The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  Except by Sir David.

  Shay was getting very close now. Its face looked innocuous enough. A little vacant, a man not too bright perhaps, or very short of sleep. Its skin was pale today, matching Sir David’s own, but he knew it could change that in an instant. Skin color, height, apparent age, gender... all of these could be changed by Shay, though it mostly appeared as it was right now.

  Small and innocuous, old and tired. Excellent camouflage among humans.

  Ten paces, nine paces, eight paces... the timing had to be right. The command had to be said in front of its face, without error, clear and precise – “Shay Risborough Gabardine,” barked Sir David, shivering in place, his whole body tensed to receive a killing blow.

  Shay’s eyes flashed silver. He took half a step forward, putting him inches away from Sir David, and stopped. There was a terrible stillness, the world perched on the brink. Then it turned on its heel, crossed the road and went back into its house. The old house, opposite Sir David’s, that no one but Shay had set foot in for thirty years.

  Sir David stood where he was for several minutes, shaking. Finally he quelled his shivering enough to march back inside his own house, where he ignored the phone on the hall table, choosing instead to open a drawer in his study to lift out a chunkier, older thing that had no dial of any kind, pushbutton or rotary. He held the handset to his head and waited.

  There were a series of clicks and whines and beeps, the sound of disparate connections working out how they might after all get together. Finally a sharp, quick male voice answered on the other end.

  “Yes.”

  “Case Shay Zulu,” said Sir David. There was a pause. He could hear the flipping of pages, as the operator searched through the ready book.

  “Is there more?” asked the operator.

  “What!” exploded Sir David. “Case Shay Zulu!”

  “How do you spell it?”

  Sir David’s lip curled almost up to his nose, but he pulled it back.

  “S-H-A-Y,” he spelled out. “Z-U-L-U.”

  “I can spell Zulu,” said the operator, affronted. “There’s still nothing.”

  “Look up my workname,” said Sir David. “Arthur Brooks.”

  There was tapping now, the sound of a keyboard. He’d heard they were using computers more and more throughout the Department, not just for the boffins in the back rooms.

  “Ah, I see... I’ve got you now, sir,” said the operator. At least there was a “sir”, now.

  “Get someone competent to look up Shay Zulu and report my communication at once to the duty officer with instruction to relay it to the Chief,” ordered Sir David. “I want a call back in five minutes.”

  The call came in ten minutes, ten minutes Sir David spent looking out his study window, watching the house across the road. It was eleven a.m, too late for Shay to go to the supermarket like it had done every day for the last thirty years. Sir David wouldn’t know if it had returned to its previous safe routine until 10:30am tomorrow. Or earlier, if Shay was departing on some different course...

  The insistent ringing recalled him to the phone.

  “Yes.”

  “Sir David? My name is Angela Terris, I’m the duty officer at present. We’re a bit at sea here. We can’t find Shay Zulu in the system at all – what was that?”

  Sir David had let out a muffled cry, his knuckles jammed against his mouth.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said, trying to think. “The paper files, the old records to 1977, you can look there. But the important thing is the book, we... I must have the notebook from the Chief’s safe, a small green leather book embossed on the cover with the gold initials IKB.”

  “The Chief’s not here right now,” said Angela brightly. “This Falklands thing, you know. He’s briefing the cabinet. Is it urgent?”

  “Of course it’s urgent!” barked Sir David, regretting it even as he spoke, remembering when old Admiral Puller had called up long after retirement, concerned about a suspicious new postman, and how they had laughed on the Seventh Floor. “Look, find Case Shay Zulu and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “Is it something to do with the Soviets, Sir David? Because we’re really getting on reasonably well with them at the moment –”

  “No, no, it’s nothing to do with the Soviets,” said Sir David. He could hear the tone in her voice, he remembered using it himself when he had taken Admiral Fuller’s call. It was the calming voice that meant no immediate action, a routine request to some functionary to investigate further in days, or even weeks, purely as a courtesy to the old man. He had to do something that would make her act, there had to some lever.

  “I’m afraid it’s something to do with the Service itself,” he said. “Could be very, very embarrassing. Even now. I need that book to deal with it.”

  “Embarrassing as in likely to be of media interest, Sir David?” asked Angela.

  “Very much so,” said Sir David heavily.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Angela.

  “WE WERE REALLY rather surprised to find the Department owns a safe house that isn’t on the register,” said the young, nattily dressed and borderline rude young man who came that afternoon. His name, or at least the one he had supplied, was Redmond. “Finance were absolutely delighted, it must be worth close to half a million pounds now, a huge place like that. Fill a few black holes with that once we sell it. On the quiet, of course, as you say it would be very embarrassing if the media get hold of this little real estate venture.”

  “Sell it?” asked Sir David. “Sell it! Did you only find the imprest accounts, not the actual file? Don’t you understand? The only thing that stops Shay from running amok is routine, a routine that is firmly embedded in and around that house! Sell the house and you unleash the... the beast!”

  “Beast, Sir David?” asked Redmond. He suppressed a yawn and added, “Sounds rather Biblical. I expect we can find a place for this Shea up at Exile House. I daresay they’ll dig his file up eventually, qualify him as a former employee.”

