The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 19

"Who are you?" he asked.

The voice said, "Listen."

Alone remained silent, straining to hear any sound, no matter how soft or fleeting. But nothing else was offered. Silence lay upon silence, chilled and black, and he spent the next long while trying to decipher which language was used. No human tongue, clearly. Yet those few words were as transparent and simple as anything he had heard before.

Once healed, he seeped light.

The engine's interior was complex and redundant, and most of its facilities were scarcely used. Except for the occasional crackling whisper, radio talk never reached him. He could wander again. Happy, he discovered a series of nameless places where the slightest frosting of dust lay over every surface, that dust never disturbed. Billions of years of benign neglect promised seclusion. No one would find him in this vastness, and if nothing else happened in his life, all would be well.

Centuries pa.s.sed.

Technicians and their machines traveled through these places, but always bound for other, more important locations.

Hiding was easy inside the catacombs.

The s.h.i.+p gave warning when the overhead engine was about to be fired. Great valves were opened and closed, vibrations traveling along the sleeping tubes. A deeper chill could be felt as lakes of liquid hydrogen were prepared for fusion. Alone always found three sites where he could quickly find shelter. His planning worked well, and he saw no reason to change what was flawless. And then one day, everything changed. Alone was sitting inside a minor conduit, happily basking in a pool of golden light leaking from his inexplicable body. He was thinking about nothing of consequence. And then that perfect instant was in the past. There was a deep rumble and the ominous feel of dense fluids on the move, and before he could react, he was picked up and carried along by a hot viscous and irresistible liquid. Not hydrogen, and not water either. It was some species of oil dirtied up with odd metals and peculiar structures. He was trapped inside juices and pa.s.sion, life and more life, and he responded with a desperate scream.

Tendrils touched him, trying to bury inside him.

He panicked, kicked and spun hard. Then he pulled his body into the first disguise that occurred to him.

Electric voices jabbered.

A language was found, and what surrounded him said in the human tongue, "It is a Remora."

"Down here?"

"Tastes wrong," a third voice complained.

"Not hyperfiber, this sh.e.l.l isn't," said a fourth.

The voices never repeated. This oily body contained a mult.i.tude of independent, deeply communal ent.i.ties.

"The face is," said another.

"Look at the face." Another.

"You hear us, Remora?"

"I do," Alone allowed.

"Are you lost?"

He knew the word, but its precise meaning had always evaded him. So with as much authority as possible, he said, "I am not lost. No."

In an alien language, the mult.i.tude debated what to do next.

Then a final voice announced, "Whatever you are, we will leave you now in a safe place. For this favor, you will pay us with your praise and thanks. Do this and win our respect. Otherwise, we will speak badly of you, today and for the eternity to come."

He was spat into a new tunnel-a brief broad hole capped with a ma.s.sive door and filled with magnetic filters, meshed filters, and a set of powerful grasping limbs. The limbs gathered him up. He immediately transformed his body, struggling to slide free. But his captors tied themselves into an enormous knot, their grip trying to crush him. Alone felt helpless. He panicked. Wild with terror, fresh talents were unleashed, and he discovered that when he did nothing except consciously gather up his energies, he could eventually let loose a burst of coherent light-an ultraviolet flash that jumped from his skin, scorching the smothering limbs-and he tumbled back onto the mesh floor.

A second set of limbs emerged, proving stronger, more careful.

Alone adapted his methods. A longer rest produced an invisible but intense magnetic pulse. The mechanical arms flinched and died, and then he changed his shape and flowed out from between them. The chamber walls and overhead door were high-grade hyperfiber. With brief bursts of light, he attacked the door's narrow seams. He attacked the floor. Security AIs made no attempt to hide their presence, calmly studying the ongoing struggle. Then a pair of technicians stepped through an auxiliary door-humans wearing armored lifesuits, complete with helmets that offered some protection to their tough, fearful minds.

The man asked the woman, "What is that thing?"

"I don't d.a.m.n well know."

