The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (84 page)

“Beijing can threaten a big exposé, tell the
New York Times
newspaper!” Mr Wei said, getting excited. “My Beijing supervisor will love that! He loves media!”

“Then you can have a big show trial,” Jieling said.

Mr Wei was nodding.

“But what is in it for us?” Baiyue said.

“When there’s a trial, they’ll have to cancel your debt!” Mr Wei said. “Even pay you a big fine!”

“If I call the floor auntie and say I caught a corporate spy, they’ll give me a big bonus,” Baiyue said.

“Don’t you care about the other workers?” Mr Wei asked.

Jieling and Baiyue looked at each other and shrugged. Did they? “What are they going to do to you anyway?” Jieling said. “You can still do big expose. But that way we don’t have to wait.”

“Look,” he said, “you let me go, and I’ll let you keep my money.”

Someone rattled the door handle.

“Please,” Mr Wei whispered. “You can be heroes for your fellow workers, even though they’ll never know it.”

Jieling stuck the money in her pocket. Then she took the papers, too.

“You can’t take those,” he said.

“Yes I can,” she said. “If after six months, there is no big corruption scandal? We can let everyone know how a government secret agent was outsmarted by two factory girls.”

“Six months!” he said. “That’s not long enough!”

“It better be,” Jieling said.

Outside the door, Taohua called, “Jieling? Are you in there? Something is wrong with the door!”

“Just a minute,” Jieling called. “I had trouble with it when I came home.” To Mr Wei she whispered sternly, “Don’t you try anything. If you do, we’ll scream our heads off and everybody will come running.” She and Baiyue shimmied the pillowcase off of Mr Wei’s head. He started to stand up and jerked the boombox, which clattered across the floor. “Wait!” she hissed and untied him.

Taohua called through the door, “What’s that?”

“Hold on!” Jieling called.

Baiyue helped Mr Wei stand up. Mr Wei climbed onto the desk and then grabbed a line hanging outside. He stopped a moment as if trying to think of something to say.

“‘A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery,’’ Jieling said. It had been her father’s favorite quote from Chairman Mao. “‘. . . it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.’”

Mr Wei looked as if he might cry and not because he was moved by patriotism. He stepped back and disappeared. Jieling and Baiyue looked out the window. He did go down the wall just like a secret agent from a movie, but it was only two stories. There was still the big footprint in the middle of Taohua’s magazine and the room looked as if it had been hit by a storm.

“They’re going to think you had a boyfriend,” Baiyue whispered to Jieling.

“Yeah,” Jieling said, pulling the chair out from under the door handle. “And they’re going to think he’s rich.”

It was Sunday, and Jieling and Baiyue were sitting on the beach. Jieling’s cell phone rang, a little chime of M.I.A. hip-hop. Even though it was Sunday, it was one of the girls from New Life. Sunday should be a day off, but she took the call anyway.

“Jieling? This is Xia Meili? From packaging. Taohua told me about your business? Maybe you could help me?”

Jieling said, “Sure. What is your debt, Meili?”

“3,800 R.M.B.,” Meili said. “I know it’s a lot.”

Jieling said, “Not so bad. We have a lot of people who already have loans, though, and it will probably be a few weeks before I can make you a loan.”

With Mr Wei’s capital, Jieling and Baiyue had opened a bank account. They had bought themselves out, and then started a little loan business where they bought people out of New Life. Then people had to pay them back with a little extra. They had each had jobs – Jieling worked for a company that made toys. She sat each day at a table where she put a piece of specially shaped plastic over the body of a little doll, an action figure. The plastic fit right over the figure and had cut-outs. Jieling sprayed the whole thing with red paint and when the piece of plastic was lifted, the action figure had a red shirt. It was boring, but at the end of the week, she got paid instead of owing the company money.

She and Baiyue used all their extra money on loans to get girls out of New Life. More and more loans, and more and more payments. Now New Life had sent them a threatening letter saying that what they were doing was illegal. But Mr Wei said not to worry. Two officials had come and talked to them and had showed them legal documents and had them explain everything about what had happened. Soon, the officials promised, they would take New Life to court.

Jieling wasn’t so sure about the officials. After all, Mr Wei was an official. But a foreign newspaperman had called them. He was from a newspaper called
The Wall Street Journal
and he said that he was writing a story about labor shortages in China after the bird flu. He said that in some places in the west there were reports of slavery. His Chinese was very good. His story was going to come out in the United States tomorrow. Then she figured officials would have to do something or lose face.

