The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 1

by Gordon Van Gelder

  NATHAN STACK.

  He heard it, from far off, across an Arctic vastness; heard it echoing over and over, down an endless corridor; as the knife sliced.

  NATHAN STACK.

  He remembered Lilith, with hair the color of dark wine. He remembered taking hours to die beneath a rock slide as his hunting companions in the pack ripped apart the remains of the bear and ignored his grunted moans for help. He remembered the impact of the crossbow bolt as it ripped through his hauberk and split his chest and he died at Agincourt. He remembered the icy water of the Ohio as it closed over his head and the flatboat disappearing without his mates noticing his loss. He remembered the mustard gas that ate his lungs as he tried to crawl toward a farmhouse near Verdun. He remembered looking directly into the flash of the bomb and feeling the flesh of his face melt away. He remembered Snake coming to him in the board room and husking him like corn from his body. He remembered sleeping in the molten core of the Earth for a quarter of a million years.

  Across the dead centuries he heard his mother pleading with him to set her free, to end her pain. Use the needle. Her voice mingled with the voice of the Earth crying out in endless pain at her flesh that had been ripped away, at her rivers turned to arteries of dust, at her rolling hills and green fields slagged to greenglass and ashes. The voices of his mother and the mother that was Earth became one, and mingled to become Snake’s voice telling him he was the one man in the world—the last man in the world—who could end the terminal case the Earth had become.

  Use the needle. Put the suffering Earth out of its misery. It belongs to you now.

  Nathan Stack was secure in the power he contained. A power that far outstripped that of gods or Snakes or mad creators who stuck pins in their creations, who broke their toys.

  YOU CAN’T. I WON’T LET YOU.

  Nathan Stack walked around the burning bush as it crackled impotently in rage. He looked at it almost pityingly, remembering the Wizard of Oz with his great and ominous disembodied head floating in mist and lightning, and the poor little man behind the curtain turning the dials to create the effects. Stack walked around the effect, knowing he had more power than this sad, poor thing that had held his race in thrall since before Lilith had been taken from him.

  He went in search of the mad one who capitalized his name.

  23

  Zarathustra descended alone from the mountains, encountering no one. But when he came into the forest, all at once there stood before him an old man who had left his holy cottage to look for roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra:

  “No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago he passed this way. Zarathustra he was called, but he has changed. At that time you carried your ashes to the mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to be punished as an arsonist?

  “Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one; what do you now want among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, would you now climb ashore? Alas, would you again drag your own body?”

  Zarathustra answered: “I love man.”

  “Why,” asked the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved man all too much? Now I love God; man I love not. Man is, for me, too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me.”

  “And what is the saint doing in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

  The saint answered: “I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming, I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

  When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: “What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly, lest I take something from you!” And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.

  But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!”

  24

  Stack found the mad one wandering in the forest of final moments. He was an old, tired man, and Stack knew with a wave of his hand he could end it for this god in a moment. But what was the reason for it? It was even too late for revenge. It had been too late from the start. So he let the old one go his way, wandering in the forest, mumbling to himself, I WON’T LET YOU DO IT, in the voice of a cranky child; mumbling pathetically, OH, PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED YET. I’M NOT YET DONE PLAYING.

  And Stack came back to Snake, who had served his function and protected Stack until Stack had learned that he was more powerful than the god he’d worshipped all through the history of Men. He came back to Snake and their hands touched and the bond of friendship was sealed at last, at the end.

  Then they worked together and Nathan Stack used the needle with a wave of his hands, and the Earth could not sigh with relief as its endless pain was ended... but it did sigh, and it settled in upon itself, and the molten core went out, and the winds died, and from high above them Stack heard the fulfillment of Snake’s final act; he heard the descent of the Deathbird.

  “What was your name?” Stack asked his friend.

  Dira.

