Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

Different language. Different rules. Tones. Tiny differences to Maria’s ear that turned out to make all the difference in the world. If you weren’t trained to listen for them, you didn’t know what was going on. You were lost.

The lady in the tablet nodded and smiled as Maria said “buy” and “sell” correctly.

Maria was so engrossed in her study that it took a while to notice that time had passed, and Papa wasn’t home.

She got to her feet and went out into the choking furnace of 120-degree heat. The smoke had thickened. It seemed like all of California was on fire, and all of it was blowing in to Phoenix.

Maria peered toward the Taiyang, but even the construction cutter flickers were invisible now. Papa was never late coming off shift. He always did his shift, got his pay, filled his jugs from the Red Cross pump, and came straight home.

She started walking toward the construction site, making her way down the long dust-rutted boulevards, where Texas bang bang girls stood on the street corners and tried to pick up rich Californians who were over the border to go slumming. Walking past the Red Cross pump, where the lines for water stretched around the block and the price always seemed to go up. Past the shanty towns of suburban refugees that filled Fry’s and Target parking lots, all of them scavenging and building plywood slums around the relief pump, grateful to be close to any place where they could get water. Past the Merry Perry revival tent, where people lashed themselves with thorn bushes and begged God to send them rain.

Maria trudged through the choking smoke and dust, wishing she’d saved some of her water jug for the brutal heat of the walk. The arcology loomed out of the smoke, a jumbled collection of boxy interconnected towers, as isolated from Phoenix as if it were a castle fortress.

On the Taiyang’s construction side, the gate guard wouldn’t let her in. He didn’t seem to understand English, Spanish, or her broken Chinese. But he did make a call, though.

A Chinese man came out to her. A polished man, he wore a hardhat, nice clothes, and filter mask around his neck – a good one from REI that would keep California and Phoenix out of his lungs. Maria eyed it jealously.

“You’re here about the accident?” he asked.

“What accident?”

“There was a fall.”

He spoke with an accent, but his English was clear enough. It had been a long fall, he said. She wouldn’t want to see his body. He was very sorry. Taiyang International had made arrangements for the respectful disposal of his body. She could pick up his remains in the evening. There was some leftover pay, and Taiyang would cover the costs of the cremation.

Maria found herself staring at the man’s fancy dust mask as he droned on. The rubberized seals and replaceable filters...

Her father would be smoke. More smoke, adding to the burn that people tried to keep out of their lungs. Maybe she was breathing him in, right now – him and the Sierras and all of California.

His ash, flying free.

NALO HOPKINSON(www.nalohopkinson.com), born in Jamaica, has lived in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and Canada. She now teaches creative writing at the University of California Riverside in the United States. She is the author of six novels – Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, The New Moon’s Arms, The Chaos, and Sister Mine – two short story collections, and a chapbook. She edited anthologies Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fictio n, and Mojo: Conjure Stories . She is a recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Locus Award for Best New Writer, the World Fantasy Award, the Sunburst Award (twice), the Aurora Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Norton Award. Her most recent book is the short story collection, Falling in Love With Hominids .

NISI SHAWL(www.nisishawl.com) is the author of collections Filter House and Something More and More . Her short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Carl Brandon and Gaylactic Spectrum Awards. Filter House won the James Tiptree Jr Memorial Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. She is co-author of Writing the Other: A Practical Approach , and co-editor of Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany . She writes reviews for The Seattle Times , and writes and edits reviews for the feminist literary quarterly Cascadia Subduction Zone . Her Belgian Congo steampunk novel Everfair is due out from Tor in September 2016.

“DAMN AND BLAST it!”

Plaquette let herself in through the showroom door of the watchmaker’s that morning to hear Msieur blistering the air of his shop with his swearing. The hulking clockwork man he’d been working on was high-stepping around the workroom floor in a clumsy lurch. It lifted its knees comically high, its body listing to one side and its feet coming down in the wrong order; toe, then heel. Billy Sumach, who delivered supplies to Msieur, was in the workroom. Through the open doorway he threw her a merry glance with his pretty brown eyes, but he had better sense than to laugh at Msieur’s handiwork with Msieur in the room.

Msieur glared at Plaquette. “You’re late. That’s coming off your pay.” Plaquette winced. Their family needed every cent of her earnings, but she’d had to wait home till Ma got back from the railroad to take over minding Pa.

The mechanical George staggered tap-click, tap-click across the shop. It crashed into a wall and tumbled with a clank to the floor, then lay there whirring. Msieur swore again, words Ma would be mortified to know that Plaquette had heard. He snatched off one of his own shoes and threw it at the George. Billy Sumach gave a little peep of swallowed laughter. Msieur pointed at the George. “Fix it,” he growled at Plaquette. “I have to present it to the governor the day after tomorrow.”

As though Plaquette didn’t know that. “Yes, Msieur,” she said to his back as he stormed through the door to the showroom.

The second the door slammed shut, Billy let out a whoop. Plaquette found herself smiling along with him, glad of a little amusement. It was scarce in her life nowadays. “My land,” Billy said, “’Pears Old George there has got himself the jake leg!”

The fun blew out of the room like a candle flame. “Don’t you joke,” Plaquette told him, through teeth clamped tight together. “You know ’bout my Pa.”

Billy’s face fell. “Oh Lord, Plaquette, I’m sorry.”

“Just help me get this George to its feet. It weighs a ton.” Billy was a fine man, of Plaquette’s color and station. Lately when he came by with deliveries he’d been favoring her with smiles and wistful looks. But she couldn’t study that right now, not with Pa taken so poorly. Together they wrestled the George over to Plaquette’s work table. There it stood. Its painted-on porter’s uniform had chipped at one shoulder when it fell. Its chest door hung open as a coffin lid. Plaquette wanted to weep at the tangle of metal inside it. She’d taken the George’s chest apart and put it back together, felt like a million times now. Msieur couldn’t see what was wrong, and neither could she. Its arms worked just fine; Plaquette had strung the wires inside them herself. But the legs...

“You’ll do it,” Billy said, “Got a good head on your shoulders.”

Feeling woeful, Plaquette nodded.

An uncomfortable silence held between them an instant. If he wanted to come courting, now would be the time to ask. Instead, he held up his clipboard. “Msieur gotta sign for these boxes.”