The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  By the time evening fell, when the fair came to life in a blaze of gaslight and calliope music, Golescu was not in the best of moods.

  “Come on, pallid one,” he said, dragging Emil forth from the wagon. “What are you shrinking from?”

  “It’s too bright,” whimpered Emil, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to hide under Golescu’s coat.

  “We’re in a big modern city, my boy,” said Golescu, striding through the crowd and towing him along relentless. “Gaslight, the wonder of the civilized world. Soon we won’t have Night at all, if we don’t want it. Imagine that, eh? You’d have to live in a cellar. You’d probably like that, I expect.”

  “I want a sausage on a stick,” said Emil.

  “Patience,” said Golescu, looking around for the food stalls. “Eating and scratching only want a beginning, eh? So scratch, and soon you’ll be eating too. Where the hell is the sausage booth?”

  He spotted a vendor he recognized and pushed through the crowd to the counter.

  “Hey! Vienna sausage, please.” He put down a coin.

  “We’re out of Vienna sausage,” said the cashier. “We have sarmale on polenta, or tochitura on polenta. Take your pick.”

  Golescu’s mouth watered. “The sarmale, and plenty of polenta.”

  He carried the paper cone to a relatively quiet corner and seated himself on a hay bale. “Come and eat. Emil dear. Polenta for you and nice spicy sarmale for me, eh?”

  Emil opened his eyes long enough to look at it.

  “I can’t eat that. It has sauce on it.”

  “Just a little!” Golescu dug his thumb in amongst the meatballs and pulled up a glob of polenta. “See? Nice!”

  Emil began to sob. “I don’t want that. I want a sausage.”

  “Well, this is like sausage, only it’s in grape leaves instead of pig guts, eh?” Golescu held up a nugget of sarmale. “Mmmm, tasty!”

  But Emil wouldn’t touch it. Golescu sighed, wolfed down the sarmale and polenta, and wiped his fingers on Emil’s coat. He dragged Emil after him and searched the fairground from end to end, but nobody was selling Vienna sausage. The only thing he found that Emil would consent to eat was candy floss, so he bought him five big wads of it. Emil crouched furtively under a wagon and ate it all, as Golescu looked on and tried to slap some warmth into himself. The cold wind pierced straight through his coat, taking away all the nice residual warmth of the peppery sarmale.

  “This is no life for a red-blooded man,” he grumbled. “Wine, women and dance are what I need, and am I getting any? It is to laugh. Wetnursing a miserable picky dwarf while the temptress of my dreams barely knows I exist. If I had any self-respect, I’d burst into that wagon and show her what I’m made of.”

  The last pink streamer of candy floss vanished into Emil’s mouth. He belched.

  “Then, of course, she’d hurt me,” Golescu concluded. “Pretty badly, I think. Her fingers are like steel. And that excites me, Emil, isn’t that a terrible thing? Yet another step downward in my long debasement.”

  Emil belched again.

  The chilly hours passed. Emil rolled over on his side and began to wail to himself. As the fair grew quieter, as the lights went out one by one and the carousel slowed through its last revolution, Emil’s whining grew louder. Amaunet’s last customer departed; a moment later her door flew open and she emerged, turning her head this way and that, searching for the sound. Her gaze fell on Emil, prostrate under the wagon, and she bared her teeth at Golescu.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing!” said Golescu, backing up a pace or two. “His highness the turnip wouldn’t eat anything but candy, and now he seems to be regretting it.”

  “Fool,” said Amaunet. She pulled Emil out from the litter of paper cones and straw. He vomited pink syrup and said, “I want a potato.”

  Amaunet gave Golescu a look that made his heart skip a beat, but in a reasonable voice he said: “I could take us all to dinner. What about it? My treat.”

  “It’s nearly midnight, you ass,” said Amaunet.

  “That café is still open,” said Golescu, pointing to a garishly lit place at the edge of the square. Amaunet stared at it. Finally she shrugged. “Bring him,” she said.

  Golescu picked up Emil by the scruff of his neck and stood him on his feet. “Your potato is calling, fastidious one. Let us answer it.” Emil took his hand and they trudged off together across the square, with Amaunet slinking after.

