Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  A day that found him just a bit tired of the items staple in breakfast found him ordering a cup of the soup du jour for starters. “How you like the soup?”—Rudolfo.

  Fred gave his head a silent shake. How. It had gone down without exiting dismay. “Truthful with you. Had better, had worse. Hm. What was it. Well, I was thinking of something else. Uh—chicken vegetable with rice? Right? Right. Yours or Campbell’s?”

  Neither.

  “Half mine, half Abelardo’s.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  But Rudolfo had never heard the rude English story about the pint of half-and-half, neither did Fred tell it to him. Rudolfo said, “I make a stock with the bones after making chickens sandwiches and I mix it with this.” He produced a large, a very large can, pushed it over to Fred. The label said. FULL CHICKEN RICHNESS Chicken-Type Soup.

  “Whah-haht?” asked Fred, half-laughing. He read on. Ingredients: Water, Other Poultry and Poultry Parts, Dehydrated Vegetables, Chickens and Chicken Parts, seasoning … the list dribbled off into the usual list of chemicals. The label also said, Canned for Restaurant and Institutional Usement.

  “Too big for a family,” Rudolfo observed. “Well, not bad, I think, too. Help me keep the price down. Every little bit help, you know.”

  “Oh. Sure. No, not bad. But I wonder about that label,” Rudolfo shrugged about that label. The Government, he said, wasn’t going to worry about some little chico outfit way down from the outskirt of town. Fred chuckled at the bland non-identification of “Other Poultry”—Rudolfo said that turkey was still cheaper than chicken—“But I don’t put it down, ‘chicken soup,’ I put it down, ‘soup du jour’; anybody ask, I say, ‘Oh, you know, chicken and rice and vegetable and, oh, stuff like that; try it, you don’t like it I don’t charge you.’ Fair enough?—Yes,” he expanded. “Abelardo, he is no businessman. He is a filosofo. His mind is always in the skies. I tell him, I could use more soup—twice, maybe even three times as many cans. What he cares. ‘Ai! Supply and demand!’ he says. Then he tells me about the old Dutch explorers, things like that. —Hey! I ever tell you about the time he make his own automobile? (“Abelar-do did?”) Sure! Abelardo did. He took a part from one car, a part from another, he takes parts not even from cars, I don’t know what they from—”

  Fred thought of Don Eliseo and the more perfect tortilla making-and-baking machine. “—well, it work! Finally! Yes! It start off, vooom! like a rocket! Sixty-three mile an hour! But oh boy when he try to slow it down! It stop! He start it again. Sixty-three mile an hour! No other rate of speed, well, what can you do with such a car? So he forget about it and he invent something else, who knows what; then he go into the soup business. —Yes, sir! You ready to order?” Rudolfo moved on.

  So did Fred. The paintings of the buildings 1895 were set aside for a while so that he could take a lot of pictures of a turn-of-the-century family home scheduled for destruction real soon. This Site Will be Improved With a Modern Office Building, what the hell did they mean by Improved? Alice came up and looked at the sketches of the family home, and at finished work. “I like them,” she said. “I like you.” She stayed. Everything fine. Then, one day, there was the other key on the table. On the note: There is nothing wrong, it said. Just time to go now. Love. No name. Fred sighed. Went on painting.

  One morning late there was Abelardo in the Bunne. He nodded, smiled a small smile. By and by, some coffee down, Fred said, “Say, where do you buy your chickens?” Abelardo, ready to inform, though not yet ready to talk, took a card from his wallet.

  E. J. Binder Prime Poultry Farm also

  Game Birds Dressed To Order 1330 Valley Rd by the Big Oak

  While Fred was still reading this, Abelardo passed him over another card, this one for the Full Chicken Richness Canned Soup Company. “You must visit me,” he said. “Most time I am home.”

