The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

by Gardner Dozois

  I got out of the water and dried myself, feeling sad and shy and forsaken, and yet extremely interested in what had happened to my body. It felt wonderfully alive and electric, so that the roughness of the towel made me shiver with pleasure. Somebody had come closer to me, somebody that had been watching me play with my friend in the water. He sat down by me now.

  It was a hearthmate a few years older than I, Arrad Tehemmy. I had worked in the gardens with Arrad all last summer, and liked him. He looked like Sether, I now thought, with heavy black hair and a long, thin face, but in him was that shining, that glory they all had here – all the kemmerers, the women, the men – such vivid beauty as I had never seen in any human beings. “Sov,” he said, “I’d like – Your first – Will you – ” His hands were already on me, and mine on him. “Come,” he said, and I went with him. He took me into a beautiful little room, in which there was nothing but a fire burning in a fireplace, and a wide bed. There Arrad took me into his arms and I took Arrad into my arms, and then between my legs, and fell upward, upward through the golden light.

  Arrad and I were together all that first night, and besides fucking a great deal, we ate a great deal. It had not occurred to me that there would be food at a kemmerhouse; I had thought you weren’t allowed to do anything but fuck. There was a lot of food, very good, too, set out so that you could eat whenever you wanted. Drink was more limited; the person in charge, an old woman-halfdead, kept her canny eye on you, and wouldn’t give you any more beer if you showed signs of getting wild or stupid. I didn’t need any more beer. I didn’t need any more fucking. I was complete. I was in love forever for all time all my life to eternity with Arrad. But Arrad (who was a day farther into kemmer than I) fell asleep and wouldn’t wake up, and an extraordinary person named Hama sat down by me and began talking and also running his hand up and down my back in the most delicious way, so that before long we got further entangled, and began fucking, and it was entirely different with Hama than it had been with Arrad, so that I realized that I must be in love with Hama, until Gehardar joined us. After that I think I began to understand that I loved them all and they all loved me and that that was the secret of the kemmerhouse.

  It’s been nearly fifty years, and I have to admit I do not recall everyone from my first kemmer; only Karrid and Arrad, Hama and Gehardar, old Tubanny, the most exquisitely skillful lover as a male that I ever knew – I met him often in later kemmers – and Berre, my golden fish, with whom I ended up in drowsy, peaceful, blissful lovemaking in front of the great hearth till we both fell asleep. And when we woke we were not women. We were not men. We were not in kemmer. We were very tired young adults.

  “You’re still beautiful,” I said to Berre.

  “So are you,” Berre said. “Where do you work?”

  “Furniture shop, Third Ward.”

  I tried licking Berre’s nipple, but it didn’t work; Berre flinched a little, and I said “Sorry,” and we both laughed.

  “I’m in the radio trade,” Berre said. “Did you ever think of trying that?”

  “Making radios?”

  “No. Broadcasting. I do the Fourth Hour news and weather.”

  “That’s you?” I said, awed.

  “Come over to the tower some time, I’ll show you around,” said Berre.

  Which is how I found my lifelong trade and a lifelong friend. As I tried to tell Sether when I came back to the Hearth, kemmer isn’t exactly what we thought it was; it’s much more complicated.

  Sether’s first kemmer was on Getheny Gor, the first day of the first month of autumn, at the dark of the moon. One of the family brought Sether into kemmer as a woman, and then Sether brought me in. That was the first time I kemmered as a man. And we stayed on the same wavelength, as Grand put it. We never conceived together, being cousins and having some modern scruples, but we made love in every combination, every dark of the moon, for years. And Sether brought my child, Tamor, into first kemmer – as a woman, like a proper Thade.

  Later on Sether went into the Handdara, and became an Indweller in the old Fastness, and now is an Adept. I go over there often to join in one of the Chants or practise the Untrance or just to visit, and every few days Sether comes back to the Hearth. And we talk. The old days or the new times, somer or kemmer, love is love.

  THE DEAD

  Michael Swanwick

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the twenty-five years that have followed has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves.” He’s won the Hugo Award four times between 1999 and 2003, for his stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur,” “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” and “Slow Life.” His other books include the novels In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, The Iron Dragons Daughter (which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a rare distinction!), Jack Faust, and, most recently, Bones of the Earth, plus a novella-length book, Griffin’s Egg. His short fiction has been assembled in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, Slow Dancing Through Time (a collection of his collaborative short work with other writers), Moon Dogs, Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, and Tales of Old Earth. He’s also published a collection of critical articles, The Postmodern Archipelago, and a book-length interview: Being Gardner Dozois. His most recent book is a new collection, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures. Coming up are two new collections, The Periodic Table of SF and Michael Swanwick’s Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna. He’s had stories in our First, Third, Fourth, Seventh and Ninth through Seventeenth annual collections. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. He has a Web site at http://www.michaelswanwick.com.

  We’ve been worried about technological unemployment for decades, but, as the bleak little story that follows suggests, now there may be another threat to your job security: dead people. Back from the grave and looking for work. . . .

