The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  “Like hell.” He narrowed his eyes, as if I was small print on a contract. “Look, since you’re quite obviously not him, I’ll tell you why it matters to me. You see, nearly forty years ago, a kid looking exactly like you nearly killed me.”

  “Is that right.”

  He nodded. “Oh yes,” he said. “I’m a goldsmith, see, like my dad before me. There’d been a lot of break-ins, so Dad and I sat up with swords in case the thief tried it on at our place. Sure enough, he did. What’s more, the little bastard stuck a knife in me. I nearly died.”

  “Nearly,” I said.

  “Well, yes. I didn’t die, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here.” He paused. “Take after your father, do you?”

  Big shrug. “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Never met him. My mother only met him once. Strictly a cash transaction.”

  “Ah.” The fat man grinned. “Well, then, maybe that explains it,” he said. “No offense. After all, not your fault”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “Actually, I’ve always led an entirely blameless life, devoted to helping those less fortunate than myself.”

  “Of course you have,” the fat man said. “Anyway, it’s all a long time ago now, and no harm done, as it turned out.” He leaned forward and gave me what I guess he thought was a conspiratorial look. “In actual fact,” he said, “quite the reverse.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Damnedest thing,” he said. “I only found out about it many years later,” he went on. “Dad told me a few years before he passed away. Damnedest thing you ever heard, actually.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well.” He paused to sip his wine. “Like I told you, this thief—who may or may not have been your old man, that’s something we’ll never know, I guess—stabbed me. So, they called for the doctors, and they swabbed me out, made sure the wound was clean and all that. Anyhow, while they were prodding and poking about inside my gut with their bits of lambswool on tiny twigs, what did they find? I’ll tell you. A damned great tumor, is what. They’d have said it was totally inoperable, except that the thief’s knife had sliced right through it, cut it out neater than any surgeon could ever have done. And I healed up just fine. If that bugger hadn’t stabbed me, I’d have been dead in a month. Sure as I sit here. Now, isn’t that the weirdest thing you ever heard?”

  I looked at him for a very long time. “Actually, no,” I said. “But it does come quite close.”

  Of course I had to go back to the inn. She was sitting where I’d left her. I don’t think she’d moved at all.

  “Can you alter the past?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I don’t think I can. Why, do you want me to?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I sat down beside her on the bed. “Why me?” I asked.

  She gave me a blank stare. “I have absolutely no idea,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  I considered my reply. “I’ve just found out,” I said, “that I’ve led an entirely blameless life, devoted to helping those less fortunate than myself.” I grinned weakly. “It came as a surprise, believe me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  I explained. “So,” I concluded, “I’m not a murderer. I actually saved that man. True, I stole a lot of stuff when I was a student, but I always gave the money to other people, my friends, who reckoned they needed it desperately. Then we stole—actually, you did all the stealing, I was just there most of the time—we stole a lot of stuff, but that was just redistribution of wealth.”

  She looked at me. “Really.”

  I shrugged. “We haven’t got any of it any more, have we? No, we dumped it or gave it away or spent it; we took it off governments and rich people, and nearly all of it ended up in the hands of the poor. Well,” I amended, “the relatively poor. And yes, I prompted you to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, but the upshot was that the Ten were overthrown. I don’t know how many deaths Victorinus was responsible for when he established the Republic, but I expect it was a comparable number. And it’s not my fault that the bastards who’re in now are just as bad, might as well blame Victorinus for chucking out the kings. All my life,” I said, “I’ve benefited others, never myself. Now, isn’t that a curious thing?”

  She looked away. “It’s like she said,” she told me. “Intentions don’t matter, there’s just the thing itself.”

  “You believe that.”

  “I’m not that bothered, really. It’s men who think about stuff like that.” Then she looked at me. “I do things for love.”

  “Like your mother.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  I took a long, deep breath. “If I wanted to go away without you,” I said, “if that was what I really wanted, would you let me? For love,” I added. “Because you love me.”

