Mammoth Book of Best New SF 19

by Gardner Dozois

  He twitches. Mouth gagged, fingers glued: good. No back channels. He’s powerless.

  “This is what it’s like to be tetraplegic, Manfred. Bedridden with motor neurone disease. Locked inside your own body by nv-CJD. I could spike you with MPPP and you’d stay in this position for the rest of your life, shitting in a bag, pissing through a tube. Unable to talk and with nobody to look after you. Do you think you’d like that?”

  He’s trying to grunt or whimper around the ball gag. She hikes her skirt up around her waist and climbs onto the bed, straddling him. The goggles are replaying scenes she picked up around Cambridge this winter; soup kitchen scenes, hospice scenes. She kneels atop him, whispering in his ear.

  “Twelve million in tax, baby, that’s what they think you owe them. What do you think you owe me? That’s six million in net income, Manny, six million that isn’t going into your virtual children’s mouths.”

  He’s rolling his head from side to side, as if trying to argue. That won’t do: she slaps him hard, thrills to his frightened expression. “Today I watched you give uncounted millions away, Manny. Millions, to a bunch of crusties and a MassPike pirate! You bastard. Do you know what I should do with you?” He’s cringing, unsure whether she’s serious or doing this just to get him turned on. Good.

  There’s no point trying to hold a conversation. She leans forward until she can feel his breath in her ear. “Meat and mind, Manny. Meat, and mind. You’re not interested in meat, are you? Just mind. You could be boiled alive before you noticed what was happening in the meatspace around you. Just another lobster in a pot.” She reaches down and tears away the gel pouch, exposing his penis: it’s stiff as a post from the vasodilators, dripping with gel, numb. Straightening up, she eases herself slowly down on it. It doesn’t hurt as much as she expected, and then the sensation is utterly different from what she’s used to. She begins to lean forward, grabs hold of his straining arms, feels his thrilling helplessness. She can’t control herself: she almost bites through her lip with the intensity of the sensation. Afterward, she reaches down and massages him until he begins to spasm, shuddering uncontrollably, emptying the darwinian river of his source code into her, communicating via his only output device.

  She rolls off his hips and carefully uses the last of the superglue to gum her labia together. Humans don’t produce seminiferous plugs, and although she’s fertile she wants to be absolutely sure: the glue will last for a day or two. She feels hot and flushed, almost out of control. Boiling to death with febrile expectancy, now she’s nailed him down at last.

  When she removes his glasses his eyes are naked and vulnerable, stripped down to the human kernel of his nearly transcendent mind. “You can come and sign the marriage license tomorrow morning after breakfast,” she whispers in his ear: “otherwise my lawyers will be in touch. Your parents will want a ceremony, but we can arrange that later.”

  He looks as if he has something to say, so she finally relents and loosens the gag: kisses him tenderly on one cheek. He swallows, coughs, then looks away. “Why? Why do it this way?”

  She taps him on the chest: “property rights.” She pauses for a moment’s thought: there’s a huge ideological chasm to bridge, after all. “You finally convinced me about this agalmic thing of yours, this giving everything away for brownie points. I wasn’t going to lose you to a bunch of lobsters or uploaded kittens, or whatever else is going to inherit this smart matter singularity you’re busy creating. So I decided to take what’s mine first. Who knows? In a few months I’ll give you back a new intelligence, and you can look after it to your heart’s content.”

  “But you didn’t need to do it this way —”

  “Didn’t I?” She slides off the bed and pulls down her dress. “You give too much away too easily, Manny! Slow down, or there won’t be anything left.” Leaning over the bed she dribbles acetone onto the fingers of his left hand, then unlocks the cuff: puts the bottle conveniently close to hand so he can untangle himself.

  “See you tomorrow. Remember, after breakfast.”

  She’s in the doorway when he calls: “but you didn’t say why!”

  “Think of it as spreading your memes around,” she says; blows a kiss at him and closes the door. She bends down and thoughtfully places another cardboard box containing an uploaded kitten right outside it. Then she returns to her suite to make arrangements for the alchemical wedding.

