The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2009
Page 31
“Many of you have lived all your lives under this god’s protection. The rest are too accustomed to living in opposition to all the gods and peoples of the world to fear what might happen if the god of Au has not the strength to do as it promises. Perhaps I have grown too soft with easy living, and sentimental. But the fate of the people of Au troubles me greatly, and if you would ally yourselves with this god you must choose another captain.”
“And if we would not?” cried a voice.
“Then we must cast stone and corpse overboard, and sail away from here as quickly as we may. It has some power yet, and we will be in some danger, but I do not think it will follow us far. The gods of surrounding waters will have no love for it, and even so, at the bottom of the sea there will be no one to feed it.”
“I will show you my power!” said the corpse.
“Show it!” came the voice of an old woman. “We all know your weakness, and Steq has never yet led us wrong!”
As though her words had been a signal, the boat lurched to starboard. Steq grabbed the rail, watched as three or four people tumbled into the water. Crew slid across the deck, and the stone began to roll but the priest caught it up, and then a thick, dead-white tentacle reached up and onto the boat, twisting and snaking until it found a rail, which it curled around and pulled.
The rail snapped and was thrown up into the air. Another tentacle joined the first, groping along the hull, and then another. Torches tumbled from their places and bounced across the deck and into the water. Still a wavering, flickering light lit the boat—the sail was aflame.
“You!” Steq grabbed a man by the arm. “Loose the port hull!” The man scrambled to obey him, speaking to others on his way, who followed him. Steq then let go of the rail, to slide down the deck up against a writhing tentacle. “Everyone to the port hull!” he shouted. What they could do against the monster in an overloaded single hull he did not know, but he did not think they could extinguish the fire and right the ship, and so it was the only chance for survival.
In the meantime he would attack the monster in any way he could. He reached into his coat for his knife, and his hand brushed up against his pouch. There was nothing in it to help him—a few needles, a coil of fishing line and some hooks, and . . .
He looked around for the woman of Au, and saw her scrambling up the deck, hands still bound. He followed, grabbed her ankle and pulled her to him. She lashed out, swinging her fists, and hit him, hard, just under his ear. “Stop!” he shouted, though he knew she would not understand him. But she did stop. “Look!” Out of the pouch he pulled the small piece of polished, golden glass he had brought from Au, and held it before her eyes.
She looked at it for only a moment, and then closed one hand around it and called out, and suddenly the writhing arms were motionless and the sound of snapping wood ceased. “Up,” he said, and pushed her along the sloping deck towards the port hull, which was nearly free, and climbed after her.
“Steq!” The voice of the dead priest, weird and gasping. “Steq! What is that?”
“It is the smallest part of the island of Au,” called Steq, without turning his head. He and the woman reached the edge of the deck and leapt into the port hull just as it was freed. The Godless were unlashing covers and pulling out oars.
“She is not of Au!” cried the dead man. “I am not bound!”
“Then move against her!” This was answered with an inarticulate cry. The last few flames of the burning mast went out as Righteous Vengeance slipped under the waves, and the only light was the torches of the other boats, for the rest of the fleet was still nearby, their own crews watching in horror.
“Row for the nearest ship!” Steq ordered then. “It can not harm us so long as the woman is in the boat, and as for the others, it has not the strength to bring more monsters against them, or it would have done so already.”
The woman sat shivering in the bottom of the hull, both hands clutched around the small glass token. Steq went to her and cut her bonds. “There is a place in the south,” he said, though he knew she would not understand him. “A mountain so high they say you can touch the stars from its top.” She did not answer, he had not expected her to. “Do you hear that, god of Au?” But there was no answer.
The next morning the Fleet of the Godless, reduced to five boats, sailed southward. Behind them, far below the featureless sea and attended only by silent bones and cold, indifferent fish, lay the Stone of Etoje, and the god of Au.
