The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “That’s it. It must be one of those new countries in Africa or Asia, with a very strange name I have never heard before or ever read in the newspaper. What surprised me was that they were so advanced, with so much progress and so well organized, because they always turn savage: look what happened in India when the English left and in the Congo after the Belgians, no? Your friend Medrano told me it was a world—a world, that’s what he said—that was very attractive when one saw it for the first time. Serprabel, now I remember, Serprabel. I think it must be close to India.”

  “I doubt it but, anyway, go on.”

  “Nevertheless, almost certainly, yes, it must be near India, not only because of the name but because of the castes.”

  “What castes?”

  “Aren’t there castes in India?”

  “Yes, there are, but what does that have to do with it?”

  “If you let me tell you, you’re going to find out; weren’t you in such a big hurry? And sit properly, it’s so obvious you are all used to wearing pants. There are no elegant women anymore.”

  “Tell me, in Serprabel, are there elegant women?”

  “Yes, according to the Medrano boy, there are splendid women, very well dressed and very well bred.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me; even if there’s only one, he’ll find her.”

  “A shame he never married.”

  “Who? Trafalgar?” I laughed for a while.

  “I don’t see what’s funny about it. I’m not saying with a foreigner, and from so far away, who may be a very good person, but have different customs, but with someone from his circle. Don’t forget, he comes from a very well-connected family.”

  “That one’s going to die an old bachelor. He likes women too much.”

  “Hmmmmm,” went my Aunt Josefina.

  “Don’t tell me Medrano Senior did, too!” I exclaimed.

  “Be discreet, sweetheart, don’t talk so loud. In fact, I can’t confirm anything. A few things were said at the time.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “And Merceditas was a saint. And on Serprabel Trafalgar was looking for romance, just as his father would have been.”

  “But how can you think that? He wasn’t looking for romance, as you say. And if he were, he wouldn’t have told me. One can see he is a very polite boy. What he did, or what he says he did, because it was most likely nothing more than a story to entertain me for a while, what he did was to try to help a poor woman, who was very unfortunate for many reasons.”

  “Ay,” I said, and once again thought that Trafalgar was a hypocritical cretin.

  “Now what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing, go on.”

  “Well, it seems that there they maintain—following those eastern religions, no?—a caste system. And there are nine. Let’s see, let me think: lords, priests, warriors, scholars, merchants, artisans, servants, and vagabonds. Oh, no, eight. They’re eight.”

  “And everyone has to be in one of the castes.”

  “Of course. Don’t tell me it isn’t an advantage.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. What does one do if one is an artisan and has the vocation to be a merchant, like Trafalgar? Do they take an exam?”

  “Of course not. Everyone lives within the caste to which they belong and they marry people from their own caste.”

  “Don’t tell me: and their children are born within that caste and die within that caste and the children of those children and so on forever.”

  “Yes. So no one has pretentions and everyone stays in their place and they avoid disorders and revolutions and strikes. I said to Medrano that, paganism aside, it seemed to me an extraordinary system and he agreed with me.”

  “Ah, he agreed with you.”

  “Of course, he even told me that in thousands of years there had never been any disorder and they had lived in peace.”

  “How nice.”

  “I know it must sound a little old-fashioned to you, but Medrano says the level of development in everything, color television and airlines and telephones with a view screen and computer centers, is impressive. I’m surprised they don’t advertise more to attract tourism. I myself, if I were inclined to travel at my age, would be very happy to go for a visit. Listen, he says the hotels are extraordinary and the service is perfect, the food is delicious, and there are museums and theaters and places to visit and splendid, just splendid landscapes.”

  “I don’t like that caste thing. I wouldn’t go even at gunpoint.”

  “Nor I, believe me, I would not enjoy such a long plane trip. But the caste thing is not that important, because anyone can govern.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That anyone can govern. Above everyone is a kind of king who lives in the center of the capital, because the city is a circle and in the middle is the Palace which is all marble and gold and crystal. Anyway, that’s what your friend says. I don’t doubt that it’s very luxurious, but not that much.”

  “And anyone can become king? I mean, everything else is hereditary and that, specifically, is not?”

  “That’s what Medrano told me. So you see, if the highest authority can be elected, everything is very democratic. The king is called the Lord of Lords and governs for a period of five years; when it’s over, he can’t be reelected, he goes back home and then the Lords elect another.”

  “Wait, wait. The Lords? So then the others don’t vote?”

  “Nobody votes, sweetie. The Lords meet every five years and elect a Lord of Lords and look how nice, they almost always, or always, elect him from among the inferior castes, you see?”

  “Heck yes, I see. And the Lord of Lords governs everybody?”

  “I suppose so, that’s what he’s elected for. Although your friend Medrano says no, he doesn’t govern.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Oh, sure, if he says it, it’s holy writ.”

  “Fine, but what is it he says?”

  Another of my Aunt Josefa’s virtues is that she can’t lie: “He says he’s a puppet of the Lords who are the ones who really govern, so as to keep everyone happy with the illusion that they or someone of their caste might become king, but that the Lord of Lords is the ultimate slave, a slave who lives like a king, eats like a king, dresses like a king, but is still a slave.”

