The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Sure,” she said.

  Kayaking, on Venus, did not involve water.

  Carlos Fernando instructed Leah, and Epiphany helped me.

  The “kayak” was a ten-meter-long gas envelope, a transparent cylinder of plastic curved into an ogive at both ends, with a tiny bubble at the bottom where the kayaker sat. One end of the kayak held a huge, gossamer-bladed propeller that turned lazily as the kayaker pedaled, while the kayaker rowed with flimsy wings, transparent and iridescent like the wings of a dragonfly.

  The wings, I discovered, had complicated linkages; each one could be pulled, twisted, and lifted, allowing each wing to separately beat, rotate, and camber.

  “Keep up a steady motion with the propeller,” Epiphany told me. “You’ll lose all your maneuverability if you let yourself float to a stop. You can scull with the wings to put on a burst of speed if you need to. Once you’re comfortable, use the wings to rise up or swoop down, and to maneuver. You’ll have fun.”

  We were in a launching bay, a balcony protruding from the side of the city. Four of the human-powered dirigibles that they called kayaks were docked against the blister, the bulge of the cockpits neatly inserted into docking rings so that the pilots could enter the dirigible without exposure to the outside atmosphere. Looking out across the cloudscape, I could see dozens of kayaks dancing around the city like transparent squid with stubby wings, playing tag with each other and racing across the sky. So small and transparent compared to the magnificent clouds, they had been invisible until I’d known how to look.

  “What about altitude?” I asked.

  “You’re about neutrally buoyant,” she said. “As long as you have airspeed, you can use the wings to make fine adjustments up or down.”

  “What happens if I get too low?”

  “You can’t get too low. The envelope has a reservoir of methanol; as you get lower, the temperature rises and your reservoir releases vapor, so the envelope inflates. If you gain too much altitude, vapor condenses out. So you’ll find you’re regulated to stay pretty close to the altitude you’re set for, which right now is,” she checked a meter, “fifty-two kilometers above local ground level. We’re blowing west at a hundred meters per second, so local ground level will change as the terrain below varies; check your meters for altimetry.”

  Looking downward, nothing was visible at all, only clouds, and below the clouds, an infinity of haze. It felt odd to think of the surface, over fifty kilometers straight down, and even odder to think that the city we were inside was speeding across that invisible landscape at hundreds of kilometers an hour. There was only the laziest feeling of motion, as the city drifted slowly through the ever-changing canyons of clouds

  “Watch out for wind shear,” she said. “It can take you out of sight of the city pretty quickly, if you let it. Ride the conveyor back if you get tired.”

  “The conveyor?”

  “Horizontal-axis vortices. They roll from west to east, and east to west. Choose the right altitude, and they’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

  Now that she’d told me, I could see the kayakers surfing the wind-shear, rising upward and skimming across the sky on invisible wheels of air.

  “Have fun,” she said. She helped me into the gondola, tightened my straps, looked at the gas pressure meter, checked the purge valve on the emergency oxygen supply, and verified that the radio, backup radio, and emergency locator beacons worked.

  Across the kayak launch bay, Leah and Carlos Fernando had already pushed off. Carlos was sculling his wings alternatingly with a practiced swishing motion, building up a pendulum-like oscillation from side to side. Even as I watched, his little craft rolled over until for a moment it hesitated, inverted, and then rolled completely around.

  “Showing off,” Epiphany said, disdainfully. “You’re not supposed to do that. Not that anybody would dare correct him.”

  She turned back to me. “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready as I’m going to be,” I said. I’d been given a complete safety briefing that explained the backup systems and the backups to the backups, but still, floating in the sky above a fifty-two-kilometer drop into the landscape of hell seemed an odd diversion.

  “Go!” she said. She checked the seal on the cockpit, and then with one hand she released the docking clamp.

