The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He came in the room, moving jerky—at first I thought there was something wrong with him. Then, I saw it was like he was in freeze frame motion. He didn’t move smoothly, but in little jumps like a snapshot. I looked closer and saw I could just barely see him move between those freeze frames. He’d stop, look down at somebody—he must have been nearly three meters tall—somebody on his other side would speak to him and suddenly, he’d be turned to them. He was so fast it almost made me sick to watch him.

  He sidled along the wall, talking to people. The whole room was watching him. It came to me, then, that he was moving towards us, stalking us, almost. With those wicked looking hands. It made me shake. I looked up at Gray. He was watching the centaur. I’d never seen him watch anything so close, even me.

  Finally, the centaur came near us, looked up and saw us both, but only acted like he’d seen Gray. He straightened up and came over to us. “Old-one-of-many-names,” he said in Lingua. “I did not know you were here.”

  Gray made kind of a half squat bow, never taking his eyes off the centaur. “Holy one, I, myself, can barely believe my good fortune.”

  The centaur leaned back against his lower half like an old man sitting down in an armchair. “It has been a long time since I have seen you. I have not seen a member of your family since we destroyed that nest—half a cycle ago? Perhaps a full cycle? Are you the last?”

  Again, Gray made the half bow. “I do not think I am the last, Holy One. I estivated for almost two cycles before I was found. This was due to the destruction of my nest.”

  “Ah.” The centaur raised his hand and let it fall like a shrug. “Of course. Is this your pet?” he said, looking at me for the first time.

  I was almost crazy with nervousness, trying not to look like I knew anything, crazy to find out this thing had killed Gray’s family. I wished I had a rifle, a laser, something. It wouldn’t have done any good. You could see up close that he spent most of his time waiting for us to catch up. His attention was wandering all around the room. Sharp, though. Damned sharp. I just did my best to look stupid.

  “It is no pet, holy one. It is my nephew.”

  “Are you certain?” The centaur put one arm on the other like a man folding his arms, but this looked like he was getting ready for something.

  “I am certain, holy one. How are your offspring?”

  The centaur looked up at him. “Fine. I brought two pupa with me and they will be molting soon. No eggs as yet. Pity, as I have been hungering for a delicacy a great deal. But it would be a shame to return home with no children so I have restrained myself. Soon, though, they will molt and of course become children. Tell me: do you think I would be too shamed by returning with only one child?”

  “You have no eggs, holy one?”

  “None as yet. I have tried several times but the flesh will not obey me.” The centaur turned his head all the way around behind him, watching something for a quick moment and then brought it back again with a snap. I wanted to throw up. “Give me the pupa you have. It would be well cooked. Look,” he pointed to me. “It does not even know language.”

  “I cannot, holy one.”

  “Come. Give it to me as a present.” He stiffened somehow and looked just like a whip in mid-air.

  I heard a soft sound from Gray and turned towards him. He’d extended every finger on every arm and each one grew a razor.

  “I cannot, holy one,” he said softly. “Forgive me.”

  They stared at each other for some minutes, then the centaur relaxed. “It is a very great sin. But, perhaps the fault is mine. I encourage my appetites as much as I can. Perhaps that is not always a virtue.” His head snapped around and back again. “I must go, my friend. Until we meet again.”

  He turned and moved away as smoothly as if he’d been on wheels.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Gray.

  “Hush.” He retracted all of his fingers and sat back down.

  “I want to go home. Let me out of this place.”

  He reached for me and held me close to him. “Be patient a while longer. We cannot leave just yet. It wouldn’t be polite.”

  We sat there for maybe half an hour more, then Gray stood up. “We can go now.”

  Outside a fog had come into the city. I pulled my jacket in close. “Jesus. What was that all about?”

  He didn’t say anything immediately, just looked around the street and acted like he was listening for something. “It went better than I expected. I think we can talk now. It was about the egg.”

  “Christ!” Gray can really be a pain in the ass sometimes. “I know that. Who was the centaur? Why did we need to come here? Did he really destroy your nest—home, or whatever? Talk to me!”

  Gray seemed to mull over that for a minute or two. “The centaur is—bishop is the best word, I think. I have met him slightly several times. His family and my family disputed over some territory in the Maxwell Station system. My family was destroyed, or if not completely destroyed forced to evacuate the system. I do not know where they are. Your people found me in the asteroid belt about a thousand years later. Before you were born. I thought the egg might be a centaur egg, but I could not find out directly—centaurs do not allow information about them to be published. They will talk about almost anything, but refuse to allow it to be written down. All I was able to find out was that there was only one centaur family on earth, and that it was the bishop’s.”

  I shuddered. “Would he really have eaten me?”

  Gray nodded. “They consider pre-sentients a delicacy.”

  “Pre-sentients?”

  “A centaur has odd and rigid rules over what is a person and what is not: communication defines a person in most circumstances.”

  “Jesus! I could have talked to him!”

  “I know that.”

  I hit him on the leg. “Why did you tell me to keep it a secret? I could have been killed. It just seems stupid.”

  We kept walking. “If you had spoken, he might have challenged you to an eating duel.”

