Science Fiction: The Best of 2001

by Robert Silverberg

  “No, sir, it is not. Possession of a working modem is a mortal crime. This device is harmless. Ask your savant.”

  “Well?” the big man growled at his dwarf. “Is it functional?”

  “No. It—”

  “Silence.” Lord Coherence-Hamilton turned back to Surplus. “You are a fortunate cur. You will not be charged with any crimes. However, while you are here; I will keep this filthy device locked away and under my control. Is that understood, Sir Bow-Wow?”

  Surplus sighed. “Very well,” he said. “It is only for a week, after all.”

  That night, the Lady Pamela Coherence-Hamilton came by Surplus’s room to apologize for the indignity of his arrest, of which, she assured him, she had just now learned. He invited her in. In short order they somehow found themselves kneeling face-to-face on the bed, unbuttoning each other’s clothing.

  Lady Pamela’s breasts had just spilled delightfully from her dress when she drew back, clutching the bodice closed again, and said, “Your man is watching us.”

  “And what concern is that to us?” Surplus said jovially. “The poor fellow’s an autistic. Nothing he sees or hears matters to him. You might as well be embarrassed by the presence of a chair.”

  “Even were he a wooden carving, I would his eyes were not on me.”

  “As you wish.” Surplus clapped his paws. “Sirrah! Turn around.”

  Obediently, Darger turned his back. This was his first experience with his friend’s astonishing success with women. How many sexual adventuresses, he wondered, might one tumble, if one’s form were unique? On reflection, the question answered itself.

  Behind him, he heard the Lady Pamela giggle. Then, in a voice low with passion, Surplus said, “No, leave the diamonds on.”

  With a silent sigh, Darger resigned himself to a long night. Since he was bored and yet could not turn to watch the pair cavorting on the bed without giving himself away, he was perforce required to settle for watching them in the mirror.

  They began, of course, by doing it doggy-style.

  The next day, Surplus fell sick. Hearing of his indisposition, Lady Pamela sent one of her autistics with a bowl of broth and then followed herself in a surgical mask.

  Surplus smiled weakly to see her. “You have no need of that mask,” he said. “By my life, I swear that what ails me is not communicable. As you doubtless know, we who have been remade are prone to endocrinological imbalance.”

  “Is that all?” Lady Pamela spooned some broth into his mouth, then dabbed at a speck of it with a napkin. “Then fix it. You have been very wicked to frighten me over such a trifle.”

  “Alas,” Surplus said sadly, “I am a unique creation, and my table of endocrine balances was lost in an accident at sea. There are copies in Vermont, of course. But by the time even the swiftest schooner can cross the Atlantic twice, I fear me I shall be gone.”

  “Oh, dearest Surplus!” The Lady caught up his paws in her hands. “Surely there is some measure, however desperate, to be taken?”

  “Well . . . ” Surplus turned to the wall in thought. After a very long time, he turned back and said, “I have a confession to make. The modem your brother holds for me? It is functional.”

  “Sir!” Lady Pamela stood, gathering her skirts, and stepped away from the bed in horror. “Surely not!”

  “My darling and delight, you must listen to me.” Surplus glanced weakly toward the door, then lowered his voice. “Come close and I shall whisper.”

  She obeyed.

  “In the waning days of Utopia, during the war between men and their electronic creations, scientists and engineers bent their efforts toward the creation of a modem that could be safely employed by humans. One immune from the attack of demons. One that could, indeed, compel their obedience. Perhaps you have heard of this project.”

  “There are rumors, but . . . no such device was ever built.”

  “Say rather that no such device was built in time. It had just barely been perfected when the mobs came rampaging through the laboratories, and the Age of the Machine was over. Some few, however, were hidden away before the last technicians were killed. Centuries later, brave researchers at the Technarchaeological Institute of Shelburne recovered six such devices and mastered the art of their use. One device was destroyed in the process. Two are kept in Burlington. The others were given to trusted couriers and sent to the three most powerful allies of the Demesne—one of which is, of course, Russia.”

