The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5

by Jonathan Strahan

  Long after the house computer had rusted into silence, the skating rink was still operational. Neill had become an excellent solo performer. For hours he would skate to singers long forgotten, like Toby Keith and Taylor Swift. Most days I would pull on my scarf and coat and boots to trudge down the slope and watch him spin. Some days I dozed off in my fireside chair, instead, and he would kiss my forehead on his way out the door.

  “I’ll be back in time for dinner,” he would say.

  One evening I woke to a cold hearth and dark skies. The house was silent but for my own voice. I made my way down the slippery slope already knowing the sad truth. Neill was exactly where I expected him to be: center ice, arms raised up, legs crossed, face proud. He had skated his final performance. He would stand there until the roof caved in and winter buried him forever.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, through tears. “You shouldn’t have been alone.”

  “He wasn’t,” a voice said behind me, from the empty stands.

  Buck was standing in the shadows, his hands buried in the pockets of his long camel hair coat. We regarded each other across a gulf of empty seats and old regrets.

  “He knew his battery was going,” Buck said, shifting his gaze to Neill. “We were never designed to last this long, Kay.”

  “The others…” I said faintly.

  “Have come to see me,” he said. “I managed to extend them for a few more years, but Neill didn’t want that. He was ready to be released. No one really wants to be immortal.”

  I wiped my face. “Not even you, Herbert?”

  Buck blinked. For a moment I thought he was going to deny it. Then he said, “How long have you known?”

  “I was always suspicious that you wouldn’t sleep with me,” I said. “And I thought something was amiss when you took the biological Herbert’s death so hard. But it was Skylar who confirmed it, on her deathbed. She said she always suspected you’d downloaded your own personality into one of the robots to preserve yourself. You did an excellent job.”

  Buck moved closer to the edge of the rink. I wondered if he missed the glide of ice under his skates, the rush of air as he sped around in circles.

  “It was an experiment,” he said. “I didn’t really expect success. All of a sudden I was handsome, and young again, and graceful for the first time in my life. But you only had eyes for the others.”

  “You could have joined us.”

  “I hated you back then. You always made me aware of my own deficiencies. I wasn’t a perfect man, but for decades I believed I was.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Didn’t want to, not with Neill frozen on the ice in front of us. All I could do was pull my hat down over my ears and make my slow, painful way up the slope to the empty house that had been rowdy with sexy cowboys for so many decades. Release sounded like a good word. Sounded like a long-promised reward after fifty years of ice.

  Buck followed me. Heated up soup that I wouldn’t eat and tucked me into a bed too big for just one person. I remembered him on the night he proposed marriage. Just the two of us in a sidewalk café in summertime, coffee and baklava on the table between us, moonlight on the street and in his eyes.

  “Come back to Dodge Falls with me,” he said. “Let us take care of you.”

  So I did.

  VII.

  And it’s here I’ve spent my last years, slowly dying amid well-heated rooms and hydroponic gardens that bloom with long-forgotten flowers. Dana keeps me company most of the time. He’s not very erectile anymore, but we enjoy taking baths together and snuggling under blankets and putting on our best dresses for afternoon tea. Buck never comes to my bed. Maybe he thinks I’ll break a hip. Maybe I’m afraid to show him what a sack of old flesh I’ve become, while he’s still strong and handsome. He spends his days working on the Big Freeze. He thinks he’s finally found a solution; even now, pilots are seeding the oceans and clouds with chemicals that will restore the planet’s damaged equilibrium. We hope.

  Dana and I can count the days we have left, or at least a rough approximation. Yuri and Doc and Cody are already gone, my beautiful boys. It’s Buck I’m worried about. Years of skating took their toll on the others, but he could outlive us for another ten years. Who will take care of him? Who will save him from the loneliness and bitterness? He needs a companion.

  I should have known he has a plan.

  “Here she is,” he says one morning, unveiling a glass cabinet in his lab. “I’ve kept her in storage all these years and just finished the upgrade.”

