Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

by Rich Horton

  * * * *

  "Yup, it was a show,” Grandfather said.

  I gave his image an exasperated look. “Of course it was a show. ‘The Cartesian Theater'—what else could it be?"

  "Not that. I mean the mutual self-destruction of Bloom and Novembre. You see it, Toby? The deliberate irony? Novembre believes in humanity and hates intellectual machines. But he takes pity on the fake Bloom as it dies, and by doing so he tacitly admits that a machine can harbor something akin to a human soul. He found what he had been looking for all his life, a metaphysical expression of human suffering outside the laws of the Rationalization—but he found it in a rack of electronics. We have to assume that's what your client wanted and expected to happen. A philosophical tragedy, culminating in a murder-suicide."

  This was Grandfather's trial-lawyer subroutine talking, but what he said made a certain amount of sense. It was as if I had played a supporting role in a drama crafted by an omniscient playwright. Except—

  "Except,” I said, “who saw it?"

  "One of the attendees might have recorded it surreptitiously."

  "No one witnessed both deaths, according to the police, and they searched the witnesses for wires."

  "But the transaction was completed? Lada was paid for her services?"

  I had talked to her this morning. Yes, she was paid. Generously and in full. The client had evidently received value for money.

  "So you have to ask yourself,” Grandfather said, “(and I no longer possess the imagination to suggest an answer), who could have known about both Bloom and Novembre? Who could have conceived this scenario? Who understood the motivation of both men intimately enough to predict a bloody outcome? To whose taste does this tragedy cater, and how was that taste satisfied if the client was not physically present?"

  "Fuck, I don't know."

  Grandfather nodded. He understood ignorance. His own curiosity had flickered briefly but it died like a spent match. “You came here with a problem to solve..."

  "Right,” I said. “Here's the thing. Lada's happy with how this whole scenario worked. She said I outdid myself. She says the client wants to work with her again, maybe on a regular basis. She offered to hire me back full-time and even increase my salary."

  "Which is what you'd been hoping for, yes?"

  "But suddenly the whole idea makes me a little queasy—I don't know why. So what do you think? Should I re-up, take the money, make a success of myself? Maybe hook up with Lada again, on a personal level I mean, if things go well? Because I could do that. It would be easy. But I keep thinking it'd be even easier to find a place by the docks and live on dole and watch the waves roll in."

  Watch the aibots build more hives and nurseries. Watch the population decline.

  "I'm far too dead,” Grandfather said, “to offer sensible advice. Anyway, it sounds as if you've already decided."

  And I realized he was right—I had.

  * * * *

  On the way out of the sanctuary where Grandfather was stored I passed a gaggle of utility aibots. They were lined up along the corridor in serried ranks, motionless, and their eyes scanned me as I passed.

  And as I approached the exit, the chief custodial aibot—a tall, lanky unit in a black vest and felt hat—stepped into my path. He turned his face down to me and said, “Do you know Sophocles, Mr. Paczovski?"

  I was almost too surprised to answer. “Sophocles who?"

  "Ajax,” he said cryptically. “The Chorus. When Reason's day / Sets rayless—joyless—quenched in cold decay / Better to die, and sleep / The never-waking sleep, than linger on, / And dare to live, when the soul's life is gone."

  And while I stared, the gathered aibots—the ones with hands, at least—began gently to applaud.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  HESPERIA AND GLORY, by Ann Leckie

  Dear Mr. Stephens,

  It is entirely understandable that you should wish a full accounting of the events of the last week of August of this year. If nothing else, your position as Mr. John Atkins’ only living relative entitles you to an explanation.

  I must begin by making two points perfectly clear. The first is quite simple. The account you have read in the papers, and no doubt also received from the chief of police of this town, is entirely false.

  My second point is this: there is not now, nor has there ever been, a well in my cellar.

