The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “It’s the track of the groundstar,” Merlin said. “In China, or so your paperbacks tell me, such lines are called lung mei, the path of the dragon.”

  The name he gave the track of slugsilver light reminded me that all of Merlin’s order called themselves Children of the Sky. When I was a child an Ambrosian had told me that such lines interlaced all lands, and that an ancient race had raised stones and cairns on their interstices, each one dedicated to a specific star (and held to stand directly beneath that star) and positioned in perfect scale to one another, so that all of Europe formed a continent-wide map of the sky in reverse.

  “Son of lies,” Merlin said. “The time has come for there to be truth between us. We are not natural allies, and your cause is not mine.” He gestured up at the tank to one side, the clusters of cracking towers, bright and phallic to the other. “Here is the triumph of my Collegium. Are you blind to the beauty of such artifice? This is the living and true symbol of Mankind victorious, and Nature lying helpless and broken at his feet—would you give it up? Would you have us again at the mercy of wolves and tempests, slaves to fear and that which walks the night?”

  “For the love of pity, Merlin. If the Earth dies, then mankind dies too!”

  “I am not afraid of death,” Merlin said. “And if I do not fear mine, why should I dread that of others?” I said nothing. “But do you really think there will be no survivors? I believe the race will continue beyond the death of lands and oceans, in closed and perfect cities or on worlds built by art alone. It has taken the wit and skill of billions to create the technologies that can free us from dependence on Earth. Let us then thank the billions, not throw away their good work.”

  “Very few of those billions would survive,” I said miserably, knowing that this would not move him. “A very small elite, at best.”

  The old devil laughed. “So. We understand each other better now. I had dreams too, before you conspired to have me sealed in a cave. But our aims are not incompatible; my ascendancy does not require that the world die. I will save it, if that is what you wish.” He shrugged as he said it as if promising an inconsequential, a trifle.

  “And in return?”

  His brows met like thunderstorms coming together; his eyes were glints of frozen lightning beneath. The man was pure theatre. “Mordred, the time has come for you to serve. Arthur served me for the love of righteousness; but you are a patricide and cannot be trusted. You must be bound to me, my will your will, my desires yours, your very thoughts owned and controlled. You must become my familiar.”

  I closed my eyes, lowered my head. “Done.”

  He owned me now.

  * * *

  We walked the granite block roadway toward the line of cool silver. Under a triple arch of sullen crimson pipes, Merlin abruptly turned to Shikra and asked, “Are you bleeding?”

  “Say what?”

  “Setting an egg,” I explained. She looked blank. What the hell did the kids say nowadays? “On the rag. That time of month.”

  She snorted. “No.” And, “You afraid to say the word menstruation? Carl Jung would’ve had fun with you.”

  “Come.” Merlin stepped on the dragon track, and I followed, Shikra after me. The instant my feet touched the silver path, I felt a compulsion to walk, as the track were moving my legs beneath me. “We must stand in the heart of the groundstar to empower the binding ceremony.” Far, far ahead, I could see a second line cross ours; they met not in a cross but in a circle. “There are requirements: We must approach the place of power on foot, and speaking only the truth. For this reason I ask that you and your bodyguard say as little as possible. Follow, and I will speak of the genesis of kings.

  “I remember—listen carefully, for this is important—a stormy night long ago, when a son was born to Uther, then King and bearer of the dragon pennant. The mother was Igraine, wife to the Duke of Tintagel, Uther’s chief rival and a man who, if the truth be told, had a better claim to the crown than Uther himself. Uther begot the child on Igraine while the duke was yet alive, then killed the duke, married the mother, and named that son Arthur. It was a clever piece of statecraft, for Arthur thus had a twofold claim to the throne, that of his true and also his nominal father. He was a good politician, Uther, and no mistake.

