Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Kai trailed her fingers along the smooth metal of the wall. Her cuts and bruises were aching again, and she stopped to light the smoke she had preserved earlier, cupping it in her hand against the wind that whistled across the flat plain of the space port to hammer into the side of the tube. She finished it while she watched the dance of the graffiti, summoning the strength to resume her long walk.

  The tributes and the slogans gave way to a section painted with landscapes, trees and sunsets, cities shining in the sky and mythical beasts dancing. She was halfway home now, and she stopped for an instant to admire the wall, as she always did. For a moment she felt sorry for the Grond, speeding through in their metal tube, separated from this flowering of human creativity. They didn’t like to admit it existed, to admit there was something mere humans understood that the Grond could never grasp. There was no art in the Grond cities, no more than there was in the Delphi, where people had too much to worry about, and no room to think about art.

  Kai could hear the occasional swish as a train rushed by, soft and swift, insulated by the tube. There was no insulation from the spaceport though; the roar of the orbitals ripping their way up through the atmosphere, g-force accelerating into a wet sky the colour of milk. The orbitals carried the Grond off-world and back, and they sometimes carried humans. Not people like Kai, but lizard-lickers, who made their credit selling out their own people to the Grond. They could afford to travel to the stars. Kai had been offered that chance once, but she preferred to make her credit honestly, in the fighting cage.

  She didn’t want to think about the orbitals, the distance they had to cover. She had plenty of distance of her own. She put her head down and kept walking.

  The holo-graffiti faded out before she reached the Delphi, as if the light and colour couldn’t bear even to approach the habitation. From there, the train tube curved away to the west while the spaceport fence carried straight on. In the space between the two worlds lay the capsule-blocks and industrial units that made up her home environs. The Delphi had been thriving once, like the other human cities. But that was before the Grond arrived, with their orbitals and their hives, and one by one they had shut down the human cities, cut them off from each other, crushed their trade. Now all the Delphi was good for was providing manual labour for the Grond factories, making components for orbitals that no one who lived there would ever be able to afford to fly in.

  Kai quickened her pace, eager to be out of the wind and off the streets. Her usual pharma lay at the bottom of an administrative block that had mostly fallen into disuse, because what was there to administrate here? She passed the little girls in their high tops and short skirts, leaning against the shuttered window, ready to sell themselves for a fix. She had vowed she would never be like them. She had fought over ten years not to fall into that life. Now she was old and tired but the girls were still there, a new generation every year.

  She eased open the door, grateful the place was quiet. She didn’t know how Ben got by. She suspected he had some kind of back-pocket deal with the Grond, but she liked him, so she wasn’t about to ask. It would be a pain to find another pharma who could provide her particular range of needs so cheaply, and with so few questions asked.

  Ben had black hair, and a face the colour of jaundice. He was leaning with his elbows on the counter, reading a tatty and lurid paperback. She watched his eyes deliberately finish his paragraph before he looked up and nodded to her. “Kai. How did it go today?”

  “Female Grond. Scrappy bitch.”

  He didn’t have to ask if she’d won. If she’d lost she wouldn’t have the credits to buy pharma. He was already moving towards the shelves at the back of the store, practiced fingers flicking over the boxes and bottles.

  “Usual?”

  “Please.”

  The boxes were beginning to stack up on the counter. The red pills and the green ones, the big white tablets to be taken with the foul-smelling milky liquid, the steroids with their little capped needles that made her veins tingle as she looked at them. The hormone blockers and the protein powder.

  “The Grond are leaning on me.” He tapped the steroids. “These are going up next month.”

  “Again?”

  Ben shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Shit.” Without the steroids she would struggle. A price hike would scrape off even more of her meagre income. “Couldn’t we come to some arrangement?”

  “I’m already sticking my neck out for you, Kai. You know that.” He indicated the drug stash with a sweep of his hand. “If the Grond found out I had half this stuff I’d be in all sorts of shit. And the pills –” He broke off, twisting his hands. “Don’t you think this has gone on for long enough? We don’t know the long term damage, and after six years –”

  “Is this the preamble to upping the price, Ben?” Kai snapped. “Because we talked about this last year, and you damn near doubled the cost. There are other pharma, you know...”

  “I know. And I like you, Kai. But you could be killing yourself, and...” He trailed off, and shrugged. “I’d hate it if something bad happened and I was at fault.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it, can I? Short of going fully illegal? I don’t want to do that. I trust you, Ben. At least I know what I’m getting from you is safe, not cut with rat poison or bleach.” She relented, and drew the packet of smokes from her pocket.

  “I’m just looking out for you. Someone has to.”

  “I appreciate your concern. Smoke?”

  “Ta.” He took the stick and slipped it into his pocket for later as she counted out the credits on the counter. The haul from the fight looked a lot thinner now.

  “You want a bag?”

  She nodded, and he slipped the drugs into a plain brown paper carrier, rolled tight at the top. It looked suitably nondescript.

  “When are you fighting again?” he asked.

  “Next week.”

  “Well,” he hesitated, “don’t get killed.”

