The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 48

After we'd finished making love, Rosita nestled against me and whispered in my ear: "Won't she forgive you? After all, you're married now."

I laughed. I knew the answer well, but I found her a.s.sumption revealing. In the culture she'd been raised, the most anyone could aspire to was marriage. Rosita believed my mother would forgive whatever offence I'd committed once I brought home a wife. How could she not want to meet her daughter-in-law? Not to speak of the children we'd surely have. I was married now, and hence a man. Nothing I'd done before was more than a childhood prank.

I was foolish. I laughed and didn't explain to her how different my people are. Maybe her culture had finally gotten to me and it didn't cross my mind to open my heart to my wife. You can't spend your life in a misogynist society and not have it catch a little.

Or maybe, I simply didn't want to dwell on what I'd lost, but I thought about you, Mother, and wondered what you would have thought of Rosita.

Our marriage would not go down in history as the longest, but I doubt there was ever a happier couple of newlyweds. Rosita got pregnant almost immediately and it looked as though the harvest would be good.

Then, just like that, hail came.

You, people from the deep, do not understand weather. For you, bad weather is a slight annoyance, a disruptor of parties, a disperser of plankton. You swim deep, where the currents are constant and change is slow. Weather doesn't threaten your survival. It doesn't threaten the issue of your womb.

Mother, these humans live hand-to-mouth. This is how you you make them live. Losing one crop means hunger. Having a baby at the same time is a disaster. Her parents had four other unmarried daughters to feed: they could not help us out. make them live. Losing one crop means hunger. Having a baby at the same time is a disaster. Her parents had four other unmarried daughters to feed: they could not help us out.

Oddly enough, Rosita didn't seem too worried. It went beyond the silly happiness of pregnancy. When we finally realized we had nothing, a busy hope overtook her. She put her marriage chest together and repacked her doilies. I asked her what was going on.

"Your mother will have to take us in now. We're family and we need help. I'm looking forward to living in the sea."

I'm not sure what she expected the sea to be like. I bet all she aspired to was a world in which she could go and buy wine without being stared at. When she saw my face, she laughed. The beauty had been sucked out of her, but the pretty still shone in her dainty bones, clearly visible after the famine.

"Oh, come on! She won't let her grandson starve, will she?"

What was I to do? Tell her that there was no hope? Tell her that my own mother wouldn't help me, would kill me if I dared wade into the sea?

I completed my act of treason and told Rosita our secrets. I told her she could be changed to swim free in the sea. I told her she'd feel no more discomfort than I did above land. Our mouths were green from eating gra.s.s and the dust had crept into the house while Rosita was weak from hunger and pregnancy. It wasn't a difficult decision to make. I didn't, however, tell her all the truth.

This is the story I want you to tell my child.

I know you won't like talking to him about dry land. I know you'll hate me with each breath that delivers my story, but I also know you'll say the words with feeling and conviction. You'll follow my wishes to the letter, Mother, because this is the mer way. Even a traitor has rights and even a traitor's story deserves to be heard. The condemned man has a right to a last meal; the merman has a right to his last words. I, being both and neither, go to my death on an empty stomach.

Believe me, Mother, when I say that I don't do this to punish you. You did what you had to do, just as I did what I was forced to do. You exiled me long ago. The reason has largely become a question of semantics. I'll make this easier for you and reaffirm my heresy: You deny merfolk evolved from humans. I have proved you wrong. Merfolk were artificially geneered from humans to survive the climate cataclysm. The merfolk then devised a way to enhance the climate change, causing the water to rise, not six meters, as had been predicted, but over twenty, hence turning over control of the planet to the new species and killing thousands in the process. It's not my fault the younger generation of merfolk agrees with me and is willing to make amends with Humanity.

There. This confession should make things easier for you. The father for the son; that's the deal. Please forgive me this last cruelty from the grave.

"What do we do now?" Rosita asks when we reach the beach.

"We wade into the water," I tell her. "They'll come out to meet us."

She has no fear of drowning. Truck with merfolk is men's domain and women don't go near the sea. I teach her to float and paddle. If you take poorly to her, I want to give her a shot at swimming back to sh.o.r.e.

