The Best Science Fiction of the Year: 1

by Unknown

  The Sovereign’s interpreter lay in the aisle, his head jammed up against the back of the pilot’s seat at an odd, awkward angle. The high voice spoke again, and in the small bag at Ashiban’s feet her handheld said, “Disregard the dead. We have to get out of here or we will also die. The speaker is in some distress.”

  In her own seat, the pink- and orange- and blue-veiled Sovereign fumbled at the safety restraints. The straps parted with a click, and the Sovereign stood. Stepped into the aisle, hiking her long blue skirt. Spoke—it must have been the Sovereign speaking all along. “Stupid cow,” said Ashiban’s handheld, in her bag. “Speaker’s distress has increased.”

  The flier lurched. The Sovereign cried out. “No translation available,” remarked Ashiban’s handheld, as the Sovereign reached forward to tug at Ashiban’s own safety restraints and, once those had come undone, grab Ashiban’s arm and pull.

  The flier had crashed. The flier had crashed, and the Sovereign’s interpreter must have gotten out of his seat for some reason, at just the wrong time. Ashiban herself must have hit her head. That would explain the memory gap, and the headache. She blinked again, and the colored shards where the window should have been resolved into cracked glass, and behind it sky, and flat ground covered in brown and green plants, here and there some white or pink. “We should stay here and wait for help,” Ashiban said. In her bag, her handheld said something incomprehensible.

  The Sovereign pulled harder on Ashiban’s arm. “You stupid expletive cow,” said the handheld, as the Sovereign picked Ashiban’s bag up from her feet. “Someone shot us down, and we crashed in the expletive High Mires. The expletive expletive is expletive sinking into the expletive bog. If we stay here we’ll drown. The speaker is highly agitated.” The flier lurched again.

  It all seemed so unreal. Concussion, Ashiban thought. I have a concussion, and I’m not thinking straight. She took her bag from the Sovereign, rose, and followed the Sovereign of Iss to the emergency exit.

  Outside the flier, everything was a brown and green plain, blue sky above. The ground swelled and rolled under Ashiban’s feet, but given the flier behind her, half-sunk into the gray-brown ground, and the pain in her head, she wasn’t sure if it was really doing that or if it was a symptom of concussion.

  The Sovereign said something. The handheld in Ashiban’s bag spoke, but it was lost in the open space and the breeze and Ashiban’s inability to concentrate.

  The Sovereign yanked Ashiban’s bag from her, pulled it open. Dug out the handheld. “Expletive,” said the handheld. “Expletive expletive. We are standing on water. The speaker is agitated.”

  “What?” The flier behind them, sliding slowly into the mire, made a gurgling sound. The ground was still unsteady under Ashiban’s feet, she still wasn’t sure why.

  “Water! The speaker is emphatic.” The Sovereign gestured toward the greenish-brown mat of moss beneath them.

  “Help will come,” Ashiban said. “We should stay here.”

  “They shot us down,” said the handheld. “The speaker is agitated and emphatic.”

  “What?”

  “They shot us down. I saw the pilot shot through the window, I saw them die. Timran was trying to take control of the flier when we crashed. Whoever comes, they are not coming to help us. We have to get to solid ground. We have to hide. The speaker is emphatic. The speaker is in some distress. The speaker is agitated.” The Sovereign took Ashiban’s arm and pulled her forward.

  “Hide?” There was nowhere to hide. And the ground swelled and sank, like waves on the top of water. She fell to her hands and knees, nauseated.

  “Translation unavailable,” said the handheld, as the Sovereign dropped down beside her. “Crawl then, but come with me or be dead. The speaker is emphatic. The speaker is in some distress.” The Sovereign crawled away, the ground still heaving.

  “That’s my bag,” said Ashiban. “That’s my handheld.” The Sovereign continued to crawl away. “There’s nowhere to hide!” But if she stayed where she was, on her hands and knees on the unsteady ground, she would be all alone here, and all her things gone and her head hurting and her stomach sick and nothing making sense. She crawled after the Sovereign.

  By the time the ground stopped roiling, the squishy wet moss had changed to stiff, spiky-leaved meter-high plants that scratched Ashiban’s face and tore at her sodden clothes. “Come here,” said her handheld, somewhere up ahead. “Quickly. Come here. The speaker is agitated.” Ashiban just wanted to lie down where she was, close her eyes, and go to sleep. But the Sovereign had her bag. There was a bottle of water in her bag. She kept going.

