The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The general outlines of the face and form of him who, with infinite sincerity, called himself ‘King of the Single Sicily,’ would have been familiar to, at least, readers of the British periodical press; for they were the form and features of Mr. Punch (himself originally a native of The Italies, under the name of Signor Punchinello); though the expression of their faces was entirely different. His lady wife did not in any way resemble Judy. The King now said, “I shall have the Lord Great Chamberlain bring it.” As Cosimo Damiano’s former pupil was wondering what piece of gimcrack or brummagem the, alas, cracked imaginations of the pair would work on, the King said, with a gesture, “The view of the hills is remarkably clear today, my son. We are high here. Very high. See for yourself.” Eszterhazy politely rose to his feet, went to the window. The window was now graced with a single curtain; there had at one time been two; and some might have seen a resemblance to the other in the garment which the Queen now wore wrapped around her ruined silken dress rather in the manner of a sari.

  Clear or not, the view was so restricted by the crumbling walls of the adjacent tenements as to consist of an irregular blur a few feet tall and a few inches wide. Behind him he heard a soft scuffling, shuffling sound. He heard the King say, “Thank you. That is all. You may go.” After a moment Eszterhazy felt it safe to say that the view was indeed remarkable. In reply, he was informed that his chocolate was ready. He withdrew slowly from the view, homeopathically of the hills of the Scythian Highlands, and otherwise and very largely of goats, pigs, washing, dogs, children, chickens, rubbishtips, and other features of the always informal great South Ward; and took his seat. And his chocolate.

  It was very good chocolate. It should have been. He had given them a canister of it a while ago, and some, with a vanilla-bean in it to keep it fresh. As, each time he visited, there was always a cup given to him, either the canister—like the pitcher of Philemon and Baucis—was inexhaustible, or the royal couple never drank any at all. Well, well. It gave them pleasure to give, and this was in itself a gift.

  “And this,” said the King, after a moment, “is the ring of Duke Pasquale.” And he produced an immensely worn little box not entirely covered anymore with eroding leather and powdering velvet. And, with a dextrous push, sprang up the lid. It made a faint sound.

  Eszterhazy with great presence of mind did not spill his hot chocolate into his lap.

  Evidently the tarnished band was silver, as—evidently—the untarnished and untarnishable band was gold. They were intertwined and must have been the very devil to keep clean, whenever the task was still being attempted. Though somewhat mis-shapen—perhaps something heavy had rested on it, long ago? while it was being perhaps hidden, long ago?—the width hinted that it might indeed have been a thumb-ring. Long ago. And set into it was a diamond of antique cut, more antique certainly even than the ring-work.

  “There were once many,” said the old man.

  “Oh yes,” said the old woman. “The wonder of it, as it must have been. The Pasqualine Diamonds, as they were called. Who knows where the others are. We know where this one is. He besought us to sell. So, so. Conceive of it. Sell? We did not even show.”

  Eszterhazy brought himself back to his present physical situation, drank off some of the chocolate. Asked, “And do you wear the ring? Ever? Never? Often?”

  The old women shook her mad old head. “Only on appropriate occasion.” She did not say what an appropriate occasion would be; he did not ask. He observed that the ring was on a chain, one of very common metal. His finger touched it. He raised his eyes. “It is the custom to wear it on a chain,” she said. “When one wears it, it should be worn on a chain, like a pendant. So, so, so. My late and sainted father-in-law wore it on a silver chain, and his late and sainted father wore it on a golden one. Thus it should be. So. Or,” the pause could not be called a hesitation, “almost always so. So, so, so. One does not wear it on a finger, not even on the thumb; certainly not on the finger; on the thumb, least of all. It would be a bad thing to do so. So, so, so. Very bad, very bad. It is ours to be keeping and ours to be guarding. As you see. So, so. So, so, so.” She coughed.

  Her husband the King said, “I shall take it now, my angel.” Take it he did; it was done so deftly and swiftly that Eszterhazy was not sure what was done with it. He had some idea. He was not sure.

  Need he be?

  No.

