The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020

by John Joseph Adams

  My finder—a strapping woman in her twenty-second cycle—stays close to me, sobbing ritually, for she knows that if she finds me I am only marking a fate which could one day befall her, too. Anyone can be named to the Finding if the health of our journey demands it. I walk proudly through the open hatches and lurch at children with my teeth bared, causing them to giggle or sometimes run shrieking to the elders. The other initiates watch me amble by, some of them mournfully shaking their heads, others pleased to see my injured pride after the favoritism I had received. I resolve inwardly to prove them wrong—I will outlast my finder for three days and become an elder crew member. I will not stand on the Renewal Pond.

  When I finally arrive before Captain Chennoufi, my finder strips me clean of the trout skins on my naked body. We each take a bite of a fish and force ourselves to keep down its pickled flesh, flush with carefully cultivated psychotropics. Then we retire to a berth and make love together, aroused by the substances coursing through our bodies, one last intimate shared moment before we become enemies.

  She locks her legs around me and hisses like a snake, while I douse myself in oils until I am slippery, simulating the watered death that awaits me if I fail. Some initiates never make it beyond this point, overwhelmed by the sheer ecstasy—and there are worse ways to die. But I am determined to outlast her. After what feels like hours of this passionate embrace, she loses her grip over me and I escape.

  Thus the Finding begins.

  * * *

  Hutchins will come for you, the message warned on Mafokeng’s module. There was no information about the sender. The message could have originated from anywhere within the past hour—the Earth, the Moon, or Mars. She knew Steward Hutchins would be upset, but this disturbed her. Had he taken her vote as an insult? Did it humiliate him in some way? He sat on various committees within the council—so many, in fact, that she had lost track—but what would he do to her? What could he do? No steward had ever physically threatened another steward. Their weapons were words, reasoning, persuasion, and, above all, consensus, which meant everyone should agree, even if the agreement was a compromise. Even idle threats ruined such goodwill. But the message was clear: Hutchins will come for you. She had to move quickly.

  The pictures from Hutchins’s briefing popped up on her module. Each appeared to have been taken from a different part of the Lion’s Mane, a four-hundred-meter vessel that had been assembled in space near the central lunar base. The first image depicted a crew member in motion, walking past an open area with exercise machines, a fold-down table, and a passageway to the next part of the ship. It was likely the mess hall or recreation hall. The second image showed the shimmering golden sail of the spacecraft, spread out to harness the Sun and patiently edge the ship forward. The third image caused Mafokeng to pause. The image was taken in the same corridor as the one with the severed finger, but she couldn’t find anyone in the image. She could clearly see the pipes snaking down the corridor. This was a different angle, where she could clearly discern a tank of water. It would have been directly opposite where the captain had been standing when about to consume the human finger. And inside the water she saw something silver and snake-like.

  A fin.

  The fourth image was even stranger. Here, one of the crew was adorned in strange regalia, with makeup applied asymmetrically across his face. His hair, too, poked out at irregular angles, but appeared to have been intentionally fixed that way. It was difficult to spot him in the image, as he blended in with the machinery, and the jagged-edge makeup made his features unidentifiable. Who was he trying to hide from? Surely, he knew that the ship sent automated images back to Earth? Every ship had a duty to maintain its transmissions. Then who?

  Fresh air, Mafokeng thought. She visited the closest atrium, a colossal biodome with a simulated sky. Her steward’s cloak gave off a faint haze from its superconducting body armor. She took comfort in the slip of vision because it meant she would be protected—stewards didn’t threaten other stewards, but there were plenty of fanatics who held grudges. Artificial clouds hung in the top of the dome, and bright-colored songbirds circled overhead in a geofenced aviary. This base was one of the finest on Earth, carefully excavated by the mining companies that operated near the Kivu Mountains of the Eastern Congo, supplying the spaceships with the rare minerals that powered their electronics. Her own family’s mines had benefited from the way the blooms shook the land, which exposed minerals previously too deeply buried for regular extraction. People were going about their lives, shopping, sipping tea, courting, listening to music. They bowed their heads to her out of respect, for stewards were rare, and more trusted than domestic politicians, considered selfless servants of the human race, as coveted as an astronaut before space travel became commonplace. No one seemed threatening. Maybe the message about Hutchins had been wrong.

  She did feel horrified by the notion of humans consuming each other, of humanity turned against itself. She hadn’t seen any children in the still images, yet feared for their stunted lives, children she had never met and who would be adults by the time she even glanced at their images. But such was the lot of a steward—living vicariously through others, inspecting ancient digital transmissions like breadcrumbs. Light moved fast through the cosmos. But not data. Data was messy and it took the most powerful processors to reassemble the scattered transmissions into a coherent image, a herculean task that required unwavering patience and perseverance. Her training had included sociology, history, empathic awareness, astronomy, 3-D modeling, physics, engineering, and archaeology. But nothing about cannibalism, other than a strict prohibition against it. She had not expected to be confronted with its visceral reality.

  Maybe this was why the words “savages” and “barbarians” kept repeating in her mind. The other stewards had used these words to justify destroying the crew, but she remembered how her own ancestors had once been described in those terms centuries ago, justifying their slaughter by the Gatling gun. Barbarians. Savages. Kill them all.

