Rich Horton: The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2019 Edition

I didn’t mention Luna. I’d done my best to forget it even existed. Easy to do. Ricochet has almost no social or trade ties with Earth’s moon. Our main economic sector is human reproduction and development—artificial wombs, zygote husbandry, natal decanting, every bit of art and science that turns a mass of undifferentiated cells into a healthy young adult. Luna’s crèche system collapsed completely not long after I left. Serves them right.

I’m a centenarian, facing my last decade or two. I may look serene and wise, but I’ve never gotten over being the butt of my old friends’ jokes.

Maybe I’ve always been immature. It would explain a lot.

Four years passed with the usual small dramas. The Jewel Box grew in body and mind, stretching into young adults of sixteen. All six—Diamant, Émeraude, Trésor, Opale, Safir, and Rubis—hit their benchmarks erratically and inconsistently, which made me proud. Kids are supposed to be odd little individuals. We’re not raising robots, after all.

As Ricochet approached, the Venusian habs began peppering us with proposals. Recreation opportunities, educational seminars, sightseeing trips, arts festivals, sporting tournaments—all on reasonable trade terms. Venus wanted us to visit, fall in love, stay. They’d been losing population to Mars for years. The brain drain was getting critical.

The Jewel Box decided to bid on a three-day excursion. Sightseeing with a focus on natural geology, including active volcanism. For the first time in their lives, they’d experience real, unaugmented planetary gravity instead of Ricochet’s one-point-zero cobbled together by centripetal force and a Steffof field.

While the kids were lounging around the rumpus room, arguing over how many credits to sink into the bid, Long Meng pinged me.

You and I should send a proposal to the Venusian crèches, she whispered. A master class or something. Something so tasty they can’t resist.

Why? Are you trying to pad your billable hours?

She gave me a toothy grin. I want a vacation. Wouldn’t it be fun to get Venus to fund it?

Long Meng and I had collaborated before, when our numbers had come up for board positions on the crèche governance authority. Nine miserable months co-authoring policy memos, revising the crèche management best practices guide, and presenting at skills development seminars. All on top of our regular responsibilities. Against the odds, our friendship survived the bureaucracy.

We spent a few hours cooking up a seminar to tempt the on-planet crèche specialists and fired it off to a bunch of Venusian booking agents. We called it ‘Attachment and Self-regulation in Theory and Practice: Approaches to Promoting Emotional Independence in the Crèche-raised Child.’ Sound dry? Not a bit. The Venusians gobbled it up.

I shot the finalized syllabus to our chosen booking agent, then escorted the Jewel Box to their open-air climbing lab. I turned them over to their instructor and settled onto my usual bench under a tall oak. Diamant took the lead position up the cliff, as usual. By the time they’d completed the first pitch, all three seminars were filled.

The agent is asking for more sessions, I whispered to Long Meng. What do you think?

“No way.” Long Meng’s voice rang out, startling me. As I pinged her location, her lanky form appeared in the distant aspen grove.

“This is a vacation,” she shouted. “If I wanted to pack my billable hours, I’d volunteer for another board position.”

I shuddered. Agreed.

She jogged over and climbed onto the bench beside me, sitting on the backrest with her feet on the seat. “Plus, you haven’t been off this rock in twenty years,” she added, plucking a leaf from the overhead bough.

“I said okay, Long Meng.”

We watched the kids as they moved with confidence and ease over the gleaming, pyrite-inflected cliff face. Big, bulky Diamant didn’t look like a climber but was obsessed with the sport. The other five had gradually been infected by their crèche-mate’s passion.

Long Meng and I waved to the kids as they settled in for a rest mid-route. Then she turned to me. “What do you want to see on-planet? Have you made a wish list yet?”

“I’ve been to Venus. It’s not that special.”

She laughed, a great, good-natured, wide-mouthed guffaw. “Nothing can compare to Luna, can it, Jules?”

“Don’t say that word.”

“Luna? Okay. What’s better than Venus? Earth?”

“Earth doesn’t smell right.”

“The Sol belt?”

“Never been there.”

“What then?”

“This is nice.” I waved at the groves of trees surrounding the cliff. Overhead, the plasma core that formed the backbone of our hab was just shifting its visible spectrum into twilight. Mellow light filtered through the leaves. Teenage laughter echoed off the cliff, and in the distance, the steady droning wail of a fussy newborn.

I pulled up the surrounding camera feeds and located the newborn. A tired-looking cuddler carried the baby in an over-shoulder sling, patting its bottom rhythmically as they strolled down a sunflower-lined path. I pinged the baby’s biom. Three weeks old. Chronic gas and reflux unresponsive to every intervention strategy. Nothing to do but wait for the child to grow out of it.

The kids summited, waved to us, then began rappelling back down. Long Meng and I met them at the base.

“Em, how’s your finger?” Long Meng asked.

“Good.” Émeraude bounced off the last ledge and slipped to the ground, wave of pink hair flapping. “Better than good.”

“Let’s see, then.”

Émeraude unclipped and offered the doctor their hand. They were a kid with only two modes: all-out or flatline. A few months back, they’d injured themselves cranking on a crimp, completely bowstringing the flexor tendon.

Long Meng launched into an explanation of annular pulley repair strategies and recovery times. I tried to listen but I was tired. My hips ached, my back ached, my limbs rotated on joints gritty with age. In truth, I didn’t want to go to Venus. The kids had won their bid, and with them off-hab, staying home would have been a good rest. But Long Meng’s friendship was important, and making her happy was worth a little effort.

Long Meng and I accompanied the Jewel Box down Venus’s umbilical, through the high sulphuric acid clouds to the elevator’s base deep in the planet’s mantle. When we entered the busy central transit hub, with its domed ceiling and slick, speedy slideways, the kids began making faces.

“This place stinks,” said Diamante.

“Yeah, smells like piss,” said Rubis.

Tré looked worried. “Do they have diseases here or something?”

Opale slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m going to be sick. Is it the smell or the gravity?”

A quick glance at Opale’s biom showed she was perfectly fine. All six kids were. Time for a classic crèche manager-style social intervention.

If you can’t be polite around the locals, I whispered, knocking my cane on the ground for emphasis. I’ll shoot you right back up the elevator.

If you send us home, do we get our credits back? Émeraude asked, yawning.

No. You’d be penalized for non-completion of contract.

I posted a leaderboard for good behavior. Then I told them Venusians were especially gossipy, and if word got out they’d bad-mouthed the planet, they’d get nothing but dirty looks for the whole trip.

A bald lie. Venus is no more gossipy than most habs. But it nurses a significant anti-crèche prejudice. Not as extreme as Luna, but still. Ricochet kids were used to being loved by everyone. On Venus, they would get attitude just for existing. I wanted to offer a convenient explanation for the chilly reception from the locals.