The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  I came back to consciousness thrashing around in the dark, hot bedroom. Odille was still asleep, and I slid out from beneath the sheet, being careful not to wake her. I crossed to the door that led to the living room, my heart pounding, skin covered with a sheen of sweat. The room beyond was slashed by a diagonal of moonlight spilling through the window, and the furniture cast knife-edged shadows on the floor. I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm and was startled by the coldness and smoothness of my skin. I looked at my arm, and the feeling of cold ran all through me—the skin on my wrist and hand was black and shining like polished stone, channeling streams of moonlight along it. I let out a gasp, and holding my arm away from me, I staggered into the living room and onward into the kitchen, the arm banging against the door, making a heavy metallic sound. I tripped, spun around, trying to keep my balance, and fetched up against the sink. I didn’t want to look at the arm again, but when I did, I was giddy with relief. Nothing was wrong with it; it was pale and articulated with muscle. A normal human arm. I touched it to make sure. Normal. I leaned against the sink, taking deep breaths. I stayed there for another fifteen minutes, trying to counter the dream and its attendant hallucination with rationalizations. I was smoking too much dope, I told myself; I’d lived for too long under emotional pressure. Or else something was very wrong.

  * * *

  Houses and intricate buildings in dreams, says Freud, signify women, and for this reason, I supposed that the pyramids might be related to my experiences with Karen—a notion assisted by the patent sexuality of the serpent imagery. There was no doubt that I had been damaged by the affair. For a year and a half prior to falling in love with her, I had been forced to watch my father die of cancer, and had spent all my time in taking care of him. My resources had been at a low ebb when Karen had come along, and I’d seen her as a salvation. I’d been obsessed with her, and the slow process of rejection—itself as lingering as a cancer—had turned the power of my obsession against me, throwing me into a terrible depression that I had tried to remedy with cocaine, a drug that breeds its own obsessions and eventually twist one’s concept of sexuality. I wondered if I was still obsessed, if I was sublimating the associated drives into my dream life. But I rejected that possibility. All that was left of my feelings for Karen was a vengeful reflex that could be triggered against my will, and it occurred to me that this was a matter of injured pride, of anger at myself for having allowed that sad woman to control and torment me. The dreams, I thought, might well be providing a ground for my anger, draining off its vital charge. And yet I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion that the dreams and the game I had played with Konwicki were at the heart of some arcane process, and one morning as I walked along the beach, I turned my steps in the direction of Konwicki’s hut, hoping that he might be able to shed some light on the matter.

  I hadn’t spoken to him since the night of the game, and I had seen him only twice, then at a distance; in the face of that, it was logical to assume that he had come to terms with what had happened. But the instant his hut came into view, I tensed and began to anticipate a confrontation. Ryan was sitting outside, dressed with uncharacteristic informality in cutoffs and a short-sleeved shirt; his head was down, knees drawn up. When he heard my footsteps, he jumped to his feet and stood in front of the door.

  “You can’t go in,” he said as I came up.

  I was taken aback by that, and also by his pathetic manner. His eyes darted side to side as if expecting a new threat to materialize; nerves twitched in his jaw, and his hands were in constant motion, plucking at his cutoffs, fingers rubbing together. He looked paler, thinner.

  “What’s the problem, man?” I asked.

  “You can’t go in,” he said stubbornly.

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s the hell wrong with you?”

  Konwicki’s voice floated out from the hut. “It’s all right, Ryan.”

  I brushed past Ryan, saying, “You better get yourself together,” and went on in. The light was bad, a brownish gloom, and Konwicki was sitting cross-legged against the rear wall; beside him was something bumpy covered by a white cloth, and noticing a corner of orange wood protruding from the cloth, I realized that he had been fooling around with the game.

  “What can I do for you?” he said in a dry tone. “Sell you some drugs?”

  I sat down close to him, off to the side, so I could watch the door; the dried palm fronds crunched beneath my weight. “How you been?”

  He made a noise of amusement. “I’ve been fine, Ray. And you?”

  I gestured at the covered board. “Playing with yourself?”

  A chuckle. “Just studying a bit. Working on my project, you know.”

  I didn’t believe him. There was a new solidity to his assurance, and I suspected it had something to do with the figures and the board. “Are you learning how to play it?” I asked.

  After a silence, framing his words with—it seemed—a degree of caution, he said. “It’s not something you can learn … not like chess, anyway. It’s more of a role-playing game. It’s essential to develop an affinity with one’s counter. Then the rules—or rather, the potentials—become evident.”

  The light was so dim that the details of his swarthy features were indistinct, making it difficult to detect nuances of expression. But I had the feeling he was laughing at me. I didn’t want to let him know that I was leery about the game, and I changed the subject. “Sounds interesting. But that’s not why I came here. I wanted to”—I pretended to be searching for the right words—”clear the air. I thought we could.…”

  “Be friends?” said Konwicki.