Jieling told Meili to call her back in two weeks – although hopefully in two weeks no one would need help to get away from New Life – and wrote a note to herself in her little notebook.

Baiyue was sitting looking at the water. “This is the first time I’ve been to the beach,” she said.

“The ocean is so big, isn’t it?”

Baiyue nodded, scuffing at the white sand. “People always say that, but you don’t know until you see it.”

Jieling said, “Yeah.” Funny, she had lived here for months. Baiyue had lived here more than a year. And they had never come to the beach. The beach was beautiful.

“I feel sorry for Mr Wei,” Baiyue said.

“You do?” Jieling said. “Do you think he really had a daughter who died?”

“Maybe,” Baiyue said. “A lot of people died.”

“My father died,” Jieling said.

Baiyue looked at her, a quick little sideways look, then back out at the ocean. “My mother died,” she said.

Jieling was surprised. She had never known that Baiyue’s mother was dead. They had talked about so much but never about that. She put her arm around Baiyue’s waist and they sat for a while.

“I feel bad in a way,” Baiyue said.

“How come?” Jieling said.

“Because we had to steal capital to fight New Life. That makes us capitalists.”

Jieling shrugged.

“I wish it was like when they fought the revolution,” Baiyue said. “Things were a lot more simple.”

“Yeah,” Jieling said, “and they were poor and a lot of them died.”

“I know,” Baiyue sighed.

Jieling knew what she meant. It would be nice to . . . to be sure what was right and what was wrong. Although not if it made you like Mr Wei.

Poor Mr Wei. Had his daughter really died?

“Hey,” Jieling said, “I’ve got to make a call. Wait right here.” She walked a little down the beach. It was windy and she turned her back to guard protect the cell phone, like someone lighting a match. “Hello,” she said, “hello, mama, it’s me. Jieling.”

DAYS OF WONDER

Geoff Ryman

Born in Canada, Geoff Ryman now lives in England. He made his first sale in 1976, to
New Worlds
, but it was not until 1984, when he made his first appearance in
Interzone
– the magazine where much of his published short fiction has appeared – with his brilliant novella
The Unconquered Country
that he first attracted any serious attention.
The Unconquered Country
, one of the best novellas of the decade, had a stunning impact on the science fiction scene of the day, and almost overnight established Ryman as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, winning him both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award; it was later published in a book version,
The Unconquered Country: A Life History
. His output has been sparse since then by the high-production standards of the genre, but extremely distinguished, with his novel
The Child Garden: A Low Comedy
, which won both the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; his later novel
Air
also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His other novels include
The Warrior Who Carried Life
; the critically acclaimed mainstream novel
Was
;
Coming of Enkidu
;
The King’s Last Song
;
Lust
; and the underground cult classic
253
, the “print remix” of an “interactive hypertext novel” that in its original form ran online on Ryman’s home page, ryman.com, and which in its print form won the Philip K. Dick Award. Four of his novellas have been collected in
Unconquered Countries
. His most recent book is a new novel,
When It Changed
.

In the eloquent story that follows, he takes us to the far future, long after humans have become extinct, to show us one individual’s quest to piece together some of the Old Knowledge in the face of desperate odds and at the cost of everything she loves.

L
EVEZA WAS THE
wrong name for her; she was big and strong, not light. Her bulk made her seem both male and female; her shoulders were broad but so were her hips and breasts.

She had beautiful eyes, round and black, and she was thoughtful; her heavy jaws would grind round and round as if imitating the continual motion of her mind. She always looked as if she were listening to something distant, faraway.

Like many large people, Leveza was easily embarrassed. Her mane would bristle up across the top of her head and down her spine. She was strong and soft all at once, and kind. I liked talking to her; her voice was so high and gentle, though her every gesture was blurting and forlorn.

But that voice when it went social! If Leveza saw a Cat crouching in the grass, her whinnying was sudden, fierce and irresistible. All of us would pirouette into a panic at once. Her cry was infallible.

So she was an
afrirador
, one of our sharpshooters, always reared up onto hindquarters to keep watch, always carrying a rifle, always herself a target. My big brave friend. Her rear buttocks grew ever more heavy from constant standing. She could walk upright like an Ancestor for a whole day. Her pelt was beautiful, her best feature, a glossy deep chestnut, no errant Ancestor reds. As rich and deep as the soil under the endless savannah.

