The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

pod preserved her sinewy body. Umos caught the pod with an extensor talon and gently untangled the net. He hadn’t used the net in millennia; there’d been nothing to catch but space debris. But today, she had come to him— traveling undisturbed in her pod, preserved ages ago on the day of her death.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Umos tractored her into the starship’s bay, running background ID programs on the Maker. She matched no one in his databanks. Her pod slid into place and he repressurized. Sometimes Umos forgot the ship was a tool, and not himself; he was a tool-user like the species that built him, like the species he sought to create on the planet below. But as her body settled into one of his ports—an act that should have been intimate, were he a Maker—he felt nothing except curiosity. Umos was not a Maker. He merely served them.

He switched his attention to the port. He prepared an ammonium hydrate solution, stripped off her pod, and explored her with his inner arms. His fiber cilia tickled her uncovered flesh, testing for bacterial life—unlikely, but seeking life had become habit. So far, he’d found nothing except the microbes he nurtured on the planet below. After he analyzed this Maker, he would check on them again; it had been over ten thousand years since he last looked.

He ran tests, cross-checked, and verified. She was as dead as the others. No life, not even bacterial; efforts to clone her genetic material produced nothing at all. As if, to quote the movements of the great poet Shwahseh, she had chosen warmer water over cold shores. Just like the other Makers, leaving the universe alone to Umos. He played a recording of the poet swimming while he pondered the significance of the Maker’s appearance. He spent twenty years thinking about it.

When he had analyzed all the possibilities, he came to the most likely one: A Maker, perhaps one who’d programmed him directly, must have cast this child in this direction upon her death.

But why? A reminder? A message?

The only message he could think of involved what lay on the planet below. Umos shifted into view mode and slipped through semi-quantum states. The species below could not yet perceive such states; he’d planted its genetic material only half a million years ago. Nothing grew that quickly, regardless of its evolutionary track.

And indeed, as he checked in, the planet looked much the same as it had before. Seas of single-celled organisms, stewing in murky waters. A few had evolved into more complex structures. A promising start, but no more. He took water and air samples and returned to his normal off-planet state.

He reconsidered the young Maker. She was tall for her age and had solid cartilage structures. A fine specimen, now that her flesh was rehydrating. Umos hadn’t seen a Maker since he first embarked upon this mission.

He wondered if he dared experiment. A quick analysis suggested he might; the results proved his suspicions. No bacteria would grow inside her tank, not the seeds he’d brought nor the evolved organisms on this alien planet. Nothing.

Umos had always wondered why the Makers would create him and then abandon him. Why had they left him here? But his databanks couldn’t answer that question. He encoded a name for the child—Wahiia, meaning “only”—and inscribed it on her tank.

For a moment he considered her, enclosed inside his starship—just the two of them, together with these sparse planets and distant stars, in a remote galaxy not their own. Umos’s emotions were limited to ones that helped with his mission, like compassion and hope. But in moments like this, he thought he felt something more.

Umos had a lot of waiting to do. It was neither patience nor frustration; it simply was. Growing new intelligent life took millions—or sometimes billions—of years. Umos required no amusement, but often entertained himself anyway. Partly to keep his systems alert—but also because if he did create a species capable of comprehending him, he wanted to be interesting.

So, to pass the time, he solved the n-1 version of the Givuri paradox and catalogued every possible move in the game of ih. He composed sky-motion songs with his talons and created an element with 180 nucleic pseudoprotons. He decided the locations of all the stars in the universe would interest an intelligent species, so he spent three-hundred thousand years cataloging that data in parallel structures, attempting to predict all the organizational methods that his new creatures might develop based on their potential brain structures.

Wahiia floated motionless in her tank, though sometimes Umos would move her to imitate conversation. Left fin raised, right curled, nostril flared in greeting. Ssshiuaaya, she’d say, if she could.

I’m glad to meet you too, is what Umos would say. Would you like to discuss philosophy?

A tilted brow ridge, and they would begin, asking questions of each other in a fashion known even to the youngest Makers. Wahiia’s body was whole, and thus able to ask any question Umos could conceive. And so Umos kept himself sharp, self-repairing any damage before it progressed too far.

As time passed, he checked on his creatures on the planet’s surface more often. They were large now, impressively multi-celled, with extensive nervous and circulatory systems. They even resembled some creatures in his database—species 01222786, called sumaou with leftward-angled head, a warm- blooded furry carnivore considered a Maker delicacy. A striking resemblance, considering the alien climate in which they evolved. These sumaou were much larger, though—one fierce subspecies was ten times taller than Wahiia, and Umos suspected the shaggy beast would eat her in one gulp.

How strange that these creatures would thrive here, while those that resembled the Makers stayed in the watery depths. The oceans here were not conducive to intelligent growth—at least not yet, though time might show differently. Umos didn’t like the sumaou. They were clumsy and loud. Too large and a too severe a drain on resources, unlike the efficient Makers. Umos tested the planet’s air, soil, and water from ten thousand locations, as he always did now that complex life had evolved.

Growing a new intelligent race was a weighty task, and sometimes he grew tired. He would open Wahiia’s tank and stir her fluids for company. He asked her, Who made you? Who created you and where did they go?

Wahiia’s fins trembled a bit, then drooped as he ceased stirring her tank. As the answer came from within himself, he made no headway on the question.

Many hazards could kill a young race. Solar flares could scorch the planet. Radiation could wreck its climate. A nearby supernova might destroy everything. Umos did not interfere with self-contained ecosystems, but he guarded them from outside forces. The chances of a planet experiencing a catastrophe sufficient to wipe out advanced life were huge. That was why so few intelligent species evolved, despite the seeming probability that they should.

In fact, even now a burst of gamma rays sped toward the planet. Umos knew he should steal them from the sky—bend them into his singularity transcept and divert them in another direction. But he stayed his extensors, troubled. He had eight thousand years before he needed to take action. The giant sumaou grew and evolved, but not in directions which satisfied him. He consulted his tables and ran some probability. It could be that super-intelligent life might yet evolve elsewhere on the planet—perhaps in those small tusked cave- dwellers, the most alien-looking species yet—but the sumaou’s presence stunted that development.

Umos’s priority system instructed that the mission took precedence. But which choice would fulfill his mission? Probability was not the same as certainty. The sumaou might yet find their way. Or perhaps, if this planet ran its course, the cave-dwellers would die out, and the sumaou would follow after them.

Umos measured the gamma rays and calculated the impact. He analyzed the results on the planet’s ecosystem. The sumaou would die—except the strangest ones, the small ones who lived underground—and the cave-dwellers would survive. The decision troubled him. Wahiia, he asked, which would you choose?

I would choose the action most likely to create an intelligent species. That is why we made you: To decide what to do.

But which way will be more effective? There are so many unknown variables.

Choose survival. Sacrifice some so that others may grow.

But then why did you not choose survival? You and the other Makers?