The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  He was silent, breathing hard. The little dog was looking up at him with anxious eyes.

  “All right, Mr. Denham,” he said quietly. “To paraphrase Dickens: Is this the image of what will be, or only of what may be?”

  I shrugged. “I only know what’s going to happen in the future in a general kind of way, Mr. Hearst. Big stuff, like wars and inventions. I’m not told a lot else. I sincerely hope things don’t turn out so badly for your ranch – and if it’s any consolation, you notice the program was about protesting the proposed development only. The problem is, history can’t be changed, not once it’s happened.”

  “History, or recorded history, Mr. Denham?” Hearst countered. “They’re not at all necessarily the same thing, I can tell you from personal experience.”

  “I’ll bet you can,” I answered, wiping away sweat again. “Okay, you’ve figured something out: there are all kinds of little zones of error in recorded history. My Company makes use of those errors. If history can’t be changed, it can be worked around. See?”

  “Perfectly,” Hearst replied. He leaned back in his chair and his voice was hard, those violets of sound transmuted to porphyry marble. “I’m convinced your people are on the level, Mr. Denham. Now. You go and tell them that twenty years is pretty much chickenfeed as far as I’m concerned. It won’t do, not by a long way. I want nothing less than the same immortality you’ve got, you see? Permanent life. I always thought I could put it to good use and, now that you’ve shown me the future, I can see my work’s cut out for me. I also want shares in your Company’s stock. I want to be a player in this game.”

  “But – ” I sat bolt upright in my chair. “Mr. Hearst! I can manage the shares of stock. But the immortality’s impossible! You don’t understand how it works. The immortality process can’t be done on old men. We have to start with young mortals. I was only a little kid when I was recruited for the Company. Don’t you see? Your body’s too old and damaged to be kept running indefinitely.”

  “Who said I wanted immortality in this body?” said Hearst. “Why would I want to drive around forever in a rusted old Model T when I could have one of those shiny new modern cars? Your masters seem to be capable of darned near anything. I’m betting that there’s a way to bring me back in a new body, and if there isn’t a way now, I’ll bet they can come up with one if they try. They’re going to have to try, if they want my co-operation. Tell them that.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and then I thought – Why argue? Promise him anything. “Okay,” I agreed.

  “Good,” Hearst said, finishing his coffee. “Do you need a telephone to contact them? My switchboard can connect you anywhere in the world in a couple of minutes.”

  “Thanks, but we use something different,” I told him. “It’s back in my room and I don’t think Jerome could find it. I’ll try to have an answer for you by tomorrow morning, though.”

  He nodded. Reaching out his hand, he took up the silver bottle and considered it. “Is this the drug that made you what you are?” He looked at me. His dog looked up at him.

  “Pretty much. Except my body’s been altered to manufacture the stuff, so it pumps through me all the time,” I explained. “I don’t have to take it orally.”

  “But you’d have no objection to sampling a little, before I drank it?”

  “Absolutely none,” I said, and held out my empty coffee cup. Hearst lifted his eyebrows at that. He puzzled a moment over the bottlecap before figuring it out, and then poured about three ounces of Pineal Tribrantine Three cocktail into my cup. I drank it down, trying not to make a face.

  It wasn’t all PT3. There was some kind of fruit base, cranberry juice as far as I could tell, and a bunch of hormones and euphoriacs to make him feel great as well as healthy, and something to stimulate the production of telomerase. Beneficial definitely, but not an immortality potion by a long shot. He’d have to have custom-designed biomechanicals and prosthetic implants, to say nothing of years of training for eternity starting when he was about three. But why tell the guy?

  And Hearst was looking young already, just watching me: wonder-struck, scared and eager. When I didn’t curl up and die, he poured the rest of the bottle’s contents into his cup and drank it down, glancing furtively at his hidden camera.

  “My,” he said. “That tasted funny.”

  I nodded.

  And of course he didn’t die either, as the time passed in that grand room. He quizzed me about my personal life, wanted to hear about what it was like to live in the ancient world, and how many famous people I’d met. I told him all about Phoenician traders and Egyptian priests and Roman senators I’d known. After a while Hearst noticed he felt swell – I could tell by his expression – and he got up and put down the little dog and began to pace the room as we talked, not with the heavy cautious tread of the old man he was but with a light step, almost dancing.

