The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  She paused, leaning on the barrier and looking toward where she estimated the party had been. It was long over now, or perhaps this was no longer a hot place to be in the Sitty. Her purpose here was not to find a party, nor to act as a decoy to attract a creature that wasn’t even real. Funny how easy it was to forget things or to keep focused here. If she waited much longer, she might even feel her concentration dissolve, break apart into tiny fragments and float away up to the stars with the sparks from the burning wreckage.

  “Icon cat?” she asked.

  It was there before her on the barrier, a big book full of symbols and their explanations. The page it was open to showed a flame within a halo; as she looked at it, it went from a line drawing to a vivid holo. The word Enlightenment came out of the flame and rippled for a moment. More words appeared on the facing page: You have only to ask.

  Konstantin made a face, or thought she did; there was no real feeling above her neck. “Is this a help file?” she said aloud.

  Now there was a new message on the page opposite the flame: Help with?—Travel—Location—Contacts—Other

  After a moment’s thought, she touched—Contacts.

  Contact—Who—What? the page wanted to know.

  She pressed for—Who. The question mark moved to the end of the word. “Body Sativa,” she said aloud.

  A golden arrow pointing to her right materialized on the page. She turned it and found a map of the area with her own position highlighted. A dotted green line appeared, winding its way along the grid of streets to a location six blocks away; a green star flashed on and off.

  “That was easy,” she said, noting the address and the directions. It just figured. You have only to ask. So simple that it was too simple to think of.

  The book disappeared into the back of the map. She picked it up and moved up the street toward the next three-way intersection. Three fiery humanish shapes detached themselves from the burning ruins of a classic Rolls sandwiched between two antique sports cars and stood watching her. Konstantin had a sudden urge to whirl on them and claim she was selling encyclopedias or household cleansers. The idea was a tickle playing over her back, where she imagined she could feel their literally burning stares.

  No, too simple; they might expect her to produce chips full of natural history quick-times or a bottle of something that looked like urine and smelled like ammonia. Not that she had smelled anything in here since she had arrived, not even anything burning.

  She couldn’t account for how she had come up with the idea of playing such a prank; she’d never had much of a sense of humor, or so her ex had always said.

  Anything goes. You can even pretend you have a sense of humor, or that your ex isn’t actually ex, and all while you look for someone with the improbable name of Body Sativa, or Love, or whatever.

  * * *

  She passed several brawls, a side street where a few hundred people seemed to be trying to stay as close together as possible and still dance—it looked as if they had decided nudity would do it—and a billboard-sized screen where half a dozen people were either collaborating on a quick-time or competing to see whose images could dominate. Someone among them was obsessed with mutant reptiles. Or were certain kinds of images contagious?

  Or maybe, she thought as she passed someone that might have been the offspring of a human and a cobra, it was the mutants themselves that were contagious. She paused at a corner in front of a park surrounded by a black metal spiked fence and consulted the map.

  “Sssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

  The noise was so soft, she wasn’t sure that she had actually heard it. But then it came again, from somewhere in the dark contained in the spiked metal fence, and she found that the sensation of the small hairs standing up on the back of her neck was not necessarily something that the hotsuit had to produce for her.

  “Sssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaannnnnnntiiiiiiih…”

  She was clenching her hands so tightly that if she had really been holding a map, it would have crumpled and torn in a dozen places. Come on, she told herself. This is nothing more than a scary story. You just happen to be in it.

  “Ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaannnnnnntiiiiiiiiih…”

  Apparently it didn’t matter what she told herself; the hairs on the back of her neck were going to stand up and jitterbug regardless. The chills seemed to be creeping down her backbone now. Konstantin tried to steel herself and shivered instead.

  “Ssssssshhhhhhhaaaaaaaannnnnnntiiiiiih. Welcome back from the land of the dead. We’ve been waiting for you, darling.”

  Konstantin forced herself to turn around. The faces grinning out of the darkness glowed moon-pale, with thick black circles around the eyes, which were also luminous. Or just the whites, anyway, Konstantin noticed, trying to see more detail in spite of the cold still flicking at the back of her neck and up onto her scalp.

  As her eyes adjusted, she could see that there were half a dozen of them, in a roughly symmetrical formation around a picnic table with the one who had spoken in the center. They were all wearing black skintights over their idealized hardbodies, some of them indisputably female, others emphatically male. When Broadway choreographers go bad, said a tiny, mocking voice in her mind. More chills played over the back of her neck. Shuddering, she rubbed her neck with her free hand and felt the cut area in front separate a bit.

  She covered her wounded throat with the map and moved closer to the metal fence. “Do I know you?” she asked, trying to sound calm.

  “Shantih,” said the one who had been doing all the talking in a sulky tone. Emphatically male, she saw. “After all we’ve meant to each other. I’m wounded. Mortally. We all are.”

  “And I’m dead,” Konstantin answered. “You have any idea who did it?”

  The glowing moon-colored face suddenly took on an uncertain expression. “Honey, you were there. Look at your footage. Relive every glorious moment.”

  “I have. I’d invite you to watch it again with me, but I’m on my way to meet someone. Maybe we can connect later.”

