The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013

by Linda Nagata

  “Except whom does the enemy rely on to make their plans?”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  Talking quietly, making the words even more important, he says, “The Almighty.”

  “What are we talking about?” I ask.

  He says nothing, starting to change his shape again.

  “The Internet?” I ask. “What, you mean it’s conscious now? And it’s working its own side in this war?”

  “The possibility is there for the taking,” he says.

  But all I can think about are the dead people and those that are hurt and those that right now are sitting at their dinner table, thinking that some fucking Canadian bitch has made their lives miserable for no goddamn reason.

  “You want honesty,” Prophet says.

  “When don’t I?”

  He says, “This story about a third side . . . it could be a contingency buried inside my tainted software. Or it is the absolute truth, and the Almighty is working with both of us, aiming toward some grand, glorious plan.”

  I am sort of listening, and sort of not.

  Prophet is turning shiny, which happens when his body is in the middle of changing shapes. I can see little bits of myself reflected in the liquid metals and the diamonds floating on top. I see a thousand little-girl faces staring at me, and what occurs to me now—what matters more than anything else today—is the idea that there can be more than two sides in any war.

  I don’t know why, but that the biggest revelation of all.

  When there are more than two sides, that means that there can be too many sides to count, and one of those sides, standing alone, just happens to be a girl named Ophelia Hanna Hanks.

  Scrap Dragon

  Naomi Kritzer

  Once upon a time, there was a princess.

  Does she have to be a princess? Couldn’t she be the daughter of a merchant, or a scholar, or an accountant?

  An accountant? What would an accountant be doing in a pastoral fantasy setting?

  The people there have money, don’t they? So they’d also have taxes and bills and profit-and-loss statements. But he could be a butcher or baker or candlestick-maker, so long as he’s not a king.

  No, I suppose an accountant might work. Very well. Once upon a time, there was a young woman—the daughter of an accountant—who had two older sisters. The oldest of these young women was clever, the middle was strong, and the youngest was kind.

  What if she wanted to be the strong one? The youngest, I mean. And what if the oldest wanted to be the nice one? It’s not fair.

  I didn’t say the youngest wasn’t strong or that the oldest wasn’t kind. But everyone knew that it was the middle daughter who was the strongest, and the youngest who was the sweetest and most innocent.

  Maybe they just thought she was sweet and innocent.

  Maybe. They lived in a palace—or rather, in a large and comfortable house, and if they were princesses, I could give the youngest one a fabulous bedroom with a drawbridge—

  She can have a drawbridge anyway. Maybe her parents built it for her just because it was cool.

  Okay. But the important thing is that, because she was so kind-hearted, animals trusted her. They would seek her out, and when she found one in need, she would try to help it.

  That would be really inconvenient.

  Being trusted by animals?

  Well, if they’d seek you out. I mean, you’re out for a walk and a stray cat comes up to you and won’t go away—

  Maybe it’s a really nice cat.

  Or maybe it’s a cat that will yowl at four in the morning every day and wake you up.

  But the animals trusting her is supposed to show you what she’s like inside. She’s not just nice on the surface; she’s a good person.

  Well, I like animals better than princesses. She can have animals following her around, that’s okay.

  One day, word came to their city that a grave threat faced them. The city was near an extinct volcano—or rather, a volcano that had been thought extinct. But a powerful and evil sorcerer had raised the spirits of the volcano, and it was now threatening to erupt. If the sorcerer continued prodding the volcano with his malicious magic, the volcano would spew forth fire and lava and the city would be utterly destroyed.

  Volcanoes erupt because of tectonic forces, not spirits.

  This was a magical volcano.

  Look, if the sorcerer could manipulate tectonic forces, why would he bother threatening the city with an eruption? He could wipe them out just as well with an earthquake.

  Fine. It wasn’t a sorcerer with a volcano. It was a dragon, a vast and powerful dragon that could breathe fire and took up residence in the crater of an extinct nearby volcano but threatened, if not supplicated with gifts of gold and treasure, to burn the city to ash.

  But I like dragons. Dragons are cool.

  Well, so? I like the French and France is cool but that doesn’t mean I like Jean-Marie Le Pen. French people aren’t all good or all bad and neither are dragons.

  Okay. I guess that’s fair.

  So, the city was under threat by the evil dragon, and if you’d let me make this person a princess she would have a reason for feeling personally responsible for saving her city. But she’s not a princess. So I suppose the king—

  Couldn’t they live in a democracy? Even an Athenian democracy is better than a king.

  —the Council of Democratically Elected Representatives of the People offered a reward to anyone who could defeat the dragon. But more than that, they begged for all those who were brave or strong or clever to do what they could to save the city. If it had been a king, he could also have offered the hand of one of his children in marriage, but you can hardly marry the son or daughter of a Council of Representatives so let’s just say they pointed out that anyone who succeeded in saving the city would be a very hot romantic commodity indeed.

  Arranged marriages are kind of creepy. But marrying someone who was only interested in you because you’d defeated a dragon also seems kind of creepy.

