The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  On a trellised arcade at Holbertson Hospital, a yellow wall gave back the sun’s rays. Trip sat in a wickerwork chair under a ceiling fan, hands folded, looking out at the garden. He was thinking of nothing in particular.

  A chair beside him creaked as someone sat down. It was Meg. “How are you doing?”

  Trip considered the question. Looking at his hands, he noted with some satisfaction that his fingers were healing, although the nails were still torn. “I’m all right. What about you?”

  “I thought I’d pay a visit to our friend in the next ward. Want to come along?”

  Trip only rose in reply. As they walked along the arcade, they passed a pair of nurses wearing white surgical masks. At their approach, the nurses inclined their heads politely, but kept their distance.

  They had arrived in Antigua two days ago. With the yacht repaired, the journey had taken three days, with frequent breaks to keep the engine from overheating. Purified water and magnesium salts had kept their destructive impulses at bay, but it was unclear what the lasting effects would be.

  As they walked, Meg said softly, “You know, when I close my eyes, I still see them.”

  Trip knew what she meant. Whenever his own eyes were closed, he saw the octopus lights blinking softly in the darkness. The pattern had been permanently branded onto his subconscious, broadcasting a message that would always be there. Magnesium controlled the urge, but did not eliminate it entirely.

  And he was not the only one. Meg’s elbow, he saw, had been freshly bandaged.

  They reached a room in the adjoining ward. Inside, Ellis was seated in bed, his notes spread across his lap. His throat was swathed in gauze. The shears had missed his carotid artery by only a few millimeters.

  As they entered, Ellis looked up. When they asked him how he was doing, he studied his own hands before speaking. The bruises on his knuckles had faded. “I’m well enough, I suppose.”

  Looking at the notes on the bedspread, Trip recognized the pictures and sketches that he had taken of the octopus school. “I hope you aren’t having second thoughts about your decision.”

  Ellis made a dismissive gesture. When the yacht was a few miles from shore, he had taken the bucket with the last remaining octopus and tipped it overboard, watching as it slid under the glassy surface. Even if they took precautions to avoid infection, the risk of contagion had been too great.

  “It’s a big ocean,” Ellis said now, his voice a whisper. “There are other discoveries to be made. And as you said, our first responsibility is to the living. Although the dead deserve our respect as well.”

  Trip merely nodded. After another minute of small talk, he left the others alone, sensing that they wanted to speak privately. As he headed for the door, he caught Meg’s eye. She smiled at him, a trace of sadness still visible in her face, then turned back to the man in the hospital bed.

  Outside, on the covered walk, the sun was setting, its last rays shining through the trellis. As Trip headed down the arcade, the slats of the trellis alternately hid and revealed the sunset, reminding him, briefly, of the lights that he had seen in the sea. He had almost reached the end of the walkway when he realized that his left hand was creeping toward his lips.

  Trip halted. Up ahead, the garden was only a few steps away. With an effort, he lowered his hand, his gaze fixed on the tips of his fingers. He waited for the impulse to fade, as it always did. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, it passed. He exhaled. Then, stuffing his hands in his pockets, he headed for the garden, keeping his eyes turned away from the light.

  DYING YOUNG

  Peter M. Ball

  A graduate of Clarion South, Peter M. Ball published his first story in Dreaming Again in 2007. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in Eclipse Four, Electric Velocipede, Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Interfictions II, Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, and elsewhere. His faerie-noir novella Horn was published in 2009, and was followed by Bleed in 2010. He lives in Brisbane, Australia, and can be found online at www.petermball.com.

  Here he spins a vivid and violent tale that starts out seeming like a mix of fantasy and spaghetti western, but which instead is really science fiction set in the wake of an apocalyptic future war – in spite of the presence of dragons.

  I SMELT HIM COMING long before he arrived, the musty odor of sulphur and dust cutting through the sweat-stink in Cassidy’s Saloon. Smelling things is part of it, that thing I inherited from my Da, but it weren’t just me who noticed it by the time he got close. The dragon stank bad enough that everyone breathed him in; the entire room hushin’ up, listening to the tick-tick of claws on hardwood, lookin’ at the door as he shouldered his way through.

