The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  The Hemingway stared down at her frontal aspect. “Sometimes I wish I were human,” it said. “Your pleasures are intense. Simple, but intense.” It moved toward her with the cane.

  John stood up. “If you kill her—”

  “Oh?” It cocked an eyebrow at him. “What will you do?”

  John took one step toward it and it waved the cane. A waist-high brick wall surmounted by needle-sharp spikes appeared between them. It gestured again and an impossible moat appeared, deep enough to reach down well into Julio’s living room. It filled with water and a large crocodile surfaced and rested its chin on the parquet floor, staring at John. It yawned teeth.

  The Hemingway held up its cane. “The white end. It doesn’t kill, remember?” The wall and moat disappeared and the cane touched Pansy lightly below the navel. She twitched minutely but continued to sleep. “She’ll have a headache,” it said. “And she’ll be somewhat confused by the uncommunicatable memory of having seen me. But that will all fade, compared to the sudden tragedy of having her new lover die here, just sitting waiting for his breakfast.”

  “Do you enjoy this?”

  “I love my work. It’s all I have.” It walked toward him, footfalls splashing as it crossed where the moat had been. “You have not personally helped, though. Not at all.”

  It sat down across from him and poured coffee into a mug that said ON THE SIXTH DAY GOD CREATED MAN—SHE MUST HAVE HAD PMS.

  “When you kill me this time, do you think it will ‘take’?”

  “I don’t know. It’s never failed before.” The toaster made a noise. “Toast?”

  “Sure.” Two pieces appeared on his plate; two on the Hemingway’s. “Usually when you kill people they stay dead?”

  “I don’t kill that many people.” It spread margarine on its toast; gestured, and marmalade appeared. “But when I do, yeah. They die all up and down the Omniverse, every timespace. All except you.” He pointed toast at John’s toast. “Go ahead. It’s not poison.”

  “Not my idea of a last meal.”

  The Hemingway shrugged. “What would you like?”

  “Forget it.” He buttered the toast and piled marmalade on it, determined out of some odd impulse to act as if nothing unusual were happening. Breakfast with Hemingway, big deal.

  He studied the apparition and noticed that it was somewhat translucent, almost like a traditional TV ghost. He could barely see a line that was the back of the chair, bisecting its chest below shoulderblade level. Was this something new? There hadn’t been too much light in the train; maybe he had just failed to notice it before.

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  He didn’t say anything about seeing through it. “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’re not supposed to kill me? That’s why I came back?”

  The Hemingway chuckled and admired its nails. “That’s a nearly content-free assertion.”

  “Oh really.” He bit into the toast. The marmalade was strong, pleasantly bitter.

  “It presupposes a higher authority, unknown to me, that’s watching over my behavior, and correcting me when I do wrong. Doesn’t exist, sorry.”

  “That’s the oldest one in the theologian’s book.” He set down the toast and kneaded his stomach; shouldn’t eat something so strong first thing in the morning. “You can only assert the nonexistence of something; you can’t prove it.”

  “What you mean is you can’t.” He held up the cane and looked at it. “The simplest explanation is that there’s something wrong with the cane. There’s no way I can test it; if I kill the wrong person there’s hell to pay up and down the Omniverse. But what I can do is kill you without the cane. See whether you come back again, some timespace.”

  Sharp, stabbing pains in his stomach now. “Bastard.” Heart pounding slow and hard: shirt rustled in time to its spasms.

  “Cyanide in the marmalade. Gives it a certain frisson, don’t you think?”

  He couldn’t breathe. His heart pounded once, and stopped. Vicious pain in his left arm, then paralysis. From an inch away, he could just see the weave of the white tablecloth. It turned red and then black.

  18. The Sun Also Rises

  From blackness to brilliance: the morning sun pouring through the window at a flat angle. He screwed up his face and blinked.

  Suddenly smothered in terrycloth, between soft breasts. “John, John.”

