The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (48 page)

That night, well-armed and well-organized mobs broke into the remaining Alloe enclaves in the capital city. The government deplored the violence the next day, but suggested that the Alloes had incited it.

At that point they no longer had any need for Till. Once again, they were very generous. They gave him a choice: relocation or deportation. He could join his family and share their fate; or he could leave the planet. Death or life. I think I have mentioned he was not very courageous. He chose to live.

They sent him to Capella Two, a 25-year journey. By the time he arrived, the entire story had traveled ahead of him by pepci, and everything was known. His own role was infamous. He was the vile collaborator who had put a benign face on the crime. He had soothed people’s fears and deceived them into walking docilely to their deaths. In hindsight, it was inconceivable that he had not known what he was doing. All across the Twenty Planets, the name of Till Diwali was reviled.

He fell silent at last. Thorn sat staring at the tabletop, because she could not sort out what to think. It was all wheeling about in her mind: right and wrong, horror and sympathy, criminal and victim – all were jumbled together. Finally she said, “Was Jemma your sister?”

“I told you, I was not there,” he said in a distant voice. “The man who did those things was not me.”

He was sitting at the table across from her again, his hands clasped before him. Now he spoke to her directly. “Thorn, you are unitary and authentic now as you will never be again. As you pass through life, you will accumulate other selves. Always you will be a person looking back on, and separate from, the person you are now. Whenever you walk down a street, or sit on a park bench, your past selves will be sitting beside you, impossible to touch or interrogate. In the end there is a whole crowd of you wherever you go, and you feel like you will perish from the loneliness.”

Thorn’s whirling feelings were beginning to come to rest in a pattern, and in it horror and blame predominated. She looked up at Jemma’s face and said, “She
died.
How could you do that, and walk away? It’s inhuman.”

He didn’t react, either to admit guilt or defend his innocence. She wanted an explanation from him, and he didn’t give it. “You’re a monster,” she said.

Still he said nothing. She got up, blind to everything but the intensity of her thoughts, and went to the door. She glanced back before leaving, and he was looking at her with an expression that was nothing like what he ought to feel – not shame, not rage, not self-loathing. Thorn slammed the door behind her and fled.

She walked around the streets of the Waste for a long time, viciously throwing stones at heaps of trash to make the rats come out. Above the buildings, the sky seemed even redder than usual, and the shadows blacker. She was furious at the magister for not being admirable. She blamed him for hiding it from her and for telling her – since, by giving her the knowledge, he had also given her a responsibility of choosing what to do.

When she got home the kitchen was empty, but she heard voices from the living room above. She was mounting the stairs when the voices rose in anger, and she froze. It was Hunter and Maya, and they were yelling at each other.

“Good God, what were you thinking?” Hunter demanded.

“She needed help. I couldn’t say no.”

“You knew it would bring the authorities down on us!”

“I had a responsibility—”

“What about your responsibility to me? You just didn’t think. You never think; everything is impulse with you. You are the most immature and manipulative person I’ve ever met.”

Maya’s voice went wheedling. “Hunter, come on. It’ll be okay.”

“And what if it’s not okay? What are you going to do then? Just pick up and leave the wreckage behind you? That’s what you’ve been doing all your life – dragging that kid of yours from planet to planet, never thinking what it’s doing to her. You never think what you’re doing to anyone, do you? It’s all just yourself. I never should have let you in here.”

There were angry footsteps, and then Hunter was mounting the stairs.

“Hunter!” Maya cried after him.

Thorn waited a minute, then crept up into the living room. Maya was sitting there, looking tragic and beautiful.

“What did you do?” Thorn said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Maya said. “He’ll get over it.”

“I don’t care about Hunter.”

Mistaking what she meant, Maya smiled through her tears. “You know what? I don’t care either.” She came over and hugged Thorn tight. “I’m not really a bad mother, am I, Thorn?”

Cautiously, Thorn said, “No . . .”

“People just don’t understand us. We’re a team, right?”

Maya held out her hand for their secret finger-hook. Once it would have made Thorn smile, but she no longer felt the old solidarity against the world. She hooked fingers anyway, because she was afraid Maya would start to cry again if she didn’t. Maya said, “They just don’t know you. Damaged child, poppycock – you’re tough as old boots. It makes me awestruck, what a survivor you are.”

“I think we ought to get ready to leave,” Thorn said.

Maya’s face lost its false cheer. “I can’t leave,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because I love him.”

There was no sensible answer to that. So Thorn turned away to go up to her room. As she passed the closed door of Hunter’s office, she paused, wondering if she should knock. Wondering if she should turn in the most notorious Gminta collaborator still alive. All those millions of dead Alloes and Vinds would get their justice, and Hunter would be famous. Then her feet continued on, even before she consciously made the decision. It was not loyalty to Magister Pregaldin, and it was not resentment of Hunter. It was because she might need that information to buy her own safety.

The sound of breaking glass woke her. She lay tense, listening to footsteps and raised voices below in the street. Then another window broke, and she got up to pull back the curtain. The sun was orange, as always, and she squinted in the glare, then raised her window and climbed out on the roof.

Below in the street, a mob of white-clad Incorruptibles was breaking windows as they passed; but their true target obviously lay deeper in the Waste. She watched till they were gone, then waited to see what would happen.

From somewhere beyond the tower fans of the park she could hear shouts and clanging, and once an avalanche-like roar, after which a cloud of dust rose from the direction of Weezer Alley. After that there was silence for a while. At last she heard chanting. Fleeing footsteps passed below. Then the wall of Incorruptibles appeared again. They were driving someone before them with improvised whips made from their belts. Thorn peered over the eaves to see more clearly and recognized their victim – Ginko, the heshe from the Garden of Delights, completely naked, both breasts and genitals exposed, with a rope around hisher neck. The whips had cut into the delicate paisley of Ginko’s skin, exposing slashes of red underneath.

