The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

“I guess. You make the competition sound pretty formidable.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s outa there the next day.”

  “Unless she winds up in love with him. That would be cute.”

  “He’s almost twice her age. Besides, she’s a whore. Whores don’t fall in love.”

  “They’re women, Castle. Women fall in love.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just like on TV.”

  She turned away from him; looked out the window. “You really know how to make a woman feel great, you know?”

  “Come on.” He crossed over and smoothed her hair. She turned around but didn’t look up. “Don’t run yourself down, Lena. You’re still one hell of a piece of ass.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled into his leer and grabbed him. “If you weren’t such a poet, I’d trade you in for a vibrator.”

  15. In Praise of His Mistress

  Pansy was indeed beautiful, even under normal conditions; delicate features, wasp waist combined with generous secondary sexual characteristics. The conditions under which John first saw her were calculated to maximize sexiness and vulnerability. Red nylon running shorts, tight and very short, and a white sleeveless T-shirt from a local bar that was stamped LAST HETEROSEXUAL IN KEY WEST – all clinging to her golden skin with a healthy sweat, the cloth made translucent enough to reveal no possibility of underwear.

  John looked out the screen door and saw her at the other door, struggling with a heavy box while trying to make the key work. “Let me help you,” he said through the screen, and stepped across the short landing to hold the box while she got the door open.

  “You’re too kind.” John tried not to stare as he handed the box back. Pansy, of course, was relieved at his riveted attention. It had taken days to set up this operation, and would take more days to bring it to its climax, so to speak, and more days to get back to normal. But she did owe Castle a big favor and this guy seemed nice enough. Maybe she’d learn something about Hemingway in the process.

  “More to come up?” John asked.

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to help. I can manage.”

  “It’s okay. I was just goofing off for the rest of the day.”

  It turned out to be quite a job, even though there was only one load from a small rented truck. Most of the load was uniform and heavy boxes of books, carefully labeled LIT A – B, GEN REF, ENCY 1-12, and so forth. Most of her furniture, accordingly, was cinder blocks and boards, the standard student bookshelf arrangement.

  John found out that despite a couple of dozen boxes marked LIT, Pansy hadn’t majored in literature, but rather Special Education; during the school year, she taught third grade at a school for the retarded in Key Largo. She didn’t tell him about the several years she’d spent as a call girl, but if she had, John might have seen a connection that Castle would never have made – that the driving force behind both of the jobs was the same, charity. The more or less easy forty dollars an hour for going on a date and then having sex was a factor, too, but she really did like making lonely men feel special, and had herself felt more like a social worker than a woman of easy virtue. And the hundreds of men who had fallen for her, for love or money, weren’t responding only to her cheerleader’s body. She had a sunny disposition and a natural, artless way of concentrating on a man that made him for a while the only man in the world.

  John would not normally be an easy conquest. Twenty years of facing classrooms full of coeds had given him a certain wariness around attractive young women. He also had an impulse toward faithfulness, Lena having suddenly left town, her father ill. But he was still in the grip of the weird overweening horniness that had animated him since inheriting this new body and double-image personality. If Pansy had said “Let’s do it,” they would be doing it so soon that she would be wise to unwrap the condom before speaking. But she was being as indirect as her nature and mode of dress would allow.

  “Do you and your wife always come down here for the summer?”

  “We usually go somewhere. Boston’s no fun in the heat.”

  “It must be wonderful in the fall.”

  And so forth. It felt odd for Pansy, probably the last time she would ever seduce a man for reasons other than personal interest. She wanted it to be perfect. She wanted John to have enough pleasure in her to compensate for the embarrassment of their “accidental” exposure, and whatever hassle his wife would put him through afterwards.

  She was dying to know why Castle wanted him set up. How Castle ever met a quiet, kindly gentleman like John was a mystery, too – she had met some of Castle’s friends, and they had other virtues.

