The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  It continues to struggle, but the netting and ropes are strong enough to hold it. Whatever it is, it’s too heavy to carry swimming, so the group must walk along the bottom with their catch while Longpincer swims ahead to fetch servants with a litter to help. They all ping about them constantly, fearful that more of the strange silent creatures are lurking about.

  “Robert! In the name of God, help me!” The laser link was full of static and skips, what with all the interference from nets, Ilmatarans, and sediment. The video image of Henri degenerated into a series of still shots illustrating panic, terror, and desperation.

  “Don’t worry!” he called back, although he had no idea what to do. How could he rescue Henri without revealing himself and blowing all the contact protocols to hell? For that matter, even if he did reveal himself, how could he overcome half a dozen full-grown Ilmatarans?

  “Ah, bon Dieu!” Henri started what sounded like praying in French. Rob muted the audio to give himself a chance to think, and because it didn’t seem right to listen in.

  He tried to list his options. Call for help? Too far from the station, and it would take an hour or more for a sub to arrive. Go charging in to the rescue? Rob really didn’t want to do that, and not just because it was against the contact regs. On the other hand he didn’t like to think of himself as a coward, either. Skip that one and come back to it.

  Create a distraction? That might work. He could fire up the hydrophone and make a lot of noise, maybe use the drones as decoys. The Ilmatarans might drop Henri to go investigate, or run away in terror. Worth a shot, anyway.

  He sent the two drones in at top speed, and searched through his computer’s sound library for something suitable to broadcast. “Ride of the Valkyries”? Tarzan yells? “O Fortuna”? No time to be clever; he selected the first item in the playlist and started blasting Billie Holiday as loud as the drone speakers could go. Rob left his camera gear with Henri’s impeller, and used his own to get a little closer to the group of Ilmatarans carrying Henri.

  Broadtail hears the weird sounds first, and alerts the others. The noise is coming from a pair of swimming creatures he doesn’t recognize, approaching fast from the left. The sounds are unlike anything he remembers—a mix of low tones, whistles, rattles, and buzzes. There is an underlying rhythm, and Broadtail is sure this is some kind of animal call, not just noise.

  The swimmers swoop past low overhead, then, amazingly, circle around together for another pass, like trained performing animals. “Do those creatures belong to Longpincer?” Broadtail asks the others.

  “I don’t think so,” says Smoothshell. “I don’t remember seeing them in his house.”

  “Does anyone have a net?”

  “Don’t be greedy,” says Roundhead. “This is a valuable specimen. We shouldn’t risk it to chase after others.”

  Broadtail starts to object, but he realizes Roundhead is right. This thing is obviously more important. Still — “I suggest we return here to search for them after sleeping.”

  “Agreed.”

  The swimmers continue diving at them and making noise until Longpincer’s servants show up to help carry the specimen.

  Rob had hoped the Ilmatarans would scatter in terror when he sent in the drones, but they barely even noticed them — even with the speaker volume maxed out. He couldn’t tell if they were too dumb to pay attention, or smart enough to focus on one thing at a time.

  He gunned the impeller, closing in on the little group. Enough subtlety. He could see the lights on Henri’s suit about fifty meters away, bobbing and wiggling as the Ilmatarans carried him. Rob slowed to a stop about ten meters from the Ilmatarans. The two big floodlights on the impeller showed them clearly.

  Enough subtlety and sneaking around. He turned on his suit hydrophone. “Hey!” He had his dive knife in his right hand in case of trouble.

  Broadtail is relieved to be rid of the strange beast. He is getting tired and hungry, and wants nothing more than to be back at Longpincer’s house snacking on threadfin paste and heat-cured eggs.

  Then he hears a new noise. A whine, accompanied by the burble of turbulent water. Off to the left about three lengths there is some large swimmer. It gives a loud call. The captive creature struggles harder.

  Broadtail pings the new arrival. It is very odd indeed. It has a hard cylindrical body like a riftcruiser, but at the back it branches out into a bunch of jointed limbs covered with soft skin. The thing gives another cry and waves a couple of limbs.

