The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Not only was the Fortitude laden with treasure. They had salt beef, salt pork, biscuit, flour, fruit, water-casks, even six dozen live chickens (though not, after we’d caught up with them, for very long). Under other circumstances, we’d have been hard put to it to find enough men for a prize crew for a ship so much bigger than our own. As it was, we were able to secure the prize for the journey home and alleviate the overcrowding on the Heron at the same time.

  From that moment on, things couldn’t have gone more smoothly. We had a mild following wind all the way home, the weather was warm, and two of the men who’d been at death’s door with the unknown fever quite suddenly snapped out of it and were fine, as soon as we crossed the 17th parallel. By the time we saw the Belltower, the duke was very nearly back to normal. He called me up on deck and gave me a lecture on how, all things considered, the expedition had been a success. We’d found Essecuivo. True, the two cities we’d visited had been abandoned at some point in the three centuries dividing us from Aeneas. There were all sorts of possible reasons for that, all of which he’d be analyzing in the book he’d already started to write. But there was no earthly reason to suppose that the entire country was like that; and when we went back again, next year—

  “The duke?” she said. “Oh, he’s out of it completely. Nobody even mentions him anymore.”

  I had a slight headache. “I thought—”

  “The money?” She smiled at me, as if at a simple-minded child. “All gone. As soon as he got back, he took a massive gamble on wheat futures. But it was a record harvest, so he’s back home in the country licking his wounds. Meanwhile, the Viscount Eretraeus—” Her small black eyes lit up as she said the name. “Now there’s someone you should definitely get to know.”

  Shortly after that, I stopped seeing her.

  I am, above all, a scholar. Just because I’m a bad human being, it doesn’t necessarily follow that my scholarship is proportionately deficient. I can analyze evidence, draw conclusions and formulate plausible hypotheses.

  So; as I think I mentioned, I have one of those see-it-once-and-it’s-there memories. What I must’ve done was remembered, deep in some remote part of my mind, which letters were illuminated red in the original manuscript. When I came to make my true-as-possible-in-the-circumstances copy, I remembered which letters to start the paragraphs with.

  The duke’s theory about Aeneas’ cipher was correct. The place we went to was Essecuivo. A lot can happen in three hundred years. Think about it. Three hundred years ago, Macella was a mighty kingdom, as big and strong as the Republic. What’s there now? The bases of a few statues, what’s left of a handful of buildings, after the locals plundered the worked stone to build pigsties.

  As for our incredible luck in running into the carrack; when we asked the captain where he’d come from with all that valuable stuff, at first he refused to tell us, quite properly. But then we explained how big and wet the sea was, and asked him if he was a really good swimmer; and he told us he was returning from the annual spice harvest at Mas Agiba, an Imperial outpost whence the Empire derived the bulk of its spices. It had been Imperial property for well over two hundred years, and no, he wasn’t going to tell us the map reference, not even if we threw him to the sharks.

  Mas Agiba could just about be the same word as Essecuivo, phonetically speaking; or, more likely, they’re both corruptions of the real name. Now, if the Imperial carrack had started from a different point on the same land mass as we had, going in more or less the same direction, it’s rather more likely that we’d have run into each other in the way we did. It was still an exceptional piece of luck—good for us, bad for them—but at least it’s possible. Imperial occupation would, of course, be a good reason for the destruction and abandonment of Aos and Eano. When the Empire makes a new friend in the colonies, it likes to play rough games. I imagine the captain is still being interrogated, somewhere in the State House cellars, assuming he’s still alive. I am therefore quietly confident that additional data will become available in due course, and the matter will be cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction.

  There was another expedition. Not the duke; he sold the Company to clear his debts from the wheat speculation, and a consortium of City merchants took over. They went to Essecuivo in an orderly, businesslike manner, with precisely one object in mind, and were more or less successful. They’d heard the story of the rose window and the appalling smell and taken a chance, which proved to be entirely justified. The smell, they guessed, was guano (bat-shit, as it turned out; the very best material for the manufacture of saltpeter, which as you know is the prime ingredient of gunpowder). They brought back a caravel filled with the stuff, and they plan on going back every year until it’s all gone.