  One of the women on the speaker’s right straightened up from her catlike stalking pose and pushed both hands into the small of her back. “Oh, for crying out loud, Shantih. My back’s killing me tonight. If you’re not playing, just say so so we can go find somebody else.”

  “I’m not playing,” Konstantin said, starting to turn away.

  “Because you’re not Shantih,” said the speaker, hopping down from the table and going to the fence. “Are you.” It wasn’t really a question.

  Konstantin shook her head. “You knew Shantih Love pretty well?”

  The man adjusted something on himself at waist-level and Konstantin felt the chills that had been tormenting her suddenly vanish. “‘Knew’? Does that mean our usual Shantih gave up the character?”

  “Gave up the ghost,” Konstantin said. “The person you knew as Shantih Love in here has been murdered. For real. I—”

  He turned away from her and swung his arm. The group surrounding the picnic table vanished, including the woman who had complained. Then he turned back to her. “What kinda virgin are you, hon?” he asked, annoyance large on his white painted face.

  “What kind?” Konstantin echoed, mystified.

  “Yeah, what kind. Are you some senator’s baby out for a good time, or are you some rich kid who bought out a regular? Thought you could get the game and the fame along with the name?”

  Konstantin started to answer but he did something at waist-level again and a fresh wave of chills danced up her neck into her hair. Crying out, she stepped back, batting the air with her map as if ultrasonics were insects she could just swat away from herself.

  “You stay away from me, you pseudo-rudo,” he yelled at her.

  “What?” she demanded. “I didn’t do anything—”

  “I hate you virgins, you all think you’re the first who ever thought of saying the one you bought out got killed for real. You think we’re all just gonna lead you to their stash
, tell you, ‘Oh, help yourself, take all the stuff, and if you don’t know how to use it, just ask’?” He did something at his waist again and Konstantin retreated several more steps. At the same time, she understood that this should not have made a difference. Unless her ’suit was cooperating in the scenario and producing the ultrasonics—

  She shifted her gaze to the control for her ’suit and saw that it was giving her the chills. She readjusted the setting and the chills cut off immediately.

  The man made a disgusted noise. “For god’s sake, baby, if you can’t take the sensation, why did you bother coming in?” He flickered out and she was alone. Moving on, Konstantin couldn’t decide whether to feel relieved or chastized.

  * * *

  The place marked on the map turned out to be a subway station, or maybe just the post-Apocalyptic ruin of a subway station. From where she stood on the sidewalk looking down the stone stairs, Konstantin could hear the distant sound of people’s voices and, even more distantly, music, but no trains. Maybe you could hike around post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty in the tunnels, and bring your own music with you.

  She crouched at the top of the stairs with her map, absently pressing the flesh of her throat together. The cut edges felt a bit like putty or clay, but they wouldn’t stay closed for very long. She wondered idly if she should try to find a place to have herself sewn up, or whether she might even try it herself. If it was the sort of thing that Shantih Love would do—

  There was a strange pressure all along her back, from her neck down to her feet. She stood up and turned around to see if some new weird experience had crept up behind her, but there was no one and nothing there. She was alone; the pressure was all in the suit, as if it were trying to push her down the steps into the subway.

  “Help?” she asked, turning the map over. It became a book again in her hands. She found the section on the hotsuit almost immediately but she had to read it over three times to be sure she understood that the ’suit itself, being loaded with Shantih Love characteristics, was trying to give her a hint as to what to do next. At this point, apparently, Shantih Love would have descended into the subway.

  Konstantin concentrated, placing her fingers on the sliced flesh of her throat and closing her eyes. There; now she could feel it. Now she could feel how the sensation of touching skin, touching flesh was all in the fingertips of the hotsuit. She wasn’t really touching anything, or if she was, the AR sensation over-rode it sheerly by intensity, vividness, and the power of suggestion.

  She opened her eyes and found herself looking down at a young Japanese man dressed in the plain garb of a laborer from about a hundred or so years before, but armed with what looked to her like a Samurai sword.

  Konstantin pressed the book to her chest protectively; it became a map again. The man seemed not to notice. He gazed at her steadily, his expression mild, almost blank. He came up another step. She meant to retreat but something in his expression changed so that his face became slightly more severe, more wary, and she stayed where she was.

  “Does this mean you’ve given up, Mr. Iguchi?” he asked in a soft, sarcastic voice. “Or have you just changed your strategy?”

  “How do you know my name?” Konstantin asked him, wincing inwardly when she heard the tremor in her voice. It wasn’t fear but cold—her ’suit seemed to have turned to ice.

  The man came up another step. “Games again, Tom? It’s always games with you.”

  “More like a malfunction, actually,” she muttered, rubbing one arm. The temperature inside the suit was still dropping, as though it was trying to keep her cool inside a furnace.

  “It’s not cold tonight, Tom,” the man said. “Are you sure it’s not fear that’s making you tremble?”

  “Have it your way,” Konstantin said desperately, hoping that might have some effect on the ’suit’s wayward thermostat.

  “Surely you’re not afraid of me—or is it what I represent?”

  Konstantin’s teeth chattered “W-w-what would that be?”

