The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (60 page)

“I have already informed the authorities that it was a mistake.” She gave him a smooth smile. “The small brush-fire of blogging will fade quickly.”

“This is the last thing we need, Tahira.” He scowled at her. “Such carelessness is unlike you. You know better than to do anything that will incite negative public attention. What were you thinking?”

“I needed to make myself bait,” she said simply. “That was the surest and fastest method.”

He was far more mature than Jen and his face betrayed nothing, not even the tic of an eyelid gave him away. Almost, she could believe . . . “Our security is very very cutting edge. I sent you the inserted visuals that replaced the images of the girl’s dying. Perhaps Jen was in a hurry.” She shrugged. “But he had neither the access nor the expertise to allow an intruder to come and go through the Security shield without triggering any alarm or record. The intruder had a password.”

“How could someone have that?”

Almost she had believed that she had made a mistake, but his tone betrayed him. He was asking a rhetorical question. “Only two people have a password, Carlo. You and I. There is no real anonymity in the net. Not for a long time now.” She smiled at him, pleasantly. “I do not believe you are one of the major players here. If I did . . .” She bared her teeth at him. “I would not be talking to you. I think you merely . . . got a percentage. Rental. And perhaps a copy of the video? Does that excite you? A real and violent death, with real fear, and real blood?”

He flinched then, and her stomach twisted.

“That was how they came to ask you, wasn’t it? You are a customer.” She kept the disgust out of her voice, because it was not yet time to end this conversation. “I have archived a file of all my suspicions and all the evidence I have uncovered to support them. It is not sufficient to convict you. But it is sufficient to let those with greater investigative skills than I have find out the truth. Then they will convict you. On the day of my death, the archive goes to the appropriate World Council committee members.”

“Blackmail?” His lip curled. “Is that so much better than what I did?”

“It’s not blackmail.” She shrugged. “It is simply an insurance policy. To make sure that this does not happen again here.”

He didn’t believe her.

“I am finishing up the DNA scan of the dead girl. I have already euthanized the lioness that attacked her. You may release that information to the media and the public. You may make whatever statement about blogger inaccuracies you choose and that will, as I said, fade away. If anything – her lip curled, “it will increase traffic to the Preserve. As you know, violent death is a potent pheromone.”

His reaction was more visible this time.

She ended the link. Rudely.

She was entitled to be rude.

“He is too well protected.” She was speaking to Shawn’s absence, heard her own defensive tone. “He is insulated by too much money and too many connections. He would emerge from the ashes of an investigation and nothing would change.” She closed down her field, got to her feet, feeling age in her flesh. How much longer did she have? “Perhaps I am too much a product of my old world. To me, justice is direct – an eye for an eye. The justice of the old gods. Of the lions.”

She had bought the old lioness a second chance. It might not buy her much time at all, or she might get another season before she was ousted by one of the younger, striped, new females that made the gene engineers so happy. She had a tour scheduled tomorrow. The note on the green calendar field on the wall was flashing its reminder. She stretched her shoulder, testing the limits of the pain. If she slept well, she could do it, perhaps with less energy. There would be questions. She would have to decide on the answers before then, would this time do Shawn the courtesy of telling him what her answers would be.

And soon it would be nothing more than an ephemera floating in webspace, evoked from time to time like a fading ghost, through some odd search connection that summoned up a stale blog entry. The world was full of ghosts.

Instead of going to her bed, she slipped outside and found her skimmer parked in its usual place. Someone had cleaned the blood from it. She found her spare glasses in the tool compartment, slipped them on and lifted into the darkness. The lions would be hunting and she might catch the pride on their way down to the river. The pain in her shoulder faded as she toed the skimmer up to speed and slid through the bright bubble of a yesterday that had never really happened.

ESCAPE TO OTHER
WORLDS WITH
SCIENCE FICTION

Jo Walton

British-turned-Canadian SF and fantasy writer Jo Walton won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and has subsequently won the World Fantasy Award for her novel
Tooth and Claw.
She’s perhaps best known for the “Small Change” trilogy that includes
Farthing, Ha’penny
, and, most recently,
Half a Crown
, but she’s also the author of
The Prize in the Game
and the diptych
The King’s Peace
and
The King’s Name.
Her most recent books are two new novels,
Lifelode and Among Others.
Her stories have been collected in
Muses and Lurkers
, and she’s also published two collections of her poetry. Born in Wales, she now lives in Montreal.

In the story that follows, which makes for uneasy reading these days, she takes us to a world where the Great Depression got worse instead of better – and stayed that way.

In the Papers (1)

NATIONAL GUARD MOVES AGAINST STRIKERS

In the seventh week of the mining strike in West Virginia, armed skirmishes and running “guerrilla battles” in the hills have led to the Governor calling in

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E

You can reap the benefits with no need to leave the safety of your house or go among unruly college students! Only from

EX-PRESIDENT LINDBERGH REPROACHES MINERS

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION

April issue on newsstands now! All new stories by Poul Anderson, Anson MacDonald and H. Beam Piper! Only 35 cents.

