They curtsied to Belari as they had been trained, making obeisance first to their patron, the mother goddess who had created them. Belari smiled at the gesture, however scripted it was, and joined the applause of her guests. The people’s applause increased again at the girls’ good grace, then Nia and Lidia were curtseying to the corners of the compass, gathering their shifts and leaving the stage, guided by Burson’s hulking presence to their patron.
The applause continued as they crossed the distance to Belari. Finally, at Belari’s wave, the clapping gave way to respectful silence. She smiled at her assembled guests, placing her arms around the slight shoulders of the girls and said, “My lords and ladies, our Fluted Girls,” and applause burst over them again, one final explosion of adulation before the guests fell to talking, fanning themselves, and feeling the flush of their own skins which the girls had inspired.
Belari held the fluted girls closely and whispered in their ears, “You did well.” She hugged them carefully.
Vernon Weir’s eyes roved over Lidia and Nia’s exposed bodies. “You outdo yourself, Belari,” he said.
Belari inclined her head slightly at the compliment. Her grip on Lidia’s shoulder became proprietary. Belari’s voice didn’t betray her tension. She kept it light, comfortably satisfied with her position, but her fingers dug into Lidia’s skin. “They are my finest.”
“Such an extraordinary crafting.”
“It’s expensive when they break a bone. They’re terribly fragile.” Belari smiled down at the girls affectionately. “They hardly remember what it’s like to walk without care.”
“All the most beautiful things are fragile.” Vernon touched Lidia’s cheek. She forced herself not to flinch. “It must have been complex to build them.”
Belari nodded. “They are intricate.” She traced a finger along the boreholes in Nia’s arm. “Each note isn’t simply affected by the placement of fingers on keys; but also by how they press against one another, or the floor; if an arm is bent or if it is straightened. We froze their hormone levels so that they wouldn’t grow, and then we began designing their instruments. It takes an enormous amount of skill for them to play and to dance.”
“How long have you been training them?”
“Five years. Seven if you count the surgeries that began the process.”
Vernon shook his head. “And we never heard of them.”
“You would have ruined them. I’m going to make them stars.”
“We made you a star.”
“And you’ll unmake me as well, if I falter.”
“So you’ll float them on the markets?”
Belari smiled at him. “Of course. I’ll retain a controlling interest, but the rest, I will sell.”
“You’ll be rich.”
Belari smiled, “More than that, I’ll be independent.”
Vernon mimed elaborate disappointment. “I suppose this means we won’t be wiring you for TouchSense.”
“I suppose not.”
The tension between them was palpable. Vernon, calculating, looking for an opening while Belari gripped her property and faced him. Vernon’s eyes narrowed.
As though sensing his thoughts, Belari said, “I’ve insured them.”
Vernon shook his head ruefully. “Belari, you do me a disservice.” He sighed. “I suppose I should congratulate you. To have such loyal subjects, and such wealth, you’ve achieved more than I would have thought possible when we first met.”
“My servants are loyal because I treat them well. They are happy to serve.”
“Would your Stephen agree?” Vernon waved at the sweetmeats in the center of the refreshment table, drizzled with raspberry and garnished with bright green leaves of mint.
Belari smiled. “Oh yes, even him. Do you know that just as Michael and Renee were preparing to cook him, he looked at me and said ‘Thank you’?” She shrugged. “He tried to kill me, but he did have the most eager urge to please, even so. At the very end, he told me he was sorry, and that the best years of his life had been in service to me.” She wiped at a theatrical tear. “I don’t know how it is, that he could love me so, and still do desire to have me dead.” She looked away from Vernon, watching the other guests. “For that, though, I thought I would serve him, rather than simply stake him out as a warning. We loved each other, even if he was a traitor.”
Vernon shrugged sympathetically. “So many people dislike the fief structure. You try to tell them that you provide far more security than what existed before, and yet still they protest, and,” he glanced meaningfully at Belari, “sometimes more.”
