The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (47 page)

“Your colleague was midway through some very radical genetic surgery.”

“He was,” Joe agreed.

“He belonged to the Rebirth Movement.”

“I’m sorry. What does this have to do with anything?” Joe’s tone was serious. Perhaps even offended. “Everybody is human, even if they aren’t
sapiens
anymore. Isn’t that the way our laws are written?”

“You knew exactly what you were doing, Joe.”

He didn’t answer.

“You selected Barnes. You picked him because you understood that nobody would stand in your way.”

Again, Joe used his shy, winning grin.

“Where did you meet with Barnes?”

“In his cabin.”

“And what did you say to him?”

“That I loved him,” Joe explained. “I told him that I was envious of his courage and vision. Leaving our old species was noble. Was good. I thought that he was intriguing and very beautiful. And I told him that to save his important life, as well as everybody else, I was going to sacrifice myself. I was staying behind with the robots.”

“You lied to him.”

“Except Barnes believed me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“When you told him you loved him . . . did you believe he was gay . . . ?”

“He wasn’t.”

“But if he had been? What would you have done if he was flattered by your advances?”

“Oh, I could have played that game too.”

The psychiatrist hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“If Barnes preferred guys, then I would have seduced him. If I’d thought there was enough time, I mean. I would have convinced him to remain behind and save my life. Really, the guy was pretty easy to manipulate, all in all. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince him that being the hero was his idea in the first place.”

“You could have managed all that?”

Joe considered hard before saying, “If I’d had a few days to work with, sure. Easy. But you’re probably right. A couple hours wasn’t enough time.”

The psychiatrist had stopped watching the telemetry, preferring to stare at the creature sitting across from her.

Quietly, she said, “OK.”

Joe waited patiently.

“What did Mr Barnes say to you?” she asked. “After you professed your love, how did he react?”

“‘You’re lying.’“ Joe didn’t just quote the man, but he sounded like him too. The voice was thick and a little slow, wrapped around vocal chords that were slowly changing their configuration. “‘You’ve slept with every damn woman on this ship,’ he told me. ‘Except our dyke captain.’”

The psychiatrist’s face stiffened slightly.

“Is that true?” she muttered.

Joe gave her a moment. “Is what true?”

“Never mind.” She found a new subject to pursue. “Mr Barnes’ cabin was small, wasn’t it?”

“The same as everybody’s.”

“And you were at opposite ends of that room. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

By birth, Barnes was a small man, but his Rebirth had given him temporary layers of fat that would have eventually been transformed into new tissues and bones, and even two extra fingers on each of his long, lovely hands. The air inside that cubbyhole had smelled of biology, raw and distinctly strange. But it wasn’t an unpleasant odour. Barnes had been drifting beside his bed, and next to him was the image of the creature he wanted to become – a powerful, fur-draped entity with huge golden eyes and a predator’s toothy grin. The cabin walls were covered with his possessions, each lashed in place to keep them out of the way. And on the surface of what was arbitrarily considered to be the ceiling, Barnes had painted the motto of the Rebirth movement:

TO BE TRULY HUMAN IS TO BE DIFFERENT.

“Do you want to know what I told him?” asked Joe. “I didn’t put this in my report. But after he claimed I was sleeping with those women . . . do you know what I said that got him to start pounding on me . . . ?”

The psychiatrist offered a tiny, almost invisible nod.

“I said, ‘I’m just playing with those silly bitches. They’re toys to me. But you, you’re nothing like them. Or like me. You’re going to be a spectacular creature. A vision of the future, you lucky shit. And before I die, please, let me blow you. Just to get the taste of another species.’”

She sighed. “All right.”

“And that’s when I reached for him —”

“You’re heterosexual,” she complained.

“I was saving lives,” Joe responded.

“You were saving your own life.”

“And plenty of others too,” he pointed out. Then with a grin, he added, “You don’t appreciate what I was prepared to do, doctor. If it meant saving the rest of us, I was capable of anything.”

She once believed that she understood Joe Carroway. But in every possible way, she had underestimated the man sitting before her, including his innate capacity to measure everybody else’s nature.