  Freed from its mooring, the kayak sprang upward into the sky. As I’d been instructed, I banked the kayak away from the city. The roll made me feel suddenly giddy. The kayak skittered, sliding around until it was moving sideways to the air, the nose dipping down so that I was hanging against my straps. Coordinate the turn, I thought, but every slight motion I made with the wings seemed amplified drunkenly, and the kayak wove around erratically.

  The radio blinked at me, and Epiphany’s voice said, “You’re doing great. Give it some airspeed.”

  I wasn’t doing great; I was staring straight down at lemon-tinted haze and spinning slowly around like a falling leaf. Airspeed? I realize that I had entirely forgotten to pedal. I pedaled now, and the nose lifted. The sideways spin damped out, and as I straightened out, the wings bit into the air. “Great,” Epiphany’s voice told me. “Keep it steady.”

  The gas envelope seemed too fragile to hold me, but I was flying now, suspended below a golden sky. It was far too complicated, but I realized that as long as I kept the nose level, I could keep it under control. I was still oscillating slightly—it was difficult to avoid overcontroling—but on the average, I was keeping the nose pointed where I aimed it.

  Where were Leah and Carlos Fernando?

  I looked around. Each of the kayaks had different markings—mine was marked with gray stripes like a tabby cat—and I tried to spot theirs.

  A gaggle of kayaks was flying together, rounding the pylon of the city. As they moved around the pylon they all turned at once, flashing in the sunlight like a school of fish suddenly startled.

  Suddenly I spotted them, not far above me,close to the looming wall of the city; the royal purple envelope of Carlos Fernando’s kayak and the blue and yellow stripes of Leah’s. Leah was circling in a steady climb, and Carlos Fernando was darting around her, now coming in fast and bumping envelopes, now darting away and pulling up, hovering for a moment with his nose pointed at the sky, then skewing around and sliding back downward.

  Their motions looked like the courtship dance of birds.

  The purple kayak banked around and swooped out and away from the city; and an instant later, Leah’s blue and yellow kayak banked and followed. They both soared upward, catching a current of air invisible to me. I could see a few of the other fliers surfing on the same updraft. I yawed my nose around to follow them, but made no progress; I was too inexperienced with the kayak to be able to guess the air currents, and the wind differential was blowing me around the city in exactly the opposite of the direction I wanted to go. I pulled out and away from the city, seeking a different wind, and for an instant I caught a glimpse of something in the clouds below me, dark and fast moving.

  Then I caught the updraft. I could feel it, the wings caught the air and it felt like an invisible giant’s hand picking me up and carrying me—

  Then there was a sudden noise, a stuttering and ripping, followed by a sound like a snare drum. My left wing and propeller ripped away,the fragments spraying into the sky. My little craft banked hard to the left. My radio came to life, but I couldn’t hear anything as the cabin disintegrated around me. I was falling.

  Falling.

  For a moment I felt like I was back in zero-gee. I clutched uselessly to the remains of the control surfaces, connected by loose cords to fluttering pieces of debris. Pieces of my canopy floated away and were caught by the wind and spun upward and out of sight. The atmosphere rushed in, and my eyes started to burn. I made the mistake of taking a breath, and the effect was like getting kicked in the head. Flickering purple dots, the colors of a bruise, closed in from all directions. My vision narrowed to a single bright tunnel. The air was liquid fire in my
lungs. I reached around, desperately, trying to remember the emergency instructions before I blacked out, and my hands found the emergency air-mask between my legs. I was still strapped into my seat, although the seat was no longer attached to a vehicle, and I slapped the breathing mask against my face and sucked hard to start the airflow from the emergency oxygen. I was lucky; the oxygen cylinder was still attached to the bottom of the seat, as the seat, with me in it, tumbled through the sky. Through blurred eyes, I could see the city spinning above me. I tried to think of what the emergency procedure could be and what I should do next, but I could only think of what had gone wrong. What had I done? For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything that I could have done that would have ripped the craft apart.

  The city dwindled to the size of an acorn, and then I fell into the cloud layer and everything disappeared into a pearly white haze. My skin began to itch all over. I squeezed my eyes shut against the acid fog. The temperature was rising. How long would it take to fall fifty kilometers to the surface?