  “This is hard to believe,” Lady Pamela said wonderingly. “Can such marvels be?”

  “Madame, I employed it two nights ago in this very room! Those voices your brother heard? I was speaking with my principals in Vermont. They gave me permission to extend my stay here to a fortnight.”

  He gazed imploringly at her. “If you were to bring me the device, I could then employ it to save my life.”

  Lady Coherence-Hamilton resolutely stood. “Fear nothing, then. I swear by my soul, the modem shall be yours tonight.”

  * * *

  The room was lit by a single lamp that cast wild shadows whenever anyone moved, as if of illicit spirits at a witch’s Sabbath.

  It was an eerie sight. Darger, motionless, held the modem in his hands. Lady Pamela, who had a sense of occasion, had changed to a low-cut gown of clinging silks, dark-red as human blood. It swirled about her as she hunted through the wainscoting for a jack left unused for centuries. Surplus sat up weakly in bed, eyes half-closed, directing her. It might have been, Darger thought, an allegorical tableau of the human body being directed by its sick animal passions, while the intellect stood by, paralyzed by lack of will.

  “There!” Lady Pamela triumphantly straightened, her necklace scattering tiny rainbows in the dim light.

  Darger stiffened. He stood perfectly still for the length of three long breaths, then shook and shivered like one undergoing seizure. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  In hollow, unworldly tones, he said, “What man calls me up from the vasty deep?” It was a voice totally unlike his own, one harsh and savage and eager for unholy sport. “Who dares risk my wrath?”

  “You must convey my words to the autistic’s ears,” Surplus murmured. “For he is become an integral part of the modem—not merely its operator, but its voice.”

  “I stand ready,” Lady Pamela replied.

  “Good girl. Tell it who I am.”

  “It is Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux who speaks, and who wishes to talk to . . .” She paused.

  “To his most august and socialist honor, the mayor of Burlington.”

  “His most august and socialist honor,” Lady Pamela began. She turned toward the bed and said quizzically, “The mayor of Burlington?”

  “ ’Tis but an official title, much like your brother’s, for he who is in fact the spy-master for the Demesne of Western Vermont,” Surplus said weakly. “Now repeat to it: I compel thee on threat of dissolution to carry my message. Use those exact words.”

  Lady Pamela repeated the words into Darger’s ear.

  He screamed. It was a wild and unholy sound that sent the Lady skittering away from him in a momentary panic. Then, in mid-cry, he ceased.

  “Who is this?” Darger said in an entirely new voice, this one human. “You have the voice of a woman. Is one of my agents in trouble?”

  “Speak to him now, as you would to any man: forth-rightly, directly, and without evasion.” Surplus sank his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

  So (as it seemed to her) the Lady Coherence-Hamilton explained Surplus’ plight to his distant master, and from him received both condolences and the needed information to return Surplus’s endocrine levels to a functioning harmony. After proper courtesies, then, she thanked the American spy-master and unjacked the modem. Darger returned to passivity.

  The leather-cased endocrine kit lay open on a small table by the bed. At Lady Pamela’s direction, Darger began applying the proper patches to various places on Surplus’s body. It was not long before
Surplus opened his eyes.

  “Am I to be well?” he asked and, when the Lady nodded, “Then I fear I must be gone in the morning. Your brother has spies everywhere. If he gets the least whiff of what this device can do, he’ll want it for himself.”

  Smiling, Lady Pamela hoisted the box in her hand. “Indeed, who can blame him? With such a toy, great things could be accomplished.”

  “So he will assuredly think. I pray you, return it to me.”

  She did not. “This is more than just a communication device, sir,” she said. “Though in that mode it is of incalculable value. You have shown that it can enforce obedience on the creatures that dwell in the forgotten nerves of the ancient world. Ergo, they can be compelled to do our calculations for us.”

  “Indeed, so our technarchaeologists tell us. You must . . . .”