  Inside is a beautiful woman: glossy brown hair, clear skin, firm breasts, legs to die for. Her cowboy hat, suede skirt, and fringed shirt are as fresh as the day she rolled off the assembly line. The seventh sexy robot. An homage to the greatest love of Herbert’s life.

  “Skylar!” I exclaim indignantly. “You built a perfect replica of her, not me?”

  He blinks at me. “That’s not Skylar—that’s you!”

  I glare.

  He wilts.

  “It’s Skylar,” Dana confirms. “Her nose always was a little bit crooked.”

  Buck says, “Well, it doesn’t matter. She’s never been activated. There’s no personality profile. I want you to have her, Kay. I can transfer your mind into this body.”

  “No. Give her to Dana,” I say.

  Dana shakes his head. “Neill’s waiting for me in electronic heaven. But I’ll borrow the skirt.”

  Buck steps closer to me. “We need you, Kay. The world needs people to rebuild it.”

  I stare at the beautiful Skylar, but spare him a sideways glance.

  “The truth is that I need you,” he confesses. “I need my Kay back, no matter whose face you’re wearing. Be young for me again. Be strong and beautiful, and we’ll take on the world together.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  Buck squeezes my hand. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  When I said I wanted a companion for Buck, I never thought it would be me. I try to imagine waking up young, strong, and beautiful. To spend every day for the rest of my life seeing Skylar in the mirror. I say nothing on the way back to my room. Dana limps along beside me, equally quiet. Maybe thinking of the skirt.

  “You could,” he finally says. “You’d still be Kay on the inside.”

  “Screw that,” I tell him. “Come on. We’re going back to Connecticut. Let’s go see Neill, and have ourselves a drink or two, and go out with a bang.”

  That afternoon we put on silky blue underwear and our cold-weather clothes. We apply foundation, sunscreen, and mascara at least fifty years past its expiration date. Dana’s blue eyes sparkle under gold eyeshadow. I pull out the small box that contains the last of my jewels.

  “Here,” I tell him. “Wear these diamond earrings. They always looked better on you than me.”

  We don pearls and gloves and set off. It takes a while to circumvent Buck’s security system, but Dana has Herbert’s smarts. Outside the secret lair, the winter sky is cobalt blue and the bitter air makes my skin tingle. Trees along the frozen river have long since fallen under the weight of ice and snow, leaving a splintered landscape. I should have brought snowshoes. Dana tosses his skate guards aside and we help each other stay upright. It’ll be nice if Buck’s plan succeeds. If the world’s gardens and forests return after such a long, deep sleep.

  “There once was a boy named Cass,” Dana says, after we’ve gone maybe a half mile. The breeze blows his hair back from his handsome face. “Whose balls were made of brass. In stormy weather, they would bang together…”

  He sits down on an icy boulder. “Funny. I can’t remember.”

  He’s never forgotten a limerick. I sit down beside him and pat his gloved hand. His blue eyes stay fixed on the distance. I think he sees Neill. I think I see Neill, too. Neill with his white hat, and Cody with his green bandana, and Yuri with his big old leather boots. There’s Doc, too, smiling like he knows a secret. It’s a hallucination, of course, and the only one I’ve ever had without the
help of illegal chemicals. Those four sexy robots come over and pull Dana to his feet.

  “Time to skate, partner,” Neill says.

  I stand up, too, but Doc shakes his head fondly. “Not you, Katherine. You’ve got a world to rebuild and a new body to do it in.”

  “Buck doesn’t want me,” I say vehemently. “He wants an ideal. He wants someone to worship him, the bastard. Seventy years and nothing’s changed.”

  “Doesn’t matter what Buck wants,” Neill tells me. “You get a chance at life, you live it. Write more books.”

  “You never read my other ones,” I sniff.

  “Sure I did,” he says. “When you weren’t looking. Didn’t want you to get a swelled head.”

  “Write stories about us,” Cody adds. “Tell them we lived, and we loved, and we ate lots of flapjacks.”

