The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Varid was somewhere ahead of them, walking with a Tristerman and the largest Yttytt that Katabasis had ever seen. Tracks and the wind claimed that he was matching paces with those stronger aliens. Perhaps the human felt that he had some point to prove. Maybe he was overextending himself, or maybe Katabasis had been wrong about his nature. The truth didn’t matter. She had a client and hers was quite cheerful about his pain, while his wife was proving resilient. Ten days was nothing in a very long journey, but they had a reasonable pace and ample rations, and their camp was pitched before darkness, time left to eat another dense, gut-knotting meal before managing a few hours of sleep and dreams.

  The couple slipped into their little tent, and in the careful fashion of weaklings trapped in high gravity, they made love.

  The porters listened to the sex, and because he couldn’t help himself, the Wogfound offered insults. “Before I carry that monkey,” he said, “I will wrap her inside her bedding. She is too ugly to touch in any way.”

  “She is a beast,” Katabasis said agreeably. “But I don’t think you will ever carry her.”

  The challenge was noted. “A wager then, your guess against mine.”

  “No.”

  “If you have seen the future,” said the Wogfound, “I will pay you what my bonus would have been.”

  Again, she said, “No.”

  Pulling his legs beneath his long body, the Wogfound prepared for sleep. “How many times have we walked together, Katabasis?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Many times perhaps.”

  “More than many,” she said.

  “Yet I don’t know you at all,” he said.

  Looking at the armored shell and the three jewel-like eyes, she said, “You are as stupid as you are ugly.”

  The laughter was abrupt and thunderous. Every anemone yanked into its home, and save for the grunting of two monkeys hiding inside their tent, the reef fell silent. Then with a brazen joyful voice, the Wogfound said, “I know what I am. I am beautiful and brilliant.”

  “A good thing to know,” Katabasis replied.

  Shortly after that, the camp fell asleep.

  They caught Varid on the seventeenth day, inside an arid valley blasted by the brilliant blue mirage of a sun. He had spent the night there, his tent and rations packed up but still lying on the hot rock. Varid was stretched out on a skeletal chair. He smiled when the others arrived. He aimed the smile at them and spoke a few quiet words, perhaps to his porter, and the One-after-another gave a deep snort. A furnace would be hotter, but not much. Varid was drenched with sweat, but to prove his strength he lifted one of those very powerful arms, wincing when he held the open hand high.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

  Perri was leading. Seventeen days and the previous trek had taught him how to move against the relentless weight. Never lift the leg higher than necessary; keep the back straight and strong. Only motions essential to covering the next half-meter were allowed. He wore minimal clothes and light boots and a body that could live for another million years. But immortality didn’t make animals into machines. He was suffering as he shuffled forward, and his voice was slow when he said, “Thank you for waiting. You’re nothing but kind.”

  Katabasis heard sarcasm and pain.

  Varid appeared oblivious. Still smiling, he turned and said something else to his porter, and then he broke into an oversized laugh.

  With her four back legs, the One-after-another stomped at the ground. They weren’t a verbal species, but those motions signaled frustration.

  “I was traveling with several friends,” said Varid, “but I tripped and fell yesterday, rather hard, and the others continued without me.”

  They had seen their chance to get free of you, thought Katabasis.

  Perri stopped walking, breathing deeply. “A bad fall, was it?”

  “Bones poking through skin and some torn tendons.”

  Quee Lee caught up with her husband. “Are you having trouble healing?”

  “I never have trouble healing.” Varid sat up, the veins in his forehead ready to burst. “No, I decided to let you catch me. I wanted someone to talk to.”

  “I am dreary company,” said the One-after-another.

  Varid stood carefully, and his chair collapsed into a fist-sized bundle.

  Katabasis had served hundreds of humans, and none were like him. She wondered about the effects of drugs and other elixirs ingested for this journey. She wondered if one of the alien “friends” had tripped the man, perhaps intentionally—a common event out on the trails.

  “May I walk with you?” Varid asked.

  “Absolutely,” Quee Lee said, slowly passing her husband.

  The One-after-another stowed the chair and balanced all of the gear on her broad back. Three humans and their porters continued up the desert valley. A long stone wall had been cut through the middle with explosives, and they slipped into the gap and entered the remains of someone’s attempted home—tunnels and oval rooms and bits of debris that might have been precious once or might have been trash. Katabasis never enjoyed walking this ground. Each time, without fail, she thought about lost homes and the ignorant strangers who would feel nothing when they passed through what others had once treasured.

  Quee Lee was in the lead. Perceiving a challenge, Varid found his legs and got busy chasing her.

  Every tradition told the porters to remain behind, watching the slow, painful, and ultimately useless race.

  The parched trail eventually swung back toward the wheel’s center, and after a long climb over a diamondcrete ridge, they dropped into a fresh drainage and different climate. The sun was always directly overhead, but now it turned pale and small. The air filled with mist. The vegetation was several shades of black, every plant held up by multiple trunks, supporting hungry canopies and fluorescing wings wrapped around giant insect bodies.

