The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II

by Jonathan Strahan

  "I was right," Jasmine said. "It's an octopus." She smiled. It was a slight smile, cold—as cold as a glance from another universe. Alien. Frightening. "All I have to do is reach through one of the buboes. Touch her. And we can choke it, shut it down, she and I."

  When the first hirudinean bubo arrived, it was no longer trying to destroy us. With the defeat of our angels, we skyfallers were no longer a viable enemy. We were food.

  The remains of the company attacked. But without massive energy from the sun, it was useless. Our conventional weapons glanced off without effect.

  The eye grew nearer.

  Hungrier.

  One by one, the company members rushed it, flung themselves at it—sacrificed themselves so that Jasmine and I could inch closer. We needed it to try to swallow her whole, just as it had her angel.

  And then we were as close as we were going to get. I took Jasmine in my arms, held her not like a weapon, but, I like to think, as a dancer holds a ballerina, suspended just before the next movement. She did not transform, but remained a woman to the last.

  She signalled me that we were close enough.

  "What if you're wrong?" I said.

  "Throw me."

  "If you don't die, you'll be alone."

  "I'll always have Rosinol," she said. Then she turned her head away from me, faced the maw of the bubo. "Now throw me in, you stupid bastard, before it's too late!"

  And so I did. I swung her back, then heaved her into the wound in reality that floated before us. She went inside. Head, torso, one bent leg.

  And then stopped. One leg was still extended. Still in the world. Had it got her, then? Was it about to chomp down, finish swallowing her?

  Less than a second later the bubo began to brown. It expanded and contracted rapidly, now attempting to expel what it had so eagerly consumed. Nothing doing.

  I knew that she had touched her angel when the bubo went totally dark around her leg. The hirudinean was still there, and she was still there. The bubo became a black disk, the size of a picture mirror, perhaps. It gave off no light, no electromagnetic radiation in any of the bands I was equipped to observe. The only reason I could see it was because of Jasmine's leg, absurdly sticking out.

  I had the irresistible urge to touch her.

  Warm. But not moving. Suspended there in mid-throw. I touched the surface of the blackened hirudinean. It had resistance and a bit of give as well—as if I were touching the surface of a hardened gel. But it didn't dimple or move in any way, and when I pulled my fingers back, they were cool and dry.

  Outside, in the rest of the universe, the buboes were gone. I listened on the subnet. Queried. Confirmed. The hirudinean attack had simply evaporated. Across worlds. Across galaxies.

  Only this one remained.

  Jasmine was the wrench in the machinery, the virus in the system.

  She had choked the octopus.

  The man who stepped from the portal that day looked neither particularly old nor particularly young. In a distant past, almost beyond memory, he might have been called middle-aged. He walked slowly down the pebble-strewn, dusty central road of the Valley of the Gardens. The sun was near noon and the man cast a stub for a shadow. The man's hair was grizzled grey, with black undertones, as was his neatly trimmed beard. He wore rope-soled sandals that were beaten to an oakum frizz and seemed barely to hang together on his feet.

  When he reached Mac's house, he stopped, stood by the courtyard gate, then opened it and walked to the door. He rapped on the wood quickly, loudly, with his knuckles.

  "Nobody home," said Mac, as he rounded the house, carrying a load of wood in his green wheelbarrow.

  The man gazed at Mac for a long moment without saying anything. Mac started to feel uncomfortable under his gaze. He lowered his load, stood straight, and stared back.

  "Can I help you with anything? We don't get many visitors this time of year."

  "Maybe," said the man. "I noticed that most of the houses in the valley have little plaques with their names on it. But I don't see one here. So I was wondering—does this house have a name?"

  "Sure it does," said Mac. "Doesn't need a plaque. Everybody knows it's Rosinol."

  The man sighed, audibly. To Mac, it sounded like relief, a burden dropped. "Do you put people up here?" the man said. "For a price, I mean? Bed-and-breakfast?"

  "Not usually," said Mac. "But what did you have in mind?"

