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

by Gardner Dozois

  It’s good, I have a good morning. I play a guy I haven’t played before, some up-and-coming star from South Korea. We play off each other well, building up a huge structure, an entire city of improbable shapes. It takes a two-and-half-hour battle for me to bring the entire thing down around his ears.

  When I come out from under I’m in a way better mood than I’ve been ever since that fucking party. A few people have plugged in to watch my game, and I actually manage a grin for them as we all disentangle from our rigs.

  “That was a sweet trick with the arches,” someone says, and someone else offers to run out for pizza since it’s now past noon, and soon there’s a crowd of us sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor, pizza grease seeping through paper plates and onto our fingertips. There’s a dimpled, heavy-set kid trying to tell everyone why he still prefers to use passive electrodes even though it means getting your hair gunked up with conductive paste, and I feel some unrecognized tightness below my collarbones soften, relax.

  Lady K, sitting next to me, waves a slice of pepperoni to get my attention. “You sticking around for the rest of the afternoon?” She pauses, arches an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  I am about to say something disparaging, when a fragment of conversation cuts through the rest of the chatter, the way fragments of conversation sometimes do, loud and unmistakable. “—kid in California hardwired himself two days ago.” It’s a pretty, wide-eyed girl with a punk-rock haircut talking; no wonder all the attention is on her. “That’s like over two dozen people hardwired in, just in America. It’s just so scary, I mean can you even imagine, drilling into your own skull like that? I hear there’s someone not too far from here, do you think—” the guy next to her finally cuts her off with an elbow jab to the ribs. She turns an inquiring glare on him, and he leans toward her, starting up a furious, whispered conversation.

  The tightness underneath my collarbones spools back into existence. I ignore the guilty glances being slanted my way, and take a large, deliberate bite of pizza instead.

  “Skipping,” I explain to Lady K once I am finished chewing. The conversation is still hushed and awkward. I fold the paper plate into a careful fat wedge, wipe my fingers on my jeans. “I’m gonna plug back in.”

  There are too many eyes on me as I try to settle into my rig, I can’t get the electrodes to sit quite right. I never have problems with my rig but it’s taking too long, I’m starting to look like an idiot so I turn the whole thing on anyway, blissful blank order sliding over my brainwaves.

  It fits my current luck that none of my active play partners are connected, so I drift uncomfortably, paging through lists of other people looking for games, trying to find someone whose stats make them look interesting. I am just about to accept an offer to play a teaching game with some newbie, when Annie’s pseud pops up as available.

  I send her a game request without even really thinking about it; I’ve done this so many times it’s like a reflex now. And like all the other times before, she declines immediately.

  Because I am childish and bitter, I send her two dozen game requests in quick succession, the Coma equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell repeatedly.

  Just admit you’re scared, I message her, and as usual, am informed that she is not accepting messages. I game-request her three more times and think really hard about flipping her off, as if the Coma network might somehow be able to convey my displeasure, might carry along my vitriol to resonate into the base of Annie’s wretched skull. Then I accept the game against the newbie and try to forget about it.

  I’m a half hour into it when Annie’s game request pings along the edge of my brain.

  I stop breathing. For at least thirty seconds I am essentially paralyzed; I know this because when I come back to myself my opponent is making good headway toward tearing down the defenses I’ve built up, sending me a little stream of surprised and pleased messages about how he thinks he’s finally really getting it. Sorry, I say, sorry, I have to go, and forfeit the game, just like that.

  I accept Annie’s game request and the world is a clean slate.

  Then Annie starts building a box.

  Maybe you can see what’s coming here. I don’t know. Maybe it was obvious from the outside. If you had asked me before, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what I thought was going to happen, because I didn’t think anything. I wanted to play Annie. Of course I did, she’s my sister, my sister who I lost, and I wanted to have her again, in any way I could. And I wanted to beat her, because she’s my sister, and you always want to win against your siblings. That’s just the way things work, right? That should have been enough.

  So I didn’t think anything. But here’s the thing, and I know this makes me a fool, but deep down, I believed, somehow, that if I could just beat her everything would be all better. Believed, with that sort of secret inner ferocity of a fairy tale or a religion. I would win against her, like nobody ever had, and there would be a silent, eternal moment. And then her name would blip out of existence, and I’d pull off my rig and look over to where she was doing the same, prying her goggles away from her eyes and sliding the probe out from the back of her skull. And we’d look at each other, and start laughing, and everything would be okay.

  In fairytales, you can wake somebody out of death with a kiss. Does waking somebody up like this really seem like so much to ask?

  When I beat Annie, there is indeed one silent, eternal moment. And right then I don’t even realize what I’m waiting for, bated breath and tense muscles, until it doesn’t happen, until she leaves the space we created without comment, until she doesn’t blip out of existence.

  Until she starts up another game, immediately, against someone else, as if absolutely nothing has changed.

  * * *

  When I get home my mother is waiting for me.

  “The school called to tell me you missed classes today,” she says.

  My keys bite into my palms, hard and irregular. I get past my mother without looking at her, make my way into the living room. Climb onto the couch, pull my knees up to my chest. Turn my face into the cushion so the upholstery forces my eyes shut.

