drank it down and another round and another one still and they drank until they set and they sot and they clean forgot, where the white mists creep they fell asleep, and they got cold. Really cold.

  “In fact they froze, from nose to toes, and there they are to this very day, and the moral is, don’t die that way! ‘Cause what’s right for Oz ain’t right on Moz, ‘cause up here it’s cold. Really cold!”

  Billy laughed like a loon, pounding his fist on the console. Bill just rolled his eyes.

  “They’re only a couple of boulders,” he said.

  “But you used to love that song,” said Billy plaintively.

  “When I was three, maybe,” said Bill, turning and going into the back. “You’d better get him out one of your extra psuits. He won’t fit in any of mine.”

  “He used to sing it with me,” said Billy to Ford, looking crestfallen.

  * * * *

  They pulled into Depot South, and once again Ford expected to see buildings, but there were none; only a confused impression of tumbled rock on the monitor. He looked up at it as Billy helped him into a psuit.

  “Is it colder out there?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Bill, getting down three helmets from a locker. “You’re at the South Pole, dummy.”

  “Aw, now, he’s never been there, has he?” said Billy, adjusting the fit of the suit for Ford. “That feel okay?”

  “I guess it—whoa!” said Ford, for once the fastenings had been sealed up the suit seemed to flex, like a hand closing around him, and though it felt warm and snug it was still a slightly creepy sensation. “What’s it doing?”

  “Just kind of programming itself so it gets to know you,” Billy explained, accepting a helmet from Bill. “That’s how it keeps you alive, see? Just settles in real close and puts a couple of sensors places you don’t notice. Anything goes wrong, it’ll try to fix you, and if it can’t, it’ll flash lights at you so you know.”

  “Like that?” Ford pointed at the little red light flashing on Billy’s psuit readout panel. Billy looked down at it.

  “Oh. No, that’s just a short circuit or glitch or something. It’s been doing that all the time latel
y when nothing’s wrong.”

  “Some people take their suits into the shop when they need repair, you know,” said Bill, putting on his own helmet. “Just an idea, Dad. Hope it’s not too radical for you.”

  As Billy helped him seal up his helmet, Ford looked at Bill and thought: You’re a mean little twit. I’d give anything if my dad was like yours.

  But when they stepped Outside, he forgot about Bill and even about Billy. He barely noticed the cold, though it was so intense it took his breath away and the psuit helpfully turned up its thermostat for him. Depot South had all his attention.

  They were surrounded on three sides by towering walls, cloudy white swirled through with colors like an Ice Pop, green and blue blue blue and lavender, all scarred and rough, faceted and broken. Underneath his feet was a confusion of crushed and broken rock, pea-sized gravel to cobbles, ice mixed with grit and stone, and a roiling mist swirled about his ankles.

  Here and there were carvings in the ice wall, roughly gouged and hacked: haulers rule ok and barsoom bruce GOT here alive, and one that simply said THANKS MARSWIFE, over a niche that had been scraped from the ice where somebody had left a little figurine like the one on Beautiful Evelyn’s console. There were figures carved too; on a section of green ice, Ford noticed a four-armed giant with tusks.

  Behind him, he became aware of a clatter as Billy and Bill opened a panel in the freighter’s side and drew out something between them. He turned to see Billy hoisting a laser-saw, and heard the hummzap as it was turned on.

  “Okay!” said Billy, his voice coming tinnily over the speaker. “Let’s go cut some ice!”

  He went up to the nearest wall, hefted the laser, and disappeared in a cloud of white steam. A moment later, a great chunk of ice came hurtling out of the steam, and bounced and rolled to Bill’s feet. He picked it up, as another block bounded out.

  “Grab that,” said Bill. “If we don’t start loading this stuff, Dad will be up to his neck in ice.”

  Ford obeyed, and followed Bill around to the rear of the freighter, where a sort of escalator ramp had been lowered, and watched as Bill dropped the block to the ramp. It traveled swiftly up the ramp to a hopper at the top of Beautiful Evelyn’s tank, where it vanished with a grinding roar, throwing up a rainbowed shatter of ice-shards and vapor against the sunlight. Fascinated, Ford set his block on the ramp and watched as the same thing happened.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Making carbon dioxide snowcones, what do you think?” said Bill. “And we take the whole lot back to Settlement Base, and sell it to the MAC.”

  “You do?” Ford was astonished. “What do we need it for?”

  “Hel-LO, terraforming, remember?” said Bill. “Making Mars green like Earth? What the MAC was brought up here to do?”

  He turned and trudged back around the side of the freighter, and Ford walked after him thinking: I’ll bet you wouldn’t hold that nose so high up in the air if I bashed it with my forehead.

  But he said nothing, and for the next hour they worked steadily as machines, going back and forth with ice blocks to the ramp. The tank was nearly full when they heard the drone of ice-cutting stop.

