The Very Best of the Best

by Gardner Dozois

  The woman shrank a little bit.

  But her companion, smelling his duty, climbed to his feet. “We can’t just leave these creatures behind,” he argued.

  Brace smiled. Then he laughed, quietly and with considerable relish. And he opened his arms while gesturing at the surrounding stomach, admitting, “Oh, I don’t intend to leave them. Not at all.”

  * * *

  There was no station at Good Mountain, abandoned or otherwise. There wasn’t even an auxiliary trail for a worm to pull to one side. But the foundations for homes were visible, plus markings lain out to define a network of streets. The only signs of recent habitation were the promised locker—an underground facility little bigger than a worm’s stomach—and standing to the north, a beacon tower built of wood and capped with an enormous bone-lined bowl. A reservoir of fats and cured sap was burning slowly, yellow flames swirling with the wind. In other times, this would have been the brightest light for a hundred kilometers—a navigation point to help any lost souls. But the firestorm to the east made the fire seem quite weak. Against that rushing, sizzling wall of scorching fire and vaporized wood, everything about the world seemed small and feeble.

  The wind was blowing harder now, and with it came a chill from the west, causing Jopale to shiver.

  Caretakers worked frantically, breaking open the locker, rolling barrel after barrel onto the trail directly in front of the worm. And other caretakers ordered the mockmen off the worm’s back, gathering them together on the dusty, dry ground, loud voices warning them not to take another step.

  Jopale thought he could hear the firestorm, even though it was still ten or twenty kilometers behind them.

  It sounded like water, oddly enough. Like a strong current flowing over a brink, then falling fast.

  Do-ane appeared suddenly, almost close enough to touch him. Her boots were buttoned. Her book was cradled under one arm. She studied his face for a moment. Then she regarded the firestorm with the same speculative intensity. And finally, she said to Jopale, “Come with me.”

  He wasn’t surprised. For a long while now, he had imagined this invitation and his response. But what startled him was his own reaction, feeling decidedly unsure about what to do.

  “My colleagues are there now,” she continued, pointing at the still-distant tower. “Behind the beacon is a little hut, and there’s a shaft and elevator that will drop us all the way to the starship—”

  “What about me?” Rit interrupted.

  Do-ane gave him a moment’s glance. She seemed unprepared for his entirely natural question.

  “Your starship is huge,” Rit reminded her. “Huge and empty. Don’t you think your friends would welcome me, too?”

  She tried to speak.

  Then the old wealthy woman stepped forwards. “There isn’t much time, miss. Where’s this sanctuary of yours—?”

  “Beyond that tower,” Rit offered.

  “Thank you.” Then to her companion, she said, “Help me, will you dear? I’m not sure I can manage such a long walk.”

  Her young man was holding their essential bags, a faint smile showing as he stared off to the north. With an agreeable tone, he said, “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Then he winked, adding, “Start right away. As fast as you can.” And with the strength of youth, he ran off into the ruddy gloom, dropping his bags and hers in his wake.

  Other passengers began to follow him.

  “Well,” the old woman muttered. Then with a shuffling gait, she tried to keep up.

  Rit glared at Do-ane. Appalled by the circumstances, he asked, “So just how big is this elevator? And how fast? And will it take all of us at once?”

  She tried to answer, but her voice kept failing her.

  Rit looked back at the worm, then focused on the tower.

  “Where are you going?” Master Brace hollered. He was still up near the worm’s mouth, but moving toward them as fast as he could manage. “What are you people doing? What in the hell are you thinking?”

  Do-ane saw him coming. Then she threw down everything but her precious book, and glancing at Jopale one last time, she turned and sprinted across the empty plain.

  Rit considered Jopale, plainly doubting his good sense and sanity. Then he was gone too, his long stride letting him catch up to Do-ane, then the old woman, leaving both of them behind.

  “Sir,” said Brace, staggering up next to Jopale.

  He would say his good-byes; then he would run too. Jopale had made up his mind, or so he believed.

  “Don’t,” was the caretaker’s advice.

  “Don’t what?” Jopale asked.

  Brace took him by the shoulder. Panting from his run, he said, “I like you, sir. And I honestly meant to warn you before now.”

  “Warn me?”

  “And then … then I saw the girl talking to everybody, and I didn’t think … I couldn’t imagine … that all of you would actually believe her—”

  “What is this?” Jopale cried out.

  “She’s ridden my worm in the past, sir.” Brace looked across the plain. The fire to the east was tall enough and bright enough to illuminate each of the fleeing passengers. Tiny now. Frantic little shapes soon to be lost against that great expanse of dead dry wood.

  “I know she’s ridden this way,” Jopale said. “Of course she has. She comes here to study the secret mountain.”

  Brace shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  Then he looked Jopale in the eyes, saying, “She does this. She has that book of hers, and she befriends a man … usually an older man … convincing him that everything she says is real. Then she steps off at this place and invites him to join her adventure, and of course any man would happily walk off with a pretty young thing like that.

  “But she is insane, sir. I am sure.

