The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  A dozen explanations occurred to Washen, but she realized that Miocene must have seen them, then discarded them.

  "If Marrow isn't teasing us," said the Submaster, "and if the buttresses don't reverse the cycle, then you can see where we’re going.”

  Washen cried out, "How long will it take, madam?"

  A dozen captains shouted the same question. "The calculations aren't promising," Miocene replied. But she had to laugh in a soft, bitter way. "At the present rate, we'll be able to touch that three kilometer stub of the bridge in about five thousand years ..”

  MISSION YEAR 88.55:

  It was time for the children to sleep. Washen had come to check on them. But for some reason she stopped short of the nursery, eavesdropping on them, uncertain why it was important to remain hidden. The oldest boy was telling a story. "We call them the Builders," he said, "because they created the ship."

  "The ship," whispered the other children, in one voice. "The ship is too large to measure, and it is very beautiful. But when it was new, there was no one to share it with the Builders, and no one to tell them that it was beautiful. That's why they called out into the darkness, inviting others to come fill its vastness."

  Washen leaned against the fragrant umbra wood, waiting. "Who came from the darkness?" asked the boy.

  "The Bleak," young voices answered, instantly. "Was there anyone else?"

  "No one."

  "Because the universe was so young," the boy explained. "Only the Bleak and the Builders bad already evolved."

  "The Bleak," a young girl repeated, with feeling.

  "They were a cruel, selfish species," the boy maintained, "but they always wore smiles and said the smartest words."

  "They wanted the ship," the others prompted.

  "And they stole it. In one terrible night, as the Builders slept, the Bleak attacked, slaughtering most of them in their beds."

  Every child whispered, "Slaughtered."

  Washen eased her way closer to the nursery door. The boy was sitting up on his cot, his face catching the one sliver of light that managed to slip through the ceiling. Till was his name. He looked very much like his mother for a moment, then he moved his head slightly, and he resembled no one else.

  "Where did the survivors retreat?" he asked. "To Marrow."

  "And from here, what did they do?"

  "They purified the ship."

  "They purified the ship," he repeated, with emphasis. "They swept its tunnels and chambers free of the scourge. The Builders had no choice."

  There was a long, reflective pause. "What happened to the last of the Builders?" he asked.

  "They were trapped here," said the others, on cue. "And one after another, they died here."

  "What died?"

  "Their flesh."

  "But what else is there?"

  "The spirit."

  "What isn't flesh cannot die," said the young prophet.

  Washen waited, wondering when she had last taken a breath.

  Then in whisper, Till asked, "Where do their spirits live?" With a palpable delight, the children replied, "They live inside us."

  "We are the Builders now," the voice assured. "After a long lonely wait, we've finally been reborn ...”

  MISSION YEAR 88.90:

  Life on Marrow had become halfway comfortable and almost predictable. The captains weren't often caught by surprise eruptions, and they'd learned where the crust was likely to remain thick and stable for years at a time. With so much success, children had seemed inevitable; Miocene decided that every female captain should produce at least one. And like children anywhere, theirs filled many niches: They were fresh faces, and they were cherished distractions, and they were entertainment, and more than anyone anticipated, they were challenges to the captains' authority. But what Miocene wanted, first and always, were willing helpers. Till and his playmates were born so that someday, once trained, they could help their parents escape from Marrow.

  The hope was that they could rebuild the bridge. Materials would be a problem, and Marrow would fight them. But Washen was optimistic. In these last eight decades, she'd tried every state of mind, and optimism far and away was the most pleasant.

  And she tried to be positive everywhere: Good, sane reasons had kept them from being rescued. There was no one else the Master could trust like her favorite captains. Perhaps. Or she was thinking of the ship's well-being, monitoring Marrow from a distance. Or most likely, the access tunnel had totally collapsed during the Event, and digging them out was grueling, achingly slow work.

  Other captains were optimistic in public, but in private, in their lovers' beds, they confessed to darker moods.