  “So I said to Apuleius, ‘But that only leaves three fish, and anyway what do you want to do about the flute player – ’” I was saying, when a door in the far corner opened and Marion stormed in.

  “W-w w-where were you?” she shouted. Marion stammered when she was tired or upset, and she was both now. “Thanks a lot for s-sneaking out like that and leaving me to t-t-talk to everybody. They’re your guests too, y-you know!”

  Hearst turned to stare at her, openmouthed. I really think he’d forgotten about Marion. I jumped up, looking apologetic.

  “Whoops! Hey, Marion, it was my fault. I needed to ask his advice about something,” I explained. She turned, surprised to see me.

  “Joe?” she said.

  “I’m sorry to take so long, dear,” said Hearst, coming and putting his arms around her. “Your friend’s a very interesting fellow.” He was looking at her like a wolf looks at a lamb chop. “Did they like the picture?”

  “N-n-no!” she said. “Half of ’em left before it was over. You’d think they’d s-stay to watch Bing C-Crosby.”

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the millennia, it’s when to exit a room.

  “Thanks for the talk, Mr. Hearst,” I said, grabbing my black case and heading for the elevator. “I’ll see if I can’t find that prospectus. Maybe you can look at it for me tomorrow,”

  “Maybe,” Hearst murmured into Marion’s neck. I was ready to crawl down the elevator cable like a monkey to get out of there, but fortunately the car was still on that floor, so I jumped in and rattled down through the house like Mephistopheles dropping through a trap door instead.

  It was dark when I emerged into the assembly hall, but as soon as the panel had closed after me, light blazed up from the overhead fixtures. I blinked, looking around. Scanning revealed a camera mount, way up high, that I hadn’t noticed before. I saluted it Roman style and hurried out into the night, over the Pompeiian floor. As soon as I had crossed the threshold, the lights blinked out behind me. More surveillance. How many faithful Jeromes did Hearst have, sitting patiently behind peepholes in tiny rooms?

  The night air was chilly, fresh with the smell of orange and lemon blossoms. The stars looked close enough to fall on me. I wandered around between the statues for a while, wondering how the hell I was going to fool the master of this house into thinking the Company had agreed to his terms. Gee: for that matter, how was I going to break it to the Company that they’d underestimated William Randolph Hearst?

  Well, it wasn’t going to be the first time I’d had to be the bearer of bad news to Dr. Zeus. At last I gave it up and found my way back to my wing of the guest house.

  There was a light on in the gorgeously gilded sitting room. Lewis was perched uncomfortably on the edge of a sixteenth-century chair. He looked guilty about something. Jumping to his feet as I came in, he said: “Joseph, we have a problem.”

  “We do, huh?” I looked him over wearily. All in the world I wanted right then was a hot shower and a few hours of shuteye. “What is it?”

  “The, ah, Valentino script has been stolen,” he said.

/>   My priorities changed. I strode muttering to the phone and picked it up. After a moment a blurred voice answered.

  “Jerome? How you doing, pal? Listen, I’d like some room service. Can I get a hot fudge sundae over here at La Casa Del Sol? Heavy on the hot fudge?”

  “Make that two,” Lewis suggested. I looked daggers at him and went on:

  “Make that two. No, no nuts. And if you’ve got any chocolate pudding or chocolate cake or some Hershey bars or anything, send those along too. Okay? I’ll make it worth your while, chum.”

  “. . . so I just thought I’d have a last look at it before I went to bed, but when I opened the case it wasn’t there,” Lewis explained, licking his spoon.

  “You scanned for thermoluminescence? Fingerprints?” I said, putting the sundae dish down with one hand and reaching for cake with the other.

  “Of course I did. No fingerprints, and judging from the faintness of the thermoluminescence, whoever went through my things must have been wearing gloves,” Lewis told me. “About all I could tell was that a mortal had been in my room, probably an hour to an hour and a half before I got there. Do you think it was one of the servants?”

