Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Then Barnaby took the little six-shot from his pocket and fondled it. For the reign of the prince of evil was about to be ended in the world.

  And when the melodrama was at its loudest, and the pistols barked, and the crowd roared like an animal, Barnaby raised his six-shot trembling.

  And fired it six times.

  It is such a little thing to kill a man and brings so much satisfaction, you wonder everybody does not do it. It is like walking through green meadows after an oppressing darkness.

  Barnaby relaxed and the short hairs subsided on his nape; for the passion had left him. Peace came down on him like white snow.

  “I have killed the villain,” he said. And he had. The pinions of the vulture had sounded and the soul of the villain had gone.

  But the act was for himself alone. Only he and the victim knew that it had happened.

  For Blackie did not act as though he were killed. He strutted through the drama to its close while the crowd howled and everyone was happy.

  Yet there was no doubt that the villain was dead, for a great clarity had descended on Barnaby. And Blackie was now more like an odd old friend who needed a shave, and no more a python or a devil.

  Margaret came to the table and she was white-faced.

  “Don’t you ever do a thing like that again. Give me that. How could you do that to us? We all love you and thought you loved us.”

  And she looked at him queerly. He liked the way she looked at him: a sort of wild worry beneath the kindness.

  Everybody drank an ocean of beer and sang thousands upon thousands of songs. And when it was late, Clancy O’Clune went over to Gladys, who wore glasses, and sat on her lap and sang “Just a Song at Twilight” for a good-night song.

  And as always they sang “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning.” And as always they went home at midnight.

  5

  Friday morning Barnaby went to work; but there was only a half day’s work for him. It often happens that a boy will find only a half day’s work after he has laid off for a week and needs it.

  And in the afternoon he went to the Golden Gate, which was closed in the daytime. He went in the back where deliveries were made.

  The sour ghost of last night’s beer permeated the place. And there was another ghost there, loud and wailing.

  It was a terrible noise, a discordant clanging and chording that was the saddest thing he had ever heard: the woeful wailing of a soul that has been in purgatory a long century, and has just been told that it is not purgatory it is in. It was a hopeless crash filled with a deep abiding sorrow that had once been hope.

  Blackie was playing the piano, and there was torture in his eyes. Yet he talked happily.

  “Hello, Barnaby. I love the instrument. I play it every chance I get. Yet I am told that I do not play well. Do I play well, Barnaby?”

  “No, no, you play quite badly.”

  Blackie, that old python who needed a shave, seemed discouraged.

  “I was afraid you would think so. Yet to myself it is beautiful. Do you think it sounds beautiful to anyone?”

  “No. I don’t think it would sound beautiful to anyone in the world, Blackie.”

  “I wish it weren’t so.”

  “I shot at you last night, Blackie.”

  “I know it. Six shots. I knew you would.”

  “One of them was not a blank.”

  “The third. I knew it would be the third. I dug it out of the plaster this morning.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “No. How would anyone else know? I am going away, Barnaby.”

  “Where?”

  “Kate’s Klondike Bar. They need a villain there. Here they are changing the format. They will call this the Speakeasy. It will be a gin mill with flapper waitresses like John Held, Jr. pictures. They will have a lost generation motif and sing lost twenties songs. Clancy is practicing ‘Star Dust’ all the time. I could stay on as a gangster, but I am better as an old time villain. The gay days are about over. The twenties will be the new era of nostalgia.”

  “I will not like that.”

  He went to find Margaret where she was counting her money in a little room.

  “Blackie says you are going to change this to a sad twenties place.”

  “Yes, dear, the twenties will be all the rage now.”

  “I don’t remember them like I do the older times. I wasn’t even born yet in the twenties. Do you remember them, Margaret?”

  “Of course I do. It’ll be sweet to have them back. We have some wonderful ideas. The girls play old scratchy records all day long to learn them.”

  “Will you still have the melodrama?”

  “Well, no. But we’ll have skits. Well, not skits really; we’ll have ukelele players and things like that. You’ll like it.”