“The crew was waiting in the passageway outside,” he mentioned. “With the captain and engineer, they were crowding in close, listening close, trying to hear what would happen. All these good decent souls, holding their breaths, wondering if I could pull this trick off.”

She nodded again.

“They heard the fight, but it took them a couple minutes to force the door. When they got inside, they found Barnes all over me and that lump of iron in his hand.” Joe paused before asking, “Do you know how blood looks in space? It forms a thick mist of bright red drops that drift everywhere, sticking to every surface.”

“Did Mr Barnes strike you?”

Joe hesitated, impressed enough to show her an appreciative smile. “What does it say in my report?”

“But it seems to me . . .” Her voice trailed away. “Maybe you were being honest with me, Joe. When you swore that you would have done anything to save yourself, I should have believed you. So I have to wonder now . . . what if you grabbed that piece of asteroid and turned it on yourself? Mr Barnes would have been surprised. For a minute or so, he might have been too stunned to do anything but watch you strike yourself in the face. Then he heard the others breaking in, and he naturally kicked over to you and pulled the weapon from your hand.”

“Now why would I admit to any of that?” Joe replied.

Then he shrugged, adding, “But really, when you get down to it, the logistics of what happened aren’t important. What matters is that I gave the captain a very good excuse to lock that man up, which was how she cleared her conscience before we could abandon ship.”

“The captain doesn’t look at this as an excuse,” the psychiatrist mentioned.

“No?”

“Barnes was violent, and her conscience rests easy.”

Joe asked, “Who ordered every corn-system destroyed before we abandoned the Demon Dandy? Who left poor Barnes with no way even to call home?”

“Except by then, your colleague was a prisoner, and according to our corporate laws, the captain was obligated to silence the criminal to any potential lawsuits.” The woman kept her gaze on Joe. “Somebody had to be left behind, and in the captain’s mind, you weren’t as guilty as Mr Barnes.”

“I hope not.”

“But nobody was half as cold or a tenth as ruthless as you were, Joe.”

His expression was untroubled, even serene.

“The captain understands what you are. But in the end, she had no choice but to leave the other man behind.”

Joe laughed. “Human or not, Barnes wasn’t a very good person. He was mean-spirited and distant, and even if nobody admits it, I promise you: nobody on the ship has lost two seconds sleep over what happened there.”

The psychiatrist nearly spoke, then hesitated.

Joe leaned forward. “Do you know how it is, doctor? When you’re a kid, there’s always something that you think you’re pretty good at. Maybe you’re the best on your street, or you’re the best at school. But you never know how good you really are. Not until you get out into the big world and see what other people can do. And in the end, we aren’t all that special. Not extra clever or pretty or strong. But for a few of us, a very few, there comes a special day when we realize that we aren’t just a little good at something. We are great.

“Better than anybody ever, maybe.

“Do you know how that feels, ma’am?”

She sighed deeply. Painfully. “What are you telling me, Joe?”

He leaned back in his chair, absently scratching at the biggest bandage on his iron-battered face. “I’m telling you that I am excellent at sizing people up. Even better than you, and I think you’re beginning to appreciate that. But what you call being a borderline psychopath is to me just another part of my bigger, more important talent.”

“You’re not borderline anything,” she said.

He took no offence from the implication. “Here’s what we can learn from this particular mess: Most people are secretly bad. Under the proper circumstances, they will gladly turn on one of their own and feel nothing but good about it afterwards. But when the stakes are high and world’s going to shit, I can see exactly what needs to be done. Unlike everybody else, I will do the dirtiest work. Which is a rare and rich and remarkable gift, I think.”

She took a breath. “Why are you telling me this, Joe?”

“Because I don’t want to be a mechanic riding clunky spaceships,” he confessed. “And I want your help, doctor. All right? Will you find me new work . . . something that’s closer to my talents. Closer to my heart.

“Would you do that for me, pretty lady?”

