The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  “Bastard.”

  “Never personal, Mae.”

  “Everything is, Sam.”

  Four beats. Not turning away. You were with Punky. Rival crew. “You know how I feel.”

  She made a disgusted sound. Four beats. Still not turning. “You came back.”

  Walt and Sunny, he might have said. Or Time’s right. Even The Sailmaker.

  “Yes,” he said, which was all of it, encompassing. Hoping she’d see. One word as emblem for so much.

  “Bastard.”

  His conditioning had him. He almost shrugged. The Zorro. Eternally cool. But didn’t. Didn’t.

  “Be with me,” he said, kept her gaze for it, as hard as that was, saw all of her contempt, real or feigned, the old raw emotion powering whatever emotion it truly was.

  Two beats.

  “Be damned.” And she turned and went.

  Afterwards, bare minutes later, then hours later in their clear-sky trackside doss with the Regulators’ camp-fire out in the cold night, he went back to it again and again, filled out the spaces with words. “That night at the stay-away,” he could have said. “The Sailmaker fuming and sewing. Teams torn up, played off against one another most like. Braka barely holding. No ships in the night for us. There was a reason for the different teams. We never settled. Never made it easy. You know that.” And the words would have been wrong. All wrong.

  Mae knew. Two beats before turning. Mae knew.

  And what was any of this if not redemption? Mae was with Punky again, but so what? There in their own meager doss, in the close dark, Sam saw Punky and The Sailmaker and the Landings as just parts of a lock that could be broken, opened at last. Nothing was ever enough, and nothing was written. Be with me. What more could anyone ever say?

  At the first pink wash of dawn, the Trimmers were up, dusting off, doing ablutions, mantras, serving coffee; heating rations. The Regulators were no doubt doing the same. Little was said, considering, and when Sunny had the Trimmers move out it was in classic “diamond wand” formation with standard two-meter separations: Angel at point. Walt behind her shoulder to the left as hawk, Sunny to the right as gauntlet, Thomas as pure, finishing the diamond proper, and Sam behind as star. When they engaged, Thomas would step into the middle of the diamond; Sam would move forward to close the diamond again.

  In a sense, the movies and the chats had done the training here. Thomas knew to expect the first of the focal drugs when Sunny passed it to him five minutes along, just slapped on the patch and played it straight, no questions, no hesitation. As if born to it. Who would have thought the movies, teev and chats could save so much time, constantly updating the mindset?

  And there were Punky’s Regulators ahead – same open diamond, their ballistic and laser weapons raised against new avatars, whatever whirter, burrus and ayling variants The Redux might serve up.

  And The Redux rose beyond, so clearly an embryonic Sailmaker. Same clutch of sculpted fossil masts, already six meters high in places, same array of flensing frames (they weren’t, nothing like it, but try convincing anyone that those stretched and bellying tarps weren’t human skin), same distinctive keening and slap-snapping sound that helped give the Landing its name. It was for all the world as if limp sails were being snapped full, a repeated jarring tattoo in the chill morning air. Silence but for the keening, the gunshot slap-snap of “shrouds” and “rigging” their own rhythmic tread.

  Within seconds the Trimmers had their shades on macro, and Sam saw the Regulators’ pure – Henna Jacko (suddenly remembering the name) – dutifully slap on the final patch. The assault patch. Saw Jack Crowfeather and Martine Atta and Mae slap on their link patches almost in unison. Saw Henna step into the center and Punky close the diamond. They were engaging. Taking no chances.

  The Redux was at 200 meters when the avatars came. Not whirters, aylings or burrus variants – those oldest of Landing progeny. These were like the running dolls that had plagued Western Europe when The Rickshaw and The Rasa had first appeared. The most conventional after the aylings, the most –

  No, not progeny at all!

  Human!

  “Down!” Walt cried, and Sunny saw it too.

  “Hit squad!”

  The Trimmers folded as one, Thomas dragged down by Walt, pushed down by Sam, went to lying unsupported positions in seconds, ballistics and laser up and aimed. Autotropics locked on as best they could in the interference caused by the Landings.

