Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Now we could grow oysters in New England.

  Six hundred years ago, oysters had flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters.

  Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine.

  The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated, and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy.

  But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defense, poachers would be found.

  Cherimoya Espiritu hailed from a long line of fisherfolks operating for generations out of nearby New Bedford. Cape Verdean by remotest ancestry, her family had suffered in the collapse of conventional fisheries off the Georges Bank. They had failed to appreciate the new industry until it was too late for them to join one of the legal oyster wikis. (Membership had been closed at a number determined by complicated sustainability formulae.) Consequently, they turned pirate to survive in the only arena they knew.

  Cherimoya and her extensive kin had divested themselves of their SCURF: no subcutaneous ubik arfids for them, to register their presence minute-to-minute to nosy authorities and jealous oyster owners. The pirates relied instead on the doddering network of GPS satellites for navigation, and primitive cell phones for communication. Operating at night, they boasted gear to interfere with entomopter cams and infrared scans. They were not above discouraging pursuers with pulsed-energy projectile guns (purchased from the PEP Boyz). After escaping with their illicit catches, they sold the fruit of the sea to individual restaurants and unscrupulous wholesalers. They took payment either in goods, or in isk, simoleons and lindens that friends would bank for them in the ubik.

  Most of the oyster pirates lived on their ships, to avoid contact with perhaps overly inquisitive mainland security wikis such as the Boston Badgers and the Stingers. Just like me prior to my island-buying—except that my motivation for a life afloat didn't involve anything illicit.

  Bits and pieces of information about this subculture I knew just from growing up in the Archipelago. And the rest I learned from Cherry over the first few months of our relationship.

  But that night of my house-raising, all I knew was that a gorgeous woman, rough-edged and authentic as one of the oyster shells she daily handled, wanted to hang out on my tiny island and have some fun.

  That her accidental presence here would lead to our becoming long-term lovers, I never dared hope.

  But sure enough, that's what happened.

  Following Cherry's introduction, I shook her hand and gave my own name. Daring to take her by the elbow—and receiving no rebuke—I steered her across the flame-lit, shadowy sands towards the nearest gaggle of revelers around their pyre.

  “So,” I asked, “how come you're not working tonight?”

  “Oh, I don't work every night. Just often enough to keep myself in provisions and fuel. Why should I knock myself out just earn money and pile up things? I'm more interested in enjoying life. Staying free, not being tied down.”

  “Well, you know, I think that's, um—just great! That's how I feel too!” I silently cursed my new status as a landowner and house-dweller.

  We came out of the darkness and into the sight of my friends. Guitars, drums, and gravicords chanced to fall silent just then, and I got pinged with the planned playlist, and a chance to submit any requests.

  “Hey, Russ, congratulations!” “Great day!” “House looks totally flexy!” “You're gonna really enjoy it!”

  Cherry turned to regard me with a wide grin. “So—gotta stay footloose, huh?”

  To cover my chagrin, I fetched drinks for Cherry and myself while I tried to think of something to say in defense of my new householder lifestyle. That damn sexy grin of hers didn't help my concentration.

  Cherry took a beer from me. I said, “Listen, it's not like I'm buying into some paranoid gatecom. This place—totally transient. It's nothing more than a beach shack, somewhere to hang my clothes. I'm on the water most of every day—”

  Waving a hand to dismiss my excuses, Cherry said, “Just funning with you, Russ. Actually, I think this place is pretty hyphy. Much as I love Soft Grind, I get tired of being so cramped all the time. Being able to stretch in your bunk without whacking your knuckles would be a treat. So—do I get a tour?”

  “Yeah, absolutely!”

  We headed toward the staircase leading up to my deck. Her sight unamped, Cherry stumbled over a tussock of grass, and I took her hand to guide her. And even when we got within the house's sphere of radiance, she didn't let go.

  Up on the deck, Foolty was supervising a few machines working atop the roof. Spotting me, he called out, “Hey, nephew! Just tying in the rainwater-collection system to the desalinization plant.”

