The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual

by Gardner Dozois

  “But Grandmother—”

  “I promise I’ll come back for Grandmother Zita,” she said.

  “And my book,” he said. “It’s still in the basement.”

  All along Infinite Progress Avenue, families spilled out of buildings carrying bundles of clothes and plastic jugs, pushing wheelchairs and shopping carts loaded with canned food, TV sets, photo albums. Elena grabbed tight to Matti’s arm and joined the exodus north.

  After an hour they’d covered only ten blocks. The street had narrowed as they left the residential district, condensing the stream of people into a herd, then a single shuffling animal. Explosions and gunfire continued to sound from behind them and the sky still flashed with parti-colored lightning. No one glanced back.

  The surrounding bodies provided Elena and Matti with some protection against the cold, though frigid channels of night air randomly opened through the crowd. Matti’s vision still hadn’t returned; he saw nothing but the yellow light of the U-Man. He told her his skin still felt hot, but he trembled as if he were cold. Once he stopped suddenly and threw up into the street. The crowd behind bumped into them, forcing them to keep moving.

  One of their fellow refugees gave Matti a blanket. He pulled it onto his shoulders like a cape but it kept slipping as he walked, tripping him up. The boy hadn’t cried since they’d started walking, hadn’t complained—he’d even stopped asking about Grandmother Zita—but Elena still couldn’t stop herself from being annoyed with him. He stumbled again and she yanked the blanket from him. “For God’s sake, Mattias,” she said. “If you can’t hold onto it—” She drew up short. The black-coated women in front of them had suddenly stopped.

  Shouts went up from somewhere ahead, and then the crowd surged backward. Elena recognized the escalating whine of an auto-cannon coming up to speed.

  Elena pulled Matti up onto her chest and he yelped in surprise or pain. The boy was heavy and awkward; she locked her hands under his buttocks and shoved toward the crowd’s edge, aiming for the mouth of an alley. The crowd buffeted her, knocked her off course. She came up hard against the plate glass window of a shop.

  A Slaybot 3000 lumbered through the crowd, knocking people aside. Its gun arm, a huge thing like a barrel of steel pipes, jerked from figure to figure, targeting automatically. A uniformed technician sat in the jumpseat on the robot’s back, gesturing frantically and shouting, “Out of the way! Out of the way!” It was impossible to tell whether he’d lost control or was deliberately marching through the crowd.

  The mass of figures had almost certainly overwhelmed the robot’s vision and recognition processors. The 3000 model, like its predecessors, had difficulty telling friend from foe even in the spare environment of the factory QA room.

  The gun arm pivoted toward her: six black mouths. Then the carousel began to spin and the barrels blurred, became one vast maw.

  Elena felt her gut go cold. She ached to disappear, and would have sunk to the ground, but the mob held her upright, pinned. She twisted to place at least part of her body between the robot and Matti. The glass at her shoulder trembled, began to bow.

  For a moment she saw both sides of the glass. Inside the dimly lit shop were two rows of blank white faces, a choir of eyeless women regarding her. And in the window’s reflection she saw her own face, and above that, a streak of light like a falling star. The UM flew toward them from the west, moving incredibly fast.

  The robot’s gun fired even as it flicked upward to acquire the new target.

  The glass shattered. The mass of people on the street beside her seemed to disintegrate into blood and cloth tatters. A moment later she registered the sound of the gun, a thunderous ba-rap! The crowd pulsed away from her, releasing its pressure, and she collapsed to the ground.

  The slaybot broke into a clumsy stomping run, its gun ripping at the air.

  Matti had rolled away from her. Elena touched his shoulder, turned him over. His eyes were open, but unmoving, glassy.

  The air seemed to freeze. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move her hand from him.

  He blinked. Then he began to scream.

  Elena got to her knees. Her left hand was bloody and freckled with glass; her fingers glistened. Each movement triggered the prick of a thousand tiny needles. Matti screamed and screamed.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m right here.”

  She talked to him for almost a minute before he calmed down enough to stop screaming.

