The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  I spent the rest of the morning shopping at vehicle-rental agencies until I found exactly what I wanted. I had the saleswoman show me how to manipulate it, practiced until nightfall, hovered opposite the laboratory until I saw Kamau enter the grounds, and then maneuvered up to the side gate.

  “Jambo, mundumugu!” whispered Kamau as he deactivated enough of the electronic barrier to accommodate the vehicle, which he scrutinized carefully. I backed up to Ahmed’s enclosure, then opened the back and ordered the ramp to descend. The elephant watched with an uneasy curiosity as Kamau deactivated a ten-foot section of the force field and allowed the bottom of the ramp through.

  “Njoo, Tembo,” I said. Come, elephant.

  He took a tentative step toward me, then another and another. When he reached the edge of his enclosure he stopped, for always he had received an electrical “correction” when he tried to move beyond this point. It took almost twenty minutes of tempting him with peanuts before he finally crossed the barrier and then clambered awkwardly up the ramp, which slid in after him. I sealed him into the hovering vehicle, and he instantly trumpeted in panic.

  “Keep him quiet until we get out of here,” said a nervous Kamau as I joined him at the controls, “or he’ll wake up the whole city.”

  I opened a panel to the back of the vehicle and spoke soothingly, and strangely enough the trumpeting ceased and the scuffling did stop. As I continued to calm the frightened beast, Kamau piloted the vehicle out of the laboratory complex. We passed through the Ngong Hills twenty minutes later, and circled around Thika in another hour. When we passed Kirinyaga—the true, snow-capped Kirinyaga, from which Ngai once ruled the world—ninety minutes after that, I did not give it so much as a glance.

  We must have been quite a sight to anyone we passed: two seemingly crazy old men, racing through the night in an unmarked cargo vehicle carrying a six-ton monster that had been extinct for more than two centuries.

  “Have you considered what effect the radiation will have on him?” asked Kamau as we passed through Isiolo and continued north.

  “I questioned my son about it,” I answered. “He is aware of the incident, and says that the contamination is confined to the lower levels of the mountain.” I paused. “He also tells me it will soon be cleaned up, but I do not think I believe him.”

  “But Ahmed must pass through the radiation zone to ascend the mountain,” said Kamau.

  I shrugged. “Then he will pass through it. Every day he lives is a day more than he would have lived in Nairobi. For as much time as Ngai sees fit to give him, he will be free to graze on the mountain’s greenery and drink deep of its cool waters.”

  “I hope he lives many years,” he said. “If I am to be jailed for breaking the law, I would at least like to know that some lasting good came of it.”

  “No one is going to jail you,” I assured him. “All that will happen is that you will be fired from a job that no longer exists.”

  “That job supported me,” he said unhappily.

  The Burning Spear would have no use for you, I decided. You bring no honor to his name. It is as I have always known: I am the last true Kikuyu.

  I pulled my remaining money out of my pouch and held it out to him. “Here,” I said.

  “But what about yourself, mzee?” he said, forcing himself not to grab for it.

  “Take it,” I said. “I have no use for it.”

  “Asante sana, mzee,” he said, taking it from my hand and stuffing it into a pocket. Thank you, mzee.

  We fell silent then, each occupied with his own thoughts. As Nairobi receded farther and farther behind us, I compared my feelings with those I had experienced when I had left Kenya behind for Kirinyaga. I had been filled with optimism then, certain that we would create the Utopia I could envision so clearly in my mind.

  The thing I had not realized is that a society can be a Utopia for only an instant—once it reaches a state of perfection it cannot change and still be a Utopia, and it is the nature of societies to grow and evolve. I do not know when Kirinyaga became a Utopia; the instant came and went without my noticing it.

  Now I was seeking Utopia again, but this time of a more limited, more realizable nature: A Utopia for one man, a man who knew his own mind and would die before compromising. I had been misled in the past, so I was not as elated as the day we had left for Kirinyaga; being older and wiser, I felt a calm, quiet certitude rather than more vivid emotions.

