But none was forthcoming. “The craeft robbed him of half himself; we robbed him then of the other,” she said sadly.
Nealy was distressed. “But I don’t begrudge it, dear Gretl. With it, what a monster I should be.”
“Yes, in all innocence, unleashing horrors and boons with equal carelessness.” Greta shook herself and looked back at Alice as if she had forgotten the young man was still there. “His choices have no moral weights, and it is urim and thummin which he would pick.” Then she rose and pointed fore-and middle finger at the younger man. “Betruth yourself, Alice Josepha Runningdeer, that you will not come to my were, nor any other dweorman, ever again, except through the man’s rixler.”
Alice dropped to her knees and hugged Greta around the waist. “Oh, I do, I do. I betruth myself, for good and aye.”
Greta lifted her to her feet. “Then go.”
Alice scurried to the door.
“Don’t forget the lye soap,” said Nealy. “And scrub very hard.” Alice gave him one last look of horror, then the door thudded shut behind her. Greta went to the door and put the bar in place, shutting the world without and them within.
* * *
Nealy ran into the wood behind the shed and knelt there rubbing himself where Gretl had struck him. Gretl was mean. All he had done was spell a spray of flowers to show how much he liked her. That was all, a spray of red and yellow and golden blooms to brighten up the winter months in their cabin.
But was Gretl pleased at the gesture? No, not her. Never spell without my permission! she had cried. Never!
Nealy clutched himself and bit down on his lip. By Hermes, that hurt! That was all she ever did, was fick him with that knout of hers, ever since the rixmister had set them up alone on the mountainside. If Papa were here, he’d make her stop; and Mama would box her ears good!
But the mountainside was far from home, far from home, and he had not seen Papa in a long, long time. Sometimes, in the night, he would sneak out of the cabin, out under the stars and look up at them, wondering if somewhere far to the south Mama and Papa were looking at them, too. Sometimes he heard their voices in the wind or in the rush of a stream, and saw their faces in the fire or a sparkling lake.
He had tried to find them once. He had made passes with his hands and the air parted before him like a curtain, and two shocked and frightened faces had turned toward him for just an instant before Gretl’s knout had struck him sharply.
Maybe that had been his parents on the other side of that curtain. Maybe not.
Maybe he should teach Gretl a lesson. Turn her stick into a viper. The spelling was in the Secret Book of Moses. He imagined the stick twisting and turning and hissing in her hands and her sudden shriek of terror. It would just be for a moment. He would change the knout back before it could bite. He did not want to hurt Gretl, only scare her.
His body twinged at the thought. Ah, what a blow she would land then!
He pulled his knees up under his chin and wrapped his arms around them. The woods grew dark farther in from the clearing, permanent night even in the day, under hickories and maples taller than the pillars of the great Temple at Shawmut, home for kobolds and sprites or other creatures. Maybe he should just run away and live by himself in the forest. Some people did that. Ridge runners and mountain men.
But he would lose Gretl if he did that. He would be all alone again, as when his parents had forsaken him. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his buckskin sleeve. He should not cry. He was fourteen, a full grown man. Papa had only been fifteen when he became house-bound to Mama. And Gretl had promised to teach him soon what were and wif did when they were house-bound to each other and that it was even better than the caresses she gave him. No, he should stay with Gretl. He was a bad boy. He had to be tamed. That was why they gave him Gretl, so she could teach him. That was why Gretl was older and knew how to touch him so it felt good. And it was why she carried the knout, too. It was all very logical. It was how you trained dogs.
* * *
Greta busied herself with the dinner preparations, setting out the flour bin and cutting a knuckle joint from the ham carcass in the cold room. Nealy admired her knifework as she cut the scraps of meat from the bone. He loved Greta’s speck-and-bean. She rolled and cut the noodles fat and small and square, and she never let the snap beans stew so long they became limp.
Nealy betook himself to his favorite chair and settled in, content to await Greta’s instructions.
When Greta had prepared the stew kettle, she carried it to the hearth. There she stopped and stared at the cold stones. Nealy felt her sorrow vibrate like the tolling of great cast iron bells. Nealy’s bones rang with it. Greta was crying.
“What is wrong, Greta?” Nealy had never seen Greta cry. It struck him as wrong. As if the sun and the moon had come loose from their crystal spheres. Greta swung the rack out and hung the kettle on the hook. “I should have told you to start the fire,” she said. “Now dinner will be late.”
Only that? A silly thing to cry over. Nealy wanted to tell her that he had thought about starting the fire himself but had not done it because she had not told him to. He thought she would be proud of his prudence. Perhaps it would cheer her up. But her eyes gazed on something so far away, Nealy did not dare interrupt her. Lately, Greta had waxed melancholy, but what it was that haunted her she never spoke of.
“I could start a fire,” he offered, “if you would but let me.” He thought that might please her. Nealy ached to be helpful; but the one thing he knew how to do well she would not let him do for trifles.
