The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Her smile brought a wave of complimentary noise.

  In private, Washen doubted they were inside someone's dead battery. But this wasn't the polite moment to list the troubles with flywheels. And besides, the bioteams were reporting next, and she was eager to compare notes.

  A tremor suddenly shook the captains, one after another, spreading out from its distant epicenter. Even for Marrow, that was a big jolt.

  Compliments dissolved into an alert silence.

  Then the Master lifted her wide hand, announcing abruptly, "We need to discuss your timetable."

  What about the bioteams?

  "You're being missed, I’m afraid. Our cover story isn't clever enough, and the crew are suspicious." The Master lowered her band, then said, "Before people are too worried, I want to bring you home."

  Smiles broke out.

  Some were tired of Marrow; other captains were tickled with the prospects of honors and promotions.

  "Everyone, madam?" Washen dared.

  "At least temporarily."

  According to the ship's duty roster, the missing captains were visiting a nearby solar system, serving as travel agents to billions of potential passengers. And the truth told, there'd been boring moments when Washen found herself wishing that the fiction was real. But not today. Not when she was in the middle of something fascinating ... !

  As mission leader, it was Miocene's place to ask:

  "Do you want us to cut our work short, madam?"

  The Master squinted at the nearest window, gazing out at one of the ship's port facilities. For her, the room and its view were genuine, and her captains were illusions.

  "Mission plans can be rewritten," she told them. "I want you to finish surveying the far hemisphere, and I want the critical studies wrapped up. Ten shipdays should be adequate. Then you'll come home, and we'll take our time deciding on our next actions."

  Smiles wavered, but none crumbled.

  Miocene whispered, "Ten days," with a tentative respect.

  "Is that a problem?"

  "Madam," the Submaster began, "I would feel much more comfortable if we were certain that Marrow isn't a threat."

  There was a pause, and not just because the Master was thousands of kilometers removed from them. It was a lengthy, unnerving silence. Then captains' captain looked off into the distance, saying, "Considerations? Any?"

  It would be a disruption. The other Submasters agreed with Miocene. To accomplish their work in ten days, with confidence, would require every captain, including those stationed with the support teams. Their base camp would have to be abandoned temporarily. That was an acceptable risk, perhaps. But mild words were obscured by clenched fists and distant, worried gazes.

  Unsatisfied, the Master turned to her future Submaster. "Do you have any considerations to add?"

  Washen hesitated as long as she dared. "Marrow could have been a flywheel," she finally allowed. "Madam."

  Brown eyes closed, opened. "I'm sorry," the Master responded, the voice devoid of amusement. "Aren't we discussing your timetable?"

  "But if these buttresses ever weakened," Washen continued, "even for an instant, the planet would have expanded instantly. Catastrophically. The surrounding hyperfiber would have vaporized, and a shock wave would have passed through the entire ship, in moments." She offered simple calculations, then added, "Maybe this was a elaborate flywheel. But it also would have made all effective self-destruct mechanism. We don't know, madam. We don't know if the builders had enemies, real or imagined. But if we're going to find answers, I can't think of a better place to look."

  The Master's face was unreadable, impenetrable.

  Finally she shook her head, smiling in a pained manner. "Since my first moment on board this glorious vessel, I have nourished one guiding principle: The builders, whomever they were, would never endanger this marvelous creation."

  Washen wished for the same confidence.

  Then that apparition of light and sound leaned forward, saying, "You need a change of duty, Washen. I want you and your team in the lead. Help us explore the far hemisphere. And once the surveys are finished, everyone comes home. Agreed?"

  "As you wish, madam," said Washen. Said everyone.

  Then Washen caught Miocene's surreptitious glance, something in the eyes saying, "Nice try, darling." And with that look, the faintest hint of respect.

  Pterosaur drones had already drawn three maps of the region. Yet as Washen passed overhead, she realized that even the most recent map, drawn eight days ago, was too old to be useful.

