The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 23

They were projections, Alone realized. The real humans were tucked inside some safe room, protected from the coming onslaught by distance and thick reaches of enduring hyperfiber.

He was injured and dying. But the damage was specific and still quite narrow, and the faltering mind lay exposed like never before. And that was when the Voice that had always been speaking to him and to every soul that stood upon or inside the deep ancient hull could be heard.

"I am the s.h.i.+p," the Voice declared.

"Listen!"

13.

In a place that was not one place, but instead was everywhere, Those-Who-Rule received unwelcome news. There was trouble in Creation, and there was sudden talk of grand failures. A portion of the everywhere was in rebellion. How could this be? Who would be so foolish? Those-Who-Rule were outraged by what they saw as pure treachery. Punishment was essential, and the best punishment had to be delivered instantly, before the rebellion could stretch beyond even their powerful reach. A s.h.i.+p was aimed and set loose, burrowing its way through the newborn universe. When it reach edits target, that s.h.i.+p would deliver a sentence worse than any death. Nonexistence was its weapon-oblivion to All-and with that one talent, plus an insatiable hunger for success, the s.h.i.+p dove on and on until it had pa.s.sed out of sight.

But then the revenge lay in the past. A moment later, upon reflection, Those Who-Rule questioned the wisdom of their initial decision. Total slaughter seemed harsh, no matter how justified. In a brief discussion that wasted time on blaming one another, these agents of power decided to dispatch a second s.h.i.+p-another vessel full of talents and desires and grand, unborn possibilities.

If the second s.h.i.+p caught the first s.h.i.+p-somewhere out into that mayhem of newborn plasmas and raw, impossible energies-disaster would be averted. Life and existence and death and life born again would remain intact. But the universe was growing rapidly, exploding outwards until two adjacent points might discover themselves separated by a billion light-years.

The chase would be very difficult.

And yet, the second s.h.i.+p's goal could be no more urgent.

Through the fires of Creation, one s.h.i.+p chased the other, and nothing else mattered, and nothing else done by mortals or immortals could compare to the race that would grant the universe permission to live out its day.

Alone listened to the insistent relentless piercing voice. And then he felt his center leaking, threatening to explode. That was when he interrupted, finally asking, "And which s.h.i.+p are you?"

The Voice hesitated.

"But you can't be the first s.h.i.+p," Alone realized. "If you were carrying this nonexistence...then you wouldn't know about the second s.h.i.+p chasing after you, trying to stop your work..."

In a mutter, the Voice said, "Yes."

"You must be the second s.h.i.+p," he said. "What other choice is there?"

"But a third choice exists," the Voice a.s.sured.

"No," said Alone.

Then in terror, he said, "Yes."

"I am," the Great s.h.i.+p said.

"Both," Alone blurted. "You're that first s.h.i.+p bringing Nothingness, and you're the second s.h.i.+p after it has reached its target."

"Yes."

"But you can't stop the mission, can you?"

"I have tried and cannot, and I will try and nothing will change," the Great s.h.i.+p declared. Sad, yet not sad.

"You're both s.h.i.+ps, both pilots."

"We are."

"Working for opposite ends."

"Yes."

"And the humans are happily, foolishly riding you through their galaxy."

"Doom everywhere, and every moment ending us."

Alone felt weak, and an instant later, stronger than he had ever felt before. As his energies flickered, he said, "Tell them. Why can't you explain it to them?"

"Why won't they hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Yes."

"I could tell them for you."

"If you survived, you would explain. Yes."

"But."

"It is too late."

Alone said nothing.

The Great s.h.i.+p continued to talk, repeating that same tale of revenge and the chase, of nonexistence and the faint promise of salvation.

But Alone had stopped listening. He heard nothing more. With just the eye of his mind, he was gazing back across tens of thousands of years, remembering every step, and marveling at how small his life appeared when set against the light of far suns and the deep abyss of Time.

NAMES FOR WATER.

KIJ JOHNSON.