  He was a tall critter, but stooped over to fit his tail, and he’d been banged up good and proper by something a little more ruthless than the road. The wreckage that’d once been wings were folded over his shoulders, draped like a tattered coat. There weren’t nothing but a jagged nub of bone where his horns had been, and that weren’t good: Da once told me a dragon without horns got ornery, and they were usually trouble for more than just the feller what cut ’em off.

  The dragon stared us down; no one said nothin’ for a long stretch, but you can’t stare at a thing like him forever. Someone up the back of the bar coughed, probably Sam Coody or one of his cloned deputies, and that was all it took for everyone to stop gawking and talk amongst themselves. The dragon sneered at us, showing off a ridge of serrated teeth, and walked over to the bar. We pretended we were okay with it, the dragon being there in the saloon, like it weren’t no big deal, but our eyes drifted back. We watched him prop an elbow, easy as anything, and we waited for somethin’ to happen.

  The doc leaned over and nudged me with that big bone hook he calls a hand. “Trouble?”

  I flinched ’fore I nodded, shying away from that hook. I didn’t even need a vision to figure this one out; there was a gun belt hanging on the dragon’s waist, visible every time he took a step, and Da never trusted strangers with guns. They were trouble, he said, and experience proved him right in the end. Doc Cameron knew that better than anyone.

  The doc weren’t satisfied with that, though. There were something pinching at the edge of his eyes, a little scent of fear underneath his oily perfume. “Look harder,” he said. “Tell me what’s coming,” and he gave me a hard look, stared until I closed my eyes and peered forward, using Da’s gift. I saw nothing but grey smoke, smelt nothing but fire. I could hear the sharp spit of an automatic through the haze.

  “Something’s burnin’, I can promise you that,” I said, “and I can hear a gun, Doc. Automatic. Someone’s headin’ for your slab, I think, before it’s all over.”

  Doc Cameron half lowered his eyelids and scratched the sharp edge of his cheekbone. Something flickered across his pupils, a cluster of lights spiralling towards the tear ducts as he scanned the dragon. Military tech, a holdover from the war, the doc’s little gift to Dunsborough. The little box on his belt hummed, fixing the data from the doc’s cortical patch onto a slice of silicon.

  “Should we tell Coody, do you think?” I said, and the doc shook his head.

  “The sheriff will want details,” Doc said. “Damn fool won’t run off a dragon based on a hunch, even one of yours.”

  The doc sniffed. Coody was Da’s friend, last of the men Da trained before the doc took over. Doc closed his eyes and a light on the box flickered, the data loaded up and ready for study. “I’m going to go download this. Keep an eye on the lizard, Paul. The real eyes and the other. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  The doc slipped out the back way, eager to get back to his lab. I sat and drank my sarsaparilla and watched the dragon like I was told. I kept one hand under the table, close to that sharp knife Da gave me when I turned fourteen. The dragon didn’t do much beyond ordering whisky. I closed two eyes and opened the third wide, peering forward for all I was worth; it got me nothing but smoke and gunshots and the beginning of a headache that would
last for days.

  It weren’t more than a half-hour after the doc scarpered before things got ugly.

  I can see trouble coming ’fore most folks, even without the third eye. It was Da that taught me the trick of it, the ways of reading a room and seeing who’ll make the first move. The dragon weren’t lookin’ for trouble when he first walked in, but he were waiting for some to roll on by and get itself started of its own accord. In the old days Da would’ve talked him around, but Da’s long gone and Coody ain’t quite got the knack of keepin’ things peaceful. People in the bar worried, stayed quiet, and whispered when they spoke.

  It were Kenny Sloan who stepped up, stompin’ across the floorboards to get in the dragon’s face. Sloan’s one of the doc’s razorfreaks, a ’borg with a handful of scalpels and jacked reflexes, fast enough to slice the wings off a fly. He put his weight against the bar and looked over at the dragon, propping his arm on the counter so the light gleamed off the metal. Kenny Sloan was a bully, like most of the doc’s boys. He flipped a quick grin back at his cronies, making sure they were watching. “Hey, lizard,” Sloan said. “I thought your kind knew better than to drink at human bars.”