NATURAL KILLER

At four in the morning, the animals slept. Which was only reasonable since this was a zoo populated entirely by synthetic organisms. Patrons didn’t pay for glimpses of furry lumps, formerly wild and now slumbering in some shady corner. What they wanted were spectacular, one-of-a-kind organisms doing breathtaking feats, and doing them in daylight. But high metabolisms had their costs, and that’s why the creatures now lay in their cages and grottos, inside glass boxes and private ponds, beautiful eyes closed while young minds dreamed about who-could-say-what.

For the moment, privacy was guaranteed, and that was one fine reason why desperate men would agree to meet in that public place.

Slipping into the zoo unseen brought a certain ironic pleasure too.

But perhaps the most important, at least for Joe, were the possibilities inherent with that unique realm.

A loud, faintly musical voice said, “Stop, Mr Carroway. Stop where you are, sir. And now please . . . lift your arms for us and dance in a very slow circle . . .”

Joe was in his middle thirties. His big and strong and rigorously trained body was dressed in casual white slacks and a new grey shirt. His face had retained its boyish beauty, a prominent scar creasing the broad forehead and a several-day growth of beard lending a rough, faintly threadbare quality to his otherwise immaculate appearance. Arms up, he looked rather tired. As he turned slowly, he took deep breaths, allowing several flavours of radiation to wash across his body, reaching into his bones.

“I see three weapons.” The voice came from no particular direction. “One at a time, please, lower the weapons and kick each of them toward the fountain. If you will, Mr Carroway.”

A passing shower had left the plaza wet and slick. Joe dropped the Ethiopian machine pistol first, followed the matching Glocks. Each time he kicked one of the guns, it would spin and skate across the red bricks, each one ending up within a hand’s length of the fountain – an astonishing feat, considering the stakes and his own level of exhaustion.

Unarmed, Joe stood alone in the empty plaza.

The fountain had a round black-granite base, buried pumps shoving water up against a perfect sphere of transparent crystal. The sphere was a monstrous, stylized egg. Inside the egg rode a never-to-be-born creature – some giant beast with wide black eyes and gill slits, its tail half-formed and the stubby little limbs looking as though they could turn into arms or legs, or even tentacles. Joe knew the creature was supposed to be blind, but he couldn’t shake the impression that the eyes were watching him. He watched the creature slowly roll over and over again, its egg suspended on nothing but a thin chilled layer of very busy water.

Eventually five shapes emerged from behind the fountain.

“Thank you, Mr Carroway,” said the voice. Then the sound system was deactivated, and with a hand to the mouth, one figure shouted, “A little closer, sir. If you will.”

That familiar voice was attached to the beckoning arm.

Two figures efficiently disabled Joe’s weapons. They were big men, probably Rebirth Neanderthals or some variation on that popular theme. A third man looked like a Brilliance-Boy, his skull tall and deep, stuffed full with a staggering amount of brain tissue. The fourth human was small and slight, held securely by the Brilliance-Boy; even at a distance, she looked decidedly female.

Joe took two steps and paused.

The fifth figure, the one that spoke, approached near enough to show his face. Joe wasn’t surprised, but he pretended to be. “Markel? What are you doing here?” He laughed as if nervous. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

The man looked as
sapien
as Joe.

With a decidedly human laugh, Markel remarked, “I’m glad to hear that you were fooled, Mr Carroway. Which of course means that you killed Stanton and Humphrey for no good reason.”

Joe said nothing.

“You did come here alone, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Because you took a little longer than I anticipated.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Perhaps not. I could be mistaken.”

Markel never admitted to errors. He was a tall fellow, as bald as an egg and not particularly handsome. Which made his disguise all the more effective. The new Homo species were always physically attractive, and they were superior athletes, more often than not. Joe had never before met a Rebirth who had gone through the pain and expense and then not bothered to grow some kind of luxurious head of hair as a consequence.

“You have my vial with you, Joseph. Yes?”

“Joe. That’s my name.” He made a show of patting his chest pocket.

“And the sealed recordings too?”

“Everything you asked for.” Joe looked past Markel. “Is that the girl?”

Something about the question amused Markel. “Do you honestly care if she is?”