  They could find a place for Sir David too, were the unspoken words. Exile House, last stop for those with total disability suffered on active service, crippled by torture, driven insane from stress, shot through both knees and elbows. There were many ways to arrive at Exile House.

  “Did you talk to the Chief?” asked Sir David. “Did you ask about the book marked ‘IKB’?”

  “Chief’s very busy,” said Redmond. “There’s a war on you know. Even if it is only a little one. Look, why don’t I go over and have a chat to old Shea, get a feel for the place, see if there’s anything else that might need sorting?”

  “If you go over there you introduce another variable,” said Sir David, as patiently as he could. “Right now, I’ve got Shay to return to its last state, which may or may not last until ten thirty tomorrow morning, when it goes and gets its bread and milk, as it has done for the last thirty years. But if you disrupt it again, then who knows what will happen.”

  “I see, I see,” said Redmond. He nodded as if he had completely understood. “Bit of a mental case, hey? Well, I did bring a couple of the boys in blue along just in case.”

  “Boys in blue!”

  Sir David was almost apoplectic. He clutched at Redmond’s sleeve, but the young man effortlessly withdrew himself and sauntered away.

  “Back in half a mo,” he called out cheerfully.

  Sir David tried to chase him down, but by the time he got to the front door it was shut in his face. He scrabbled at the weapon cache, pushing hard on a panel till he realized it was the wrong one. By the time he had the revolver in his hand and had wrestled the door open, Redmond was already across the road, waving to the two policemen in the panda car to follow him. They got out quickly, large men in blue, putting their hats on as they strode after the young agent.

  “Not even Special Branch,” muttered Sir David. He let the revolver hang by his side. What could he do with it anyway? He couldn’t shoot Redmond, or the policemen.<
br />
  Perhaps, he thought bleakly, he could shoot himself. That would bring them back, delay the knock on the door opposite... but it would only be a delay. And if he was killed, and if they couldn’t find Brunel’s book, then the other command words would be lost.

  Redmond went up the front steps two at a time, past the faded sign that said, “Hawkers and Salesmen Not Welcome. Beware of the Vicious Dog” and the one underneath it that had been added a year after the first, “No Liability for Injury or Death, You Have Been Warned.”

  Sir David blinked, narrowing his eyes against the sunshine that was still streaming down, flooding the street. It was just like the afternoon, that afternoon in ’43 when the sun had broken through after days of fog and ice, but even though it washed across him on the bridge of his frigate he couldn’t feel it, he could only see the light, he was so frozen from the cold Atlantic days the sunshine couldn’t touch him, there was no warmth that could reach him . . .

  He felt colder now. Redmond was knocking on the door. Hammering on the door. Sir David choked a little on his own spit, apprehension rising. There was a chance Shay wouldn’t answer, and the door was very heavy, those two policemen couldn’t kick it down, there would be more delay – The door opened. There was the flash of silver, and Redmond fell down the steps, blood geysering from his neck as if some newfangled watering system had suddenly switched on beside him, drawing water from a rusted tank.

  A blur of movement followed. The closer policeman spun about, as if suddenly inspired to dance, only his head was tumbling from his shoulders to dance apart from him. The surviving policeman, that is the policeman who had survived the first three seconds of contact with Shay, staggered backwards and started to turn around to run.

  He took one step before he too was pierced through with a silver spike, his feet taking him only to the gutter where he lay down to die.

  Sir David went back inside, leaving the door open. He went to his phone in the hall and called his daughter. She answered on the fourth ring. Sir David’s hand was so sweaty he had to grip the plastic tightly, so the phone didn’t slip from his grip.

  “Mary? I want you to call Peter and your girls and tell them to get across the Channel now. France, Belgium, doesn’t matter. No, wait, Terence is in Newcastle, isn’t he? Tell him... listen to me... he can get the ferry to Stavanger. Listen! There is going to be a disaster here. It doesn’t matter what kind! I haven’t gone crazy, you know who I know. They have to get out of the country and across the water! Just go!”

  Sir David hung up. He wasn’t sure Mary would do as he said. He wasn’t even sure that the sea would stop Shay. That was one of the theories, never tested, that it wouldn’t or couldn’t cross a large body of water. Brunel almost certainly knew, but his more detailed papers had been lost. Only the code book had survived. At least until recently.

  He went to the picture window in his study. It had been installed on his retirement, when he’d moved here to keep an eye on Shay. It was a big window, taking up the place of two old Georgian multi-paned affairs, and it had an excellent view of the street.

  There were four bodies in full view now. The latest addition was a very young man. Had been a young man. The proverbial innocent bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time. A car sped by, jerking suddenly into the other lane as the driver saw the corpses and the blood.

  Shay walked into the street and looked up at Sir David’s window.

  Its eyes were silver.

  The secure phone behind Sir David rang. He retreated, still watching Shay, and picked it up.

  “Yes.”

  “Sir David? Angela Terris here. The police are reporting multiple 999 calls, apparently there are people –”

  “Yes. Redmond and the two officers are dead. I told him not to go, but he did. Shay is active now. I tried to tell you.”

