The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Vargovic ensconced himself in a cave, after placing the gill-worker equipment near another cave on the far side of the vent, hoping that the security operatives would look there first. While they did so, he would be able to kill at least one of them; maybe two. Once he had their weapons, taking care of the third would be a formality.

  Something nudged him from behind.

  What Vargovic saw when he turned around was something too repulsive even for a nightmare. It was so wrong that for a faltering moment he could not quite assimilate what it was he was looking at, as if the thing was a three-dimensional perception test; a shape which refused to stabilize in his head. The reason he could not hold it still was because part of him refused to believe that this thing had any connection with humanity. But the residual traces of human ancestry were too obvious to ignore.

  Vargovic knew-beyond any reasonable doubt-that what he was seeing was a Denizen. Others loomed from the cave depths. They were five more of them; all roughly similar; all aglow with faint bioluminescence, all regarding him with darkly intelligent eyes. Vargovic had seen pictures of mermaids in books when he was a child; what he was looking at now were macabre corruptions of those innocent illustrations. These things were the same fusions of human and fish as in those pictures-but every detail had been twisted toward ugliness, and the true horror of it was that the fusion was total; it was not simply that a human torso had been grafted to a fish's tail, but that the splice bad been made-it was obvious-at the genetic level, so that in every aspect of the creature there was something simultaneously and grotesquely piscine. The face was the worst; bisected by a lipless down-curved slit of a mouth, almost sharklike. There was no nose, not even a pair of nostrils; just an acreage of flat, sallow fish-flesh. The eyes were forward-facing; all expression compacted into their dark depth. The creature had touched him with one of its arms, which terminated in an obscenely human hand. And then-to compound the horror-it spoke, its voice perfectly clear and calm, despite the water.

  "We've been expecting you, Vargovic."

  The others behind murmured, echoing the sentiment.

  "What?"

  "So glad you were able to complete your mission."

  Vargovic began to get a grip, shakily. He reached up and dislodged the Denizen's hand from his shoulder. "You aren't why I'm here," he said, forcing allthority into his voice, drawing on every last drop of Gilgamesh training to suppress his nerves. "I wanted to know about you ... that was all .. ."

  "No," the lead Denizen said, opening its mouth to expose an alarming array of teeth. "You misunderstand. Coming here was always your mission. You have brought us something we want very much. That was always your purpose."

  "Brought you something?" His mind was reeling now.

  "Concealed within you." The Denizen nodded-, a human gesture which only served to magnify the horror of what it was. "The means by which we will strike at the Demarchy; the means by which we will take the ocean."

  He thought of the chips in his hands. "I think I understand," he said slowly. "It was always intended for you, is that what you mean?"

  "Always."

  Then he'd been lied to by his superiors-or they had at least drastically simplified the matter. He filled in the gaps himself, making the necessary mental leaps: evidently Gilgamesh was already in contact with the Denizens-bizarre as it seemed-and the chip, of hyperdiamond were meant for the Denizens, not his own people. Presumably-although he couldn't begin to guess at how this might be possible-the Denizens had the means to examine the shards and fabricate the agent which would unravel the hyperdiamond weave. They'd be acting for Gilgamesh, saving it the bother of actually dirtying its hands in the attack. He could see why this might appeal to Control. But if that was the case ... why had Gilgamesh ever faked ignorance about the Denizens?

  It made no sense. But on the other hand, he could not concoct a better theory to replace it.

  "I have what you want," he said, after due consideration. "Cholok said removing it would be simple."

  "Cholok can always be relied upon," the Denizen said.

  "You knew-know -her, then?"

  "She made us what we are today."

  "You hate her, then?"

  "No; we love her." The Denizen flashed its sharklike smile again, and it seemed to Vargovic that as its emotional state changed, so did the coloration of its bioluminescence. It was scarlet now; no longer the blue-green hue it had displayed upon its first appearance. "She took the abomination that we were and made us something better. We were in pain, once. Always pain. But Cholok took it away, made us strong. For that they punished her, and us."

  "If you hate the Demarcby," Vargovic said, "why have you waited until now before attacking it?"

  "Because we can't leave," one of the other Denizens said; the tone of its voice betraying femininity. "The Demarchy hated what Cholok had done to us. She brought our humanity to the fore; made it impossible to treat us as animals. We thought they would kill us, rather than risk our existence becoming known to the rest of Circum-Jove. Instead, they banished us here."

  "They thought we might come in handy," said another of the lurking creatures.

  Just then, another Denizen entered the cave, having swum in from the sea.

  "Demarchy agents have followed him," it said, its coloration blood red, tinged with orange, pulsing lividly. "They'll be here in a minute."

  "You'll have to protect me," Vargovic said.

  "Of course," the lead Denizen said. "You're our saviour."

  Vargovic nodded vigorously, no longer convinced that he could handle the three operatives on his own. Ever since he had arrived in the cave he bad felt his energy dwindling, as if he was succumbing to slow poisoning. A thought tugged at the back of his mind, and for a moment he almost paid attention to it; almost considered seriously the possibility that he was being poisoned. But what was going on beyond the cave was too distracting. He watched the three Demarchy agents approach, driven forward by the tugs which they held in front of them. Each agent carried a slender harpoon gun, tipped with a vicious barb.

