The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three (50 page)

That was when Joe unfastened his harness and approached.

Li seemed to notice him. But his assistant—a cold little Swede named Hussein—took the trouble to ask, "What do you need, Mr. Carroway?"

"Just want to offer my opinion," he said.

"Opinion? About what?"

Joe made a pistol with his hand and pointed it at Hussein, and then he jerked so suddenly that the man flinched.

"What is it, Joe?" asked Li.

"People are idiots," Joe said.

The candidate looked puzzled, but a moment later, something about those words intrigued him. "In what way?"

"We can't see into the future."

"We can't?"

"None of us can," said Joe. He showed a smile, a little wink. "Not even ten seconds ahead, in some cases."

"Yet we do surprisingly well despite our limitations." The candidate leaned back, trying to find the smoothest way to dismiss this famous name.

"We can't see tomorrow," said Joe, "but we are shrewd."

"People, you mean?"

"Particularly when ten billion of us are thinking hard about the same problem. And that's why you aren't going to win this race. Nobody sees what will happen, but in this case, it's very easy to guess how the Li presidency will play out."

Hussein bristled.

But Li told him and everyone else to let the man speak.

"You're assuming that I hate these other species," Joe told him. "In fact, you've counted on it from the start. But the truth is . . . I don't have any compelling attachment to
sapiens
. By and large, I am a genuinely amoral creature. While you, sir . . . you are a bigot and a genocidal asshole. And should you ever come to power, the solar system has a respectable chance of collapsing into full-scale civil war."

Li took a moment. Then he pointed out, "In my life, I have killed no one. Not a single Rebirth, or for that matter, a
sapien
."

"Where I have slaughtered thousands," Joe admitted. "And stood aside while millions more died."

"Maybe you are my problem. Perhaps we should drop you from the ticket."

"That is an option," Joe agreed.

"Is this what you wanted to say to me? That you wish to quit?"

Joe gave the man a narrow, hard-to-read smile.

"My life," he said.

"Pardon?" Li asked.

"Early in life, I decided to live as if I was very important. As if I was blessed in remarkable ways. In my hand, I believed, were the keys to a door that would lead to a worthy future, and all that was required of me was that I make hard calculations about matters that always seem to baffle everyone else."

"I'm sorry, Joe. I'm not quite sure—"

"I have always understood that I am the most important person there is, on the Earth or any other world within our reach. And I have always been willing to do or say anything that helps my climb to the summit."

"But how can you be that special? Since that's my place to be!"

Li laughed, and his assistants heartily joined in.

Again, Joe made a pistol with his hand, pointing his index finger at the candidate's face.

"You are a scary individual," Li remarked. Then he tried to wave the man back, looking at no one when he said, "Perhaps a medical need needs to be diagnosed. A little vacation for our dear friend, perhaps."

Hussein gave an agreeable nod.

In the distance, a single soft pop could be heard.

Joe slipped back to his seat.

His security man was sitting beside him. Bothered as well as curious, he asked, "What was that all about?"

"Nothing," said Joe. "Never mind."

Another mild pop was followed by something a little louder, a little nearer.

Just in case, the security man reached for his weapon. But he discovered that his holster was empty now.

Somehow his gun had found its way into Joe's hand.

"Stay close to me," Joe said.

"You know I will," the man muttered weakly.

Then came the flash of a thumb-nuke, followed by the sharp wail of people screaming, begging with Fortune to please show mercy, to please save their glorious, important lives.

Three terms as President finally ended with an assortment of scandals—little crimes and large ones, plus a series of convenient nondisclosures—and those troubles were followed by the sudden announcement that Joseph Carroway would slide gracefully into retirement. After all that, there was persistent talk about major investigations and unsealing ancient records. Tired allegations refused to die. Could the one-time leader of humanity be guilty of even one tenth of the crimes that he was rumored to have committed? In judicial circles, wise minds discussed the prospects of charging and convicting the Old Man on the most egregious insults to common morality. Politicians screamed for justice without quite defining what justice required. Certain species were loudest in their complaints, but that was to be expected.