  “Swell. FooDog, I'd like you to meet—”

  “No, don't tell me the name of this sweet niece. Let me find out on my own.”

  Cherry snorted. “Good luck! Far as the ubik knows, I'm not even part of this brane. And that's how I like it.”

  FooDog's eyes went unfocused, and he began to make strangled yips like a mutt barking in its sleep. After about ninety seconds of this, during which time Cherry and I admired a rising quarter moon, FooDog emerged from his trawl of the ubik.

  “Cherimoya Espiritu,” he said. “Born 2015. Father's name João, mother's name Graca. Younger brother nicknamed the Dolphin. Member of the Oyster Pirates—”

  Cherry's face registered mixed irritation, admiration, and fright. “How—how'd you find all that out?”

  FooDog winked broadly. “Magic.”

  “No, c'mon, tell me!”

  “All right, all right. The first part was easy. I cheated. I teasled into Russ's friends list. He added you as soon as you met, and that's how I got your name and occupation. My SCURF isn't off the shelf. It picked up molecules of your breath, did an instant signature on four hundred organic compounds, and found probable family matches with your parents, whose genomes are on file. And your brother's got a record with the Boston Badgers for a ruckus at a bar in Fall River.”

  Now I felt offended. “You teasled into my friends list? You got big ones, FooDog.”

  “Well, thanks! That's how I got where I am today. And besides, I discovered my name there too, so I figured it was okay.”

  I couldn't find it in myself to be angry with this genial ubik-trickster. Cherry seemed willing to extend him the same leniency.

  “No need to worry about anyone else learning this stuff. While I was in there, I beefed up all your security, nephew.”

  “Well—thanks, I guess.”

  “No thanks necessary.” FooDog turned back to the bots on the roof. “Hey, Blue Droid! You call that a watertight seam!”

  Cherry and I went through the sliding glass door that led off the deck and inside.

  I made an inspection of my new home for the first time with Cherry in tow. The place was perfect: roomy yet cozy, easy to maintain, lots of comforts.

  The wikis had even provided some rudimentary furniture, including a couple of inflatable adaptive chairs. We positioned them in front of a window that commanded a view of the ocean and the Moon. I went to a small humming fridge and found it full of beer. I took two bottles back to the seats.

  Cherry and I talked until the Moon escaped our view. I opaqued all the glass in the house. We merged the MEMS skins of the chairs, fashioning them into a single bed. Then we had sex and fell asleep.

  In the morning, Cherry said, “Yeah, I think I could get used to living here real fast.”

  * * * *

  4.

  Mucho Mongo

  My Dad was a garbageman.

  Okay, so not really. He didn't wear overalls or hang from the back of a truck or heft dripping
sacks of coffee grounds and banana peels. Dad's job was strictly white-collar. His fingers were more often found on a keyboard than a trash compactor. He was in charge of the Barnstable Transfer Station, a seventy-acre “disposium” where recyclables were lifted from the waste-stream, and whatever couldn't be commercially repurposed was neatly and sterilely buried. But I like to tell people he was a garbageman just to get their instant, unschooled reactions. If they turn up their noses, chances are they won't make it onto my friends list.

  I remember Dad taking me to work once in a while on Saturdays. He proudly showed off the dump's little store, stocked with the prize items his workers had rescued.

  “Look at this, Russ. A first edition Jack London. Tales of the Fish Patrol. Can you believe it?”

  I was five years old, and had just gotten my first pair of spex, providing rudimentary access to what passed for the ubik back then. I wasn't impressed.

  “I can read that right now, Dad, if I wanted to.”

  Dad looked crestfallen. “That digital text is just information, Son. This is a book! And best of all, it's mongo.”

  I tried to look up mongo in the ubik, like I had been taught, but couldn't find it in my dictionary. “What's mongo, Dad?”

  “A moment of grace. A small victory over entropy.”

  “Huh?”