  THREE BOY ZOMBIES in matching red jackets bused our table, bringing water, lighting candles, brushing away the crumbs between courses. Their eyes were dark, attentive, lifeless; their hands and faces so white as to be faintly luminous in the hushed light. I thought it in bad taste, but “This is Manhattan,” Courtney said. “A certain studied offensiveness is fashionable here.”

  The blond brought menus and waited for our order.

  We both ordered pheasant. “An excellent choice,” the boy said in a clear, emotionless voice. He went away and came back a minute later with the freshly strangled birds, holding them up for our approval. He couldn’t have been more than eleven when he died and his skin was of that sort connoisseurs call “milk-glass,” smooth, without blemish, and all but translucent. He must have cost a fortune.

  As the boy was turning away, I impulsively touched his shoulder. He turned back. “What’s your name, son?” I asked.

  “Timothy.” He might have been telling me the spécialité de maison. The boy waited a breath to see if more was expected of him, then left.

  Courtney gazed after him. “How lovely he would look,” she murmured, “nude. Standing in the moonlight by a cliff. Definitely a cliff. Perhaps the very one where he met his death.”

  “He wouldn’t look very lovely if he’d fallen off a cliff.”

  “Oh, don’t be unpleasant.”

  The wine steward brought our bottle. “Château Latour ’17.” I raised an eyebrow. The steward had the sort of old and complex face that Rembrandt would have enjoyed painting. He poured with pulseless ease and then dissolved into the gloom. “Good lord, Courtney, you seduced me on cheaper.”

  She flushed, not happily. Courtney had a better career going than I. She outpowered me. We both knew who was smarter, better connected, more likely to end up in a corner offic
e with the historically significant antique desk. The only edge I had was that I was a male in a seller’s market. It was enough.

  “This is a business dinner, Donald,” she said, “nothing more.”

  I favored her with an expression of polite disbelief I knew from experience she’d find infuriating. And, digging into my pheasant, murmured, “Of course.” We didn’t say much of consequence until dessert, when I finally asked, “So what’s Loeb-Soffner up to these days?”

  “Structuring a corporate expansion. Jim’s putting together the financial side of the package, and I’m doing personnel. You’re being headhunted, Donald.” She favored me with that feral little flash of teeth she made when she saw something she wanted. Courtney wasn’t a beautiful woman, far from it. But there was that fierceness to her, that sense of something primal being held under tight and precarious control that made her hot as hot to me. “You’re talented, you’re thuggish, and you’re not too tightly nailed to your present position. Those are all qualities we’re looking for.”

  She dumped her purse on the table, took out a single-folded sheet of paper. “These are the terms I’m offering.” She placed it by my plate, attacked her torte with gusto.

  I unfolded the paper. “This is a lateral transfer.”

  “Unlimited opportunity for advancement,” she said with her mouth full, “if you’ve got the stuff.”

  “Mmm.” I did a line-by-line of the benefits, all comparable to what I was getting now. My current salary to the dollar – Ms. Soffner was showing off. And the stock options. “This can’t be right. Not for a lateral.”

  There was that grin again, like a glimpse of shark in murky waters. “I knew you’d like it. We’re going over the top with the options because we need your answer right away – tonight preferably. Tomorrow at the latest. No negotiations. We have to put the package together fast. There’s going to be a shitstorm of publicity when this comes out. We want to have everything nailed down, present the fundies and bleeding hearts with a fait accompli.”

  “My God, Courtney, what kind of monster do you have hold of now?”

  “The biggest one in the world. Bigger than Apple. Bigger than Home Virtual. Bigger than HIVac-IV,” she said with relish. “Have you ever heard of Koestler Biological?”

  I put my fork down.

  “Koestler? You’re peddling corpses now?”

  “Please. Postanthropic biological resources.” She said it lightly, with just the right touch of irony. Still, I thought I detected a certain discomfort with the nature of her client’s product.

  “There’s no money in it.” I waved a hand toward our attentive waitstaff. “These guys must be – what – maybe two percent of the annual turnover? Zombies are luxury goods: servants, reactor cleanups, Hollywood stunt deaths, exotic services” – we both knew what I meant – “a few hundred a year, maybe, tops. There’s not the demand. The revulsion factor is too great.”

  “There’s been a technological breakthrough.” Courtney leaned forward. “They can install the infrasystem and controllers and offer the product for the factory-floor cost of a new subcompact. That’s way below the economic threshold for blue-collar labor.

  “Look at it from the viewpoint of a typical factory owner. He’s already downsized to the bone and labor costs are bleeding him dry. How can he compete in a dwindling consumer market? Now let’s imagine he buys into the program.” She took out her Mont Blanc and began scribbling figures on the tablecloth. “No benefits. No liability suits. No sick pay. No pilferage. We’re talking about cutting labor costs by at least two thirds. Minimum! That’s irresistible, I don’t care how big your revulsion factor is. We project we can move five hundred thousand units in the first year.”

  “Five hundred thousand,” I said. “That’s crazy. Where the hell are you going to get the raw material for – ?”

  “Africa.”