SPRING FASHIONS 1960

Skirts are being worn long in London and Paris this season, but here in New York the working girls are still hitching them up. It’s stylish to wear a little

HOW FAR FROM MIAMI CAN THE
“
FALLOUT
” REACH?

Scientists say it could be a problem for years, but so much depends on the weather that

You hope to work
You hope to eat
The work goes to
The man that’s neat!
BurmaShave

Getting By (1)

Linda Evans is a waitress in Bundt’s Bakery. She used to work as a typist, but when she was let go she was glad to take this job, even though it keeps her on her feet all day and sometimes she feels her face will crack from smiling at the customers. She was never a secretary, only in the typing pool. Her sister Joan is a secretary, but she can take shorthand and type ninety words a minute. Joan graduated from high school. She taught Linda to type. But Linda was never as clever as Joan, not even when they were little girls in the time she can just remember, when their father had a job at the plant and they lived in a neat little house at the end of the bus line. Their father hasn’t worked for a long time now. He drinks up any money he can bully out of the girls. Linda stands up to him better than Joan does.

“They’d have forgiven the New Deal if only it had worked,” a man says to another, as Linda puts down his coffee and sandwich in front of him.

“Worked?” asks his companion scornfully. “It was working. It would have worked and got us out of this if only people had kept faith in it.”

They are threadbare old men, in mended coats. They ordered grilled cheese sandwiches, the cheapest item on the menu. One of them smiles at Linda, and she smiles back, automatically, then moves on and forgets them. She’s on her feet all day. Joan teases her about flirting with the customers and falling in love, but it never seems to happen. She used to tease Joan about falling in love with her boss, until she did. It would all have been dandy except that he was a married man. Now Joan spends anguished hours with him and anguished days without him. He makes her useless presents of French perfume and lace underwear. When Linda wants to sell them, Joan just cries. Both of them live in fear that she’ll get pregnant, and then where will they be? Linda wipes the tables and tries not to listen to the men with their endless ifs. She has enough ifs of her own: if mother hadn’t died, if she’d kept her job in the pool, if John hadn’t died in the war with England, and Pete in the war with Japan.

“Miss?” one of them asks. She swings around, thinking they want more coffee. One refill only is the rule. “Can you settle a question?” he asks. “Did Roosevelt want to get us to join in the European War in 1940?”

“How should I know? It has nothing to do with me. I was five years old in 1940.” They should get over it and leave history to bury its own dead, she thinks, and goes back to wiping the tables.

In the Papers (2)

WITH MIRACLE-GROW YOU CAN REGAIN
YOUR LOST FOLLICLES!

In today’s world it can be hard to find work even with qualifications. We at Cyrus Markham’s Agency have extensive experience at matching candidates to positions which makes us the unrivaled

NEW TORPEDOES THAT WORK EVEN BETTER

Radar, sonar and even tele vision to

AT LAST YOU CAN AFFORD THE HOUSE OF YOUR DREAMS

LET SCIENCE FICTION TAKE YOU TO NEW WORLDS

New books by Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein for only

ANOTHER BANK FOUNDERS IN PENNSYLVANIA

WE HAVE NOT USED THE WORD “SECEDE,”
SAYS TEXAS GOVERNOR

Why do Canadians act so high and mighty? It’s because they know

In the Line (1)

When Tommy came out of the navy, he thought he’d walk into a job just like that. He had his veteran’s discharge, which entitled him to medical treatment for his whole life, and he was a hero. He’d been on the carrier Constitution, which had won the Battle of the Atlantic practically single-handed and had sent plenty of those Royal Navy bastards to the bottom of the sea where they belonged. He had experience in maintenance as well as gunnery. Besides, he was a proud hard-working American. He never thought he’d be lining up at a soup kitchen.

In the Papers (3)

TIME FOR A NEW TUNE

Why are the bands still playing Cole Porter?

SECRETARY OF STATE LINEBARGER
SAYS THE BRITS WANT PEACE

ATOMIC SECRETS

DO THE JAPANESE HAVE THE BOMB?

Sources close to the Emperor say yes, but the Nazis deny that they have given out any plans. Our top scientists are still working to

NYLONS NYLONS NYLONS

DIANETICS: A NEW SCIENCE OF THE MIND

Getting By (2)

Linda always works overtime when she’s asked. She appreciates the money, and she’s always afraid she’ll be let go if she isn’t obliging. There are plenty of girls who’d like her job. They come to ask every day if there’s any work. She isn’t afraid the Bundts will give her job away for no reason. She’s worked here for four years now, since just after the Japanese War. “You’re like family,” Mrs Bundt always says. They let Olive go, the other waitress, but that was because there wasn’t enough work for two. Linda works overtime and closes up the cafe when they want her to. “You’re a good girl,” Mrs Bundt says. But the Bundts have a daughter, Cindy. Cindy’s a pretty twelve-year old, not even in high school. She comes into the cafe and drinks a milkshake sometimes with her girlfriends, all of them giggling. Linda hates her. She doesn’t know what they have to giggle about. Linda is afraid that when Cindy is old enough she’ll be given Linda’s job. Linda might be like family, but Cindy really is family. The bakery does all right, people have to eat, but business isn’t what it was. Linda knows.

