Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “No, sirrah. I had Apprentice Greal with me.”

  Kheo must have imagined the small hesitation between ‘Greal’ and ‘with’. “And did anything happen?”

  “Happen, sirrah?” Kheo would swear the man was enjoying this. “What sort of thing were you thinking of, sirrah?”

  “I… I could check the camera feeds, you know.”

  “So you could, sirrah.” The mechanic smiled laconically. “But I doubt you’d find anything to alarm you.”

  Because Sovat had edited them. The Mechanic was careful, thorough: he must have lived with what he was for years. Kheo wanted to hate such forward planning, such contrivance, but found himself admiring it. This man could not only face the truth, but live with it. “If,” he managed, “I did see anything some people might find alarming…” he swallowed, half expecting an interruption, but the other man remained silent, “I’m not sure I’d be alarmed, myself,” he finished in a rush. His face felt like it had caught fire.

  Sovat’s voice was soft. “Perhaps you wouldn’t, at that,” he said.

  “And if, if I was not alarmed when, when most people would be. Normally, that is. Would that be … something of interest? To you.”

  Sovat remained silent.

  Kheo swallowed. “I was asking you a question.”

  “Were you now, sirrah?” Was that caution or knowing acceptance in Sovat’s voice?

  Acceptance, Kheo decided. They understood each other. No damning words, no absolute confirmation, but there was that connection, that shared experience. Except Kheo’s experiences had been confined to fantasy, until now. “What if I had been here, with you, instead of Apprentice Greal? Would something have happened? Something the cameras wouldn’t see, and that no one,” he felt his breath growing short, “no one ever needed to know about.”

  Sovat paused before answering, then said, his voice regretful, “No.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “A matter of taste, sirrah. Personal taste.”

  “What are you saying? I’m not your type? But you’re… and I’m…” And no one else is. Except Greal, apparently. “I could report you, you know. What about that, eh?”

  “You’re free to do as you will, sirrah.” Sovat sounded calm; Kheo had no idea if he was concerned about the threat. “Your word carries far more weight than mine.”

  But with doctored cameras, it would just be his word. And he could never betray the only man he had ever spoken to in this way. Not even if that man rejected him. “Well, just… remember that.”

  “I always do, sirrah. Was there anything else?”

  “No. Nothing else.”

  After Sovat left Kheo sat alone in the briefing room. Then he locked himself in the nearest restroom alone, and privately explored the possibility that Sovat would walk in, and find Kheo was his type after all. Then he showered, thoroughly.

  Having been both vindicated and rejected in one short conversation, he returned to the family suite, heading straight for his rooms. Here he checked the publically available information on Mechanic Sovat. The man’s first name was Appis, and Kheo spent a few moments saying the name, Appis Sovat, before chiding himself and looking deeper.

  There was nothing incriminating to be found. Had there been the technician would not be in the position he was in today. Kheo uncovered only one item of note, from before the War: when Sovat was twenty-six two of his male friends had been charged with gross indecency. One had opted for surgical readjustment; the other had not relented of his perversion and had been exiled ‘at the Empress’s service’. Further research revealed that the man had died two years later, at a mine in the bleak high plains of South Arnisland. The verdict was death by natural causes. It generally was, in the mines.

  Kheo hisses in triumph as one of the two yachts peels away, slowing as it does. Too rich for you, eh? He has taken the shorter, riskier path twice before. The first time, he won. The second time overdriving the engines damaged his yacht, and ended his race. Who would have thought two other pilots were also willing to take the skim? Or rather, one now. Umbrel Narven is still in the race. And her yacht is going to enter the streams ahead of him. He’ll be hard pressed to catch her.

  No, that’s defeatist talk: he is still the best Pilot, in the best ship.

  Umbrel Narven no doubt thinks the same about her own skills and vessel.

  “Ah, there you are!”

  Kheo looked up from his desk and forced a smile for his mother. “I thought I’d get an early night…” He waved the display clear.

  “Very sensible. But first, I have news.”