  “It's any treasure you reclaim from the edge of destruction, Russ. There's no thrill like making a mongo strike.”

  I looked at the book with new eyes. And that's when I got hooked.

  From then on, mongo became my life.

  That initial epiphany occurred over twenty years ago. Barnstable is long drowned, fish swimming through the barnacled timbers of the disposium store, and my folks live in Helena now. But I haven't forgotten the lessons my Dad taught me.

  The Gogo Goggins has strong winches for hauling really big finds up into the air. But mostly I deal in small yet valuable stuff. With strap-on gills, a smartskin suit, MEMS flippers and a MHD underwater sled packing ten-thousand candlepower of searchlights, I pick through the drowned world of the Cape Cod Archipelago and vicinity.

  The coastal regions of the world now host the largest caches of treasure the world has ever seen. Entire cities whose contents could not be entirely rescued in advance of the encroaching waters. All there as salvage for the taking, pursuant to many, many post-flood legal rulings.

  Once I'm under the water, my contact with the ubik cut off, relying just on the processing power in my SCURF, I'm alone with my thoughts and the sensations of the dive. The romance of treasure-hunting takes over. Who knows what I might find? Jewelry, monogrammed plates from a famous restaurant, statues, coins—whatever I bring up, I generally sell with no problems, either over the ubik or at the old-fashioned marketplace on the mainland.

  It's a weird way of earning your living, I know. Some people might find it morbid, spending so much time amid these ghostly drowned ruins. (And to answer the first question anyone asks: yes, I've encountered skeletons, but none of them have shown the slightest inclination to attack.)

  But I don't find my job morbid at all.

  I'm under the spell of mongo.

  One of the first outings Cherry and I went on, after she moved in with me, was down to undersea Provincetown. It's an easy dive. Practically nothing to find there, since amateurs have picked it clean. But by the same token, all the hazards are well charted.

  Cherry seemed to enjoy the expedition, spending hours slipping through the aquatic streets with wide eyes behind her mask. Once back aboard the Gogo Goggins, drying her thick hair with a towel, she said, “That was stringy, Russ! Lots of fun.”

  “You think you might like tossing in with me? You know, becoming business partners? We'd make good isk. Not that we need to earn much, like you said. And you could give up the illegal stuff—”

  “Give up the Oyster Pirates? Never! That's my heritage! And to be honest with you, babe, there's just not enough thrills in your line of work.”

  Just as I was addicted to mongo, Cherry was hooked on plundering the shellfish farms, outwitting the guards and owners and escaping with her booty. Myself, I knew I'd be a nervous wreck doing that for a living. (She took me out one night on a raid; when the PEP discharges started sizzling through the air close to my head, I dropped to the deck of Soft Grind [which possessed a lot of speed belied by its appearance] and didn't stand up again till we reached home. Meanwhile, Cherry was alternately shouting curses at our pursuers and emitting bloodthirsty laughs.)

  Luckily, we were able to reconcile our different lifestyles quite nicely. I simply switched to night work. Once I was deep enough below the surface, I had to rely on artificial lights even during the daytime anyhow.

  Several nights each week, you'd find us motoring off side by side in our respective boats. Eventually our paths would diverge, signaled by a dangerous kiss across the narrow gap between our bobbing boats. As I headed toward whatever nexus of sunken loot I had charted, I'd catch up on ubik matters, writing dialogue for One Step Closer to Nowhere, the sitcom that had replaced Naomi Instanton, or monitoring border crossings for an hourly rate for the Minute Men.

  Cherry and I would meet back home on my little island, which Cherry had christened “Sandybump.” We'd sleep till noon or later, then have fun during the day.

  A lot of that fun seemed to involve Foolty “FooDog” Fontal.

  * * * *

  5.