  “No, I don’t. I know Mr. Hearst sent Jerome in here to get something out of my room, but I don’t think the guy ducked into yours as an afterthought to go through your drawers. Anybody who swiped stuff from Mr. Hearst’s guests wouldn’t work here very long,” I said. “If any guest had ever had something stolen, everybody in the Industry would know about it. Gossip travels fast in this town.” I meant Hollywood, of course, not San Simeon.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Lewis said miserably.

  “True. But I think our buddy Jerome has faithful retainer written all over him,” I said, finishing the cake in about three bites.

  “Then who else could have done it?” Lewis wondered, starting on a dish of pudding.

  “Well, you’re the Literary Specialist. Haven’t you ever accessed any Agatha Christie novels?” I tossed the cake plate aside and pounced on a Hershey bar. “You know what we do next. Process of elimination. Who was where and when? I’ll tell you this much, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Big Daddy Hearst. I was with him from the moment we left the rest of you in the theater until Marion came up and I had to scram.” I closed my eyes and sighed in bliss, as the Theobromos high finally kicked in.

  “Well – ” Lewis looked around distractedly, trying to think. “Then – it has to have been one of us who were in the theater watching Going Hollywood.”

  “Yeah. And Marion said about half the audience walked out before it was over,” I said. “Did you walk out, Lewis?”

  “No! I stayed until the end. I can’t imagine why anybody left. I thought it was delightful,” Lewis told me earnestly. “It had Bing Crosby in it, you know.”

  “You’ve got pudding on your chin. Okay, so you stayed through the movie.” I said, realizing my wits weren’t at their sharpest right now but determined to thrash this through. “And so did Marion. Who else was there when the house lights came up, Lewis?”

  Lewis sucked in his lower lip, thinking hard through the theobromine fog. “I’m replaying my visual transcript,” he informed me. “Clark Gable is there. The younger Mr. Hearst and his friend are there. The unpleasant-looking fellows in the business suits are there. Connie’s there.”

  “Garbo?”

  “Mm – nope.”

  “The two silent guys? Charlie and Laurence?”

  “No.”

  “What’s his name, Jack from Paramount, is he there?”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “What about the crazy lady with the dogs?”

  “She’s not there either.” Lewis raised horrified eyes to me. “My gosh, it could have been any one of them.” He remembered the pudding and dabbed at it with his handkerchief.

  “Or the thief might have sneaked out, robbed your room and sneaked back in before the end of the picture,” I told him.

  “Oh, why complicate things?” he moaned. “What are we going to do?”

  “Damned if I know tonight,” I replied, struggling to my feet.

  “Tomorrow you’re going to find out who took the Valentino script and get it back. I have other problems, okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Hearst is upping the ante on the game. He’s given me an ultimatum for Dr. Zeus,” I explained.

  “Wowie.” Lewis looked appalled. “He thinks he can dictate terms to the Company?”

  “He’s doing it, isn’t he?” I said, trudging off to my bedroom. “And guess who gets to deliver the messages both ways. Now you see why I was nervous? I knew this was going to happen.”

  “Well, cheer up,” Lewis called after me. “Things can’t go more wrong than this.”

  I switched on the light in my room, and found out just how much more wrong they could go.

  Something exploded up from the bed at my face, a confusion of needle teeth and blaring sound. I was stoned, I was tired. I was confused, and so I just slapped it away as hard as I could, which with me being a cyborg and all was pretty hard. The thing flew across the room and hit the wall with a crunch. Then it dropped to the floor and didn’t move, except for its legs kicking, but not much or for long.

  Lewis was beside me immediately, staring. He put his handkerchief to his mouth and turned away, ashen-faced.

  “Ye gods!” he said. “You’ve killed Tcho-Tcho!”

  “Maybe I just stunned her?” I staggered over to see. Lewis staggered with me. We stood looking down at Tcho-Tcho.

  “Nope,” Lewis told me sadly, shaking his head.

  “The Devil, and the Devil’s Dam, and the Devil’s . . . insurance agent.” I swore, groping backward until I found a chair to collapse in. “Now what do we do?” I averted my eyes from the nasty little corpse and my gaze fell on the several shreddy parts that were all that remained of my left tennis shoe. “Hey! Look what the damn thing did to my sneaker!”