We were groom-mates in our days of wonder.

I would brush her, and her hide would twitch with pleasure. She would stretch with it, as if it were taffy to be pulled. We tried on earrings, or tied bows into manes, or corn-rowed them into long braids. But Leveza never rested long with simple pleasures or things easily understood.

Even young, before bearing age, she was serious and adult. I remember her as a filly, slumped at the feet of the stallions as they smoked their pipes, played checkers, and talked about what they would do if they knew how to make electricity.

Leveza would say that we could make turning blades to circulate air; we could pump water to irrigate grass. We could boil water, or make heat to dry and store cud-cakes. The old men would chuckle to hear her dreaming.

thought it was a pointless game, but Leveza could play it better than anyone, seeing further and deeper into her own inherited head. Her groom-sister Ventoo always teased her, “Leveza, what are you fabricating now?”

We all knew that stuff. I knew oh so clearly, how to wrap thin metal round and round a pivot and with electricity, make it spin. But who could be bothered? I loved to run. All of us foals would suddenly sprint through long grass to make the ground thunder, to raise up the sweet smells of herbs, and to test our strength. We had fire in our loins and we wanted to gallop all the way to the sun. Leveza pondered.

She didn’t like it when her first heat came. The immature bucks would hee-haw at her and pull back their feeling lips to display their great white plates of teeth. When older men bumped her buttocks with their heads, she would give a little backward kick, and if they tried to mount her, she walked out from under them. And woe betide any low-grade drifter who presumed that Leveza’s lack of status meant she was grateful for attention. She would send the poor bag of bones rattling through the long grass. The babysquirrels clutched their sides and laughed. “Young NeverLove wins again.”

But I knew. It was not a lack of love that made my groom-mate so careful and reserved. It was an abundance of love, a surfeit of it, more than our kind is meant to have, can afford to have, for we live on the pampas and our cousins eat us.

Love came upon Leveza on some warm night, the moon like bedtime milk. She would not have settled for a quick bump with a reeking male just because the air wavered with hot hormones. I think it would have been the reflection of milklight in black eyes, a gentle ruffling of upper lip, perhaps a long and puzzled chat about the nature of this life and its consequences.

We are not meant to love. We are meant to mate, stand side by side for warmth for a short time afterward, and then forget.
I wonder who fathered this one
?

Leveza knew and would never forget. She never said his name, but most of us knew who he was. I sometimes caught her looking toward the circle of the Great Men, her eyes full of gentleness. They would gallop about at headball, or talk seriously about axle grease. None of them looked her way, but she would be smiling with a gentle glowing love, her eyes fixed on one of them as steadily as the moon.

One night, she tugged at my mane. “Akwa, I am going to sprog,” she said, with a wrench of a smile at the absurdity of such a thing.

“Oh! Oh Leveza, that’s wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me, how did this happen?”

She ronfled in amusement, a long ruffling snort. “In the usual way, my friend.”

“No, but . . . oh you know! I have seen you with no one.”

She went still. “Of course not.”

“Do you know which one?”

Her whole face was in milklight. “Yes. Oh yes.”

Leveza was both further back toward an Ancestor than anyone I ever met, and furthest forward toward the beasts. Even then it was as if she was pulled in two directions, Earth and stars. The night around us would sigh with multiple couplings. I was caught up in the season. Sex was like a river, washing all around us. I was a young mare then, I can tell you, wide of haunch, slim of ankle. I plucked my way through the grass as if it were the strings of a harp. All the highest-rankers would come and snuffle me, and I surprised myself. Oh! I was a pushover. One after another after another.

I would come back feeling like a pasture grazed flat; and she would be lumped out on the ground, content and ready to welcome me. I nuzzled her ear, which flicked me like I was a fly, and I would lay my head on her buttock to sleep.

“You are a strange one,” I would murmur. “But you will be kind to my babes. We will have a lovely house.” I knew she would love my babies as her own.

That year the dry season did not come.

It did go cooler, the afternoon downpours were fewer, but the grass did not go gray. There was dew when we got up, sparkling and cold with our morning mouthfuls. Some rain came at nighttime in short, soft caresses rather than pummeling on our pavilion roofs. I remember screens pulled down, the smell of grass, and warm breath of a groom-mate against my haunches.