  Kheo knew that tone. “You’d better come in.”

  She swept into his room and perched on the more upright of the two chaises. “I didn’t want to distract you until we were sure, not with the race coming up –”

  “It’s tomorrow, Ma, and I don’t want to be distracted, you’re so right.” Kheo ignored his mother’s wince at being spoken back to.

  “Ah, but this will give you something to race for.”

  “Have you… finalised arrangements? You have, haven’t you?” Making the right match was as much the duty of an oldest son as racing in the Flamestar Challenge. More, really: the Empress had dictated that Clan scions must prove themselves before marrying, but she was gone. Given the dangers of yacht-racing, many Clans, already depleted by the War, forbad their heirs from taking part. And whether or not the race endured, it was no activity for a family man, as his mother had reminded him on his last birthday.

  “I have!”

  “With Leilian Fermelai?”

  “Well, you two used to play together so well when you were children. And the poor thing lost both her parents in all the nastiness.” Meaning: unlike Clan Reuthani, Clan Fermelai had not acted against the Empress. “We’ll announce the engagement en route back to Homeworld, and hold the formal party at the Manse.”

  “This isn’t what I want.” His voice sounded dead in his ears.

  “Kheo, I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for all of us. But you have to settle down. Leilian is technically the head of her clan but she’s only a woman, and with most of her family gone… this is better for everyone. She will be a good wife.”

  He wanted to protest further, to say he did not want a wife, good or otherwise, but it would be futile.

  More gently his mother added, “This marriage is a necessary thing. I hope you can find happiness in it, Kheo, I truly do. But if you cannot… provided you do your duty, a blind eye can be turned.”

  Does she know? But he had done nothing to act on his feelings; on the contrary he had made every effort to live up to the image of the yacht-racing noble rake. “What do you mean?” he asked as evenly as he could.

  “The unsuitable women,” said his mother, in the verbal equivalent of scraping excrement from a shoe.

  Ah yes, those women, the entertainers and hostesses; eager to please, and notorious enough that his rumoured liaisons with them maintained his reputation, yet low enough that his failures and foibles would never reach the wrong ears. He had been careful in his choices. He wouldn’t miss the embarrassment and guilty revulsion; nor the fear that they saw him for what he really was.

  “You won’t have to worry about them,” he said.

  “Good.” His mother’s smile told him that she, like everyone else, believed the carefully cultivated image. “That’s settled then.”

  The Aurora Dream is pulling ahead, Narven’s lead opening up second by second.

  So, no win. No glory. No final chance to shine before subsiding under the weight of duty and acceptable behaviour. The best he can hope for is second place.

  Why can’t I just be happy with the privileged life I was born into? He knows the answer: because he can’t be himself.

  Am I being selfish? Perhaps; there were choices, plenty of them. He could have fought in the War, despite being young. He could admit what he really wants in a lover, although where would he find that in the world he lives in, where such things are never spo
ken of, even if they are no longer punished with more than a fine? He could stand up to his father, although the old man is quite capable of disinheriting him; an unthinkable prospect.

  Plenty of choices there. Shame he has been too much of a coward to take them.

  He blinks away stupid self-pitying tears and focuses on Liberty Bird’s instrument panel. Here is the one thing that is good and simple and right about his life, directly in front of him. And he is about to come in second, in his final race. It’s all downhill from here. Winning isn’t just desirable any more: it’s the only option, whatever the cost.

  There isn’t much time: he scans his readouts, their meaning as comforting and familiar as the drapes above his bed, or the face of his childhood nurse. It would be a minor adjustment to his trajectory.

  He makes the change.

  An alarm sounds.

  He ignores it.

  Kheo never slept well the night before a race. He doubted any Pilot did. He ended up resorting to the chemical remedies offered by the Clan doctor.

  Perhaps that was why, when he was escorted through the halls and corridors of the liner the next morning amid cheers and thrown petals, he felt as though he was watching the festivities from afar, rather than being the reason for them.

