The Best of the Best, Volume 1

by Gardner Dozois

  “Don’t bother.”

  “All right, I won’t, though ‘tis a good shape. A man can take it and be whatever he wants, one o’ the People o’ Peace or a bit o’ a man from Mars. I’ve used it for both, and there’s nothin’ better.”

  “You took Lissy,” Tim said.

  “And how would ye be knowin’ that?”

  “I thought she’d drowned.”

  “Did ye now?”

  “And that this ship—or whatever it is—was just a sign, an omen. I talked to a policeman and he as good as told me, but I didn’t really think about what he said until last night, when I was trying to sleep.”

  “Is it a dream yer havin’? Did ye ever think on that?”

  “If it’s a dream, it’s still real,” Tim said doggedly. “And anyway, I saw your ship when I was awake, yesterday and the day before.”

  “Or yer dreamin’ now ye did. But go on wi’ it.”

  “He said Lissy couldn’t have been abducted because I was in the same bed, and that she’d gone out for a swim in the morning and drowned. But she could have been abducted, if she had gone out for the swim first. If someone had come for her with a boat. And she wouldn’t have drowned, because she didn’t swim good enough to drown. She was afraid of the water. We went in yesterday, and even with me there, she would hardly go in over her knees. So it was you.”

  ‘Ter right, ye know,” Daniel said. He formed a little steeple of his fingers. “ ‘Twas us.”

  Tim was recalling stories that had been read to him when he was a child. “Fairies steal babies, don’t they? And brides. Is that why you do it? So we’ll think that’s who you are?”

  “Bless ye, ‘tis true,” Daniel told him. “ ‘Tis the Fair Folk we are. The jinn o’ the desert too, and the saucer riders ye say ye credit, and forty score more. Would ye be likin’ to see me wi’ me goatskin breeches and me panpipe?” He chuckled. “Have ye never wondered why we’re so much alike the world over? Or thought that we don’t always know just which shape’s the best for a place, so the naiads and the dryads might as well be the ladies o’ the Deeny Shee? Do ye know what the folk o’ the Barb’ry Coast call the hell that’s under their sea?”

  Tim shook his head.

  “Why, ‘tis Domdaniel. I wonder why that is, now. Tim, ye say ye want this girl.”

  “That’s right.”

  “An’ ye say there’ll be trouble and plenty for us if ye don’t have her. But let me tell ye now that if ye don’t get her, wi’ our blessin’ to boot, ye’ll drown.—Hold your tongue, can’t ye, for ‘tis worse than that—If ye don’t get her wi’ our blessin’, ‘twill be seen that ye were drownin’ now. Do ye take me meaning?”

  “I think so. Close enough.”

  “Ah, that’s good, that is. Now here’s me offer. Do ye remember how things stood before we took her?”

  “Of course.”

  “They’ll stand so again, if ye but do what I tell ye. ‘Tis yerself that will remember, Tim Neal, but she’ll remember nothin’. An’ the truth of it is, there’ll be nothin’ to remember, for it’ll all be gone, every stick of it. This policeman ye spoke wi’, for instance. Ye’ve me word that ye will not have done it.”

  “What do I have to do?” Tim asked.

  “Service. Serve us. Do whatever we ask of ye. We’d sooner have a broth of a girl like yer Lissy than a great hulk of a lad like yerself, but then too, we’d sooner be havin’ one that’s willin’, for the unwillin’ girls are everywhere—I don’t doubt but ye’ve seen it yerself. A hundred years, that’s all we ask of ye. ‘Tis short enough, like Doyle’s wife. Will ye do it?”

  “And everything will be the same, at the end, as it was before you took Lissy?”

  “Not everythin’, I didn’t say that. Ye’ll remember, don’t ye remember me sayin’ so? But for her and all the country round, why ‘twill be the same.”

  “All right,” Tim said. “I’ll do it.”

  “ ‘Tis a brave lad ye are. Now I’ll tell ye what I’ll do. I said a hundred years, to which ye agreed—”

  Tim nodded.

  “—but I’ll have no unwillin’ hands about me boat, nor no ungrateful ones neither. I’ll make it twenty. How’s that? Sure and I couldn’t say fairer, could I?”