“I’m preggers too,” I said some weeks later and giggled, thrilled and full of butterflies. I was young, eh? In my fourth year. I could feel my baby nudge. Leveza and I giggled together under our shawls.

It did not go sharply cold. No grass-frost made our teeth ache. We waited for the triggering, but it did not come.

“Strangest year I can remember,” said the old women. They were grateful, for migrations were when they were eaten.

That year! We made porridge for the toothless. We groomed and groomed, beads and bows and necklaces and shawls and beautiful grass hats. Leveza loved it when I made up songs; the first, middle and last word of every line would rhyme. She’d snort and shake her mane and say, “How did you do that; that’s so clever!”

We would stroke each other’s stomachs as our nipples swelled. Leveza hated hers; they were particularly large like aubergines. “Uh. They’re gross. Nobody told me they wobble in the way of everything.” They ached to give milk; early in her pregnancy they started to seep. There was a scrum of babysquirrels around her every morning. Businesslike, she sniffed and let them suckle. “When my baby comes, you’ll have to wait your turn.” The days and nights came and went like the beating of birdlike wings. She got a bit bigger, but never too big to stand guard.

Leveza gave birth early, after only nine months.

It was midwinter, in dark Fehveroo when no one was ready. Leveza pushed her neck up against my mouth for comfort. When I woke she said, “Get Grama for me.” Grama was a high-ranking midwife.

I was stunned. She could not be due yet. The midwives had stored no oils or bark-water. I ran to Grama, woke her, worried her. I hoofed the air in panic. “Why is this happening now? What’s wrong?”

By the time we got back, Leveza had delivered. Just one push and the babe had arrived, a little bundle of water and skin and grease on the ground behind her rear quarters.

The babe was tiny, as long as a shin, palomino, and covered in soft orange down so light that he looked hairless. No jaw at all. How would he grind grass? Limbs all in soft folds like clouds. Grama said nothing, but held up his feet for me to see. The forelegs had no hoof-buds at all, just fingers; and his hind feet were great soft mitts. Not quite a freak, streamlined and beautiful in a way. But fragile, defenceless, and nothing that would help Leveza climb the hierarchy. It was the most Ancestral child I had ever seen.

Grama set to licking him clean. I looked at the poor babe’s face. I could see his hide through the sparse hair on his cheeks. “Hello,” I said. “I’m your groom-mummy. Your name is Kaway. Yes it is. You are Kaway.”

A blank. He couldn’t talk. He could hardly move.

I had to pick him up with my hands. There was no question of using my mouth; there was no pelt to grip. I settled the babe next to Leveza. Her face shone love down on him. “He’s beautiful as he is.”

Grama jerked her head toward the partition; we went outside to talk. “I’ve heard of such births; they happen sometimes. The inheritances come together like cards shuffling. He won’t learn to talk until he’s two. He won’t walk until then, either. He won’t really be mobile until three or four.”

“Four!” I thought of all those migrations.

Grama shrugged. “They can live long, if they make it past infancy. Maybe fifty years.”

I was going to ask where they were now, and then I realized. They don’t linger in this world, these soft sweet angelic things.

They get eaten.

My little Choova was born two months later. I hated childbirth. I thought I would be good at it, but I thrashed and stomped and hee-hawed like a male in season.
I will never do this again!
I promised. I didn’t think then that the promise would come true.

“Come on, babe, come on, my darling,” Leveza said, butting me with her nose as if herding a filly. “It will be over soon, just keep pushing.”

Grama had become a friend; I think she saw value in Leveza’s mindful way of doing things. “Listen to your family,” she told me.

My firstborn finally bedraggled her way out, tawny, knobbly, shivering and thin, pulled by Grama. Leveza scooped my baby up, licked her clean, breathed into her, and then dandled her in front of my face. “This is your beautiful mother.” Choova looked at me with intelligent love and grinned.

Grama whinnied the cry that triggers
Happy Birth
! Some of our friends trotted up to see my beautiful babe, stuck their heads through the curtains. They tossed their heads, chortled and nibbled the back of her neck.

“Come on, little one. Stand! Stand!” This is what the ladies had come to see. Leveza propped Choova up on her frail, awkward, heartbreaking legs, and walked her toward me. My baby stumbled forward and collapsed like a pile of sticks, into the sheltering bay of my stomach.