The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Full of muddle-headed good intentions, she made her way back to the colony, her guards trailing behind, and when she had reached the chamber, she stood with her back to the channel that led toward the throat, uncertain of how to proceed. Several hundred feelies were milling about the bottom of the chamber, and others were clinging to ropes, hanging together in front of one or another of the cubicles, looking in that immense space like clusters of glittering, many-colored fruit; the constant motion and complexity of the colony added to Catherine’s hesitancy and bewilderment, and when she tried to call out to the feelies, to gain their attention, she managed only a feeble, scratchy noise. But she gathered her strength and called out again and again, until at last they were all assembled before her, silent and staring, hemming her in against the entrance to the channel, next to some chests that contained the torches and swords and other items used by the hunters. The feelies gawped at her, plucking at their gaudy rags; their silence seemed to have a slow vibration. Catherine started to speak, but faltered; she took a deep breath, let it out explosively and made a second try.

  “We have to leave,” she said, hearing the shakiness of her voice. “We have to go outside. Not for long. Just for a little while … a few hours. The chamber, it’s going.…” She broke off, realizing that they weren’t following her. “The thing Griaule has meant me to learn,” she went on in a louder voice, “at last I know it. I know why I was brought to you. I know the purpose for which I have studied all these years. Griaule’s heart is going to beat, and when it does the chamber will fill with liquid. If you remain here, you’ll all drown.”

  The front ranks shifted, and some of the feelies exchanged glances, but otherwise they displayed no reaction.

  Catherine shook her fists in frustration. “You’ll die if you don’t listen to me! You have to leave! When the heart contracts, the chamber will be flooded … don’t you understand?” She pointed up to the mist-hung ceiling of the chamber. “Look! The birds … the birds have gone! They know what’s coming! And so do you! Don’t you feel the danger? I know you do!”

  They edged back, some of them turning away, entering into whispered exchanges with their fellows.

  Catherine grabbed the nearest of them, a young female dressed in ruby silks. “Listen to me!” she shouted.

  “Liar, Cat’rine, liar,” said one of the males, jerking the female away from her. “We not goin’ be mo’ fools.”

  “I’m not lying! I’m not!” She went from one to another, putting her hands on their shoulders, meeting their eyes in an attempt to impress them with her sincerity. “The heart is going to beat! Once … just once. You won’t have to stay outside long. Not long at all.”

  They were all walking away, all beginning to involve themselves in their own affairs, and Catherine, desperate, hurried after them, pulling them back, saying, “Listen to me! Please!” Explaining what was to happen, and receiving cold stares in return. One of the males shoved her aside, baring his teeth in a hiss, his eyes blank and bright, and she retreated to the entrance of the channel, feeling rattled and disoriented, in need of another pellet. She couldn’t collect her thoughts, and she looked around in every direction as if hoping to find some sight that would steady her; but nothing she saw was of any help. Then her gaze settled on the chests where the swords and torches were stored. She felt as if her head were being held in a vise and forced toward the chests, and the knowledge of what she must do was a coldness inside her head—the unmistakable touch of Griaule’s thought. It was the only way. She saw that clearly. But the idea of doing something so extreme frightened her, and she hesitated, looking behind her to make sure that none of the feelies were keeping track of her movements. She inched toward the chests, keeping her eyes lowered, trying to make it appear that she was moving aimlessly. In one of the chests were a number of tinderboxes resting beside some torches; she stooped, grabbed a torch and one of the tinderboxes, and went walking briskly up the slope. She paused by the lowest rank of cubicles, noticed that some of the feelies had turned to watch her; when she lit the torch, alarm surfaced in their faces and they surged up the slope toward her. She held the torch up to the curtains that covered the entrance to the cubicle, and the feelies fell back, muttering, some letting out piercing wails.

  “Please!” Catherine cried, her knees rubbery from the tension, a chill knot in her breast. “I don’t want to do this! But you have to leave!”