  The dragon turned then, mouth full of whisky, twin trails of smoke seeping out of his nose. The molten eyes squinted at Sloan, studying him. Sloan was a big guy, even before Doc jacked him up; no one missed him posturing. The noise died down and I saw Coody and his posse of badges straightening up in their corner, gettin’ ready for real trouble. The dragon turned back to his whisky, ignoring us all. Sloan laid his fingers on the dragon’s shoulder.

  “Hey, lizard,” Sloan said. He flicked the mechanical arm out, blades sliding free of the finger sheaths. “We already beat your kind once, yeah?”

  Things happened fast after that, probably too fast to get the details without the third eye’s hindsight. Sloan went to strike the dragon, Coody and his tin-star heroes got up on their feet, and the dragon moved faster than all of them. A quick twist away from Sloan’s swipe, wings flaring out behind him, the dragon’s stance low with clawed hands splayed wide. Sloan got himself gutted before his finger-blades crunched into the top of the bar, and he stood there, bleeding slow from a stomach wound and struggling to get his hand free.

  “You need a doctor,” the dragon hissed. He swallowed the last mouthful of whisky, and Coody’s men had him surrounded by the time he laid the glass down. The dragon eyed them carefully, all the sheriffs skinny mutateclones with their clunky pre-war revolvers. Coody pulled Sloan’s hand free of the hardwood; Kenny Sloan kept himself busy trying to hold in the mess of blood and gore that used to be his stomach. “Sorry for the mess,” the dragon said, and he touched a blood-slicked claw to his forehead. His wings settled around him again, rearranging themselves to cover his gun belt and the sleek lines of his body. “I’ll see myself out, yes?”

  The clones looked at Coody and the old man nodded; no one said squeak as the dragon walked away. Sloan moaned a little, making gurgling sounds when he tried to speak, and as soon as the dragon was gone the sheriff looked around and pointed in my direction.

  “Where’s the doc?” Coody said. “Blood and thunder, son, go tell Cameron to hustle if he wants his pet ’borg to keep breathing.”

  I nodded and started moving, but Sloan was a goner. The doc didn’t care about his ’borgs the way Coody looked after his clones, ’specially not when they were as dumb as Kenny and there was prey on the horizon. I went ’cross the square and buzzed the doc’s doorbell, but there was no answer coming. I had nothing to do but wait, go back to Coody, or go trailin’ after the dragon like I was supposed to. None of them appealed. Kenny Sloan was screaming inside the bar, dying slow and messy, so I went with the best option of the three; I ambled down the main street, following the soft buzz in my head that’d tell me where to find the dragon’s camp.

  The dragon was hiding out by Prickly Pear Hill, his bedroll stretched out in the middle of the twisted cacti that soaked up moisture from the stream curving ’round the base of the slope. He looked like he was travelling light; a small pack looked empty, like he’d been killing food on the march, but when I strolled in I got the familiar itch and saw dirt piled up where he’d buried supplies. I opened the third eye, peered on down, and got a sense of crates, canned food, and cordite.

  I had myself a few good minutes before the dragon rolled in, largely thanks to the fact that I weren’t forced to backtrack in case the town sent out a posse. I sat on a rock and kicked the dust, listening hard, trying to hear him coming. It didn’t work; I didn’t hear him, see him, didn’t even smell him this time around. I ain’t easy to sneak up on, but he managed it. I just blinked my eyes and there he was, crouched low with claws out and hot spit dribbling down his chin.

  “Boy,” he said, nostrils flaring, and at that the smell of sulphur rose up around me. “You were at the bar, yes? Town sent you?”

  I nodded, keeping my hands out in the open. I weren’t armed with much, just my Da’s knife, and it seemed to calm the dragon. He knelt down, sniffed me, then sighed a stream of smoke into the air. “Ah,” he said. “You have gifts.”

  “A bit,” I said. “Not much, not really.”

  He sniffed again, breathing deep. I recognized the trick from when Da used to do it, knew about the clues you could pick up with the right kind of training. The third eye does big things, its own special kind of magic, but Da always said there were other senses to fill in what the third eye can’t see. The dragon smiled at me. “Trained, then? Your father?”

