Science Fiction: The Best of 2001 Read online

  None of the introduced species had survived: dogs or turkeys or llamas. The ship could find no cities, towns, buildings—not even ruins. There were neither tubeways nor roads, only the occasional animal track. The ship looked across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and saw nothing but the natural background.

  There was nobody home on Trueborn. And as far as they could tell, there never had been.

  “Speculate,” said Mada.

  “I can’t,” said the ship. “There isn’t enough data.”

  “There’s your data.” Mada could hear the anger in her voice. “Trueborn, as it would have been had we never even existed.”

  “Two-tenths of a spin is a long time, Mada.”

  She shook her head. “They ripped out the foundations, even picked up the dumps. There’s nothing, nothing of us left.” Mada was gripping the command perch so hard that the knuckles of her toes were white. “Hypothesis,” she said, “the Utopians got tired of our troublemaking and wiped us out. Speculate.”

  “Possible, but that’s contrary to their core beliefs.” Most DIs had terrible imaginations. They couldn’t tell jokes, but then they couldn’t commit crimes, either.

  “Hypothesis: they deported the entire population, scattered us to prison colonies. Speculate.”

  “Possible, but a logistical nightmare. The Utopians prize the elegant solution.”

  She swiped the image of her home planet off the screen, as if to erase its unnerving impossibility. “Hypothesis: there are no Utopians anymore because the revolution succeeded. Speculate.”

  “Possible, but then where did everyone go? And why did they return the planet to its pristine state?”

  She snorted in disgust. “What if,” she tapped a finger to her forehead, “maybe we don’t exist. What if we’ve skipped to another time line? One in which the discovery of Trueborn never happened? Maybe there has been no Utopian Empire in this timeline, no Great Expansion, no Space Age, maybe no human civilization at all.”

  “One does not just skip to another timeline at random.” The ship sounded huffy at the suggestion. “I’ve monitored all our dimensional reinsertions quite carefully, and I can assure you that all these events occurred in the timeline we currently occupy.”

  “You’re saying there’s no chance?”

  “If you want to write a story, why bother asking my opinion?”

  Mada’s laugh was brittle. “All right then. We need more data.” For the first time since she had been stranded upwhen, she felt a tickle stir the dead weight she was carrying inside her. “Let’s start with the nearest Utopian system.”

  chasing shadows

  The HR683 system was abandoned and all signs of human habitation had been obliterated. Mada could not be certain that everything had been restored to its pre-Expansion state because the ship’s database on Utopian resources was spotty. HR4523 was similarly deserted. HR509, also known as Tau Ceti, was only 11.9 light years from earth and had been the first outpost of the Great Expansion.

  Its planetary system was also devoid of intelligent life and human artifacts—with one striking exception.

  Nuevo LA was spread along the shores of the Sterling Sea like a half-eaten picnic lunch. Something had bitten the roofs off its buildings and chewed its walls. Metal skeletons rotted on its docks, transports were melting into brown and gold stains. Once-proud boulevards crumbled in the orange light; the only traffic was wind-blown litter chasing shadows.

  Mada was happy to survey the ruin from low orbit. A closer inspection would have spooked her. “Was it war?”

  “There may have been a war,” said the ship, “but that’s not what caused this. I think it’s deliberate deconstruction.” In extreme magnification, the screen showed a concrete wall pockmarked with tiny holes, from which dust puffed intermittently. “The composition of that dust is limestone, sand, and aluminum silicate. The buildings are crawling with nanobots and they’re eating the concrete.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “At a guess, a hundred years, but that could be off by an order of magnitude.”

  “Who did this?” said Mada. “Why? Speculate.”

  “If this is the outcome of a war, then it would seem that the victors wanted to obliterate all traces of the vanquished. But it doesn’t seem to have been fought over resources. I suppose we could imagine some deep ideological antagonism between the two sides that led to this, but such an extreme of cultural psychopathology seems unlikely.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She shivered. “So they did it themselves, then? Maybe they were done with this place and wanted to leave it as they found it?”

  “Possible,” said the ship.

  Mada decided that she was done with Nuevo LA, too. She would have been perversely comforted to have found her enemies in power somewhere. It would have given her an easy way to calculate her duty. However, Mada was quite certain that what this mystery meant was that twenty thousand millennia had conquered both the revolution and the Utopians and that she and her sibling batch had been designed in vain.

  Still, she had nothing better to do with eternity than to try to find out what had become of her species.

  a never-ending vacation

  The Atlantic Ocean was now larger than the Pacific. The Mediterranean Sea had been squeezed out of existence by the collision of Africa, Europe and Asia. North America floated free of South America and was nudging Siberia. Australia was drifting toward the equator.

