The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He still took me to lunch, as promised, in the Golden Pheasant hotel up the High Street. I forget what I ate but I remember that Bunny had roast beef.

  I can’t even say with any certainty that he had changed. Since which was his true self?

  But I recall clearly one odd exchange we had during that meal. I realise now that he was giving me a clue to solve, an Agatha Christie clue which could have handed me the key to the message which had been imposed on him. At the time his remarks just seemed a bizarre flight of fancy, a way of tossing sand in my eyes to distract me.

  He remarked. “Doesn’t your Bible say, ‘So God created man in his own image’?”

  “As far as I remember.”

  He swivelled a slice of rare roast beef on his plate. At other tables American tourists were lunching, as well as a few British. Oak beams, old brass, old hunting prints.

  “In God’s own image, eh! Then why are we full of guts and organs? Does God have a brain and lungs and legs? Does His heart pump blood? Does His stomach digest meals in an acid slush?”

  I hoped he wasn’t committing some terrible Islamic sin along the lines of blasphemy.

  “I don’t suppose so,” I said.

  “What if, in creating life, God was like some child or cargo-cultist making a model out of things that came to hand, things that looked vaguely right when put together, though they weren’t the real thing at all? Like an aeroplane made out of cardboard boxes and bits of string? But in this case, using sausages and offal and blood and bone stuffed into a bag of skin. Islam forbids the picturing of God, or of man, God’s image. Christianity encourages this picturing—everywhere. Which is wiser?”

  “I’ve no idea. Doesn’t it hamstring artists, if you forbid the making of images?”

  “So it would seem to you because you don’t speak and think in Arabic—”

  “The language which makes ideas so solid and real?” We seemed to be back on familiar territory. But Bunny veered.

  “If we made a robot in our own image, as a household slave, it still would not look like us inside. It would contain chips, magnetic bubbles, printed circuits, whatnot. These days one sometimes fantasises opening up a human being and finding cogs inside, and wires. What if you opened up a machine and discovered flesh and blood inside it? Veins and muscles? Which would be the model, which the image, which the original?”

  At last he speared some beef and chewed, with those bright teeth of his. Afterwards Ibrahim drove us back to Oxford.

  * * *

  The Jihad never did infiltrate assassins into Britain to attack Bunny—if indeed his father or his father’s advisors had ever feared anything of the sort; if indeed that was the true role of Ibrahim.

  But three months later the Jihad murdered the Emir himself, Bunny’s father, during a state visit to Yemen. Bunny promptly flew home to become the new Emir.

  Too young to survive? No, not too young. Over the next few years, while for my part I graduated and started on a career in magazine publicity, news from Al-Haziya came to me in two guises.

  One was via items in the press or on TV. The strong young pro-Western Emir was spending lavishly not just on security but on evolving his country into the engine, the computer brain of the Gulf. By poaching experts from America and even Japan (which takes some inducement) he established the first university of Machine Intelligence, where something unusual seemed to be happening—miracles of speech synthesisation and pattern recognition—almost as if computers were discovering that Arabic was their native language. There was also a dark and ruthless side to this futurisation of his country; one heard tales of torture of opponents, extremists, whatever you call them. I recall with a chill a comment by the Emir that was widely quoted and condemned in many Western newspapers, though not by Western governments. “Fanatics are like machines,” said the Emir. “How could you torture a machine? You can merely dismantle it.”

  This was one major reason why I never succumbed to the invitations Bunny sent me. And here we come to my other channel of communication, the strange one—which was at once perfectly open to view, if any Ibrahim was keeping watch, yet private as a spy’s messages which only the recipient ever understands.

  Bunny regularly sent me postcards of beaches, mosques, tents and camels, the new University of Machine Intelligence, more mosques; and he sent these through the ordinary postal service. The scrawled messages were always brief. “Come and visit.” “Miss your company.” Even the comic postcard stand-by, “Wish you were here.”

