The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 Read online

  “I don’t understand any of that,” Simon confessed.

  “Why am I not surprised?” One of Jackie’s unanticipated talents was for sarcasm. “At first, I wasn’t bothered. But fire scares me and I thought that mentioning the chiefs was worrisome.”

  Simon agreed. In principle, every aspect of the colony was under their control, and if something was unknown to them –

  “That’s why I followed the miners,” the bird volunteered.

  “You said they weren’t miners.”

  “Because they were strong. Two exceedingly muscular human beings.”

  Only soldiers and recent immigrants retained their muscle tone. Simon had a willow-boned shape that came from minimal gravity and limited calories. “What else did they say?”

  “Except for one time, they didn’t speak again,” she said. “But just before leaving the farm, the man turned to the woman and told her to smile. He said that McKall knows what he’s doing, and she should please damn well stop wasting her energy by imagining the worst.”

  Simon said nothing.

  Then Jackie pointed out, “You know McKall, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he admitted. “In fact, he’s the atum who gave me this post.”

  Two dark reddish asteroids lay snug against each other, producing 624 Hektor. The little world orbited the sun 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter, in that sweet Lagrange zone where a multitude of Trojan asteroids had swum for billions of years. Hektor was an elongated body spinning once in less than seven hours, and Simon had always believed that it was an ugly world. It didn’t help his opinion that he was living on the fringe of settled space, serving the chiefs and various corporations as little more than a farmer. In school, his test scores were always ample; he graduated as a qualified, perhaps even gifted atum – the professional name borrowed from the Egyptian god whose task it was to finish the unfinished worlds. But good minds only took their bodies so far. More coveted posts were earned through useful friendships and powerful mentors, and Simon’s career to date proved that he had neither. Anywhere else in the solar system would have been a happier fate: Mars was a dream, and the sunward asteroids and the moons of Jupiter were busy, important realms. Plus there was Luna now, and preliminary teams were plotting the terraforming of Venus. In contrast, Hektor was an isolated mining station, and not even a complete station at that. Once its facilities were finished, it would supply water and pure carbon to the inner system. But it was never intended to become an important destination, much less a site of major colonization. Barely fifty thousand intelligent souls lived on and inside its gloomy body, and the humans were a minority, most of them deemed also-rans and lost souls.

  The main settlement had an official name, but locals referred to it as Crashtown – a grimy dense chaotic young city resting on the impact zone where two D-class asteroids were joined together. Riding beside a load of freshly harvested bananas and boneless minnows, Simon rode down to Crashtown. But he wasn’t sure of his intentions, his mind changing again and again. Then the police robot suddenly asked for his destination.

  “The home of Earnest McKall,” Simon heard himself reply.

  But that wasn’t good enough. For no obvious reason, security protocols had been heightened. The robot haughtily demanded to know a purpose for this alleged visit.

  “I found his lost dog,” the young atum declared.

  No dog was present, but the answer seemed to satisfy. Simon continued kicking his way into an exclusive tunnel, past robust gardens basking under earth-bright lights, endless arrays of flowers and cultured animal flesh repaying their considerable energy by making rainbow colors and elaborate perfumes.

  “What if McKall isn’t at home?” Simon asked himself.

  But he was, and the much older atum seemed pleased to find this unexpected guest waiting at his front door. “Come in, my boy. I was just about to enjoy an evening drink.”

  “I don’t want to bother you,” Simon lied.

  “No bother at all. Come in here!” McKall had always been a bony person. Simon once found a ninety-year-old image of him – a lean, shaggy boy of eight, bright eyes staring at the camera while the mouth looked smug and a little too full, as if he had just eaten something that wasn’t proper food. The grown-up version of that boy retained his youthful air, but the hair was a second or third crop, and it had come in thin and amazingly black. Most of McKall’s life had been spent on tiny worlds, and the lack of gravity along with a Methuselan diet had maintained the scrawny elegance of that lost child.

  “Wine?” McKall offered.