  It is true that ever since my return from the war I have walked with a cane, and stairs are difficult for me. But the house was my great-aunt's, and my parents and I often spent summers here when I was a boy. In those days I marshaled my leaden armies across the packed dirt floor of the cellar, destroying and resurrecting whole battalions by the hour. I know every inch of that cellar floor. I wish to be quite particular about the matter.

  Your cousin Mr. Atkins came to my house with Mr. Edgar Stark. I've known Mr. Stark since college, and he is a frequent visitor at my house. I live a quiet life, and am, I admit, somewhat prone to melancholy. Mr. Stark's lively humor and good spirits are a dependable restorative, and for this and many other reasons I value his friendship. It is not unusual for him to bring a friend or two on his visits, so I was not at all surprised when he arrived in company with another man, whom he introduced as John Atkins, an old school friend of his.

  To be entirely honest, I found Atkins unprepossessing. His suit was gray with dust and his collar wilted and dirty. As I shook his hand I could not help but notice his listless grip and slightly petulant expression. All of this I put down to a long drive in the heat, but upon further acquaintance it was clear that the expression, at least, was habitual.

  Each morning he spent at my home he was up early, before the heat made his room unbearable. After a quick breakfast of bread and jam and cold coffee he would take his place in the living-room on the couch, stretched out, his feet on the cushions, eyes closed, brow knitted in concentration. He arose only briefly in the afternoon to plug in the electric fan and bring the ice bucket from the dining-room to the couch. After supper he went directly to his room, but he slept poorly, if at all; each night I heard his step overhead, pacing back and forth.

  Stark did his best to stir his friend, with no success. Atkins did not like music, either from the piano or the Victrola—the noise distracted him. Books were out of the question, as, he informed us, reading only put other people's ideas into his head. “Well, then, Atkins,” I said on the third morning, after another attempt to find something that would entice him off the couch, “what do you like?"

  "I like to be left alone,” he snapped.

  We were only too happy to grant his wish, and went out onto the terrace to sit in a couple of dusty wrought-iron chairs in the shade of an old sycamore. Quite naturally, I asked Mr. Stark for an explanation. He told me that John Atkins was mad. Or rather, that he purported to be mad. He had avoided college, work, enlistment, any sort of responsibility, by pretending insanity. He had deceived various doctors and had spent much of the past year in isolation at the latest doctor's orders. Stark believed Atkins was not truly mad, because the mad did not merely lie about all day. “If you're mad, you should be ... mad,” he said. The doctor had approved Atkins’ departure from the sanatorium and advised that his surroundings for the moment should be peaceful and calm. So naturally Mr. Stark had thought of my house. “I thought you could only be good for him. And he was quite interested in your house, when I described it to him. Particularly the well in your cellar. It's the first time in ages he's shown any sort of interest in anything."

  "There's no well in my cellar."

  "John and I were good friends at school, before college. Something happened, I don't know."

  "There's no well in my cellar,” I said again. It disturbed me that he had not seemed to hear what I had said.

  "I need another drink,” he said, and that was the end of the matter.

  * * * *

  You may wonder that I did not take offense at your cousin's behavior. The truth of the matter is, I had se
en something like it before. Some doctors called it “funk” and some “neurasthenia.” I called it perfectly natural, if you'd been at the front long enough. Atkins had never enlisted, but whatever his problem, I didn't doubt that it was real enough.

  That evening, when I heard Atkins’ step, I determined to speak with him, so I rose and took my stick, meaning to make my slow way up the stairs. Instead I heard Atkins come down, and walk through the dining room out onto the terrace. I followed him.

  The night was cool and cloudless, but not silent. Crickets chirruped, and other night insects shrilled and chorused. All the colors were gone out of the bricks, the grass, the leaves of the trees; everything was shades of black and gray. Atkins was still in his shirtsleeves, and he stood on the grass with his face turned up to the sky. He was there long enough for my leg to grow tired, and I seated myself in one of the chairs and waited.