  And one of her defects consists in believing only what she wants to believe: “You see that can’t be. Surely the Lords form a kind of Council or Chamber or something like that and your friend took one thing for another. Or he probably invented it to spice up the story.”

  “Yes, just probably. I warn you, Trafalgar is capable of anything.”

  “He also told me, this seems more reasonable to me, that the inferior castes are the more numerous. There is only one Lord of Lords. There are very few Lords, I think he told me there are a hundred. A few more Priests, many more, I think around three hundred. Many more Warriors and even more Scholars, he didn’t tell me how many. Many, many Merchants, Artisans, and Servants, especially Servants. And it seems there are millions of Vagabonds. It must be a very populous country. And anyone of any caste, except the Lord of Lords, of course, can be Owner or Dispossessed.”

  “Having money or not having money? Rich and poor, let’s say.”

  “More or less: he who has land is an Owner; he who does not is Dispossessed. And within each caste anyone who is an Owner is superior to the Dispossessed.”

  “And can one go from being Dispossessed to Owner?”

  “Yes, so you already see that it’s not as terrible as you thought. If one puts together enough money, one buys land, which is very expensive, just like everywhere. It seems to be a very rich country.”

  “The Vagabonds can buy land, too?”

  “No, no. The Vagabonds are vagabonds. They don’t even have houses, I don’t know how people can live like that.”

  “I don’t understand. Now tell me what happened to Trafalgar on Serprabel.”

  “It’s a little cool, don’t you think?”<
br />
  “Do you want to go inside?”

  “No, but help me put the jacket over my shoulders,” not that my Aunt Josefina needs help to put on her jacket. “That’s it, thank you. According to him, some of everything happened. He went there to sell jewelry and perfumes. He says he didn’t do too well with the perfumes because they have a good chemical industry and flowers, you should see the flowers he described to me, very heavily scented ones from which they make extracts. But as there are no deposits of precious stones, he sold the ones he took very well. Of course, he had a few problems, believe me, because anyone who goes to Serprabel has to become part of a caste. They considered him a merchant and he had to use vehicles for Merchants and go to a hotel for Merchants. But when he learned that there were superior castes with better hotels and more privileges, he protested and said he was also a Scholar and a Warrior. He did the right thing, don’t you think? Of course, since there one can’t belong to more than one caste, they had to hold a kind of audience presided over by one of the Lords who had the strangest name, that I’m really not going to be able to remember, and there he explained his case. Oh, he made me laugh so much telling me how he had disconcerted them and remarking that he was very sorry he couldn’t say he was a Lord, and that he would also have liked to say he was a Priest, which is the second caste. The bad part was he didn’t know anything about the religion and he doesn’t have mystical inclinations. Although I think he was educated in a religious school.”

  “That he has no mystical inclinations remains to be seen. So what happened?”

  “They accepted that in other places there were other customs and they reached an agreement. He would be a Warrior but one of the lowest, those of the Earth, although an Owner, and with permission to act as a Merchant.”

  “What’s that about those of the Earth?”

  “Well, each one of the four superior castes has categories. For example, let’s see, how was it, the Lords can be of Light, of Fire, and of Shadow, I think that was the order. The Priests can devote themselves to Communication, Intermediation, or Consolation. The Warriors act in the Air, the Water, or on the Earth. And the Scholars are dedicated to Knowledge, Accumulation, or Teaching. The others are inferior and don’t have categories.”

  “What a mess. And each one can also be Owner or Dispossessed and that influences their position?”

  “Yes. It’s a little complicated. Medrano told me that a Lord of Light, an Owner, was the highest rank. And a Warrior of Air but Dispossessed was almost equal to a Priest devoted to Consolation but an Owner. Understand?”

  “Not really. Anyway, they gave Trafalgar a very passable rank.”

  “He was very satisfied. The took him to a very superior hotel and that’s even though he says the Merchants’ hotel was very good, and they set four people to attend him exclusively, aside from the hotel personnel. The fact that he had jewels to sell also must have had some influence, because they are a real luxury. He says a delegation of Merchants went to see him and that although they couldn’t enter the hotel, which was solely for Warriors, they spoke in the park and offered him a very well located shop where he could sell what he had brought. A few wanted to buy one or another piece of jewelry so as to sell it themselves but they were very expensive and the Merchants, although they aren’t exactly poor, aren’t rich, either. Only one of them, who was an Owner, and of a lot of land, might have been able to buy something from him, but Medrano didn’t want to sell him anything; he did well, because why make such a long trip and end up splitting the profits with another? In any event they had to give him the location even though they didn’t end on very friendly terms, because every caste has its laws and among the Merchants one can’t go back after having offered something verbally or any other way, but above all verbally. Another law for all of the castes—which frankly, I don’t know what result it would produce—seems very silly to me, it says no one can repeat to those of his own caste nor to those of other castes something he has overheard a member of another caste say, although they can repeat what members of their own caste have said. Of course this is hard to control, and no one speaks gladly to someone from another caste but only out of obligation, but every so often they catch an offender and the punishments are terrible; anyway, I don’t know if it’s really worth all that.”