  I have mostly stopped crying by this point.

  “You listen when I’m talking to you,” says my mother.

  I can hear her moving into the living room after me. The shadows behind my eyelids get darker as she stands over me, half-blocking the light. I expect her to grab hold of me, yank me upright, something, but she doesn’t move.

  “Would you unplug me?” I hear myself asking. My voice filters through the cushions, muffled and strange. I doubt my mother can even understand what I’m saying. “If I was like Annie. Would you unplug us both?”

  Silence. The tender spots at my temples throb in time with my pulse, thudding slow and regular. Then I feel her moving, feel the couch shifting as she sinks down next to me. Her fingertips press into my scalp, thumb curling into the fine hairs at the base of my skull.

  “I don’t know,” she says, almost a whisper.

  I almost want to believe she sounds sorry.

  “Okay,” I say. Her fingernails catch in my hair when she pulls her hand away, bringing long strands with them. I feel them lift and separate, imagine them shining and infinite, like wires. “Okay.”

  The Prodigal Son

  ALLEN M. STEELE

  Here’s a compelling look at the struggle to launch a privately funded starship, in spite of all the legal and logistical challenges that must be overcome, including some potentially deadly ones …

  Allen Steele made his first sale in 1988. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus poll as Best First Novel of the year, and soon Steele was being compared to Golden Age Heinlein by no less an authority than Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Clarke County, Space; Lunar Descent; Labyrinth of Night; The Weight; The Tranquility Alternative; A King of Infinite Space; Oceanspace; Chronospace; Coyote; Coyo
te Rising; Spindrift; Galaxy Blues; Coyote Horizon; Coyote Destiny; Hex; and a YA novel, Apollo’s Outcast. His short work has been gathered in five collections, Rude Astronauts, All-American Alien Boy, American Beauty, The Last Science Fiction Writer, and Sex and Violence in Zero-G: The Complete “Near Space” Stories. His most recent book is a new novel, V-S Day. He has won three Hugo Awards, in 1996 for his novella “The Death of Captain Future,” in 1998 for his novella “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” and, most recently, in 2011 for his novelette “The Emperor of Mars.” Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, covering science and business assignments, and is now a full-time writer living in Whately, Massachusetts, with his wife Linda.

  I

  The Gulfstream G8 was an old aircraft on the verge of retirement. Its fuselage creaked whenever it hit an air pocket, and the tiltjets had made a rattling sound when it took off from San Juan. At least the Caribbean looked warm. Matt figured that, if something went wrong and the plane had to ditch, at least he and the other passengers wouldn’t freeze to death in the sun-dappled water that lay below. Provided that they survived the crash, of course.

  Matt looked away from the window to steal another glance at the young woman sitting across the aisle. She’d said nothing to him over the past couple of hours, and he couldn’t decide whether whatever she was studying on her slate was really that fascinating or if she was merely being standoffish. The aircraft jounced again, causing her to briefly raise her eyes from the screen. She caught Matt looking at her, favored him with a polite smile, then returned her attention to the slate.

  She was beautiful. Dark brown skin and fathomless black eyes hinted at an Indian heritage. Her build was athletically slender, her face solemn yet her mouth touched with subtle laugh-lines. And there were no rings on her fingers.

  “Rough flight,” he said.

  She looked up again. “Excuse me?”

  “Rough flight, I said.” Searching for something to add, Matt settled on the obvious. “You’d think the foundation could afford a better plane. This one looks like it came from the junkyard.” He picked at the frayed upholstery of his left armrest.

  “They’re trying to save money. This is probably the cheapest charter they could afford.”

  Her gaze went back to her slate, her right hand pushing away a lock of mahogany hair that had fallen across her face. She was plainly uninterested in making conversation with a fellow passenger. Or at least the young guy about her own age seated beside her. But Matt had learned how to be persistent when pursuing attractive women. Sometimes, the direct approach was the best.

  He stuck out his hand. “Matt Skinner.”

  She eyed his hand for a second before deciding to take it. “Chandraleska Sanyal.”

  “Chandalre…” He fumbled over the syllables

  “I’ll settle for Chandi.”

  “Okay. So what are you doing with the … y’know? The project.”

  “Payload specialist, Nathan 4. I’m with the checkout team.” She nodded toward the handful of other men and women sitting around them. Most were in their late twenties or early thirties, although two or three were middle-aged or older. “Same as everyone else … except you, I suppose.”

  “Oh yeah … checkout team.” Matt had no idea what she meant by that, other than it had something to do with the rocket carrying Galactique’s components into orbit. Leaning across the armrest, he peered at her slate. Vertical columns of numbers, a bar-graph with multicolored lines rising from left to right, a pop-up menu bar. They could just as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Fascinating.”

  Chandi wasn’t fooled for a second. “I didn’t know tourists still visit Ile Sombre. Or are you the new kitchen help?”

  It was an insult, of course, but at least she was talking to him. “Oh, no,” he said, “I’m coming down to visit my parents. They work on the project. Ben and Jill Skinner … maybe you know them?”

