The Long List Anthology Volume 3 Read online

  The Long List Anthology

  Volume 3

  More Stories from the Hugo Award Nomination List

  Edited by David Steffen

  THE LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 3: More Stories from the Hugo Award Nomination List

  edited by David Steffen

  www.diabolicalplots.com

  Copyright © 2017 David Steffen

  Stories copyright © 2016 by the authors

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Diabolical Plots, L.L.C.

  “Worldcon,” “World Science Fiction Society,” “WSFS,” “World Science Fiction Society,” “Hugo Award,” the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award trophy rocket are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.

  Cover art: “The Alchemist” by Amanda Makepeace © 2017

  Cover layout by Pat R. Steiner

  Layout: Polgarus Studio

  To my family and everyone who has given encouragement and support in any form.

  To everyone out there who tries to make the world a better place

  To anyone who feels like they don’t fit in, there is a place for you too.

  PERMISSIONS

  “Red in Tooth and Cog” by Cat Rambo. Copyright © 2016 by Cat Rambo. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction March/April 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Salvaging of Ghosts” by Amal El-Mohtar. Copyright © 2016 by Aliette de Bodard. First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #195. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Research Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim. Copyright © 2016 by Caroline M. Yoachim. First published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 70. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Razorback” by Ursula Vernon. Copyright © 2016 by Ursula Vernon. First published in Apex Magazine, Issue #80. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “We Have a Cultural Difference, Can I Taste You” by Rebecca Ann Jordan. Copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Ann Jordan. First published in Strange Horizons, April 18, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lullaby for a Lost World” by Aliette de Bodard. Copyright © 2016 by Aliette de Bodard. First published on Tor.com, June 8, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar. Copyright © 2016 by Lavie Tidhar. First published on Tor.com, April 13, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands” by Seanan McGuire. Copyright © 2016 by Seanan McGuire. First published in Uncanny Magazine May/June 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Things With Beards” by Sam J. Miller. Copyright © 2016 by Sam J. Miller. First published in Clarkesworld #117. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Venus Effect” by Joseph Allen Hill. Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Allen Hill. First published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue #79. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Visitor From Taured” by Ian R. MacLeod. Copyright © 2016 by Ian R. MacLeod. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction September 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Blood Grains Speak Through Memories” by Jason Sanford. Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sanford. First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #195. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Pinsker. First published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 69. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” by P. Djèlí Clark. Copyright © 2016 by P. Djèlí Clark. First published in Tor.com, May 18, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Red as Blood and White as Bone” by Theodora Goss. Copyright © 2016 by Theodora Goss. First published in Tor.com, May 4, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Foxfire, Foxfire” by Yoon Ha Lee. Copyright © 2016 by Yoon Ha Lee. First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #194. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Forest of Memory” by Mary Robinette Kowal. Copyright © 2016 by Mary Robinette Kowal. First published by Tor.com Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author and Tor.com Publishing.

  “Chimera” by Gu Shi, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu and Ken Liu. Copyright in English © 2016 by Gu Shi, S. Qiouyi Lu, and Ken Liu. First published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, October 2015. First published in English in Clarkesworld Issue #114. Reprinted by permission of the author and translators.

  “Hammers on Bone” by Cassandra Khaw. Copyright © 2016 by Cassandra Khaw. First published by Tor.com Publishing, October 11, 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author and Tor.com Publishing.

  “Runtime” by S.B. Divya. Copyright © 2016 by S.B. Divya. First published by Tor.com Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author and Tor.com Publishing.

  Contents

  Permissions

  Foreword

  Red in Tooth and Cog • Cat Rambo

  A Salvaging of Ghosts • Aliette de Bodard

  Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0 • Caroline M. Yoachim

  Razorback • Ursula Vernon

  We Have a Cultural Difference, Can I Taste You? • Rebecca Ann Jordan

  Lullaby for a Lost World • Aliette de Bodard

  Terminal • Lavie Tidhar

  Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands • Seanan McGuire

  Things With Beards • Sam J. Miller

  The Venus Effect • Joseph Allen Hill

  The Visitor From Taured • Ian R. MacLeod

  Blood Grains Speak Through Memories • Jason Sanford

  Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea • Sarah Pinsker

  A Dead Djinn in Cairo • P. Djèlí Clark

  Red as Blood and White as Bone • Theodora Goss

  Foxfire, Foxfire • Yoon Ha Lee

  Forest of Memory • Mary Robinette Kowal

  Chimera • Gu Shi • Translators S. Qiouyi Lu and Ken Liu

  Hammers on Bone • Cassandra Khaw

  Runtime • S.B. Divya

  Acknowledgments

  Backer Appreciation

  About the Editor

  More From Diabolical Plots Publishing

  Foreword

  Here we are in the third volume of the Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List. I wasn’t sure if a third volume would fund in the Kickstarter campaign as well as the previous volumes, since the Hugo Award landscape has changed quite a bit this year, so I’m very happy to see that there is still interest from the readers to keep the project going. I’m enjoying the work and I’m enjoying the outcome, so I would like to continue it as an ongoing yearly anthology as long as there’s interest.