  Yuri blows me a kiss. “Persevere, sweet Kay.”

  They skate off into the sunset, my five sexy robots, doing triple lutzes on the way.

  I guess, for the boys, I can live some more. I can write their stories, and the story of life before the Big Ice. I can cut Skylar’s hair, get rid of that cowboy skirt, and bang a notion or two through Buck’s thick metal skull. But first I have to get off this rock and back up the frozen river. The wind is strong but the sun warms my face, and along the way I hear the sound of water dripping off trees. The world is renewing. I’m glad I’ll be here to see it.

  THE SPY WHO NEVER GREW UP

  SARAH REES BRENNAN

  Sarah Rees Brennan was raised in Ireland where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish, but she chose instead to read books under her desk in class. The books most often found under her desk were by Jane Austen, Margaret Mahy, Anthony Trollope, Robin McKinley, and Diana Wynne Jones, and she still loves them all today.

  After college she lived briefly in New York and somehow survived in spite of her habit of hitching lifts in fire engines. She began working on her first novel while doing a Creative Writing MA and library work in Surrey, England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write and to use as a home base for future adventures. The Demon’s Lexicon was published in 2009, followed by The Demon’s Covenant. A final volume in the series, The Demon’s Surrender, is due later this year.

  There is a magic shore where children used to beach their coracles every night.

  The children have stopped coming now, and their little boats are tipped over on their sides, like the abandoned shells of nuts eaten long ago. The dark sea rushes up to the pale beach and just touches the crafts, making them rattle together with a sound like bones.

  You and I cannot reach that shore again. We’ve forgotten everything. Even the sound of the waves and the mermaids singing. But the men in Her Majesty’s Secret Service can go anywhere.

  The submarine drifted to a stop not far from the island, its periscope breaking the surface of the water like the lifted nose of an inquisitive pointer dog. After a few minutes, a man emerged from the submarine and got into a boat, one not at all like the children’s boats arrayed on the shore.

  When the boat sliced through water to white sand, the man stepped out of it. They had given him a number and taken away his name. Unfortunately for him, his number was 69. This was a subject of many tasteless jokes in the Service, but nobody would have known that from 69’s serious face and his extremely dapper black suit.

  He took a few purposeful steps along the shore to the forest, then looked down. Under his feet, and under a layer of the black grease of age and filth, were pebbles like jewels and children’s toys and human bones.

  There was a barely perceptible shift in the air before his face, but the men and women in Her Majesty’s Secret Service are extremely highly trained. 69 looked up.

  The boy before him was beautiful in a slightly terrible way, like a kiss with no innocence in it.

  More to the point, he was holding a sword as if he knew how to use it, and floating about a yard above the ground.

  “Dark and sinister suit,” said the boy. “Have at thee.”

  “I am afraid I do not have time to indulge you,” 69 said. “I am here on a mission from Her Majesty.”

  “Ah,” said the boy, tilting his chin. “I know it well.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Majesty,” the boy said, waving his sword vaguely. “Belonging to… Her. I know all about it.”

  “Her Majesty the Queen,” 69 said, with a trifle more emphasis than was necessary.

  “I knew that,” the boy informed him.

  “She feels that the Service has a need for a man—”

  The boy hissed like a vampire exposed to sunlight, lifting his free arm as if to protect himself from the word. Man.

  “Excuse me. A boy of your special talents,” 69 said smoothly.

  He had been raised in diplomatic circles.

  The boy spun around in a circle, like a ballerina with a sword in zero gravity.

  “My talents are special! So awfully special!”

  “Indeed,” said 69. His countenance remained unchanged. 69 was very highly trained, and also a gifted amateur poker player.

  “And the Queen needs—someone of such talents for a job.”

  The boy started to laugh, a high lovely laugh that wavered between a baby’s gurgle and the peal of bells. It did not sound quite sane.