She's so trusting, she learns fast.

"You go ahead; I want you to be the first one my mother sees. If something happens just swim back. I might disappear suddenly, but don't worry about me. There are guards at the border and they might take me down for questioning," I lie.

I realize I've frightened her. "Don't worry, it'll only be a few minutes. If anything happens, just paddle back and wait for me on the sh.o.r.e."

She nods. For a second, I resent her for trusting me, even though I am the one who is lying to her.

There she goes. I chirp at her as she swims, engraving our story into her bones. The mer will tear me apart as soon as my scent spreads into the water. My body isn't a good vehicle for this message, so I'm placing it in Rosita.

The story of how we met goes into Rosa's left foot. The story of how I'm leaving her, into her right. I've tried to do the tale justice, nipping the bone at a microscopic level. The bones in her toes, in particular, I find endearing, and I pay them special attention, weaving the story into filigrees which I'm certain you'll appreciate. Think of me when you chirp at my bride and her bones sing back to you.

So, this is my wife, Mother. Truth be told, I don't know what I'm doing, sending her to you like this. Is this song in her bones like the sealed letters from the stories, telling you to kill the bearer? I think not. The merfolk have always been exacting, but never cruel. My bride is not what is wrong with her species and you know that genes do not determine behavior. Look at you; look at me. Who would think we were related?

Come now, Mother, find it in you to like this girl. She bears my child and I have kept my chirps away from her abdomen. You are threatening two innocents, for the crimes of your son, and that is not the mer way.

Do not make the child pay for the sins of the father.

THE SULTAN OF THE CLOUDS.

GEOFFREY A. LANDIS.

Geoffrey A. Landis is the author of one novel, Mars Crossing Mars Crossing, and one collection of short stories, Impact Parameter and Other Quantum Realities Impact Parameter and Other Quantum Realities. He has also written more than eighty short stories, which have appeared in publications such as a.n.a.log a.n.a.log, Asimov's Asimov's and and Fantasy & Science Fiction Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as in anthologies. He is the winner of the Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards, and the Locus Award for his fiction, as well as two Rhysling awards for SF poetry. Outside of science fiction, Dr. Landis is a physicist who works for NASA at the John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. He was on the science team of the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover missions, and has published 400 scientific papers and been awarded seven patents. He currently works on developing new technology for future planetary missions, including missions to explore Venus. He lives in Berea, Ohio, with his wife, writer Mary A. Turzillo, and four cats.

When Leah Hamakawa and I arrived at Riemann orbital, there was a surprise waiting for Leah: a message. Not an electronic message on a link-pad, but an actual physical envelope, with Doctor Leah Hamakawa lettered on the outside in flowing handwriting.

Leah slid the note from the envelope. The message was etched on a stiff sheet of some hard crystal that gleamed a brilliant translucent crimson. She looked at it, flexed it, ran a fingernail over it, and then held it to the light, turning it slightly. The edges caught the light and scattered it across the room in droplets of fire. "Diamond," she said. "Chromium impurities give it the red color; probably nitrogen for the blue. Charming." She handed it to me. "Careful of the edges, Tinkerman; I don't doubt it might cut."

I ran a finger carefully over one edge, but found that Leah's warning was unnecessary; some sort of pa.s.sivation treatment had been done to blunt the edge to keep it from cutting. The letters were limned in blue, so sharply chiseled on the sheet that they seemed to rise from the card. The t.i.tle read, "Invitation from Carlos Fernando Delacroix Ortega de la Jolla y Nordwald-Gruenbaum." In smaller letters, it continued, "We find your researches on the ecology of Mars to be of some interest. We would like to invite you to visit our residences at Hypatia at your convenience and talk."

I didn't know the name Carlos Fernando, but the family Nordwald-Gruenbaum needed no introduction. The invitation had come from someone within the intimate family of the Satrap of Venus.

Transportation, the letter continued, would be provided.

The Satrap of Venus. One of the twenty old men, the lords and owners of the solar system. A man so rich that human standards of wealth no longer had any meaning. What could he want with Leah?