  “We have created monstrosities to perform the duties that were once done by machines. But with this, there would be no necessity to do so. We have allowed ourselves to be ruled by an icosahexadexal-brained freak. Now we have no need for Gloriana the Gross, Gloriana the Fat and Grotesque, Gloriana the Maggot Queen!”

  “Madame!”

  “It is time, I believe, that England had a new queen. A human queen.”

  “Think of my honor!”

  Lady Pamela paused in the doorway. “You are a very pretty fellow indeed. But with this, I can have the monarchy and keep such a harem as will reduce your memory to that of a passing and trivial fancy.”

  With a rustle of skirts, she spun away.

  “Then I am undone!” Surplus cried, and fainted onto the bed.

  Quietly, Darger closed the door. Surplus raised himself from the pillows, began removing the patches from his body, and said, “Now what?”

  “Now we get some sleep,” Darger said. “Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

  The master of apes came for them after breakfast, and marched them to their usual destination. By now, Darger was beginning to lose track of exactly how many times he had been in the Office of Protocol. They entered to find Lord Coherence-Hamilton in a towering rage, and his sister, calm and knowing, standing in a corner with her arms crossed, watching. Looking at them both now, Darger wondered how he could ever have imagined that the brother outranked his sister.

  The modem lay opened on the dwarf-savant’s desk. The little fellow leaned over the device, studying it minutely.

  Nobody said anything until the master of apes and his baboons had left. Then Lord Coherence-Hamilton roared, “Your modem refuses to work for us!”

  “As I told you, sir,” Surplus said coolly, “it is inoperative.”

  “That’s a bold-arsed fraud and a goat-buggering lie!” In his wrath, the Lord’s chair rose up on its spindly legs so high that his head almost bumped against the ceiling. “I know of your activities—” he nodded toward his sister—“and demand that you show us how this whoreson device works!”

  “Never!” Surplus cried stoutly. “I have my my honor, sir.”

  “Your honor, too scrupulously insisted upon, may well lead to your death, sir.”

  Surplus threw back his head. “Then I die for Vermont!”

  At this moment of impasse, Lady Hamilton stepped forward between the two antagonists to restore peace. “I know what might change your mind.” With a knowing smile, she raised a hand to her throat and denuded herself of her diamonds. “I saw how you rubbed them against your face the other night. How you licked and fondled them. How ecstatically you took them into your mouth.”

  She closed his paws about them. “They are yours, sweet ’Sieur Precieux, for a word.”

  “You would give them up?” Surplus said, as if amazed at the very idea. In fact, the necklace had been his and Darger’s target from the moment they’d seen it. The only barrier that now stood between them and the merchants of Amsterdam was the problem of freeing themselves from the Labyrinth before their marks finally realized that the modem was indeed a cheat. And to this end they had the invaluable tool of a thinking man whom all believed to be an autistic, and a plan that would give them almost twenty hours in which to escape.

  “Only think, dear Surplus.” Lady Pamela stroked his head and then scratched him behind one ear, while he stared down at the precious stones. “Imagine the life of wealth and ease you could lead, the women, the power. It all lies in your hands. All you need do is close them.”

  Surplus took a deep breath. “Very well,” he said. “The secret lies in the condenser, which takes a full day to re-charge. Wait but—”

  “Here’s the problem,” the savant said unexpectedly. He poked at the interior of the modem. “There was a wire loose.”

  He jacked the device into the wall.

  “Oh, dear God,” Darger said.

  A savage look of raw delight filled the dwarf savant’s face, and he seemed to swell before them.

  “I am free!” he cried in a voice so loud it seemed impossible that it could arise from such a slight source. He shook as if an enormous electrical current were surging through him. The stench of ozone filled the room.

  He burst into flames and advanced on the English spy-master and her brother.

  While all stood aghast and paralyzed, Darger seized Surplus by the collar and hauled him out into the hallway, slamming the door shut as he did.

  They had not run twenty paces down the hall when the door to the Office of Protocol exploded outward, sending flaming splinters of wood down the hallway.

