The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her voice muffled by the pillow, she said, “I can’t stand any more leaving.”

  “Hey – ”

  She turned into me, her eyes red from crying. “I mean it,” she said. “I couldn’t stand any more.”

  I held her tightly while the sun came up.

  At the breakfast table, I opened the little silver pill case. There were only three pills left. I took one with my first cup of dark French roast. Kim stared at the open case before I snapped it shut.

  “You’re almost out,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Robert, it’s not like what you said. Those pills aren’t you. They allow you to feel, that’s all. You can’t always be afraid.”

  I contemplated my coffee.

  “Listen,” she said. “I used to be envious of Eyes. No more pain, no more loneliness, no more fear. Life with none of the messiness of living. But I was wrong. That isn’t life at all. This is. What we have.”

  “So I’ll get more pills.” I smiled.

  Only it wasn’t like a trip to the local pharmacy. There was only one place to obtain the magic personality drug: The Project. I decided that I should go that day, that there was no point in waiting for my meager supply to run out.

  Kim held onto me like somebody clinging to a pole in a hurricane.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  “They won’t let you past the gate.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll wait outside, then.”

  We took her car. She parked across the street. We embraced awkwardly in the front seat. I was aware of the guard watching us.

  “You’ve hardly told me anything personal about yourself,” she said. “And here I’ve told you all my secret pain.”

  “Maybe I don’t have any secret pain.”

  “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.”

  “I’ll spill my guts when I come out. Promise.”

  She didn’t want to let go, but I was ready to leave. I showed the guard my credentials and he passed me through. I turned and waved to Kim.

  “She’s a pretty one,” the guard said.

  I sat in a room. They relieved me of my pill case. I was “debriefed” by a young man who behaved like an automaton, asking questions, checking off my answers on his memorypad. Where had I spent the last two weeks? Why had I failed to communicate with the Project? Did I feel depressed, anxious? Some questions I answered, some I ignored.

  “I just want more pills,” I said. “I’ll check in next time, cross my heart.”

  A man escorted me to the medical wing, where I underwent a thorough and pointless physical examination. When it was over, Orley Campbell, assistant director of the Tau Boo Project, sat down to chat while we awaited the results of various tests.

  “So our stray lamb has returned to the fold,” he said. Orley was a tall man with a soft face and the beginnings of a pot belly. I didn’t like him.

  “Baaa,” I said.

  “Same old Bobbie.”

  “Yep, same old me. When do I get out of here?”

  “This isn’t a jail. You’re free to leave any time you wish.”

  “What about my pills?”

  “You’ll get them, don’t worry about that. You owe us one more session, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you having misgivings? I’ve looked over your evaluation. You appear somewhat depressed.”

  “I’m not in the least bit depressed.”

  “Aren’t you? I wish I could say the same.”

  “What time is it? How long have I been here, Orley?”

  “Oh, not long. Bobbie, why not jump right back on the horse? If you’d like to relax for a couple of weeks more, that’s absolutely not a problem. You just have to remember to check in. I mean, that’s part of the drill, right? You knew that when you signed on.”

  I thought about Kim, waiting outside the gate. Would she still be there? Did I even want her to be? I could feel my consciousness spreading thin. Orley kept smiling at me. “I guess I’m ready,” I said.

  A month is a long time to exist in the Tank. Of course, as an Eye, you are unaware of passing hours. You inhabit a sensory world at the far end of a tachyon tether. I’ve looked at romanticized illustrations of this. The peaceful dreamer at one end, the industrious robot on the other. In between, the data flows along an ethereal cord of light. Blah. They keep you alive intravenously, maintain hydration, perform body waste removal. A device sucks out the data. It’s fairly brutal.

  I recouped in the medical wing for several days. I had my pills and a guarantee of more, all I would require. I had put in the maximum Tank time and could not return without suffering serious and permanent brain damage.

  My marathon Tank session had yielded zip in terms of the Project’s primary goal. The fourth planet was dead.

  Now I would have money and freedom and a future, if I wanted one. I spent my hours reading, thinking about warm climates. Kim Pham rapped on my memory, but I wouldn’t open the door.

  A week after my retrieval, I insisted on being released from the medical wing, and nobody put up an argument. I’d served my purpose. Orley caught up to me as I was leaving the building. I was hobbling on my weak legs, carrying my belongings in a shoulder bag. Orley picked up my hand and shook it.

  “Good luck to you,” he said. “What’s first on the agenda, a little ‘Eye candy’?”

  I wasn’t strong enough to belt him. He looked morose and tired, which is approximately the way I felt myself. When I didn’t reply, he went on:

  “Cruising a little close to home last time, weren’t you? That Pham woman was persistent. She came around every day for two weeks straight. Nice-looking, but older than the others. I guess you would get tired of the young ones after a while.”

  The smirk is what did it. I found some ambition and threw a decent punch that bloodied his nose.

  A cab picked me up at the gate. On impulse, I switched intended destinations. Instead of the airport, I provided sketchy directions, and we managed to find Kim’s house without too much difficulty.

