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

by Jonathan Strahan

  A small smile played on the fat man’s face. “It is true that many government bodies find it cheaper to pay us to deal with their troublemakers than to build prisons for them.”

  “Madam-Mayor Tresjolie condemns these unfortunates into the city’s penal system, you pay her by body count, and after they have been zombified you lease them out for menial labor at prices that employers find irresistible.

  Those who enter your service rarely leave it.”

  “If a government official or family member presents me with papers proving that somebody’s debt to society has been paid off, I am invariably happy to free them. I grant you that few ever come to me with such documentation.

  But I am always available to those who do. Exactly what is your objection to this arrangement?”

  “Objection?” Darger said in surprise. “I have no objection. This is your system and as an outsider I have no say in it. I am merely explaining the reason why I wished to use an independent bank for the assay.” “Which is?”

  “Simply that, happy though I am to deal with you three individually, collectively I find you far too shrewd.” Darger turned to stare at the stage, where naked zombies coupled joylessly. Near the front, a spectator removed several banknotes from his wallet and tapped them meaningfully on his table. One of the lifeless waitresses picked up the money and led him through a curtain at the back of the room. “Acting together, I suspect you would swallow me and my partners in a single gulp.”

  “Oh, there is no fear of that,” Master Bones said. “We three only act collectively when there is serious profit in the offing. Your little enterprise – whatever it is – hardly qualifies.”

  “I am relieved to hear it.”

  THE NEXT DAY, the three conspirators made three distinct trips to the Assay Office at the New Orleans branch of the Bank of San Francisco. On the first trip, one of Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s green-jacketed zombie bodyguards opened a lockbox, withdrew a silver ingot, and placed it on the work bench. Then, to the astonishment of both the mayor and the assayist, Surplus directed his own hired zombies to hoist several heavy leather bags to the bench as well, and with the aid of his colleagues began pulling out drills, scales, acids, reagents, and other tools and supplies and setting them in working order.

  The affronted assayist opened his mouth to object, but – “I’m sure you won’t mind if we provide our own equipment,” Darger said suavely. “We are strangers here, and while nobody questions the probity of San Francisco’s most prestigious financial concern, it is only good business to take proper precautions.”

  As he was talking, Tawny and Surplus both reached for the scales at once, collided, and almost sent them flying. Faces turned and hands reached out to catch them. But, in the fact, it was Surplus who saved the apparatus from disaster.

  “Oops,” Tawny said, coloring prettily.

  Swiftly, the assayist performed his tests. At their conclusion, he looked up from the ingot. “The finding is .925,” he said. “Sterling standard.”

  With an absent nod, Madam-Mayor Tresjolie acknowledged his judgment. Then she said, “The girl. How much do you want for her?”

  As one, Darger and Surplus turned. Then they subtly shifted position so that one stood to either side of Tawny. “Ms. Petticoats is our ward,” Darger said, ”and therefore, it goes without saying, not for sale. Also, yours is not an entirely reputable business for so innocent a child as she.”

  “Innocence is in high demand at my establishment. I’ll give you the silver ingot. To keep. Do with it as you wish.”

  “Believe me, madam. In not so very long, I shall consider silver ingots to be so much petty cash.”

  MASTER bONES WATCHED the assay, including even the chaotic assembly of the trio’s equipment, with a beatific smile. Yet all the while, his attention kept straying to Tawny. Finally, he pursed his lips and said, “There might be a place in my club for your young friend. If you’d consider leasing her to me for, oh, let’s say a year, I’d gladly forego my twenty percent profit on this deal.” Turning to Tawny, he said, “Do not worry, my sweet. Under the influence of the zombie drugs you will feel nothing, and afterwards you will remember nothing. It will be as if none of it ever happened. Further, since you’d be paid a commission on each commercial encounter performed, you’d emerge with a respectable sum being held in trust for you.”

