The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Get out,” I said to Miss Lytton, the guards.

  “Sir, I—”

  I shot her a look, and she backed away. Then the old man spoke, and once again I heard that wonderful voice of his, like a subway train rumbling underfoot. “Yes, Amy, allow us to talk in privacy, please.”

  When we were alone, the old man and I looked at each other for a long time, unblinking. Finally, I rocked back on my heels. “Well,” I said. After all these centuries, I was at a loss for words. “Well, well, well.”

  He said nothing.

  “Merlin,” I said, putting a name to it.

  “Mordred,” he replied, and the silence closed around us again.

  * * *

  The silence could have gone on forever for all of me; I wanted to see how the old wizard would handle it. Eventually he realized this, and slowly stood, like a thunderhead rising up in the western sky. Bushy, expressive eyebrows clashed together. “Arthur dead, and you alive! Alas, who can trust this world?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve read Malory too.”

  Suddenly his left hand gripped my wrist and squeezed. Merlin leaned forward, and his face loomed up in my sight, ruthless grey eyes growing enormous as the pain washed up my arm. He seemed a natural force then, like the sun or wind, and I tumbled away before it.

  I was on a nightswept field, leaning on my sword, surrounded by my dead. The veins in my forehead hammered. My ears ached with the confusion of noises, of dying horses and men. It had been butchery, a battle in the modern style in which both sides had fought until all were dead. This was the end of all causes: I stood empty on Salisbury Plain, too disheartened even to weep.

  Then I saw Arthur mounted on a black horse. His face all horror and madness, he lowered his spear and charged. I raised my sword and ran to meet him.

  He caught me below the shield and drove his spear through my body. The world tilted and I was thrown up into a sky black as wellwater. Choking, I fell deep between the stars where the shadows were aswim with all manner of serpents, dragons, and wild beasts. The creatures struggled forward to seize my limbs in their talons and claws. In wonder I realized I was about to die.

  Then the wheel turned and set me down again. I forced myself up the spear, unmindful of pain. Two-handed, I swung my sword through the side of Arthur’s helmet and felt it bite through bone into the brain beneath.

  My sword fell from nerveless fingers, and Arthur dropped his spear. His horse reared and we fell apart. In that last instant our eyes met and in his wondering hurt and innocence I saw, as if staring into an obsidian mirror, the perfect image of myself.

  “So,” Merlin said, and released my hand. “He is truly dead, then. Even Arthur could not have survived the breaching of his skull.”

  I was horrified and elated: He could still wield power, even in this dim and disenchanted age. The danger he might have killed me out of hand was small price to pay for such knowledge. But I masked my feelings.

  “That’s just about fucking enough!” I cried. “You forget yourself, old man. I am still the Pen-dragon, Dux Bellorum Britanniarum and King of all Britain and Amorica and as such your liege lord!”

  That got to him. These medieval types were all heavy on rightful authority. He lowered his head on those bullish shoulders and grumbled, “I had no right, perhaps. And yet how was I to know that? The histories all said Arthur might yet live. Were it so, my duty lay with him, and the restoration of Camelot.” There was still a look, a humor, in his eye I did not trust, as if he found our confrontation essentially comic.

  “You and your fucking Camelot! Your bloody holy and ideal court!” The memories were unexpectedly fresh, and they hurt as only betrayed love can. For I really had loved Camelot when I first came to court, and adolescent true believer in the new myth of the Round Table, of Christian chivalry and glorious quests. Arthur could have sent me after the Grail itself, I was that innocent.

  But a castle is too narrow and strait a space for illusions. It holds no secrets. The queen, praised for her virtue by one and all, was a harlot. The king’s best friend, a public paragon of chastity, was betraying him. And everyone knew! There was the heart and exemplar of it all. Those same poetasters who wrote sonnets to the purity of Lodegreaunce’s daughter smirked and gossiped behind their hands. It was Hypocrisy Hall, ruled over by the smiling and genial Good King Cuckold. He knew all, but so long as no one dared speak it aloud, he did not care. And those few who were neither fools nor lackeys, those who spoke openly of what all knew, were exiled or killed. For telling the truth! That was Merlin’s holy and Christian court of Camelot.

