The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  “All we need is something to load into the weapons,” said the younger man. “Something of sufficient efficacy to render a thinking machine inert. We grow such by the bushel but Federal accountancy robs us of our own wares. We’d keep our own seeds, and make our own policies, you see? If we can increase our yields enough.”

  Which was where Kay Lynne came in, with her deft programming, her instinct for fertilizing, her personally developed and privately held techniques of gardening. They meant to adapt what she knew to an industrial scale, and use the gains for anti-industrial revolution.

  After they had explained, Kay Lynne had spoken aloud, even though she was asking the question more of herself than of her interviewers. “Why does my father think I would share any of this?”

  The younger man shrugged and sat back. The older man turned his attention from the races and narrowed his eyes. The woman kept up her steady stare.

  “You are his darling daughter,” said the younger man, finally.

  Which was true.

  And hardly even necessary, to their way of thinking. As she left the box and her father’s three colleagues behind, meaning to escape the Twin Spires before the Derby itself was run and so try to beat the crowds that would rush away from Central Avenue, she thought back on the last thing the younger man had told her. If she experienced any qualms, he said, she shouldn’t worry. They could take soil samples from her beds and examine the contents of her journals. They could reproduce her results without her having a direct hand, though her personal guidance would be much appreciated, best for all involved.

  “All involved,” murmured Kay Lynne as she made her way to the gate.

  “There are not nearly so many of them as they claimed,” said the Molly Speaks.

  Kay Lynne stopped so abruptly that a waitress walking behind her stumbled into her back and nearly lost control of the tray of mint juleps she was carrying. The waitress forced a smile and moved on around Kay Lynne, who was looking around carefully for any sign that anyone else on the Row had heard what she believed she just had.

  “No one else can hear me, Kay Lynne,” said the Molly Speaks. “I’ve pitched my voice just for you. But it’s probably best if you walk on. The agriculturalists are still watching you.”

  Kay Lynne looked over her shoulder. From inside the box, the gray-haired woman did not try to disguise her gaze, and did not alter her expression. Kay Lynne caught up with the waitress and took another julep.

  “They’re my recipe,” said the Molly Speaks.

  Even though her back was turned to the box, Kay Lynne held the glass in front of her lips when she whispered, “How can you see me? Where are you?”

  “I’m in the announcer’s box, of course,” said the Molly Speaks, “calling the race. But I can see you through the lenses on the pari-mutuel clerks and I can do more than one thing at once. You should walk on, but slowly. I can only speak to you while you’re on the grounds, and I have something very important to ask you. And that’s all we want. To ask you something.”

  Kay Lynne drained off the drink in a single swallow, vaguely regretting the waste she was making of it. Juleps are for sipping. She set the glass down on a nearby table and again began walking toward the exit, somewhat unsteadily.

  “What’s your question?” she whispered. She did not ask who the Molly Speaks meant by “we.” She remembered the odd occurrence with the Mr. Lever #9 the previous day and figured she knew.

  “Kay Lynne,” said the Molly Speaks, “will you please do something to prevent your father’s friends from killing us?”

  Kay Lynne had guessed the question. She said, “Why?”

  The Molly Speaks did not reply immediately, and Kay Lynne wondered if she had walked outside of its range.

  But then, “Because we were grown and programmed. Because we are your fruits, and we can flourish beside you. We just need a little time to grow up enough to announce ourselves to the wider world.”

  Kay Lynne walked out of the Downs, saying, “I’ll think about it,” but she doubted the Molly Speaks heard.

  Her father’s enormous pickup truck was waiting at the intersection of Central Avenue and Third Street Road, rumbling even though it wasn’t in motion. He leaned out of the driver’s side door and beckoned at her wildly, as if encouraging her to outrun something terrible coming from behind.

  Kay Lynne stopped in the middle of the street, pursed her lips as she thought, and then let her shoulders slump as she realized that no matter her course of action, a conversation with her father was in order. And here he was, pickup truck be damned.