  Ignoring Tawny’s glare of outrage, Darger suavely said, “In strictest confidence, sir, we have already turned down a far better offer for her than yours today. But my partner and I would not part with our dear companion for any amount of money. She is to us a treasure beyond price.”

  “I’m ready,” the assayist said. “Where do you wish me to drill?” Darger airily waved a finger over the ingot and then, seemingly at random, touched a spot at the exact center of the bar. “Right there.”

  “I UNDERSTAND THAT on the street they call me the Pirate,” Jean-Nagin Lafitte said with quiet intensity. “This, however, is an insolence I will not tolerate to my face. Yes, I do chance to share a name with the legendary freebooter. But you will find that I have never committed an illegal act in my life.”

  “Nor do you today, sir!” Darger cried. “This is a strictly legitimate business arrangement.”

  “So I presume or I would not be here. Nevertheless, you can understand why I must take offense at having you and your clumsy confederates question the quality of my silver.”

  “Say no more, sir! We are all gentlemen here – save, of course, for Ms. Petticoats who is a gently-reared Christian orphan. If my word is good enough for you, then your word is good enough for me. We may dispose of the assay.” Darger coughed discreetly. “However, just for my own legal protection, in the absence of an assay, I shall require a notarized statement from you declaring that you will be satisfied with whatever quality of silver we return to you.”

  Pirate Lafitte’s stare would have melted iron. But it failed to wilt Darger’s pleasant smile. At last, he said, “Very well, run the assay.”

  Negligently, Darger spun a finger in the air. Down it came on the exact center of the bar. “There.”

  While the assayist was working, Pirate Lafitte said, “I was wondering if your Ms. Petticoats must be available to –”

  “She is not for sale!” Darger said briskly. “Not for sale, not for rent, not for barter, not available for acquisition on any terms whatsoever. Period.”

  Looking irritated, Pirate Lafitte said, “I was going to ask if she might be interested in going hunting with me tomorrow. There is some interesting game to be found in the bayous.”

  “Nor is she available for social occasions.” Darger turned to the assayist. “Well, sir?”

  “Standard sterling,” the man said. “Yet again.”

  “I expected no less.”

  FOR THE SAKE of appearances, after the assays were complete, the three swindlers sent the zombies with their lab equipment back to Mason Fema and went out to supper together. Following which, they took a genteel stroll about town. Tawny, who had been confined to her room while negotiations took place, was particularly glad of the latter. But it was with relief that Darger, Surplus, and Tawny saw the heavy bags waiting for them on the sitting room table of their suite. “Who shall do the honors?” Darger asked.

  “The lady, of course,” Surplus said with a little bow.

  Tawny curtsied and then, pushing aside a hidden latch at the bottom of one of the bags, slid out a silver ingot. From another bag, she slid out a second. Then, from a third, a third. A sigh of relief went up from all three conspirators at the sight of the silver glimmering in the lantern-light.

  “That was right smartly done, when you changed the fake bars for the real ones,” Tawny said.

  Darger politely demurred. “No, it was the distraction that made the trick possible, and in this regard you were both exemplary. Even the assayist, who was present all three times you almost sent the equipment to the floor, suspected nothing.”

  “But tell me something,” Tawny said. “
Why did you make the substitution before the assay, rather than after? The other way around, you wouldn’t have needed to have that little plug of silver in the middle for the sample to be drawn from. Just a silver-plated lead bar.”

  “We are dealing with suspicious people. This way, they first had the ingots confirmed as genuine and then saw that we came nowhere near them afterwards. The ingots are in a safety deposit box in a reputable bank, so to their minds there is not the least risk. All is on the up-and-up.”

  “But we’re not going to stop here, are we?” Tawny asked anxiously. “I do so want to work the black money scam.”

  “Have no fear, my lovely,” Surplus said, “this is only the beginning. But it serves as a kind of insurance policy for us. Even should the scheme go bad, we have already turned a solid profit.” He poured brandy into three small glasses and handed them around. “To whom shall we drink?”

