Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14

by Gardner Dozois

  “Sure, Sylvie… “

  “Listen. The guy he’s with will do some stuff—it won’t take long—and then Lenny’ll give you some money. And he’ll give you the box back. Make sure you get that box back and everything in it. Mint. Understand?” She handed him something. She had to push it into his hand, because at first he didn’t see it, he had been focusing so intently on Sylvie’s eyes. It was an ice pick.

  He didn’t know what to make of it at first. “Sylvie?”

  “You won’t have to use it, don’t worry. It’s just in case. You might have to show it to him — that’s the worst it could get. Then he would give you everything and run. Lenny’s not brave like you, jumper boy. Believe me, I know Lenny.”

  Milo put the ice pick under his shirt, inside his belt.

  “Let Lenny leave. Just stay there by the showers. Make sure he’s gone. Make sure nobody’s around. If anybody’s around, wait till they’re gone. Put the box down on a bench. Come out to the door, and wait. I’ll meet you there in less than a minute, guaranteed.” She took a deep breath and huffed it out.

  “OK,” she said, strictly business now, all the tension turned to purpose. “Turn around, Milo. I gotta do something you can’t see. Then I’ll split, and I’ll leave the package there for you to take in to Lenny. Just turn around, count to twenty, then do what I told you. Get it?”

  “Yes, Sylvie.”

  “You’re soaking wet, you jerk.” She smiled and tousled his hair. “Don’t you know to come in out of the rain?” Then she pushed his shoulder to make him turn.

  “One, two… “ Rain dripping from the eaves. His teeth chattered a little. At twenty, he turned around and Sylvie was gone. There was a hat box on the landing, bound with a red ribbon. Milo picked it up and carried it across the landing and in through the men’s door, hugging it closely to his chest with both arms. The ice pick pricked his thigh a little when he stepped, but it didn’t hurt much.

  He didn’t see anyone at first. He was standing in a large, echoey dome with arched passages leading off every sixty degrees or so. The sound of slowly dripping water boomed all around him. He stood near the centre trying to figure out which way to go, when he heard a voice: “Psst! Hey, kid! This way!” Milo followed the voice as well as he could.

  Moving into one of the small passageways, the quality of sound changed so abruptly that he felt someone had boxed his ears. Or else he was walking inside a sea shell, or inside the labyrinth of his own ear. The passage opened into a small, concrete courtyard with showers along the perimeter and a few benches near the middle. The hard floor sloped down towards a drain in the centre. Milo looked up. The sky was the colour of iron. He was cold.

  Suddenly Lenny was at his side. “Surprised you, huh?” He had come from a shower stall beside the entrance. “I had to take a leak. Mr Jones used the regular facilities. He’ll be right here… You a pal of Sylvie’s? She never used you before.”

  Milo heard steps echoing behind him. He turned and backed out of the way, towards the benches. Mr Jones was a thick, crewcut man with a flaccid face. He wore a stiff, white short-sleeved shirt that fairly glowed in the stormy light. He squinted and cocked his head at the sight of Milo. “This isn’t a girl.”

  Lenny laughed. “So what? So she sent an associate. You’ll notice he’s got the merchandise.”

  Jones rolled his eyes. He looked disgusted. “That ain’t all he’s got, Lenny.”

  “Huh?”

  “This associate here has got a weapon in his belt,” Jones said. Milo looked down around the hat box to his waist. The soaked shirt was bunched around the handle of the ice pick. Jones stepped towards Milo and extended one hand, palm up. “Give.”

  “Come on, kid,” Lenny said. “You don’t need that. We trust each other here. God! I’m sorry, Mr Jones. The kid doesn’t know how we do business, is all.”

  “Sure. So give.”

  Milo didn’t move. He looked back and forth between Lenny and Mr Jones. For some reason, he didn’t feel worried about them. He was worried about something else. Something Lenny had said.

  “Sylvie doesn’t use me.”

  Lenny smiled. “Tough. Very tough. Very impressive. OK. Sylvie doesn’t use you. Just give Mr Jones the knife.”

  “It’s an ice pick,” Milo said. He looked straight at Jones. “And I’m keeping it. Sylvie didn’t say anything about giving it to you—unless you try to cheat me.”

