The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (14 page)

“I’ve got nothing with me,” Robeson said. “Nothing at all. And these suits don’t make recordings.”

“Okay, we’ll make a cairn – pile up some ice . . .” He stopped as he looked around at the flat, featureless expanse that extended to the horizon in all directions. Saunders lifted his arms, making trembling fists in front of his helmet. “Damnit, damnit, damnit!” He kicked at the ground, knocking himself more than a meter skyward. “We can’t even scratch a lousy arrow in the ice!” He was breathing so hard that Robeson could see his chest rising and falling through his suit. “Okay then. Okay. We get back to Jansha. Even these lousy inertial position systems in our suits should be good enough to let us find this spot again by backtracking. With a big enough search team we’ll find it.” He launched himself into a fast skip across the ice. “Come on!” he barked. “From here on we go flat out! As fast as we can, whatever the risk. We have to make it back to Jansha, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” said Robeson.

Saunders glanced behind him without breaking his stride. Robeson was standing still.

“What are you doing, Robeson? Come on!”

“I don’t think we can make it back, Mr. Saunders. Look at your readouts. We’re down to about thirty minutes of air and we’re only about halfway back.”

“So what, damnit? We have to try. You can’t just stay there and . . .” Saunders went silent. Fighting not to lose his footing, he slowly brought himself to a stop, then turned to look at Robeson, now fifty meters behind him. “My God, Robeson,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Robeson. “We don’t have any transponder flags with us, but we’ve got transponders. The ones that are built into these suits. They’ll use that to come after my body, and when they find me they’ll find . . . him.”

“No, Robeson. Look – even if we don’t make it back, we just have to get within radio range . . . We’ll tell them . . .”

“If we make it back to radio range. And they still might never find this guy. You have to be right on top of him to see him through the ice.”

“You can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t just . . . Christ, Robeson . . .”

“You said it yourself, Mr Saunders. This is important. The most important thing ever. The Wreckage is nothing but a pile of twisted metal, but this is something real. His body, his suit . . . you guys will learn all kinds of stuff from him. But they have to find him. They have to find him.”

Saunders took a slow breath. “Robeson, I can’t wait, I can’t stand here and argue. I’m heading back to Jansha, and I’m going to make it. I don’t care if I have to breathe vacuum. I’m going to make it back, you hear me? You can damn well sit here and wait to die if you want to. I’m not going to!”

Seconds passed, and Robeson said nothing. Saunders made a sound that might have been a word, but Robeson couldn’t understand it. Then he was moving again, gliding over the ice with long, fast strides.

Robeson touched a control on his forearm that turned off his suit radio. He listened to his own breath echoing in his helmet. It was fast and trembling. “I’m the one hyperventilating like a damn schoolgirl now, Mr Saunders,” he said to himself. He let himself drop to a seated position and put one hand on the ice, close to the alien’s face. “What the hell are you doing way out here, anyway, little guy?” he said. He lowered himself onto his back and looked up. Saturn was full now, and Mimas was just starting a transit, painting a small gray disk on the edge of Saturn’s face. He looked up for a long time in silence. “How can they not look at it?” he said quietly. He stared, trying to imagine something menacing in the vision, the feeling of being pulled up into the blackness, lifted away from Enceladus’ feathery gravity. Instead all he saw was a big ball of pastel yellow, part of it blackened by the shadow of the rings. When he’d seen pictures of it back home, there was nothing much to it; pretty, but nothing special. But here, with the incredible, impossible size of it overhead, it was different. It became something he couldn’t ignore, something joyous – a gigantic, roaring shout of beauty from the sky.

He shifted onto his side to look down at the frozen alien again. One of its eyes was closed, the other showed a narrow white slit. “I bet you didn’t mind looking at it, did you?” he said. “You knew you weren’t going to make it, and you laid down just like this, looking up at the sky. I guess you had no imagination either.”

He rolled onto his back again. He tried to put his hands under the back of his head, but the shoulder joints in his suit made the position uncomfortable. He crossed his arms tight against his chest, trembling. “What the hell were you doing way out here, anyway?” he said again. He was quiet for several minutes. Then he said, “Yeah, I know. Doin’ your job. Just doin’ your damn job, same as the rest of us.”

EVENTS PRECEDING
THE HELVETICAN
RE NAISSANCE

John Kessel

Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel now lives with his family in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is a professor of American literature and the director of the creative-writing program at North Carolina State University. Kessel made his first sale in 1975. His first solo novel,
Good News From Outer Space
, was released in 1988 to wide critical acclaim, but before that he had made his mark on the genre primarily as a writer of highly imaginative, finely crafted short stories, many of which have been assembled in collections such as
Meeting in Infinity
and
The Pure Product.
He won a Nebula Award in 1983 for his novella
Another Orphan
, which was also a Hugo finalist that year and has been released as an individual book. His story “Buffalo” won the Theodore Sturgeon Award in 1991, and his novella
Stories for Men
won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2003. His other books include the novels
Corrupting Dr. Nice, Freedom Beach
(written in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly),
Ninety Percent of Everything
(writen in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly and Jonathan Lethem), and an anthology of stories from the famous Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop (which he also helps to run), called
Intersections
, co-edited by Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner. His most recent books are a collection,
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories
, and three anthologies coedited with James Patrick Kelly,
Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
, and
The Secret History of Science Fiction.