  The population of earth was about what it had been in the fifteenth century CE, according to the ship. Half a billion people lived on the home world and, as far as Mada could see, none of them had anything important to do. The means of production and distribution, of energy-generation and waste disposal were in the control of Dependent Intelligences like the ship. Despite repeated scans, the ship could detect no sign that any independent sentience was overseeing the system.

  There were but a handful of cities, none larger than a quarter of a million inhabitants. All were scrubbed clean and kept scrupulously ordered by the DIs; they reminded Mada of databases populated with people instead of information. The majority of the population spent their bucolic lives in pretty hamlets and quaint towns overlooking lakes or oceans or mountains.

  Humanity had booked a never-ending vacation.

  “The brain clans could be controlling the DIs,” said Mada. “That would make sense.”

  “Doubtful,” said the ship. “Independent sentients create a signature disturbance in the sixth dimension.”

  “Could there be some secret dictator among the humans, a hidden oligarchy?”

  “I see no evidence that anyone is in charge. Do you?”

  She shook her head. “Did they choose to live in a museum,” she said, “or were they condemned to it? It’s obvious there’s no First Right here; these people have only the illusion of individuality. And no Second Right either. Those bodies are as plain as uniforms—they’re still slaves to their biology.”

  “There’s no disease,” said the ship. “They seem to be functionally immortal.”

  “That’s not saying very much, is it?” Mada sniffed. “Maybe this is some scheme to start human civilization over again. Or maybe they’re like seeds, stored here until someone comes along to plant them.” She waved all the screens off. “I want to go down for a closer look. What do I need to pass?”

  “Clothes, for one thing.” The ship displayed a selection of current styles on its screen. They were extravagantly varied, from ballooning pastel tents to skin-tight sheaths of luminescent metal, to feathered camouflage to jump-suits made of what looked like dried mud. “Fashion design is one of their principal pasttimes,” said the ship. “In addition, you’ll probably want genitalia and the usual secondary sexual characteristics.”

  It took her the better part of a day to flow ovaries, fallopian tubes, a uterus, cervix, and vulva and to re-arrange her vagina. All these unnecessary organs made her feel bloated. She saw breasts as a waste of tissue; she made hers
as small as the ship thought acceptable. She argued with it about the several substantial patches of hair it claimed she needed. Clearly, grooming them would require constant attention. She didn’t mind taming her claws into fingernails but she hated giving up her whiskers. Without them, the air was practically invisible. At first her new vulva tickled when she walked, but she got used to it.

  The ship entered earth’s atmosphere at night and landed in what had once been Saskatchewan, Canada. It dumped most of its mass into the empty dimensions and flowed itself into baggy black pants, a moss-colored boat neck top and a pair of brown, gripall loafers. It was able to conceal its complete sensorium in a canvas belt.

  It was 9:14 in the morning on June 23, 19,834,004 CE when Mada strolled into the village of Harmonious Struggle.

  the devil’s apple

  Harmonious Struggle consisted of five clothing shops, six restaurants, three jewelers, eight art galleries, a musical instrument maker, a crafts workshop, a weaver, a potter, a woodworking shop, two candle stores, four theaters with capacities ranging from twenty to three hundred and an enormous sporting goods store attached to a miniature domed stadium. There looked to be apartments over most of these establishments; many had views of nearby Rabbit Lake.

  Three of the restaurants—Hassam’s Palace of Plenty, The Devil’s Apple, and Laurel’s—were practically jostling each other for position on Sonnet Street, which ran down to the lake. Lounging just outside of each were waiters eyeing handheld screens. They sprang up as one when Mada happened around the corner.

  “Good day, Madame. Have you eaten?”

  “Well met, fair stranger. Come break bread with us.”

  “All natural foods, friend! Lightly cooked, humbly served.”

  Mada veered into the middle of the street to study the situation as the waiters called to her. ~So I can choose whichever I want?~ She subvocalized to the ship.,

  ~In an attention-based economy,~ subbed the ship in reply, ~ all they expect from you is an audience.~

  Just beyond Hassam’s, the skinny waiter from The Devil’s Apple had a wry, crooked smile. Black hair fell to the padded shoulders of his shirt. He was wearing boots to the knee and loose rust-colored shorts, but it was the little red cape that decided her.

  As she walked past her, the waitress from Hassam’s was practically shouting. “Madame, please, their batter is dull!” She waved her handheld at Mada. “Read the reviews. Who puts shrimp in muffins?”

  The waiter at the Devil’s Apple was named Owen. He showed her to one of three tables in the tiny restaurant. At his suggestion, Mada ordered the poached peaches with white cheese mousse, an asparagus breakfast torte, baked orange walnut French toast and coddled eggs. Owen served the peaches, but it was the chef and owner, Edris, who emerged from the kitchen to clear the plate.

