The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “We’d better go back to Bricktown for our shoes,” Onogawa said.

  “All right,” Encho said. Their feet had blistered in the commandeered clogs, and they walked back slowly and carefully.

  Yoshitoshi met them in his downstairs landing. “Did you catch it?”

  “It made a run for the railroads,” Encho said. “We couldn’t stop it; it was way above our heads.” He hesitated. “Say. You don’t suppose it will come back here, do you?”

  “Probably,” Yoshitoshi said. “It lives in that knot of cables outside the window. That’s why I put the shutters there.”

  “You mean you’ve seen it before?”

  “Sure I’ve seen it,” Yoshitoshi muttered. “In fact I’ve seen lots of things. It’s my business to see things. No matter what people say about me.”

  The others looked at him, stricken. Yoshitoshi shrugged irritably. “The place has atmosphere. It’s quiet and no one bothers me here. Besides, it’s cheap.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the demon’s vengeance?” Onogawa said.

  “I get along fine with that demon,” Yoshitoshi said. “We have an understanding. Like neighbors anywhere.”

  “Oh,” Encho said. He cleared his throat. “Well, ah, we’ll be moving on, Taiso. It was good of you to give us the borubona.” He and Onogawa stuffed their feet hastily into their squeaking shoes. “You keep up the good work, pal, and don’t let those political fellows put anything over on you. Their ideas are weird, frankly. I don’t think the government’s going to put up with that kind of talk.”

  “Someday they’ll have to,” Yoshitoshi said.

  “Let’s go,” Onogawa said, with a sidelong glance at Yoshitoshi. The two men left.

  Onogawa waited until they were well out of earshot. He kept a wary eye on the wires overhead. “Your friend certainly is a weird one,” he told the comedian. “What a night!”

  Encho frowned. “He’s gonna get in trouble with that visionary stuff. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, you know.” They walked into the blaze of artificial gaslight. The Ginza crowd had thinned out considerably.

  “Didn’t you say you knew some girls with a piano?” Onogawa said.

  “Oh, right!” Encho said. He whistled shrilly and waved at a distant two-man rickshaw. “A piano. You won’t believe the thing; it makes amazing sounds. And what a great change after those dreary geisha samisen routines. So whiny and thin and wailing and sad! It’s always, ‘Oh, How Piteous Is A Courtesan’s Lot,’ and ‘Let’s Stab Each Other To Prove You Really Love Me.’ Who needs that old-fashioned stuff? Wait till you hear these gals pound out some ‘opera’ and ‘waltzes’ on their new machine.”

  The rickshaw pulled up with a rattle and a chime of bells. “Where to, gentlemen?”

  “Asakusa,” said Encho, climbing in.

  “It’s getting late,” Onogawa said reluctantly. “I really ought to be getting back to the wife.”

  “Come on,” said Encho, rolling his eyes. “Live a little. It’s not like you’re just cheating on the little woman. These are high-class modern girls. It’s a cultural experience.”

  “Well, all right,” said Onogawa. “If it’s cultural.”

  “You’ll learn a lot,” Encho promised.

  But they had barely covered a block when they heard the sudden frantic ringing of alarm bells, far to the south.

  “A fire!” Encho yelled in glee. “Hey, runners, stop! Fifty sen if you get us there while it’s still spreading!”

  The runners wheeled in place and set out with a will. The rickshaw rocked on its axle and jangled wildly. “This is great!” Onogawa said, clutching his hat. “You’re a good fellow to know, Encho. It’s nothing but excitement with you!”

  “That’s the modern life!” Encho shouted. “One wild thing after another.”

  They bounced and slammed their way through the darkened streets until the sky was lit with fire. A massive crowd had gathered beside the Shinagawa Railroad Line. They were mostly low-class townsmen, many half-dressed. It was a working-class neighborhood in Shiba District, east of Atago Hill. The fire was leaping merrily from one thatched roof to another.

  The two men jumped from their rickshaw. Encho shouldered his way immediately through the crowd. Onogawa carefully counted out the fare. “But he said fifty sen,” the older rickshawman complained. Onogawa clenched his fist and the men fell silent.