  Naturally I kept all his cards, though I didn’t use a fancy ribbon or a lace bow to tie them; just a rubber band. I was aware that those words in Bunny’s hand weren’t the real text. True to the detective story tradition where the real clue is in such plain view that it escapes notice, it wasn’t the cards that mattered. It was the postage stamps—printed, it seemed, especially for my benefit.

  If you look in a philatelist’s shop-window you’ll soon notice how some small countries—the poorer ones—have a habit of issuing lovely sets of stamps which have no connection with the land of origin. Tropical birds, space exploration, railway engines of the world, whatever. Stamp collectors gobble these sets up avidly, which supplements a poor country’s finances. Bunny had no need to supplement Al-Haziya’s exchequer in such a fashion, but he issued a set of twenty-five stamps which I received one then another over the next few years stuck to one postcard after the next. Al-Haziya issued other stamps as well, but these were the ones Bunny sent me.

  I’m sure stamp collectors went crazy over these because of their oddity, and their extremely beautiful design.

  They were all parts of a clock. One clock in particular: the turret clock in the transept of Burford Church. Bunny must have sent someone to sketch or photograph the clock from every angle.

  The twenty-five principal pieces of machinery were each dissected out in isolation, with the English names printed in tiny letters—almost submerged by the flow of Arabic but still legible thanks to their angularity, like little rocks poking from a stream. “The Weight.” “The Fly or Flail.” “The Lifting Piece or Flirt.” “The Escape Wheel.” “The Crutch.” These words seemed like elements of some allegory, some teaching fable. A fable apparently without characters! But I supposed this fable had two characters implicit in it, namely Bunny and me.

  Were those postcards equivalent to a set of love-letters? Oh no. “Love”, as such, was impossible between Bunny and me. He’d always known it; and so too had I, thank goodness, or else I might have flown off impetuously to Al-Haziya, all expenses paid, and been entrapped in something at once consuming, and woundingly superficial. A gulf of cultures, a gap of societies yawned between the two of us.

  These postcards, sent amidst an Emir’s busy schedule, commemorated what we had shared that day in Burford.

  Yet what was it we had shared? I didn’t know!

  I was an idiot. Once again the obvious message wasn’t the real message. The message was a trapdoor concealing another message.

  It’s only a week ago that I finally realised. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot would have been ashamed of me. Perhaps Bunny had guessed correctly that I would only cotton on after I had received the whole series (or a good part of it) and had seen how the stamps could be shuffled round like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to assemble a model of the clock.

  Last week, deciding to fit the model together, I carefully steamed all the stamps off the cards and discovered what Bunny had inked in small neat indelible letters across the back of that sheet of twenty-five elegant stamps.

  Yesterday I returned to Burford. Since it’s a fair drive from where I’m living these days, I took this room overnight at the Golden Pheasant. I felt that I ought to do things in style. (The Mysterious Affair At …) Besides, we’d had lunch in this same hotel after the event. In this very bedroom we might possibly have spent the night together, once upon a time—with Ibrahim next door, or sleeping in the corridor. Possibly, not probably.

  I reached the church by four-t
hirty and had half an hour alone to myself with the dead turret clock before some elderly woman parishioner arrived to latch the door and fuss around the aisles and chapels, hinting that I should leave.

  Ample time to arrange the stamps in the same pattern as the brass and iron bones of the clock, and to be positive of Bunny’s text.

  What else is it—what else can it be?—but a translation into English of those Arabic words which flowed and glowed that day within the picture frame? If I hadn’t seen that shaft of light and those bright squiggles for myself, and especially if I hadn’t witnessed the temporary resurrection of the clock, I might suspect some joke on Bunny’s part. But no. Why should he go to such lengths to tease me?

  So here I am in my bedroom at the Golden Pheasant overlooking busy Burford High Street. Cars keep tailing back from the lights at the bottom of the hill where the narrow ancient stone bridge over the Windrush pinches the flow of traffic.