  It was his traditional goodbye. If she died in the cage, Ben would know. He would go to her capsule and take care of things for her. They had an unspoken deal.

  “I’ll try not to.” She grinned, but he had already picked up his novel and resumed reading as if her interruption had never happened. If the Grond came in, he would deny seeing her.

  Kai left the pharma, clutching the precious bag tight to her chest. Her capsule was over by the space port fence, and she made her way between the towering blocks and through the alleys between the industrial complexes, limping now. Her boots were rubbing and the walk from the arena had given her a blister. She had a little salt. She could soak her wounds in a bucket when she got home. If the water was on.

  She turned a corner into a long alley, closed in on either side by sheet metal fencing. Up ahead something clattered, and her stride slowed, instinct prickling. If it was a rat, and not too diseased, that was extra protein. But it sounded too big to be a rat.

  There was a tread behind her. She turned around, looking along the blade of the knife to the kid that clutched it. He looked about seventeen, and he had patches of fake Grond-skin tattooed onto his cheeks. When had that become the fashion?

  “Don’t do it, kid,” Kai said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Give me your money, then!” He had a friend backing him up, younger and sick-looking, and when Kai glanced back over her shoulder there were two older lads behind her. One stuck his tongue through the yawning gap in his teeth and wriggled it obscenely.

  “You dumb kid, you should have jumped me before I hit the pharma.” She indicated the bag in her hands. “I’ve got no credits left now, have I?”

  “Then we’ll take that.” The boy with the knife nodded at the bag.

  “Over your dead body…”

  “That’s the idea – what?” The hand holding the knife shook. Kai dropped the bag between her feet and rolled her shoulders. She still ached from the fight with the Grond but these were children. She could take them.

/>   She beckoned the leader closer. “How about you and me, kid? Man on man.”

  He peered at her closer. “You’re not a man…”

  Kai’s foot lashed out, catching his wrist. She hoped to numb his arms so she could snatch the knife, but his grip was too loose. The blade span high into the air and over the fence that hemmed them in. Her boot swept on to make contact with the kid’s chin, throwing his head back with a shattering crunch. She spun around, a fist catching the gap-toothed boy in the gut, sending him staggering. His companion stumbled away as she came for him, and he pointed, gibbering.

  “What?”

  “Lady, he’s taking your bag…”

  “Fuck it!” She spun around to the fourth mugger. To where the fourth mugger had been. He had her pharma bag and he was accelerating down the alley away from her.

  She needed that bag. Her life, her future, lay in those pills and powders. She couldn’t afford any more this week. Without the steroids, she would be more likely to lose the next time she fought. And if she lost she might go on losing, her confidence shattered. She had fought for so long, and now everything she had worked for was vanishing down the alley with her assailant.

  Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she hurled herself into a final burst of speed, stretching out to grab the back of his shirt with snatching fingers as an orbital roared overhead. She jerked him back. His mouth was working but she couldn’t hear his words, and whatever he was trying to say was cut off as she wrapped her arm around his throat and twisted until he stopped kicking.

  She let go and he slumped in the dirt at her feet, his neck at an eye-watering angle. Some of the pills had spilled out of the bag when she retrieved it, but it wasn’t ripped, and it was easy to roll back up. Kai squeezed it to her chest.

  The orbital had passed over but her ears were ringing. She looked down at the boy. His mouth hung open, as if he was trying to finish what he had started to say. The other kids had run or staggered away, and she didn’t have the energy to hunt them down. Her hand twitched towards the smokes in her pocket, but stopped – she could trade them. She had smoked one and given one to Ben, but the rest were a source of credits and she wasn’t going to turn down any money she could get.

  She checked the boy’s pockets. A five. A bonus. She closed his eyes and stood over him for a moment, feeling as if she should say something. She wondered if he had parents who would look for him. But the words withered on her tongue and it had taken her too long to get home. Martine would be worrying.

  Martine lived in the same capsule block as Kai, a few floors below. The lock on her door was broken, smashed in an almost-forgotten fight. Kai pushed it open and moved through the dusty light towards the kitchen table, where the old lady was asleep. She caught her shoulder and shook her awake.

  “Kai? Did you get food?”

  “Tomorrow,” Kai lied. “I said I was going to go tomorrow. I got your pills.”

  Martine patted her hand. “You’re a good girl, Kai. How was the factory?”

  “Same as ever.” Kai mixed up the milky liquid in a stained plasteel mug, and handed Martine the white pill, broken into two easy-to-swallow halves. Martine knocked it back obediently, making a face at the bitterness.

  “I don’t see why I need these,” she grumbled.

  “For your blood, remember? The pharma said.”

  “For my blood?”

  “How’s Hari been today?”

  Martine beamed, showing blackened stumps of teeth. “Good as gold. She’s asleep out back.”

  Kai glanced over at the corner, at the pile of blankets. “Out back?”

  Martine pointed vaguely. “Over there. I don’t know why I said out back. We had a back yard, when I was a girl…”

  “Of course you did.” Kai took the pack of smoke sticks out of her pocket and pressed them into Martine’s hand. “I got these. You want to buy them?”