  They got a table by the door. For all that the hour was late, the café was densely crowded with people in evening dress, quite glittering and cosmopolitan in appearance. The air was full of their chatter, oddly echoing, with a shrill metallic quality. Amaunet gave the crowd one surly look, and paid them no attention thereafter. But she took off her black shawl and dropped it over Emil’s head. He sat like an unprotesting ghost, shrouded in black, apparently quite content.

  “And you’re veiling him because . . .?” said Golescu.

  “Better if he isn’t seen,” said Amaunet.

  “What may we get for the little family?” inquired a waiter, appearing at Golescu’s elbow with a speed and silence that suggested he had popped up through a trap door. Golescu started in his chair, unnerved. The waiter had wide glass-bright eyes, and a fixed smile under a straight bar of moustache like a strip of black fur.

  “Are you still serving food?” Golescu asked. The waiter’s smile never faltered; he produced a menu from thin air and presented it with a flourish.

  “Your carte de nuit. We particularly recommend the black puddings. Something to drink?”

  “Bring us the best you have,” said Golescu grandly. The waiter bowed and vanished again.

  “It says the Czernina Soup is divine,” announced Golescu, reading from the menu. “Hey, he thought we were a family. Charming, eh? You’re Mother Aegypt and I’m . . .”

  “The Father of Lies,” said Amaunet, yawning.

  “I shall take that as a compliment,” said Golescu. “Fancy French cuisine here, too: Boudin Noir. And, for the hearty diner, Blutwurst. So, who do you think will recognize our tiny prodigy, Madame? He wouldn’t happen to be a royal heir you stole in infancy, would he?”

  Amaunet gave him a sharp look. Golescu sat up, startled.

  “You can’t be serious!” he said. “Heaven knows, he’s inbred enough to have the very bluest blood – ”

  The waiter materialized beside them, deftly uncorking a dusty bottle. “This is very old wine,” he said, displaying the label.

  “ ‘Egri Bikaver,’ “ read Golescu. “Yes, all right. Have you got any Vienna sausage? We have a little prince here who’ll hardly eat anything else.”

  “I want a potato.” Emil’s voice floated from beneath the black drape.

  “We will see what can be done,” said the waiter, unblinking, but his smile widened under his dreadful moustache. “And for Madame?”

  Amaunet said something in a language with which Golescu was unfamiliar. The waiter chuckled, a disturbing sound, and jotted briefly on a notepad that appeared from nowhere in particular. “Very wise. And for Sir?”

  “Blutwurst. I’m a hearty diner,” said Golescu.

  “To be sure,” said the waiter, and vanished. Golescu leaned forward and hissed, “Hey, you can’t mean you actually stole him from some – ”

  “Look, it’s a gypsy!” cried a young woman, one of a pair of young lovers out for a late stroll. Her young man leaned in from the sidewalk and demanded, “What’s our fortune, eh, gypsy? Will we love each other the rest of our lives?”

  “You’ll be dead in three days,” said Amaunet. The girl squeaked, the boy went pale and muttered a curse. They fled into the night.

  “What did you go and tell them that for?” demanded Golescu. Amaunet shrugged and poured herself a glass of wine.

  “Why should I lie? Three days, three hours, three decades. Death always comes, for them. It’s what I tell them all. Why not?”

  “No wonder you don’t do bet
ter business!” said Golescu. “You’re supposed to tell them good fortunes!”

  “Why should I lie?” repeated Amaunet.

  Baffled, Golescu pulled at his mustaches. “What makes you say such things?” he said at last. “Why do you pretend to feel nothing? But you love little Emil, eh?”

  She looked at him in flat astonishment. Then she smiled. It was a poisonous smile.

  “Love Emil?” she said. “Who could love that thing? I could as soon love you.”

  As though to underscore her contempt, a woman at the bar shrieked with laughter.

  Golescu turned his face away. Immediately he set about soothing his lacerated ego, revising what she’d said, changing her expression and intonation, and he had nearly rewritten the scene into an almost declaration of tender feeling for himself when the waiter reappeared, bearing a tray.

  “See what we have for the little man?” he said, whisking the cover off a dish. “Viennese on a stake!”