  And she recalled how the media had covered the loss of the Medallion, focusing on Captain Trent Tieman Deng, a man born and raised in Canada and touted as humanity’s hope until the ship exploded, at which point he became Trent Deng, the child of Sudanese immigrants, his stature stripped to its barest essentials.

  Mafokeng searched the word “cannibalism” in an isolation pod of the council archives, sorted by word cloud.

  Anthropophagy. Human sacrifice. Crimes against humanity. Genocide.

  Then she looked up anthropophagy:

  The eating of human flesh by human beings. Orig. Greek.

  In one definition, anthropophagy linked the eating of human flesh with sexual pleasure. Hutchins had not mentioned anything about sex in his report, so she suspected she was going down the wrong path.

  Next she looked up “human sacrifice,” which led to a word tree that branched down the screen: Greeks (ancient), Aztecs (Mexico), Rome (ancient), Maya (Mexico), Yoruba (Nigeria), Shang dynasty (China), Ur (Iraq), Cahokia (United States), Israelites (ancient), Hitobashira (Japan), Inca (Peru), Igbo (Nigeria). The list included dozens of cultures scattered across millennia.

  Here, she thought, here is something. Time to learn. But she had been sitting for hours already. She told the archives to read the entries back to her as she moved through some stretching poses, breathing deeply as the information washed into her. The archive compressed the information down into its essence, layering on olfactory notes to ensconce the data into her memory. Each inhalation affirmed the data; the deeper she breathed, the more it etched into her consciousness. It was not the same as remembering information in rote form, or even studying it closely, but there was an associative purity to it that she preferred over raw data. Besides, she didn’t have any time to spare.

  Mafokeng left the biodome as the clouds began raining, a light pleasant swish that turned into a deluge complete with thunder, which delighted the children as the water splashed about their feet, draining into a grayw
ater system where it would be reused once again. Like the passengers aboard the Lion’s Mane, these children had likely never experienced a real summer rain, for the torrential acid rains on the surface would burn exposed skin. This was safe, recycled water, purged of any dangerous bacteria or toxins but too sullied with particulate matter to drink. Not potable but usable. She could feel an insight beginning to take shape, as if the revolting image of the captain eating a finger, strung out over decades, was coalescing into meaning. Her deep breathing from the archives was stringing together the separate strands into a theory. Something about the water.

  The attack came as three short flashes in the corner of her vision. She was thrown into the moist air of the biodome. She landed with a heavy splash in the French drain that ringed the foliage. When she opened her eyes, everything around her suddenly seemed crystal clear. Her shield was down. Its haze had disappeared and she was completely vulnerable. She threw her hands over her head, expecting a follow-up blast. But nothing came.

  A family saw her curled up on the ground and the father ran over to help. “Are you all right, Steward?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Somewhere in that tree.”

  His little daughter pointed up. “The flower,” she said, “it got very bright.”

  The police arrived shortly after to investigate, and confirmed that the daughter had been right. The brugmansia blossom was a short-range device, designed to short out any body cloak, placed there intentionally, apparently several weeks ago. Normally the device disabled any shielding for a blunt force attack, but she was lucky enough that no one harmed her when her shield went down. She thanked them and went on her way.

  Safe, for now, Mafokeng returned to her dwelling, an expansive underground villa that her aunt had donated to stewards visiting from off-planet. Ten years ago, after the Medallion had been destroyed, she had planned to stay at the villa for a week to decompress before returning to the lunar base. She had never left.

  The dark walls were interlaced with sparkling minerals with a central fountain that dribbled water over the rock, and national treasures donated from governments all over the continent—sculptures, tapestries, and bas-reliefs. The hope was that if the smoky crystal blooms covering the nearby mountains ever made contact, there would be enough fineries to impress them. The entire villa—like the underground biodome—was suspended within a jelly polymer, protected against all seismic activity save molten magma itself. Mafokeng had never prevented other stewards from enjoying the hospitality of the villa, maybe because her aunt’s towering presence haunted every corridor. Watching her, judging her. Nonetheless, the villa pleased the council, since stewardship was psychologically taxing work. For her part, she spruced it up, refreshing it with eucalyptus and hardy succulents that responded to the inset biostrip lighting.

  When she returned, a steward was relaxing on a chaise longue, sipping on a tincture of honeybush tea mixed with cannabinoids and electrolytes as a machine stimulated his muscles. He was a large man with an ample belly, which seemed to have grown after a six-month visit to the Valles Marineris.

  “Ah,” he said, “the lone holdout. Ms. Obstinance herself.”

  “Is that what they’re calling me, Steward Kusago?” Mafokeng asked.

  “Gossip to stewards is like water to the well. And some of them are quite thirsty.”

  “You’re stoned.”

  He laughed loudly. “Everybody feels high after living on Mars for six months. Even underground. The air in here—it lends a certain delicacy to everything. Their habitations are getting better, but they really don’t compare. This tea is delicious. Your family certainly knows how to entertain.”

  “This is the sovereign land of the council.”

