Year's Best SF 17

“Is it like having your period?” Cara said. She had explained menstruation and making babies and every aspect of human reproduction to Beatrix in excruciating detail, and she, of course, had found it utterly captivating. Was there anything about humans that didn’t enthrall her?

“No. My cranial opening will expand. And my cord will release. It will connect with the cord of a perfect genetic match. And then I’ll be tethered.”

Cara stared at the red swimmer’s cap on Beatrix’s flat head.

“After years of tethering, the cord retracts and the mated couple …” Beatrix looked around to make sure that only bots swam near them. “We become one,” she whispered. “Our bodies … merge.”

“You mean you have sex?”

“Not like your people, Cara. Real sex. The merge is … permanent.”

“What do you mean ‘permanent’? How can that be?”

“The passive partner is absorbed. The dominant partner then becomes pregnant with a brood of children.”

Cara stared at her in horror. “So … if you have a baby, you die?”

“It depends on whether my genes are passive or dominant. But I don’t think about it in terms of dying. It’s the best part of being alive, Cara. I can’t wait to be tethered.”

“Okay,” Cara said, trying not to think about it. She decided to change the subject. “What’s your home world like, Bea?”

“I’ve never been there, but I hear that the white skies and the black-sand deserts are so beautiful that the mere sight of them can make a grown Wergen cry.”

“I wish I could see it,” Cara said. “I wish I could travel to all the amazing planets in our galaxy.” She wanted more than anything to be an explorer like her parents, working in tandem with the Wergens to colonize the universe. So many other worlds had been opened up to them thanks to Wergen fieldtech. Colonization efforts were already underway on Triton and Enceladus as well as incredible alien worlds hundreds of light years away, such as Langalana and Verdantium.

A wave splashed over them.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Bea?”

Beatrix looked up into the orange sky. “I hadn’t thought about it before, but being an explorer sounds wonderful, Cara.” She tilted her head to the left in that familiar manner and nodded, smiling warmly. “Especially if I can explore the cosmos with you.”

“Beatrix!” A voice shouted from the shore. Her brother Ambus called for her to return to her hearth as he always did when dusk approached. Cara knew that by the time they made it back to shore he would be gone. She had yet to see Beatrix’s brother up close.

“Let’s race!” Cara said. And she stroked furiously, leaving Beatrix behind in her wake.

A moment later Beatrix jetted past her, propelled by the bots, a huge grin plastered on her face.

ENCRYPTED Medical Journal Entry No. 224 by Dr Juan Carlos Barbarón: A contractile sheath gives the tether a pronounced elasticity as it emerges through the cranial canal. The tail-end is laced with thousands of microscopic nerve fibers and pore receptors. Muscle spindles allow the tether to unfurl and undulate toward the Wergen mate. When two tethers come into contact, the fibers bore into the receptors of the Wergen with the passive genotype. This signals the commencement of macromeiosis.One day Cara agreed to meet Beatrix by the lake, but a mile farther north where fewer ice boulders dotted the shore and ten-foot orange dunes draped the surface. Perpuffers were said to be even more plentiful in this area.

As she approached, Cara heard someone shout her name from behind a red dune. She recognized the voice immediately. “Ambus?”

“Stay where you are so I can’t see you.”

“What do you—?”

“And don’t speak! Your voice is too … sweet. I don’t want to give in to it. Like my sister. And my father. Just listen. If you respect my sister, you’ll stay away from her.”

Cara fought the urge to answer him.

“She doesn’t have the will to resist you. How can she choose her own path with you around? How can she be her own person? If you really consider yourself her friend, just leave her alone!”

Cara couldn’t stay quiet anymore. “Bea can pick her own friends. Why should you decide for her?” She scaled the dune to confront Ambus but when she reached the top he was no longer there. His footprints receded into the distance, snaking behind the sand drifts in the horizon.