Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

When the guards brought us to the playroom, Carlos Fernando was at the end of the room farthest from the enormous window, his back to the window and to us. He’d known we were coming, of course, but when the guards announced our arrival he didn’t turn around, but called behind him “It’s okay—I’ll be with them in a second.”

The two guards left us.

He was gyrating and waving his hands in front of a large screen. On the screen, colorful spaceships flew in three-dimensional projection through the complicated maze of a city that had apparently been designed by Escher, with towers connected by bridges and buttresses. The viewpoint swooped around, chasing some of the spaceships, hiding from others. From time to time bursts of red dots shot forward, blowing the ships out of the sky with colorful explosions as Carlos Fernando shouted “Gotcha!” and “In your eye, dog.”

He was dancing with his whole body; apparently the game had some kind of full-body input. As far as I could tell, he seemed to have forgotten entirely that we were there.

I looked around.

Sitting on a padded platform no more than two meters from where we had entered, a lion looked back at me with golden eyes. He was bigger than I was. Next to him, with her head resting on her paws, lay a lioness, and she was watching me as well, her eyes half-open. Her tail twitched once; twice. The lion’s mane was so huge that it must have been shampooed and blow-dried.

He opened his mouth and yawned, then rolled onto his side, still watching me.

“They’re harmless,” Leah said. “Bad-Boy and Knickers. Pets.”

Knickers—the female, I assumed—stretched over and grabbed the male lion by the neck. Then she put one paw on the back of his head and began to groom his fur with her tongue.

I was beginning to get a feel for just how different Carlos Fernando’s life was from anything I knew.

On the walls closer to where Carlos Fernando was playing his game were several other screens. The one to my left looked like it had a homework problem partially worked out. Calculus, I noted. He was doing a chain-rule differentiation and had left it half-completed where he’d gotten stuck, or bored. Next to it was a visualization of the structure of the atmosphere of Venus. Homework? I looked at it more carefully. If it was homework, he was much more interested in atmospheric science than in math; the map was covered with notes and had half a dozen open windows with details. I stepped forward to read it more closely.

The screen went black.

I turned around, and Carlos Fernando was there, a petulant expression on his face. “That’s my stuff,” he said. His voice squeaked on the word “stuff.” “I don’t want you looking at my stuff unless I ask you to, okay?”

He turned to Leah, and his expression changed to something I couldn’t quite read. He wanted to kick me out of his room, I thought, but didn’t want to make Leah angry; he wanted to keep her approval. “What’s he doing here?” he asked her.

She looked at me, and raised her eyebrows.

I wish I knew myself, I thought, but I was in it far enough, I had better say something.

I walked over to the enormous window, and looked out across the clouds. I could see another city, blue with distance, a toy balloon against the golden horizon.

“The environment of Venus is unique,” I said. “And to think, your ancestor Udo Nordwald put all this together.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I mean, I guess I mean thanks. I’m glad you like our city.”

“All of the cities,” I said. “It’s a staggering accomplishment. The geniusit must have taken to envision it all, to put together the first floating city; to think of this planet as a haven, a place where millions can live. Or billions—the skies are nowhere near full. Someday even trillions, maybe.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Really something, I guess.”

“Spectacular.” I turned around and looked him directly in the eye. “So why do you want to destroy it?”

“What?” Leah said.

Carlos Fernando had his mouth open, and started to say something, but then closed his mouth again. He looked down, and then off to his left, and then to the right. He said, “I… I…” but then broke off.

“I know your plan,” I said. “Your micromachines—they’ll convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen. And when the atmosphere changes, the cities will be grounded. They won’t be lighter than air, won’t be able to float any more. You know that, don’t you? You want to do it deliberately.”

“He can’t,” Leah said, “it won’t work. The carbon would—” and then she broke off. “Diamond,” she said. “He’s going to turn the excess carbon into diamond.”

I reached over and picked up a piece of furniture, one of the foamed-diamond tables. It weighted almost nothing.

“Nanomachinery,” I said. “The molecular still you mentioned. You know, somebody once said that the problem with Venus isn’t that the surface is too hot. It’s just fine up here where the air’s as thin as Earth’s air. The problem is, the surface is just too darn far below sea level.

“But every ton of atmosphere your molecular machines convert to oxygen, you get a quarter-ton of pure carbon. And the atmosphere is a thousand tons per square meter.”

I turned to Carlos Fernando, who still hadn’t managed to say anything. His silence was as damning as any confession. “Your machines turn that carbon into diamond fibers, and build upward from the surface. You’re going to build a new surface, aren’t you—a completely artificial surface. A platform up to the sweet spot, fifty kilometers above the old rock surface. And the air there will be breathable.”

At last Carlos found his voice.“Yeah,”he said.“Dad came up with the machines, but the idea of using them to build a shell around the whole planet—that idea was mine. It’s all mine. It’s pretty smart, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s smart?”

“You can’t own the sky,” I said, “but you can own the land, can’t you? You will have built the land. And all the cities are going to crash. There won’t be any dissident cities, because there won’t be any cities. You’ll own it all. Everybody will have to come to you.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said. He was smiling now, a big goofy grin. “Sweet, isn’t it?” He must have seen my expression, because he said,“ Hey, come on. It’s not like they were contributing. Those dissident cities are full of nothing but malcontents and pirates.”

Leah’s eyes were wide. He turned to her and said, “Hey, why shouldn’t I? Give me one reason. They shouldn’t even be here. It was all my ancestor’s idea, the floating city, and they shoved in. They stole his idea, so now I’m going to shut them down. It’ll be better my way.”

He turned back to me. “Okay, look. You figured out my plan. That’s fine, that’s great, no problem, okay? You’re smarter than I thought you were, I admit it. Now, just, I need you to promise not to tell anybody, okay?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, go away,” he said. He turned back to Leah. “Doctor Hamakawa,” he said. He got down on one knee, and, staring at the ground, said, “I want you to marry me. Please?”

Leah shook her head, but he was staring at the ground, and couldn’t see her. “I’m sorry, Carlos,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He was just a kid, in a room surrounded by his toys, trying to talk the adults into seeing things the way he wanted to see them. He finally looked up, his eyes filling with tears. “Please,” he said. “I want you to. I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you whatever you want. You can have everything I own, all of it, the whole planet, everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Leah repeated. “I’m sorry.”