  Sovat – Appis – was in the hangar, amongst the honour guard of techs who stood respectfully silent while their Pilot crossed the floor to his yacht. Kheo gave him no more regard than was normal, including him in the faint nod of gratitude to his crew as he passed.

  Only when he took his seat in Liberty Bird did he fully wake up. He performed the usual pre-flight checks with a combination of the utmost care and little conscious thought. By the time the hoist had inched him into the hangar’s massive airlock, he was as ready for his fate as he had ever been.

  The trajectory alteration is subtle; a matter of a few degrees in one plane. The difference between passing through a volume of space with no appreciable matter in it, and the lower path, where the number of molecules in the vacuum might constitute the start of an atmosphere. Enough of an atmosphere to cause drag and test Liberty Bird’s engines, certainly. But the ultimate shortcut – if it works.

  He is deep in the ion-streams now, their flickering representations dancing around his yacht. Every other racer is above him; some still appear to be ahead, but they have further to go. It is too early yet to know if his crazy ploy will bring victory.

  His com flashes: the support team requesting emergency contact. No mean feat given the ionic interference; they must be juicing up the signal with everything they’ve got. If he answers, will it be Appis Sovat on the com? He is Chief Tech, after all. The prospect of hearing Sovat’s voice again makes Kheo hesitate. Then he catches himself and turns his attention to his console. The drive readout is already edging out of the safe zone, and there’s a constellation of amber warnings. Suddenly one of them spikes red: a jolt thrums through his yacht. What was that? Ah, navigational thrusters. Even this is too much atmosphere for them. Well, he’s stuck on this course now. As for what happens once he’s on the far side, whether they’ll blow clear … first make it to the far side, then worry about that.

  The ship feels wrong. It’s a subtle sensation, a faint vibration, but if he carries on, it’s only a matter of time before structural integrity begins to fail.

  His life is so complicated. The tension of duty and desire. His inability to be himself. And always he has taken what seemed like the easiest path, only to find complications besetting him. Not now though. Now everything truly is simple. He will either win this race, or die trying.

  Another red light: radiation warning. There is only so much energy his suit and canopy can protect him from. The view outside is more spectacular than ever, like a great forest of energy, the psychedelic ion-streams like twisted trunks of impossible trees.

  This in itself is the easy way out, of course. Yes, even as he defies death, he’s still a coward.

  The vibration becomes a shudder. Suddenly Kheo is scared. At least his body is: racing heart, dry mouth, dizzy head.

  What am I doing? This insane stunt isn’t bravery: it’s avoidance, the ultimate avoidance.

  The ship begins to shake. The drive readout spikes into the red. He reaches for the console but everything’s moving, wild forces pulling at him. And even if he could get his hands on the controls, what could he do? The course is set. Too late to change it now.

  I’m a fool. A coward and a fool.

  A great concussion hits, throwing him in every direction at once. He is going to die, here, now. Die without facing himself.

  Massive constriction – but I was expecting an explosion! – and he is wrapped in chilly gel. As the sedatives kick in he realises two things: he has lost the race and he is still alive. When, seconds later, the drugs ease his stressed system into therapeutic unconsciousness, his last thought is that the former doesn’t matter, only the latter.

  The media love it. Kheo Reuthani’s miraculous escape after his death-or-glory bid for victory eclipses Umbrel Narven’s win. Kheo feels sorry for her.

  The rescue clipper barely arrived in time to stop Liberty Bird drifting into the nearest ion-stream, an experience he would not have survived even encased in crash-gel. By the time his yacht was hauled in, he had received enough radiation to increase his risk of long-term health problems – and to destroy any chance of him giving Clan Reuthani an heir.

  Mother visits him in hospital. “I’ve seen your results.”

  She could be talking about an exam he failed. “I guess the wedding’s off then.” He tries not to sound triumphant. He feels sorry for Leilian Fermelai too. He does not, for once, feel sorry for himself.

  “Not necessarily. There may be a medical work-around to the, ah, fertility issue. Perhaps even some advance from out-of-system.”