  The window was gone, the shop door blown open. The window case was filled with foam heads on posts, some with wigs askew, others tipped over and bald. She got Matti to take her hand—her good hand—and led him toward the doorway. She was thankful that he could not see the things they stepped over.

  Inside, arms and legs of all sizes hung from straps on the walls. Trays of dentures sat out on the countertops. A score of heads sported hairstyles old-fashioned even by Trovenian standards. There were several such shops across the city. Decent business in a land of amputees.

  Elena’s face had begun to burn. She walked Matti through the dark, kicking aside prosthetic limbs, and found a tiny bathroom at the back of the shop. She pulled on the chain to the fluorescent light and was surprised when it flickered to life.

  This was her first good look at Matti’s face. The skin was bright red, puffy and raw looking—a second-degree burn at least.

  She guided the boy to the sink and helped him drink from the tap. It was the only thing she could think of to do for him. Then she helped him sit on the floor just outside the bathroom door.

  She could no longer avoid looking in the mirror.

  The shattering glass had turned half of her face into a speckled red mask. She ran her hands under the water, not daring to scrub, and then splashed water on her face. She dabbed at her cheek and jaw with the tail of her shirt but the blood continued to weep through a peppering of cuts. She looked like a cartoon in Matti’s Lord Grimm book, the coloring accomplished by tiny dots.

  She reached into her jacket and took out the leather work gloves she’d stuffed there when she emptied her locker. She pulled one onto her wounded hand, stifling the urge to shout.

  “Hello?” Matti said.

  She turned, alarmed. Matti wasn’t talking to her. His face was turned toward the hallway.

  Elena stepped out. A few feet away were the base of a set of stairs that led up into the back of the building. A man stood on the first landing, pointing an ancient rifle at the boy. His jaw was flesh-toned plastic, held in place by an arrangement of leather straps and mechanical springs. A woman with outrageously golden hair stood higher on the stairs, leaning around the corner to look over the man’s shoulder.

  The man’s jaw clacked and he gestured with the gun. “Go. Get along,” he said. The syllables were distorted.

  “They’re hurt,” the wigged woman said.

  The man did not quite shake his head. Of course they’re hurt, he seemed to say. Everyone’s hurt. It’s the national condition.

  “We didn’t mean to break in,” Elena said. She held up her hands. “We’re going.” She glanced back into the showroom. Outside the smashed window, the street was still packed, and no one seemed to be moving.

  “The bridge is out,” the man said. He meant the Prince’s Bridge, the only paved bridge that crossed the river. No wonder then that the crowd was moving so slowly.

  “They’re taking the wounded to the mill,” the woman said. “Then trying to get them out of the city by the foot bridges.”

  “What mill?” Elena asked.

  The wigged woman wouldn’t take them herself, but did give directions. “Go out the back,” she said.

  The millrace had dried out and the mill had been abandoned fifty years ago, but its musty, barn-like interior still smelled of grain. Its rooms were already crowded with injured soldiers and citizens.

  Elena found a spot for Matti on a bench inside the building and told him not to move. She went from room to room asking if anyone had aspirin
, antibiotic cream, anything to help the boy. She soon stopped asking. There didn’t seem to be any doctors or nurses at the mill, only the wounded helping the more severely wounded, and no medicines to be found. This wasn’t a medical clinic, or even a triage center. It was a way station.

  She came back to find that Matti had fallen asleep on the gray-furred shoulder of a veteran zoomando. She told the man that if the boy woke up she would be outside helping unload the injured. Every few minutes another farm truck pulled up and bleeding men and women stepped out or were passed down on litters. The emptied trucks rumbled south back into the heart city.

  The conversation in the mill traded in rumor and wild speculation. But what report could be disbelieved when it came to the U-Men? Fifty of them were attacking, or a hundred. Lord Grimm was both dead and still fighting on the battlements. The MoGs had escaped from the mines in the confusion.

  Like everyone else Elena quickly grew deaf to gunfire, explosions, crackling energy beams. Only when something erupted particularly close—a nearby building bursting into flame, or a terrordactyl careening out of control overhead—did the workers look up or pause in their conversation.