  And the Deathbird settled down across the tired shape of the Earth, and it spread its wings wide, and brought them over and down, and enfolded the Earth as a mother enfolds her weary child. Dira settled down on the amethyst floor of the dark-shrouded palace, and closed his single eye with gratitude. To sleep at last, at the end.

  All this, as Nathan Stack stood watching. He was the last, at the end, and because he had come to own—if even for a few moments—that which could have been his from the start, had he but known, he did not sleep but stood and watched. Knowing at last, at the end, that he had loved and done no wrong.

  25

  The Deathbird closed its wings over the Earth until at last, at the end, there was only the great bird crouched over the dead cinder. Then the Deathbird raised its head to the star-filled sky and repeated the sigh of loss the Earth had felt at the end. Then its eyes closed, it tucked its head carefully under its wing, and all was night.

  Far away, the stars waited for the cry of the Deathbird to reach them so final moments could be observed at last, at the end, for the race of Men.

  26

  THIS IS FOR MARK TWAIN

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  The Women Men Don’t See – James Tiptree, Jr.

  When “James Tiptree, Jr.” (a pseudonym of Alice Bradley Sheldon [1915-1987]), first submitted the story “Painwise,” editor Ed Ferman turned it down for F&SF as being too baffling. Months later, still haunted by the story, he asked to see it again and bought it unrevised. “Like any original author,” Ursula Le Guin said, “Alii [Sheldon] did have to teach people how to read Tiptree.” I doubt anyone will have any such problems with “The Women Men Don’t See”—in this story, Tiptree used the a Hemingway-esque style of adventure writing to create a classic extrapolation of life on Earth.

  I see her first while the Mexicana 727 is barreling down to Cozumel Island. I come out of the can and lurch into her seat, saying “Sorry,” at a double female blur. The near blur nods quietly. The younger blur in the window seat goes on looking out. I continue down the aisle, registering nothing. Zero. I never would have looked at them or thought of them again.

  Cozumel airport is the usual mix of panicky Yanks dressed for the sand pile and calm Mexicans dressed for lunch at the Presidente. I am a gray used-up Yank dressed for serious fishing; I extract my rods and duffel from the riot and hike across the field to find my charter pilot. One Captain Estéban has contracted to deliver me to the bonefish flats of Belize three hundred kilometers down the coast.

  Captain Estéban turns out to be four feet nine of mahogany Maya puro. He is also in a somber Maya snit. He tells me my Cessna is grounded somewhere and his Bonanza is booked to take a party to Chetumal.


  Well, Chetumal is south; can he take me along and go on to Belize after he drops them? Gloomily he concedes the possibility—if the other party permits, and if there are not too many equipajes.

  The Chetumal party approaches. It’s the woman and her young companion —daughter?—neatly picking their way across the gravel and yucca apron. Their Ventura two-suiters, like themselves, are small, plain, and neutral-colored. No problem. When the captain asks if I may ride along, the mother says mildly, “Of course,” without looking at me.

  I think that’s when my inner tilt-detector sends up its first faint click. How come this woman has already looked me over carefully enough to accept on her plane? I disregard it. Paranoia hasn’t been useful in my business for years, but the habit is hard to break.

  As we clamber into the Bonanza, I see the girl has what could be an attractive body if there was any spark at all. There isn’t. Captain Estéban folds a serape to sit on so he can see over the cowling and runs a meticulous check-down. And then we’re up and trundling over the turquoise Jell-O of the Caribbean into a stiff south wind.

  The coast on our right is the territory of Quintana Roo. If you haven’t seen Yucatán, imagine the world’s biggest absolutely flat green-gray rug. An empty-looking land. We pass the white ruin of Tulum and the gash of the road to Chichén Itzá, a half-dozen coconut plantations, and then nothing but reef and low scrub jungle all the way to the horizon, just about the way the conquistadors saw it four centuries back.

