The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The time for impact came when the MMG asteroid was still a clear fifty kilometers out of position, and accelerating away. I saw the final collision, and the payload scraped along the surface of Io in a long, jagged scar that looked nothing at all like the neat, punched hole that we were supposed to achieve.

  And we did achieve it, a few seconds later. Our asteroid came in exactly where and when it was supposed to, driving in exactly vertical to the surface. The plume of ejecta had hardly begun to rise from Io’s red-and-yellow surface before von Neumann was pulling a bottle of bourbon from underneath the communications console.

  I didn’t object—I only wished I were there physically to share it, instead of being stuck in my own pod, short of rendezvous with our main ship. I looked at my final list, still somewhat incomplete. Was there a pattern to it? Ten minutes of analysis didn’t show one. No one had tried anything—this time. Someday, and it might be tomorrow, somebody on another combine would have a bright idea; and then it would be a whole new ball game.

  While I was still pondering my list, my control console began to buzz insistently. I switched it on expecting contact with my own trouble-shooting team. Instead, I saw the despondent face of Brunel, MMG’s own team leader—the man above all others that I would have liked to work on my side.

  He nodded at me when my picture appeared on his screen. He was smoking one of his powerful black cigars, stuck in the side of his mouth. The expression on his face was as impenetrable as ever. He never let his feelings show there. “I assume you saw it, did you?” he said around the cigar. “We’re out of it. I just called to congratulate you—again.”

  “Yeah, I saw it. Tough luck. At least you came second.”

  “Which, as you know very well, is no better than coming last.” He sighed and shook his head. “We still have no idea what happened. Looks like either a programming error, or a valve sticking open. We probably won’t know for weeks. And I’m not sure I care.”

  I maintained a sympathetic silence.

  “I sometimes think we should just give up, Al,” he said. “I can beat those other turkeys, but I can’t compete with you. That’s six in a row that you’ve won. It’s wearing me out. You’ve no idea how much frustration there is in that.”

  I had never known Brunel to reveal so much of his feelings before.

  “I think I do understand your problems,” I said.

  And I did. I knew exactly how he felt—more than he would believe. To suffer through a whole, endless sequence of minor, niggling mishaps was heartbreaking. No single trouble was ever big enough for a trouble-shooting team to stop, isolate it, and be able to say, there’s dirty work going on here. But their cumulative effect was another matter. One day it was a morass of shipments missing their correct flights, another time a couple of minus signs dropped into computer programs, or a key worker struck down for a few days by a random virus, permits misfiled, manifests mislaid, or licenses wrongly dated.

  I knew all those mishaps personally. I should, because I invented most of them. I think of it as the death of a thousand cuts. No one can endure all that and still hope to win a Phase B study.

  “How would you like to work on the Europan Metamorph?” I asked. “I think you’d love it.”

  He looked very thoughtful, and for the first time, I believe I could actually read his expression. “Leave MMG, you mean?” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know what I want anymore. Let me think about it. I’d like to work with you, Al—you’re a genius.”

  Brunel was wrong about that, of course. I’m certainly no genius. All I can do what I’ve always done—handle people, take care of unpleasant details (quietly!), and make sure things get done that need doing. And of course, do what I do best: make sure that some things that need doing don’t get done.

  There are geniuses in the world, real geniuses. Not me, though. The man who decided to clone me, secretly—there I’d suggest you have a genius.

  “Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al…”

  Of course, I don’t remember. That song was written in the 1930s, and I didn’t die until 1947, but no clone remembers anything of the forefather life. The fact that we tend to be knowledgeable about our originals’ period is an expression of interest in those individuals, not memories from them. I know the Chicago of the Depression years intimately, as well as I know today; but it is all learned knowledge. I have no actual recollection of events. I don’t remember.

  So even if you don’t remember, call me Al anyway. Everyone did.

  MIKE RESNICK

  For I Have Touched the Sky

  Mike Resnick is one of the best-selling authors in science fiction, and one of the most prolific. His many novels include The Dark Lady, Stalking the Unicorn, Paradise, and Santiago. His recent novel Ivory was well-received and a new novel, Second Contact, has just been published. Last year, his story “Kirinyaga”—which was in our Sixth Annual Collection—won the Hugo Award, and was one of the year’s most critically acclaimed, and controversial, stories. He lives with his family, a whole bunch of dogs—he and his wife run a kennel—and at least one computer in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  Here he returns to the milieu of “Kirinyaga,” an orbiting space colony that has been remade in the likeness of ancient Kenya, for another compelling tale of cultural conflict, and of the terrible price that must sometimes be paid by those who quest after knowledge.

  For I Have Touched the Sky

  MIKE RESNICK

  There was a time when men had wings.

  Ngai, who sits alone on His throne atop Kirinyaga, which is now called Mount Kenya, gave men the gift of flight, so that they might reach the succulent fruits on the highest branches of the trees. But one man, a son of Gikuyu, who was himself the first man, saw the eagle and the vulture riding high upon the winds, and, spreading his wings, he joined them. He circled higher and higher, and soon he soared far above all other flying things.

