The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

“The gamble is desperate. Yet if we win, choose your reward, whatever it may be, and I think you shall have it.”

  Ilyandi lowered her head above folded hands. “Enough to have served those who dwell beyond the moon.”

  “Humph,” Kalava could not keep from muttering, “if they want to pay for it, why not?” Aloud, almost eagerly, his own head raised into the wind that tossed his whitened mane: “What’d you have us do?”

  Brannock’s regard matched his. “I have thought about this. Can one of you come with me? I will carry him, faster than he can go. As for what happens later, we will speak of that along the way.”

  The humans stood silent.

  “If I but had the woodcraft,” Ilyandi then said. “Ai, but I would! To the stars!”

  Kalava shook his head. “No, my lady. You go back with these fellows. Give heart to them at the ship. Make them finish the repairs.” He glanced at Brannock. “How long will this foray take, lord?”

  “I can reach the mountaintop in two days and a night,” the other said. “If I am caught and you must go on alone, I think a good man could make the whole distance from here in ten or fifteen days.”

  Kalava laughed, more gladly than before. “Courser won’t be seaworthy for quite a bit longer than that. Let’s away.” To Ilyandi: “If I’m not back by the time she’s ready, sail home without me.”

  “No—” she faltered.

  “Yes. Mourn me not. What a faring!” He paused. “May all be ever well with you, my lady.”

  “And with you, forever with you, Kalava,” she answered, not quite steadily, “in this world and afterward, out to the stars.”

  9

  From withes and vines torn loose and from strips taken off clothing or sliced from leather belts, Brannock fashioned a sort of carrier for his ally. The man assisted. However excited, he had taken on a matter-of-fact practicality. Brannock, who had also been a sailor, found it weirdly moving to see bowlines and sheet bends grow between deft fingers, amidst all this alienness.

  Harnessed to his back, the webwork gave Kalava a seat and something to cling to. Radiation from the nuclear power plant within Brannock was negligible; it employed quantum-tunneling fusion. He set forth, down the hills and across the valley.

  His speed was not very much more than a human could have maintained for a while. If nothing else, the forest impeded him. He did not want to force his way through, leaving an obvious trail. Rather, he parted the brush before him or detoured around the thickest stands. His advantage lay in tirelessness. He could keep going without pause, without need for food, water, or sleep, as long as need be. The heights beyond might prove somewhat trickier. However, Mount Mindhome did not reach above timberline on this oven of an Earth, although growth became more sparse and dry with altitude. Roots should keep most slopes firm, and he would not encounter snow or ice.

  Alien, yes. Brannock remembered cedar, spruce, a lake where caribou grazed turf strewn with salmonberries and the wind streamed fresh, driving white clouds over a sky utterly blue. Here every tree, bush, blossom, flitting insect was foreign; grass itself no longer grew, unless it was ancestral to the thick-lobed carpeting of glades; the winged creatures aloft were not birds, and what beast cries he heard were in no tongue known to him.

  Wayfarer’s avatar walked on. Darkness fell. After a while, rain roared on the roof of leaves overhead. Such drops as got through to strike him were big and warm. Attuned to both the magnetic field and the rotation of the planet, his directional sense held him on course while an inertial integrator clocked off the kilometers he left behind.

  The more the better. Gaia’s mobile sensors were bound to spy on the expedition from Ulonai, as new and potentially troublesome a factor as it represented. Covertly watching, listening with amplification, Brannock had learned of the party lately gone upstream and hurried to intercept it—less likely to be spotted soon. He supposed she would have kept continuous watch on the camp and that a tiny robot or two would have followed Kalava, had not Wayfarer been in rapport with her. Alpha’s emissary might too readily become aware that her attention was on something near and urgent, and wonder what.

  She could, though, let unseen agents go by from time to time and flash their observations to a peripheral part of her. It would be incredible luck if one of them did not, at some point, hear the crew talking about the apparition that had borne away their captain.

