The Year's Best Science Fiction--Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He thought about Hitler announcing the successful invasion of England. The ships at Dover and the submarine that made it up the Thames and blew up the House of Commons. It’d taken them six months to hunt down Churchill. He’d been hiding in a bunker all that time.

  Swastikas waving over Buckingham Palace. No one knew where the royal family was. Or knew but wasn’t saying. So many things you couldn’t say anymore. His mind wandered.

  How does every German joke start? He thought.

  By looking over your shoulder.

  In time London would be rebuilt and there’d be no sign left of the war.

  “Wake up,” someone said. He was prodded awake. His heart was beating too fast and there was an acrid taste in his mouth. Beyond the car’s headlights he saw the lit front of a small church.

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought you were kidding.”

  “Just move it, will you? Boss wants to see you.”

  Gunther got out of the car obligingly. There was a large electric red cross above the door. Its light spilled over the driveway and ran down the walls. It made everything look covered in blood. Gunther went inside the church. The two gunmen remained outside. The door shut behind Gunther.

  There was an altar straight ahead. Stained glass windows showed nativity scenes. The pews had been pushed aside and there were half-shut crates and boxes everywhere.

  “Mr. Sloam. Thank you for coming. I understand you have been looking for me.”

  Gunther started. For a moment he couldn’t locate the voice. Then a diminutive shadow detached itself from the chancel and approached him with the tread of soft feet. “Welcome to the mission, Mr. Sloam. We do God’s work here.”

  Jurgen, the dwarf, wore horn-rimmed glasses and a crisp white shirt. The rolled-up sleeves showed muscled arms. His hair was reddish-brown and fine.

  “With guns?” Gunther said.

  Jurgen laughed, softly. “These are dangerous times. One must take precautions.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Jurgen shrugged. “It wasn’t hard,” he said. “I have the ear of the poor, the desperate and the dispossessed. I understand Pirelli is dead.”

  “Pirelli, Blucher, Ulla Blau,” Gunther said. He ticked them off one by one on his fingers. He watched Jurgen but Jurgen’s face bore nothing but a polite expression.

  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,” Jurgen said.

  “Did you kill them?” Gunther said.

  “Why would I do that, Mr. Sloam?”

  “To protect your little racket,” Gunther said. “I knew it couldn’t be Ulla behind it all. Running drugs, suborning women. Those children who died in the hospital. It was all your doing, wasn’t it. Wasn’t it!”

  He was shouting. Jurgen flinched. “Mr. Sloam,” he said. “Please. This is unseemly.”

  “Just tell me,” Gunther whispered. The fight wasn’t in him anymore. “Tell me the truth.”

  Jurgen rubbed his eyes. “I came to London to help these people. The poor, the needy. The war had destroyed their homes along with their futures. We provide medical supplies, food, bibles.” He shrugged. “The Führer won’t challenge the church. This much we still have.”

  “You’re a banker.”

  “I’m wealthy. My family is rich.”

  “Did you kill them? Did you kill Ulla?”

  “You want me to confess?” Jurgen looked amused. “We are in church, after all.”

  “I don’t know what I want,” Gunther said.

  “I believe in God, Mr. Sloam. I believe that the sins of the present age are but the prelude to the flood that is to come. This is Sodom and Gomorrah. The end of days. Evil has won, Mr. Sloam. But evil cannot rule the world forever.”

  “My God,” Gunther said. “You’re an agitator. A … a subversive.”

  “Mr. Sloam, really,” Jurgen said. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

  “How are you still allowed to operate? Why is the Gestapo not knocking on your door as we speak?”

  “Someone has to fund this occupation,” Jurgen said, complacently. “Someone has to rebuild. Even Nazis need money, Mr. Sloam. I think you have the wrong impression of me. I did not kill Ulla. God knows I had reason to. You paint me so blackly, but Ulla Blau was exactly what you deny she was. She was a whoremonger and a poisoner. And a blackmailer, too, and many other things besides. I do not hold it against her. She did what she thought she must do. She had all the morals of an actress and all their brittle ruthlessness. I do not judge, Mr. Sloam. Only God does.”

