Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  First poke was us, a compact team for quick overview and resource mapping: a primary pilot, six scientists with twistship operations training, and two bodyguards (including me), with similar training. If enough gold panned out, RE would dispatch a heavier poke: multiple ships with large crews and serious equipment to investigate areas we’d believed worthy. By Global Council laws, no company could claim much of this Promising Land, but RE would get first crack at the ten thousand most promising adjacent acres.

  Stardancer bent reality into an unimaginable pretzel, and after three subjective weeks, all nine of us crowded around the main viewscreen, gazing at our gray, white, and blue destination while residual boredom faded from our eyes. To speed up scanning, Flute, High Queen of Piloting, began by “rolling against the grain.” That’s our in-house code for orbiting a planet at the equator opposite to its direction of rotation.

  Artist reported four kinds of results: expected, pleasantly surprising, disappointing, and bizarre.

  As the bribed analyst predicted, even at the equator, temperatures remained somewhat below human comfort level, and gravity didn’t have quite Earth’s tug. Artist beamed during his next revelation. Praise the Lord, the atmosphere did register as breathable straight from the box, and watering holes abounded, plus three sizable oceans. Yet deeper scans showed no signs of life, not even the fuzz of primitive vegetation. Those Earth levels of atmospheric oxygen might be, he speculated, generated by organisms too small, too cold, or too buried for his instruments to detect; or, more likely, by volcanic processes.

  One anomaly registered. Slightly north of the equator—“north” being an assigned direction—Artist had pinpointed a tiny area of highly refined metals. Hardly a spectacular find, but worthy of a close-up. A science team headed by Cards, High Priest of Geology, flew Mighty Moose down to do so and took Archer and me along, out of habit, I suppose, since the planet’s only apparent danger was tripping and falling.

  I remember the way we joked as we spiraled down. Any number of natural events could’ve resulted in a minuscule patch of pure metals, none of which amounted to anything profitable by RE standards.

  But instead of discovering a pool or two of shiny congealed irrelevance, we found the incredible.

  Six days later, something far more incredible found me.

  * * *

  I’m doing some jumping and push-ups to stay warm. Light keeps leaching from the sky, and she still hasn’t appeared. Maybe tonight she won’t. Restlessness invades me like an emotional species of cold, but I can’t bring myself to leave. No oversize bubbles arise, no telltale bulge of water disturbs the lake’s surface. Soon, it will become too dark to know if she’s on the way.

  She? When and why had I begun thinking of her as female? Oh, now I remember: when I began writing that poem about her.

  * * *

  Flute set Moose down on a conveniently flat shelf of rock, conveniently close to the site none of us took seriously. Gardener did a just-to-be-sure air sample test, and a minute later Archer and I led our merry band of insulated scientists toward a lake that was three drops shy of being a sea. Can’t speak for Archer, but despite ER’s commandments, I felt two kinds of fool for toting a wave rifle along. Soon, all jokes ceased, along with conversation, because we’d gotten close enough to our goal to see what had to be an abandoned campsite.

  We stopped several meters from it, and spread out into a fog-exhaling semicircle. For a full minute, no one said a word. Finding this evidence would’ve had Cards—even-tempered only by being perpetually peeved—screaming obscenities at the pearly sky, poorly aimed at whichever corporation had mounted an unauthorized expedition here. But the collection of incomprehensible artifacts strewn around had clearly not been made by or for humans. Weaver, our tactile sensor specialist, finally broke our joint stunned silence.

  “Anyone doubt that intelligent ETs left all this?” She glanced around at us. Even her Kenyan face appeared somewhat bleached by more than the cold. “Yeah. Me neither. But here’s a little trivia for your consideration, children. They scrambled so recently that my sensors can pick up a touch of residual heat.”

  Quite the aftershock. We looked in each other’s eyes and I’m sure everyone had the same two thoughts.

  Cards wondered out loud for all of us. “You mean we just missed them? Christ! You don’t suppose they took off so suddenly because we’d arrived?”

