The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  As she wanders, she thinks about being in the library late in the day. The light from the forest lying complicated, shifting patterns on the floor. And herself, passing through, from one end of the story to the other.

  Endless Forms Most Beautiful

  Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

  “Palsgrave Greshmenn, someone requests your presence.”

  Greshmenn was on the fifth level of the east wing, clad in full mood-onomatopoeic garb. When he heard Taetzsch, his estate’s Intelligence, he froze in place, bushels of long, silver hair swinging pendulum-like at his sides for a dozen servo-regulated heartbeats. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it.

  The most recent parade of colors to flow through his vestments, instants before the announcement, had not denoted happiness: anxious amaranths, distressed palatinate purples, a flash of cerulean.

  Now the wide sleeves of Greshmenn’s sense-recording dalmatic turned a dour shamrock green, and the silk cummerbund around his waist shimmered with glaring chestnut.

  At last, the august palsgrave brought himself to answer. His voice, as though having crossed a desert on its way to his thin lips, arrived parched with incredulity. “Someone requests my presence?”

  “Yes, Palsgrave,” Taetzsch said.

  Greshmenn frowned. “And who precisely is this undesirable that dares disturb me?”

  While he waited for a response, Greshmenn’s eyes returned to the object he had been scrutinizing, his most prized possession, the Varnava. He was thoroughly vexed by the microscopic leak that threatened to upset the painting’s delicate evolution.

  And now this intrusive request—

  Unbearable.

  The reclusive palsgrave, who had gone to great lengths to disappear from public life, hadn’t been bothered in years, and that was the way he liked it. Greshmenn absorbed the often grim media reports of his own demise with faint bemusement and a dash of disdainful pity: poor naïve dullards, he thought.

  And yet someone had managed to find him.

  As he pondered the suspects, Greshmenn thought of Raugrave Niarchos IV, his only significant competitor in the world of Evolutive art collecting, a fellow holdover from the remote days of bio-original spinal cords. And yet it seemed unlikely that the pompous Raugrave would wish to communicate with him right before bidding opened on the latest Hilel Zhe Pan, unless he wanted to strike some kind of deal. That hadn’t happened in decades.

  No, this must be someone else. Someone new.

  “He says his name is Titian,” Taetzsch said. “He claims to need your assistance with a delicate matter, but he has refused to disclose what he insists are the sensitive details of his appeal.”

  The palsgrave stroked the point of his immaculate argent beard. Titian was one of the transitional names used by almost every artgrave on the climb up—and more often than not again on the drop down—the ladders of the collecting world. That Greshmenn had been accidentally discovered by a stranger was a single unlikelihood and might be overlooked. But for the stranger to occupy the very same specialized niche as the palsgrave? In such curlicues of circumstance could be felt a tickle of intrigue.

  “Did this Titian fellow explain how he found me?”

  “I did not ask him,” Taetzsch replied. “However, I am happy to do so now, Palsgrave.”

  Greshmenn puffed out his chest and straightened his shoulders. “I will perform the inquiry myself. Enhancements?”

  “My scans reveal only the ordinary nanoimplants and servos,” Taetzsch said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Titian is speaking with me via Spore. His physical location is Dar es Salaam, off the coast of Tanzania.”

  “I want him to make the trip here in person. I won’t speak with him by Spore. Relay that.” Greshmenn’s gaze drifted back to his painting’s leak. His amice flooded with deep Prussian blue. He lowered his head.

  Taetzsch’s voice shoved him back into reality: “Titian has agreed to your terms.”

  “Good,” Greshmenn snapped. “When will he be here?”

  “Four hours and sixteen minutes.”

  Greshmenn sighed. “Finalize arrangements for his visit and terminate your conversation with him at once.”

  “As you wish, Palsgrave,” Taetzsch said.

  After waiting thirty seconds or so, Greshmenn said, “Well?”