  “Thank you, no,” Simon responded.

  The chief atum on Hektor stood beside an elaborate bar – a structure trimmed with rare metals, in the middle of a huge room designed for nothing but entertaining. Yet he hadn’t bothered reaching for empty bottles, much less filling them. What he was doing was staring at Simon, and smiling, and something about that look and the silence told the guest that his presence was not unanticipated.

  “My dog, is it?” asked McKall.

  Simon flinched.

  The smile sharpened. The man kicked closer, his voice flat and smooth and decidedly unrushed. “What do you know, my boy?”

  Simon was nearly fifty, his own boyhood beyond reach.

  “Hear some news, did you?”

  “About dogs,” he reported.

  McKall shrugged. “And what else?”

  “Something is going to happen.”

  “Happenings are inevitable. Do you have specifics?”

  “Twenty-eight hours from now — ”

  “Stop.” A small hand lifted, not quite touching Simon on the chest. “No, you know nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Your dogs are sleeping,” Simon continued.

  His host refused to speak. Waiting.

  “And there’s something about a fire, too.”

  The smile shrank, but the voice was friendlier. Curious. Perhaps even amused. “What about fire?”

  “I’ve studied your writings, sir.” Habit forced Simon to nod slightly, admitting his lower status. “You like to equate metabolic activity with fire.”

  “I’m not the only voice to use that allusion.”

  “But as a young atum, you spent a great deal of time and energy complaining about the limits to our work. Every atum is shackled by draconian laws, you claimed. You said that life as we made it was just a smoldering flame. Your hope was to unleash the powers of the organic. Novel biochemistries, unique genetics, and ultraefficient scavenging the dead and spent. You were one of the loudest advocates of suspending the outmoded Guidelines, and only then would our young profession be able to produce a firestorm of life that would run wild across the universe.”

  “I see.” McKall laughed quietly. Then again, he said, “I see.”

  “What can’t the chiefs stop?”

  Instead of answering the question, the atum posed his own. “Why do you believe that a skilled researcher – a man with major accomplishments – willingly came to this very remote place? Why would Earnest McKall ignore every lucrative offer, traveling all the way out here to this little chunk of trash and ice water?”

  Simon said nothing.

  “There are dogs,” McKall admitted. “Soon to be awakened, in fact. Decades of research and a series of camouflaged laboratories have produced more than a few revolutions, both in terms of productivity and plasticity.”

  “You did this?”

  “Not alone.” The atum shook his head, the rich black hair waving in the air. “I have a dozen brilliant associates working beside me, plus collaborators on twenty other worlds. Yes, I have a fine confident mind, but I’m not crazy with pride.”

  “I’m one of your associates,” Simon pointed out.

  “You are not, no. I would have included you, young man. In fact, that’s why I steered several likely employers away from your class’s hatch. I believed I could use your talents out here with me.”

  “But I haven’t done anything.”

  “Nothing
at all,” McKall agreed. “Which was a surprise for me, I’ll admit. After your arrival, I kept careful watch over your work, and in particular, how you responded to authority. Honestly, I wasn’t impressed. I need boldness, genius. Competency without inspiration is fine for the commercial world, but not for souls dreaming the big dream.”

  If Simon had been slapped, his face wouldn’t have felt warmer. He breathed heavily and slowly, and then despite every reserve of self-control, he began to weep, tears scattering from his reddened checks.

  “But I like you anyway,” McKall continued. “And since you have no specific knowledge about my plans, and there’s no way to stop what is soon to begin, I will give you a gift. Use this chance to slip away. A transport leaves Hektor in four hours. There will be empty berths, and I advise that you take one.”

  Simon turned as if to leave, then hesitated.

  “You plan to take control over Hektor?” he muttered.

  McKall laughed. “Haven’t you been paying attention? My goals are far more ambitious than this two-headed rock!”