  Weaver didn’t quite roll her eyes. “By ‘recently’ I meant sometime in the last few local days. You people do know how sensitive my equipment is?” By her tone, we’d have to study hard to attain the level of ignoramus.

  Cards made a firing-back sort of target, but he got distracted.

  “Hey, you! Archer! Don’t you take another step. We so much as touch that, uh, equipment right now, we could be out millions.”

  No one spoke, but I saw a brightness dawning in everyone else’s face. Yes. We’d landed the jackpot of jackpots. A discovery like this would be worth more than a dozen rare earth or precious jewel mines. We’d each be getting astronomical bonuses! I could quit RE, go back to school, and see if my Tara was still foolish enough to marry a—

  I noticed all eyes turning toward me.

  Oh. Everyone else had already thought it through. Part of me still floated, buoyed by visions of a brilliant future. Another part sank as I worked it out for myself, a three-step process.

  One: Before reaping our unjust rewards, we had to stake this claim, an immediate priority with a discovery of this magnitude. Otherwise, RE specialists might lack time enough to squeeze maximum value from the artifacts before … other interests arrive.

  Two: Global Council policy demanded a “Vigilant,” a person constantly remaining within seven hundred meters of a find until a title was officially registered. Some legal cheating by one of RE’s competitors, the Finnish-Japanese conglomerate Draaki Oyj, inspired this recent rule change. Draaki had exploited the original radio beacon dibs-on-this statute by burying inactivated beacons, thousands, on newly opened worlds wherever sites held a shred of financial promise. They’d let other companies do the actual work to find any goodies, and then activate the buried beacons to finalize a claim. This stunt had also inspired the adjacent-acres rider.

  Three, where our lightning stroke of mutual luck carried an edge of personal discomfort: Stardancer equals scouting ship. We weren’t expected or prepared to find anything this valuable. And it takes six people minimum, three to a shift, to safely operate a twistship of any size. No insulation yet discovered prevents the Twist from affecting onboard electronics. So constant attention and frequent recalibration is the price for making the light-speed limit irrelevant. By both Council and RE’s internal laws, eight people are the minimum crew for any twistship, two for backup.

  And who happened to be on top of our totem pole, in the sense of providing our crew the least support? Me.

  I did some mental calculations and didn’t savor the result. Even with the Twist’s temporal contraction paradox, it would take almost two weeks for Stardancer to return home, a few days at best for RE to dispatch a claim fleet, and another brace of weeks for those ships to arrive here. I’d be on my own here for at least a month …

  “Cards,” I said quietly. “I realize the finger of fate is giving me the finger. Might I ask a question at this point?”

  “You’ll never get a better chance, Poet.”

  “What if the … beings that left all their toys behind come back?”

  He grunted dismissively. “Not gonna happen. Look how the stuff is lying all, uh, helter-skelter. No orderly retreat here, kid—they were gettin’ the hell out, and didn’t plan on returning.”

  “Uh-huh. Still, what if they do? And here’s something that strikes me as relevant: Why do you suppose they left in such a rush? Think that might be something for me to worry about?”

  He shook his head, more in sadness than anger. “Poet, you’re too damn sensitive and worry too much. We’ll set a cam or two aimed here, and if they do come bac
k—which they won’t—just stay out of sight, keep an eye on ’em, and record everything they do.” He glanced again at the artifacts. “This site would have a … different kind of value in that case, and Global would send out a contact team and cut out ER, but we’d still get a fat payday. Got it? When your relief comes, we’ll have ’em park their shuttle far enough away so any ETs around won’t be likely to notice.”

  His words seemed as vacuous as empty space yet densely self-serving.

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions,” I pointed out. “And, again, since you ignored the question, what made the ETs cut and run?”

  “Could be anything. Maybe they can’t breathe here, and something went wrong with their air supply. Maybe they’ve solved ultra-distance comm and got an emergency ‘rush home’ message. Maybe they got cold. Who knows? But look around. Artist’s right. There’s no life here. None. Sure, you’ll be alone for a few days, but we’ll ferry down the equipment you’ll need, and you’ll have company before you know it. Hell, you’re always bitchin’ you don’t have enough time to write. Here’s your chance.”