  He put his elbow down to support himself, uncomfortable on the parquet floor, and looked up at Pansy. Her face was wet with tears. He cleared his throat. “What happened?”

  “You, you started putting on your foot and … you just fell over. I thought.…”

  John looked down over his body, hard ropy muscle and deep tan under white body hair, the puckered bullet wound a little higher on the abdomen. Left leg ended in a stump just above the ankle.

  Trying not to faint. His third past flooding back. Walking down a dirt road near Kontum, the sudden loud bang of the mine and he pitched forward, unbelievable pain, rolled over and saw his bloody boot yards away; grey, jagged shinbone sticking through the bloody smoking rag of his pants leg, bright crimson splashing on the dry dust, loud in the shocked silence; another bloodstain spreading between his legs, the deep mortal pain there—and he started to buck and scream and two men held him while the medic took off his belt and made a tourniquet and popped morphine through the cloth and unbuttoned his fly and slowly worked his pants down: penis torn by shrapnel, scrotum ripped open in a bright red flap of skin, bloody grey-blue egg of a testicle separating, rolling out. He fainted, then and now.

  And woke up with her lips against his, her breath sweet in his lungs, his nostrils pinched painfully tight. He made a strangled noise and clutched her breast.

  She cradled his head, panting, smiling through tears, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “Will you stop fainting now?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry.” Her lips were trembling. He put a finger on them. “Just a longer night than I’m accustomed to. An overdose of happiness.”

  The happiest night of his life, maybe of three lives. Like coming back from the dead.

  “Should I call a doctor?”

  “No. I faint every now and then.” Usually at the gym, from pushing too hard. He slipped his hand inside the terrycloth and covered her breast. “It’s been … do you know how long it’s been since I … did it? I mean … three times in one night?”

  “About six hours.” She smiled. “And you can say ‘fuck.’ I’m no schoolgirl.”

  “I’ll say.” The night had been an escalating progression of intimacies, gymnastics, accessories. “Had to wonder where a sweet girl like you learned all that.”

  She looked away, lips pursed, thoughtful. With a light fingertip she stroked the length of his penis and smiled when it started to uncurl. “At work.”

  “What?”

  “I was a prostitute. That’s where I learned the tricks. Practice makes perfect.”

  “Prostitute. Wow.”

  “Are you shocked? Outraged?”

  “Just surprised.” That was true. He respected the sorority and was grateful to it for having made Vietnam almost tolerable, an hour or so at a time. “But now you’ve got to do something really mean. I could never love a prostitute with a heart of gold.”

  “I’ll give it some thought.” She shifted. “Think you can stand up?”

  “Sure.” She stood and gave him her hand. He touched it but didn’t pull; rose in a smooth practiced motion, then took one hop and sat down at the small table. He started strapping on his foot.

  “I’ve read about those new ones,” she said, “the permanent kind.”

  “Yeah; I’ve read about them, too. Computer interface, graft your nerves onto sensors.” He shuddered. “No, thanks. No more surgery.”

  “Not worth it for the convenience?”

  “Being able to wiggle my toes, have my foot itch? No. Besides, the VA won’t pay for it.” That startled John as he said it: here, he hadn’t grown up rich. His father had spent
all the mill money on a photocopy firm six months before Xerox came on the market. “You say you ‘were’ a prostitute. Not any more?”

  “No, that was the truth about teaching. Let’s start this egg thing over.” She picked up the bowl she had dropped in the other universe. “I gave up whoring about seven years ago.” She picked up an egg, looked at it, set it down. She half-turned and stared out the kitchen window. “I can’t do this to you.”

  “You … can’t do what?”

  “Oh, lie. Keep lying.” She went to the refrigerator. “Want a beer?”

  “Lying? No, no thanks. What lying?”

  She opened a beer, still not looking at him. “I like you, John. I really like you. But I didn’t just … spontaneously fall into your arms.” She took a healthy swig and started pouring some of the bottle into a glass.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She walked back, concentrating on pouring the beer, then sat down gracelessly. She took a deep breath and let it out, staring at his chest. “Castle put me up to it.”