  “An old world that has nothing to do with what this world has become—this world, or the one it’s contained in, or the one that that one is contained in, boxes within boxes within boxes, all the way to infinity.” The man suddenly produced a strange coin between thumb and forefinger. It flashed silver for a moment; then Konstantin could see the symbol on it, like a figure 8 lying on its side. The man flipped it over and showed her the other side, a snake with its tail in its mouth.

  “Though these are not Japanese symbols, there is still something very Japanese about what they represent. Old Japan, I’m talking about, not the hot icy flash of the nth generation of speed tribes, or the debauchery of the newest salarymen in the neon jungle that covered over the old signs and symbols.”

  He held it out to her, as if inviting her to take it, but when she reached for it, he flipped it again and snatched it out of the air. Konstantin pulled her hand back, embarrassed and irritated. The man put both hands behind himself for a moment and then held them up. “Which hand, Tom? You choose.”

  Konstantin tucked the map under her arm, trying to ignore the fact that she felt as if she were turning into an ice cube from the skin inward. “Let’s see,” she said, lifting her chin with bravado. “I used to be pretty good at this. Finding the tell, I mean. Everybody’s got a tell. Even old Japan.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed and he took a closer look at her. “You never used to be so smart, Tom. What happened since I saw you last—you take some genius pill somewhere? Something that’s burning your brain cells out as you use them, maybe?”

  Konstantin didn’t answer; she scrutinized his right fist for a long time, and then his left. “Sometimes, it’s a twitch, a tightening of the muscles. Sometimes, it’s just that the person simply looks at the correct hand, whichever one it is. Doesn’t matter, you just have to know what to look for, what kind of tell it is. Most of the time, you know, the person doing it doesn’t even realize it. But it’s there. There’s always a tell, and it tells you what the answer is.” Konstantin hesitated and then tapped the man’s right fist. “I say there.”

  “You’re not Iguchi,” he said, not moving.

  “Let’s see it,” said Kostantin. “I know I must be right. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be delaying.”

  “You’re not Iguchi. I should have seen it immediately. That’s too smart for Iguchi. Where is old Tom tonight? Did he hire you, or did you buy him out? If you bought him out, I got to tell you, he stuck you with damaged goods there.” He indicated her cut throat with a jab of his chin.

  Konstantin felt more confident now. She stepped forward and tapped the knuckles of his right hand. “Come on, let me see it. I know it’s there. Give me the coin and you can call it a night.”

  “Call it a night?” The man smiled, raised his right hand, and opened it. It was empty. “Or call it in the air?” He looked at his left hand as it unfolded in the same position to reveal that it, too, was empty. He stayed that way, with both hands raised, as if he were at gunpoint, or perhaps surrendering. Annoyed, Konstantin stepped back and folded her arms.

  “Fine,” she said. “But I know, and you know, that until you cheated, that coin was in your right hand. You can go ahead and take it away with you, but we both know you cheated, and we’ll always know it. We’ll never forget, will we?” She went to take the map from under her arm and felt something funny in her palm. She looked down and opened her hand. The coin was there. She picked it up and looked at both sides.

  “I told you to call it in the air,” the man admonished her. “But the problem is, when you have a coin with infinity on one side, and Ouroboros on the other, how can you ever really know which side is heads, and which is tails?”

  Konstantin said nothing. He burst out laughing, bowed to her, and walked away into the darkness. She could hear the echo of his laughter long after the shadows had swallowed him up.

  She examined the coin again. Whatever else he might have said or done, he had given her the coin; she had ju
st received some AR stuff. She wondered if this was the type of stuff Guilfoyle Pleshette was so enamored of, and if it were the sort of thing that someone might kill for.

  She descended the stairs, feeling every bump and irregularity in the bannister with her free hand as the sounds of voices and music bounced off the grimy tiles. Sometimes the sensory input was too authentic to be authentic, Konstantin noted, almost amused. Until she got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the empty platform beyond the broken turnstiles and the long unused token-seller’s cage. There were no people anywhere to be seen in the unnatural light of the fluorescent tubes, no movement anywhere at all. Dust and dirt lay thickly on everything, suggesting that no one had come here for a long, long time—which had to be wrong, since her Japanese friend had just come up out of here.

  Or had he only been waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs? Her or someone like her—no, he had definitely been expecting Shantih Love, for some reason.

  She looked at the lights overhead. They didn’t hum or buzz; they didn’t even flicker. Strange, for a place so disused and abandoned.

  The coin grew slightly warmer in her fist. No, too high a price, she thought, amused. “Icon cat?” she asked, and it was there under her arm. She took hold of it with her free hand and maneuvered it open. “Subway?”

  The pages flipped and came to rest on a picture of a wooden nickel. She could tell it was made of wood by the lustrous grain. Konstantin considered it and then shook her head. The pages flipped again and kept flipping, like a rotary card file in a high wind. Because there was a wind, she realized, coming from somewhere down in the old train tunnel. She could feel it and she could hear music again as well, except it was much thinner-sounding, just one instrument, either a guitar or a very good synthesizer.

  “Pause,” she told the book; it closed quietly for her. She climbed over one of the turnstiles and walked out onto the platform, looking around.