Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition

by Rich Horton

  * * * *

  Now Rena. Parked in the breakdown lane I'd gotten a flash. Not even really a memory. More like a sudden pulsation of significant emotion. It started when I smelled her throat. Add the quickening of my blood while we sat there and she explained about simultaneous worlds. Then something electric surged through me and ignited an image. That's a lake. And sunlight on a white-painted porch. Rena in a flowing thing apparently woven out of light. Rena herself. This is our place. We made it, outside and beyond all other illusions. And the non-verbal operatically proportioned emotional theme? Love. As in, I've known you forever and I love you. Wholly and without reserve, all barriers down, the moat drained, guards sent home, portcullis raised and locked open, all my defensive weapons acquired in life (lives?) reforged to plowshares. It smells nice here. Piney. And the flavor of cinnamon tea.

  * * * *

  We came up fast on a tractor trailer rig. The Subaru's headlights glinted on the plates, Washington, Idaho, Montana. I swung into the opposite lane and accelerated to pass. In moments I'd tucked back into the eastbound lane, which climbed and curved until the rig all strung with amber lights was lost behind us.

  * * * *

  “He's going to be stopped. Just a little farther.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I just do, dear.”

  A minute later a pickup appeared ahead of us, halted in the breakdown lane.

  “Pull in behind him,” Rena said. Then, with a puzzled look: “But not too close. I don't know why.”

  I did that.

  F-250, Oregon plate, the left rear end resting on the rim of a shredded tire. We sat fifty yards or so behind it, engine idling, rain falling through the headlights. No boyfriend in sight.

  “Where is he?”

  Rena shrugged. “I don't know everything.”

  She popped the passenger door and climbed out. Seizing a moment of passing lucidity and guilt I opened my cell phone but got only a faded signal. Maybe if I wandered around a little I could pick it up. But I left the phone in the car when I got out to join Rena. I felt free. And the guilt and fear that had been building around Marci sloughed away and struck me as inconsequential. We were all bigger than what we appeared.

  My breath steamed in the mountain air. The rain fell icy cold on my head and neck. Rena and I cast long black shadows in the fanned glare of the Subaru's headlamps.

  A car went by, then another, then it was quiet on the pass. Rena's drippy pixie hair was flattened to her skull. Still cute, though. She closed her eyes tight. A minute or so elapsed.

  “Rena?”

  “Wait.”

  I sighed deeply then closed my eyes, too, and another world opened around me. This time it wasn't mountains and grassy vistas. I found myself on a broad promenade encircling midway up a building that might have been a mile tall. Rena was there and we were standing next to an abandoned rickshaw-like contraption with a broken wheel. The sky was painted with sunset clouds.

  You couldn't see the rest of the city unless you stepped right up to the retaining wall that enclosed the promenade. We were that high up on the side of this stupendous structure. Not a sky scraper but a sky penetrater. The rest of the city spread out below us, densely packed to the horizon in every direction, blocks and towers and spires and buttresses, plumes of venting steam, checkerboard lights, traffic crawling between the buildings like sluggish yellow blood, a distant rumble and clangor.

  I looked away, feeling kind of flickery.

  Rena smiled. “You're not doing too well this time. You better open your eyes.”

  “They are open.”

  “Here they are. But not back on the road. You're too porous. I doubt you even know what's going on.”

  “I'm okay,” I said, though I did feel unsteady and only half comprehended the situation. If that.

  “Yes, you're okay. But don't move, huh?”

  She walked away. The promenade was wide as a superhighway and empty except for us. Something big came around the curve, lumbering but fast, like Dumbo the flying elephant. It even looked a bit like an elephant, only the trunk was some kind of articulated cable thick as a telephone pole and bent like an inverted question mark. On the fluted end of it sat a little man in a blue helmet, hands manipulating a pair of levers.

  I was safe by the wall, but Rena had just stepped into Dumbo's path.

