The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

The port opened and Erno got a glimpse of the space that yawned below. A thousand meters below them the semicircular ranks of seats of the Sobieski Park amphitheater glowed ghostly white in the lights of the artificial night. Tyler drew ropes and carabineers from his pack, and from the bottom, an oblong device, perhaps fifty centimeters square, wrapped in fiberoptic cloth that glinted in the light of the flashlight. At one end was a timer. The object gave off an aura of threat that was both frightening and instantly attractive.

“What is that thing? Is it a bomb?”

“A bomb, Erno? Are you crazy?” Tyler snapped one of the lines around a reinforcing strut. He donned a harness and handed an identical one to Erno. “Put this on.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“Don’t be silly. This is safe as a kiss. Safer, maybe.”

“What are we trying to accomplish?”

“That’s something of a metaphysical question.”

“That thing doesn’t look metaphysical to me.”

“Nonetheless, it is. Call it the Philosopher’s Stone. We’re going to attach it to the inside of the dome.”

“I’m not going to blow any hole in the dome.”

“Erno, I couldn’t blow a hole in the dome without killing myself. I guarantee you that, as a result of what we do here, I will suffer whatever consequences anyone else suffers. More than anyone else, even. Do I look suicidal to you, Erno?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know. You sure do some risky things. Why don’t you tell me what you intend?”

“This is a test. I want to see whether you trust me.”

“You don’t trust me enough to tell me anything.”

“Trust isn’t about being persuaded. Trust is when you do something because your brother asks you to. I didn’t have to ask you along on this adventure, Erno. I trusted you.” Tyler crouched there, calmly watching Erno. “So, do you have the balls for this?”

The moment stretched. Erno pulled on the climbing harness.

Tyler ran the ropes through the harness, gave him a pair of gloves, and showed Erno how to brake the rope behind his back. Then, with the maybe-bomb Philosopher’s Stone slung over his shoulder, Tyler dropped through the port. Feeling like he was about to take a step he could never take back, Erno edged out after him.

Tyler helped him let out three or four meters of rope. Erno’s weight made the rope twist, and the world began to spin dizzily. They were so close to the dome’s inner surface that the “stars” shining there were huge fuzzy patches of light in the braided fiberglass surface. The farmlands of the crater floor were swathed in shadow, but around the crater’s rim, oddly twisted from this god’s-eye perspective, the lights of apartment districts cast fans of illumination on the hanging gardens and switchbacked perimeter road. Erno could make out a few microscopic figures down there. Not far from Tyler and him, the top of the central spire obscured their view to the west. The flying stage, thirty meters down from where the spire met the roof, was closed for the night, but an owl nesting underneath flew out at their appearance and circled below them.

Tyler began to swing himself back and forth at the end of his line, gradually picking up amplitude until, at the apex of one of his swings, he latched himself onto the dome’s inner surface. “C’mon, Erno! Time’s wasting!”

Erno steeled himself to copy Tyler’s performance. It took effort to get himself swinging and once he did the arcs were ponderous and slow. He had trouble orienting himself so that one end of his oscillation left him close to Tyler. At the top of every swing gravity disappeared and his stomach lurched. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of trying, Erno swung close enough for Tyler to reach out and snag his leg.

He pulled Erno up beside him and attached Erno’s belt line to a ringbolt in the dome’s surface. Erno’s heart beat fast. “Now you know you’re alive,” Tyler said. “If anyone catches us up here, our asses are fried.” “Our asses are everywhere and always fried. That’s the human condition. Let’s work.”

While Tyler pulled the device out of the bag he had Erno spread glue onto the dome’s surface. When the glue was set, the two of them pressed the Philosopher’s Stone into it until it was firmly fixed. Because of its reflective surface it would be invisible from the crater floor. “Now, what time did Debra Debrasdaughter say that meeting was tomorrow?”

“1600,” Erno said. “You knew that.”

Tyler flipped open the lid over the Stone’s timer and punched some keys. “Yes, I did.”

“And you didn’t need my help to do this. Why did you make me come?”

The timer beeped; the digital readout began counting down. Tyler flipped the lid closed. “To give you the opportunity to betray me. And if you want to, you still have-” he looked at his wristward, “-fourteen hours and thirteen minutes.”

Male Dominance Behavior