  A Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young FooDog

  During all the years we hung out together, we never learned where FooDog actually lived. He seemed reluctant to divulge the location of his digs, protective of his security and privacy even with his friends. (And recalling how easily he had stolen Cherry's identity from my friends list, who could blame him at worrying about unintentional data-sharing?) FooDog's various business, recreational, and hobbyist pursuits had involved him with lots of shady characters and inequitable dealings, and he existed, I soon realized, just one step ahead—or perhaps laterally abaft—of various grudge-holders.

  I should hasten to say that FooDog's dealings were never—or seldom—truly unethical or self-serving. It's just that his wide-ranging enthusiasms respected no borders, sacred cows, or intellectual property rights.

  But despite his lack of a public meatspace address, FooDog could always be contacted through the ubik, and Cherry and I would often meet him somewhere for what invariably turned out to be an adventure of the most hyphy dimensions.

  I remember one day in November...

  We grabbed a zipcar, FooDog slung several duffels in the interior storage space, and we headed north to New Hampshire. FooDog refused to tell us where we were heading till it was too late to turn back.

  “We're going to climb Mount Washington? Are you nuts?” I picked up the feed from the weather observatory atop the peak. “There's a blizzard going on right now!”

  “Precisely the conditions I need for my experiment.”

  The normal daily high temperature atop the peak at this time of the year was thirteen degrees Fahrenheit. The record low was minus twenty. In 1934, the observatory had recorded the biggest wind ever experienced on the planet: 231 MPH. There were taller places and colder places and windier places and places with worse weather. But Mount Washington managed to combine generous slices of all these pies into a unique killer confection.

  Cherry said, “C'mon, Russ, trust the Dog.”

  I grumbled, but went along.

  We made it by car up the access road to 4300 vertical feet, leaving only 2000 feet to ascend on foot. With many contortions, we managed to dress in the car in the smartsuits FooDog had provided. When we stepped outside, we were smitten with what felt like a battering ram made of ice. We sealed up our micropore facemasks and snugged our adaptive goggles more firmly into place. Cherry had a headset that provided a two-way audio feed to the ubik. We donned our snowshoes, grabbed our alpenstocks, and began the ascent, following the buried road that was painted by our ubik vision to resemble the Golden Brick path to O
z. FooDog carried a box strapped to his back, the object of our whole folly.

  I won't belabor you with the journey, which resembled in its particulars any number of other crazed climbs atop forbidding peaks. Let's just say the trek was the hardest thing I've ever done.

  We never even made it to the top. Around 5500 feet, FooDog declared that he could conduct his experiment at that altitude, with the storm raging slightly less virulently around us. He doffed his box, unfolded its tripod legs, spiked it into the snow, and began sending an encrypted command stream to the gadget over the ubik.

  “Can we know now what we risked our lives for?” I said.

  “Sure thing, nephew. This gadget messes with the quantum bonds between the hydrogen atoms in water molecules, via a directional electrostatic field. I've got it pointed upward now. Good thing, or we'd all be puddles of slop.”

  I took a nervous step or three away from the machine, unsure if FooDog was kidding or not. But I should have trusted him not to endanger us—at least via technology.

  I looked toward Cherry, to make sure she was okay. She gave an exclamation of awe. I looked back toward the machine.

  There was an expanding hemisphere of atmospheric inactivity above the gadget. It grew and grew, providing an umbrella of calm. Some snow still pelted us from the side, but none reached us from above.

  FooDog's box was quelling the blizzard.

  FooDog undid his mask. His black face, wreathed in a wide grin, stood out amidst all the white like the dot of a giant exclamation point.

  “Hyphy!” he exclaimed.

  The ubik was already going insane. Weather-watcher wikis frantically sought to dispatch entomopter cams to our location, to supplement the reports of the fixed sensors located at some distance, but were frustrated by the surrounding storm, still in full force. But I suspected that if FooDog's bubble continued to expand, sooner or later a cam would get through and ID us.

  Evidently, FooDog had the same realization. He said, “Brace yourself,” then shut off his machine.

  The blizzard socked us with renewed vigor—although I seemed to sense in the storm a kind of almost-human shock, as if it had been alarmed by its interruption.