  Then what? Somehow she must divert Wayfarer for a while, so that a sufficient fraction of her mind could direct machines of sufficient capability to find Brannock and deal with him. He doubted he could again fight free. Because she dared not send out her most formidable entities or give them direct orders, those that came would have their weaknesses and fallibilities. But they would be determined, ruthless, and on guard against the powers he had revealed in the aircraft. It was clear that she was resolved to keep hidden the fact that humans lived once more on Earth.

  Why, Brannock did not know, nor did he waste mental energy trying to guess. This must be a business of high importance; and the implications went immensely further, a secession from the galactic brain. His job was to get the information to Wayfarer.

  He might come near enough to call it in by radio. The emissary was not tuned in at great sensitivity, and no relay was set up for the short-range transmitter. Neither requirement had been foreseen. If Brannock failed to reach the summit, Kalava was his forlorn hope.

  In which case—“Are you tired?” he asked. They had exchanged few words thus far.

  “Bone-weary and plank-stiff,” the man admitted. And croak-thirsty too, Brannock heard.

  “That won’t do. You have to be in condition to move fast. Hold on a little more, and we’ll rest.” Maybe the plural would give Kalava some comfort. Seldom could a human have been as alone as he was.

  Springs were abundant in this wet country. Brannock’s chemosensors led him to the closest. By then the rain had stopped. Kalava unharnessed, groped his way in the dark, lay down to drink and drink. Meanwhile Brannock, who saw quite clearly, tore off fronded boughs to make a bed for him. He flopped onto it and almost immediately began to snore.

  Brannock left him. A strong man could go several days without eating before he weakened, but it wasn’t necessary. Brannock collected fruits that ought to nourish. He tracked down and killed an animal the size of a pig, brought it back to camp, and used his tool-hands to butcher it.

  An idea had come to him while he walked. After a search he found a tree with suitable bark. It reminded him all too keenly of birch, although it was red-brown and odorous. He took a sheet of it, returned, and spent a time inscribing it with a finger-blade.

  Dawn seeped gray through gloom. Kalava woke, jumped up, saluted his companion, stretched like a panther and capered like a goat, limbering himself. “That did good,” he said. “I thank my lord.” His glance fell on the rations. “And did you provide food? You are a kindly god.”

  “Not either of those, I fear,” Brannock told him. “Take what you want, and we will talk.”

  Kalava first got busy with camp chores. He seemed to have shed whatever religious dread he felt and now to look upon the other as a part of the world—certainly to be respected, but the respect was of the kind he would accord a powerful, enigmatic, high-ranking man. A hardy spirit, Brannock thought. Or perhaps his culture drew no line between the natural and the supernatural. To a primitive, everything was in some way magical, and so when magic manifested itself it could be accepted as simply another occurrence.

  If Kalava actually was primitive. Brannock wondered about that.

  It was encouraging to see how competently he went about his tasks, a woodsman as well as a seaman. Having gathered dry sticks and piled them in a pyramid, he set them alight. For this, he took from the pouch at his belt a little hardwood cylinder and piston, a packet of tinder, and a sulfur-tipped silver. Driven down, the piston heated trapped air to ignite the powder; he dipped his match in, brought it up aflame, and used it to start his fire. Yes, an inventive people. And
the woman Ilyandi had an excellent knowledge of naked-eye astronomy. Given the rarity of clear skies, that meant many lifetimes of patient observation, record-keeping, and logic, which must include mathematics comparable to Euclid’s.

  What else?

  While Kalava toasted his meat and ate, Brannock made inquiries. He learned of warlike city-states, their hinterlands divided among clans; periodic folkmoots where the freemen passed laws, tried cases, and elected leaders; an international order of sacerdotes, teachers, healers, and philosophers; aggressively expansive, sometimes piratical commerce; barbarians, erupting out of the ever-growing deserts and wastelands; the grim militarism that the frontier states had evolved in response; an empirical but intensive biological technology, which had bred an amazing variety of specialized plants and animals, including slaves born to muscular strength, moronic wits, and canine obedience …

  Most of the description emerged as the pair were again traveling. Real conversation was impossible when Brannock wrestled with brush, forded a stream in spate, or struggled up a scree slope. Still, even then they managed an occasional question and answer. Besides, after he had crossed the valley and entered the foothills he found the terrain rugged but less often boggy, the trees and undergrowth thinning out, the air slightly cooling.