  “He’s a kid, for crissakes!” Lenny laid a hand on Mr Jones’s shoulder. Mr Jones kept his hand extended and his eyes straight on Milo. “Nobody’s got anything to gain by violence here, am I right? Let’s just do our business and adjourn. OK, Mr Jones?”

  Jones nodded slowly. “I’m not impressed. I’m not pleased. But we’ll let it go, because I respect Lenny, and because I think this little boy would lose his lunch before he pricked anybody with that steel dick. Also, I have a gun… So, let’s see the goods.”

  Jones stepped back. Lenny gave Milo a sheepish look. Facing Milo, so Jones couldn’t see, Lenny mouthed the words: “He doesn’t have any gun.” Lenny shrugged. Milo held out the box to Mr Jones. Jones took it from Milo and carried it to one of the benches,where he laid it down and undid the ribbon.

  Lenny stayed a few feet back with Milo. “You’re wet, kid. Quite a downpour, huh?”

  “Don’t get the box wet,” Milo said to Jones. The wooden bench was damp. Jones shot him a black look and snarled something under his breath. Jones lifted the cover from the round box and laid it down on the bench beside the box itself. He reached in and pulled out a roll of cash. He fanned it, then removed the rubber band around it, pulled out one of the bills and held it at arm’s length to look it over. He did the same thing with a few others, turning them over, flapping them and pulling them out with a snap. Then Mr Jones took a magnifying glass from his pocket and examined one of the bills more closely.

  He returned the magnifying glass to his pants pocket. He stacked the bills together and bound them with the rubber band again. He put the cash back into the box, closed it and tied the ribbon with the same sort of bow it had had before.

  “So?” said Lenny.

  Mr Jones handed the box back to Milo and smiled. He turned to Lenny. “It’s crap.”

  “What do you mean, it’s crap? You can’t tell me this is crap. This is the work of a goddam artist. Uncle fucking Sam himself couldn’t tell this stuff from the real thing.”

  “I can. It’s crap.”

  “You’re trying to weasel a better deal out of me, aren’t you, Harold? You said if this passed muster you’d front me the ten thou. I told you I could guarantee delivery of the rest in two weeks. OK, you said. Two weeks, you said. Ten thou up front on approval, you said.”

  “On approval.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with this job. I’m telling you Sylvie’s guy is an artist. He’s a Da Vinci, Harold. Nothing’s wrong with it. What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s off, that’s all. The border’s off. The weave is funny. We won’t work with it. Find another distributor—it’s your funeral.”

  “Somebody’s supposed to give me some money,” Milo said.

  Jones turned on him, laughing. His face was like bread dough being folded and kneaded. His lips curled back, showing the gums, big and pink, like a horse’s. “What, are you gonna pull out your ice pick now? You an artist, too? You gonna make me into an ice sculpture, kid? You guys are a million laughs.”

  Jones walked into the passage to the main chamber.

  “Harold!” Lenny turned his head to shout after him, but didn’t move an inch. He looked beaten. “Harold! Hey! Wait a minute here! Harold… Shit!”

  “Are you gonna give me the money?” Milo asked Lenny.

  “You’re a real piece of work, kid, you and that bitch of a sister you got.”

  “She’s not my sister.”

  “Give me the box. Screw Mr Jones. I’ll find another Mr Jones.”

  “I’m supposed to take the box back to Sylvie. You’re suppos
ed to pay me.”

  Lenny grabbed at the hat box. Milo swung it out of his reach.

  “I don’t need this, kid,” Lenny said. “I don’t need your whore sister either, not after this. She screwed up. Give me the damn box. I’ll pay her when I get my advance, see? This is supposed to be our sample. This is supposed to buy me a little time while our printer gets his act together. You see how many people you’re holding up here, kid? Me, the printer, the printer’s family, my family… “ He was walking forward as Milo walked back, between the benches, towards the far showers. “… and Sylvie too. She’s got no use for it, without I get some dough on it for her. Now, gimme.”

  Milo was backed against a wall under a shower head. Lenny took another swipe at the box. Milo reached back and turned on the shower, spraying Lenny full in the face. Milo grabbed the ice pick from his belt. The point gouged Milo’s own stomach, and his soaked shirt reddened. He looked down, uttered a small cry of surprise, and dropped the ice pick.