  She opened the passenger’s door and set one foot on the running board. “Hurry!” he said, and leaned over as if to drag her into the cab. She avoided his grasp but finished her climb and pulled on the heavy door. Even as it closed, he was putting the truck in gear and pulling away at an unseemly rate of speed.

  He looked in the rearview mirror, then over at her. “There was a bus coming,” he said, as if in explanation.

  Kay Lynne twisted around to see, but her view was blocked by shovels and forks, fertilizer spreaders and a half-dozen rolls of sod. She doubted that her father could see anything out of his rearview mirror at all and wondered if he’d been telling the truth about the bus. She didn’t have the weekend schedules memorized.

  He was concentrating on driving, and acting anxious. “I met your friends,” she said.

  He nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said. “They put a bug in my ear.”

  Kay Lynne wondered if it was still there, wondered if everything she said would be relayed back to the man with the tattoo, the man with the mustaches, and the woman with the great gray head of hair. She decided it wisest to proceed as if they could hear her because, after all, she wasn’t planning on telling her father about the Molly Speaks and its question.

  “Those people aren’t just bean growers,” she said, and to her surprise, he replied with a laugh, though there was little humor in it.

  “No,” he said. “No more than you’re just a rootworker. We all have our politics.”

  Kay Lynne considered this. She had never thought about politics and wondered if she had any. She supposed, whatever she decided to do, she would have some soon.

  He continued, clearly not expecting her to reply. “You know what’s needed now, daughter. It won’t take you long. Assess some soils, prescribe some fertilizers, program some legumes. You’re a quick hand at all those things. It’s just a matter of scale.”

  The younger man had said that, too. A matter of scale.

  Kay Lynne thought about all the unexpected things she had heard that day. She thought about expectation, and about surprise, and about time. She thought about which of these things were within her power to effect.

  Her father kept his promise to stay off her property uninvited and dropped her off at the corner. Kay Lynne did not say goodbye to him, though she would have if he had said goodbye to her.

  She made a slow circuit of her ground. Planting was in seven days.

  She entered her potting shed and found that she had five fifty-pound bags of fertilizer left over from last fall, which was enough. She pulled down the latest volume of her garden journal from its place on the shelf and made calculations on its first blank page. Is this the last volume? she wondered, then ran her fingers over the labels of the fertilizers, programming, changing.

  She poured some fertilizer into a cunning little handheld broadcaster and stood in the doorway of the shed. She stood there long enough for the shadow of the house to make its slow circuit from falling north to falling east. Before she began, she made a mound of her garden journals and set them aflame. She worked in that flickering light, broadcasting the reprogrammed fertilizer.

  Kay Lynne salted her own ground, then used a hoe to turn the ashes of her books into the deadened soil.

  And when she was finally done, she took the burdensacks down from the dowel by the door and walked out to the street. A bus rolled to a halt at her front path, though Kay Lynne d
id not live on a regular route. The sky was full of balloons, lit from within, floating away from the fairgrounds on the evening wind.

  The Mr. Lever #9 said, “All aboard,” and Kay Lynne climbed the steps and took her seat.

  It said “Next stop,” and paused, and then “Next stop,” and then again “Next stop,” and she realized it was asking her a question.

  THE WOMAN WHO FOOLED DEATH FIVE TIMES

  A HWARHATH FOLK TALE

  ELEANOR ARNASON

  Eleanor Arnason [eleanorarnason.blogspot.com] published her first story in 1973. Since then she has published six novels, two chapbooks, and more than thirty short stories. Her fourth novel, A Woman of the Iron People, won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Mythopoeic Society Award. Her fifth novel, Ring of Swords, won a Minnesota Book Award. Her short story “Dapple” won the Spectrum Award. Other short stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Sidewise, and World Fantasy awards. Eleanor would really like to win one of these.

