The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

Boris knelt beside the boy, the ceaseless movement of people around them forgotten. He looked into those eyes. “It’s possible,” he said. “I know that blue. It was popular three decades ago. We hacked an open-source version out of the trademarked Armani code…”

He was waffling, he thought. Why was he doing that? The woman, her familiarity disturbed him. A buzzing as of invisible mosquitoes, in his mind, a reshaping of his vision came flooding to him, out of his aug, the boy frozen beside him, smiling now, a large and bewildering and knowing smile—

The woman was shouting, he could hear it distantly, “Stop it! What are you doing to him?”

The boy was interfacing with his aug, he realised. The words came in a rush, he said, “You had no parents,” to the boy. Recollection and shame mingling together. “You were labbed, right here, hacked together out of public property genomes and bits of black-market nodes.” The boy’s hold on his mind slackened. Boris breathed, straightened up. “Nakaimas,” he said, and took a step back, suddenly frightened.

The woman looked terrified, and angry. “Stop it,” she said. “He’s not—”

Boris was suddenly ashamed. “I know,” he said. He felt confused, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.” This mix of emotions, coming so rapidly they blended into each other, wasn’t natural. Somehow the boy had interfaced with the aug and the aug, in turn, was feeding into Boris’s mind. He tried to focus. He looked at the woman. Somehow it was important to him that she would understand. He said, “He can speak to my aug. Without an interface.” Then, remembering the clinics, remembering his own work, before he left to go to space, he said, quietly, “I must have done a better job than I thought, back then.”

The boy looked up at him with guileless, deep blue eyes. Boris remembered children like him, he had birthed many, so many… The clinics of Central Station were said to be on par with those of Yunan, even. But he had not expected this, this interference, though he had heard stories, on the asteroids, and in Tong Yun, the whispered word that used to mean black magic: nakaimas.

The woman was looking at him, and her eyes, he knew her eyes—

Something passed between them, something that needed no node, no digital encoding, something earlier, more human and more primitive, like a shock, and she said, “Boris? Boris Chong?”

He recognised her at the same time she did him, wonder replacing worry, wonder, too, at how he failed to recognise her, this woman of indeterminate years suddenly resolving, like two bodies occupying the same space, into the young woman he had loved, when the world was young.

“Miriam?” he said.

“It’s me,” she said.

“But you—”

“I never left,” she said. “You did.”

* * *

He wanted to go to her now. The world was awake, and Boris was alone on the roof of the old apartment building, alone and free, but for the memories. He didn’t know what he would do about his father. He remembered holding his hand, once, when he was small, and Vlad had seemed so big, so confident and sure, and full of life. They had gone to the beach that day, it was a summer’s day and in Menashiya Jews and Arabs and Filipinos all mingled together, the Muslim women in their long dark clothes and the children running shrieking in their underwear; Tel Aviv girls in tiny bikinis, sunbathing placidly; someone smoking a joint, and the strong smell of it wafting in the sea air; the lifeguard in his tower calling out trilingual instructions—“Keep to the marked area! Did anyone lose a child? Please come to the lifeguards now! You with the boat, head towards the Tel Aviv harbour and away from the swimming area!”—the words getting lost in the chatter, someone had parked their car and was blaring out beats from the stereo, Somali refugees were cooking a barbeque on the promenade’s grassy area, a dreadlocked white guy was playing a guitar, and Vlad held Boris’s hand as they went into the water, strong and safe, and Boris knew nothing would ever happen to him; that his father would always be there to protect him, no matter what happened.

THE IRON SHIRTS by Michael F. Flynn

Born in Easton, Pennsylvania, Michael F. Flynn has a B.A. in math from La Salle University, an M.S. for work in topology from Marquette University, and works as an industrial quality engineer and statistician. Since his first sale there in 1984, Flynn has become a mainstay of Analog, and one of their most frequent contributors. He has also made sales to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, New Destinies, Alternate Generals, and elsewhere, and is thought of as one of the best new “hard science” writers to enter the field in several decades. His books include In the Country of the Blind, Fallen Angels (a novel written in collaboration with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Firestar, Rogue Star, Lodestar, Falling Stars, Eifelheim, The Wreck of the River of Stars, and The January Dancer. His stories have been collected in The Forest of Time: and Other Stories and The Nanotech Chronicles. He’s been a Hugo finalist several times and twice won Prometheus Awards, for In the Country of the Blind and Fallen Angels. His most recent books are the novels Up Jim River and In the Lion’s Mouth. He now lives in Edison, N.J.

Here he takes us to thirteenth-century Ireland for a complex alternate history tale, a subtle and complicated story of deadly political gamesmanship, full of betrayals, double crosses, and double double crosses.

GEANTRAI

The outriders were galloping in from both flanks and David o Flynn pulled back on his pony’s reins to wait halfway down the hillside. His companions imitated him, some yanking warbows from their scabbards and stringing them with thoughtless ease. The footmen lined up in a loose array, holding their javelins ready but with their thumbs not yet in the throwing loops. They had passed unmolested south of the bog country around Dun Mor, avoiding the Foreign-held lands, but one never knew. The heavens cried out the deaths of kings; but on earth in this Year of Grace twelve hundred and four and twenty, men planned those deaths in whispers.

Cill Cluanaigh rolled away fat and green from the base of the hill toward the broad expanse of Lough Corrib. From his position on the hillside, David could just make out the smudge of the lough’s farther shore. Iar Connaught resembled nothing so much as a sullen, gray cloud on the horizon. Freshening, the breeze rippled the grass and raised a sparkling white chop from the lough, as if the grass were an emerald sea breaking on a shore of shattered glass.

The outriders signaled with the finger-ogham but David couldn’t make out the numbers.

“A party of fourteen,” said Gillapadraig, his principal man-of-trust. “Armed.”

“Now, there is a surprise…” David glanced behind. “We’ll move back,” he said. “Just below the crest, not atop it.” Such a position would provide the widest field for the archers.

On David’s other side, Liam o Flaherty shifted on his pony. “It’s not a trap,” he said. “Only an escort. Himself would not send me all the way into the Sliabh ua Fhlainn only to lure you into a trap.”

“Would he not, then?” David replied distractedly. The western man spoke as if the Sliabh ua Fhlainn lay at the very ends of the earth. Yet if any land deserved that name, it was surely Iar Connaught. West of Lough Corrib they grew nothing but stones, and not very good stones at that. “Those horsemen may not be your own folk, but