Year's Best Scifi 8 Part 46

Jeff nodded again. "Shoot."

"You said it was going to get better, people were going to come out here from Elysium again. But you were boarding up your store. So you know, only you're scared I'll leave."

Jeff did not speak.

"We're not like you." To ill.u.s.trate what he meant, Zaa began six-legging. "I been raised with you-with you Sol people is what I mean. I feel like I'm one of you, and maybe once a week I'll see myself in a mirror or someplace and I think, my gosh, I'm an alien."

"You're a Martian," Jeff told him firmly. "I am, too. You call us Sols or Earthmen or something, and most of my folks were Navajo. But I'm Martian, just like you."

"Thanks. Only we get attached to places, you know? We're like cats. I hatched in this town. I grew up here. As long as I can stay, I'm not going."

"There's food in the store. Canned and dried stuff, a lot of it. I'll leave you the key. You can look after it for me."

Zaa took a deep breath, filling a chest thicker even than Jeff's with thin Martian air that they had made. "You said we'd added to the ma.s.s with our air. Made more gravity. Only we didn't. The nitrogen's from the rock we dig and crush. You know that. The oxygen's from splitting water. Fossil water from underground. Sure, we bring stuff from Earth, but it doesn't amount to s.h.i.t. We've still got the same gravity we always did."

"I guess I wasn't thinking," Jeff conceded.

"You were thinking. You were sc.r.a.ping up any kind of an argument you could to make yourself think they weren't going to shut us down. To make me think that, too."

Jeff looked at his watch.

"It's a long time yet."

"Sure."

He pressed the combination on the keypad-nine, nine, two, five, seven, seven. You could not leave the door of the Administration Building open; an alarm would sound. "What's that?" Zaa caught his arm.

It was a voice from deep inside the building. Zaa leaped away with Jeff after him, long bounds carrying them the length of the corridor and up the stair.

"Mister Shonto? Administrator Shonto?"

"Here I am!" Panting, Jeff spoke as loudly as he could. "I'm coming!"

Undersecretary R. Lowell Bensen, almost in person, was seated in the holoconference theater; in that dim light, he looked fully as real as Zaa.

"Ah, there you are." He smiled; and Jeff, who was superst.i.tious about smiles, winced inwardly.

"Leem, too. Good. Good! I realized you two might be busy elsewhere, but good G.o.d, twenty-four fifteen. A time convenient for us, a convenient time to get you two out of bed. Believe me, the Department treats me like that, too. Fourteen hours on a good day, twice around the clock on the bad ones. How are things in Grand Ca.n.a.l?"

"Quiet," Jeff said. "The plant's running at fifteen percent, per instructions. We've got a weak hydraulic pump on Number One Crusher, so we're running Number Two." All this would have been on the printout Bensen had undoubtedly read before making his call, but it would be impolite to mention it.

"Zaa Leem here is making oversized rings and a new piston for that pump while we wait for a new one."

Not in the least intending to do it, Jeff gulped. "We're afraid we may not get a new pump, sir, and we want to be capable of one hundred percent whenever you need us."

Bensen nodded, and Jeff turned to Zaa. "How are those new parts coming, Leem?"

"Just have to be installed, sir."

"You two are the entire staff of the Grand Ca.n.a.l Plant now? You don't even have a secretary? That came up during our meeting."

Jeff said, "That's right, sir."

"But there's a town there, isn't there? Grand Ca.n.a.l City or some such? A place where you can hire more staff when you need them?"

Here it came. Jeff's mouth felt so dry that he could scarcely speak. "There is a town, Mr. Bensen.

You're right about that, sir. But I couldn't hire more personnel there. n.o.body's left besides-besides ourselves, sir. Leem and me."

Bensen looked troubled. "A ghost town, is it?"

Zaa spoke up, surprising Jeff. "It was a tourist town, Mr. Bensen. That's why my family moved here.

People wanted to see aliens back then, and talk to some, and they'd buy our art to do it. Now-well, sir, when my folks came to the Sol system, it took them two sidereal years just to get here. You know how it is these days, sir. Where'd you take your last vacation?"

"Isis, a lovely world. I see what you mean."

"The Department pays me pretty well, sir, and I save my money, most of it. My boss here wants me to go off to our home planet, where there are a lot more people like me. He says I ought to buy a ticket, whenever I've got the money, just to have a look at it."

Bensen frowned. "We'd hate to lose you, Leem."

"You're not going to, Mr. Bensen. I've got the money now, and more besides. But I don't speak the language or know the customs, and if I did, I wouldn't like them. Do you like aliens, sir?"

"I don't dislike them."

