Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Kala could guess why these people had come into the mountains. They liked solitude and cheap energy, and besides, the police were hunting everywhere else for those who had murdered the security guards.

  Sandor was somewhere close, Kala told herself.

  Watching her.

  She almost relaxed, imagining her brother hunkered low in the shadow of some great old tree, waiting for a critical mistake to be made. Hunting for an opening, a weakness. Any opportunity. She went as far as picturing his arrival: Sandor would wait for afternoon and the gathering storms, and maybe the rain would start to fall, fat drops turning into a deluge, and while the devout boys and girls watched for the Lord in that angry sky, her brother would sneak up behind her and neatly cut her free.

  Obviously, that's what would happen.

  Kala thought so highly of the plan that she was as surprised as anyone when a figure emerged from the shadows—a man smaller than most were, running on bare feet to keep his noise to a minimum. He was quick, but something in his stride seemed unhurried. Untroubled. He looked something like a hiker who had lost his way but now had found help. Perhaps that was what Sandor intended. But his face was grim and focused, and no motion was wasted. Everybody—grooms and brides and even their captive—stared for a moment, examining the stranger in their midst. Then the newcomer reached beneath his shirt and lifted a long pistol, and the first hollow point removed the top of the father's head and the second one knocked the small girl flat. Then Sandor was running again, slipping between brides, and one of the sons finally lifted his weapon, spraying automatic gunfire until three girls had dropped and another brother had pushed the barrel into the forest floor, screaming, “Stop, would you ... just stop...!"

  Sandor had the third brother by the neck, slamming him against the broad black trunk of a tree. Then he stared out at the cowering survivors, pressing the barrel of the pistol into the man's ass, and with a voice eerily composed, he said, “Put your guns down. Do it now. Or I'm going to do some painting over here ... with a goddamn pubic hair brush..."

  12

  The matronly gray robes of middle age had vanished, replaced by an old woman's love for gaudy colors. She was wearing a rich slick and very purple dress with a purple hat with a wide gold belt and matching shoes. Diet and exercise had removed enough weight to give her a stocky, solid figure. She nicely filled the station of her life—that of the fit, well-rested widow. Seeing her children standing at her doorway, Mom smiled—a thoroughly genuine expression, happy but brief. Then she found something alarming in their faces. “What's happened?” With concern, she said, “Darlings. What's wrong?"

  Kala glanced at her brother and then over her shoulder.

  In the street sat a plain commercial van. Nothing about the vehicle was remarkable, except that its back end was being pressed down by the terrific, relentless weight of a class-C ripper and a powerful little winch.

  The van was their fourth vehicle in three days, and Sandor would replace it tomorrow, if he thought it would help.

  "I was just leaving,” their mother offered. And when no one else spoke, she added, “I don't normally dress like this—"

  "Don't go,” said her son.

  "Are you meeting friends?” Kala asked. “If you don't show, will somebody miss you?"

  Mom shook her head. “I just go the tea parlor on Fridays. I know people, but no, I doubt if anybody expects me."

  It was the Sabbath today, wasn't it?

  "Can I park the van inside your garage?” Sandor asked.

  Mom nodded. “You'll have to pull my car out—"

  "Keys,” he said.

  She fished them from a purse covered with mock jewelry, and Sandor started down the front stairs.

  Kala gratefully stepped inside. All these years, and the same furnishings and carpet populated the living room, although every surface was a little more worn now. Immersed in what was astonishingly familiar, she suddenly relaxed. She couldn't help herself. All at once it was impossible to stand under her own power, and as soon as she sat, a deep need for sleep began to engulf her.

  "What's happened?” Mom repeated. “What's wrong?"

  "We're going to explain everything, Mom."

  "You look awful, sweetness. Both of you do.” The old woman sat beside Kala on the lumpy couch, one hand patting her on the knee. “But I'm glad to see you two, together."

  Sometime in these last few moments, Kala had begun to cry.

  "Tell me, dear."

  In what felt like a single breath, the story emerged. For the second time in her life, Kala had been kidnapped, but this time Sandor killed two people while freeing her. A second bride died in random gunfire, and two more were severely injured. “But we had to leave them,” Kala confessed. “After we disarmed the brothers and brides, we left them with first aid kits and two working trucks ... except Sandor shot out the tires before we drove off in their bus, just to make sure we would have a head start..."

  Her mother held herself motionless, mouth open and no sound worth the effort.

  "It was a big long bus with a ripper onboard. Sandor drove us through the mountains. Fast. I don't know why we didn't crash, but we didn't. We stopped at a fix-it shop and he made calls, and a hundred miles after that, we met a couple friends of his ... men that he met inside prison, I think..."

  "When was this?"

  "Wednesday,” she answered. “Those friends helped Sandor pull the ripper from the bus. They gave us a new truck and kept the capacitors and the other expensive gear for themselves. Then he and I drove maybe two miles, and that's when Sandor stole a second truck. Because he didn't quite trust his friends, and what if they decided to come take the ripper too?” She wiped at her eyes, her cheeks. “After that, we drove more than a thousand miles, but never in a straight line. By then, we'd finally decided what we were going to do, and he stole the van before we came here."