  “I can eat with the best of them.”

  “An eating duel,” said Gray carefully, “is a duel in which the loser gets eaten. To the centaurs, losers are not persons by definition.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling very small. “Why was I here at all, then?” I felt so lost and confused.

  “I did not want the bishop to think I had come for revenge. If I brought my family, he would know for certain I had not come for war. I don’t want to die either, Ira.”

  We walked a little further and I reached up and took his hand. “I’m sorry about your family, Gray.”

  Gray didn’t say anything for a block or so. “They are gone.”

  * * *

  As evening had fallen, a fog had come into town from the nooks and canals of Back Bay, rolled into the city like a stumbling drunk. As the elevator descended towards it, Sara had the feeling of diving into water or cotton or something else she could drown in. She was to meet Sam on his boat about eight. But right now, she needed a drink. She left the building almost as soon as she hit the ground floor.

  Now, she was below the bright sunlight she had left on the ninetieth floor. The fog had given the city a dreamy, half-real quality. The locust trees in front of the old Customs House burned yellow through it, the fall colors pastel and washed out. The upper city was completely lost. Here, there was only this corner, filled with tourist shops, street vendors and a man selling flowers, each close and intimate in the fog.

  She bought a pretzel from a cart and waited while the vendor warmed it in one of those battery powered alien ovens. One of those would be good on the Hercules, she thought.

  Sitting beneath the locust trees and eating slowly, guiltily—Sam would be cooking dinner for her in a couple of hours—she was suddenly struck with the memory of Hull, burning. For a long moment, she could smell the explosions like fireworks mixed with the smell of burning houses and the sea. She remembered hitting a nameless man across the face with a cr
owbar—dark asian hair, stubble, wild eyes, blood spilling from his forehead as he fell into the water—when he had tried to take the dory away from her. She had tried to get to the house—the only house they had ever had after all that time living on boats, that her father and mother wouldn’t leave and would not believe they had to leave until it was too late—when she found Roni, burned, arm broken, half swimming through the hip-deep water. Sara dragged Roni into the dory. She started up the motor again to get to the house when the MDC planes came in low and dropped something—she never knew what—that exploded into a sheet of flame. The firestorm raced towards them in a boiling, guttering wave. She turned the dory and gunned the motors. The flames leaped from house to house, low-pitched explosions following her. Don’t foul the prop! Don’t foul the prop! The dory burst out into the harbor. Up on Telegraph Hill, the gangs were shooting back. Hog Island was firing anti-aircraft guns at the MDC planes. Two planes banked towards it, fired two missiles—Sara grabbed Roni and dove into the bottom of the boat. There was a blinding flash and the sea roared around them. A hot wind sucked the breath from her lungs. There was a sound too loud to be understood. Then, it passed and utter silence came to her. Am I deaf?

  She looked back and Hog Island was flattened. The fires had been blown by the wind into smoke.

  Sara sat unseeing on the park bench, holding herself. She could never even identify where her house had been, much less her parents. It had taken hours just to find the Hercules. At least, that was intact. There were no looters. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they had been blinded by the flash. Maybe Sara was so deep in shock she couldn’t see them. She left Hull, the smoke masking the sun into a deep red disk hanging sickly in the west, a cold south wind blowing them towards Boston. Roni never took her eyes off Sara that whole night. She watched every move Sara made.

  Sara looked up at the locust tree and shook herself. Almost seven. Time to go. She stood up slowly, shaking off the memory. Someday, someday, she would bury that memory. Roni getting herself killed only made it worse. “Damn you, Roni,” she said under her breath. “I didn’t drag you out of there just to die like a dog.”

  It was that same south wind that blew across her on the way home. She lit a cigarette and rummaged in the dory’s small hold. There was a half-empty fifth of rye whisky buried under a tow line. Do we want to begin here? Yes, I think we do. It is always better to begin early. You’re in too lousy a mood for dinner with Jesus Christ himself, much less Sam. That’s it. Take a good one. Feel that deep, aching warmth burn in your belly.

  Jack was waiting for her on the Hercules.

  “Hey, honey,” she said as she tied up. “I’m home.”

  Jack nodded shortly. He leaned against the hull and stared moodily out the window.

  Damn. He’s acting like a teenager again. “Something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Sam asked me over to his boat for dinner.” No response. “Your Mama’s got a date.”

  Jack didn’t look at her. “That’s good,” he said distractedly.

  Damn. He’s getting more like his father every day. Don’t think about Mike. Don’t. He was slime. He was scum. And didn’t I want him back for the longest time?

  She sat next to him and watched him in the darkening light. The whisky and the sunset light met and mellowed in her. Ah, Sara. Don’t you miss him, though.

  “Hey, honey,” she said softly.

  Jack looked at her and she started to reach out and hold him but she could feel him stiffen. “What’s the matter, Jack?”

  Jack shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it.” He looked up at her searchingly, then seemed to find something that reassured him. He grinned. “I’ll be okay. You go have a good time with Sam. Gonna find me a pop?”

  It was an old joke, but thin now. She slapped his knee lightly. “Watch your mouth. Christ. I’ve got to take a shower.”

