The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

Planets blend in a cosy private lounge. They were an odd couple: the massive Shet, his grey hide forming ponderous, dignified folds across his skull and over his brow, and the stripling immortal, slick strands of head-hair to his shoulders, black eyes dancing with mischief on either side of the dark space of his nasal. But the Aleutian, though he had never lived to be old—he wasn’t the type—had amassed a fund of fascinating knowledge in his many lives, and Boaaz was an elderly priest with varied interests and a youthful outlook.

Butterscotch’s hundred or so actual citizens didn’t frequent the Old Station. The usual customers were mining lookerers, who drove in from the desert in the trucks that were their homes, and could be heard carousing, mildly, in the public bar. Boaaz and Conrad shared a glance, agreeing not to join the fun tonight. The natives were friendly enough—but Martian settlers were, almost exclusively, humans who had never left conventional space. The miners had met few “aliens,” and believed the Buonarotti Interstellar Transit was a dangerous novelty that would never catch on. One got tired of the barrage of uneasy fascination.

“I’m afraid I scare the children,” rumbled Boaaz.

The Aleutian could have passed for a noseless, slope-shouldered human. The Shet was hairless and impressively bulky, but what really made him different was his delicates. To Boaaz it was natural that he possessed two sets of fingers: one set thick and horny, for pounding and mashing, the other slender and supple, for fine manipulation. Normally protected by his wrist folds, his delicates would shoot out to grasp a stylus for instance, or handle eating implements. He had seen the young folk startle at this, and recoil with bulging eyes—

“Stop calling them children,” suggested Conrad. “They don’t like it.”

“I don’t think that can be it. The young always take the physical labour and service jobs, it’s a fact of nature. I’m only speaking English.”

Conrad shrugged. For a while each of them studied his own screen, as the saying goes. A comfortable silence prevailed. Boaaz reviewed a list of deserving “cases” sent to him by the Colonial Social Services in Opportunity. He was not impressed. They’d simply compiled a list of odds and ends: random persons who didn’t fit in, and were vaguely thought to have problems.

To his annoyance, one of the needy appeared to live in Butterscotch.

“Here’s a woman who has been suspected of being insane,” he grumbled aloud. “Has she been treated? Apparently not. How barbaric. Has visited Speranza… No known religion… What’s the use in telling me that?”

“Maybe they think you’d like to convert her,” suggested Conrad.

“I do not convert people!” exclaimed Boaaz, shocked. “Should an unbelieving parishoner wish my guidance towards the Abyss, they’ll let me know. It’s not my business to persuade them! I have entered my name alongside other Ministers of Religion on Mars. If my services as a priest should be required at a Birth, Adulthood, Conjunction, or Death, I shall be happy to oblige, and that’s enough.”

Conrad laughed soundlessly, the way Aleutians do. “You don’t bother your ‘flock,’ and they don’t bother you! That sounds like a nice easy berth.”

Not always, thought the old priest, ruefully. Sometimes not easy at all!

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Boaaz. Mars is a colony. It’s run by the planetary government of Earth, and they’re obssessed with gathering information about innocent strangers. When they can’t find anything interesting, they make it up. The file they keep on me is vast, I’ve seen it.”

“Earth,” powerful neighbour to the Red Planet, was the local name for the world everyone else in the Diaspora knew as the Blue.

Boaaz was here to minister to souls. Conrad was here—he claimed—purely a tourist. The fat file the humans kept might suggest a different story, but Boaaz had no intention of prying. Aleutians, the Elder Race, had their own religion; or lack of one. As long as he showed no sign of suffering, Conrad’s sins were his own business. The old Shet cracked a snifter vial, tucked it in his holder, inhaled deeply, and returned to the eyeball-screen that was visible to his eyes alone. The curious Social Services file on Jewel, Isabel reappeared. All very odd. Careful of misunderstandings, he opened his dictionary, and checked in detail the meanings of English words he knew perfectly well.

wicked…

old woman…

insane…

Later, on his way to bed, he examined one of the fine rock formations that decorated the station’s courtyards. They promised good hunting. The mining around here was of no great worth, ferrous ores for the domestic market, but Boaaz was not interested in commercial value: he collected mineral curiosities. It was his passion, and one very good reason for visiting Butterscotch, right on the edge of the most ancient and interesting Martian terrain. If truth be known, Boaaz looked on this far-flung Vicarate as an interesting prelude to his well-earned retirement. He did not expect his duties to be burdensome. But he was a conscientious person, and Conrad’s teasing had stung.

“I shall visit her,” he announced, to the sharp-shadowed rocks.

* * *

The High Priest had travelled from his home world to Speranza, capital city of the Diaspora, and onward to the Blue Planet Torus Port, in no time at all (allowing for a few hours of waiting around, and two “false duration” interludes of virtual entertainment). The months he’d spent aboard the conventional space liner Burroughs, completing his interplanetary journey, had been slow but agreeable. He’d arrived to find that his Residence, despatched by licensed courier, had been delayed—and decided that until his home was decoded into material form, he might as well carry on travelling. His tour of this backward but extensive new parish happened to concentrate on prime mineral-hunting sites: but he would not neglect his obligations.

He took a robotic jitney as far as the network extended, and proceeded on foot. Jewel, Isabel lived out of town, up against the Enclosure that kept tolerable climate and air quality captive. As yet unscrubbed emissions lingered here in drifts of vapour; the thin air had a lifeless, paradoxical warmth. Spindly towers of mine tailings, known as “Martian Stromatolites,” stood in groups, heads together like ugly sentinels. Small mining machines crept about, munching mineral-rich dirt. There was no other movement, no sound but the crepitation of a million tiny ceramic teeth.

Nothing lived.

The “Martians” were very proud of their Quarantine. They farmed their food in strict confinement, they tortured off-world travellers with lengthy decontamination. Even the gastropod machines were not allowed to reproduce: they were turned out in batches by the mine factories, and recycled in the refineries when they were full. What were the humans trying to preserve? The racial purity of rocks and sand?

Absurd superstition, muttered the old priest, into his breather. Life is life!

Jewel, Isabel clearly valued her privacy. He hadn’t messaged her in advance. His visit would be off the record, and if she turned him away from her door, so be it. He could see the isolated module now, at the end of a chance “avenue” of teetering stromatolites. He reviewed the file’s main points as he stumped along. Old. Well travelled, for a human of her caste. Reputed to be rich. No social contacts in Butterscotch, no data traffic with any other location. Supplied by special delivery at her own expense. Came to Mars, around a local year ago, on a settler’s one-way ticket. Boaaz thought that must be very unusual. Martian settlers sometimes retired to their home planet; if they could afford the medical bills. Why would a fragile elderly person make the opposite trip, apparently not planning to return?

The dwelling loomed up, suddenly right in front of him. He had a moment of selfish doubt. Was he committing himself to an endless round of visiting random misfits? Maybe he should quietly go away again… But his approach had been observed, a transparent pane had opened. A face glimmered, looking out through the inner and the outer skin; as if from deep, starless space.

“Who are you?” demanded a harsh voice, cracked with disuse. “Are you real? Can you hear me? You’re not human.”

“I hear you, I’m, aah, ‘wired for sound.’ I am not a human, I am a Shet, a priest of the Void, newly arrived, just making myself known. May I come in?”

He half-hoped that she would say no. Go away, I don’t like priests, can’t you see I want to be left alone? But the lock opened. He passed through, divested himself of the breather and his outer garments, and entered the pressurised chamber.