  Mom was alert, focused. She was sitting forward with her hand clenched to her daughter's knee. Very quietly, she asked, “Is it one of the stolen rippers? From that convoy?"

  Kala nodded. “The ID marks match."

  "Have you thought about giving it back to its rightful owners?"

  "We talked about that. Yes."

  But then Mom saw what had eventually become obvious to Kala. “Regardless what you tell the owners, they'll think your brother had something to do with the robbery and murders. And what good would that do?"

  "Nothing."

  Then her mother gathered up Kala's hands, and without hesitation, she said, “God has given you a gift, darling."

  She didn't think about it in religious terms. But the words sounded nice.

  "A great rare and wonderful gift,” her mother continued. “And you know, if there is one person who truly deserves to inherit a new world, it has to be—"

  "My brother?"

  "No,” Mom exclaimed, genuinely surprised. Then as the front door swung open and Sandor stepped inside, she said brightly, “It's you, sweetness. You deserve the best world. Of course, of course, of course...!"

  * * * *

  Their frantic days had only just begun. The Children of Forever would have learned their names from the old ranger, or maybe from the Kala's abandoned car. And people who had murdered dozens to steal the ripper would undoubtedly do anything to recover what was theirs and avenge their losses. Obviously, it was best to vanish again, this time taking their mother with them. Old lives and treasured patterns had to be avoided, yet even on the run, they still had to find time and energy to make plans for what was to come next.

  Sandor knew the best places to find machinery and foodstuffs and the other essential supplies. But Kala knew where to find people—the right people—who would make this business worthwhile. And it was their mother who acted as peacemaker, calming the water when her two strong-willed children began fighting over the details that always looked trivial the next day.

  Suddenly it was winter—the worst season to migrate to another world. But that gave them the gift o
f several months where they could make everything perfect, or nearly so.

  Years ago, the old fix-it man who once worked on their family car had retired, and the next owner had driven his shop out of business. The property was purchased from the bank for nothing and reconnected to the power grid, and with Kala's friends supplying labor and enough money, Sandor managed to refit the building according to their specific needs. Medical stocks were locked in the lady's room. The garage was jammed with canned and dried food and giant water tanks, plus the rest of their essential goods, including a fully charged class-C ripper that would carry away the little building.

  On a cold bleak day in late March—several weeks before their scheduled departure—a stranger came looking for gasoline. He parked beside one of the useless pumps and pulled on his horn several times. Then he climbed out of the small, nondescript car, and ignoring the CLOSED signs painted on the shuttered windows, he walked across the cracked pavement in order to knock hard on both garage doors and the front door.

  "Hey! Anybody there?” he shouted before finally giving up.

  As he returned to his car, Kala asked her brother, “What is he? Children of Forever, or some kind of undercover cop?"

  "Really,” Sandor replied, “does it matter?"

  Kala set her splattergun back in its cradle.

  "I think it's time,” their mother offered.

  It was too early in the season to be ideal. But what choice did they have? Kala lifted the phone and made one coded call to the nearest town. And within the hour, everybody had arrived. Those who weren't going with them offered quick tearful good-byes to those who were, showering those blessed pioneers with kisses and love. But then the pioneers had enough, and with quick embarrassed voices, they said, “Enough, Mommy. Daddy. That's enough. Good-bye!"

  * * * *

  Kala had come too far and paid too much of a price not to watch what was about to happened. She opened all of the shutters in the public room, letting the murky gray flow inside, and then she sat between two six-year-olds, one of whom asked, “How much longer now?"

  "Soon,” she promised. “A minute or two, at most."

  Sandor and several other mechanically minded souls were in the garage, watching the ripper power up. Sharing the public room with Kala were a handful of grown men and a dozen women, plus nearly forty children sitting on tiny folding chairs, the oldest child being a stubborn twelve year-old boy—the only son of colleagues who were staying behind.

  Kala's mother was one of the women, and she wasn't even the oldest.

  "We're not making everybody else's mistakes,” Kala had explained to her, sitting in the old living room some months ago. “We're taking grandparents and little kids, but very few young adults. I don't want virility and stupidity. I want wisdom and youth."

  "What seeds are you taking?” her mother had asked.

  "None."

  "Did I hear you say—?"

  "No seeds, and no animals. Not even one viable tortoise shell. And before we leave, I want to make sure every mouse in the building is dead, and every fly and flea, and if there's one earthworm living under us, I'll kill it myself when it pops in the new world."

  Nobody was leaving this world but humans.

  And even then, they were traveling as close to empty-handed as they dared. They had tools and a few books about science and mechanics. But everyone had taken an oath not to bring any Bibles or odd Testaments, and as far as possible, everything else that smacked of preconceptions and fussy religion had to be left behind on their doomed world.

  The children came from families who believed as Kala believed.