  Daniel’s figure was beginning to waver and fade; the image of the dark mass Tim had seen first hung about it like a cloud.

  “Lay yerself on yer belly, for I must put me foot upon yer head. Then the deal’s done.”

  The salt ocean was in his mouth and his eyes. His lungs burst for breath. He revolved in the blue chasm of water, tried to swim, at last exploded gasping into the air.

  The King had said he would remember, but the years were fading already. Drudging, dancing, buying, spying, prying, waylaying, and betraying when he walked in the world of men. Serving something that he had never wholly understood. Sailing foggy seas that were sometimes of this earth. Floating among the constellations. The years and the slaps and the kicks were all fading, and with them (and he rejoiced in it) the days when he had begged.

  He lifted an arm, trying to regain his old stroke, and found that he was very tired. Perhaps he had never really rested in all those years. Certainly, he could not recall resting. Where was he? He paddled listlessly, not knowing if he were swimming away from land, if he were in the center of an ocean. A wave elevated him, a long, slow swell of blue under the gray sky. A glory—the rising or perhaps the setting sun—shone to his right. He swam toward it, caught sight of a low coast.

  He crawled onto the sand and lay there for a time, his back struck by drops of spray like rain. Near his eyes, the beach seemed nearly black. There were bits of charcoal, fragments of half-burned wood. He raised his head, pushing away the earth, and saw an empty bottle of greenish glass nearly buried in the wet sand.

  When he was able at last to rise, his limbs were stiff and cold. The dawnlight had become daylight, but there was no warmth in it. The beach cottage stood only about a hundred yards away, one window golden with sunshine that had entered from the other side, the walls in shadow. The red Triumph gleamed beside the road.

  At the top of a small dune he turned and looked back out to sea. A black freighter with a red and white stack was visible a mile or two out, but it was only a freighter. For a moment he felt a kind of regret, a longing for a part of his life that he had hated but that was now gone forever. I will never be able to tell her what happened, he thought. And then, Yes I will, if only I let her think I’m just making it up. And then, No wonder so many people tell so many stories. Goodbye to all that.

  The steps creaked under his weight, and he wiped the sand from his feet on the coco mat. Lissy was in bed. When she heard the door open she sat up, then drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.

  “Big Tim,” she said. “You did come. Tim and I were hoping you would.”

  When he did not answer, she added, “He’s out having a swim, I think. He should be around in a minute.”

  And when he still said nothing. “We’re—Tim and I—we’re going to be married.”

  Salvador

  * * *

  LUCIUS SHEPARD

  Lucius Shepard was one of the most popular, influential, and prolific of the new writers of the ’80s, and that decade and much of the decade that followed would see a steady stream of bizarre and powerfully compelling stories by Shepard, stories such as the landmark novella “R&R,” which won him a Nebula Award in 1987, “The Jaguar Hunter,” “Black Coral,” “A Spanish Lesson,” “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” “Shades,” “A Traveller’s Tale,” “Human History,” “How the Wind Spoke at Madaket,” “Beast of the Heartland,” “The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter,” and “Barnacle Bill the Spacer,” which won him a Hugo Award in 1993. In 1988, he picked up a World Fantasy Award for his monumental short-story collection The Jaguar Hunter, following it in 1992 with a second World Fantasy Award for his second collection, The Ends of the Earth.

  In the mid to late ’90s, Shepard’s production slowe
d dramatically, but in the new century he has returned to something like his startling prolificacy of old; by my count, Shepard published at least ten or eleven stories in 2003 alone, many of them novellas, including three almost-novel-length chap-books, Louisiana Breakdown, Floater, and Colonel Rutherford’s Colt. Nor has the quality of his work slipped—stories like “Radiant Green Star,” “Only Partially There,” and “Liar’s House” deserve to be ranked among his best work ever, and his “Over Yonder” won him the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. And it may be that he’s only beginning to hit his stride. Shepard’s other books include the novels Green Eyes, Kalimantan, The Golden, and the collection Barnacle Bill the Spacer. His stories have appeared in our Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eighteenth annual collections. His most recent books are two new collections, Trujillo and Two Trains Running. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, he now lives in Vancouver, Washington.

