The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  All celestial cities have their own municipal police force. It’s often a part-time, amateur operation, but the local force is supposed to investigate traditional crimes like theft, assault, murder—all the heinous things people have done to each other since the beginning of time. The Commonwealth police are involved only when the crime violates statutes involving molecular science, biology, or machine intelligence.

  So strictly speaking, I didn’t have any legal right or requirement to investigate the original accident that had exposed Key’s quirk, but I took the elevator up to Level 1 West anyway, and used my authority to get past the DI that secured the railcar garage.

  Nahiku is a twin orbital. Its two inhabited towers are counterweights at opposite ends of a very long carbon-fiber tether that lets them spin around a center point, generating a pseudogravity in the towers. A rail runs the length of the tether, linking Nahiku East and West. The railcar Key Lu had failed to die in was parked in a small repair bay in the West-end garage. Repair work hadn’t started on it yet, and the two small holes in its canopy were easy to see.

  There was no one around, maybe because it was local-night. That worked for me: I didn’t have to concoct a story on why I’d made this my investigation. I started collecting images, measurements, and sample swabs. When the DI picked up traces of explosive residue, I wasn’t surprised.

  I was inside the car, collecting additional samples from every interior surface, when a faint shift in air pressure warned me a door had opened. Footsteps approached. I don’t know who I was expecting. Hera, maybe. Or Tishembra. Not the magistrate.

  Glory Mina walked up to the car and, resting her hand on the roof, she bent down to peer at me where I sat on the ruptured upholstery.

  “Is there more going on here that I need to know about?” she asked.

  I sent her the DI’s report. She received it in her atrium, scanned it, and followed my gaze to one of the holes in the canopy. “You’re thinking someone tried to kill him.”

  “Why like this?” I wondered. “Is it coincidence? Or did they know about his quirk?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “If the attacker knew about Key, then it was murder by cop.”

  “And if not, it was just an attempted murder. Either way, it’s not your case. This one belongs to the city cops.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t leave it alone. Maybe that’s why my superiors tolerated me. “I like to know what’s going on in my city, and the big question I have is why? I’m not buying a coincidence. Whoever blew the canopy had to know about Key—so why not just kill him outright? If he’d died like any normal person, I wouldn’t have looked into it, you wouldn’t have assessed a fine. Who gains, when everyone loses?”

  Even as I said the words my thoughts turned to Tishembra, and what she’d said. It’s gotten to the point, my best hope is another disaster. No. I wasn’t going to go there. Not with Tishembra. But maybe she wasn’t the only one thinking that way?

  The magistrate watched me closely, no doubt recording every nuance of my expression. She said, “I saw the complaint against your intimate.”

  “It’s baseless.”

  “But you’ll look into it?”

  “I’ve scheduled a scan.”

  Glory nodded. “See to that, but stay out of the local case. This one doesn’t belong to you.”

  The apartment felt empty when I returned. I panicked for the few seconds it took me to sprint across the front room to the bedroom door. Tishembra was still lying on the bed, her half-closed eyes blinking sporadically, but I couldn’t feel her. Not like before. A sense of abandonment came over me. I knew it was ridiculous, but I felt like she’d walked away.

  Robin whimpered in his sleep, turned over, and then awoke. He looked first at Tishembra lying next to him, and then he looked at me. “What happened to Mommy?”

  “Mommy’s okay.”

  “She’s not. She’s wrong.”

  I went over and picked him up. “Hush. Don’t ever say that to anyone but me, okay? We need it to be a secret.”

  He pouted, but he was frightened, and he agreed.

  I spent that night in the front room, with Robin cradled in my arm. I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t stop thinking about Key and his quirk, and who might have known about it. Maybe someone from his past? Or someone who’d done a legal mod on him? I had the DI import his personal history into my atrium, but there was no record of any bioengineering work being done on him. Maybe it had just been a lucky guess by someone who knew what went on in the Far Reaches? I sent the DI to search the city files for anyone else who’d ever worked out there. Only one name came back to me: Tishembra Indens.