  The man smiled. His teeth, white and perfect, flashed. He stroked his beard. His gaze became distant and he laughed softly. "I stayed here once before. Many years ago. I have fond memories of the place. I have some business in the valley that will keep me overnight. Would you mind giving me a place to stay? I haven't got much money on me, but I can pay you"—the man returned his gaze to Mac—"with a story."

  Mac nodded. "How'd you know that's about the only thing I'd agree to?" he said.

  The man gestured at the house, the beautifully kept rose garden in its courtyard, now dormant and trimmed back for winter, but still lovely in its tangle. "When a man's already got everything, that's about all a traveller has to offer."

  "I haven't got everything," Mac said. "Not close. But come on inside and let's have something to drink. My father's about. He may drop by. Been acting a bit queer lately, though."

  "I'd be interested to see him," the man replied, "after all these years."

  "Now I really want that story," Mac said. He led the way into the warmth of the house.

  " . . .the Valley of the Gardens was quite a famous place after she stopped the war. People made pilgrimages here. Religions formed. For a while, this world became a shrine. Sojourners camped in the desert on the other side of the mountain. Some of the surviving skyfallers, too, hung around after they were discharged. Thousands filled the plains at a time, millions at some points."

  The man sat across from Mac in the Rosinol living room. They sipped red wine from Mac's own vineyards, now laid up these past twenty-five years and at a pitch-perfect age, even if he did say so himself.

  "For a long time, I was the caretaker. I guarded the caves, let only certain scientists in. Two universes meet here. Jasmine holds on to her angel there, but part of her sticks out here in the valley. It's as simple as that. Physical law is indeterminate. We determined it was a small area—a dozen square miles. Constants migrate back and forth over this small space. We fenced in this area. Cultivated it. The hirudineans wanted to parasitise our universe to enlarge their own. Now both exist side by side, and Jasmine is the bridge."

  "People hardly know this place exists anymore," said Mac.

  "You can't blame them," said the man. "So much else has happened."

  "Or maybe it was hidden on purpose," Mac said.

  "And maybe you're just a bunch of damned provincials. Nobody's held prisoner on Cangarriga. It's just the locations have been a bit obscured to keep the valley pristine." The man sipped his wine. "Something else happened too. Something we've yet to explain, although we've been studying it all these years. It wasn't just the hirudinean universe that's been seeping into the valley. It's Jasmine. She began to influence things. She'd been a gardener before the war. The valley had been beautiful when we arrived, but it took on a new lustre. You knew somebody was in charge. Then the first stone roses grew, with their gateway properties. We knew then. We called in the scientists, and they were able to analyse the port stone, enhance its ability to exist in two realities at once. Make use of it. And that's how we cut star travel time down by decades, intergalactic travel down by lifetimes. How the portal system developed."

  "You say 'we,' but you left."

  "Yes," said the man. "But I also stayed. I made myself a quantum-

  entangled clone, an angel of my own, to guard this valley. To stand watch over her grave. I've seen it all, no matter where I've been. He and I are always together."

  "My da," said Mac.

  "Yes," the man replied. He took up his wine glass, took a long sip, wiped a drop from his beard. Outside, the sun had
gone down and the stars twinkled in the Cangarriga night with no moon, ever, to dilute their light.

  "So you're my . . .my real father."

  "No," said the man. "Your father is your father."

  "And my mother?"

  The man took another sip, considered, then drained his glass. "What do you remember?"

  "She left before I was old enough to remember," Mac said. "Da told me."

  "She's here, son. She's been here all along."

  "I'm a clone?" Mac said. "I'm your clone?"

  "Your father's. But it comes to the same thing," the man replied. "Made from valley materials."

  "Why?"

  "You'll understand when you're a little older. For one thing, you'll be able to travel without a portal. At least, we think so. There's never really been anything like you before."

  "So I can leave the valley?"