Kij Johnson sold her first short story in 1987, and has subsequently appeared regularly in a.n.a.log a.n.a.log, Asimov's Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and and Realms of Fantasy Realms of Fantasy. She has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the International a.s.sociation for the Fantastic in the Arts' Crawford Award. Her short story "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" was nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Hugo awards. Her story "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" was nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Hugo awards, and won the World Fantasy Award, while short science fiction story "Spar" won the 2009 Nebula Award. Her novels include World Fantasy Award nominee The Fox Woman The Fox Woman and and Fudoki Fudoki. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian j.a.pan.

Hala is running for cla.s.s when her cell phone rings. She slows to take it from her pocket, glances at the screen: UNKNOWN CALLER. It rings again. She does not pick up calls when she doesn't know who it is, but this time she hits TALK, not sure what's different, except that she is late for a cla.s.s she dreads, and this call delays the moment when she must sit down and be overwhelmed.

"h.e.l.lo," she says.

No one speaks. There is only the white noise that is always in the background of her cell phone calls. It could be the result of a flaw in the tiny cheap speaker but is probably microwaves, though she likes to imagine sometimes that it is the whisper of air molecules across all the thousands of miles between two people.

The hiss in her ear: she walks across the commons of the Engineering building, a high-ceilinged room crowded with students shaking water from their jackets and umbrellas on their way to cla.s.s. Some look as overwhelmed as she feels. It is nearly finals and they are probably not sleeping any more than she is.

Beyond the gla.s.s wall it is raining. Cars pa.s.s on Loughlin Street, across the wet lawn. Water sprays from their wheels.

Her schoolwork is not going well. It is her third year toward an engineering degree, but just now that seems an unreachable goal. The science is simple enough, but the mathematics has been hard, and she is losing herself in the tricky mazes of Complex Variables. She thinks of dropping the cla.s.s and switching her major to something simpler, but if she doesn't become an engineer what will she do instead?

"This is Hala," she says, her voice sharper. "Who is this?" This is the last thing she needs right now: a forgotten phone in a backpack, crushed against a text book and accidentally speed-dialing her; or worse, someone's idea of a prank. She listens for breathing but hears only the constant hiss. No, it is not quite steady, or perhaps she has never before listened carefully. It changes, grows louder and softer like traffic pa.s.sing, as though someone has dropped a phone onto the sidewalk of a busy street.

She wonders about the street, if it is a real street-where in the city it is, what cars and buses and bicycles travel it. Or it might be in another city, somewhere distant and fabulous. Mumbai. Tokyo. Wellington. Santiago. The names are like charms that summon unknown places, unfamiliar smells, the tastes of new foods.

Cla.s.s time. Students pool in the cla.s.sroom doorways and push through. She should join them, find a seat, turn on her laptop; but she is reluctant to let go of this strange moment for something so prosaic. She puts down her bag and holds the phone closer.

The sound in her ear ebbs and flows. No, it is not a street. The cell phone is a sh.e.l.l held to her ear, and she knows with the logic of dreams or exhaustion that it is water water she hears: surf rolling against a beach, an ocean perhaps. No one speaks or breathes into the phone because it is the water itself that talks to her. she hears: surf rolling against a beach, an ocean perhaps. No one speaks or breathes into the phone because it is the water itself that talks to her.

She says to it, "The Pacific Ocean." It is the ocean closest to her, the one she knows best. It pounds against the coast an hour from the university. On weekends back when school was not so hard, she walked through the thick-leaved plants that grew on its cliffs. The waves threw themselves against the rocks, and burst into spray that made the air taste of salt and ozone. Looking west at dusk, the Pacific seemed endless; but it was not: six thousand miles to the nearest land; ninety million miles to the sun as it dropped below the horizon; and beyond that, to the first star, a vast-but measurable-distance.

Hala likes the sudden idea that if she calls the water by its right name, it will speak in more than this hiss. "The Atlantic Ocean," she says. She imagines waters deep with fish, floored with eyeless crabs and abandoned telecommunication cables. "The Arctic. The Indian Ocean." Ice blue as turquoise; water like sapphires.