  They didn't stand a chance.

  The Denizens moved too quickly, lancing out from the shadows, cutting through the water. The creatures moved faster than the Demarchy agents, even though they only had their own muscles and anatomy to propel them. But it was more than enough. They had no weapons, either-not even harpoons. But sharpened rocks more than sufficed-that and their teeth. Vargovic was impressed by their teeth.

  Afterwards, the Denizens returned to the cave to join their cousins. They moved more sluggishly now; as if the fury of the fight bad drained them. For a few moments they were silent, and their bioluminescence curiously subdued. Slowly, though, Vargovic watched their colour return. "It was better that they not kill you," the leader said.

  "Damn right," Vargovic said. "They wouldn't just have killed me, you know."

  He opened his fists, exposing his palms. "They'd have made sure you never got this."

  The Denizens-all of them-looked momentarily toward his open hands, as if there ought to have been something there. "I'm not sure you understand," the leader said, eventually.

  "Understand what?"

  "The nature of your mission."

  Fighting his fatigue-it was a black slick lapping at his consciousness-Vargovic said: "I understand perfectly well. I have the samples of hyperdiamond, in my hands ..."

  "That isn't what we want."

  He didn't like this, not at all. It was the way the Denizens were slowly creeping closer to him; sidling round him to obstruct his exit from the cave.

  "What then?"

  "You asked why we haven't attacked them before," the leader said, with frightening charm. "The answer's simple. We can't leave the vent."

  "You can't?"

  "Our haemoglobin. It's not like yours." Again that awful sharklike smile-and now be was well aware of what those teeth could do, given the right circumstances. "It was tailored to allow us to work here."

  "Copied from the ventl
ings?"

  "Adapted, yes. Later it became the means of imprisoning us. The DNA in our bone marrow was manipulated to limit the production of normal haemoglobin; a simple matter of suppressing a few beta-globin genes while retaining the variants which code for ventling haemoglobin. Hydrogen sulphide is poisonous to you, Vargovic. You probably already feel weak. But we can't survive without it. Oxygen kills us."

  "You leave the vent .."

  "We die, within a few hours. There's more, as well. The water's hot here; so hot that we don't need the glycoproteins. We have the genetic instructions to synthesize them, but they've also been turned off. But without the glycoproteins we can't swim into colder water. Our blood freezes."

  Now he was surrounded by them; looming aquatic devils, flushed a florid shade of crimson. And they were coming closer.

  "But what do you expect me to do about it?"

  "YOU don't have to do anything, Vargovic." The leader opened its chasmic jaw wide, as if tasting the water. It was a miracle an organ like that was capable of speech in the first place.

  "I don't?"

  "No." And with that the leader reached out and seized him, while at the same time he was pinned from behind by another of the creatures. "It was Cholok's doing," the leader continued. "Her final gift to us. Maunciple was her first attempt at getting it to us-but Maunciple never made it."

  "He was too fat."

  "All the defectors failed-they just didn't have the stamina to make it this far from the city. That was why Cholok recruited you-an outsider."

  "Cholok recruited me?"

  "She knew you'd kill her-you have, of course-but that didn't stop her. Her life mattered less than what she was about to give us. It was Cholok who tipped off the Demarchy about your primary extraction site, forcing you to come to us."

  He struggled, but it was pointless. All he could manage was a feeble, "I don't understand .. ."

  "No," the Denizen said. "Perhaps we never expected you to. If you had understood, you might have been less than willing to follow Cholok's plan."

  "Cholok was never working for us?"

  "Once, maybe. But her last clients were us."

  "And now?"

  "We take your blood, Vargovic." Their grip on him tightened. He used his last draining reserves of strength to try and work loose, but it was futile.

  "My blood?"

  "Cholok put something in it. A retrovirus-a very hardy one, capable of surviving in your body. It reactivates the genes which were suppressed by the Demarchy. Suddenly, we'll be able to make oxygen-carrying haemoglobin. Our blood will fill up with glycoproteins. It's no great trick: all the cellular machinery for making those molecules is already present; it just needs to be unshackled."

  "Then you need ... what? A sample of my blood?"

  "No," the Denizen said, with genuine regret. "Rather more than a sample, I'm afraid. Rather a lot more."

  And then-with magisterial slowness-the creature bit into his arm, and as his blood spilled out, the Denizen drank. For a moment the others waited-but then they too came forward, and bit, and joined in the feeding frenzy. All around Vargovic, the water was turning red.

  The Undiscovered

  William Sanders

  William Sanders lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. A former powow dancer and sometime Cherokee gospel singer, he appeared on the SF scene back around the turn of the decade with a couple of alternate history comedies, Journey to Fusang (a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award) and The Wild Blue and Gray. Sanders then turned to mystery and suspense, producing a number of critically acclaimed titles. He credits his old friend Roger Zelazny with persuading him to return to SF, this time via the short story form, and has made sales to Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tales of the Great Turtle, and Wheel of Fortune; one of his stories earned him a spot on last year's Final Hugo Ballot. His stories have appeared in our Twelfth and Thirteenth Annual Collections.