  In the harrowing story that follows, the first to make me really sit up and take serious notice of Shepard as a writer, he shows us that we do learn from the experience of war—the only question is, learn what?

  Three weeks before they wasted Tecolutla, Dantzler had his baptism of fire. The platoon was crossing a meadow at the foot of an emerald-green volcano, and being a dreamy sort, he was idling along, swatting tall grasses with his rifle barrel and thinking how it might have been a first-grader with crayons who had devised this elementary landscape of a perfect cone rising into a cloudless sky, when cap-pistol noises sounded on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass, fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped another—“A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say—and lay with his head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth, and he was very afraid.

  Gradually his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened to a fierce resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing. He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was necessary, like a child playing soldier.

  “Playin’ my ass!” DT would say. “You just actin’ natural.”

  DT was a firm believer in the ampules; though the official line was that they contained tailored RNA compounds and pseudoendorphins modified to an inhalant form, he held the opinion that they opened a man up to his inner nature. He was big, black, with heavily muscled arms and crudely stamped features, and he had come to the Special Forces direct from prison, where he had done a stretch for attempted murder; the palms of his hands were covered by jail tattoos—a pentagram and a horned monster. The words DIE HIGH were painted on his helmet. This was his second tour in Salvador, and Moody—who was Dantzler’s buddy—said the drugs had addled DT’s brains, that he was crazy and gone to hell.

  “He collects trophies,” Moody had said. “And not just ears like they done in ‘Nam.”

  When Dantzler had finally gotten a glimpse of the trophies, he had been appalled. They were kept in a tin box in DT’s pack and were nearly unrecognizable; they looked like withered brown orchids. But despite his revulsion, despite the fact that he was afraid of DT, he admired the man’s capacity for survival and had taken to heart his advice to rely on the drugs.

  On the way back down the slope they discovered a live casualty, an Indian kid about Dantzler’s age, nineteen or twenty. Black hair, adobe skin, and heavy-lidded brown eyes. Dantzler, whose father was an anthropologist and had done fieldwork in Salvador, figured him for a Santa Ana tribesman; before leaving the States, Dantzler had pored over his father’s notes, hoping this would give him an edge, and had learned to identify the various regional types. The kid had a minor leg wound and was wearing fatigue pants and a faded COKE ADDS LIFE T-shirt. This T-shirt irritated DT no end.

  “What the hell you know ‘bout Coke?” he asked the kid as they headed for the chopper that was to carry them deeper into Morazán Province. “You think it’s funny or somethin’?” He whacked the kid in the back with his rifle butt, and when they reached the chopper, he slung him inside and had him sit by the door. He sat beside him, tapped out a joint from a pack of Kools, and asked, “Where’s Infante?”

  “Dead,” said the medic.

  “Shit!” DT licked the joint so it would burn evenly. “Goddamn beaner ain’t no use ‘cept somebody else know Spanish.”

  “I know a little,” Dantzler volunteered.

  Staring at Dantzler, DT’s eyes went empty and unfocused. “Naw,” he said. “You don’t know no Spanish.”

  Dantzler ducked his head to avoid DT’s stare and said nothing; he thought he understood what DT meant, but he ducked away from the understanding as well. The chopper bore them aloft, and DT lit the joint. He let the smoke out his nostrils and passed the joint to the kid, who accepted gratefully.

  “Qué saborl” he said, exhaling a billow; he smiled and nodded, wanting to be friends.

  Dantzler turned his gaze to the open door. They were flying low between the hills, and looking at the deep bays of shadow in their folds acted to drain away the residue of the drugs, leaving him weary and frazzled. Sunlight poured in, dazzling the oil-smeared floor.

  “Hey, Dantzler!” DT had to shout over the noise of the rotors. “Ask him whass his name!”

  The kid’s eyelids were drooping from the joint, but on hearing Spanish he perked up; he shook his head, though, refusing to answer. Dantzler smiled and told him not to be afraid.

  “Ricardo Quu,” said the kid.

  “Kool!” said DT with false heartiness. “Thass my brand!” He offered his pack to the kid.

  “Gracias, no.” The kid waved the joint and grinned.