  Down below, Shikra prowled the crooked aisles dividing the workbenches, prying open a fermenter to take a peek, rifling through desk drawers, elaborately bored. She had that kind of rough, destructive energy that demands she be doing something at all times.

  The king’s bastard is like his jester, powerless but immune from criticism. I trafficked with the high and low of the land, tinsmiths and river-gods alike, and I knew their minds. Arthur was hated by his own people. He kept the land in ruin with his constant wars. Taxes went to support the extravagant adventures of his knights. He was expanding his rule, croft by shire, a kingdom here, a chunk of Normandy there, questing after Merlin’s dream of a Paneuropean Empire. All built on the blood of the peasantry; they were just war fodder to him.

  I was all but screaming in Merlin’s face. Below, Shikra drifted closer, straining to hear. “That’s why I seized the throne while he was off warring in France—to give the land a taste of peace; as a novelty, if nothing else. To clear away the hypocrisy and cant, to open the windows and let a little fresh air in. The people had prayed for release. When Arthur returned, it was my banner they rallied around. And do you know what the real beauty of it was? It was over a year before he learned he’d been overthrown.”

  Merlin shook his head. “You are so like your father! He too was an idealist—I know you find that hard to appreciate—a man who burned for the Right. We should have acknowledged your claim to succession.”

  “You haven’t been listening!”

  “You have a complaint against us. No one denies that. But, Mordred, you must understand that we didn’t know you were the king’s son. Arthur was … not very fertile. He had slept with your mother only once. We thought she was trying to blackmail him.” He sighed piously. “Had we only known, it all could have been different.”

  I was suddenly embarrassed for him. What he called my complaint was the old and ugly story of my birth. Fearing the proof of his adultery—Morgawse was nominally his sister, and incest had both religious and dynastic consequences—Arthur had ordered all noble babies born that feast of Beltaine brought to court, and then had them placed in an unmanned boat and set adrift. Days later, a peasant had found the boat run aground with six small corpses. Only I, with my unhuman vigor, survived. But, typical of him, Merlin missed the horror of the story—that six innocents were sacrificed to hide the nature of Arthur’s crime—and saw it only as a denial of my rights of kinship. The sense of futility and resignation that is my curse descended once again. Without understanding between us, we could never make common cause.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  * * *

  I picked up 476 to the Schuylkill. Shikra hung over the back seat, fascinated, confused and aroused by the near-subliminal scent of murder and magic that clung to us both. “You haven’t introduced me to your young friend.” Merlin turned and offered his hand. She didn’t take it.

  “Shikra, this is Merlin of the Order of Ambrose, enchanter and master politician.” I found an opening to the right, went up on the shoulder to take advantage of it, and slammed back all the way left, leaving half a dozen citizens leaning on their horns. “I want you to be ready to kill him at an instant’s notice. If I act strange—dazed or in any way unlike myself—slit his throat immediately. He’s capable of seizing control of my mind, and yours too if you hesitate.”

  “How ’bout that,” Shik
ra said.

  Merlin scoffed genially. “What lies are you telling this child?”

  “The first time I met her, I asked Shikra to cut off one of my fingers.” I held up my little finger for him to see, fresh and pink, not quite grown to full size. “She knows there are strange things astir, and they don’t impress her.”

  “Hum.” Merlin stared out at the car lights whipping toward us. We were on the expressway now, concrete crashguards close enough to brush fingertips against. He tried again. “In my first life, I greatly wished to speak with an African, but I had duties that kept me from traveling. It was one of the delights of the modern world to find I could meet your people everywhere, and learn from them.” Shikra made that bug-eyed face the young make when the old condescend; I saw it in the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t have to ask what you’ve been doing while I was … asleep,” Merlin said after a while. That wild undercurrent of humor was back in his voice. “You’ve been fighting the same old battles, eh?”

