Year's Best SF 15 - By David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer Page 0,114

this world turned suddenly, wholly alien? No, nor the regret. Would Lakmi have guessed those things and left them unsung?

Sayla looked at her a moment, silent. Then, “Maybe it’s how she thought it should have been.”

Evriel closed her eyes. She waited for tears, or relief, or the murky shame that had swirled so long about her feet. My daughter, look what I did to you. She waited for Lakmi, beautiful and righteous, to appear before her and accuse. But she didn’t come. The silty tide of shame didn’t come.

Evriel prodded, waiting for the ache to bloom into familiar regret, familiar loss. It didn’t.

Finally she opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she repeated.

“It’s what you came for, then.”

“I—yes. Yes, it is.” A pause. Then, “But not the only thing.”

It was to have been a short stay.

Evriel said, “I wonder—would there be a need for another archivist, somewhere on the mountain?”

Sayla gave her another long, measuring look. “Your ship’ll be leaving.”

“Yes.” Evriel considered her words, tested them. “I lost a husband and a daughter here, and I might as well have left myself behind. I won’t make the mistake again.”

Sayla nodded slowly, not approving, quite, but acknowledging. Evriel found that that meant something to her.

Sayla rose, saying, “Time for Asha to be getting up and breakfast getting started.”

When she was gone, Evriel wrapped another robe around her, walked the cold stone hall to the door, and stepped out into the gleaming white. Soon she must sketch her plans, make lists of forms to fill, messages to send. It was no easy thing, retiring from the service of the regent. But for just a moment she would look again down the tumbling plains to the winding black thread of the Serra.

The Highway Code

BRIAN STABLEFORD

Brian Stableford (freespace.virgin.net/diri.gini/) lives in Reading in the UK. He is the leading writer/scholar in British science fiction in the generation after Brian W. Aldiss. He is prodigiously productive as a writer and translator. He has published more than fifty SF novels and many short stories since the 1970s, some of which are in his seven collections. His recent books include his eighth and ninth collections, An Oasis of Horror: Decadent Tales and Contes Cruels (2008) and The Gardens of Tantalus and Other Delusions (2008). He is currently translating classic French scientific romances for Black Coat Press; 2010 will see the publication, among others, of six volumes of works by J. H. Rosny the Elder and five volumes of works by Maurice Renard. The latest volume of his own fiction is a collection of two Lovecraftian novellas, “The Womb of Time” and “The Legacy of Erich Zann,” published by Perilous Press (2009).

“The Highway Code” was published in We Think, Therefore We Are, edited by Peter Crowther. In the future, AI trucks (a bit like the characters in Thomas the Tank Engine) have replaced most trucking. The protagonist is a giant truck who always tries to follow the rules. When a crisis occurs, he is smart enough to do a maneuver that saves many lives.

Tom Haste had no memory of his emergence from the production line, but the Company made a photographic record of the occasion and stored it in his archive for later reference. He rarely reflected upon it, though; the assembly robots and their human supervisors celebrated, each after their own fashion, but there were no other RTs in sight, except for as-yet-incomplete ones in embryo in the distant background. Not that Tom was any kind of xenophobe, of course—he liked everyone, meat or metal, big or small—but he was what he was, which was a long-hauler. His life was dedicated to intercontinental transport and the Robot Brotherhood of the Road.

Tom’s self-awareness developed gradually while he was in the Test Program, and his first true memories were concerned with the artistry of cornering. Cornering was always a central concern with artics, especially giants like Tom, who had a dozen containers and no less than fifty-six wheels. Tom put a lot of effort into the difficult business of mastering ninety-degree turns, skid control and zigzag management, and he was as proud in his achievements as only a nascent intelligence can be. He was proud of being a giant, too, and couldn’t understand why humans and other RTs were always making jokes about it.

In partic u lar, Tom couldn’t understand why the Company humans were so fond of calling him “the steel centipede” or “the sea serpent,” since he was mostly constructed of artificial organic compounds, didn’t have any legs at all,