The Very Best of the Best

by Gardner Dozois

  He had a sip of beer. Bill gritted his teeth. He could tell that, as far as Billy was concerned, the incident was over. It had just been a mistake, right? What was the point of getting mad about it? Never mind that Bill had been scared and alone …

  Bill exhaled forcefully and shoveled down his congealing dinner.

  “I got my socks,” he said loudly.

  “That’s nice,” said Billy. Lifting his glass for another sip, his attention was taken by the holo playing above the bar. He stared across at it. Bill turned around in his seat to look. There was the image of one of Mother’s Boys, a sergeant from his uniform, staring into the foremost camera as he made some kind of announcement. His lips moved in silence, though, with whatever he was saying drowned out by the laughter and the shouting in the bar.

  Bill looked quickly back at Billy. Why was he watching the police report? Had he been in some kind of incident after all? Billy snorted with laughter, watching, and then pressed his lips shut to hide a smile. Why was he doing that?

  Bill looked back at the holo, more certain than ever that Billy was in trouble, but now saw holofootage of two guys fighting. Was either one of them Billy? No; Bill felt his anger damp down again as he realized it was only a couple of MAC colonists, kicking and punching each other. Bill was appalled; he hadn’t thought the Collective ever did stupid stuff like that.

  Then there was a closeup shot of a skinny boy, with a shaven head—MAC, Bill supposed. He shrugged and turned his attention back to his plate.

  Billy’s food was brought and he dug into it with gusto.

  “Think we’ll head out again tonight,” he said casually.

  “But we just got back in!” Bill said, startled.

  “Yeah. Well…” Billy sliced off a bit of Grilled Strip, put it in his mouth and chewed carefully before going on. “There’s … mm … this big bonus right now for CO2, see? MAC’s getting a crop of something or other in the ground and they’ve placed like this humongous order for it. So we can earn like double what we just deposited if I get a second trip in before the end of the month.”

  Bill didn’t know what to say. It was the sort of thing he nagged at his dad to do, saving more money; usually Billy spent it as fast as he had it. Bill looked at him with narrowed eyes, wondering if he had gotten into trouble after all. But he just shrugged again and said, “Okay.”

  “Hey, Mona?” Billy waved at the nearest of Mother’s daughters. “Takeaway order too, okay, sweetheart? Soygold nuggets and sprouts. And a bottle of batch.”

  “Why are we getting takeaway?” Bill asked him.

  “Er…” Billy looked innocent. “I’m just way hungry, is all. Think I’ll want a snack later. I’ll be driving all night.”

  “But you drove for twelve hours today!” Bill protested. “Aren’t you ever going to sleep?”

  “Sleep is for wusses,” said Billy. “I’ll just pop a Freddie.”

  Bill scowled. Freddies were little red pills that kept you awake and jittery for days. Haulers took them sometimes when they needed to be on the road for long runs without stopping. It was stupid to take them all the time, because they could kill you, and Bill threw them away whenever he found any in the cab. Billy must have stopped to buy some more. So that was where he’d been.

  * * *

  Night had fallen by the time they left the Empress and headed back down the hill. Cold penetrated down through the Permavizio; Bill shivered, and his psuit’s thermostat turned itself up. There were still people in the streets, though fewer of them, and some of the lights had been turned out. Usually by this time, when they were in off the road, Bill would be soaking in a stone tub full of hot water, and looking forward to a good night’s sleep someplace warm for a change. The thought made him grumpy as they came round the corner into the airlock.

  “Masks on, Dad,” Bill said automatically. Billy nodded, shifting the stoneware bucket of takeaway to his other hand as he reached for his mask. They went out to Beautiful Evelyn.

  Bill was climbing up to open the cab when Billy grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “Hang on,” he said, and reached up and knocked on the hatch. “Yo, kid! Mask up, we’re coming in!”

  “What?” Bill staggered back, staring at Billy. “Who’s in there?”

