Year's Best SF 17 полностью

“Which faction mined the Lake of Heaven parkland?”

“To our knowledge? Nobody did, child.”

It was a question he’d asked over and over, long ago when he thought he could get answers. Now he asked and didn’t care. He followed the Shet, the Ki-anna behind him. His pace was steady, yet the display said his body was pumping adrenaline; not from fear, he knew, but in the grip of intense excitement. He sucked on glucose and tried to calm himself.

As the radiance above them dimmed, they reached the Grotto domain. Rugged rocky pillars seemed to hold up the roof of ice, widely spaced at first, clustering towards a centre that could not be seen. There was a Ki community, surviving in rad-proofed modules. The Ki-anna went inside. Patrice and the Shet waited, in the darkening blighted landscape. She emerged after an hour or so.

“We can’t go on without guides, and we can’t have guides until tomorrow. At the earliest. They have to think it over.”

“They weren’t expecting us?”

“They were. They know all about it, but they may have had fresh instructions. They’re in full communication with the castle: there’s some sophisticated kit in there. We’ll just have to wait.”

“Do they remember Lione?” demanded Patrice. “I have transaid, I want to talk to someone.”

“Not now. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

“Can we sleep indoors?” asked the Shet.

“No.”

The Shet and the Ki-anna made camp in the ruins of the former village, using their suits to clear ground and construct a shelter. Patrice moved over to a heap of boulders where he’d noticed patches of lichen. He had fragments of Lione’s incense in the sleeve pocket of his inner, in a First Aid pouch. The police were fully occupied: furtively he opened the arm of his hardshell, and fished the pouch out. He was right, it was the same—

Lione had stood here. The incense was not a gift, she had gathered it. She had been standing right here. His need was irresistible. He released his face-plate, stripped his gauntlets, rubbed away quarantine film.

KiAn rushed in on him, cold and harsh in his throat, intoxicating—

“What is that?”

The Ki-anna was behind him. “A lichen sample,” said Patrice, caught out. “Or that’s what I’d call it at home. It was in my sister’s room, in the An Castle. Look, they’re the same.”

“Not quite,” said the Ki-anna. “Yours is a cultivated variety.”

He thought she’d be angry, maybe accuse him of concealing evidence. To his astonishment she took his bared hand, and bowed over it until her cheek brushed the vulnerable inner skin of his wrist. Her touch was a huge shock, sweet and profoundly sexual. She made him dizzy.

This can’t be happening, he thought. I’m here for Lione—

“I don’t know your name.”

“We don’t do that,” she whispered.

“I felt, I can’t describe it, the moment I met you—”

“I’d better keep this. You must get your gloves and helmet back on.”

“But I want KiAn—”

Gently, she let go of his hand. “You’ve had enough.”

The shelter was a snug fit. Sealed inside, they shared rations and drank fresh water they’d brought from the Habitat. They would sleep in their suits, for warmth and security. Patrice lay down at once, to escape their questions and to be alone with his confusion. He was here for Lione, he was here to join Lione. How could he and the Ki-anna suddenly feel this way?

“Were you getting romantic, with Patrice, over by those rocks?” asked Bhvaaan. “Sniffing his pheromones?”

“No,” said the Ki-anna, grimly. “Something else.”

She showed him the First Aid pouch and its contents.

“Mighty Void!”

“He says it was in the room Lione used, in the castle.”

“I don’t think so! We took that cabin apart.” The Shet’s delicates unfolded from his club of a fist. He turned the clear pouch around, probing her find with sensitive tentacles. “So that’s how, so that’s how—”

“So that’s how the cookie was crumbled,” agreed the Ki-anna.

“What do we do, Chief? Abort this, and run away very quickly?”

“Not without back-up. If we run, and they have heavy weaponry, we’re at their mercy. I see what it looks like, but we should show no alarm.”

“I have had thoughts about him,” she murmured, looking at the dark outline of Patrice Ferringhi. “Don’t know why. It’s something in his eyes.”

“Thaap’s the way it starts,” said the Shet. “Thoughts. Then wondering if anything can come of them. They say sentient bipeds are attracted to each other like … like brothers and sisters, long separated. Well, I’ll talk to the Greenies. And you and I had better not sleep.”

The suit was a house the shape of her body. She sat in it, wondering about sexual pleasure: pleasure with Patrice. What would it be like? She had only one strange comparison, but that didn’t frighten her … What Roaaat Bhvaaan offered was far more disturbing.

She glimpsed the abyss, and fell into oblivion.