The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  I asked her if she’d ever go out again, and she laughed, bright-eyed and buoyant. “Maybe. We have forever, don’t we? To do anything we want?” She turned again to the kids. “Not any time soon, though.”

  “So you didn’t leave a husk out there?”

  “No. You understand . . . the years in micro-gee, the constant radiation. Even with ongoing repairs, the integrity of the husk is doubtful. If I ever go back, I’ll start fresh. I can afford a new husk. So I had my old one dissolved and the matter sold off. There’s nothing of me out there anymore.”

  Back at Sato Station, I started to pull Mika’s DNA record from her latest scan, but I hesitated. There were implications to what I might find. Mika could be drawn into this case, even if she had no immediate involvement . . . but I needed to know what had happened, before I could know what to do—and I didn’t have to include everything I found in my final report. So I went ahead with it, comparing DNA samples from Mika and Shay. And I found what I expected: outside the spliced segments, and with some exceptions for radiation damage and repairs, they were a match. Somehow, the Mika who’d disappeared thirty-two years ago had finally made it back from the dark.

  How had it happened? And had Officer Daoud Pana known the truth? Had Kiel Chaladur given him a cut of the profits for certifying Shay as an unknown citizen? Or had Pana been played?

  I’d been so sure of this case when I started, but I wasn’t sure anymore.

  I got up from the couch where I’d been working. Pana was in his office, talking to a ghost I couldn’t see, but he turned his attention to me when I looked in the doorway. “I’m leaving.”

  “Did you find anything?” he asked in a cold voice. “Should I start preparing a defense?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  It was time for me to go to Mars.

  On Sato Station I returned my husk to cold storage, and a moment later in my perspective, I opened the eyes of another husk, this one in the mausoleum in Confluencia, the largest city on Mars.

  Confluencia was a good place for someone with a questionable identity to disappear. The city snaked for hundreds of miles through Mariner Valley and the Martians weren’t big on security, so no gates existed between the city’s districts. A person could live a hundred years in Confluencia and never be scanned.

  I wondered about her, this unknown, Shay Antigo, who was once Mika Brennan. What had she done out in the dark? How had she lost herself for so many years? And why had she finally chosen to come back . . . as someone else?

  The Martian husk was heavier than the one I usually used, adapted to a higher gravity, but it didn’t take long to master my balance, and within minutes I was dressed and armed and heading out into the city.

  In most parts of the Commonwealth, locating a citizen is a simple matter of having a city’s network of listening posts search for the ping of an ID chip, but the Martians of Confluencia liked their privacy, and the only listening posts were on the walls of government buildings. So I did the next best thing: I followed the money, requesting real time account activity for both Shay Antigo and Kiel Chaladur.

  In a city as vast as Confluencia, it’s impossible to go anywhere without constantly paying for transportation, and given that my quarry was newly flush with money and fresh from the austerity of the Belt, I expected to see frequent transactions mapping a bright electronic trail.

  To my surprise, it took more than an hour for the first transaction to occur, but a location was attached to it, a mall, a few kilometers down the valley.

  By the time I reached the mall, a second transaction put their location at a designer clothing store—and minutes later, I saw them. Kiel Chaladur looked taller and more robust than he had stepping off the Gold Witch at Sato Station, while Shay Antigo looked much the same, her hair still close-cropped and her soft features suggesting nothing of Mika Brennan’s bold face.

  I didn’t need to talk to them right away. I was close enough to register the ping of their ID chips, and that made them easy to follow. So I tracked them through two more stores, then waited while they had a drink. Anything said or done in public was likely to be recorded, either by a security device or a passerby, and then all chance of discretion was gone. So I bided my time, and after an hour my patience was rewarded when Shay and Kiel disappeared through the lobby doors of a luxury hotel.

  I gave them a minute to get onto the elevator before I followed. The hotel yielded their room number, and before long a chime was announcing my presence at their door.

  No one answered, not for three minutes or more. I imagined the frantic, whispered conversation that must be going on inside as they considered why a Commonwealth police officer stood on their threshold. The door finally slid back to reveal Shay, gazing up at me with a sorrowful look.

  Asking no questions, she stepped aside—a gesture I took as an invitation to enter. Kiel stood on the balcony, a glass-encased ledge that overlooked the canyon as it wended south. His arms were crossed over his chest and from the look on his face, I knew that if there was no glass barrier there, he would enjoy throwing me over the precipice.

  The door whispered in its tracks, and as it closed my atrium informed me I was signal-dead, cut-off from the network. I froze in shock—though I should have expected it. This was a luxury hotel, offering the best, including electronic privacy, and Shay and Kiel were fugitives.

  I sent a gel ribbon gliding down my arm, wondering what else they were willing to do to protect themselves.

  Shay circled around me, keeping her eyes fixed on me as she gave me a wide berth. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked me in a desperate voice.

  “What did you do?” I wondered.

  “I came in from the dark. That’s all.”

  “So it is you? Mika Brennan. How much did Officer Pana make you pay for your new identity?”

  My DI confirmed the confusion I saw on her face. “It wasn’t like that—”

  “And her name is Shay Antigo,” Kiel interrupted, stepping in from the balcony.

