The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  The city was supposedly full of piratical presences, at least according to my father, but this guy actually looked like a pirate. That, or, with his bushy red beard, twinkling blue eyes, wildly curly hair, be-ribboned coat and pixie boots, like some counter-cultural Father Christmas.

  "Give that back!"

  He grinned, still cupping my seashell in a big, paint-grained palm. "This is a pretty cool device, you know. Basically, it's mimicking your brainwaves so it can mess around with your thoughts…"

  My father had said something similar, but this man's tone was admiring rather than concerned. At least, he seemed a man to me; I figured out later that Karl was barely into his twenties.

  "I said –"

  "Here. Don't want to get yourself tangled…" Almost impossibly gently, he was reaching to unpick the buds from around my ears, and already I was hooked. He was asking me questions. He seemed interested in my head-down city wanderings, and where I was from, and what I'd been playing on my seashell, and what I thought about things, and even in my Indian background, although I did have to make most of that up.

  "This is the place. Don't snag yourself…"

  Now, he was holding the wire of the fence that surrounded one of those half-finished developments that the dying economy had never finished. Maybe shops or offices or housing, but basically just a shrouded, rustyscaffolded concrete frame. A few floors up, though, and in this place he called "the waystation" was a different world. In many ways, it was a glimpse of what was to come.

  People stirred and said hi. The waystation's inner walls were painted, or hung with random bits of stuff, or fizzed with projections that drifted to and fro in the city haze. Old vehicles, bits of construction material, expensive drapes, blankets and rugs that looked more as if they had come from gated estate communities such as my own, had all been cleverly reused to shape an exotic maze. Everything here had been transformed and recycled, and it was plain to me already that Karl was an artist of some talent, and at the heart of whatever was going on.

  The Widney Commune is based around a grand old house, with icicled gates leaning before a winding drive. Some long-dead Midlands industrialist's idea of fine living. Shara and the other commune youngsters will still be down at the schoolhouse, and most of the adults will be out. This place could almost be deserted, Martha tells herself as she edges her Mini up the drive and clambers out. The main door lies up a half-circle of uncleared steps, with an old bellpull beside. Something tinkles deep within the house when she gives it an experimental tug.

  Even with all the indignities which have been inflicted on it – the warty vents and pipings, the tumbling add-ons – this is still a fine old sort of a place to live. Especially when you compare it to Baldwin Towers. No fifteen floors to ascend. Nor any concrete stalactites, or rusting pipes, or a useless flat roof. The entangled might claim that they can see the wrongness of things, and feel disappointment and envy. But they clearly don't.

  Martha starts when snow scatters her shoulders.

  "Hello there," she shouts up with all her usual yes-I-really-am-here cheeriness. "Just trying to see if there's anyone at home."

  "Oh…" A pause as the head at the window above registers that she's not some odd garden statue. "…I'm sorry. The front door's been stuck for years. If you can come around to the side…"

  This pathway's been cleared, as even a mindblind moron should have noticed, leading to a side entrance which opens into what was once, and still mostly is, a very great hall.

  The space goes all the way up and there are galleries around it and a wide set of stairs. Live ivy grows up over the beams and there's a hutch in the corner where fat-eared rabbits lollop, and it's plain that the woman who's sashaying over to greet Martha is the source of at least half of Shara's good looks.

  "I'm Freya…" After a small hesitation, she holds out a hand. It's crusty with flour, as are her bare arms. Her shoulders are bare, too, and so are her feet. Which, like the tip of her nose, are also dusted white. She's wearing holed dungarees that show off a great deal of her lithe, slim figure. Dirty blonde hair done up in a kind of knot. "…you're…?" Confused by the difficulties of introduction with someone of Martha's disability, she hesitates with a pout.

  "Martha Chauhan." Martha lets her hand, which by now is floury as well, slip from Freya's. "I'm guessing you're Shara's birth mother?"

  "That's right." Freya squints hard. "You were testing Shara? Today? At school?"

  Martha nods. "Not that there's any cause for concern."

  "That's good." She smiles. Hugs herself.

