The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Do not bother that lady,” interrupted a tall blond young man dressed in a lightweight off-white jacket and slacks.

  “No, it’s all right,” I assured my would-be protector.

  “It is not all right. Any trash is on our streets. They are not safe.”

  He waved, and a taxi pulled up almost immediately. The young man opened the door, plunged his hand inside his jacket, and showed me a small pistol hidden in his palm. Was he some urban vigilante crusader pledged to rescue damsels from offensive encounters? I just didn’t understand what was happening.

  “Get in quickly,” he said, “or I will shoot you dead.”

  Help, I mouthed at the Arab, or whatever.

  In vain.

  I did as Prince Charming suggested. Did anyone notice me being abducted? Or only see a handsome young man hand me enthusiastically into that taxi?

  The driver didn’t look round.

  “Keep quiet,” said the young man. “Put these glasses on.” He handed me glasses black as night equipped with side-blinkers, such as someone with a rare hypersensitive eye ailment might wear. Only, these were utterly dark; I couldn’t see a thing through them.

  * * *

  We drove for what seemed like half an hour. Eventually we drew up—and waited, perhaps so that passers-by might have time to pass on by—before my abductor assisted me from the cab. Quickly he guided me arm in arm up some steps. A door closed behind us. Traffic noise grew mute.

  We mounted a broad flight of stairs, and entered an echoing room—where I was pressured into a straight-backed armchair. Immediately one hand pressed under my nose, and another on my jaw, to force my mouth open.

  “Drink!”

  Liquid poured down my throat—some sweet concoction masking a bitter undertaste. I gagged and spluttered but had no choice except to swallow.

  What had I drunk? What had I drunk?

  “I need to see the eyes,” said a sombre, if somewhat slobbery voice. “The truth is in the eyes.” The accent was Germanic.

  A hand removed my glasses.

  I found myself in a drawing room with a dusty varnished floor and double oak doors. A small chandelier of dull lustres shone. Thick blue brocade curtains cloaked tall windows, which in any event appeared to be shuttered. A dustsheet covered what I took to be a baby grand piano. An oblong of less faded rose-and-lily wallpaper, over a marble fireplace, showed where some painting had hung.

  On a chaise longue sat a slim elegant grizzle-haired man of perhaps sixty kitted out in a well-tailored grey suit. A walking cane was pressed between his knees. His hands opened and closed slowly to reveal the chased silver handle. A second middle-aged man stood near him: stouter, bald, wearing a long purple velvet robe with fur trimmings which at first I thought was some exotic dressing gown. This man’s face was jowly and pouchy. He looked like Goering on a bad day. His eyes were eerie: bulgy, yet bright as if he was on cocaine.

  My abductor had stationed himself directly behind me.

  On a walnut table lay a copy of Archimboldo Erotico, open at my introduction.

  Shit.

  “My apologies,” said the seated gent, “for the manner of your coming here, Miss Donaldson.” He gestured at the book. “But you owe me a profound apology—and restitution. Your libels must be corrected.”

  The fellow in the robe moved closer, to stare at me. His fingers wiggled.

  “What libels?” I asked, rather deeply scared. These people had to be nutters, possessed by some zany fanatical motive. Well-heeled, well-groomed nutters were maybe the really dangerous sort. What had I drunk? A slow poison? Would I soon be begging for the antidote?

  “Libels against a certain Holy Roman Emperor, Miss Donaldson. Thus, libels against the Habsburg dynasty … which may yet be the salvation of Europe, and of the world. Very untimely libels.” The gent raised his cane and slashed it to and fro as if decapitating daisies. “I am sure you will see reason to denounce your fabrications publicly…”

  “What fabrications?”

  He stood up smoothly and brought his cane down savagely upon my book, though his expression remained suave and polite. I jerked, imagining that cane striking me instead.

  “These! These obscenities were never painted by Rudolph’s court artist!”

  “But,” I murmured, “the looting of Prague … Skoklosters Castle … Queen Christina’s chaplain…”

  He sighed. “Lies. All lies. And I do not quite know why. Let us discuss art and history, Miss Donaldson.”