  “On my worm, she has ridden west at least five times now. And three times, she has set off a flare to make us stop here and pick her up on our eastbound leg.” He gulped the cool air. “That’s what people do in this country when there is no station, sir.” Offering a grim smile, he added, “But sometimes we haven’t brought her, and it’s her men who set off the flares. We’ve rescued several gentlemen of your age and bearing, and they’re always angry. ‘She showed me this big book,’ they’ll say. They’ll say, ‘I was going to explore an ancient starship and look at the bones of gods.’”

  Jopale wrapped his arms around his chest, moaning softly.

  “That girl is quite crazy, sir. And that’s all she is.” Brace placed a comforting hand upon Jopale’s shoulder. “She takes her men walking in the darkness. She keeps telling them that their destination is just a little farther now. But there’s nothing to find out there. Even the most foolish man figures that out. And do you know what she does? At some point, she’ll turn and tell him, ‘You are the problem. You don’t believe, so of course we can’t find it.’

  “Then those fellows return here and continue their journey west. And she wanders for a little while, then comes and waits here for the next eastbound worm. Somehow she always has money. Her life is spent riding worms and reading her book, and when she forgets that nothing on those pages is real, she comes back this way again. And that’s all that she does in her life, from what I can tell.”

  Jopale was confused, and he had never been so angry. But somehow none of this was a perfect surprise.

  “I should have said something,” Brace admitted. “In my baby’s stomach, when I saw her talking to everybody…”

  “Should we chase after them?” Jopale asked.

  But the caretaker could only shake his head, telling him, “There isn’t time, sir. And honestly, I don’t think we could make those people listen to reason now. They’re chasing the only hope they’ve got left.”

  “But we should try to do what’s right,” Jopale maintained. “Perhaps we can convince one or two of them to turn back—”

  “Sir,” Brace interrupted.

  Then the old fellow laughed at him.

/>   “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, sir. But there is an exceptionally good chance that we ourselves won’t be alive for much longer.”

  Again, Jopale heard the soft watery rumbling of the fire.

  “Yes. Of course…”

  TOWARD PORT OF KRAUSS

  Brace began walking toward the worm’s head.

  The worm was slowly crawling forward, gulping down the big sweet barrels as she moved. Farther ahead, several dozen mockmen were being coaxed down onto the trail. At a distance, they looked entirely human. They seemed small and plainly scared, clinging to one another while their bare feet slipped on the white grease.

  Jopale caught Brace, and before he lost his own scarce courage, he made an enormous request.

  “I know it’s asking a lot,” he admitted.

  “That won’t make much difference,” the old man said, offering a dark little laugh. Then he paused and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting new orders into the wind.

  The red-haired female was separated from the other mockmen.

  Jopale rejoined his companion, and the two of them grabbed his bags and then a rope ladder, climbing onto the worm’s wide back.

  Without prompting, the mockman claimed one of the low chairs, facing forward, her long legs stretched out before her. If the creature was grateful, it didn’t show on her stoic face. Either she was too stupid to understand what he had done, or she was perceptive enough to despise him for saving only her, leaving her friends to their gruesome fate.

  The worm’s bare flesh was warm to the touch. Jopale sat directly behind his mockman, letting her bulk block the wind. He could feel the great spine shifting beneath his rump. Facing backwards, he didn’t watch the rest of the feeding, and save for a few muddled screams, he heard nothing. Then the worm began to accelerate, drugs and this one meal lending her phenomenal energy. And after a little while, when they were racing across the empty landscape, Master Brace came and sat beside him.

  “But the book,” Jopale began.

  “It certainly looks real enough,” the old man replied, guessing his mind. “And maybe it is genuine. Maybe she stole it from a true scientist who actually knows where the starship is buried. Or maybe it’s an ancient manuscript, and there was once a starship … but the ship sank to the core ages ago, and some curious fluke has placed it in her strange hands.”

  “Or she invented everything,” Jopale allowed.

  “Perhaps.” Watching the firestorm, Brace nodded. “Perhaps the girl heard a story about space flight and lost worlds, and she has a talent that lets her draw elaborate diagrams and play games with cameras. And these times are what made her insane. The terrors and wild hopes tell her that everything she can dream up is real. Perhaps.”

  Or she was perfectly rational, Jopale thought, and the starship really was waiting out there. Somewhere. While Brace was the creature whose sanity had been discarded along the way, his mind lying to both of them, forcing them to stay onboard his treasured worm.

  “But the name,” Jopale muttered.

  “Sir?”

  “‘Good Mountain’. She told me why the scientists used that old word. And honestly, I can’t think of another reason for placing that noble name on this ridiculous place?”

  “First of all, sir—”

  “Call me Jopale, please.”

  “Jopale. Yes.” Brace held both of his hands against the worm’s skin, listening to the great body. “First of all, I know this country well. If there were a project here, a research station of any size, it would not be a secret from me. And I can tell you frankly, Jopale … except for that one strange girl and her misguided men, nobody comes to this wasted space…”

  A small quake rolled beneath them.

  When it passed, Brace suggested, “We might be in luck here, sir. Do-ane may have told you: There’s a dead island under this ground. There’s a lot of wood sitting between us and the methane. So when the fire gets off the Tanglelands, it should slow down. At least for a little while. This wood’s going to burn, sure, but not as fast as that damned gas does.”