  After a while he turned, and as though he'd known I was there all the time he came and sat in another of the chairs. In the dark his face was shadowed oddly, his glasses dark circles where his eyes should be. “Edgar thinks I'm mad,” he said, conversationally, as though he'd offered me a cigarette.

  "You're not mad."

  "Of course not."

  "Have a drink?"

  "No,” he said, and hooked one of the chairs with his foot and dragged it closer with a shriek of iron against brick. “You can bring me some ice.” He put his feet up on the chair.

  "All out, old man.” Actually the ice man had been just that morning, and I'd taken more than usual, because of my guests. “You'll have to wait until tomorrow."

  He made a slight movement that might have been a shrug. “I'm not like just anyone else,” he said after some minutes had passed. “I matter."

  "Ah,” I said.

  "Things have gone terribly wrong, and only I can fix them. It's all my brother's fault. My half-brother, really. Asery.” The last word was drawn out, filled with hate. “His father led a rebellion against the king of Hesperia—my father, Cthonin VI. He failed, of course. His head rolled down the palace stairs and into the square in the capital, and the body was buried under the steps, so that every day Hesperians would have him underfoot. I'll never understand why his son didn't join him, infant or not."

  "And where is Hesperia?” I asked.

  "On Mars, of course."

  "Of course,” I said. “How foolish of me."

  He told me then of the antiquity and superiority of Martian civilization, and of Hesperia, which was the greatest of Martian nations. Each Hesperian learned, from his mother's knee and throughout his schooling, the importance of right thinking. “On Mars,” he said, “we understand that what one thinks makes the world."

  "Do you mean to say that each of us makes our own world with his thoughts?” I'd heard the idea before, usually at two in the morning from young men drunk with a heady mix of champagne and philosophy, and whose lives had yet to run up very hard against reality.

  "No, no,” said Atkins testily. “Nothing so trivial. There's only one universe. But that universe is formed by thought. If it were left to undisciplined minds, the world would be chaos."

  "Your mind is disciplined,” I ventured.

  "I was bred to it. I am Cthonin Jor, Prince of Hesperia. Some day I will be Cthonin VII. But first I must defeat Asery."

  I asked him then to tell me the tale, and thus he began:

  * * * *

  In Hesperia (here I set down his words as best I remember them) the canals run deep and wide, and straight as death. The dirt, thick and heavy and scarlet, makes the water the color of blood. Some canals in less blessed regions have run dry, but in Hesperia green grows thick and lush thirty miles on either side of the broad waterways that criss-cross the land.

  The canal called Fortunae does not run through Hesperia proper, but it is important nonetheless. It runs northward from the southern ice to a series of falls that cascade down into the Lake of the Sun, which is nearly a sea, wide and shallow. In unimaginably ancient times it was believed that on the day of creation the sun itself rose from that lake. It was the site of a tremendous temple complex, nearly all of which has disappeared without a trace after so many thousands of years. But one part of the temple still stands: the Wheel of Heaven, six hundred sixty-nine chambers, each built side to side in a great circle under the lake. The ring turns by the width of a chamber each day, and there being only one entrance a single room is accessible each day, and that same room, once its day has passed, cannot be entered again until the six hundred and sixty-nine days, which is the length of the Martian year, pass once more. The entrance is reached through a cave behind the falls.

  The Fortunae comes out again at the western shore, at a headland called the Cape of Dawn. On this headland is one of the many pumping stations that send the water of the Fortunae on to where it meets the canals of Hesperia proper, in mountains to the west. Near the station is a town, and this is the administrative center of the province, which is, of course, governed by Hesperia.

  It was there that I had been sent by my father, and there that my brother Asery came to me nearly a year ago as I sat in my chair on the steps of the governor's palace, my counselors beside me. Before me was a great plaza, paved with the local brown stone in various shades, depicting a coiled serpent surrounded by a border of alternating jasper and copper in which the artist had cunningly concealed the drainage grates so necessary for a large, flat surface near so much water. Across the plaza, to the north, was the canal come again out of the lake. On the east was the lake itself, and to the west a barracks, and the town beyond. The air there is always filled with the sound of rushing water, and the rumble of the great pumping station.

