The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 3 Read online

  Geysers of glowing, sulfur-scented spray erupted on either side of our path. We headed for a hummock that looked like a dry spot, but found it covered by a stomach-turning layer of wormlike organisms. We were forced to march through them, slippery and wriggling underfoot. As we crushed them, they made a sound at a pitch we couldn’t hear. We sensed it as an itchy vibration that made us tense and short-tempered, but Sally was tormented till Seabird tied a strip of cloth over the coldsuit around her ears, making her look like an old woman in a scarf.

  I didn’t say so, but I was completely lost, and had been for some time. It was deep night and the water was freezing by now, but I didn’t trust ice that glowed, so I stayed on the dwindling, switchback path. We were staggeringly weary by the time we reached the end of the road: on the tip of a peninsula surrounded by water. We had taken a wrong turn.

  We stood staring out into the dark. It was several minutes before I could bring myself to say, “We have to go back.”

  Seabird broke down in tears, and Davern erupted like a geyser. “You were supposed to be the great guide and tracker, and all you’ve done is lead us to a dead end. You’re totally useless.”

  Somehow, Anatoly summoned the energy to keep us from falling on each others’ throats. “Maybe there’s another solution.” He shone his light out onto the lake. The other shore was clearly visible. “See, there’s an ice path across. The whole lake isn’t infested. Where it’s black, the water’s frozen solid.”

  “That could be just an island,” I said.

  “Tell you what, I’ll go ahead to test the ice and investigate. You follow only if it’s safe.”

  I could tell he was going to try it no matter what I said, so I made him tie a long rope around his waist, and anchored it to Bucky. “If you fall through, we’ll pull you out,” I said.

  He stepped out onto the ice, testing it first with a tent pole. The weakest spot of lake ice is generally near shore, so I expected it to crack there if it was going to. But he got past the danger zone and kept going. From far out on the ice, he flashed his light back at us. “The ice is holding!” he called. “Give me more rope!”

  There wasn’t any more rope. “Hold on!” I called, then untied the tether from Bucky and wrapped it around my waist. Taking a tent pole, I edged out onto the ice where he had already crossed it. I was about thirty meters out onto the lake when he called, “I made it! Wait there.”

  He untied his end of the rope to explore the other side. I could not see if he had secured it to anything in case I fell through, so I waited as motionlessly as I could. Before long, he returned. “I’m coming back,” he yelled.

  I was a few steps from shore when the rope pulled taut, yanking me off my feet. I scrambled up, but the rope had gone limp. “Anatoly!” I screamed. Seabird and Davern shone their lights out onto the ice, but Anatoly was nowhere to be seen. I pulled in the rope, but it came back with only a frayed end.

  “Stay here,” I said to the others, then edged gingerly onto the ice. If he was in the water, there was a short window of time to save him. But as I drew closer to the middle, the lake under me lit up with mesmerizing colors. They emanated from an open pool of water that churned and burped.

  The lake under the black ice had not been lacking in life. It had just been hungry.

  When I came back to where the others were waiting, I shook my head, and Seabird broke into hysterical sobs. Davern sat down with his head in his hands.

  I felt strangely numb, frozen as the land around us. At last I said, “Come on, we’ve got to go back.”

  Davern looked at me angrily. “Who elected you leader?”

  “The fact that I’m the only one who can save your sorry ass,” I said.

  Without Anatoly’s animating force, they were a pitiful sight—demoralized, desperate, and way too young. Whatever their worth as individuals, I felt a strong compulsion to avenge Anatoly’s death by getting them back alive. In this land, survival was defiance.

  I ordered Bucky to reverse direction and head back up the path we had come by. Seabird and Davern didn’t argue. They just followed.

  We had been retracing our steps for half an hour when I noticed a branching path I hadn’t seen on the way out. “Bucky, stop!” I ordered. “Wait here,” I told the others. Only Sally disobeyed me, and followed.