  “There’s only one thing bothers me.”

  “What, dear?”

  “In the twenties, how did they know who was the villain?”

  “I don’t know, dear. Here are the men with the scenery. I have to show them where to put it.”

  But that Friday night it wasn’t the same. The girls were all dressed in potato sacks with the belts only three inches from the bottom. Their stockings were rolled and their knees were rouged; and on their heads were sheathlike helmets that made them look like interplanetary creatures with the ears sheared off them. Jenny and Jeannie looked like two peeled onions with not enough hair on their heads to cover them. Oh, that those breathtaking creatures should come to this!

  They sang “Yes sir, she’s my baby.” They sang “Oh you have no idea.” They sang:

  “You play the Uke,

  You’re from Dubuque,

  I go for that.”

  The Speakeasy spoke, but Barnaby could not hear its message. To him it was dismal and deep. And then the long evening was over and the gin glasses were empty.

  Clancy O’Clune was singing a good-night song to a bony flapper.

  “Picture me

  Upon your knee,

  And tea for two,

  And two for tea.”

  But he didn’t sit on her lap. All at once none of the ladies were built like that anymore.

  Barnaby went to Blackie’s room. Blackie was packing.

  “What town is Kate’s Klondike Bar in?”

  Blackie told him the town. But it shall be told to no one else. If it were known, people would go there, and come in every night, and take up room; and it’s going to be crowded enough there as it is.

  “That isn’t very far,” said Barnaby. “That’s only a couple of hundred miles. I’ll go there and get a job. Then at night I can come in and listen to them sing, and watch the melodrama.”

  JACK DANN

  Blind Shemmy

  One of the most respected writer/editors of his generation, Jack Dann began writing in 1970 and first established his reputation with the critically acclaimed novella “Junction,” which was a Nebula finalist in 1973; he has been a Nebula finalist six more times since then and a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. His short fiction has appeared in Omni, Orbit, Playboy, Penthouse, New Dimensions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Shadows, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, New Worlds Quarterly, The Berkley Showcase, and elsewhere. His books include the novels Starhiker and Junction, and Timetipping, a collection of his short fiction. As an anthologist, he edited one of the most famous anthologies of the ’70s, Wandering Stars, a collection of fantasy and SF on Jewish themes; his other anthologies include More Wandering Stars, Immortal, Faster Than Light, (co-edited with George Zebrowski), and several anthologies co-edited with Gardner Dozois: Future Power, Aliens!, and Unicorns! Upcoming are a new novel (of which “Blind Shemmy,” in somewhat different form, is a part) called The Man Who Melted, for Bluejay Books and another anthology co-edited with Gardner Dozois, Magic Cats, from Ace.

  In “Blind Shemmy,” he takes us to a lushly-decadent future world where jaded sophisticates play a bizarre high-tech game that redefines the outer limi
ts of just how much a gambler is really willing to lose …

  After covering the burning and sacking of the Via Roma in Naples, Carl Pfeiffer, a famous newsfax reporter, could not resist his compulsion to gamble. He telephoned Joan Otur, one of his few friends, and insisted that she accompany him to Paris.

  Organ-gambling was legal in France.

  They dropped from the sky in a transparent Plasticine egg, and Paris opened up below them, Paris and the glittering chip of diamond that was the Casino Bellecour.

  Except for the dymaxion dome of the Right Bank, Joan would not have been able to distinguish Paris from the suburbs beyond. A city had grown over the city: The grid of the ever-expanding slung city had its own constellations of light and hid Haussmann’s ruler-straight boulevards, the ancient architectural wonders, even the black, sour-stenched Seine, which was an hourglass curve dividing the old city.

