“I want to go now,” she said. “I’m ready. Take me home.”
Shamus had been waiting, hoping for her to make a quick decision. He started forward, a wide smile forming on his lips. He looked suddenly younger, more vibrant. This must not have been easy for him either.
She wondered what would become of the people passing through the concourse. Would they live? Would a Vector—possibly even her—reinfect them with the necessary immunities to keep them healthy and blissfully unaware? And what would Attie do? He couldn’t stop them, not physically. Others could, agents not currently compromised by either version of the Vector, but none had yet arrived.
Their luck ran out at the same instant that the thought entered her mind. Sirens, distant shrieks, high-pitched and mechanical, sounded from the direction of the Boadd. At this time of day it would take a while for wheeled vehicles to navigate the crowded streets of Las Vegas’ new sin preserve. They still had time, but only a little.
She turned, expecting to find Shamus nearby. Instead, Attie stood within a foot of her.
He smiled. She screamed.
“Boo,” he whispered. His face smiled, but contempt gleamed behind his small eyes.
So she spit on him.
She didn’t think about it. It was an instinctive reaction. The little blob, shining green with her Vector, landed on the ruby skin of his cheek, like an olive in a bowl of cherries—and it began to spread. Her Vectored virus began to infiltrate Attie’s body. He reacted as if shot, stumbling back. His fingers moved to his cheek, coming away with a dusting of molten emeralds.
“You bitch!” he hissed. His right hand balled into a fist, and he swung. Victoria closed her eyes, expecting pain. Nothing happened. Trembling, she peeked. Shamus stood between her and the other man. He held Attie’s small fist tightly in his massive hand.
“That is no way to treat a lady,” Shamus growled ominously. His skin, once the color of darkened sea glass where the avocado shimmer of his Vector covered his natural chocolate tones, began to bleed. His arm to the elbow became engulfed within a crawling wave the color of burgundy. Attie’s skin, bright as a stop sign, now appeared mottled like jungle camouflage. The two distinct viruses, at war, passed between the men in bursts and cascades, packets of green and red that blurred, collapsed and coalesced almost too quickly for the eye follow. They burned themselves out within moments, leaving the two men standing in the sunlight, blank, drained. Neither of the Vectored viruses remained to stain their flesh.
“Shamus!” Victoria cried.
Shamus raised his right hand, momentarily confused as he inspected himself. Then the enormity of his actions sank in, and his face twisted in distress. It lasted only a moment before he spoke, but Victoria had seen the hopelessness in his eyes, and it crushed her soul.
“Don’t worry, Vic. Everything’s fine.” He smiled, but there was no joy behind it.
She leapt into his arms, tears the color of summer meadows splashing from her eyes. They struck his cheek, his shoulder, his chest—but with no potency. The drops melted against his skin like ice on hot pavement, as did her hopes. Her Vector wouldn’t stick.
“You can’t die on me. Don’t,” she sobbed.
He shrugged. There was nothing he could say. They both knew what would happen, what was probably already happening. His body would begin to tear itself apart. Foreign organisms flooded through his blood stream, encountering no immune response. Every system in his body would begin to react, like an organ transplant patient gone horribly wrong. Healthy cells would be eliminated, healthy organs rejected. Every one of the hundreds of molds, bacteria and viruses that harmlessly enshroud people every day, living within us and floating around us, would instantly become a lethal enemy. His own white blood cells would start to turn against him, and he’d die. Quickly and terribly.
If he hadn’t been a Vector, he might not even have noticed what Attie had done to him, but his own choice had doomed him.
Suddenly, all the confusion and betrayal was behind her. She felt so young and vulnerable, and so very much alone.
“Please don’t leave me,” she begged. “I don’t know what to do.”
His lips formed into a sad smile. “You’re strong, Vic. I know you, maybe better than you realize, maybe even better than you know yourself. You’ll keep trying to save the world.”
A moment ago he had her believing that she was partly responsible for wrecking it. Now, she just didn’t care. The rest of the world seemed small and unimportant. She wanted things back the way they were, back the way they could never be again.
“But I can’t. Not without you.”
“You can,” he said firmly. “Remember, I love you.”
Then he grabbed Attie by the shoulder and spun him around. The smaller man had stood there through the whole exchange, pale and stricken. A look of disbelief mixed with growing horror covered his face and his flat, lifeless eyes. As a Vector, he’d share Shamus’ fate. Nothing could cure what was already happening inside them.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Shamus said as he maneuvered the man up the ramp and toward the closest walking sidewalk headed downtown. “Your friends can pick us up at the Shamrock. How’s that sound?”
He glanced back briefly to wink at Victoria and then was gone.
She stood there in shock, unable to move as the growing swarms of people ambled around her like water past a boulder in a stream. Without Shamus she had nothing. Her soul had been ripped free with his departure, leaving a very thin, empty shell. How could she go on? What would she do?
The passage of bodies flowed around her as she remained transfixed, unable to step outside her pain. Time passed, but she wasn’t aware of it. Thoughts and images came and went within her mind, but they flitted though her subconscious with such dizzying speed that she could concentrate on nothing. Part of her heard the sirens scream past, headed uptown. They’d be coming back this way soon enough, but she no longer cared.