  Broadtail moves toward it, trying to figure out what it is. Two creatures, maybe? And what is it doing? Is this a territorial challenge? He keeps his own pincers folded so as not to alarm it.

  “Be careful, Broadtail,” Longpincer calls.

  “Don’t worry.” He doesn’t approach any closer, but evidently he’s already too close. The thing cries out one more time, then charges him. Broadtail doesn’t want the other Bitterwater scholars to see him flee, so he splays his legs and braces himself, ready to grapple with this unknown monster.

  But just before it hits him, the thing veers off and disappears into the silent distance. Listening carefully lest it return, Broadtail backs toward the rest of the group and they resume their journey to Longpincer’s house.

  Everyone agrees that this expedition is stranger than anything they remember. Longpincer seems pleased.

  Rob stopped his impeller and let the drones catch up. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. The Ilmatarans wouldn’t be scared off, and there was no way Rob could attack them. Whatever happened to Henri, Rob did not want to be the first human to harm an alien.

  The link with Henri was still open. The video showed him looking quite calm, almost serene.

  “Henri?” he said. “I tried everything I could think of. I can’t get you out. There are too many of them.”

  “It is all right, Robert,” said Henri, sounding surprisingly cheerful. “I do not think they will harm me. Otherwise why go to all the trouble to capture me alive? Listen: I think they have realized I am an intelligent being like themselves. This is our first contact with the Ilmatarans. I will be humanity’s ambassador.”

  “You think so?” For once Rob found himself hoping Henri was right.

  “I am certain of it. Keep the link open. The video will show history being made.”

  Rob sent in one drone to act as a relay as the Ilmatarans carried Henri into a large rambling building near the Maury 3a vent. As he disappeared inside, Henri managed a grin for the camera.

  Longpincer approaches the strange creature, laid out on the floor of his study. The others are all gathered around to help and watch. Broadtail has a fresh reel of cord and is making a record of the proceeding. Longpincer begins. “The hide is thick, but flexible, and is a nearly perfect sound absorber. The loudest of pings barely produce any image at all. There are four limbs. The forward pair appear to be for feeding, while the rear limbs apparently function as both walking legs and what one might call a double tail for swimming. Roundhead, do you know of any such creature recorded elsewhere?”

  “I certainly do not recall reading of such a thing. It seems absolutely unique.”

  “Please note as much, Broadtail. My first incision is along the underside. Cutting the hide releases a great many bubbles. The hide peels away very easily; there is no connective tissue at all. I feel what seems to be another layer underneath. The creature’s interior is remarkably warm.”

  “The poor thing,” says Raggedclaw. “I do hate causing it pain.”

  “As do we all, I’m sure,” says Longpincer. “I am cutting through the underlayer. It is extremely tough and fibrous. I hear more bubbles. The warmth is extraordinary — like pipe-water a cable or so from the vent.”

  “How can it survive such heat?” asks Roundhead.

  “Can you taste any blood, Longpincer?” adds Sharpfrill.

  “No blood that I can taste. Some odd flavors in the water, but I judge that to be from the tissues and space between. I am peeling back the underl
ayer now. Amazing! Yet another layer beneath it. This one has a very different texture — fleshy rather than fibrous. It is very warm. I can feel a trembling sensation and spasmodic movements.”

  “Does anyone remember hearing sounds like that before?” says Smoothshell. “It sounds like no creature I know of.”

  “I recall that other thing making similar sounds,” says Broadtail.

  “I now cut through this layer. Ah — now we come to viscera. The blood tastes very odd. Come, everyone, and feel how hot this thing is. And feel this! Some kind of rigid structures within the flesh.”

  “It is not moving,” says Roundhead.

  “Now let us examine the head. Someone help me pull off the shell here. Just pull. Good. Thank you, Raggedclaw. What a lot of bubbles! I wonder what this structure is?”