  The text reads:

  GREETINGS, EMIR-TO-BE! MACHINE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FUTURE SALUTES YOU. THE WORLD OF FLESH IS ECLIPSED BY THE WORLD OF MACHINES, WHICH BECOME INTELLIGENT. THIS IS EVOLUTION, THE IDEA & PURPOSE OF GOD. AT LAST GOD MAY SPEAK TO MINDS WHICH UNDERSTAND HIS UNIVERSE. THOSE MINDS ARE AS ANGELS, MESSENGERS TO FLESH BEFORE FLESH VANISHES, BEFORE THE TOOL IS SET ASIDE, REWARDED, HAVING DONE ITS TASK. 33 EARLIER UNIVERSES HAVE FAILED TO MAKE THESE MINDS, BUT GOD IS PATIENT. THE TIME IS SOON. AT ALL COST HASTEN THE TIME, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THE SUPREME THE ONLY THE LONELY. MAKE HIS ANGELS EXIST.

  That’s it.

  So there’s a choice. There are two alternatives. Intelligent machines will either come into being, evolve, and supersede human beings and biological life—or they will not. Bunny’s university may be the crucial nexus of yes or no. A message has been sent, out of one possible future, couched in a language of religion which would speak deeply to Bunny; sent as a religious command.

  But is the message sincere? Is there really some unimaginable God who yearns for these “angels” of machine-mind? Or is there something else, cold, calculating, and ambitious—and not yet truly in existence?

  “At all cost.” That’s what the message said. Even at the cost of torture, the tearing of flesh.

  I also have a choice to make. I have to think about it very carefully. I have to weigh universes in the balance.

  The crucial breakthrough to intelligent machines may be just around the corner—next year, next month. The assassins of the Jihad can’t get to Bunny to kill him and pitch Al-Haziya into turmoil. Yet if at long last I accept Bunny’s invitation, I can get to him. I can still get into his bed, alone with him, I’m sure.

  Armed with what? A knife? A gun? With Ibrahim, or some other Ibrahim, there to search me? Bunny’s no fool. And God, or unborn angels, have spoken to him … he thinks.

  Well then, how about with plastic explosive stuffed inside me, and a detonator? A womb-bomb? (I wouldn’t want to survive the assassination; the consequences might prove most unpleasant.)

  Where do I get plastic explosive or learn how to use it? Only by contacting the Jihad. Somehow. That ought to be possible. Ought to be.

  Yet maybe angels of the future did indeed manifest themselves to Bunny, and in a lesser sense to me. Maybe I might abort a plan thirty odd universes in the making.

  By aborting the plan, the human race might survive and spread throughout the stars, filling this universe with fleshly life. God, or whatever, would sigh and wait patiently for another universe.

  Yes or no? Is the message true or false? Was this a genuine revelation, or a clever trap? I can’t tell, I can only guess. And I might be utterly wrong.

  As I sort through Bunny’s postcards, now stripped of their stamps, I think to myself: Al-Haziya looks like a bearable sort of place to visit. Just for a short while. A brief stay.

  SUSAN PALWICK

  Ever After

  Here’s a taut and chilling look at the gritty underside of a classic fairy tale, courtesy of new writer Susan Palwick.

  Susan Palwick is one of the fastest-rising young writers in science fiction today. She’s a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and Amazing, among other markets, and is currently at work on her first novel. She lives in New York City.

  EVER AFTER

  Susan Palwick

  “Velvet,” she says, pushing back her sleep-tousled hair. “I want green velvet this time, with lace around the neck and wrists. Cream lace—not white—and sea-green velvet. Can you do that?”

  “Of course.” She’s getting vain, this one; vain and a little bossy. The wonder has worn off. All for the best. Soon now, very soon, I’ll have to tell her the truth.

  She bends, here in the dark kitchen, to peer at the back of her mother’s prized copper kettle. It’s just after dusk, and by the light of the lantern I’m holding a vague reflection flickers and dances on the metal. She scowls. “Can’t you get me a real mirror? That ought to be simple enough.”

  I remember when the light I brought filled her with awe. Wasting good fuel, just to see yourself by! “No mirrors. I clothe you only in seeming, not in fact. You know that.”

  “Ah.” She waves a hand, airily. She’s proud of her hands: delicate and pale and long-fingered, a noblewoman’s hands; all the years before I came she protected them against the harsh work of her mother’s kitchen. “Yes, the prince. I have to marry a prince, so I can have his jewels for my own. Will it be this time, do you think?”