  That worked out well for me. Leafing through my copy of Emulaeus one day, I found a sheet of paper I’d folded to use as a bookmark, many years ago. It was my father’s certificate for ten shares in the Company, which he’d bought on a tumbling market as an act of solidarity shortly before the crash. I sold my shares to the consortium for two thousand angels. So I’m all right.

  One piece of evidence I nearly suppressed; but I find I can’t. It wakes me up in the night sometimes, and I have to drink rather too much brandy to get rid of it.

  I said that the carrack’s cargo included fruit. So it did. What I neglected to mention was that it was carrying three tons of premium, freshly harvested lemons.

  JOKE IN FOUR PANELS

  ROBERT SHEARMAN

  Robert Shearman [www.justsosospecial.com] is probably best known for bringing back the Daleks in a Hugo-Award nominated episode of the first series of the BBC’s revival of Doctor Who. But in Britain he has had a long career writing for both theatre and radio, winning two Sony awards, the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, and the Guinness Award for Theatre Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. His first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, won the World Fantasy Award; its follow-up, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, received the British Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards, while third collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, spawned his craziest idea yet. His most recent book is collection Remember Why You Fear Me.

  Snoopy is dead. They found his body lying on top of his kennel, wearing those World War I fighter pilot goggles he liked, and there must have been a foot of snow on him. Charlie Brown told the reporters, “At first I just thought it was one of his gags. That up out of the mound of snow would float a thought bubble with a punchline in it.” He went on to admit that he hadn’t cleared the snow off the body for hours, just in case he did something to throw the comic timing. But Snoopy was dead, he was frozen stiff, it’s a cold winter and the beagle was really very old. The doctors say it might have been hypothermia, it might have been suffocation, he might even have drowned if enough snow had got into his mouth and melted. Charlie Brown is distraught. “I can’t help but think I might be partially responsible.” But no one blames Charlie Brown, we all know what Snoopy was like, you couldn’t tell Snoopy anything, Snoopy was his own worst enemy.

  Everyone’s being nice to Charlie Brown. No one’s called him a blockhead for days. Lucy Van Pelt has offered him free consultations at her psychiatry booth, and the kite-eating tree has passed on its condolences. And all the kids at school, the ones who never get a line to say or a joke of their own, all of them have been passing on their sympathies. You admit, you immediately saw it as an opportunity. That if you went up to Charlie Brown and said something suitably witty, maybe it’d end up printed in the comic strip. You came up with a funny joke, you practiced the delivery. You’d find him in recess, maybe, or that pitcher’s mound of his, and you’d say, “It’s a dog-gone shame, Charlie Brown!” That’s pretty funny. That’s T-shirt funny. That’s funny enough to be put on a lunch box. But when it comes to it, you just can’t do it. When you see Charlie’s perfectly rounded head, and the expression on it so vacant, so lost, it’s not just a sidekick who’s dead but a family pet—no, you won’t do it, you have some
scruples.—Besides, you can see that all the kids have had the same idea, he’s being harangued on all sides by the bit part players of the Peanuts franchise, and their gags are better than yours.

  Your name is Madalyn Morgan, although none of the readers would know that. Your name has never been printed. You’ve appeared in quite a few of the cartoons, whenever they need a crowd of kids to watch a baseball game or something. Once you got to be in a cartoon in which Charlie Brown and the gang were queuing up to see a movie, and you were standing just three kids in front! You didn’t get to say anything, but you were proud anyway, you cut out the strip from the newspaper, and framed it, and now it hangs on your bedroom wall. You think Madalyn Morgan is a good name. It’s better than Patricia Reichardt, she had to change her name to Peppermint Patty just to get the alliteration, and you have the alliteration already, they should have used you in the first place. And Peppermint Patty’s friend is called Marcie, that’s so close to Maddie, oh, it’s infuriating. Some of the supporting characters have a gimmick, and you’ve been working on some of your own. Schroeder has a toy piano; you’re learning how to play the harp. You think there’s room for a harp in the Peanuts strip. Linus carries a security blanket everywhere with him, and believes in the Great Pumpkin. You’ve experimented with towels and Mormonism.

