The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Rig and Asten discovered that as well as the elevators there was a stately staircase with a curving banister, leading from the reception hall up to the library. They slid down the banister shrieking wildly, until Shan threatened to apply a local gravity field and force them to slide up it, which they besought him to do. Betton watched the little ones with a superior gaze, and took the elevator; but the next day he slid down the banister, going a good deal faster than Rig and Asten because he could push off harder and had greater mass, and nearly broke his tailbone. It was Betton who organized the tray-sliding races, but Rig generally won them, being small enough to stay on the tray all the way down the stairs. None of the children had had any lessons at the beach, except in swimming and being Shobies; but while they waited through an unexpected five-day delay at Ve Port, Gveter did physics with Betton and math with all three daily in the library, and they did some history with Shan and Oreth, and danced with Tai in the low-G gym.

  When she danced, Tai became light, free, laughing. Rig and Asten loved her then, and her son danced with her like a colt, like a kid, awkward and blissful. Shan often joined them; he was a dark and elegant dancer, and she would dance with him, but even then was shy, would not touch. She had been celibate since Betton’s birth. She did not want Shan’s patient, urgent desire, did not want to cope with it, with him. She would turn from him to Betton, and son and mother would dance wholly absorbed in the steps, the airy pattern they made together. Watching them, the afternoon before the test flight, Sweet Today began to wipe tears from her eyes, smiling, never saying a word.

  “Life is good,” said Gveter very seriously to Lidi.

  “It’ll do,” she said.

  Oreth, who was just coming out of female kemmer, having thus triggered Karth’s male kemmer, all of which, by coming on unexpectedly early, had delayed the test flight for these past five days, enjoyable days for all—Oreth watched Rig, whom she had fathered, dance with Asten, whom she had borne, and watched Karth watch them, and said in Karhidish, “Tomorrow.…” The edge was very sweet.

  * * *

  Anthropologists solemnly agree that we must not attribute “cultural constants” to the human population of any planet; but certain cultural traits or expectations do seem to run deep. Before dinner that last night in port, Shan and Tai appeared in black and silver uniforms of the Terran Ekumen, which had cost them—Terra also still had a money economy—a half-year’s allowance.

  Asten and Rig clamored at once for equal grandeur. Karth and Oreth suggested their party clothes, and Sweet Today brought out silver-lace scarves, but Asten sulked, and Rig imitated. The idea of a uniform, Asten told them, was that it was the same.

  “Why?” Oreth inquired.

  Old Lidi answered sharply: “So that no one is responsible.”

  She then went off and changed into a black velvet evening suit that wasn’t a uniform but that didn’t leave Tai and Shan sticking out like sore thumbs. She had left Terra at age eighteen and never been back nor wanted to, but Tai and Shan were shipmates.

  Karth and Oreth got the idea, and put on their finest fur-trimmed hiebs, and the children were appeased with their own party clothes plus all of Karth’s hereditary and massive gold jewelry. Sweet Today appeared in a pure white robe which she claimed was in fact ultraviolet. Gveter braided his mane. Betton had no uniform, but needed none, sitting beside his mother at table in a visible glory of pride.

  Meals, sent up from the Port kitchens, were very good, and this one was superb: a delicate Hainish iyanwi with all seven sauces, followed by a pudding flavored with Terran chocolate. A lively evening ended quietly at the big fireplace in the library. The logs were fake, of course, but good fakes; no use having a fireplace on a ship and then burning plastic in it. The neo-cellulose logs and kindling smelled right, resisted catching, caught with spits and sparks and smoke billows, flared up bright. Oreth had laid the fire, Karth lit it. Everybody gathered round.

  “Tell bedtime stories,” Rig said.

  Oreth told about the Ice Caves of Kerm Land, how a ship sailed into the great blue sea-cave and disappeared, and was never found by the boats that entered the caves in search; but seventy years later that ship was found drifting—not a living soul aboard nor any sign of what had become of them—off the coast of Osemyet, a thousand miles overland from Kerm.…

  Another story?

