The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (54 page)

“I didn’t know your tuk-tuk could talk,” a voice said. Noy looked up and saw Dr. Somboong standing by the steps, smiling faintly in the moonlight.

“Neither did I . . .”

“What’s wrong with the vehicle?”

Noy fished out a torch, shone it on the ground. “Son of a – ” he said.

The chain, which linked the engine in the front to a central axis under the passenger cabin which, in turn, provided motion for the wheels, had broken at one joint and fallen on the ground.

“I better fix this,” Noy said apologetically.

“Bring it into the yard,” Dr Somboong said. He walked down the stairs with slow, careful steps, then to the gate. He fumbled with the latch and pushed the gate open. Noy, in turn, pushed the slim-framed tuk-tuk through, and into the yard. Dr Somboong clapped his hands, twice, and lights came on, and the old man smiled with delight. “Put it next to the spaceship.”

As always, the spaceship was in a state of undress: it looked a little like a tuk-tuk with wings, its insides exposed, engine parts and chains and nails and coils of wires and electronic components lying all about around it. The rockets lay on the unmown grass, heavy scrap metal hammered together into cylindrical shapes. To Noy, the spaceship looked like a heavenly chariot, like something the Buddha might be seen in on his way to final enlightenment, like a special effect they used on
Journey to the West
, a Chinese space kung-fu serial about the Buddha that he watched avidly, whenever he could, on Thai TV. To Noy, the spaceship was beautiful. Dr Somboong said, “I’m thinking of setting the trial launch for early next year. Have to be sure, you know.”

Noy knew. Dr Somboong had said the same thing in the past three years of their acquaintance, but Noy agreed. You had to be sure. And you couldn’t hurry something like this: it existed as a perfect thing, a fusion of hope and dream that could not be ruined, a vehicle of vision and faith whose chain could not break while it was not in motion. “She’s beautiful,” he said. He always said that.

“I’m thinking of calling her Lady Champa,” Dr Somboong said. He always said that, too. And there was always something wistful in his voice: Noy didn’t know whether it was named purely for the flower, or perhaps, as he sometimes liked to imagine, for a mysterious, long-gone girlfriend of the doctor in whose memory the doctor’s life work was being carried out.

Fat flies buzzed around the lamps and a moth launched itself at the window, the sound of its impact against the glass repetitive and soothing. “I brought whiskey,” Noy said. The doctor nodded, as if Noy had just confirmed a great mystery he had been pondering for a while. “I’ll get us a couple of glasses,” he said. “Then we can see about your chain.”

The doctor disappeared inside the house. Noy lifted the empty passenger carriage and propped it at an angle. He would need to re-join the broken ends of the chain, then loop it back through the pipes and wooden boards of the tuk-tuk. He took hold of the chain, put it on the ground and began to hammer the two disparate parts back together again.

A gust of wind, coming in by stealth from the outside, brought with it a freshening coolness into the yard, the smell of growing rice, the smell of water, a snatch of music from someone’s radio far away, and Noy stood up, his hands black with grease. Low on the horizon the moon, like a spaceship, was slowly setting, describing its descent in a glittering arc across the dark sky.

LION WALK

Mary Rosenblum

One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the 1990s, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale, to
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine, and one of its most frequent contributors, with almost thirty sales there to her credit. She has also sold to
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Pulphouse, New Legends
, and elsewhere.

Her linked series of “Drylands” stories have proved to be one of
Asimov’s
most popular series, but she has also published memorable stories such as, “The Stone Garden,” “Synthesis,” “Flight,” “California Dreamer,” “Casting At Pegasus,” “Entrada,” “Rat,” “The Centaur Garden,” “Skin Deep,” “Songs the Sirens Sing,” and many, many others. Her novella
Gas Fish
won the
Asimov’s
Readers Award Poll in 1996 and was a finalist for that year’s Nebula Award. Her first novel,
The Drylands
, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of the year; it was followed in short order by her second novel,
Chimera
, and her third,
The Stone Garden.
Her first short-story collection,
Synthesis and Other Stories
, was widely hailed by critics as one of the best collections of 1996. She has also written a trilogy of mystery novels written under the name Mary Freeman. Her most recent books include a major new science fiction novel,
Horizons
, and a reissued and expanded version of
The Drylands
. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives in Portland, Oregon.

Here, she takes us to a nature reserve where scientists are re-creating creatures from the Pleistocene by selective breeding, for a hard-hitting story that manages to work both as genuine SF and as a genuine mystery.