  She shivered. “She told me I’d never lose anyone I loved, ever again.”

  “She lied,” I told her. “You lost me a very long time ago.”

  I didn’t leave. For one thing, I didn’t trust her to let me. How would I know if the flea in my hair wasn’t her, or the dog following me in the street, or the bird a thousand feet overhead? At least, while she was human, I knew where she was and had some idea of what she was up to. That’s the point. I’d never know, and everything I ever did could be her, guiding, manipulating. Wouldn’t put it past her to land me back in the condemned cell, just so she could get me out again. And I didn’t fancy the thought of what she might do to get me there. When you suddenly discover that you’re blameless and pure as the driven snow, it really cramps your style. Another reason for staying: after all, I had no resources and absolutely no way of earning a living, apart from theft, which no longer appealed to me. I had my own exalted example to live up to now, God help me.

  So, I stayed with her out of mere expediency. No, not really. Nothing had changed since I tried to kill myself—try? I succeeded—by throwing myself into the blades of the Kuvass City sawmill. The act, I would suggest, of a man who wanted to get rid of his life at all costs rather than make it a bit easier. On balance, I believe it was the apology that did it, those first words when I came round after being resurrected. I’m sorry.

  Over the next couple of days, I took stock. I thought a lot about love. I realized, I had no idea what the word stood for. I considered what I understood to be the standard definition, as set out in Saloninus’ Ethics: the state of mind in which the other person is more valuable to you than you are yourself. I tried applying it to her, and I wasn’t sure it fitted. She said she loved me, and happiness was never losing someone you love. By that criterion, the miser loves his gold to the point where he can’t bring himself to spend it, even when he’s freezing cold and the coal-scuttle’s empty. That’s not love. Tweak the definition: the state of mind in which the other person’s happiness is your paramount concern. Well, that would explain the apology, and thirty-odd years spent robbing provincial state treasuries, in the misguided belief that that was what I liked doing. Taken all in all, I felt she wasn’t terribly good at love, though that didn’t mean she didn’t love me. Sincere, but completely ineffectual. Nobody’s perfect.

  Still not a good enough definition. All right, then: love is the state of mind in which the other person is more valuable to you than you are yourself, and their happiness is your paramount concern. I couldn’t help feeling that that was a bit of a compromise, the sort of thing that gets hammered out in committee and passed by a slender majority after a lot of behind-the-scenes horse trading. Never mind. It would have to do.

  Now the hard part—to apply it to myself. It’d be reaching quite a lot to say I regarded her as more valuable than myself. Except that, since I’d done my best to reduce my body to mince in an attempt to frustrate all efforts at bringing me back to life, it seemed fair to assess my value to myself at nil, assuming negative values aren’t allowed. She meant more to me than naught, or minus one. As for the other part, well, I thought, why not? Thirty years of being together is no
trivial thing; good, bad or utterly miserable, it has substance, it exists, it can’t just be dissolved by a quick so-long-then and a turning of the back. I thought of some of the arranged marriages I’d observed over the years; they didn’t like each other much to start with, and things never got much better after that, but even so, better than being alone. No, bad model. The simple fact was, I hadn’t left her simply because she was unleavable. No matter where I ran to, how I disguised myself, she’d always be there with me. A bit like—Old saying: no matter where you go, you take yourself with you. One mind, one heart, one flesh.

  I thought: I’m stuck with her. Even death will not part us. If I devote my life to making her happy, maybe that will resolve the issue in some way, assuming it’s capable of any kind of resolution. Just listen to yourself, I thought, this is crazy. But—

  Indeed. But.

