The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  A significant number showed no signs of wanting to leave, however, particularly those whose secular bent put them at odds with the increasingly traditionalist Islamic model of democracy that had sprouted from the scorched earth of the so-called Arab Spring in the Teens. Some fled quietly to the valleys hidden among the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the north, where they set about reviving the hard-scrabble subsistance farming methods that their Moorish forebears had developed centuries before. Others—particularly the young and angry—occupied small swathes of greenhouse and turned them over to growing their own food, as did some of the more self-reliant and entrepreneurial gangs of taskrabbits who’d stayed on. Territorial disputes—driven more by the lack of water than the lack of space—were frequent, ugly, but mercifully short, and Hope spent a lot of time riding around the region with General Weissmuutze and her peacekeepers, putting out fires both literal and figurative. Within a few weeks the Plastic Ocean had evaporated away to a ragged series of puddles scattered across the landscape, separated by wide stretches of near-desert, the fleshless skeletons of greenhouse tunnels, and wandering tumbleweed tangles of charred plastic sheeting.

  Other taskrabbit warrens found other business models, and Weissmuutze was hard-pressed to keep a lid on those who’d decided to stick with disruptive drug pharming. With the evisceration and collapse of the EPZ syndicate, courtesy Niceday and friends, the container port at Almeria became a revolving door for all sorts of shady import/export operators, and overland distribution networks for everything from un-tariffed Chinese photovoltaics and Pakistani firearms to prime Afghan heroin quickly sprung up and cut their way northwards into central Europe. Weissmuutze was obliged to be ruthless, rounding up the pharmers and their associates before putting their greenhouses and shipping-container biolabs to the torch. But the Spanish government had little interest in doing anything beyond issuing chest-thumping press releases, and most of her detainees were sprung by colleagues overnight, slipping eastwards or southwards and vanishing into the seething waters of the dark economy.

  Much to Hope’s fascination, however, the majority of the warrens went for more legitimate enterprises, from simple reboots of the greenhouse model aimed at growing food for themselves and for barter, to more ambitious attempts at brewing up synthetic bacteria to clean up land and waterways blighted by excessive fertiliser run-off, all of which Weissmuutze did her best to protect and encourage. The disruptors had snared a lot of warrens in contracts whose small print specified they could be paid off in stock and other holdings in lieu of cash, with the result that various collectives and sole operators found themselves holding title to all-but-worthless slivers and fragments of land, all-but-exhausted water abstraction rights, and chunks of physical infrastructure in various states of disrepair or dysfunction. Parallel economies sprung up and tangled themselves together almost overnight, based on barter, laundered euros, petrochemicals, solar wattage and manual labour. The whole region had become a sort of experimental sandbox for heterodox economic systems; the global media considered it a disaster zone with low-to-zero telegenic appeal, and ignored it accordingly, but to Hope it was like seeing all the abstract theories she’d studied for years leap off the page and into reality. She was busy, exhausted and, by this point, a most un-British shade of Mediterranean bronze.

  When she finally remembered to wonder, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy.

  * * *

  She was sat beneath a tattered sunbrella on the promenade at Playa Serena, poking at her mothballed novel, when Ian rolled up on his trike. Cedric was perched on the bench seat in the shade of the solar panel, wearing a pale suit and a casually dignified expression that reminded Hope of archived stills from the height of the British Raj.

  “May we join you, Hope?” he asked, dismounting. Ian rolled his eyes and grinned, leaning into the back-rest of the trike’s saddle.

  “Sure. Stack of these brollies back there, if you want one.”

  Cedric settled himself next to her and stared down the beach, where a small warren was clustered around a device that looked like a hybrid of Ian’s trike, a catering-grade freezer, and an explosion in a mirror factory. “What have we here?” he asked.

  “Solarpunks,” said Hope. “They’re trying to make glass from sand using only sunlight.”

  “Innovative!”

  “Naw, old idea,” said Ian mildly. “Was a proof-of-concept back in the Teens. No one could scale it up for profit.”

  “What’s their market, then?”

  Hope gestured westwards, toward a large vacant lot between two crumbling hotels. “There’s another lot down there working on 3d printing at architectural scales. They want to do Moorish styles, all high ceilings and central courtyards, but they’re having some trouble getting the arches to come out right.”

  Ian barked a short laugh, then fell silent.

  “I came to thank you for your hard work, Hope,” said Cedric.

  “You’ve paid me as promised,” Hope shrugged. “No need for thanks.”

  “No requirement, perhaps, but I felt the need. Given the, ah, mission creep issues early on.”

  The euphemisms of power, thought Hope. “No biggie. I got to see the face of disruption close up. Lotta journalists would kill for a chance like that.”

  “A lot of researchers, too,” Cedric suggested. Hope didn’t reply.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of paying off your student loans in full.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Cedric.”

  “Think nothing of it,” he said, with a wave of his hand. Hope let the silence stretch. “I was wondering if you’d like to sign up again,” he continued, with that easy confidence. “Same terms, better pay. There will be more events like this, we’re sure. We don’t know quite where yet, but we’ve a weather eye on a few likely hotspots. Colombia, maybe. Southern Chinese seaboard. West Africa. Wherever it is, we’ll be there.”