  In the wily, funny, and compassionate story that follows, he settles one of the great controversies of all time by demonstrating who wrote Shakespeare's plays (Shakespeare did, of course. What did you think?), but also shows us how, under other circumstances, some of the plays might have come out just a bit differently-especially if they were being performed for a somewhat different audience ...

  The white men are back! And trying once again to build themselves a town, without so much as asking anyone's permission. I wonder how long they will stay this time. It sounds as if these have no more sense than the ones who came before.

  They certainly pick the strangest places to settle. Last time it was that island, where anyone could have told them the weather is bad and the land is no good for corn. Now they have invaded Powhatan's country, and from what you say, they seem to have angered him already. Of course that has never been hard to do.

  Oh, yes, we hear about these matters up in the hills. Not many of us actually visit the coastal country-I don't suppose there are ten people in this town, counting myself, who have even seen the sea-but you know how these stories travel. We have heard all about your neighbor Powhatan, and you eastern people are welcome to him. Was there ever a chief so hungry for power? Not in my memory, and I have lived a long time.

  But we were speaking of the white men. As you say, they are a strange people indeed. For all their amazing weapons and other possessions, they seem to be ignorant of the simplest things. I think a half-grown boy would know more about bow to survive. Or how to behave toward other people in their own country.

  And yet they are not the fools they appear. Not all of them, at least. The only one I ever knew was a remarkably wise man in many ways, Do not make that gesture at me. I tell you that there was a white man who lived right here in our town, for more than ten winters, and I came to know him well.

  I remember the day they brought him in. I was sitting in front of my house, working on a fish spear, when I heard the shouting from the direction of the town gate. Bigkiller and his party, I guessed, returning from their raid on the Tuscaroras. People were running toward the gate, pouring out of the houses, everyone eager for a look.

  I stayed where I was. I could tell by the sound that the raid had been successful-no women were screaming, so none of our people had been killed or seriously hurt-and I didn't feel like spending the rest of the day listening to Bigkiller bragging about his latest exploits.

  But a young boy came up and said, "They need you, Uncle. Prisoners."

  So I put my spear aside and got up and followed him, wondering once again why no one around this place could be bothered to learn to speak Tuscarora. After all, it is not so different from our tongue, not nearly as hard as Catawba or Maskogi or Shawano. Or your own language, which as you see I still speak poorly.

  The captives were standing just inside the gate, guarded by a couple of Bigkiller's brothers, who were holding war clubs and looking fierce, as well as pleased with themselves. There was a big crowd of people by now and I had to push my way through before I could see the prisoners. There were a couple of scared looking Tuscarora women-one young and pretty, the other almost my age and ugly as an alligator-and a small boy with his fist stuck in his mouth. Not much, I thought, to show for all this noise and fuss.

  Then I saw the white man.

  Do you know, it didn't occur to me at first that that was what he was. After all, white men were very rare creatures in those days, even more so than now. Hardly anyone had actually seen one, and quite a few people refused to believe they existed at all.

  Besides, he wasn't really white-not the kind of fish-belly white that I'd always imagined, when people talked about white men-at least where it showed. His face was a strange reddish color, like a boiled crawfish, with little bits of skin peeling from his nose. His arms and legs, where they stuck out from under the single buckskin garment he wore, were so dirty and covered with bruises that it was hard to tell what color the skin was. Of course that was true of all of the captives; Bigkiller and his warriors had not been gentle.


  His hair was dark brown rather than black, which I thought was unusual for a Tuscarora, though you do see Leni Lenapes and a few Shawanos with lighter hair. It was pretty thin above his forehead, and the scalp beneath showed through, a nasty bright pink. I looked at that and at the red peeling skin of his face, and thought: well done, Bigkiller, you've brought home a sick man. Some lowland skin disease, and what a job it's going to be purifying everything after he dies ... That was when he turned and looked at me with those blue eyes. Yes, blue. I don't blame you; I didn't believe that story either, until I saw for myself. The white men have eyes the color of a sunny sky. I tell you, it is a weird thing to see when you're not ready for it.

  Bigkiller came through the crowd, looking at me and laughing. "Look what we caught, Uncle," he said, and pointed with his spear. "A white man!"

  "I knew that," I said, a little crossly. I hated it when he called me "Uncle." I hated it when anyone did it, except children-I was not yet that old-but I hated it worse when it came from Bigkiller. Even if he was my nephew.

  "He was with the Tuscaroras," one of the warriors, Muskrat by name, told me. "These two women had him carrying firewood-"

  "Never mind that." Bigkiller gave Muskrat a bad look. No need to tell the whole town that this brave raid deep into Tuscarora country had amounted to nothing more than the ambush and kidnapping of a small wood-gathering party.

  To me Bigkiller said, "Well, Uncle, you're the one who knows all tongues. Can you talk with this white-skin?"

  I stepped closer and studied the stranger, who looked back at me with those impossible eyes. He seemed unafraid, but who could read expressions on such an unnatural face?