  “Dude’s named for a goddamn cigarette,” said DT disparagingly, as if this were the height of insanity.

  Dantzler asked the kid if there were more soldiers nearby, and once again received no reply; but, apparently sensing in Dantzler a kindred soul, the kid leaned forward and spoke rapidly, saying that his village was Santander Jimenez, that his father was—he hesitated—a man of power. He asked where they were taking him. Dantzler returned a stony glare. He found it easy to reject the kid, and he realized later this was because he had already given up on him.

  Latching his hands behind his head, DT began to sing—a wordless melody. His voice was discordant, barely audible above the rotors; but the tune had a familiar ring and Dantzler soon placed it. The theme from “Star Trek.” It brought back memories of watching TV with his sister, laughing at the low-budget aliens and Scotty’s Actors’ Equity accent. He gazed out the door again. The sun was behind the hills, and the hillsides were unfeatured blurs of dark green smoke. Oh, God, he wanted to be home, to be anywhere but Salvador! A couple of the guys joined in the singing at DT’s urging, and as the volume swelled, Dantzler’s emotion peaked. He was on the verge of tears, remembering tastes and sights, the way his girl Jeanine had smelled, so clean and fresh, not reeking of sweat and perfume like the whores around Ilopango—finding all this substance in the banal touchstone of his culture and the illusions of the hillsides rushing past. Then Moody tensed beside him, and he glanced up to learn the reason why.

  In the gloom of the chopper’s belly, DT was as unfeatured as the hills—a black presence ruling them, more the leader of a coven than a platoon. The other two guys were singing their lungs out, and even the kid was getting into the spirit of things. “Musical” he said-at one point, smiling at everybody, trying to fan the flame of
good feeling. He swayed to the rhythm and essayed a “la-la” now and again. But no one else was responding.

  The singing stopped, and Dantzler saw that the whole platoon was staring at the kid, their expressions slack and dispirited.

  “Space!” shouted DT, giving the kid a little shove. “The final frontier!”

  The smile had not yet left the kid’s face when he toppled out the door. DT peered after him; a few seconds later he smacked his hand against the floor and sat back, grinning. Dantzler felt like screaming, the stupid horror of the joke was so at odds with the languor of his homesickness. He looked to the others for reaction. They were sitting with their heads down, fiddling with trigger guards and pack straps, studying their bootlaces, and seeing this, he quickly imitated them.

  Morazán Province was spook country. Santa Ana spooks. Flights of birds had been reported to attack patrols; animals appeared at the perimeters of campsites and vanished when you shot at them; dreams afflicted everyone who ventured there. Dantzler could not testify to the birds and animals, but he did have a recurring dream. In it the kid DT had killed was pinwheeling down through a golden fog, his T-shirt visible against the roiling backdrop, and sometimes a voice would boom out of the fog, saying, “You are killing my son.” No, no, Dantzler would reply, it wasn’t me, and besides, he’s already dead. Then he would wake covered with sweat, groping for his rifle, his heart racing.

  But the dream was not an important terror, and he assigned it no significance. The land was far more terrifying. Pine-forested ridges that stood out against the sky like fringes of electrified hair; little trails winding off into thickets and petering out, as if what they led to had been magicked away; gray rock faces along which they were forced to walk, hopelessly exposed to ambush. There were innumerable booby traps set by the guerrillas, and they lost several men to rockfalls. It was the emptiest place of Dantzler’s experience. No people, no animals, just a few hawks circling the solitudes between the ridges. Once in a while they found tunnels, and these they blew with the new gas grenades; the gas ignited the rich concentrations of hydrocarbons and sent flame sweeping through the entire system. DT would praise whoever had discovered the tunnel and would estimate in a loud voice how many beaners they had “refried.” But Dantzler knew they were traversing pure emptiness and burning empty holes. Days, under debilitating heat, they humped the mountains, traveling seven, eight, even ten klicks up trails so steep that frequently the feet of the guy ahead of you would be on a level with your face; nights, it was cold, the darkness absolute, the silence so profound that Dantzler imagined he could hear the great humming vibration of the earth. They might have been anywhere or nowhere. Their fear was nourished by the isolation, and the only remedy was “martial arts.”