  During one shipboard group meeting where we were required to air our complaints, I mentioned how frustrating it was to be on a good roll with a poem and get interrupted. Hadn’t brought it up again. No one dared contradict Cards out loud, but Archer, Dancer, and Piano skewered him with sharp looks, which failed to register on their target. You couldn’t accuse Cards of being oversensitive.

  Before sunset, Moose had gone and come and gone. I inflated my new photovoltaic home close to the lake, inflated my new bed and furniture, and set up equipment, connecting everything electronic to the battery built into my new roof.

  My final human contact had been with Archer.

  “You know,” I’d said, “I’m willing to trade places with you if you’re up for a nice vacation.”

  He chuckled. “Haven’t you watched any of those old space operas, Poet? The black guy always dies. But thanks for the offer.”

  I swung an arm around, gesturing at the terrain. “Main danger here is death by boredom.”

  “Yeah. Don’t envy you much.” He hugged me tightly for a moment. “When the smoke clears, we’ll all have pockets brimming with cash. Just remember that, and take care of yourself, Ross.”

  Having him use my real name despite Stardancer traditions touched me more than the hug.

  * * *

  The first two days weren’t bad. Some wonderful surprises manifested, including sunsets that J. M. W. Turner would’ve sold both legs and maybe one arm to paint. Also, enormous bubbles rose from the lake occasionally as evanescent domes, clearly preserved for a time by more than mere surface tension. When they appeared during sunsets, they seemed to have all the magic of the best soap bubbles in a convenient circus-tent size. I wished I had someone to share these things with.

  In addition, I had my virtual entertainment system to keep me virtually entertained, and spent much of my time working out with water-filled kettlebells, digging a latrine with a muscle-powered shovel from our geology gear, listening to music, and catching up on movies I’d missed. Archer had insisted on loaning his fancy bow to me, another touching act, and it provided surprisingly authentic feedback when firing virtual arrows at virtual targets. But despite my awards in ski archery, I hadn’t retained much interest in such toys. Evenings, I watched the lightshow until the stars, distorted by the atmosphere’s icy window, emerged to twinkle outrageously as if winking at private jokes.

  Sure, I worked to refine my latest poem and tried to compose another, but the muse had deserted me along with my team. By the third day, numbness reigned supreme.

  That afternoon, a herd of clouds galloped in, and despite my shelter’s all-frequency converters, my battery juice took a hit. Priorities. To preserve heat, maintain a radioed trickle of energy to those cams at the alien campsite, keep my Vigilant location monitor happy, and power my water desalinator/purifier, I put aside electronic fun for that evening and the entire next day.

  I tried to keep busy. But running in big circles, always within seven hundred meters from our treasure, lost its appeal after a few hundred laps, and the kettlebells failed to call to me like mythical exercise sirens. At least my dehydrated food and coffee could heat itself, and I should’ve blessed the existence of exothermic reactions. But an emptiness filled my spirit, not forceful enough to be labeled depression. “Malaise” fit the bill nicely. When night settled in, I felt grateful. Sometimes sleep is the best way to surf time.

  But my snores got interrupted by rattling sounds on the domed ceiling above me, so I wasn’t shocked when I awoke the fifth day, squeezed through my shelter’s entrance membrane, and found the gifts nature had brought me. Small and slippery icy pellets coated the ground. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” I muttered, a line from an antique movie I’d watched days ago. The temperature hugged Fahrenheit at the thirty mark, and it seemed wise to stay indoors until the mess thawed somewhat, likely a matter of only a few hours, assuming the usual mid-morning equatorial heat wave of merely chilly air.

  Gripping myself by the scruff of the brain, I went back inside and buckled up to work on a poem. I got this far:

  The bittersweet memory of a not-yet-frozen, forgotten tomorrow.

  Liked the way it rolled off the mental tongue. I modified it:

  Bittersweet, the memory of a not-yet-frozen, forgotten tomorrow.

  That had a stronger beat, and I felt the phrase resonated with the right frequency of loneliness. Its meaning burned clear to me, evoking childhood hopes and dreams that were abandoned but lingered on. Still, would this come across to anyone else, should anyone else ever read it?