  If you don’t follow the Hugo Awards, I suggest that you do—anyone can nominate and vote if you pay for a Supporting Membership to that year’s WorldCon. One of the perks of the Supporting Membership is that you get the Hugo Packet, downloadable copies of many of the works on the final ballot. After the Hugo Award ceremony, they also publish a longer list of nominated works, which is the basis of this anthology.

  This year’s cover art is “The Alchemist” by an artist new to this series: Amanda Makepeace. I am very glad to work with her!

  I sincerely hope you enjoy these stories as much as I have!

  —David Steffen, December 2017—

  Red in Tooth and Cog

  By Cat Rambo

  A phone can be so much. Your memory, your edge against boredom, your source of inspiration. There’s always an app for whatever you need. Renee valued her phone accor
dingly, even celebrating it by giving way to the trend for fancy phone-cases. Its edges were bezeled with bling she’d won on a cruise the year before, and she’d had some tiny opals, legacy of her godmother, set into the center.

  It was an expensive, new-model phone in a pretty case, and that was probably why it was stolen.

  Renee was in the park near work. A sunny day, on the edge of cold, the wind carrying spring with it like an accessory it was testing for effect.

  She set her phone down on the bench beside her as she unfolded her bento box, foil flaps levering back to reveal still-steaming rice, quivering tofu.

  Movement caught her eye. She pulled her feet away as a creature leaped up onto the bench slats beside her, an elastic-band-snap’s worth of fear as it grabbed the phone, half as large as the creature itself, and moved to the other end of the bench.

  The bento box clattered as it hit the path, rice grains spilling across the grey concrete.

  Renee thought the creature an animal at first, but it was actually a small robot, a can opener that had been greatly and somewhat inexpertly augmented and modified. It had two corkscrew claws, and grasshopper legs made from nutcrackers to supplement the tiny wheels on its base, originally designed to let it move to hand as needed in a kitchen. Frayed raffia wrapped its handles, scratchy strands feathering out to weathered fuzz. Its original plastic had been some sort of blue, faded now to match the sidewalk beneath her sensible shoes.

  The bench jerked as the robot leaped again, moving behind the trashcan, still carrying her phone. She stood, stepping over the spilled rice to try to get to it, but the rhododendron leaves thrashed and stilled, and her phone was gone.

  She went to the Tellbox to seek the help of the park’s assistant, an older model humanoid with one mismatched, updated arm, all silver and red LED readouts in contrast to the shabbier aged plastic of the original form, built in a time when a slightly retro animatronic look had been popular.

  “How do I get my phone back?” she demanded after recounting what had happened.

  The robot shook its smiling gender-neutral head. “Gone.” Its shoulders hunched toward her. “I hope you have a backup.”

  “Of course,” she snapped, “but that’s my phone. The case was customized. Irreplaceable.” The case reflected her, was her, as though what had been carried off was a doll-sized replica of Renee, clutched in the arms of a robotic King Kong.

  “Contact the owner!” she said, but the robot shook its head again.

  “No one owns those,” it said.

  “But it was modified. Who did that?”

  “They do it to themselves. They get thrown out, but their AI chips try to keep them going. That’s the problem with self-repairing, self-charging appliances—they go feral.”

  “Feral appliances?” she said in disbelief. She’d heard of such things, but surely they were few and far between. Not something that lived in the same park in which she ate her lunch every once in a while.

  • • • •

  The next few days she became a regular, haunted the park every lunch hour, looking for any sign of her phone. Her job as a minor advertising functionary gave her lunches plus “creativity breaks” that were served as well by sitting outside as by any of the other approved modes, like music or drugs.

  She was on a bench, scrolling through mail on her replacement phone, when she spotted the phenomenon. Tall grass divided like a comb to display a bright wriggle, then another. She didn’t move, didn’t startle them.

  Her first thought had been snake and they did resemble snakes. But they were actually styluses, two of the old Google kind, a loose chain of circles in the pocket that would snap into rigidity when you squeezed the ball at one end. One was an iridescent peacock metal, somewhat dust-dulled. The other was a matte black, with little silver marks like scars. It had several long limbs, thin as needles, spiking from its six-inch length. The peacock had no such spurs; it was also a half-inch shorter.

  They slithered through the unmown grass, heading for another large rhododendron, its roots covered with English ivy and shadows.