  I bolted for her, yelling, and my eyes opened in the first world, the world of mountain darkness and icy rain. Instead of a midget-driven elephant there came roaring out of the dark curve of the pass a tractor trailer rig, white lights like a scream. The driver started to swing towards the breakdown lane, but he still would have hit Rena if I hadn't yanked her out of the way.

  Tumbled on the road, my body covering Rena, I saw the boyfriend. He had his cell phone in hand, keypad lit up periwinkle, his face an astonished white mask just before the semi (missing my Subaru by a comfortable margin) plowed him and his Ford into the side of the mountain. I guess he had a faded signal, too, and had gone off to try to unfade it.

  * * * *

  Dale or whateverthefuck slumped against the fender of his cab, red hat clutched in his ape's paw, weeping at the mangled pickup and the dead man. Rain fell continuously. Rena and I stood on the other side of the road.

  “Was that supposed to happen?” I said.

  “I guess so.”

  She looked like she had invisible sandbags slung over her shoulders.

  “When you bleed between worlds,” she said, “the trajectories of Fate sharpen. All this makes some kind of had-to-be sense, or it's supposed to.”

  I held her hand and she squeezed hard and pulled me around. “Hey, Johnny—”

  I looked at her wet face.

  “I'm slipping away, I feel it.”

  “Don't,” I said.

  “Can't help it. We'll meet again. We already have, already will. Kiss me before we forget who we are.”

  I kissed her mouth, but midway through it I began to feel strange about her, then stranger. We broke apart from each other and I couldn't really see her face anymore. Dark rain swept between us. Then Rena screamed and lurched toward the wreckage, calling some lost boy's name in her cracking voice.

  * * * *

  I sat alone in my car and didn't remember any of the strange stuff. My head hurt. Rain ticked on the roof. Beyond the flooded windshield blue and red and white lights strobed and highway patrolmen in rain slickers milled around watching the tow truck. Rena was in the backseat of one of the cruisers. And I found myself alone in the unguarded fortress of my heart. Moat drained, portcullis raised, etc. Piranha flopped in the mud. A lonely wind blew through the open gate. That's what was left over. It's what you get for picking up a hitcher. The end of fun and games, not the beginning. When I shut my eyes I saw only the usual dark.

  * * * *

  I started the car, turned around and headed toward Seattle.

  As soon as I cleared the fade zone I speed dialed Marci's cell. It went straight to voice mail. I retrieved the number for the Kennedy Hotel and asked the front desk to connect me to Marci's room. The phone started ringing and went on ringing. Well it was almost dawn, and she might have been a deep sleeper. I wouldn't know, having always left before the night was over, especially this final time; I used to be that way. The phone rang and rang, and inside I was raveled and alone, subjected to memory. That phone rang until the front desk informed me needlessly that the room wasn't answering, and I told the desk clerk he better get up there with a passkey. Maybe I shouted it. Trajectories of Fate. Everybody bleeds through. Eventually.

  * * * *

  It's nice here on the lake. The water is sapphire, because that's Rena's favorite color. It looks painted. This is a shifting place where memories converge around the core of our beings. A safe place where I am myself and Rena is herself, and we can sort things out. It's beautiful here but even when Rena steps through the door to join me there will remain a terrible aspect to it. There are a lot of things to sort out.


  The door opens behind me. I smell cinnamon.

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  * * *

  ART OF WAR

  Nancy Kress

  "Return fire!” the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice.

  The young and untried officer of the deck cried, “It won't do any good, there's too many—"

  "I said fire, Goddammit!"

  "Fire at will!” the OD ordered the gun bay, and then closed his eyes against the coming barrage, as well as against the sight of the exec's mangled corpse. Only minutes left to them, only seconds...

  A brilliant light blossomed on every screen, a blinding light, filling the room. Crewmen, those still standing on the battered and limping ship, threw up their arms to shield their eyes. And when the light finally faded, the enemy base was gone. Annihilated as if it had never existed.