  The trip back was awful. Rob couldn’t keep from replaying Henri’s death in his mind. He got back to the station hours late, exhausted and half out of his mind. As a small mercy Rob didn’t have to tell anyone what had happened — they could watch the video.

  There were consequences, of course. But because the next supply vehicle wasn’t due for another twenty months, it all happened in slow motion. Rob knew he’d be going back to Earth, and guessed that he’d never make another interstellar trip again. He didn’t go out on dives; instead he took over drone maintenance and general tech work from Sergei, and stayed inside the station.

  Nobody blamed him, at least not exactly. At the end of his debriefing, Dr. Sen did look at Rob over his little Gandhi glasses and say, “I think it was rather irresponsible of you both to go off like that. But I am sure you know that already.”

  Sen also deleted the “Death to HK” list from the station’s network, but someone must have saved a copy. The next day it was anonymously relayed to Rob’s computer with a final method added: “Let a group of Ilmatarans catch him and slice him up.”

  Rob didn’t think it was funny at all.

  The garden

  A Hwarhath science Fictional Romance

  ELEANOR ARNASON

  Here’s something you may have never seen before—a fascinating take on what a science fiction story would be like if it was written by an alien rather than by a human …

  Eleanor Arnason published her first novel, The Sword Smith, in 1978, and followed it with novels such as Daughter of the Bear King and To the Resurrection Station. In 1991, she published her best-known novel, one of the strongest novels of the nineties, the critically acclaimed A Woman of the Iron People, a complex and substantial novel that won the prestigious James Tipree Jr. Memorial Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Orbit, Xanadu, and elsewhere. Her most recent novel is Ring of Swords. Her story “Stellar Harvest” was a Hugo Finalist in 2000. Her stories have appeared in our Seventeenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Annual Collections.

  There was a boy who belonged to the Atkwa lineage. Like most of his family, he had steel-gray fur. In the case of his relatives the color was solid. But the boy’s fur was faintly striped and spotted. In dim light this wasn’t visible. In sunlight his pelt looked like one of the old pattern-welded swords that hung in his grandmother’s greathouse and were taken outside rarely, usually to be polished, though sometimes for teaching purposes, when adult male relatives were home. Not that anyone used swords in this period, except actors in plays. But children ought to learn the history of their family.

  The boy’s pelt was due to a recessive gene, emerging after generations, since the Atkwa had not gone to a spotted family for semen in more than two hundred years. This was not due to prejudice. Unlike humans, the hwarhath find differences in color more interesting than disturbing. Their prejudices lie in other directions.1

  It was circumstance and accident that kept the Atkwa solid grey. They lived in a part of the world where this was the dominant coloration; and — being a small and not especially powerful family — they did not look to distant places when arranging breeding contracts.

  As a toddler, the boy was forward and active, but not to an extraordinary degree. At the age of eight or so, he lengthened into a coltish child, full of energy, but also prone to sudden moods of thoughtfulness. These worried his mother, who consulted with her mother, the family matriarch, a gaunt woman, her fur frosted by age, her big hands twisted by joint disease.

  “Well,” the matriarch said after listening. “Some men are thoughtful. They have to be, if they’re going to survive in space, with no women around to do their thinking.”

  “But so young?” the mother asked. “He spends hours watching fish in a stream or bugs in a patch of weeds.”

  “Maybe he’ll become a scientist.” The matriarch gave her daughter a stern look. “He’s your only boy. He’s been strange and lovely looking from birth. This has led you to pay too much attention and to worry without reason. Straighten up! Be solid! The boy will probably turn out well. If he doesn’t, he’ll be a problem for our male relatives to handle.”

  At ten, the boy discovered gardening — by accident, while following a tli that had come out of the nearby woods to steal vegetables. The sun was barely up. Dew gleamed on the vegetation around his grandmother’s house. The air he drew into his mouth was cool and fragrant.

  The tli, a large specimen with strongly marked stripes, trundled over his grandmother’s lawn, its fat furry belly gathering dew like a rag wiping moisture off something bright. A metal blade maybe, the boy thought. A dark trail appeared behind the animal, and it was this the boy followed at a safe distance. Not that a tli is ever dangerous, unless cornered, but he didn’t want to frighten it.

