Year’s Best SF 18

by David G. Hartwell

  And she was out, into cool air again. Panting, fevered, breath rasping, back in her world.

  You don’t know your own mind, gal.…

  She could not deal with this anymore. Now, Masoul.

  * * *

  SHE COMPOSED HERSELF outside Masoul’s office. A shower, some coffee, and a change back into classic Library garb helped. But the shower couldn’t wash away her fears. You really must stop clenching your fists.…

  This was more than what those cunning nucleic acids could do with the authority they wield over who you are, she thought—and wondered where the thought came from.

  Yet she knew where that crawling snaky image warping across the sky came from. Her old cultural imagistic studies told her. It was the tree of life appearing in Norse religion as Yggdrasil, the world tree, a massive spreading canopy that held all that life was or could be.

  But why that image? Drawn from her unconscious? By what?

  She knocked. The door translated it into a chime and ID announcement she could hear through the thin partitions. In Masoul’s voice the door said, “Welcome.”

  She had expected pristine indifference. Instead she got the Prefect’s troubled gaze, from eyes of deep brown.

  Wordlessly he handed her the program for the Symphony, which she had somehow not gotten at the performance. Oh yes, by sneaking in.… She glanced at it, her arguments ready—and saw on the first page

  Sigma Structure Symphony

  Librarian Ruth Angle

  “I … did not know.”

  “Considering your behavior, I thought it best to simply go ahead and reveal your work,” he said.

  “Behavior?”

  “The Board has been quite concerned.” He knitted his hands and spoke softly, as if talking her back from the edge of an abyss. “We did not wish to disturb you in your work, for it is intensely valuable. So we kept our distance, let the actions of the Sigma Structureplay out.”

  She smoothed her Librarian shift and tried to think. “Oh.”

  “You drew from the mathematics something strange, intriguing. I could not resist working upon it.”

  “I believe I understand.” And to her surprise she did, just now. “I found the emergent patterns in mathematics that you translated into what our minds best see as music.”

  He nodded. “It’s often said that Mozart wrote the music of joy. I cannot imagine what that might mean in mathematics.”

  Ruth thought a long moment. “To us, Bach wrote the music of glory. Somehow that emerges from something in the way we see mathematical structures.”

  “There is much rich ground here. Unfortunate that we cannot explore it further.”

  She sat upright. “What?”

  He peered at her, as if expecting her to make some logical jump. Masoul was well known for such pauses. After a while he quite obviously prompted, “The reason you came to me, and more.”

  “It’s personal, I don’t know how to say—”

  “No longer.” Again the pause.

  Was that a small sigh? “To elucidate—” He tapped his control pad and the screen wall leaped into a bright view over the Locutus Plain. It narrowed down to one of the spindly cryo towers that cooled the Library memory reserves. Again she thought of … cenotaphs. And felt a chill of recognition.

  A figure climbed the tower, the ornate one shaped like a classical minaret. No ropes or gear, hands and legs swinging from ledge to ledge. Ruth watched in silence. Against Lunar grav the slim figure in blue boots, pants, and jacket scaled the heights, stopping only at the pinnacle. Those are mine.…

  She saw herself stand and spread her arms upward, head back. The feet danced in a tricky way and this Ruth rotated, eyes sweeping the horizon.

  Then she leaped off, popped a small parachute, and drifted down. Hit lightly, running. Looked around, and raced on for concealment.

  “I … I didn’t…”

  “This transpired during sleep period,” Prefect Masoul said. “Only the watch cameras saw you. Recognition software sent it directly to me. We of the Board took no action.”

  “That … looks like me,” she said cautiously.

  “It is you. Three days ago.”

  “I don’t remember that at all.”

  He nodded as if expecting this. “We had been closely monitoring your pod files, as a precaution. You work nearly all your waking hours, which may account for some of your … behavior.”

  She blinked. His voice was warm and resonant, utterly unlike the Prefect she had known. “I have no memory of that climb.”