  The firemen had reacted with their usual quick skill. Three companies of them had surrounded the neighborhood. They swarmed like ants over the roofs of the undamaged houses nearest the flames. As usual, they did not attempt to fight the flames directly. That was a hopeless task in any case, for the weathered, graying wood, paper shutters, and reed blinds flared up like tinder, in great blossoming gouts.

  Instead, they sensibly relied on firebreaks. Their hammers, axes, and crowbars flew as they destroyed every house in the path of the flames. Their skill came naturally to them, for, like all Edo firemen, they were also carpenters. Special banner-men stood on the naked ridgepoles of the disintegrating houses, holding their company’s ensigns as close as possible to the flames. This was more than bravado; it was good business. Their reputations, and their rewards from a grateful neighborhood, depended on this show of spirit and nerve.

  Some of the crowd, those whose homes were being devoured, were weeping and counting their children. But most of the crowd was in a fine holiday mood, cheering for their favorite fire teams and laying bets.

  Onogawa spotted Encho’s silk hat and plowed after him. Encho ducked and elbowed through the press, Onogawa close behind. They crept to the crowd’s inner edge, where the fierce blaze of heat and the occasional falling wad of flaming straw had established a boundary.

  A fireman stood nearby. He wore a kneelength, padded fireproof coat with a pattern of printed blocks. A thick protective headdress fell stiffly over his shoulders, and long padded gauntlets shielded his forearms to the knuckles. An apprentice in similar garb was soaking him down with a pencil-thin gush of water from a bamboo hand-pump. “Stand back, stand back,” the fireman said automatically, then looked up. “Say, aren’t you Encho the comedian? I saw you last week.”

  “That’s me,” Encho shouted cheerfully over the roar of flame. “Good to see you fellows performing for once.”

  The fireman examined Onogawa’s ash-streaked frock coat. “You live around here, big fella? Point out your house for me, we’ll do what we can.”

  Onogawa frowned. Encho broke in hastily. “My friend’s from uptown! A High City company man!”

  “Oh,” said the fireman, rolling his eyes.

  Onogawa pointed at a merchant’s tile-roofed warehouse, a little closer to the tracks. “Why aren’t you doing anything about that place? The fire’s headed right for it!”

  “That’s one of merchant Shinichi’s,” the fireman said, narrowing his eyes. “We saved a place of his out in Kanda District last month! And he gave us only five yen.”

  “What a shame for him,” Encho said, grinning.

  “It’s full of cotton cloth, too,” the fireman said with satisfaction. “It’s gonna go up like a rocket.”

  “How did it start?” Encho said.

  “Lightning, I hear,” the fireman said. “Some kind of fireball jumped off the telegraph lines.”

  “Really?” Encho said in a small voice.

  “That’s what they say,” shrugged the fireman. “You know how these things are. Always tall stories. Probably some drunk knocked over his sake kettle, then claimed to see something. No one wants the blame.”

  “Right,” Onogawa said carefully.

  The fire teams had made good progress. There was not much left to do now except admire the destruction. “Kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” the fireman said. “Look how that smoke obscures the autumn moon.” He sighed happily. “Good for business, too. I mean the carpentry business, of course.” He waved his gauntleted arm at the leaping flames. “We’ll get this worn-out trash out of here and build something worthy of a m
odern city. Something big and expensive with long-term construction contracts.”

  “Is that why you have bricks printed on your coat?” Onogawa asked.

  The fireman looked down at the block printing on his dripping cotton armor. “They do look like bricks, don’t they?” He laughed. “That’s a good one. Wait’ll I tell the crew.”

  * * *

  Dawn rose above old Edo. With red-rimmed eyes, the artist Yoshitoshi stared, sighing, through his open window. Past the telegraph wires, billowing smudge rose beyond the Bricktown rooftops. Another Flower of Edo reaching the end of its evanescent life.

  The telegraph wires hummed. The demon had returned to its tangled nest outside the window. “Don’t tell, Yoshitoshi,” it burbled in its deep, humming voice.

