Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14

by Gardner Dozois

  “We’re not going directly back to the house,” she said. “She wants to take me to a club on the square. I don’t know when we’ll get to your father’s.”

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I think we should wait until morning.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Go to the house and as soon as you’ve dealt with your father, do exactly what I told you. When you hear us enter the house, stay out of sight. Don’t do a thing until I come and get you. Understand?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, perplexed at the way she had taken charge.

  “Please!” She grabbed me by the lapels. “Promise you’ll do as I say! Please!”

  I promised, but as I watched her run off into the dark I had a resurgence of my old sense of dislocation, and though I had not truly listened to the major’s story, having been occupied with my own troubles, the sound of him sputtering and chortling behind me, gloating over the treasure of his recovered memory, his invention, whatever it was, caused me to wonder then about the nature of my own choice, and the story that I might someday tell.

  My father’s house was on Yen Phu Street—two storeys of pocked grey stone with green vented shutters and a green door with a knocker carved in the shape of a water buffalo’s head. I arrived shortly after midnight and stood in the lee of the high whitewashed wall that enclosed his compound. The fog had been cut by a steady drizzle, and no pedestrians were about. Light slanted from the vents of a shuttered upstairs window, and beneath it was parked a bicycle in whose basket rested a dozen white lilies, their stems wrapped in butcher paper. I imagined that my father had ridden the bicycle to market and had forgotten to retrieve the flowers after carrying his other purchases inside. They seemed omenical in their glossy pallor, a sterile emblem of the bloody work ahead.

  The idea of killing my father held no terrors for me—I had performed the act in my mind hundreds of times, I’d conceived its every element—and as I stood there I felt the past accumulating at my back like the cars of a train stretching for eighteen years, building from my mother’s death to the shuddering engine of the moment I was soon to inhabit. All the misgivings that earlier had nagged at me melted away, like fog before rain. I was secure in my hatred and in the knowledge that I had no choice, that my father was a menace who would never fade.

  I crossed the street, knocked, and after a few seconds he admitted me into a brightly lit alcove with a darkened room opening off to the right. He was dressed in a voluminous robe of green silk, and as he proceeded me up the stairway to the left of the alcove, the sight of his bell-like shape and bald head with the silver plate collaring the base of his skull… these things along with the odour of jasmine incense led me to imagine that I was being escorted to an audience with some mysterious religious figure by one of his eunuch priests. At the head of the stairs was a narrow white room furnished with two padded chrome chairs, a wall screen and, at the far end, a desk bearing papers, an ornamental vase, an old-fashioned letter opener, and a foot-high gilt and bronze Buddha. My father sat down in one of the chairs, triggered the wall screen’s computer mode with a penlight, and set about accessing the Sony AI, working through various menus, all the while chatting away, saying he was sorry he’d missed our show, he hoped to attend the following night, and how was I enjoying my stay in Binh Khoi, it often seemed an unfriendly place to newcomers, but by week’s end I’d feel right at home. I had brought no weapon, assuming that his security would detect it. The letter opener, I thought, would do the job. But my hand fell instead to the Buddha. It would be cleaner, I decided. A single blow. I picked it up, hefted it. I had anticipated that when the moment arrived, I would want to make myself known to my father, to relish his shock and dismay; but I understood that was no longer important, and I only wanted him to die. In any case, since he likely knew the truth about me, the dramatic scene I’d envisioned would be greatly diminished.

  “That’s Thai. Fifteenth century,” he said, nodding at the statue, then returned his attention to the screen. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” I said.

  Then, without a thought, all thinking necessary having already been done, and the deed itself merely an automatic function, the final surge of an eighteen-year-long momentum, I stepped behind him and swung the statue at the back of his head. I expected to hear a crack but the sound of impact was plush, muffled, such as might be caused by the flat of one’s hand striking a pillow. He let out an explosive grunt, toppled with a twisting motion against the wall, ending up on his side, facing outward. There was so much blood, I assumed he must be dead. But then he groaned, his eyes blinked open, and he struggled to his knees. I saw that I’d hit the silver plate at the base of his skull. Blood was flowing out around the plate, but it had protected him from mortal damage. His robe had fallen open, and with his pale mottled belly bulging from the green silk and the blood streaking his neck, his smallish features knitted in pain and perplexity, he looked gross and clownishly pitiable. He held up an unsteady hand to block a second blow. His mouth worked, and he said “Wait… “ or “What… “ Which, I can’t be sure. But I was in no mood either to wait or to explain myself. A clean death might not have affected me so deeply, but that I had made of a whole healthy life this repellent half-dead thing wobbling at my feet—it assaulted my moral foundation, it washed the romantic tint of revenge from the simple, terrible act of slaughter, and when I struck at him again, this time smashing the statue down two-handed onto the top of his skull, I was charged with the kind of fear that afflicts a child when he more or less by accident wounds a bird with a stone and seeks to hide the act from God by tossing his victim onto an ash heap. My father sagged onto his back, blood gushing from his nose and mouth. I caught a whiff of faeces and staggered away, dropping the Buddha. Now that my purpose had been accomplished, like a bee dying from having stung its enemy, I felt drained of poison, lull of dull surprise that there had been no more rewarding result.