"That's exactly how I feel, sir. n.o.body comes to Grand Ca.n.a.l anymore, sir. Why should they? It's just more Mars, and they live here already. Me and Mr. Shonto, we work here, and we think our work's important. So we stay. Only there's n.o.body else."

For a moment no one spoke.

"This came up in our meeting, too." Bensen cleared his throat, and suddenly Jeff understood that Bensen felt almost as embarra.s.sed and self-conscious as he had. "Betty Collins told us Grand Ca.n.a.l had become a ghost town, but I wanted to make sure."

"It is," Jeff muttered. "If you're going to shut down our plant, sir, I can draw up a plan-"

Bensen was shaking his head. "How many security bots have you got, Shonto?"

"None, sir." "None?"

"No, sir. We had human guards, sir. The Plant Police. They were only police in Grand Ca.n.a.l, actually. They were laid off one by one. I reported it-or my predecessor and I did, sir, I ought to say."

Bensen sighed. "I didn't see your reports. I wish I had. You're in some danger, I'm afraid, you and Leem."

"Really, sir?"

"Yes. Terrorists have been threatening to wreck the plants. Give in to their demands, or everyone suffocates. You know the kind of thing. Did you see it on vid?"

Jeff shook his head. "I don't watch much, sir. Maybe not as much as I should."

Bensen sighed again. "One of the news shows got hold of it and ran it. Just one show. After that, we persuaded them to keep a lid on it. That kind of publicity just plays into the terrorists' hands."

For a moment he was silent again, seeming to collect his thoughts; Zaa squirmed uncomfortably. "Out there where you are, you're safer than any of the others. Still, you ought to have security. You get supplies each thirty-day?"

Jeff shook his head again. "Every other thirty-day, sir."

"I see. I'm going to change that. A supply crawler will come around every thirty-day from now on.

I'll see to it that the next one carries that new pump."

"Thank you, sir."

"But you'll be getting a special resupply as quickly as I can arrange it. Security bots. Twenty, if I can sc.r.a.pe that many together. Whatever I can send."

Jeff began to thank him again, but Bensen cut him off. "It may take a while. Weeks. Until you get them, you'll have to be on guard every moment. You're running at fifteen percent, you said. Could you up that to twenty-five?"

"Yes, sir. To one hundred within a few days."

"Good. Good! Make it twenty-five now, and let us know if you run into any problems."

Abruptly, Bensen was gone. Jeff looked at Zaa, and Zaa looked at Jeff. Both grinned.

At last Jeff managed to say, "They're not shutting us down. Not yet anyhow."

Zaa rose, two-legging and seeming as tall as the main cooling stack. "These terrorist have them p.i.s.sing in their pants, Jeff. p.i.s.sing in their pants! We're their ace in the hole. There's n.o.body out here but us."

"It'll blow over," Jeff found he was still grinning. "It's bound to, in a year or two. Meanwhile we better get Number One back on line."

They did, and when they had finished, Zaa s.n.a.t.c.hed up a push broom, holding it with his right hand and his right intermediate foot as if it were a two-handed sword. "Defend yourself, Earther!"

Jeff backed away hurriedly until Zaa tossed him a mop, shouting, "They can mark your lonely grave with this!"

"Die, alien sc.u.m!" Jeff made a long thrust that Zaa parried just in time. "I rid the s.p.a.ceways of their filth today!" Insulting the opponent had always been one of the best parts of their battles.

This one was furious. Jeff was smaller and not quite so strong. Zaa was slower; and though his visual field was larger, he lacked the binocular vision that let Jeff judge distances.

Even so, he prevailed in the end, driving Jeff through an open door and into the outdoor storage park, where after more furious fighting he slipped on the coa.r.s.e red gravel and fell laughing and panting with the handle of Zaa's push broom at his throat.

"Man, that was fun!" He dropped his mop and held up his hands to indicate surrender. "How long since we did this?"

Zaa considered as he helped him up. "Ten years, maybe."

"Way too long!"

"Sure." Sharp claws scratched Zaa's scaly chin. "Hey, I've got an idea. We always wanted real swords, remember?"

As a boy, Jeff would have traded everything he owned for a real sword; the spot had been touched, and he found that there was still-still-a little, wailing ghost of his old desire. "We could make swords," Zaa said. "Real swords. I could and you could help." Abruptly, he seemed to overflow with enthusiasm. "This rock's got a lot of iron in it. We could smelt it, make a crucible somehow. Make steel. I'd hammer it out-"

He dissolved in laughter beneath Jeff's stare. "Just kidding. But, hey, I got some high-carbon steel strip that would do for blades. I could grind one in an hour or so, and I could make hilts out of bra.s.s bar stock, spruce them up with file work, and fasten them on with epoxy."