She’s late going home. Joan’s dressing up to go out with her married boss. She washes in the sink in the room they share. The shower is down the corridor, shared with the whole floor. It gets cleaned only on Fridays, or when Joan or Linda do it. Men are such pigs, Linda thinks, lying on her bed, her weight off her feet at last. Joan is three years older than Linda but she looks younger. It’s the make-up, Linda thinks, or maybe it’s having somebody to love. If only she could have fallen in love with a boss who’d have married her and taken her off to a nice little suburb. But perhaps it’s just as well. Linda couldn’t afford the room alone, and she’d have had to find a stranger to share with. At least Joan was her sister and they were used to each other.

“I saw Dad today,” Joan says, squinting in the mirror and drawing on her mouth carefully.

“Tell me you didn’t give him money?”

“Just two dollars,” Joan admits. Linda groans. Joan is a soft touch. She makes more than Linda, but she never has any left at the end of the week. She spends more, or gives it away. There’s no use complaining, as Linda knows.

“Where’s he taking you?” she asks wearily.

“To a rally,” Joan says.

“Cheap entertainment.” Rallies and torch-lit parades and lynchings, beating up the blacks as scapegoats for everything. It didn’t help at all; it just made people feel better about things to have someone to blame. “It’s not how we were brought up,” Linda says. Their mother’s father had been a minister and had believed in the brotherhood of man. Linda loved going to her grandparents’ house when she was a child. Her grandmother would bake cookies and the whole house would smell of them. There was a swing on the old apple tree in the garden. Her father had been a union man, once, when unions had still been respectable.

“What do I care about all that?” Joan says, viciously. “It’s where he’s taking me, and that’s all. He’ll buy me dinner and we’ll sing some patriotic songs. I’m not going to lynch anybody.” She dabs on her French perfume, fiercely.

Linda lies back. She isn’t hungry. She’s never hungry. She always eats at the bakery – the Bundts don’t mind – any order that was wrong, or any bread that would have been left over. Sometimes they even gave her cakes or bread to bring home. She rubs her feet. She’s very lucky really. But as Joan goes out the door she feels like crying. Even if she did meet somebody, how could they ever afford to marry? How could they hope for a house of their own?

In the Papers (4)

SEA MONKEYS WILL ASTOUND YOUR FRIENDS!

PRESIDENT SAYS WE MUST ALL PULL TOGETHER

In Seattle today in a meeting with

TAKE A LUXURY AIRSHIP TO THE HOLY CITY

CAN THE ECONOMY EVER RECOVER?

Since the Great Depression the country has been jogging through a series of ups and downs and the economy has been lurching from one crisis to another. Administrations have tried remedies from Roosevelt’s New Deal to Lindbergh’s Belt Tightening but nothing has turned things around for long. Economists say that this was only to be expected and that this general trend of downturn was a natural and inevitable

NEW HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER “REICHSMARSHALL”
STARRING MARLON BRANDO

In the Line (2)

When Sue was seventeen she’d had enough of school. She had a boyfriend who promised to find her a job as a dancer. She went off with him to Cleveland. She danced for a while in a topless club, and then in a strip joint. The money was never quite enough, not even after she started turning tricks. She’s only thirty-four, but she knows she looks raddled. She’s sick. Nobody wants her anymore. She’s waiting in the line because there’s nowhere else to go. They feed you and take you off in trucks to make a new start, that’s what she’s heard. She can see the truck. She wonders where they go.

In the Papers (5)

ARE NEW HOME PERMANENTS AS GOOD AS THEY SAY?

Experts say yes!

NEW WAYS TO SAVE

PRESIDENT SAYS: THERE IS NO WITCH-HUNT

Despite what communists and union organizers may claim, the President said today

Getting By (3)

The Bundts like to play the radio in the cafe at breakfast time. They talk about buying a little tele vision for the customers to watch, if times ever get better. Mr Bundt says this when Linda cautiously asks for a raise. If they had a tele vision they’d be busier, he thinks, though Linda doesn’t think it would make a difference. She serves coffee and bacon and toast and listens to the news. She likes music and Joan likes Walter Winchell. She should ask Joan how she reconciles that with going to rallies. Winchell famously hates Hitler. Crazy. Linda can’t imagine feeling that strongly about an old man on the other side of the world.