The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three

by Jonathan Strahan

  I nodded. "Glad to know you." And I tried not to smile, tried not to show her that I was as excited about her staying as she was, though for different reasons. But I failed. I felt my fat lips twitch into a grin. "Let's get you that bath," I told her.

  And that was how we met.

  Time moved at measured pace as it does in all Bureaucracies. And here, in the tangled, loose ends of the Great Red-Tape Wrap-Up, there was really not much work to do anymore. Inventory and a bit of paperwork, filing and a bit of maintenance. Few came for supplies these days and I liked it that way. It gave me time to admire my guest.

  Her first bath set the tempo for our time together. It quickly became a daily ritual for her to lie in the tub up to her neck in warm bubbles while I sat on the other side of the cracked door. We kept the door between us and we talked. Mostly about work but sometimes about life because the two were so intricately intertwined.

  "My job is dull beyond measure, utterly uninteresting," she said during her third bath. "But yours is quite fascinating. Tell me more, Drum?"

  And I did.

  Our first week slipped past. On Tuesday, the Rationer came with his donuts, unlabelled tin cans and packets of instant coffee. He even had a few mealy apples that I swapped a case of obsolete toner cartridges for. Harmony clapped her hands with delight when I showed her, then suddenly because serious as she lowered her voice.

  "Won't you get in trouble for that?" she asked.

  "For what?"

  "Those toner cartridges—" she started.

  "Were completely worthless and taking up valuable and much-needed storage space," I finished for her. "Just part of the job."

  She raised one of the apples to her mouth. I watched her lips part, watched her shiny white teeth slide into the pock-marked red skin. It's my heart, I thought. She's biting into my heart and in seven weeks there won't even be a core to show it was ever there. The tube whistled and groaned, a battered carrier dropped into the cradle.

  Harmony stepped towards it, setting the apples on my desk. "May I?"

  I nodded.

  She opened the carrier, pulled out the memo, unfolded it, read it. I watched her eyes move back and forth, her lips now tightly pressed together. She looked up. "They'll expect me back with the love once it arrives. Until then, I should make myself useful to you down here."

  She crumpled the memo and moved towards the furnace.

  "We usually file all correspondence," I said as she tossed it in.

  "Sorry. I didn't think it was important."

  "It probably isn't," I said.

  She grinned. "So after my bath, I'll make myself useful to you." She picked up the apples, stepped closer to me. My size dwarfed her.

  "Any good?" I asked.

  She smiled and stepped even closer, now eclipsed by the shadow of me. I could smell Grundy's Liquid Anti-Bacterial Hand Soap rising from her skin in waves but it could've been summer sun on a field of roses. I could see the swell of her breasts as they struggled to fit a bra two sizes too small, the white skin disappearing into a trace of red lace. She lifted the apple, the meat glistening where her teeth torn into its skin. The apple rose slowly and I watched her wrist, her fingers, her arm as they traveled upwards towards me with it. She held it under my nose, near my snaggle-toothed mouth.

  "Taste and see," she said.

  After her bath, she hung her clean clothes on the makeshift line by the boiler. I had rummaged an oversized jumpsuit from the janitorial supplies. She held the collar closed with one hand while she slung her clean dress, bra and panties over the makeshift line with the other. My own clothes from yesterday still hung there and I blushed when I saw her dainty scraps of underwear next to my tent-sized, tattered and stained boxers.

  Four weeks had passed now. She'd taken twenty-nine baths. I'd sat outside the door each time, listening to the music of her movement in the water, listening to the wet slap of cloth on concrete on the days that she scrubbed her clothes.

  "So what are we doing today?" she asked.

  "Inventory, I think."

  Her eyes lit up. "Can we do the abstracts this time?"

  I thought about the love I'd hidden there and the small box of secondhand hope concealed behind row upon row of ennui, terror, despair and longing. I shook my head. "No, it's paper today."

  She pouted. "But I want to do the abstracts."

  I remembered the time I dropped a bottle of despair, splattering my boots with thick, black strands. I'd had to burn them eventually. "Trust me," I said. "You really don't."