  “Those were rough and unsteady times, and I convinced the king his son would be safest raised anonymously in a holding distant from the strife of civil war. We agreed he should be raised by Ector, a minor knight and very distant relation. Letters passed back and forth. Oaths were sworn. And on a night, the babe was wrapped in cloth of gold and taken by two lords and two ladies outside of the castle, where I waited disguised as a beggar. I accepted the child, turned and walked into the woods.

  “And once out of sight of the castle, I strangled the brat.”

  I cried aloud in horror.

  “I buried him in the loam, and that was the end of Uther’s line. Some way farther in was a woodcutter’s hut, and there were horses waiting there, and the wet-nurse I had hired for my own child.”

  “What was the kid’s name?” Shikra asked.

  “I called him Arthur,” Merlin said. “It seemed expedient. I took him to a priest who baptised him, and thence to Sir Ector, whose wife suckled him. And in time my son became king, and had a child whose name was Mordred, and in time this child killed his own father. I have told this story to no man or woman before this night. You are my grandson, Mordred, and this is the only reason I have not killed you outright.”

  * * *

  We had arrived. One by one we entered the circle of light.

  It was like stepping into a blast furnace. Enormous energies shot up through my body, and filled my lungs with cool, painless flame. My eyes overflowed with light: I looked down and the ground was a devious tangle of silver lines, like a printed circuit multiplied by a kaleidoscope. Shikra and the wizard stood at the other two corners of an equilateral triangle, burning bright as gods. Outside our closed circle, the purples and crimsons had dissolved into a blackness so deep it stirred uneasily, as if great shapes were acrawl in it.

  Merlin raised his arms. Was he to my right or left? I could not tell, for his figure shimmered, shifting sometimes into Shikra’s, sometimes into my own, leaving me staring at her breasts, my eyes. He made an extraordinary noise, a groan that rose and fell in strong but unmetered cadence. It wasn’t until he came to the antiphon that I realized he was chanting plainsong. It was a crude form of music—the Gregorian was codified slightly after his day—but one that brought back a rush of memories, of ceremonies performed to the beat of wolfskin drums, and of the last night of boyhood before my mother initiated me into the adult mysteries.

  He stopped. “In this ritual, we must each give up a portion of our identities. Are you prepared for that?” He was matter-of-fact, not at all disturbed by our unnatural environment, the consummate technocrat of the occult.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Once the bargain is sealed, you will not be able to go against its terms. Your hands will not obey you if you try, your eyes will not see that which offends me, your ears will not hear the words of others, your body will rebel against you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Shikra was swaying slightly in the uprushing power, humming to herself. It would be easy to lose oneself in that psychic blast of force.

  “You will be more tightly bound than slave ever was. There will be no hope of freedom from your obligation, not ever. Only death will release you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  The old man resumed his chant. I felt as if the back of my skull were melting and my brain softening and yeasting out into the filthy air. Merlin’s words sounded louder now, booming within my bones. I licked my lips, and smelled the rotting flesh of his cynicism permeating my hindbrain. Sweat stung down my sides on millipede feet. He stopped.

  “I will need blood,” said Merlin. “Hand me your knife, child.” Shikra looked my way, and I nodded. her eyes were vague, half-mesmerized. One
hand rose. The knife materialized in it. She waved it before her, fascinated by the colored trails it left behind, the way it pricked sparks from the air, crackling transient energies that rolled along the blade and leapt away to die, then held it out to Merlin.

  Numbed by the strength of the man’s will, I was too late realizing what he intended. Merlin stepped forward to accept the knife. Then he took her chin in hand and pushed it back, exposing her long, smooth neck.

  “Hey!” I lunged forward, and the light rose up blindingly. Merlin chopped the knife high, swung it down in a flattening curve. Sparks stung through ionized air. The knife giggled and sang.

