“Please. We have to stop this,” Renz said. “You and me, we have to stop.” The girl shook her head in response. No, we don’t.
“God is great,” she said, happily. Like she was sharing a secret.
The Defenders
COLIN P. DAVIES
New British writer Colin P. Davies is a building surveyor from Liverpool, England. His stories have appeared in Spectrum SF, Asimov’s Science Fiction, 3SF, Paradox, Elysian Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and he is at work on his first novel.
In the incisive and elegant little story that follows, one packed with enough ideas to fuel many another author’s eight-hundred-page novel, he shows us the price that sometimes has to be paid to maintain the status quo …
Finally, Grandfather slowed the dinghy, and the retinue of iridescent wakefish skated away under a punishing noon sun.
Elisa leaned over the side and watched another wavering giant carcass pass below while Grandfather whistled a tune far older than Elisa’s thirteen years.
“That’s enough!” she said—then softer, “I’ve seen enough.”
“And do you still consider me wicked?” Grandfather pushed back his white cap and wiped a crumpled handkerchief across his brow. He stopped the engine. The gentle splashing faded along with the murmur of the power unit.
“I never did think you were wicked.”
Elisa scanned the horizon. From this far out in the Spherical Ocean, none of the archipelago was visible.
New Sicily was two hours to the west. She’d never traveled so far from Homeport, from people, before. The knowledge of isolation was like a hand squeezing her lungs—just her and Grandfather and an ocean a world wide.
She gazed again into the clear shallow water of the plateau, at the graveyard of great white bones. “How big is the battlefield?”
Grandfather held his arms wide so that his white shirt caught the breeze. “Vast. I watched from a prudent distance.”
“I can’t see the bodies of any demons. You said they’re as big as the defenders.”
“The winged demons are there—trust me. Look again … you may see their bronze spears.”
“I see only my children.” Elisa took off her brimmed grassweave hat and pulled her red hair back from her face. She touched a fingertip to her cheek, hoping for a tear, but found none. The sun burned on her scalp and she replaced the hat.
Grandfather shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “I think you stretch the point a little too far.” He crouched forward and rummaged in a canvas bag, coming up with a pair of binoculars.
“Okay – maybe not children.”
“You’re a resource, Elisa, and I’m a creator. I don’t have feelings of guilt.”
“And yet you brought me out here.”
“You’re my granddaughter … I was coming here … and you asked.” With the binoculars, he examined the sky to the east. “Besides … I thought you might learn something.”
Elisa trailed her fingers in the water. The coolness surprised her, yet it seemed fitting for this place of the dead. She had come here looking for emotion, for a connection … or at least a reaction. But she was unmoved. Her heart was as cold as the ocean.
The monsters on the sea bed—those flying behemoths that had defended Homeport from the demons’ attack, that had battled in a sky dark with wings and flesh, with blood falling like rain—were a part of her, created from her. The house-sized skull, the ribs like rafters, cells of her cells. What had she expected to feel?
“Grandfather … you’re certain none survived?” She dried her fingers on her shorts.
He lowered the glasses. “When the spotters called, we sent out your litter. The demons fled, and no defenders returned to the labyrinth. Now only harvester fish inhabit the nest.”
“What if the demons return?”
“They will return, in time. But we will always have another litter.”
“But not mine.”
“You’ve done your duty. No one will ask you again.”
“I’m curious … . How does it feel to create life only for it to be destroyed? To create with that very aim? Doesn’t it bother you?”
Grandfather sighed. “It has become a necessity. How else could we hold the demons back? It must be hard for you to understand.”
“No, it’s not hard.” Understanding came easily—it was emotion that was hard. Elisa searched for melancholy, or grief. All she could find was discomfort in the harsh heat of the sun. “I’d like to believe that mine died heroically, that somehow a bit of my personality lived in them.”
“Defenders have no choice. They fight, they return to the nest. They’re designed to have no choice—is that heroic?”