  "I want to do the abstracts." She stomped her foot. Then, her mock anger collapsed on itself and she burst into a fit of giggles.

  I chuckled at her. She offered a sheepish grin.

  "Paper it is," she said.

  The front office bell chimed and we went out, hoping it was the Rationer. He'd not shown up Tuesday for the first time in seventeen years.

  Now he stood in the office, bruised and bandaged, on a Thursday.

  "Black Drawlers on the stairs," he said, patting his sword. We made our trades. He threw in an extra can of potted meat as an apology and I threw in an extra box of Number 1 Pencils as a thank you. Keeping the Machine broken was one thing; Drawlers in the stairwells was another.

  Harmony's eyes had gone wide. "Black Drawlers? Here?"

  "Sometimes," the Rationer said as he hefted his pack into a battered wheelbarrow. "It's the season for them."

  I looked at the calendar and flipped the page. He was right. After he left, his wagon wheels squealing on the tile, I looked up at her. "It is the season," I told her, dropping my fat finger onto the day after tomorrow.

  Her eyes danced. Music thrummed from her muscles as they followed her eyes, dragging her body into a little jig.

  "Do you celebrate down here?"

  "Not usually. You?"

  She shook her head. "We used to. I miss it."

  So the next day, we made our little red hats from cotton swabs and construction paper and paste. She opened eight unlabeled cans, mixed the fruits with fruits and the vegetables with the potted meat and two fistfuls of rice. I took a screwdriver to the furnace grate and pushed the office's single faux-leather couch in front of it. We wore our hats and ate our rice stew while watching the fire sort itself out.

  "Do you have a copy of the Cycle?" she asked between spoonfuls. "My mom used to read it to me every Dragon's Mass Eve."

  "I know it by heart," I said.

  Her eyes widened. "Drum, you surprise me. What's a troll like you doing with scripture rattling about in his head?"

  I set my empty bowl on the small table between my massive feet. "I wanted to be a priest when I was younger. Spent a year in the seminary, then gave it up for all of this." I swept my arm wide to encompass our surroundings. I barked out a laugh. "My own kingdom."

  She looked around. "It's a bit small." Her forehead wrinkled. "Why didn't you stay on with the seminary?"

  "The world wasn't in a good place for it. Civil service seemed a better bet. Of course, this was thirty years ago. When I was closer to your age."

  "I'm older than I look," she said. She wriggled herself closer to me. I looked down at her, inhaled the scent of her hair and skin. She put her bowl down, lay back and closed her eyes. She still radiated more heat than the fire but a month of life with her and I didn't have to worry about catching fire anymore. The deepest places in me had burned to the ground on that first day. "Will you recite it for me?" she asked.

  "I haven't said it for a long time," I said.

  "You'll do fine." She opened her eyes, trapped me in them briefly, then closed them again. "Please?"

  I cleared my voice. "Muscles tire," I said, my voice rumbling low into the room. "Words fail." I paused to let the language set its own pace. "Faith fades." I watched her, watched her own lips moving to the words as mine did. "Fear falls." Her eyelids twitched a little. She was watching me watch her and a smile pulled at her mouth. I paused again, then closed my own eyes and gave myself to language and
mythology. "In the Sixteenth Year of the Sixteen Princes the world came to an end when the dragon's back gave out . . . ."

  I recited it all the way through. Afterwards, we didn't speak. Together, we lit a candle for the broken dragon upon whose back the world languishes. Then, we turned towards the north, knelt on the floor with my hands swallowing hers, and whispered a prayer for the Santaman's second coming.

  Later, we ate our fruit salad and talked.

  "Do you believe in the Santaman?" Harmony asked between bitefuls.

  I shook my head. "Not really. I did once."

  "I don't think I do, either. If he were real, he'd have come back by now."

  "Maybe," I said, "he's waiting for us to figure things out for ourselves."

  "Or maybe our hearts are too small for that kind of love," she said. "Like you were saying when we first met: The doom of love in small spaces. Maybe if he were to come back now, we'd go insane from it. Maybe this broken world is opening us up somehow, making us really, really ready for him."