  A few of the feelies edged toward the channel, and encouraged by this, Catherine shouted, “Yes! That’s it! If you’ll just go outside, just for a little while, I won’t have to do it!”

  Several feelies entered the channel, and the crowd around Catherine began to erode, whimpering, breaking into tears, trickles of five and six at a time breaking away and moving out of sight within the channel, until there were no more than thirty of them left within the chamber, forming a ragged semi-circle around her. She would have liked to believe that they would do as she had suggested without further coercion on her part, but she knew that they were all packed into the channel or the chamber beyond, waiting for her to put down the torch. She gestured at the feelies surrounding her, and they, too, began easing toward the channel; when only a handful of them remained visible, she touched the torch to the curtains.

  She was amazed by how quickly the fire spread, rushing like waves up the silk drapes, following the rickety outlines of the cubicles, appearing to dress them in a fancywork of reddish yellow flame, making crispy, chuckling noises. The fire seemed to have a will of its own, to be playfully seeking out all the intricate shapes of the colony and illuminating them, the separate flames chasing one another with merry abandon, sending little trains of fire along poles and stanchions, geysering up from corners, flinging out fiery fingers to touch tips across a gap.

  She was so caught up in this display, her drugged mind finding in it an aesthetic, that she forgot all about the feelies, and when a cold sharp pain penetrated her left side, she associated this not with them but thought it a side-effect of the drug, a sudden attack brought on by her abuse of it. Then, horribly weak, sinking to her knees, she saw one of them standing next to her, a male with a pale thatch of thinning hair wisping across his scalp, holding a sword tipped with red, and she knew that he had stabbed her. She had the giddy urge to speak to him, not out of anger, just to ask a question that she wasn’t able to speak, for instead of being afraid of the weakness invading her limbs, she had a terrific curiosity about what would happen next, and she had the irrational thought that her executioner might have the answer, that in his role as the instrument of Griaule’s will he might have some knowledge of absolutes. He spat something at her, an accusation or an insult made inaudible by the crackling of the flames, and fled down the slope and out of the chamber, leaving her alone. She rolled onto her back, gazing at the fire, and the pain seemed to roll inside her as if it were a separate thing. Some of the cubicles were collapsing, spraying sparks, twists of black smoke boiling up, smoldering pieces of blackened wood tumbling down to the chamber floor, the entire structure appearing to ripple through the heat haze, looking unreal, an absurd construction of flaming skeletal framework and billowing, burning silks, and growing dizzy, feeling that she was falling upward into that huge fiery space, Catherine passed out.

  She must have been unconscious for only a matter of seconds, because nothing had changed when she opened her eyes, except that a section of the fabric covering the chamber floor had caught fire. The flames were roaring, the snap and cracking of timbers as sharp as explosions, and her nostrils were choked with an acrid stink. With a tremendous effort that brought her once again to the edge of unconsciousness, she came to her feet, clutching the wound in her side, and stumbled toward the channel; at the entrance she fell and crawled into it, choking on the smoke that poured along the passageway. Her eyes teared from the smoke, and she wriggled on her stomach, pulling herself along with her hands. She nearly passed out half a dozen times before reaching the adjoining chamber, and then she staggered, crawle
d, stopping frequently to catch her breath, to let the pain of her wound subside, somehow negotiating a circuitous path among the pools of burning liquid and the pale red warty bumps that sprouted everywhere. Then into the throat. She wanted to surrender to the darkness there, to let go, but she kept going, not motivated by fear, but by some reflex of survival, simply obeying the impulse to continue for as long as it was possible. Her eyes blurred, and darkness frittered at the edges of her vision. But even so, she was able to make out the light of day, the menagerie of shapes erected by the interlocking branches of the thickets, and she thought that now she could stop, that this had been what she wanted—to see the light again, not to die bathed in the uncanny radiance of Griaule’s blood.