  “But listen, more than silly, that’s dangerous, because it’s very vague, there aren’t any limits. If you take it literally, no one can talk to anyone from another caste.”

  “There’s something of that, as I said. But as the Lords, who are very intelligent and very fair, act as judges, there are no abuses. What is happening is that from caste to caste, the language is becoming more and more different. I forgot to ask Medrano what language they spoke and if he understood it. Would it be some dialect of Hindi? In any case, with a little English one can make oneself understood anywhere in the world.”

  “Trafalgar speaks excellent English. I expect he sold the jewelry.”

  “To the Lords, of course. The store fronts, the shops, those are public places where anyone can go, except for the Vagabonds who can’t go anywhere, but when a Lord or a number of Lords enter, everyone else has to leave. Those that aren’t Lords, because those that are Lords can stay. In any case, a crowd of people paraded through to see what Medrano had brought.”

  “I’d bet a year’s paychecks he sold it all.”

  “I don’t know what you were going to live on because he didn’t sell everything. He had a pearl necklace left over.”

  “I don’t believe you. No. Impossible. Never.”

  “Seriously. Of course it was because of everything that happened and anyway he was the one who decided to leave it, but he didn’t sell it.”

  “I don’t understand any of this, but it seems very unusual in Trafalgar.”

  “Well, the Lord of Lords governing at that time, and who had been elected by the Lords less than a year before, was a man not at all well-suited to the office. Listen, he had been a Vagabond, how awful.”

  “Why? Don’t they elect the inferior castes as king?”

  “Yes, of course, but seldom Vagabonds, who are illiterate and don’t know how to eat or how to behave. But Medrano says they had elected him because he had the face and the poise of a king.”

  “High-class liars, those Lords.”

  “Sweetie, so vulgar.”

  “Don’t tell me they aren’t a bunch of liars and something worse, too.”

  “I don’t think so, because from what Medrano told me they are irreproachable people. And it seems to me very democratic to elect a Vagabond as king. Even a bit idealistic, like something out of a novel.”

  “A cock-and-bull story.”

  “The fact is, the poor Lords made a mistake. Of course, an ignorant person, without education—what could you expect?”

  “He left them in a bad state.”

  “He fell in love, can you believe, with a married woman.”

  “A Vagabond?”

  “No, I think the Vagabonds don’t even get married. Worse: he fell in love with the wife of a Scholar, and one of the best, the ones devoted to Knowledge and who for that reason was often at court. And Medrano found that out because he heard the Lords discussing what had to be done in the jewelry store he had opened. But as he didn’t know that one can’t repeat what members of a caste that isn’t your own have said, and he was—at least so long as he was there—a Warrior, he mentioned it to a Scholar in conversation. I don’t remember what category he belonged to, but Medrano says he had been looking at the jewels and that he was a very interesting man who knew a great deal about philosophy, mathematics, music, and it was worthwhile listening to him speak. He couldn’t buy anything: only the Lords had picked up a lot of things, because the prices were very high for those of other castes, but he stayed until quite late, and as the two were alone and they had talked about the cutting of stones and of goldsmithing and of music, they started to talk about other things, too, and Medrano praised the country and the city and the
other asked if he had seen the gardens at the Palace and they talked about the Lord of Lords and there your friend committed an indiscretion.”

  “He mentioned the Lord of Lords’ affair with the woman.”

  “He said he had heard the Lords talk about that and he didn’t realize he had said something he should not: he was just surprised when the Scholar became very serious and stopped talking and said good-bye very coldly and left.”

  “Trafalgar acts like a know-it-all but he never learns. He always sticks his foot in it.”

  “My goodness, what a way to speak.”

  “I promise to be more refined, or at least try to, but tell me what happened to him.”

  “When you want to you can speak correctly. The thing would be for you to always want to. That day, nothing happened to him. The next day he sold what he had left, only to the Lords, save for a pearl necklace that must have been beautiful, truly beautiful: a very long string of pink pearls all the same size. Natural pearls, as you can imagine. It must have cost a fortune.”

  “That was the one he left?”

  “Yes, but wait. When he had nothing left but that necklace and was about to sell it to a Lord, the police came in and arrested him.”

  “It looks like there are police on Serprabel.”

  “Why not? They belong to the Servants caste. And they took him directly to the Palace of the Lord of Lords. There he had to wait, always under guard, with the necklace in his pocket, until they made him enter—shoved him, he says, how unpleasant—enter a courtroom. As repeating things said by someone from another caste is a serious

  crime, the judge wasn’t just any Lord but the Lord of Lords. Of course, assisted by two Lords. The one who acted as prosecutor was another Lord, who put forward the accusation.”

  “And defender? Did he have a defender?”

  “No, he had to defend himself. I will say it does not seem fair to me.”

  “Not fair at all. A filthy trick, forgive the term.”

  “It may be a little strong, but you’re right. They accused him and he defended himself as well as he could. But note, they had to say what it was about, what it was Medrano had repeated. And it was nothing less than the illicit affairs of the very king presiding over the tribunal.”