  Quiet and kindly, but horny. Whenever she contrived, in the course of their working together, to expose a nipple or a little beaver, he would turn around to adjust himself, and blush. More like a teenager, discovering his sexuality, than a middle-aged married man.

  He was a pushover, but she didn’t want to make it too easy. After they had finished putting the books up on shelves, she said thanks a million; I gotta go now, spending the night house-sitting up in Islamorada. You and your wife come over for dinner tomorrow? Oh, then come on over yourself. No, that’s all right, I’m a big girl. Roast beef okay? See ya.

  Driving away in the rented truck, Pansy didn’t feel especially proud of herself. She was amused at John’s sexiness and looking forward to trying it out. But she could read people pretty well, and sensed a core of deep sadness in John. Maybe it was from Vietnam; he hadn’t mentioned it, but she knew what the bracelet meant.

  Whatever the problem, maybe she’d have time to help him with it – before she had to turn around and add to it.

  Maybe it would work out for the best. Maybe the problem was with his wife, and she’d leave, and he could start over . . .

  Stop kidding yourself. Just lay the trap, catch him, deliver him. Castle was not the kind of man you want to disappoint.

  16. Fiesta

  She had baked the roast slowly with wine and fruit juice, along with dried apricots and apples plumped in port wine, seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg and cardamom. Onions and large cubes of acorn squash simmered in the broth. She served new potatoes steamed with parsley and dressed Italian style, with garlicky olive oil and a splash of vinegar. Small Caesar salad and air-light pan de agua, the Cuban bread that made you forget every other kind of bread.

  The way to a man’s heart, her mother had contended, was through his stomach, and although she was accustomed to aiming rather lower, she thought it was probably a good approach for a longtime married man suddenly forced to fend for himself. That was exactly right for John. He was not much of a cook, but he was an accomplished eater.

  He pushed the plate away after three helpings. “God, I’m such a pig. But that was irresistible.”

  “Thank you.” She cleared the table slowly, accepting John’s offer to help. “My mother’s ‘company’ recipe. So you think Hadley might have just thrown the stories away, and made up the business about the train?”

  “People have raised the possibility. There she was, eight years older than this handsome hubby – with half the women on the Left Bank after him, at least in her mind – and he’s starting to get published, starting to build a reputation . . .”

  “She was afraid he was going to ‘grow away’ from her? Or did they have that expression back then?”

  “I think she was afraid he would start making money from his writing. She had an inheritance, a trust fund from her grandfather, that paid over two thousand a year. That was plenty to keep the two of them comfortable in Paris. Hemingway talked poor in those days, starving artist, but he lived pretty well.”

  “He probably resented it, too. Not making the money himself.”

  “That would be like him. Anyhow, if she chucked the stories to ensure his dependency, it backfired. He was still furious thirty years later – three wives later. He said the stuff had been ‘fresh from the mint,’ even if the writing wasn’t so great, and he was never able to reclaim it.”

  She opened a cabinet a
nd slid a bottle out of its burlap bag, and selected two small glasses. “Sherry?” He said why not? and they moved into the living room.

  The living room was mysteriously devoid of chairs, so they had to sit together on the small couch. “You don’t actually think she did it.”

  “No.” John watched her pour the sherry. “From what I’ve read about her, she doesn’t seem at all calculating. Just a sweet gal from St. Louis who fell in love with a cad.”

  “Cad. Funny old-fashioned word.”

  John shrugged. “Actually, he wasn’t really a cad. I think he sincerely loved every one of his wives . . . at least until he married them.”

  They both laughed. “Of course it could have been something in between,” Pansy said, “I mean, she didn’t actually throw away the manuscripts, but she did leave them sitting out, begging to be stolen. Why did she leave the compartment?”