THE FANTASY JUMPER
WILL MCINTOSH
Rando passed his wrist over the credit eye on the Fantasy Jumper kiosk. The darkened window flashed to life, revealing a full-length, three-dimensional image of a young woman with pale, perfect skin lightly dusted with freckles.
“This is the one I wanted to show you,” Rando said to his blind date, Maya, who had an artificial eye that drooped slightly, but was otherwise very cute in a chipmunk sort of way.
“Make her blonde,” Rando said, while Maya peered over his shoulder. The woman’s hair changed from brown to golden blonde.
“Old-fashioned romance dress.” It hurt to talk, because Rando had accidentally bitten the inside of his cheek while eating oysters at the underwater restaurant. The woman’s simple white shift morphed into a flowing mintcream gown with a diving bust line, like on the covers of the books Rando’s elderly mother read.
“Big pointy dunce hat,” Rando said, laughing, and the woman was suddenly wearing an oversized red cone, with “Dunce” printed top to bottom in plain black letters.
“Finished,” Rando said to the kiosk, simultaneously puffing his cheek to keep the wound from rubbing against his molar.
The window glided up, and the woman stepped out.
“This time, maybe I’ll reach the fountain,” she said. She turned and leapt off the roof.
Maya gasped.
They leaned over the short wall and watched her plummet, her dress billowing, arms spread wide.
“Isn’t that something?” Rando said.
The woman seemed to fall for a long time; Rando stared, rapt.
Finally, she hit the ground. Her head bounced violently, then she lay motionless. The dunce hat, which had come loose during the fall, clunked to the ground a few feet away from her. A wide swatch of blood blossomed on the pavement around her head. People on a pedestrium that wound past the fountain pointed, their words indecipherable. Then they seemed to recognize that the woman was not a real woman, and went back to their conversations.
Rando looked at Maya. “Isn’t that something?”
Maya smiled and nodded. She glanced at her watch.
“Watch this, watch this,” Rando said, pointing down at the broken body. The pavement under the body slid open until the body dropped out of sight, then it returned to its original flat grey.
“Let’s try it again,” Rando said, sweeping the credit eye a second time. “Can you do that movie star, Ellie what’s-her-name?”
“I only have copyright permission to simulate three celebrities: Cotton McQue, Gym Hinderer, and Lena Zavaroni,” the woman behind the glass said listlessly.
“Those all suck,” Rando said. “What about a little kid?”
“Age?”
“Five.”
The woman became a five year old girl, cute as a button, but with the same haunted grey eyes.
“Finished!” Rando said.
The little girl stepped out. “This time, maybe I’ll reach the fountain,” she said. Her tiny legs scrambled and churned until she finally cleared the low wall. She jumped, tumbling head over feet once, twice, before slamming to the pavement.
He glanced at Maya again. She looked a little distracted, like she wasn’t having a very good time. She was so cute. Rando imagined what it would be like to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner holding Maya’s hand.
“Hey, I have an idea,” he said. He held up a picture of his mother for the kiosk to scan. “This is going to be hilarious.”
When he’d finished watching h
is mother fall, he turned to find that Maya was nowhere in sight.
“Maya?” he called, but got no answer. He headed off to look for her.
Violet and Cloe wandered the roof, holding hands. Violet was an egret of a woman, tall and skinny. Her head bobbed when she walked—one bob for each step. Cloe had a ruddy red face, and a habit of waggling her finger when she talked, as if were trying to write what she said in the air.
They took turns looking out at the park through a telescopic viewfinder that could focus on one square of a waffle cone held by a child in line to see the Concrete Mermaid, if you wanted it to. The view was spectacular—the fair stretched nearly to the horizon, a cacophony of brilliant shapes and colors, snaked by long lines of wide-eyed patrons.
They walked on, pausing to watch three teenage boys create a haggard looking middle-aged woman, who said something about the fountain, then startled them both by leaping off the roof. They continued.