  "What if the Master has written us off?" Diu posed the question, then offered an even worse scenario. "Or maybe something's happened to her. This was a secret mission. If she died unexpectedly, and if the First-chairs don't even know we're here .. ."

  "Do you believe that?" Washen asked. Diu shrugged his shoulders.

  "There's another possibility," she said, playing the game. "What if everyone else on the ship has died?"

  For a moment, Diu didn't react.

  "The ship was a derelict," she reminded him. "No one knows what happened to its owners, or to anyone else who's used it since."

  "What are you saying?" Diu sat up in bed, dropping his legs over the edge. "You mean the crew and the passengers ... all of them have been killed ... ?"

  "Maybe the ship cleans itself out every hundred thousand years."

  A tiny grin emerged. "So how did we survive?"

  "Life on Marrow is spared," she argued. "Otherwise, all of this would be barren iron and nothing else."

  Diu pulled one of his hands across his face.

  "This isn't my story," she admitted, placing her hand on his sweaty back. Their infant son, Locke, was sleeping in the nearby crib, blissfully unaware of their grim discussion. In three years, he would live in the nursery. With Till, she was thinking. Washen bad overheard the story about the Builders and the Bleak several months ago, but she ever told anyone. Not even Diu. "have you ever listened to the children?" Glancing over his shoulder, he asked, "Why?"

  She explained, in brief.

  A sliver of light caught his gray eye and cheek. "You know Till," Diu countered. "You know how odd he can seem."

  "That's why I never mention it."

  "Have you heard him tell that story again?"

  "No," she admitted.

  Her lover nodded, looking at the crib. At Locke.

  "Children are imagination machines," he warned. "You never know what they're going to think about anything."

  He didn't say another word.

  Washen was remembering her only other child-a long-ago foster child, only glancingly human-and with a bittersweet grin, she replied, "But that's the fun in having them ... or so I've always heard .. ."

  MISSION YEAR 89.09:

  The boy was walking alone, crossing the public round with his eyes watching his own bare feet, watching them shuffle across the heat-baked iron. "Hello, Till."

  Pausing, he lifted his gaze slowly, a smile waiting to shine at the captain. "Hello, Madam Washen. You're well, I trust."

  Under the blue glare of the sky, he was a polite, scrupulously ordinary boy. He had a thin face joined to a shorter, almost blockish body, and like most children, he wore as little as the adults let him wear. No one knew which of several captains was his genetic father. Miocene never told. She wanted to be his only parent, grooming him to stand beside her someday, and whenever Washen looked at Till, she felt a nagging resentment, petty as can be, and since it was directed at a ten year old, simply foolish.

  With her own smile, Washen said, "I have a confession to make. A little while ago, I overheard you and the other children talking. You were telling each other a story."

  The eyes were wide and brown, and they didn't so much as blink. "It was an interesting story," Washen conceded.

  Till looked like any ten year old who didn't know what to make
of a bothersome adult. Sighing wearily, he shifted his weight from one brown foot to the other. Then he sighed again, the picture of boredom. "How did you think up that story?" she asked. A shrug of the shoulders. "I don't know."

  "We talk about the ship. Probably too much." Her explanation felt sensible and practical. Her only fear was that she would come across as patronizing.

  "Everyone likes to speculate. About the ship's past, and its builders, and all the rest. it has to be confusing. Since we're going to rebuild our bridge, with your help ... it does make you into a kind of builder..

  Till shrugged again, his eyes looking past her.

  On the far side of the round, in front of the encampment's shop, a team of captains had fired up their latest turbine-a primitive wonder built from memory and trial-and-error. Homebrewed alcohols combined with oxygen, creating a delicious roar. When it was working, the engine was powerful enough to do any job they could offer it, at least today. But it was dirty and noisy, and the sound of it almost obscured the boy's voice.

  "I'm not speculating," he said softly.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I won't tell you that. That I'm making it up."