  Just the same, Brannock would not have gotten as much as he did, in the short snatches he had, were he merely human. But he was immune to fatigue and breathlessness. He had an enormous data store to draw on. It included his studies of history and anthropology as a young mortal, and gave him techniques for constructing a logic tree and following its best branches—for asking the right, most probably useful questions. What emerged was a bare sketch of Kalava’s world. It was, though, clear and cogent.

  It horrified him.

  Say rather that his Christian Brannock aspect recoiled from the brutality of it. His Wayfarer aspect reflected that this was more or less how humans had usually behaved, and that their final civilization would not have been stable without its pervasive artificial intelligences. His journey continued.

  He broke it to let Kalava rest and flex. From that hill the view swept northward and upward to the mountains. They rose precipitously ahead, gashed, cragged, and sheer where they were not wooded, their tops lost in a leaden sky. Brannock pointed to the nearest, thrust forward out of their wall like a bastion.

  “We are bound yonder,” he said. “On the height is my lord, to whom I must get my news.”

  “Doesn’t he see you here?” asked Kalava.

  Brannock shook his generated image of a head. “No. He might, but the enemy engages him. He does not yet know she is the enemy. Think of her as a sorceress who deceives him with clever talk, with songs and illusions, while her agents go about in the world. My word will show him what the truth is.”

  Would it? Could it, when truth and rightness seemed as formless as the cloud cover?

  “Will she be alert against you?”

  “To some degree. How much, I cannot tell. If I can come near, I can let out a silent cry that my lord will hear and understand. But if her warriors catch me before then, you must go on, and that will be hard. You may well fail and die. Have you the courage?”

  Kalava grinned crookedly. “By now, I’d better, hadn’t I?”

  “If you succeed, your reward shall be boundless.”

  “I own, that’s one wind in my sails. But also—” Kalava paused. “Also,” he finished quietly, “the lady Ilyandi wishes this.”

  Brannock decided not to go into that. He lifted the rolled-up piece of bark he had carried in a lower hand. “The sight of you should break the spell, but here is a message for you to give.”

  As well as he was able, he went on to describe the route, the site, and the module that contained Wayfarer, taking care to distinguish it from everything else around. He was not sure whether the spectacle would confuse Kalava into helplessness, but at any rate the man seemed resolute. Nor was he sure how Kalava could cross half a kilometer of paving—if he could get that far—without Gaia immediately perceiving and destroying him. Maybe Wayfarer would notice first. Maybe, maybe.

  He, Brannock, was using this human being as consciencelessly as ever Gaia might have used any; and he did not know what his purpose was. What possible threat to the fellowship of the stars could exist, demanding that this little brief life be offered up? Nevertheless he gave the letter to Kalava, who tucked it inside his tunic.

  “I’m ready,” said the man, and squirmed back into harness. They traveled on.

  * * *

  The hidden hot sun stood at midafternoon when Brannock’s detectors reacted. He felt it as the least quivering hum, but instantly knew it for the electronic sign of something midge-size approaching afar. A mobile minisensor was on his trail.

  It could not have the sensitivity of the instruments in him, he had not yet registered, but it would be here faster than he could run, would see him and go off to notify stronger machines. They could not be distant either. Once a clue to him had been obtained, they would have converged from across the continent, perhaps across the globe.

  He slammed to a halt. He was in a ravine where a waterfall foamed down into a stream that tumbled off to join the Remnant. Huge, feathery bushes and trees with serrated bronzy leaves enclosed him. Insects droned from flower to purple flower. His chemosensors drank heavy perfumes.

  “The enemy scouts have found me,” he said. “Go.”