  Fred hadn’t really cared where the chickens were bought, but now the devil entered into him. First he told Abelardo the story about the man who sold rabbit pie. Asked, wasn’t there anyway maybe some horsemeat in the rabbit pie, said it was fifty-fifty: one rabbit, one horse. Abelardo reflected, then issued another small smile, a rather more painful one. Fred asked, “What about the turkey-meat in your chicken-type soup? I mean, uh, rather, the ‘Other Poultry Parts?’”

  Abelardo squinted. “Only the breast,” he said. “The rest not good enough. —For the soup, I mean. The rest, I sell to some mink ranchers.”

  “How’s business?”

  Abelardo shrugged. He looked a bit peaked. “Supply,” he said. “Demand,” he said. Then he sighed, stirred, rose. “You must visit me. Any time. Please,” he said.

  Abelardo wasn’t there in the La Bunne Burger next late morning, but someone else was. Miles Marton, call him The Last of the Old-Time Land Agents, call him something less nice: there he was. “Been waiting,” Miles Marton said. “Remember time I toll you bout ol stage-coach buildin? You never came. It comin down tomorrow. Ranch houses. Want to take its pitcher? Last chance, today. Make me a nice little paintin of it, price is right, I buy it. Bye now.”

  Down Fred went. Heartbreaking to think its weathered timbers, its mellowed red brick chimney and stone fireplace, were coming down; but Fred Hopkins was very glad he’d had the favor of a notice. Coming down, too, the huge trees with the guinea-fowl in them. Lots of photographs. Be a good painting. At least one. Driving back, lo! a sign saying E.J. BINDER PRIME POULTRY FARM; absolutely by a big oak. Still, Fred probably wouldn’t have stopped if there hadn’t been someone by the gate. Binder, maybe. Sure enough. Binder. “Say, do you know a South American named Abelardo?”

  No problem. “Sure I do. Used to be a pretty good customer, too. Buy oh I forget how many chickens a week. Don’t buy many nowdays. He send you here? Be glad to oblige you.” Binder was an oldish man, highly sun-speckled.

  “You supply his turkeys and turkey-parts, too?” The devil still inside Fred Hopkins.

  Old Binder snorted, “‘Turkeys,’ no we don’t handle turkeys, no sir, why chickens are enough trouble, cost of feeding going up, and—No, ‘guinea-fowl,’ no we never did. Just chickens and of course your cornish.”

  Still civil, E.J. Binder gave vague directions toward what he believed, he said, was the general location of Mr. Abelardo’s place. Fred didn’t find it right off, but he found it. As no one appeared in response to his calling and honking, he got out and knocked. Nothing. Pues, “My house is your house,” okay: in he went through the first door. Well, it wasn’t a large cannery, but it was a cannery. Fred started talking to himself; solitary artists often do. “Way I figure it, Abelardo,” he said, “is that you have been operating with that ‘small measure of deceit in advertising,’ as you so aptly put it. I think that in your own naive way you have believed that so long as you called the product ‘Chicken-Type Soup’ and included some chicken, well, it was all right. Okay, your guilty secret is safe with me; where are you?” The place was immaculate, except for. Except for a pile of … well … shit … right in the middle of an aisle. It was as neat as a pile of shit can be. Chicken-shits? Pigeon-poops? Turkey-trots? ¿Quien sabe?

  At the end of the aisle was another door and behind that door was a small apartment and in a large chair in the small apartment lay sprawled Abelardo, dead drunk on mescal, muzhik-grade vodka, and sneaky pete … according to the evidence. Alcoholism is not an especially Latin American trait? Who said the poor guy was an alcoholic? Maybe this was the first time he’d ever been stewed in his life. Maybe the eternally perplexing matter of supply and demand had finally unmanned him.

  Maybe.

  At the other end of that room was another door and behind that other door was another room. And in that other room was … .

  … something else … .

