The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual

by Gardner Dozois

  The bus had three sections—a separate cab where the driver was safe from the passengers, important for this ride, followed by two individual sections, each with forty-eight seats. They’d be shoving sixty to seventy men in each.

  Someone bumped into him, then someone else bumped them both. Bodies pressed close, the cumulative odor of sweat and bad breath and stale lunch was almost overwhelming. Guards yelled, “Get in, get back from the door!” as they physically packed the last few men on board. It felt like a grotesque game of musical chairs, with cursing for music and metal benches for chairs. The door snapped shut, stayed shut even as men pushed back. Through the window, Max saw guards herd more men into the second compartment.

  A hand snaked through the bodies and grabbed hold of Max. Max twisted, tried to tug free, but it only had the effect of reeling the man to him.

  “Hey, it’s me, Vasily.”

  “I don’t really need a guard any more,” Max said.

  “The front doors are locked.”

  “And the back doors and the compartment door.”

  “What are we going to do?” Vasily said. “You’re a senior political officer—”

  “Sh, sh, sh,” Max said, squeezing a hand up in Vasily’s face to make him shut up.

  “Nikomedes—that’s it!” a voice said from the bench beside them. The major from the van. His cheek was bruised, his lip swollen, where he’d been hit in the face. “I knew I knew you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said.

  “Major Benjamin Georgiev,” the man said, squeezing over on the bench, making room for Max. “I served aboard the Jericho with you, years ago.”

  “You were the radio tech,” Max said, sitting, recalling the name once it was matched to the ship. Another chance to keep a low profile, remain invisible, slipped away. The bus lurched into motion, throwing everyone off balance, raising a chorus of curses. “I thought you were regular service.”

  “Transferred. Got inspired by the spirit of the revolution to join Education.” Georgiev’s eyes surveyed the bus. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “You two,” Vasily interrupted. “You know how to get out of this, right?”

  Georgiev ignored Vasily. “Killing those Adareans, that was a mistake,” he said to Max. “That’ll bring down the power of Adares, first with political pressure, then with force.”

  “Maybe,” Max answered. “But Intelligence can get away with killing Adareans during the first throes of the purge. They’ll blame it on runaway elements, punish some token low-level grunts, execute someone prominent, then appease the Adareans later.”

  “I doubt it’ll stop there—it never does. Did you ever hear the one about the secret police?” Georgiev asked.

  “Probably,” Max said. Vasily asked, “Which one?”

  Georgiev lifted his head toward Vasily. “The secret police came for the Adareans and no one tried to stop them, so they took the Adareans away.”

  Max recognized the old chestnut; Vasily said, “Yeah?”

  “Then the secret police came for the unchristians and no one tried to stop them, so all the uns were taken away. Then the secret police came for the sinners—the fornicators, the secret body polluters, the users of forbidden technology—and no one tried to stop them.”

  “So they took the sinners away,” Vasily finished.

  “Right,” Georgiev said. “Finally the secret police came for honest men like you and me.”

  Max finished the joke. “And there was no one left to stop them.”

  “No,” Georgiev said. “When they came for me, I said, ‘Welcome, brother. Isn’t it good to be the secret police?’”

  After a pause, Vasily chuckled. The bus braked hard, throwing them back in their seats, then sped up again.

  A young man with a soft chin leaned in from the bench beside them. “I heard you guys talking. You know, that guy they shot at the gate—”

  “The accountant?” Georgiev asked. “He told me he was an accountant.”

  “No he wasn’t, that’s what I’m saying.” He jerked his thumb down the aisle. “Guy back there says he recognized him as an actor. It was all staged. Guy got up and walked away while we were getting on the bus.”

  “Not walked,” interrupted another kid hanging from an overhead rack. “There were two guys, one on either side of him, helping him, made it look like they were dragging him, but you could tell he was faking it.”

  “See, they’re just trying to scare us,” the first kid said. He laughed, like he wasn’t fooled.

  “Well, it’s working,” Vasily said, rubbing his throat, where his cross would’ve been. “I’m scared.”

  “The Adareans, that was fake too,” Max said. “Really great bunch of actors.”