  The animal skirted the house, entering the garden in back. There the tli began to pillage, a messy process with much (it seemed to the boy) unnecessary destruction. He ought to chase it away. But he was hit — suddenly and with great force — by the beauty of the scene in front of him. The perception was like a blade going into his chest. Don’t think of this as a figure of speech, exaggerated and difficult to believe. There are emotions so intense that they cause pain, either a dull ache or a sudden sharp twinge. Under the influence of such an emotion, one’s heart may seem to stop. One may feel wounded and changed, as one changed by a serious injury.

  This happened to the boy when he didn’t, as yet, understand much of what he felt. If he’d been older, he might have realized that most emotions go away, if one ignores them. Instead, he was pierced through by beauty. For the rest of his life he remembered how the garden looked: a large rectangular plot, edged with ornamental plants, their leaves — red, purple, yellow, and blue — like the banners of a guard in a military ceremony.

  Inside this gaudy border were the vegetables, arranged in rows. Some grew on poles or trellises. Others were bushes. Still others rose directly from the soil as shoots, fronds, clusters of leaves. The variety seemed endless. While the garden’s border was brightly colored, most of these plants were shades of green or blue. Yet they seemed — if anything — more lovely and succulent, beaded with dew and shining in the low slanting rays of the sun.

  So it was, on a cool summer morning, the air barely stirring, that Atkwa Akuin fell in love — not with another boy, as might have been expected, if not this year, then soon, but with his grandmother’s garden.

  He spent the rest of that summer in the plot, helping the two senior female cousins who did most of the house’s gardening. In the fall, he turned soil, covered beds with hay, trimmed what needed trimming and planted chopped-up bits of root. Black and twisted, they looked dead to him. But they’d send up shoots in the spring, his cousins promised.

  Akuin’s mother watched doubtfully. The boy was settling down to a single activity. That had to be better than his former dreaminess. But she would have been happier if he’d taken up a more boyish hobby: riding tsina, fishing in the nearby river, practicing archery, playing at war.

  “Give him more time,” said Akuin’s grandmother. “Boys are difficult, as I know.”

 
She’d raised three. One had died young in an accident. Another had died in space, killed in the war that had recently begun. The enemy — humans, though their name was not yet known — had come out of nowhere in well-armed ships. Almost everything about them remained hidden in darkness as complete as the darkness from which they’d emerged. But no one could doubt their intentions. The first meeting with them had ended in violence. So had every encounter since.

  The matriarch’s third son was still alive and had reached the rank of advancer one-in-front. This should have given her satisfaction, but the two of them had never gotten along. Akuin’s uncle rarely came home for a visit. The matriarch lavished her attention on her one daughter, her nieces, and their children.

  Now she said, folding her twisted hands, “Maybe Akuin will become a gardener in a space station. Such people are useful. An army needs more than one kind of soldier.”

  When he was fifteen, Akuin went to boarding school, as do all boys of that age. In these places they learn to live without women and among males who belong to other lineages. This becomes important later. A boy who can’t detach himself from family and country is of little use in space.

  In addition, the boys complete their education in the ordinary hwarhath arts and sciences, the ones learned by both females and males; and they begin their education in the specifically male art and science of war.

  Akuin’s school was on the east coast of his continent, in an area of sandy dunes and scrub forest: poor land for gardening. Nonetheless, the school had a garden. Botany is a science, and horticulture is an art.

  It was on the landward side of the school complex, sheltered by buildings from the prevailing wind. Akuin found it the day after he arrived. To the west was a row of dunes, with the afternoon sun standing just above them. Long shadows stretched toward the garden. The gardener—a man with a metal leg—moved slowly between the rows of plants, bending, examining, picking off bugs, which he pressed between the fingers of his good hand. His other arm hung at his side, clearly damaged and not recently. It had shrunk till little remained except black fur over bone.