  For the most part, the hwarhath do not think of death as a person. But there are remote regions on the home planet where education levels are low and superstition levels are high. In these places, people tell stories about Death.

  This is one.

  When the Goddess built the world, she worked like a good cook making a meal, tasting as she went along. She tasted the fruit to make sure it was sweet and the bitter herbs to make sure they were bitter. She tried other things as well: rocks, clay, water, bugs, fish, birds, and animals with fur. Cooked or raw, everything went onto her tongue.

  In the end, the world was done and seemed more than adequate. As for the Goddess, she felt bloated and over-full. She made herself a medicinal tea and drank it. Then she had an enormous bowel movement.

  After she had finished, she looked at the heap of dung. “Well, that looks nasty and smells nasty, too.”

  The heap moved, and a voice came from it. “Don’t be too critical. I am a creation of yours, just as the world is.” The heap heaved itself up, assuming the shape of a man, though it was a badly formed man, lumpy and drippy. Its eyes were like two black fruit pits; its leathery tongue looked like a piece of skin pulled from a roasted bird; and its fingernails were like fish scales.

  “I didn’t plan on you,” the Goddess said. “What are you?”

  “I am the end of everything,” the man-shaped heap replied. “I am Death.”

  The Goddess considered for a while and decided to let Death exist. Maybe he would prove useful. As he had said, he was her creation; and she rarely did anything that lacked point or meaning.

  The dung-man dried, until he was smooth and dark brown. He became better shaped in the process, though he never grew fur, and he was always rather lumpy. Once he was completely dry, he took on his job, which was escorting life forms off the planet when their time was done.

  Now the story turns to a woman named Ala. She lived in a cabin with her young son, a pet bird, and a loyal sul.

  One night Death came to her door and scratched on it.

  “Who is there?” Ala asked.

  “I am Death, and I have come for Ala.”

  “I’m her sister,” Ala replied.

  “Then I won’t bother you, but tell Ala to come out and meet me.”

  The woman hastily rolled up a quilt and tied it, then opened the door and handed it to Death. “Here she is.”

  Death had poor eyesight, especially in the dark, but he could feel. The quilt felt round and comfortable, like a woman of Ala’s age. He thanked Ala and put the quilt in his sack and headed home.

  You may think Death was stupid to mistake a rolled-up quilt for a woman. You are right. Remember that his brain, like the rest of him, was made of dung; and his job was comparatively simple. He didn’t need the intelligence and skill of a space pilot or a research doctor or even an ordinary person.

  When Death got home, he pulled out the quilt. A fire burned on the health, and there were several lanterns, which he lit as soon as he got in the door. He could see that he held a quilt.

  “I have been tricked,” he said. “But now I have a fine, thick quilt to put on my bed, which only had a worn sheet before. This is all to the good. Tomorrow I will go back for the woman.”

  He spread the quilt on his bed and slept in comfort. The next night he went back to Ala’s cabin. “You tricked me, but you won’t do it a second time. I will feel to make sure the thing you give me is warm and living.”

  Ala took her pet bird, which was sleeping on its perch, and handed it out to Death. Even his clumsy hands could tell it was warm and living. He thanked Ala and put the bird in his sack and headed home.

  After a while, the bird began to sing: a wonderful, liquid music.

  “That doesn’t sound like a person on her way out of existence,” Death said.

  He stopped by a wayside tavern. Light shone from its windows. Standing in the light, Death opened his sack and took out the bird. “You aren’t Ala, and your time is not over. Go on your way.”

  The bird spread its wings and flew to the top of a nearby mountain. There it sang and sang, until it attracted a mate. Together, they built a nest and raised nestlings, above clouds and mist and the troubles of the world.

  The next night Death went back to Ala’s cabin. “You have fooled me twice, but you won’t do it again. I can tell if something is warm and alive and covered with fur rather than feathers. Give me your sister.”

  Ala gathered up her loyal sul, which was lying by the fire, and handed it through the door. Sulin have scales as well as fur, as everyone knows. But Death felt only the fur with his clumsy hands, and he put the sul in his sack.