  “What other things?” Gunther said; whispered.

  Jurgen shrugged. “Lives,” he said. “She sold lives.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you? Then perhaps it is better that way.”

  “Who did she blackmail?” Then, realisation dawned. “You?”

  “I have certain proclivities,” Jurgen said. “I am not proud of them, but I have my needs. And Ulla had a knack for finding these things out.”

  “So you funded her?” Gunther said.

  Jurgen shrugged again. “I paid her some money,” he allowed. “What she mostly wanted from me was a way of putting that money somewhere safe. She had saved almost enough, she told me. She was looking forward to retiring. She wanted to go back to Germany, somewhere far from Berlin. She dreamed of opening her own theatre. Can you believe it?” He gave a sudden, unexpected bark of a laugh. “She was never much of an actress,” he said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, Sloam. I liked her too, you know. But I never went to bed with her.”

  Gunther took a step towards him. Jurgen stood his ground. He smiled sardonically. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded almost genuine. “I don’t know who killed her.”

  “But you’re grateful,” Gunther said. He loomed over the smaller man, who looked at him evenly, unafraid.

  “What’s one death,” he said, “amongst so many?”

  Footsteps sounded behind Gunther. He began to turn, only to see a dark shape rise in the air towards him. The butt of a gun connected with the back of his head. Pain flared, and he fell to his knees.

  “Take him outside. Dump him somewhere with the garbage.”

  He tried to rise. They hit him again and, this time, he stayed down.

  * * *

  “I thought I was dead,” he said. “Until I woke up covered in rotting cabbage, with a rat nibbling on my shoe. They really did dump me in the garbage.”

  “Did they give you back your gun?”

  “What gun?” he said. He looked at me blankly.

  I sighed. “So who killed Ulla?” I said.

  Gunther rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “And I don’t care anymore. I’ve had it, Everly. I’m going home.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Like you said, you can’t just kill me, I’m a faithful citizen of the Reich.”

  I laughed. He looked hurt, at that. “Who’s going to miss you, Gunther? I have your file. You’re a third rate hack for pictures no one makes anymore. You have no wife, no friends and not much of a future. Face it. You may as well be dead.”

  He shrugged. He must have heard worse. It’s harder to break a man when he has nothing.

  “If you’re going to do it, just do it,” he said.

  “I would,” I said, “only I like you. We do things a little differently here, in England.”

  I think it was true, too. He wasn’t a bad guy. He just kept believing the wrong people.

  “Then that’s it? You’re just going to let me go?”

  “There’s the door,” I said. “There’s a transport plane leaving in a couple of hours from Northolt. Why don’t you do yourself a favour and be on it this time.”

  “I will,” he said, fervently. “I’ll be damned if I spend another minute in this town.”

  I watched him get up. He walked to the door. He hesitated with his hand on the handle. “You’re a good sort, Everly,” he
said.

  “We’re a vanishing kind,” I said.

  10

  When we’d picked him up he didn’t have the gun on him. He must have stashed it somewhere in the trash. From us he should have gone straight to the airport. He didn’t.

  He made his way back to Dean Street. Back to the start. A car was parked in the street with the trunk open and packed suitcases on the ground. The old woman straightened when she saw him and said, dismissively, “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Mrs. White. Going someplace?”

  “The cold’s no good for my bones,” she said, in her atrocious German. “I thought perhaps somewhere warm for the winter.”

  “Can I help you with your luggage?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  Gunther took his gun out and pointed it at her. She squinted. “What’s that for, then?” she said.

  “Could you step away from the car?”

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Gunther.”

  He stared at her; but the gun never wavered. She straightened up, slowly. When she next spoke she seemed to shed forty years and her accent. “You came. I wasn’t sure you would but you did.”

  “Just keep your hands where I can see them, Ulla.”

  She smiled. It was her old familiar smile. He wondered how he didn’t see it before. “People keep telling me you’re not much of an actress,” he said, “but by God, you are!”