  Kusago chuckled. “Quite the prickly one today. The council does not provide food of this quality. This is your doing.”

  “I do try to make visiting stewards comfortable, of course. That’s my duty as an emissary. The villa was donated by my aunt. She’s never set foot in it.”

  And thank the gods she hasn’t, she thought. She did not feel charmed by Kusago’s playful mood, and sat heavily across from him in an antique chair wrapped in kudu-skin shagreen. “I was attacked in the biodome.”

  Kusago raised an eyebrow. “Attacked? What happened?”

  She told him about the blossom that had shorted her armor, and the way the family had saved her. The police still didn’t have any leads.

  “If it was placed several weeks ago,” Kusago guessed, “then they could not have known you would vote against retirement of the Lion’s Mane.”

  “But it’s possible Hutchins had already seen the photo then.”

  “I suppose that’s true. That would have required remarkable foresight on his part to suspect you would vote against him. Do you suspect anyone besides him?”

  “No one.”

  “Strange. I won’t deny that Hutchins is angry with you. He’s moving for the council to affirm the retirement again. When you broke consensus it makes his decision appear to be extralegal. He expects to be celebrated around the world, perhaps even nominated to the council presidency. You’re ruining his plans. He wants to be known as the steward who sacrificed his own ship for the good of humanity.”

  “The wrong kind of sacrifice.”

  Steward Kusago, she recalled, specialized in living systems, moving between council bases to optimize their food sources. He was allowing his hair to grow out, and she was surprised to see white mixed with light brown. The stresses of interplanetary travel affected people differently.

  “Steward,” she asked, “have you heard of fish being kept aboard a ship?”

  “Fish? I’ve heard of attempts. The early vessels did not have the technology to support lab-grown meats. Each one contained some form of hydroponics to provide food and sustenance for the crew. It was the only way to ensure a food source for a long voyage, with crew members trained to select the best plants that could resist the radiation from space, usually by manipulating the transcriptome and omics. Aquaponics were never successful.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aquaponics were meant to be a symbiotic system. In theory, people could eat the fish. The fish droppings would fertilize the plants, which the fish in turn feed upon. The council abandoned plans to install aquaponics on the ships before launch. The systems failed because of the nitrate problem. You see, the fish droppings contained too many nitrates for the plants, and eventually killed them. Thus any aquaponic ecosystem would eventually collapse. The council modified various bacteria through gene sequencing to convert the nitrates to nitrites, but none were proven before launch. The cell-based artificial meats common today were not yet developed, and full of unpleasant mutations. It’s a shame, too, because there was another benefit to aquaponics, which was the radiation shielding. Lead can shield the crew from radiation, but water is also effective. Water is useful. In an aquaponic system, the water would sustain the fish while protecting the crew from radiation.”

  Mafokeng thought it over. “My ship, the Medallion, had hydroponics but it depended on a seed bank for renewal, not the amount of water you’re describing. What do you make of this image, Steward?”

  He leaned in to look at her module. “I must have glanced over that one in Hutchins’s dossier. Certainly a fish. An aquarium, perhaps?”

  “That seems unlikely. It would be wasteful. This is the fin of a brook trout—meant for consumption, not display.”

  “It could be some sort of mascot. Or maybe a talisman.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Like a parrot on a pirate ship. Something to boost morale. There was a glow worm kept as a pet aboard my transport to Mars. Hungry little fellow. Do you have a higher-resolution image?”

  “No.”

  “Then Hutchins would be the most knowledgeable, given that he is the steward of the Lion’s Mane.” He took a long sip of his tincture and his eyelids drooped.

  “I very much doubt,” Mafokeng sig
hed, “Hutchins would share anything with me at this moment.”

  The quake began first as a light rattle and moved through the villa in waves, the magnetic force of it shaking the lights. The villa switched over instantly to a different source of geothermal power.

  “Minor quake,” Mafokeng said.

  Kusago used his free hand to unclench a balled fist. His entire arm had locked in cramp. “I feel queasy.”

  “You get used to it. The nausea of the quakes passes after the first few days.” Mafokeng peeled open his fingers and massaged his forearm, the first time she had touched another human’s flesh in months. “You need potassium.”

  “I’ll add it to my tincture,” he groaned. “If only you would leave this lair of yours to join the daily affairs of the council.”

  Her eyes alighted on a ceremonial mask with bulging eyes and protruding lips wrapped in antelope sinew that had been donated by the Mafokeng royalty. It had graced her aunt’s immaculate reception chamber as a child, when everything her aunt had touched felt perfect and gilded with elegance. That was before she had lost the Medallion and her aunt had disowned her for the loss of the ship.

  “Being on Earth keeps me close to the people,” she said. “They’re the reason why we’re acting as stewards in the first place.”

  “True, of course. But here there is a certain kind of people. The Martians feel somewhat differently, that people on Earth are inherently wasteful. I can’t say that they’re wrong.” He took a big swig of his beverage. “But I also think they lose sight of the finer things in life. I will be more direct: I fear you may not be safe here, Steward. Hutchins has a nasty way of treating people who disagree with him, and you did so quite publicly.”