T
AHIRA GHANI STARED
down at all that was left of the trespasser, the stunner pointed down at the summer yellow grass. The big California Condor she had interrupted spread it’s huge stretch of wings and gave a reproachful squawk, scattering the smaller turkey vultures. A hot breeze washed their carrion scent over her, but she barely noticed. The pride probably hadn’t left much and the coy-dogs – well on their way to emulating the Pleistocene wild dogs – had cleaned up whatever the lions hadn’t eaten before the vultures even had a chance. She squatted beside the mess, smelling a trace of blood, spilled gut, lion, and the musky tang of violent death on the hot wind. A torn, bloodstained piece of black fabric fluttered in the breeze, snagged on a hawthorn. Flies swarmed over the few vertebrae and the piece of a rib that remained, the rags of flesh dark red brown now, the color of old blood. A strand of auburn hair caught her eye, tangled among grass stems. Long. A woman? Like the other one. Caucasian this time. She read the diary of last night in the scuffed ground where the lions had killed, the tracks leading to it, faint on the dry grass, human prints overlaid with lion. She squatted, the stunner in one hand, her dun suncloth coverall hot against her thighs. Laid her fingertips lightly on the double imprint; woman, lion. Brought her hand to her mouth and touched her tongue to her fingertips, tasting dust, dead leaves, and lion.

Running. No shoes. Tahira stood, wiped her fingers on her coverall and circled the dusty patch of ground that gave up this information, shaded her eyes to stare at the single print, the faint ovals of toes, ball of foot. No blood, so she hadn’t been barefoot long. Frowning, she searched the prairie bisected by the willow-clad banks of the river. Maybe the intruder had thought the river could save her. Barefoot? In the distance, beyond the summer yellow grass and white fluff of the seeding thistles, the stark peaks of the Rockies jutted against the cloudless sky. Once they had had snow on them, even in the summer. Not in her lifetime. Her frown deepened as she studied the marks where the lions had lain to eat. Coy-dog tracks pocked the dust and flattened grass, along with the prints of the turkey vultures. The condor had chased them away and now they circled patiently overhead waiting for her to leave. By tomorrow, you’d find no traces to prove that someone had died and the lions had eaten here.

Tahira’s frown deepened as she used her link to video the site. She dug into her daypack for a plastic bag, waved the blow flies from the vertebrae and carefully bagged them. Plenty of flesh for a DNA identification. If this trespasser had wanted to be eaten, she could not have done a better job of placing herself in the old lioness’s path.

Just like the other one.

Tahira collected the fabric and hair, added them to the bag, then trudged back to her skimmer, stowed the stunner in the scabbard beneath the saddle and climbed aboard. The vultures were already descending, dodging the condor’s half-hearted feints, squabbling as they searched for overlooked scraps, their huge black wings raising dust from the scuffed ground. She pulled out her link and texted a report of the intruder’s death to her boss. Then she frowned at the screen and turned it off. He’ll scream about the PR aspects. Not now.

The fabric, torn, dirty and bloody as it was, had had the feel of silk, the sexy kind of shirt you might buy to wear for a lover. Tahira toed the skimmer to life and lifted gently from the riverbank.

Thoughtfully, she pulled her AR goggles on and zoomed in on the ground as she spiraled slowly outward from the site of the killing, reading the night’s traffic in the bent grass stems, the wisp of tan hair snagged on a tangle of riverbank willow.

She knew where this pride would be lying up, didn’t need to search for their chip signatures with the tracking software. Every major mammal in the Pleistocene Preserve was chipped, from coy-dogs to the new pair of giant sloths that had the gene engineers popping champagne corks, but after her years here, she rarely needed to use a chip to find what she was looking for.

Tahira accelerated until the wind pulled her lips back from her teeth. Not one Perimeter alarm had gone off last night. Same with the last one.

Tahira spied a patch of tawny hide in the shade beneath a clump of hawthorn a split second before the goggles ringed it with red and flashed an ID number above it. She braked hard, spiraled back and down. That was the small male, the one with the ragged ear, one of the old lioness’s last surviving cubs. He was a classic African type, with a full tawny mane and only a hint of the Pleistocene striping and narrower head. Which meant he was on the cull list. Like the old lioness. The IDs of the rest of the pride flashed into view. Right where she knew they would be. The old lioness was on her feet, looking up at the skimmer, her scarred face and faded, ratty fur a testament to her age. She was smart and she learned quickly. An offering like the girl would have been too good to pass up the first time. This second offering would have been easier to take.