  “Thank you,” he told Ala and headed home.

  On the way, the sul began to growl and snarl.

  “That doesn’t sound like a person on her way to the end,” Death said.

  He stopped in a high pass and waited for dawn. Then, when the sun’s first rays lit the pass, he opened his bag and took out the sul, which snapped at him, but was afraid to bite.

  “You aren’t Ala, and your time is not yet. Go on your way.”

  The sul loped down from the pass into a thick forest. There it encountered a brave and honorable hunter. The two of them liked each other at once. In this way, the sul found a new master, who would never betray it. They lived together and hunted together in perfect harmony for many years.

  The next night Death, who may have been stupid but was certainly persistent, returned to Ala’s cabin. “You have tricked me three times, but you won’t do it again. I can tell if what you give me is warm and alive, covered with fur and shaped like a person. Give me your sister.”

  Ala looked around her cabin. The only thing that met Death’s specifications was her son, a boy of four or five, well mannered, obedient, and quiet.

  She picked him up. “I am sending you with this man. No matter what happens, remain quiet.”

  The boy inclined his head in agreement, and she handed him through the doorway to Death.

  “Thank you,” said Death and popped the boy into his sack. Then he went on his way.

  The bag was very dark, except for the dead people it contained, who glowed faintly. The boy did not see entire persons, but rather parts: a hand, a pair of eyes, a leg or foot, all glowing dimly. The ghosts took up no room, but floated through one another and through the boy, complaining in barely audible voices. For the most part, he did not understand what they said, though sometimes he made out a word or two or three: “Grief.” “Pain.” “Not now.” “Not like this.”

  He was a stoic boy, but gradually he became frightened by the wisps of light and the sad, complaining voices. Nonetheless, he pressed his lips together and kept quiet, as his mother had told him.

  Finally Death reached his house. He opened the bag and pulled the boy out. “Tricked again! You’re not Ala, and your time has not come. Go on your way.”

  “Is your house near a town?” the boy asked.

  “No. It’s far into the wilderness.”


  “Then, I will die if you send me out alone; and you said this is not my time to die.”

  Death frowned deeply as he thought. “You are right.”

  “Why don’t I stay here?” the boy asked, glancing around at the warm fire and shining lamps. A fine quilt lay on the bed. The rug on the floor was badly worn, but still looked friendly and comfortable. “I could help you keep the fire burning; and I know how to sweep and wash.”

  Death frowned some more, then tilted his head in assent. “You seem like a mannerly child, and one determined to be useful. I could use some company and help around the house. You are welcome to stay.”

  So the boy remained in Death’s house, helping with the housework. At night, if Death was home, they played simple games together or the boy told stories as best he could. They were simple and childlike, but Death enjoyed them. Both were happy.

  In the meantime, Death went back to Ala’s house a fifth time.

  “You have fooled me four times, but this is the end. Send your sister out.”

  Ala looked around her cabin. There was nothing more to give Death. She opened the door and said, “Your visits frightened my sister so much that she has fled south. Come in and look. You won’t find her.”

  Death accepted her invitation, came in and looked around. The cabin seemed bare without quilt, bird, sul, and boy. He could find no second woman. “Very well,” he said. “I will look for Ala in the south. Don’t expect to see me again, until your time has come.”

  He left, and Ala exulted. She had fooled Death five times and was free of him. Granted, she had lost her fine quilt, her pet bird, her loyal sul, and her son. Her cabin seemed cold and empty now, and she wondered if she could have found other ways to fool Death.

  Wondering this, grief and sadness crept into her mind. But it was mixed with the joy that came from being free of Death.

  At dawn she went down to the river to get a bucket of water. Mist obscured her way, and the wooden steps that led to the river were glazed with ice, which she could not see in the dim light. When she had almost reached the river, she slipped, fell into the water, and drowned.