  The dish held an artful arrangement of Vienna sausages on wooden skewers, stuck upright in a mound of mashed potato.

  “Well, isn’t that cute?” said Golescu. “Thank the nice man, Emil.”

  Emil said nothing, but reached for the plate. “He says Thank You,” said Golescu, as smacking noises came from under the veil. The waiter set before Amaunet a dish containing skewered animal parts, flame-blackened to anonymity.

  “Madame. And for Sir,” said the waiter, setting a platter before Golescu. Golescu blinked and shuddered; for a moment he had the strongest conviction that the Blutwurst was pulsing and shivering, on its bed of grilled onions and eggplant that seethed like maggots. Resolutely, he told himself it was a trick of the greenish light and the late hour.

  “Be sure to save room for cake,” said the waiter.

  “You’ll be dead in three days, too,” Amaunet told the waiter. The waiter laughed heartily.

  They journeyed on to the next crossroads fair. Two days out they came to the outskirts of another town, where Amaunet pulled off the road onto waste ground. Drawing a small purse from her bosom, she handed it to Golescu.

  “Go and buy groceries,” she said. “We’ll wait here.”

  Golescu scowled at the pouch, clinked it beside his ear. “Not a lot of money,” he said. “But never mind, dearest. You have a man to provide for you now, you know.”

  “Get potatoes,” Amaunet told him.

  “Of course, my jewel,” he replied, smiling as he climbed down. He went dutifully off to the main street.

  “She is not heartless,” he told himself. “She just needs to be wooed, that’s all. Who can ever have been kind to her? It’s time to drop the bucket into your well of charm, Golescu.”

  The first thing he did was look for a bathhouse. Having located one and paid the morose Turk at the door, he went in, disrobed, and submitted to being plunged, steamed, scraped, pummeled, and finally shaved. He declined the offer of orange flower water, however, preferring to retain a certain manly musk, and merely asked to be directed to the market square.

  When he left it, an hour later, he was indeed carrying a sack of potatoes. He had also onions, flour, oil, sausages, a bottle of champagne, a box of Austrian chocolates, and a bouquet of asters.

  He had the satisfaction of seeing Amaunet’s eyes widen as he approached her.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “For you,” he said, thrusting the flowers into her arms. Golescu had never seen her taken aback before. She held them out in a gingerly sort of way, with a queer look of embarrassment.

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” she said.

  “Put them in water?” he said, grinning at her as he hefted his other purchases.

  That night, when they had made their camp in a clearing less cobwebbed and haunted than usual, when the white trail of stars made its way down the sky, Golescu went into the wagon to retrieve his treats. The asters had drooped to death, despite having been crammed in a jar of water, but the champagne and chocolates had survived being at the bottom of his sack. Humming to himself, he carried them, together with a pair of chipped enamel mugs, out to the fireside.

  Amaunet was gazing into the flames, apparently lost in gloomy reverie. She ignored the popping of the champagne cork, though Emil, beside her, twitched and started. When Golescu opened the chocolates, however, she looked sharply round.

  “Where did you get that?” she demanded.

  “A little fairy brought it, flying on golden wings,” said Golescu. “Out of his purse of twenty thousand lei, I might add, so don’t scowl at me like that. Will you have a sweetmeat, my queen? A cherry cream? A bit of enrobed ginger peel?”

  Amaunet stared fixedly at the box a long moment, and then reached for it. “What harm can it do?” she said, in a quiet voice. “Why not?”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Golescu, pouring the champagne. “A little pleasure now and again is good for you, wouldn’t you agree? Especially when one has the money.”

  Amaunet didn’t answer, busy with prizing open the box. When he handed her a mug full of champagne, she took it without looking up, drained it as though it were so much water, and handed it back.

  “Well quaffed!” said Golescu, as a tiny flutter of hope woke in his flesh. He poured Amaunet another. She meanwhile had got the box open at last, and bowed her head over the chocolates, breathing in their scent as though they were the perfumes of Arabia.

  “Oh,” she groaned, and groped in the box. Bringing out three chocolate creams, she held them up a moment in dim-eyed contemplation; then closed her fist on them, crushing them as though they were grapes. Closing her eyes, she licked the sweet mess from her hand, slowly, making ecstatic sounds.