  "But I, ah…" Martha looks around again, wondering if this is how social workers once felt. "Sometimes just like to call in on a few communes. Just to… Well…"

  "Of course," Freya nods. "I understand."

  Somehow, she does, even if Martha doesn't. The entangled live in a sea of trust.

  "Most people are out, either working or enjoying the day. But I've just finished baking… so what can I show you?"

  The entangled are relentlessly proud of their communes. They'll argue and josh about who breeds the fluffiest sheep, puts on the cheeriest festival or grows the best crop of beets. As always, there's the deep, sweet, monkeyhouse reek of massed and rarely washed humanity, but it's mingled here with different odours of yeast, and the herbs that seem to be hanging everywhere to dry, and yet more of those rabbits. Each commune has its own specialities which it uses to exchange for things it doesn't make, and this one turns out to be rabbits which are raised to make warm blankets and coats from their skins, as well as for their meat. This commune's bread is something they're particularly proud of, as well. Down in the hot kitchen, Freya tears some with her hands, takes a bite, then offers Martha the rest, dewy with spit. She doesn't have to lie when she says she isn't hungry.

  Many of the rooms look like the scenes of some perpetual sleepover. The entangled mostly sleep like puppies, curling up wherever they fancy, although Freya's slightly more coy about one or two other spaces, which reek of sex. Another smell, sourer this time, comes from some leaking chairs and sofas set around a big fire where the old ones cluster, basking like lizards, tremulous hands joined and rheumy eyes gazing into the tumbled memories at a past forever gone.

  "And this is where Shara sleeps with the rest of the under-tens…"

  Another charming, fetid mess, although this one's scattered with toys. There's a spinning top. There are rugs and papier mache stars. There's a one-eyed, one-armed teddy bear. A few story books and piles of paper, as well, along with newer, stranger devices that make no sense to Martha at all.

  "Shara's your only birth child?"

  Freya nods. She looks at least as proud of that as she does of most things, even if parenting is shared in a loose kind of way that involves the whole commune and no one gets too possessive. Knowing exactly who the father is can be difficult. In this era of trust, mothers are surprisingly coy about who they've fucked. Women often wander out to visit other communes – driven either by biological imperative or the simple curiosities of lust – and births are often followed by versions of the he's got Uncle Eric's nose conversations that must have gone on throughout human history.

  Freya's showing drawings and scraps of writing that Shara's done, then lifting up pretty bits of clothing she's resewn herself for all the kids to use and share.

  "No new babies at the moment," she adds. "Although we're planning, of course… Soon as the commune has the resources. And Shara's been such a joy to us all… That I'm rather hoping…" As she puts the things back, her hands move unconsciously to her breasts.

  "And Shara's father? Somehow, I'm guessing he's a fair bit older than you are…?"

  "Oh? That's right." Freya smiles, not remotely insulted or surprised. "Karl's hoping, as well. We all are. Would you like to see the studio where he works?"

  Martha blinks, swallows, nods. A falling feeling as she follows Freya down a long corridor then through a doorway into what's clearly an artist's studio. Rich smells of oil and varnis
h. Linseed oil squeezed out over a press. Pigments from the hedgerow, or wherever it is that pigments come from. Half-finished canvases lean against the walls. The room is a kind of atrium, lit from windows on all sides and high up. The colours and the shadows roar out to her even on a day as wintry as this.

  "He's probably out helping in one of the greenhouses," Freya says. "That or sketching. He tends to paint in short, intense bursts."

  The canvases are part abstract and part Turner seascape. They're undeniably accomplished, and recognisably Karl Yann's, although to Martha's mind they've lost their old edge. The entangled are good at making pretty and practical things, but proper art seems to be beyond them. Still, as Martha stares at the largest blur of colour, which looms over her like a tsunami in a paint factory, it's hard not to be drawn.

  Freya chuckles, standing so close that Martha can smell the grease in her hair. "I know. They're lovely, and they barter really well… But Karl doesn't like to have them up on display in our commune. Says all he'd ever see is where he went wrong."