  “Beautiful,” said Quee Lee.

  Glancing up, Perri stumbled, the bones in his left leg splintering from the unexpected impact, and he collapsed and hit the ground, shattering his cheek and eye socket against bare stone.

  Quee Lee returned to him. There was no reason for worry, but she settled beside him anyway.

  Varid was ahead of everyone, smiling at his fortune.

  “I could make you feel better,” Quee Lee said.

  “In no time,” her husband agreed.

  “But others are lurking.”

  The two of them laughed.

  Then Quee Lee looked at the other human. “Have we met him? He seems just a little familiar.”

  They didn’t have access to a nexus. Memory was what counted, and despite the blood plastered across his face and a crooked leg trying to straighten itself, Perri had enough focus to decide, “I don’t remember a man like him. And I think I would.”

  “Maybe he isn’t the same person now,” said Quee Lee.

  Perri wiped the gore from under his eye. “Maybe something happened to him.”

  “Maybe I should ask him,” Quee Lee said.

  Perri laughed softly.

  “You’re right,” she said. “This is a long walk. There’ll be plenty of boring to fight off before the end.”

  A central valley led toward the distant mountains, and the River East was slow leaden water down its middle. For three days the trail pushed close to the water, and just when the routine and climate became familiar, they crossed the river on a massive bridge of granite slabs and granite columns.

  Another ridge demanded to be climbed.

  Half a kilometer was one day’s work, and they weren’t yet to the top.

  They camped again and ate shavings from their supplies, and nobody complained about the taste of the water. The spring at their feet was cool and clear, little crustaceans leaving feces that tasted like something called pepper. Beside them was a grove of tashaleen trees—massive trunks laced with glass, each supporting fat bladders filled with sulfuric acid. Tashaleens periodically flooded the landscape
to maintain their monoculture, but none were ripe at present, and they had lovely red colors that pushed deep into the infrared.

  Today Varid had broken the little bones inside one foot. They healed fast enough, but the foot needed hard rubbing.

  The couple sat opposite him, leaning against one another.

  Katabasis was sitting alone, chewing steadily on a dead black stick laced with bright flavors.

  After a long silence, Varid cleared his throat. Smiling at his foot, he lifted his hand, and then he turned to smile at his fingers as he said, “Name anyone luckier than us.”

  There was optimism in the voice.

  And there wasn’t.

  “Nobody is luckier,” Quee Lee said.

  Perri watched the man. “What luck are you talking about?”

  “Buying passage on the Great Ship,” said Varid. “That’s an honor beyond measure.”

  How could anyone disagree?

  “I feel blessed.”

  “Where did you come from?” Perri asked.

  “Mellis 4.”

  “That’s a colony world,” Quee Lee said. “In the Outskirt District, isn’t it?”

  Varid seemed to hear the question, and for a moment he looked ready to formulate an answer. But then his face emptied, and everybody sat waiting. Eventually he stared at Perri, and after another long pause asked, “What’s your background? From where did you come?”

  “Nowhere. I was born on the Ship.”

  “Are you some captain’s child, or something else?”

  “Something else,” said Perri.

  Varid nodded slowly, as if he was working through the myriad possibilities. But he didn’t ask for more information. He shifted his focus to Quee Lee, ready to ask the same question.

  “I was born on the Earth,” she volunteered.

  “I want to visit the Earth,” Varid said. “Once the voyage ends, I plan to walk all across its ancient ground.”

  The Great Ship wouldn’t return home for another two hundred thousand years. And that was assuming nothing disastrous happened during the long, long journey.

  The married humans glanced at each other.

  Varid appeared excited, staring at the ground and the once-injured foot, smiling and breathing faster until he suddenly looked up, hunting for another worthwhile face.

  “Katabasis,” he said.

  His porter let her plumage flatten, showing disinterest.

  “Your name,” he said. “There’s a human word that sounds like Katabasis.”

  The others looked at her. Even the other porters were curious.

  This had happened several times before, human clients recognizing the word. But to have this odd dim creature bring up the matter like this, without warning…well, it was astonishing. Katabasis held her breath, the hearts in her thighs pushing blood into her face, making it more purple than usual.

  “What word is ‘Katabasis’?” asked Quee Lee.

  “It is very old, and Greek,” Varid said. “I wish I could remember what it meant. Maybe I knew once, but then again.…”

  His voice faded, yet the face seemed more alive than usual, dark eyes sparkling and the mouth very small, very intense.

  Perri looked at his porter. “Is that a coincidence?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  Quee Lee was interested enough to stand up and shuffle closer. “You took the name when you came here. Didn’t you?”

  “It’s a tradition,” Katabasis explained. “Move to another realm, and you embrace some name from those in power.”

  Varid’s face changed again, back to its flat, vague, and apparently empty ways. But he lifted the hand that had rubbed the foot that couldn’t be any healthier, and he asked the hand, “How did you find your way to the Great Ship?”

  The other porters put their ears and eyes on her.