  She lay down, lowering herself cautiously among a bed of ferns, her back against the side of the throat, the same position—she remembered—in which she had fallen asleep that first night inside the dragon so many years before. She started to slip, to dwindle inside herself, but was alerted by a whispery rustling that grew louder and louder, and a moment later swarms of insects began to pour from the dragon’s throat, passing overhead with a whirring rush and in such density that they cut off most of the light issuing from the mouth. Far above, like the shadows of spiders, apes were swinging on the vines that depended from the roof of the mouth, heading for the outer world, and Catherine could hear smaller animals scuttling through the brush. The sight of these flights made her feel accomplished, secure in what she had done, and she settled back, resting her head against Griaule’s flesh, as peaceful as she could ever recall, almost eager to be done with life, with drugs and solitude and violence. She had a moment’s worry about the feelies, wondering where they were; but then she realized that they would probably do no differently than had their remote ancestor, that they would hide in the thickets until all was calm.

  She let her eyes close. The pain of the wound had diminished to a distant throb that scarcely troubled her, and the throbbing made a rhythm that seemed to be bearing her up. Somebody was talking to her, saying her name, and she resisted the urge to open her eyes, not wanting to be called back. She must be hearing things, she thought. But the voice persisted, and at last she did open her eyes. She gave a weak laugh on seeing Amos Mauldry kneeling before her, wavering and vague as a ghost, and realized that she was seeing things, too.

  “Catherine,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  “No,” she said, and laughed again, a laugh that sent her into a bout of gasping; she felt her weakness in a new and poignant way, and it frightened her.

  “Catherine?”

  She blinked, trying to make him disappear; but he appeared to solidify as if she were becoming more part of his world than that of life. “What is it, Mauldry?” she said, and coughed. “Have you come to guide me to heaven … is that it?”

  His lips moved, and she had the idea that he was trying to reassure her of something; but she couldn’t hear his words, no matter how hard she strained her ears. He was beginning to fade, becoming opaque, proving himself to be no more than a phantom; yet as she blacked out, experiencing a final moment of panic, Catherine could have sworn that she felt him take her hand.

  * * *

  She walked in a golden glow that dimmed and brightened, and found herself staring into a face; after a moment, a long moment, because the face was much different than she had imagined it during these past few years, she recognized that it was hers. She lay still, trying to accommodate to this state of affairs, wondering why she wasn’t dead, puzzling over the face and uncertain as to why she wasn’t afraid; she felt strong and alert and at peace. She sat up and discovered that she was naked, that she was sitting in a small chamber lit by veins of golden blood branching across the ceiling, its walls obscured by vines with glossy dark green leaves. The body—her body—was lying on its back, and one side of the shirt it wore was soaked with blood. Folded beside the body was a fresh shirt, trousers, and resting atop these was a pair of sandals.

  She checked her side—there was no sign of a wound. Her emotions were a mix of relief and self-loathing. She understood that somehow she had been conveyed to this cavity, to the ghostvine, and her essences had been transferred to a likeness, and yet she had trouble accepting the fact, because she felt no different than she had before … except for the feelings of peace and strength, and the fact that she had no craving for the drug. She tried to deny what had happened, to deny that she was now a thing, the bizarre contrivance of a plant, and it seemed that her thoughts, familiar in their ordinary process, were proofs that she must be wrong in her assumption. However, the body was an even more powerful evidence to the contrary. She would have liked to take refuge in panic, but her overall feeling of well-being prevented this. She began to grow cold, her skin pebbling, and reluctantly she dressed in the clothing folded beside the body. Something hard in the breast pocket of the shirt. She opened the pocket, took out a small leather sack; she loosed the tie of the sack and from it poured a fortune of cut gems into her hand: diamonds, emeralds, and sunstones. She put the sack back into the pocket, not knowing what to make of the stones, and sat looking at the body. It was much changed from its youth, leaner, less voluptuous, and in the repose of death, the face had lost its gloss and perfection, and was merely the face of an attractive woman … a disheartened woman. She thought she should feel something, that she should be oppressed by the sight, but she had no reaction to it; it might have been a skin she had shed, something of no more consequence than that.