  Found the Sovereign prone, veilless, pulling off her bright-colored skirts to ball them up beneath herself. Underneath her clothes she wore a plain brown shirt and leggings, like any regular Gidanta. “Ancestors!” panted Ashiban, still on hands and knees, not sure where there was room to lie down. “You’re just a kid! You’re younger than my grandchildren!”

  In answer the Sovereign took hold of the collar of Ashiban’s jacket and yanked her down to the ground. Ashiban cried out, and heard her handheld say something incomprehensible, presumably the Gidantan equivalent of No translation available. Pain darkened her vision, and her ears roared. Or was that the flier the Sovereign had said she’d heard?

  The Sovereign spoke. “Stupid expletive expletive expletive, lie still,” said Ashiban’s handheld calmly. “Speaker is in some distress.”

  Ashiban closed her eyes. Her head hurt, and her twig-scratched face stung, but she was very, very tired.

  A calm voice was saying, “Wake up, Ashiban Xidyla. The speaker is distressed.” Over and over again. She opened her eyes. The absurdly young Sovereign of Iss lay in front of her, brown cheek pressed against the gray ground, staring at Ashiban, twigs and spiny leaves caught in the few trailing braids that had come loose from the hair coiled at the top of her head. Her eyes were red and puffy, as though she had been crying, though her expression gave no sign of it. She clutched Ashiban’s handheld in one hand. Nineteen at most, Ashiban thought. Probably younger. “Are you awake, Ashiban Xidyla? The speaker is distressed.”

  “My head doesn’t hurt,” Ashiban observed. Despite that, everything still seemed slippery and unreal.

  “I took the emergency medical kit on our way off the flier,” the handheld said, translating the Sovereign’s reply. “I put a corrective on your forehead. It’s not the right kind, though. The instructions say to take you to a doctor right away. The speaker is. . . .”

  “Translation preferences,” interrupted Ashiban. “Turn off emotional evaluation.” The handheld fell silent. “Have you called for help, Sovereign? Is help coming?”

  “You are very stupid,” said Ashiban’s handheld. Said the Sovereign of Iss. “Or the concussion is dangerously severe. Our flier was shot down. Twenty minutes after that a flier goes back and forth over us as though it is looking for something, but we are in the High Mires, no one lives here. If we call for help, who is nearest? The people who shot us down.”

  “Who would shoot us down?”

  “Someone who wants war between Gidanta and Raksamat. Someone with a grudge against your mother, the sainted Ciwril Xidyla. Someone with a grudge against my grandmother, the previous Sovereign.”

  “Not likely anyone Raksamat then,” said Ashiban, and immediately regretted it. She was here to foster goodwill between her people and the Sovereign’s, because the Gidanta had trusted her mother, Ciwril Xidyla, and so they might listen to her daughter. “There are far more of you down here than Raksamat settlers. If it came to a war, the Raksamat here would be slaughtered. I don’t think any of us wants that.”

  “We will argue in the future,” said the Sovereign. “So long as whoever it is does not manage to kill us. I have been thinking. They did not see us, under the plants, but maybe they will come back and look for us with infrared. They may come back soon. We have to reach the trees north of here.”

  “I can use my handheld to just contact my own people
,” said Ashiban. “Just them. I trust them.”

  “Do you?” asked the Sovereign. “But maybe the deaths of some Raksamat settlers will be the excuse they need to bring a war that kills all the Gidanta so they can have the world for themselves. Maybe your death would be convenient for them.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Ashiban. She pushed herself to sitting, not too quickly, wary of the pain in her head returning, of her lingering dizziness. “I’m talking about my friends.”

  “Your friends are far away,” said the Sovereign. “They would call on others to come find us. Do you trust those others?” The girl seemed deadly serious. She sat up. “I don’t.” She tucked Ashiban’s handheld into her waistband, picked up her bundle of skirts and veils.

  “That’s my handheld! I need it!”

  “You’ll only call our deaths down with it,” said the Sovereign. “Die if you want to.” She rose, and trudged away through the stiff, spiky vegetation.

