Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

by Rich Horton

  I was flushed with joy. I had never set an actual foot on an actual world before, and as I bounded in sheer delight through the snow I rejoiced in all the little details I felt all around me.

  The crunch of the frozen methane under my boots. The way the wind picked up long streamers of snow that made little spattering noises when they hit my windscreen. The suit heaters that failed to heat my body evenly, so that some parts were cool and others uncomfortably warm.

  None of it had the immediacy of the simulations, but I didn't remember this level of detail either. Even the polyamide scent of the suit seals was sharper than the generic stuffy suit smell they put in the sim.

  This was all real, and it was wonderful, and even if my body was borrowed I was already having the best time I'd ever had in my life.

  I scuttled over to Janis on my six legs and crashed into her with affectionate joy. (Hugging wasn't easy with the vac suits on.) Then Parminder ran over and crashed into her from the other side.

  "We're finally out of Plato's Cave!” she said, which is the sort of obscure reference you always get out of Parminder. (I looked it up, though, and she had a good point.)

  The outfitters at the top of the glacier hadn't been expecting us for some time, so we had some free time to indulge in a snowball fight. I suppose snowball fights aren't that exciting if you're wearing full-body pressure suits, but this was the first real snowball fight any of us had ever had, so it was fun on that account anyway.

  By the time we got our skis on, the shuttle holding the rest of the cadre and their pods was just arriving. We could see them looking at us from the yellow windows of the shuttle, and we just gave them a wave and zoomed off down the glacier, along with a grownup who decided to accompany us in case we tried anything else that wasn't in the regulation playbook.

  Skiing isn't a terribly hazardous sport if you've got six legs on a body slung low to the ground. The skis are short, not much longer than skates, so they don't get tangled; and it's really hard to fall over—the worst that happens is that you go into a spin that might take some time to get out of. And we'd all been practicing on the simulators and nothing bad happened.

  The most interesting part was the jumps that had been molded at intervals onto the glacier. Titan's low gravity meant that when you went off a jump, you went very high and you stayed in the air for a long time. And Titan's heavy atmosphere meant that if you spread your limbs apart like a skydiver, you could catch enough of that thick air almost to hover, particularly if the wind was cooperating and blowing uphill. That was wild and thrilling, hanging in the air with the wind whistling around the joints of your suit, the glossy orange snow coming up to meet you, and the sound of your own joyful whoops echoing in your ears.

  I am a great friend to public amusements, because they keep people from vice.

  Well. Maybe. We'll see.

  The best part of the skiing was that this time I didn't get so carried away that I'd forgot to observe. I thought about ways to render the dull orange sheen of the glacier, the wild scrawls made in the snow by six skis spinning out of control beneath a single squat body, the little crusty waves on the surface generated by the constant wind.

  Neither the glacier nor the lake is always solid. Sometimes Titan generates a warm front that liquifies the topmost layer of the glacier, and the liquid methane pours down the mountain to form the lake. When that happens, the modular resort breaks apart and creeps away on its treads. But sooner or later everything freezes over again, and the resort returns.

  We were able to ski through a broad orange glassy chute right onto the lake, and from there we could see the lights of the resort in the distance. We skied into a big ballooning pressurized hangar made out of some kind of durable fabric, where the crew removed our pressure suits and gave us little felt booties to wear. I'd had an exhilarating time, but hours had passed and I was tired. The Incarnation Day banquet was just what I needed.

  Babbling and laughing, we clustered around the snack tables, tasting a good many things I'd never got in a simulation. (They make us eat in the sims, to get us used to the idea so we don't accidentally starve ourselves once we're incarnated, and to teach us table manners, but the tastes tend to be a bit monotonous.)

  "Great stuff!” Janis said, gobbling some kind of crunchy vat-grown treat that I'd sampled earlier and found disgusting. She held the bowl out to the rest of us. “Try this! You'll like it!"

  I declined.

  "Well,” Janis said, “If you're afraid of new things..."