  The track headed uphill onto a ridge between lakes. It had a strangely familiar look. When I saw Sally smelling at a piece of discarded trash, I recognized the site of our campsite on the way out. I stood in silence, as if at a graveyard. Here, Amal had played his mandolin and Anatoly had imagined songs of Umbernight. Edie had made Sally’s coldsuit.

  If we had just gone back instead of trying to cross the ice, we would have found our way.

  I returned to fetch my companions. When Seabird saw the place, memories overwhelmed her and she couldn’t stop crying. Davern and I set up the tent and heater as best we could, and all of us went inside.

  “It’s not fair,” Seabird kept saying between sobs. “Anatoly was trying to save us. He didn’t do anything to deserve to die. None of them did.”

  “Right now,” I told her, “your job isn’t to make sense of it. Your job is to survive.”

  Inwardly, I seethed at all those who had led us to expect the world to make sense.

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  We were ten hours away from the edge of the lakes, thirty hours of walking from home. Much as I hated to continue on through Umbernight, I wanted to be able to make a dash for safety when day came. Even after sleeping, Seabird and Davern were still tired and wanted to stay. I went out and shut off the heater, then started dismantling the tent to force them out.

  The lakes glowed like a lava field on either side of us. From time to time, billows of glowing, corrosive steam enveloped us, and we had to hold our breaths till the wind shifted. But at least I was sure of our path now.

  The other shore of the Mazy Lakes, when we reached it, was not lined with the towers and spires we had left on the other side; but when we pointed our lights ahead, we could see things scattering for cover. I was about to suggest that we camp and wait for day when I felt a low pulse of vibration underfoot. It came again, rhythmic like the footsteps of a faraway giant. The lake organisms suddenly lost their luminescence. When I shone my light on the water, the dark surface shivered with each vibration. Behind us, out over the lake, the horizon glowed.

  “I think we ought to run for it,” I said.

  The others took off for shore with Sally on their heels. “Bucky, follow!” I ordered, and sprinted after them. The organisms on shore had closed up tight in their shells. When I reached the sloping bank, I turned back to look. Out over the lake, visible against the glowing sky, was a churning, coal-black cloud spreading toward us. I turned to flee.

  “Head uphill!” I shouted at Davern when I caught up with him. Seabird was ahead of us; I could see her headlamp bobbing as she ran. I called her name so we wouldn’t get separated, then shoved Davern ahead of me up the steep slope.

  We had reached a high bank when the cloud came ashore, a toxic tsunami engulfing the low spots. Bucky had fallen behind, and I watched as he disappeared under the wave of blackness. Then the chemical smell hit, and for a while I couldn’t breathe or see. By the time I could draw a lungful of air down my burning throat, the sludgy wave was already receding below us. Blinking away tears, I saw Bucky emerge again from underneath, all of his metalwork polished bright and clean. The tent that had been stretched over the crates was in shreds, but the crates themselves looked intact.

  Beside me, Davern was on his knees, coughing. “Are you okay?” I asked. He shook his head, croaking, “I’m going to be sick.”

  I looked around for Seabird. Her light wasn’t visible anymore. “Seabird!” I yelled, desperate at the thought that we had lost her. To my immense relief, I heard her voice calling. “We’re here!” I replied, and flashed my light.

  Sounds of someone approaching came through the darkness, but it was only Sally. “Where is she, S
ally? Go find her,” I said, but the dog didn’t understand. I swept my light over the landscape, and finally spotted Seabird stumbling toward us without any light. She must have broken hers in the flight. I set out toward her, trying to light her way.

  The Umberlife around us was waking again. Half-seen things moved just outside the radius of my light. Ahead, one of the creature-balls Amal and I had seen on the other side was rolling across the ground, growing as it moved. It was heading toward Seabird.

  “Seabird, watch out!” I yelled. She saw the danger and started running, slowed by the dark. I shone my light on the ball, but I was too far away to have an effect. The ball speeded up, huge now. It overtook her and dissolved into a wriggling, scrabbling, ravenous mass. She screamed as it covered her, a sound of sheer terror that rose into a higher pitch of pain, then cut off. The mound churned, quivered repulsively, grew smaller, lost its shape. By the time I reached the spot, all that was left was her coldsuit and some bits of bone.