  I shrugged the question away. “I work for the doc,” I said. “He runs things; wanted you followed.”

  The dragon cocked his head, smiling. “Dangerous work, yes?”

  I said nothing, just crouched there on my rock and waiting for what would come. I had enough of my Da in me to know I weren’t going to die there, but that didn’t mean I weren’t going to pay hard for daring to follow him out there. I waited for the dragon to lash out, making use of his claws.

  It ain’t often I’m surprised, but he surprised me then. “I make tea, yes?”

  “Oh.” I blinked, and he watched me carefully. I forced myself to nod. “Yes. Please, yes.”

  I squirmed. The dragon turned his attention to the fire, hocked a sharp gob of spit into a pile of kindling to get things going. He unearthed an iron pot and loose tea from his pack, crouched down by the flames to set it boiling. There was something fascinating about the muscles moving under his scales, about the way sunlight gleamed on the dark ridges across his hands. He sat, dignified, and waited.

  “You’re after someone,” I said. “I saw that much, back in the saloon. Can’t see who, or why, but it’s going to end messy.”

  The dragon kept his eyes on the tea. “Yes.”

  “I’m thinking it’s the doc,” I said. “He got plenty nervous when you showed up, hurried off to his lab right fast. That ain’t like him, really. Doc Cameron likes his body parts, having new bits to play with.”

  That earned me a reaction, a snort of smoke and a twitch in the folded wings. “Yes.”

  “So what’s going to happen, when you front up again?”

  The dragon settled back on his haunches, stirring the pot. He lifted the pan and poured spiced tea into a pair of metal mugs, both of them bearing scorch marks on the rim. He handed one to me and I saw flecks of Sloan’s blood drying on the dragon’s claws. “You have the sight,” he said. “You tell me.”

  My forehead tingled, all prescience and instinct, but turned up nothing new. “I haven’t seen yet; the future’s nothing but smoke and gunfire.” I took a long sip of the tea, felt the chilli powder burning the back of my throat as it went down. The dragon watched me drink, red eyes narrowed to slits. I figured I knew what he was waiting for. “Ask,” I said. “I ain’t going to lie.”

  “You have the sight, yet you work for your doctor?”

  I guessed what he was asking and short-cut to the answer. “He did some bad stuff when he arrived,” I said. “But good stuff, to
o. Helped people, gave ’em back stuff they’d lost. Relics of the war, sure, but they had arms and legs again. They could work, and we needed workers.”

  The dragon’s laughter sent hot spit across the campfire. He put his cup down, tilting forward, and when he straightened up one of those ancient Lugers sat neat and easy in his hand. He pointed the narrow barrel in my direction, eyes narrowed down to stare at me. “You know, then,” he said. “You’ve seen what your doctor has done?”

  “Bits and pieces. Glimpses, really, but I got plenty after what he’s done since coming to town.” I watched the cold fire in the dragon’s eyes.

  The dragon breathed deep. “He killed your father?”

  I nodded again.

  “And you work for him, still?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “Why?”

  “Needs to be done.” I sipped my tea, staying calm; he wasn’t going to shoot me, I could see that much. I don’t have all my Da’s gifts, not even half, but I was sure enough of that. “Not much good tellin’ folk ’round these parts he’s the devil; they need the doc too much to care and it ain’t like anyone’s goin’ to be surprised by revelations of shady dealin’s. And my Da didn’t hold with revenge, really; he cared about keepin’ folks safe. He would a done the same as me, most likely, if he ain’t ended up dead. These are nasty times; it takes a nasty man or a brave man to keep a town safe.”

  “Your father was brave.”

  “And look where it got him.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, to avoid the flashes of history that rolled in if I let myself dwell on feeling. Hindsight can be a curse, Da said, and he weren’t half wrong about that. “We’re out of brave men, now he’s dead. All we’ve got left is the nasty folk and the followers. Way I see it, I can have the doc dead or everyone else can live.”

  The dragon’s expression didn’t change and the Luger didn’t waver, but the tattered wings rippled as he adjusted his stance. The crooked line of his broken horn caught the firelight. “What you have seen,” he said. “You cannot save him.”