Tahira sighed, and spun the skimmer away, out over the broad plain of yellow summer grass patched with the dusty gray green of hawthorn and the darker junipers. A small herd of antelope raised their heads as she soared over, tails flashing nervously. The big herd would be farther north, she’d check on them as she circled home. A hawk soared at eye level as she rose, turned its attention back to the ground, searching for rodents flushed by the antelope below. Tahira checked on the horse herd, found them southward, watering at the grassy back of the narrow river, whose waters ran clear and dark. Automatically, she noted the dwindling feeder stream that would be down to a trickle in another month. No glaciers to keep rivers running out here, not anymore. Dark tails whisked their dun sides and they stamped dark-striped legs at the biting flies. The gene engineers were winning here, too. They had engineered the original Przewalksi’s horse into a chunky look alike to the horses that had grazed this plain in the Pleistocene. They were working hard on the elephants now. Some of the recent calves were going to be huge and hairy. She did a quick count of the herd using her link software to scan the GPS chips, although she really didn’t need to. She’d have all the numbers available from the daily sat-scan when she got back to Admin. She didn’t have to do the rounds in person at all, but she liked to see for herself.

And the last body hadn’t showed up on the Security report at Admin. She suspected this one wouldn’t either.

The lead mare raised her head as she circled. The lame filly was gone, probably brought down by the same lion pride that had taken the trespasser. They would have gotten the filly long ago except that the old lead mare was her dam and had protected her foal fiercely, with the whole herd to back her up. Luck must have aided the pride. The old lioness was showing her age, and avoided the hard kills now.

So she had taken the meal that had walked up and asked to be eaten.

How in the name of all that was unholy had the trespasser gotten past the Perimeter?

Tahira kicked the skimmer to high speed, circled south to where the bison herd grazed the lowlands, their huge, erect horns another testament to the geneticists wizardry. The eastern elephant troop was hanging around there right now, close enough to the monorail to give the tourists a good show. Sure enough, a train had stopped and even at her height and speed she could make out the passengers hanging out the windows, pointing their links. Their tour goggles would pick out the hairy Mastodon-type calves for them and explain in a pleasant voice how the engineers were tweaking the genome. The old cow raised her trunk to blow at Tahira as she skimmed by, then went back to scooping dust from the wallow they’d created, tossing it in ochre showers over her back. Tahira didn’t see any of the camels, but they were probably all back in trees, out of the sun. They, too, were changing. The old lioness was the only remaining lion that carried wholly African genes, had been wild-caught as a cub.

Tahira liked her for that.

With a sigh, Tahira grounded the skimmer to text a quick report on her find to her boss. Then she shut off the link before he could reply and swung the skimmer northward to find the big antelope herd.

The sun was dipping toward the horizon by the time she returned to Admin. Only the solar farm beyond the low, ochre buildings, row upon row of collectors following the sun, spelled ‘tech.’ The earth-brick buildings might have been built by some primitive peoples, blending gently into the summer prairie. Tech was pretty much invisible now – except in the dry lands where the ranked mirrors of the solar farms and the wind towers had supplanted juniper and sage. But nobody went out there. Her village would have suited this landscape, she thought. Huts decaying slowly into the shriveling desert that had once fed lions and antelope and people. Tahira set the skimmer down hard and fast on the small landing pad behind the building. The trickle of water down the central interior water wall washed a breath of moist cool and greenery-scent over her as she entered, tempting her to strip, shower, and sit in the pool. She ached after her full day on the skimmer. Once upon a time, she had not ached. It was time to make another appointment at the geri clinic. Or perhaps not. Every cycle had a natural end. Well, perhaps that was no longer true. Tahira sighed at the angry blink of the red priority icon above the holo deck.

She ignored it and instead seated herself on her working cushion, doing full lotus for concentration. Called up Security. Some eye somewhere must have seen the girl last night. She started a search for predator-prey movement, narrowed the profile to a human’s mass. No point in watching rodents and coy-dogs. That got her lions, antelope, bison calves. A headache blossomed behind her eyes as the images flickered through her field.

Then . . . there she was. Shadowy, slender, her arms, neck, face, legs stark white in the night-eye recording, that black shirt that would be torn and bloodied revealing a deep cleavage and breasts that were small enough to be natural, not sculpted. Tahira’s eyes narrowed. Short shorts, sexy clothes, nothing you’d wear into the thorny scrub of the Preserve. Sandals, so she had lost them, running. No blood on that white skin. She hadn’t waded through the hawthorn then. How old? Sixteen? No, she decided. Less. Maybe fourteen. That was how old her daughter had been, last time she had seen her. Tahira tasted blood, realized she was biting her lip. She watched the girl wince, bend a slender leg to rub at something – thorn or bite. She looked lost. Pissed. Stood-up by a date pissed.

Then, her expression changed from lost-and-angry to startled. Then frightened. She looked around and for an instant her eyes seemed to meet Tahira’s. Accusingly.

Like an antelope, she turned and bolted, running through the grass and thorns. One of the sandals flew off, a twinkle of motion on the screen.

“Don’t run.” Tahira said it out loud.

In the holo field the girl kept running and in a second vanished from the eye’s sweep.

Tahira found herself standing. Muttered a curse. She skimmed to the next eye, which should have picked up the girl’s panicked flight and probably the kill, since it covered that sector.