  “You were always too kind to me,” she said. Gunther could see now under her makeup and the wig: it was her eyes she couldn’t truly mask. They were large and startled and innocent, like a wounded bird’s. It was her eyes which dominated the last few seconds of screen at the end of Die Grosse Liebe, as the picture slowly faded to black. How could he have ever forgotten them?

  “How did you know, Gunther?”

  “I didn’t, not for sure. It was just something this girl said.”

  “My, you’ve wasted no time getting over me.”

  He ignored her. “She was crying because one of her friends was missing. One of the other girls. And I thought how much she looked like you, how much all of them did. The Gestapo man said they all smiled like you.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing!” she said, with a flash of anger.

  “And there was no face, of course.”

  “No,” she said. “There was no face left, was there.”

  “How could you do it, Ulla? All of it? Not just the girls or the drugs, I can understand that, but those dead children too?”

  “They’d have been dead sooner or later, Gunther. This whole stinking country is a waiting room in a hospital’s terminal wing. You can’t pin that on me.”

  “But why?”

  “Why, why,” she said, aping him. Her voice was cruel. “Maybe because I couldn’t get a role anymore. So I had to make one for myself.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I just got tired. It’s over now, anyway. It was just something to do to pass the time at the end of the world.”

  “And the others?” he said. “Blucher, Pirelli?”

  “I only did what I had to do.”

  “Why me, Ulla?”

  “Do you mind if I light a cigarette?”

  “Do it slowly.”

  “I do everything slowly, Gunther.”

  She reached into her pocket and came back with a silver case. She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it with a match. She blew out smoke and looked at him, unconcerned. “I always liked you,” she said, softly.

  “Liked?”

  “Maybe it was love. It was so long ago and who can remember anymore. You were just easy, Gunther. I don’t know how you’re still alive.”

  He just stared at her. The sunlight framed her head. It was just an ordinary day.

  “Put the gun down, Gunther. You know you’re not going to shoot me.” She wiped makeup off her face and smiled at him. He thought she must still be beautiful, underneath. “Come with me,” she said. “We’ll go back to the continent, away from this awful place. I have money, we’d never have to work again. Come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Then step away!” She began loading the cases into the car. Gunther stood and watched her, helplessly.

  I watched them from across the road. Neither of them saw me. It was obvious he wasn’t going to shoot. She knew it and I did. I think the only one who didn’t was Gunther.

  I crossed the road to them. I wasn’t in a hurry. Gunther heard my footsteps first. He turned his head and looked at me in bewilderment.

  “Give me the gun, Gunther.”

  “No,” he said, “she’s got to pay, she’s got to pay for what she did.”

  “To them, or to you?” I said. “Give me the gun, Gunther.”

  I watched her all the while. She straightened up again, slowly, her eyes never leaving my own or blinking. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

  “Give me the gun.”

  He gave it to me. Ulla watched us without expression. I couldn’t see her hands.

  I raised the gun and shot her.

  A Luger makes a surprising amount of noise when it’s fired. The gunshot echoed from the walls. She fell slowly.

  I’d blown half her face off, and the wig, which fell and lay on the ground matted in blood. Ulla Blau collapsed after it. She lay by the car and didn’t move. There was a small gun in her hand; she’d intended to shoot me.

  I walked over to her and fired another bullet, just to be sure.

  Gunther stood there all the while. He didn’t move. His eyes found mine at last. “What did you do that for?” he said, numbly.

  “You never asked her,” I said.

  “Asked her what?”

  “What else she did to earn a living. Someone must have told you.”

  I could see it in his eyes. Someone must have said something but he never thought to follow it. I said, “You want to know why she was so protected? She sold us Jews. To the Gestapo.”

  “So?” he said.

  “She worked in the theatre in the aftermath of the war. She recruited the girls. She knew where people were hiding. It was just another way to make a living, and buy some protection on the side.”

  “So what?” he said. “They were just Jews.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure. They were just Jews.”