  At some point a woman in the red smock of the Gene Corps noticed that Elena’s cheek had started bleeding again. “It’s a wonder you didn’t lose an eye,” the scientist said, and gave her a wad of torn-up cloth to press to her face. “You need to get that cleaned up or it will scar.”

  Elena thanked her curtly and walked outside. The air was cold but felt good on her skin.

  She was still dabbing at her face when she heard the sputter of engines. An old mechaneer cavalryman, painted head to wheels in mud, rolled into the north end of the yard, followed by two of his wheeled brethren. Each of them was towing a narrow cart padded with blankets.

  The lead mechaneer didn’t notice Elena at first, or perhaps noticed her but didn’t recognize her. He suddenly said, “My beautiful Elena!” and puttered forward, dragging the squeaking cart after him. He put on a smile but couldn’t hold it.

  “Not so beautiful, Mr. Bojars.”

  The old man surveyed her face with alarm. “But you are all right?” he asked. “Is Mattias—?”

  “I’m fine. Matti is inside. He’s sick. I think he . . .” She shook her head. “I see you’ve lost your sausage oven.”

  “A temporary substitution only, my dear.” The surviving members of his unit had re united, he told her matter-of-factly, to do what they could. In the hours since the Prince’s Bridge had been knocked out they’d been ferrying wounded across the river. A field hospital had been set up at the northern barracks of the city guard. The only ways across the river were the foot bridges and a few muddy low spots in the river. “We have no weapons,” Mr. Bojars said, “but we can still drive like demons.”

  Volunteers were already carrying out the people chosen to evacuate next, four men and two women who seemed barely alive. Each cart could carry only two persons at a time, laid head to foot. Elena helped secure them.

  “Mr. Bojars, does the hospital have anything for radiation poisoning?”

  “Radiation?” He looked shocked. “I don’t know, I suppose . . .”

  One of the mechaneers waved to Mr. Bojars, and the two wheeled men began to roll out.

  Elena said, “Mr. Bojars—”

  “Get him,” he replied.

  Elena ran into the mill, dodging pallets and bodies. She scooped up the sleeping boy, ignoring the pain in her hand, and carried him back outside. She could feel his body trembling in her arms.

  “I can’t find my book,” Matti said. He sounded feverish. “I think I lost it.”

  “Matti, you’re going with Mr. Bojars,” Elena said. “He’s going to take you someplace safe.”

  He seemed to wake up. He looked around, but it was obvious he still couldn’t see. “Elena, no! We have to get Grandmother!”

  “Matti, listen to me. You’re going across the river to the hospital. They have medicine. In the morning I’ll come get you.”

  “She’s still in the basement. She’s still there. You promised you would—”

  “Yes, I promise!” Elena said. “Now go with Mr. Bojars.”

  “Matti, my boy, we shall have such a ride!” the mechaneer said with forced good humor. He opened his big green parka and held out his arms.

  Matti released his grip on Elena. Mr. Bojars set the boy on the broad gas tank in front of him, then zipped up the jacket so that only Matti’s head was visible. “Now we look like a cybernetic kangaroo, hey Mattias?”

  “I’ll be there in the morning,” Elena said. She kissed Matti’s forehead, then kissed the old man’s cheek. He smelled of grilled onions and diesel. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said.

  Mr. Bojars circled an arm around Matti and revved his engine. “A kiss from you, my dear, is payment enough.”

  She watched them go. A few minutes later another truck arrived in the yard and she fell in line to help carry in the wounded. When the new arrivals were all inside and the stained litters had all been returned to the truck, Elena stayed out in the yard. The truck drivers, a pair of women in coveralls, leaned against the hood. The truck’s two-way radio played ocean noise: whooshing static mixed with high, panicked pleas like the cries of seagulls. The larger of the women took a last drag on her cigarette, tossed it into the yard, and then both of them climbed into the cab. A moment later the vehicle started and began to move.

  “Shit,” Elena said. She jogged after the truck for a few steps, then broke into a full run. She caught up to it as it reached the road. With her good hand she hauled herself up into the open bed.