  An hour after sunrise, we came to a huge, green, fog-enshrouded mountain, set in the middle of a bleached desert. A single swirling dust devil was visible against the horizon.

  We stopped, then unsealed the elephant’s compartment. We stood back as Ahmed stepped cautiously down the ramp, his every movement tense with apprehension. He took a few steps, as if to convince himself that he was truly on solid ground again, then raised his trunk to examine the scents of his new—and ancient—home.

  Slowly the great beast turned toward Marsabit, and suddenly his whole demeanor changed. No longer cautious, no longer fearful, he spent almost a full minute eagerly examining the smells that wafted down to him. Then, without a backward glance, he strode confidently to the foothills and vanished into the foliage. A moment later we heard him trumpet, and then he was climbing the mountain to claim his kingdom.

  I turned to Kamau. “You had better take the vehicle back before they come looking for it.”

  “Are you not coming with me?” he asked, surprised.

  “No,” I replied. “Like Ahmed, I will live out my days on Marsabit.”

  “But that means you, too, must pass through the radiation.”

  “What of it?” I said with an unconcerned shrug. “I am an old man. How much time can I have left—weeks? Months? Surely not a year. Probably the burden of my years will kill me long before the radiation does.”

  “I hope you are right,” said Kamau. “I should hate to think of you spending your final days in agony.”

  “I have seen men who live in agony,” I told him. “They are the old mzees who gather in the park each morning, leading lives devoid of purpose, waiting only for death to claim another of their number. I will not share their fate.”

  A frown crossed his face like an early morning shadow, and I could see what he was thinking: He would have to take the vehicle back and face the consequences alone.

  “I will remain here with you,” he said suddenly. “I cannot turn my back on Eden a second time.”

  “It is not Eden,” I said. “It is only a mountain in the middle of a desert.”

  “Nonetheless, I am staying. We will start a new Utopia. It will be Kirinyaga again, only done right this time.”

  I have work to do, I thought. Important work. And you would desert me in the end, as they have all deserted me. Better that you leave now.

  “You must not worry about the authorities,” I said in the same reassuring tones with which I spoke to the elephant. “Return the vehicle to my son and he will take care of everything.”

  “Why should he?” asked Kamau suspiciously.

  “Because I have always been an embarrassment to him, and if it were known that I stole Ahmed from a government laboratory, I would graduate from an embarrassment to a humiliation. Trust me: He will not allow this to happen.”

  “If your son asks about you, what shall I tell him?”

  “The truth,” I answered. “He will not come looking for me.”

  “What will stop him?”

  “The fear that he might find me and have to bring me back with him,” I said.

  Kamau’s face reflected the battle that was going on inside him, his terror of returning alone pitted against his fear of the hardships of life on the mountain.

  “It is true that my son would worry about me,” he said hesitantly, as if expecting me to contradict him, perhaps even hoping that I would. “And I would never see my grandchildren again.”

  You are the last Kikuyu, indeed the last human being, that I shall ever see, I thought. I will utter
one last lie, disguised as a question, and if you do not see through it, then you will leave with a clear conscience and I will have performed a final act of compassion.

  “Go home, my friend,” I said. “For what is more important than a grandchild?”

  “Come with me, Koriba,” he urged. “They will not punish you if you explain why you kidnapped him.”

  “I am not going back,” I said firmly. “Not now, not ever. Ahmed and I are both anachronisms. It is best that we live out our lives here, away from a world we no longer recognize, a world that has no place for us.”

  Kamau looked at the mountain. “You and he are joined at the soul,” he concluded.

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Kwaheri, Kamau.”

  “Kwaheri, mzee,” he replied unhappily. “Please ask Ngai to forgive me for my weakness.”

  It seemed to take him forever to activate the vehicle and turn it toward Nairobi, but finally he was out of sight, and I turned and began ascending the foothills.