  He really looked at me then. I think it was the first time he really started to see things for what they were and not for what he thought they should be.

  “But you can’t be,” he said. “You’re not—”

  “I knew Tom Everly in Berlin, before the war,” I said. “We were at university together. He became a committed Nazi and when he went back to England he was already working for the Abwehr.”

  I was watching Gunther’s eyes. He wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. You can’t outrun a bullet.

  “We found him in the last few months of the war. Just enough time for me to take his place,” I said. “He had a wife and a son, but it’s no use having a family in this line of work.”

  All Gunther did was keep shaking his head. No, no. “There are no more Jews,” he said.

  “I told you,” I said. “We’re a vanishing kind.”

  Later, I stood over him. I knelt beside him and put the gun in his hand. They looked good together, Ulla and him. I felt bad for Gunther. He wasn’t a bad guy, and none of this has really been his fault. He came to London following a woman, which is how these stories usually start, and he found her: which is how they usually end.

  One Sister, Two Sisters, Three

  JAMES PATRICK KELLY

  James Patrick Kelly made his first sale in 1975, and since has gone on to become one of the most respected and popular writers to enter the field in the last twenty years. Although Kelly has had some success with novels, especially with Wildlife, he has perhaps had more impact to date as a writer of short fiction, with stories such as “Solstice,” “The Prisoner of Chillon,” “Glass Cloud,” “Mr. Boy,” “Pogrom,” “Home Front,” “Undone,” and “Bernardo’s House,” and is
often ranked among the best short story writers in the business. His story “Think Like a Dinosaur” won him a Hugo Award in 1996, as did his story “1016 to 1,” in 2000. Kelly’s first solo novel, the mostly ignored Planet of Whispers, came out in 1984. It was followed by Freedom Beach, a mosaic novel written in collaboration with John Kessel, and then by another solo novel, Look Into the Sun, as well as the chapbook novella, Burn. His short work has been collected in Think Like a Dinosaur and Strange But Not a Stranger. His most recent book are a series of anthologies co-edited with John Kessel: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, The Secret History of Science Fiction, Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and Nebula Awards Showcase 2012. Born in Minneola, New York, Kelly now lives with his family in Nottingham, New Hampshire. He has a Web site at www.JimKelly.net, and reviews internet-related matters for Asimov’s Science Fiction.

  Here he shows us that even on another planet thousands of years in the future, sibling rivalry is just the same as it’s been since the dawn of time—and, if strong enough, can have similarly dire consequences.

  This isn’t my story—I’m nobody. It’s my sister’s. Zana is the one who got away, leaving me on this sad little world where we were born. Where I’ll die someday, as the Divine Moya wills. Moya expects us to die, each and every one. That’s her plan for those who still follow the human way.

  We were born fraternal twins, Jix and Zana, separated by thirteen minutes—one of the holy numbers. We were conceived as Moya intended, mother clinging to father, sperm seeking egg. For the first years of our lives, we were close. We danced the moons and prayed the holy numbers and taunted the boys who went to our church. Later we kissed them. Father taught us to bake the cookies that we sold to the upsider tourists from the Thousand Worlds and Mother taught us to mind the money that they paid. Ours was a family of happy wallrats, living just outside the ruins.

  But we began to drift apart in our late teens. Zana had the precise beauty that only Moya can bestow. Her ratios were near the 1.618 of the Divine’s perfection, her curls tight, and her skin had a dark luster, like the midnight of the Jagged Spike. Her high forehead set off molten brown eyes. Zana wore her feelings like a consecration crown for all to see; transparency was part of her attraction. I wasn’t plain, but compared to my sister, my features were commonplace, so I found my own way. While Zana could be shy, especially with strangers, I was forward. While she pondered the right word to say, I let my tongue do the thinking. I didn’t mind what they said about us. Zana the pretty, Jix the witty. Maybe I talked too much for some boys, as Mother used to say, but too much silence made my lips twitch. And I had my share of flings, if not as many as my sister.