  Hope thought of Niceday, stood in the opulence of his suite; such similar creatures. “Don’t you worry, Cedric, that you’re one of the causal forces you’re trying to explain? That your own wealth distorts the markets like gravity distorts space-time? That the disruptors are following you, rather than the other way around?”

  Ian laughed again. “She got ye there, boss.”

  “Thank you, Ian,” said Cedric, mildly. “Yes, Hope, I do worry about that. But I have concluded that the greater sin is to do nothing. As you know, no one can or will fund this sort of research at this sort of scale, especially out in the hinterlands. General Weissmuutze has been passing our reports directly to the UN, at no cost. She tells me they’re very grateful.”

  “I guess they should be,” Hope allowed. “As should I.”

  “Think nothing of it,” he said again, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Come with us, Hope. Don’t you want to be part of the next story?”

  “No, Cedric,” she replied. “Don’t you get it? This story isn’t finished. Only the bits of it that interest you and Niceday’s people have finished. And the next story will have started long before you get wherever it is you decide to go. You can close the book and start another one, if you like; that is your privilege.” She sighed. “But the world carries on, even when there’s no one there to narrate it.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Stop running. You’ve set me free from my past, Cedric, and I’m grateful. But you can’t give me a future. Only I can do that.” She pointed at the solarpunks down on the sand. “That’s what they’re trying to do, and the others. And maybe I can’t build things or ship code or hustle funding, but I can tell stories. Stories where those other things don’t matter so much, maybe.

  “When you look at this place, you see a story ending. I see one just beginning. And sure, perhaps it’ll be over in weeks, maybe it’ll end in failure. But we won’t know unless we try writing it.”

  “It takes a special kind of person,” said Ian, quietly, “a special eye, to make the ruins bloo
m.” He sat up straight in his saddle. “C’mon, boss. You got way more than yer pound o’ flesh from this one. Leave her be now, eh?”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Cedric, standing. “If you ever change your mind…”

  “… you’ll find me, I know.”

  Without another word, Cedric settled himself onto the trike’s bench-seat. Ian raised his sunglasses, tipped her one last wink, and whirred away down the promenade to the east, where the last clouds of the morning were burning away to wispy nothings.

  Hope smiled to herself, and blinked her novel back up on her spex. Down on the beach, a ragged cheer arose from the crowd around the glassmaker.

  Red Lights, and Rain

  GARETH L. POWELL

  Gareth L. Powell is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author from Bristol. His third novel, Ack-Ack Macaque, tied with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice to co-win the 2013 BSFA Award for Best Novel. His books have been published in the UK, Germany, the USA, and Japan, and have all received enthusiastic reviews in the Guardian. His short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including six short stories in Interzone magazine. In 2007, one of his stories came out on top of the Interzone annual readers’ poll for best short story of the year. He has also cowritten a novelette with Aliette de Bodard and given guest lectures on creative writing at Bath Spa University. He has written articles for the Irish Times, SFX, SF Signal, Mass Movement Magazine, and Acoustic Magazine, and, in 2012, he achieved a boyhood ambition when he was given the chance to pen a strip for Britain’s long-running sci fi and fantasy comic, 2000 AD. He can be found online at www.garethlpowell.com.

  Here he gives us a vigorous, gritty, and action-packed look at a bloody battle being fought throughout present-day Amsterdam by time-travelling superpowered genetically enhanced agents, each almost impossible to kill, and each nevertheless determined to kill the other.

  It’s raining in Amsterdam. Paige stands in the oak-panelled front bar of a small corner pub. She has wet hair because she walked here from her hotel. Now she’s standing by the open door, holding half a litre of Amstel, watching the rain stipple the surface of the canal across the street. For the fourth time in five minutes, she takes out her mobile and checks the screen for messages. From across the room, the barman looks at her. He has dark skin and gold dreads. Seeing the phone in her hand again, he smiles, obviously convinced she’s waiting for a date.

  Outside, damp tourists pass in the rain, looking for the Anne Frank house; open-topped pleasure boats seek shelter beneath humped-back bridges; and bare-headed boys cut past on scooters, cigarettes flaring, girlfriends clinging side-saddle to the parcel shelves, tyres going bop-bop-bop on the wet cobble stones. Paige sucks the froth from her beer. On the other side of the canal, a church bell clangs nine o’clock. As it happens, she is waiting for a man, but this won’t be any sort of date, and she’ll be lucky if she survives to see the sun come up tomorrow morning. She pockets the mobile, changes the beer glass from one hand to the other, and slips her fingers into the pocket of her coat, allowing them to brush the cold metal butt of the pistol. It’s a lightweight coil gun: a magnetic projectile accelerator, fifty years more advanced than anything else in this time zone, and capable of punching a titanium slug through a concrete wall. With luck, it will be enough.

  She watches the barman lay out new beer mats on the zinc counter. He’s just a boy, really. Paige should probably warn him to leave, but she doesn’t want to attract too much attention, not just yet. She doesn’t want the police to blunder in and complicate matters.