  Something enormous and metallic swooped down from above me, and I blacked out.

  Minutes or hours or days later I awoke in a dimly lit cubicle. I was lying on the ground, and two men wearing masks were spraying me with jets of a foaming white liquid that looked like milk but tasted bitter. My flight suit was in shreds around me.

  I sat up, and began to cough uncontrollably. My arms and my face itched like blazes, but when I started to scratch, one of the men reached out and slapped my hands away.

  “Don’t scratch.”

  I turned to look at him, and the one behind me grabbed me by the hair and smeared a handful of goo into my face, rubbing it hard into my eyes.

  Then he picked up a patch of cloth and tossed it to me. “Rub this where it itches. It should help.”

  I was still blinking, my face dripping, my vision fuzzy. The patch of cloth was wet with some gelatinous slime. I grabbed it from him, and dabbed it on my arms and then rubbed it in. It did help, some.

  “Thanks,” I said. “What the hell—”

  The two men in face masks looked at each other. “Acid burn,” the taller man said. “You’re not too bad. A minute or two of exposure won’t leave scars.”

  “What?”

  “Acid. You were exposed to the clouds.”

  “Right.”

  Now that I wasn’t quite so distracted, I looked around. I was in the cargo hold of some sort of aircraft. There were two small round portholes on either side. Although nothing was visible through them but a blank white, I could feel that the vehicle was in motion. I looked at the two men. They were both rough characters. Unlike the brightly colored spider-silk gowns of the citizens of Hypatia, they were dressed in clothes that were functional but not fancy, jumpsuits of a dark gray color with no visible insignia. Both of them were fit and well-muscled. I couldn’t see their faces, since they were wearing breathing masks and lightweight helmets, but under their masks I could see that they both wore short beards, another fashion that had been missing among the citizens of Hypatia. Their eyes were covered with amber-tinted goggles, made in a crazy style that cupped each eye with a piece that was rounded like half an eggshell, apparently stuck to their faces by some invisible glue. It gave them a strange, bug-eyed look. They looked at me, but behind their face masks and google-eyes I was completely unable to read their expression.

  “Thanks,” I said. “So, who are you? Some sort of emergency rescue force?”

  “I think you know who we are,”the taller one said. “The question is, who the hell are you?”

  I stood up and reached out a hand, thinking to introduce myself, but both of the men took a step back. Without seeming to move his hand, the taller one now had a gun, a tiny omniblaster of some kind. Suddenly a lot of things were clear.

  “You’re pirates,” I said.

  “We’re theVenus underground,” he said. “We don’t like the word pirates very much. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a question, and I really would like an answer. Who the hell are you?”

  So I told him.

  The first man started to take off his helmet, but the taller pirate stopped him. “We’ll keep the masks on, for now. Until we decide he’s safe.” The taller pirate said he was named Esteban Jaramillo; the shorter one Esteban Francisco. That was too many Estebans, I thought, and decided to tag the one Jaramillo and the other Francisco.

  I discovered from them that not everybody in the floating cities thought of Venus as a paradise. Some of the independent cities considered the clan of Nordwald-Gruenbaum to be well on its way to becoming a dictatorship. “They own half of Venus outright, but that’s not good enough for them, no, oh no,” Jaramillo told me. “They’re stinking rich, but not stinking rich enough, and the very idea that there are free cities floating in the sky, cities that don’t swear fealty to them and pay their goddamned taxes, that pisses them off. They’ll do anything that they can to crush us. Us? We’re just fighting back.”

  I would have been more inclined to see his point if I didn’t have the uncomfortable feeling that I’d just been abducted. It had been a tremendous stroke of luck for me that their ship had been there to catch me when my kayak broke apart and fell. I didn’t much believe in luck. And they didn’t bother to answer when I asked about being returned to Hypatia. It was pretty clear that the direction we were headed was not back toward the city.