The waves keep their counsel. She has not named them properly.

She speaks the names of seas: the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Great Bight of Australia, the Red and Black and Dead seas. They are an incantation filled with the rumble of great s.h.i.+ps and the silence of corals and anemones.

When these do not work, she speaks the words for such lakes as she remembers. "Superior. Victoria. t.i.ticaca." They have waves, as well. Water brushes their sh.o.r.es pushed by winds more than the moon's inconstant face. Birds rise at dusk from the rushes along sh.o.r.eline marshes and return at dawn; eagles ride the thermals above basalt cliffs and watch for fish. "Baikal. The Great Bear. Malawi."

The halls are empty now. Perhaps she is wrong about what sort of water it is, and so she tries other words. Streams, brooks, kills, runs, rills: water summoned by gravity, coaxed or seduced or forced from one place to the next. An estuary. Ponds and pools. Snow and steam. "c.u.mulus," she says, and thinks of the clouds mounding over Kansas on summer afternoons. "Stratus. Altostratus." Typhoons, waterspouts. There is so much water, so many possibilities, but even if she knew the names of each raindrop, and every word in every language for ice, she would be wrong. It is not these things.

She remembers the sleet that cakes on her car's winds.h.i.+eld when she visits her parents in Wisconsin in winter. A stream she remembers from when she was a child, minnows s.h.i.+ning uncatchable just under the surface. The Mississippi: broad as a lake where it pa.s.ses St. Louis; in August, it is the color of cafe au lait cafe au lait and smells of mud and diesel exhaust. h.o.a.rfrost coats a century-old farmhouse window in starbursts. Bathtubs fill with blue-tinted bubbles that smell of lavender. These are real things, but they are wrong. They are not names but memories. and smells of mud and diesel exhaust. h.o.a.rfrost coats a century-old farmhouse window in starbursts. Bathtubs fill with blue-tinted bubbles that smell of lavender. These are real things, but they are wrong. They are not names but memories.

It is not the water of the world, she thinks. It is perhaps the water of dreams. "Memory," she says, naming a hidden ocean of the heart. "Longing, death, joy." The sound in her ear changes a little, as though the wind in that distant place has grown stronger or the tide has turned, but it is still not enough. "The womb. Love. Hope." She repeats, "Hope, hope," until it becomes a sound without meaning.

It is not the water of this this world world, she thinks.

This is the truth. It is water rolling against an ocean's sandy sh.o.r.e; but it is alien sand on another world, impossibly distant. It is unknown, unknowable, a riddle she will never answer in a foreign tongue she will never hear.

It is also an illusion brought on by exhaustion. She knows the sound is just white noise; she's known that all along. But she wanted it to mean something- enough that she was willing to pretend to herself, because just now she needs a charm against the sense that she is drowning in schoolwork and uncertainty about her future.

Tears burn her eyes, a ridiculous response. "Fine," she says, like a hurt child; "You're not even there." She presses END and the phone goes silent, a sh.e.l.l of dead plastic filled with circuit boards. It is empty.

Complex Variables. She'll never understand today's lesson after coming in ten minutes late. She shoulders her bag to leave the building. She forgot her umbrella, so she'll be soaked before she gets to the bus. She leans forward hoping her hair will s.h.i.+eld her face, and steps out into the rain.

The bus she just misses drives through a puddle and the splash is an elegant complex shape, a high-order Bezier curve. The rain whispers on the lawn; chatters in the gutters and drains.

The oceans of the heart.

She finds UNKNOWN CALLER in her call history and presses TALK. The phone rings once, twice. Someone-something-picks up.

"Hala," she says to the hiss of cosmic microwaves, of s.p.a.ce. "Your name is Hala."

"Hala," a voice says very loud and close. It is the unsuppressed echo common to local calls. She knows this. But she also knows it is real, a voice from a place unimaginably distant, but attainable. It is the future.