  “How did she get in here, anyway?” Lewis wrung his hands.

  “So much for my playing tennis with anybody tomorrow,” I snarled.

  “But – but if she was in here long enough to chew up your shoe . . .” Lewis paused, eyes glazing over in difficult thought. “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that Theobromos. Isn’t that the way it always is? Just when you think it’s safe to relax and unwind a little – ”

  “Hey! This means Cartimandua Bryce took your Valentino script.” I said, leaping to my feet and grabbing hold of the chair to steady myself. “See? The damn dog must have followed her in unbeknownst!”

  “You’re right.” Lewis’ eyes widened. “Except – well, no, not necessarily. She didn’t have the dogs with her, don’t you remember? They wouldn’t behave at table. They had to be taken back to her room.”

  “So they did.” I subsided into the chair once more. “Hell. If somebody was sneaking through the rooms, the dog might have got out and wandered around until it got in here, chewed up my shoe and went to sleep on my bed.”

  “And that means – that means – ” Lewis shook his head. “I’m too tired to think what that means. What are we going to do about the poor dog? I suppose we’ll have to go tell Mrs. Bryce.”

  “Nothing doing,” I snapped. “When I’m in the middle of a deal with Hearst? Hearst, who’s fanatic about kindness to animals? Sorry about that, W.R., but I just brutally murdered a dear little chihuahua in La Casa Del Sol. Thank God there aren’t any surveillance cameras in here!”

  “But we have to do something,” Lewis protested. “We can’t leave it here on the rug! Should we take it out and bury it?”

  “No. There’s bound to be a search when Mrs. Bryce notices it’s gone.” I said. “If they find the grave and dig it up, they’ll know the mutt didn’t die naturally, or why would somebody take the trouble to hide the body?”

  “Unless we hid it somewhere it’d never be found?” Lewis suggested. “We could pitch it over the perimeter fence. Then, maybe the wild animals would
remove the evidence!”

  “I don’t think zebras are carrion eaters, Lewis.” I rubbed my temples wearily. “And I don’t know about you, but in the condition I’m in, I don’t think I’d get it over the fence on the first throw. All I’d need then would be for one of Hearst’s surveillance cameras to pick me up in a spotlight, trying to stuff a dead chihuahua through a fence. Hey!” I brightened. “Hearst has a zoo up here. What if we shotput Tcho-Tcho into the lion’s den?”

  Lewis shuddered. “What if we missed?”

  “To hell with this.” I got up. “Dogs die all the time of natural causes.”

  So we wound up flitting through the starry night in hyperfunction, leaving no more than a blur on any cameras that might be recording our passage, and a pitiful little corpse materialized in what we hoped was a natural attitude of canine demise on the front steps of La Casa Grande. With any luck it would be stiff as a board by morning, which would make foul play harder to detect.

  Showered and somewhat sobered up, I opened the field credenza in my suitcase and crouched before it to tap out my report on its tiny keys:

  WRH WILLING, HAD PT3 SAMPLE, BUT HOLDING OUT FOR MORE. TERMS: STOCK SHARES PLUS IMMORTALITY PROCESS. HAVE EXPLAINED IMPOSSIBILITY. REFUSES TO ACCEPT.

  SUGGEST: LIE. DELIVER EIGHTEEN YEARS PER HISTORICAL RECORD WITH PROMISE OF MORE, THEN RENEGOTIATE TERMS WITH HEIRS.

  PLEASE ADVISE.

  It didn’t seem useful to tell anybody that the Valentino script was missing. Why worry the Company? After all, we must be going to find it and complete at least that part of the mission successfully, because history records that an antique restorer will, on December 20, 2326, at the height of the Old Hollywood Revival, find the script in a hidden compartment in a Spanish cabinet, once owned by W.R. Hearst but recently purchased by Dr. Zeus Incorporated. Provenance indisputably proven, it will then be auctioned off for an unbelievably huge sum, even allowing for twenty-fourth century inflation. And history cannot be changed, can it?

  Of course it can’t.

  I yawned pleasurably, preparing to shut the credenza down for the night, but it beeped to let me know a message was coming in. I scowled at it and leaned close to see what it said.