  I had wasted many years seeking Ngai on the wrong mountain. Men of lesser faith might believe Him dead or disinterested, but I knew that if Ahmed could be reborn after all others of his kind were long dead, then Ngai must surely be nearby, overseeing the miracle. I would spend the rest of the day regaining my strength, and then, in the morning, I would begin searching for Him again on Marsabit.

  And this time, I knew I would find Him.

  RED SONJA AND LESSINGHAM IN DREAMLAND

  Gwyneth Jones

  British writer Gwyneth Jones was a cowinner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction with her 1991 novel and she’s also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award an unprecedented four times. Her other books include the novels Divine Endurance, Escape Plans, Kairos, North Wind, and Flowerdust, a chapbook of short stories, Identifying the Object, and her World Fantasy Award-winning collection of fairy stories, Seven Tales and a Fable. She has also written a number of Young Adult novels, mostly under the pen-name of Ann Halam. Her most recent book is a new novel, Phoenix Café. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

  Be careful what you wish for, an old saying warns us, because you just might get it. The same applies to what you dream about, as the wry little chiller that follows demonstrates—not to mention who you dream with.

  The earth walls of the caravanserai rose strangely from the empty plain. She let the black stallion slow his pace. The silence of deep dusk had a taste, like a rich dark fruit; the air was keen. In the distance mountains etched a jagged margin against an indigo sky; snow streaks glinting in the glimmer of the dawning stars. She had never been here before, in life. But as she led her horse through the gap in the high earthen banks she knew what she would see. The camping booths around the walls; the beaten ground stained black by the ashes of countless cooking fires; the wattle-fenced enclosure where travelers’ riding beasts mingled indiscriminately with their host’s goats and chickens … the tumbledown gallery, where sheaves of russet plains-grass sprouted from empty window-spaces. Everything she looked on had the luminous intensity of a place often visited in dreams.

  She was a tall woman, dressed for riding in a kilt and harness of supple leather over brief close-fitting linen: a costume that left her sheeny, muscular limbs bare and outlined the taut, proud curves of breast and haunches. Her red hair was bound in a braid as thick as a man’s wrist. Her sword was slung on her back, the great brazen hilt standing above her shoulder. Other guests were gathered by an open-air kitchen, in the orange-red of firelight and the smoke of roasting meat. She returned their stares coolly: She was accustomed to attracting attention. But she didn’t like what she saw. The host of the caravanserai came scuttling from the group by the fire. His manner was fawning. But his eyes measured, with a thief’s sly expertise, the worth of the sword she bore and the quality of Lemiak’s harness. Sonja tossed him a few coins and declined to join the company.

  She had counted fifteen of them. They were poorly dressed and heavily armed. They were all friends together and their animals—both terror-birds and horses—were too good for any honest travelers’ purposes. Sonja had been told that this caravanserai was a safe halt. She judged that this was no longer true. She considered riding out again onto the plain. But wolves and wild terror-birds roamed at night between here and the mountains, at the end of winter. And there were worse dangers; ghosts and demons. Sonja was neither credulous nor superstitious. But in this country no wayfarer willingly spent the black hours alone.

  She unharnessed Lemiak and rubbed him down: taking sensual pleasure in the handling of his powerful limbs; in the heat of his glossy hide, and the vigor of his great body. There was firewood ready stacked in the roofless booth. Shouldering a cloth sling for corn and a hank of rope, she went to fetch her own fodder. The corralled beasts shifted in a mass to watch her. The great flightless birds, with their pitiless raptors’ eyes, were especially attentive. She felt an equally rapacious attention from the company by the caravanserai kitchen, which amused her. The robbers—as she was sure they were—had all the luck. For her, there wasn’t one of the fifteen who rated a second glance.