  It was amazing, and heartening, how many people held opinions not too much unlike hers. And sometimes in her most doubting moments, she found herself wondering if maybe her home world had a real chance of surviving the next ten thousand years.

  But there were many parents who saw doom coming—ecological or political or religious catastrophes—and that's why they were so eager to give up a young son or daughter.

  They were there now, standing out near the highway, surely hearing the ripper as it began to hammer hard at reality.

  From inside the cold garage, Sandor shouted, “A target's acquired!"

  Will this madness work? Kala asked herself one last time. Could one species arrive on an alien world, with children and old people in tow, and find food enough to survive? And then could they pass through the next ten thousand years without destroying everything that that world was and could have become ... ?

  And then it was too late to ask the question.

  The clouds of one day had vanished into a suddenly blue glare of empty skies, a green-blue lawn of grassy something stretching off into infinity ... and suddenly a room full of bright young voices shouted, “Neat! Sweet! Pretty!"

  Then the boy on her right tugged at her arm, adding, “That's fun, Miss Kala. Let's do it again!"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CONTRIBUTORS

  Christopher Rowe has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Awards, and in 2006 the New York Times said that he should be awarded “a special prize for the speculative work possessing the year's most striking literary imagery.” Rowe is a native of Kentucky and lives there still, with his wife, writer Gwenda Bond.

  Carolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Fantasy and Science Fiction, Bending the Landscape, The Year's Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, and German. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.” She currently lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.

  Born in England in 1943, Ian Watson graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1963 with a first class Honours degree in English Literature, followed in 1965 by a research degree in English and French 19th Century literature. After lecturing in literature at universities in Tanzania and Tokyo, and in Futures Studies in Birmingham, England, he became a full-time writer in 1976 following the success of his first novel, The Embedding. Numerous novels of science fiction, fantasy, and horror followed, and nine story collections. His stories have been finalists for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and widely anthologised. He lives with a black cat called Poppy in a small rural village sixty miles north of London.

  Robert Charles Wilson's first novel was published in 1986. Since then he was won the Philip K. Dick Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, three Aurora Awards, and in 2006 his novel Spin was the recipient of the Hugo Award. He lives near Toronto.

  Ann Leckie is a graduate of Clarion West. Her fiction has appeared in Subterranean Magazine and Son and Foe. She has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband, children, and cats.

  Walter Jon Williams started writing in the early ‘80s, and his first science fiction novel, Ambassador of Progress, appeared in 1984 and was followed by Hardwired, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire, The Rift, and most recently his Dread Empire's Fall series, The Praxis, The Sundering and Conventions of War. A prolific and talented short fiction writer, he has won the Nebula for “Daddy's World” and “The Green Leopard Plague,” His short fiction is collected in Facets and Frankensteins and Foreign Devils. Upcoming is new science fiction novel Implied Spaces.

  Sometime-English-professor, sometime-IT-professional, Ruth Nestvold has sold several dozen stories to a variety of markets, including Scifiction, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction, and a number of anthologies. Her novella “Looking Through Lace” made the short list for the Tiptree award in 200
3 and was nominated for the Sturgeon award. She maintains a web site at www.ruthnestvold.com.

  Since his first publication in 1993, William Shunn's stories have appeared in Salon, Asimov's, F&SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, Storyteller, and elsewhere. He was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2002 for his novelette “Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites,” and has served three years as a national juror for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. He produces a biweekly podcast, and is at work on a novel and a memoir. Born in L.A. and raised in Utah, he has lived for eleven years in New York City, where he met his wife Laura Chavoen. The couple have a soft-coated wheaten terrier named Ella. A chapbook of stories in due from Spilt Milk Press in the summer of 2007.

  Jack Skillingstead has lived most his life in Seattle. In 2001 Stephen King chose his entry as a winner in his “On Writing” contest. Since 2003 Jack's stories have appeared in various publications, including Asimov's Science Fiction, On Spec, Realms of Fantasy, and Gardner Dozois’ Years Best Science Fiction. Jack's first professional sale was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

  Adam Roberts is a writer in his forties. He lives a little way west of London with his wife and daughter. He's published various novels, the most recent being Gradisil, Splinter and Land of the Headless.

  Benjamin Rosenbaum is a small blue thing which fits in the palm of your hand, cedar-smelling, warm as a gun, inscrutable. He has been on Hugo and Nebula ballots, worked as a party clown, been translated into ten human languages as well as the languages of archaic blind cave-dwelling fish, eaten grasshoppers, and been eaten by Fate. For more about him and his work, see his website at www.benjaminrosenbaum.com.

  Robert Reed was born in Omaha, Nebraska on October 9, 1956. Since then Bob has had eleven novels published, starting with The Leeshore and most recently with The Well of Stars. Since winning the first annual L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest in 1986 and being a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1987, he has had 140 shorter works published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Eleven of those stories were published in his critically-acclaimed first collection, The Dragons of Springplace. Twelve more stories appear in his second collection, The Cuckoo's Boys. Reed continues to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife, Leslie, and daughter, Jessie.