  I was too late. The groundstar fought me, warping up underfoot in a narrowing cone that asymptotically fined down to a slim line yearning infinitely outward toward its unseen patron star. I flung out an arm and saw it foreshorten before me, my body flattening, ribs splaying out in extended fans to either side, stretching tautly vectored membranes made of less than nothing. Lofted up, hesitating, I hung timeless a nanosecond above the conflict and knew it was hopeless, that I could never cross that unreachable center. Beyond our faint circle of warmth and life, the outer darkness was in motion, mouths opening in the void.

  But before the knife could taste Shikra’s throat, she intercepted it with an outthrust hand. The blade transfixed her palm, and she yanked down, jerking it free of Merlin’s grip. Faster than eye could follow, she had the knife in her good hand and—the keen thrill of her smile!—stabbed low into his groin.

  The wizard roared in an ecstasy of rage. I felt the skirling agony of the knife as it pierced him. He tried to seize the girl, but she danced back from him. Blood rose like serpents from their wounds, twisting upward and swept away by unseen currents of power. The darkness stooped and banked, air bulging inward, and for an instant I held all the cold formless shapes in my mind and I screamed in terror. Merlin looked up and stumbled backward, breaking the circle.

  And all was normal.

  We stood in the shadow of an oil tank, under normal evening light, the sound of traffic on Passayunk a gentle background surf. The groundstar had disappeared, and the dragon lines with it. Merlin was clutching his manhood, blood oozing between his fingers. When he straightened, he did so slowly, painfully.

  Warily, Shikra eased up from her fighter’s crouch. By degrees she relaxed, then hid away her weapon. I took out my handkerchief and bound up her hand. It wasn’t a serious wound; already the flesh was closing.

  For a miracle, the snuffbox was intact. I crushed a crumb on the back of a thumbnail, did it up. A muscle in my lower back was trembling. I’d been up days too long. Shikra shook her head when I offered her some, but Merlin extended a hand and I gave him the box. He took a healthy snort and shuddered.

  “I wish you’d told me what you intended,” I said. “We could have worked something out. Something else out.”

  “I am unmade,” Merlin groaned. “Your hireling has destroyed me as a wizard.”

  It was as a politician that he was needed, but I didn’t point that out. “Oh come on, a little wound like that. It’s already stopped bleeding.”

  “No,” Shikra said. “You told me that a magician’s power is grounded in his mental somatype, remember? So a wound to his generative organs renders him impotent on symbolic and magical levels as well. That’s why I tried to lop his balls off.” She winced and stuck her injured hand under its opposite arm. “Shit, this sucker stings!”

  Merlin stared. He’d caught me out in an evil he’d not thought me capable of. “You’ve taught this … chit the inner mysteries of my tradition? In the name of all that the amber rose represents, why?”

  “Because she’s my daughter, you dumb fuck!”

  Shocked, Merlin said, “When—?”

  Shikra put an arm around my waist, laid her head on my shoulder, smiled. “She’s seventeen,” I said. “But I only found out a year ago.”

  * * *

  We drove unchallenged through the main gate, and headed back into town. Then I remembered there was nothing there for me anymore, cut across the median strip and headed out for the airport. Time to go somewhere. I snapped on the radio, tuned it to ’XPN and turned up the volume. Wagner’s valkyries soared and swooped low over my soul, dead meat cast down for their judgment.

  Merlin was just charming the pants off his greatgranddaughter. It shamed reason how he made her blush, so soon after trying to slice her open. “—make you Empress,” he was saying.

  “Shit, I’m not political. I’m some kind of anarchist, if anything.”

  “You’ll outgrow that,” he said. “Tell me, sweet child, this dream of your father’s—do you share it?”

  “Well, I ain’t here for the food.”

  “Then we’ll save your world for you.” He laughed that enormously confident laugh of his that says that nothing is impossible, not if you have the skills and the cunning and the will to use them. “The three of us together.”