“You’re a cold-hearted old soldier, Grandfather. They’re not machines. You told me that they can feel.”
He nodded. “Of course they feel. They feel love for us. Why else would they die for us?”
Grandfather returned the binoculars to the bag by his feet; when he straightened up, he was holding a small radio or communicator. He extended an aerial and tapped a fingertip on the keys. “Sometimes I wonder who the real defenders are,” he said.
“What do you mean? You made them. You should know.”
“And who are the real demons … .”
“Whoever they are, one day you’ll find them and destroy them—right?”
He smiled at her. “This is their world. Humans are the intruders here.”
“What are you doing?” she said, pointing a finger at the radio in his hand.
“Fishing.”
The sun burned down upon Elisa’s brown shoulders; her pink vest offered little protection. She didn’t want to be here anymore.
“I’ve seen enough, Grandfather. I want to go back.”
“Just a little while … I’m almost done.”
“What if the defenders loved themselves more than they loved us?”
“You’re a strange one, Elisa. Full of questions. No one has asked me such questions before.”
“Maybe I’m not like everyone else.”
“They have to love us more than life. Our survival here depends on it. But I’m no fool. I have planned for surprises.”
“I think I don’t have it in me to be a martyr.”
I “You’ll have time to …”
His words fell away as the sea heaved and the boat rocked as something passed beneath them. Elisa peered into the water, but only glimpsed a darkness through the flashes of reflected sun. A moment of quiet and trepidation, and then a huge shape burst from the water three hundred meters distant. Out of a fountain of spray, a monstrous creature took to the air. It turned in their direction as a wave rushed toward the boat.
“A defender!” Elisa screamed as the dinghy tossed and threw her about. She clamped her fingers to the seat.
The creature climbed above them on black reptilian wings, then swooped and circled low, its scythelike claws slicing the wave tops. The massive head retained human characteristics, but exaggerated and drawn forward into a spike-tipped snout. The chitin-plated neck seemed unfeasibly slender, but allowed for maneuverability in the air and for slashing strokes with the serrated tusks. A magnificent beast that had proved the equal of the self-destructive recklessness of the brown-furred demons.
“It’s one of mine!” Elisa cried. “It must be!”
The defender rose and blocked out the sun for a moment, sweeping the air back to gain height, then banked and returned to dive toward them.
“Yes, it’s one of mine,” she said. “And it must be smarter than the rest. It found out how to hide and survive.”
The defender was calling—a howl as mournful as a lost child’s – as it swept so low over them that Elisa’s hair was blown about her face. She caught the creature’s seaweed scent. “It’s because of me, isn’t it, Grandfather? My defender is different. It has my spirit. It made its own choices. It’s stronger, brighter … . It could become a leader.”
The defender came around again and glid
ed overhead, and there came a crack and a thud and a large smouldering blue-sky hole appeared in the creature’s body … and it screamed and reeled and plunged from the sky … crashed into the water some distance away.
Elisa cried and grasped the side of the rocking boat. “Grandfather …” She saw him push down the aerial. “You killed it! It was you. Why? Why did you kill it?”
She watched as the great body was sucked beneath the surface. First whirlpools, then cold boiling, then calmness. This was terrible. A tragedy. She could have had the best defender ever!
“Grandfather?”
He dropped the transmitter into the bag and stared down at the wa- ter. She could not see his face. Though she spoke to him, again and again, he would not reply. Slowly, the boat ceased its agitated motion.
The sun crawled across the sky.
Finally, Grandfather started the engine and directed the dinghy toward Homeport.
Mayflower II
STEPHEN BAXTER
Like many of his colleagues here at the beginning of a new century, British writer Stephen Baxter has been engaged for more than a decade now with the task of revitalizing and reinventing the “hard-science” story for a new generation of readers, producing work on the cutting edge of science that bristles with weird new ideas and often takes place against vistas of almost outrageously cosmic scope.
