The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
“Hey!” Alice said. “There’s no need for that.”
The deck floor was mostly gone now, as was the starboard side of the hull, which she could see through the blurry office walclass="underline" the Void was on two sides. But the ceiling remained intact, and since there was no such thing as up or down in space—especially without the artificial gravity—she was doing okay with her mag-spiked boots. Shortly, though, she was going to run out of places to move.
“Computer, if you could just stop being so long-winded and give me something I can use, that would be great,” she said.
“The nature and pace of the narrative isn’t under the computer’s control,” the computer said, annoyingly.
Alice grumbled an insult under her breath and kept going. Very shortly, none of this would matter. The portside hull was weakening already, not so much from direct contact with the Void as a consequence of having its structural integrity challenged thanks to half of it no longer existing. The hull’s metal shell was wrinkling . . .
“Hang on, go back,” Alice said. “Repeat that last part.”
Alice grumbled an insult . . .
“After that.”
Already, the portside hull was weakening . . .
“Computer, end narrative mode.”
“Ending narrative mode.”
Alice put her hand on the blurry med lab wall on the port side. It felt firm, because it was a wall, but at the same time it also didn’t feel that firm. She pushed . . . and her hand went through it.
“Okay, that probably shouldn’t have worked,” she said.
She kicked her leg through, and then her other arm, and soon she’d gotten her whole body on the other side. Now in a room that was trying very hard to be both Marchere’s supercollider lab and a medical examination room, she mag-walked across the ceiling to the outer hull.
The pushing-her-hand-through-something-that-was-supposed-to-be-solid trick didn’t work a second time; the hull was firm, although she could hear it starting to fail. Waiting for that to happen seemed like a bad bet, and she didn’t have to; not as long as she was carrying explosive charges.
She pulled one out, set the digital timer to thirty seconds, said a quiet prayer that she was in a part of the ship where chemical explosives and digital clocks still worked like they were supposed to, and then disengaged the mag-clips from the ceiling and pushed herself to the far end of the room.
The charge went off, exposing all of deck three and eleven-sixteenths to outer space. The atmosphere blew out of the hole, and sucked Alice out with it. In seconds, she was drifting on a free trajectory a significant distance from the Erwin.
“Now unsynchronized with USFS Erwin’s computer,” her suit’s computer announced, which Alice thought was great news.
“Call the shuttle to my position,” Alice said.
“Unable to locate shuttle,” the computer said.
Alice twisted around until she was facing the wreckage of the Erwin. She could see the shuttle all right, but it was now embedded in the side of the larger ship. It looked like the Erwin was giving birth to it, only in reverse.
“That’s great,” she said.
The Void was just about done with the Erwin. Like the narrative said, it was hard to tell whether the ship had been drifting into the Void or whether the Void was expanding to consume the ship. Either way, she couldn’t afford to drift into it herself, nor could she ask the Rosen to get that close to it just to pick her up.
But, she wasn’t out of options. There were two more charges in her bag, and the bag had armor shielding.
She pulled it off her back and got out the two remaining charges.
“Computer, locate the Rosen,” she said. Then she held her breath. If the computer said unable to locate or worse, the USFSF Rosen does not exist, Alice was out of luck. It said neither.
“Rosen located.”
“Target on helmet view.”
The computer pinpointed the ship for her.
Now’s the fun part, she thought. She set the timer for both charges at thirty seconds, put them back in the bag, and then tried to crouch until her whole body—feet-first so her legs would absorb the worst of it—was behind the steel plate in the bag. Then she tried to maneuver herself so that she was between the impending explosion and the USFSF Rosen.
“Computer, activate emergency beacon,” she said.
“Emergency beacon activated.”
“Thanks. Sure hope this works.”
The charges blew. She felt her right leg shatter, and then she blacked out.
She woke up in the Rosen’s med lab, with a doctor she didn’t know standing over her.
“There you are,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” she said. Her mouth was dry and her vision blurry.
How long have I been out? she wondered.
She tried to sit up, but it felt like the Rosen’s gravity was set at a much higher force level than it was supposed to be.
“Here, let me help,” the doctor said, pushing a button that got her bed into an upright position. “I’m Dr. Maxwell, and you are lucky to be alive.”
“You wouldn’t be the first doctor to tell me that,” she said, trying out a smile. “What’s the damage?”
“Broken right leg, shattered left kneecap, broken left elbow, torn muscles in your right shoulder, and your oxygen ran out three minutes before we got to you, so you’re probably missing a few brain cells. There were a couple of other things, but that’s the worst of it.”
“I need to speak to the captain,” she said.
“I’m sure. I’ll let him know you’re awake; he’ll want to speak to you too. They’ve been going over the information you retrieved from the Erwin; I guess there are a lot of questions that need answering.”
“How long . . . ?”
“How long have you been out?” he asked. “Depends on where you’d like to start counting. We believe you were adrift for a couple of days, but you’d been on board the Erwin for more than a week. Your trip computer recorded only a few hours, though. I think this is one of the questions the captain has. You do need some rest first, so if you’d like for me to delay him, I can certainly do so.”
“No,” she said. “It’s okay. The sooner the better.”
“Good,” he said with a paternal smile. “I’ll let him know. Meanwhile, if you’re thirsty, there’s a glass of water on your right. I’ll be right back.”
He left. Alice sat still for a few minutes, trying to compose her thoughts. It was going to be impossible to explain everything without sounding insane, but she didn’t really care about coming off as sane anymore. What happened, happened. They’d have to take the data from Dr. Marchere, and her accounting, and figure out what to do with it. Hopefully, one of the things they would decide to do would be to bar all travel through Quadrant Brenda.
After a few minutes with her thoughts, Alice realized she was fantastically thirsty. She turned and reached for the glass, not entirely anticipating how weak her right arm was. What began as a straightforward reach for a nearby object became an awkward flail that resulted in her knocking the glass off the edge of the counter.