  "That remains to be seen," said the man. "Jasmine's grip is loosening. She's sent messages to your father. Dreams. It takes years for them to take shape, decades to understand. That's what he's been doing all this time. Listening. Haven't you felt them too?"

  "I don't know." But he did. The restlessness. The wilderness creeping in where the fence had fallen down. Was his love for Theresa merely the valley loosening its grip?

  "So what happens when Jasmine lets go of her angel? Will the hirudinean come back, destroy us all?"

  The man didn't answer directly. He stood up, turned to the living room's window. Outside, a single lamp glowed in the courtyard.

  "What do you imagine it's been like for her, holding on, spread out over two worlds?"

  "I guess the strain might get to you. You'd go a little crazy. You might start to hallucinate."

  "Or dream." The man sat back down. "You're wrong about your father," he said. "He's a lot more human than I am."

  "You're joking," said Mac. "He's gone beyond the vegetable stage. He's practically become a rock."

  "Fifty thousand years. That many lifetimes lacquered on. It's a wonder he ever speaks at all. But you and I both know there's a man under there."

  "But here you are, talking to me as free as can be, not bent over by time."

  "Wise boy," the man said. "But still a kid. What is there beyond a stone? Beyond a storm?"

  Mac shook his head. "A principle?" he said. "A law of nature?"

  "What I am is a painter," the man said. He reached for the wine bottle. Fingered the picture on the label. A stone rose. "I was only a soldier for a little while."

  Mac was confused. "You've come here to paint?"

  The man set the wine bottle back down. "I came to meet my nephew, free my girl—and maybe in the process, I'll finish a painting I've been working on for quite some time." The man sat back in his chair, considered his wine glass. "I do need a brush, though."

  "You need a—what?"

  "Something to paint with."

  "Well, good luck with finding one." Mac drained his glass, poured himself another from the half-empty bottle. He'd added some coded mash to the ferment that spread the taste out longer, held it in the mouth after swallowing for a few seconds. That had worked out nicely—again, if he did say so himself. Along with the portal stone, wine was another of the valley's principal exports.

  The man held out his glass for a refill, with which Mac provided him. He drank, considered, and finally spoke. "The Extremadura has one purpose only."

  "I'd always thought it was a fairly pointless place."

  "That is the point. Aimlessness. A place to think. Slowly. Convolutedly. All those pilgrimages set the jack-rock in motion. Your father and I just tweaked it a bit, then left it alone. We asked it to come up with something to release Jasmine and keep the hirudinean in check. That's the problem it's been working on for all these centuries. Those trades you've made over the years with the Fallers? Discarded ideas. False starts. Sometimes useful, but never an answer. Now we think we've got something."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The artifact your nomad girl gave you."

  "My telescope? But that's nothing. That was a love gift. It doesn't have anything to do with all this."

  "Exactly," said the man. "Do you think the gods speak in any other way?"

  "You can't have it."

  "I don't want it." The man took a sip, but kept Mac in his gaze. "All I want is for you to come with me tomorrow. Will you?"

  To do what? Destroy the truce that had preserved the universe? Reveal the man for a charlatan? Likely, they'd clamber about in the caves until they both grew exhausted and decided to come home for supper.

  "I suppose so," Mac said. "Yes, I'll come."

  The man nodded. "Let's get some sleep," he said. "We have a long way to go in the morning."

  Mac finished his wine. He stood with his glass and the bottle to take them away to the kitchen.

  "You can leave the bottle if you don't mind," said the man. "It's about the best I've tasted in a really long time."

  Mac nodded, pleased, and returned the bottle to the living room coffee table.

  "Would you like to take the master bedroom? The one where . . . you know."

  "It's yours now, isn't it?" the man said.

  "Yes," Mac replied. "Da hasn't slept inside for years."

  The man considered. "I think I'd rather take the couch," he finally said.

  "Then I'll get your linens," Mac said.

  When he returned with them, the man was sitting quietly on the couch reading one of Mac's farming magazines. He'd poured himself another glass of wine. He set the glass down on the coffee table, accepted the sheets, blanket and pillow. Mac turned to go, and was halfway out of the room when the man spoke again.