Baxter made his first sale to Interzone in 1987, and since then has become one of that magazine’s most frequent contributors, as well as making sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Analog, Zenith, New Worlds, and elsewhere. He’s one of the most prolific new writers in science fiction, and is rapidly becoming one of the most popular and acclaimed of them as well. In 2001, he appeared on the Final Hugo Ballot twice, and won both Asimov’s Readers Award and Analog’s Analytical Laboratory Award, one of the few writers ever to win both awards in the same year. Baxter’s first novel, Raft, was released in 1991 to wide and enthusiastic response, and was rapidly followed by other well-received novels such as Timelike Infinity, Anti-Ice, Flux, and the H. G. Wells pastiche—a sequel to The Time Machine – The Time Ships, which won both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. His other books include the novels, Voyage, Titan, Moonseed, Mammoth, Book One: Silverhair, Manifold: Time, Manifold: Space, Evolution , Coalescent, and (in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke) The Light of Other Days, as well as the collections Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence, Traces, and Hunters of Pangaea. His most recent books are a chapbook novella, Mayflower II, and a new novel, Exultant. Coming up is another novel written in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, Time’s Eye, a Time Odyssey.
Here he gives us ringside seats for the painful birth of a new civilization—one destined to spend the next few thousand years confined within four walls.
Author’s Note:
My proceeds from this work will be donated to the Asian Elephant Survival Appeal, of which I am a patron.
Once elephants could be found throughout Asia, India, Africa, and North America. Their remains, with tusks like sculptures and teeth like carbstones, are still dug out of the ground in Los Angeles and London. Today all the elephants are gone, save only three species. But now human population pressure is endangering one of these: the Asian (or Indian) elephants. It is highly likely they will be gone in decades.
The North of England Zoological Society, a nonprofit conservation organization, is spearheading an international program to sustain the Asian elephant in its native ranges, as well as to establish a reserve breeding population in European zoos. Preserving the elephant will bring the additional benefit of preserving the wider ecosystem it inhabits, while respecting the economic and cultural interests of neighboring human populations.
For more details or to make a donation please contact:
Asian Elephant Survival Appeal
Chester Zoo
FREEPOST
Chester CH2 1LH
UK
or visit www.chesterzoo.co.uk.
Twenty days before the end of his world, Rusel heard that he was to be saved.
“Rusel. Rusel …” The whispered voice was insistent. Rusel rolled over, trying to shake off the effects of his usual mild sedative. His pillow was soaked with sweat. The room responded to his movement, and soft light coalesced around him.
His brother’s face was hovering in the air at the side of his bed. Diluc was grinning widely.
“Lethe,” Rusel said hoarsely. “You ugly bastard.”
“You’re just jealous,” Diluc said. The Virtual made his face look even wider than usual, his nose more prominent. “I’m sorry to wake you. But I just heard—you need to know—”
“Know what?”
“Blen showed up in the infirmary.” Blen was the nanochemist assigned to Ship Three. “Get this: he has a heart murmur.” Diluc’s grin returned.
Rusel frowned. “For that you woke me up? Poor Blen.”
“It’s not that serious. But, Rus – it’s congenital.”
The sedative dulled Rusel’s thinking, and it took him a moment to figure it out.
The five Ships were to evacuate the last, brightest hopes of Port Sol from the path of the incoming peril. But they were slower-than-light transports, and would take many centuries to reach their destinations. Only the healthiest, in body and genome, could be allowed aboard a generation starship. And if Blen had a hereditary heart condition—
“He’s off the Ship,” Rusel breathed.
“And that means you’re aboard, brother. You’re the second-best nanochemist on this lump of ice. You won’t be here when the Coalition arrives. You’re going to live!”
Rusel lay back on his crushed pillow. He felt numb.
Diluc kept talking. “Did you know that families are illegal under the Coalition? Their citizens are born in tanks. Just the fact of our relationship would doom us, Rus! I’m trying to fix a transfer from Five to Three. If we’re together, that’s something, isn’t it? I know it’s going to be hard, Rus. But we can help each other. We can get through this …”
All Rusel could think about was Lora, whom he would have to leave behind.
