The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  That night he caught the shuttle from Heathrow to Shannon. He knew Tod was right; it was cruel and selfish to run away. Tod was entitled to think what he wanted. He would never know how much it hurt Cage to give Wynne up this way … If Cage was escaping, it was into pain. He hoped Wynne would understand. Eventually. His beautiful Wynne. It took a few days to put his affairs in order. He assigned a fortune in Western Amusement stock to her. He made a tape for her, said goodbye.

  * * *

  There is a mist clinging to the land. The slaty grayness of Galway Bay reminds Cage of sarsen. The cyogenic box awaits, set for a hundred years. He does not know whether this is enough to save her. Or himself. He knows he will probably never see her again. But for a time, at least, he will be at peace. He will sleep the inscrutable sleep of stones.

  AVRAM DAVIDSON

  Duke Pasquale’s Ring

  For many years now, Avram Davidson has been one of the most eloquent and individual voices in science fiction and fantasy, and there are few writers in any literary field who can hope to match his wit, his erudition, or the stylish elegance of his prose. His recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Englebert Esterhazy (collected in his World Fantasy Awardwinning The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas), for instance, are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers, and rank among the best work of the seventies. Davidson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, and the World Fantasy Award. His books include the renowned The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rogue Dragon, Peregrine: Primus, Rork!, Clash of Star Kings, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas With Oysters, and The Redward Edward Papers. His most recent books are Peregrine: Secundus, a novel, Collected Fantasies, a collection, and, as editor, the anthology Magic For Sale. Upcoming is a new novel, Vergil in Averno, the sequel to The Phoenix and the Mirror. His story “Full Chicken Richness” was in our First Annual Collection.

  Here—in the most recent of the Dr. Esterhazy tales—he introduces us to a sinister man who has some sinister—and very strange—ways of getting what he wants …

  DUKE PASQUALE’S RING

  Avram Davidson

  The King of the Single Sicily was eating pasta in a sidewalk restaurant; not in Palermo: in Bella. He had not always been known by that title. In Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, he had for long decades been known chiefly as an eccentric but quite harmless fellow who possessed many quarterings of nobility and nothing in the shape of money at all. But when the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and all of southern Italy being the other one) was rather suddenly included into the new and united Kingdom of Italy, ostensibly by plebiscite and certainly by force of Garibaldean arms, something had happened to the inoffensive old man.

  He now put down his fork and belched politely. The waiter-cook-proprietor came forward. “Could the King eat more?” he asked.

  “Im[belch]possible. There is no place.” He patted the middle-front of his second-best cloak.

  “What damage,” said the other. His previous career, prior to deserting a French man-of-war, had been that of coal-heaver. But he was a Frenchman born (that is, he was born in Algeria of Corsican parentage), and this was almost universally held to endow him with an ability to cook anything anywhere in Infidel Parts better than the infidel inhabitants could. And certainly he cooked pasta better and cheaper than it was cooked in any other cook-shop in Bella’s South Ward. “What damage,” he repeated. “There is more in the pot.” And he raised his brigand brows.

  “Ah well. Put it in my kerchief, and I shall give it to my cat.”

  “Would the King also like a small bone for his dog?”

  “Voluntarily.”

  He had no cat; he had no dog; he had at home an old, odd wife who had never appeared in public since the demise of her last silk gown. The bone and extra pasta would make a soup, and she would eat.

  With the extinction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies something had gone flash in the old man’s brain-pan: surely Sicily itself now reverted to the status of a kingdom by itself? Surely he was its rightful king? And to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would read, he explained the matter, in full genealogy, with peculiar emphasis on the four marriages of someone called Pasquale III, from one of which marriages he himself descended. Some listened. Some read. Some even replied. But, actually, nothing happened. The new King of Italy did not so much as restore a long-forfeited tomato-patch. The ousted King of Naples did not so much as reply. Neither did Don Amadeo, King of Spain (briefly, very briefly, King of Spain). On the other hand, Don Carlos, King of Spain (pretended or claimed), did. Don Carlos was an exile in Bella at the moment. Don Carlos perhaps heard something. Don Carlos perhaps did not know much about Pasquale III, but Don Carlos knew about being a pretender and an exile. He did not precisely send a written reply; he sent some stockings, some shirts, a pair of trousers, and a cloak. All mended. But all clean. And a small hamper of luncheon.