  Battered by quakes, the landscape had been beaved skyward, then torn open. Molten iron flowed into an oxbow lake, boiling water and mud, and columns of dirty steam rose skyward, then twisted to the east. As an experiment, Washen flew into the steam clouds. Samples were ingested through filters and sensors and simple Tensing chambers. Riding with the steam were spores and eggs, encased in tough bioceramics and indifferent to the heat. Inside the tip of the needle flask, too small to see with the naked eye, were enough pond weeds and finned beetles to conquer ten new lakes.

  Catastrophe was the driving force on Marrow.

  That insight struck Washen every day, sometimes hourly, and it always arrived with a larger principle in tow:

  In some flavor or another, disaster ruled every world.

  But Marrow was the ultimate example. And as if to prove itself, the steam clouds dispersed suddenly, giving way to the sky's light, the chamber wall overhead, and far below, for as far as Washen could see, the stark black bones of a jungle.

  Fumes and fire had incinerated every tree, every scrambling bug.

  The carnage must have been horrific. Yet the blaze had passed days ago, and new growth was already pushing up from the gnarled trunks and fresh crevices, thousands of glossy black umbrella-like leaves shining in the superheated air.

  Washen decided to blank the useless maps, flying on instinct.

  "Twenty minutes, and we're as far from the bridge as possible," Diu promised, his smile wide and infectious.

  No other team would travel as far.

  Washen started to turn, intending to order chilled champagne for the occasion, her mouth opened and a distorted, almost inaudible voice interrupting her.

  "Report ... all teams ... !"

  It was Miocene's voice strained through a piercing electronic whistle.

  "What do ... see ... ?" asked the Submaster. "Teams ... report ... Washen tried establishing more than an audio link, and failed.

  A dozen other captains were chattering in a ragged chorus. Zale said, "We're on schedule." Kyzkee observed, "There's some com-interference ... otherwise, systems appear nominal." Then with more curiosity than worry, Aasleen inquired, "Why, madam? Is something wrong?"

  There was a long, jangled hum.

  Diu was hunched over sensor displays, and with a tight little voice, he said, "Shit."

  "What-?" Washen cried out.

  Then a shrill cry swept away every voice, every thought. And the day brightened and brightened, fat bolts of lightning flowing across the sky, then turning, moving with purpose, aiming for them.

  From the far side of the world came a twisted voice:

  "The bridge ... where is it ... do you see it ... where ... ?"

  The car bucked as if panicking, losing thrust and altitude, then its Als. Washen deployed the manual controls, and centuries of drills made her concentrate, nothing existing but their tumbling vehicle, her syrupy reflexes, and an expanse of burnt forest.

  The next barrage of lightning was purple-white, and brighter, nothing visible but its seething glare.

  Washen flew blind, flew by memory.

  Their car was designed to endure heroic abuse, the same as its passengers. But it was dead and its hull had been degraded, and when it struck the iron ground, the hull shattered. Restraining fields grabbed bodies, then failed. Nothing but mechanical belts and gas bags held the captains in their seats. Flesh was jerked and twisted, and shredded. Bones were shattered and wrench
ed from their sockets. Then the seats were torn free of the floor, and like useless wreckage, scattered across several hectares of iron and burnt stumps.

  Washen never lost consciousness.

  With numbed curiosity, she watched her own legs and arms break, and a thousand bruises spread into a single purple tapestry, every rib crushed to dust and her reinforced spine splintering until she was left without pain or a shred of mobility. Washen couldn't move her head, and her words were slow and watery, the sloppy mouth filled with cracked teeth and dying blood. "Abandon," she muttered. Then, "Ship," and she was laughing feebly. Desperately. A gray sensation rippled through her body. Emergency genes were already awake, finding their home in a shambles. They immediately protected the brain, flooding it with oxygen and anti inflammatories, plus a blanket of comforting narcotics. Then they began to repair the vital organs and spine, cannibalizing meat for raw materials and energy, the captain's body wracked with fever, sweating salt water and blood, and after a little while, the body grew noticeably smaller.