  For a moment, her eyes are off the door, and that’s when Josef arrives, heralded by the swish of his coat, the clack of his boots as they hit the step. She sees the barman’s gaze flick past her shoulder, his eyes widen, and she turns to find Josef standing on the threshold, close enough to kiss.

  “Hello, Paige.”He’s at least five inches taller than her; rake thin with pale lips and rain-slicked hair.

  “Josef.” She slides her right hand into her coat, sees him notice the movement.

  “Are you here to kill me, Paige?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know.”

  He flicks his eyes in the direction of the bar, licks his bottom lip. “What about him?”

  Paige takes a step back, placing herself between the “vampire” and the boy with the golden dreadlocks. She curls the index finger of the hand still in her pocket around the trigger of the coil gun.

  “Not tonight, Josef.”

  Josef shrugs and folds his arms, shifts his weight petulantly from one foot to the other.

  “So, what?” he says. “You want to go at it right now, in here?”

  Paige shakes her head. She’s trying not to show emotion, but her heart’s hammering and she’s sure he can hear it.

  “Outside,” she says. Josef narrows his eyes. He looks her up and down, assessing her as an opponent. Despite his attenuated frame, she knows he can strike like a whip when he wants to. She tenses, ready for his attack and, for a moment, they’re frozen like that: eyes locked, waiting for the other to make the first move. Then Josef laughs. He turns on his heel, flicks up the collar of his coat, and steps out into the rain.

  Paige lets out a long breath. Her stomach’s churning. She pulls the coil gun from her pocket and looks over at the barman.

  “Stay here,” she says.

  * * *

  She follows Josef into a small concrete yard at the rear of the pub, surrounded by walls on all sides, and lit from above by the orange reflection of city lights on low cloud. Rusty dumpsters stand against one wall; a fire escape ladder hangs from the back of the pub; and metal trapdoors cover the cellar. Two storeys above, the gutters leak, spattering the concrete.

  Josef says, “So, how do you want to do this?”

  Paige lets the peeling wooden door to the street bang shut behind her, hiding them from passers-by. The coil gun feels heavy in her hand.

  “Get over by the wall,” she says.

  Josef shakes his head.

  She opens her mouth to insist but, before she can speak or raise the gun, he’s closed the distance between them, his weight slamming her back against the wooden door. She feels his breath on her cheek, his hand clasping her throat. She tries to bring the gun to bear but he chops it away, sending the weapon clattering across the wet floor.

  “You’re pathetic,” he growls, and lifts her by the throat. Her feet paw at empty air. She tries to prise his hand loose, but his fingers are like talons, and she can’t breathe; she’s choking. In desperation, she kicks his kneecap, making him stagger. With a snarl, he tosses her against one of the large wheeled dumpsters. She hits it with an echoing crash, and ends up on her hands and knees, coughing, struggling for air. Josef’s boot catches her in the ribs, and rolls her onto her side. He stamps down once, twice, and something snaps in her left forearm. The pain fills her. She yelps, and curls herself around it. The coil gun rests on the concrete three or four metres away on the other side of the yard, and there’s no way he’ll let her reach it. He kicks her twice more, then leans down with his mouth open, letting her see his glistening ceramic incisors. They’re fully extended now, locked in attack position, and ready to tear out her windpipe.

  “Ha’ enough?” he says, the fangs distorting his speech.

  Paige coughs again. She’s cradling her broken arm, and she still can’t breathe properly. She’s about to tell him to go to hell, when the back door of the pub swings open, and out steps the boy with the golden dreads, a sawn-off antique shotgun held at his hip.

  “That’s enough,” the boy says. His eyes are wide and scared.

  Josef looks up with a hiss, teeth bared.Startled, the barman pulls the trigger. The flash and bang fill the yard. Josef takes both barrels in the chest. It snatches him away like laundry in the wind, and he lands by the door to the street, flapping and yelling, drumming his boot heels on the concrete.

  “Shoot him again
,” Paige gasps, but the young man stands frozen in place, transfixed by the thrashing vampire. He hasn’t even reloaded. Paige uses her good arm to claw her way into a sitting position. The rain’s soaked through her clothes.

  “Shoot him!”

  But it’s too late. Still hollering, Josef claws his way through the wooden door, out onto the street. Paige pulls herself up and makes it to the pavement just in time to see him slip over the edge of the bank, into the canal, dropping noiselessly into the water between two tethered barges. She turns back to find the boy with the shotgun looking at her.

  “Is he dead?”

  She shakes her head. The air’s tangy with gun smoke. “No, he’ll be back.” She scoops up her fallen coil gun and slides it back into her coat pocket. Her left arm’s clutched against her chest. Every time she moves, she has to bite her lip against the pain.

  The boy takes her by the shoulder, and she can feel his hands shake as he guides her into the pub kitchen, where she leans against the wall as he locks and bolts the back door.

  * * *

  When she asks, the boy tells her his name is Federico. He settles her on a bar stool, plonks a shot glass and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the counter, then goes to close the front door.

  “I’m going to call the police,” he says.

  As he brushes past her, Paige catches his arm.”There’s no time, we have to leave.”

  He looks down at her hand.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he says. “Not until you explain what the hell just happened.”