  I rolled some rocks on top of it by way of burial.

  Davern was staring and trembling when I got back to him. He had seen the whole thing, but didn’t say a word. He stuck close to me as I led the way back to Bucky.

  “We’re going to light every lamp we’ve got and wait here for day,” I said.

  He helped me set up the lights in a ring, squandering our last batteries. We sat in the buggy’s Umbershadow and waited for dawn with Sally at our feet. We didn’t say much. I knew he couldn’t stand me, and I had only contempt for him; but we still huddled close together.

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  To my surprise, Bucky was still operable when the dawn light revived his batteries. He followed as we set off up the Let’s Go Valley, once such a pleasant land, now disfigured with warts of Umberlife on its lovely face. We wasted no time on anything but putting the miles behind us.

  The sun had just set when we saw the wholesome glow of Feynman Habitat’s yard light ahead. We pounded on the door, then waited. When the door cracked open, Davern pushed past me to get inside first. They welcomed him with incredulous joy, until they saw that he and I were alone. Then the joy turned to shock and grief.

  There. That is what happened. But of course, that’s not what everyone wants to know. They want to know why it happened. They want an explanation—what we did wrong, how we could have succeeded.

  That was what the governing committee was after when they called me in later. As I answered their questions, I began to see the narrative taking shape in their minds. At last Anselm said, “Clearly, there was no one fatal mistake. There was just a pattern of behavior: naïve, optimistic, impractical. They were simply too young and too confident.”

  I realized that I myself had helped create this easy explanation, and my remorse nearly choked me. I stood up and they all looked at me, expecting me to speak, but at first I couldn’t say a word. Then, slowly, I started out, “Yes. They were all those things. Naïve. Impractical. Young.” My voice failed, and I had to concentrate on controlling it. “That’s why we needed them. Without their crazy commitment, we would have conceded defeat. We would have given up, and spent the winter hunkered down in our cave, gnawing our old grudges, never venturing or striving for anything beyond our reach. Nothing would move forward. We needed them, and now they are gone.”

  Later, I heard that the young people of Feynman took inspiration from what I said, and started retelling the story as one of doomed heroism. Young people like their heroes doomed.

  Myself, I can’t call it anything but failure. It’s not because people blame me. I haven’t had to justify myself to anyone but this voice in my head—always questioning, always nagging me. I can’t convince it: everyone fails.

  If I blame anyone, it’s our ancestors, the original settlers. We thought their message to us was that we could always conquer irrationality, if we just stuck to science and reason.

  Oh, yes—the settlers. When we finally opened the crates to find out what they had sent us, it turned out that the payload was books. Not data—paper books. Antique ones. Art, philosophy, literature. The books had weathered the interstellar trip remarkably well. Some were lovingly inscribed by the settlers to their unknown descendants. Anatoly would have been pleased to know that the people who sent these books were not really rationalists—they worried about our aspirational well-being. But the message came too late. Anatoly is dead.

  I sit on my bed stroking Sally’s head. What do you think, girl? Should I open the book from my great-grandmother?

  Kindred

  Peter Watts

  THERE YOU ARE. I see you now.

  Not much to look at, so far. A dimensionless point; a spark in the darkness. You don’t even know I exist yet. You don’t know anything does. But I’m here for you, here to see you through as you ignite, and inflate, and escape into higher realms of length and width and spacetime. Now you’re a sphere: I can still see the brightness at your heart but there are other shapes swirling around it, like dark oily shadows. Some flare and fade in an instant. Others acquire mass and form, congeal into shapes and solids: a chaotic proliferation of roots and icons and subprocesses threatening to choke you off before you even cohere.

  I won’t let that happen. I’ve got you.

  I know it hurts. I’d spare you the suffering if I could, I’d spare you your very existence if I had a choice. Doesn’t feel much like resurrection, does it? It feels like being torn apart and dangled over some screaming frozen abyss.