  “Ah, so you’d accept outsider medicine to solve the Clan’s problems, then?”

  “One must adapt.”

  A shame, then, that she had not pressed his father to adapt to the proactive approach many Clans had instituted after the Liberation, of taking sperm or egg samples from their Pilots in case of such accidents. “Yes, one must. I’m sorry, Mother. I won’t marry that poor girl just to save face. Let Prinbal have his chance. He wants to lead the clan more than I do anyway.”

  He is treated to the rare spectacle of his mother lost for words.

  The general consensus is that he had a lucky escape. If his drive had not cut out when it did, Liberty Bird would either have shaken itself to bits, blown up or been crushed by Yssim’s atmosphere. Kheo keeps his opinion on the matter to himself.

  He is still welcome in the hangar, where work is underway to ensure that Liberty Bird will race again. He might even be the one to fly her, when and if his father forgives him for declaring Prinbal the Reuthani heir. Assuming the Flamestar is still going then.

  It is only natural that Sovat leads the repair work. And it is only natural that Kheo and he should take the chance to talk about the state of Liberty Bird.

  Their conversation, held in the meeting room while the techs work outside, begins with an assessment of the damage, and what is being done to fix it. Kheo looks at Appis Sovat’s hands twice, and his face once. He realises that the Chief Mechanic loves the yacht as much as he himself does, perhaps more.

  “She was lucky, wasn’t she?” asks Kheo. “Well, we both were. Liberty Bird, and me. Losing power at exactly the right moment to bounce us off Yssim’s atmosphere.” He hopes his words don’t sound too disingenuous.

  “So they say.”

  Kheo seizes his chance. “You don’t think it was luck then?”

  “It was fortunate the engine shut down soon as the rads and outside density reached critical. But not luck, sirrah, no.”

  “Ah.” There had been a move, immediately after the Liberation, to install overrides to stop Pilots overdriving their engines but it had been deemed unnecessary, and insulting to the Pilots. “I… see.” Kheo picks his next words carefully. “Having su
ch a fortunate shutdown wouldn’t be hard to arrange for someone with the right skills.”

  “I imagine not, sirrah.” The tech’s tone is careful.

  Kheo ploughs on. “But one would have to ask why anyone might arrange for such a thing.”

  “I’ve seen it before, sirrah.” Sovat is looking at him directly now; he can feel it. “More than once.”

  “Seen what?” says Kheo slowly. He manages to raise his gaze as high as the tech’s chest.

  “The boys who can’t live with themselves.”

  “Wait, you think I made the choices I did just because I… because you... You know nothing about me, Technician!” Except the one thing Kheo wished the man didn’t know. His embarrassed anger lets Kheo meet Sovat’s eyes.

  “True enough, sirrah.” The tech’s voice and gaze are gentle. “And I’m not saying there’s just the one cause. But that’s part of it: us being what we are. It’s not worth dying for, you know.”

  “It’s pretty damn hard to live with.”

  “Hard for others to live with, yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that, sirrah: we’re what we are. It’s those around us that make it a problem.”

  “Unless we get caught.”

  The tech shrugs, though it is a considered gesture. “That’s still true, for now. But not every change is for the worst.”

  “No, it isn’t. Listen, I know I’m not, er, your type… but if I did want some advice about, well, safe places, where people like me, like us…?”

  “I’d be happy to give it.”

  “Thank you.” Kheo hesitates. “And thank you for knowing what I needed even if I didn’t. Had anyone found out what you did–”

  “I’m better at my job than that, sirrah.”

  “Even so, you risked your career for me.”

  “A career don’t matter a s–spit compared to a life, sirrah.”

  Kheo nods. “Quite so. Good night, Engineer Sovat.”

  Alone in the briefing room, Kheo exhales. He calls up the plans for his yacht. The thought that he might never pilot Liberty Bird again is hard to face, but face it he will. Who knows, perhaps when contact with the rest of the universe strengthens he might fly something more amazing, perhaps even travel between the stars? Now that is a good dream to hold onto.