  An hour after the crash, a wrenching pain swept through Washen. It was a favorable sign. She squirmed and wailed, and with weak bands, freed herself from her ruined chair. Then with her sloppy rebuilt legs, she forced herself to stand.

  Washen was suddenly twenty centimeters shorter, and frail. But she was able to limp over to Dill's body, finding him shriveled and in agony, but defiant-a fierce grin and a wink, then he told her, "You look gorgeous, madam. As always."

  The others were alive, too. But not one machine in the wreckage would operate, not even well enough to say, "I'm broken."

  The six captains healed within a day, and waited at the crash site, eating their rations to reclaim their size and vigor. No rescue team arrived. whatever crippled their car must have done the same everywhere, they decided. Miocene was as powerless as them. And that left them with one viable option:

  If Washen and the others wanted help, they were going to have to walk halfway around Marrow to find it.

  MISSION YEAR 4.43:

  The bridge resembled a rigid thread, silvery and insubstantial. Sheered off in the high stratosphere, it was far too short to serve as an escape route. But it made a useful landmark. Washen's team steered for the bridge during those last days, picking their way across the knife-like ridges and narrow valleys between. Wondering what they would find, whenever they rested-for a moment, now and again-they let themselves talk in hopeful tones, imagining the other captains' surprise when the six of them suddenly marched out of the jungle.

  Except when they arrived at the bridge, there was no one to catch off guard. The main encampment had been abandoned. The hilltop where the bridge was rooted had been split open by quakes, and the entire structure tilted precariously toward the east. A simple iron post kept the main doors propped open, and there was a makeshift ladder in the shaft, but judging by the rust, nobody had used it for months. Or perhaps years.

  A sketchy path led west. They followed, and after a long while, they came to a fertile river bottom and wider paths. With Washen at the lead, they were jogging, and it was Miocene who suddenly stepped into view, surprising them.

  The Submaster was unchanged.

  In uniform, she looked regal and well-chilled. "It took you long enough," she deadpanned. Then she smiled, adding, "It's good to see you. Honestly, we'd nearly given up hope."

  Waslie swallowed her anger.

  The other captains bombarded Miocene with questions. Who else had survived? flow were they inaking do? Did any machines work? Had the Master been in contact with them? Then Diu asked, "What kind of relief mission is coming?"

  "It's a cautious relief mission," Miocene replied. "So cautious that it seems almost nonexistent."

  Her captains had built telescopes from scratch, and at least one captain was always watching the base camp overhead. The transparent blister was intact. Every building was intact. But the drones and beacons were dead, which meant that the reactor was offline. A three kilometer stub of the bridge would make the perfect foundation for a new structure. But there wasn't any sign that captains or anyone was trying to mount any kind of rescue.

  "The Master thinks we're dead," Diu offered, trying to be charitable.

  "We aren't dead," Miocene countered. "And even if we were, she should be a little more interested in our bones, and answers."

  Washen didn't talk. After three years of jogging, eating lousy food and forcing hope, she suddenly felt sickened and achingly tired.

  The Submaster led them along a wide trail, working back through their questions.

  "Every machine was ruined by the Event. That's our name for what happened. The Event left our cars and drones and sensors as fancy trash, and we can't fix them. And we can't decide why, either." Then she offered a distracted smile, adding, "But we're surviving. Wooden homes, with roofs. Iron tools. Pendulum clocks. Steam power when we go to the trouble, and enough homemade equipment, like the telescopes, that we can do some simple, simple science."

  The jungle's understory had been cut down and beaten back, and the new encampment stretched out on all sides. Like anything built by determined captains, the place was orderly, perhaps to a fault. The houses were clean and in good repair. Paths were marked with logs, and someone had given each path its own name. Everyone was in uniform, and everyone was smiling, trying to hide the weariness in the eyes and their voices. A hundred captainsshouted, "Hello! Welcome!"

  Washen stared at their faces, and counted, and finally forced herself to ask, "Who isn't here?"

  Miocene recited a dozen names.