  Lenny stopped sputtering and flailing. He stood still, with the spray pelting his face and plastering his sparse hair down in absurd curls. He stared at the blood welling up along Milo’s belt. He stepped back out of I he shower. “Oh, God, what a mess! Kid, you keep it. You keep the damn paper. Tell Sylvie she screwed up. Oh, God! Equidecomposa-bullshit! I musta been outa my gourd! Tell her this is the last time she does a job for anybody east of Topeka. And get a doctor, kid!” He turned and ran.

  “She’s not my sister,” Milo said. He turned off the shower. There was a shallow pool of red before him, pushed outwards by the force of the spray and streaming back again towards the drain behind his heels. Like a drunkard navigating one sensum at a time, Milo looked at his right arm and saw that the hat box was still cradled there, soaked; then he found his feet and walked back to the benches, trailing bloody water.

  He laid the box down on a bench. He started back towards the main chamber, but as soon as he entered the passageway, the air filled with bright Paisleys, and he found himself on his knees, gasping. He pulled up his shirt to look underneath. He could see the lip of the wound, where blood oozed. “It’s not so bad,” he said. He slumped down on to his buttocks. He was about to black out, but he forced himself awake. He rolled onto all fours, then stood up, a little at a time. He leaned his shoulder against the wall of the passage and slid along, like a child pulling himself along the gutter of a swimming pool.

  He was halfway down the passage when he heard Sylvie’s voice behind him, in the courtyard, among the showers. “Milo! Milo, what happened? Whose blood is this?”

  He started to say “Dede’s”, but stopped it before his tongue left his palate. Dede’s blood! He looked at his fingers, and for a moment he thought that they were bloody claws…

  Dede lies before him, all bloody. Her spasms are like the jerks of a severed frog leg. He looks at his fingers. The claws are just now retracting into his fingertips, the carpal pad receding into a palm, the fur on his forearm turning into the slightest blond down. He cries, and his chin shudders into a gelatinous ooze, pulling upward, shortening, then hardening again, as the fangs recede with a squeak, shrinking into his gums and out of sight. “Dede! Dede! Did I do what you wanted? Dede!” He looks around for help. His knees have softened and recongealed to face the right direction now. The boy he was supposed to kill for Dede, the one who wouldn’t be her lover, is gone. The door has been thrown open and Milo can hear running down the street. “Dede, please say something!” He looks at his bloody fingers…

  “Mine, Sylvie,” he said. “It’s my blood!” There was something hilarious about it. He started to laugh. He turned to look back towards the showers, back to where Sylvie’s voice had come from. The bit of sky he saw had cleared. There was a bright rainbow arching above the concrete wall, blue to red, and a fainter one above it, red to blue. He took one step towards the courtyard, and everything went red, then black.

  “I’m a shape-shifter, Sylvie.”

  “You dope!” She was changing the dressing again. Her face hovered above him. She was biting her lip. He could see that she was working hard not to cry.

  “Where are we?” He was lying on a bed made of two chairs pushed together and covered with a white sheet. He had been undressed. He lay naked under another sheet.

  “Some place, that’s all. I took you to a doctor. It’s the first time in my whole life I missed a booking, and it’s your fault, little man.”

  “Did I tell you what happened?”

  “Yeah. Who needs those crooks, anyway?” She kissed him on the forehead. “Milo… you were a champ. I can’t believe how brave you are. I’m sorry I put you in that spot.”

  “I’m a shape-shifter, Sylvie. I remember everything. I breathed, and I remembered my sister, Dede. I did stuff for her. I was keys and credit cards and… money...” He stopped talking. Then he said it again: “The money!”

  Sylvie looked away. “I’m sorry.” The room was dark behind her.

  “It was you!”

  Sylvie shrugged.

  “You were the money!” Milo said.

  “I do stuff for Lenny sometimes. He had a press going somewhere, all set to turn out fifties, hundreds, deluxe items, Milo, really good work, but they needed some front money. I provided Lenny with a sample, is all. Like a grant application, see? They weren’t ready to print yet. He was just supposed to show it and collect the advance. Then he pays me. Anyway, that was the idea.”

  “Was that Lenny Zorn?”