  Lidi told about the little desert wolf who lost his wife and went to the land of the dead for her, and found her there dancing with the dead, and nearly brought her back to the land of the living, but spoiled it by trying to touch her before they got all the way back to life, and she vanished, and he could never find the way back to the place where the dead danced, no matter how he looked, and howled, and cried.…

  Another story!

  Shan told about the boy who sprouted a feather every time he told a lie, until his commune had to use him for a duster.

  Another!

  Gveter told about the winged people called gluns, who were so stupid that they died out, because they kept hitting each other head-on in midair. “They weren’t real,” he added conscientiously. “Only a story.”

  Another— No. Bedtime now.

  Rig and Asten went round as usual for a goodnight hug, and this time Betton followed them. When he came to Tai he did not stop, for she did not like to be touched; but she put out her hand, drew the child to her, and kissed his cheek. He fled in joy.

  “Stories,” said Sweet Today. “Ours begins tomorrow, eh?”

  * * *

  A chain of command is easy to describe, a network of response isn’t. To those who live by mutual empowerment, “thick” description, complex and open-ended, is normal and comprehensible, but to those whose only model is hierarchic control, such description seems a muddle, a mess, along with what it describes. Who’s in charge here? Get rid of all these petty details. How many cooks spoil a soup? Let’s get this perfectly clear now. Take me to your leader!

  The old navigator was at the NAFAL console, of course, and Gveter at the paltry churten console; Oreth was wired into the AI; Tai, Shan, and Karth were their respective Support, and what Sweet Today did might be called supervising or overseeing if that didn’t suggest a hierarchic function. Interseeing, maybe, or subvising. Rig and Asten always naffled (to use Rig’s word) in the ship’s library, where, during the boring and disorienting experience of travel at near light-speed, Asten could look at pictures or listen to a story tape, and Rig could curl up on and under a certain furry blanket and go to sleep. Betton’s crew function during flight was Elder Sib; he stayed with the little ones, provided himself with a barf bag since he was one of those whom NAFAL flight made queasy, and focused the intervid on Lidi and Gveter so he could watch what they did.

  So they all knew what they were doing, as regards NAFAL flight. As regards the churten process, they knew that it was supposed to effectuate their transilience to a solar system seventeen light-years from Ve Port without temporal interval; but nobody, anywhere, knew what they were doing.

  So Lidi looked around, like the violinist who raises her bow to poise the chamber group for the first chord, a flicker of eye contact, and sent the Shoby into NAFAL mode, as Gveter, like the cellist whose bow comes down in that same instant to ground the chord, sent the Shoby into churten mode. They entered unduration. They churtened. No long, as the ansible had said.

  “What’s wrong?” Shan whispered.

  “By damn!” said Gveter.

  “What?” said Lidi, blinking and shaking her head.

  “That’s it,” Tai said, flicking readouts.

  “That’s not A-sixty-whatsit,” Lidi said, still blinking.

  Sweet Today was gestalting them, all ten at once, the seven on the bridge and by intervid the three in the library. Betton had cleared a window, and the children were looking out at the murky, brownish convexity that filled half of it. Rig was holding a dirty, furry blanket. Karth was taking the electrodes off Oreth’s temples, disengaging the AI link-up. “There was no interval
,” Oreth said.

  “We aren’t anywhere,” Lidi said.

  “There was no interval,” Gveter repeated, scowling at the console. “That’s right.”

  “Nothing happened,” Karth said, skimming through the AI flight report.

  Oreth got up, went to the window, and stood motionless looking out.

  “That’s it. M-60-340-nolo,” Tai said.

  All their words fell dead, had a false sound.

  “Well! We did it, Shobies!” said Shan.

  Nobody answered.

  “Buzz Ve Port on the ansible,” Shan said with determined jollity. “Tell ‘em we’re all here in one piece.”