  Their transpod settled to the ground like a dirty snowflake and split silently open, letting in the chill night air with its acrid smells of mudflats and cinders and clogged drains. Joan and Pfeiffer hurried across the transpad toward the high oaken doors of the casino. All around them stretched the bleak, brick-and-concrete wastelands of the city’s ruined districts, the fetid warrens on the dome’s peripheries, which were inhabited by skinheads and Screamers who existed outside the tightly controlled structure of Uptown life. Now, as Pfeiffer touched his hand to a palm-plate sensor, the door opened and admitted them into the casino itself. The precarious outside world was closed out and left behind.

  A young man, who reminded Joan of an upright (if possible) Bedlington terrier, led them through the courtyard. He spoke with a clipped English accent and had tufts of woolly, bluish-white hair inplanted all over his head, face, and body. Only his hands and genitals were hairless.

  “He has to be working off an indenture,” Pfeiffer said sharply as he repressed a sexual urge.

  “Shush,” Joan said, as the boy gave Pfeiffer a brief, contemptuous look—in Parisian culture, you paid for the service, not for the smile.

  They were led into a simple, but formal, entry lounge, which was crowded, but not uncomfortable. The floor was marbled; a few pornographic icons were discreetly situated around the carefully laid-out comfort niches. The room reminded Joan of a chapel with arcades, figures, and stone courts. Above was a dome, from which radiated a reddish, suffusing light, lending the room an expansiveness of height rather than breadth.

  But it was mostly holographic illusion.

  They were directed to wait a moment and then presented to the purser, an overweight, balding man who sat behind a small desk. He was dressed in a blue camise shirt and matching caftan, which was buttoned across his wide chest and closed with a red scarf. He was obviously, and uncomfortably, dressed in the colors of the establishment.

  “And good evening, Monsieur Pfeiffer and Mademoiselle Otur. We are honored to have such an important guest, or guests, I should say.” The purser slipped two cards into a small console. “Your identification cards will be returned to you when you leave.” After a pause he asked, “Ah, does Monsieur Pfeiffer wish the lady to be credited on his card?” The purser lowered his eyes, indicating embarrassment. Quite simply, Joan did not have enough credit to be received into the more sophisticated games.

  “Yes, of course,” Pfeiffer said absently. He felt guilty and anxious about feeling a thrill of desire for that grotesque boy.

  “Well, then,” said the purser, folding his hands on the desk, “we are at your disposal for as long as you wish to stay with us.” He gestured toward the terrier and said, “Johnny will give you the tour,” but Pfeiffer politely declined. Johnny ushered them into a central room, which was anything but quiet, and—after a wink at Pfeiffer—discreetly disappeared.

  The room was as crowded as the city ways. It was filled with what looked to be the ragtag, the bums and the street people, the captains of the ways. Here was a perfect replica of a street casino, but perfectly safe. This was a street casino, at least to Pfeiffer, who was swept up in the noise and bustle, as he whetted his appetite for the dangerous pleasures of the top level.

  Ancient iron bandits whispered “chinka-chinka” and rolled their picture-frame eyes in promise of a jackpot, which was immediately transferred to the winner’s account by magnetic sleight of hand. The amplified, high-pitched voices of pinball computers on the walls called out winning hands of poker and blackjack. A simulated stabbing drew nothing more than a few glances. Tombstone booths were filled with figures working through their own Stations of the Cross. Hooked-in winners were rewarded with bursts of electrically induced ecstasy; losers writhed in pain and suffered through the brain-crushing aftershock of week-long migraines.

  And, of course, battered robots clattered around with the traditional complement of drugs, drink, and food. The only incongruity was a perfectly dressed geisha, who quickly disappeared into one of the iris doors on the far wall.

  “Do you want to play the one-armed bandits?” Joan asked, fighting her growing claustrophobia, wishing only to escape into quiet; but she was determined to try to keep Pfeiffer from going upstairs. Yet ironically—all her emotions seemed to be simultaneously yin and yang—she also wanted him to gamble away his organs. She knew that she would feel a guilty thrill if he lost his heart. Then she pulled down the lever of the one-armed bandit; it would read her finger- and odor-prints and transfer or deduct the proper amount to or from Pfeiffer’s account. The eyes rolled and clicked and one hundred international credit dollars was lost. “Easy come, easy go. At least, this is a safe way to go. But you didn’t come here to be safe, right?” Joan said mockingly.