  “What?” Sylvie looked at him with a slightly shocked expression, like a hoer who has struck an unexpected rock in a well-cultivated field. “Lenny who… ? Wait a minute. How do you know about that? You mean Zorn’s Lemma, don’t you? How did you hear about Zorn’s Lemma?” She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. Slowly, it closed. Her brows descended. She grabbed Milo’s arm. “You little rat! What do you think you are, some kind of a damned spy? You were listening in on me and the doctor,weren’t you? You knew the whole time, didn’t you?”

  “You’re a shape-shifter, too,” Milo said, “you and Devore! What do you want from me?”

  “God damn you, Milo! What is it with you? You think I want to hurt you? You think I want to use you? What the hell do I need you for? I’m rich as fucking Croesus!”

  “You already used me, Sylvie. You nearly got me killed. Why?”

  “I needed some money, damn it, that’s all. And you’re the one who nearly got you killed. You stabbed yourself, for pity’s sake! It was a simple set-up. Failsafe!”

  “You blew the borders, Sylvie. The guy said they were fuzzy.”

  “Well, it couldn’t be perfect, could it? The guy would think it was regular dough. You think you could do better?”

  Milo knew fifty-dollar bills pretty well. Sylvie insisted on cash from her puppet show patrons, and Milo had been doing most of the collecting lately. They often paid with a fifty, which was a headache for Sylvie to break, but easy for the sponsors to carry. In his mind, Milo could see a fifty-dollar bill as clearly as he could see his own hand. He could look right through it and all around it, on both sides. He felt the pattern of ink on its surface as if it were a network of varicose veins. He felt the rough surface like a hairy pelt, like his own hairy pelt.

  Suddenly, he felt the sheets collapse around him, his skin shrivel and implode. He felt as if he were becoming all tongue, and the tongue was sucking an unripe fruit that sucked back at him, drying him out till he winked out of existence entirely. It was very quiet, very dark, very still.

  Milo was gone. There was only a vague electricity, a tension, slight at first, but it became more and more irritating, until it was unbearable. Then he burst into mundane awareness again, like a frogman bursting above the surface, gasping, shocked by the sudden light and air.

  “Damn you,” Sylvie was saying. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again.”

  “Don’t tell him that” a low voice said from behind Sylvie. A door had opened. Light poured in. Someone was walking in, silhouetted in the doorw
ay. Milo could see only that he was a small man and, from the light flashing from his head, that he wore glasses. “His father told him that once. He won’t like to hear that, will you, Milo? Tell the truth now, Sylvie. Was he any good?”

  Sylvie was fuming. She swallowed. She breathed. She calmed herself for the small man’s sake. “He’s fabulous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “That’s what I figured.” The man came closer and put his hand on Sylvie’s shoulder. “You know who I am, don’t you, Milo?”

  “Sure,” Milo said. “You’re Dr Devore.”

  “That’s right, Milo. I don’t know much materiel medica any more, but I can still do first aid, OK. How’s the belly?”

  “I’m all right. Do you own The Grass and Trees?”

  “You’re a smart boy, Milo. We don’t want to hurt you. We don’t want to use you. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite, you know?”

  Now he made out the drapes, the rolltop, the chairs he lay on. “I jumped out of that window. I was a bat. I flew down.”

  “I didn’t expect that,” Devore said. “I didn’t know you were still here. I wasn’t in a position to know anything at that moment.”

  “The doctor was a rainbow,” Sylvie said.

  Devore clucked his tongue. “Ach! My small talent!”

  “But you called Sylvie,” Milo said.

  “Yes, I had already called her to tell her about you, you know? She was on her way here when she saw you fly down. She improvised.”

  Milo started to tremble. He shut his eyes, then forced them open again. “Sylvie, Dr Devore, there’s something I remembered from a long time ago… “

  Devore cut in, “You don’t have to tell us this, Milo. You don’t have to say anything you’re not ready to say… “

  “I killed my sister. I killed Dede.” He began to sob.

  Sylvie kissed him on the forehead and cradled his head in her arms. “It wasn’t you, little man. It was a mountain lion. You were a little boy! You couldn’t control it! You didn’t know anything! Dede was an operator! She would have used you up and thrown you away like an old Kleenex!”