  Leave aside the motivations and it was true. I’d lived my life helping others, blameless, keeping nothing for myself, a man to all intents and appearances in love with the human race. Bad intentions and good outcomes, the mirror image of her life before we met. Perhaps love is something that has to be worked out cold, like sheet metal, beaten and persuaded into an acceptable shape by countless pecks of the hammer. It’s not bar stock, to be made white-hot in the fire, until it bends, flows, upsets, takes a perfect form, even picks up the marks on the hammer-head. It’s too thin for that, too flimsy and slight to heat red without burning. Or take the other obvious analogy. Wars start in furious, passionate anger, but peace is made slowly and painfully, one concession at a time, each party agreeing to give away things it wants to keep, to do things it doesn’t want to do, the objective being to reach an arrangement of which both parties can eventually, reluctantly say: I can live with that.

  And, when you aren’t allowed to die, I can live with that is the most you can hope for.

  “So,” she said. “What do you want to do now?”

  I sighed. “You haven’t been listening,” I said.

  “No, it’s fine, I heard you.” She was frowning. “It’s just—If you don’t like stealing stuff, what do you like?”

  That made me smile. “You know what,” I said. “It’s been so long, I really can’t remember. But you’re missing the point. And it’s really quite simple. I want to make you happy.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She took me to the top of Mount Carysion.

  It’s the highest point in the world, so they say. We used to believe the gods lived there, in vast golden mansions, shrouded in mist. As far as anyone knows, nobody’s ever been there—except her and me, of course. Somehow, I don’t think we count.

  I could scarcely breath. I thought I was having some kind of seizure, but she explained (as she conjured up a bubble all round us) that the air on mountaintops is too thin to be any use. All I could see was the tops of clouds. I didn’t say anything, but I guess she figured out what I was thinking from the look on my face. She mumbled something, the sun came out and the clouds melted away, and I could see the whole world.

  What does the whole world look like, when you’re so high up that you can see it all in one, as a single thing? Well, to me it looked like a patchwork quilt, of the sort you get in low-class houses. I associate such things with visiting retired servants and poor relations.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “That can all be yours,” she said. “If you want it.”

  I looked out over the kingdoms of the Earth. I could see the blue curve of Beloisa Bay, with the mountains behind; beyond them, Selvatia, the steppes of the Mesoge, the Dancing Floor sloping gently down into the Panosaic Sea. I could clearly make out the curved spine of the Avelro Peninsula, a little flash of light could easily have been the golden dome of the Archer Temple. I turned slowly round and searched until I saw the Needles, towering over Kuvass City. I could see everywhere I’d ever been, everywhere I could ever possibly go. “What would be the point?” I said.

  She sighed, and the clouds came swirling back. It was bitter cold. “I think I’d like to go back down now,” I said.

  “You told me once,” I said, “you actually met Saloninus once. Is that true?”

  She shrugged. “Yes.”

  “I think I’d like to meet him.”

  She gave me a long, weary look. “Do you really?”

  “Yes.”

  Sigh. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I had every confidence in her; rather more, I suspect, than she had. But, fair play to her, she figured out how to do it. To go back into the past, apparently, you have to fly round the world, west to east, faster than the arrows of the Invincible Sun. I don’t actually believe in the Invincible Sun, but luckily that didn’t seem to be a barrier. I was curious as to what we were going to fly in, but when the time came, she just muttered something and suddenly we were in mid-air. I closed my eyes and started screaming. It didn’t feel like we were moving at all. I’m ashamed to say I wet myself, something I hadn’t done for a very long time.

  She was yelling something. I couldn’t make out what it was. She yelled louder. It was “QUIET!”

  I opened my eyes. We were exactly where we’d been a moment ago. It hadn’t worked.

  “Well,” she said. “Here we are.”

  No we aren’t, I started to say, then it occurred to me that we were in Victorinus Square, which hasn’t changed much in four hundred years. The only significant difference is the Senate House, which got burned down and rebuilt. I looked for it. It had a flat roof, not a dome. Oh, I thought.

  “Getting here,” she was saying, “was the easy bit. Getting back could be awkward. We may have to go the long way round.”

  “What are we doing here?” I asked her. I’d forgotten.