  * * *

  The Dog Said Bow-Wow

  MICHAEL SWANWICK

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the twenty-two years that have followed he has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has several times been a finalist for the Nebula Award, as well as for the World Fantasy Award and for the John W. Campbell Award, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves.” In the last few years, he’s won back-to-back Hugo Awards — he won the Hugo in 1999 for his story “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” and followed it up in 2000 with another Hugo Award for his story “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur.” His other books include his first novel, In The Drift, which was published in 1985, a novella-length book, Griffin’s Egg, 1987’s popular novel Vacuum Flowers, a critically acclaimed fantasy novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (a rare distinction!), and Jack Faust, a sly reworking of the Faust legend that explores the unexpected impact of technology on society. His short fiction has been assembled in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, Slow Dancing Through Time (a collection of his collaborative short work with other writers), Moon Dogs, Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, and Tales of Old Earth. He’s also published a collection of critical articles, The Post-modern Archipelago, and a book-length interview Being Gardner Dozois. His most recent book is a major new novel, Bones of the Earth. He’s had stories in our Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Annual Collections. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter (Sean left for college). He has a website at http://www.michaelswanwick.com.

  Here he takes us to a colorful, curious, and eccentric future to spin a swashbuckling, slyly entertaining adventure explaining why there really are some things that mankind was not meant to know, and that they certainly shouldn’t tamper with.

  The dog looked as if he had just stepped out of a children’s book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.

  To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.

  But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature’s costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and — again — a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.

  “You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.

  The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”

  “You’re from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood — on the docks — and that the schooner Yankee Dreamer had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”

  “Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”

  “No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”

  “Then lead on, sir, and I
shall follow you with a right good will.”

  The dog’s name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.

  Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue — something more than mischievous and less than a cutthroat. A dog, in fine, after Darger’s own heart.

  Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger —”

  “Please. Call me Aubrey.”

  “Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the…ah, spoils of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”

  Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide — you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you’ll not find a grain’s difference between the two.”

  “Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.

  It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”

  “It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”

  “That is fine advice,” Darger agreed. “But it cannot comfort a lover of cities, nor one of a melancholic turn of mind.”

  “Pah!” cried Surplus, and said no more until they arrived at their destination.

  At the portal into Buckingham, the sergeant-interface strode forward as they stepped down from the carriage. He blinked at the sight of Surplus, but said only, “Papers?”

  Surplus presented the man with his passport and the credentials Darger had spent the morning forging, then added with a negligent wave of his paw, “And this is my autistic.”

  The sergeant-interface glanced once at Darger, and forgot about him completely. Darger had the gift, priceless to one in his profession, of a face so nondescript that once someone looked away, it disappeared from that person’s consciousness forever. “This way, sir. The officer of protocol will want to examine these himself.”

  A dwarf savant was produced to lead them through the outer circle of the Labyrinth. They passed by ladies in bioluminescent gowns and gentlemen with boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin. Both women and men were extravagantly bejeweled — for the ostentatious display of wealth was yet again in fashion — and the halls were lushly clad and pillared in marble, porphyry, and jasper. Yet Darger could not help noticing how worn the carpets were, how chipped and sooted the oil lamps. His sharp eye espied the remains of an antique electrical system, and traces as well of telephone lines and fiber optic cables from an age when those technologies were yet workable.

  These last he viewed with particular pleasure.

  The dwarf savant stopped before a heavy black door carved over with gilt griffins, locomotives, and fleurs-de-lis. “This is a door,” he said. “The wood is ebony. Its binomial is Diospyros ebenum. It was harvested in Serendip. The gilding is of gold. Gold has an atomic weight of 197.2.”

  He knocked on the door and opened it.

  The officer of protocol was a dark-browed man of imposing mass. He did not stand for them. “I am Lord Coherence-Hamilton, and this —” he indicated the slender, clear-eyed woman who stood beside him — “is my sister, Pamela.”

  Surplus bowed deeply to the Lady, who dimpled and dipped a slight curtsey in return.

  The Protocol Officer quickly scanned the credentials. “Explain these fraudulent papers, sirrah. The Demesne of Western Vermont! Damn me if I have ever heard of such a place.”

  “Then you have missed much,” Surplus said haughtily. “It is true we are a young nation, created only seventy-five years ago during the Partition of New England. But there is much of note to commend our fair land. The glorious beauty of Lake Champlain. The gene-mills of Winooski, that ancient seat of learning the Universitas Viridis Montis of Burlington, the Technarchaeological Institute of —” He stopped. “We have much to be proud of, sir, and nothing of which to be ashamed.”

  The bearlike official glared suspiciously at him, then said, “What brings you to London? Why do you desire an audience with the queen?”