  Some of my soldiers were playing a ball game in the square in front of us, and I was proposing a wager on the outcome with my vice-governor when the voice of the crier interrupted us and Asery came before me. He is a tall man, nearly as tall as I am, with dark hair and gray eyes inherited from his father, and he carries himself with the same arrogance. On this day he was dressed in plain garments, covered with red-brown dust, as though he were some homeless wanderer just come off the road, not a gentleman seeking audience with the governor of the province, and a prince.

  "Welcome brother,” I said. “Please sit with us."

  "I will not sit,” he said.

  This sort of disrespect was like Asery, but I am a patient man. “Couldn't you even bathe between here and ... wherever it is you've come from? Our mother would be shocked to see you."

  "Our mother is not easily shocked,” he answered. “After all, she bore you without any noticeable display of shame."

  My counselors, who had been whispering among themselves, fell silent. Even the ballplayers stopped, and the ball bounced away and then rolled to the edge of the plaza, stopping and spinning on a grate. They moved together, closer to where I sat, and where my brother stood before me. Asery did not move, nor did he look behind him where they gathered.

  "I hope you've not been thinking of taking up your father's ambitions,” I said.

  "I have not come to take up any ambition. I only wish to speak with you."

  "You've made a bad start of it,” I told him. “But then, your family's arrogance is famous."

  "The contrast with the habitual modesty and diffidence of the house of Jor is marked,” he said, with the slightest of bows. “I stand reprimanded.

  That was better. “What can I do for you?"

  "You can restore the Fortunae to its original course.” Now, this had been the pretext for his father's rebellion. At one time another canal had flowed north from the upper shore of the lake, and from there into Tharsis. “A hundred years ago Hesperia annexed this province and turned its waters westward. Now the lakes and rivers of Tharsis are dry, and its fields are desert."

  "Nothing stops them from building another canal. Or buying the water they require. Isn't Tharsis famous for its silver mines? Aren't their artisans the most marvelous workers of metal on Mars?"

  H
e exhaled sharply, derisively. I couldn't read the expression in his gray eyes. “I wish I could make you see what Mars is really like, away from the canals, away from your palace."

  I realized then what he had come to do. I stood and signaled the soldiers, and with a cry Asery pulled a sword from under his dusty shirt and sprang forward. I stood to face him and drew my dagger.

  Our blades met, and over his shoulder I saw the soldiers turn as the grates around the court lifted and fell clanging to the stones, and up out of the drains came men in dusty red-brown, swords raised. In a moment they had ringed the plaza, even in front of where I stood on the palace steps.

  Asery was a wily and treacherous swordsman, and I had to fight with all my attention. I did not have time to look over the plaza, or think of my counselors who had been next to me, but it was evident that the soldiers from the barracks had joined us, because from time to time I heard their voices raised in the battle cry of Hesperia: For Hesperia, and glory! And though he had a sword and I had only my dagger, we fought until each of us was exhausted, and I, anticipating his feint, disarmed him and sent his sword spinning across the stones of the plaza.

  It was then that I looked up from the fight and saw that the battle was lost. My own soldiers lay dead or bound, and my vice-governor was held by two rebels.

  I turned and ran up the palace steps.

  * * * *

  Atkins paused, and before he could continue I asked why he had not merely thought Asery dead on the spot? Or willed his enemies’ swords to turn into flowers?

  "You don't believe me,” he accused.

  "On the contrary. I'm just trying to understand."

  For a few moments the only sound was the night insects, and the soft sighing of a breeze in the tree leaves. “They would never have believed that their swords would suddenly turn to flowers."

  "So they all have to believe?"