  By the time the King of the Single Sicily had dressed in his best and gone to call on Don Carlos, Don Carlos was gone, and—to Bella, as to Spain—Don Carlos never came back.

  That was the nearest which Cosimo Damiano (as he chose to style himself) had ever come to Recognition. Stockings, shirts, and trousers had all worn out; the cloak he was wearing even now. And to pay for the daily plate of pasta he was left to his semi-occasional pupil in the study of Italian, calligraphy, and/or advanced geometry.

  “To see again,” he said, now rising, and setting upon the tiny table a coin of two copperkas.

  “To see again,” said the cook-shop man, his eyes having ascertained the existence of the coin and its value. He bowed. He would when speaking to Cosimo Damiano refer to him in the third person as the king, he would give him extra pasta past its prime, he would even donate to a pretense-dog a bone which still had some boiling left in it. He might from time to time do more. A half-cup of salad neglected by a previous diner. A recommendation to a possible pupil. Even now and then a glass of thin wine not yet “turned.” But for all and for any of this he must have his coin of two copperkas. Otherwise: nothing. So it was.

  D. Cosimo D., as sometimes he signed himself, stooped off homeward in his cloak. Today was a rich day: extra pasta, a soup-bone, and he had a half-a-copperka to spare. He might get himself a snuff of inferior tobacco wrapped in a screw of newspaper. But he rather thought he might invest the two farthings in the merchandise of Mother Whiskers, who sold broken nut-meats in the mouth of an alley not far off. His queen was fond of that. The gaunt and scabby walls, street-level walls long since knocked bare of plaster or stucco, narrowed in towards him as he went. The old woman was talking to another customer, not one who wanted a farthingworth of broken nut-meats, by his look. But Mother Whiskers had another profession: she was by way of being a witch, and all sorts of people came to see her, deep in the smelly slums where she had her seat.

  She stopped whatever she had been saying, and jerked up her head to D. Cosimo D. “Gitcherself anointed?” was her curious question.

  “I fear not. Alas,” said D. Cosimo D., with a sigh.

  She shook her head so that her whiskers flew about her face, and her earrings, too. “Gitcherself anointed!” she said. “All kinds o’ work and jobs I c’n git fer a ‘nointed king. Touch fer the king’s evil—the scrofuly, that is—everybuddy knows that—and ringworm! Oh my lordy, how much ringworm there be in the South Ward!” Oft-times, when he was not thinking of his own problems alone, Cosimo wondered that there was not much more cholera, pest, and leprosy in the South Ward. “—and the best folks c’n do is git some seventh son of a seventh son; now, not that I mean that ain’t good. But can’t compare to a ‘nointed king!”

  And the stranger, in a deep, murmurous voice, said No, indeed.

  Poor Cosimo! Had he had to choose between Anointing without Crowning, and Crowning without Anointing, he would have chosen the Holy Oil over the Sacred C
rown. But he was allowed no choice. Hierarch after hierarch had declined to perform such services, or even service, for him. There was one exception. Someone, himself perhaps a pretender and certainly an exile, someone calling himself perhaps Reverend and Venerable Archimandrite of Petra and Simbirsk had offered to perform … but for a price … a high one … it would demean his sacred office to do it on the cheap, said he. And, placing his forefinger alongside his nose, had winked.

  Much that had helped.

  “Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” grumbled Old Mother Whiskers. “But I do my best for y’, anyway. Gotchyou a stoodent, here. See?”

  Taking a rather closer look than he had taken before, Cosimo saw someone rather tall and rather richly dressed … not alone for the South Ward, richly … for anywhere, richly. There was something in this one’s appearance for which the word sleek seemed appropriate, from his hat and his moustache down to his highly-polished shoes; the man murmured the words, “Melanchthon Mudge,” and held out his hand. He did not take his glove off (it was a sleek glove), and Cosimo, as he shook hands and murmured his own name, felt several rings … and felt that they were rings with rather large stones, and …

  “Mr. Mudge,” said Mother Whiskers; “Mr. Mudge is a real classy gent.” And D. Cosimo D. felt, also that—though Mr. Mudge may have been a gent—Mr. Mudge was not really a gentleman. But as to that, in this matter: no matter.