  Long strings of cumulus are racing at us, shadowing the coast. I have gathered that part of our pilot’s gloom concerns the weather. A cold front is dying on the henequen fields of Mérida to the west, and the south wind has piled up a string of coastal storms: what they call lloviznas. Estéban detours methodically around a couple of small thunderheads. The Bonanza jinks, and I look back with a vague notion of reassuring the women. They are calmly intent on what can be seen of Yucatán. Well, they were offered the copilot’s view, but they turned it down. Too shy?

  Another llovizna puffs up ahead. Estéban takes the Bonanza upstairs, rising in his seat to sight his course. I relax for the first time in too long, savoring the latitudes between me and my desk, the week of fishing ahead. Our captain’s classic Maya profile attracts my gaze: forehead sloping back from his predatory nose, lips and jaw stepping back below it. If his slant eyes had been any more crossed, he couldn’t have made his license. That’s a handsome combination, believe it or not. On the little Maya chicks in their minishifts with iridescent gloop on those cockeyes, it’s also highly erotic. Nothing like the oriental doll thing; these people have stone bones. Captain Estéban’s old grandmother could probably tow the Bonanza....

  I’m snapped awake by the cabin hitting my ear. Estéban is barking into his headset over a drumming racket of hail; the windows are dark gray.

  One important noise is missing—the motor. I realize Estéban is fighting a dead plane. Thirty-six hundred; we’ve lost two thousand feet!

  He slaps tank switches as the storm throws us around; I catch something about gasolina in a snarl that shows his big teeth. The Bonanza reels down. As he reaches for an overhead toggle, I see the fuel gauges are high. Maybe a clogged gravity feed line; I’ve heard of dirty gas down here. He drops the set; it’s a million to one nobody can read us through the storm at this range anyway. Twenty-five hundred—going down.

  His electric feed pump seems to have cut in: the motor explodes—quits— explodes—and quits again for good. We are suddenly out of the bottom of the clouds. Below us is a long white line almost hidden by rain: the reef. But there isn’t any beach behind it, only a big meandering bay with a few mangrove flats—and it’s coming up at us fast.

  This is going to be bad, I tell myself with great unoriginality. The women behind me haven’t made a sound. I look back and see they’ve braced down with their coats by their heads. With a stalling speed around eighty, all this isn’t much use, but I wedge myself in.

  Estéban yells some more into his set, flying a falling plane. He is doing one jesus job, too—as the water rushes up at us he dives into a hair-raising turn and hangs us into the wind—with a long pale ridge of sandbar in front of our nose.

  Where in hell he found it I never know. The Bonanza mushes down, and we belly-hit with a tremendous tearing crash—bounce—hit again—and everything slews wildly as we flat-spin into the mangroves at the end of the bar. Crash! Clang! The plane is wrapping itself into a mound of strangler fig with one wing up. The crashing quits with us all in one piece. And no fire. Fantastic.

  Captain Estéban pries open his door, which is now in the roof. Behind me a woman is repeating quietly, “Mother. Mother.” I climb up the floor and find the girl trying to free herself from her mother’s embrace. The woman’s eyes are closed. Then she opens them and suddenly lets go, sane as soap. Estéban starts hauling them out. I grab the Bonanza’s aid kit and scramble out after them into brilliant sun and wind. The storm that hit us is already vanishing up the coast.

  “Great landing, Captain.”

  “Oh, yes! It was beautiful.” The women are shaky, but no hysteria. Estéban is surveying the scenery with the expression his ancestors used on the Spaniards.

  If you’ve been in one of these things, you know the slow-motion inanity that goes on. Euphoria, first. We straggle down the fig tree and out onto the sandbar in the roaring hot wind, noting without alarm that there’s nothing but miles of crystalline water on all sides. It’s only a foot or so deep, and the bottom is the olive color of silt. The distant shore around us is all flat” mangrove swamp, totally uninhabitable.

  “Bahía Espírito Santo.” Estéban confirms my guess that we’re down in that huge water wilderness. I always wanted to fish it.

  “What’s all that smoke?” The girl is pointing at the plumes blowing around the horizon.