  A man appeared, from the darkness under the ruined gallery. He was tall. The rippled muscle of his chest, left bare by an unlaced leather jerkin, shone red-brown. His black hair fell in glossy curls to his wide shoulders. He met her gaze and smiled, white teeth appearing in the darkness of his beard. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings … look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.… Do you know those lines?” He pointed to a lump of shapeless stone, one of several that lay about. It bore traces of carving, almost effaced by time. “There was a city here once, with marketplaces, fine buildings, throngs of proud people. Now they are dust, and only the caravanserai remains.”

  He stood before her, one tanned and sinewy hand resting lightly on the hilt of a dagger in his belt. Like Sonja, he carried his broadsword on his back. Sonja was tall. He topped her by a head: Yet there was nothing brutish in his size. His brow was wide and serene, his eyes were vivid blue: his lips full and imperious; yet delicately modeled, in the rich nest of hair. Somewhere between eyes and lips there lurked a spirit of mockery, as if he found some secret amusement in the perfection of his own beauty and strength.

  The man and the woman measured each other.

  “You are a scholar,” she said.

  “Of some sort. And a traveler from an antique land—where the cities are still standing. It seems we are the only strangers here,” he added, with a slight nod toward the convivial company. “We might be well advised to become friends for the night.”

  Sonja never wasted words. She considered his offer and nodded.

  They made a fire in the booth Sonja had chosen. Lemiak and the scholar’s terror-bird, left loose together in the back of the shelter, did not seem averse to each other’s company. The woman and the man ate spiced sausage, skewered and broiled over the red embers, with bread and dried fruit. They drank water, each keeping to their own waterskin. They spoke little, after that first exchange—except to discuss briefly the tactics of their defense, should defense be necessary.

  The attack came around midnight. At the first stir of covert movement, Sonja leapt up sword in hand. She grasped a brand from the dying fire. The man who had been crawling on his hands and knees toward her, bent on sly murder of a sleeping victim, scrabbled to his feet. “Defend yourself,” yelled Sonja, who despised to strike an unarmed foe. Instantly he was rushing at her with a heavy sword. A great two-handed stroke would have cleft her to the waist. She parried the blow and caught him between neck and shoulder, almost severing the head from his body. The beasts plunged and screamed at the rush of blood scent. The scholar was grappling with another attacker, choking out the man’s life with his bare hands … and the booth was full of bodies: their enemi
es rushing in on every side.

  Sonja felt no fear. Stroke followed stroke, in a luxury of blood and effort and fire-shot darkness … until the attack was over, as suddenly as it had begun.

  The brigands had vanished.

  “We killed five,” breathed the scholar, “by my count. Three to you, two to me.”

  She kicked together the remains of their fire and crouched to blow the embers to a blaze. By that light they found five corpses, dragged them and flung them into the open square. The scholar had a cut on his upper arm, which was bleeding freely. Sonja was bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt. The worst loss was their woodstack, which had been trampled and blood-fouled. They would not be able to keep a watch fire burning.

  “Perhaps they won’t try again,” said the warrior woman. “What can we have that’s worth more than five lives?”

  He laughed shortly. “I hope you’re right.”

  “We’ll take turns to watch.”

  Standing breathless, every sense alert, they smiled at each other in new-forged comradeship. There was no second attack. At dawn Sonja, rousing from a light doze, sat up and pushed back the heavy masses of her red hair.

  “You are very beautiful,” said the man, gazing at her.

  “So are you,” she answered.

  The caravanserai was deserted, except for the dead. The brigands’ riding animals were gone. The innkeeper and his family had vanished into some bolt-hole in the ruins.

  “I am heading for the mountains,” he said, as they packed up their gear. “For the pass into Zimiamvia.”

  “I too.”

  “Then our way lies together.”

  He was wearing the same leather jerkin, over knee-length loose breeches of heavy violet silk. Sonja looked at the strips of linen that bound the wound on his upper arm. “When did you tie up that cut?”

  “You dressed it for me, for which I thank you.”

  “When did I do that?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, sometime.”