The past emerged as an intense light, brilliant and bright, jammed full of happy memories and laughter. She remembered the first day she and Shamus had met. She remembered his smile, and his loose confidence and the affectionate way he always called her Vic. That was all gone now, lost in darkness and despair.
She felt as if she should move, run, escape, but that would take focus. Focus would be thinking, and thinking was bad. Maybe she’d just stand here, wait until her Vector died out, or they came for her, or until her own immune system collapsed. She could join him then. They could be together again, together forever.
Something soft caressed her thigh. “Lady . . .”
Victoria glanced down, slowly shifting her center of attention from her pain to the young girl standing in front of her. The child must have been only six or seven years old, a chubby little dark-skinned cherub with tightly curled black hair held in asymmetric clumps by glowing rods in primary colors. In her hands was Shamus’ ugly felt fedora. The girl had been pressing it against Victoria’s leg.
“A big man told me to give this to you,” the girl said as she held the dreadful gray lump out for Victoria to take. The air seemed to thin around her. She couldn’t catch her breath, let alone talk. It seemed like forever before she was able to reach out and touch the fedora.
“Thank you,” Victoria stammered, unable to think of anything else to say.
“He said ‘there are things worth fighting for,’” the little girl recited. “He told me you’d know what he meant.”
And then, in a tiny whisper, she said, “But I hope you’re not fighting about that hat. It’s ugly.”
Victoria began to cry again.
“No,” she said. “It’s not about the hat.”
She gazed down at the girl, at her beautiful big eyes and innocent smile. She loved children. They were hope and happiness all rolled into one, and Shamus knew just how to get her going
again. It was just like him to worry about her, to make sure she didn’t get locked into self pity.
She knelt down and took the child’s face in her hands. The girl’s skin was warm. Victoria kissed her on both cheeks and then once on her forehead. “Thank you.”
The girl giggled and then skipped away into the crowd. Victoria watched her go, a brightening emerald glow enfolding her small body. She ran up to a heavy woman and wrapped her little arms around one thick pillar of a leg. The green film slithered from the girl’s fingers, covering the older woman—who in turn spread it to yet another woman and two men who stood nearby. The Vector fanned out from there, sprouting a forest of shimmering bodies in tints of green ranging from olive, to jade, to lime and shades she couldn’t put names to.
Victoria smiled and wiped one last tear from her eyes. It wouldn’t be the same, not now. She wasn’t the naïve girl who had danced into the public concourse that morning. She was a Vector, and now she’d have to learn what that really meant. She’d have to find the documents Shamus mentioned. With those she could choose a side, make a decision. There was a lot to do. She needed to organize, but most of all she needed to learn. If she was going to change the world, she couldn’t simply stand by and protest anymore.
She looked down at the fedora in her hands and almost put it on. No, she thought, she’d do it her own way.
The Sundial
written by
John Arkwright
illustrated by
IRVIN RODRIGUEZ
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Arkwright’s mother paid for his birth by digging potatoes during the final stages of her pregnancy. His father was in a body cast due to a train wreck. Mom recited “The Raven” to put John to sleep at night. The soles of his feet were thick and hard from going barefoot for eight months per year; his back was tanned from going shirtless. John loved tic-tac-toe and checkers, which his grandfather, Cricket, taught him. Later he enjoyed chess and impromptu wrestling at his country school.
Poe continued to thrill John with “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” but in his teens and twenties John found Asimov, Tolkien, Orson Scott Card and William Gibson. John met Julia at a Dungeons & Dragons game in college and they married about the time he earned his first degree. Later, he earned a doctorate in economics from the University of South Carolina with a dissertation on terrorist bargaining. John and Julia now live in a small southern mountain town with their three sons.
John works hard to show his students how they can use rational decision making to enrich their lives. Julia works hard to raise three sons and an aggravating husband. John writes when he can, his imagination fueled by his rediscovery of Mark Twain and his belated discoveries of George R. R. Martin and Elmore Leonard.
Julia, the world’s most voracious reader, edits his work. His creative writing professor, B. J. Robinson, and his writing friend, the computer goddess, Barbara Seaton, form their Gang of Three writing group. They have taught him well. Stonepile Writers, located at his university, also nourishes his craft and creativity.
John’s mother is now deceased. His hero is his father, Scotty.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Irvin Rodriguez is also the illustrator for “The Truth, from a Lie of Convenience” in this volume. For more about him, please see page 66.
The Sundial
The moon looked up at Hept from the water of the washtub. “Bess, do not put those sheets in yet,” she said.
A thin breeze set the glowing surface aquiver. Bess said, “Miss Hept, what you see in the water?”
“A man is on my property, Bess. He bleeds. He aims for the old stables behind the trees.”
Bess dropped the woven basket of clothes. “Is he a outlaw? A soldier man? Is he running to or running from?”
Hept frowned. “He is running from. Another man, one of Mosby’s cavalry, just crossed the fence line at the lower forty, by the creek. I am going into the house to gather my bag and my shotgun. You hide inside.”