  “She is deceitful,” said the fellow in the robe, always peering at me. “She has a guilty conscience.”

  “Who are you?” I asked. “The local mind-reader?”

  The stout man smiled unctuously.

  “Herr Voss is my occultist,” explained the gent.

  “Oculist? You mean, optician?”

  “My occultist! My pansophist. The holder of the keys to the Unknown. And my name happens to be Heinrich von Habsburg, Miss Donaldson…”

  “Oh…,” I said.

  “I shall not burden your brain with genealogy, except to say that I am the living heir to the Holy Roman throne.”

  Genealogy indeed. “I thought,” said I, “that your Roman throne couldn’t be inherited by virtue of blood—”

  He cut me short. “You misunderstand divine right. What the Electors bestowed wasn’t rightly theirs, but God’s, to give. God finally vested this title in the Habsburg family. Let us discuss art instead. And sacred history.”

  This, His Royal Heinrich proceeded to do, while the keeper of the keys contemplated me and my guard hovered behind me.

  * * *

  Rudolph and his father Maximilian before him had been astute, benevolent rulers, who aimed to heal discord in Christian Europe by uniting it under Habsburg rule. They lived noble and honourable lives, as did Count Giuseppe Archimboldo. His supposed fantasias possessed a precise political and metaphysical significance in the context of the Holy Roman throne. The aesthetic harmony of natural elements in the Vertumnus and in the other portrait heads bespoke the harmony which would bless Europe under the benificent leadership of the House of Austria …

  Jawohl, I thought.

  Ever-present, like the elements themselves, the Habsburgs would rule both microcosm and macrocosm—both the political world, and nature too. Archimboldo’s cycle of the seasons, depicted as Habsburg heads wrought of Wintry, Vernal, Summery, and Autumnal ingredients, confided that Habsburg rule would extend eternally through time in one everlasting season. Under the secular and spiritual guidance of those descendants of Hercules, the House of Habsburg, the Golden Age would return to a united Europe.

  Right on.

  In due course of time, this happy culmination had almost come to pass. The “Great King,” as predicted, nay, propagandized by Nostradamus, loomed on the horizon.

  When the Habsburgs united with the House of Lorraine, and when Marie Antoinette became Queen of France, the House of Habsburg-Lorraine was within a generation of dominion over Europe—had the French Revolution not intervened.

  What a pity.

  Throughout the nineteenth century the House attempted to regroup. However, the upheavals attending the end of the First World War toppled the Habsburgs from power, ushering in chaos …

  Shame.

  Now all Europe was revived and reuniting, and its citizens were ever more aware that the microcosm of Man and the macrocosm of Nature were a unity.

  Yet lacking, as yet, a head.

  A Holy Roman Imperial head.

  Early restoration of the monarchy in Hungary was one possible ace card, though other cards were also tucked up the imperial sleeve …

  Archimboldo’s symbolic portraits were holy ikons of this golden dream, especially in view of their ecoinjection into the European psyche. Those paintings were programming the people with a subconscious expectation, a hope, a longing, a secret sense of destiny, which a restored Habsburg Holy Roman Empire would fulfill.

  “Now do you see why your obscenities are s
uch a libelous blasphemy, Miss Donaldson?”

  Good God.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you’re behind the Archimboldo eco-campaign?” I asked His Imperial Heinrich.

  “The power of symbols,” remarked Voss, “is very great. Symbols are my speciality.”

  Apparently they weren’t going to tell me whether they simply hoped to exploit an existing, serendipitous media campaign—or whether some loyal Habsburg mole had actively persuaded the ecofreaks to plaster what were effectively Habsburg heads—in fruit and veg, and flowers and leaves—all over Europe and America.

  “You broke into my flat,” I accused the man behind me. “Looking for some dirt that doesn’t exist because the erotic paintings are genuine!”

  Blondie slapped me sharply across the head.

  “Martin! You know that is unnecessary!” H. von H. held up his hand prohibitively—for the moment, at least.

  “You broke my door down,” I muttered over my shoulder, thinking myself reprieved, “and you stole my CD and TV just to make the thing look plausible. I bet you burgled those other flats in the neighbourhood too as a deception.”