I tried to remember what I knew about the Sultan of the clouds, satrap of the fabled floating cities. It seemed very far away from everything I knew. The society, I thought I remembered, was said to be decadent and perverse, but I knew little more. The inhabitants of Venus kept to themselves.

Riemann station was ugly and functional, the interior made of a dark anodized aluminum with a pebbled surface finish. There was a viewport in the lounge, and Leah had walked over to look out. She stood with her back to me, framed in darkness. Even in her rumpled s.h.i.+p's suit, she was beautiful, and I wondered if I would ever find the clue to understanding her.

As the orbital station rotated, the blue bubble of Earth slowly rose in front of her, a fragile and intricate sculpture of snow and cobalt, outlining her in a sapphire light. "There's nothing for me down there," she said.

I stood in silence, not sure if she even remembered I was there.

In a voice barely louder than the silence, she said, "I have no past."

The silence was uncomfortable. I knew I should say something, but I was not sure what. "I've never been to Venus," I said at last.

"I don't know anybody who has." Leah turned. "I suppose the letter doesn't specifically say that I should come alone." Her tone was matter of fact, neither discouraging nor inviting.

It was hardly enthusiastic, but it was better than no. I wondered if she actually liked me, or just tolerated my presence. I decided it might be best not to ask. No use pressing on my luck.

The transportation provided turned out to be the Sulieman Sulieman, a fusion yacht.

Sulieman was more than merely first-cla.s.s, it was excessively extravagant. It was larger than many ore transports, huge enough that any ordinary yacht could have easily fit within the most capacious of its recreation spheres. Each of its private cabins-and it had seven-was larger than an ordinary habitat module. Big s.h.i.+ps commonly were slow s.h.i.+ps, but was more than merely first-cla.s.s, it was excessively extravagant. It was larger than many ore transports, huge enough that any ordinary yacht could have easily fit within the most capacious of its recreation spheres. Each of its private cabins-and it had seven-was larger than an ordinary habitat module. Big s.h.i.+ps commonly were slow s.h.i.+ps, but Sulieman Sulieman was an exception, equipped with an impressive amount of delta-V, and the transfer orbit to Venus was scheduled for a transit time well under that of any commercial transport s.h.i.+p. was an exception, equipped with an impressive amount of delta-V, and the transfer orbit to Venus was scheduled for a transit time well under that of any commercial transport s.h.i.+p.

We were the only pa.s.sengers.

Despite its size, the s.h.i.+p had a crew of just three: captain, and first and second pilot. The captain, with the shaven head and saffron robe of a Buddhist novice, greeted us on entry, and politely but firmly informed us that the crew were not answerable to orders of the pa.s.sengers. We were to keep to the pa.s.senger section, and we would be delivered to Venus. Crew accommodations were separate from the pa.s.senger accommodations, and we should expect not to see or hear from the crew during the voyage.

"Fine," was the only comment Leah had.

When the s.h.i.+p had received us and boosted into a fast Venus transfer orbit, Leah found the smallest of the private cabins and locked herself in it.

Leah Hamakawa had been with the Pleiades Inst.i.tute for twenty years. She had joined young, when she was still a teenager-long before I'd ever met her-and I knew little of her life before then, other than that she had been an orphan. The inst.i.tute was the only family that she had.

It seems to me sometimes that there are two Leahs. One Leah is shy and childlike, begging to be loved. The other Leah is cool and professional, who can hardly bear being touched, who hates-or perhaps disdains-people.

Sometimes I wonder if she had been terribly hurt as a child. She never talks about growing up, never mentions her parents. I had asked her, once, and the only thing she said was that that is all behind her, long ago and far away.

I never knew my position with her. Sometimes I almost think that she must love me, but cannot bring herself to say anything. Other times she is so casually thoughtless that I believe she never thinks of me as more than a technical a.s.sistant, indistinguishable from any other tech. Sometimes I wonder why she even bothers to allow me to hang around.

I d.a.m.n myself silently for being too cowardly to ask.