Belari shrugged. “Well, my subjects don’t protest. At least not until Stephen. They love me.”
Vernon smiled. “As we all do. In any case, serving him chilled this way.” He lifted a plate from the table. “Your taste is impeccable.”
Lidia’s face stiffened as she followed the conversation. She looked at the array of finely sliced meats and then at Vernon as he forked a bite into his mouth. Her stomach turned. Only her training let her remain still. Vernon and Belari’s conversation continued, but all Lidia could think was that she had consumed her friend, the one who had been kind to her.
Anger trickled through her, filling her porous body with rebellion. She longed to attack her smug patron, but her rage was impotent. She was too weak to hurt Belari. Her bones were too fragile, her physique too delicate. Belari was strong in all things as she was weak. Lidia stood trembling with frustration, and then Stephen’s voice whispered comforting wisdom inside her head. She could defeat Belari. Her pale skin slushed with pleasure at the thought.
As though sensing her, Belari looked down. “Lidia, go put on clothes and come back. I’ll want to introduce you and your sister to everyone before we take you public.”
Lidia crept toward her hidey-hole. The vial was still there, if Burson had not found it. Her heart hammered at the thought: that the vial might be missing, that Stephen’s final gift had been destroyed by the monster. She slipped through dimly lit servant’s tunnels to the kitchen, anxiety pulsing at every step.
The kitchen was busy, full of staff preparing new platters for the guests. Lidia’s stomach turned. She wondered if more trays bore Stephen’s remains. The stoves flared and the ovens roared as Lidia slipped through the confusion, a ghostly waif sliding along the walls. No one paid her attention. They were too busy laboring for Belari, doing her bidding without thought or conscience: slaves, truly. Obedience was all Belari cared for.
Lidia smiled grimly to herself. If obedience was what Belari loved, she was happy to provide a true betrayal. She would collapse on the floor, amongst her mistress’s guests, destroying Belari’s perfect moment, shaming her and foiling her hopes of independence.
The pantry was silent when Lidia slipped through its archway. Everyone was busy serving, running like dogs to feed Belari’s brood. Lidia wandered amongst the stores, past casks of oil and sacks of onions, past the great humming freezers that held whole sides of beef within their steel bowels. She reached the broad tall shelves at the pantry’s end and climbed past preserved peaches, tomatoes, and olives to the high-stored legumes. She pushed aside a vacuum jar of lentils and felt within.
For a moment, as she slid her hand around the cramped hiding place, she thought the vial was missing, but then her grasp closed on the tiny blown-glass bulb.
She climbed down, careful not to break any bones, laughing at herself as she did, thinking that it hardly mattered now, and hurried back through the kitchen, past the busy, obedient servants, and then down the servants’ tunnels, intent on self-destruction.
As she sped through the darkened tunnels, she smiled, glad that she would never again steal through dim halls hidden from the view of aristocracy. Freedom was in her hands. For the first time in years she controlled her own fate.
Burson lunged from the shadows, his skin shifting from black to flesh as he materialized. He seized her and jerked her to a halt. Lidia’s body strained at the abrupt capture. She
gasped, her joints creaking. Burson gathered her wrists into a single massive fist. With his other hand, he turned her chin upward, subjecting her black eyes to the interrogation of his red-rimmed orbs. “Where are you going?”
His size could make you mistake him for stupid, she thought. His slow rumbling voice. His great animal-like gaze. But he was observant where Belari was not. Lidia trembled and cursed herself for foolishness. Burson studied her, his nostrils flaring at the scent of fear. His eyes watched the blush of her skin. “Where are you going?” he asked again. Warning laced his tone.
“Back to the party,” Lidia whispered.
“Where have you been?”
Lidia tried to shrug. “Nowhere. Changing.”
“Nia is already there. You are late. Belari wondered about you.”
Lidia said nothing. There was nothing she could say to make Burson lose his suspicions. She was terrified that he would pry open her clenched hands and discover the glass vial. The servants said it was impossible to lie to Burson. He discovered everything.