  I put doubts aside, and tried to come up with the next line. Time passed, bringing me nothing. Finally, in hopes of getting things sliding, I took a random stab.

  In that space between space, which no time can erase …

  No. Wrong direction, I warned myself, and what’s with suddenly breaking out in a bad case of rhyme?

  Second attempt, a half hour later:

  Here, here I walk in the chill,

  In the chill twilight of the soul,

  Where the heart hides its own pulse lest its secrets …

  Lest? What the hell was wrong with me? Perhaps my creativity and I should exeunt rather than leave my shelter …

  Outside, the hailstone marbles had morphed into a layer of slush; gray rivulets of runoff trickled toward the lake. The heavy clouds had thinned, those remaining had dressed for the opera, preening ostrich feather streamers. The local sun felt like a blessing on my bare face, and with luck would keep me company long enough to dry my supposedly self-cleaning clothes, which badly needed cleaning. Having a body of water so near my front door had advantages, and the smart material, despite its stay-fresh limitations, rejected salt.

  I slogged some 680 soggy meters to determine if the storm had shifted the hidden, motion-activated microcams spying on the abandoned paraphernalia. It hadn’t, although they certainly dripped. I could’ve checked on them from my shelter, but bathing my eyes in mysteries refreshed my sense of wonder, and somewhat eased my restiveness. I would’ve spent far more time staring at the alien junk if it didn’t tug on my curiosity like an addiction. The war between cupidity and curiosity was already too close to a tie.

  I suspected that one object, emplaced on a smallish mound, was some form of power supply or generator. It stood a good meter taller than me—and I’m anything but short—appeared barrel-shaped with a flat top, and had what I guessed were sockets designed for massive cables. The way the soil around it bulged made me think it had sunk at least half a meter. If so, it had to be heavy as hell, a hell made of lead.

  That night, my main battery had recharged enough for me to use my virtual system, watch recorded shows, or play immersive games. I tried, but after a dozen attempts nothing gripped me. I turned the device off, lay in bed, and stared up at my ceiling. Only five days, and my life here already felt very old.

  * * *
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  Morning on the sixth day brought another kind of present: wind, sometimes brisk, sometimes violent, and always unwelcome. Outdoors, my parka at full blast couldn’t keep up with the heat loss, and even indoors felt colder than it had at night. I made several expeditions, one to the latrine and another to the lake to fetch water, and came back shivering each time.

  I came up with seven more lines for the poem I’d tentatively titled “Bittersweet,” but discarded them all because none matched the feeling of the initial line. The notion of eating just for something to do had too much appeal, but while my food supply included an extra sixty days beyond the expected arrival time of the next crew, no grocery shops were currently available, and contingency supplies exist because contingencies happen.

  Why not, I asked myself, see how many push-ups you can do these days in an hour? When I’d taken silver for Canada in ski archery, my record had been 1,260. I’d worked to stay fit since then, but my edge had certainly dulled. Question was, had it chipped entirely off?

  I’d lost count somewhere past six hundred when the wind, which had been rattling my shelter and periodically moaning through the tent’s clever tangle of guy wires, stopped so suddenly, the hush felt as though someone had just died. My interest in push-ups dropped to a new low, and I headed outdoors to certify that I wasn’t that someone.

  In the utter stillness, the air felt relatively balmy, which levitated my spirits so much that I decided to get reckless and do something my bosses wouldn’t endorse: give this world a name. That kind of honor made an excellent bribe, and when my relief showed up, if I bandied my choice around, there’d be a slight but real chance the name would stick.

  “I dub thee … Sonnet!”

  After such a massive accomplishment, I felt worthy of taking the balance of the day off. A picnic, an alcoholic beverage, and a no-pressure writing session seemed in order.

  I fetched a blanket, whitepad and stylus, one of my three small bags of mixed nuts, and reconstituted some orange juice. Piano had provided me a single carton of vodka, really all I wanted, since I’m not much of a drinker. I opened the tab and added a splash to the juice.