  “Alligator hunters,” says Estéban. Maya poachers have left burn-offs in the swamps. It occurs to me that any signal fires we make aren’t going to be too conspicuous. And I now note that our plane is well-buried in the mound of fig. Hard to see it from the air.

  Just as the question of how the hell we get out of here surfaces in my mind, the older woman asks composedly, “If they didn’t hear you, Captain, when will they start looking for us? Tomorrow?”

  “Correct,” Estéban agrees dourly. I recall that air-sea rescue is fairly informal here. Like, keep an eye open for Mario, his mother says he hasn’t been home all week.

  It dawns on me we may be here quite some while.

  Furthermore, the diesel-truck noise on our left is the Caribbean piling back into the mouth of the bay. The wind is pushing it at us, and the bare bottoms on the mangroves show that our bar is covered at high tide. I recall seeing a full moon this morning in—believe it, St. Louis—which means maximal tides. Well, we can climb up in the plane. But what about drinking water?

  There’s a small splat! behind me. The older woman has sampled the bay. She shakes her head, smiling ruefully. It’s the first real expression on either of them; I take it as the signal for introductions. When I say I’m Don Fenton from St. Louis, she tells me their name is Parsons, from Bethesda, Maryland. She says it so nicely I don’t at first notice we aren’t being given first names. We all compliment Captain Estéban again.

  His left eye is swelled shut, an inconvenience beneath his attention as a Maya, but Mrs. Parsons spots the way he’s bracing his elbow in his ribs.

  “You’re hurt, Captain.”

  “Roto—I think is broken.” He’s embarrassed at being in pain. We get him to peel off his Jaime shirt, revealing a nasty bruise in his superb dark-bay torso.

  “Is there tape in that kit, Mr. Fenton? I’ve had a little first-aid training.”

  She begins to deal competently and very impersonally with the tape. Miss Parsons and I wander to the end of the bar and have a conversation which I am later to recall acutely.

  “Roseate spoonbills,” I tell her as three pink birds flap away.

  “They’
re beautiful,” she says in her tiny voice. They both have tiny voices. “He’s a Mayan Indian, isn’t he? The pilot, I mean.”

  “Right. The real thing, straight out of the Bonampak murals. Have you seen Chichén and Uxmal?”

  “Yes. We were in Mérida. We’re going to Tikal in Guatemala.... I mean, we were.”

  “You’ll get there.” It occurs to me the girl needs cheering up. “Have they told you that Maya mothers used to tie a board on the infant’s forehead to get that slant? They also hung a ball of tallow over its nose to make the eyes cross. It was considered aristocratic.”

  She smiles and takes another peek at Estéban. “People seem different in Yucatán,” she says thoughtfully. “Not like the Indians around Mexico City. More, I don’t know, independent.”

  “Comes from never having been conquered. Mayas got massacred and chased a lot, but nobody ever really flattened them. I bet you didn’t know that the last Mexican-Maya war ended with a negotiated truce in nineteen thirty-five?”

  “No!” Then she says seriously, “I like that.”

  “So do I.”

  “The water is really rising very fast,” says Mrs. Parsons gently from behind us.

  It is, and so is another llovizna. We climb back into the Bonanza. I try to rig my parka for a rain catcher, which blows loose as the storm hits fast and furious. We sort a couple of malt bars and my bottle of Jack Daniel’s out of the jumble in the cabin and make ourselves reasonably comfortable. The Parsons take a sip of whiskey each, Estéban and I considerably more. The Bonanza begins to bump soggily. Estéban makes an ancient one-eyed Mayan face at the water seeping into his cabin and goes to sleep. We all nap.

  When the water goes down, the euphoria has gone with it, and we’re very, very thirsty. It’s also damn near sunset. I get to work with a bait-casting rod and some treble hooks and manage to foul-hook four small mullets. Estéban and the women tie the Bonanza’s midget life raft out in the mangroves to catch rain. The wind is parching hot. No planes go by.