  No thinking about it. Crack. Crack. Tear. Crack. Tear. Crack.

  Dolls were falling, spots of ground kicking up where doll-strike hit back.

  “Who?” Thomas yelled, huddling, terrified. There was the smell of piss.

  No answer. Work it out, newbie!

  Between shots, Sam managed a glimpse of the Regulators – down and firing – but couldn’t see the damage there, who was safe and who wasn’t.

  Dolls were falling, falling. But so many. Too many. Thank the gods that autotropics were skewed.

  No time to discuss it. Sam rolled to the side, targeted the outer skins of The Redux.

  The others saw. Walt added his own ballistic strikes, Sunny swung his laser over the outer watch-screens.

  The Redux struck back, and – as Sam hoped – targeted the moving shapes. Reached out with whatever targeting protocols it had and plucked at faces. Just faces. Snatched them into the activation perimeter and stretched them on the sky – one face, vast and glaring in shock, then two, ten, twenty, vast hoardings, rushmores, sails, twenty, thirty meters across and with – impossibly – complete facial integrity, no distortion despite the size.

  Making sails.

  The Trimmers and the Regulators didn’t dare shift position. The dolls were gone – transformed. The Redux was in fully trophy display, just like its terrifying parent out on the Amadeus. No slap-snap now, just the keening.

  But there’d be more. A hit squad – that level of resources deployment – meant a carefully planned mission. Not targeting The Redux! Them! The crews! Mission contingency.

  A fire-strike, of course! Officially: bombing The Redux before it proliferated. Perhaps claiming it already had! Something.

  Unofficially: getting rid of the top crews, one way or another.

  Wanting The Redux to grow. The old strategies. Old mistakes. Everything old, new again. New science. New chances for young turks with theories, careers to mind. Forgetting the past. Busy seizing the day.

  “Sky-strike!” Sam stage-whispered, not daring to say it loudly. All quiet but for the keening, maybe the white noise shift, shift, shift of gaping faces on the sky.

  Sunny dared to move an arm, so so slowly, activating the audio seek on his headset.

  “They have the range,” Walt said.

  “We’ll never know,” Angel added. True, all true.

  “Listening!” Sunny reminded them, not expecting ship-talk in the braka white-out but hoping for something, anything.

  So then it was just the keening and the waiting, thoughts of Mae running through Sam’s mind, and anger and some amusement too that it had come to this. How could you not laugh? So easy to catch the heroes, set them up. Can’t help themselves, the pompous asses! Strutting like lords! Who cared about countless thousands dying in an overpopulated world? Pay lip-service, go through the motions. Be seen to be doing the right thing. Who cared about the flashmen and their two secrets – two secrets that only the prime crews knew, that the taggers, quarterhands and newbies desperately tried to learn? Wasted heroes of the people. Losses just added to the legend. Get rid of the old, bring on the new. Bread and circuses.

  Sam laughed into the sand. Merely flashmen. All they ever were. Dependable.

  Expendable.

  “Incoming!” Sunny said, reading not voice transmissions of any kind but rather fluctuations in the static where they would be. Ghosts of talk. He switched to distance tracking, non-vested audio ranges, made his raw calculations. “Ten k’s out and on approach!” Best guess, but he had the skill.

 
; “What will they do?” Thomas asked.

  “Missile,” Angel said. “Point blank.”

  “They don’t know,” Sunny said, marveling at those careless airmen and foolish mission chiefs, that there could be so much ignorance in – the joke was there – high places. Still. Again. However it played. This was a Sailmaker, for heaven’s sake!

  “Wait for it!” Walt Senny said, targeting the sky, the faces. “We’ll spoil its trophies.”

  “No laser!” Angel warned.

  “Stealth grenade,” Walt said. “No sustained source trail.”

  “We hope.”

  “We hope,” Sunny confirmed.

  Sam found himself thinking of Mae of the Regulators, of poor Thomas lying in his own piss, silent, bless him, but alive. Needed more than ever now if Henna Jacko was lost.

  Walt judged the approach, calculated vagaries like Sunny’s ten k’s wind direction, engine noise, pilot caution.