  “Not me,” Yoshitoshi said. “You think I want them to lock me up again?”

  “I keep the presses running,” the demon whined. “Just you deal with me. I’ll make you famous, I’ll make you rich. There’ll be no more slow dark shadows where townsmen have to creep with their heads down. Everything’s brightness and speed with me, Yoshitoshi. I can change things.”

  “Burn them down, you mean,” Yoshitoshi said.

  “There’s power in burning,” the demon hummed. “There’s beauty in the flames. When you give up trying to save the old ways, you’ll see the beauty. I want you to serve me, you Japanese. You’ll do it better than the clumsy foreigners, once you accept me as your own. I’ll make you all rich. Edo will be the greatest city in the world. You’ll have light and music at a finger’s touch. You’ll step across oceans. You’ll be as gods.”

  “And if we don’t accept you?”

  “You will! You must! I’ll burn you until you do. I told you that, Yoshitoshi. When I’m stronger, I’ll do better than these little flowers of Edo. I’ll open seeds of Hell above your cities. Hell-flowers taller than mountains! Red blooms that eat a city in a moment.”

  Yoshitoshi lifted his latest print and unrolled it before the window. He had worked on it all night; it was done at last. It was a landscape of pure madness. Beams of frantic light pierced a smoldering sky. Winged locomotives, their bellies fattened with the eggs of white-hot death, floated like maddened blowflies above a corpse-white city. “Like this,” he said.

  The demon gave a gloating whir. “Yes! Just as I told you. Now show it to them. Make them understand that they can’t defeat me. Show them all!”

  “I’ll think about it,” Yoshitoshi said. “Leave me now.” He closed the heavy shutters.

  He rolled the drawing carefully into a tube. He sat at his worktable again, and pulled an oil lamp closer. Dawn was coming. It was time to get some sleep.

  He held the end of the paper tube above the lamp’s little flame. It browned at first, slowly, the brand-new paper turning the rich antique tinge of an old print, a print from the old days when things were simpler. Then a cigar-ring of smoldering red encircled its rim, and blue flame blossomed. Yoshitoshi held the paper up, and flame ate slowly down its length, throwing smoky shadows.

  Yoshitoshi blew and watched his work flare up, cherry-blossom white and red. It hurt to watch it go, and it felt good. He savored the two feelings for as long as he could. Then he dropped the last flaming inch of paper in an ashtray. He watched it flare and smolder until the last of the paper became a ghost-curl of gray.

  “It’d never sell,” he said. Absently, knowing he would need them tomorrow, he cleaned his brushes. Then he emptied the inkstained water over the crisp dark ashes.

  KATE WILHELM

  Forever Yours, Anna

  There’s a saying that goes, out of sight, out of mind. Well, not always …

  Regarded as one of the best of today’s writers, Kate Wilhelm won a Nebula Award in 1968 for her short story, “The Planners,” took a Hugo in 1976 for her well-known novel, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, and added another Nebula to her collection in 1987 “The Girl Who Fell into the Sky.” Her many books include the novels Margaret and I, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, and Oh, Susannah!, and the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, and Listen, Listen. Her most recent SF books are the novels Huysman’s Pets and Crazy Time. She lives with her family in Eugene, Oregon.

  FOREVER YOURS, ANNA

  Kate Wilhelm

  Anna entered his life on a spring afternoon, not invited, not even wanted. Gordon opened his office door that day to a client who was expected and found a second man also in the hallway. The second man brought him Anna, although Gordon did not yet know this. At the moment, he simply said, “Yes?”

  “Gordon Sills? I don’t have an appointment, but … may I wait?”

  “Afraid I don’t have a waiting room.”

  “Out here’s fine.”

  He was about fifty, and he was prosperous. It showed in his charcoal-colored suit, a discreet blue-gray silk tie, a silk shirt. Gordon assumed the stone on his finger was a real emerald of at least three carats. Ostentatious touch, that.

