The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  After that night on the point, I concluded that Livingston had lost its charm; I wanted to avoid further conflicts, and I was certain more would arise. Odille was in accord with this, and we planned to leave as soon as I could find someone responsible to take over the Spanish doctor’s house. We decided to settle in Panajachel near Lake Atitlán until I finished my current writing project, and then visit New York city en route to Paris; almost without acknowledging it, we had made an oblique, understated commitment to each other, one that by contrast to our pasts and the instability around us was a model of rigor. Perhaps our relationship had begun as an accommodation, a shelter from the heavy weather of our lives, but against all odds, something more had developed; although I wasn’t ready to admit it to her, unwilling to risk a total involvement, I had fallen in love with Odille. It wasn’t any one instance or event that had brought this home to me, but rather a slowly growing awareness of my reactions to her. I had begun to focus more and more upon her, to treasure images of her. To savor all the days. And yet I detected in myself a residue of tension, one I also detected in her, and this was evidence that we were afraid of the obsessive bonding that had occurred, and were preparing for disappointment, obeying the conditioning of our pasts.

  Ten days passed, and I hadn’t found anyone to take the house. I wrote to the Spanish doctors, telling them that an emergency had come up, that I had to leave and wanted to delegate my responsibilities to the local priest, who had become something of a friend, and who—aside from his clerical duties—maintained a small museum that displayed some Mayan artifacts of indifferent value. I began to pack my papers in anticipation of their response. Early one evening I went to the telegraph office to call my agent in the States and tell her about the move, to see if she had money for me. The office was a low building of yellow stucco next to the generator that provided the village’s power, and was manned by a harried-looking clerk who was arguing with an Indian family, and was guarded by a soldier wearing camouflage gear and carrying a machine gun. The phones lined the rear wall of the office, and, choosing the one farthest from the argument, I put in the call. Five minutes later I heard my agent’s voice through a hiss of static, and after we had taken care of business, I asked what was new in the big city.

  “The usual,” she said. “Boring parties and editors playing musical chairs. You’re better off down there … as long as you’re working. Are you working?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said.

  My agent let some dead time accumulate, then said, “I guess I should tell you this, Ray. You’re going to find out sooner or later.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Karen had her baby.”

  For an instant I felt strangely light, free of some restraint. “I didn’t think she was due this soon.”

  “There were complications. But she’s all right. So’s the baby. It’s a boy. It’s really cute, Ray. A little doll. It just lies there and squeaks.”

  I let out a nasty laugh. “Just like its mama.”

  “I thought you went down there to let go of her. You don’t sound like you’re letting go.”

  “Must be the connection.” I stared at the pocked, grimy wall, seeing nothing.

  Another pause. “What’re you working on, Ray?”

  “You’ll see it soon,” I said. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks, O.K.?”

  I walked outside, cut down onto the beach. Dusk had given way to darkness, and the jungled shore was picked out by shanty lights; there was also a scattering of lights on the hills lifting behind the village, showing the location of small farms and platanals. The moon, almost full, had risen to shine through a notch between the hills, paving the chop of the water close to shore with silvery glitter, but threatening clouds and dark brooms of rain were visible farther out—a storm would be hitting the coast within a matter of minutes. I was angry as I walked, but my anger was undirected. Karen was no longer an object of hatred, merely a catalyst that opened me to violent emotion, and I realized that part of the reason she had maintained a hold over me for so long was due, not to any real feeling, but to my romantic nature, my stubborn denial that the light in the heart could be snuffed out. I had hung on to the belief that—despite Karen’s betrayal—the good, strong core of my feelings would last; now I was forced to face the fact that they were dead, and that made me angry and caused me to doubt everything I felt for Odille.

  A voice called to me as I was passing a stand of palmettos. I ignored it, but the voice continued to call, and I whirled around to see Ryan running down the beach, his blond hair flying, dressed in the cutoffs and soiled shirt that had become his uniform. He staggered to a halt a few feet away, gasping.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  He held up a hand, trying to catch his breath. “Gotta talk to you,” he managed. He looked alien to me, a pale little twist of a creature, and I felt vastly superior. Stronger, more intelligent. The fierceness of the loathing that fueled these feelings didn’t strike me as unusual.