  The penlight had rolled beneath the second chair. I picked it up, and, following Tan’s instructions, I used the computer to contact a security agency in Danang. A blonde woman with a brittle manner appeared on the screen and asked my business. I explained my circumstances, not bothering to characterize the murder as anything other than it was—the size of my trust would guarantee my legal immunity — and also provided her with the number of Vang’s lawyer, as well as some particulars concerning the trust, thereby establishing my bona fides. The woman vanished, her image replaced by a shifting pattern of pastel colours, and, after several minutes, this in turn was replaced by a contract form with a glowing blue patch at the bottom to which I pressed the ball of my thumb. The woman reappeared, much more solicitous now, and cautioned me to remain where I was. She assured me that an armed force would be at the house within the hour. As an afterthought she advised me to wipe the blood from my face.

  The presence of the body—its meat reality—made me uncomfortable. I picked up the letter opener and went down the stairs and groped my way across the unlit room off the alcove and found a chair in a corner from which I could see the door. Sitting alone in the darkness amplified the torpor that had pervaded me, and though I sensed certain unsettling dissonances surrounding what had just taken place, I was not sufficiently alert to consider them as other than aggravations. I had been sitting there for perhaps ten minutes when the door opened and Phuong, laughing, stepped into the alcove with Tan behind her, wearing a blue skirt and chequered blouse. She kicked the door shut, pushed Tan against the wall, and began to kiss her, running a hand up under her skirt. Then her head snapped around, and although I didn’t believe she could see in the dark, she stared directly at me.

  Before I could react, before I could be sure that Phuong had detected me, Tan struck her beneath the jaw with the heel of her left hand, driving her against the opposite wall, and followed this with a kick to the stomach. Phuong rolled away and up into a crouch. She cried out my father’s name: “William!” Whether in warning or—recognizing what had happened
—in grief, I cannot say. Then the two women began to fight. It lasted no more than half a minute, but their speed and eerie grace were incredible to see: like watching two long-fingered witches dancing in a bright patch of weakened gravity and casting violent spells. Dazed by Tan’s initial blows, Phuong went on the defensive, but soon she recovered and started to hold her own. I remembered the letter opener in my hand. The thing was poorly balanced and Phuong’s quickness made the timing hard to judge, but then she paused, preparing to launch an attack, and I flung the opener, lodging it squarely between her shoulderblades. Not a mortal wound—the blade was too dull to bite deep—but a distracting one. She shrieked, tried to reach the opener, and, as she reeled to the side, Tan came up behind her and broke her neck with a savage twist. She let the body fall and walked towards me, a shadow in the darkened room. It seemed impossible that she was the same woman I had known on the beach at Vung Tau, and I felt a spark of fear.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, stopping a few feet away.

  “All right?” I laughed. “What’s going on here?”

  She gave no reply, and I said, “Apparently you decided against using Mei’s herbs.”

  “If you had done as I asked, if you’d stayed clear, it might not have been necessary to kill her.” She came another step forward. “Have you called for security?”

  I nodded. “Did you learn to fight like that in Hue?”

  “In China,” she said.

  “At a private security company. Like Phuong.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it would follow that you’re not Vang’s niece.”

  “But I am,” she said. “He used the last of his fortune to have me trained so I could protect you. He was a bitter man… to have used his family so.”

  “And I suppose sleeping with me falls under the umbrella of protection.” She kneeled beside the chair, put a hand on my neck, and gazed at me entreatingly. “I love you, Philip. I would do anything for you. How can you doubt it?”

  I was moved by her sincerity, but I could not help but treat her coldly. It was as if a valve had been twisted shut to block the flow of my emotions. “That’s right,” I said. “Vang told me that your kind were conditioned to bond with their clients.”

  I watched the words hit home, a wounded expression washing across her features, then fading, like a ripple caused by a pebble dropped into a still pond.

  “Is that so important?” she asked. “Does it alter the fact that you fell in love with me?”

  I ignored this, yet I was tempted to tell her, No, it did not. “If you were trained to protect me, why did Vang discourage our relationship?”

  She got to her feet, her face unreadable, and went a few paces towards the alcove; she appeared to be staring at Phuong’s body, lying crumpled in the light. “There was a time when I think he wanted me for himself. That may explain it.”

  “Did Phuong really accost you?” I asked. “Or was that… “

  “I’ve never lied to you. I’ve deceived you by not revealing everything I knew about Vang,” she said. “But I was bound to obey him in that. As you said, I’ve been conditioned.”

  I had other questions, but I could not frame one of them. The silence of the house seemed to breed a faint humming, and I became oppressed by the idea that Tan and I were living analogs of the two corpses, that the wealth I was soon to receive as a consequence of our actions would lead us to a pass wherein we would someday lie dead in separate rooms of a silent house, while two creatures like ourselves but younger would stand apart from one another in fretful isolation, pondering their future. I wanted to dispossess myself of this notion, to contrive a more potent reality, and I crossed the room to Tan and turned her to face me. She refused to meet my eyes, but I tipped up her chin and kissed her. A lover’s kiss. I touched her breasts—a treasuring touch. But despite the sweet affirmation and openness of the kiss, I think it also served a formal purpose, the sealing of a bargain whose terms we did not fully understand.