  Tishembra and I had never talked much about where we’d come from. I knew circumstances had not been kind to her, but that she’d had to take a contract in the Far Reaches—that shocked me.

  My best hope is another disaster.

  I deleted the query, I tried to stop thinking, but I couldn’t help reflecting that she was an engineer. She had skills. She could work out how to pop the canopy and she’d have access to the supplies to do it.

  Eventually I dozed, until Tishembra woke me. I stared at her. I knew her face, but I didn’t know her. I couldn’t feel her anymore. Her quirk was gone, and she was a stranger to me. I sat up. Robin was still asleep and I cradled his little body against my chest, dreading what would happen when he woke.

  “I’m ready,” Tishembra said.

  I looked away. “I know.”

  Robin wouldn’t let his mother touch him. “You’re not you!” he screamed at her with all the fury a three-year-old could muster. Tishembra started to argue with him, but I shook my head, “Deal with it later,” and took him into the dining nook, where I got him breakfast and reminded him of our secret.

  “I want Mommy,” he countered with a stubborn pout.

  I considered tranking him, but the staff at the day-venture center would notice and they would ask questions, so I did my best to persuade him that Mommy was Mommy. He remained skeptical. As we left the apartment, he refused to hold Tishembra’s hand but ran ahead instead, hiding behind the jungle foliage until we caught up, then running off again. I didn’t blame him. In my rotten heart I didn’t want to touch her either, but I wasn’t three. So the next time he took off, I slipped my arm around Tishembra’s waist and hauled her aside into a nook along the path. We didn’t ever kiss or hold hands when I was in uniform and besides, I’d surprised her when her mind was fixed on more serious things, so of course she protested. “Zeke, what are you doing?”

  “Hush,” I said loudly. “Do you want Robin to find us?”

  And I kissed her. I didn’t want to. She knew it, and resisted, whispering, “You don’t need to feel sorry for me.”

  But I’d gotten a taste of her mouth, and that hadn’t changed. I wanted more. She felt it and softened against me, returning my kiss in a way that made me think we needed to go back to the apartment for a time.

  Then Robin was pushing against my hip. “No! Stop that kissing stuff. We have to go to day-venture.”

  I scowled down at him. “Fine, but I’m holding Tishembra’s hand.”

  “No. I am.” And to circumvent further argument, he seized her hand and tugged her toward the path. I let her go with a smirk, but her defiant gaze put an end to that.

  “I do love you,” I insisted. She shrugged and went with Robin, too proud to believe in me just yet.

  Day-venture was on Level 5, where there was a prairie vista. On either side of the path we looked out across a vast land of low, grassy hills, where some sort of herd animals fed in the distance. Waist-high grass grew in a nook outside the doorway to the day-venture center. Robin stomped through it, sending a flutter of butterflies spiraling toward a blue sky. The grass sprang back without damage, betraying a biomechanical nature that the butterflies shared. One of them floated back down to land on Tishembra’s hand. She started to shoo it away, but Robin shrieked, “Don’t flick it!” and he pounced. “It�
��s a message fly.” The butterfly’s blue wings spread open as it rested in his small palms. A message was written there, shaped out of white scales drained of pigment, but Robin didn’t know how to read yet, so he looked to his mother for help. “What does it say?”

  Tishembra gave me a dark look. Then she crouched to read the message and I saw a slight uptick in the corner of her lip. “It says Robin and Zeke love Tishembra.” Then she ran her finger down the butterfly’s back to erase the message, and nudged it, sending it fluttering away.

  “It’s wrong,” Robin told her defiantly. “I don’t love Tishembra. I love Mommy.” Then he threw his arms around her neck and kissed her, before running inside to play with his friends.

  Tishembra and I went on to my office, where Glory Mina was waiting for us to arrive.

  When Tishembra saw the magistrate she turned to me with a look of desperation. I told her the truth. “It doesn’t matter.”