  “Kiel, please. You need to stay out of it.”

  He didn’t listen, no more than I would have in the same situation. “She is Shay Antigo. An unknown from the rocks. The cop at Sato confirmed it and we didn’t pay him a damned thing.”

  “It’s true,” Shay said. “There was no record of me in the system, because I came to life out there in the rocks.”

  The DI studied her, and to my surprise it did not suggest she was lying—but then, time changes the way we define ourselves. “You came to life after Mika Brennan died?” I asked her.

  “The prospector? I heard that story. It was a long time ago.”

  “She never went home.”

  “That’s not what I heard. I heard her family restored her from backup. I heard she made it home.”

  Kiel added, “I heard that too. I heard she made a fortune, and set up a life for herself.”

  “A good life,” Shay added, tears glinting in her eyes. “A life I wish I’d had.”

  “What happened out there?” I asked her.

  She turned and, crossing the room, she sank slowly onto a sofa.

  “There was an accident.”

  Mika Brennan had been one of a crew of three, on a prospecting boat running on marginal resources. They’d found a comet remnant and knew their fortunes were made. Engines were fixed to the ice, but there were fault lines that they didn’t detect, and when the engines fired, a massive chunk of ice sheared away and struck the ship.

  “We lost all power,” Shay said. “The reactor was damaged. It was only a matter of time before the radiation killed us. But we figured if we could get back to the main ice fragment, eventually another prospector would come along and we’d be found.”

  So they wrestled cold sleep pods and a bivouac tent to the hopper bay. Mika jumped first, taking her pod with her. And because she was the lightest, she took the bivouac tent too. Her hopper was fully fueled, and she made it. Her companions didn’t. They overshot the ice, and had no fuel lef
t to turn around.

  The three of them talked, until the distance was too great for the suit radios. Then Mika bolted her cold sleep pod to the ice. She set up the bivouac tent around it, inflating it with the last of her air reserve. Then she stripped off her suit, and before the cold could kill her, she climbed into the pod.

  “I thought it’d be a year or two before I was picked up. But it was thirty-one years until Kiel and his crew found me, and by then I didn’t exist anymore. I mean, the Mika Brennan of thirty-two years ago, she no longer existed in the Commonwealth. It was too late for me to go home.”

  “Shay’s harmed no one,” Kiel said gruffly. “She’s done no wrong.”

  I wished that was true. “She lied about her name.”

  Shay wasn’t going to give in easily. “It wasn’t a lie! That name didn’t belong to me anymore—and you know what would have happened if I tried to take back my life.”

  I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I walked out to the balcony, thinking about the choice she’d had to make. She could have claimed her true name. It was her right. She could have seized back the life of Mika Brennan, but she’d chosen not to.

  I felt a shy touch against my arm and looked down, surprised to see that Shay had followed me. “She’s the version of me that my parents know. She’s the one my brothers and sisters love. She’s the mother of my children. For thirty years we’ve grown apart, and it’s too late now to ever put us back together.”

  Shay was right, of course. A ghost can join its memories to its progenitor, but only for a while. As they grow apart, it becomes impossible to meld one mind with another. But in the Commonwealth, individuals are allowed only one physical copy of themselves.

  “If I took back my name,” Shay said, “I’d take her life away. Do you think my family would even want me if I could do a thing like that?”

  “You know it doesn’t work that way,” I told her.

  We all want to see shades of meaning in what we do, but Commonwealth law is absolute. It’s concerned with limits, not justice.

  “You were first,” I said. “She was second. Under the law, that makes her an illegal copy.”

  “No, she was approved. There was a legal certification.”

  “Based on the assumption of your death, but you’re not dead. She’s the backup, so you have precedence. You knew it. That’s why you decided to disappear.”

  Shay stared out at the sprawl of gleaming towers and the canyon’s seemingly infinite walls. Kiel came to stand on her other side. He took her hand.

  “What was I supposed to do?” she asked me—that same question she’d met me with when I first came in the door. Only this time, there was steel in her voice, the stern conviction of a woman who’d survived out in the dark, alone. “I gave Mika my life. I didn’t ask for it back. I just wanted my own.”

  “And Officer Pana gave it to you.”

  “He’s a good cop,” Kiel said. “With a reputation for playing fair. Not like the jackboot cops of the inner system.”

  I wasn’t going to argue. Pana had done a better job than me. Sometimes, being a good cop means knowing when to stop asking questions.

  I’d been so determined to prove that Pana had been paid off, I’d followed this case too far. If I reported what I knew, the life of Mika Brennan, resident of Eden-2, would be forfeit as an illegal copy of a living person. And when she was gone, Shay would be tried and convicted of counterfeiting her identity, and she would be executed for it. Hardly a just reward for what she’d been through, and what she’d given up.

  I drew a breath and let it out slowly. “The radiation out there in the dark,” I said. “It damages the DNA. The repair programs . . . sometimes it seems like they’re copying patterns from the wrong DNA source.”

  “Like a cousin or something?” Kiel asked tentatively. “Even a sibling?”

  “Like that,” I agreed.