  Matt had the satisfaction of watching Chandi’s eyes widen in surprise. “Dr. Skinner’s your father?” she asked, and he nodded. “That means you’re with the Arkwright family.”

  “Why, yes. That’s my middle name … Matthew Arkwright Skinner.” He said this with deliberate casualness, as if it was the most unremarkable thing he could have mentioned. “Nathan Arkwright was my great-great-grandfather. He started the Arkwright Foundation about seventy years ago, when…”

  “I know the foundation’s history. I’ve even read a few of his novels.” Chandi nodded towards the other passengers. “It’s a good bet everyone has. Which book was your favorite?”

  The soft chime of a bell saved Matt from having to admit that he’d never read any of Nathan Arkwright’s science fiction novels. The seat-belt lights flashed on and the pilot’s voice came through the speakers: “We’ll be coming in for landing, folks, so if you’ll return to your seats and stow your belongings, we’ll have you on the ground in just a few minutes.”

  The other passengers began collapsing their slates. Matt felt his ears pop. Chandi saved her work, then slipped her slate into her travel bag. “If you look out the window, you might see the launch site.”

  Matt turned to look. For a moment he saw nothing, then the plane banked to the right and Ile Sombre came into view. He caught a glimpse of a ciudad flotante, one of the floating towns common in the coastal regions of the southern hemisphere; this one was Ste. Genevieve, a collection of prefabs, huts, and shacks built atop pontoon barges above the flooded remains of the island’s former capitol. Then the aircraft moved away from the coast and he saw, rising from the inland rainforest, something that looked like a giant yellow crayon nestled within a gantry tower: a cargo rocket, perched atop its mobile launch platform.

  “Nathan 2.” Chandi leaned across the aisle to gaze over his shoulder. “Scheduled for lift-off the day after tomorrow … if all goes well, that is.”

  Glancing back at her, Matt couldn’t help but see down the front of her blouse. It was a pleasant sight. “That’s … um, the microwave beam thing, isn’t it?”

  Chandi noticed the direction he was looking and quickly sat up straight again. “No. The beamsat went up six weeks ago on Nathan 1. It’s being assembled in Lagrange orbit and should be ready for operation in about four months. Nathan 2 is carrying the service module.”

  “Oh, okay. Right…”

  A bump beneath their feet as the landing gear came down, followed a few seconds later by the trembling shudder of the engine nacelles swiveling upward to descent position. About a thousand feet below, a paved airstrip came into view. Chandi gave her seat belt a perfunctory hitch to make sure it was tight. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”

  Matt smiled. “I can give you the answer. Yes, I’d love to have dinner with you tonight.”

  She didn’t return the smile. “What I was going to ask was, why are you here?”

  “Come again?”

  “I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t know anything about Galactique. This is no vacation spot. The island lost its beaches years ago, and there’s no one at the hotel except the launch team. So trying to use your family name to pick up girls isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

  Matt’s face became warm. “I didn’t … I wasn’t…”

  “Sure you weren’t.” Chandi’s expression was knowing. “So what brings you here?”

  He suddenly found himself wishing the plane would crash, if only because death might save him the embarrassment of this moment. Chandi was watching him, though, waiting for an answer, so he gave her the only one he had that was honest.

  “My grandmother thought it was a good idea,” he said.

  II

  Matt’s grandmother was Kate Morressy Skinner, the Arkwright Foundation’s executive director, and as Matt stood in the customs line of what was laughably called the Ile Sombre International Airport, he once again reflected that it had been a mistake to call her asking for money.

  He’d always gotten along well with Grandma, but he s
hould have known that her wealth was an illusion. The foundation had been established by a bestowment left by her grandfather; it was worth billions of dollars, but all of it was tied up in investment capital associated with its principal goal: building and launching the first starship from Earth. Grandma had been made its director when she was about Matt’s age, and although she received a generous salary, she was hardly rich. So she shouldn’t have been expected to give her grandson a “loan” they both knew would probably never be repaid.

  Matt watched the customs inspector open the backpack he’d brought with him from the states and began to carefully sort through his belongings. The airport terminal was a large single room in a cinderblock building; customs was a row of folding tables behind which the inspectors stood. The place was humid, with the ceiling fans doing nothing but blow hot air around. It was springtime in this part of the world, but it felt like mid-summer anywhere else. Through the open door leading to the airstrip came the roar of another battered Air Carib jet taking off. Except for the passengers who’d disembarked from Matt’s flight, everyone in the building was black; he’d later learn that the native inhabitants were descended from African slaves who’d escaped from French and Spanish plantations elsewhere in the Caribbean and made their way to this remote island just south of Dominica, which the Europeans avoided because it had once been a pirate stronghold.

  Grandma had done enough for him already by lining up his most recent job as an orderly at the Philadelphia hospital where Grandpa had worked as a doctor before he passed away. But that job lasted only about as long as all the others before it: part-time actor, recording studio publicist, store clerk, a couple of positions as assistant associate whatever. He’d keep them until he got bored and his boss noticed his lack of commitment, and then the inevitable chain of events would follow. The carpet. The warning. The second warning. The final warning. The unapologetic apology, the dismissal form, the severance check. And then the move to another city, another apartment, and another job found on another employment Web site.