  Then, suddenly, the hand of Ngai reached out and grabbed the son of Gikuyu.

  “What have I done that you should grab me thus?” asked the son of Gikuyu.

  “I live atop Kirinyaga because it is the top of the world,” answered Ngai, “and no one’s head may be higher than my own.”

  And so saying, Ngai plucked the wings from the son of Gikuyu, and then took wings away from all men, so that no man could ever again rise higher than His head.

  And that is why all of Gikuyu’s descendents look at the birds with a sense of loss and envy, and why they no longer eat the succulent fruits from the highest branches of the trees.

  * * *

  We have many birds on the world of Kirinyaga, which was named for the holy mountain where Ngai dwells. We brought them along with our other animals when we received our charter from the Eutopian Council and departed from a Kenya that no longer had any meaning for true members of the Kikuyu tribe. Our new world is home to the marabou and the vulture, the ostrich and the fish eagle, the weaver and the heron, and many other species. Even I, Koriba, who am the mundumugu—the witch doctor—delight in their many colors, and find solace in their music. I have spent many afternoons seated in front of my boma, my back propped up against an ancient acacia tree, watching the profusion of colors and listening to the melodic songs as the birds come to slake their thirst in the river that winds through our village.

  It was on one such afternoon that Kamari, a young girl who was not yet of circumcision age, walked up the long, winding path that separates my boma from the village, holding something small and gray in her hands.

  “Jambo, Koriba,” she greeted me.

  “Jambo, Kamari,” I answered her. “What have you brought to me, child?”

  “This,” she said, holding out a young pygmy falcon that struggled weakly to escape her grasp. “I found him in my family’s shamba. He cannot fly.”

  “He looks fully fledged,” I noted, getting to my feet. Then I saw that one of his wings was held at an awkward angle. “Ah!” I said. “He has broken his wing.”

  “Can
you make him well, mundumugu?” asked Kamari.

  I examined the wing briefly, while she held the young falcon’s head away from me. Then I stepped back.

  “I can make him well, Kamari,” I said. “But I cannot make him fly. The wing will heal, but it will never be strong enough to bear his weight again. I think we will destroy him.”

  “No!” she exclaimed, pulling the falcon back. “You will make him live, and I will care for him!”

  I stared at the bird for a moment, then shook my head. “He will not wish to live,” I said at last.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he has ridden high upon the warm winds.”

  “I do not understand,” said Kamari, frowning.

  “Once a bird has touched the sky,” I explained, “he can never be content to spend his days on the ground.”

  “I will make him content,” she said with determination. “You will heal him, and I will care for him, and he will live.”

  “I will heal him, and you will care for him,” I said. “But,” I added, “he will not live.”

  “What is your fee, Koriba?” she asked, suddenly businesslike.

  “I do not charge children,” I answered. “I will visit your father tomorrow, and he will pay me.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “This is my bird. I will pay the fee.”

  “Very well,” I said, admiring her spirit, for most children—and all adults—are terrified of their mundumugu, and would never openly contradict or disagree with him. “For one month you will clean my boma every morning and every afternoon. You will lay out my sleeping blankets, and keep my water gourd filled, and you will see that I have kindling for my fire.”

  “That is fair,” she said after a moment’s consideration. Then she added: “What if the bird dies before the month is over?”

  “Then you will learn that a mundumugu knows more than a little Kikuyu girl,” I said.

  She set her jaw. “He will not die.” She paused. “Will you fix his wing now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will help.”

  I shook my head. “You will build a cage in which to confine him, for if he tries to move his wing too soon, he will break it again, and then I will surely have to destroy him.”

  She handed the bird to me. “I will be back soon,” she promised, racing off toward her shamba.

  I took the falcon into my hut. He was too weak to struggle very much, and he allowed me to tie his beak shut. Then I began the slow task of splinting his broken wing and binding it against his body to keep it motionless. He shrieked in pain as I manipulated the bones together, but otherwise he simply stared unblinking at me, and within ten minutes the job was finished.

  Kamari returned an hour later, holding a small wooden cage in her hands.

  “Is this large enough, Koriba?” she asked.

  I held it up and examined it.

  “It is almost too large,” I replied. “He must not be able to move his wing until it has healed.”

  “He won’t,” she promised. “I will watch him all day long, every day.”

  “You will watch him all day long, every day?” I repeated, amused.

  “Yes.”

  “Then who will clean my hut and my boma, and who will fill my gourd with water?”

  “I will carry his cage with me when I come,” she replied.

  “The cage will be much heavier when the bird is in it,” I pointed out.

  “When I am a woman, I will carry far heavier loads on my back, for I shall have to till the fields and gather the firewood for my husband’s boma,” she said. “This will be good practice.” She paused. “Why do you smile at me, Koriba?”

  “I am not used to being lectured to by uncircumcised children,” I replied with a smile.

  “I was not lecturing,” she answered with dignity. “I was explaining.”