He was prepared for rebuff, but when Greta said, “Yes. Explain how you would accomplish it,” he brightened and told her all about the marching faggots and the salamander and the rest. When he was finished, he waited anxiously for her judgment. It could well be there was some moral wrong involved, like the time he had.… Well, it was best not to think on that. The villagers had rebuilt their houses farther from the riverbank, and the drought had ended. It was too bad about the children, but that could not be helped. Greta had been less experienced then.
“I see nothing wrong,” Greta said at last. The worry and the sorrow filled the cabin like molasses and Nealy ached to stopper the flow before he became mired in it. He wondered if Greta knew that he could feel these things. He had told her he could, but perhaps it was like Greta explaining right and wrong to him. The words were there, but not the sense.
He donned his wolf’s skin and made the cast, and a good one it was. The faggots put on a fine show, marching like legionnaires in the quick-step, centurions to the fore and levites to the rear, and even a leafy twig aloft in lieu of an eagle. A smile pierced even Greta’s quiet distress.
When the wood had stacked itself and ignited in a haze of flame, Greta swung the kettle hook back over the fire. Afterward, she stood staring into the crackling blaze for a long time, and remained silent all through dinner.
After cockshut, when the dishes were scoured and put away and the cooking fire had settled into a gentle roil of soft flames, Greta went to the cloak hook and took down her sheep’s wool.
“Are you going out again, dear?” Nealy asked.
Greta brought the cloak back and laid it down upon the hearth. Then she unfastened the neck of her coverslut and gown and let them fall to the flagstones. She stood there nude, one foot slightly upraised, her nakedness only accentuated by the ritual vestal’s dagger dangling between her breasts on its silken cord. The firelight caused the gemstones on the handle to sparkle like small, hard flames. Nealy sighed at the sight of the soft flesh rosened by the licking flames, and awaited her summons.
When Greta held out her arms Nealy shed his buckskins with fumbling fingers and joined her on the warm outer hearthstones. They kissed—he with urgency, she with tenderness—and settled down onto the soft wool. The heat of the fire was a delicious roasting sensation on his right side. Greta took him and brought him to her and they kissed again. “Yes,” said Greta, breaking her silence at last. “Yes, y
ou may, this one last time.”
Nealy knew what she meant. Eagerly, he reached out with himself, feeling his being engorge with the stuff of the Other Way. His pulse throbbed and the stuff ran through his veins like liquor. He sparkled like the sunlight off the chop of a gentle lake. He touched her here, and there, in places where fingers could not reach; and Greta’s breath came faster and faster, in short gulps. She said, “Yes,” over and over.
He had dreamed of this earlier, Nealy remembered, just before Alice had come. He had dreamed of Greta pleasuring him on the hearthstones; and he wondered if the yearning itself had brought this act to pass. Sometimes his dreams did that. Sometimes.
When he was spent, he lay by her side, gently following her contours with his touch. Greta lay with her eyes closed, making soft noises in her throat. Nealy waited for her to tell him not to pleasure her the Other Way the next time. She always forbade him, she always asked him, he always obeyed her. Nealy did not know why the pleasuring frightened her.
This time, however, she made no reference to it. Instead, she spoke in a whisper, “Nealy, dear, I’ve been a good wifman to you.”
“No one could ask for a better,” Nealy told her. “I could never bind with another.”
“I know,” Greta said. “I know. The rixmister paired us well. The years have been good to us.” She sighed and pressed his head against her breasts, ran her fingers through his hair. “I had looked forward to spending our chair days together.”
He lifted his head from its delicious pillow. “What is it?” he asked, dread bubbling through the sorrow. “What is wrong?”
She cupped one of her breasts in her hand and gazed at it sadly. “I have the cancer,” she said.
The words dropped down the well of Nealy’s soul. He had to swallow several times before he could speak. “Are you sure?” was all he could ask. Bad news is always questioned. Bad news is always denied.
“I saw the chirurgeon in the town. That is why I went down the mountain.” She drew determination around her like a cloak. “Here, darling, Nealy…” She pushed herself to a sitting position. “Here, sit within my lap.”
Nealy did as he was bid. He sat on the sheepskin between her legs and leaned back against her. Greta pulled his head once more against her breasts and Nealy jerked slightly at the touch.
“Do not fret, dear. You cannot hurt me; not by leaning against me.” Greta was silent for a time and Nealy contented himself with listening to her breathing. Then she said, “I felt the lumps at the freshening of Hunter’s Moon. I was not sure, at first. I did not want to believe it, at first. But the chirurgeon confirmed it.”
Nealy twisted his head and looked up into her face. Twin tears left dark trails down her cheeks. “Is there anything I can do, dear? Are there spells? I know of none; but…”
“No, Nealy. No. You would have to know the cancer as well as you know the owl or the wind … or Alice Runningdeer’s fleas. No one knows what the cancer is, or why it does what it does. How can you spell what you cannot name?”
“True names…,” Nealy said. “I could spell black,” he offered. “I could weave an unnamed spell. If the known does not help, we must try the unknown.”
“The Black Unknown? We dare not.… Dare not.… Nealy, no dweorman may spell upon the body of a rixler. That is a geas that may not, must not be lifted…”
“But…” Nealy frowned in concentration. “But, you will die. Surely.…”
Greta seized him and held him tight against her, nearly crushing his breath from him. “I know. I know. I have lived with death for three tendays, now. I have grown … accustomed to his breath. Comes the moment, I will even welcome him. The chirurgeon’s potions … I may ask for something stronger, on that day.”