  "I like that," I said. It reminded me of my job. Keep the Machine in disrepair and disconnect, keep the thousands of us in the Bureaucracy inches from disaster to bring out our best and finest effort. I smiled down at her. "It has a certain poetry to it."

  She bit her lip. A devilish light sparked in her eyes. "Are you ready for your gift?"

  "A gift? You got me a gift?"

  She nodded. "It's Dragon's Mass Eve, Drum. Of course I did. You can't celebrate Dragon's Mass without gifts."

  I sighed. "I didn't get you anything. I just . . . didn't think about it." But of course I had. I'd thought about it ever since the Rationer reminded me of the day. For something like thirty years, the only things I'd ever let loose from my supply room had been the scant little I had to in order to keep my job. Except for the seventh floor, but I told myself that was just to keep the Board greased up and pliant. Still, I'd walked the aisles of my lair looking for something, anything, to give the girl in red. I'd even taken down the small box of hope, shaken a bit into my big hand, before tipping it carefully back inside.

  Harmony stretched herself up on the couch. "Well, I have an idea about that," she said.

  "What's that?"

  She drew her face closer to mine. I could smell pear syrup on her breath; it intoxicated me. "I'll give you my gift. And if you like it, you can give it back to me."

  I frowned. "Shouldn't it be the other way around? If I don't like it, I give it back to you?"

  She shook her head. Her hair flowed like liquid midnight when she did. "It's what I said."

  "Okay. If I like it, I can give it back."

  She pulled away, her face concerned. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  She leaned back in.

  Then she kissed me.

  And because I liked it, I kissed her back.

  At seven weeks, the phone rang when she was in the bath.

  "I'll get it," I said.

  After the call, I went back to my place by the door.

  "Who was it?" she asked over the noise of the water.

  I rubbed my face. I planned a lie, planned it well, then failed miserably to deliver it. "It was Central Stores," I said. "There's a bit of a problem."

  "What's that? Truck break down?"

  Worse, I wanted to say. Our world is out of love, it's on backorder. They sent the ship but the ship sank on a reef and the world's last love drowned in the hold. But suddenly I couldn't speak. Suddenly pinpricks pushed at my eyes and darkness dragged at my heart. I thought about my secret stash and knew that soon I'd have to tell the truth. But for now, after a lifetime of success disappointing others, I didn't have it in me to disappoint her. "Nothing important," I said. "They're just running a bit behind. I'll send up another memo and let them know."

  The door opened. She stood there in nothing but a towel that hid little. "How far behind?"

  "A few more weeks."

  "I'd like that," she said. "Besides, I still haven't helped you with the abstracts." She turned, poised on the tips of her toes, her dark hair plastered over her upper back and shoulders.

  "Trust me," I told her. "They're pretty much the same as everything else." I snorted. "You've picked the rest of it up quite quickly. You could probably do this job when I retire."

  She flinched; I should've wondered why.

  "You're retiring?" She used the heel of her foot to push the door partly closed. From the corner of my eye, I saw a brief flash as the towel dropped to the floor.

  "Someday," I said. "Don't know what they'll do without me." But I did know. At least, I thought I did before Harmony walked into my office looking for love. Before meeting her, I'd known the place would fall entirely once I stepped down. I'd kept the Board distanced from the rest of the Bureaucracy. I'd sent them the cream and others the curds. I'd kept the Machine barely functioning but once I moved aside, our small space in the world would collapse in on itself. The other six floors would storm the seventh in a rage. But now I wondered. Maybe someone else could take my place, could prolong the inevitable until the world's groan wound its way north. And maybe—though I doubted it—maybe in the north, salvation would stir and a red-clad myth would strap on his sword, saddle up his wolf-stallion and ride south to find us and show us a new home.

  My sudden collision with truth and passion unsettled me.

  "What are you going to do?" She asked. Now I could hear her scrubbing her clothes. "When you retire, I mean?"

  "I used to have it all planned out," I said. "I was going to cash in my pension and buy a horse. Ride west."