  The kid sitting down, the one with the soft chin, looked away and didn’t say anything. But the one hanging from the strap said, “Yeah, the whole thing is a big scam. I hear Mallove and Drozhin worked it out together, plan to combine the two departments. Mallove’s going to take over as soon as Drozhin’s dead.”

  The pitch of conversation rose around them, a dozen variations of the same stories being told, repeated, and invented. Their small group sat quietly for a second.

  Max coughed. “Did you ever hear the one that goes, how can you tell when a rumor about Drozhin is true?”

  Major Georgiev stared at Max, his face carefully blank. The two kids waited for the answer. Finally, Vasily said, “How?”

  Max aimed his finger like a gun at the other man’s head. “‘What did you just say?’”

  Georgiev smirked and the kids chuckled nervously. Max leaned back, closed his eyes, ignored the press of bodies. His day had started as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contact in Intelligence. His day ended as a prisoner, waiting to hear from his contacts in Intelligence. Nothing had changed. But then he thought about the distance from the Adarean baptism at the execution that morning to the brutal murder of the Adareans in the park, and it felt as if everything had changed.

  As he listened to the sound of the wheels, all he could think of was the roar of the mower bladers as the tractor rolled toward the Adareans trapped in the pit.

  ______

  “Wake up, Nikomedes.” A hand shook him.

  Before he was completely awake, Max deflected the hand and turned the wrist. He snapped alert quick enough to stop before he broke it. Major Georgiev bent over him. “What?”

  “We’re passing through the outskirts of Lost Angeles—it’s night, the city’s big enough to hide most of us.”

  “What’s the plan? There are bars welded on the windows, and the doors are locked.” He’d watched younger men waste themselves for hours trying to find a way out, everything from tearing through the panels to breaking windows. One of them had been cut badly on broken glass. Wind whistled through the broken windows; combined with the night temperatures, it would have chilled the ride to the point of hypothermia if not for the warmth of the bodies jammed together.

  “We’re going to rock the bus, tip it over,” Georgiev said. “I could use your help organizing these kids.”

  Max straightened in his seat. “Tipping the bus—that will get us out how?”

  “They’ll have to empty the bus then. We’ll overpower them, make a break for it.”

  “You’re on your own.” He leaned back again.

  “To think that I was ever inspired by you,” Georgiev sneered. “You’re a coward.”

  And you’re a fool, Max wanted to respond. He had nothing against escape, but suicide? “Don’t play into their hands.”

  “This morning,” Georgiev said, looking around, “we were all part of an organization, each of us knowing our role and function. Tonight we are starving, thirsty outcasts, deprived of basic necessities. But we’re still men, we have to do something.”

  There were murmurs of “amen” and “witness” from the men around them.

  “Don’t you think Intelligence’s purpose is to reduce and dispirit us?” Max asked.

  �
��Yes, but—”

  “So what do you think they’ll do to anyone who goes against their intentions early on?” Max asked. “What would your response be? To anyone who tries to lead?”

  Georgiev said nothing.

  “You would destroy the ring leaders as an example,” Max said, answering his own question. “And first you would create a situation where you expect people to step up, just so you can make examples of them. It’s what I would do.”

  “I’m not you,” Georgiev said. “And I believe this is all a mistake. Those are our fellow soldiers out there, our brothers and cousins. If we force them to pay attention to us, they’ll listen. And if they don’t, we’ll overwhelm them.”

  Murmurs of “yeah” and “they have to listen.”

  “You’ve been hit in the face and burned and you still say that?” Max said, leaning back in his seat. “We save ourselves. No purge lasts forever.”

  “You’re pathetic,” Georgiev said and turned away.

  Vasily, hand at the invisible cross at his throat, stared at Max, shook his head, and followed Georgiev.

  Georgiev had no trouble organizing the men: he was the senior officer on board and soldiers were trained to love a hierarchy, taught to do something instead of nothing. After explaining his plan to tip the bus, he said, “All right, on the count of three, we all throw ourselves to starboard. Is that clear? One! Two!”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” cried one voice, and then others said, “Stop,” and Georgiev yelled, “Wait, stop!”