  Washen had to smile, asking, "Aren't you?"

  "No." Till shook his head, then looked back down at his toes. "Madam Washen," he said with a boy's fragile patience. "You can't make up something that's true."

  MISSION YEAR 114.41:

  Locke was waiting in the shadows-a grown man with a boy's guilty face and the wide, restless eyes of someone expecting trouble to come from every direction. His first words were, "I shouldn't be doing this."

  But a moment later, responding to an anticipated voice, he said, "I know, Mother. I promised."

  Washen never made a sound.

  It was Diu who offered second thoughts. "If this is going to get you in trouble ... maybe we should go home ..."

  "Maybe you should," their son allowed. Then he turned and walked away, never inviting them to follow, knowing they wouldn't be able to help themselves.

  Washen hurried, feeling Diu in her footsteps.

  A young jungle of umbra trees and lambda bush dissolved into rugged bare iron: Black pillars and arches created an indiscriminate, infuriating maze. Every step was a challenge. Razored edges sliced at exposed flesh. Bottomless crevices threatened to swallow the graceless. And Washen's body was accustomed to sleep at this hour, which was why the old grove took her by surprise. Suddenly Locke was standing on the rusty lip of a cliff, waiting for them, gazing down at a narrow valley filled with black-as-night virtue trees.

  It was lucky ground. When the world's guts began to pour out on all sides, that slab of crust had fallen into a fissure. The jungle had been burned but never killed. It could be a hundred years old, or older. There was a rich, eternal feel to the place, and perhaps that's why the children had chosen it.

  The children. Washen knew better, but despite her best intentions, she couldn't think of them any other way.

  "Keep quiet," Locke whispered, not looking back at them. "Please."

  In the living shadows, the air turned slightly cooler and uncomfortably damp. Blankets of rotting canopy left the ground watery-soft. A giant daggerwing roared past, intent on some vital business, and Washen watched it vanish into the gloom, then reappear, tiny with the distance, its bluish carapace shining in a patch of sudden skylight.

  Locke turned abruptly, silently.

  A single finger lay against his lips. But what Washen noticed was his expression, the pain and worry so intense that she had to try and reassure him with a touch.

  It was Diu who had wormed the secret out him.

  The children were meeting in the jungle, and they'd been meeting for more than twenty years. At irregular intervals, Till would call them to some secluded location, and it was Till who was in charge of everything said and done. "What's said?" Washen had asked. "And what do you do?" But Locke refused to explain it, shaking his head and adding that he was breaking his oldest promise by telling any of it. "Then why do it?" Washen pressed.

  "Because," her son replied. "You have every right to hear what he's saying. So you can decide for yourselves."

  Washen stood out of sight, staring at the largest virtue tree she had ever seen. Age had killed it, and rot had brought it down, splitting the canopy open as it crumbled. Adult children and their little brothers and sisters had assembled in that pool of skylight, standing in clumps and pairs, talking quietly. Till paced back and forth on the wide black trunk. He looked fully adult, ageless and decidedly unexceptional, wearing a simple breechcloth and nimble boots, his plain face showing a timid, self-conscious expression that gave Washen a strange little moment of hope.

  Maybe Till's meetings were a just an old game that grew up into a social gathering.

  Maybe.

  Without a word or backward glance, Locke walked into the clearing, joining the oldest children up in the front.

  His parents obeyed their promise, kneeling in the jungle.

  A few more children filtered into view. Then with some invisible signal, the worshippers fell silent. With a quiet voice, Till asked, "What do we want?"

  "What's best for the ship," the children answered. "Always."

  "How long is always?"

  "Longer than we can count."

  "And how far is always?"

  "To the endless ends."

  "Yet we live-"

  "For a moment!" they cried. "If that long!"

  The words were absurd, and chilling. What should have sounded silly to Washen wasn't, the prayer acquiring a muscular credibility when hundreds were speaking in one voice, with a practiced surely.