At a spot beneath Thorn’s perch, Ginko stumbled and fell. A mass of Incorruptibles gathered round. Two of them pulled Ginko’s legs apart, and a third made a jerking motion with a knife. A womanlike scream made Thorn grip the edge of her rooftop, wanting to look away. They tossed the rope over a signpost and hoisted Ginko up by the neck, choking and clawing at the noose. The body still quivered as the army marched past. When they were gone, the silence was so complete Thorn could hear the patter of blood into a pool on the pavement under the body.

On hands and knees she backed away from the edge of the roof and climbed into her bedroom. It was already stripped; everything she valued or needed was in her backpack, ready to go. She threw on some clothes and went down the stairs.

Maya, dressed in a robe, stopped her halfway. She looked scattered and panicky. “Thorn, we’ve got to leave,” she said.

“Right now?”

“Yes. He doesn’t want us here anymore. He’s acting as if we’re some sort of danger to him.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. Some other planet. Someplace without men.” She started to cry.

“Go get dressed,” Thorn told her. “I’ll bring some food.” Over her shoulder she added, “Pack some clothes and money.”

With her backpack in hand, Thorn raced down to the kitchen.

She was just getting out the dolly for the ice owl’s refrigerator when Maya came down.

“You’re not taking that, are you?” Maya said.

“Yes, I am.” Thorn knelt to shift the refrigerator out from under the table, and only then noticed it wasn’t running. Quickly, she checked the temperature gauge. It was in the red zone, far too high. With an anguished exclamation, she punched in the lock code and opened the top. Not a breath of cool air escaped. The ice pack on top was gurgling and liquid. She lifted it to see what was underneath.

The owl was no longer nested snugly in ice. It had shifted, tried to open its wings. There were scratches on the insulation where it had tried to peck and claw its way out. Now it lay limp, its head thrown back. Thorn sank to her knees, griefstruck before the evidence of its terrifying last minutes – revived to life only to find itself trapped in a locked chest. Even in that stifling dark, it had longed for life so much it had fought to free itself. Thorn’s breath came hard and her heart labored, as if she were reliving the ice owl’s death.

“Hurry up, Thorn,” Maya said. “We’ve got to go.”

Then she saw what had happened. The refrigerator cord lay on the floor, no longer attached to the wall outlet. She held it up as if it were a murder weapon. “It’s unplugged,” she said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Maya said, distracted. “I had to plug in the curling iron. I must have forgotten.”

Rage rose inside Thorn like a huge bubble of compressed air. “You
forgot
?”

“I’m sorry, Thorn. I didn’t know it was important.”

“I
told
you it was important. This was the last ice owl anywhere. You haven’t just killed this one, you’ve killed the entire species.”

“I said I was sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Maya would never change. She would always be like this, careless and irresponsible, unable to face consequences. Tears of fury came to Thorn’s eyes. She dashed them away with her hand. “You’re useless,” she said, climbing to her feet and picking up her pack. “You can’t be trusted to take care of anything. I’m done with you. Don’t bother to follow me.”

Out in the street, she turned in the direction she never went, to avoid having to pass what was hanging in the street. Down a narrow alley she sprinted, past piles of stinking refuse alive with roaches, till she came to a narrow side street that dog-legged into the park. On the edge of the open space she paused under a portico to scan for danger; seeing none, she dashed across, past the old men’s chess tables, past the bench where she had met Magister Pregaldin, to the entrance of Weezer Alley.

Signs of the Incorruptibles’ passage were everywhere. Broken glass crunched underfoot and the contents of the shops were trampled under red dirt shoeprints. When Thorn reached the Garden of Delights, the entire street looked different, for the building had been demolished. Only a monstrous pile of rubble remained, with iron girders and ribs sticking up like broken bones. A few people climbed over the ruin, looking for survivors.

The other side of the street was still standing, but Magister Pregaldin’s door had been ripped from its hinges and tossed aside. Thorn dashed up the familiar stairs. The apartment looked as if it had been looted – stripped bare, not a thing of value left. She walked through the empty rooms, dreading what she might find, and finding nothing. Out on the street again, she saw a man who had often winked at her when she passed by to her lessons. “Do you know what happened to Magister Pregaldin?” she asked. “Did he get away?”

“Who?” the man said.

“Magister Pregaldin. The man who lived here.”

“Oh, the old Vind. No, I don’t know where he is.”

So he had abandoned her as well. In all the world, there was no one trust-worthy. For a moment she had a dark wish that she had exposed his secret. Then she realized she was just thinking of revenge.

Hoisting her pack to her shoulder, she set out for the waystation. She was alone now, only herself to trust.

There was a crowd in the street outside the waystation. Everyone seemed to have decided to leave the planet at once, some of them with huge piles of baggage and children. Thorn pushed her way in toward the ticket station to find out what was going on. They were still selling tickets, she saw with relief; the crowd was people waiting for their turn in the translation chamber. Checking to make sure she had her copy of Maya’s credit stick, she joined the ticket line. She was back among her own kind, the rootless, migrant elite.

Where was she going? She scanned the list of destinations. She had been born on Capella Two, but had heard it was a harshly competitive place, so she decided against it. Ben was just an ice-ball world, Gammadis was too far away. It was both thrilling and frightening to have control over where she went and what she did. She was still torn by indecision when she heard someone calling, “Thorn!”

Clarity was pushing through the crowd toward her. “I’m so glad we found you,” she said when she drew close. “Maya was here a little while ago, looking for you.”