  Billy didn’t answer, but Bill heard a high-pitched voice calling “okay” from inside the cab, and Billy swung the hatch open and climbed up. Bill scrambled after him. The hatch sealed behind them and the air whooshed back. Bill pulled off his mask as the lights came on to reveal a boy, pulling off his own mask. They stared at each other, blinking.

  Billy held out the bucket of takeaway. “Here you go, kid. Hot dinner!”

  “Oh! Thank you,” said the other, as Bill recognized him for the MAC boy from the holofootage he’d watched.

  “What’s he doing here?” he demanded.

  “Just, you know, sort of laying low,” said Billy. “Got in a little trouble and needs to go off someplace until things cool down. Thought we could take him out on the run with us, right? No worries.” He stepped sidelong into the cab and threw himself into the console seat, where he proceeded to start up Beautiful Evelyn’s drives.

  “But—but—” said Bill.

  “Er … Hi,” said the other boy, avoiding his eyes. He was taller than Bill but looked younger, with big wide eyes and ears that stuck out. His shaven head made him look even more like a baby.

  “Who’re you?” said Bill.

  “I’m, ah—” said the other boy, just as Billy roared from the cab:

  “No names! No names! The less we know, the less they can beat out of us!” And he whooped with laughter. The noise of the drives powering up drowned out anything else he might have said. Bill clenched his fists and stepped close to Ford, glaring up into his eyes.

  “What’s going on? What’d my dad do?”

  “Nothing!” Ford took a step backward.

  “Well then, what’d you do? You must have done something, because you were on the holo. I saw you! You were fighting, huh?”

  Ford gulped. His eyes got even wider and he said, “Er—yeah. Yeah, I punched out these guys. Who were trying to trick me into working in the mines for them. And, uh, I ran because, because the Security Fascists were going to beat the daylights out of me. So Billy let me hide in here. What’s your name?”

  “Bill,” he replied. “You’re with the MAC, aren’t you? What were you fighting for?”

  “Well—the other guys started it,” said Ford. He looked with interest at the takeaway. “This smells good. It was really nice of your dad to bring it for me. Is there anywhere I can sit down to eat?”

  “In there,” said Bill in disgust, pointing into the cab.

  “Thank you. You want some?” Ford held out the bucket timidly.

  “No,” said Bill. “I want to go to sleep. Go on, clear out of here!”

  “Okay,” said Ford, edging into the cab. “It’s nice meeting you, Billy.”

  “Bill!” said Bill, and slammed the door in his face.

  Muttering to himself, he dimmed down the lights and lay down in his bunk. He threw the switch that inflated the mattress, and its contours puffed out around him, cradling him snugly as the freighter began to move. He didn’t know why he was so angry, but somehow finding Ford here had been the last straw.

  He closed his eyes and tried to send himself to sleep in the way he always had, by imagining he was going down the Tube to the long Acres, step by step, into green, warm, quiet places. Tonight, though, he kept seeing the two MAC colonists from the holo, whaling away at each other like a couple of clowns while the city people looked on and laughed.

  * * *

  Ford, clutching his dinner, sat down in the cab and looked around. With all the screens lit up there was plenty of light by which to eat.

  “Is it okay if I sit in here?” he asked Billy, who waved expansively.

  “Sure, kid. Don’t mind li’l Bill. He’s cranky sometimes.”

  Ford opened the bucket and looked
inside. “Do you have any forks?”

  “Yeah. Somewhere. Try the seat pocket.”

  Ford groped into the pocket and found a ceramic fork that was, perhaps, clean. He was too hungry to care whether it was or not, and ate quickly. He wasn’t sure what he was eating, but it tasted wonderful.

  As he ate, he looked up at the screens. Some had just figures on them, data from the drives and external sensors. Four of them had images from the freighter’s cameras, mounted front and rear, right and left. There was no windscreen—even Ford knew that an Earth-style glass windscreen would be scoured opaque by even one trip through the storms of sand and grit along the High Road, unless a forcefield was projected in front of it, and big forcefields were expensive, and unlikely to deflect blowing rocks anyhow. Easier and cheaper to fix four little forcefields over the camera lenses.