  She looked at me. “You wanted to see Saloninus,” she said.

  Oh yes, so I did. I couldn’t for the life of me remember why. “Right,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

  We started to walk toward the prefecture. “Why are we going this way?” I asked.

  She smiled at me. “Because,” she said, “I can absolutely guarantee I know where to find him. Come on.”

  The prefecture. I tried to remember. Had there been a ceremony of some sort, the conferring of an honorary degree, investiture as a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe? But they did that sort of thing at the Palace or the Blue Spire. Four hundred years ago, as far as I could recall my history lessons, the prefecture was just the law courts.

  “This is fun,” I said. “Are we really going to meet Saloninus? He’s my absolute hero.” She was walking very fast. It was hard to talk and keep up with her at the same time. “I always think, if the God put the human race on trial and said show me one man whose life was perfect, or else I’ll send a flood and drown the whole lot of you, we wouldn’t need to worry, we’d just point to Saloninus and the God would be, like, sorry to have bothered you. He must’ve had the most amazing mind.”

  “This way,” she said.

  She led me down an alleyway. I knew it well. There was a tavern here I used to go to, frequented by gamblers and young political types. The back wall of the tavern garden was also the back wall of the old prison. When we got there, I realized the tavern hadn’t been built yet, and the prison was still the New Prison, and the walled-up doorway where they used to have a big copper for mulling wine in the winter hadn’t been walled up yet. There were two guards on duty in front of it. For some reason, they fell asleep.

  “Oh come on,” I said.

  “This way.”

  I think it was when Jarnicus was First Aedile, they knocked through all the internal walls in the Old Prison and turned it into this one enormous room for diplomatic receptions. I went there with my father, when I was about twelve. I remember meeting some old bald fat man who was someone important, though I can’t recall his name. Remarkable, the difference a few walls can make.

  Prisons, I have to tell you, are no treat to me. “I don’t like this,” I told her, �
�let’s go back now.” She didn’t seem to hear me. She was muttering directions under her breath—third left, second right, first right, third left. I’m hopeless at that sort of thing. I let her concentrate.

  “Three,” she said, “four, five, six.” She stopped. We were standing in front of a solid oak door, in a very dark stone-floored corridor lined with about a hundred identical doors. The smell, rather familiar, turned my stomach; stale piss, boiled cabbage, rust. There was a sort of tidemark of crusted white saltpeter running along the wall about three inches off the ground. Some things never change.

  “Surely not,” I said.

  She nodded. “Seventeenth Paralia, AUC 277,” she said. “He’s in there, one hundred percent guaranteed. Ready?”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “Stealing a chicken,” she said, and rested the flat of her hand on the door. There was a plucked-string noise and a loud crack, and the door swung open.

  I followed her in. There was a man lying on the stone ledge. He had one hand down the front of his trousers, which he quickly pulled out. He was about sixty years old, short, thin on top, with a straggly pepper-and-salt beard. He stared at her.

  “Oh God,” he said. “It’s you.”

  “Hello,” she said.

  He turned his face to the wall. “Go away,” he said.

  I didn’t need to ask. I knew. Saloninus.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said. “I’ve come to get you out of here.”

  “Please,” Saloninus said to the wall, “don’t bother. Really.”

  “If you stay here,” she said, “they’re going to hang you.”

  “What?” I said. “For stealing a chicken?”

  She glared at me. Saloninus didn’t seem to have heard me. It occurred to me that, as far as he was concerned, I wasn’t there. “So what?” he said. “I don’t care.”

  I remembered that four hundred years ago, they still had the death penalty for theft. “Don’t be silly,” she was pleading. “You know I’ll look after you, one way or another. Come on, before the guards do their rounds. Please.”

  I vaguely remembered—at the age of fifty-four, Saloninus published his last great alchemical treatise. Nothing more is known for certain, and the rest of his life was supposed to have passed in tranquil retirement. “I wish,” he said, “I wish you’d just leave me alone.”