  You’re sorry that Snoopy is dead, of course, but you can’t say that you’ll miss him. He was a self-obsessed narcissist, that’s the truth of it. And all those fantasies he had, that he was fighting the Red Baron on a Sopwith Camel, that he was the world’s greatest tennis coach or hockey player or novelist, that by putting on a pair of sunglasses he could be Joe Cool and hit on the girls—is it just you that thinks these delusions aren’t charming? But actually the symptoms of a sociopathic mental case? He was only kind to one of the characters, that little yellow bird called Woodstock, and you suspect that’s because Woodstock can’t speak English, and with no jokes of his own he’d never rival the dog in popularity. Snoopy is dead, and the world is in mourning, and you’re sorry, but you can’t pretend you care. But you admit that without his comic genius there’s a cold wind now blowing through the funny pages.

  There’s a funeral for Snoopy, but it’s only for close friends and stars of the strip. You’re not invited. It’s quite a big send-off, all over town everyone can hear it. There are fireworks. You like fireworks.

  The Peanuts franchise has been marketed to the hilt, and it doesn’t take you long to track down a full size Snoopy costume. When you try it on you’re pleased that it’s so woolly, that’ll keep you snug during the cold winter months ahead. Your hair is quite distinctive, and you’re worried that the head piece won’t cover it up properly, but it’s fine, it’s better than fine, it pads out all the crevices nicely and helps give Snoopy’s head that soft squidgy shape that’s so endearing.

  You put the supper bowl between your teeth, the way you’ve seen the real Snoopy do countless times in countless strips. You go up to the front door of Charlie Brown’s house. You kick against it three times, loud, insistent.

  You know this is a classic opening to many a Peanuts cartoon. Suppertime at the Charlie Brown house, and Snoopy banging on the door, demanding to be fed. And you can already imagine it on the page, this is panel one.

  Charlie Brown opens the door. He stares at you. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. And this is the crucial moment, you know this—if he accepts you, then you’re okay, and the strip can continue, but there’ll be a million and one reasons why he wouldn’t want to accept you: for a start, you’re some strange kid he doesn’t know pretending to be his dead dog. His eyes water. Is he going to cry? You think he might cry. Or will he be angry? Charlie Brown doesn’t do anger well, his character is sold on that essential wishy-washiness of his, but if ever a boy is going to get angry, it’s now, surely—and you’re suddenly aware of just how obvious the costume looks, the zips and fasteners exposed for all the world to see, you’re some ill-fitting parody of a best friend he only buried last week.

  And then his face softens. He has made the decision to play along, you can see it. Or has he been fooled? Is he really that much of a blockhead? “Snoopy, where have you been? We thought you were gone for good!” he says. The speech bubble appears to his side, you can read the words clearly, his response is now official. And that is panel two.

  In panel three you’re both walking to the kennel. Charlie Brown is now carrying the supper bowl. You’re following behind, on hind legs, of course. You wonder whether you should be doing the happy dance, when Snoopy’s fed his supper he sometimes does the happy dance, but you think that maybe it’s a little ambitious. And it might break the comic focus—if there’s one thing you’ve learned on your long stint on Peanuts it’s that you mustn’t smother the gag with extraneous detail. Always focus on what the story is about. This isn’t a strip about Snoopy doing a happy dance. It’s a strip about Snoopy coming home and Charlie Brown accepting him. Keep it simple. Charlie Brown says, “I threw out all your dog food, all I’ve got left are these old vegetables…”

  And he’s gone. And you’re into panel four. The final panel on a weekday Peanuts strip is panel four, and it has a special job—it needs to sum up the world weariness and despair that is the hallmark of the cartoon at its best. To take all the hope that was present in the first three panels and show that it is wanting. To demonstrate that at best life is an awkward compromise we all just have to buckle down and accept. You don’t know how to convey all that. All eyes are on you. You stare down at the awful food in your supper bowl. You roll your eyes. You send up a thought bubble. “Good grief,” you think.