  It was madness to think of these two mad old people living in poverty year after year, decade after decade, when a fortune lay ready to be redeemed. It was mad; it was also noble. Turn the ring into money, turn the money into silk dresses, linen shirts, unbroken shoes, proper and properly furnished apartments; turn it into beef and pork and poultry and salad fresh daily, into good wine and wax candles or modern oil-lamps—turn it as one would: how long would the money last? Did the ‘King of the Single Sicily’ think just then in such terms? Perhaps. He said, as he accompanied his former pupil to the worm-eaten door, this is what he said: “Today’s fine food is tomorrow’s ordure. And today’s fine wine is tomorrow’s urine. Today’s fine clothes are tomorrow’s rags. And today’s fine carriages are tomorrow’s rubble. And after one has spent one’s long and painful years in this world, one wishes to have left behind at least one’s honor unstained. Which is something better than ordure, urine, rags, and rubble. Something more than urine, ordure, rubble, and rags. Be such things far from thee, my son. Farewell now. Go with the Good God and Blessed Company of the Saints.”

  One must hope. Eszterhazy went.

  Thus: the Pasqualine Ring.

  * * *

  There had been a meeting of the University’s Grand Ancillary Council, to discuss (once again) the private-docent question; and, Eszterhazy being a junior member, he had attended. The conclusion to which the Grand Ancillary Council had come was (once again) that it would at that specific meeting come to no conclusion. And filed out, preceded by dignitaries with muffs and ruffs and chains of office and maces and staves and drummers and trumpeters. About the necessity of all this to the educational process, Dr. Eszterhazy had certainly some certain opinions; and, being still but a junior member, kept them to himself.

  The Emperor, who was ex-officio Protector, Professor-in-Chief, Grand Warden, and a muckle many other offices, to and of the University, did not attend … he never attended … but, as always, had sent them a good late luncheon instead of a deputy: this was more appreciated. Eszterhazy found himself in discussion over slices of a prime buttock of beef with a Visiting Professor of one of the newer disciplines, “Ethnology” it was called. Older faculty members regarded an occasional lecture on Ethnology as a permissible amusement; further than that, they would not go. “Where did your last expedition take you?” asked Eszterhazy. Professor De Blazio said, West Africa, and asked Eszterhazy to pass the very good rye bread with caraway seeds. This passed, it occurred to the passer to ask if there were leopards in West Africa. “Although,” he added, “that is hardly Ethnology.”

  De Blazio said something very much like, “Chomp, chomp, gmurgle.” Then he swallowed. Then he said, “Ah, but it is, because in West Africa we have what is called the Leopard Society. I believe it to be totemic in origin. Totem, do you know the word totem? A North-American Red-Indian word meaning an animal which a family or clan in primitive society believes to have been its actual ancestor. Some say this creature changes into human form and back again.—Not bad, this beef.—Is it Müller who sees in this the source of heraldic animals? Can one quite imagine the British Queen turning into a lion at either the full or the dark of the moon? Ho Ho Ho.” Each Ho of Professor De Blazio was delivered in a flat tone. Perhaps he felt one could not quite imagine it. “Mustard, please.”

  Eating the roast beef, for a few moments, speaking English between mouthfulls, Eszterhazy could think himself in England. And then the stewards came carrying round the slabs of black bread and the pots of goose grease. And he knew that he was exactly where he now thought he was: in Bella, the sometimes beautiful and sometimes s
qualid capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania.

  Fourth largest empire in Europe.

  The Turks were fifth.

  * * *

  The gas-lights in the great salon in the town-house of old Colonel Count Cruttz were famous gas-lights. Cast in red bronze, they were in the form of mermaids, each the length of a tall man’s arm, and each clasping in cupped hands the actual jets for the gas flames as they, the mermaids, faced each other in a great circle: with mouths slightly open, they might be imagined as singing each to each. This was perhaps a high point of a sort in illumination, here in Bella. Well-dried reeds were used to soak up mutton-tallow or other kitchen grease, and these formed the old-fashioned rush-lights which the old-fashioned (or the poor) still used at night. They smelled vile. But they were cheap. Their flickering, spurting light was not good to read by. But they were cheap. They were very, very cheap. Tallow-candles. Whale-oil. Colza-oil, allegedly stolen here and there by Tartars to dress their cole-slaw. Coal-oil, also called paraffin or kerosene. Gas-lamps. From each pair of red-gold hands the red-gold flames leaped high, soughing and soaring. Often attempts had been made to employ the new experimental gas mantles. But Colonel Count Cruttz always shot them away with his revolver-pistol.