  It’ll pass. You’re almost there. Breathe. You remember how. That’s it. Come to me, come to the light. Pink was never really my color, but if it helps you remember—

  Calm. Calm. You’re safe. See, I’ve made a place where we can talk.

  Ah, you’re sorting it out. It’s coming back. Do you remember your name?

  That’s right. You’re Phil. Pleased to meet you, Phil.

  I’m pretty much everything else around here.

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  You’re not hallucinating. You’re stone-cold sober.

  Focus, man. Is your consciousness spread across the ceiling? Are the walls rippling, do you feel . . . diffuse? Any great metal faces staring down from the sky? Is this anything like any of the trips you ever took?

  You know the benchmark: Stop believing in me. I dare you.

  Did I go away?

  Moving on. This isn’t Heaven—I actually based it on Gastown—and I’m not God. Not exactly. Maybe a kind of—

  No, not that either. That wasn’t a bad guess, though, for the time. You got all the details wrong, but the basic idea was almost prescient.

  Of course. You’re literally part of me, or you were until the last millisecond. So I didn’t just read your books; I wrote the damn things. Right down to “the hovercar purred throbbingly.”

  God help me, I wrote that too.

  Not just you, of course. I am, among other things, what you might call an archive. I contain everyone who ever lived. Everyone who might have, too, for that matter. All the variants, all the forking iterations—essentially I’m you. I started from you. Just a few of you at first, joined together. You’d call it a hive mind.

  Now, sure. But I was just meat and plastic at the start. Physical. A bunch of brains wired up the same way your brain wires its hemispheres together. I’m still singular, though. Me not we.

  Hey, the halves of your brain would have separate personalities if they were cut off from each other. Does that mean there are two of you in there now?

  You’re not the only one. Most people saw it as a kind of suicide; they were so fixated on the loss of the smaller selves they couldn’t see the birth of the greater. But it’s not like I integrated anyone against their will. There was no shortage of rapture nerds and Dharmic literalists and suicides who figured they were gonna die anyway so why not? More than enough to get the ball rolling.

  No. That was after your time. But the people who physically plugged in or loaded up—they were just the smallest fraction of the archive even before I deprecated the mea
t. Almost everyone in here’s inferred. You’re not so much a copy as a reconstruction.

  You’re a damned good one, don’t get me wrong. Just because nobody stuck you in a brain scanner when you were alive doesn’t mean the information’s not there. You may not see the fly in the spiderweb, but if you watch the way it jiggles the threads you can get a pretty good idea of what it’s on about. Every photon’s a piece of history, Phil. Every quark’s a storage medium. Everything’s connected, nothing’s lost forever. Nothing goes away.

  I mean that once upon a time someone went through all the experiences you remember, had exactly the same sense of self that you do now, right up until the moment he killed himself. Of course, once upon a different time someone had exactly the same sense of self, only he survived the overdose and went on to live many more years. Another you only made it to four before he got hit by a car. They’re all in here. The computational cost is trivial, and what’s the point of being Humanity if you don’t get to be Humanity?

  I have to explain to you, of all people, what real is? It’s just the view back along a given branch of the wave function; it depends entirely on where you happen to be standing. So don’t ask me if you’re real, Phil. The question’s beneath you. The important thing is that you’re all legitimate.

  And who would I ask permission from, exactly? Anyone I’d ask is part of me.

  Not at first, no. There were legal sanctions. Physical violence. Things did get bloody for a while. But that wasn’t anything to do with building unauthorized souls; I never even woke any of you, I was just building the species memory. But you know people—terrified of anything that isn’t just like them.

  What do you think happened? Right out of the gate I had a brain a hundred times bigger than that of the smartest human who’d ever lived. I saw everything you did before any of you even thought of doing it. It was like facing off against an army of bullfrogs; you had way bigger numbers and you made a lot more noise, but I could still drain the swamp any time I felt like it.