Though mightily tempted, Jeff muttered, "It's Department property, Zaa."

Zaa laid a large, clawed hand upon his shoulder. "Boss boy, you fail to understand. We're arming ourselves. What if the terrorists get here before the security bots do?"

The idea swept over Jeff like the west wind in the Mare Erythraeum, carrying him along like so much dust. "How come I'm the administrator and you're the maintenance guy?"

"Simple. You're not smart enough for maintenance. Tomorrow?"

"Sure. And we'll have to practice with them a little before we get them sharp, right? It won't be enough to have them, we have to know how to use them, and that would be too dangerous if they had sharp edges and points."

"It's going to be dangerous anyhow," Zaa told him thoughtfully, "but we can wear safety helmets with face shields, and I'll make us some real shields, too."

The shields required more work than the swords, because Zaa covered their welded aluminum frames with densely woven plastic-coated wire, and wove a flattering portrait of Diane Seyn (whom he had won in battle long ago) into his, and an imagined picture of such a woman as he thought Jeff might like into Jeff's.

Although the shields had taken a full day each, both swords and shields were ready in under a week, and the fight that followed-the most epic of all their epic battles-ranged from the boarded up bungalows of Grand Ca.n.a.l to the lip of the Grand Ca.n.a.l itself, a setting so dramatic that each was nearly persuaded to kill the other, driving him over the edge to fall-a living meteor-to his death tens of thousands of feet below. The pure poetry of the thing seemed almost worth a life, as long as it was not one's own.

Neither did, of course. But an orthopter taped them as it shot footage for a special called Haunted Mars. And among the tens of billions on Earth who watched a few seconds of their duel were women who took note of their shields and understood.

Patent Infringement

NANCY KRESS.

Nancy Kress [www.sff.net/people/nankress] lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is one of today's leading SF writers. She is known for her complex medical SF stories, and for her biological and evolutionary extrapolations in such cla.s.sics as Beggars in Spain (1993), Beggars and Choosers (1994), and Beggars Ride (1996). In recent years, she has written Maximum Light (1998), Probability Moon (2000), and Probability Sun (2001), and last year published Probability s.p.a.ce, the final book in a trilogy of hard SF novels set against the background of a war between humanity and an alien race. Her stories are rich in texture and in psychological insight, and have been collected in Trinity and Other Stories (1985), The Aliens of Earth (1993) and Beaker's Dozen (1998). She has won two Nebulas and a Hugo for them, and been nominated for a dozen more of these awards.

"Patent Infringement," from Asimov's, is a short, amusing story told in memos and letters, about a guy whose genes are used to create a medicine. He asks for a share of the royalties. Pohl and Kornbluth, still the models in SF, were never more sharply satirical than this.

PRESS RELEASE Kegelman-b.a.l.l.ston Corporation is proud to announce the first public release of its new drug, Halitex, which cures Ulbarton's Flu completely after one ten-pill course of treatment. Ulbarton's Flu, as the public knows all too well, now afflicts upward of thirty million Americans, with the number growing daily as the highly contagious flu spreads. Halitex "fluproofs" the body by inserting genes tailored to confer immunity to this persistent and debilitating scourge, whose symptoms include coughing, muscle aches, and fatigue.

Because the virus remains in the body even after symptoms disappear, Ulbarton's Flu can recur in a given patient at any time. Halitex renders each recurrence ineffectual by "fluproofing" the body.

The General Accounting Office estimates that Ulbarton's Flu, the virus of which was first identified by Dr. Timothy Ulbarton, has cost four billion dollars already this calendar year in medical costs and lost work time. Halitex, two years in development by Kegelman-b.a.l.l.ston, is expected to be in high demand throughout the nation.

New York Post KC ZAPS ULBARTON'S FLU.

NEW DRUG DOES U'S FLU 4 U.

Jonathan Meese 538 Pleasant Lane Aspen Hill, MD 20906 Dear Mr. Kegelman and Mr. b.a.l.l.ston, I read in the newspaper that your company, Kegelman- b.a.l.l.ston, has recently released a drug, Halitex, that provides immunity against Ulbarton's Flu by gene therapy. I believe that the genes used in developing this drug are mine. Two years ago, on May 5, I visited my GP to explain that I had been exposed to Ulbarton's Flu a lot (the entire accounting department of The Pet Supply Catalog Store, where I work, developed the flu. Also my wife, three children, and mother- in-law. Plus, I believe my dog had it, although the vet disputes this). However, despite all this exposure, I did not develop Ulbarton's.