  “Almost done,” Taetzsch said. “Despite your reticence to make use of this ability, may I remind you than I’m quite capable of concluding my conversation with Titian and speaking with you at the same time?”

  “I know you are,” Greshmenn said. “I don’t doubt your resources. I purchased them. But I’d prefer it if you just talked to one of us at a time. Call me old-fashioned.”

  “You are anything but,” Taetzsch said. “Your collection attests to that.”

  Was that a pinprick of sarcasm? Could an Intelligence develop such nuances, such sophistication? The palsgrave fleetingly wondered whether something was wrong with his artificial servant. But before he could pursue that line of thought Taetzsch informed him that his transaction with Titian had finalized. “Very well. Before Titian arrives at the estate, activate maximal observation procedures. Reroute resources from wherever you have to—even the restoration of my Varnava, if you must. I want to know everything there is to know about this scoundrel from the moment he gets here.”

  “Yes, Palsgrave.”

  “And as soon as he departs I expect a comprehensive analysis.”

  “Of course, Palsgrave.”

  “You think I’m being paranoid, don’t you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “This visit likely involves some kind of deception.”

  “An excellent appraisal.”

  “Are you being deferential?”

  “Yes, Palsgrave, but only in response to the flawless logic underlying your assessment.”

  Greshmenn tugged at the corners of his arsenic eyes, where a strange weariness, imperceptible to his myriad amino acid and endorphin regulators, threatened to creep into his body. These days he felt that same tiredness, verging on apathy, with increasing frequency. Perhaps it was resignation.

  “You know, Taetzsch, at times I attempt to imagine what existence must be like for you, and I become fearful that you must be lonely. After all, most EIs are Linked, but to protect my anonymity I keep you disconnected. But then you inevitably remind me, with your barbs—as you did just now with your comment about my ‘flawless logic’—that I’m just being mawkish.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Taetzsch said in his predictably flat voice. “But I assure you that I cannot experience loneliness in the sense you suggest, Palsgrave.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Are the maximal observation procedures in place?”

  “They are.”

  “Very well. I will return to my painting now.”

  “Yes, Palsgrave. As always, I’m happy to assist with the painting’s restoration, should you desire it.”

  More irony? Taetzsch’s efforts to fix the painting’s leak, like Greshmenn’s, had proved useless.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Greshmenn paced stolidly for a few minutes and finally sank back into the interminable chore of trying to save the painting.

  Greshmenn was underwhelmed by his visitor’s appearance. The top of Titian’s head, covered in unkempt, curly, sand-brown hair, reached only up to Greshmenn’s shoulders. And Titian’s implants, as evidenced by the telltale gray discolorations at the interface points on his neck and palms, were at least two generations behind Greshmenn’s, who himself took irrational, retrograde pride in being several years behind the Swathing Edge.

  As Greshmenn strode through his palatial grounds, Titian trailed a few steps behind. The palsgrave stopped at a fountain, his thoughts dancing along an inverted cone of electromagnetically slowed micro-droplets.

  He eased into a timeless state, testing his visitor with silence.

  Titian’s lanky frame bent to and fro, making the palsgrave think
of a malnourished birch. Titian’s voice, when he finally spoke, was almost lost amidst the water’s susurrations: “Excuse my ignorance if I have offended you. I’m unfamiliar with the ways of your estate.”

  Greshmenn decided he was tired of playing games. “Come with me,” he commanded, and with firm long strides led the way into his study on the fifth level. Security systems unfurled at his command like lavender petals, parting to reveal the bud of his collection. As they entered the chamber, Greshmenn kept his sights on Titian at all times. It took Titian only a few seconds to spot the Varnava.

  “The Chitinous Narcissus,” he whispered.

  Titian gravitated toward it as though in a trance. He admired it from one angle, then another, and yet another. He asked technical questions about its composition, about its purchase and preservation. As the palsgrave replied, Titian nodded thoughtfully, his attention never wandering from the piece.

  A ruminative pause grew, eventually becoming unsettling.

  Titian had spotted the leak.