  “To Madam-Mayor Tresjolie!” Darger said.

  They drank, and then Tawny said, “What do you make of her? Professionally, I mean.”

  “She is far shrewder than she would have you think,” Surplus replied. “But, as you are doubtless aware, the self-consciously shrewd are always the easiest to mislead.” He poured a second glass. “To Master Bones!”

  They drank. Tawny said, “And of him?”

  “He is more problematic,” Darger said. “A soft man with a brutal streak underneath his softness. In some ways he hardly seems human.”

  “Perhaps he has been sampling his own product?” Surplus suggested.

  “Puffer fish extract, you mean? No. His mind is active enough. But I catch not the least glimmer of empathy from him. I suspect that he’s been associating with zombies so long that he’s come to think we’re all like them.”

  The final toast inevitably went to Pirate Lafitte.

  “I think he’s cute,” Tawny said. “Only maybe you don’t agree?”

  “He is a fraud and a poseur,” Darger replied, “a scoundrel who passes himself off as a gentleman, and a manipulator of the legal system who insists he is the most honest of citizens. Consequently, I like him quite a bit. I believe that he is a man we can do business with. Mark my words, when the three of them come to see us tomorrow, it will be at his instigation.”

  For a time they talked business. Then Surplus broke out a deck of cards. They played euchre and canasta and poker, and because they played for matches, nobody objected when the game turned into a competition to see how deftly the cards could be dealt from the bottom of the deck or flicked out of the sleeve into one’s hand. Nor was there any particular outcry when in one memorable hand, eleven aces were laid on the table at once.

  At last Darger said, “Look at the time! It will be a long day tomorrow,” and they each went to their respective rooms.

  THAT NIGHT, AS Darger was drifting off to sleep, he heard the door connecting his room with Tawny’s quietly open and shut. There was a rustle of sheets as she slipped into his bed. Then the warmth of Tawny’s naked body pressed against his own, and her hand closed about his most private part. Abruptly, he was wide awake.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he whispered fiercely.

  Unexpectedly, Tawny released her hold on Darger and punched him hard in his shoulder. “Oh, it’s so easy for you,” she retorted, equally quietly. “It’s so easy for men! That hideous old woman tried to buy me. That awful little man wanted you to let him drug me. And God only knows what intentions Pirate Lafitte holds. You’ll notice they all made their propositions to you. Not a one of them said a word to me.” Hot tears fell on Darger’s chest. “All my life I have had male protectors – and needed them too. My Daddy, until I ran away. My first husband, until he got eaten by giant crabs. Then various boyfriends and finally that creep Jake.”

  “You have nothing to worry about. Surplus and I have never abandoned a confederate, nor shall we ever. Our reputation is spotless in this regard.”

  “I tell myself that, and daytimes I’m fine with it. But at night... well, this past week has been the longest I ever went without a man’s body to comfort me.”

  “Yes, but surely you understand –”

  Tawny drew herself up. Even in the dim half light of the moon through the window she was a magnificent sight. Then she leaned down to kiss Darger’s cheek and murmured into his ear, “I’ve never had to beg a man before, but... Please?”

  Darger considered himself a moral man. But there was only so much temptation a man could resist without losing all respect for himself.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Darger awoke alone. He thought of the events of last night and smiled. He thought of their implications and scowled. Then he went down to the dining room for breakfast.

  “What comes next?” Tawny asked, after they had fortified themselves with chicory coffee, beignets, and sliced baconfruit.

  “We have planted suspicions in the minds of our three backers that there is more profit to be had than we are offering to share,” Surplus said. “We have given them a glimpse of our mysterious young ward and suggested that she is key to the enterprise. We have presented them with a puzzle to which they can think of no solution. On reflection, they can only conclude that the sole reason we have the upper hand is that we can play them off of one another.” He popped the last of his beignet into his mouth. “So sooner or later they will unite and demand of us an explanation.”