"You think it's the Remora's ghost?"

"Who cares?" he decided. "Call the boss, let her decide."

The humans retreated. Fresh arms were generated, slow and ma.s.sive but designed just moments ago to capture this peculiar prize. Alone was herded into a corner and grabbed up, and an oxygen wind blew into the chamber, bringing a caustic mist of aerosols designed to weaken any normal machine. Through the dense air and across the radio spectrum, the humans spoke to him. "We don't know if you can understand us," they admitted. "But please, try to remain still. Pretend to be calm. We don't want you hurt, we want you to feel safe, but if you insist on fighting, mistakes are going to be made."

Alone struggled.

Then something was with him-a close, familiar presence-and the voice said, "The animals."

Alone stopped fighting.

"They have us," said the voice.

He listened to the air, to the empty static.

But whatever spoke to him was already gone, and that's when a low whistling noise began to leak out of the prisoner-a steady sad moaning that stopped only when the ranking engineer arrived.

6.

"I think you do understand me." He stared at the woman. Except for a plain white garment, she wore nothing. No armor, no helmet.

"My name is Aasleen."

Aasleen's face and open hands were the color of starless s.p.a.ce. She was speaking into the air and into an invisible microphone, her radio words finding him an instant before their mirroring sound.

The woman said, "Alone."

He wasn't struggling. Doing nothing, he felt his power growing quickly, and he wondered what he might accomplish if held this pose for a long time.

"That's your name, isn't it? Alone?"

He had never embraced any name and saw no reason to do so now.

With her nearly black eyes, Aasleen studied her prisoner. And as she stood before him, coded threads of EM noise pushed into her head. Buried in her organic flesh were tiny machines, each speaking with its own urgent, complex voice. She listened to those voices, and she watched him. Then she said one secret word, silencing the chatter, and that's when she approached, walking forward slowly until he couldn't endure her presence anymore.

He made himself invisible.

She stopped moving toward him, but she didn't retreat either, speaking quietly to the smear of nothing defined by the giant clinging limbs.

"Twisting ambient light," she said. "I know that trick. Metamaterials and a lot of energy. You do it quite well, but it's nothing new."

Alone remained transparent.

"And I understand how you can alter your shape and color so easily. You're liquid, of course. You only pretend to be solid." She paused for a moment, smiling. "I once had a pet octopus. He had an augmented brain. To make me laugh, he used to pull himself into the most amazing shapes."

Alone let his body become visible again.

"Step away," he pleaded.

Aasleen stared at him for another moment. Then she backed off slowly, saying nothing until she had doubled the distance between them.

"Do you know what puzzleboys are?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"Puzzleboys build these wonderful, very beautiful machines-hard cores clothed with liquid exteriors. Their devices are durable and inventive. Their best machines are designed to survive for ages while crossing deep s.p.a.ce." Aasleen paused, perhaps hoping for a reaction. When she grew tired of the quiet, she explained, "Puzzleboys were like a lot of sentient species. They wanted the Great s.h.i.+p for themselves. Thousands of worlds sent intergalactic missions, but my species won the race. I rode out here on one of the earliest stars.h.i.+ps. Among my happiest days is that morning when I first stood on the s.h.i.+p's battered hull, gazing down at the Milky Way."

He said, "Yes."

"You know the view?"

"Yes."

She smiled, teeth showing. "A couple thousand years ago, as we were bringing the Great s.h.i.+p into the galaxy, puzzleboys started singing their lies. They claimed they'd sent a quick stealthy mission up here. The laws of salvage are ancient-far older than my baby species. Machines can't claim so much as a lump of ice for their builders. But the aliens claimed that they'd shoved one of their own citizen's minds into a suitable probe. Like all good lies, their story has dates and convincing details. It's easy to conclude that their one brave explorer might have actually reached the Great s.h.i.+p first. If he had done that, then this prize would be theirs. At least according to these old laws. The only trouble with the story is that the mission never arrived. I know I never saw any sign of squatters. Which is why we've made a point of insulting that entire species, and that's why the legal machinery of this cranky old galaxy has convincingly backed our claim of owners.h.i.+p."