  She stood in order to watch the last few feet of their journey. At the motion, they froze, but when she did not move for a few moments, they grew bold again and continued on.

  The robot keeper crunched over to stand by Renee as she looked at the rhododendron.

  “Why isn’t this place better tended?” she asked the robot.

  “It is a nature preserve as well as a park,” it said. “That was the only way we could obtain funding.”

  “But everything is growing wild.” She pointed at the bank of English ivy rolling across a rock near them. “That’s an invasive species. If you let it, it will take over.”

  It shrugged, one of those mechanical gestures few humans could imitate, boneless and smooth as though the joints were gliding on a track.

  “This is one of the few places in the city where feral appliances can run loose,” it said. “Not the big ones, nothing larger than a sewing machine or toaster, no fridges or hot tubs or even a house heart. But your toothbrushes, key fobs, and screwdrivers? There’s plenty of space for them here and enough lunchtime visitors that they can scavenge a few batteries and parts.” Again it shrugged.

  The styluses had vanished entirely underneath the rhododendron.

  “You don’t do anything about them?” she asked the robot.

  “It is not within my directives,” it said.

  Two days later, she saw the phone-thief climbing a maple tree. Someone had been tying bits of metal thread on the trunks and the creature was clipping each with an extended claw and tucking them somewhere inside its body. It used its grasshopper legs, set in a new configuration, to grip the bark, moving up and down with surprising speed as it jumped from branch to branch.

  She tried to get closer, but moved too fast. Quick as an indrawn breath, it scuttled to the other side of the trunk where she couldn’t see it.

  If she stood still long enough, would it grow confident again and reappear? But it did not show itself in the fifteen to twenty minutes she lingered there.

  More of the bits of metallic thread were tied on three smaller trees near the bench. She wondered if someone had put them there for the wild appliances, the equivalent of a birdfeeder. How else might you feed them? A thought flickered into her head and that night she looked a few things up on the Internet and placed an order.

  She noticed more and more of the creatures as she learned to pick out the traces of their presences from the landscape. She began to recognize the ones she saw on a regular basis, making up names for them: Patches, Prince, Starbucks. They appeared to recognize her, too, and when she began to scatter handfuls of small batteries or microchips near where she sat watching, she found that she could often coax them within a few feet of her, though never within touching distance. She had no urge to touch them—most had their own defenses, small knives or lasers, and she knew better—but she managed, she thought, to convince them she meant no harm.

  Even the phone-thief grew easier in her presence. She never saw anything resembling her phone and its case. She didn’t mind that for the most part, but the loss of the opals still ate at her. Australian opals like sunset skies, surrounded by tiny glitters of diamond.

  The creature surely would still have the bits of the case somewhere. Track the creature and she might be able to track the gems.

  A couple of days later, another sighting. A palm-sized, armadillo-shaped thing she thought must be connected to learning. She watched it rooting through red and yellow maple leaves under a sparse bush. When it saw her watching, it extruded several whisker-thin extensions from its “nose” and used them to burrow away.

  She blinked, amused despite her irritation that she was no further along the path to discovering the missing gems.

  She hadn’t intended to mention them to her mother, but it slipped out during a vid call.

  “You what?” her mother said, voice going high-pitched in alarm. She fanned herself with a h
and, leaning back in the chair. “Oh my god. Oh. My. God. You lost Nana Trent’s opals.”

  Renee fought to keep from feeling five years old and covered in some forbidden substance. She said, “I’ll get them back.”

  “How? You said a robot took them.”

  “A little feral robot, Mom. The park’s full of them.”

  “I’ve heard of those. That’s how that man died, out in the Rockies. He was hiking. A pack of them attacked him.”

  Renee was fascinated despite her growing urge to bring the conversation to an end before her mother returned to the question of the opals.

  Too late. Her mother said, “So how will you get them back?”

  “I’ll spot the one that took them and find its nest.”

  “Nest? They have nests, like birds?” Her mother’s hands still fluttered at her throat as though trying to snatch air and stuff it into her mouth.

  “Like rats,” Renee said. Her mother hated rats.

  “You’d better get them back,” her mother said. “That’s the sort of thing she’d cut you out of the will for.”

  Renee would have liked to protest this dark observation but her mother was right: her godmother was made up of those sorts of selfish and angry motivations. She’d been known to nurse grudges for decades, carrying them forward from grade school days.

  “I still have the largest,” she said. “In that ring I had made.”

  After saying goodbyes and reassurances, she turned the com off and touched the ring. All of the stones had come from the same mine, one Nana had owned in her earlier years, and they were fire opals, filled with red and pink and yellow and unexpected flashes of green amid the sunset colors.