  Jopale tried to feel encouraged. Then he repeated the words, “‘First of all.’”

  “Sir?”

  “You said, ‘First of all.’ What’s second of all?”

  Master Brace nodded in a thoughtful fashion, then said, “You know, my mother was a caretaker on a worm exactly like this one. And her father was a driver on a freighter worm that crawled along this same trail, bringing the new iron back from Port of Krauss. It was that grandfather who told me that even when there was sunlight here, this was an awful place to live. Flat like this. Sapless. Hard to farm, and hard on the soul. But some greedy fellow bought this land for nothing, then sold pieces of it to people in more crowded parts of the world. He named his ground ‘Good Mountain’ because he thought the old word sounded strong and lasting. But of course, all he wanted was to lure fools into his trap…”

  Jopale reached back over his head, burying one of his hands into the mockman’s thick hair. Then he pushed with his legs, feeling a consuming need to be closer to her, grinding his spine hard up against her spine.

  “It’s just one old word,” Brace was saying. With his face lit up by the endless fire, he said, “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, sir. But words … what they are … they’re just sounds and scribbles. It’s people who give them meaning. Without us, the poor things wouldn’t have any life at all.”

  And they pressed on, rushing toward the promised Ocean, with the End of the World following close behind.

  Where the Golden Apples Grow

  KAGE BAKER

  One of the most prolific new writers to appear in the late nineties, the late Kage Baker made her first sale in 1997, with “Noble Mold,” the first of her long sequence of sly and compelling stories of the adventures and misadventures of the time-traveling agents of the Company. Her Company novels include In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, The Graveyard Game, The Life of the World to Come, The Machine’s Child, Sons of Heaven, and Not Less Than Gods. Her other books include fantasy novels The Anvil of the World, The House of the Stag, and The Bird on the River, science fiction novel The Empress of Mars, YA novel The Hotel Under the Sand, and Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, about some of the real pirates of the Caribbean. Her many stories were collected in Black Projects, White Knights, Mother Aegypt and Other Stories, The Children of the Company, Dark Mondays, and Gods and Pawns. Her posthumously published books include Neil Gwynne’s Scarlet Spy, Neil Gwynne’s On Land and Sea (with Kathleen Barholomew), and a collection, In the Company of Thieves. Baker died, tragically young, in 2010.

  Here she takes us to a newly colonized frontier Mars, still wild and dangerous, for a taut adventure that demonstrates that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence—no matter which side of the fence you’re looking over.

  I

  He was the third boy born on Mars.

  He was twelve years old now and had spent most of his life in the cab of a freighter. His name was Bill.

  Bill lived with his dad, Billy Townsend. Billy Townsend was a Hauler. He made the long runs up and down Mars, to Depot North and Depot South, bringing ice back from the ends of the world. Bill had always gone along on the runs, from the time he’d been packed into the shotgun seat like a little duffel bag to now, when he sat hunched in the far corner of the cab with his Gamebuke, ignoring his dad’s loud and cheerful conversation.

  There was no other place for him to be. The freighter was the only home he had ever known. His dad called her Beautiful Evelyn.

  As far as Bill knew, his mum had passed on. That was one of the answers his dad had given him, and it might be true; there were a lot of things to die from on Mars, with all the cold and dry and blowing grit, and so little air to breathe. But it was just as likely she had gone back to Earth, to judge from other things his dad had said. Bill tried not to think about her, either way.

  He didn’t like his life very much. Most of it w
as either boring—the long, long runs to the Depots, with nothing to look at but the monitor screens showing miles of red rocky plain—or scary, like the times they’d had to run through bad storms, or when Beautiful Evelyn had broken down in the middle of nowhere.

  Better were the times they’d pull into Mons Olympus. The city on the mountain had a lot to see and do (although Bill’s dad usually went straight to the Empress of Mars Tavern and stayed there); there were plenty of places to eat, and shops, and a big public data terminal where Bill could download school programs into his Buke. But what Bill liked most about Mons Olympus was that he could look down through its dome and see the Long Acres.

  The Long Acres weren’t at all like the city, and Bill dreamed of living there. Instead of endless cold red plains, the Long Acres had warm expanses of green life, and actual canals of water for crop irrigation, stretching out for kilometers under vizio tunnels. Bill had heard that from space, it was supposed to look like green lines crossing the lowlands of the planet.

  People stayed put in the Long Acres. Families lived down there and worked the land. Bill liked that idea.

  His favorite time to look down the mountain was at twilight. Then the lights were just coming on, shining through the vizio panels, and the green fields were empty; Bill liked to imagine families sitting down to dinner together, a dad and a mum and kids in their home, safe in one place from one year to the next. He imagined that they saved their money, instead of going on spending sprees when they hit town, like Bill’s dad did. They never forgot things, like birthdays. They never made promises and forgot to keep them.

  * * *

  “Payyyydayyyy!” Billy said happily, beating out a rhythm on the console wheel as he drove. “Gonna spend my money free! Yeah! We’ll have us a good time, eh, mate?”