  And it’s a wrap.

  The strip is printed in the newspapers the very next day. The world is glad to see that Snoopy is back again, even if he’s sporting a zip.

  You soon find out, in the absence of a really good punchline, rolling your eyes and thinking “Good grief” tends to work pretty well.

  Sometimes the supporting cast come to see you. Linus says, “You are exploiting the grief of someone who is suffering, don’t you feel ashamed?” And then quotes some Bible verses at you, and that’s so very Linus—and you want to say, if you’re so smug and sanctimonious, why do you carry a security blanket? No, you don’t feel ashamed, because Snoopy wouldn’t feel ashamed—that was the point of Snoopy, can’t they see that, he had no conscience at all. You just lie on the roof of the kennel and let their criticisms wash right over you. Lucy is more direct, as usual; she says she wants to slug you; she says she wants to pound you. The best way to deal with Lucy is to call her “sweetie” and kiss her on the nose, that never fails to infuriate her.

  Incidentally, it’s hard to sleep on the roof of a kennel, especially one that tapers into such a very sharp point. It took you a week to learn how to do it without falling off. And even now, you haven’t found a way of lying there without the pain, it jabs right into your spine, it’s agony. Thank God your contorted face is masked beneath that Snoopy head. Thank God your Snoopy head is fixed in that expression of cute self-satisfaction.

  Woodstock comes by only the once. He jabbers at you, and he’s angry, but you’ve no idea what he’s saying, his speech bubbles are full of nothing more than vertical lines. And you tire of him, and you punch him—you thwack him with your paw, and it says, “Ka-pow!”—and Woodstock is lying still on the grass for ages, and you wonder whether you’ve killed him. (And wonder whether it would matter; if the Peanuts strip can survive the death of the original Snoopy, who cares about the fate of a little bird that wasn’t even given a name for the first twenty years of syndication?) But Woodstock does revive. And he flies away. And you never see him again.

  The only one you need to keep happy is Charlie Brown. And Charlie Brown is very happy; he brings you fresh bowls of dog food every day, and you wolf them down, and dance the happy dance for real. He’s the butt of all your jokes, but he has faith in you, and you have faith in him—life will knock the stuffing out of Charlie Brown each and e
very day, but he rolls with the punches, he keeps coming back for more. It’s harder to be a Charlie Brown than a Snoopy. You have to admire him a bit for it.

  You try out Snoopy’s tried and tested specialty acts. You fly your kennel into World War I, and fight the Germans. The first time you strap on your goggles you think maybe something magical will happen, that you’ll really take off into the air, that you’ll really have to dodge the bullets of enemy fire. And you feel a bit disappointed at first that it’s all pretend, of course it’s all pretend, and it always was. But there’s a certain thrill to it, that you have a nemesis, the Red Baron, even if it’s just a made-up nemesis. And every time he shoots you down you shake your fist up to heaven and curse him, and it’s fun, even though you know there’s no one up there listening and that no one really cares.

  You try to introduce some of your own skills into the act. For a few strips Snoopy begins to play the harp, with hilarious consequences. For a week or two he becomes a Mormon. The last storyline is seen as a noble failure, and is never repeated.

  Sometimes you forget you’re Madalyn Morgan at all. Sometimes you think you really were born at Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. And when your head itches, and once in a while you’re forced to pull off your mask, you see that that hair of yours has just kept on growing, there’s so much of it now, and you stare at it in the mirror with horror.