  No one’s going to have to marry anyone they don’t want to marry. Anyway, the eldest tried first. She set out to learn all she could about dragons—first at the library nearby, then, when she had exhausted its resources, to a larger city some days’ journey away. She sent home letters when she could, sharing everything she’d learned, but it was a vast library and she thought it would be years before she’d learned everything there was to know.

  So the second sister decided to set out to confront the dragon directly.

  And she never returned.

  What do you mean, she never returned?

  I mean that she died on her journey. There were people who said that the dragon had eaten her—

  But I don’t want her to be dead. It’s not fair.

  No, it isn’t. Death isn’t ever fair.

  But I liked her!

  Yes.

  The people I like aren’t supposed to die.

  No.

  So can she just be sleeping, if you need to take her out of the story?

  No. She died, and so the youngest—

  I don’t think I want the youngest to try to defeat the dragon. She might get eaten, too.

  But she’s the city’s only hope.

  I don’t care. I want her to stay home where she’s safe.

  That’s what her parents said. “We’ve lost one daughter already. Let someone else lose a daughter next time.”

  And she’s the nice one.

  Yes.

  How is she supposed to defeat a dragon by being nice?

  Other people said that, too, sometimes even where she could hear them. So the youngest daughter—whose name was Heather—decided that for now, she would stay home.

  Heather had a book of blank pages, and she took all the letters her family had gotten from her eldest sister, with the diagrams of dragons and ancient philosophy regarding dragons and information about their nesting habits and lairs and so on, and began to organize it. Because, she tho
ught, even if she could not herself defeat the dragon, perhaps she could provide a useful set of information to someone else.

  But sometimes she would flip the book over, and working from the back, she began creating a book about her sister, the one who had died. She had pictures that she had drawn, but she also put in all sorts of things that made her think of her sister. There was a scrap of cloth from her sister’s favorite dress, and a flower she’d pressed, and when Heather found a poem her sister had written she copied it out in the book. The funny thing was, her sister had loved dragons.

  Because dragons are cool.

  Which made it all the more ironic that she’d probably been eaten by one.

  One afternoon Heather took her book and her lunch, called for her dog (whose name was Bear), and went to sit by a wooded lake not too far from her house.

  The dog had better not die in this story.

  The dog’s not going to die. Not in the story, anyway.

  Good.

  They sat down by the lake. Heather took out one of her sandwiches, and gave half of it to Bear. A nutria swam up and poked its head out of the water. “Hello, nutria,” Heather said to it. It didn’t swim away, so she broke off a piece of her sandwich and tossed it down to the nutria.

  Is that a real animal?

  Yes, nutrias are real. They’re rodents and look like a cross between a beaver and a really big rat.

  Oh. That sounds cool.

  The nutria shot a wary look at Bear, then climbed up on the bank to grab the piece of sandwich. Bear sometimes chased squirrels (and a nutria might have been sufficiently squirrel-like to chase) but right now he was more interested in getting another handout from Heather; he looked at her with a big doggy smile and wagged his tail. Heather sighed and took out another sandwich. Her food wasn’t going to last long at this rate. “Go get me a sandwich, Bear,” she said to Bear.

  Did he get her a sandwich?

  Of course he didn’t. If dogs could make sandwiches, they’d eat them themselves. When the nutria finished its piece of sandwich, it sat on the shore of the lake looking at Heather with gleaming dark eyes, and Heather broke off another piece of bread and tossed it over. “Can you tell me how to defeat a dragon?” she asked it.

  The nutria picked up the bread. “Why do you want to defeat it?” it asked.

  Heather was a little startled that the nutria actually answered her; she talked to Bear all the time, and other animals some of the time, but she’d never had an animal answer her before. “Because if no one defeats it, it’s going to come and burn my city to the ground,” she said.

  The nutria seemed to mull this over as it ate. “Know the truth that lies within you,” it said. “And speak the truth that waits without.”

  Waits without what?

  Without here is the opposite of within. So she needs to know the truth she has inside, and then speak some truth that’s external.

  You know, even with an explanation that’s pretty cryptic.

  It’s advice from a talking water rat. Were you expecting step-by-step instructions?

  Well, did she try asking it for something more specific?

  She tried, but the nutria was done talking. It nibbled away the rest of the bread, then plopped back into the water and swam off. “Find me another nutria, Bear,” Heather suggested, but Bear just wagged his tail again.

  One thing was certain, however. Heather still didn’t know how she was going to defeat the dragon, but she thought the nutria wouldn’t have spoken to her—and given her advice about knowing the truth inside—unless she did have the power to defeat it. So she went home, quietly packed her belongings, and left with Bear when no one was home. (She did leave a nice note on the kitchen counter, but she didn’t want to stick around to explain in person that she was going out to fight the dragon because of advice from a talking rodent.)

  Of course, she had no idea what the nutria was talking about. If it was the truth that lay within her, it probably meant it was something she already knew and just hadn’t fully realized yet, so she took her book with the information about dragons (and the pictures of her sister) and studied it when she would stop to rest. After reviewing everything three times, she still had no idea what it was she was supposed to know—unless the secret was that she was willing to ask unlikely sources, like nutrias, for advice.