  I had given them my word that I wouldn’t fight, or try to escape—where would I escape to?—and they accepted it. Once they realized that I wasn’t who they had expected to capture, they pressed me for news of the outside. “We don’t hear a lot of outside news.”

  There were three of them in the small craft, the two Estebans, and the pilot, who was never introduced. He did not bother to turn around to greet me, and all I ever saw of him was the back of his helmet. The craft itself they called a manta; an odd thing that was partly an airplane, partly dirigible, and partly a submarine. Once I’d given my word that I wouldn’t escape, I was allowed to look out, but there was nothing to see but a luminous golden haze.

  “We keep the manta flying under the cloud decks,” Jaramillo said. “Keeps us invisible.”

  “Invisible from whom?” I asked, but neither one of them bothered to answer. It was a dumb question anyway; I could very well guess who they wanted to keep out of sight of. “What about radar?” I said.

  Esteban looked at Esteban, and then at me. “We have means to deal with radar,” he said. “Just leave it at that and stop it with the questions you should know enough not to ask.”

  They seemed to be going somewhere, and eventually the manta exited the cloudbank into the clear air above. I pressed toward the porthole, trying to see out. The cloudscapes of Venus were still fascinating to me. We were skimming the surface of the cloud deck—ready to duck under if there were any sign of watchers, I surmised. From the cloudscape it was impossible to tell how far we’d come, whether it was just a few leagues, or halfway around the planet. None of the floating cities were visible, but in the distance I spotted the fat torpedo shape of a dirigible. The pilot saw it as well, for we banked toward it and sailed slowly up, slowing down as we approached, until it disappeared over our heads, and then the hull resonated with a sudden impact, and then a ratcheting clang.

  “Soft dock,” Jaramillo commented, and then a moment later another clang, and the nose of the craft was suddenly jerked up. “Hard dock,” he said. The two Estebans seemed to relax a little, and a whine and a rumble filled the little cabin. We were being winched up into the dirigible.

  After ten minutes or so, we came to rest in a vast interior space. The manta had been taken inside the envelope of the gas chamber, I realized. Half a dozen people met us.

  “Sorry,” Jaramillo said, “but I’m afraid we’re going to have to blind you. Nothing personal.”

  “Blind?” I said, but actually, that was good news. If they’d had no intention to release me, they wouldn’t care what I saw.

  Jaramillo held my head steady
while Francisco placed a set of the google-eyed glasses over my eyes. They were surprisingly comfortable. Whatever held them in place, they were so light that I could scarcely feel that they were there. The amber tint was barely noticeable. After checking that they fit, Francisco tapped the side of the goggles with his fingertip, once, twice, three times, four times. Each time he touched the goggles, the world grew darker, and with a fifth tap, all I could see was inky black. Why would sunglasses have a setting for complete darkness, I thought? And then I answered my own question: the last setting must be for e-beam welding. Pretty convenient, I thought. I wondered if I dared to ask them if I could keep the set of goggles when they were done.

  “I am sure you won’t be so foolish as to adjust the transparency,” one of the Estebans said.

  I was guided out the manta’s hatch and across the hanger, and then to a seat.

  “This the prisoner?” a voice asked.

  “Yeah,” Jaramillo said. “But the wrong one. No way to tell, but we guessed wrong, got the wrong flyer.”

  “Shit. So who is he?”

  “Technician,” Jaramillo said. “From the up and out.”

  “Really? So does he know anything about the Nordwald-Gruenbaum plan?”

  I spread my hands out flat, trying to look harmless. “Look, I only met the kid twice, or I guess three times, if you—”

  That caused some consternation; I could hear sudden buzz of voices, in a language I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure how many of them there were, but it seemed like at least half a dozen. I desperately wished I could see them, but that would very likely be a fatal move. After a moment, Jaramillo said, his voice now flat and expressionless,“You know the heir of Nordwald-Gruenbaum? You met Carlos Fernando in person?”

  “I met him. I don’t know him. Not really.”

  “Who did you say you were again?”