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

A queer, swoopy feeling fluttered through Nyma’s stomach.

“Mind you, I still think you being here is barbaric,” Han continued.

In a burst of courage, Nyma slipped to her feet and grabbed the president’s arm. “What do you see?” she said. “When you look out these windows at the Capital, and all the people and buildings, what do you see?”

He glanced down at her, surprise writ clear on his expression. “I suppose I see… progress. Prosperity. Things worth protecting.”

“In the Order they teach us to look at the city and imagine it… imagine what happened two hundred years ago,” Nyma said. “They say not to think about the whole city, that’s too big. You have to look at the small things.” She pointed at the streets that crisscrossed below them. “Like that woman in the green coat. Just—gone. She’s gone. The couple holding hands over by the pigeons. They’re gone too. All the pigeons, and the street, and that shop selling flowers, and the kids playing in front of it. And then you think about your family. If you have parents, or friends, anyone you love—how they could also just be gone, all at once.” She licked her lips. It was the longest she’d ever talked in a row to the president. “The whole city. Two hundred years ago, that happened. The Havenites did that to us. That’s what I see. And I can’t bear the thought of it happening again, to anyone.”

She half expected him to tell her this was only what she had been taught from the mouths of meddling grown-ups. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Do you have a family, Nyma?”

The question surprised her. “My parents were both in the Order, sir. They were raising me that way too, but they died in a tram crash when I was a baby and left me with the Elders. It’s a good education.”

“With a price. Do the Elders let you have friends?”

“Of course. My friends can’t visit me much here, but we write to each other.” The writing had dropped off of late. It made Nyma’s heart give a funny little twist. Her classmates didn’t seem to know how to speak to her now that she had been chosen—now that she had been chosen and they hadn’t. “And some of my tutors are my friends. Like Tej.”

Han made a noncommittal sound. “Tell me, Nyma. Do you write poetry about all this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Peace knows you shouldn’t have to listen to anything I say, but I think… I think you should keep on doing that. Is that all right?”

“Yes, sir.” It had never occurred to her to stop.

Nyma was off with the presidential cadre on a diplomatic trip the day she turned twelve years old, but when she returned the following week, Tej brought a box of birthday teacakes to their class session.

“You remembered!” she said, delighted. The Tower staff kept a log and the ushers had made sure she got very traditional, professionally sugared teacakes on the day, but it was different when someone thought of you.

“How was the trip?” Tej asked.

Nyma closed the box and set it aside, careful not to drag her dagged sleeve in the sugar. She’d asked to stop wearing Tower livery of late—she wasn’t required to, and she found she liked having a say in designing outfits for herself. All under the watchful eye of the Tower communications staff, of course.

Besides, she was grateful to find one more distraction from the ever-pressing weight of the air around her.

“Nyma?”

“The feeds aren’t always right, you know. About the war.” She played with the hem of her sleeve instead of looking at Tej. “But I can always tell when it’s bad, because he stops talking to me.”

Cowardice, Tej wanted to say, but didn’t. They’d all been so hopeful this war would end two years ago. Instead it had dragged. And dragged.

And now the murmurs were becoming pointed shouts, and the editorials kept mentioning the words “land invasion.” Their nation hadn’t suffered a conflict on its own soil in two hundred years.

Tej was of the opinion that they’d earned that tranquility by striving so hard to be a force for peace. His countrymen didn’t seem so certain. Nyma’s ear might be on the feeds and the president’s mood, but Tej’s was on the populace, the growing rumbles of anger and discontent. That was what he feared most of all.

“Nyma,” he said. “I had a thought while you were away. Are you still writing?”

Her head came up in surprise. “You mean, writing poetry? Of course.”

“I think,” Tej said, “that we should publish some of it. A book.”

“My poems? But I’m—” Not good enough, still a child, still learning? “I’m not sure I’m—that’s like a dream, to be published , but Tej, I don’t even know if I have enough. I’m already embarrassed of what I wrote last year.”

“The ones you gave me last year for composition lessons were quite impressive,” he said, truthfully. It had still perhaps been obvious they had been from the hand of a child, but the emotion that bled between the lines had wrenched him. “We’ll have an editor help you. What do you think?”

“I don’t… I mean, I…” She couldn’t have said why, but it didn’t feel right. It was all too easy. If she weren’t the president’s carrier, she’d have to keep working at it, scraping and practicing until her verses caught the eye of a professional, wouldn’t she?

But if she weren’t the president’s carrier, she’d have a lifetime of years for that.

“All right,” she said to Tej. She felt real and unreal, excited and not excited, all balled up like twine in her heart.

He flashed her a quick, tight smile. “Good. You know, Nyma, it takes more than soldiers to win a war.”

She blinked. “But the Islanders won’t even be able to read my poems. Unless they’re translated or something.”

“That’s not the only war we’re fighting.”

Whether from morbidity or compassion or their own ideological motivations, the nation’s people devoured the book of poems titled The Girl in the Tower . Presses clacked overnight, every night, binding up more copies, and Nyma’s name fell in too-careful droplets from everyone’s lips.

She thought she’d become used to the stares and whispers, but now public focus riveted on her like it wanted to drag her under the waves. The Tower communications staff had to block out a cascade of interview requests; the few profiles Nyma did do exploded and thrived across the feeds. Her photograph seemed to be plastered everywhere—almost always a solemn portrait that had been taken with dark lighting over a sea-green dress. It made her appear a waif. Nyma hated it, but candid captures of her laughing in the sun and wearing gold or pink seemed not to fit the feeds’ narrative.

The protesters called her out by name now. It wasn’t only abstract carrier “children” they chanted and opined about, but Nyma, the Poet in the Tower, who deserved to grow old, who was the fire and rallying symbol of everyone who opposed the use of seres.

President Han wasn’t happy.

He was a good enough man that he did not lose his temper to Nyma about it, though he might have glowered in her direction more than a few times, after interviewers asked him with appalling directness whether he could truly imagine himself sliding a blade between her ribs and tearing open her heart. But he did summon Tej to him.

“You’re using her. You’re despicable.”

Tej kept his hands folded before him, a picture of tranquility he hoped would be maddening. “Nyma believes in what we do. Would you really be so heartless as to tell her she can’t speak for herself?”

“Damn you, man! Do you think I’d ever use the blasted things if I thought I had a choice? And you want to pinch us between annihilation from overseas and a bloodbath in our own country if I have to dirty my hands the way you people set me up to? You think that won’t be the hardest day of my cursed life already?”