  There was a school nearby, and she could hear a bell that meant school was over for the day, so she waited while the children ran off and then went in to ask the teacher. He was a mathematician, although this was a small school so he was also expected to teach reading, grammar, and dancing.

  They learned dancing in school?

  Yes, in this place they considered dancing very important.

  “Excuse me,” Heather said. “I come from another part of the city, and I was wondering whether you knew of any way to defeat the dragon?”

  “If I did, I’d already have mentioned it to someone,” he said. “Although I suppose it’s reasonable to consider the possibility that I would have tried that, and found no one willing to listen. But no, I don’t.”

  “Oh,” Heather said, feeling a bit deflated, even though she hadn’t asked anyone else yet. Maybe she should have asked the students, before they all left.

  “Is there a particular reason you thought I would know?”

  Heather told him about the nutria, and the book of notes, and how she had no idea what truth it was she supposedly knew.

  “Well,” the teacher said, “I have a friend who is an inventor. If you’d like to come back to my house, I’ll introduce you to him, and we can see if he has any ideas.”

  The teacher introduced himself as Fillard.

  That’s a very unusual name for a person in a pastoral fantasy.

  It’s a very unusual name, period. As they walked, he explained that his neighbor was also a musician and an actor; the neighbor’s name was Peter, and Peter turned out to be extremely kind and invited Heather and Bear (and Fillard) to stay for supper, even though he’d never met Heather or Bear before.

  As the shadows grew long and their after-dinner tea grew tepid, they all listed everything they’d ever heard about dragons. Peter had heard that they could sing; he wasn’t inclined to go walking over to the dragon’s lair to confirm this, but the stories said that dragons had beautiful voices, on those occasions when they chose to share them. Fillard, on the other hand, had heard that dragons enjoyed games almost as much as they liked hoarding treasure; there were stories of dragons offering to let travelers go free if the travelers could beat them at a game of chess. “Of course, the dragon always wins in those stories unless the human cheats,” Fillard added. “I have a large collection of games, and could offer you several that the dragon wouldn’t have seen before. That would make the challenge a bit more fair.”

  They made fresh tea as it grew darker, and since Heather had been taking notes (“gd. singers / games—chess?”) she had her book out. She set it down at one point to look at a game that Fillard had run home to get and bring back, and when she picked it up, she had it upside down, so it was the side about her sister, rather than the dragon. “Laura loved dragons,” she said softly. “I should put a picture of a dragon somewhere on Laura’s side.”

  “Who is Laura?” the men asked.

  She explained about her sister, and how she’d disappeared when she went to confront the dragon. Laura had always believed that dragons were cool—

  Because dragons are cool.

  —which made the circumstances of her death tragically ironic.

  You already mentioned the irony.

  And she explained about the book, and everyone nodded, and then Peter went to find an article about dragons that he’d saved from somewhere. There was nothing in the article that was new, but it had a lovely picture, a sort of extremely artistic diagram. He gave it to her to paste in later.

  It was late, and Heather was tired, so Peter made up a guest bed for her. Heather woke early—before Peter or Fillard—and stepped outside. />
  Are you sure she got up first?

  Fillard and Peter had stayed up very late talking, and weren’t awake yet. The sky was light and the birds were singing, and when Heather opened her book she realized that she’d nearly filled it; only a pair of blank pages faced each other at the exact center of the book. All the rest of the book had been filled, with notes about dragons on one side and notes and mementos relating to her sister on the other. She held the picture hesitantly—it seemed to her like maybe it should go on the dragon side. But she’d never put a dragon in the Laura half of the scrapbook, and that seemed like a terrible loss. Since she’d flipped the book, she had to choose—it would be right-side up for one, upside-down for the other. After staring at it for several minutes, as the sky grew lighter and the sun grew warmer, she finally turned the book sideways and pasted the picture in that way, so that maybe it could go with either.

  And then she realized what the nutria meant.

  She did?

  Yes.

  Well, what did it mean?

  I can’t just tell you that straight out; it would spoil the flow of the story. We’ll get to it in a bit.

  You’re as bad as that damn water rat.

  Heather picked up her bags and called for Bear and set out—

  Isn’t she going to leave a note?

  She only just met Fillard and Peter. Do you really think they’ll worry?

  Of course they’re going to worry.

  She got up, left a note, took the game that Fillard had offered her and the sheet music for songs that Peter had said he’d particularly like to hear a dragon sing, and then she and Bear headed for the path that would swiftly take them to the dragon’s lair, at the edge of the extinct volcano.

  You promised me the dog wouldn’t die, remember.

  Don’t worry about the dog.

  Does that mean I should be worrying about Heather? I didn’t make you promise she wouldn’t die because she’s the hero of the story so I figured she was safe.

  The dragon emerged from its lair as Heather and Bear approached. It unfurled its vast wings and shook them back the way you might stretch your wrists and crack your spine, and licked its lips, showing its big teeth. “Hello,” Heather said to the dragon. “I know you’re not going to eat me. I know you’re not really a threat to the city. So I know the real danger must be coming from someone else.”