  Daoud Pana had known the truth, I didn’t doubt it, and he’d chosen to let Shay through the station gate because it was the right thing to do. Now I’d entered into his conspiracy.

  I turned and walked back across the hotel room. The door opened at my touch. I felt my connection restored. Looking back at Shay and Kiel, I saw they were still standing together on the balcony. “Thank you for answering my questions,” I said. “Assessments such as this one help us maintain the integrity of our officers. My report will state that, based on the evidence, Daoud Pana followed procedure and made the right call. This case is closed.”

  I took a step into the hall before I thought to turn back. “And welcome to the Commonwealth, Shay Antigo. I think you’ll like it here.”

  “Better than the rocks,” she allowed, in whispery relief.

  I nodded and went on my way.

  In my mind I started composing my report. I would have liked to open it with the truth: that strange things happen out in the dark.

  But I don’t want anyone else to get curious and start digging into this story . . . not until the law is changed—and that will happen. It must.

  On the Origin of Song

  Naim Kabir

  Note: Doyen-Générale, enclosed is the full catalogue of documents pertaining to the individual known as Ciallah Daroun, as per your request. I only ask that you keep the card registries intact, so that they may again be archived in a timely manner.

  —Commissaire de l’Académie, Aveline Duvachelle

  Envelope 32-R (Reichstagg’s Report):

  Stamped with Gold wax and Phoenix of the Sunrook solarium.

  1117thturn, 4th moon.

  Chercheur-Commandant Dupont,

  The Sunrook Conservatory had received reports of a large stranger harassing citizens for three weeks. This giant was dressed in grey-black rags, with his face covered in the way of highwaymen. He was estimated to stand at a height of twenty-one hands, with a wide frame, though other physical features were obscured by rough cloth. His voice was not of this world, and was, as one report mentioned, like two fists of shale scraped against one another.

  The individual was first confronted by Conservatory marshals outside the solarium, at which time Lecteur-Marèchale Ericcson charged him with the illegal hunting of solarium sunbirds. I commanded the stranger to identify himself, and he gave the name “Chala Darune,” then remarked that he was not a hunter but a naturalist. He cited the sixth and tenth Academy commandments before requesting that he be allowed to continue on his way. The marshals and I issued a warning but complied.

  Later the Cartographer Brecker sent word of the individual Darune and further aberrant behavior. After observing the Cartographer’s griffins, Darune had asked to buy inks and vellum, paying with foreign iron ingots. Subsequently, without any use of Song, the stranger Darune swallowed the inks and stamped his foot upon the vellum. According to the esteemed Cartographer’s testimony, writing had filled the vellum in the colour of the imbibed inks, all while the stranger remained silent.

  Though these actions were not illegal, they were deemed deviant, and so Lecteur-Marèchale Davisson, Chanteur-Marèchale Redwyn, and I set off in pursuit. Darune left the city of Sunrook by dusk and disappeared beyond the Shore into the Desert. However, he left deep footprints in which we observed rich printed text. The marshals and I immediately made plaster casts rubbed with charcoal and copied in triplicate, all of which have been delivered to you with this letter.

  Salut,

  Connaisseur-Captaine Reichstagg

  Charcoal scratching,

  Package 32-R (Reichstagg’s Plaster-Casts):

  Original plaster in Le Conservatoire de l’Académie.

  Note: Observe how the letters are formed in such a way that it appears to have been printed from a Press. The font has not yet been identified.

  —Commissaire-Aspirant de l’Académie, Jean Lamarck

  though I have seen the phoenixes from my home on the mesa, they are quite something else when observed from close by. They seem to be wholly domesticated here in Sunrook, though this Mountain is their native, w
ild ground. I saw one hunt a small desert mouse outside of my home-tent on the mesa, though here in the city they are fed by the solarium’s keepers. It appears they are used for the delivery of messages. The ever-present constantly shifting lights in the night sky, I surmise, are correspondence flown between all the solariums of the world.

  This phoenician Song seems to be composed of augmented chords in the high-to-mid octaves, and is associated with their sun-bright light. Jaanbab Al-Marack would have us believe that these traits are passed on in the blood, but I find it curious that the other wildlife on this Mountain is possessed of the same traits.

  The gryffones, both captive and wild, also Sing with augmented and major chords, though they are lower in octave, and they too spit hot, bright light. The peoples of Sunrook mirror these sounds with flutes and Woodwinds, and much of their Music is focused upon production of warmth and illumination. Even during nighttime, the Songs of the population keep the Mountain lit as if it were high noon. Behavior seems to be shared among the people and their Singing beasts, as well: all seem haughty and highbrowed, and lend themselves easily towards arrogance.

  I inquired as to whether much intermating occurs between the Men and Beasts of the region and was immediately reported to the Conservatory authorities for speaking deviant words and causing a disturbance. As it was taken as an insult, I believe it can be fairly inferred that no such mating occurs, and that these Musical traits are not passed in blood lineage.

  My hypothesis remains that an environmental factor inspires the abilities of Song, perhaps in the weather or geography. I am convinced that it must relate to sound: it cannot be sheer coincidence that the mesa of Benihajr is dry and in the still and silent doldrums, and that my people cannot Sing.