  “Talk about what?” I said.

  “Odille … you have to break it off with her.”

  “You jealous, Ryan?”

  “Konwicki…”

  “Fuck Konwicki!” I gave Ryan a shove that sent him reeling backward, catching at the air with his hands. “If he’s got a problem, tell him to come talk to me himself.”

  “You have to stop seeing her,” said Ryan defiantly. He slipped a hand beneath his shirtfront as if soothing a stomachache, and kept his eyes lowered. “I’m warning you … Bad things are going to happen if you don’t.”

  “Goodness me, Ryan,” I said, taking a little walk around him, examining him contemptuously, as if he were an unsightly objet d’art. “I wonder what they could be.”

  Ryan’s chin quivered. “He’s … he’s.…”

  “C’mon, man! Spit it out!” I said. “Has he been doing bad things to you? He must have been doing something nasty, mighty bad to turn you into such a twitchy little toad. Is it drugs? Is he feeding you bad drugs, or.…”

  Anger came boiling out of him. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  I knew at that moment that Ryan had a weapon. The way he kept shifting his right hand under his shirt as if adjusting his grip, keeping his weight back on his heels, balanced, ready to strike. And I wanted him to strike.

  “I got it,” I said. “Konwicki’s into boys now. That’s it, right? And you’re his boy! That explains why I’ve never seen you with a girl.”

  “Stop it!” He set himself, the muscles of his right forearm flexing.

  “What’s it like with him, man? He make your little doggy sit up and beg?”

  “You better stop!”

  “Does he make a lot of noise, Ryan?” I laughed, and the laugh startled me, sounding too guttural to be my own. “Or is he the strong, silent type?”

  With a shout, he pulled a knife from beneath his shirt and slashed at me. I caught his wrist, gave it a sharp twist. He cried out, the knife fell to the sand, and he backed away, cradling his wrist, his expression shifting between panic and anguish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. He told me I had to…” Then he broke into a stumbling run and went crashing through the palmettos. I scooped up the knife and began to hunt him. That was how it seemed. A hunt. One in which I was expert. I’ve never been much of an athlete, yet that night I ran easily, with short, chopping strides that carried me in a zigzagging path among the palmettos. I kept pace with Ryan, running off to his left and a little behind, intending to harry him until he dropped. He glanced back over his shoulder, saw me, and ran faster, frantically calling out to Konwicki.

  On hearing that, I slowed my pursuit. It was Konwicki I really wanted, and since Ryan had been his messenger, it was likely that he was now going to see him. And yet we were heading away from the beach, away from Konwicki’s house. I decided to trust my instincts. If
Konwicki had somehow convinced Ryan to kill me—and I thought that must be the case, that he’d hoped to evade the judgment of the game by eliminating me—after the deed, he would have wanted Ryan to meet him somewhere out of the way. I dropped back a bit, letting Ryan think he had lost me, keeping track of him by ear, picking out the sound of his passage through the foliage from the noises of insects and frogs and wind. We were moving onto the slope of one of the hills behind the village, and despite the uphill path, I was still running easily, enjoying myself. The musky scents of the vegetation were as cloying as perfume; clouds flowing across the moon, driven by a gusting wind, made the world go alternately dark and bright with an erratic rhythm that added to my excitement. I exulted in the turbulent weather, in my strength, and I threw the knife into the brush, knowing that I wasn’t going to need it.