  The compartment was dark, but lights outside rolled front to back, front to back, illuminating puzzled faces. Finally, someone said, “Which side’s starboard?”

  Max smirked. Most of the men had only served groundside.

  Georgiev rattled the locked door. “The doors are port, the other side is starboard. We want to tip over to starboard, so we can climb out the doors on top.”

  Murmurs of “got it” and “all right” were followed by Georgiev resuming the count. Max braced his feet on the floor and grabbed hold of the bench.

  On three the mob of men surged toward the starboard side. The bus rocked—about as much as it did when it hit a bad pothole.

  “That was pretty effective,” Max said, but Georgiev was shouting out encouragement and instructions: “All right, that was a good first try. Let’s all squeeze over to port, to the door side, and do it again.”

  Men crushed Max against the side. He smelled urine mixed in with all the other lockerroom odors.

  “Three!”

  This time the men yelled as they surged to the other side.

  This time there was a noticeable rock.

  “Good work, men,” Georgiev shouted. “Now we’re going to rock it back and forth. As soon as we hit port side, the door side over here”—he leaned over and banged the door—“I want you all to run back to starboard, over here. Got it?”

  Mumbles of “got it” and “yes, sir.”

  “What? I can’t hear you!”

  “YES, SIR!”

  On three, they all shouted and threw themselves at the port side. Max brought up his arm to cover his head. This time the bus rocked again, though no more than it would be by the wind coming off the escarpment this time of year.

  “Starboard!” Georgiev ordered, and with a roar, they immediately threw themselves at the other side. Several men tumbled to the floor in the dark, but despite the blindness and swearing, the rock on the other side was bigger.

  Georgiev got them cheering and clapping for themselves, then set up a rhythm, charging one side, then the other. As Max persisted in staying in his seat, knees and elbows hit him with every rush, even though he pulled his legs up on the seat. He deflected some blows, braced and took the others.

  “Come on,” Vasily shouted, all excited.

  Pounding from the compartment behind them led to a shouted exchange of plans. On the first combined rush, the two compartments ran toward different sides, cancelling each other’s efforts. One of the young men leaned up against the back wall, and yelled, “Starboard, you morons, starboard!”

  “Hurry,” Georgiev shouted. “We’re almost through Lost Angeles!”

  Renewed effort in both cars quickly led to rocking until the bus tipped up, wheels off the ground. As it swerved suddenly on the road, bouncing down again, the men fell silent, all but two or three forgetting to finish the charge back to the other side.

  “That’s it, we can do it!” Georgiev shouted. “Come on, get up, let’s start over!”

  The men were so absorbed in rocking the bus that only Max noticed it slowing or saw the headlights of the dustskimmers outside. The bus braked to a stop as a row of floodlights cut through the barred windows, freezing the unshaven, sunken-eyed faces of Max’s fellow prisoners in a harsh light.

  Guards ran over, the locks clattered to the pavement, and the door flew open. “Congratulations, that’s an impressive effort, good work, men,” the guard said. “Who’s the senior officer here?”

  Georgiev squinted as he squeezed forward through the men. “Major Benjamin Georgiev, enlisted regular service in six-four. What we’d like—”

  The guard shot him, discharging enough bolt to knock down two men beside him and pimple the hairs on Max’s arms a couple seat rows back. One of the kids shouted, tried to rush the guard, but the blue crackle from the gun just missed his head as the men near him dragged him to the floor.

  Angry shouts from the second compartment were silenced by the sound of broken windows and a barrage of fire.

  “Do we have another senior officer in here?” the guard asked. Vasily and a couple others looked toward Max, but he shook his head.

  “Do we have someone else in charge?” the guard asked. When no one spoke, he said, “Good, because I’m a big believer in individual responsibility, and if anything else happens, I will hold each and every one of you individually responsible. Do I make myself clear?”

  He grabbed Georgiev by the back of his shirt and dragged his body, face first, down the steps and outside. Other guards, nervous, guns up, shut and locked the doors again.

  Vasily slumped down in the seat beside Max, his face a pale mask of disbelief and despair.