  “I was hoping we could at least put an end to any lingering animosity. We’re all going to be living here for a while, and it’s pointless to be carrying on petty warfare … even if it’s only giving each other the cold shoulder.”

  “That’s very reasonable of you, Ray.”

  “Are you going to be reasonable? You and Odille were done before I came along. You must be aware of that.”

  “If you knew me, you wouldn’t approach me this way.”

  “That’s why I’m here … to get to know you.”

  “Just like a Yank, to think he can know something through talking.” Konwicki’s hand strayed toward the board as if by reflex, but he did not complete the movement. “I don’t let go of things easily. I hang on to them, even things I don’t really want. Unless I’m made to let go.”

  I ignored the implicit challenge. “Why’s that?”

  Konwicki leaned back and folded his arms, a shift in posture that conveyed expansiveness. “I’ve traveled in America,” he said. “I’ve seen slums in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. Ghastly ruins. Much more terrible in their physical entity than anything in England. But there’s still vitality in America, even in the slums. Some of the slums in London, they’re absolutely without vitality. Gray places with here and there a petunia in a flowerpot brightening a cracked window, and old toothless women, and children with stick arms and legs, and women whose bodies are too sallow and sickly to sell, and men whose brains have shrunk to the size of their balls. All of them moving about like people in a dream. Bending over to sniff at corpses, poking their fingers in a fire to see how hot it is. So much trash and foulness lying about that the streets stink even when they’re frozen. To be born there is like being born on a planet where the gravity is so strong you can’t escape it. It’s not something you can resist with anger or violence. It’s like treacle has been poured over you, and you crawl around in it like a fly with your wings stuck together. I’ve never escaped. I’ve run around the world; I’ve cultivated myself and given myself an education. I’ve developed refined sensibilities. But everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve carried that gravity with me, and I’m the same ignorant, bloody-minded sod I always was. So don’t you tell me something’s not good for me. I’ll want it more than ever. Things that aren’t good for me make me happy. And don’t say
that something’s done. I’m too damn stupid to accept it. And too damn greedy.”

  Despite its passion, there was a hollowness to this statement, and after he had done, I said, “I don’t believe you.”

  He gave a caustic laugh. “That’s good, Ray. That’s very perceptive. I’ve other imperatives now. But it used to be true.”

  I let his words hang in the air for a bit, then said, “Have you been having odd dreams lately?”

  “I dream all the time. What sort of dreams are you talking about?”

  “About the game we played.”

  “The game? This game?” He touched the cloth covering the board.

  I nodded.

  “No … why? Are you?”

  His mocking voice told me that he was not being direct, and I realized there was no use in continuing the conversation; either he was lying, or else he was running yet another game on me, hoping to make me think he knew something by means of arch denial. I tried to dismiss the importance of what I’d said. “A couple … just weird shit. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  If Konwicki was dreaming of that strange desert, if there was an occult reality to the game we’d played. I knew—because of my partial admission—I must look like a fool to him; to me, with his arms folded, half-buried in the dimness, he seemed as impenetrable as a Buddha. The thatched roof crackled like a small fire in a gust of wind, and behind Konwicki, mapping the darkness of the wall, were tiny points of lights, uncaulked places between the boards through which the day was showing; they lent the wall the illusion of depth, of being a vast sky mapped with stars, all arranged in a dwindling perspective so as to draw one’s eyes toward a greater darkness beyond them. I began to feel daunted, out of my element, and I told myself again that this was the result of manipulation on Konwicki’s part, that by intimating through denial some vague expertise, he was playing upon my fears; but this was no comfort. I tried to think of something to say that would pose a counterspell to the silent pall that was settling over me, I had a great faith in words, believing that their formal noise elegantly utilized could have the weight of truth no matter how insincere had been the impulse to speak, and so when words failed me, I felt even more at sea. I looked away from Konwicki, gathering myself. The doorway framed a stretch of pale brown sand and sun-spattered water and curving palm trunks, and the brilliance of the scene was such a contrast to the gloom within, I imagined that these things comprised a single presence that was peering in at us like an eye at a keyhole, and that Konwicki and I were microscopic creatures dwelling inside the mechanism of a lock that separated dark and light.

  The weight of the silence forced me to stand and squeezed me toward the door. “We haven’t settled anything,” I said, brushing off my trousers, making a bustling, casual business of retreat. “But I hope you understand that I don’t need any aggravation. Neither does Odille. If you want to make peace, we’re open to it.” I stepped into the doorway. “See you around.”

  Once outside under the sun, breathing the salt air, I felt easier, confident. I had, I thought, handled things fairly well. But as I turned to head back to the house, I tripped over Ryan, who had reclaimed his place beside the door, sitting with his knees drawn up. I went sprawling, rolled over, intending to apologize. But Ryan didn’t appear to have noticed me. He continued to sit there, staring at a patch of sand, fingers plucking at a fray on his cutoffs, and after getting to my feet, watching him for a second or two, I started walking, maintaining a brisk pace, feeling a cold spot between my shoulder blades that I imagined registered the pressure of a pair of baleful eyes.