  "The base ... it ... how did you do that, ma'am?” the OD asked, dazed.

  "Search for survivors,” the colonel ordered, just before she passed out from wounds that would have killed a lesser soldier, and all soldiers were lesser than she...

  * * * *

  No, of course it didn't happen that way. That's from the holo version, available by ansible throughout the Human galaxy forty-eight hours after the Victory of 149-Delta. Author unknown, but the veteran actress Shimira Coltrane played the colonel (now, of course, a general). Shimira's brilliant green eyes were very effective, although not accurate. General Anson had deflected a large meteor to crash into the enemy base, destroying a major Teli weapons store and much of the Teli civilization on the entire planet. It was an important Human victory in the war, and at that point we needed it.

  What happened next was never made into a holo. In fact, it was a minor incident in a minor corner of the Human-Teli war. But no corner of a war is minor to the soldiers fighting there, and even a small incident can have enormous repercussions. I know. I will be paying for what happened on 149-Delta for whatever is left of my life.

  This is not philosophical maundering nor constitutional gloom. It is mathematical fact.

  * * * *

  Dalo and I were just settling into our quarters on the Scheherezade when the general arrived, unannounced and in person. Crates of personal gear sat on the floor of our tiny sitting room, where Dalo would spend most of her time while I was downside. Neither of us wanted to be here. I'd put in for a posting to Terra, which neither of us had ever visited, and we were excited about the chance to see, at long last, the Sistine Chapel. So much Terran art has been lost in the original, but the Sistine is still there, and we both longed to gaze up at that sublime ceiling. And then I had been posted to 149-Delta.

  Dalo was kneeling over a box of mutomati as the cabin door opened and an aide announced, “General Anson to see Captain Porter, ten-hut!”

  I sprang into a salute, wondering how far I could go before she recognized it as parody.

  She came in, resplendent in full-dress uniform glistening with medals, flanked by two more aides, which badly crowded the cabin. Dalo, calm as always, stood and dusted mutomati powder off her palms. The general stared at me bleakly. Her eyes were shit brown. “At ease, soldier.”

  “Thank you, ma'am. Welcome, ma'am.”

  “Thank you. And this is...”

  “My wife, Dalomanimarito.”

  “Your wife.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “They didn't tell me you were married.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” To a civilian, obviously. Not only that, a civilian who looked ... I don't know why I did it. Well, yes, I do. I said, “My wife is half Teli.”

  And for a long moment she actually looked uncertain. Yes, Dalo has the same squat body and light coat of hair as the Teli. She is genemod for her native planet, a cold and high-gravity world, which is also what Tel is. But surely a general should know that interspecies breeding is impossible—especially that interspecies breeding? Dalo is as human as I.

  The general's eyes grew cold. Colder. “I don't appreciate that sort of humor, captain.”

  “No, ma'am.”

  “I'm here to give you your orders. Tomorrow at oh five hundred hours your shuttle leaves for downside. You will be based in a central Teli structure that contains a large stockpile of stolen Human artifacts. I have assigned you three soldiers to crate and transport upside anything that you think has value. You will determine which objects meet that description and, if possible, where they were stolen from. You will attach to each object a full statement with your reasons, including any applicable identification programs—you have your software with you?”

  “Of course, ma'am.”

  “A C-112 near-AI will be placed at your disposal. That's all.”

  “Ten-hut!” bawled one of the aides. But by the time I had gotten my arm into a salute, she was gone.

  “Jon,” Dalo said gently. “You didn't have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did. Did you see the horror on the aides’ faces when I said you were half-Teli?”

  She turned away. Suddenly frightened, I caught her arm. “Dear heart—you knew I was joking? I didn't offend you?”

  “Of course not.” She nestled in my arms, affectionate and gentle as always. Still, there is a diamond-hard core under all that sweetness. The general had clearly never heard of her before, but Dalo is one of the best mutomati artists of her generation. Her art has moved me to tears.