  Then Katabasis surprised herself. With her voice cool and pleasant, she said, “I walked here. And I walked and walked and walked.”

  3

  She wasn’t Katabasis and wasn’t immortal, and she knew her tiny age and critical place, always going to sleep certain that a great family loved her. She lived inside the world’s stronghold. A wedge-hole decorated with painted pretties was where she slept, and the girl had a collection of flavored sticks to chew on, and every morning one of the household warriors would lick her bare toes, waking her with a hot rough tongue.

  “The maiden is expected,” the warrior would say, or words to that effect. “The Five are waiting in the study with books and high expectations.”

  The Five were a fierce and wealthy and much respected marriage. Royalty and elected leaders didn’t exist in the world and couldn’t be envisioned by the People. But three women and two husband/brothers sat astride generations of obligations and large favors. The girl wasn’t one of the Five’s children, not by blood or by adoption. But she was a Hopeful, which meant that she was endowed with some talent or compelling strength that had made her worth purchasing from forgotten parents.

  “The Five are waiting,” was a ritual statement. Time was too precious to share with even the most promising half-grown citizen. But there were mornings when one of the Five, usually the younger brother/husband, would march past the two hundred Hopefuls, handing out assignments and lofty words about the future before chasing after even more pressing ceremonies.

  The typical morning brought small groups divided by skills and led by teachers who loved the subject in hand. Sometimes Hopefuls were gathered in the arena where they played elaborate games full of lessons and fun that kept them busy until the day’s meal and the night’s sleep. Even better were days when a girl was told to read alone and contemplate every word. But reflective lessons brought warriors on the next morning—warriors delivering hard training because it was important to drive the laziness from these young, spoiled souls.

  The girl’s gift was mathematics, and in particular, cumbersome formulas with their tangled alliances and deep abstractions. On the best days, a teacher and one warrior would pull aside the mathematicians—eleven Hopefuls, including her closest friends—and they would leave the stronghold, going out into the great, lovely, and nearly perfect world to test their knowledge against what was real.

  All that was worth knowing was built upon formulas.

  The world was one day’s walk wide, on average, and fifteen days in length, shaped rather like a passion worm dying on hot rock. The world stood upon an old mountain range. Left in their natural state, those eroded peaks would catch only the rare rain, and perhaps a few rock-scions would grow in the valleys. But the People had built forests of broad towers standing above the tired, broken-down tectonics. Each life in the world had its job. Gardeners and their vines dangled out of the windows while J’jjs and clonetakes sang from cages, begging their keepers for feed. The buildings’ interiors were full of wedge-holes and broad hallways, and every floor had its stockers and teachers, weavers and gossips. Especially important were the miners who left every evening, descending to the hot plains to work with their electric machines. They cut fresh stone from the quarries and smelted metals from the best ores available. Other citizens tended the fans that stood high, dancing with the winds to supply power, and those who knew the dew-catchers watered the crops and every mouth. There was majesty and perfection in this labor. Every mouth attached to a working mind sang praises to the world’s rich life.

  The towers demanded endless construction, and construction demanded endless calculation.

  This girl, the happy young Hopeful, was being groomed to design new walls and reinforce old buttresses. If she couldn’t look forward to the day, at least she was resigned to her duty, and it was a good day whenever a teacher looked at her work, saying without too much difficulty that she was showing that most precious talent: “Promise.”

  She never imagined that outside events could interrupt her future.

  Who does at such an age?

  The best mornings found the budding mathematicians riding in bubbles strung on electr
ified cables, climbing to the highest rooftops. Where the air was thin and chill was her favorite place. Deep pleasure could be found in those vistas. The girl always stole moments to look past the world. The surrounding plains were rough and ugly, but there was a horizon to seek, though it was often masked by dust and the occasional cloud. She carried a worn-out telescope rescued from the school’s garbage, and if she was very lucky and the lessons went into evening, she had stars to admire and neighboring worlds, and sometimes several moons graced the sky with their trusted round faces.

  Each class was accompanied by at least one trained, well-armed warrior. The Hopefuls had real value and might tempt their enemies. Other worlds and other People lived beyond the horizon. Perhaps those same enemies would come here to steal away their talent: It had never happened and never would happen, but there was pleasure in the possibility. Who doesn’t wish to be valuable, to be special?

  One day-journey reached into evening and then farther. The teacher had critical points to deliver about bracing towers and the telltale signs of strain on a windmill blade, and she steadfastly refused to leave this high place until every student absorbed her competence.

  Thinking no one was watching, the girl drifted away.

  But the warrior noticed and climbed after her, finding her chewing a fresh stick of dribbledoe while pushing the little telescope against her eye. The nearest moon was overhead—gray and airless, pocked with volcanoes that sometimes threw up columns of soot that left a soft ring in its orbit. She watched the moon’s limb and stared at patches of stars, and because this was one of those rare perches where every direction was visible, she turned in a slow circle, trying to absorb the precious vista.

  The warrior was young and bold. He crept up on the girl, and wanting to startle her, tried to drop the cold gun barrel against her beautiful neck.