Burson eyed her silently, letting her betray herself. Finally he said, “You went to your hidey-hole.” He sniffed at her. “Not in the kitchen, though. The pantry.” He smiled, revealing hard sharp teeth. “High up.”
Lidia held her breath. Burson couldn’t let go of a problem until it was solved. It was bred into him. His eyes swept over her skin. “You’re nervous.” He sniffed. “Sweating. Fear.”
Lidia shook her head stubbornly. The tiny vial in her hands was slick, she was afraid she would drop it, or move her hands and call attention to it. Burson’s great strength pulled her until they were nose to nose. His fist squeezed her wrists until she thought they would shatter. He studied her eyes. “So afraid.”
“No.” Lidia shook her head again.
Burson laughed, contempt and pity in the sound. “It must be terrifying to know you can be broken, at any time.” His stone grip relaxed. Blood rushed back into her wrists. “Have your hidey-hole, then. Your secret is safe with me.”
For a moment, Lidia wasn’t sure what he meant. She stood before the giant security officer, frozen still, but then Burson waved his hand irritably and slipped back into the shadows, his skin darkening as he disappeared. “Go.”
Lidia stumbled away, her legs wavering, threatening to give out. She forced herself to keep moving, imagining Burson’s eyes burning into her pale back. She wondered if he still watched her or if he had already lost interest in the harmless spindly fluted girl, Belari’s animal who hid in the closets and made the staff hunt high and low for the selfish mite.
Lidia shook her head in wonderment. Burson had not seen. Burson, for all his enhancements, was blind, so accustomed to inspiring terror that he could no longer distinguish fear from guilt.
A new gaggle of admirers swarmed around Belari, people who knew she was soon to be independent. Once the fluted girls floated on the market, Belari would be nearly as powerful as Vernon Weir, valuable not only for her own performances, but also for her stable of talent. Lidia moved to join her, the vial of liberation hidden in her fist.
Nia stood near Belari, talking to Claire Paranovis from SK Net. Nia nodded graciously at whatever the woman was saying, acting as Belari had trained them: always polite, never ruffled, always happy to talk, nothing to hide, but stories to tell. That was how you handled the media. If you kept them full, they never looked deeper. Nia looked comfortable in her role.
For a moment, Lidia felt a pang of regret at what she was about to do, then she was beside Belari, and Belari was smiling and introducing her to the men and women who surrounded her with fanatic affection. Mgumi Story. Kim Song Lee. Maria Blyst. Takashi Ghandi. More and more names, the global fraternity of media elites.
Lidia smiled and bowed while Belari fended off their proffered hands of congratulation, protecting her delicate investment. Lidia performed as she had been trained, but in her hand the vial lay sweaty, a small jewel of power and destiny. Stephen had been right. The small only controlled their own termination, sometimes not even that. Lidia watched the guests take slices of Stephen, commenting on his sweetness. Sometimes, not even that.
She turned from the crowd of admirers and drew a strawberry from the pyramids of fruit on the refreshment table. She dipped it in cream and rolled it in sugar, tasting the mingled flavors. She selected another strawberry, red and tender between her spidery fingers, a sweet medium for a bitter freedom earned.
With her thumb, she popped the tiny cork out of the vial and sprinkled amber jewels on the lush berry. She wondered if it would hurt, or if it would be quick. It hardly mattered, soon she would be free. She would cry out and fall to the floor and the guests would step back, stunned at Belari’s loss. Belari would be humiliated, and more important, would lose the value of the fluted twins. Vernon Weir’s lecherous hands would hold her once again.
Lidia gazed at the tainted strawberry. Sweet, Lidia thought. Death should be sweet. She saw Belari watching her, smiling fondly, no doubt happy to see another as addicted to sweets as she. Lidia smiled inwardly, pleased that Belari would see the moment of her rebellion. She raised the strawberry to her lips.
Suddenly a new inspiration whispered in her ear.
An inch from death, Lidia paused, then turned and held out the strawberry to her patron.