  “The mousse, Madame, you liked it?” she asked, beaming.

  “It was good,” said Mada.

  Her smile shrank a size and a half. “Enough lemon rind, would you say that?”

  “Yes. It was very nice.”

  Mada’s reply seemed to dismay Edris even more. When she came out to clear the next course, she blanched at the corner of breakfast torte that Mada had left uneaten.

  “I knew this.” She snatched the plate away. “The pastry wasn’t fluffy enough.” She rolled the offending scrap between thumb and forefinger.

  Mada raised her hands in protest. “No, no, it was delicious.” She could see Owen shrinking into the far corner of the room.

  “Maybe too much colby, not enough gruyere?” Edris snarled. “But you have no comment?”

  “I wouldn’t change a thing. It was perfect.”

  “Madame is kind,” she said, her lips barely moving, and retreated.

  A moment later Owen set the steaming plate of French toast before Mada.

  “Excuse me.” She tugged at his sleeve.

  “Something’s wrong?” He edged away from her. “You must speak to Edris.”

  “Everything is fine. I was just wondering if you could tell me how to get to the local library.”

  Edris burst out of the kitchen. “What are you doing, beanheaded boy? You are distracting my patron with absurd chitterchat. Get out, get out of my restaurant now.”

  “No, really, he. . .”

  But Owen was already out the door and up the street, taking Mada’s appetite with him.

  ~You’re doing something wrong,~ the ship subbed.

  Mada lowered her head. ~I know that!~

  Mada pushed the sliver of French toast around the pool of maple syrup for several minutes but could not eat it. “Excuse me,” she called, standing up abruptly. “Edris?”

  Edris shouldered through the kitchen door, carrying a tray with a silver egg cup. She froze when she saw how it was with the French toast and her only patron.

  “This was one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten.” Mada backed toward the door. She wanted nothing to do with eggs, coddled or otherwise.

  Edris set the tray in front of Mada’s empty chair. “Madame, the art of the kitchen requires the tongue of the patron,” she said icily.

  She fumbled for the latch. “Everything was very, very wonderful.”

  no comment

  Mada slunk down Lyric Alley, which ran behind the stadium, trying to understand how exactly she had offended. In this attention-based economy, paying attention was obviously not enough. There had to be some other cultural protocol she and the ship were missing. What she probably ought to do was go back and explore the clothes shops, maybe pick up a pot or some candles and see what additional information she could blunder into. But making a fool of herself had never much appealed to Mada as a learning strategy. She wanted the map, a native guide—some edge, preferably secret.

  ~Scanning,~ subbed the ship. ~Somebody is following you. He just ducked behind the privet hedge twelve-point-three meters to the right. It’s the waiter, Owen.~

  “Owen,” called Mada, “is that you? I’m sorry I got you in trouble. You’re an excellent waiter.”

  “I’m not really a waiter.” Owen peeked over the top of the hedge. “I’m a poet.”

  She gave him her best smile. “You said you’d take me to the library.” For some reason, the smile stayed on her face “Can we do that now?”

  “First listen to some of my poetry.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Owen, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. I said I would like to go to the library.”

  “All right then, but I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  Mada was taken aback. “Really? Why is that?”

  “I’m not attracted to women with small breasts.”

  For the first time in her life, Mada felt the stab of outraged hormones. “Come out here and talk to me.”

  There was no immediate break in the hedge, so Owen had to squiggle through. “There’s something about me that you don’t like,” he said as he struggled with the branches.

  “Is there?” She considered. “I like your cape.”

  “That you don’t like.” He escaped the hedge’s grasp and brushed leaves from his shorts.

  “I guess I don’t like your narrow-mindedness. It’s not an attractive quality in a poet.”

  There was a gleam in Owen’s eye as he went up on his tiptoes and began to declaim:

  “That spring you left I thought I might expire

  And lose the love you left for me to keep.

  To hold you once again is my desire.

  Before I give myself to death’s long sleep.”

  He illustrated his poetry with large, flailing gestures. At “death’s long sleep” he brought his hands together as if to pray, laid the side of his head against them and closed his eyes. He held that pose in silence for an agonizingly long time.

  “It’s nice,” Mada said at last. “I like the way it rhymes.”

  He sighed and went flat-footed. His arms drooped and he fixed her with an accusing stare. “You’re not from here.”

 
“No,” she said. ~Where am I from?~ she subbed. ~Someplace he’ll have to look up.~

  ~Marble Bar. It’s in Australia~

  “I’m from Marble Bar.”

  “No, I mean you’re not one of us. You don’t comment.”

  At that moment, Mada understood. ~I want to skip downwhen four minutes. I need to undo this.~

  * * *

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