  As I passed through a banana grove, a flickering yellow light penetrated the bushes to my left from one of the farmhouses. The wind was rapidly gaining in force, tattering the banana leaves, lifting them high like the feathery legs of giant insects, and something about their articulated shapes fluttering in a sudden wash of moonlight made me uneasy. I began to have an inconstant feeling in my flesh, a dull vibration that nauseated me; I tried to push it aside, to concentrate on the running, but it persisted. I estimated that I must be a quarter of the way up the hill, and I could hear Ryan jogging along almost parallel to me. He had stopped calling out to Konwicki, but now and then he would cry out, perhaps because of the pain in his wrist. I was having some pain myself. Twinges in my joints, in my bones. Growing sharper by the moment. And there was something wrong with my eyes. Every object had a halo, the veins of leaves glowed an iridescent green, and overhead I could see dozens of filmy layers between the clouds and the earth, drifting, swirling, coalescing. I shook my head, trying to clear my vision, but if anything, it grew worse. The halos had congealed into auras of a dozen different colors; hot spots of molten scarlet and luminous blue were insects crawling in the dirt. The pain kept growing worse, too. The twinges became jolts of agony shooting through my limbs, and with the onset of each, I staggered, unable to stay on course. Then a tremendous pain in my chest sent me to all fours, my eyes squeezed shut; panting. I tried to stand, and in doing so, caught sight of my left hand—gnarled, lumpy fingers thick as sausages, clawing at rusty orange sand, lengthening and blackening. A fresh surge of pain knocked me down, and I twisted about and gouged at the earth for what seemed a very long time. Rain started to fall, and another burst of pain dredged up a bass scream from my chest that merged with the wind, like the massive Om of a foghorn wedded to a howl. One instant I felt I was splitting in half, the next that I was growing huge and heavy. I receded from the storm and the world, dwindling to a point within myself, and from that moment on I was incapable of action, only of mute and horrified observation as another “I” took control of my thoughts, one whose judgments were funded by an anger far more potent and implacable than my own.

  I lashed out with my left arm, clutched something thin and hard, tore at it; the next second a banana tree fell across my chest. But the pain was diminishing rapidly, and after it had passed, rather than feeling exhausted, I felt renewed. I climbed to my feet and looked out over the treetops. The storm that during transition had seemed so chaotic and powerful now seemed inconsequential, hardly worth my notice. Lightning scratched red forking lines down the sky; inky clouds rushed overhead. A flickering nimbus of bluish white overlaid the jungle, and beneath it, the lights of the houses ranging the hill were almost too dim to make out. I could find no sign of the defeated. Frustrated, I moved toward the nearest house—a structure with board walls and a roof of corrugated metal—knocking away branches, pushing masses of foliage aside, my hair whipped into my eyes by the wind. When I reached the house, I stood gazing down at the roof, trying to sense the occupants. The energy flows binding the metal, stitchings of coruscant lines and dazzles, could not hide the puny lives within: shifting clots of heat and color. My quarry was not there, but in a fury I swung my arm and tore a long rip in the roof, delighted by the shriek of the tortured metal. Dark frightened faces stared at me through the rip, then vanished. A moment later I spotted them running out the door and into the jungle, becoming streaks of red beneath the ghostly luminescence of the leaves. I would have enjoyed pursuing them, but my time was limited, and I was concerned that the completion of my task would be hampered by the victor—lodged like a stone in my brain—whose pitiful morality was a nagging irritant. I wondered at his motives for entering the contest. Surely he must have known what was at stake. There is no morality in this darkness.

  I comforted myself with the thought that before too long the victor would have his due, unless—and I thought this unlikely—he chose to renew the challenge; and I pressed on through the jungle. Something ran across my path—an animal of some sort. It swerved aside, but before it could escape, I grazed it with a claw, tearing its belly and flipping it into the air. The kill improved my temper. I had never relished employing my license here. The weak strains of life are barely a music, and the walls that hold back death are tissue-thin. But I was pleased to see the blood jet forth. I watched the animal’s essence disperse, misting upward in pale threads to rejoin the Great Cloud of Being, and then continued on my way.