  Six months and a bit after my eighteenth birthday, I was sitting in a room in the Sony offices in Saigon, a windowless space with black walls and carpet and silver-framed photographs of scenes along the Perfume River and in the South China Sea, when Vang flickered into being against the far wall. I thought I must seem to him, as he seemed to me, like a visitation, a figure from another time manifested in a dream. He appeared no different than he had on the day he left the circus—thin and grey-haired, dressed in care-worn clothing—and his attitude towards me was, as ever, distant. I told him what had happened in Binh Khoi, and he said, “I presumed you would have more trouble with William. Of course he thought he had leverage over me—he thought he had Tan in his clutches. So he let his guard down. He believed he had nothing to fear.”

  His logic was overly simplistic, but rather than pursue this, I asked the question foremost on my mind: why had he not told me that he was my grandfather? I had uncovered quite a lot about my past in the process of familiarizing myself with Vang’s affairs, but I wanted to hear it all.

  “Because I’m not your grandfather,” he said. “I was William’s father-in-law, but… “ He shot me an amused look. “I should have thought you would have understood all this by now.”

  I saw no humour in the situation. “Explain it to me.”

  “As you wish.” He paced away from me, stopped to inspect one of the trained photographs. “William engineered the death of my wife, my daughter, and my grandson in a plane crash. Once he had isolated me, he challenged my mental competency, intending to take over my business concerns. To thwart him, I faked my suicide. It was a very convincing fake. I used a body I’d had cloned to supply me with organs. I kept enough money to support Green Star and to pay for Tan’s training. The rest you know.”

  “Not so,” I said. “You haven’t told me who I am.”

  “Ah, yes.” He turned from the photograph and smiled pleasantly at me. “I suppose that would interest you. Your mother’s name was Tuyet. Tuyet Su Vanh. She was an actress in various pornographic media. The woman you saw in your dream—that was she. We had a relationship for several years, then we drifted apart. Not long before I lost my family, she came to me and told me she was dying. One of the mutated HIVs. She said she’d borne a child by me. A son. She begged me to take care of you. I didn’t believe her, of course. But she had given me pleasure, so I set up a trust for you. A small one.”

  “And then you decided to use me.”

  “William had undermined my authority to the extent that I could not confront him directly. I needed an arrow to aim at his heart. I told your mother that if she cooperated with me I’d adopt you, place my fortune in the trust, and make you my heir. She gave permission to have your memory wiped. I wanted you empty so I could fill you with my purpose. After you were re-educated, she helped construct some fragmentary memories that were implanted by means of a biochip. Nonetheless, you were a difficult child to mould. I couldn’t be certain that you would seek William out, and so, since I was old and tired and likely not far from Heaven, I decided to feign an illness and withdraw. This allowed me to arrange a confrontation without risk to myself.”

  I should have hated Vang, but after six months of running his businesses, of viewing the world from a position of governance and control, I understood him far too well to hate—though at that moment, understanding the dispassionate requisites and protocols of such a position seemed as harsh a form of judgment as the most bitter of hatreds. “What happened to my mother?” I asked.

  “I arranged for her to receive terminal care in an Australian hospital.”

  “And her claim that I was your biological son… did you investigate it?”

  “Why should I? It didn’t matter. A man in my position could not acknowledge an illegitimate child, and once I had made my decision to abdicate my old life, it mattered even less. If it has any meaning for you, there are medical records you can access.”

  “I think I’d prefer it to remain a mystery,” I told him.

&n
bsp; “You’ve no reason to be angry at me,” he said. “I’ve made you wealthy. And what did it cost? A few memories.”

  I shifted in my chair, steepled my hands on my stomach. “Are you convinced that my… that William had your family killed? He seemed to think there had been a misunderstanding.”

  “That was a charade! If you’re asking whether or not I had proof—of course I didn’t. William knew how to disguise his hand.”

  “So everything you did was based solely on the grounds of your suspicions.”

  “No! It was based on my knowledge of the man!” His tone softened. “What does it matter? Only William and I knew the truth, and he is dead. If you doubt me, if you pursue this further, you’ll never be able to satisfy yourself.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “Are you leaving already?” He wore an aggrieved expression. “I was hoping you’d tell me about Tan… and Green Star. What has happened with my little circus?”

  “Tan is well. As for Green Star, I gave it to Mei and Tranh.”

  I opened the door, and Vang made a gesture of restraint. “Stay a while longer, Philip. Please. You and Tan are the only people with whom I have in emotional connection. It heartens me to spend time with you.”

  Hearing him describe our relationship in these terms gave me pause. I recalled the conversation in which Tan had asserted that something central to the idea of life died when one was uploaded into Heaven—Vang’s uncharacteristic claim to an emotional debt caused me to think that he might well be, as she’d described her parents, a coloured shadow, a cunningly contrived representation of the original. I hoped that this was not the case; I hoped that he was alive in every respect.

  “I have to go,” I said. “Business, you understand. But I have some news that may be of interest to you.”