  Ashiban considered tackling the girl and taking back her handheld. But the Sovereign was young, and while Ashiban was in fairly good shape considering her age, she had never been an athlete, even in her youth. And that was without considering the head injury.

  She stood. Carefully, still dizzy, joints stiff. Where the flier had been was only black water, strips and chunks of moss floating on its surface, all of it surrounded by a flat carpet of yet more moss. She remembered the Sovereign saying, We’re standing on water! Remembered the swell and roll of the ground that had made her drop to her hands and knees.

  She closed her eyes. She thought she vaguely remembered sitting in her seat on the flier, the Sovereign crying out, her interpreter getting out of his seat to rush forward to where the pilot slumped over the controls.

  Shot down. If that was true, the Sovereign was right. Calling for help—if she could find some way to do that without her handheld—might well be fatal. Whoever it was had considered both Ashiban and the Sovereign of Iss acceptable losses. Had, perhaps, specifically wanted both of them dead. Had, perhaps, specifically wanted the war that had threatened for the past two years to become deadly real.

  But nobody wanted that. Not even the Gidanta who had never been happy with Ashiban’s people’s presence in the system wanted that, Ashiban was sure.

  She opened her eyes. Saw the girl’s back as she picked her way through the mire. Saw far off on the northern horizon the trees the girl had mentioned. “Ancestors!” cried Ashiban. “I’m too old for this.” And she shouldered her bag and followed the Sovereign of Iss.

  Eventually Ashiban caught up, though the Sovereign didn’t acknowledge her in any way. They trudged through the hip-high scrub in silence for some time, only making the occasional hiss of annoyance at particularly troublesome branches. The clear blue sky clouded over, and a damp-smelling wind rose. A relief—the bright sun had hurt Ashiban’s eyes. As the trees on the horizon became more definitely a band of trees—still dismayingly far off— Ashiban’s thoughts, which had this whole time been slippery and tenuous, began to settle into something like a comprehensible pattern.

  Shot down. Ashiban was sure none of her people wanted war. Though off-planet the Raksamat weren’t quite so vulnerable—were, in fact, much better armed. The ultimate outcome of an actual war would probably not favor the Gidanta. Or Ashiban didn’t think so. It was possible some Raksamat faction actually wanted such a war. And Ashiban wasn’t really anyone of any significance to her own people.

  Her mother had been. Her mother, Ciwril Xidyla, had negotiated the Treaty of Eatu with the then-Sovereign of Iss, ensuring the right of the Raksamat to live peacefully in the system, and on the planet. Ciwril had been widely admired among both Raksamat and Gidanta. As her daughter, Ashiban was only a sign, an admonition to remember her mother. If her side could think it acceptable to sacrifice the lives of their own people on the planet, they would certainly not blink at sacrificing Ashiban herself. She didn’t want to believe that, though, that her own people would do such a thing.

  Would the Gidanta be willing to kill their own Sovereign for the sake of a war? An hour ago—or however long they had been trudging across the mire, Ashiban wasn’t sure—she’d have said certainly not. The Sovereign of Iss was a sacred figure. She was the conduit between the Gidanta and the spirit of the world of Iss, which spoke to them with the Sovereign’s voice. Surely they wouldn’t kill her just to forward a war that would be disastrous for both sides?

  “Sovereign.”

  A meter ahead of Ashiban, the girl kept trudging. Looked briefly over her shoulder. “What?”

  “Where are you going?”

  The Sovereign didn’t even turn her head this time. “There’s a monitoring station on the North Udran Plain.”

  That had to be hundreds of kilometers away, and that wasn’t counting the fact that if this was indeed the High Mires, they were on the high side of the Scarp and would certainly have to detour to get down to the plains.

  “On foot? That could take weeks, if we even ever get there. We have no food, no water.” Well, Ashiban had about a third of a liter in a bottle in her bag, but that hardly counted. “No camping equipment.”

  The Sovereign just scoffed and kept walking.

  “Young lady,” began Ashiban, but then remembered herself at that age. Her own children and grandchildren. Adolescence was trying enough without the fate of your people resting on your shoulders, and being shot down and stranded in a bog. “I thought the current Sovereign was fifty or sixty. The daughter of the woman who was Sovereign when my mother was here last.”