  “I'm not offended, Jon, but I do want you to be more careful. You were baiting General Anson.”

  “I won't have to see her while I'm on assignment here. Generals don't bother with lowly captains.”

  “Still—”

  “I hate the bitch, Dalo.”

  “Yes. Still, be more circumspect. Even be more pleasant. I know what history lies between you two but nonetheless she is—”

  “Don't say it!”

  “—after all, your mother.”

  * * * *

  The evidence of the meteor impact was visible long before the shuttle landed. The impactor had been fifty meters in diameter, weighing roughly 60,000 tons, composed mostly of iron. If it had been stone, the damage wouldn't have been nearly so extensive. The main base of the Teli military colony had been vaporized instantly. Subsequent shockwaves and airblasts had produced firestorms that raged for days and devastated virtually the entire coast of 149-Delta's one small continent. Now, a month later, we flew above kilometer after kilometer of destruction.

  General Anson had calculated when her deflected meteor would hit and had timed her approach to take advantage of that knowledge. Some minor miscalculation had led to an initial attack on her ship, but before the attack could gain force, the meteor had struck. Why hadn't the Teli known that it was coming? Their military tech was as good as ours, and they'd colonized 149-Delta for a long time. Surely they did basic space surveys that tracked both the original meteor trajectory and Anson's changes? No one knew why they had not counter-deflected, or at least evacuated. But, then, there was so much we didn't know about the Teli.

  The shuttle left the blackened coast behind and flew toward the mountains, skimming above acres of cultivated land. The crops, I knew, were rotting. Teli did not allow themselves to be taken prisoner, not ever, under any circumstances. As Human forces had forced their way into successive areas of the continent, the agricultural colony, deprived of its one city, had simply committed suicide. The only Teli left on 168-Beta occupied those areas that United Space Forces had not yet reached.

  That didn't include the Citadel.

  “Here we are, Captain,” the pilot said, as soldiers advanced to meet the shuttle. “May I ask a question, sir?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Is it true this is where the Teli put all that art they stole from humans?”

  “Supposed to be true.” If it wasn't, I had no business here.

  “And you're a ... a art historian?”

  “I am. The military has some strange nooks and crannies.” />
  He ignored this. “And is it true that the Taj Mahal is here?”

  I stared at him. The Teli looted the art of Terran colonies whenever they could, and no one knew why. It was logical that rumors would run riot about that. Still ... “Lieutenant, the Taj Mahal was a building. A huge one, and on Terra. It was destroyed in the twenty-first century Food Riots, not by the Teli. They've never reached Terra.”

  “Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. “I heard the Taj was a sort of holo of all these exotic sex positions.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well.” He sighed deeply. “Good luck, Captain.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Citadel—our Human name for it, of course—turned out to be the entrance into a mountain. Presumably the Teli had excavated bunkers in the solid rock, but you couldn't tell that from the outside. A veteran NCO met me at the guard station. “Captain Porter? I'm Sergeant Lu, head of your assignment detail. Can I take these bags, sir?”

  “Hello, Sergeant.” He was ruddy, spit-and-polish military, with an uneducated accent—obviously my “detail” was not going to consist of any other scholars. They were there to do grunt work. But Lu looked amiable and willing, and I relaxed slightly. He led me to my quarters, a trapezoid-shaped, low-ceilinged room with elaborately etched stone walls and no contents except a human bed, chest, table, and chair.

  Immediately I examined the walls, the usual dense montage of Teli symbols that were curiously evocative even though we didn't understand their meanings. They looked hand-made, and recent. “What was this room before we arrived?”

  Lu shrugged. “Don't know what any of these rooms were to the tellies, sir. We cleaned ‘em all out and vapped everything. Might have been booby-trapped, you know.”

  “How do we know the whole Citadel isn't booby-trapped?”

  “We don't, sir.”

  I liked his unpretentious fatalism. “Let's leave this gear here for now—I'd like to see the vaults. And call me Jon. What's your first name, Sergeant?”