  "You know, I'm kind of worried about what she'll think when she sees me," he said. "I've gotten so old."

  They left at dawn for the caverns. Mac brought along his telescope in a pack slung over his back. The man had asked for, and carried along with him, a ten-pound sledgehammer. After a while, the thing seemed so heavy in the older man's hands that Mac volunteered to carry it as well. The road ran down the centre of the valley, then switchbacked twice, rising towards the spring that fed the Sant Llorenz, the small creek that watered the bottomland and shared the same name as the village.

  In a field not far up the road from the house stood Mac's da. Jari leant on his hoe and gazed at them, moving not a muscle. Mac knew he'd probably been in that position for two or three days. Waiting, thinking. Listening.

  When the man saw Jari, he paused, looked him over.

  Did they speak in their hidden, quantum-tunnel language? Or was there nothing left to say?

  After a moment, the man began walking again, and, with a glance back at his da, who still hadn't moved, Mac followed.

  After the second switchback, the road ran a bit farther, then dead-ended into a circular parking area for those who drove up from the village. A small trailpost pointed the way onward to the Sant Llorenz's origin in a rock-enclosed spring. Past the spring, the road became a trail and climbed steeply up Moncau, the peak that overlooked the valley. Rosemary and sage grew thicker here, and the spindly hardwood oca began giving way to pure pine forest as they climbed higher. The ground was rockier underfoot and the underlying stone—basaltic conglomerate—began poking through the topsoil. This was the jack-rock itself, inhabited by five hundred centuries of algorithms. Sometimes Mac swore he could hear the rock whispering, more talkative than his father.

  The family land ran in a long, thin swath down one side of the creek, and here, past where the creek gave out, it was bounded by a row of stone markers and cairns set in a curving line up to the very tip of the peak. It was at the top of Moncau that this line met the fence that bordered the land on the ridge.

  The hammer he carried grew heavier in Mac's hand, but he'd trucked much greater weights for longer distances before, and he wasn't bothered by the burden. What irritated him was the unwieldy nature of the tool. He hung it over his shoulder, tried walking with it as a cane, and eventually settled on
grasping it just under the head and carrying it horizontal to the ground, its handle slung out behind him.

  At first, the man led the way with an easy certainty, but as the trail rose and twisted, the man slowed, looked around. When they passed the little side path that led to the cave entrances, Mac realised that the man was lost.

  Mac turned them around, found the pile of gravel—the remains of an aborted mining claim—that marked the side trail's split from the main, and brought the man to the entrance of the largest cave. Here the man seemed to regain his bearings, and he entered without hesitation, Mac following close behind. The man's hands began to glow faintly. He held them aloft in front of them, and in the utter blackness of the cave, this was all either of them needed to see.

  They made their way down, and then farther down. Mac had often been in these caves and prided himself that he could never get lost in them, but it was now his turn to lose his sense of direction. Something in the jack-rock was deliberately confusing him. The man had no such problem. He'd obviously burnt the path he must follow into his memory, and it was as if the rock remembered him.

  The cave was wet, dank. The rock in the walls was a combination of the hollowed-out black basalt underpinning the valley and later layers of water-deposited silicates which formed a pearly sheen over the darkness beneath. The floor was flat, its surface crazed, the bottom of an ancient fissure.

  Down, through a lightning-like crack in the wall. Turn a corner. Down again.

  And then they followed a tunnel with walls coated with the thick quartzite deposits brought from the valley above within the memory of man. Within this man's memory. The air was fresher here, a cool breeze wafting from some hidden vent. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites rose from the floor to meet them in enormous columns. The ceiling was high, but the way was narrow. At length they came to a blank wall, a true dead end.

  "Here we are," said the man.

  "Where?" said Mac. "I thought you said it was in a larger room."

  "This used to be a larger room. This was where we met the last bubo."

  Mac looked around. Nothing but stone.