Nealy pondered Greta’s death. Who would make his meals? Who would pleasure him? Who would make his decisions? “Oh, Gretl,” he said, using her childhood name. “Oh, Gretl,” and his own tears came now as he conjured up his future in his drawn and quartered soul. “I do not know what I shall do without you!”
Greta hugged him even tighter between her breasts. He could feel the heat of them, feel the hardness of their tips, smell the delicious smell of flesh. “I do,” he heard Greta say.
Something felt different. Something was missing in their embrace. He felt the fleshy softness against his cheek. “Why, Gretl,” he said. “Your vestal’s dagger … Have you taken it off?”
“Lean your head back as far as you can, darling,” he heard her say.
It gave him such pleasure to obey her. A fine blade, it tickled; rather like a feather drawn across his throat.
DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND
Pat Cadigan
Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and now lives in Overland Park, Kansas. She made her first professional sale in 1980, and has subsequently come to be regarded as one of the best writers in SF. Her story “Pretty Boy Crossover” has recently appeared on several critics’ lists as among the best science fiction stories of the 1980s; her story “Angel” was a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award (one of the few stories ever to earn that rather unusual distinction); and her collection Patterns has been hailed as one of the landmark collections of the decade. Her first novel, Mindplayers, was released in 1987 to excellent critical response, and her second novel, Synners, released in 1991, won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award as the year’s best science fiction novel, as did her third novel, Fools, making her the only writer ever to win the Clarke Award twice. Her stories have appeared in our First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Annual Collections. Her most recent book is a major new collection called Dirty Work, and she is currently at work on two new novels.
Here she plunges us deep inside the bizarre mirror-maze world of Virtual Reality gaming to play the oldest game there is, the deadly and venerable game of murder—and to play it for the highest stakes of all …
The kid had had his choice of places to go—other countries, other worlds, even other universes, à la the legendary exhortation of e. e. cummings, oddly evocative in its day, spookily prescient now. But the kid’s idea of a hell of a good universe next door had been a glitzed-out, gritted-up, blasted and blistered post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty. It wasn’t a singular sentiment—post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty was topping the hitline for the thirteenth week in a row, with post-Apocalyptic Ellay and post-Apocalyptic Hong Kong holding steady at two and three, occasionally trading places but defending against all comers.
Dore Konstantin didn’t understand the attraction. Perhaps the kid could have explained it to her if he had not come out of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty with his throat cut.
Being DOA after a session in the Sitty wasn’t singular, either; immediate information available said that this was number eight in as many months. So far, no authority was claiming that the deaths were related, although no one was saying they weren’t, either. Konstantin wasn’t sure what any of it meant, except that, at the very least, the Sitty would have one more month at the number one spot.
The video parlor night manager was boinging between appalled and thrilled. “You ever go in the Sitty?” she asked Konstantin, crowding into the doorway next to her. Her name was Guilfoyle Pleshette and she didn’t make much of a crowd; she was little more than a bundle of sticks wrapped in a gaudy kimono, voice by cartoonland, hair by Van de Graaff. She stood barely higher than Konstantin’s shoulder, hair included.
“No, never have,” Konstantin told her, watching as DiPietro and Celestine peeled the kid’s hotsuit off him for the coroner. It was too much like seeing an animal get skinned, only grislier, and not just because most of the kid’s blood was on the hotsuit. Underneath, his naked flesh was imprinted with a dense pattern of lines and shapes, byzantine in complexity, from the wires and sensors in the ’suit.
Yes, it’s the latest in nervous systems, Konstantin imagined a chatty lecturer’s voice saying. The neo-exo-nervous system, generated by hotsu
it coverage. Each line and shape has its counterpart on the opposite side of the skin barrier, which cannot at this time be breached under pain of—
The imaginary lecture cut off as the coroner’s cam operator leaned in for a shot of the kid’s head and shoulders, forcing the stringer from Police Blotter back against the facing wall. Unperturbed, the stringer held her own cam over her head, aimed the lens downward and kept taping. This week, Police Blotter had managed to reverse the injunction against commercial networks that had been reinstated last week. Konstantin couldn’t wait for next week.
As the ’suit cleared the kid’s hips, the smell of human waste fought with the heavy odor of blood and the sour stink of sweat for control of the air in the room, which wasn’t much larger than the walk-out closet that Konstantin had shared with her ex. The closet had looked a lot bigger this morning now that her ex’s belongings were gone, but this room seemed to be shrinking by the moment. The coroner, her cam operator, the stringer, and DiPietro and Celestine had all come prepared with nasal filters; Konstantin’s were sitting in the top drawer of her desk.
Putting her hand over her nose and mouth, she stepped back into the hallway where her partner Taliaferro was also suffering, but from the narrow space and low ceiling rather than the air, which was merely overprocessed and stale. Pleshette followed, fishing busily in her kimono pockets.
The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995 Page 29