  The house had an abandoned look, or at least I thought so. A mood can color things, though, and my mood was gloomy. The desperation of the Tau Boo Project had rubbed off on me. There was no life on the fourth planet, no life on any of the planets that had thus far been explored by our human Eyes. When the receiver craft were launched decades previously, it was with a sense of great purpose and hope. But so far, the known universe had not proved too lively, which only made our own earth feel isolated, lonely – doomed, even.

  The windows of Kim’s house were all black. I knocked, waited, knocked again. I knew where she hid the spare key, on a hook under the back porch.

  The house was silent. Every surface was filmed with dust. I drifted through the hollow rooms like a ghost.

  Gone.

  I pictured all the ways, all the ugly ways, she might have departed this world. Of course, there was no evidence that she had done anything of the sort. An empty house did not necessarily add up to a terminated life. Probably I was giving myself too much credit. But the gloom was upon me. And I could see the white scars on her wrists.

  I sat on the carpeted floor of the master bedroom, still weak from the Tank. Hunger gnawed at me, but I didn’t care. I let time unravel around the tightening in my chest, and, as darkness fell. I dialed the walls and ceiling clear, and lay on my back, and let exhausted sleep take me.

  Lack of nourishment inhibits the efficacy of the pill. In the morning, I opened my eyes to dark pre-dawn and a point of reference that was rapidly growing muddy. The pills were in my bag, but my interest in digging them out was not very great. Why not let it all go? Become the fiber in the rug, the glass, the pulse of blood in my own veins. Why not?

  I lay still and began to lose myself. I watched the dark blue sky pale toward dawn. At some point, the blue attained a familiar shade. Kim cradling her dead dog, the fierceness of her eyes. I can manage.

 
A sharp bubble of emotion formed in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow it down. So I rolled over. Because maybe I could manage it, too. Maybe. I reached for my bag, my mind growing rapidly diffuse. The interesting articulation of my finger joints distracted me: Bone sleeved within soft flesh, blood circulating, finger pads palpating the tight fibers of the rug. Time passed. I shook myself, groped forward, touched the bag, forgot why it was so important, flickeringly remembered, got my hand on the case, fingered a pill loose onto the rug, belly-crawled, absently scanning details, little yellow pill nestled in fibers, extend probe (tongue), and swallow.

  One personality pill with lint chaser.

  I came around slowly, coalescing back into the mundane world, an empty stomach retarding the absorption process. Eventually, I stood up. First order of business: food. I found some stale crackers in a kitchen cabinet. Ambrosia. Standing at the sink, gazing out the window, I saw the garage. I stopped chewing, the crackers like crumbled cardboard in my mouth. I’d thought of ropes and drugs and razors. But what about exhaust?

  I walked toward the garage, my breathing strangely out of sync. I stopped to gather my courage, or whatever it was I’d need to proceed.

  Then I opened the door.

  There was one car in the double space. My Mitsubishi, still parked as I’d left it. I climbed into the unlocked car and checked for the keys under the visor. They fell into my lap, note attached. From Kim.

  It wasn’t a suicide note.

  KING DRAGON

  Michael Swanwick

  Here’s a vivid , scary, and gorgeously colored story that dances right on the razor-edge between science fiction and fantasy. Like his famous novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, to which it is clearly somehow related (sequel? prequel? who knows?), it tips back and forth from one genre to the other depending on how you squint at it, sometimes several times in the same page, or even the same paragraph – like one of those paintings that’s either of a beautiful young girl or of a skull, depending on how you hold your head. However you squint or hold your head, though, it’s an unforgettable reading experience.

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the twenty-four years that have followed has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves.” He’s won the Hugo Award four times between 1999 and 2003, for his stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” “Scherzo With Tyrannosaur,” “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” and “Slow Life.” His other books include the novels In The Drift, Vacuum Flowers, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a rare distinction!), Jack Faust, and, most recently, Bones of the Earth, plus a novella-length book, Griffin’s Egg. His short fiction has been assembled in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, Slow Dancing Through Time (a collection of his collaborative short work with other writers), Moon Dogs, Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, and Tales of Old Earth. He’s also published a collection of critical articles, The Postmodern Archipelago, and a book-length interview, Being Gardner Dozois. His most recent book is a new collection, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures. He’s had stories in our Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, and Thirteenth through Twentieth Annual Collections. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. He has a web site at www.michaelswanwick.com.

  THE DRAGONS CAME at dawn, flying low and in formation, their jets so thunderous they shook the ground like the great throbbing heartbeat of the world. The village elders ran outside, half unbuttoned, waving their staffs in circles and shouting words of power. Vanish, they cried to the land, and sleep to the skies, though had the dragons’ half-elven pilots cared they could have easily seen through such flimsy spells of concealment. But the pilots’ thoughts were turned toward the west, where Avalon’s industrial strength was based, and where its armies were rumored to be massing.

  Will’s aunt made a blind grab for him, but he ducked under her arm and ran out into the dirt street. The gun emplacements to the south were speaking now, in booming shouts that filled the sky with bursts of pink smoke and flak.