  * * *

  That same night, following a bout of paranoid introspection, I dreamed that I went inside one of the pyramids, a structure not far from the statue of the snake-headed creature that I had encountered in earlier dreams. Leery about entering, watching for signs that would warn me off, I passed through a missing wall and climbed a stair that ended several hundred feet above in midair and was connected to a number of windowless cubicles, all of the same black stone. I considered exploring the cubicles, but when I put my hand to the door of one, I heard a woman’s muffled voice alternately sobbing and spewing angry curses; I pictured a harpy within, some female monstrosity, and I withdrew my hand. On every side a maze of other stairways lifted around me, rising without apparent support like a monumental fantasy by Escher or Piranesi, reducing perspective to a shadowy puzzle, and I felt diminished in spirit by the enormity of the place. Snakes lay motionless on the stairs, looking at a distance like cracks admitting to a bright coppery void; black spiders, invisible until they moved, scuttled away from my feet, and their filmy webs spanned between each step. From a point three-quarters of the way up, the desert appeared the color of dried blood, and set at regular intervals about the complex were five more colossal statues, each similar to the first in its repulsive anatomy, but sculpted in different poses; one crouching, one with its head thrown back, and so on. I couldn’t help wondering if these six figures were related to the counters of Konwicki’s game.

  I had intended to go all the way to the top, but I grew uncomfortable with the isolation, the silence, and started back down. My progress was slowed by an attack of dizziness. I could still hear the woman crying, and the percussive effect of her sobs made me dizzier. The spaces beneath were swelling upward like black gas, and, afraid that I would fall, overcoming my nervousness concerning the cubicles, I flung open the door to one, thinking I would sit inside until my vertigo had passed. A fecal stink poured from the cubicle, and something moved in the darkness at the rear, startling me.

  “Who’s there?” called a man’s voice.

  There was something familiar about the voice, and I peered into the cubicle. A pale shape was slumped against the far wall.

  “Come on out,” I said.

  The man shifted deeper into the corner. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m dreaming all this,” I said. “I don’t have much choice.”

  A feeble, scratchy laugh. “That’s what they all say.”

  I stepped inside, closing until I had clear sight of the man. For a moment I failed to recognize him, but then I realized it was Ryan—Ryan as he might have looked after a hard twenty years, his blond hair grayed and the youthful lines of his face dissolved into sagging flesh. The creases in his skin had filled in with grime and looked to be deep cuts. His clothes were in tatters. “Jesus, Ryan!” I said. “What happened?”

  “I’m in jail.” Another cracked laugh. “I have to stay put until.…”

  “Till what?”

  He shook his head.

  I knelt beside him. “Where are we, Ryan?”

  He giggled. “The endgame.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “The game,” he said, “is not a game.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he had lost his train of thought. I repeated the question.

  “The game is just a way of getting here. You’ve already done playing, and now you have to wait till all the moves have been made.”

  I asked him to explain why—if I’d done playing—moves were still to be made, and he replied by saying that a move wasn’t a move until it had been made everywhere. “It’s like this place,” he said. “A place isn’t really a place. One place leads to another, and that place leads to another yet, and on and on. There’s nothing that’s only itself.” That thought seemed to sadden him, and he said, “Nothing.”

  The woman let out a piercing scream, and her curses echoed through the pyramid.

  I tried to pull Ryan to his feet, thinking that there might be some more pleasant place for him to wait; he struck at my hands, a flurry of weak blows that did no damage, but caused me to release him.

  “Leave me alone,” he said. “I’m safe here.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “From you,” he answered. “The Master thinks he’s the dangerous one, but I know it’s you. He’s made the wrong move. Sooner or later
he’ll see I’m right, and he’ll try and stop it. But you can’t stop it. The travelers have to come and go; the transitions have to.…” His speech became incoherent for a few seconds; then he snapped out of it. “Of course, there are no right moves. Even the winner pays a price once the game is done. But not to worry, Ray,” he said with a flash of his old cockiness. “It’ll hurt, but it’ll be a much cheaper price than the one the Master has to pay. Or else you can always keep playing if you want to be noble and take the risk.”

  He lapsed into incoherence once again; I attempted to bring him to his senses, but all he would say was to repeat that “it” couldn’t be stopped, “it” had to happen, and to ramble on about “exchanges, necessary transitions.” Giving up on him, I left the cubicle and went out onto the sand. The sun was low, its violet-white disk partially down on the horizon, and the shadows had grown indistinct. I strolled about the complex, feeling for the first time at ease among the buildings; I was comfortable even in proximity to the snake-headed statue. I stepped back from it, admiring its needle teeth and flat skull, all its obscene proportions, and although I felt as before a sense of resonant identity with it, on this occasion I was not frightened by the feeling, but rather was pleased. Indeed, I found the entire landscape soothing. The snakes, the crabs scuttling down the sanguine faces of the dunes, the black silence of the complex … all this had a bleak majesty and seemed the product of a pure aesthetic.