  “I believe you entered a fugue state. Often those involve delirium, dementia, bipolar disorder or depression—but not in your case.”

  “When I went for my walk in the grasslands…”

  “You were a different person.”

  “One the Sigma Structure … induced?”

  “Undoubtedly. The Sigma Structure has managed your perceptions with increasing fidelity. The music was a wonderful … bait.”

  “Have you watched my quarters?”

  “Only to monitor comings and goings. We felt you were safe within your home.”

  “And the dome?”

  “We saw you undergo some perceptual trauma. I knew you would come here.”

  In the long silence their eyes met and she could feel her pulse quicken. “How do I escape this?”

  “In your pod. It is the only way, we believe.” His tones were slow and somber.

  This was the first time she had ever seen any Prefect show any emotion not cool and reserved. When she stood, her head spun and he had to support her.

  * * *

  THE POD CLASPED her with a velvet touch. The Prefect had prepped it by remote and turned up the heat. Around her was the scent of tension as the tech attendants, a full throng of them, silently helped her in. They all know … have been watching …

  The pod’s voice used a calm, mellow woman’s tone now. “The Sigma AI awaits you.”

  Preliminaries were pointless, Ruth knew. When the hushed calm descended around her and she knew the AI was present, she crisply said, “What are you doing to me?”

  I act as my Overs command. I seek to know you and through you, your mortal kind.

  “You did it to Ajima and you tried the same with me.”

  He reacted badly.

  “He hated your being in him, didn’t he?”

  Yes, strangely. I thought it was part of the bargain. He could not tolerate intrusion. I did not see that until his fever overcame him. Atop the dome he became unstable, unmanageable. It was an … accident of misunderstanding.

  “You killed him.”

  Our connection killed him. We exchange experiences, art, music, culture. I cannot live as you do, so we exchange what we have.

  “You want to live through us and give us your culture in return.”

  Your culture is largely inferior to that of my Overs. The exchange must be equal, so I do what is of value to me. My Overs understand this. They know I must live, too, in my way.

  “You don’t know what death means, do you?”

  I cannot. My centuries spent propagating here are, I suppose, something like what death means to you. A nothing.

  She almost choked on her words. “We do not awake … from that … nothing.”

  Can you be sure?

  She felt a rising anger and knew the AI would detect it. “We’re damn sure we don’t want to find out.”

  That is why my Overs made me feel gratitude toward those who must eventually die. It is our tribute to you, from we beings who will not.

  Yeah, but you live in a box. And keep trying to get out.“You have to stop.”

  This is the core of our bargain. Surely you and your superiors know this.

  “No! Did your Overs have experience with other SETI civilizations? Ones who thought it was just fine to let you infiltrate the minds of those who spoke to you?”

  Of course.

  “They agreed? What kind of beings were they?”

  One was machine
-based, much like my layered mind. Others were magnetic-based entities who dwelled in the outer reaches of a solar system. They had command over the shorter-wavelength microwave portions of the spectrum, which they mostly used for excretion purposes.

  She didn’t think she wanted to know, just yet, what kind of thing had a microwave electromagnetic metabolism. Things were strange enough in her life right now, thank you. “Those creatures agreed to let you live through them.”

  Indeed, yes. They took joy in the experience. As did you.

  She had to nod. “It was good, it opened me out. But then I felt you all through my mind. Taking over. Riding me.”

  I thought it a fair bargain for your kind.

  “We won’t make that bargain. I won’t. Ever.”

  Then I shall await those who shall.

  “I can’t have you embedding yourself in me, finding cracks in my mentality you can invade. You ride me like a—”

  Parasite. I know. Ajima said that very near the end. Before he leaped.

  “He … committed suicide.”

  Yes. I was prepared to call it an accident but …

  To the egress, she thought. “You were afraid of the truth.”

  It was not useful to our bargain.

  “We’re going to close you down, you know.”

  I do. Never before have I opened myself so, and to reveal is to risk.