An old woman with thick ankles ringed by plump purple veins sat at the memory kiosk. On the viewscreen a young girl (Violet assumed it was the old woman in her youth) swatted yellow jackets off a younger boy (her brother?) who was covered with them. He was screaming, his skin already mottled by lumps with angry red centers. One of the wasps landed on the girl’s cheek and stung her; she cried in pain, but kept swatting at the bees that swarmed the boy.
“What a gruesome memory to record,” Cloe said.
“Maybe she wants to show her family what a brave girl she was.” Violet let go of Cloe’s hand to wipe her palm on her hip, then reached to retrieve it, but Cloe had folded her arms across her chest.
At the Dream kiosk they watched what they had dreamed the night before. Violet dreamed that Chinese people were painting graffiti all over her body. Cloe dreamed that she was pinned by a tangle of electrical cords connected to life support systems. She had to unplug them to free herself.
“Look at this one,” Violet said, scampering ahead, “Lie Detector Spectacles.”
She scanned the credit eye; the specs popped out on a stalk, oversized, with black frames. Violet pressed her face to them, eyeing Cloe through a haze of smudges.
“How old are you?” Violet asked.
“Fourteen,” Cloe said.
A burst of indecipherable readouts lit up in Violet’s peripheral vision, then the word LIE in bright red. Violet clapped, delighted.
“Do you watch too much television?”
“Yes.”
TRUTH.
“Who do you think is better looking, me or you?” Violet said.
Cloe smirked, shook her head.
“Come now! Who’s better looking?”
“You,” she finally answered.
LIE.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. I always thought you had a bit of a narcissistic streak.”
“It’s my turn,” Cloe said, stepping out of the spectacles’ gaze and tugging Violet by her sweater.
“Do you hate my mother?”
“Of course not!” Violet said.
Cloe pulled her face away from the spectacles, looked at Violet, nodded her head. “Yes. You do.”
“No, I don’t,” Violet protested.
“Have you ever looked at my personal memory videos when I was out of the house?”
“N—no.”
Violet and Cloe took turns hurling questions, progressing from tickling, to pricking, to ripping flesh from the bone. Do you find my breasts too small? What really happened after I passed out the night we snorted Godflash with Jenna?
Then a question burst from Violet unbidden, as if leaping out of a black hole.
“Do you love me?”
“What?” Cloe said.
“You heard me.”
Cloe shifted from one foot to the other, looked toward the horizon, where the wonders of the park continued to shimmer and spin.
“No,” she said.
TRUTH, said the spectacles.
Violet sank to the floor. A rushing filled her ears, as if they were flooding with water. She stared at Cloe, waiting for Cloe to take it back, or qualify it, or denounce the kiosk a liar.
“I’m sorry,” Cloe said. “I should have told you sooner, but I couldn’t figure out how.”
Violet stared. She was having one of those disembodied moments, when every word, every movement, feels like an echo instead of something happening new.
“I should go.” Cloe turned, then paused. Violet’s heart leapt.
Cloe reached behind her neck with both hands, unclasped the vow necklace Violet had given her, and put it in Violet’s lap when Violet didn’t hold out a hand to take it.
Abbet was fat, and he walked like a duck. His splayed footsteps were silent on the hard polished floor. No one paid him much attention as he approached the Fantasy Jumper kiosk—a glistening rectangle trimmed in silver and chrome. He swept his wrist across the kiosk’s credit eye, and the young woman appeared.
“No alterations. Default model.”
Always the same expression when she emerged—serene on the surface, but undertones of restless longing.
Immediately, she turned toward the low wall. “This time, maybe I’ll reach the fountain.”
“Wait, not yet,” Abbet said.
The woman gazed out for a moment, focused not on the wonders spread out before her, but on the empty air between her and those wonders, the middle distance. Reluctantly she turned back.
“It breaks my heart that you’re created only to die scant moments later. Such a waste.”