  “Does Mr. Mudge desire to be instructed,” he asked, “in Italian? In calligraphy? Or in advanced geometry? Or in all three?”

  Mr. Mudge touched a glossy-leather-encased-finger to a glossy moustache. Said he thought, “For the present, sir. For the present,” that they would skip calligraphy. “Madame here has already told me of your terms, I find them reasonable, and I would only wish to ask if you might care to mention … by way of, as it were, general reference … the names of some of your past pupils. If you would not mind.”

  Mind? The poor old King of the Single Sicily would not have minded standing on his head if it would have helped bring him a pencil. He mentioned the names of a surveyor now middling-high in the Royal and Imperial Highways and to whom he had taught advanced geometry, of several ladies of quality to whom he had taught Italian, and of a private docent whom he had instructed in calligraphy: still Mr. Mudge waited, as one who would hear more; D. Cosimo D. went on to say, “And, of course, that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is—”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Melanchthon Mudge, stroking his moustache and his side-whiskers; “that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is.” His voice seemed to grow very drawn-out and deep.

  * * *

  Plaster and paint, turpentine and linseed oil had all alike long since dried, inside and outside the house at Number 33 Turkling Street, where lived Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy; though sometimes he had the notion that he could still smell it. At the moment, though, what he chiefly smelled came from his well-fitted chemical laboratory, as well as from the more distant kitchen where—in some matters Eszterhazy was old-fashioned—Mrash, his man-cook, reigned. Old Mrash would probably and eventually be replaced by a woman. In the meanwhile he had his stable repertory of ten or twelve French dishes as passed down through generations of army officers’ cooks since the days of (at least) Bonaparte; and when he had run through it and them and before running through them and it again, Mrash usually gave his master a few days of peasant cooking which boxed the culinary compass of the fourth-largest empire in Europe. Ox-cheek and eggs. Beef palate, pigs’ ears, and buckwheat. Potatoes boiled yellow in chicken broth with unborn eggs and dill. Cowfoot stew, with mushrooms and mashed turnips. And after that it was back to boeuf à la mode Bayonne [sic], and all the rest of it as taught long ago to his captors by some long ago prisoner-of-war.

  Today, along with the harmless game of “consulting the menu-book,” Mrash had a question, “if it pleased his lordship.” Eszterhazy knew that it pleased Mrash to think that he cooked for a lordship, and had ceased trying to convince him of it not really pertaining. So, “Yes, Mrashko, certainly. What is the question?” There might or might not be a direct answer.

  “What do they call that there place, my lordship, a boo?”

  Philologists have much informed the world that the human mouth is capable of producing only a certain limited number of sounds, therefore it was perhaps no great feat for Eszterhazy at once to counter-ask, “Do you perhaps mean a zoo?”

  “Ah,” said Mrash the man-cook, noncommittally, He might, his tone indicated, though then again he might not.

  Eszterhazy pressed on. “That’s the short name for the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoölogical Gardens and Park, where the plants and creatures mostly from foreign parts are.” Mrashko’s mouth moved and seemed to relish the longer form of the name. “It’s the second turning of the New Stonepaved Road after Big Ludo’s Beer Garden,” added ‘his lordship.’

  Mrash nodded. “I expect that’s where it come from, then,” he said.

  “‘Come from’? Where what came from, Cooky?”

  Cooky said, simply, “The tiger.”

  Eszterhazy recalled the comment of Old Captain Slotz, someone who had achieved much success in obtaining both civil and military intelligence. Captain Slotz had stated, “I don’t ask them did they done it or I don’t ask them did they not done it. Just, I look at them, and I say, Tell me about it.”

  “Tell me about it, Mrashko-Cooky.”