  A deep scan is performed with an injection of molecular-scale machines called Makers that map the body’s component systems. The data is fed directly into police records and there’s no way to fake the results. Tishembra should have known that, but she looked at me as if I’d betrayed her. “You don’t have to worry,” I insisted. “The scan is just a formality, a required response in the face of the baseless complaint filed against you.”

  Glory Mina watched me with a half smile. Naturally, her DI would have told her I was lying.

  I led Tishembra into a small exam room and had her sit in a large, cushioned chair. After Glory came in behind us, the office DI locked the door. I handed Tishembra a packet of Makers and she dutifully inhaled it. At the same time my DI whispered that Hera Poliu had arrived in the outer office. Sensing trouble, I looked at the magistrate. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Who?” Tishembra asked anxiously. “Zeke, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on. Everything will be fine.”

  Glory just watched me. I grunted, realizing she’d come not to observe the scan but to gauge the integrity of her Nahiku watch officer, which she had good cause to doubt. “I’ll be right back.”

  The office DI maintained a continuous surveillance of all rooms. I channeled its feed, keeping one eye on Tishembra and another on Hera as she looked around the front office with an anxious gaze. She appeared timid and unsure—nothing at all like the angry woman who had accosted me yesterday. “Zeke?” she called softly. “Are you here?”

  When the door opened ahead of me, she startled.

  “Zeke!” Hera’s hands were shaking. “Is it true Tishembra’s been scheduled for a scan? She didn’t have anything to do with Key. You have to know that. She hardly knew him. There’s no reason to suspect her. Tishembra is my best engineer and if we lose her this city will never recover… Zeke? What is it?”

  I think I was standing with my mouth open. “You filed the complaint that initiated the scan!”

  “Me? I…” Her focus turned inward. “Oh, yesterday… I wasn’t myself. I took the wrong mood patch. I was out of my head. Is Tishembra…?”

  The results of the scan arrived in my atrium. I glanced at them, and closed my eyes briefly in silent thanks. “Tishembra has passed her scan.”

  Against all expectation I’d made a home at Nahiku. I’d found a woman I loved, I’d made friends, and I’d gained trust—to the point that people would come to me for advice and guidance, knowing I wasn’t just another jackboot of the Commonwealth.

  In one day all that had been shattered and I wanted to know why.

  I sent a DI hunting through the datasphere for background on Key Lu. I sent another searching through Hera Poliu’s past. I thought about sending a third after Tishembra—but whatever the DI turned up would go into police records and I was afraid of what it might find.

  Tish had used a patch to calm herself, resolved to go into work as if nothing was changed. “I’m fine,” she insisted when I said I’d walk with her. She resented my coddling, but there were questions I needed to ask. We took the elevator, stepping out into a corridor enhanced with a seascape. The floor appeared as weathered boardwalk; our feet struck it in hollow thumps. Taking her arm, I gently guided her to a nook where a strong breeze blew, carrying what I’m told is the salt scent of an ocean, and hiding the sound of our voices. “Tish, is there anything you need to tell me?”

  Resentment simmered in her eyes. “What exactly are you asking?”

  “You spent time in the Far Reaches.”

  “So?”

  “Did you know about Key Lu?”

  I deserved the contempt that blossomed in her expression. “There are hundreds of tiny settlements out there, Zeke. Maybe thousands. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know him here, either.”

  The DI returned an initial infodump. My focus wavered. Tishembra saw it. “What?” she asked me.

  “Key Lu was a city finance officer, one who signed off on the water deal.”

  “The water deal with no water,” she amended bitterly. Crossing her arms, she glared at the ocean.

  “Someone tried to kill him,” I told her, letting my words blend in with the sea breeze.

  She froze, her gaze fixed on the horizon.

  “There was never a micrometeor. His railcar was sabotaged.”

  I couldn’t read her face and neither could the DI. Maybe it was the patch she’d used to level her emotions, but her fixed expression frightened me.

  She knew what was going on in my head, though. “You’re asking yourself who has the skill to do that, aren’t you? Who could fake a meteor strike? If it were me, I’d do it with explosive patches, one inside, one outside, to get the trajectory correct. Is that how it was done, Zeke?”