  The driver slowed and leaned out her window. “We’re leaving now!” she shouted. “Going back in!”

  “So go!” Elena said.

  The driver shook her head. The truck lurched into second gear and rumbled south.

  As they rolled into the city proper it was impossible for Elena to tell where they would find the front line of the battle, or if there was a front line at all. Damage seemed to be distributed randomly. The truck would roll through a sleepy side street that was completely untouched, and twenty yards away the buildings would be cracked open, their contents shaken into the street.

  The drivers seemed to possess some sixth sense for knowing where the injured were waiting. The truck would slow and men and women would emerge from the dark and hobble toward the headlights of the truck, or call for a litter. Some people stood at street corners and waved them down as if flagging a bus. Elena helped the drivers lift the wounded into the back, and sometimes had to force them to leave their belongings.

  “Small boats,” the largest driver said over and over. A Trovenian saying: In a storm, all boats are too small.

  Eventually she found herself crouched next to a burned dragoon who was half-welded to his jet pack. She held his hand, thinking that might give him something to feel besides the pain, but he only moaned and muttered to himself, oblivious to her presence.

  The truck slammed a stop, sending everyone sliding and crashing into each other. Through the slats Elena glimpsed a great slab of blue, some huge, organic shape. A leg. A giant’s leg. The U-Man had to be bigger than an apartment building. Gunfire clattered, and a voice like a fog horn shouted something in English.

  The truck lurched into reverse, engine whining, and Elena fell forward onto her hands. Someone in the truck bed cried, “Does he see us? Does he see us?”

  The truck backed to the intersection and turned hard. The occupants shouted as they collapsed into each other yet again. Half a block more the truck braked to a more gradual stop and the drivers hopped out. “Is everyone okay?” they asked.

  The dragoon beside Elena laughed.

  She stood up and looked around. They were in the residential district, only a few blocks from her apartment. She made her way to the gate of the truck and hopped down. She said to the driver, “I’m not going back with you.”

  The woman nodded, not needing or wanting an explanation.

/>   Elena walked slowly between the hulking buildings. The pain in her hand, her face, all seemed to be returning.

  She emerged into a large open space. She realized she’d been mistaken about where the truck had stopped—this park was nowhere she recognized. The ground in front of her had been turned to glass.

  The sky to the east glowed. For a moment she thought it was another super-powered UM. But no, only the dawn. Below the dark bulk of Mount Kriegstahl stood the familiar silhouette of the Slaybot Prime bolted to its gantry. The air battle had moved there, above the factories and docks. Or maybe no battle at all. There seemed to be only a few flyers in the air now. The planes and TDs had disappeared. Perhaps the only ones left were U-Men.

  Power bolts zipped through the air. They were firing at the Prime.

  A great metal arm dropped away from its shoulder socket and dangled by thick cables. Another flash of energy severed them. The arm fell away in seeming slow motion, and the sound of the impact reached her a moment later. The übermenschen were carving the damn thing up.

  She almost laughed. The Slaybot Prime was as mobile and dangerous as the Statue of Liberty. Were they actually afraid of the thing? Was that why an army of them had shown up for an ordinary hostage rescue?

  My God, she thought, the morons had actually believed Lord Grimm’s boasting.

  She walked west, and the rising sun turned the glazed surface in front of her into a mirror. She knew now that she wasn’t lost. The scorched buildings surrounding the open space were too familiar. But she kept walking. After a while she noticed that the ground was strangely warm beneath her feet. Hot even.

  She looked back the way she’d come, then decided the distance was shorter ahead. She was too tired to run outright but managed a shuffling trot. Reckoning by rough triangulation from the nearest buildings, she decided she was passing over Mr. Bojars’ favorite spot, the corner of Glorious Victory Street and Infinite Progress Avenue. Her own apartment building should have loomed directly in front of her.

  After all she’d seen tonight she couldn’t doubt that there were beings with the power to melt a city block to slag. But she didn’t know what strange ability, or even stranger whim, allowed them to casually trowel it into a quartz skating rink.