  “My mission and destination lie in Russia. However, England being on my itinerary and I a diplomat, I was charged to extend the compliments of my nation to your monarch.” Surplus did not quite shrug. “There is no more to it than that. In three days I shall be in France, and you will have forgotten about me completely.”

  Scornfully, the officer tossed his credentials to the savant, who glanced at and politely returned them to Surplus. The small fellow sat down at a little desk scaled to his own size and swiftly made out a copy. “Your papers will be taken to Whitechapel and examined there. If everything goes well — which I doubt — and there’s an opening — not likely — you’ll be presented to the queen sometime between a week and ten days hence.”

  “Ten days! Sir, I am on a very strict schedule!”

  “Then you wish to withdraw your petition?”

  Surplus hesitated. “I…I shall have to think on’t, sir.”

  Lady Pamela watched coolly as the dwarf savant led them away.

  The room they were shown to had massively framed mirrors and oil paintings dark with age upon the walls, and a generous log fire in the hearth. When their small guide had gone, Darger carefully locked and bolted the door. Then he tossed the box onto the bed, and bounced down alongside it. Lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, he said, “The Lady Pamela is a strikingly beautiful woman. I’ll be damned if she’s not.”

  Ignoring him, Surplus locked paws behind his back, and proceeded to pace up and down the room. He was full of nervous energy. At last, he expostulated, “This is a deep game you have gotten me into, Darger! Lord Coherence-Hamilton suspects us of all manner of blackguardry.”

  “Well, and what of that?”

  “I repeat myself: We have not even begun our play yet, and he suspects us already! I trust neither him nor his genetically remade dwarf.”

  “You are in no position to be displaying such vulgar prejudice.”

  “I am not bigoted about the creature, Darger, I fear him! Once let suspicion of us into that macroencephalic head of his, and he will worry at it until he has found out our every secret.”

  “Get a grip on yourself, Surplus! Be a man! We are in this too deep already to back out. Questions would be asked, and investigations made.”

  “I am anything but a man, thank God,” Surplus replied. “Still, you are right. In for a penny, in for a pound. For now, I might as well sleep. Get off the bed. You can have the hearth-rug.”

  “I! The rug!”

  “I am groggy of mornings. Were someone to knock, and I to unthinkingly open the door, it would hardly do to have you found sharing a bed with your master.”

  The next day, Surplus returned to the Office of Protocol to declare that he was authorized to wait as long as two weeks for an audience with the queen, though not a day more.

  “You have received new orders from your government?” Lord Coherence-Hamilton asked suspiciously. “I hardly see how.”

  “I have searched my conscience, and reflected on certain subtleties of phrasing in my original instructions,” Surplus said. “That is all.”

  He emerged from the office to discover Lady Pamela waiting outside. When she offered to show him the Labyrinth, he agreed
happily to her plan. Followed by Darger, they strolled inward, first to witness the changing of the guard in the forecourt vestibule, before the great pillared wall that was the front of Buckingham Palace before it was swallowed up in the expansion of architecture during the mad, glorious years of Utopia. Following which, they proceeded toward the viewer’s gallery above the chamber of state.

  “I see from your repeated glances that you are interested in my diamonds, ‘Sieur Plus Precieux,’” Lady Pamela said. “Well might you be. They are a family treasure, centuries old and manufactured to order, each stone flawless and perfectly matched. The indentures of a hundred autistics would not buy the like.”

  Surplus smiled down again at the necklace, draped about her lovely throat and above her perfect breasts. “I assure you, madame, it was not your necklace that held me so enthralled.”

  She colored delicately, pleased. Lightly, she said, “And that box your man carries with him wherever you go? What is in it?”

  “That? A trifle. A gift for the Duke of Muscovy, who is the ultimate object of my journey,” Surplus said. “I assure you, it is of no interest whatsoever.”

  “You were talking to someone last night,” Lady Pamela said. “In your room.”

  “You were listening at my door? I am astonished and flattered.”

  She blushed. “No, no, my brother…it is his job, you see, surveillance.”

  “Possibly I was talking in my sleep. I have been told I do that occasionally.”

  “In accents? My brother said he heard two voices.”

  Surplus looked away. “In that, he was mistaken.”

  England’s queen was a sight to rival any in that ancient land. She was as large as the lorry of ancient legend, and surrounded by attendants who hurried back and forth, fetching food and advice and carrying away dirty plates and signed legislation. From the gallery, she reminded Darger of a queen bee, but unlike the bee, this queen did not copulate, but remained proudly virgin.