  “Sure,” Gordon said, and ushered his client inside. They passed through a foyer into his office workroom. The office section was partitioned from the rest of the room by three rice-paper screens with beautiful Chinese calligraphy. In the office area was his desk and two chairs for visitors, his chair, and an overwhelmed bookcase, with books on the floor in front of it.

  When his client left, the hall was empty. Gordon shrugged and returned to his office; he pulled his telephone across the desk and dialed his former wife’s apartment number, let it ring a dozen times, hung up. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes absently. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the slats in the venetian blinds, zebra light. I should go away for a few weeks, he thought. Just close shop and walk away from it all until he started getting overdraft notices. Three weeks, he told himself; that was about as long as it would take. Too bad about the other guy, he thought without too much regret. He had a month’s worth of work lined up already, and he knew more would trickle in when that was done.

  Gordon Sills was thirty-five, a foremost expert in graphology, and could have been rich, his former wife had reminded him quite often. If you don’t make it before forty, she had also said—too often—you simply won’t make it, and he did not care, simply did not care about money, security, the future, the children’s future.…

  Abruptly he pushed himself away from the desk and left the office, going into his living room. Like the office, it was messy, with several days’ worth of newspapers, half a dozen books, magazines scattered haphazardly. To his eyes it was comfortable looking, comfort giving; he distrusted neatness in homes. Two fine Japanese landscapes were on the walls.

  The buzzer sounded. When he opened the door, the prosperous, uninvited client was there again. He was carrying a brushed-suede briefcase.

  Gordon opened the door wider and motioned him on through the foyer into the office. The sunlight was gone, eclipsed by the building across Amsterdam Avenue. He indicated a chair and took his own seat behind the desk.

  “I apologize for not making an appointment,” his visitor said. He withdrew a wallet from his breast pocket, took out a card, and slid it across the desk.

  “I’m Avery Roda. On behalf of my company I should like to consult with you regarding some correspondence that we have in our possession.”

  “That’s my business,” Gordon said. “And what is your company, Mr. Roda?”

  “Draper Fawcett.”

  Gordon nodded slowly. “And your position there?”

  Roda looked unhappy. “I am vice president in charge of research and development, but right now I am in charge of an investigation we have undertaken. My first duty in connection with this was to find someone with your expertise. You come very highly recommended, Mr. Sills.”

  “Before we go on any further,” Gordon said, “I should tell you that there are a number of areas where I’m not interested in working. I don’t do paternity suits, for example. Or employer-employee pilferage cases.”

/>   Roda flushed.

  “Or blackmail,” Gordon finished equably. “That’s why I’m not rich, but that’s how it is.”

  “The matter I want to discuss is none of the above,” Roda snapped. “Did you read about the explosion we had at our plant on Long Island two months ago?” He did not wait for Gordon’s response. “We lost a very good scientist, one of the best in the country. And we cannot locate some of his paperwork, his notes. He was involved with a woman who may have them in her possession. We want to find her, recover them.”

  Gordon shook his head. “You need the police, then, private detectives, your own security force.”

  “Mr. Sills, don’t underestimate our resolve or our resources. We have set all that in operation, and no one has been able to locate the woman. Last week we had a conference during which we decided to try this route. What we want from you is as complete an analysis of the woman as you can give us, based on her handwriting. That may prove fruitful.” His tone said he doubted it very much.

  “I assume the text has not helped.”

  “You assume correctly,” Roda said with some bitterness. He opened his briefcase and withdrew a sheaf of papers and laid it on the desk.

  From the other side Gordon could see that they were not the originals but photocopies. He let his gaze roam over the upside-down letters and then shook his head. “I have to have the actual letters to work with.”

  “That’s impossible. They are being kept under lock and key.”

  “Would you offer a wine taster colored water?” Gordon’s voice was bland, but he could not stop his gaze. He reached across the desk and turned the top letter right side up to study the signature. ANNA. Beautifully written. Even in the heavy black copy it was delicate, as artful as any of the Chinese calligraphy on his screens. He looked up to find Roda watching him intently. “I can tell you a few things from just this, but I have to have the originals. Let me show you my security system.”