  Golescu stared, and in his inattention poured champagne in his lap. Amaunet did not notice.

  “I had no idea you liked chocolates so much,” said Golescu.

  “Why should you?” said Amaunet through a full mouth. She lifted the box and inhaled again, then dipped in with her tongue and scooped a nut cluster straight out of its little paper cup.

  “Good point,” said Golescu. He edged a little closer on the fallen log that was their mutual seat, and offered her the champagne once more. She didn’t seem to notice, absorbed as she was in crunching nuts. “Come, drink up; this stuff won’t keep. Like youth and dreams, eh?”

  To his astonishment, Amaunet threw back her head and laughed. It was not the dry and humorless syllable that had previously expressed her scorn. It was full-throated, rolling, deep, and so frightful a noise that Emil shrieked and put his hands over his head, and even the fire seemed to shrink down and cower. It echoed in the night forest, which suddenly was darker, more full of menace.

  Golescu’s heart beat faster. When Amaunet seized the mug from him and gulped down its contents once more, he moistened his lips and ventured to say:

  “Just let all those cares wash away in the sparkling tide, eh? Let’s be good to each other, dear lady. You need a man to lessen the burden on those poor frail shoulders. Golescu is here!”

  That provoked another burst of laughter from Amaunet, ending in a growl as she threw down the mug, grabbed another handful of chocolates from the box, and crammed them into her mouth, paper cups and all.

  Scarcely able to believe his luck (one drink and she’s a shameless bacchante!) Golescu edged his bottom a little closer to Amaunet’s. “Come,” he said, breathing heavily, “Tell me about yourself, my Nile lily.”

  Amaunet just chuckled, looking at him sidelong as she munched chocolates. Her eyes had taken on a queer glow, more reflective of the flames perhaps than they had been. It terrified Golescu, and yet . . .

  At last she swallowed, took the champagne bottle from his hand and had a drink.

  “Hah!” She spat into the fire, which blazed up. “You want to hear my story? Listen, then, fat man.”

  “A thousand thousand years ago, there was a narrow green land by a river. At our backs was the desert, full of jackals and demons. But the man and the woman always told me
that if I stayed inside at night, like a good little girl, nothing could hurt me. And if I was a very good little girl always, I would never die. I’d go down to the river, and a man would come in a reed boat and take me away to the Sun, and I’d live forever.

  “One day, the Lean People came out of the desert. They had starved in the desert so long, they thought that was what the gods meant for people to do. So, when they saw our green fields, they said we were Abomination. They rode in and killed as many as they could. We were stronger people and we killed them all, threw their bodies in the river – no boats came for them! And that was when I looked on Him, and was afraid.”

  “Who was He, precious?” said Golescu.

  “Death,” said Amaunet, as the firelight played on her face. “The great Lord with long rows of ivory teeth. His scales shone under the moon. He walked without a shadow. I had never seen any boat taking good children to Heaven; but I saw His power. So I took clay from the riverbank and I made a little Death, and I worshipped it, and fed it with mice, with birds, anything I could catch and kill. Take all these, I said, and not me; for You are very great.

  “Next season, more riders came out of the desert. More war, more food for Him, and I knew He truly ruled the world.

  “Our people said: We can’t stay here. Not safe to farm these fields. And many gave up and walked north. But the man and woman waited too long. They tried to take everything we owned, every bowl and dish in our house, and the woman found my little image of Him. She beat me and said I was wicked. She broke the image.

  “And He punished her for it. As we ran along the path by the river, no Sun Lord came to our aid; only the desert people, and they rode down the man and the woman.

  “I didn’t help them. I ran, and ran beside the river, and I prayed for Him to save me.” Amaunet’s voice had dropped to a whisper. She sounded young, nearly human.

  Golescu was disconcerted. It wasn’t at all the mysterious past he had imagined for her; only sad. Some miserable tribal struggle, in some backwater village somewhere? No dusky princess, exiled daughter of pharaohs. Only a refugee, like any one of the hatchet-faced women he had seen along the roads, pushing barrows full of what they could salvage from the ashes of war.