The whites of Bess’ eyes shone. “Don’t you go out there with them men, Miss Hept. We both hide inside, up high in you room where you can pick ’em off with you rifle if they comes close.”
“Obey me, Bess.”
Inside, Hept took her leather satchel and the Lenderhaux shotgun from the chifferobe and waited for Bess to situate her thin black body inside, butcher knife in hand.
Outside, Hept knelt at the tub and stared into the reflection of the moon. One man lay in the abandoned stable while the other followed the trail the first had left in the expansive hayfield. She murmured a prayer to Thoth and aimed her steps for the stables, past her stone sundial, an obelisk spire as tall as Hept, but useless in the dark.
At the tree line, Hept took a pinch of the powdered blind rat eye out of her satchel, blew it into the air and walked through the cloud, whispering in the old tongue. The men would not see her now unless she walked through a moonbeam.
Down the hill, no one moved outside the stable. The mossy door was ajar; the frame bore fresh knife scars. The man inside had exposed wood that had never seen this world before and had now dried up, with nary a drop of sap. “Nary,” she thought. Bess would have said it that way. Hept was becoming comfortable with the language of this time and place.
She smelled the blood of only one man. She crept inside, quiet as a snake, lifetimes of practice, feet inching their way, avoiding dapples of moonlight shining between boards, through knotholes and through cracks in the shutter of the hayloft window.
The man was in the last set of stalls, sitting back against the wall. She slunk to the opposite stall and crouched, the steel of the shotgun comforting her as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
He had removed his shirt and held it against his upper chest, nearly under his arm. Only a fold of the cloth was not soaked black. She did not see a gun—perhaps that was a knife beside him. He might live, if the other man did not kill him. But, no, he was too weakened to prevail.
The bleeding man whispered to no one, “I’m sorry I didn’t finish bricking the footpath. It was your birthday present. I saved money for half a year and worked for three days. I probably had another two days to go. I wanted you to be able to walk from the carriage house to the back door without getting mud on your skirts.” He took a shuddering breath. “I would have finished, but I was due at the regiment and they came for me. I couldn’t linger until you got back. I wanted to see you on your birthday. I don’t mean to complain. I just want to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ And ‘I’ll miss you.’”
Hept blinked. Few men were worthy of women. Most of them were not worth the effort that it took to pour boiling oil in their ears—to say nothing of the value of oil.
She winded the other man—Mosby’s raider. She wanted to talk to this man—this creator of pathways—who truly loved his wife. The creator of pathways coughed. His throat was surely dry from loss of blood.
Mosby’s man called, “Come on out, Yank. I’m not gonna shoot you—just take you into custody. Walk out slow now, so I don’t get jumpy and shoot you by accident.”
“Liar,” the bleeding man breathed. His left hand went to the knife. He was left-handed. He was bad luck. He struggled to his knees.
“Easy, Yank. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.” Mosby’s man sidled through the door.
The bleeding man crouched on one knee.
Mosby’s man crept onward. Hept wanted to warn the bleeding man that he was breathing so hard that he could be heard—that before he could spring with the knife, Mosby’s man would hear him and shoot him dead. It was not fair, but it was the way of things. She was torn inside. But her mind was her master. She would not interfere.
The breathing turned to panting.
The hammer clicked back. Mosby’s man’s gun wavered, aimed in her direction. The panting—it had been her own!
The Creator of Paths sprang at Mosby’s man from behind.
The revolver thundered. The muzzle flash blinded her. The ball slammed into her forehead. Bone shattered. Flesh tore. Blackness enveloped her.
Way down yonder, down in the meadow,
There’s a poor wee sweet little lamby.
With the bees and the butterflies peckin’ out its eyes,
The little thing cried for her mammy.
Hept’s black world spun.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry.
Go to sleep . . .
She reached to lay hold of something in the nothingness, guided only by Bess’ song.
“Miss Hept!” Bess cried. “I thought you was dead!”
Hept tried to speak. “B . . .”
“Praise the Lord! You gonna be all right. I’m gonna set you up now. Gonna set you up nice.” Scorching fingers gripped Hept’s upraised hands. She struggled, but the hot iron fingers clamped tight.
Hept tried to tell Bess to let go. “F . . .”
Bess braced one arm behind Hept’s back and pulled her upright.
“F . . . fire . . . stop.”
When Bess released her, Hept sank back onto softness. She pulled her seared fingers to her breast and looked around in the dark.
“That’s all better, Miss Hept. Let’s give you some water. Good Lord, I done some crying about you.”
“Dark. I am blind.”
Bess said, “You not blind. I stuck liberty dimes to you eyes with sweet gum because I thought you give up the ghost. My, you are cold as a stone. I get you warmed up and you be just fine.”
Bess removed the dimes, washed Hept’s eyes and hurried into the house. Hept could see. She lay on a blanket on the porch.
Bess brought teacakes and cold coffee, then knelt beside Hept to assist her. Hept lifted a teacake with trembling fingers and tasted. “Too sweet, Bess.”
Writers of the Future Volume 27: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 39