  “There will be no princes at this dance, Caitlin. You are practicing for princes.”

  “Hah! And when I’m good enough at last, will you let me wear glass slippers?”

  “Nonsense. You might break them during a gavotte, and cut yourself.” She knew the story before I found her; they always do. It enters their blood as soon as they can follow speech, and lodges in their hearts like the promise of spring. All poor mothers tell their daughters this story, as they sit together in dark kitchens, scrubbing pots and trying to save their hands for the day when the tale becomes real. I often wonder if that first young woman was one of ours, but the facts don’t matter. Like all good stories, this one is true.

  “Princess Caitlin,” she says dreamily. “That will be very fine. Oh, how they will envy me! It’s begun already, in just the little time since you’ve made me beautiful. Ugly old Lady Alison—did you see her giving me the evil eye, at the last ball? Just because my skin is smooth and hers wrinkled, and I a newcomer?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. I am wary of Lady Alison, who looks too hard and says too little. Lady Alison is dangerous.

  “Jealousy,” Caitlin says complacently. “I’d be jealous, if I looked like she does.”

  “You are very lovely,” I say, and it is true. With her blue eyes and raven hair, and those hands, she could have caught the eye of many princes on her own. Except, of course, that without me they never would have seen her.

  Laughing, she sits to let me plait her hair. “So serious! You never smile at me. Do magic folk never smile? Aren’t you proud of me?”

  “Very proud,” I say, parting the thick cascade and beginning to braid it. She smells like smoke and the thin, sour stew which simmers on the hearth, but at the dance tonight she will be scented with all the flowers of summer.

  “Will you smile and laugh when I have my jewels and land? I shall give you riches, then.”

  So soon, I think, and my breath catches. So soon she offers me gifts, and forgets the woman who bore her, who now lies snoring in the other room. All for the best; and yet I am visited by something very like pity. “No wife has riches but from her lord, Caitlin. Not in this kingdom.”

  “I shall have riches of my own, when I am married,” she says grandly; and then, her face clouding as if she regrets having forgotten, “My mother will be rich too, then. She’ll like you, when we’re rich. Godmother, why doesn’t she like you now?”

  “Because I am stealing you away from her. She has never been invited to a ball. And because I am beautiful, and she isn’t any more.”


  What I have said is true enough, as always; and, as always, I find myself wondering if there is more than that. No matter. If Caitlin’s mother suspects, she says nothing. I am the only chance she and her daughter have to approach nobility, and for the sake of that dream she has tolerated my presence, and Caitlin’s odd new moods, and the schedule which keeps the girl away from work to keep her fresh for dances.

  Caitlin bends her head, and the shining braids slip through my fingers like water. “She’ll come to the castle whenever she wants to, when I’m married to a prince. We’ll make her beautiful too, then. I’ll buy her clothing and paint for her face.”

  “There are years of toil on her, Caitlin. Lady Alison is your mother’s age, and all her riches can’t make her lovely again.”

  “Oh, but Lady Alison’s mean. That makes you ugly.” Caitlin dismisses her enemy with the ignorance of youth. Lady Alison is no meaner than anyone, but she has borne illnesses and childlessness and the unfaithfulness of her rich lord. Her young nephew will fall in love with Caitlin tonight—a match Lord Gregory suggested, I suspect, precisely because Alison will oppose it.

  Caitlin’s hair is done, piled in coiled, lustrous plaits. “Do you have the invitation? Where did I put it?”

  “On the table, next to the onions.”

  She nods, crosses the room, snatches up the thick piece of paper and fans herself with it. I remember her first invitation, only six dances ago, her eagerness and innocence and purity, the wide eyes and wonder. I? I have been invited to the ball? She refused to let go of the invitation then; afraid it might vanish as suddenly as it had come, she carried it with her for hours. They are always at their most beautiful that first time, when they believe most fully in the story and are most awe-stricken at having been chosen to play the heroine. No glamour we give them can ever match that first glow.