  “That’s one screwy aspect of it. Hadley herself never said, not on paper. Every biographer seems to come up with a different reason: she went to get a newspaper, she saw some people she recognized and stepped out to talk with them, wanted some exercise before the long trip . . . even Hemingway had two different versions – she went out to get a bottle of Evian water or to buy something to read. That one pissed him off, because she did have an overnight bag full of the best American writing since Mark Twain.”

  “How would you have felt?”

  “Felt?”

  “I mean, you say you’ve written stories, too. What if somebody, your wife, made a mistake and you lost everything?”

  He looked thoughtful. “It’s not the same. In the first place, it’s just hobby with me. And I don’t have that much that hasn’t been published – when Hemingway lost it, he lost it for good. I could just go to a university library and make new copies of everything.”

  “So you haven’t written much lately?”

  “Not stories. Academic stuff.”

  “I’d love to read some of your stories.”

  “And I’d love to have you read them. But I don’t have any here. I’ll mail you some from Boston.”

  She nodded, staring at him with a curious intensity. “Oh hell,” she said, and turned her back to him. “Would you help me with this?”

  “What?”

  “The zipper.” She was wearing a clingy white summer dress. “Undo the zipper a little bit.”

  He slowly unzipped it a few inches. She did it the rest of the way, stood up and hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps and shrugged. The dress slithered to the floor. She wasn’t wearing anything else.

  “You’re blushing.” Actually, he was doing a good imitation of a beached fish. She straddled him, sitting back lightly on his knees, legs wide, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Uh,” he said.

  “I just get impatient. You don’t mind?”

  “Uh . . . no?”

  17. On Being Shot Again

  John woke up happy but didn’t open his eyes for nearly a minute, holding on to the erotic dream of the century. Then he opened one eye and saw it hadn’t been a dream: the tousled bed in the strange room, unguents and sex toys on the nightstand, the smell of her hair on the other pillow. A noise from the kitchen; coffee and bacon smells.

  He put on pants and went into the living room to pick up the shirt where it had dropped. “Good morning, Pansy.”

  “Morning, stranger.” She was wearing a floppy terry cloth bathrobe with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She turned the bacon carefully with a fork. “Scrambled eggs okay?”

  “Marvelous.” He sat down at the small table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “I don’t know what to say.”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t say anything. It was nice.”

  “More than nice.” He watched her precise motions behind the counter. She broke the eggs one-handed, two at a time, added a splash of water to the bowl, plucked some chives from a windowbox and chopped them with a small Chinese cleaver, rocking it in a staccato chatter; scraped them into the bowl, and followed them with a couple of grinds of pepper. She set the bacon out on a paper towel, with another towel to cover. Then she stirred the eggs briskly with the fork and set them aside. She picked up the big cast-iron frying pan and poured off a judicious amount of grease. Then she poured the egg mixture into the pan and studied it with alertness.

  “Know what I think?” John said.

  “Something profound?”

  “Huh uh. I think I’m in a rubber room someplace, hallucinating the whole thing. And I hope they never cure me.”

  “I think you’re a butterfly who’s dreaming he’s a man. I’m glad I’m in your dream.” She slowly stirred and scraped the eggs with a spatula.

  “You like older men?”

  “One of them.” She looked up, serious. “I like men who are considerate . . . and playful.” She returned to the scraping. “Last couple of boyfriends I had were all dick and no heart. Kept to myself the last few months.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “You could rent yourself out as a service.” She laughed. “You must have been impossible when you were younger.”

  “Different.” Literally.

  She ran hot water into a serving bowl, then returned to her egg stewardship. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  “The lost manuscript stuff we were talking about last night, all the different explanations.” She divided the egg into four masses and turned each one. “Did you ever read any science fiction?”

  “No. Vonnegut.”

  “The toast.” She hurriedly put four pieces of bread in the toaster. “They write about alternate universes. Pretty much like our own, but different in one way or another. Important or trivial.”

  “What, uh, what silliness.”