  "Why not now?" she asked.

  "Epiphany," I said.

  "No, Harmony," she answered. "I'm Harmony."

  "No," I said. "I had an epiphany."

  She laughed. "That's my sister's name. So when did you have this epiphany?"

  A minute ago, I didn't say. "Doesn't matter."

  The door opened. She stood in front of me, freshly scrubbed, wearing the oversized jumpsuit. She hadn't kissed me since Dragon's Mass Eve. And I hadn't tried to kiss her. But once in a while, in the midst of our days, there would be a pause, a moment where we simply stood still and looked at one another.

  We had our moment and then we went to work.

  On the morning of the seventh day of our eighth week, she skipped her bath and wore her red dress instead of the coveralls.

  "It's time for the truth, Drum," she told me, "no matter how hard it is."

  She'd caught me. I didn't know how. Maybe she'd read it on my face all this time. I'd lived by lying my entire life but somehow she saw past it and knew me. I put my head in my hands.

  "I'm sorry, Harmony," I said.

  She looked surprised. "What are you sorry about?"

  "That call from Central Stores last week. The shipment isn't running a few weeks late."

  "Drum, that's not important."

  "No," I said. "You're right. It's time for the truth. There's no love coming. There's none to send. The ship went down, all hands lost." I paused. More truth pushed at me. "But that's not all," I said.

  Her eyes blazed at me. "I didn't come here for the love, Drummond."

  And suddenly, I realized what she meant about it being time for the truth. Time for her truth, not mine. Time to uncover her lie and lay it out for me to see.

  "I'm not even from the fifth floor." She waited. The fierceness in her eyes abated, became a smolder, then ashes mixed with rain. "I'm from the seventh."

  I growled. It started in my belly and worked its way into my throat and past bared teeth. "You lied to me. You're from the Board, aren't you?"

  She nodded, her eyes wandered to the clock. "The memo should be here any minute." The rain drowned the ashes. Her lip quivered and she started to cry. Her shoulders shook.

  I wanted to grab her and shake her, toss her about like the toy she made me feel like. "All that interest in my work? All that making yourself useful?"

  She nodded. "I'm your replacement." She looked up, her face glistening
from tears and snot. "When they ran the ad, I applied for it. I wanted to make things better. They wanted to make things better, too."

  The pneumatic tube clanked and groaned. A heavy carrier dropped into the cradle.

  I turned away from it. I opened the carrier and a battered gold watch fell out, far too small for my thick wrist. A card fell out, too.

  I ripped it open and read the message. Gratitude of the Board and all that rubbish. Warmest wishes for a happy retirement. Utmost confidence in Miss Sheffleton's capabilities.

  I looked over at her. Her dress rippled with her sobs.

  She saw me looking. "I don't want it anymore, Drum."

  I didn't say anything. I turned around and left.

  She found me sitting in the back of the storeroom. I sat on the floor, stroking love's soft underbelly. It rolled its eyes at me and tried to lick its lips behind the muzzle.

  I'd decided it wasn't so bad after all. I'd given my thirty years. I'd even decided that her betrayal was a blessing in disguise, jarring me out of a rut I'd lain in for too long.

  I felt her hand on my shoulder. "Will you ride west?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "I don't know."

  "Stay with me," she said. "Don't retire. We can work it together." She waited. When I didn't answer, she added: "I want you to stay."

  I scratched behind love's ears. "Would we keep things the same or let them fall apart?"

  "Neither," she said. "We'd make them better. It's time to try a new way."

  She knelt down, her own hands petting the love. It twisted to get more of her. "What's this?" she asked.

  More truth, I thought. "It's love," I said. "I lied before about being out. I just wanted you to stay here with me." I looked at her. "I was tired of being alone."

  "Imagine it," she said. "You and me. We fix the elevator and the phones, first. Get the supply chain running so that Facilities can take over the repairs. Before you know it, we'd have a different world."

  "And," I said, "we'd have some love and a little hope."

  She grinned. "You've got hope here, too?"

  I smiled. "Only a little."

  She kissed me for the second time. I kissed her back.