In the story that follows, Kessel spins a traditional action-packed space adventure with some inventive and individual touches that are very much his own.

W
HEN MY MIND
cleared, I found myself in the street. The protector god Bishamon spoke to me then: The boulevard to the spaceport runs straight up the mountain. And you must run straight up the boulevard.

The air was full of wily spirits, and moving fast in the Imperial City was a crime. But what is man to disobey the voice of a god? So I ran. The pavement vibrated with the thunder of the great engines of the Caslonian Empire. Behind me the curators of the Imperial Archives must by now have discovered the mare’s nest I had made of their defenses, and perhaps had already realized that something was missing.

Above the plateau the sky was streaked with clouds, through which shot violet gravity beams carrying ships down from and up to planetary orbit. Just outside the gate to the spaceport a family in rags – husband, wife, two children – used a net of knotted cords to catch fish from the sewers. Ignoring them, prosperous citizens in embroidered robes passed among the shops of the port bazaar, purchasing duty-free wares, recharging their concubines, seeking a meal before departure. Slower, now.

I slowed my pace. I became indistinguishable from them, moving smoothly among the travelers.

To the Caslonian eye, I was calm, self-possessed; within me, rage and joy contended. I had in my possession the means to redeem my people. I tried not to think, only to act, but now that my mind was rekindled, it raced. Certainly it would go better for me if I left the planet before anyone understood what I had stolen. Yet I was very hungry, and the aroma of food from the restaurants along the way enticed me. It would be foolishness itself to stop here.

Enter the restaurant, I was told. So I stepped into the most elegant of the establishments.

The maitre d’ greeted me. “Would the master like a table, or would he prefer to dine at the bar?”

“The bar,” I said

“Step this way.” There was no hint of the illicit about his manner, though something about it implied indulgence. He was proud to offer me this experience that few could afford.

He seated me at the circular bar of polished rosewood. Before me, and the few others seated there, the chef grilled meats on a heated metal slab. Waving his arms in the air like a dancer, he tossed flanks of meat between two force knives, letting them drop to the griddle, flipping them dexterously upward again in what was as much performance as preparation. The energy blades of the knives sliced through the meat without resistance, the sides of these same blades batting them like paddles. An aroma of burning hydrocarbons wafted on the air.

An attractive young man displayed for me a list of virtualities that represented the “cuts” offered by the establishment, including subliminal tastes. The “cuts” referred to the portions of the animal’s musculature from which the slabs of meat had been sliced. My mouth watered.

He took my order, and I sipped a cocktail of bitters and Belanova.

While I waited, I scanned the restaurant. The fundamental goal of our order is to vindicate divine justice in allowing evil to exist. At a small nearby table, a young woman leaned beside a child, probably her daughter, and encouraged her to eat. The child’s beautiful face was the picture of innocence as she tentatively tasted a scrap of pink flesh. The mother was very beautiful. I wondered if this was her first youth.

The chef finished his performance, to the mild applause of the other patrons. The young man placed my steak before me. The chef turned off the blades and laid them aside, then ducked down a trap door to the oubliette where the slaves were kept. As soon as he was out of sight, the god told me, Steal a knife.

While the diners were distracted by their meals, I reached over the counter, took one of the force blades, and slid it into my boot. Then I ate. The taste was extraordinary. Every cell of my body vibrated with excitement and shame. My senses reeling, it took me a long time to finish.

A slender man in a dark robe sat next to me. “That smells good,” he said. “Is that genuine animal flesh?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“Ah, brother, calm yourself I’m not challenging your taste.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

“But I am challenging your identity.” He parted the robe – his tunic bore the sigil of Port Security. “Your passport, please.”

I exposed the inside of my wrist for him. A scanlid slid over his left eye and he examined the marks beneath my skin. “Very good,” he said. He drew a blaster from the folds of his cassock. “We seldom see such excellent forgeries. Stand up, and come with me.”

I stood. He took my elbow in a firm grip, the bell of the blaster against my side. No one in the restaurant noticed. He walked me outside, down the crowded bazaar. “You see, brother, that there is no escape from consciousness. The minute it returns, you are vulnerable. All your prayer is to no avail.”

This is the arrogance of the Caslonian. They treat us as non-sentients, and they believe in nothing. Yet as I prayed, I heard no word.

I turned to him. “You may wish the absence of the gods, but you are mistaken. The gods are everywhere present.” As I spoke the plosive “p” of “present,” I popped the cap from my upper right molar and blew the moondust it contained into his face.

The agent fell writhing to the pavement. I ran off through the people, dodging collisions. My ship was on the private field at the end of the bazaar. Before I had gotten halfway there, an alarm began sounding. People looked up in bewilderment, stopping in their tracks. The walls of buildings and stalls blinked into multiple images of me. Voices spoke from the air: “This man is a fugitive from the state. Apprehend him.”