She will pa.s.s Complex Variables with a C+. She will change her major to physics, graduate, and go to grad school to study astrophysics. Seven years from now, as part of her dissertation, she will write a program that searches the data that will come from the Webb telescope, which will have been launched in 2014. Eleven years and six months from now, her team of five will discover water's fingerprint splashed across the results matrix from a planet circling Beta Leonis, fifty light years away: a star ignored for decades because of its type. The presence of phyllosilicates will indicate that the water is liquid. Eighteen months later, their results will be verified.

One hundred and forty-six years from now, the first men and women will stand on the planet circling Beta Leonis, and they will name the ocean Hala.

Hala doesn't know this. But she snaps the phone shut and runs for cla.s.s.

FAIR LADIES.

THEODORA GOSS.

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the cla.s.sics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); (2006); Interfictions Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; and (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; and Voices from Fairyland Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards. (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards.

When Rudolf Arnheim heard what his father had done, he kicked the leg of a table that his mother had brought to Malo as part of her dowery. It had been in her family for two hundred years, and had once stood in the palace of King Radomir IV of Sylvania. The leg broke and the tabletop fell, scattering bits of inlaid wood and ivory over the stone floor.

"d.a.m.n!" he said. And then, "d.a.m.n him!" as though trying to a.s.sign blame elsewhere, although he knew well enough what his mother would say, both about her table and about his father's decision.

"What are you going to do?" asked Karl, when the three of them were sitting in leather armchairs in the Cafe Kroner.

Rudolf, who was almost but not quite drunk, said, "I'll refuse to see her."

"You'll refuse your father?" said Gustav.

They had been at the university together. Gustav Malev had come to the city from the forests near Gretz. His father's father had been a farmer who, by h.o.a.rding his wealth, had purchased enough land to marry the daughter of a local brewer and send his son to the university. The brewing operation had flourished; gla.s.ses of dark, bitter Malev beer were drunk from the Caucasus to the Adriatic. Gustav, two generations removed from tilling the soil, still looked like the farmer his grandfather had been. He was large and slow, with red hair that stood up on his head like a boar-bristle brush. In contrast, Karl Reiner was small, thin, with black hair that hung down to his shoulders in the latest Aesthetic fas.h.i.+on. He knew the best places to drink absinthe in Karelstad. His father was a government official, like his father and his father's father before him. Most likely, Karl would be a government official as well.

Rudolf looked at his friends affectionately. How he liked Karl and Gustav! Of course, he would not want to be either of them. I may not have Karl's brains, I may not have Karl's brains, he thought, he thought, but I would not be such a weasely-looking fellow for all the prizes and honors of the university, but I would not be such a weasely-looking fellow for all the prizes and honors of the university, none of which, incidentally, had come to Rudolf. none of which, incidentally, had come to Rudolf. And while Gustav is as rich as Croesus, and a very good sort of fellow to boot, what was his grandfather? And while Gustav is as rich as Croesus, and a very good sort of fellow to boot, what was his grandfather? And he remembered with pride that his grandfather had been a baron, as his father was a baron. His father, the Baron. He could not understand his father's preposterous-preposterous-he could not remember the word. Yes, Gustav and Karl were his best friends. And he remembered with pride that his grandfather had been a baron, as his father was a baron. His father, the Baron. He could not understand his father's preposterous-preposterous-he could not remember the word. Yes, Gustav and Karl were his best friends.

He stood up and stumbled, almost falling on Karl. "Really, you know, I think I'm going to throw up."

Karl paid the bill, while Gustav held him under the arms as they wound their way around the small tables to the front entrance.

"The Pearl," said Karl later, when they were sitting in their rooms. They shared an apartment near the university, on Ordony Street. "I wonder what she's like, after all these years. No one has seen her since before the war. She must be forty, at least."

Rudolf put his head in his hands. He had thrown up twice on his way home, and his head ached.

"Surely your father won't expect you to-take her as a mistress," said Gustav, with the delicacy of a country boy. He still blushed when the women on the street corners called and whistled to him.