  “Don’t worry,” Max said. “Georgiev is probably just faking it.”

  The bus started rolling again, this time the skimmers flanking it in clear view. The city shrank behind them, and in moments, dust and grit came through the window, getting in Max’s eyes and under his tongue. Elsewhere in the darkened bus, someone coughed. A couple others whispered that they should have prepared weapons from the broken glass and jumped the guard. Retrospect always gave you a better plan.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw one of the kids stand up toward the side of the bus and unzip his pants to relieve himself.

  “You might want to save that for drinking later,” Max shouted. Some of the men around them laughed; some didn’t.

  “I got nothing to save it in,” the kid shouted back, which was true. “You want to come over, use it like a drinking fountain?”

  Max smiled, and his lips cracked. “Nah, don’t think I want to touch that handle.”

  Beside him, Vasily rubbed his throat. “I would do anything right now for a bathroom,” he whispered. “Hell, I’d personally murder Mallove for something to eat or some water to drink.”

  Max’s own throat was parched and his stomach had been growling for hours. With a glance around, he unrolled the stolen fruitein bar from the waist of his pants. He tried to tear it open with his hands, couldn’t, ripped it open with his teeth. After breaking the bar in half, he said, “Sh,” and pressed half into Vasily’s palm.

  “What? What’s—”

  “Sh!” Then softly, Max added, “Eat it slow.”

  He saw the blue shadow of Vasily’s hand shove the whole thing into his mouth. He tried to chew it slowly, but swallowed before Max ate his first small piece.

  “Is there more?” Vasily whispered.

  “No, that’s all.”

  L
ater, while Max finished the last piece of the bar, Vasily asked, “Why did you share it?”

  “Because where we’re going, I’ll need friends more than I need food right now. Can we look out for each other?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Vasily whispered. “Whatever you need, whatever I can do, I’m the man.”

  Max nodded, as if a contract had been signed, and Vasily dipped his head in return. Such a slight gesture in the dark. Vasily’s stomach rumbled and he crossed his hands over it. As the bus rolled on through the dark, Max searched his lap for crumbs, licking them off his finger, one by one. Wind coursed over the flatlands and through the broken windows, carrying a hint of salt and moisture.

  All that was missing was the smell of compost and blood to complete the reclamation camp stink. As a political officer, he’d visited them more than once.

  Men around him shifted, tried to sleep, but Max stared straight ahead into the rushing night.

  Sunrise, harsh and unrelenting, cast brightness on their squalor even through the unbroken, tinted windows. The bus smelled of urine, shit, and sweat. Get used to it, Max told himself. His back ached and his legs were stiff from too many hours in the unyielding seat. In one corner, someone sobbed.

  “That’s Machete Ridge,” Max said, pointing to a sharp line on the horizon. Vasily leaned across Max to look. “Do you see that bump, up there beside the road?” Max asked.

  “That’s the reclamation camp,” Vasily said.

  “That’s Faraway Farms. It used to be a reclamation camp.” Twenty years ago, Faraway Farms was the end of the line. Now it was just one more extension settlement on the coast, a few thousand people occupying rows of low brown buildings built around a series of narrow field-ponds.

  “Maybe we’ll stop here,” Vasily suggested.

  “Be wary of hope,” Max warned quietly. “It’d be too hard to guard everyone here. Too many other people, too much access to boats and skimmers.”

  Still, an hour later, when the bus pulled over to the fresh water cisterns outside of Faraway, even Max had to fight against hope.

  When he saw the guards hooking up a fire hose, he gave up hope and clawed his way over the benches to reach one of the open windows first. For a few blissful seconds, Max’s face was drenched as he opened his throat to gulp down the blast of water. Then he was fighting the weight of men on his back, crushing him for a drink. He was saved when the hose moved along to another window and the mass of bodies tumbled over the seatbacks after it. Everyone got at least a trickle of water, all except for two men too sick, or weak, to move, who lay moaning at the front end of the car. Max thought they were the ones caught by the shot that killed Georgiev. Men stretched their arms through the bars, begging for more, as the guards moved to the next car.