  “Oh, God, Courtney.” I was struck wordless by the cynicism it took to even consider turning the sub-Saharan tragedy to a profit, by the sheer, raw evil of channeling hard currency to the pocket Hitlers who ran the camps. Courtney only smiled and gave that quick little flip of her head that meant she was accessing the time on an optic chip.

  “I think you’re ready,” she said, “to talk with Koestler.”

  At her gesture, the zombie boys erected projector lamps about us, fussed with the settings, turned them on. Interference patterns moiréd, clashed, meshed. Walls of darkness erected themselves about us. Courtney took out her flat and set it up on the table. Three taps of her nailed fingers and the round and hairless face of Marvin Koestler appeared on the screen. “Ah, Courtney!” he said in a pleased voice. “You’re in – New York, yes? The San Moritz. With Donald.” The slightest pause with each accessed bit of information. “Did you have the antelope medallions?” When we shook our heads, he kissed his fingertips. “Magnificent! They’re ever so lightly braised and then smothered in buffalo mozzarella. Nobody makes them better. I had the same dish in Florence the other day, and there was simply no comparison.”

  I cleared my throat. “Is that where you are? Italy?”

  “Let’s leave out where I am.” He made a dismissive gesture, as if it were a trifle. But Courtney’s face darkened. Corporate kidnapping being the growth industry it is, I’d gaffed badly. “The question is – what do you think of my offer?”

  “It’s . . . interesting. For a lateral.”

  “It’s the start-up costs. We’re leveraged up to our asses as it is. You’ll make out better this way in the long run.” He favored me with a sudden grin that went mean around the edges. Very much the financial buccaneer. Then he leaned forward, lowered his voice, maintained firm eye contact. Classic people-handling techniques. “You’re not sold. You know you can trust Courtney to have checked out the finances. Still, you think: It won’t work. To work the product has to be irresistible, and it’s not. It can’t be.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Succinctly put.”

  He nodded to Courtney. “Let’s sell this young man.” And to me, “My stretch is downstairs.”

  He winked out.

  Koestler was waiting for us in the limo, a ghostly pink presence. His holo, rather, a genial if somewhat coarse-grained ghost afloat in golden light. He waved an expansive and insubstantial arm to take in the interior of the car and said, “Make yourselves at home.”

  The chauffeur wore combat-grade photomultipliers. They gave him a buggish, inhuman look. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or not. “Take us to Heaven,” Koestler said.

  The doorman stepped out into the street, looked both ways, nodded to the chauffeur. Robot guns tracked our progress down the block.

  “Courtney tells me you’re getting the raw materials from Africa.”

  “Distasteful, but necessary. To begin with. We have to sell the idea first – no reason to make things rough on ourselves. Down the line, though, I don’t see why we can’t go domestic. Something along the lines of a reverse mortgage, perhaps, life insurance that pays off while you’re still alive. It’d be a step toward getting the poor off our backs at last. Fuck ’em. They’ve been getting a goddamn free ride for too long; the least they can do is to die and provide us with servants.”

  I was pretty sure Koestler was joking. But I smiled and ducked my head, so I’d be covered in either case. “What’s Heaven?” I asked, to move the conversation onto safer territory.

  “A proving ground,” Koestler said with great satisfaction, “for the future. Have you ever witnessed bare-knuckles fisticuffs?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, now there’s a sport for gentlemen! The sweet science at its sweetest. No rounds, no rules, no holds barred. It gives you the real measure of a man – not just of his strength but his character. How he handles himself, whether he keeps cool under pressure – how he stands up to pain. Security won’t let me go to the clubs in person, but I’ve made arrangements.”

  Heaven was a converted movie theater in a run-down neighborhood in Queens. The chauffeur got out, di
sappeared briefly around the back, and returned with two zombie bodyguards. It was like a conjurer’s trick. “You had these guys stashed in the trunk?” I asked as he opened the door for us.

  “It’s a new world,” Courtney said. “Get used to it.”

  The place was mobbed. Two, maybe three hundred seats, standing room only. A mixed crowd, blacks and Irish and Koreans mostly, but with a smattering of uptown customers as well. You didn’t have to be poor to need the occasional taste of vicarious potency. Nobody paid us any particular notice. We’d come in just as the fighters were being presented.

  “Weighing two-five-oh, in black trunks with a red stripe,” the ref was bawling, “tha gang-bang gangsta, the bare-knuckle brawla, the man with tha – ”

  Courtney and I went up a scummy set of back stairs. Bodyguard-us-bodyguard, as if we were a combat patrol out of some twentieth-century jungle war. A scrawny, potbellied old geezer with a damp cigar in his mouth unlocked the door to our box. Sticky floor, bad seats, a good view down on the ring. Gray plastic matting, billowing smoke.

  Koestler was there, in a shiny new hologram shell. It reminded me of those plaster Madonnas in painted bathtubs that Catholics set out in their yards. “Your permanent box?” I asked.

  “All of this is for your sake, Donald – you and a few others. We’re pitting our product one-on-one against some of the local talent. By arrangement with the management. What you’re going to see will settle your doubts once and for all.”