The woman opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t understand what he meant, that she had been created for falling and dying, for ecstasy and agony, but realized that saying it would only draw him into conversation, only delay her. The joy of the fall, and the horror of the pavement, beckoned.
“Thank you,” she said instead.
“I fell asleep at my work station yesterday,” Abbet said. “When I woke up I discovered I’d inadvertently laid my head on my keyboard, primarily on the ‘k’ key.” Bits of foam formed on his lips as he spoke. “When I woke, my screen was filled with k’s. It took me hours to delete them all.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder. Rays of sunshine painted the dust and dandelion blooms swirling in the space she longed to fill. She could be out there with them now, she could pass through those bands of light, create a draft that sucked dust and dandelion blooms after her.
“I’ve kept the tags from all my clothing since I was a boy, so I can track the changes in my body. I keep the tags in a brown chest.” He watched her face carefully, searching for some reaction.
“I have to go now,” she said, leaning on her right foot, the one she would step with first. “Please let me go.”
“Please, talk to me a while,” he said.
“Why don’t you talk to one of the women from the sex kiosk?”
“They only want to have sex. They don’t want to talk. No one wants to talk.” He kicked at a bottle top lying prongs-up on the ground, but missed.
“Are you the same each time?” He asked. “Or are you a new one each time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you want to reach the fountain so badly?”
“I don’t know. I imagine I was made that way. But it doesn’t matter. It would be so wonderful, to hit the water, to feel it all around me, pouring into my throat and my ears.”
“Your wishes are so simple,” Abbet said. “Mine are so complicated. I’m not even sure what all of them are.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with desperate eyes.
He nodded glumly. “Okay, go, if that’s what you want.”
“This time I’m going to reach the fountain.”
“You’ll never reach it, you know. It’s much too far . . . ”
Her artificial heart pounding in anticipation and terror, craving the fall but dreading the pain, she planted the arch of her foot against the edge of the low wall and catapulted herself into the air, arms spread wide, gaze fixed
past the wide grey expanse of pavement to the shallow ripple and spray of blue-white water beyond. She flew horizontally first, feeling the thrill of weightlessness, the anticipation, the potential represented by the space between her body and the ground. Then she fell, gaining speed. Her long, chestnut hair snapped in the wind; her cheeks puffed as air rushed into her half-open mouth.
Too soon, all at once, it was over. She lay staring at a red and white popsicle wrapper lying by her nose for one last, agonizing heartbeat, then she died.
Still clutching Cloe’s vow necklace in her sweaty palm, Violet watched the earnest fat man talk to the Fantasy Jumper, then watched the Fantasy Jumper leap. Part of Violet wanted to follow the Jumper, to be free of her sadness. And, maybe even more importantly, to saddle Cloe with a lifetime of guilt and remorse. But there was bound to be a safety field around the roof to stop anyone but the Fantasy Jumper from jumping.
The fat man waddled away without even watching the Fantasy Jumper hit the ground. Violet went to the edge to look at the Fantasy Jumper’s body. It was already gone.
A jolt went through her—Cloe was walking on the pedestrium below. She must have stopped in the bathroom. Violet hoped she’d stopped to cry.
Violet turned away, absently caressed the brass piping of the Fantasy Jumper’s kiosk. She looked at her reflection in the window, at her too-small breasts and her beak nose.
A wonderful idea occurred to her.
She swept her bony wrist over the credit eye, and the window came to life.
“Just like me. Exactly like me,” she ordered, and in an instant, it was as if she were looking at her reflection again.
“Come,” Violet said.
The window raised, and the Fantasy Jumper stepped out. “This time, I’ll reach the fountain,” she said.
“Wait!” Violet said, holding out an arm to block the Fantasy Jumper from the wall. Cloe was still fifty meters from the fountain. Violet had to time it just right.
She fastened Cloe’s vow necklace around the Fantasy Jumper’s neck, instructed the Jumper to wait for her signal, then hurried to the telescopic viewer and focused it on Cloe. She wanted to see Cloe’s face.