  Martin, on his own? Surely not … There must have been others involved. The taxi driver … and whoever else …

  “Actually, we broke your door after the burglary,” boasted Martin. “We entered with more circumspection.”

  Voss smiled in a predatory fashion. “With secret keys, as it were.”

  Others. Others …

  They had blown up the Galerij Bosch! They had burned those two guards to death …

  I shrank.

  “I see that the magnitude of this is beginning to dawn on your butterfly mind,” said the Habsburg. “A united Europe must be saved from pollution. Ecological pollution, of course—a Holy Roman Emperor is as a force of nature. But moral pollution too.”

  “How about racial?” I queried.

  “I’m an aristocrat, not a barbarian,” remarked Heinrich. “The Nazis were contemptible. Yet plainly we cannot have Moslems—Turkish heathens—involved in the affairs of Holy Europe. We cannot have those who besieged our Vienna in 1683 succeeding now by the back door.”

  Oh, the grievances of centuries long past … Rumby and his science Star Club suddenly seemed like such Johnnies-Come-Lately indeed.

  Science … versus imperial magic … with ecomysticism in the middle …

  “I just can’t believe you’re employing a frigging magician to gain the throne of Europe!”

  “Language, Miss Donaldson!” snapped the Habsburg. “You are corrupt.”

  Voss smoothed his robe as though I had mussed it.

  “You’re a creature of your time, Miss Donaldson,” said H. von H. “Whereas I am a creation of the centuries.”

  “Would that be The Centuries of Nostradamus?” Yes, that was the title of that volume of astrological rigmarole.

  “I mustn’t forget that you’re educated, by the lights of today. Tell me, what do you suppose the Centuries of the title refer to?”

  “Well, years. A long time, the future.”

  “Quite wrong. There simply happen to be a hundred quatrains—verses of four lines—in each section. You’re only half educated. And thus you blunder. How much did your American art collector pay you for writing that introduction?”

  Obviously Rumby would have paid me something … I wouldn’t have written those pages for nothing …

  “Three thousand dollars,” I improvised.

  “That doesn’t sound very much, considering the evil intent. Is Mr Wright being hoaxed too?”

  Again, he slammed the cane on to my book.

  An astonishing flash of agony seared across my back. I squealed and twisted round—but Martin was holding no cane.

  He was holding nothing at all. With a grin, Martin displayed his empty paws for me. Voss giggled, and when I looked at him he winked.

  It was as though that open volume was some voodoo doll of myself which the Habsburg had just chastised.

  The Habsburg lashed at my words again, and I cried out, for the sudden pain was intense—yet I knew there would be no mark on me.

  Voss licked his lips. “Symbolic resonances, Miss Donaldson. The power of symbolic actions.”

  What drug had been in that liquid I swallowed? I didn’t feel disoriented—save for nerves and dread—yet I must be in some very strange state of mind to account for my suggestibility to pain.

  “We can continue thus for a while, Miss Donaldson.” Heinrich raised his cane again.

  “Wait.”

  Was three quarters of a million dollars enough to compensate for being given the third degree right now by crazy, ruthless murderers—who could torture me symbolically, but effectively?

  I experienced an absurd vision of myself attempting to tell the West Indian detective-constable that actually my flat had been broken into by agents of a Holy Roman Emperor who hoped to take over Europe—and that I was seeking police protection because the Habsburgs could hurt me agonizingly by whipping my words …

  Was I mad, or was I mad?

  The room seemed luminous, glowing with an inner light. Every detail of furniture or drapery was intensely actual. I thought that my sense of reality had never been stronger.

  “Okay,” I admitted, “the paintings were all forgeries. They were done in Holland, but I honestly don’t know who by. I never met him. I never learned his name. Rumby—Mr. Wright—hates the ecology lobby because they hate space exploration, and he thinks that’s our only hope. I have a friend at the Sunday Times. I’ll tell him everything—about how the paintings were a prank. They’ll love to print that! Wright will have egg on his face.”

  “What a treacherous modern creature you are,” the Habsburg said with casual contempt; and I squirmed with shame and fear.