She offered the berry as obeisance, with the humility of a creature utterly owned. She bowed her head and proffered the strawberry in the palm of her pale hand, bringing forth all her skill, playing the loyal servant desperately eager to please. She held her breath, no longer aware of the room around her. The guests and conversations all had disappeared. Everything had gone silent.
There was only Belari and the strawberry and the frozen moment of delicious possibility.
Dead Worlds
Jack Skillingstead
New writer Jack Skillingstead works in the aerospace industry and lives with his family near Seattle, Washington. The compelling and melancholy story that follows, which shows us that sometimes you have to look very hard indeed just to realize what it is you want to find, was his first professional sale, but I can confidently predict that it won’t be his last (an easy enough prophecy, since I already have several of his stories in inventory at Asimov’s). Publishers take note: He has two unsold novels at home, and is at work on more.
A week after my retrieval, I went for a drive in the country. I turned the music up loud, Aaron Copland. The two lane blacktop wound into late summer woods. Sun and shadow slipped over my Mitsubishi. I felt okay, but how long could it last? The point, I guess, was to find out.
I was driving too fast, but that’s not why I hit the dog. Even at a reduced speed, I wouldn’t have been able to stop in time. I had shifted into a slightly banked corner overhung with maple—and the dog was just there. A big shepherd, standing in the middle of the road with his tongue hanging out, as if he’d been running. Brakes, clutch, panicked wrenching of the wheel, a tight skid. The heavy thud of impact felt through the car’s frame.
I turned off the digital music stream and sat a few moments in silence except for the nearly subaudible ripple of the engine. In the rearview mirror, the dog lay in the road.
I swallowed, took a couple of deep breaths, then let the clutch out, slowly rolled onto the shoulder, and killed the engine.
The door swung smoothly up and away. A warm breeze scooped into the car, carrying birdsong and the muted purl of running water—a creek or stream.
I walked back to the dog. He wasn’t dead. At the sound of my footsteps approaching, he twisted his head around and snapped at me. I halted a few yards away. The dog whined. Bloody foam flecked his lips. His hind legs twitched brokenly.
“Easy,” I said.
The dog whimpered, working his jaws. He didn’t snap again, not even when I hunkered close and laid my hand between his ears. The short hairs bristled against my palm.
His chest heaved. He made a grunting, coughing sound. Blood spattered the road. I looked on, dispassionate. Already, I w
as losing my sense of emotional connection. I had deliberately neglected to take my pill that morning.
Then the woman showed up.
I heard her trampling through the underbrush. She called out, “Buddy! Buddy!”
“Here,” I said.
She came out of the woods, holding a red nylon leash, a woman maybe thirty-five years old, with short blond hair, wearing a sleeveless blouse, khaki shorts, and ankle boots. She hesitated. Shock crossed her face. Then she ran to us.
“Buddy, oh Buddy!”
She knelt by the dog, tears spilling from her blue eyes. My chest tightened. I wanted to cherish the emotion. But was it genuine, or a residual effect of the drug?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He was in the road.”
“I took him off the leash,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
She kept stroking the dog’s side, saying his name. Buddy laid his head in her lap as if he was going to sleep. He coughed again, choking up blood. She stroked him and cried.
“Is there a vet?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Buddy shuddered violently and ceased breathing; that was the end. “We’d better move him out of the road,” I said.
She looked at me and there was something fierce in her eyes. “I’m taking him home,” she said.
She struggled to pick the big shepherd up in her arms. The dog was almost as long as she was tall.
“Let me help you. We can put him in the car.”
“I can manage.”
She staggered with Buddy, feet scuffing, the dog’s hind legs limp, like weird dance partners. She found her balance, back swayed, and carried the dead dog into the woods.
I went to the car, grabbed the keys. My hand reached for the glove box, but I drew it back. I was gradually becoming an Eye again, a thing of the Tank. But no matter what, I was through with the pills. I wanted to know if there was anything real left in me.
The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003 Page 49
