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

He reached out and picked up something off the floor—a model of a space-ship—and looked at it, pretending to be suddenly interested in it. Then he put it carefully down on a table, picked up another one, and stood up, not looking at us. He sniffled, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand—apparently forgetting he had the ship model in it—trying to do it casually, as if we wouldn’t have noticed that he had been crying.

“Ok,” he said. “You can’t leave, you know. This guy guessed too much. The plan only works if it’s secret, so that the malcontents don’t know it’s coming, don’t prepare for it. You have to stay here. I’ll keep you here, I’ll—I don’t know. Something.”

“No,” I said. “It’s dangerous for Leah here. Miranda already tried to hire pirates to shoot her down once, when she was out in the sky kayak. We have to leave.”

Carlos looked up at me, and with sudden sarcasm, said, “Miranda? You’re joking. That was me who tipped off the pirates. Me. I thought they’d take you away and keep you. I wish they had.”

And then he turned back to Leah. “Please? You’ll be the richest person on Venus. You’ll be the richest person in the solar system. I’ll give it all to you. You’ll be able to do anything you want.

“I’m sorry,” Leah repeated. “It’s a great offer. But no.”

At the other end of the room, Carlos’ bodyguards were quietly entering. He apparently had some way to summon them silently. The room was filling with them, and their guns were drawn, but not yet pointed.

I backed toward the window, and Leah came with me.

The city had rotated a little, and sunlight was now slanting in through the window. I put my sun goggles on.

“Do you trust me?” I said quietly.

“Of course,” Leah said. “I always have.”

“Come here.”

LINK: READY blinked in the corner of my field of view.

I reached up, casually, and tapped on the side of the left lens. CQ MANTA, I tapped. CQ.

I put my other hand behind me and, hoping I could disguise what I was doing as long as I could, I pushed on the pane, feeling it flex out.

HERE, was the reply.

Push. Push. It was a matter of rhythm. When I found the resonant frequency of the pane, it felt right, it built up, like oscillating a rocking chair, like sex.

I reached out my left hand to hold Leah’s hand, and pumped harder on the glass with my right. I was putting my weight into it now, and the panel was bowing visibly with my motion. The window was making a noise now, an infrasonic thrum too deep to hear, but you could feel it. On each swing the pane of the window bowed further outward.

“What are you doing?” Carlos shouted. “Are you crazy?”

The bottom bowed out, and the edge of the pane separated from its frame.

There was a smell of acid and sulfur. The bodyguards ran toward us, but—as I’d hoped—they were hesitant to use their guns, worried that the damaged panel might blow completely out.

The window screeched and jerked, but held, fixed in place by the other joints. The way it was stuck in place left a narrow vertical slit between the window and its frame. I pulled Leah close to me, and shoved myself backwards, against the glass, sliding along against the bowed pane, pushing it outward to widen the opening as much as I could.

As I fell, I kissed her lightly on the edge of the neck.

She could have broken my grip, could have torn herself free.

But she didn’t.

“Hold your breath and squeeze your eyes shut,”I whispered, as we fell through the opening and into the void, and then with my last breath of air, I said, “I love you.”

She said nothing in return. She was always practical, and knew enough not to try to talk when her next breath would be acid. “I love you too,” I imagined her saying.

With my free hand, I tapped, MANTA

NEED PICKUP. FAST.

And we fell.

“It wasn’t about sex at all,” I said. “That’s what I failed to understand.” We were in the manta, covered with slime, but basically unhurt. The pirates had accomplished their miracle, snatched us out of midair. We had information they needed; and in exchange, they would give us a ride off the planet, back where we belonged, back to the cool and the dark and the emptiness between planets. “It was all about finance. Keeping control of assets.”

“Sure it’s about sex,” Leah said. “Don’t fool yourself. We’re humans. It’s always about sex. Always. You think that’s not a temptation? Molding a kid into just exactly what you want? Of course it’s sex. Sex and control. Money? That’s just the excuse they tell themselves.”

“But you weren’t tempted,” I said.

She looked at me long and hard. “Of course I was.” She sighed, and her expression was once again distant, unreadable. “More than you’ll ever know.”

John Kessel lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is professor of American literature and creative writing at North Carolina State University. A writer of erudite short fiction that often makes reference to or pastiches popular culture, Kessel received the Nebula Award for the novella “Another Orphan” and for the novelette “Pride and Prometheus.” He has published a range of impressive short fiction, including a series of time travel stories featuring character Detlev Gruber (the most recent of which is “It’s All True”), and a series of science fiction stories set in the same world as James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner “Stories for Men.” Kessel’s short fiction has been collected in three volumes, Meeting in Infinity , The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence , and he has published three novels: Freedom Beach (with James Patrick Kelly), Good News from Outer Space, and Corrupting Dr. Nice . He and Kelly also co-edited the anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction , that makes the case for the rapprochement, over the last forty years, of literary and science fiction.

Enzo worked at the checkout in Tyler’s Superstore. Tyler’s had started life as a grocery but now offered a farmer’s market, a bakery, a deli, a butcher shop, aisles of housewares, appliances, tableware, crockery, a pharmacy, a huge wine section, CDs and DVDs, photo reprints, small furniture, an optometrist, and a section for TVs and electronics. The ambient lights were low and soothing, the music bland, the employees, like Enzo, treading water. Enzo would be stuck at Tyler’s until the place was driven out of business by some still-more-gargantuan sensorium that sold everything from new spouses to plastic surgery.

Until then he worked checkout. “Where is the bottled water?” asked a harried woman trailing a crying toddler.

“Over there, ma’am, aisle six, under that big blue sign that says Bottled Water.”

She glared at him. “Don’t be smart.”

When she turned her back, Enzo flipped her off.

Kwasniewski, the assistant manager, saw him, stalked over, and gave him a five-minute tongue-lashing.

The store was filled with worn-out people 24/7. Like Enzo, they were spending money they didn’t have. The global economy, the news told them, was booming. So why was everybody he knew working two jobs and living from one paycheck to the next? Why did everybody buy lottery tickets? Why did they try out for Become Megarich! and You Can’t Be Too Thin! then watch those shows or a dozen like them nightly on various screens in astonishing lifelike splendor?

The magazines at the checkout counter were plastered with bright images of celebrities—beautiful people getting married, getting pregnant, getting divorced, getting arrested, going into rehab, getting out of rehab, having affairs, gaining weight and then losing it again. Everybody wanted to be a celebrity. If you weren’t a celebrity, you might as well kill yourself.