  My mind wasn’t wholly on our conversation. I was thinking of the bon hommes of Languedoc, the gentle people today remembered (by those few who do remember) as the Albigensians. In the heart of the thirteenth century, they had reinvented Christianity, leading lives of poverty and chastity. They offered me hope, at a time when I had none. We told no lies, held no wealth, hurt neither man nor animal—we did not even eat cheese. We did not resist our enemies, nor obey them either, we had no leaders and we thought ourselves safe in our poverty. But Innocent III sent his dogs to level our cities, and on their ashes raised the Inquisition. My sweet, harmless comrades were tortured, mutilated, burnt alive. History is a laboratory in which we learn that nothing works, or even can. “Yes.”

  “Why?” Merlin asked. And chuckled to himself when I did not answer.

  * * *

  The Top of Centre Square was your typical bar with a view, a narrow box of a room with mirrored walls and gold foil insets in the ceiling to illusion it larger, and flaccid jazz oozing from hidden speakers. “The stools in the center, by the window,” I told the hostess, and tipped her accordingly. She cleared some businessmen out of our seats and dispatched a waitress to take our orders.

  “Boodles martini, very dry, straight up with a twist,” I said.

  “Single malt Scotch. Warm.”

  ‘‘I’d like a Shirley Temple, please.” Shikra smiled so sweetly that the waitress frowned, then raised one cheek from her stool and scratched. If the woman hadn’t fled it might have gotten ugly.

  Our drinks arrived. “Here’s to progress,” Merlin said, toasting the urban landscape. Silent traffic clogged the far-below streets with red and white beads of light. Over City Hall the buildings sprawled electric-bright from Queen Village up to the Northern Liberties. Tugs and barges crawled slowly upriver. Beyond, Camden crowded light upon light. Floating above the terrestrial galaxy, I felt the old urge to throw myself down. If only there were angels to bear me up.

  “I had a hand in the founding of this city.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, the City of Brotherly Love. Will Penn was a Quaker, see, and they believed religious toleration would lead to secular harmony. Very radical for the times. I forget how many times he was thrown in jail for such beliefs before he came into money and had the chance to put them into practice. The Society of Friends not only brought their own people in from England and Wales, but also Episcopalians, Baptists, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, all kinds of crazy German sects—the city became a haven for the outcasts of all the other religious colonies.” How had I gotten started on this? I was suddenly cold with dread. “The Friends formed the social elite. Their idea was that by example and by civil works, they could create a pacifistic society, one in which all men followed their best impulses. All their grand ideals were grounded in a pragmatic set of laws, too; they didn’t rely on goodwill alone. And you know, for a Utopian scheme it was pretty successful. Most of them don’t last a decade. But…” I was rambling, wandering further and further away from the point. I felt helpless. How could I make him understand how thoroughly the facts had betrayed the dream? “Shikra was born here.”

  “Ahhh.” He smiled knowingly.

  Then all the centuries of futility and failure, of striving for first a victory and then a peace I knew was not there to be found, collapsed down upon me like a massive barbiturate crash, and I felt the darkness descend to sink its claws in my shoulders. “Merlin, the world is dying.”

  He didn’t look concerned. “Oh?”

  “Listen, did my people teach you anything about cybernetics? Feedback mechanisms? Well, never mind. The Earth”—I gestured as if holding it cupped in my palm—“is like a living creature. Some say that it is a living creature, the only one, and all life, ourselves included, only component parts. Forget I said that. The important thing is that the Earth creates and maintains a delicate balance of gases, temperatures, and pressures that all life relies on for survival. If this balance were not maintained, the whole system would cycle out of control and … well, die. Us along with it.” His eyes were unreadable, dark with fossil prejudices. I needed another drink. “I’m not explaining this very well.”

  “I follow you better than you think.”

  “Good. Now, you know about pollution? Okay, well now it seems that there’s some that may not be reversible. You see what that means? A delicate little wisp of the atmosphere is being eaten away, and not replaced. Radiation intake increases. Meanwhile, atmospheric pollutants prevent reradiation of greater and greater amounts of infrared; total heat absorption goes up. The forests begin to die. Each bit of damage influences the whole, and leads to more damage. Earth is not balancing the new influences. Everything is cycling out of control, like a cancer.