  Kalava scrambled free and down to the ground but hesitated, hand on sword. “Can I fight beside you?”

  “No. Your service is to bear my word. Go. Straightaway. Cover your trail as best you can. And your gods be with you.”

  “Lord!”

  Kalava vanished into the brush. Brannock stood alone.

  The human fraction of him melted into the whole and he was entirely machine life, logical, emotionally detached, save for his duty to Wayfarer, Alpha, and consciousness throughout the universe. This was not a bad place to defend, he thought. He had the ravine wall to shield his back, rocks at its foot to throw, branches to break off for clubs and spears. He could give the pursuit a hard time before it took him prisoner. Of course, it might decide to kill him with an energy beam, but probably it wouldn’t. Best from Gaia’s viewpoint was to capture him and change his memories, so that he returned with a report of an uneventful cruise on which he saw nothing of significance.

  He didn’t think that first her agents could extract his real memories. That would take capabilities she had never anticipated needing. Just to make the device that had tried to take control of him earlier must have been an extraordinary effort, hastily carried out. Now she was still more limited in what she could do. An order to duplicate and employ the device was simple enough that it should escape Wayfarer’s notice. The design and commissioning of an interrogator was something else—not to mention the difficulty of getting the information clandestinely to her.

  Brannock dared not assume she was unaware he had taken Kalava with him. Most likely it was a report from an agent, finally getting around to checking on the lifeboat party, that apprised her of his survival and triggered the hunt for him. But the sailors would have been frightened, bewildered, their talk disjointed and nearly meaningless. Ilyandi, that bright and formidable woman, would have done her best to forbid them saying anything helpful. The impression ought to be that Brannock only meant to pump Kalava about his people, before releasing him to make his way back to them and himself proceeding on toward Mind-home.

  In any event, it would not be easy to track the man down. He was no machine, he was an animal among countless animals, and the most cunning of all. The kind of saturation search that would soon find him was debarred. Gaia might keep a tiny portion of her forces searching and a tiny part of her attention poised against him, but she would not take him very seriously. Why should she?

  Why should Brannock? Forlorn hope in truth.

  He made his preparations. While he waited for the onslaught, his spirit ranged beyond the clouds, out a
mong the stars and the millions of years that his greater self had known.

  10

  The room was warm. It smelled of lovemaking and the roses Laurinda had set in a vase. Evening light diffused through gauzy drapes to wash over a big four-poster bed.

  She drew herself close against Christian where he lay propped on two pillows. Her arm went across his breast, his over her shoulders. “I don’t want to leave this,” she whispered.

  “Nor I,” he said into the tumbling sweetness of her hair. “How could I want to?”

  “I mean—what we are—what we’ve become to one another.”

  “I understand.”

  She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Can you forget I did?”

  “Why?”

  “You know. I can’t ask you to give up returning to your whole being. I don’t ask you to.”

  He stared before him.

  “I just don’t want to leave this house, this bed yet,” she said desolately. “After these past days and nights, not yet.”

  He turned his head again and looked down into gray eyes that blinked back tears. “Nor I,” he answered. “But I’m afraid we must.”

  “Of course. Duty.”

  And Gaia and Wayfarer. If they didn’t know already that their avatars had been slacking, surely she, at least, soon would, through the amulets and their link to her. No matter how closely engaged with the other vast mind, she would desire to know from time to time what was going on within herself.

  Christian drew breath. “Let me say the same that you did. I, this I that I am, damned well does not care to be anything else but your lover.”

  “Darling, darling.”

  “But,” he said after the kiss.

  “Go on,” she said, lips barely away from his. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me. You can’t.”

  He sighed. “I sure can, and you can hurt me. May neither of us ever mean to. It’s bound to happen, though.”

  She nodded. “Because we’re human.” Steadfastly: “Nevertheless, because of you, that’s what I hope to stay.”

  “I don’t see how we can. Which is what my ‘but’ was about.” He was quiet for another short span. “After we’ve remerged, after we’re back in our onenesses, no doubt we’ll feel differently.”