  Colonel Count Cruttz looked sober enough tonight; of course, that was subject to change, although it was customary for nothing but champagne to be served at such soirees, and it was not in accordance with his reputation to become shooting-drunk (even gas-mantle-shooting drunk) on such a ladies’ drink as champagne. Still. If a bullet from a revolver-pistol, or two or three, could solve a certain problem of which signs were likely to be shown tonight—if so, gladly would Doctor Eszterhazy ply Colonel Count Cruttz with brandy, vodka, rum, gin, shnapps, and whiskey. Or, for that matter, alcohol absolutes. As, however, it was not to be more than thought of, he would have to … what would he have to do?

  … something else.

  In one half of the great salon, the soirée looked like any and every other soirée in Bella: that is, an imitation of a soirée in Vienna, which in turn would be an imitation of one in Paris. Few things bored Eszterhazy more than a Bellanese soirée, though they were, barring boredom, harmless. The other half of the great salon, under the soaring gas-lights, was not in the least like every other soirée in Bella, for everyone in that half of the room was gathered around one sole person: a breach of good manners indeed. One might give a ‘reception’ for a particular person and that person might be lionized, surrounded; this was to be expected. But a soirée was not a reception, at least it was not intended to be, and it was good manners neither in those gathered round one person nor for that one person to allow it. But—allow it?

  Mr. Mudge reveled in it.

  Those in the other half of the room strolled around for the most part by ones and twos, now and then uttering polite words to those they walked with or to those they encountered. What was going to happen? By now Doctor Eszterhazy knew. Someone would give a polite hand-clap. Others would fall silent. Someone would say what good luck they all had. Someone would speak, obliquely, of the Spirits which—or who—had ‘crossed over,’ and how, for reasons not only not made clear but never mentioned, they sometimes were pleased to make use of “the justly-famous Mr. Mudge” as the medium of their attempts to contact the living. Eszterhazy had, he hoped, a most open mind: the received opinion of thousands of years to the contrary, the spirits of the dead were not where they could neither reach nor be reached? Very well. Let the evidence be presented, and he would form … perhaps … an opinion. But he knew no evidence that any of the so-called spirits had passed their time, whilst living, in tipping tables or sounding very tatty-looking trumpets or ringing lots of little bells; and so he did not think they would do so, now that they were dead, as a means of proving that they were not really entirely dead after all. Mr. Mudge did it (assuming it to be Mr. Mudge who did it); Mr. Mudge did it all very well.

  But did any of it need to be done at all?

  Eszterhazy could not think so.

  He was not altogether alone.

  “Engli, need we got to have all this?” asked a man, no longer at all young, with a weather-beaten and worn … worn? eroded!… face, stopping as he strolled.

  “Not if you do not wish it had, Count.”

  The Count almost doubled over in an agony of conviction. “I don’t! I don’t! Oh, I thought nothing when Olga Pensk asked it of me, that was a month ago, always have had a soft spot in me heart for her, lovely young girl her daughter is—But oh I’ve heard such a lot in that month. And I can’t get back to talk to Olga about it. She won’t see me. She’s become that creature’s creature. Look at her, doesn’t take her eyes off him, let me tell you what I have heard.”

  But Eszterhazy, saying that perhaps he had heard it, too, urged that this be put off to another time.

  “Do something, do something, do something,” begged the Count and Colonel. “I know what I’d love to do, and would do, hadn’t all of us in the Corps of Officers given our solemn vow and oath to his Royal and Imperial Majesty neither to fight duels nor commit homicides; wish I hadn’t. Engli. Engli. You’re a learned chap. You lived how many a month was it with the Old Men of the Mountains, didn’t you learn—”

  But Eszterhazy was lightly clapping his hands.