  Shay was moving, crossing the road.

  “Sir David!”

  “Find the book,” said Sir David wearily. “That’s the only thing that can help you now. Find the leather book marked ‘IKB’. It’s in the Chief’s safe.”

  Shay was on Sir David’s side of the street, moving left, out of sight.

  “The Chief’s office was remodeled last year,” said Angela Terris. “The old safe... I don’t know –”

  Sir David laughed bitter laughter and dropped the phone.

  There was the sound of footsteps in the hall.

  Footsteps that didn’t sound quite right.

  Sir David stood at attention and straightened his tie. Time to find out if the other command did what it was supposed to do. It would be out of his hands then. If it worked, Shay would kill him and then await further instructions for twenty-four hours. Either they’d find the book or they wouldn’t, but he would have done his best.

  As always.

  Shay came into the room. It didn’t look much like an old man now. It was taller, and straighter, and its head was bigger. So was its mouth.

  “Shay Corsham Worsted,” said Sir David.

  KHELDYU

  Karl Schroeder

  Karl Schroeder (www.kschroeder.com) was born into a Mennonite family in Manitoba, Canada, in 1962. He started writing at age fourteen, following in the footsteps of A. E. van Vogt, who came from the same Mennonite community. He moved to Toronto in 1986, and became a founding member of SF Canada (he was president from 1996–97). He sold early stories to Canadian anthologies, and his first novel, The Claus Effect (with David Nickle) appeared in 1997. His first solo novel, Ventus, was published in 2000, and was followed by Permanence and Lady of Mazes. His most recent work includes the Virga series of science fiction novels (Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, Pirate Sun, and The Sunless Countries) and hard SF space opera Lockstep. He also collaborated with Cory Doctorow on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Science Fiction. Schroeder lives in East Toronto with his wife and daughter.

  THE TRUCK CRESTED a hill and Gennady got his first good look at the Khantayskoe test site. He ground to a stop and sat there for a long time.

  Spreading before him were thirty square kilometers of unpopulated Siberian forest. Vast pine-carpeted slopes ran up and up into impossible distance to either side, yet laid over the forest of the south-facing rise was a gleaming circle six kilometers in diameter. It was slightly crinkly, like a giant cellophane disk or parachute that had been dropped here by a passing giant. Its edges had been perfectly sharp in the photos Gennady had seen, but they were ragged in real life. That circle was just a vast roof of plastic sheeting, after all, great sections of which had fallen in the past several winters. Enough remained to turn the slope into a glittering bulls-eye of reflecting sheets and fluttering, tattered banners of plastic.

  Underneath that ceiling, the dark low forest was a subdued shade of gray. That gray was why Gennady was now putting on a surgical mask.

  Standing up out of the top quarter of the circle was a round, flat-topped tower, like a smoke-stack for some invisible morlock factory. The thing was over a kilometer tall, and wisps of cloud wreathed its top.

  He put the truck into gear and bumped his way toward the tumbled edges of the greenhouse. There was no trick to roofing over a whole forest, at least around here; few of the gnarled pines were more than thirty feet tall. Little grew between them, the long sight-lines making the northern arboreal forest a kind of wall-less maze. Here, the trees made a perfect filter, slowing the air that came in around the open edges of the greenhouse and letting it warm slowly as it converged on that distant tower.

  “There’s just one tiny problem,” Achille Marceau had told Gennady when they’d talked about the job, “which is why we need you. The airflow stopped when we shut down the wind turbines at the base of the solar updraft tower. It got hot and dry under the greenhouse, and with the drought – well, you know.”

  The tenuous road wove between tree trunks and under the torn translucent roof whose surface wavered like an inverted lake. For the first hundred meters or so everything was okay. The trees were still alive. But then he b
egan passing more and more orange and brown ones, and the track became obscured by deepening drifts of pine needles.

  Then these began to disappear under a fog of greyish-white fungus.

  He’d been prepared for this sight, but Gennady still stopped the truck to do some swearing. The trees were draped in what looked like the fake cobwebs kids hung over everything for American Halloween. Great swathes of the stuff cocooned whole trunks and stretched between them like long, sickening flags. He glanced back and saw that an ominous white cloud was beginning to curl around the truck – billions of spores kicked up by his wheels.

  He gunned the engine to get ahead of the spore clouds, and that was when he finally noticed the other tracks.

  Two parallel ruts ran through the white snow-like stuff, outlining the road ahead quite clearly. They looked fresh, and would have been made by a vehicle about the same size as his.

  Marceau had insisted that Gennady would be the first person to visit the solar updraft plant in five years.

  The slope was just steep enough that the road couldn’t run straight up the hillside, but zig-zagged; so it took Gennady a good twenty minutes to make it to the tower. He was sweating and uncomfortable by the time he finally pulled the rig into the gravel parking area under the solar uplift tower. The other vehicle wasn’t here, and its tracks had disappeared on the mold-free gravel. Maybe it had gone around the long curve of the tower.

  He drove that way himself. He was supposed to be inspecting the tower’s base for cracks, but his eyes kept straying, looking for a sign that somebody else was here. If they were, they were well hidden.