  “Yes.”

  Her gaze was still fixed on the horizon. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Okay.”

  She turned and looked me in the eye. “It wasn’t me.”

  The DI whispered that she spoke the truth. I smiled my relief and reached for her, but she backed away. “No, Zeke.”

  “Tish, come on. Don’t be mad. This day is making us both crazy.”

  “I haven’t accused you of being a murderer.”

  “Tish, I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “I remember when we used to trust each other. I think that was yesterday.”

  The second DI arrived with an initial report on Hera. Like an idiot, I scanned the file. To my surprise, I had a new suspect, but while I was distracted, Tishembra walked away.

  Glory Mina was waiting for me when I returned to my office. She’d tracked my DIs and copied herself on their reports. “You should have been a municipal cop,” she told me. She sat perched on the arm of a chair, her arms crossed and her eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “It’s not like I had a choice.”

  She cocked her head, allowing me the point. Reading from the DI’s report, she said, “So Hera Poliu had a brother. Four years ago he was exiled from Nahiku, and a year after that he was arrested and executed for an illegal enhancement.”

  “Hera lost her brother. She’s got to resent it. Maybe she resents anybody who has a—” I caught myself. “Anybody she thinks might have a quirk.”

  “Maybe,” Glory conceded. “And maybe that’s why she made a complaint against your intimate, but so what? It’s not your case, Zeke. Forward what you’ve got to whoever had the misfortune to be appointed as the criminal investigator in this little paradise and let it go.”

  I made compliant noises. She shook her head, not needing the DI to know I wasn’t being straight. “Walk with me.”

  “Where?”

  “The mausoleum. I’m going home. But on the way there, you’re going to listen to what I have to say about the necessity for boundaries.” She crooked her finger at me. I shrugged and followed. As we walked past the vistas she lectured me on the essential but very limited role of the Commonwealth police and warned me that my appointment as watch officer at Nahiku could end at any time. I listened patiently, knowing she would soon be gone.


  As we approached the mausoleum, I sent a DI to open the door. Inside was a long hallway with locked doors on either side. Behind the doors were storage chambers, most of them belonging to corporations. The third door on the left secured the police chamber. It opened as we approached, and closed again when we had stepped inside. One wall held clothing lockers. The other, ranks of cold storage drawers stacked four high. “Magistrate Glory Mina,” Glory said to the room DI. She stripped off her clothes and hung them in one of the lockers while the drawers slid past each other, rearranging themselves. Only two were empty. One was mine. The other descended from the top rank to the second level, where it opened, ready to receive her.

  Glory closed the locker door. She was naked and utterly unconcerned about it. She turned to me with a stern gaze. “You tried to pretend Key Lu was a victim. This once, I’m going to pretend you just missed a step in the background investigation. Zeke, as much as you don’t like being a cop, being an ex-cop can be a lot worse.”

  I had no answer for that. I knew she was right.

  She climbed into the drawer. As soon as she lay back, the cushions inflated around her, creating a moist interface all across the surface of her skin. The drawer slid shut and locked with a soft snick. Very soon, her ghost would be on its way to Red Star. Once again, I was on my own.

  No matter what Glory wanted, there was no way I was going to set this case aside. Key Lu was dead, while Tishembra had been threatened and made into a stranger, both to me and to her own son. I wanted to know who was responsible and why.

  Still, I knew how to make concessions. So I set up an appointment with an official who served part-time as a city cop, intending to hand over the case files, if only for the benefit of my personnel record. But before that could happen a roving DI returned to me with the news that the city’s auto-defense system had locked down a plague outbreak on Level 5 West. The address was Robin’s day-venture center.

  It took me ninety seconds to strip off my uniform and wrap on the impermeable hide of a vacuum-capable skinsuit, police black, with gold insignia. Then I grabbed a standard-issue bivouac kit that weighed half as much as I did, and I raced out the door.