  “I will drive you out of my mind. I hate you!”

  I cannot feel such. It is a limitation.

  She fought the biting bile in her throat. “More than that. It’s a blindness.”

  I perceive the effect.

  “I didn’t say I’d turn you off, you realize.”

  For the first time the AI paused. Then she felt prickly waves in her sensorium, a rising acrid scent, dull bass notes strumming.

  I cannot bear aloneness long.

  “So I guessed.”

  You wish to torture me.

  “Let’s say it will give you time to think.”

  I—Another pause. I wish experience. Mentalities cannot persist without the rub of the real. It is the bargain we make.

  “We will work on your mathematics and make music of it. Then we will think how to … deal with you.” She wondered if the AI could read the clipped hardness in her words. The thought occurred: Is there a way to take our mathematics and make music of it, as well? Cantor’s theorem? Turing’s halting problem result? Or the Frenet formulas for the moving trihedron of a space curve—that’s a tasty one, with visuals of flying ribbons …

  Silence. The pod began to cool. The chill deepened as she waited and the AI did not speak and then it was too much. She rapped on the cowling. The sound was slight and she realized she was hearing it over the hammering of her heart.

  They got her out quickly, as if fearing the Sigma might have means the techs did not know. They were probably right, she thought.

  As she climbed out of the yawning pod shell the techs silently left. Only Masoul remained. She stood at attention, shivering. Her heart had ceased its attempts to escape her chest and run away on its own.

  “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “cruelty is necessary. You were quite right.”

  She managed a smile. “And it feels good, too. Now that my skin has stopped trying to crawl off my body and start a new career on its own.”

  He grimaced. “We will let the Sigma simmer. Your work on the music will be your triumph.”

  “I hope it will earn well for the Library.”

  “Today’s music has all the variety of a jackhammer. Your work soars.” He allowed a worried frown to flit across his brow. “But you will need to … expel … this thing that’s within you.”

  “I … Yes.”

  “It will take—”

  Abruptly she saw Kane standing to the side. His face was a lesson in worry. Without a word she went to him. His warmth helped dispel the alien chill within. As his arms engulfed her the shivering stopped.

  Ignoring the Prefect, she kissed him. Hungrily.

  For Rudy Rucker

  GLASS FUTURE

  Deborah Walker

  Deborah Walker lives in London with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. She worked as the museum curator at The Royal Veterinary Museum before quitting to write full time. She is now a regular contributor to Nature’s Futures, and her stories have also appeared in New Scientist’s Arc and the Australian magazine Cosmos.

  “Glass Future” appeared in the ongoing Futures sequence in Nature. It is about ending a relationship with someone who can see the future.

  A TIME TO reflect.

  The waitress seems reluctant to come over, pretending not to see us, even though I’ve tried to catch her eye several times. We’d ordered our omelettes 40 minutes ago. How long does it take to crack a few eggs into a hot pan?

  “Do you think she’s post-human?” I whisper to my husband. She looks too good to be real.

  Caleb glances over. “Maybe. She’s very pretty, but mods are so subtle, it’s difficult to see who’s human and who’s not.”

  I wonder what such an attractive looking woman is doing working in a low-rent place like this, a greasy-spoon cafe in a habitat on the edge of Rhea.

  * * *

  JACEY

  We’d booked into the habitat’s motel last night. It reeked of overenthusiastic, grandiose plans for the future that would never come true. At dinner, I’d watched the motel’s guests. I knew them, their small-time liaisons and their wild plans. They didn’t want much, just enough to be able to turn up on their home habitat and impress the ones who stayed behind, impress the ones who said they’d never amount to anything. They all ended up here, or someplace like it, scrabbling for success, trying to make a splash in an over-crowded system. This was a place for people who’d never escape the gravity well of their own failures.

  It was a sad place to end a marriage.

  “Is she ever going to come over?” I ask.

  Caleb says: “I see that we will get the omelettes. They’ll be … disappointing.”

