The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6

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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6 Page 54

by Libba Bray


  Eliza turned her head to look him over. “You found out that you were an accountant?”

  “Well, yeah, I am an accountant. But no, that’s not what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to have a business career like yours,” sniffed Eliza. “You know what I want, when I grow up? What I really, really want from my life? Because I already know.”

  “I’m eager to hear this,” Gavin told her.

  She looked him in the eyes. “You’re not teasing me?”

  “I would never tease you, Elizabeth. I want you to tell me about that. Because I study futurism, and I think that I can help you.”

  “Well, in the future, I want to be a princess.”

  His little sister wanted to be a princess. What a fairy-tale notion. A six-year-old would laugh.

  “I see,” he said.

  “No, you don’t see! I mean I need to be like royalty! Because I need to be awesome just for being me! That’s the most important part! Whenever I make the scene, everybody has to stop whatever they’re doing. They all just look at me! Just because, wow, it’s me: Elizabeth Aimee Tremaine! Or whatever cool name I have, in the future: Madonna, Shakira. One of those one-name names that only superstars can have.” Eliza’s shoulders suddenly slumped. “Every dorky chick in this world is named ‘Elizabeth.’”

  “So, uh, you want to become an entertainer? That’s a pretty tough life.”

  “Probably more like Paris. I mean, Paris Hilton. Paris is famous and powerful, and she gets all kinds of international respect. I don’t know why, but she sure does.”

  “Look, Paris Hilton is in movies. Paris had her own TV series. Paris cut a record.” Gavin had closely studied the career of Paris Hilton. Because Paris Hilton was very trendy, and trends were of supreme importance to futurists. “I don’t think that you want to get famous the way that Paris Hilton got famous.”

  Eliza opened her black satchel. She pulled out a portable CD player. “Gav, look at this. Once, I loved this machine so much. Because it plays all my CDs. But nobody buys CDs in music stores anymore! They just steal mp3s! Even I don’t pay for music, and I’m rich! I took my CD player everywhere... now I’m carrying a zombie in my purse!”

  “Well, yes, that platform has become obsolete now, but a new business model will arise for music.”

  “No it won’t! That’s a lie! Nobody will ever pay! The music business is the walking dead! Just don’t lie to me!” Eliza stuffed her doomed, archaic device back into her furry black purse.

  Gavin rubbed his chin. “Your Digital Native generation really has some issues.”

  “The music business is over! That means someone has to raise the dead! Me! I’ll do it! Why not me? I can raise the dead! Elizabeth Aimee Tremaine, the princess of music, the Gothic superstar! I would do that! I’d do anything, to do it.”

  Gavin nodded, rocking from heel to toe in his Timberland brogues. “OK. Sure. I get it. Any girl who could pull that stunt off would be a major-league princess for sure.”

  Gavin felt pleased to see his sister taking such an interest in technology issues. He’d been afraid that his geeky lectures on those subjects had flown right over her head. But now he saw that Eliza understood him. Just, in her own way.

  Eliza pulled at her wind-tangled hair, which was blonde at the roots but dyed the lifeless color of coal dust. “When our music scene dies in Seattle,” she told him, “our town will become a dead city. Everything will be quiet and evil and covered with thorns.”

  “Aw, come on, that’ll never happen to Seattle! We’re an inventive, creative city. We love the arts!”

  “Well, I love music with all my heart, and I have to watch music die every day.”

  Gavin didn’t know how to respond this dreadful lament. He knew that he should say something. Something very older-brother style. Something that was good, wise and cheerful, that would make everything better for her.

  Here was his sister, finally spitting up the real source of her misery. Confiding in him, and trusting him. Yet he couldn’t console her. He had nothing to tell her. He lacked a prepared position statement.

  “Back home,” Eliza grumbled, knotting her fine blonde brows, “we have that huge skyscraper tomb thing, that’s like that stupid Rock and Roll Museum that Paul Allen built.... But there’s nothing in there now but science fiction weirdness. That totally sucks!”

  Gavin cleared his throat. “Well, the music industry does have other potential revenue models. There’s subscriptions, merchandise sales...”