  I never did get my seashell back, but I got Karl Yann instead. He had a bragging mix of certainty and vulnerability which I found appealing after my father's endless on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other attempts at balance. Karl was clever and he knew what he thought. Karl was an accomplished artist. Karl cared. He'd read stuff and done things and been to places and had opinions about everything, but he also wanted to know what my views were, and actually seemed to listen to me when I said them. Or at least, he had a roguishly charming way of cocking his head. Maybe it was a little late in the day for this whole hippy/ beatnik/bohemian revolutionary shtick, but these things come new to every generation – or at least they used to – and they felt new to me. Karl used real paint when he could, or whatever else came to hand – he found the virtuals fascinating but frustrating – but what he really wanted to create was a changed world. No use accepting things as they are, Martha. No use talking about what needs to be done. At least, not unless you're prepared to act to make the necessary sacrifices to help bring about the coming wave of change. The forests dying. Whole continents starving. The climate buggered. The economy fucked. So, are you with us, Martha, or not?

  They called them performance acts, and Karl and the other inhabitants of the waystation were convinced they were contributing towards bringing about a better world. And so, now, was I. People had to be shaken out of their complacency – especially the selfish, cosseted rich, with all their possessions, all their things – and what was the harm in having some fun while we're doing so? Right? Okay? Yes?

  We used my credit pass to gain access to one of those exclusive, guarded, gated, palm tree-filled, rich-people-only, air-conditioned pleasure domes they still called shopping malls to which my father had occasionally taken me and Damien as a birthday treat, and pulled on balaclavas and yelled like heathens and flung pigshit-filled condoms at the over-privileged shoppers and their shit-filled shops, and got out laughing and high-fiving in the ensuing mayhem. We climbed fences and sneaked through gardens and around underlit pools to hang paintings upside down and spraypaint walls and mess with people's heads. Then, often as not, and young as Martha Chauhan still was, she went home to her gated estate.

  The mini seems to know the way from the Widney Commune, but time and entanglement haven't been kind to this part of the city. Martha's boots press through new white drifts to snag on the rusted shockwire and fallen sensor pylons that once supposedly protected this little enclosure. The houses, haggard with smoke, blink their shattered eyes and shrug their collapsing shoulders as if in denial. Is this really the right place? Even the right street? Martha struggles to make sense of the layout of her lost life as she stands at what was surely the heart of their neat cul-desac where an uprooted tree now scrawls its branches until she's suddenly looking straight at her old home and everything's so clear it's as if her eyeballs have burned through into ancient photographic negatives. The roof of the old house still intact, even if Dad's old car has long gone from the driveway, and she almost reaches for her key when she steps up to the front door. But the thing is blocked solid by age and perhaps even the fancy triple-locking that once protected it. You can't be too careful Martha… She looks around with a start. The other houses with their blackened Halloween eyes stare back at her. She shivers. Steps back. Takes stock. Then she walks around to the side past an upturned bin and finds that half the wall is missing, and pushes through, and everything clicks, and she's standing in their old kitchen.

  Over there… Over here…

  She's an archaeologist. She's a diver in the deepest of all possible seas. She scoops snow, dead leaves and rubble from the hollow of the sink. She straightens a thing of rust that might once have been the spice rack. Many of the tiles with their squiggle pattern of green and white that she never consciously noticed before are still hanging. And all the while, the thinning light of this distant winter pours down and in. So many days here. So many arguments over breakfast. She can see her father clearly now, quietly spooning fruit and yoghurt on his muesli with the flowerpots lined on the window ledge behind him and the screen of some medical paper laid on the table and his cuffs rolled back to show his raw-looking wrists and his tie not yet done up. Damien is there as well, chomping as ever through some sugary, chocolaty stuff that he'll waste half of.

  "I had a visit from some police contractors yesterday," he's telling her as he unfolds a linen handkerchief and dabs delicately at his mouth. "Apparently, they're looking for witnesses to an incident that happened at the Hall Green Mall. You may have heard about it – some kind of silly stunt? Of course, I told them the truth. I simply said you were out."