  “All where?” Oreth asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Sweet Today said, but did nothing.

  “Right,” said Tai, going to the ship’s ansible. She opened the field, centered to Ve, and sent a signal. Ship’s ansibles worked only in the visual mode; she waited, watching the screen. She resignaled. They were all watching the screen.

  “Nothing going through,” she said.

  Nobody told her to check the centering coordinates; in a network system nobody gets to dump their anxieties that easily. She checked the coordinates. She signaled; rechecked, reset, resignaled; opened the field and centered to Abbenay on Anarres and signaled. The ansible screen was blank.

  “Check the—” Shan said, and stopped himself.

  “The ansible is not functioning,” Tai reported formally to her crew.

  “Do you find malfunction?” Sweet Today asked.

  “No. Nonfunction.”

  “We’re going back now,” said Lidi, still seated at the NAFAL console.

  Her words, her tone, shook them apart.

  “No, we’re not!” Betton said on the intervid while Oreth said, “Back where?”

  Tai, Lidi’s Support, moved toward her as if to prevent her from activating the NAFAL drive, but then hastily moved back to the ansible to prevent Gveter from getting access to it. He stopped, taken aback, and said, “Perhaps the churten affected ansible function?”

  “I’m checking it out,” Tai said. “Why should it? Robot-operated ansible transmission functioned in all the test flights.”

  “Where are the Al reports?” Shan demanded.

  “I told you, there are none,” Karth answered sharply.

  “Oreth was plugged in.”

  Oreth, still at the window, spoke without turning. “Nothing happened.”

  Sweet Today came over beside the Gethenian. Oreth looked at her and said, slowly, “Yes. Sweet Today. We cannot … do this. I think. I can’t think.”

  Shan had cleared a second window, and stood looking out it. “Ugly,” he said.

  “What is?” said Lidi.

  Gveter said, as if reading from the Ekumenical Atlas, “Thick, stable atmosphere, near the bottom of the temperature window for life. Microorganisms. Bacterial clouds, bacterial reefs.”

  “Germ stew,” Shan said. “Lovely place to send us.”

  “So that if we arrived as a neutron bomb or a blackhole event we’d only take bacteria with us,” Tai said. “But we didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” said Lidi.

  “Didn’t arrive?” Karth asked.

  “Hey,” Betton said, “is everybody going to stay on the bridge?”

  “I want to come there,” said Rig’s little pipe, and then Asten’s voice, clear but shaky, “Maba, I’d like to go back to Liden now.”

  “Come on,” Karth said, and went to meet the children. Oreth did not turn from the window, even when Asten came close and took Oreth’s hand.

  “What are you looking at, maba?”

  “The planet, Asten.”

  “What planet?”

  Oreth looked at the child then.

  “There isn’t anything,” Asten said.

  “That brown color—that’s the surface, the atmosphere of a planet.”

  “There isn’t any brown color. There isn’t anything. I want to go back to Liden. You said we could when we were done with the test.”

  Oreth looked around, at last, at the others.

  “Perception variation,” Gveter said.

  “I think,” Tai said, “that we must establish that we are—that we got here—and then get here.”

  “You mean, go back,” Betton said.

  “The readings are perfectly clear,” Lidi said, holding on to the rim of her seat with both hands and speaking very distinctly. “Every coordinate in order. That’s M-60-Etcetera down there. What more do you want? Bacteria samples?”

  “Yes,” Tai said. “Instrument function’s been affected, so we can’t rely on instrumental records.”

  “Oh, shitsake!” said Lidi. “What a farce! All right. Suit up, go down, get some goo, and then let’s get out. Go home. By NAFAL.”

  “By NAFAL?” Shan and Tai echoed, and Gveter said, “But we would spend seventeen years, Ve time, and no ansible to explain why.”

  “Why, Lidi?” Sweet Today asked.