I would not make it to the ship unaided, so I turned on my perceptual overdrive. Instantly, everything slowed. The voices of the people and the sounds of the port dropped an octave. They moved as if in slow motion. I moved, to myself, as if in slow motion as well – my body could in no way keep pace with my racing nervous system – but to the people moving at normal speed, my reflexes were lighting fast. Up to the limit of my physiology – and my joints had been reinforced to take the additional stress, my muscles could handle the additional lactic acid for a time – I could move at twice the speed of a normal human. I could function perhaps for ten minutes in this state before I collapsed.

The first person to accost me – a sturdy middle-aged man – I seized by the arm. I twisted it behind his back and shoved him into the second who took up the command. As I dodged through the crowd up the concourse, it began to drizzle. I felt as if I could slip between the raindrops. I pulled the force blade from my boot and sliced the ear from the next man who tried to stop me. His comic expression of dismay still lingers in my mind. Glancing behind, I saw the agent in black, face swollen with pustules from the moondust, running toward me.

I was near the field. In the boarding shed, attendants were folding the low-status passengers and sliding them into dispatch pouches, to be carried onto a ship and stowed in drawers for their passage. Directly before me, I saw the woman and child I had noticed in the restaurant. The mother had out a parasol and was holding it over the girl to keep the rain off her. Not slowing, I snatched the little girl and carried her off. The child yelped, the mother screamed. I held the blade to the girl’s neck. “Make way!” I shouted to the security men at the field’s entrance. They fell back.

“Halt!” came the call from behind me. The booth beside the gate was seared with a blaster bolt. I swerved, turned, and, my back to the gate, held the girl before me.

The agent in black, followed by two security women, jerked to a stop. “You mustn’t hurt her,” the agent said.

“Oh? And why is that?”

“It’s against everything your order believes.”

Master Darius had steeled me for this dilemma before sending me on my mission. He told me, “You will encounter such situations, Adlan. When they arise, you must resolve the complications.”

“You are right!” I called to my pursuers, and threw the child at them.

The agent caught her, while the other two aimed and fired. One of the beams grazed my shoulder. But by then I was already through the gate and onto the tarmac.

A port security robot hurled a flame grenade. I rolled through the flames. My ship rested in the maintenance pit, cradled in the violet anti-grav beam. I slid down the ramp into the open airlock, hit the emergency close, and climbed to the controls. Klaxons wailed outside. I bypassed all the launch protocols and released the beam. The ship shot upward like an apple seed flicked by a fingernail; as soon as it had hit the stratosphere, I fired the engines and blasted through the scraps of the upper atmosphere into space.

The orbital security forces were too slow, and I made my escape.

I awoke battered, bruised, and exhausted in the pilot’s chair. The smell of my burned shoulder reminded me of the steak I had eaten in the port bazaar. The stress of accelerating nerve impulses had left every joint in my body aching. My arms were blue with contusions, and I was as enfeebled as an old man.

The screens showed me to be in an untraveled quarter of the system’s cometary cloud; my ship had cloaked itself in ice so that on any detector I would simply be another bit of debris among billions. I dragged myself from the chair and down to the galley, where I warmed some broth and gave myself an injection of cellular repair mites. Then I fell into my bunk and slept.

My second waking was relatively free of pain. I recharged my tooth and ate again. I kneeled before the shrine and bowed my head in prayer, letting peace flow down my spine and relax all the muscles of my back. I listened for the voices of the gods.

I was reared by my mother on Bembo. My mother was an extraordinary beautiful girl. One day Akvan, looking down on her, was so moved by lust that he took the form of a vagabond and raped her by the side of the road. Nine months later I was born.

The goddess Sedna became so jealous that she laid a curse on my mother, who turned into a lawyer. And so we moved to Helvetica. There, in the shabby city of Urushana, in the waterfront district along the river, she took up her practice, defending criminals and earning a little baksheesh greasing the relations between the Imperial Caslonian government and the corrupt local officials. Mother’s ambition for me was to go to an off-planet university, but for me the work of a student was like pushing a very large rock up a very steep hill. I got into fights; I pursued women of questionable virtue. Having exhausted my prospects in the city, I entered the native constabulary, where I was re-engineered for accelerated combat. But my propensity for violence saw me cashiered out of the service within six months. Hoping to get a grip on my passions, I made the pilgrimage to the monastery of the Pujmanian Order. There I petitioned for admission as a novice, and, to my great surprise, was accepted.

It was no doubt the work of Master Darius, who took an interest in me from my first days on the plateau. Perhaps it was my divine heritage, which had placed those voices in my head. Perhaps it was my checkered career to that date. The Master taught me to distinguish between those impulses that were the work of my savage nature, and those that were the voices of the gods. He taught me to identify the individual gods. It is not an easy path. I fasted, I worked in the gardens, I practiced the martial arts, I cleaned the cesspool, I sewed new clothes and mended old, I tended the orchards. I became an expert tailor, and sewed many of the finest kosodes worn by the masters on feast days. In addition, Master Darius held special sessions with me, putting me into a trance during which, I was later told by my fellow novices, I continued to act normally for days, only to awake with no memories of my actions.