  “Just watch for next weekend’s paper,” I promised.

  “At this moment,” said Voss, “she believes she is going to do what she says—and of course she knows that our Martin can find her, if she breaks her word…”

  He peered.

  “Ah: she’s relieved that you cannot reach her from a distance with the whipping cane.

  “And she wonders whether Martin would really kill her, and thus lose us her testimony…”

  No, he wasn’t reading my mind. He wasn’t! He was reading my face, my muscles. He could do so because everything was so real.

  More peering.

  “She feels a paradoxical affection for her friend … Rumby. Solidarity, as well as greed. Yes, a definite loyalty.” If only I hadn’t called him Rumby. If only I’d just called him Wright. It was all in the words. Voss wasn’t reading my actual thoughts.

  “So therefore,” H. von H. said to Voss, “she must be retrained in her loyalties.”

  What did he mean? What did he mean?

  “She must be conditioned by potent symbols, Voss.”

  “Just so, Excellency.”

  “Thus she will not wish to betray us. Enlighten her, Voss. Show her the real depth of history, from where we come. Your juice will be deep in her now.”

  Numbness crept over me, as Voss loomed closer. The sheer pressure of his approach was paralyzing me.

  “Wait,” I managed to squeak.

  “Wait?” echoed H. von H. “Oh, I have waited long enough already. My family has waited long enough. Through the French Revolution, through the Communist intermezzo … The Holy Roman Empire will revive at this present cusp of history—for it has always remained in being, at least as a state of mind. And mind is what matters, Miss Donaldson—as Rudolph knew, contrary to your pornographic lies! Ah yes, my ancestor avidly sought the symbolic key to the ideal world. Practitioners of the symbolic, hermetic arts visited him in Prague Castle—though he lacked the loyal services of a Voss…”

  The Habsburg slid his cane under the dustsheet of the piano, and whisked the cloth off. Seating himself on the stool, he threw open the lid of the baby grand with a crash. His slim, manicured fingers started to play plangent, mournful Debussyish chord
s in which I could almost feel myself begin to drown.

  Voss crooned to me—or sang—in some dialect of German … and I couldn’t move a muscle. Surely I was shrinking—or else the drawing room was expanding. Or both. Voss was becoming vast.

  I was a little child again—yet not a child, but rather a miniature of myself. When I was on the brink of puberty, lying in bed just prior to drifting off to sleep, this same distortion of the senses used to happen to me.

  The music lamented.

  And Voss crooned my lullaby.

  * * *

  A bearded man in black velvet and cerise satin held my nude paralyzed body in his hands. He held the whole of me in his hands—for I was tiny now, the height of his forearm.

  Draped over his shoulders was a lavish ermine cloak.

  I was stiff, unmoving.

  He placed me in a niche, ran his fingertip down my belly, and traced the cleft between my thighs.

  He stepped back.

  Then he left.

  I was in a great gloomy vaulted chamber housing massive cupboards and strongboxes. The slit windows in the thick stone wall were grated so as to deter any slim catburglars. Stacked several deep around a broad shelf, and likewise below, were mythological and Biblical oil paintings: Tintorettos, Titians, by the look of them … Neither the lighting nor the decor were at all in the spirit of any latter-day museum. Here was art as treasure—well and truly locked up.

  Days and nights passed.

  Weeks of static solitude until I was going crazy. I would have welcomed any change whatever, any newcomer. My thoughts looped around a circuit of Strada, death in Amsterdam, Habsburgs, with the latter assuming ever more significance—and necessity—with each mental swing.

  Eventually the door opened, and in walked a figure who made the room shine. For his face and hair were made of a hundred springtime flowers, his collar of white daisies, and his clothes of a hundred lush leaves.

  He stood and gazed at me through floral eyes, and with his rosebud lips he smiled faintly.

  He simply went away.

  A season passed, appalling in its sheer duration. I saw daisies like stars before my eyes, in an unending afterimage.

  Then in walked glowing Summer. His eyes were ripe cherries. His teeth were little peas. Plums and berries tangled in his harvest-hair; and his garment was of woven straw.