  “Castle?”

  She nodded. “Sylvester Castlemaine, boy wonder.”

  John sat back stunned. “But you said you don’t do that anymore,” he said without too much logic. “Do it for money.”

  “Not for money,” she said in a flat, hurt voice.

  “I should’ve known. A woman like you wouldn’t want.…” He made a gesture that dismissed his body from the waist down.

  “You do all right. Don’t feel sorry for yourself.” Her face showed a pinch of regret for that, but she plowed on. “If it were just the obligation, once would have been enough. I wouldn’t have had to fuck and suck all night long to win you over.”

  “No,” he said, “that’s true. Just the first moment, when you undressed. That was enough.”

  “I owe Castle a big favor. A friend of mine was going to be prosecuted for involving a minor in prostitution. It was a set-up, pure and simple.”

  “She worked for the same outfit you did?”

  “Yeah, but this was free-lance. I think it was the escort service that set her up, sort of delivered her and the man in return for this or that.”

  She sipped at the beer. “Guy wanted a three-way. My friend had met this girl a couple of days before at the bar where she worked part-time … she looked old enough; said she was in the biz.”

  “She was neither?”

  “God knows. Maybe she got caught as a juvie and made a deal. Anyhow, he’d just slipped it to her and suddenly cops comin’ in the windows. Threw the book at him. ‘Two inches, twenty years,’ my friend said. He was a county commissioner somewhere, with enemies. Almost dragged my friend down with him. I’m sorry.” Her voice was angry.

  “Don’t be.” John said, almost a whisper. “It’s understandable. Whatever happens, I’ve got last night.”

  She nodded. “So two of the cops who were going to testify got busted for possession, cocaine. The word came down and everybody remembered the woman was somebody else.”

  “So what did Castle want you to do? With me?”

  “Oh, whatever comes natural—or un-natural, if that’s what you wanted. And later be doing it at a certain time and place, where we’d be caught in the act.”

  “By Castle?”

  “And his trusty little VCR. Then I guess he’d threaten to show it to your wife, or the university.”

  “I wonder. Lena … she knows I’ve had other women.”

  “But not lately.”

  “No. Not for years.”

  “It might be different now. She might be starting to feel, well, insecure.”

  “Any woman who looked at you would feel insecure.”

  She shrugged. “That could be part of it. Could it cost you your job, too?”

  “I don’t see how. It would be awkward, but it’s not as if you were one of my students—and even that happens, without costing the guy his job.” He laughed. “Poor old Larry. He had a student kiss and tell, and had to run the Speakers’ Committee for four or five years. Got allergic to wine and cheese. But he made tenure.”

  “So what is it?” She leaned forward. “Are you an addict or something?”

  “Addict?”

  “I mean how come you even know Castle? He didn’t pick your name out of a phone book and have me come seduce you, just to see what would happen.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So? I confess, you confess.”

  John passed a hand over his face and pressed the other hand against his knee, bearing down to keep the foot from tapping. “You don’t want to be involved.”

  “What do you call last night, Spin the Bottle? I’m involved!”

  “Not the way I mean. It’s illegal.”

  “Oh golly. Not really.”

  “Let me think.” John picked up their dishes and limped back to the sink. He set them down there and fiddled with the straps and pad that connected the foot to his stump, then poured himself a cup of coffee and came back, not limping.

  He sat down slowly and blew across the coffee. “What it is, is that Castle thinks there’s a scam going on. He’s wrong. I’ve taken steps to ensure that it couldn’t work.” His foot tapped twice.

  “You think. You hope.”

  “No. I’m sure. Anyhow, I’m stringing Castle along because I need his expertise in a certain matter.”

  “‘A certain matter,’ yeah. Sounds wholesome.”

  “Actually, that part’s not illegal.”

  “So tell me about it.”

  “Nope. Still might backfire.”