  She left Jack on the Hercules some time later, walked nervously over to Sam’s Casey. She was wearing a dress—she hadn’t worn a dress in years. She was even wearing earrings.

  Sam was wearing a jacket—from the way he wore it, he hadn’t worn a jacket in years, either. That made her feel better.

  He didn’t say anything as he gestured her inside, then leaned down and whispered conspiratorially: “I’ve got steak.”

  “Go on,” she laughed.

  “No. Honest.” He pointed to the galley. “It’s in there. You can see it for yourself.”

  “That’s a day’s salary.”

  “Steak,” he said. “Meat. Beef. Carne. Le boef. Thick, juicy, broiled, bloody—”

  She laughed and touched his mouth to make him stop and he did and her fingertips tingled. Sara pulled them back and folded her arms, embarrassed.

  “Anyway,” he said suddenly after a silence, “I’ve got it. And we’re gonna eat it. You may as well adjust.”

  “I’m adjusted. Let’s eat it now.”

  He shook his head and held up his hands palm towards her. “Not so fast. We have to make preparations. We can’t insult the cattle gods.”

  She sat down and began to laugh. It was uncontrollable and she sobbed and held her stomach.

  “It wasn’t that funny,” he said with a shy grin..

  “Damn you,” she giggled. “You did this to me in high school, too. I’d forgotten.”

  “My dear, my dignity is ruined.”

  “Christ, it’s good to see you again.”

  He didn’t reply. “Dinner is served.”

  Steak was rare—usually meat came like a slab, grown in the huge meat farms in the midwest. Steak came from an animal. A cow? No. Steer. It came from a steer. Steak was expensive.

  Sam had broiled it perfectly.

  “Do you like it?”

  She made an inchoherent noise around a piece of gristle and nodded.

  Half an hour later, she leaned back and patted her full stomach. “I am satisfied. Life is good.”

  Sam leaned towards her. “There’s more.”

  She shrugged. “It could only be a letdown.”

  He reached above them and out of a cabinet pulled down a bottle. “I don’t think so.” He handed her the bottle.

  Her eyes grew round. “Glenfiddich! Christ on a stick! How long have you had this?”

  Sam grinned at her and leaned on the table. “My daddy gave it to me. He brought it back from Scotland a few years ago.”

  “Christ,” she said again. “This is too much. Put it back, Sam.”

  “Too late.” He brought down two glasses. “You don’t want me to drink alone.”

  The scotch made her feel warm and sleepy, like the world had no more sharp edges. Sam turned on the radio and they listened to some fluffy pop station. She didn’t like it. “Turn it to something else.” She took the bottle and held it lovingly in her arms. “Got a cigarette?” she said.

  “Don’t smoke.”

  “He doesn’t smoke,” she said to the bottle. “He’s a wonder, Sam is.”

  Sam found a jazz station faint but clear. “That’s better.” He hummed along with a clarinet.

  “Yeah,” she said and half-filled both their glasses.

  “Want to dance?” he said with a faint giggle.

  “Sure.”

  They stood up and swayed together and he felt so right, in her arms, close, moving slowly together to the faint jazz. It had been so long she wanted to cry. Just to be touched. Just to be warm with someone else.

  Outside, she heard a cry.

  “Jack?” she said and the scotch blew through her mind.

  There was somebody shouting and somebody answering.

  “Jack!” She was outside. Sam followed her but she didn’t notice. Gray was standing outside the cabin holding Jack up in the air, struggling. The cabin inside was a mess, the cushions were slashed. The table was overturned.

  “Let him go!” She shrieked, grabbed a crowbar. “Let him go!”

  Ira launched himself at her and grabbed her arms. The gouge on the bar l
ooped in the air towards his face. Gray’s fingers closed on it and held it as if it were stuck in concrete.

  There was a long moment where Gray held Jack in one set of arms, the crowbar in another and grasped the railing with a third. “Jack is all right,” he said and pulled the crowbar from her.

  “Jesus,” she heard Sam say behind her.

  Jack stood absolutely still.

  “What is going on?” she asked him. “What is going on?”

  Jack looked at her, then at Ira, Gray, back at her. Back to Gray.

  “What happened?” she asked Gray.

  Gray did not speak for a long minute watching Jack. “I do not know. I do not know what is happening at all.”

  “And what the hell happened to the goddamn cabin?” Sara demanded.

  “I did it,” said Gray slowly. “It was an accident. I did not mean to. I misjudged things. I will fix it. I will fix it sometime tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Ira burst out. “We were going.…” and his voice trailed off. He looked at Sara and then looked down.

  “Go where?” she said, suspicious. Where would Ira be going that he would hide it? “The ferry. You two were going to the Hesperus tomorrow?”

  Gray nodded. “We were.”

  She looked at him coldly. “I told you not to take him there.”

  He did not speak.

  “Don’t do it again. I won’t have you around if you do that. I won’t have you anywhere near me.” She stood up next to him and stared up into his face. She could feel the nearness of his rhino body, hear the rasp of leather as he breathed. “You hear me? You understand this time?”