While Leah had locked herself away, I explored the s.h.i.+p. Each cabin was spherical, with a single double-gla.s.sed octagonal viewport on the outer cabin wall. The cabins had every luxury imaginable, even hygiene facilities set in smaller adjoining spheres, with booths that sprayed actual water through nozzles onto the occupant's body.

Ten hours after boost, Leah had still not come out. I found another cabin and went to sleep.

In two days I was bored. I had taken apart everything that could be taken apart, examined how it worked, and put it back together. Everything was in perfect condition; there was nothing for me to fix.

But, although I had not brought much with me, I'd brought a portable office. I called up a librarian agent, and asked for history.

In the beginning of the human expansion outward, transport into s.p.a.ce had been ruinously expensive, and only governments and obscenely rich corporations could afford to do business in s.p.a.ce. When the governments dropped out, a handful of rich men bought their a.s.sets. Most of them sold out again, or went bankrupt. A few of them didn't. Some stayed on due to sheer stubbornness, some with the fervor of an ideological belief in human expansion, and some out of a cold-hearted calculation that there would be uncountable wealth in s.p.a.ce, if only it could be tapped. When the technology was finally ready, the twenty families owned it all.

Slowly, the frontier opened, and then the exodus began. First by the thousands: Baha'i, fleeing religious persecution; deposed dictators and their sycophants, looking to escape with looted treasuries; drug lords and their retinues, looking to take their profits beyond the reach of governments or rivals. Then, the exodus began by the millions, all colors of humanity scattering from the Earth to start a new life in s.p.a.ce. Splinter groups from the Church of John the Avenger left the unforgiving mother church seeking their prophesied destiny; dissidents from the People's Republic of Malawi, seeking freedom; vegetarian communes from Alaska, seeking a new frontier; Mayans, seeking to reestablish a Maya homeland; libertarians, seeking their free-market paradise; communists, seeking a place outside of history to mold the new communist man. Some of them died quickly, some slowly, but always there were more, a never-ending flood of dissidents, malcontents and rebels, people willing to sign away anything for the promise of a new start. A few of them survived. A few of them thrived. A few of them grew.

And every one of them had mortgaged their very b.a.l.l.s to the twenty families for pa.s.sage.

Not one habitat in a hundred managed to buy its way out of debt-but the heirs of the twenty became richer than nations, richer than empires.

The legendary war between the Nordwald industrial empire and the Gruenbaum family over solar-system resources had ended when Patricia Gruenbaum sold out her controlling interest in the family business. Udo Nordwald, tyrant and patriarch of the Nordwald industrial empire-now Nordwald-Gruenbaum-had no such plans to discard or even dilute his hard-battled wealth. He continued his consolidation of power with a merger-by-marriage of his only son, a boy not even out of his teens, with the shrewd and calculating heiress of la Jolla. His closest compet.i.tors gone, Udo retreated from the outer solar system, leaving the long expansion outward to others. He established corporate headquarters, a living quarters for workers, and his own personal dwelling in a place which was both central to the inner system, and also a spot that n.o.body had ever before thought possible to colonize. He made his reputation by colonizing the planet casually called the solar system's h.e.l.l planet.

Venus.

The planet below grew from a point of light into a gibbous white pearl, too bright to look at. The arriving interplanetary yacht shed its hyperbolic excess in a low pa.s.s through Venus' atmosphere, rebounded leisurely into high elliptical orbit, and then circularized into a two-hour parking orbit.

Sulieman had an extravagant viewport, a single transparent pane four meters in diameter, and I floated in front of it, watching the transport barque glide up to meet us. I had thought had an extravagant viewport, a single transparent pane four meters in diameter, and I floated in front of it, watching the transport barque glide up to meet us. I had thought Sulieman Sulieman a large s.h.i.+p; the barque made it look like a miniature. A flattened cone with a rounded nose and absurdly tiny rocket engines at the base, it was shaped in the form of a typical planetary-descent lifting body, but one that must have been over a kilometer long, and at least as wide. It glided up to the a large s.h.i.+p; the barque made it look like a miniature. A flattened cone with a rounded nose and absurdly tiny rocket engines at the base, it was shaped in the form of a typical planetary-descent lifting body, but one that must have been over a kilometer long, and at least as wide. It glided up to the Sulieman Sulieman and docked with her like a pumpkin mating with a pea. and docked with her like a pumpkin mating with a pea.

