Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Molly and Phoebe looked at each other, while Matthew fidgeted, and then Phoebe said, “Father Brown mysteries.”

“Are you sure?” Molly said.

Phoebe nodded. She ran, fast as a deer, and came back with a tiny paperback of G. K. Chesterton that would fit in the pockets of the donated corduroys. “I used to love this book,” she told Matthew. “It’s about God, and religion, but it’s really just a great bunch of detective stories, where the key always turns out to be making sense of people.”

Matthew kept thanking Molly and Phoebe in a kind of guttural undertone, like a compulsive cough, until they waved it off. When they got to the California storefront, they kept Matthew out of sight until they were sure the coast was clear, then they hustled him out and showed him the clearest path that followed the main road but stayed under cover. He waved once as he sprinted across the blunt strip of gravel parking lot, but other than that, he didn’t look back.

The President of California wished the President of America a good spring solstice instead of “Happy Easter,” and the President of America called a news conference to discuss this unforgivable insult. America’s Secretary of Morality, Wallace Dawson, called California’s gay attorney general an offensive term. California moved some troops up to the border and performed some “routine exercises,” so close that Molly could hear the cackle of guns shooting blanks all night. (She hoped they were blanks.) America sent some fighter craft and UAVs along the border, sundering the air. California’s swarms of water-divining robots had managed to tap the huge deposits located deep inside the rocky mantle, but both America and California claimed that this water was located under their respective territories.

Molly’s Gidget kept flaring up with “news” that was laced with propaganda, as if the people in charge on both sides were trying to get everyone fired up. The American media kept running stories about a pregnant woman in New Sacramento who lost her baby because her birth-control implant had a buggy firmware update, plus graphic stories about urban gang violence, drugs, prostitution, and so on. California’s media outlets, meanwhile, worked overtime to remind people about the teenage rape victims in America who were locked up and straitjacketed to make sure they gave birth, and the peaceful protestors who were gassed and beaten by police.

Almost every day lately, Americans came in looking for a couple books that Molly didn’t have. Molly had decided to go ahead and stock Why We Stand , a book-length manifesto about individualism and Christian values that stopped just short of accusing Californians of bestiality and cannibalism. But Why We Stand was unavailable, because they’d gone back for another print run. Meanwhile, though, Molly outright refused to sell Our People , a book that included offensive caricatures of the black and brown people who mostly clustered in the dense cities out west, like New Sacramento, plus “scientific” theories about their relative intelligence.

People kept coming in and asking for Our People , and at this point Molly was pretty sure they knew she didn’t have it, and they were just trying to make a point.

“It’s just, some folks feel as though you think you’re better than the rest of us,” said Norma Verlaine, whose blonde, loud-mouthed daughter Samantha was part of Phoebe’s friend group. “The way you try to play both sides against the middle, perching here in your fancy chair, deciding what’s fit to read and what’s not fit to read. You’re literally sitting in judgment over us.”

“I’m not judging anyone,” Molly said. “Norma, I live here, too. I go to Holy Fire every Sunday, same as you. I’m not judging.”

“You say that. But then you refuse to sell Our People .”

“Yes, because that book is racist.”

Norma turned to Reggie Watts, who had two kids in Phoebe’s little gang: Tobias and Suz. “Did you hear that, Reggie? She just called me a racist.”

“I didn’t call you anything. I was talking about a book.”

“Can’t separate books from people,” said Reggie, who worked at the big power plant thirty miles east. He furrowed his huge brow and stooped a little as he spoke. “And you can’t separate people from the places they come from.”

“Time may come, you have to choose a country once and for all,” Norma said. Then she and Reggie walked out while the glow of righteousness still clung.

Molly felt something chewing all the way through her. Like the cartoon “bookworm” chewing through a book, from when Molly was a child. There was a worm drilling a neat round hole in Molly, rendering some portion of her illegible.

Molly was just going through some sales slips, because ever since that dust-up with Sander and Teri she was paranoid about American sales not getting recorded in the computer, when the earthquake began. A few books fell on the floor as the ground shuddered, but most of the books were packed too tight to dislodge right away. The vibrations from underground made a grinding, screeching sound that made Molly’s ears throb. When she could get her balance back, she looked at her Gidget, and at first she saw no information. Then there was a news alert: California had laid claim to the water deposits, deep underground, and was proceeding to extract them as quickly as possible. America was calling this an act of war.

Phoebe was out with her friends as usual. Molly sent a message on her Gidget, and then went outside to yell Phoebe’s name into the wind. The crushing sound underground kept going, but either Molly had gotten used to it, or it was moving away from here.

“Phoebe?”

Molly walked the two-lane roads, glancing every couple minutes at her Gidget to see if Phoebe had replied yet. She told herself that she wouldn’t freak out if she could find her daughter before the sun went down, and then the sun did go down and she had to invent a new deadline for panic.

Something huge and powerful opened its mouth and roared nearby, and Molly swayed on her feet. The hot breath of a large carnivore blew against her face while her ears filled with sound. She realized after a moment that three Stalker-class aircraft had flown very low overhead, in stealth mode, so you could hear and feel—but not see—them.

“Phoebe?” Molly called out, as she reached the end of the long main street, with the one grocery store and the diner. “Phoebe, are you out here?” The street led to a big field of corn on one side, and the diversion road leading to the freeway on the other. The corn rustled from the after-shakes of the flyover. Out on the road, Molly heard wheels tearing at loose dirt and tiny rocks, and saw the slash of headlights in motion.

“Mom!” Phoebe came running down the hill from the tiny forest area, followed by Jon Brinkfort, Zadie Kagwa, and a few other kids. “Thank god you’re okay.”

Molly started to say that Phoebe should get everyone inside the bookstore, because the reading room was the closest thing to a bomb shelter for miles.

But a new round of flashes and ear-splitting noises erupted, and then Molly looked past the edge of town and saw a phalanx of shadows, three times as tall as the tallest building, moving forward.

Molly had never seen a mecha before, but she recognized these metal giants, with the bulky actuators on their legs and rocket launchers on their arms. They looked like a crude caricature of bodybuilders, pumped up inside their titanium alloy casings. The two viewports on their heads, along with the slash of red paint, gave them the appearance of scowling down at all the people underfoot. Covered with armaments all over their absurdly huge bodies, they were heading into town on their way to the border.