  He looked at it as though recognizing something familiar for the first time since his arrival.

  The palsgrave had done nothing to call attention to the painting’s imperfection, which absorbed the entirety of his attention. “I see you’ve noticed the blemish,” he said.

  “Indeed.”

  The palsgrave compared his subjective impressions of the young man’s reactions with the empirical data that Taetzsch was feeding him through his tunic. Both datasets agreed, indicating that Titian spoke candidly. But he hadn’t exactly said much of value. He had recognized this piece, and yet he seemed unsurprised by the leak.

  Greshmenn took a step back. Time to be practical. “Observe the canvas with care,” he instructed. “If your visual memory enhancements allow, you will notice that the painting is subtly different now from what it was seconds ago. Diminutive alterations are occurring every instant: color, texture, angle, style of brush-strokes, and so on. That’s the norm for all Evolutive art—endless change. The work reassembles itself bit by quantum bit,” Greshmenn said. “A hum of intermeshed realities.”

  “Yes,” Titian murmured.

  “It can prove quite hypnotic,” the palsgrave went on. “Consider. At some unknowable moment the work will manifest its highest possible aesthetic. But it will remain in this state of unsurpassable beauty for perhaps only a few moments.”

  Greshmenn stood still. Fourteen years, fourteen hopeful years, had passed and he had not yet witnessed this High Point. If the painting had been healthy, if it had been intact and whole, it might have been another fourteen years—or ten times as long—before he was privy to such an apex. What of it? He had the lifespan and the dedication to wait as long as necessary for the golden moment. But the painting was not healthy. It was not intact. It was not whole. “This leak,” Greshmenn said, “this intolerable transgression against all that is sacred, threatens to make a travesty of my patience.”

  The leak rippled, as though in response to the palsgrave’s desperation. It was entropic, a virus of imperfection consuming this majestic exemplar of Evolutive progress. And there was no known way to remove it. The same physics that made cross-reality reassembly possible in the first place could, in rare instances such as this, generate artifacts, bugs, splotches of atoms that simply refused to dance in concert with the rest.

  Beauty was seeping out through the leak like sap.

  Greshmenn felt his pulse quiver, and the myriad invisible nanosoldiers in his cells righted it. His breath quickened, and they slowed it down. There was one thing they did not stop, however, for the palsgrave was careful to stop it himself; the distillation of his despair into tears.

  “You are overcome with emotion, but you choke it down,” Titian said.

  Greshmenn did not deny it.

  The younger man turned to face the palsgrave. “Why?”

  Greshmenn blinked. “I control myself for the painting,” he said.

  “Surely, the painting does not care what you feel. Or do you attribute sensitivity to it? Sentience, perhaps?”

  “It does not care in the sense that you or I care,” Greshmenn said. “But it is sensitive to the quality of one’s gaze, and the emotional state of he or she who gazes upon it. To put it another way: its evolution is shaped by how it is beheld. That is the little-known key to the finest Evolutive art, you see. Not simply that it changes, but that it responds to one’s study of its transformation. A spectator becomes thus a collaborator in the seeking and creation of meaning. The painter lays down the fundamental probability pathways, but it is up to the observer to exert the selection pressures that draw out the painting’s true worth.”

  “How many have influenced this particular painting?”

  The silence was deep.

  “Only I,” Greshmenn finally admitted.

  “You speak with regret,” Titian observed.

  “Not regret. An unwilling admission of failure.” Greshmenn smiled without joy.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “The Evolutive masters were fragile creatures, souls as fine as wine glasses. Varnava was perhaps the most delicate of all. Their creations followed suit, not being intended for mass consumption—not even admiration by a handful. Their works blossom best when nurtured by a single individual.”

  “One whose commitment is equal to the task?” Titian guessed.

  “Yes. An observer whose passion never wanes, whose loyalty remains always to the potential of the work. And so the painting’s glories are destined, by necessity, to go largely unseen. A hundred hungry eyes could ravage ‘The Chitinous Narcissus’ . . . ”

  “ . . . while a single well-chosen pair could render it unsurpassable,” Titian completed.