  Listening to their cherry prattle, I felt so vile and corrupt. The world is sick beyond salvation; I’ve seen the projections. People aren’t going to give up their cars and factories, their VCRs and styrofoam-packaged hamburgers. No one, not Merlin himself, can pull off that kind of miracle. But I said nothing. When I die and am called to account, I will not be found wanting. “Mordred did his devoir”—even Malory gave me that. I did everything but dig up Merlin, and then I did that too. Because even if the world can’t be saved, we have to try. We have to try.

  I floored the accelerator.

  For the sake of the children, we must act as if there is hope, though we know there is not. We are under an obligation to do our mortal best, and will not be freed from that obligation while we yet live. We will never be freed until that day when Heaven, like some vast and unimaginable mall, opens her legs to receive us all.

  The author acknowledges his debt to the unpublished “Mordred” manuscript of the late Anna Quindsland.

  JOHN KESSEL

  Mrs. Shummel Exits a Winner

  Here’s an icy little tale that suggests that how high you bet should depend on how much you’re willing to lose …

  Born in Buffalo, New York, John Kessel now lives with his wife, Sue Hall, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is a professor of American literature and creative writing at North Carolina State University. Kessel made his first sale in 1975, and has since also become a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; his stories have also appeared in Galileo, New Dimensions, The Twilight Zone Magazine, The Berkley Showcase, and elsewhere. In 1983, Kessel won a Nebula Award for his brilliant novella “Another Orphan,” which was also a Hugo finalist that year. His most recent books are the novel Freedom Beach, written in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, and the Tor Double Another Orphan. He has just completed his first solo novel, Good News from Outer Space. Kessel’s story “Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine” was in our First Annual Collection; his story “Friend,” written with James Patrick Kelly, was in our Second Annual Collection; his story “The Pure Product” was in our Fourth Annual Collection.

  MRS. SHUMMEL EXITS A WINNER

  John Kessel

  The bingo hall at the Colonel S.L.A. Marshall VFW Post was filling when Martha Shummel and her friend Betty Alcyk arrived. To the right of the platform where the machine sat waiting, in the gloom that would be dispelled once the caller stepped up to begin the game, hung the flag of Florida. To the left hung the tattered flag of the United States that Pete Cullum had brought back from Saigon. They said that the brown stain that ran up the right edge was from the mortal wound of one of the heroes who died in the Tet offensive, but although Martha did not question the story she always wondered how that could have happened unless he had wrapped himself in it. The rows of wooden tables with “Col. Marshall” stenciled on their centers were already half covered with mosaics of bingo boards; people leaned back in the folding chairs and filled the hall with cigarette smoke and the buzz of conver
sation.

  Martha did not like getting there so late. She liked to be early enough to get her favorite seat, set her boards neatly in order, and sit back and watch the people come in. She would chat with her neighbors about children and politics and the weather while the feeling of excitement grew. Once a month or so she worked in the kitchen and sometimes on the other nights she brought in her special pineapple cake. It was like being in a club. You got together as friends, forgot how bad your digestion was or how hard it was to pay the bills or how long it had been since your kids had called. You took a little chance. Maybe when you left you still had to go back through streets where punks sold drugs on street corners, to a stuffy room in a retirement home, but for a couple of hours you could put that away and have some fun.

  But Betty had not been ready when Martha came by. So instead of getting there early they got stuck in line behind Sarah Kinsella, the human cable news network. With Sarah you could hardly get a word in edgewise, despite the fact that she had emphysema and her voice sounded like it was coming at you through an aqualung. She told them about the UFO landing port beneath Apalachee Bay, about the Cuban spies pawing through her trash cans, and about how well her grandson Hugh was doing at the University of Florida—starting quarterback on the football team, treasurer of his fraternity, and he was making straight A’s. Martha and Betty listened patiently even though they had heard it all before. Finally they got to the front of the line. Sarah bought five boards and headed past the table, down an aisle. The two women sighed in relief.

  “He makes straight A’s,” Betty muttered.

  “Yes,” said Martha. “But his B’s are a little crooked.” They both laughed until their eyes were damp.