  “That’s not enough, Dad,” Bill called, and nobody answered. He turned and ran. Ford walked around the side of the freighter and saw him kneeling beside Billy, who had fallen and lay with the white mist curling over his body.

  Ford gasped and ran to them. The whole front of Billy’s psuit was lit with blinking colors, dancing over a readout panel that had activated. Bill was bending close, waving away the mist to peer at it. Ford leaned down and saw Billy’s face slack within the helmet, his eyes staring and blank.

  “What’s wrong with him?” said Ford.

  “He’s had a blowout,” said Bill flatly.

  “What’s a blowout?”

  “Blood vessel goes bang. Happens sometimes to people who go Outside a lot.” Bill rested his hand on his father’s chest. He felt something in one of the sealed pouches; he opened it, and drew out the bottle of Freddie Stay-awakes. After staring at it for a long moment, his face contorted. He hurled the bottle at the ice-wall, where it popped open and scattered red pills like beads of blood.

  “I knew it! I knew he’d do this! I knew this would happen someday!” he shouted. Ford felt like crying, but he fought it back and said:

  “Is he going to die?”

  “What do you think?” said Bill. “We’re at the bloody South Pole! We’re a week away from the infirmary!”

  “But—could we maybe keep him alive until we get back?”

  Bill turned to him, and a little of the incandescent rage faded from his eyes. “We might,” he said. “The psuit’s doing what it can. We have some emergency medical stuff. You don’t understand, though. His brain’s turning to goo in there.”

  “Maybe it isn’t,” said Ford. “Please! We have to try.”

  “He’ll die anyway,” said Bill, but he got Billy under the shoulders and tried to lift him. Ford came around and took his place, lifting Billy easily; Bill grabbed his father’s legs, and between them they hoisted Billy up and carried him into the cab.

  There they settled him in his bunk, and Bill fumbled in a drawer for a medical kit. He drew out three sealed bags of colored liquid with tubes leading from one end and hooks on the other. The tubes he plugged into ports in the arm of Billy’s psuit; the hooks fitted into loops on the underside of the upper bunk, so the bags hung suspended above Billy.

  “Should we get his helmet off him?” Ford asked. Bill just shook his head. He turned and stalked out of the compartment. Ford took a last look at Billy, with the glittering lights on his chest and his dead eyes staring, and followed Bill.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We get the laser,” said Bill. “We can’t leave it. It cost a month’s pay.”

  * * * *

  6

  The freighter was a lot harder to handle now, full of ice, than it had been on the way out when Billy had let him drive. It took all Ford’s strength to back her around and get her on the road again, and even so the console beeped a warning as they trundled out through Jack and Jim, for he nearly swerved and clipped one of the giants. At last he was able to steer straight between the boulders and get up a little speed.

  “We really can’t, er, send a distress signal or anything?” he asked Bill. Bill sat hunched at his end of the cab, staring at the monitors.

  “Nobody’ll hear us,” he said bitterly. “There’s half a planet between Mons Olympus and us. Did you notice any relay towers on the way out here?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because there aren’t any. Why should Areco build any? Nobody comes out here except Haulers, and who cares if Haulers die? We do this work because nobody else wants to do it, because it’s too dangerous. But Haulers are a bunch of idiots; they don’t care if they get killed.”

  “They’re not idiots, they’re brave!” said Ford. Bill looked at him with contempt. Neither of them said anything for a long while after that.

  * * * *

  By the time it was beginning to get dark, Ford was aching in every muscle of his body from the sheer effort of keeping the freighter on the road. The approaching darkness was not as fearful as he’d thought it might be, because for several miles now someone had daubed the lines of boulders with photoreflective paint, and they lit up nicely in the freighter’s high-beams. But Beautiful Evelyn seemed to want to veer to the left, and Ford wondered if there was something wrong with her steering system until he saw drifts of sand flying straight across the road in front of her, like stealthy ghosts.

  “I think the wind’s rising,” he said.

  “You think, genius?” Bill pointed to a readout on the console.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means we’re probably driving right into a storm,” said Bill, and then they heard a shrill piping alarm from the back. Bill scrambled aft; Ford held the freighter on the road. Please don’t let that be Billy dying! Please, Marswi
fe, if you’re out there, help us!

  Bill returned and crawled into his seat. “The air pressure’s dropping in here. The psuit needed somebody to okay turning it up a notch.”

  “Why’s the air pressure dropping?”

  Bill sounded weary. “Because this is going to be a really bad storm. You’d better pull over and anchor us.”

  “But we have to get your dad to an infirmary!”

  “Did you think we were going to drive for a whole week without sleeping?” Bill said. “We don’t have any Freddies now. We have to sit out the storm no matter what happens. Five-Fifty-K is coming up soon. Maybe we can make it that far.”