  She laughed and poured the hot water out of the serving bowl, and dried it with a towel. “I guess maybe. But what if . . . what if all of those versions were equally true? In different universes. And for some reason they all came together here.” She started to put the eggs into the bowl when there was a knock on the door.

  It opened and Ernest Hemingway walked in. Dapper, just twenty, wearing the Italian army cape he’d brought back from the war. He pointed the black-and-white cane at Pansy. “Bingo.”

  She looked at John and then back at the Hemingway. She dropped the serving bowl; it clattered on the floor without breaking. Her knees buckled and she fainted dead away, executing a half turn as she fell so that the back of her head struck the wooden floor with a loud thump and the bathrobe drifted open from the waist down.

  The Hemingway stared down at her frontal aspect. “Sometimes I wish I were human,” it said. “Your pleasures are intense. Simple, but intense.” It moved toward her with the cane.

  John stood up. “If you kill her—”

  “Oh?” It cocked an eyebrow at him. “What will you do?”

  John took one step toward it and it waved the cane. A waist-high brick wall surmounted by needle-sharp spikes appeared between them. It gestured again and an impossible moat appeared, deep enough to reach down well into Julio’s living room. It filled with water and a large crocodile surfaced and rested its chin on the parquet floor, staring at John. It yawned teeth.

  The Hemingway held up its cane. “The white end. It doesn’t kill, remember?” The wall and moat disappeared and the cane touched Pansy lightly below the navel. She twitched minutely but continued to sleep. “She’ll have a headache,” it said. “And she’ll be somewhat confused by the uncommunicatable memory of having seen me. But that will all fade, compared to the sudden tragedy of having her new lover die here, just sitting waiting for his breakfast.”

  “Do you enjoy this?”

  “I love my work. It’s all I have.” It walked toward him, footfalls splashing as it crossed where the moat had been. “You have not personally helped, though. Not at all.”

  It sat down across from him and poured coffee into a mug that said ON THE SIXTH DAY GOD CREATED MAN – SHE MUST HAVE HAD
PMS.

  “When you kill me this time, do you think it will ‘take’?”

  “I don’t know. It’s never failed before.” The toaster made a noise. “Toast?”

  “Sure.” Two pieces appeared on his plate; two on the Hemingway’s. “Usually when you kill people they stay dead?”

  “I don’t kill that many people.” It spread margarine on its toast, gestured, and marmalade appeared. “But when I do, yeah. They die all up and down the Omniverse, every timespace. All except you.” He pointed toast at John’s toast. “Go ahead. It’s not poison.”

  “Not my idea of a last meal.”

  The Hemingway shrugged. “What would you like?”

  “Forget it.” He buttered the toast and piled marmalade on it, determined out of some odd impulse to act as if nothing unusual were happening. Breakfast with Hemingway, big deal.

  He studied the apparition and noticed that it was somewhat translucent, almost like a traditional TV ghost. He could barely see a line that was the back of the chair, bisecting its chest below shoulder-blade level. Was this something new? There hadn’t been too much light in the train; maybe he had just failed to notice it before.

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  He didn’t say anything about seeing through it. “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’re not supposed to kill me? That’s why I came back?”

  The Hemingway chuckled and admired its nails. “That’s a nearly content-free assertion.”

  “Oh really.” He bit into the toast. The marmalade was strong, pleasantly bitter.

  “It presupposes a higher authority, unknown to me, that’s watching over my behavior, and correcting me when I do wrong. Doesn’t exist, sorry.”

  “That’s the oldest one in the theologian’s book.” He set down the toast and kneaded his stomach; shouldn’t eat something so strong first thing in the morning. “You can only assert the nonexistence of something; you can’t prove it.”

  “What you mean is you can’t.” He held up the cane and looked at it. “The simplest explanation is that there’s something wrong with the cane. There’s no way I can test it; if I kill the wrong person, there’s hell to pay up and down the Omniverse. But what I can do is kill you without the cane. See whether you come back again, some timespace.”