  “Gavin, are you stupid? That’s not reality! That is a fantasy! When the money walks away, money never comes back! Not by itself! And when all the money’s gone, there’s nothing left but zombies. Zombies and vampires!”

  Gavin was completely thrown by this bizarre remark. He truly didn’t know what to say to her. He’d been doing pretty well with Eliza on this trip, but now the gears froze solid in his head.

  Whenever he talked to Eliza, there was always some moment where she jumped into a kinky flight of fancy, where he couldn’t follow. This was another one of those unhappy, broken moments.

  All that he could do was try to show her that he loved her.

  “Eliza, I’m glad we’re having this discussion. I know that you have some strong concerns in this direction. I, just, never heard you frame them quite like this.”

  “Can you talk to Dad about this for me? I mean, about me and my plans to save the soul of music?” Eliza kicked at the rocky path with her combat boot. “I know my life, as, like, a ‘music superstar princess’... Well, I know, that doesn’t sound very realistic.”

  “Well,” Gavin hedged, “we’re here in Capri to attend a futurist conference. There are five hundred famous international experts coming here, here to get ahead of planetary trends! You couldn’t ask for a better place to work on your issues! You can attend all the panels, and watch them plot and scheme about futurity, and master the world of tomorrow! So, if you can show me that you’re serious about your plans... sure, I’ll talk to Dad for you.”

  “Dad will hate my ideas. Dad wants me to mind my grades and study law. If I tell Dad that I love music more than anything, he’s gonna start yelling at me again.”

  “Listen, never mind that. Dad should have come out here to Capri himself. Dad really needs a vacation. This finance crisis has got Dad all keyed up.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Money isn’t everything.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Gavin said. “I agree with you. That is a fact. Just take Detroit, for instance. Over at Cook, Bishop & Engleman, we just held a big futurist workshop about contemporary issues in American urbanism. Detroit is totally broke, and yet Detroit’s also a great city for American music production. See, that’s a vital data-point for you, right there.”

  “Gavin, you do sort of understand this, don’t you? I mean, you understand some parts of it. In your own way.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I do,” he said. “Yeah, sometimes I really do understand the future.” That didn’t mean that he was happy about it.

  “Gavin, everybody says that you’re way ahead of your time. You started Fettlr, and you sold it to Yahoo for 20 million dollars! And you did it in, like, two weeks! That was so totally great! Everybody talks about our Dad being this so-called ‘great businessman’—but Dad never did anything like that.”

  Gavin silently looked at his Omega wristwatch. “Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  “We got maybe an hour before the conference opens. Let’s grab a couple of sandwiches.”

  They hiked up the steep, scaly pavement, which wriggled over Capri like a concrete snake. A hotel lurked on the blossoming peak of the ridge.

  This hotel commanded a view over Capri that was divine. Capri looked divine because Capri was divine. The sea around the island was doing all kinds of surging and sparkling things that mere seawater was never supposed to do. The azure sea was jeweled with yachts. Capri was classically divine, like the goddess Venus. Capri had divinities
the way lesser islands had oysters.

  The sky over Capri had hundreds of rich, distinct tints of blue, like a dome of blue art-glass. Paragliders were swooping and fluttering up there. Young athletes like angels, graceful and fearless, zooming over Capri with bright colored fabric and string.

  The Capri hotel had a somber, crooked dining room, with a grandmotherly Italian waitress. She led them to a creaky wooden table tucked in the room’s darkest corner, so that Eliza’s kinky Goth gear wouldn’t alarm her other customers.

  This Capri hotel had nothing to eat that was “fast.” Patrons of majestic old Capri hotels were supposed to eat thoughtfully, in a civilized, European fashion. First, a nice little snack with a drink. Then the first real course. After that, a good, solid second course. Then a sweet. Then some brandy, nuts and cigars.

  After a polite debate in his college Italian, Gavin managed to order them a couple of salads, an overpriced bottle of mineral water, and nothing else.

  Gavin carefully spread the hotel’s linen napkin over his cargo pants. The hotel’s parquet floors looked spotty and warped. The inner walls had been rebuilt so many times that they leaned at odd angles, like a stage set for a silent film. Everything in this old hotel had been patched or painted over, bored-through, re-wired, re-furbished, then buried in enamel and lacquer.