  That was Janis for you—she insisted on sharing her existence with everyone around her, and got angry if you didn't find her life as exciting as she did.

  About that time Andy and Parminder began to gag on the stuff Janis had made them eat, and Janis laughed again.

  The other members of the cadre trailed in about an hour later, and the feast proper began. I looked around the long table—the forty-odd members of the Cadre of Glorious Destiny, all with their little heads on their furry multipede bodies, all crowded around the table cramming in the first real food they've tasted in their lives. In the old days, this would have been a scene from some kind of horror movie. Now it's just a slice of posthumanity, Earth's descendants partying on some frozen rock far from home.

  But since all but Fahd were in borrowed bodies I'd never seen before, I couldn't tell one from the other. I had to ping a query off their implant communications units just to find out who I was talking to.

  Fahd sat at the place of honor at the head of the table. The hair on his furry body was ash-blond, and he had a sort of widow's peak that gave his head a kind of geometrical look.

  I liked Fahd. He was the one I had sex with, that time that Janis persuaded me to steal a sex sim from Dane, the guy I do outside programming for. (I should point out, Doctor Sam, that our simulated bodies have all the appropriate organs, it's just that the adults have made sure we can't actually use them for sex.)

  I think there was something wrong with the simulation. What Fahd and I did wasn't wonderful, it wasn't ecstatic, it was just ... strange. After a while we gave up and found something else to do.

  Janis, of course, insisted she'd had a glorious time. She was our leader, and everything she did had to be totally fabulous. It was just like that horrid vat-grown snack food product she'd tried—not only was it the best food she'd ever tasted, it was the best food ever, and we all had to share it with her.

  I hope Janis actually did enjoy the sex sim, because she was the one caught with the program in her buffer—and after I told her to erase it. Sometimes I think she just wants to be found out.

  During dinner those whose parents permitted it were allowed two measured doses of liquor to toast Fahd—something called Ring Ice, brewed locally. I think it gave my esophagus blisters.

  After the Ring Ice things got louder and more lively. There was a lot more noise and hilarity when the resort crew discovered that several of the cadre had slipped off to a back room to find out what sex was like, now they had real bodies. It was when I was laughing over this that I looked at Janis and saw that she was quiet, her body motionless. She's normally louder and more demonstrative than anyone else, so I knew something was badly wrong. I sent her a private query through my implant. She sent a single-word reply.

  Mom...

  I sent her a glyph of sympathy while I wondered how had Janis’ mom had found out about our little adventure so quickly. There was barely time for a lightspeed signal to bounce to Ceres and back.

  Ground Control must have really been annoyed. Or maybe she and Janis’ mom were Constant Soldiers in the Five Principles Movement and were busy spying on everyone else—all for the greater good, of course.

  Whatever the message was, Janis bounced back pretty quickly. Next thing I knew she was sidling up to me saying, “Look, you can loan me your vac suit, right?"

  Something about the glint in her huge platter eyes made me cautious.

  "Why would I want to do that?” I asked.

  "Mom says
I'm grounded. I'm not allowed to go skating with the rest of you. But nobody can tell these bodies apart—I figured if we switched places we could show her who's boss."

  "And leave me stuck here by myself?"

  "You'll be with the waiters—and some of them are kinda cute, if you like them hairy.” Her tone turned serious. “It's solidarity time, Alison. We can't let Mom win this one."

  I thought about it for a moment, then said, “Maybe you'd better ask someone else."

  Anger flashed in her huge eyes. “I knew you'd say that! You've always been afraid to stand up to the growups!"

  "Janis,” I sighed. “Think about it. Do you think your mom was the only one that got a signal from Ground Control? My parents are going to be looking into the records of this event very closely. So I think you should talk someone else into your scheme—and not Parminder or Andy, either."

  Her whole hairy body sulked. I almost laughed.

  "I guess you're right,” she conceded.

  "You know your mom is going to give you a big lecture when we get back."