  "What is best for the ship," Till repeated.

  Except he was asking a question. His plain face was filled with curiosity, a genuine longing.

  Quietly, he asked his audience, "Do you know the answer?"

  In a muddled shout, the children said, "No."

  "I don't either," their leader promised. "But when I'm awake, I'm searching. And when I'm sleeping, my dreams do the same."

  There was a brief pause, then an urgent voice cried out, "We have newcomers! "

  "Bring them up."

  They were seven year olds-a twin brother and sister-and they climbed the trunk as if terrified. But Till offered his hands, and with a crisp surely, he told each to breathe deeply, then asked them, "what do you know about the ship?"

  The little girl glanced at the sky, saying, "It's where we came from."

  Laughter broke out in the audience, then evaporated.

  Her brother corrected her. "The captains came from there. Not us." Then he added, "But we're going to help them get back there. Soon."

  There was a cold, prolonged pause.

  Till allowed himself a patient smile, patting both of their heads. Then he looked out at his followers, asking, "Is he right?"

  "No," they roared. The siblings winced and tried to vanish.

  Till knelt between them, and with a steady voice said, "The captains are just the captains. But you and I and all of us here ... we are the Builders."

  Washen hadn't heard that nonsense in a quarter of a century, and hearing it now, she couldn't decide whether to laugh or explode in rage.

  "We're the Builders reborn," Till repeated. Then he gave them the seeds of rebellion, adding, "And whatever our purpose, it is not to help these silly captains."

  Miocene refused to believe any of it. "First of all," she told Washen, and herself, "I know my own child. What you're describing is ridiculous. Second of all, this rally of theirs would involve nearly half of our children-"

  Diu interrupted. "Most of them are adults with their own homes." Then he added, "Madam."

  "I checked," said Washen. "Several dozen of the younger children did slip out of the nurseries-"

  "I'm not claiming that they didn't go somewhere." Then with a haughty expression, she asked, "Will the two of you listen to me? For a moment, please?"

  "Go on, madam," said Diu.

  "I kno
w what's reasonable. I know how my son was raised and I know his character, and unless you can offer me some motivation for this ... this shit ... then I think we'll just pretend that nothing's been said here ..”

  "Motivation," Washen repeated. "Tell me what's mine."

  With a chill delight, Miocene said, "Greed."

  “Why?"

  "Believe me, I understand." The dark eyes narrowed, silver glints in their corners. "If my son is insane, then yours stands to gain. Status, at least. Then eventually, power."

  Washen glanced at Diu.

  They hadn't mentioned Locke's role as the informant, and they would keep it secret as long as possible-for a tangle of reasons, most of them selfish. "Ask Till about the Builders," she insisted. "I won't."

  "Why not?"

  The woman took a moment, vainly picking spore cases from her new handmade uniform. Then with a cutting logic, she said, "If it's a lie, he'll say it's a lie. If it's true and he lies, then it'll sound like the truth."

  "But if he admits it-?"

  "Then Till wants me to know. And you're simply a messenger." She gave them a knowing stare, then looked off into the distance. "That's not a revelation I want delivered at his convenience."

  Three ship-days later, while the encampment slept, a great fist lifted the world several meters, then grew bored and flung it down again.

  Captains and children stumbled into the open. The sky was already choked with golden balloons and billions of flying insects. In twelve hours, perhaps less, the entire region would blister and explode, and die. Like a drunken woman, Washen ran through the aftershocks, reaching a tidy home and shouting, "Locke," into its empty rooms. Where was her son? She moved along the round, finding all of the children's houses empty. A tall figure stepped out of Till's tiny house and asked, "Have you see mine?"

  Washen shook her head. "Have you seen mine?" Miocene said, "No," and sighed. Then she strode past Washen, shouting, "Do you know where I can find him?"

  Diu was standing in the center of the round. Waiting. "If you help me," the Submaster promised, "you'll help your own son."