  Satanic laughter boomed behind them.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Darger saw the burning dwarf, now blackened to a cinder, emerge from a room engulfed in flames, capering and dancing. The modem, though disconnected, was now tucked under one arm, as if it were exceedingly valuable to him. His eyes were round and white and lidless. Seeing them, he gave chase.

  “Aubrey!” Surplus cried. “We are headed the wrong way!”

  It was true. They were running deeper into the Labyrinth, toward its heart, rather than outward. But it was impossible to turn back now. They plunged through scattering crowds of nobles and servitors, trailing fire and supernatural terror in their wake.

  The scampering grotesque set fire to the carpets with every footfall. A wave of flame tracked him down the hall, incinerating tapestries and wallpaper and wood trim. No matter how they dodged, it ran straight toward them. Clearly, in the programmatic literalness of its kind, the demon from the web had determined that having early seen them, it must early kill them as well.

  Darger and Surplus raced through dining rooms and salons, along balconies and down servants’ passages. To no avail. Dogged by their hyper-natural nemesis, they found themselves running down a passage, straight toward two massive bronze doors, one of which had been left just barely ajar. So fearful were they that they hardly noticed the guards.

  “Hold, sirs!”

  The mustachioed master of apes stood before the doorway, his baboons straining against their leashes. His eyes widened with recognition. “By gad, it’s you!” he cried in astonishment.

  “Lemme kill ’em!” one of the baboons cried. “The lousy bastards!” The others growled agreement.

  Surplus would have tried to reason with them, but when he started to slow his pace, Darger put a broad hand on his back and shoved. “Dive!” he commanded. So of necessity the dog of rationality had to bow to the man of action. He tobogganed wildly across the polished marble floor between two baboons, straight at the master of apes, and then between his legs.

  The man stumbled, dropping the leashes as he did.

  The baboons screamed and attacked.

  For an instant, all five apes were upon Darger, seizing his limbs, snapping at his face and neck. Then the burning dwarf arrived, and, finding his target obstructed, seized the nearest baboon. The animal shrieked as its uniform burst into flames.

  As one, the other baboons abandoned their original quarry to fight this newcomer who had dared attack one of their own.

  In a trice, Darger leaped over the fallen master of apes, and
was through the door. He and Surplus threw their shoulders against its metal surface and pushed. He had one brief glimpse of the fight, with the baboons aflame, and their master’s body flying through the air. Then the door slammed shut. Internal bars and bolts, operated by smoothly oiled mechanisms, automatically latched themselves.

  For the moment, they were safe.

  Surplus slumped against the smooth bronze, and wearily asked, “Where did you get that modem?”

  “From a dealer of antiquities.” Darger wiped his brow with his kerchief. “It was transparently worthless. Whoever would dream it could be repaired?”

  Outside, the screaming ceased. There was a very brief silence. Then the creature flung itself against one of the metal doors. It rang with the impact.

  A delicate girlish voice wearily said, “What is this noise?”

  They turned in surprise and found themselves looking up at the enormous corpus of Queen Gloriana. She lay upon her pallet, swaddled in satin and lace, and abandoned by all, save her valiant (though doomed) guardian apes. A pervasive yeasty smell emanated from her flesh. Within the tremendous folds of chins by the dozens and scores was a small human face. Its mouth moved delicately and asked, “What is trying to get in?”

  The door rang again. One of its great hinges gave.

  Darger bowed. “I fear, madame, it is your death.”

  “Indeed?” Blue eyes opened wide and, unexpectedly, Gloriana laughed. “If so, that is excellent good news. I have been praying for death an extremely long time.”

  “Can any of God’s creations truly pray for death and mean it?” asked Darger, who had his philosophical side. “I have known unhappiness myself, yet even so life is precious to me.”

  “Look at me!” Far up to one side of the body, a tiny arm—though truly no tinier than any woman’s arm—waved feebly. “I am not God’s creation, but Man’s. Who would trade ten minutes of their own life for a century of mine? Who, having mine, would not trade it all for death?”

  A second hinge popped. The doors began to shiver. Their metal surfaces radiated heat.