  "Oh yeah. I'm sure she's writing her speech right now, making sure she doesn't miss a single point."

  "Maybe you'd better let me eavesdrop,” I said. “Make sure you don't lose your cool."

  She looked even more sulky. “Maybe you'd better."

  We do this because we're cadre. Back in the old days, when the first poor kids were being raised in virtual, a lot of them cracked up once they got incarnated. They went crazy, or developed a lot of weird obsessions, or tried to kill themselves, or turned out to have a kind of autism where they could only relate to things through a computer interface.

  So now parents don't raise their children by themselves. Most kids still have two parents, because it takes two to pay the citizenship points and taxes it takes to raise a kid, and sometimes if there aren't enough points to go around there are three parents, or four or five. Once the points are paid the poor moms and dads have to wait until there are enough applicants to fill a cadre. A whole bunch of virtual children are raised in one group, sharing their upbringing with their parents and creche staff. Older cadres often join their juniors and take part in their education, also.

  The main point of the cadre is for us all to keep an eye on each other. Nobody's allowed to withdraw into their own little world. If anyone shows sign of going around the bend, we unite in our efforts to retrieve them.

  Our parents created the little hell that we live in. It's our job to help each other survive it.

  A person used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.

  Certainly Janis isn't, though despite cadre solidarity she never managed to talk anyone else into changing places with her. I felt only moderately sorry for her—she'd already had her triumph, after all—and I forgot all about her problems once I got back into my pressure suit and out onto the ice.

  Skating isn't as thrilling as skiing, I suppose, but we still had fun. Playing crack-the-whip in the light gravity, the person on the end of the line could be fired a couple kilometers over the smooth methane ice.

  After which it was time to return to the resort. We all showered while the resort crew cleaned and did maintenance on our suits, and then we got back in the suits so that the next set of tourists would find their rental bodies already armored up and ready for sport.

  We popped open our helmets so that the scanners could be put on our heads. Quantum superconducting devices tickled our brain cells and recovered everything they found, and then our brains—our essences—were dumped into a buffer, then fired by communication laser back to Ceres and the sim in which we all lived.

  The simulation seemed inadequate compared to the reality of Titan. But I didn't have time to work out the degree of difference, because I had to save Janis’ butt.

  That's us. That's the cadre. All for one and one for all.

  And besides, Janis has been my best friend for practically ever.

  Anna-Lee, Janis’ mom, was of course waiting for her, sitting in the little common room outside Janis’ bedroom. (Did I mention that we sleep, Doctor Sam? We don't sleep as long as incarnated people do, just a few hours, but our parents want us to get used to the idea so that when we're incarnated we know to sleep when we get tired instead of ignoring it and then passing out while doing something dangerous or important.

  (The only difference between our dreams and yours is that we don't dream. I mean, what's the point, we're stuck in our parents’ dream anyway.)

  So I'm no sooner arrived in my own simulated body in my own simulated bedroom when Janis is screaming on the private channel.

  "Mom is here! I need you now!"

  So I press a few switches in my brain and there I am, right in Janis’ head, getting much of the same sensor feed that she's receiving herself. And I looked at her and I say, “Hey, you can't talk to Anna-Lee looking like this."

  Janis is wearing her current avatar, which is something like a crazy person might draw with crayons. Stick-figure body, huge yellow shoes, round bobble head with crinkly red hair like wires.

  "Get your quadbod on!” I tell her. “Now!"

  So she switches, and now her avatar has four arms, two in the shoulders, two in the hip sockets. The hair is still bright red. Whatever her avatar looks like, Janis always keeps the red hair.

  "Good,” I say. “That's normal."

  Which it is, for Ceres. Which is an asteroid without much gravity, so there really isn't a lot of point in having legs. In microgravity legs just drag around behind you and bump into things and get bruises and cuts. Whereas everyone can use an extra pair of arms, right? So most people who live in low- or zero-gravity environments use quadbods, which are much practical than the two-legged model.