  He fired into the faces, scored the hit. One by one they burned, skewing, heaving on their invisible tethers.

  Nil source detected, it seemed. No instantaneous retaliation, at any rate. Possibly too small, too slight, no constant follow-up signature.

  Then, again. The Redux found something that would do, coarse movement, read the aircraft on approach. Reached out and made sails. More faces spread on the sky – a half-dozen, there, there, there.

  The bomber continued over, a smooth high crucifix with no-one aboard left alive.

  The braka static from the Regulators came almost at once – basic Morse – Henna dead. Your dibs.

  And lying there, the Trimmers swapped strategy. Thomas worked a new patch onto his arm. The others slowly, carefully, added their own patches when they could, each stage-whispered “Check!” till they’d all confirmed. Lying there, sprawled on the sand, they made the flash crew.

  The Redux was new, dazzled by trophies, possibly its first, distracted by the sheer overload of being in the world. It never suspected – were there truly a governing intelligence that could suspect, bring cognition to what it did.

  The Trimmers found their voice, their hold, their strike, started working the flashpoint.

  Sam focused, focused, no longer daring to think of Mae, or surviving, or the people out there in shut-down waiting their chance. He concentrated on Thomas, on sending through Thomas to The Redux, to the faces in the sky.

  His eyes glazed, cleared, glazed, cleared, then found one trophy face, eyeless, vast, distended on the sky, twenty meters across, yet impossibly intact, mouth open in a scream but with no other feature distortion. Young, young it seemed. Not Mae. Young.

  He used that face to keep the resolve. Through Thomas to that face.

  How long they worked it there was no telling. The day tracked. The sun was up and blazing, crawling across the sky. Late autumn heat still made it a hell, but distant, bearable.

  That sun was well into afternoon when the modes began shifting, finally switched, when the keening fell away and the slap-snap began again. Somewhere people were waking from shut-down fugue, finding dust in their mouths, insects, their limbs cramped, broken, wasted by circulation necrosis. But alive! Alive! And somewhere a debt was being paid.

  The trophies were gone – the sky above the masts and frames of The Redux was a washed blue.

  They’d managed it.

  One by one, the Trimmers stirred, stood, stretched, worked their own stiff and aching muscles, grateful to be in the world.

  The Regulators hadn’t done as well. Three up, two down. Two!

  The Trimmers hurried as much as they dared in that fraught place, crossed the newly keening, slap-snapping terrain before The Redux and reached was what left of Punky’s crew.

  Henna Jacko was gone. Her young face had been the sail Sam had seen. Had used.

  Jack Crowfeather was the other – hit twice by shots from approaching dolls. Punky, Martine and Mae were getting them into body-bags, slowly, no sudden movements now, preparing to haul them back to whatever decent distance would serve as a trail burial site in these dangerous wastes.

  “Thanks,” Punky said. “Fee’s yours, clear.” Not: Who were they? What happened? Understanding that.

  “We share,” Sunny said. “Braka.” Keeping faith, building traditions that might well outlive them all. Went in together. Come out together.

  Punky grinned at the foolishness, Sunny’s dogged largesse. “In light of this?”

  “Especially.” And not hesitating: “You go southwest by The Praying Hands. We’ll take northwest. Use braka Morse when we can, voice when it clears. Have to get this out.”

  “Agreed,” Punky said. “Warn our people off.”

  Walt grunted. “See if they can get themselves a decent crew then.”

  Martine and Mae both nodded, Mae’s eyes holding Sam’s two, three seconds before sliding away to tasks at hand. The Regulators reached for the bags holding their dead.

  Sunny beat them to that as well. “We’ll take the girl.”

  Not Jack. The newbie.

  Punky nodded. “Appreciated.”

  No dragging body bags here. No being slowed down now if it could be helped. The Redux had made sails, possibly its first, was possibly recalling the experience, sorting what had happened. It could swing again. Not likely, given logged behavior ranges, but anything was possible.