  Lidi stared at the Hainishwoman. “You want to churten again?” she demanded, raucous. She looked round at them all. “Are you people made of stone?” Her face was ashy, crumpled, shrunken. “It doesn’t bother you, seeing through the walls?”

  No one spoke, until Shan said cautiously, “How do you mean?”

  “I can see the stars through the walls!” She stared round at them again, pointing at the carpet with its woven constellations. “You can’t?” When no one answered, her jaw trembled in a little spasm, and she said, “All right. All right. I’m off duty. Sorry. Be in my room.” She stood up. “Maybe you should lock me in,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” said Sweet Today.

  “If I fall through,” Lidi began, and did not finish. She walked to the door, stiffly and cautiously, as if through a thick fog. She said something they did not understand, “Cause,” or perhaps, “Gauze.”

  Sweet Today followed her.

  “I can see the stars too!” Rig announced.

  “Hush,” Karth said, putting an arm around the child.

  “I can! I can see all the stars everywhere. And I can see Ve Port. And I can see anything I want!”

  “Yes, of course, but hush now,” the mother murmured, at which the child pulled free, stamped, and shrilled, “I can! I can too! I can see everything! And Asten can’t! And there is a planet, there is too! No, don’t hold me! Don’t! Let me go!”

  Grim, Karth carried the screaming child off to their quarters. Asten turned around to yell after Rig, “There is not any planet! You’re just making it up!”

  Grim, Oreth said, “Go to our room, please, Asten.”

  Asten burst into tears and obeyed. Oreth, with a glance of apology to the others, followed the short, weeping figure across the bridge and out into the corridor.

  The four remaining on the bridge stood silent.

  “Canaries,” Shan said.

  “Khallucinations?” Gveter proposed, subdued. “An effect of the churten on extrasensitive organisms—maybe?”

  Tai nodded.

  “Then is the ansible not functioning or are we hallucinating nonfunction?” Shan asked after a pause.

  Gveter went to the ansible; this time Tai walked away from it, leaving it to him. “I want to go down,” she said.

  “No reason not to, I suppose,” Shan said unenthusiastically.

  “Khwat reason to?” Gveter asked over his shoulder.

  “It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? It’s what we volunteered to do, isn’t it? To test instantaneous—transilience—prove that it worked, that we are here! With the ansible out, it’ll be seventeen years before Ve gets our radio signal!”

  “We can just churten back to Ve and tell them,” Shan said. “If we did that now, we’d have been … here … about eight minutes.”

  “Tell them—tell them what? What kind of evidence is that?”

  “Anecdotal,” said Sweet Today, who had come back quietly to the bridge; she moved like a big sailing ship, imposingly silent.

  �
�Is Lidi all right?” Shan asked.

  “No,” Sweet Today answered. She sat down where Lidi had sat, at the NAFAL console.

  “I ask a consensus about going down onplanet,” Tai said.

  “I’ll ask the others,” Gveter said, and went out, returning presently with Karth. “Go down, if you want,” the Gethenian said. “Oreth’s staying with the children for a bit. They are—we are extremely disoriented.”

  “I will come down,” Gveter said.

  “Can I come?” Betton asked, almost in a whisper, not raising his eyes to any adult face.

  “No,” Tai said, as Gveter said, “Yes.”

  Betton looked at his mother, one quick glance.

  “Why not?” Gveter asked her.

  “We don’t know the risks.”

  “The planet was surveyed.”

  “By robot ships—”

  “We’ll wear suits.” Gveter was honestly puzzled.

  “I don’t want the responsibility,” Tai said through her teeth.

  “Khwy is it yours?” Gveter asked, more puzzled still. “We all share it; Betton is crew. I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t understand,” Tai said, turned her back on them both, and went out. The man and the boy stood staring, Gveter after Tai, Betton at the carpet.

  “I’m sorry,” Betton said.

  “Not to be,” Gveter told him.

  “What is … what is going on?” Shan asked in an over-controlled voice. “Why are we—we keep crossing, we keep—coming and going—”