  “It was my desire to do just that,” the palsgrave said. “When I first heard of Varnava’s talent he was but a boy; a genius, but a boy. His elders had no desire to see his work sold. But they couldn’t refuse my wealth. I made a promise to nurture this piece as though it were my own flesh and blood. And what have I done instead? Sullied it! How can I pretend that the leak is not the result of my influence? Surely the wretched suture is but a reflection of a chasm within me. I have taken nectar from the gods and soured it.”

  The younger man’s lips spread in an expansive grin devoid of malice.

  His image reassembled, so that he became an older version of the man he’d been mere minutes before. He was Greshmenn’s peer now, in both stature and bearing.

  Greshmenn didn’t care for whatever optical trickery Titian had just performed. “I’m afraid this visit is at an end,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve already said too much. My EI will guide you back to your transport.”

  “Please, grant me a few more moments of your time. You’ll find it worthwhile. I can help reverse the leak.”

  “Is that so? Why not start by telling me your real name, and what you want from me?”

  “I am the one who offers you a gateway,” Titian said. “Call me Echo. I am a memory of infinity, a palisade helping to hold your world in.”

  “A frustrated poet with a flair for the melodramatic. Riddles amused me once,” the palsgrave said. “But that was long ago, before I became a riddle to myself.” He stared intently at the charlatan.

  Titian was nonplussed. He appeared to welcome the challenge. “You’ve become misguided. Drifted a bit off course,” he said. “Nothing that can’t be corrected.”

  The palsgrave threw his head back. “You presume not only to grasp my faults, but also to possess the knowledge necessary to emend them! Exposed to such uncanny humility I’m sure the painting will be nursed back to health in no time.” He waved toward the study’s exit, shoulders slumped. “I shouldn’t have exposed it to you at all.”

  “It’s not humility that will repair this,” Titian—Echo—said, index finger pointed at the leak. “You know that as well as I.”

  “You have one minute before my EI helps you find the exit,” Greshmenn said, jaw clenched.

  “You’ve
speculated that you are the cause of the leak,” Echo said, drawing nearer. “The fact that you are alive is related to the leak’s existence—but not how you think.”

  “Let’s pretend for a moment that I don’t think you need reality-reorientation therapy. What kind of a fee would your services require?”

  “Only your gifts as a connoisseur,” Echo responded.

  “You’re angling the wrong bait,” the palsgrave said. But he cancelled the mental command to have Echo forcibly removed.

  “Your talent for recognizing beauty is unique,” Echo continued, speaking more quickly now. “And woefully underused. I ask only that you assist in a simple culling task. Surely, the exercise of your skills cannot be too heavy a due?”

  “A culling task?”

  “Accompany me to an estate not unlike this one,” Echo said. “It contains a collection of several dozen unique Evolutive pieces. Some rival your Varnava. A few even outshine it. Select those of highest Evolutive potential and discard the rest. Choose as you see fit. Your decisions will be yours alone, and final.”

  “And who owns this rarefied collection?” Greshmenn asked.

  “The collector’s identity is immaterial,” Echo said. “Let’s just say that he uses art as commodity, with no understanding of its intrinsic value.”

  “Sounds callously superficial,” Greshmenn said. He pressed on. “If he’s such a nobody why are you here wrangling on his behalf?”

  “I represent only myself in this transaction,” Echo explained. “The owner knows his collection is contaminated by inferior works, but has no method of discerning the priceless from the worthless without advertising what he owns. He has no interest in the pieces themselves and therefore no patience to see them through, as it were. With your assistance, however, I could elevate the worth of his collection, and he will then give me what I seek most.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Freedom,” Echo said. “I said before I wasn’t familiar with your ways, and I wasn’t lying. I’m not from . . . here.” Echo paused. “Imagine a leak as wide as a door.”