  “You can remain down here, if you like,” Pfeiffer said, looking about the room for an exit, noticing that iris doors were spaced every few meters on the nearest wall to his left. The casino must take up the whole bloody block, he thought. “How the hell do I get out of here?”

  Before Joan could respond, Johnny appeared, as if out of nowhere, and said, “Monsieur Pfeiffer may take any one of the ascenseurs, or, if he would care for the view of our palace, he could take the staircase to heaven.” He smiled, baring even teeth, and curtsied to Pfeiffer, who was blushing. The boy certainly knows his man, Joan thought sourly.

  Am I jealous? she asked herself. She cared for Pfeiffer, but didn’t love him—at least she didn’t think she did.

  “Shall I attend you?” Johnny asked Pfeiffer, ignoring Joan.

  “No,” said Pfeiffer. “Now please leave us alone.”

  “Well, which is it?” asked Joan. “The elevator would be quickest, zoom you right to the organ room.”

  “We can take the stairs,” Pfeiffer said, a touch of blush still in his cheeks. But he would say nothing about the furry boy. “Jesus, it seems that every time I blink my eye, the stairway disappears.”

  “I’ll show you the way,” Joan said, taking his arm.

  “Just what I need,” Pfeiffer said, smiling, eliminating one small barrier between them.

  “I think your rush is over, isn’t it? You don’t really want to gamble out your guts.”

  “I came to do something, and I’ll follow it through.”

  The stairwell was empty and, like an object conceived in Alice’s Wonderland, it appeared to disappear behind them. “Cheap tricks,” Pfeiffer said.

  “Why are you so intent on this?” Joan asked. “If you lose, which you most probably will, you’ll never have a day’s peace. They can call in your heart, or liver, or—”

  “I can buy out, if that should happen.” Pfeiffer reddened, but it had nothing to do with his conversation with Joan, to which he was hardly paying attention; he was still thinking about the furry boy.

  “You wouldn’t gamble them, if you thought you could buy out. That’s bunk.”

  “Then I’d get artificials.”

  “You’d be taking another chance, with the quotas—thanks to your right-wing friends in power.”

  Pfeiffer didn’t take the bait. “I admit defeat,” he said. Again he
thought of the furry boy’s naked, hairless genitals. And with that came the thought of death.

  The next level was less crowded and more subdued. There were few electronic games to be seen on the floor. A man passed dressed in medical white, which indicated that deformation games were being played. On each floor the stakes became increasingly higher; fortunes were lost, people were disfigured or ruined but—with the exception of the top floor, which had dangerous games other than organ-gambling—at least no one died. They might need a face and body job after too many deformations, but those were easily obtained, although one had to have very good credit to ensure a proper job.

  On each ascending level, the house whores, both male and female, became more exotic, erotic, grotesque, and abundant. There were birdmen with feathers like peacocks and flamingos, children with dyed skin and overly large, implanted male and female genitalia, machines that spoke the language of love and exposed soft, fleshy organs, amputees and cripples, various drag queens and kings, natural androgynes and mutants, cyborgs, and an interesting, titillating array of genetically engineered mooncalves.

  But none disturbed Pfeiffer as had that silly furry boy. He wondered if, indeed, the boy was still following him.

  “Come on, Joan” Pfeiffer said impatiently. “I really don’t want to waste any more time down here.”

  “I thought it was the expectation that’s so exciting to seasoned gamblers,” Joan said.

  “Not to me,” Pfeiffer said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I want to get it over with.” With that, he left the room.

  Then why bother at all? Joan asked herself, wondering why she had let Pfeiffer talk her into coming here. He doesn’t need me. Damn him, she thought, ignoring a skinny, white-haired man and a piebald, doggie mooncalf coupling beside her in an upright position.