The size, I knew, was deceiving. The barque was no more than a thin skin over a hollow sh.e.l.l made of vacuum-foamed t.i.tanium surrounding a vast empty chamber. It was designed not to land, but to float in the atmosphere, and to float it required a huge volume and almost no weight. No s.h.i.+ps ever landed on the surface of Venus; the epithet "h.e.l.l" was well chosen. The transfer barque, then, was more like a s.p.a.ce-going dirigible than a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, a vehicle as much at home floating in the clouds as floating in orbit.

Even knowing that the vast bulk of the barque was little more substantial than vacuum, though, I found the effect intimidating.

It didn't seem to make any impression on Leah. She had come out from her silent solitude when we approached Venus, but she barely glanced out the viewport in pa.s.sing. It was often hard for me to guess what would attract her attention. Sometimes I had seen her spend an hour staring at a rock, apparently fascinated by a chunk of ordinary asteroidal chondrite, turning it over and examining it carefully from every possible angle. Other things, like a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p nearly as big as a city, she ignored as if they had no more importance than dirt.

Bulky cargos were carried in compartments in the hollow interior of the barque, but since there were just two of us descending to Venus, we were invited to sit up in the pilot's compartment, a transparent blister almost invisible at the front.

The pilot was another yellow-robed Buddhist. Was this a common sect for Venus pilots, I wondered? But this pilot was as talkative as Sulieman Sulieman's pilot had been reclusive. As the barque undocked, a tether line stretched out between it and the station. The station lowered the barque toward the planet. While we were being lowered down the tether, the pilot pointed out every possible sight-tiny communications satellites crawling across the sky like turbocharged ants; the pinkish flashes of lightning on the night hemisphere of the planet far below; the golden spider's web of a microwave power relay. At thirty kilometers, still talking, the pilot severed the tether, allowing the barque to drop free. The Earth and moon, twin stars of blue and white, rose over the pearl of the horizon. Factory complexes were distantly visible in orbit, easy to spot by their flas.h.i.+ng navigation beacons and the transport barques docked to them, so far away that even the immense barques were shrunken to insignificance.

We were starting to brush atmosphere now, and a feeling of weight returned, and increased. Suddenly we were pulling half a gravity of overgee. Without ever stopping talking, the pilot-monk deftly rolled the barque inverted, and Venus was now over our heads, a featureless white ceiling to the universe. "Nice view there, is it not?" the pilot said. "You get a great feel for the planet in this att.i.tude. Not doing it for the view, though, nice as it is; I'm just getting that old hypersonic lift working for us, holding us down. These barques are rather a bit fragile; can't take them in too fast, have to play the atmosphere like a big ba.s.s fiddle. Wouldn't want us to bounce off the atmosphere, now, would you?" He didn't pause for answers to his questions, and I wondered if he would have continued his travelogue even if we had not been there.

The gee level increased to about a standard, then steadied.

The huge beast swept inverted through the atmosphere, trailing an ionized cloud behind it. The pilot slowed toward subsonic, and then rolled the barque over again, skipping upward slightly into the exosphere to cool the glowing skin, then letting it dip back downward. The air thickened around us as we descended into the thin, featureless haze. And then we broke through the bottom of the haze into the clear air below it, and abruptly we were soaring above the endless sea of clouds.

Clouds.

A hundred and fifty million square kilometers of clouds, a billion cubic kilometers of clouds. In the ocean of clouds the floating cities of Venus are not limited, like terrestrial cities, to two dimensions only, but can float up and down at the whim of the city masters, higher into the bright cold sunlight, downward to the edges of the hot murky depths.

Clouds. The barque sailed over cloud-cathedrals and over cloud-mountains, edges recomplicated with cauliflower fractals. We sailed past lairs filled with cloud-monsters a kilometer tall, with arched necks of cloud stretching forward, threatening and bl.u.s.tering with cloud-teeth, cloud-muscled bodies with clawed feet of flickering lightning.