  The Trimmers and the Regulators went their opposite ways, walking smoothly, quickly enough, considering. They abandoned their slow-mo’s – possibly booby-trapped, but giving too much signature anyway – and they walked it. Left their dead amid rocks and walked. It took a fair slice of forever, but everyone was glad to pay it out of their lives.

  Only when the Trimmers had the northwest boundary in sight, well clear of Checkpoint Reuben just in case, did Sam bring it up.

  “Questions, Thomas?”

  “What’s that?” the kid asked, off with his thoughts, then understood. “The two secrets? I can ask?”

  “This side of The Redux it’s only fair.”

  Sam stopped. Thomas stopped. The others kept walking, the group separating now, dividing as precaution: Angel and Sunny going wide toward the north, Walt going alone to the west proper. Getting it out.

  Leaving Sam as good cop – and bad, should it come to that.

  “So, what are they?” Direct, not defiant. Watching the others go.

  Sam didn’t hesitate. “First, to get back thousands, we have to sacrifice hundreds.”

  “Seems right. Seems fair. You can’t save everyone. I don’t – wait, are you saying that when we switch modes, some always die? Have to die?”

  Sam began walking again, slowly, making it casual. He always wanted to deceive at this point. Give the beautiful lie. “Take it further.”

  Thomas was following. “Wait! How do I take it further? We’re causing coarse action. Naturally some will die. The trauma – ”

  “Take it further!” Sam rounded on him, stopping again. Good cop and bad. Gun and dueling stick ready.

  “How further?” Then his face locked into a mask, his eyes wide; his mouth wide, like a miniature of The Redux’s trophies. “You kill them!” And accepting: “We kill them!”

  Sam’s voice was soft, nearly toneless. “We use the energies of the random few to let us free the rest!”

  “You used me to do that!”

  “Certainly did. Certainly do. Certainly will. Every time. A devil’s bargain, but the fairest trade we can ever make.”

  “It’s murder!”

  “It surely is. Collateral damage. Friendly fire. Never personal. Our powers have to come from somewhere!”

  “But you kill them!” Thomas said it more softly now, beyond rage, beyond disbelief. And the you worried Sam. Not we. “You used me.”

  “However it works, the power comes through the pure. Has to. We find. You send. Small price to pay when you think it through. Small enough price. Hundreds dead so thousands upon thousands can be saved.”

  “It’s immoral!”

  “Amoral
more like. But which is better? There goes a village, a town. You’ll have hundreds dead outright or thousands dying slowly? Starving. Eaten by insects, dogs, lying there aware in the fugue.”

  “But you’re heroes!”

  Sam didn’t try to answer that. What could you say? Merely flashmen, Thomas. Merely flashmen.

  “Which is better?” was all he said.

  “What!”

  “Do we try to get some or let them all go?”

  “You try to get them all!” Tears were running down the kid’s cheeks.

  “Doesn’t work like that. Which is better?”

  “It doesn’t excuse it!”

  “Never does. Never can. Explains is all. You did well today. You saved some who would have died.”

  “You’ll kill me if I tell about this.” The look of terror in his eyes had turned to cold understanding. “That’s the other secret.”

  “Doesn’t go like that,” Sam said, giving the final wonderful lie. “We give you the Lethe drug. You remember none of it.”

  “The Lethe drug? What if I refuse?”

  “We make you. Or the WHO doctors will. Or they’ll imprison you, take you away. The world can’t know.”

  I could pretend, Thomas might have said. Go along with it. But Sam had seen the test results, the psych profile, and knew he couldn’t.

  “Think it through,” was all Sam said, and started walking away.

  “I hate you!” Thomas called after him. “I thought you were heroes! I hate you all!”

  “You’ll be hero enough if you accept the responsibility. That’s why you were chosen. I’ll be at the perimeter.”

  Sam left him raging, weeping, sitting in the dust. Sat in the shade of some boulders himself as the last of the day fell away, and thought it through again. Because you always had to.

  What do they want from us? Sam asked himself, yet again. Clean answers? Salvation without a price? Something for nothing? He ran them all, all the old questions and trade-offs. Came up hard and strong, thinking of Mae, of Sunny and Walt and the look on Angel’s face back at Tagger’s when she first saw him again.