  “You’re not supposed to talk like we’re all different people,” said the girl. “We’re all the voice of the world spirit. And you mean my aunt. She abdicated last week.”

  “Abdicated!” Mortified by her mistake—Ashiban had been warned over and over about the nature of the Sovereign of Iss, that she was not an individual, that referring to her as such would be an offense. “I didn’t know that was possible.” And surely at a time like this, the Sovereign wouldn’t want to drop so much responsibility on a teenager.

  “Of course it’s possible. It’s just a regular priesthood. It never was particularly special. It was you Raksamat who insisted on translating Sovereign as Sovereign. And it’s you Raksamat whose priests are always trancing out and speaking for your ancestors. Voice of Iss doesn’t mean that at all.”

  “Translating Sovereign as Sovereign?” asked Ashiban. “What is that supposed to mean?” The girl snorted. “And how can the Voice of Iss not mean exactly that?” The Sovereign didn’t answer, just kept walking.

  After a long silence, Ashiban said, “Then why do any of the Gidanta listen to you? And who is it my mother was negotiating with?”

  The Sovereign looked back at Ashiban and rolled her eyes. “With the interpreter, of course. And if your mother didn’t know that, she was completely stupid. And nobody listens to me.” The voice of the translating handheld was utterly calm and neutral, but the girl’s tone was contemptuous. “That’s why I’m stuck here. And it wasn’t about us listening to the voice of the planet. It was about you listening to us. You wouldn’t talk to the Terraforming Council because you wouldn’t accept they were an authority, and besides, you didn’t like what they were saying.”

  “An industrial association is not a government!” Seeing the girl roll her eyes again, Ashiban wondered fleetingly what her words sounded like in Gidantan—if the handheld was making industrial association and government into the same words, the way it obviously had when it had said for the girl, moments ago, translating Sovereign as Sovereign. But that was ridiculous. The two weren’t the same thing at all.

  The Sovereign stopped. Turned to face Ashiban. “We have been here for two thousand years. For all that time, we have been working on this planet, to make it a place we could live without interference. We came here, to this place without an intersystem gate, so that no one would bother us and we could live in peace. You turned up less than two centuries ago, now most of the hard work is don
e, and you want to tell us what to do with our planet, and who is or isn’t an authority!”

  “We were refugees. We came here by accident, and we can’t very well leave. And we brought benefits. You’ve been cut off from the outside for so long, you didn’t have medical correctives. Those have saved lives, Sovereign. And we’ve brought other things.” Including weapons the Gidanta didn’t have. “Including our own knowledge of terraforming, and how to best manage a planet.”

  “And you agreed, your own mother, the great Ciwril Xidyla agreed, that no one would settle on the planet without authorization from the Terraforming Council! And yet there are dozens of Raksamat farmsteads just in the Saunn foothills, and more elsewhere.”

  “That wasn’t the agreement. The treaty explicitly states that we have a right to be here, and a right to share in the benefits of living on this planet. Your own grandmother agreed to that! And small farmsteads are much better for the planet than the cities the Terraforming Council is intending.” Wind gusted, and a few fat drops of rain fell.

  “My grandmother agreed to nothing! It was the gods-cursed interpreter who made the agreement. And he was appointed by the Terraforming Council, just like all of them! And how dare you turn up here after we’ve done all the hard work and think because you brought us some technology you can tell us what to do with our planet!”

  “How can you own a planet? You can’t, it’s ridiculous! There’s more than enough room for all of us.”

  “I’ve memorized it, you know,” said the Sovereign. “The entire agreement. It’s not that long. Settlement will only proceed according to the current consensus regarding the good of the planet. That’s what it says, right there in the second paragraph.”

  Ashiban knew that sentence by heart. Everyone knew that sentence by now. Arguments over what current consensus regarding the good of the planet might mean were inescapable—and generally, in Ashiban’s opinion, made in bad faith. The words were clear enough. “There’s nothing about the Terraforming Council in that sentence.” Like most off-planet Raksamat, Ashiban didn’t speak the language of the Gidanta. But—also like most off-planet Raksamat— she had a few words and phrases, and she knew the Gidantan for Terraforming Council. Had heard the girl speak the sentence, knew there was no mention of the council.