  The foremost screen fascinated him. He saw the High Road itself, rolling out endlessly to the unseen night horizon under the stars. It ran between two lines of big rocks, levered into place over the years by Haulers to make it easier to find the straightest shot to the pole.

  Every now and then Ford caught a glimpse of carving on some of the boulders as they flashed by—words, or figures. Some of them had what looked like tape wrapped around them, streaming out in the night wind.

  “Are those…” Ford sought to remember his lessons about Earth roads. “Are those road signs? With, er, kilometer numbers and all?”

  “What, on the boulders? Nope. They’re shrines,” said Billy.

  “What’s a shrine?”

  “Place where somebody died,” said Billy. “Or where somebody should have died, but didn’t, because Marswife saved their butts.” He reached out and tapped the little red lady on the console.

  Ford thought about that. He looked at the figurine. “So … she’s like, that Goddess the Ephesians are always on about?”

  “No!” Billy grinned. “Not our Marswife. She was just this Sheila, see? Somebody from Earth who came up here like the rest of us, and she was crazy. Same as us. She thought Mars, was, like, her husband or something. And there was this big storm and she went out into it, without a mask. And they say she didn’t die! Mars got her and changed her into something else so she could live Outside. That’s what they say, anyway.”

  “Like, she mutated?” Ford stared at the little figure.

  “I guess so.”

  “But really she died, huh?”

  “Well, you’d think so,” Billy said, looking at him sidelong. “Except that there are guys who swear they’ve seen her. She lives on the wind. She’s red like the sand and her eye is a ruby, and if you’re lost sometimes you’ll see a red light way off, which is her eye, see? And if you follow it, you’ll get home again safe. And I know that’s true, because it happened to me.”

  “Really?”

  Billy held up one hand, palm out. “No lie. It was right out by Two-Fifty-K. There was a storm swept through so big, it was able to pick up the road markers and toss ’em around, see? And Beautiful Evelyn got thrown like she was a feather by the gusts, and my nav system went out. It was just me and li’l Bill, and he was only a baby then, and I found myself so far off the road I had no clue, no clue, where I was, and I was sure we were going to die out there. But I saw that red light and I figured, that’s somebody who knows where they are, anyway. I set off after it. Hour later the light blinks out and there’s Two-Fifty-K Station right in front of me on the screen, but there’s no red lights anyplace.”

  “Whoa,” said Ford, wondering what Two-Fifty-K station was.

  “There’s other stories about her, too. Guys who see her riding the storm, and when she’s there they know to make for a bunker, because there’s a Strawberry coming.”

  “What’s a Strawberry?”

  “It’s this kind of cyclone. Big big storm full of sand and rocks. Big red cone dancing across the ground. One took out that temple the Ephesians built, when they first got up here, and tore open half the Tubes. They don’t come up Tharsis way much, but when they do—” Billy shook his head. “People die, man. Some of your people died, that time. You never heard that story?”

  “No,” said Ford, “But we’re not supposed to talk about bad stuff after it happens.”

  “Really?” Billy looked askance.

  “Because we can’t afford to be afraid of the past,” said Ford, half-quoting what he remembered from every Council Meeting he’d ever been dragged to. “Because fear will make us weak, but working fearlessly for the future will make us strong.” He chanted the last line, unconsciously imitating his dad’s intonation.

  “Huh,” said Billy. “I guess that’s a good idea. You can’t go through life being scared of everything. That’s what I tell Bill.”

  Ford looked into the takeaway bucket, surprised that he had eaten his way to the bottom so quickly.

  “It’s good to hear stories, though,” he said. “Sam, that’s my brother, he gets into trouble for telling stories.”

  “Heh! Little white lies?”

  “No,” Ford said, “Real stories. Like about Earth. He remembers Earth. He says everything was wonderful there. He wants to go back.”

  “Back?” Billy looked across at him, startled. “But kids can’t go back. I guess if he was old enough when he came up, maybe he might make it. I hear it’s tough, though, going back down. The gravity’s intense.”

  “Would you go back?”