  “A job?” he asked. “Make a man of me, will you? Oh no, oh no. You sailed your boat to the wrong shore.” He made a quick, deadly gesture with his small sword to the island around them, the dark stones and trees with branches like bared claws. “This is no place for men.”

  “So I see,” said 69.“And I see there is nobody here who would be brave enough to risk all for Her Majesty’s sake: nobody who is enough of a patriot to die for their country.”

  Peter was not entirely sure what a “patriot” was, but he would have scorned to betray this fact. He did not even acknowledge it to himself, really: Peter’s thoughts always move like a stone on water, skipping and skimming along the surface until they hit a certain spot.

  69 had turned toward the sea, but he was not entirely surprised when a sword landed, light as a very sharp butterfly’s wing, on his shoulder.

  He turned back to meet the sight of the lovely, terrible smile.

  “To die for your country,” said Peter. “Would that be an awfully big adventure?”

  The party was a very glamorous affair, with chandeliers like elaborate ice sculptures and ice sculptures like elaborate chandeliers.

  This created an effect of very tasteful strobe lights playing on the discreet black clothing of the guests.

  A suspiciously nondescript man paused on his voyage over the glowing floor to speak to a lady. She was wearing a dress more daring than any of the party dresses around her, and very striking lipstick.

  They were, of course, both spies.

  “Who are you hunting today?”

  “Oh, the English, of course,” said the lady. She did not turn her Ts into Zs except when playing certain roles, but her faint accent was nevertheless very Russian. “Look at their latest golden boy.”

  She laid a certain emphasis on the word boy.

  Let us play I Spy, and follow the spies’ line of vision to the bar where a boy was leaning. He wore a black suit like every other suit in the room, tailored to discreet perfection.

  The look was rather spoiled by the knotted dead leaf he was wearing as a bowtie.

  The Russian spy detached from her companion and came over to the bar, slinking like a panther in an evening gown. Which is to say, with some suggestion that the evening gown might be torn off at any moment.

  She offered the boy her hand. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  The lady noted his wary look, and told herself that no matter how young he seemed, he was obviously a true professional. She was not to know this was how Peter regarded all grown-ups.

  “Ivana,” she murmured, which I must tell you was a fib.

  “The name’s Pan,”
said Peter, who I must admit was showing off. “Peter Pan.”

  Neither of them was really on their best behavior. Spies rarely are.

  “What will you have?” asked the bartender.

  “Martini,” said Ivana. “Shaken, not stirred.”

  “Milk,” said Peter. “Warm, not hot.”

  The bartender and Ivana both gave Peter rather doubtful looks. Peter has been receiving such looks for more years than he could ever count, and he looked disdainfully back.

  “Come now,” Ivana said, and reached for Peter’s arm. “I think we can do better than that. After all, you’re almost a man.”

  Peter’s eyes narrowed. “No. I am not.”

  She was very clever, that Russian spy who was not really called Ivana. She instantly saw she had made a mistake.

  “I meant to suggest that this affair must be boring you. After all, it really isn’t up to the excitement that a boy of your… many talents must be used to.”

  Peter looked more favorably upon her. “I do have many talents. Thousands, really. Millions of talents. Nobody has ever had as many talents as I!”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “I keep them in a box,” said Peter, and looked briefly puzzled when Ivana laughed and then triumphant as he decided he had meant all the time to make a splendid joke.

  He beamed at her, and Ivana reared back.

  She quickly collected herself, however. Remember, she was very well-trained.

  “I imagine you have done many things,” Ivana murmured. “Such as the affair of Lady Carlisle’s necklace in the embassy?”

  “Oh that! Yes, I took it! I flew in under cover of darkness and stole it.”

  Ivana blinked. “You did?”

  “I am a master thief,” Peter said with some satisfaction.

  “It was my understanding that the English were the ones who got the necklace back,” Ivana said slowly.

  “Oh yes,” Peter told her. “I fought the dastardly thieves single-handed and restored the jewels to their rightful owner! I remember now.”