  So Janis pushes off with her left set of arms and floats through the door into the lounge where her mom awaits. Anna-Lee wears a quadbod, too, except that hers isn't an avatar, but a three-dimensional holographic scan of her real body. And you can tell that she's really pissed—she's got tight lips and tight eyelids and a tight face, and both sets of arms are folded across her midsection with her fingers digging into her forearms as if she's repressing the urge to grab Janis and shake her.

  "Hi, mom,” Janis said.

  "You not only endangered yourself,” Anna-Lee said, “but you chose to endanger others, too."

  "Sit down before you answer,” I murmured in Janis’ inward ear. “Take your time."

  I was faintly surprised that Janis actually followed my advice. She drifted into a chair, used her lower limbs to settle herself into it, and then spoke.

  "Nobody was endangered,” she said, quite reasonably.

  Anna-Lee's nostrils narrowed.

  "You diverted from the flight plan that was devised for your safety,” she said.

  "I made a new flight plan,” Janis pointed out. “Ground Control accepted it. If it was dangerous, she wouldn't have done that."

  Anna-Lee's voice got that flat quality that it gets when she's following her own internal logic. Sometimes I think she's the program, not us.

  "You are not authorized to file flight plans!” she snapped.

  "Ground Control accepted it,” Janis repeated. Her voice had grown a little sharp, and I whispered at her to keep cool.

  "And Ground Control immediately informed me! They were right on the edge of calling out a rescue shuttle!"

  "But they didn't, because there was no problem!” Janis snapped out, and then there was a pause while I told her to lower her voice.

  "Ground Control accepted my revised plan,” she said. “I landed according to the plan, and nobody was hurt."

  "You planned this from the beginning!” All in that flat voice of hers. “This was a deliberate act of defiance!"

  Which was true, of course.

  "What harm did I do?” Janis asked.

  ("Look,” I told Janis. “Just tell her that she's right and you were wrong and you'll never do it again."

  ("I'm not going to lie!” Janis sent back on our private channel. “
Whatever mom does, she's never going to make me lie!")

  All this while Anna-Lee was saying, “We must all work together for the greater good! Your act of defiance did nothing but divert people from their proper tasks! Titan Ground Control has better things to do than worry about you!"

  There was no holding Janis back now. “You wanted me to learn navigation! So I learned it—because you wanted it! And now that I've proved that I can use it, and you're angry about it!” She was waving her arms so furiously that she bounced up from her chair and began to sort of jerk around the room.

  "And do you know why that is, mom?” she demanded.

  "For God's sake shut up!” I shouted at her. I knew where this was leading, but Janis was too far gone in her rage to listen to me now.

  "It's because you're second-rate!” Janis shouted at her mother. “Dad went off to Barnard's Star, but you didn't make the cut! And I can do all the things you wanted to do, and do them better, and you can't stand it!"

  "Will you be quiet!" I tell Janis. “Remember that she owns you!"

  "I accepted the decision of the committee!” Anna-Lee was shouting. “I am a Constant Soldier and I live a productive life, and I will not be responsible for producing a child who is a burden and a drain on resources!"

  "Who says I'm going to be a burden?” Janis demanded. “You're the only person who says that! If I incarnated tomorrow I could get a good job in ten minutes!"

  "Not if you get a reputation for disobedience and anarchy!"

  By this point it was clear that since Janis wasn't listening to me, and Anna-Lee couldn't listen, so there was no longer any point in my involving myself in what had become a very predictable argument. So I closed the link and prepared my own excuses for my own inevitable meeting with my parents.

  I changed from Picasso Woman to my own quadbod, which is what I use when I talk to my parents, at least when I want something from them. My quadbod avatar is a girl just a couple years younger than my actual age, wearing a school uniform with a Peter Pan collar and a white bow in her—my—hair. And my beautiful brown eyes are just slightly larger than eyes are in reality, because that's something called “neotony,” which means you look more like a baby and babies are designed to be irresistible to grownups.