What was more surprising, perhaps, were the numbers of pure
sapiens
who blamed the President for every kind of ill. But most of the pain and passion fell on one-time colleagues and allies. Unable to sleep easily, they would sit at home, secretly considering their own complicities in old struggles and more recent deeds, as well as non-deeds and omissions that seemed brilliant at the moment, but now, in different light, looked rather ominous.

In the end, nothing substantial happened.

In the end, the Carroway Magic continued to hold sway.

His successor was a talented and noble soul. No one doubted her passion for peace or the decency of her instincts. And she was the one citizen of the Inhabited Worlds who could sit at a desk and sign one piece of parchment, forgiving crimes and transgressions and mistakes and misjudgments. And then she showed her feline face to the cameras, winning over public opinion by pointing out that trials would take decades, verdicts would be contested for centuries, and every last one of the defendants had been elected and then served every citizen with true skill.

The new president served one six-year term before leaving public life.

Joseph Carroway entered the next race at the last moment, and he won with a staggering seventy percent mandate. But by then the Old Man was exactly that: A slowed, sorry image of his original self, dependent on a talented staff and the natural momentum of a government that achieved the ordinary without fuss or too much controversy.

Fifteen months into Joe's final term, an alien starship entered the solar system. In physical terms, it was a modest machine: Twenty cubic kilometers of metal and diamond wrapped around empty spaces. There seemed to be no crew or pilot. Nor was there a voice offering to explain itself. But its course was clear from the beginning. Moving at nearly one percent of light speed, the Stranger, as it had been dubbed, missed the moon by a few thousand kilometers. Scientists and every telescope studied its configuration, and two nukes were set off in its vicinity—neither close enough to cause damage, it was hoped, but both producing EM pulses that helped create a detailed portrait of what lay inside. Working separately, teams of AI savants found the same awful hypothesis, and a single Antfolk nest dedicated to the most exotic physics proved that hypothesis to everyone's grim satisfaction. By then, the Stranger was passing through the sun's corona, its hull red-hot and its interior awakening. What might have been a hundred-thousand-year sleep was coming to an end. In less than a minute, this very unwelcome guest had vanished, leaving behind a cloud of ions and a tiny flare that normally would trouble no one, much less spell doom for humankind.

They told Joe what would happen.

His science advisor spoke first, and when there was no obvious reaction on that perpetually calm face, two assistants threw their interpretations of these events at the Old Man. Again, nothing happened. Was he losing his grip finally? This creature who had endured and survived every kind of disaster—was he suddenly lost, at wit's end and such?

But no, he was just letting his elderly mind assemble the puzzle that they had given him.

"How much time?" he asked.

"Ten, maybe twelve minutes," the science advisor claimed. "And then another eight minutes before the radiation and scorching heat reach us."

Others were hoping for a longer delay. As if twenty or thirty minutes would offer some kind of help.

Joe looked out the window, and with a wry smile pointed out, "It is a beautiful day."

In other words, the sun was up, and they were dead.

"How far will the damage extend?" he asked.

Nobody replied.

The Antfolk ambassador was watching from her orbital embassy, tied directly into the President's office. For a multitude of reasons, she despised this
sapien
. But he was the ruler of the Great Nest, and in awful times, she was willing to do or say anything to help him, even if that meant telling him the full, undiluted truth.

"Our small worlds will be vaporized. The big asteroids will melt and seal in the deepest parts of our nests." With a sad gesture of every hand, she added, "Mars is worse off than Earth, what with the terraforming only begun. And soon there won't be any solid surfaces on the Jovian moons."

Joe turned back to his science advisor. "Will the Americas survive?"

"In places, maybe." The man was nearly sobbing. "The flares will finish before the sun rises, and even with the climate shifts and the ash falls, there's a fair chance that the atmosphere will remain breathable."