  The old woman’s hands did her seeing for her, running over the smokes in the packet, counting them off. “There’s only eight in here,” she chided. “You trying to rip me off?”

  “There’s no fooling you, is there? Will you give me ten for them?”

  “For eight smokes?” Martine snorted. “I’ll give you three.”

  “Five?”

  “Done.” She reached into her pocket and slapped her ancient leather purse down on the table. “There’s three notes in there. I counted them, mind.”

  Kai opened the purse. There were three notes, a five and two ragged tens. She took one of the tens and pushed the purse back into Martine’s hands. “Five,” she reminded her, helping her light up a smoke. In the sudden flare of light, the older woman’s eyes gleamed white and opaque. “And I’ll get food tomorrow. I’ll even cook.”

  Martine nodded, yawning, her mouth a black hole. The pills Kai brought her made her tired, but they helped ward off the worst of the dementia that afflicted her. Kai needed Martine sane, but not too sane. Sane enough to take care of Hari while Kai was fighting in the arena, but just daft enough not to realise what Kai was doing to her own daughter.

  “I’ll take Hari home now, shall I?”

  Martine nodded, leaning back, smoke stick hanging from her bottom lip. Kai retrieved it and gently stubbed it out. Let the old lady enjoy it later.

  As Kai lifted the blankets aside, Hari stretched out sleepy arms to her. Kai gathered her daughter to her chest, cradling her and kissing the soft crown of her head. She retrieved the bag of pharma and let herself out into the cold evening air, feet ringing on the metal steps as she made her way up to her own capsule.

  The single room was cold, and a line of drying nappies hung from the ceiling on a wire cut from a dead power cable. Kai swiftly transferred Hari to her own ragged blankets. She popped out a red pill, and a green one, chewing them between her own teeth until they were soft, before she transferred them to Hari’s toothless mouth, making sure she swallowed. It was a familiar routine; they had been doing this most days for the past six years, Kai feeding her daughter the pills that would arrest her development, keep her in a state of infancy.

  While Hari drooled and gurgled, Kai transferred the day’s profit to the tin she kept under the floorboards, under the blankets. She was getting there. It had taken over seven years so far, and it might take another two, but one day she would have enough money for a one-way ticket on an orbital. Off-world, away from the Grond, from the Delphi, and the fight arena. Just one ticket, but if Hari was small enough to fit in a sling on her chest, she would travel for free. If she had to save for two tickets she would never make it. She would be far too old to fight before that day came. Already her joints were stiffening and her reflexes slowing. One day she would die in the arena, if she didn’t get out, and what would happen to Hari then?

  She tied off her forearm and tapped her veins until she found one that hadn’t collapsed, and shot a steroid into her bloodstream. That would keep her going a little longer. Tomorrow was a food day.

  She crawled into the blankets next to Hari. Her daughter smelled of warmth and milk and love, and one day they would be off-world and she could grow. They could both grow. Kai wrapped herself around her daughter and held her tight against her chest. As another orbital roared above their heads, shaking plaster from the ceiling in a gentle snow that drifted down around them, she began to croon a lullaby.

  Ten Love Songs to Change the World

  Peter F. Hamilton

  I met Jesus once. Well come on, we all do it. He was one of us after all, a fey. Our hero, venerated by us the way baseline humans worship him for something else entirely. It was his stand which makes our history, our world, possible.

  I was fourteen years old, and dreamed myself all the way back to his time. A relatively peaceful segment of his life, mind you, when he was starting to quietly gather his disciples from across the Roman Empire and beyond, and before the ghouls started showing an interest. It was on the shore of a lake. I don’t remember where. It’s not important.

  He saw me and recogni
sed what I was. Not hard. Fey can see each other when we’re manifesting, and I must have been quite a sight. I was wearing a white summer dress from Top Shop and some frayed Nike trainers. My hair was fairer than you got in the Middle East at that time, and cut in a wavy bob that was never really in fashion even in my time, never mind back then. All very different to First Century styles.

  To look at he wasn’t anything remarkable. Average height, average build, small beard. His eyes though, they were sad. But I could see how much anger he could bring forth. Maybe that’s what made him the one, our saviour.

  “You’re from a long way ahead,” he said. Or rather didn’t say, we don’t use words, of course, not in manifested state. As in all dreams, you can talk to whoever you want and understand each other. “I can always tell.”

  “The start of the twenty-first century,” I admitted.

  “That’s risky. You’ll get the Guardians come and talk to you. There will be finger wagging.”

  “I know. But I had to see you. To thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You won. Or you will win, but then you know that.”

  “Yes, enough of you tell me.”

  ‘I live thanks to you. I’m grateful. I wanted you to know. That’s all.”

  “Well thank you for making the trip…”“

  “Malinda.”

  “Malinda from two thousand years ahead. I appreciate it.”

  I looked round at his band of followers. He’d gathered over forty fey already, and not just timedreamers like me, there were sidedreamers, fardreamers, soothers, and more. But all of them were fighters, I knew that from their attitude. “Thank you all,” I said. And I saw someone else approaching. Some boy in late eighteenth century clothes, who was walking over to us with his feet not quite touching the ground.