  Eleven of them were friends or acquaintances of Washen's. The last name was Hazz-a Submaster and a voyage-long friend of Miocene's. "Two months ago," she explained, "he was exploring a nearby valley. A fissure opened up suddenly, without warning, and he was trapped by the flowing iron." Her eyes were distant, unreadable. "Hazz was perched on a little island that was melting. We tried to build a bridge, and tried to divert the current. Everything half-possible, we tried."

  Washen stared at the narrow face, at the way the eyes had grown empty, and it was suddenly obvious that Miocene had been more than friends with the dead man.

  "The island shrank," she told them, her voice too flat and slow. "It was a knob, if that. Hazz's boots dissolved, and his feet were boiling, and his flesh caught fire. But he managed to stand there. He endured it. He endured it and even managed to turn and take a step toward on us, on his boiling legs, and he fell forward, and that's when he finally died."

  Washen had been mistaken. This wasn't the same Miocene.

  "I have one goal," the Submaster confessed. "I want to find a way to get back to the Master, and I'll ask her why she sent us here. Was it to explore? Or was it just the best awful way to get rid of us ... ?"

  MISSION YEAR 6.55:

  The iron crust rippled and tore apart under a barrage of quakes, and with its foundation shattered, the bridge pitched sideways with a creaking roar, then shattered, the debris field scattered over fifty kilometers of newborn mountains.

  Its fall was inevitable, and unrecorded. Geysers of white-hot metal had already obliterated the captains' encampment, forcing them to flee with a minimum of tools and provisions. Lungs were scared. Tongues and eyes were blistered. But the captains eventually stumbled into a distant valley, into a grove of stately trees, where they collapsed, gasping and cursing. Then as if to bless them, the trees began releasing tiny balloons made from gold, and the shady, halfway cool air was filled with the balloons' glint and the dry music made by their brushing against one another.

  Diu coined the name virtue tree.

  Miocene set her captains to planning new streets and houses, several of the virtue trees already downed when the ground ripped open with an anguished roar.

  Wearily, the captains fled again, and when they settled, finally, they built strong simple houses that could be rebuilt anywhere in a ship's day.

  Nomadic blood took hold in them. When they weren't stockpiling food for the next migration,
they were building lighter tools, and when they weren't doing either, they studied their world, trying to guess its fickle moods.

  Washen assembled a team of twenty observant captains.

  "Breeding cycles are key," she reported. Sitting in the meeting hall, looking up and down the iron table, she reported that virtue trees spun their golden balloons only when the crust turned unstable. "If we see another show like the last one," she promised, "we're screwed. We've got a day, or less, to get out of here."

  Staff meetings were patterned after conferences with the Master, except they came on an irregular schedule, and Miocene presided, and despite her best intentions, the captains kept the atmosphere informal, even jocular, and because of the absence of soap, more than a little sour.

  "How are our virtue trees acting?" asked Aasleen.

  "As if they'll live forever," Washen replied. "They're still happy, still early in their growth cycle. As far as we can tell."

  Miocene acted distant that day. Squinting at nothing, she repeated the word:

  "Cycles."

  Everyone turned in their heavy chairs, and waited. "Thank you, Washen." The Submaster rose and looked at each of them, then admitted, "This may be premature. I could be wrong for many reasons. But I think I've been able to find another cycle ... one that's unexpected, at least for me ... There was the distant droning of a hammerwing, and then, silence. "Volcanic activity is escalating. I think that's obvious." The tall woman nodded for a moment, then asked, "But why? My proposal is that the buttresses have begun to relax their hold on Marrow. Not by much. Certainly nothing we can measure directly. But if it did happen, the metals under us are going to expand, and that's why, according to my careful computations, our home is growing larger."

  Washen's first impulse was to laugh; it was a joke. "Several kilometers larger," Miocene told the stunned faces. "I've gathered several lines of evidence. The buttresses' light has diminished by two or three percent. The horizon is a little more distant. And what's most impressive, I think: I've triangulated the distance to our base camp, and it's definitely closer than it was last year."