  “In the meantime –” Darger said.

  “I know, I know. Back to my dreary old room to play solitaire and read the sort of uplifting literature appropriate to a modest young virgin.”

  “It’s important to stay in character,” Surplus said.

  “I understand that. Next time, however, please make me something that doesn’t need to be stored in the dark, like a sack of potatoes. The niece of a Spanish prisoner, perhaps. Or a socialite heiress. Or even a harlot.”

  “You are a Woman of Mystery,” Darger said. “Which is a time-honored and some would say enviable role to play.”

  Thus it was that when Darger and Surplus left Maison Fema – at precisely ten o’clock, as they had made it their invariant habit – they were not entirely astonished to find their three benefactors all in a group, waiting for them. A brusque exchange of threats and outrage later, and protesting every step of the way, they led their marks to their suite.

  The three bedrooms all opened off of a sunny common-room. Given the room’s elegant appointments, the crates of black paper that had been stacked in front of Tawny Petticoats’ door looked glaringly out of place.

  Gesturing their guests to chairs, Darger adopted an air of resignation and said, “In order to adequately explain our enterprise, we must go back two generations to a time before San Francisco became the financial center of North America. The visionary leaders of that great city-state determined to found a new economy upon uncounterfeitable banknotes, and to this end employed the greatest bacterial engraver of his age, Phineas Whipsnade McGonigle.”

  “That is an unlikely name,” Madam-Mayor Tresjolie sniffed.

  “It was of course his nom de gravure, assumed to protect him from kidnappers and the like,” Surplus explained. “In private life, he was known as Magnus Norton.”

  “Go on.”

  Darger resumed his narrative. “The results you know. Norton crafted one hundred and thirteen different bacteria which, as part of their natural functions, laid down layer upon layer of multicolored ink in delicate arabesques so intricate as to be the despair of coin-clippers and paperhangers everywhere. This, combined with their impeccable monetary policies, has made the San Francisco dollar the common currency of the hundred nations of North America. Alas for them, there was one weak point in their enterprise – Norton himself.

  “Norton secretly created his own printing vats, employing the bacteria he himself had created, and proceeded to mass-produce banknotes that were not only indistinguishable from the genuine item but for all intents and purposes were the genuine item. He created enough of them to make himself the wealth
iest man on the continent.

  “Unfortunately for that great man, he tried to underpay his paper supplier, precipitating an argument that ended with him being arrested by the San Francisco authorities.”

  Pirate Lafitte raised an elegant forefinger. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

  “My colleague and I are journalists,” Darger said. Seeing his audience’s expressions, he raised both hands. “Not of the muckraking variety, I hasten to assure you! Corruption is a necessary and time-honored concomitant of any functioning government, and one we support wholeheartedly. No, we write profiles of public figures, lavishing praise in direct proportion to their private generosity; human interest stories of heroic boys rescuing heiresses from fires and of kittens swallowed by crocodiles and yet miraculously passing through their alimentary systems unharmed; and of course amusing looks back at the forgotten histories of local scoundrels whom the passage of time has rendered unthreatening.”

  “It was this last that led us to Norton’s story,” Surplus elucidated.

  “Indeed. We discovered that by a quirk of San Francisco’s labyrinthine banking regulations, Norton’s monetary creations could neither be destroyed nor distributed as valid currency. So to prevent their misuse, the banknotes were subjected to another biolithographic process whereby they were deeply impregnated with black ink so cunningly composed that no known process could bleach it from the bills without destroying the paper in the process.

  “Now, here’s where our tale gets interesting. Norton was, you’ll recall, incomparable in his craft. Naturally, the city fathers were reluctant to forego his services. So, rather than have him languish in an ordinary prison, they walled and fortified a mansion, equipped it with a laboratory and all the resources he required, and put him to work.