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

“She is.” Richard maneuvered himself into the weight machine and buckled in.

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching her?”

“I am.”

“But you’re not.”

“No.” He smiled at no one in particular as he adjusted the arms of the machine. “I’d rather be here with you.” He set the resistance to four kilograms for curls.

“ Richard .”

He laughed. “Beep told me to take a break. He’s watching her but she hasn’t messed up since Dragon . Ninety-seven days and counting. She’s so good now that she’s boring.”

Mariska had logged just three kilometers and had seven more to go. At least a half-hour before she finished her workout and could escape him. She pulled her towel from its clip and wiped her face. Sweat was another thing she hated about space. She missed swimming.

How was she supposed to act around Richard anyway? She couldn’t help but wonder what was going on behind those wide brown eyes when he looked at her. Probably imagining new kinks. But with more than a hundred days left in the run, she couldn’t afford to confront him. Feuds in space tended to take up a lot of room. On a ship the size of the Shining Legend, that would be trouble. But she wasn’t about to pretend that she was comfortable being alone with him.

After he finished the curls, he did shoulder squats. The weight machine clanked and wheezed and its gyros hummed. The more reps he did, the more the veins stood out at his temples. Richard was proud of his foolish muscles and worked hard to keep them. Now he was grunting from the effort. It was kind of disgusting. He told her once when they were high on wizard that he’d be like some kind of superhero if he ever visited the Moon. She’d tried not to laugh at his ignorance. There was hardly any crime at Haworth. The Moon had no need of another Lord Danger.

“You haven’t been very nice to me lately.” He was smiling, his cheeks flushed from his workout. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing.” She wasn’t going to think feathers and golden chains.

“Somehow you make nothing sound an awful lot like something.” He waited for her to answer; she let him wait. “Okay.” He reconfigured the weight machine for squat thrusts. “ One . Two .” The count exploded out of him when he kicked his legs back. “ Three . Four . Five .” He was so strong that he overpowered the gyro. When the apparatus banged against the wall, she could feel the entire mod shake. It was a point of pride with Richard that he could do this. “ Thirteen . Fourteen . Fifteen .” No one else aboard could. Sometimes she could feel him working out as far away as Galley.

Richard stopped at twenty, sucking air in huge gulps. Mariska felt a familiar tingle; since he was out of breath and couldn’t speak, he was offering her his feed.

“No thanks,” she said. She woke up the screen in front of them, picked a 3D channel at random. It was old sci-fi from the previous century: a space captain in a ridiculously tight uniform was sitting on a shiny chair on the bridge of some fairy-tale spaceship. The camera pulled back. Everyone on the screen was sitting on chairs.

There were no chairs on the Shining Legend .

“Artificial gravity.” Richard climbed on the stationary bike and started peddling. “I could use some of that just now.”

Mariska ignored him and pretended interest in the 3D.

Now the people on the bridge were staring at a viewscreen showing another silly spaceship. In an external shot, one ship veered sharply away from the other, narrowly avoiding a collision. Back on the bridge, the crew were all leaning to their left.

“Sorry,” said Richard, “but they’d all be puddles of jelly on the wall.” He shook his head. “People on Earth still watch this stuff.”

The counter on the treadmill clicked over to tenkilometers. “Really?” Mariska slowed her pace to a walk. Her legs felt pleasantly heavy.

“People on Earth are stupid. They don’t know anything about living about space. That’s why I left.”

“There are stupid people everywhere.” She unbungeed herself. “The trick is not to let them do anything stupid to you.”

Richard shot her a quizzical look. “Meaning?

“Meaning have a nice workout, Richard.” She said, and kicked out of Rec.

Mariska had never had a feed from her mother before. At first she wasn’t sure that she should accept it. Natalya Volochkova was a fossil like Beep. Her generation used feeds only for the most intimate sort of contact, which was the last thing Mariska wanted. But this feed had been the only message from her mother for several days now. Mariska was curious to know why she had stopped.

= Moya radost , you know this isn’t what I wanted for us .= Natalya Volochkova was seated in a plastic chair in a spare room that was clearly not at their home in Haworth. The focus was tight, the light harsh. Mariska tried to zoom out but the feed refused her command. There was a stale papery smell to the room that made Mariska think that she might be looking at a museum or a library. Some kind of storage area. =You think you are doing what is right. Maybe, but where you are now is not where you will be when you grow up .=

“I am grown up!” Of course, her mother couldn’t hear her.

= I know you have been suffering, but things will get better .= There was a weight to her voice that Mariska had never heard before. = I promise .=

“Just stop your interfering, bitch.”

= I’m on Mars just now, but I won’t be staying. I don’t know if you’ve heard but we’re commissioning a new starship, the Natividad .=

Mariska felt her throat tightening.

= It’s been more than a year since I’ve heard anything from you. I write, you are silent. At least I know that you are safe. I’m sorry if you’re unhappy .= She was shocked to see her mother’s eyes shine with tears. = I wish I knew what you’re thinking just now. But if you really want me out of your life, then I must accept that. I’ve been offered a place on the Natividad. I had hoped to bring you with me but….=

“Go then.” Mariska closed her mind. The bare room and her sad mother disappeared. “ Leave .” She deleted the feed.

Mariska tried to relax into the delicate embrace of her closet’s sleep net but her thoughts kept tumbling over one another. Mariska wondered at how little she understood herself. After all, this was exactly what she wanted. Natalya Volochkova was finally leaving her alone.

So why did she feel betrayed?

Glint’s scream shook the walls of Galley fifteen meters away. Mariska choked on a mouthful of butterscotch pudding. When she poked her head out of the hatch Beep almost tore it off as he shot upspine toward Command. She followed at a distance. Ahead she saw Richard desperately trying to pull Glint downspine. Glint flailed at him like a drowning swimmer.

“What?” Beep shouted over her shrieking.

“Seda…tive,” said Richard. Glint spun in his grasp and they crashed against the deck of the spine. “Ooof. Glint, no.”

“ What?” said Beep.

“Something about the ice.”

It was a measure of Glint’s panic that she gave musclebound Richard all he could handle. But when he finally yanked her arms behind her back,she slumped forward. Her screams melted into sobs.

“You.” Beep pushed Mariska at them. “Help.” He flew into Command.

They wrangled her downspine to Health and strapped her to an examining table. Richard tried to comfort her while Mariska tapped at the med rack and charged a face mask with somapal. When Richard pressed it to Glint’s nose and mouth, she groaned and went limp.