  Eliza busily flicked at her iPhone, her burgundy fingernails skidding on the screen. “Hey Gavin, wow, an arms merchant built this hotel. He was this rich German guy who made cannons in World War One. I bet his corporation killed a million people.”

  “Yeah, welcome to Europe, Eliza.”

  Eliza glanced up at him, her blue eyes full of wicked satisfaction. “This place has just got to be haunted.”

  Gavin had a bite of his Capri hotel salad, a leafy construction that featured capers, olives and anchovies. He’d expected a quick tourist salad to be pretty mediocre, but this was a magnificent salad. It was likely the best salad Gavin had ever eaten in his life. It was like an opera in a bowl. Miracles could happen in a place that had such salads.

  Gavin sloshed pink vinegar from a cut-glass cruet. “‘There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.’ Marie Antoinette said that.”

  “‘Marie who?’”

  “I said Marie Antoinette, Eliza. Marie Antoinette was a princess.”

  “Oh, yeah, her, Marie Antoinette! She was in that Sofia Coppola film with that techno soundtrack. Great movie, I totally loved that movie! And I love this hotel, too! Can we check out of our lame modern hotel, and move into this cool, old hotel? This cool, old, haunted hotel? Please, Gavin, just for me, please please?”

  Lover B: The Convent of Crossed Destinies

  Farfalla had jumped the train without a ticket, from Milano all the way to Napoli. Six and a half hours of avoiding the conductors. Then Farfalla had jumped a bus in Naples from the railway to the ferry to Capri. She paid nothing for that, too.

  She had no way to sneak aboard the hydrofoil to Capri. The ferry only had one gangplank, and two sailors were watching it. So Farfalla had to pay the ferry fare.

  So she finally arrived in Capri, tugging her roll-aboard suitcase, completely broke.

  Well, almost completely broke. Not quite completely. Farfalla had one stray two-euro coin stuck deep in the lining of her purse. She also found one twenty-eurocent coin. A coin with a beautiful statue created by an Italian Futurist.

  To find the Futurist coin meant good luck for Farfalla. At least, she had to believe that Futurism was her good luck.

  The Capri Trend Assessment Congress was a paying gig for Farfalla. She was there to translate for the foreign speakers, and to run errands for Babi, who was a conference organizer. That work would pay her in cash, under the table of course.

  But Farfalla wouldn’t see any money from Babi until the event was over.

  That meant that Farfalla had to survive for three days in Capri with two euros and twenty cents.

  Farfalla had her iPhone, her conference badge, and a couch in a stranger’s apartment. Farfalla could probably manage with that. She had managed with less than that, in worse places than Capri.

  So, hello again, Capri! Beautiful, gorgeous, divine Capri! Lovely Capri, charming Capri, Capri, the island of tender romance! Capri could be a very romantic place—if you were a princess in disguise, like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Italian men hitting on Farfalla often told her that she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Farfalla Corrado was nobody’s Audrey Hepburn.

  Farfalla dragged her rolling luggage through the narrow Capri streets. Purring housecats, fresh fried fish, and boutiques smelling of cologne and sea-salt. Wobbling on her heels in the rugged cobblestones, Farfalla hiked to her accommodation. This was a spare couch in the small, cigarette-stinking apartment of one of Babi’s many personal friends.

  Farfalla’s new hostess, Eleonora, was a washed-up Italian television showgirl. Eleonora gave Farfalla a spare key to the flat, and then talked at her for half an hour. Eleonora talked just like Italian television: which meant that she was loud and colorful, and she had nothing much to say.

  Farfalla abandoned her rolling bag next to the couch, packed her purse, and left the apartment. The Capri Trend Assessment Congress was taking place in two different buildings, downhill, five blocks away.

  One building was new, tall and strong. The other building was old, low and ruined. The future had joined them together. Nobody could pry them apart.

  Farfalla took a deep breath and invaded the shining five-star conference hotel. She found it very posh. The official conference hotel had towering palms and rippling balconies, spas, gyms and swimming pools. It had glass elevators, brass staircases, and a cellar full of fine wine and fine luggage.

