Brave New Worlds

books, no cultural referents to anything gay, lesbian, transsexual or remotely queer. For the story's masked narrator, it's a perfect world. But the images behind him suggest something a little darker.

The narrator of this piece speaks through a mobile white mask with very abstracted features, strikingly reminiscent of a Guy Fawkes mask. It's interesting to note that at the time, V for Vendetta, a 1980s British comics series featuring a character who wears a Guy Fawkes mask (and written by Alan Moore, the first editor of this piece) was very popular.

Different motivations, different details — but Moore's character, Gaiman's narrator, and Guy Fawkes were all men perfectly willing to destroy the world for their own black purposes.

Amaryllis by CARRIE VAUGHN

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, which started with Kitty and the Midnight Hour. Her latest books are Kitty Goes to War; a young adult novel, Voices of Dragons; and a stand-alone fantasy novel, Discord's Apple. Her short work has appeared many times in Realms of Fantasy and in a number of anthologies, such as By Blood We Live; The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance; Fast Ships, Black Sails; and Warriors. She has a story forthcoming in my anthology The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, and this story first appeared in my online science fiction magazine, Lightspeed.

'Amaryllis' gives us a world that, compared to some dystopias, feels downright wholesome. No one is tortured; no one lives under scrutiny; no one is executed. But the characters are caught in a society that has taken away their reproductive control. For most of us, that's a pretty basic human right.

But there's a good reason to take family size out of individual control, with the world's population spinning out of control. As the author says: 'in the industrialized world at least, a financially successful family or individual can stay pretty isolated from their community, if they so choose. But if there's ever a cataclysmic loss of resources, that could change. ' And in the future Carrie Vaughn spins, a desperate community must contain its population — or die.

Our next story's debatable dystopic quotient aside, this story explores the idea that while one never sets out to create a dystopia, in order for a society to survive, sometimes it is necessary to become one.

* * *

I never knew my mother, and I never understood why she did what she did. I ought to be grateful that she was crazy enough to cut out her implant so she could get pregnant. But it also meant she was crazy enough to hide the pregnancy until termination wasn't an option, knowing the whole time that she'd never get to keep the baby. That she'd lose everything. That her household would lose everything because of her.

I never understood how she couldn't care. I wondered what her family thought when they learned what she'd done, when their committee split up the household, scattered them — broke them, because of her. Did she think I was worth it?

It was all about quotas.

'They're using cages up north, I heard. Off shore, anchored,' Nina said. 'Fifty feet across — twice as much protein grown with half the resources, and we'd never have to touch the wild population again. We could double our quota. '

I hadn't really been listening to her. We were resting, just for a moment; she sat with me on the railing at the prow of Amaryllis and talked about her big plans.

Wind pulled the sails taut and the fiberglass hull cut through waves without a sound, we sailed so smooth. Garrett and Sun hauled up the nets behind us, dragging in the catch. Amaryllis was elegant, a 30-foot sleek vessel with just enough cabin and cargo space — an antique but more than seaworthy. She was a good boat, with a good crew. The best.

'Marie—' Nina said, pleading.

I sighed and woke up. 'We've been over this. We can't just double our quota. '

'But if we got authorization—'

'Don't you think we're doing all right as it is?' We had a good crew — we were well fed and not exceeding our quotas; I thought we'd be best off not screwing all that up. Not making waves, so to speak.

Nina's big brown eyes filled with tears — I'd said the wrong thing, because I knew what she was really after, and the status quo wasn't it.

'That's just it,' she said. 'We've met our quotas and kept everyone healthy for years now. I really think we should try. We can at least ask, can't we?'

The truth was: No, I wasn't sure we deserved it. I wasn't sure that kind of responsibility would be worth it. I didn't want the prestige. Nina didn't even want the prestige — she just wanted the baby.

'It's out of our hands at any rate,' I said, looking away because I couldn't bear the intensity of her expression.

Pushing herself off the rail, Nina stomped down Amaryllis' port side to join the rest of the crew hauling in the catch. She wasn't old enough to want a baby. She was lithe, fit, and golden, running barefoot on the deck, sun-bleached streaks gleaming in her brown hair. Actually, no, she was old enough. She'd been with the house for seven years — she was twenty, now. It hadn't seemed so long.

'Whoa!' Sun called. There was a splash and a thud as something in the net kicked against the hull. He leaned over the side, the muscles along his broad, coppery back flexing as he clung to a net that was about to slide back into the water. Nina, petite next to his strong frame, reached with him. I ran down and grabbed them by the waistbands of their trousers to hold them steady. The fourth of our crew, Garrett, latched a boat hook into the net. Together we hauled the catch onto the deck. We'd caught something big, heavy, and full of powerful muscles.

We had a couple of aggregators — large buoys made of scrap steel and wood— anchored fifty miles or so off the coast. Schooling fish were attracted to the aggregators, and we found the fish — mainly mackerel, sardines, sablefish, and whiting. An occasional shark or marlin found its way into the nets, but those we let go; they were rare and outside our quotas. That was what I expected to see — something unusually large thrashing among the slick silvery mass of smaller fish. This thing was large, yes, as big as Nina — no wonder it had almost pulled them over — but it wasn't the right shape. Sleek and streamlined, a powerful swimmer. Silvery like the rest of the catch.

'What is it?' Nina asked.

'Tuna,' I said, by process of elimination. I had never seen one in my life. 'Bluefin, I think. '

'No one's caught a bluefin in thirty years,' Garrett said. Sweat was dripping onto his face despite the bandanna tying back his shaggy dark hair.

I was entranced, looking at all that protein. I pressed my hand to the fish's flank, feeling its muscles twitch. 'Maybe they're back. '

We'd been catching the tuna's food all along, after all. In the old days the aggregators attracted as many tuna as mackerel. But no one had seen one in so long, everyone assumed they were gone.

'Let's put him back,' I said, and the others helped me lift the net to the side. It took all of us, and when we finally got the tuna to slide overboard, we lost half the net's catch with it, a wave of silvery scales glittering as they hit the water. But that was okay: Better to be under quota than over.

The tuna splashed its tail and raced away. We packed up the rest of the catch and set sails for home.

The Californian crew got their banner last season, and flew its red and green—