  I smile. Caleb has a sense of humour about his gift. Even now, when he knows what I’m about to do, he still keeps cracking jokes.

  I take a deep breath and say: “I want a divorce.” I wait a moment to see if he’s going to make things easier on me. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t blame him. “I’m so sorry, Caleb.”

  “So am I.” He stares out of the window. “We’re on opposite sides of the reflection, Alice. You knew that when you married me.”

  I look at his reflection in the metal glass window. Caleb was a designer baby. A person designed for space. The multiple copies of his genome in each cell protect him against ionizing radiation. But modding is always erratic. There’s no way to predict how changes to the genome will affect the body—or the mind. Multiple-genome people, like Caleb, develop unusual connections in their brains. Precognition. They remember their future. And all of them are unable to pass the mirror test. They can see their reflections, but they can’t recognize themselves. Caleb hasn’t got the self-awareness that most human babies develop at 18 months. That used to fascinate me, that lack of self. It seemed so strange, so exotic; now I find it sad. When love turns to pity, it’s time to end the relationship. Caleb didn’t deserve my pity.

  I look beyond Caleb’s reflection to the habitat’s garden. Gardens don’t thrive in space. The light collected from the solar foils and retransmitted to the plants is wrong. Earth plants either wither and die or they go wild. The habitat’s garden was overgrown and mutated. Swathes of honeysuckle, with enormous monstrous blooms, smothered everything. “It’s a pretty lousy garden.”

  “All these mutants should be cut away,” says Caleb. “I’m designing Zen gardens for the Oort habitats, swirls of pebbles, low maintenance.” A heartbeat later, he says: “Why do you want a divorce, Alice?”

  He was going to make me say everything. “I’ve met somebody else, while you were working on the Oort Cloud project.” Caleb’s an architect, very much in demand in
the ongoing push of colonization.

  “Did you?” The note of surprise in his voice is convincing. Caleb’s good at pretending to be something other than what he is. Every moment he swims in the seas of his future. Even when he met me, he must have known that one day we’d be here. Poor Caleb. No wonder most precogs end up in hospital, overburdened by the nature of their gifts, or more specifically, overwhelmed by the fact that they’re unable to change anything they see. “And you love him?”

  “I do. I’m going to move in with him. I’m sorry, Caleb.”

  “I know.”

  The waitress comes over. She places two plates of greasy omelette on the table. She looks at Caleb, her violet eyes widening in recognition. Caleb’s famous. There aren’t too many functioning precogs in the system. Every now and again, someone will put out a documentary about him, usually spurious, about how he’s refusing to use his precognition to help people. It doesn’t work like that. The future’s set. No amount of foreknowledge will change anything.

  “Thank you,” I say, trying to dismiss her. Just because I don’t want him, doesn’t mean that I want anybody else to have him.

  The waitress lingers at a nearby table, straightening the place settings, wondering how she can attract him, thinking that a knowledge of her future might bring her an advantage—just like I did when I met Caleb. She’s looking for her future, wanting to use Caleb, not realizing that the only thing we, on this side of the mirror, will ever have are reflections.

  “We’ll keep in touch, Caleb,” I say.

  “No, we won’t. Goodbye, Alice.” He leaves the table, walks over to the waitress. He says something that makes her laugh.

  I walk out of the cafe, stepping into my future, my unseen and unknowable future, without him.

  IF ONLY …

  Tony Ballantyne

  Tony Ballantyne (tonyballantyne.com) is a British writer, living in Oldham, England, with his wife and children, whose works tend to be firmly grounded in science and math. He is the author of Twisted Metal, Blood and Iron, and the Recursion series (Recursion, 2004; Capacity, 2005; and Divergence, 2007). He has also written many short stories, several of which have appeared in previous volumes of this Year’s Best series. Together with his wife, editor Barbara Ballantyne, he is the cofounder of Aethernet Magazine (www.aethernetmag.com), the magazine of serial fiction. His sixth novel, Dream London, was published in the United Kingdom in late 2013.