  At the crest of the hill, I paused and gazed back down the slope. From this vantage the landscape of that soft female world seemed transformed, infused with new strength. Great smoking clouds streamed from the seas and the jungle pitched and tossed as if troubled by my sight. The souls of trees were thin gold wires stretched to breaking. The thunder was a power, the lightning a name. I stood attuning myself to the night, absorbing its black subtleties and cold meanings, and thus strengthened, restored to the fullness of purpose, I went along the crest, searching the darkness for the defeated, listening among the whispers of the dead for the sound of one soon to die, for that telltale dullness and sonority. At last I heard him venting his rage against one of the alternates in a house a third of the way down the hill. His obvious lack of preparation dismayed me, and once again I felt less than enthusiastic about my duty. It would be a mercy to end these intermittent rituals of violence and let the brood come as an army to urge on this feeble race to the next plane.

  The house was a glowing patch in the midst of a toiling darkness, and was made of sapling poles and thatch; orange light striped the gaps between the poles and leaked from beneath the door. I called to the defeated. The angry conversation within was broken off, but no one came out. Perhaps, I thought, he had mistaken my call for an element of the storm. I called again, a demanding scream that outvoiced the thunder. Still he remained within. This was intolerable! Now I would be forced to instruct him. I ripped aside the poles at the front of the house, creating a gaping hole through which I saw two figures shrinking back against the rear wall. I held out my hand in invitation, but as the alternate collapsed to the floor, the defeated went scuttling about like a frightened crab, running into the table, the chairs. Disgusted, I reached in and picked him up. I lifted him high, looked into his terrified face. He struggled, prying at my claws, kicking, squealing his fear.

  “Why do you struggle?” I asked. “Your life is an exhausted breath, the failure of an enervated creation. You are food with a flicker of intelligence. True power is beyond you, and the knowledge of pain is your most refined sensibility.” Of course, he did not understand; my speech must have seemed to him like a tide roaring out from a cave. But to illustrate the point, I traced a line of blood across his ribs, being careful not to cut too deeply. “Your ideas are all wrong,” I told him. “Your concept of beauty, a gross mutation; your insipid notions of good and evil, an insult to their fathering principles.” Once again I made him bleed, tracing the second line of instruction, slitting the skin of his stomach with such precision that it parted in neat flaps, yet the sac within was left intact. “Evil is as impersonal as mathematics. That its agencies derive pleasure from carrying out its charge is meaningless. Its tr
appings, its gauds and hellish forms, are nuance, not essence. Evil is the pure function of the universe, the machine of stars and darkness that carries us everywhere.” At the third line, I saw in his face the first lights of understanding, and in his shrieks I detected a music that reflected the incisiveness of my as yet incomplete design. His eyes were distended, bloody spittle clung to his lips and beard, and there was a new eagerness in his expression; he would—had he been able to muster coherent thought—have interpreted this eagerness as a lust for death, yet I doubted he would be aware that to feel such a lust was the signature of a profound lesson learned. I thought, however, that once we returned to the desert, once I had time to complete the design, our lessons would go more quickly. I traced a fourth line. His body spasmed, flopping bonelessly, but he did not lose consciousness, and I admired his stamina, envied him the small purity of his purpose. The bond that held me in that place was weakening, and I grasped him more tightly, squeezing a trickle of darkness from his mouth. “You and I,” I said, slicing the skin over his breastbone, “are gears of the machine. Together we interlock and turn, causing an increment of movement, a miniscule resolution of potential.” With the barest flick, I laid open one of his cheeks, and he responded with a high, quavering wail that went on and on as if I had opened a valve inside him, released some pressure that issued forth with a celebratory keening. Beneath the wash of blood, I had a glimpse of white. “I can see to your bone,” I said. “The stalk of your being. I am going to pare you down to your essential things, both of flesh and knowledge. And when we return to the temples, you will have clear sight of them, of their meaning. They, too, are part of the machine.” His head lolled back; his mouth went slack, and his eyes—they appeared to have gone dark—rolled up to fix on mine. It was as if he had decided to take his ease and bleed and study his tormentor, insulated from pain and fear. Perhaps he thought the worst was over. I laughed at that, and the storm of my laughter merged with the wind and all the tearing night, making him stiffen. I bent my head close to him, breathed a black breath to keep him calm during the transition, and whispered, “Soon you will know everything.”