Quietly, he said, "Puzzleboys."

"That's a human name. A translation, and like most approximations, inadequate."

With a burst of radio, the species' name was offered in its native language.

"Do you recognize it?" asked Aasleen.

He admitted, "I don't, no."

"All right." She nodded. A thin smile broke and then vanished again. "Let's have some fun. Try to imagine that somebody we know, some familiar civilization, dreamed you up and sent you to the Great s.h.i.+p. Maybe they borrowed puzzleboy technologies. Maybe you've sprung from a different engineering history. Right now, I'm looking at a lot of data. But despite everything I see, I can't pick one answer over the others. Which is why this so interesting. And fun."

Alone said nothing.

She laughed briefly, softly. "That leaves me with a tangle of questions. For instance, do you know what scares me about you?"

He took a moment before asking, "What scares you?"

"Your power supply."

"Why?"

Aasleen didn't seem to hear the question. "And I'm not the only person sick with worry," she admitted. She closed one of her eyes and opened it again abruptly. "Miocene," she said, and sighed. "Miocene is an important captain. And you're considered a large enough problem that, right now, that captain is sitting inside a hyperfiber bunker three kilometers behind me. Three kilometers is probably far enough. If the worst happens, that is. But of course nothing is going to go bad now. As I explained to Miocene and the other captains, you seem to have survived quite nicely and without mishap, possibly for many thousands of years. What are the odds that your guts are going to fail today, in my face?"

He considered his nature.

"Do you have any idea what's inside you?"

"No," he admitted.

"A single speck of degenerated matter. Possibly a miniature black hole, although you're more likely a quark a.s.semblage of one or another sort." She sighed and shrugged, adding, "Regardless of your engine design, it is novel. It's possible, yes, and I have a few colleagues who have done quite a lot of work proving that this kind of system might be used safely. But to see something like you in action, and to realize that you've existed for who-knows-how-long, and apparently without demanding any significant repair...

"Alone," she said, "I am a very good engineer. One of the best I've ever met, regardless of the species. And I just can't believe in you. Honestly, it's impossible for me to accept that you are real."

"Then release me," he begged.

She laughed.

He watched her face, her nervous fingers.

"In essence," she continued, "you are a lucid ent.i.ty carrying a tiny quasar inside your stomach. A quasar smaller than an atom and enclosed within a magnetic envelope, but ma.s.sive and exceptionally dense."

"Quasar," he repeated.

"Matter, any matter, can be thrown inside you, and if only a fraction of the resulting energy is captured, you will generate shocking amounts of power."

He considered her explanation. Then with a quiet tone, he mentioned, "I have seen the s.h.i.+p's engines firing."

"Have you?"

"Next to them, I am nothing."

"That's true enough. In fact, I've got a few machines sitting near us that can outstrip your capacities, and by a wide margin. But as Submaster Miocene has reminded me, if your magnetic envelope is breached, and if your stomach can digest just your own body ma.s.s, the resulting fireworks will probably obliterate several cubic kilometers of the s.h.i.+p, and who knows how many innocent souls."

Alone believed her. But then he remembered that good lies have believable details and he didn't feel as certain.

Aasleen smiled in a sad fas.h.i.+on. "Of course I don't know exactly what would happen, if your stomach got loose. Maybe it has safety mechanisms that I can't see. Or maybe its fire would reach out and grab my body, and everything else in this room would be consumed, as well as Miocene...and with that, the Great s.h.i.+p would be short one engine, and the survivors would have an enormous hole in the hull, spewing poisons and nuclear fire."

"I won't fail," he promised.

She nodded. "I think that's an accurate statement. I know I want to believe that both of us are perfectly safe."

"I won't hurt the s.h.i.+p."

"All right. But why do you feel certain?"

He said, "Because I am."

Aasleen closed her eyes, once again concentrating on the machines inside her head.