The next morning Rusel arranged to meet Lora in the Forest of Acestors. He took a bubble-wheel surface transport, and set out early.
Port Sol was a ball of friable ice and rock a couple of hundred kilometers across. It was actually a planetesimal, an unfinished remnant of the formation of Sol system. Inhabited for millennia, its surface was heavily worked, quarried and pitted, and littered by abandoned towns. But throughout Port Sol’s long human usage some areas had been kept undamaged, and as he drove Rusel kept to the marked track, to avoid crushing the delicate sculptures of frost that had coalesced here over four billion years.
This was the very edge of Sol system. The sky was a dome of stars, with the ragged glow of the Galaxy hurled casually across its equator. Set in that diffuse glow was the sun, the brightest star, bright enough to cast shadows, but so remote it was a mere pinpoint. Around the sun Rusel could make out a tiny puddle of light: That was the inner system, the disc of worlds, moons, asteroids, dust and other debris that had been the arena of all human history before the first interplanetary voyages some three thousand years earlier, and still the home of all but an invisible fraction of the human race. This was a time of turmoil, and today humans were fighting and dving, their triumphs and terror invisible. Even now, from out of that pale glow, a punitive fleet was ploughing toward Port Sol.
And visible beyond the close horizon of the ice moon was a squat cylinder, a misty sketch in the faint rectilinear sunlight. That was Ship Three, preparing for its leap into the greater dark.
The whole situation was an unwelcome consequence of the liberation of Earth from the alien Qax.
The Coalition of Interim Governance was the new, ideologically pure and viciously determined authority that had emerged from the chaos of a newly freed Earth. Relentless, intolerant, unforgiving, the Coalition was already burning its way out thro
ugh the worlds and moons of Sol system. When the Coalition ships came, the best you could hope for was that you community would be broken up, your equipment impounded, and that you would be hauled back to a prison camp on Earth or its Moon for “reconditioning.”
But if you were found to be harboring anyone who had collaborated with the hated Qax, the penalties were much more extreme. The word Rusel had heard was “resurfacing.”
Now the Coalition had turned its attention to Port Sol. This ice moon was governed by five Pharaohs, who had indeed collaborated with the Qax—though they described it as “mediating the effects of the occupation for the benefit of mankind” – and they had received antiageing treatments as a reward. So Port Sol was a “nest of illegal immortals and collaborators,” the Coalition said, which its troops had been dispatched to “clean out.” They seemed indifferent to the fact that in addition to the Pharaohs, some fifty thousand people called Port Sol home.
The Pharaohs had a deep network of spies on Earth, and they had had some warning. As the colonists had only the lightest battery of antiquated weaponry—indeed the whole moon, a refuge from the occupation, was somewhat low-tech-nobody expected to be able to resist. But there was a way out.
Five mighty Ships were hastily thrown together. On each Ship, captained by a Pharaoh, a couple of hundred people, selected for their health and skill sets, would be taken away: a total of a thousand, perhaps, out of a population of fifty thousand, saved from the incoming disaster. There was no faster-than-light technology on Port Sol; these would be generation starships. But perhaps that was well: between the stars there would be room to hide.
All of these mighty historical forces had now focused down on Rusel’s life, and they threatened to tear him away from his lover.
Rusel was an able nanochemist, he was the right age, and his health and pedigree were immaculate. But unlike his brother he hadn’t been good enough to win the one-in-fifty lottery and make the cut to get a place on the Ships. He was twenty-eight years old: not a good age to die. But he had accepted his fate, so he believed—for Lora, his lover, had no hope of a place. At twenty she was a student, a promising Virtual idealist but without the mature skills to have a chance of competing. So at least he would die with her, which seemed to him some consolation. He was honest with himself; he had never been sure if this serenity would have survived the appearance of the Coalition ships in Port Sol’s dark sky – and now, it seemed, he was never going to find out.
The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004 Page 66