  That other room was partly crammed with an insane assortment of machinery and allied equipment, compared to which Don Eliseo’s more pefect make-and-bake tortilla engine, with its affinities to the perpetual motion invention of one’s choice, w
as simplicity. The thing stood naked for Fred’s eyes, but his eyes told him very little: wires snaked all around, that much he could say. There was a not-quite-click, a large television screen flickered on. No. Whatever it was at the room’s end, sitting flush to the floor with a low, chicken-wire fence around it, it was not television, not even if Abelardo had started from scratch as though there had been no television before. The quality of the “image” was entirely different, for one thing; and the color, for another, was wrong … and wrong in the way that no TV color he had ever seen had been wrong. He reached to touch the screen, there was no “screen,” it was as though his hand met a surface of unyielding gelatin. The non-screen, well, what the hell, call it a screen, was rather large, but not gigantically so. He was looking at a savannah somewhere, and among the trees were palms and he could not identify the others. A surf pounded not far off, but he could not hear it. There was no sound. He saw birds flying in and out of the trees. Looking back, he saw something else. A trail of broken bread through the room, right up to the, mmm, screen. A silent breeze now and then rifled grass, and something moved in the grass to one side. He stepped back, slightly. What the hell could it mean? Then the something which was in the grass to one side stepped, stiff-legged, into full view, and there was another odd, small sound as the thing—it was a bird—lurched through the screen and began to gobble bread. Hopkins watched, dry-mouthed. Crumb by crumb it ate. Then there was no more bread. It doddled up to the low fence, doddled back. It approached the screen, it brushed the screen, there was a Rube Goldberg series of motions in the external equipment, a sheet of chicken wire slid noisily down to the floor. The bird had been trapped.

  Fred got down and peered into the past till his eyes and neck grew sore, but he could not see one more bird like it. He began to laugh and cry simultaneously. Then he stood up. “Inevitable,” he croaked, throwing out his arms. “Inevitable! Demand exceeded supply!”

  The bird looked up at him with imbecile, incurious eyes, and opened its incredible beak. “Doh-do,” it said, halfway between a gobble and a coo. “Doh-do. Doh-do.”

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Multiples

  One of the most prolific authors alive, Robert Silverberg can lay claim to more than 450 fiction and nonfiction books and over 3,000 magazine pieces. Within SF, Silverberg rose to his greatest prominence during the late ‘60s and early ’70s, winning four Nebula Awards and a Hugo Award, publishing dozens of major novels and anthologies—1973’s Dying Inside in particular is widely considered to be one of the best novels of the ’70s—and editing New Dimensions, perhaps the most influential original anthology series of its time. In 1980, after four years of self-imposed “retirement,” Silverberg started writing again, and the first of his new novels, Lord Valentine’s Castle, became a nationwide bestseller. Silverberg’s other books include The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, Tower of Glass, The World Inside, Born with the Dead, Shadrach in the Furnace, and the collections Unfamiliar Territory, Capricorn Games, and The Best of Robert Silverberg. His most recent books are Lord of Darkness, a historical novel, the collection Majipoor Chronicles, and Valentine Pontifex, the sequel to Lord Valentine’s Castle.

  Here Silverberg turns his cooly sardonic eye toward a strange kind of future single’s-bar, where things are not supposed to be as they seem, and the customers have a great deal more to offer each other than it would at first appear …

  There were mirrors everywhere, making the place a crazy house of dizzying refraction: mirrors on the ceiling, mirrors on the walls, mirrors in the angles where the walls met the ceiling and the floor, even little eddies of mirror dust periodically blown on gusts of air through the room so that all the bizarre distortions, fracturings, and dislocations of image that were bouncing around the place would from time to time coalesce in a shimmering haze of chaos right before your eyes. Colored globes spun round and round overhead, creating patterns of ricocheting light. It was exactly the way Cleo had expected a multiples club to look.

  She had walked up and down the whole Fillmore Street strip, from Union to Chestnut and back again, for half an hour, peering at this club and that before finding the courage to go inside one that called itself Skits. Though she had been planning this night for months, she found herself paralyzed by fear at the last minute: afraid they would spot her as a fraud the moment she walked in, afraid they would drive her out with jeers and curses and cold, mocking laughter. But now that she was within, she felt fine—calm, confident, ready for the time of her life.