  Billy shook his head. “All I remember of Earth is the insides of rooms. Who needs that? Nobody up here to tell me what to do, man. I can just point myself at the horizon and go, and go, as far and as fast as I want. Zoom! I can think what I want, I can feel what I want, and you know what? The sand and the rocks don’t care. The horizon don’t care. The wind don’t care.

  “That’s why they call this space. No, no way I’d ever go back.”

  Ford looked up at the screens, and remembered the nights he had watched for the long light-beams coming in from the darkness. It had given him an aching feeling for as long as he could remember, and now he understood why.

  He had wanted space.

  IV

  They drove all night, and at some point Billy’s stories of storms and fights and near-escapes from death turned into confusion, with Sam there somehow, and a room that ran blue with water. Then abruptly Ford was sitting up, staring around at the inside of the cab.

  “Where are we?” he asked. The foremost screen showed a spooky gray distance, the High Road rolling ahead between its boulders to … what? A pale void full of roaming shadows.

  “Almost to Five-Hundred-K Station,” said Billy, from where he hunched over the wheel. “Stop pretty soon.”

  “Can Security follow us out here?”

  Billy just laughed and shook his head. “No worries, kiddo. There’s no law out here but Mars’s.”

  The door into the living space opened abruptly, and Bill looked in at them.

  “Morning, li’l Bill!”

  “Good morning,” said Bill in a surly voice. “You never stopped once all night. Are you ever going to pull us off somewhere so you can sleep?”

  “At Five-Hundred-K,” Billy promised. “How about you fix a bite of scran, eh?”

  Bill did not reply. He stepped back out of sight and a moment later Ford felt the warmth in the air that meant that water was steaming. He could almost taste it, and realized that he was desperately thirsty. He crawled from his seat and followed the vapor back to where Bill had opened the kitchen and was shoving a block of something under heating coils.

  “Are you fixing tea?”

  “Yeah,” said Bill, with a jerk of his thumb at the tall can that steamed above a heat element.

  “Can I have a cup, when it’s ready?”

  Bill frowned, but he got three mugs from a drawer.

  “Do you fight much, in the Collective?” he asked. Ford blinked in surprise.

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t me fighting, actually. It was just my dad and my brother. They hate each other. But my mum
won’t let them fight in the house. Sam said he was deserting us and my dad went off on him about it. I ran when the Security came.”

  “Oh,” said Bill. He seemed to become a little less hostile, but he said: “Well, that was pretty bloody stupid. They’d only have taken you to Mother’s until your dad sobered up. You’d be safe home by now.”

  Ford shrugged.

  “So, what’s your name, really?”

  “Ford.”

  “Like that guy in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” Bill smiled for the first time.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a book I listen to all the time. Drowns out Billy singing.” Bill’s smile went away again. The tea can beeped to signal it was hot enough, and Bill turned and pulled it out. He poured dark bubbling stuff into the three mugs, and, reaching in a cold-drawer, took out a slab of something yellow on a dish. He spooned out three lumps of it, one into each mug, and presented one to Ford.

  “Whoa.” Ford stared into his mug. “That’s not sugar.”

  “It’s butter,” said Bill, as though that were obvious. He had a gulp of tea, and, not wanting to seem picky, Ford took a gulp too. It wasn’t as nasty as he had expected. In fact, it wasn’t nasty at all. Bill, watching his face, said:

  “You’ve never had this before?”

  Ford shook his head.

  “But you guys are the ones who make the butter up here,” said Bill. “This is MAC butter. What do you drink, if you don’t drink this?”

  “Just … batch, and tea with sugar sometimes,” said Ford, wondering why this should matter. He had another gulp of the tea. It tasted even better this time.

  “And the sugar comes from the sugar beets you grow?” Bill persisted.

  “I guess so,” said Ford. “I never thought about it.”

  “What’s it like, living down there?”

  “What’s it like?” Ford stared at him. Why in the world would anybody be curious about the Long Acres? “I don’t know. I muck out cow sheds. It’s boring, mostly.”

  “How could it be boring?” Bill demanded. “It’s so beautiful down there! Are you crazy?”