Joe nodded.

Quietly, firmly, he told everyone, "I want an open line to every world. In thirty seconds."

Before anyone could react, the youngest assistant screamed out, "Why? Why would aliens do this awful thing to us?"

Joe laughed, just for a moment.

Then with a grandfatherly voice, he said, "Because they can. That's why."

"It has been an honor to serve as your President," Joe told an audience of two and then three and then four billion. But most citizens were too busy to watch this unplanned speech—an important element in his gruesome calculations. "But my days are done. The sun has been infiltrated, its hydrogen stolen to use in the manufacture of an amazing bomb, and virtually everybody in the range of my voice will be dead by tomorrow.

"If you are listening to me, listen carefully.

"The only way you will survive in the coming hell is to find those very few people whom you trust most. Do it now. Get to your families, hold hands with your lovers. Whoever you believe will watch your back always. And then you need to search out those who aren't aware of what I am telling you to do.

"Kill those other people.

"Whatever they have of value, take it.

"And store their corpses, if you can. In another week or two, you might relish the extra protein and fat."

He paused, just for a moment.

Then Joe said, "For the next ten generations, you will need to think only about yourselves. Be selfish. Be vicious. Be strong, and do not forget:

"Kindness is a luxury.

"Empathy will be a crippling weakness.

"But in another fifty generations, we can rebuild everything that we have lost here today. I believe that, my friends. Goodness can come again. Decency can flower in any rubble. And in fifty more generations after that, we will reach out to the stars together.

"Keep that thought close tonight, and always.

"One day, we will punish the bastards who did this awful thing to us. But to make that happen, a few of you must find the means to survive!"

Meghan McCarron's stories have recently appeared in
Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld Magazine,
and
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
. She has been an action movie researcher, a Hollywood assistant, a boarding school English teacher, and, briefly, a typist for an experimental philosopher. She lives in Brooklyn.

The magician's house looked like every other house in our neighborhood on the inside, except it had more doors. There were three doors in the foyer, two under the stairs, four in the hallway, one next to the fireplace, and another hidden behind the sofa. They were the builder's standard issue, painted the same blank white color as the walls. I pictured each one leading to a room in another house that looked exactly like this one. This house was the ur-house, the house that allowed all other houses in the development to exist.

We didn't go through any of those doors, like I had been expecting. Instead, the magician led me into the kitchen, opened the oven, and crawled inside. The oven seemed too small for a man that tall, let alone for me. I peered inside; there were no racks or walls or heat sources. There was nothing but darkness. I glanced up at the control knobs. They were turned to "OFF."

"Well?" said the magician's voice from inside. It echoed, as if coming from below ground.

I ducked my head into the oven; inside was strangely humid, and the air smelled warm and yeasty. There were no walls I could make out, only receding darkness. Taking a deep breath, I placed one hand inside, then another. I banged my shin on the oven's edge as I pulled my legs up. I crawled forward into the pitch black, the hard metal floor warming beneath my hands. Suddenly, this seemed like a terrible idea. But before I could turn around, the darkness enveloped me, and I slid down.

Inside the oven, a gas lamp flickered over upholstered chairs that I had seen in a dumpster a few months ago. I remembered them because they were lime green, and I had thought about hauling them home for my pink-and-floral bedroom to piss off my mom. The magician was already seated, waiting for me. He looked bored. I wiped the nervous sweat from my face, took a deep breath, and sat.

The magician was a tall, spindly man with surprisingly thick hands and dark, graying hair. He folded into the chair like a marionette. To meet me, he wore black stretch pants, a silk pajama shirt, a burgundy cardigan, and decaying black flip-flops. If I had seen him on the street, I would have laughed, but in the oven room he looked right at home, whereas I felt ridiculous in my khaki shorts and pre-faded T-shirt. I had even blow-dried my hair. For the first time, instead of feeling invisible in my prepster clothes, I felt exposed.