  I held a hand up to shade my eyes from the afternoon sun.

  “Are you not afraid of me, little Kamari?” I asked.

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because I am the mundumugu.”

  “That just means you are smarter than the others,” she said with a shrug. She threw a stone at a chicken that was approaching her cage, and it raced away, squawking its annoyance. “Someday I shall be as smart as you are.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded confidently. “Already I can count higher than my father, and I can remember many things.”

  “What kind of things?” I asked, turning slightly as a hot breeze blew a swirl of dust about us.

  “Do you remember the story of the honey bird that you told to the children of the village before the long rains?”

  I nodded.

  “I can repeat it,” she said.

  “You mean you can remember it.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “I can repeat every word that you said.”

  I sat down and crossed my legs. “Let me hear it,” I said, staring off into the distance and idly watching a pair of young men tending their cattle.

  She hunched her shoulders, so that she would appear as bent with age as I myself am, and then, in a voice that sounded like a youthful replica of my own, she began to speak, mimicking my gestures.

  “There is a little brown honey bird,” she began. “He is much like a sparrow, and as friendly. He will come to your boma and call to you; and as you approach him, he will fly up and lead you to a hive, and then wait while you gather grass and set fire to it and smoke out the bees. But you must always”—she emphasized the word, just as I had done—”leave some honey for him, for if you take it all, the next time he will lead you into the jaws of fisi, the hyena, or perhaps into the desert, where there is no water and you will die of thirst.” Her story finished, she stood upright and smiled at me. “You see?” she said proudly.

  “I see,” I said, brushing away a large fly that had lit on my cheek.

  “Did I do it right?” she asked.

  “You did it right.”

  She stared at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps when you die, I will become the mundumugu.”

  “Do I seem that close to death?” I asked her.

  “Well,” she answered, “you are very old and bent and wrinkled, and you sleep too much. But I will be just as happy if you do not die right away.”

  “I shall try to make you just as happy,” I said ironically. “Now take your falcon home.”

  I was about to instruct her concerning his needs, but she spoke first.

  “He will not want to eat today. But starting tomorrow, I will give him large insects, and at least one lizard every day. And he must always have water.”

  “You are very observant, Kamari.”

  She smiled at me again, and then ran off toward her boma.

  * * *

  She was back at dawn the next morning, carrying the cage with her. She placed it in the shade, then filled a small container with water from one of my gourds and set it inside the cage.

  “How is your bird this morning?” I asked, sitting close to my fire, for even though the planetary engineers of the Eutopian Council had given Kirinyaga a climate identical to Kenya’s, the sun had not yet warmed the morning air.

  Kamari frowned. “He has not eaten yet.”

  “He will, when he gets hungry enough,” I said, pulling my blanket more tightly around my shoulders. “He is used to swooping down on his prey from the sky.”

  “He drinks his water, though,” she noted.

  “That is a good sign.”

  “Can you not cast a spell that will heal him at once?”

  “The price would be too high,” I said, for I had foreseen her question. “This way is better.”

  “How high?”

  “Too high,” I repeated, closing the subject. “Now, do you not have work to do?”

  “Yes, Koriba.”

  She spent the next few minutes gathering kindling for my fire and filling my gourd from the river. Then she went into my hut to clean it and straighten my sleeping blankets. She emer
ged a moment later with a book in her hand.

  “What is this, Koriba?” she asked.

  “Who told you that you could touch your mundumugu’s possessions?” I asked sternly.

  “How can I clean them without touching them?” she replied with no show of fear. “What is it?”

  “It is a book.”

  “What is a book, Koriba?”

  “It is not for you to know,” I said. “Put it back.”

  “Shall I tell you what I think it is?” she asked.

  “Tell me,” I said, curious to hear her answer.

  “Do you know how you draw signs on the ground when you cast the bones to bring the rains? I think that a book is a collection of signs.”

  “You are a very bright little girl, Kamari.”

  “I told you that I was,” she said, annoyed that I had not accepted her statement as a self-evident truth. She looked at the book for a moment, then held it up. “What do the signs mean?”

  “Different things,” I said.

  “What things?”

  “It is not necessary for the Kikuyu to know.”

  “But you know.”

  “I am the mundumugu.”

  “Can anyone else on Kirinyaga read the signs?”

  “Your own chief, Koinnage, and two other chiefs can read the signs,” I answered, sorry now that she had charmed me into this conversation, for I could foresee its direction.

  “But you are all old men,” she said. “You should teach me, so when you all die, someone can still read the signs.”

  “These signs are not important,” I said. “They were created by the Europeans. The Kikuyu had no need for books before the Europeans came to Kenya; we have no need for them on Kirinyaga, which is our own world. When Koinnage and the other chiefs die, everything will be as it was long ago.”

  “Are they evil signs, then?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “They are not evil. They just have no meaning for the Kikuyu. They are white man’s signs.”

  She handed the book to me. “Would you read me one of the signs?”

  “Why?”