  Now, as he refolds his handkerchief, his turns his guileless brown eyes up towards her, and the question he's really asking is so padded with all his usual oblique politeness that it's easily ignored. Anyway, time is moving on – Martha can feel it roaring through her bones in a winter gale – and now she's back home from her first term at the old, elite university town that her father, ever the supportive parent, has agreed to finance her to study at. Politics and Philosophy, too, and not a mention of the practical, career-based subjects she's sure he'd have much preferred her to take. Even as he spoons yoghurt over his muesli, she can feel him carefully not mentioning this. But he seems newly hunched and his hand trembles as he spoons his yoghurt. And here's a much larger, gruffersounding version of Damien, as well, and sprouting some odd kind of haircut, even if he is still half-eating a bowl of sugary slop. All so very strange: the way people start changing the instant you look away from them. But that isn't at the heart of it. What lies at the core of Martha's unease is, of all things, a dog that isn't really a dog.

  "Of course he's a dog, Martha," her father's saying as his suddenly liver-spotted hands stroke the creature's impossibly high haunches and it wags its tale and gazes at her with one eye of brown and the other of whirring silver. "Garm's fun. We take him for walks, don't we Damien? The only difference is that he's even more clever and trustworthy, and helps bring us a little bit of extra safety and security in these difficult times. Some worrying things have occurred locally, Martha, and I don't just mean mere destruction in unoccupied homes. So we do what we can, don't we Garm? Matter of fact, Martha, the enhancement technology that allows him to interact with the house security systems is essentially the same as I use to help my patients…"

  But this is all too much, it always was, and Martha's off out through the same stupid security gates and on along the same cold, dreary streets with more than enough stuff roaring around in her head to make up for her missing seashell that Karl never did give back to her even though all property is, basically, theft. That's dumb sloganeering and there are many new ideas Martha wants to share with him. But even the waystation seems changed. Sydney's been arrested, and Sophie got her arm burned on some stray shockwire, and different faces peer out at her through the fug. Who is this person? Martha Chauhan could ask them the same. Then up the final level, squeezing past a doorway
into some windy higher floor which already looks like the aftermath of a battle in an art gallery, with ripped concrete walls, flailing reinforcing bars and blasted ceilings all coated in huge swathes of colour. Clearly Karl's experimenting with new techniques, and it's all rather strange and beautiful-ugly. Forget regurgitated abstract expressionism. This is what Bosch would have painted if he'd lived in the bombed-out twenty-first century city. But hadn't they agreed that art for art's sake was essentially nothing but Nero fiddling while Rome burned?

  "So," he gestures, emerging from the dazzling rubble with the winter sun behind him like some rock star of old. "What do you think?"

  "It's… incredible…" So much she wants to tell him, now that she properly understands the history and context of their performance acts and sees them as part of a thread that goes back through syncretic individualism, anarcho-syndicalism and autonomism. But Karl is already scuttling off and returns holding something inside a paint-covered rag that she momentarily assumes as he unwraps it is some new artistic toy he's been playing with – a programmable paint palette or digital brush. But, hey, it's a handgun.

  * * *

  Snow blows in. Martha's breath plumes. It's growing dark. The old family house creaks, groans, tinkles as she shuffles into the hall and brushes away ice and dirt from the security control panel beneath the stairs. But everything here is dead – her own memory of the night when she lost half her mind and more than half her family included. Just doubts and what-ifs. Things Karl had said, questions he'd asked, about her Dad being a doctor, which surely meant access to drugs and money, and about the kind of security systems employed in their gated estate, and ways to circumvent them. That, and the strange, dark, falling gleam of that handgun, and how those performance acts of old had never been that harmless. Not just ghastly artwork hung up the wrong way but taps left running, freezers turned off, pretty things smashed. Precious books, data, family photos, destroyed or laughingly defaced beyond all hope of recovery. Pigshit in the beds. Koi carp flopped gasping on Persian rugs. Treasured bits of people's lives gleefully ruined. In a way, she supposes, what Karl did to her here in her own home was a kind of comeuppance.