  Half the children in the village were out in the streets, hopping up and down in glee, the winged ones buzzing about in small, excited circles. Then the yage-witch came hobbling out from her barrel and, demonstrating a strength Will had never suspected her of having, swept her arms wide and then slammed together her hoary old hands with a boom! that drove the children, all against their will, back into their huts.

  All save Will. He had been performing that act which rendered one immune from child-magic every night for three weeks now. Fleeing from the village, he felt the enchantment like a polite hand placed on his shoulder. One weak tug, and then it was gone.

  He ran, swift as the wind, up Grannystone Hill. His great-great-great-grandmother lived there still, alone at its tip, as a grey standing stone. She never said anything. But sometimes, though one never saw her move, she went down to the river at night to drink. Coming back from a nighttime fishing trip in his wee coracle, Will would find her standing motionless there and greet her respectfully. If the catch was good, he would gut an eel or a small trout, and smear the blood over her feet. It was the sort of small courtesy elderly relatives appreciated.

  “Will, you young fool, turn back!” a cobbley cried from the inside of a junk refrigerator in the garbage dump at the edge of the village. “It’s not safe up there!”

  But Will didn’t want to be safe. He shook his head, long blond hair flying behind him, and put every ounce of his strength into his running. He wanted to see dragons. Dragons! Creatures of almost unimaginable power and magic. He wanted to experience the glory of their flight. He wanted to get as close to them as he could. It was a kind of mania. It was a kind of need.

  It was not far to the hill, nor a long way to its bald and grassy summit. Will ran with a wildness he could not understand, lungs pounding and the wind of his own speed whistling in his ears.

  And then he was atop the hill, breathing hard, with one hand on his grandmother stone.

  The dragons were still flying overhead in waves. The roar of their jets was astounding. Will lifted his face into the heat of their passage, and felt the wash of their malice and hatred as well. It was like a dark wine that sickened the stomach and made the head throb with pain and bewilderment and wonder. It repulsed him and made him want more.

  The last flight of dragons scorched over, twisting his head and spinning his body around, so he could keep on watching them, flying low over farms and fields and the Old Forest that stretched all the way to the horizon and beyond. There was a faint brimstone stench of burnt fuel in the air. Will felt his heart grow so large it seemed impossible his chest could contain it, so large that it threatened to encompass the hill, farms, forest, dragons, and all the world beyond.

  Something hideous and black leaped up from the distant forest and into the air, flashing toward the final dragon. Will’s eyes felt a painful wrenching wrongness, and then a stone hand came down over them.

  “Don’t look,” said an old and calm and stony voice. “To look upon a basilisk is no way for a child of mine to die.”

  “Grandmother?” Will asked.

  “Yes?”

  “If I promise to keep my eyes closed, will you tell me what’s happening?”

  There was a brief silence. Then: “Very well. The dragon has turned. He is fleeing.”

  “Dragons don’t flee,” Will said scornfully. “Not from anything.” Forgetting his promise, he tried to pry the hand from his eyes. But of course it was useless, for his fingers were mere flesh.

  “This one does. And he is wise to do so. His fate has come for him. Out from the halls of coral it has come, and down to the halls of granite it will take him.
Even now his pilot is singing his death-song.”

  She fell silent again, while the distant roar of the dragon rose and fell in pitch. Will could tell that momentous things were happening, but the sound gave him not the least clue as to their nature. At last he said, “Grandmother? Now?”

  “He is clever, this one. He fights very well. He is elusive. But he cannot escape a basilisk. Already the creature knows the first two syllables of his true name. At this very moment it is speaking to his heart, and telling it to stop beating.”

  The roar of the dragon grew louder again, and then louder still. From the way it kept on growing, Will was certain the great creature was coming straight toward him. Mingled with its roar was a noise that was like a cross between a scarecrow screaming and the sound of teeth scraping on slate.

  “Now they are almost touching. The basilisk reaches for its prey . . .”

  There was a deafening explosion directly overhead. For an astonishing instant, Will felt certain he was going to die. Then his grandmother threw her stone cloak over him and, clutching him to her warm breast, knelt down low to the sheltering earth.

  When he awoke, it was dark and he lay alone on the cold hillside. Painfully, he stood. A somber orange-and-red sunset limned the western horizon, where the dragons had disappeared. There was no sign of the War anywhere.

  “Grandmother?” Will stumbled to the top of the hill, cursing the stones that hindered him. He ached in every joint. There was a constant ringing in his ears, like factory bells tolling the end of a shift. “Grandmother!”

  There was no answer.

  The hilltop was empty.

  But scattered down the hillside, from its top down to where he had awakened, was a stream of broken stones. He had hurried past them without looking on his way up. Now he saw that their exterior surfaces were the familiar and comfortable grey of his stone-mother, and that the freshly exposed interior surfaces were slick with blood.

  One by one, Will carried the stones back to the top of the hill, back to the spot where his great-great-great-grandmother had preferred to stand and watch over the village. It took hours. He piled them one on top of another, and though it felt like more work than he had ever done in his life, when he was finished, the cairn did not rise even so high as his waist. It seemed impossible that this could be all that remained of she who had protected the village for so many generations.