  She had no idea where to go, but realizing that she couldn’t stay there forever, she stood and with a last glance at the body, she made her way down the narrow channel leading away from the cavity. When she emerged into the passage, she hesitated, unsure of which direction to choose, unsure, too, of which direction was open to her. At length, deciding not to tempt Griaule’s judgment, she headed back toward the colony, thinking that she would take part in helping them rebuild; but before she had gone ten feet she heard Mauldry’s voice calling her name.

  He was standing by the entrance to the cavity, dressed as he had been that first night—in a satin frock coat, carrying his gold-knobbed cane—and as she approached him, a smile broke across his wrinkled face, and he nodded as if in approval of her resurrection. “Surprised to see me?” he asked.

  “I … I don’t know,” she said, a little afraid of him. “Was that you … in the mouth?”

  He favored her with a polite bow. “None other. After things settled down, I had some of the feelies bear you to the cavity. Or rather I was the instrument that effected Griaule’s will in the matter. Did you look in the pocket of your shirt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you found the gems. Good, good.”

  She was at a loss for words at first. “I thought I saw you once before,” she said finally. “A few years back.”

  “I’m sure you did. After my rebirth—” he gestured toward the cavity “—I was no longer of any use to you. You were forging your own path and my presence would have hampered your process. So I hid among the feelies, waiting for the time when you would need me.” He squinted at her. “You look troubled.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “How can I feel like my old self, when I’m obviously so different?”

  “Are you?” he asked. “Isn’t sameness or difference mostly a matter of feeling?” He took her arm, steered her along the passage away from the colony. “You’ll adjust to it, Catherine. I have, and I had the same reaction as you when I first awoke.” He spread his arms, inviting her to examine him. “Do I look different to you? Aren’t I the same old fool as ever?”

  “So it seems,” she said drily. She walked a few paces in silence, then something occurred to her. “The feelies … do they.…”

  “Rebirth is only for the chosen, the select. The feelies receive another sort of reward, one not given me to understand.”

  “You call this a reward? To be subject to more of Griaule’s whims? And what’s next for me? Am I to disco
ver when his bowels are due to move?”

  He stopped walking, frowning at her. “Next? Why, whatever pleases you, Catherine. I’ve been assuming that you’d want to leave, but you’re free to do as you wish. Those gems I gave you will buy you any kind of life you desire.”

  “I can leave?”

  “Most assuredly. You’ve accomplished your purpose here, and you’re your own agent now. Do you want to leave?”

  Catherine looked at him, unable to speak, and nodded.

  “Well, then.” He took her arm again. “Let’s be off.”

  As they walked down to the chamber behind the throat and then into the throat itself, Catherine felt as one is supposed to feel at the moment of death, all the memories of her life within the dragon passing before her eyes with their attendant emotions—her flight, her labors and studies, John, the long hours spent beside the heart—and she thought that this was most appropriate, because she was not re-entering life but rather passing through into a kind of afterlife, a place beyond death that would be as unfamiliar and new a place as Griaule himself had once seemed. And she was astounded to realize that she was frightened of these new possibilities, that the thing she had wanted for so long could pose a menace and that it was the dragon who now offered the prospect of security. On several occasions she considered turning back, but each time she did, she rebuked herself for her timidity and continued on. However, on reaching the mouth and wending her way through the thickets, her fear grew more pronounced. The sunlight, that same light that not so many months before had been alluring, now hurt her eyes and made her want to draw back into the dim golden murk of Griaule’s blood; and as they neared the lip, as she stepped into the shadow of a fang, she began to tremble with cold and stopped, hugging herself to keep warm.

  Mauldry took up a position facing her, jogged her arm. “What is it?” he asked. “You seem frightened.”