  Expecting to be stopped – by restraining hands or murderous weapons – Simon nonetheless hurried to Crashtown’s civil house. The highest-ranking chief seemed to be waiting for his arrival. He shook both of Simon’s hands and ushered him into a tiny office, and before Simon could speak, the chief told him, “Don’t worry. And certainly don’t panic. We know all about their plans.”

  “You do? For how long?”

  “Days now.” The chief shrugged. Feigning confidence, he reported, “We have McKall in sight, plus all of his lieutenants. And our security teams are minutes away from taking out both of his private labs.”

  “Good,” Simon offered.

  And that was when the chief quit smiling. Turning grim, he said to the farmer, “But I am curious: Why did you go to the atum’s home before coming to us?”

  “I didn’t know anything,” Simon said.

  “You were fishing for information?”

  With as much conviction as he could manage, he said, “Yes. If I was going to report a crime that hadn’t happened, I needed details. Some reason for you to believe me.”

  “A good enough answer,” the chief replied. “At least for the moment.”

  Simon felt cold and weak. What mattered to him now was returning to his farm, to Jackie, and provided this trouble vanished, he would again take up his pivotal role in feeding this very small world. He was practically shaking with worries. “May I leave?” he risked asking.

  “Until we know for certain, you cannot.”

  Simon swallowed. “Until you know what for certain?”

  That brought a tiny laugh, and then the ominous words, “Everything, of course. Everything.”

  The attacks on the laboratories were launched, each blundering into carefully laid traps. McKall’s mercenaries were ready, and the parallel attempt to capture the ringleaders ended up netting nothing but holo images and robotic mimics. Then the rebels took over the local com-system. Their own attack would proceed on schedule, and simple decency demanded fair warning to civilians and the opportunity to escape by any means available. But the chiefs banned all travel. They quickly gathered their remaining forces, generating new plans up until that moment when the rumored “dogs” appeared. Secret tunnels reached deep inside Hektor’s smaller half, and out of them came hot-blooded monsters moving as blurs, eating flesh and laser bolts as they ran wild through Crashtown.

  The ensuing chaos allowed Simon to escape. At the farm, he discovered three civil robots quickly setting up a small fusion bomb. “We cannot leave this resource for the enemy,” one machine reported. Simon didn’t care anymore. He collected Jackie and a few possessions before racing to the auxiliary port, and while the ground beneath him shook and split open, thousands of panicked souls abandoned Hektor, riding whatever was marginally spaceworthy, accepting any risk to take the long fall back toward the sun.

  For the next several weeks, Simon was interrogated by a string of distant voices – military minds and politicians who wanted any and all glimpses into McKall’s nature. Simon offered what insights he had, trying to steer clear of his own considerable embarrassment. Once Simon’s transport passed into Martian orbit, the refugees were herded into quarantine on New Phobos. Who knew what new diseases MaKall could have slipped into their blood? Between the tests and more interviews, his childhood world teased Simon with glimpses of its cold blue seas and dense, mostly artificial atmosphere. The harsh desert landscape had vanished, the world’s rapid transformation producing feelings of pride and sorrowful loss. But despite all of the brilliant plans and the trillions of invested euros, the terraforming process was far from perfect. From forty thousand kilometers high, Simon identified lakes where the acids still ruled and forests of withering trees, and there were rumors that the new ecosystem was proving far less stable than the public voices liked to proclaim.

  Fifteen months later, Simon was free of quarantine, and he watched the updates as a fleet of powerful military vessels assaulted 624 Hektor. Robots and shock troops landed in the empty crater that had been Simon’s farm. The fearsome dogs were melted and frozen. Every battle was won; victory was in hand. But then the war took an abrupt, unexpected turn. A blue-white blast tore through the asteroid. Since the rebellion, the smaller portion of Hektor had been thoroughly transformed. A transport ship of unprecedented size was hiding inside the reddish crust, and the explosion flung away great chunks of its companion while slaughtering the invaders. Half of the asteroid dropped out of its ancient orbit, crude engines firing, maintaining a near-collision course with Jupiter. Momentum was stolen away from giant planet. Then uncontested, the ship pushed into the outer solar system, swinging close enough to Saturn to enjoy an even larger kick.