  This glorious Capri hotel was a sleek machine for taking credit-cards from wealthy foreigners. The cheapest room in the place cost 220 euros a night. This was exactly one hundred times as much money as Farfalla had.

  Farfalla snagged two perfect apples from a hammered silver bowl in the hotel. She stuffed her purse with the hotel’s giveaway soaps, shampoos and body lotions. Farfalla would eat, and she would have a pretty good hair day. Here in the future, her life was already improving.

  On her way out of the hotel, Farfalla saw a local cabbie harassing an old woman.

  Old Lady Tourist wore a sturdy houndstooth cloth coat, Anne Klein gloves, and a hairnet. She looked close to tears. “He won’t accept American Express,” Lady Tourist lamented in English. “He wants to drive me to a bank machine to get him euros.”

  Farfalla confronted the cabbie at once. “Che cosa ti sta succedendo, tu ladro succhiatore di sangue? Cosa sei, albanese?”

  “Me, Albanian? I’d rather be dead!” the cabbie protested.

  “You Rumanian vampire, you’ll steal fares from my conference people like the dirty bandit that you are, and cheat your blessed grandma here? Get lost! I can call my old man at the Tourist Board, and he’ll break both your legs!”

  The driver ducked behind his wheel and slammed his door. He fled the scene of his crime.

  Tourist Lady had tumbled her heavy bag from the taxi’s trunk. She watched the taxi rumble down the tilted street. “Miss, you seem to have saved me thirty euros.”

  “Ma’am, a trip from the ferry costs ten.”

  “Well then! I don’t think my driver was entirely honest!”

  “He is a clandestini. An illegal foreigner. Not like you!”

  Farfalla helped Tourist Lady lug her ungainly bag up the stone stairs toward the hotel’s registration. Tourist Lady’s bag was very old-fashioned, solid and square, all brass buckles and leather. No wheels on it! How old did a lady have to be, to have a travel bag with no wheels?

  Farfalla had warm, protective feelings about tourists and travelers. She felt a sacred bond with them, a need to make their lives easier. Guests should always be treated kindly. Because, after all, you never knew who a “foreign guest” really was.

  Farfalla herself was a foreign guest in the world, most of the time. Nobody kne
w who she really was, either.

  Especially, nice little old foreign ladies—helpless old ladies were especially sacred guests. Old ladies should be watched-over and comforted and protected at all times, in Italy. Because Italy had more than a thousand dark surprises for nice little old foreign ladies.

  Tourist Lady announced herself at the hotel desk. It seemed that Tourist Lady was an American professor from a university in Virginia. She had a reservation in a room for two.

  “So, Professor Milo,” said Farfalla to Tourist Lady, “you must be here for my Trend Assessment Congress! Benvenuto! Let me show you to our venue.”

  “No, thank you,” said Professor Milo, removing her hat with a prim little nod. “I came here to Capri entirely for private reasons.”

  Farfalla blinked. “For ‘private reasons’?”

  “Yes, private reasons.”

  How private could her reasons be? thought Farfalla at once. Was this stout, blue-haired American professor checking into this fancy Capri hotel for some frolic with a secret lover? Or, well, why not? Maybe she was old and gray, but when was love ever likely?

  Farfalla politely shook Professor Milo’s dainty gloved hand. Then she left.

  Farfalla ventured past the tall glass panes of the Capri tourist-traps. They peddled kinky lingerie, odd-shaped limoncello bottles and necklaces of ragged red coral. She walked a narrow, winding lane, between walls overhung with dark, crooked, odorous fig trees.

  The site of the Trend Assessment Congress was a wreck. The venue was a former medieval convent. This old convent had been built on the stony ruins of some even more ancient Roman structure. Southern Italy was full of layer-cake buildings of this kind. Italian earthquakes made that a local way of life.

  Babi claimed that the convent had probably been a brothel, once. Babi was from Naples, so Babi had incredible street-smarts. You had to be from a woman from Naples to realize that a brothel and a convent were basically the same enterprise. As Babi pointed out: as long as big stone walls locked the men out, you could make a pretty good business of it, either way.

 

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