  The man-cook gestured. “See, my lordship, it come up the lane there,” gesture indicated the alley. “And it hop onto yon wood-shed, or as it might be, coal-shed. Then it lep up onto the short brick bake-building. then it gave a big jump and gits onto the roof of what was old Baron Johan’s townhouse what his widow live in now all alone saving old Helen, old Hugo, and old Hercules what they call him, who look after her ladyship what she seldom go out at all anymore.” Eszterhazy listened with great patience: “and then it climb up the roof and until it reach the roof-peak. It look all around. It put its front-limbs down,” Mrash imitated this, “and it sort of just stretch … streeettch.…”

  Silence.

  “And then?”

  “Then I get back to me work, me lordship.”

  “Oh.”

  “Nother thing. I knew that there beast have another name to ‘t. Leopard. That be its other name. I suppose it come from the book. I suppose it trained to go back. Three nights I’ve seen it, nor I haven’t heard no alarm.” He began making the quasi-military movements which indicated he was about to begin the beginning of his leaving.

  “Does it have stripes? Or spots?”

  Mrash, jerking his arms, moving stiff-legged, murmured something about there being but the one gas-lamp in the whole alley, there having been not much of a bright moon of recent, hoped the creature wouldn’t hurt no one nor even skeer the old Baroness nor old Helen; and—finally—“Beg permission to return to duty, your lordship. Hup!”

  “Granted.—And—Mrash![Me lord!] The next time you see it, let me know, directly.”

  The parade-ground manner of the man-cook’s departure gave more than a hint that the next meal would consist largely of boiled bully-beef in the mode of the Royal and Imperial Infantry, plus the broth thereof, plus fresh-grated horseradish which would remove the roof of your mouth, plus potatoes prepared purple in a manner known chiefly to army cooks present and past all around the world. Eszterhazy looked out the window and across the alley. At ground level, the stones of the house opposite were immense, seemingly set without mortar. Cyclopean, the word came to him. Above these massive courses began others, of smaller pieces of masonry. The last storey and a half were of brick, with here and there a tuft of moss instead of mortar. The steep-pitched roof was of dull grey slate. And though he could see this all quite clearly, he could see no explanation for the story which his old cook, never before given to riotous fancy, had just recounted to him. Long he stared. Long he stared. Long he considered. Then he rang the bell and asked for his horse to be saddled.

  * * *

  T
he old Chair of Natural Philosophy had finally been subdivided, and the new Chair of Natural History been created. Natural Philosophy included Chemistry, Physics, Meteorology, Astronomy. Natural History included Zoölogy, Ichthyology, Botany, Biology. Dr. Eszterhazy, having bethought him of the knot of loafers always waiting on hand near the Zoo to see whose horse shied at the strange odor when the wind blew so, decided to stop off first at the office of the Royal-Imperial Professor of Natural History, who was ex cathedra the Director of the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoölogical Gardens and Park. Said, “Your tigers and leopards. Tell me about them.”

  The Professor—it was Cornelius Crumholtss, with whom Dr E. E. had once taken private lessons—said, crisply, “None.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The tiger died last year. The Gaekwar of Oont, or is it his heir, the Oontie Ghook? has agreed to trade us a tiger for three dancing bears and two gluttons—or wolverines as some call them—but he’s not done it yet. Leopards? We’ve never had one. We do have the lion. But he is very old. Shall I have spots painted on him for you? No? Oh.”

  * * *

  Eszterhazy had gone to the Benedictine Library. There were things there which were nowhere else … and, not seldom, that meant nowhere else … once, indeed, he had found the Papal Legate there, waiting for a chance to see something not even in the Vatican Library. It was stark and chill in the whitewashed chamber which served as waiting-room. Who was waiting for what? Eszterhazy was waiting for Brother Claudius, for even Eszterhazy might not go up into the vaulted hall where the oldest books were unless Brother Claudius showed him up; not even the Papal Legate might do so, and it was almost certain that not even the King-Emperor might … in the unlikely instance of the King-Emperor’s going to the Benedictine Library to look for a book … or anywhere else, for that matter. E. assumed that the tall, thin man slumped in the corner was also waiting for Brother Claudius. By and by, in came the lay-brother who acted as porter, and wordlessly set down a brazier of glowing coals before withdrawing.