  “Merlin, I’m on the ropes. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and I’ve failed. The political obstacles to getting anything done are beyond belief. The world is dying, and I can’t save it.”

  He looked at me as if I were crazy.

  I drained my drink. “’Scuse me,” I said. “Got to hit up the men’s room.”

  * * *

  In the john I got out the snuffbox and fed myself some sense of wonder. I heard a thrill of distant flutes as it iced my head with artificial calm, and I straightened slightly as the vultures on my shoulders stirred and then flapped away. They would be back, I knew. They always were.

  I returned, furious with buzzing energy. Merlin was talking quietly to Shikra, a hand on her knee. “Let’s go,” I said. “This place is getting old.”

  * * *

  We took Passayunk Avenue west, deep into the refineries, heading for no place in particular. A kid in an old Trans Am, painted flat black inside and out, rebel flag flying from the antenna, tried to pass me on the right. I floored the accelerator, held my nose ahead of his, and forced him into the exit lane. Brakes screaming, he drifted away. Asshole. We were surrounded by the great tanks and cracking towers now. To one side, I could make out six smoky flames, waste gases being burnt off in gouts a dozen feet long.

  “Pull in there!” Merlin said abruptly, gripping my shoulder and pointing. “Up ahead, where the gate is.”

  “Getty Gas isn’t going to let us wander around in their refinery farm.”

  “Let me take care of that.” The wizard put his forefingers together, twisted his mouth, and bit through his tongue; I heard his teeth snap together. He drew his fingertips apart—it seemed to take all his strength—and the air grew tense. Carefully, he folded open his hands, and then spat blood into the palms. The blood glowed of its own light, and began to bubble and boil. Shikra leaned almost into its steam, grimacing with excitement. When the blood was gone, Merlin closed his hands again and said, “It is done.”

  The car was suddenly very silent. The traffic about us made no noise; the wheels spun soundlessly on the pavement. The light shifted to a melange of purples and reds, color dopplering away from the center of the spectrum. I felt a pervasive queasiness, as if we were moving at enormous speeds
in an unperceived direction. My inner ear spun when I turned my head. “This is the wizard’s world,” Merlin said. “It is from here that we draw our power. There’s our turn.”

  I had to lock brakes and spin the car about to keep from overshooting the gate. But the guards in their little hut, though they were looking straight at us, didn’t notice. We drove by them, into a busy tangle of streets and accessways servicing the refineries and storage tanks. There was a nineteenth-century factory town hidden at the foot of the structures, brick warehouses and utility buildings ensnarled in metal, as if caught midway in a transformation from City to Machine. Pipes big enough to stand in looped over the road in sets of three or eight, nightmare vines that detoured over and around the worn brick buildings. A fat indigo moon shone through the clouds.

  “Left.” We passed an old meter house with gables, arched windows, and brickwork ornate enough for a Balkan railroad station. Workmen were unloading reels of electric cable on the loading dock, forklifting them inside. “Right.” Down a narrow granite block road we drove by a gothic-looking storage tank as large as a cathedral and buttressed by exterior struts with diamond-shaped cutouts. These were among the oldest structures in Point Breeze, left over from the early days of massive construction, when the industrialists weren’t quite sure what they had hold of, but suspected it might be God. “Stop,” Merlin commanded, and I pulled over by the earth-and-cinder containment dike. We got out of the car, doors slamming silently behind us. The road was gritty underfoot. The rich smell of hydrocarbons saturated the air. Nothing grew here, not so much as a weed. I nudged a dead pigeon with the toe of my shoe.

  “Hey, what’s this shit?” Shikra pointed at a glimmering grey line running down the middle of the road, cool as ice in its feverish surround. I looked at Merlin’s face. The skin was flushed and I could see through it to a manically detailed lacework of tiny veins. When he blinked, his eyes peered madly through translucent flesh.