  There were more women than men in the club, something like a seven-to-three ratio. Hardly anyone seemed to be talking to anyone else. Most stood alone in the middle of the floor, staring into the mirrors as though in trance.

  Their eyes were slits, their jaws were slack, their shoulders slumped forward, their arms dangled. Now and then, as some combination of reflections sluiced across their consciousnesses with particular impact, they would go taut and jerk and wince as if they had been struck. Their faces would flush, their lips would pull back, their eyes would roll, they would mutter and whisper to themselves; then after a moment they would slip back into stillness.

  Cleo knew what they were doing. They were switching and doubling. Maybe some of the adepts were tripling.

  Her heart rate picked up. Her throat was very dry. What was the routine here? she wondered. Did you just walk right out onto the floor and plug into the light patterns, or were you supposed to go to the bar first for a shot or a snort?

  She looked toward the bar. A dozen or so customers were sitting there, mostly men, a couple of them openly studying her, giving her that new-girl-in-town stare. Cleo returned their gaze evenly, coolly, blankly. Standard-looking men, reasonably attractive, thirtyish or early fortyish, business suits, conventional haristyles: young lawyers, executives, maybe stockbrokers—successful sorts out for a night’s fun, the kind of men you might run into anywhere. Look at that one—tall, athletic, curly hair, glasses. Faint, ironic smile, easy, inquiring eyes. Almost professional. And yet, and yet—behind that smooth, intelligent forehead what strangeness must teem and boil! How many hidden souls must lurk and jostle! Scary. Tempting.

  Irresistible.

  Cleo resisted. Take it slow, take it slow. Instead of going to the bar, she moved out serenely among the switchers on the floor, found an open space, centered herself, looked toward the mirrors on the far side of the room. Legs apart, feet planted flat, shoulders forward. A turning globe splashed waves of red and violet light, splintered a thousand times over into her upturned face.

  Go. Go. Go. Go. You are Cleo. You are Judy. You are Vixen. You are Lisa. Go. Go. Go. Go. Cascades of iridescence sweeping over the rim of her soul, battering at the walls of her identity. Come, enter, drown me, split me, switch me. You are Cleo and Judy. You are Vixen and Lisa. You are Cleo and Judy and Vixen and Lisa. Go. Go. Go.

  Her head was spinning. Her eyes were blurring. The room gyrated around her.

  Was this it? Was she splitting? Was she switching? Maybe so. Maybe the capacity was there in everyone, even her, and all that it would take was the lights, the mirrors, the right ambience, the will.

  I am many. I am multiples. I am Cleo switching to Vixen. I am Judy, and I am—

  No. I am Cleo.

  I am Cleo.

  I am very dizzy, and I am getting sick, and I am Cleo and only Cleo, as I have always been. I am Cleo and only Cleo, and I am going to fall down.

  “Easy,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Steadying up, I think. Whew!”

  “Out-of-towner, eh?”

  “Sacramento. How did you know?”

  “Too quick on the floor. Locals all know better. This place has the fastest mirrors in the west. They’ll blow you away if you’re not careful. You can’t just go out there and grab for the big one—you’ve got to phase yourself in slowly. You sure you’re going to be okay?”

  “I think so.”

  He was the tall man from the bar, the athletic, professional one. She
supposed he had caught her before she had actually fallen, since she felt no bruises.

  His hand rested easily now against her right elbow as he lightly steered her toward a table along the wall.

  “What’s your now-name?” he asked.

  “Judy.”

  “I’m Van.”

  “Hello, Van.”

  “How about a brandy? Steady you up a little more.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Never?”

  “Vixen does the drinking,” she said.

  “Ah. The old story. She gets the bubbles you get her hangovers. I have one like that too, only with him it’s Hunan food. He absolutely doesn’t give a damn what lobster in hot and sour sauce does to my digestive system. I hope you pay her back the way she deserves.”

  Cleo smiled and said nothing.

  He was watching her closely. Was he interested, or just being polite to someone who was obviously out of her depth in a strange milleu? Interested, she decided. He seemed to have accepted that Vixen stuff at face value.