  She snorted. “You know what might backfire. Fucking with Castle.”

  “I can take care of him.”

  “You don’t know. He may be more dangerous than you think he is.”

  “He talks a lot.”

  “You men.” She took a drink and poured the rest of the bottle into the glass. “Look, I was at a party with him, couple of years ago. He was drunk, got into a little coke, started babbling.”

  “In vino veritas?”

  “Yeah, and Coke is It. But he said he’d killed three people, strangers, just to see what it felt like. He liked it. I more than halfway believe him.”

  John looked at her silently for a moment, sorting out his new memories of Castle. “Well … he’s got a mean streak. I don’t know about murder. Certainly not over this thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll have to trust me. It’s not because of Castle that I can’t tell you.” He remembered her one universe ago, lying helpless while the Hemingway lowered its cane onto her nakedness. “Trust me?”

  She studied the top of the glass, running her finger around it. “Suppose I do. Then what?”

  “Business as usual. You didn’t tell me anything. Deliver me to Castle and his video camera; I’ll try to put on a good show.”

  “And when he confronts you with it?”

  “Depends on what he wants. He knows I don’t have much money.” John shrugged. “If it’s unreasonable, he can go ahead and show the tape to Lena. She can live with it.”

  “And your department head?”

  “He’d give me a medal.”

  19. in our time

  So it wasn’t the cane. He ate enough cyanide to kill a horse, but evidently only in one universe.

  You checked the next day in all the others?

  All 119. He’s still dead in the one where I killed him on the train—

  That’s encouraging.

  —but there’s no causal resonance in the others.

  Oh, but there is some resonance. He remembered you in the universe where you poisoned him. Maybe in all of them.

  That’s impossible.

  Once is impossible. Twice is a trend. A hundred and twenty means something is going on that we don’t understand.

  What I suggest—

  No. You can’t go back and kill them all one by one.

  If the wand had worked the first time, they’d all be dead anyhow. There’s no reason to think we’d ca
use more of an eddy by doing them one at a time.

  It’s not something to experiment with. As you well know.

  I don’t know how we’re going to solve it otherwise.

  Simple. Don’t kill him. Talk to him again. He may be getting frightened, if he remembers both times he died.

  Here’s an idea. What if someone else killed him?

  I don’t know. If you just hired someone—made him a direct agent of your will—it wouldn’t be any different from the cyanide. Maybe as a last resort. Talk to him again first.

  All right. I’ll try.

  20. Of Wounds and Other Causes

  Although John found it difficult to concentrate, trying not to think about Pansy, this was the best time he would have for the forseeable future to summon the Hemingway demon and try to do something about exorcising it. He didn’t want either of the women around if the damned thing went on a killing spree again. They might just do as he did, and slip over into another reality—as unpleasant as that was, it was at least living—but the Hemingway had said otherwise. There was no reason to suspect it was not the truth.

  Probably the best way to get the thing’s attention was to resume work on the Hemingway pastiche. He decided to rewrite the first page to warm up, typing it out in Hemingway’s style:

  ALONG WITH YOUTH

  1. Mitraigliatrice

  The dirt on the side of the trench was never dry in the morning. If Fever could find a dry newspaper he could put it between his chest and the dirt when he went out to lean on the side of the trench and wait for the light. First light was the best time. You might have luck and see a muzzle flash to aim at. But patience was better than luck. Wait to see a helmet or a head without a helmet.

  Fever looked at the enemy trench line through a rectangular box of wood that pushed through the trench wall at about ground level. The other end of the box was covered with a square of gauze the color of dirt. A man looking directly at it might see the muzzle flash when Fever fired through the box. But with luck, the flash would be the last thing he saw.

  Fever had fired through the gauze six times. He’d potted at least three Austrians. Now the gauze had a ragged hole in the center. One bullet had come in the other way, an accident, and chiseled a deep gouge in the floor of the wooden box. Fever knew that he would be able to see the splinters sticking up before he could see any detail at the enemy trench line.