The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) by Gardner Dozois Page A

mist.”
    Lucas caught the boom as it swung, held it steady. “We’ll sit tight for a spell. See if the fret burns off.”
    “And meanwhile the tide’ll turn and lift off the fucking dragon.”
    “Not for a while.”
    “We’re almost there.”
    “You don’t like it, you can swim.”
    “I might.” Damian peered at the advancing fret. “Think the dragon has something to do with this?”
    “I think it’s just fret.”
    “Maybe it’s hiding from something looking for it. We’re drifting backwards,” Damian said. “Is that part of your plan?”
    “We’re over the river channel, in the main current. Too deep for my anchor. See those dead trees at the edge of the grass? That’s where I’m aiming. We can sit it out there.”
    “I hear something,” Damian said.
    Lucas heard it too. The ripping roar of a motor driven at full speed, coming closer. He looked over his shoulder, saw a shadow condense inside the mist and gain shape and solidity: a cabin cruiser shouldering through windblown tendrils at the base of the bank of mist, driving straight down the main channel at full speed, its wake spreading wide on either side.
    In a moment of chill clarity Lucas saw what was going to happen. He shouted to Damian, telling him to duck, and let the boom go and shoved the tiller to starboard. The boom banged around as the sail bellied and the boat started to turn, but the cruiser was already on them, roaring past just ten metres away, and the broad smooth wave of its wake hit the boat broadside and lifted it and shoved it sideways towards a stand of dead trees. Lucas gave up any attempt to steer and unwound the main halyard from its cleat. Damian grabbed an oar and used it to push the boat away from the first of the trees, but their momentum swung them into two more. The wet black stump of a branch scraped along the side and the boat heeled and water poured in over the thwart. For a moment Lucas thought they would capsize; then something thumped into the mast and the boat sat up again. Shards of rotten wood dropped down with a dry clatter and they were suddenly still, caught amongst dead and half-drowned trees.
    The damage wasn’t as bad as it might have been – a rip close to the top of the jib, long splintery scrapes in the blue paintwork on the port side – but it kindled a black spark of anger in Lucas’s heart. At the cruiser’s criminal indifference; at his failure to evade trouble.
    “Unhook the halyard and let it down,” he told Damian. “We’ll have to do without the jib.”
    “Abode Two.
That’s the name of the bugger nearly ran us down. Registered in Norwich. We should find him and get him to pay for this mess,” Damian said as he folded the torn jib sail.
    “I wonder why he was going so damned fast.”
    “Maybe he went to take a look at the dragon, and something scared him off.”
    “Or maybe he just wanted to get out of the fret.” Lucas looked all around, judging angles and clearances. The trees stood close together in water scummed with every kind of debris, stark and white above the tide line, black and clad with mussels and barnacles below. He said, “Let’s try pushing backwards. But be careful. I don’t want any more scrapes.”
    By the time they had freed themselves from the dead trees the fret had advanced around them. A cold streaming whiteness that moved just above the water, deepening in every direction.
    “Now we’re caught up in it, it’s as easy to go forward as to go back. So we might as well press on,” Lucas said.
    “That’s the spirit. Just don’t hit any more trees.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “Think we should put up the sail?”
    “There’s hardly any wind, and the tide’s still going out. We’ll just go with the current.”
    “Dragon weather,” Damian said.
    “Listen,” Lucas said.
    After a moment’s silence, Damian said, “Is it another boat?”
    “Thought I heard wings.”
    Lucas had taken out his catapult. He fitted a ball-bearing in the centre of