  Five years later, an improved set of star engines came to life. By then, McKall’s plans were common knowledge. No one was planning to chase after him, much less continue the war. What would be the point? A forever-changing, increasingly strange body of organized carbon and silicon and fusion-heated water was streaking away from the sun, away from humanity, aiming this newborn revolution straight for the three Centauri sisters.

  Venus

  Eventually Simon’s personal history became public knowledge. Strangers suddenly knew his name, and they would smile at him in that special sad way people used in uncomfortable circumstances. Acquaintances began to treat him as if he were important, laughing easily at his rare jokes, wishing him a good day or good evening or sweet, delightful dreams. His workmates, the fellow atums, embraced one of two inadequate strategies: Either they were quick to tell him how sorry they were and then ask if they could do anything, anything at all, or they seemed to take offense that Simon hadn’t confided with them before now. “Dear god, you lost most of your family,” one man exclaimed incorrectly, but with passion. “I wish I’d known. I look like the fool. I thought we were friends, at least . . .”

  Simon did have a few scattered friends, and they knew better. When he didn’t mention the unfolding disaster on Mars, they patiently respected his privacy. As the situation worsened, he sought out mood-leveling drugs and other cheats that allowed him to manage, if only barely. He cried, but only when he was alone. During the worst days, he volunteered for solitary assignments, carefully avoiding professional chatter about past mistakes and the mounting casualties. He thought he was succeeding, taking a grim pride in his talent for enduring these personal trials, but afterwards, when the situation had finally stabilized, he crossed paths with an acquaintance from childhood. Ignorant as a bug, the fellow asked, “What about your family, Simon? They got out of that nightmare in time, didn’t they?”

  His parents never tried to escape. They were two old people living at opposite ends of an unfinished, critically flawed world, and they hadn’t spoken to one another in nearly forty years. But as the blizzards struck and the air turned to poison, they left their homes, riding and then marching through the chaos and slaughter, finally reaching an isolated habitat overlookin
g Hellas where they lived together for their final eight days and nights.

  As for Simon’s sister and various half-siblings, all but two escaped before the ecosystem collapsed. But where they would live tomorrow was an endless problem, for them and for the solar system at large. Millions of refugees were crammed onboard the ten New Moons and a fleet of rescue ships, plus various ad hoc habitats contrived out of inflated bladders and outmoded life support systems. It was a tough, dirty and problematic life, though far superior to being one of the fifty million bodies left behind on the anaerobic, peroxide-laced surface of Mars. Where would these souls live tomorrow? Faced with this conundrum, the atums had a ready solution: Terraform Mars all over again, and do it as quickly as possible, but use every trick in their rapidly evolving arsenal.

  “This time, we’ll build a conservatory,” one young atum declared. “That’s how it should have been done in the first place. And again, Simon, I’m so very sorry for your tragedies.”

  Naomi was a pretty youngster who used her beauty and a charming, obvious manner to win favors and fish for compliments. She liked to talk. She loved listening to her own smart, insistent voice. Rumor had it that her body was equipped with artificial openings and deployable prods, leaking intoxicating scents and wondrous doses of electricity. Simon was curious about her body, but he didn’t have the rank or adequate desire to pursue his base urges. Watching one of Naomi’s performances was as close as he wanted to be. Most of his colleagues felt threatened by her promise. But even when the girl spoke boldly about her incandescent future, Simon couldn’t take offense. His second century had brought with it a tidy and quite useful epiphany: Everyone would eventually fail, and if their failures were long-built, then the subsequent collapses would be all the more dramatic.

  At this particular moment, the atums were chanting the usual praises about conservatories.

  “Oh, I’m not convinced,” said Simon quietly.

  Naomi laughed, and with a patronizing tone asked, “Oh my, why not?”

  “A roof wouldn’t have helped. In the end, nothing would have changed.”