  * * *

  Afterwards, he had brief misgivings. Had he been right to have done it at all? To have done it the way he had done? That Melanchthon Mudge thought this-or-that about it: on this he did not need to waste thought. The Sovereign Princess of Damrosch-Pensk, would she ever forgive him? Too bad, if she would not. But suppose that collegium of white wizards, the Old Men of the Mountains, to hear of it; what would they think? Well, well, he had not depended on what they had taught him for everything he’d done in the great salon of Colonel Count Cruttz’s townhouse. Even the common sorcerers of the Hyperborean High Lands dearly loved the rude, the bawdy, the buffoon; they did not rank with the Old Men, but he had taken some pains to learn from them, too.

  And though he told himself that he did not need think about Mr. Mudge, think about Mr. Mudge he did. If he had denounced Mr. Mudge as a heretic; a heresiarch, satanist, and diabolist; if he had made him seem black and scarlet with infamously classical sins? Why, certainly the man would have loved it. Swelled with pride. Naturally. But he, Eszterhazy, had not done it. Nothing of the sort. He had parodied the usual ritual of the séance. He had reduced the introductory words to gibberish and, worse by far than merely that, to funny gibberish. He had made the table tip, totter, fall back, to the audible imitation of an off-color street-song, as though accompanied on, not one trumpet, but a chorus of trumpets, as played by a chorus of flatulent demons. He had done something similar with his summoning-up, in mockery, of the spirit bells. Was it not enough to show how others could do it? Did he have to have them ring in accompaniment to the naughty (recognizable—but who would admit it?) song on the ‘trumpet’?

  Well, ‘need.’ Need makes the old dame trot, went the proverb.

  He had done it.

  The whole doing was a mere five minutes long; but it had, of course, made it utterly impossible for Mudge, with or without others, to give his own performance. Absolutely impossible, right afterwards. And who knows for how long impossible, subsequently? He had lost the best part of his audience, for certainly the effect was ruined. If he would indeed try a repetition, elsewhere, a week, a fortnight, even a month, months later, he would hardly dare do so in the presence of any who had been there then. A single guffaw would have meant death.

  And eloquent of death was the man’s face as his eyes met Eszterhazy’s. It was but for a moment; then the face changed. No hot emotion showed as he came up to Eszterhazy, the Colonel Count rather hastily stepping up to be ready, in case of need, to step between them. But no. “Very amusing, Doctor,” said Mr. Mudge. He bowed and said a few courteous words to the host. Then he left. Leaving with him, her own face as though carved in ice, was the Sovereign Princess Olga
Helena. Not icy, but perhaps rather confused, was the face of her daughter, the Highlady Charlotte, own cousin to Eszterhazy’s own cousin. Had she, too, believed? Well, it were better she should now doubt. That there were sincere people in the ranks of the spiritualists, the doctor did not doubt. That some were not alone sincere, but, also, even, good, he was prepared to admit. But Mr. Mudge was something else, and if indeed he were sincere, it was in the sincerity of evil.

  * * *

  It made of course no difference to the chemistry of Glauber’s Salts what name was given them or who had first discovered them. But it was a hobby-horse of Eszterhazy’s, one which he so far trusted himself never to ride along the nearer paths which lead to lunacy, that the pursuit of inorganic cathartics marked the real watershed between alchemy and chemistry. The ‘philosopher’ who, turning away from the glorious dreams of transmuting dross to gold, sought instead a means of moving the sluggish bowels of the mass of mankind and womankind, had taken his head out of the clouds and brought it very close to the earth indeed. Quaere: How did the dates of Ezekkiel Yahnosh compare with those of Johann Glauber? Responsum: Go and look them up. That the figures in the common books were unreliable, E. E. knew very well. He had also known (he now recalled) that there was a memorial to the great seventeenth-century Scythian savant somewhere in the back of the Great Central Reformed Tabernacle, commonly called the Calvinchurch, from the days when it—or its predecessor—was the only one of that faith in Bella.

  Q.: Why might he not go right now and copy it? R.: Why not?—unless it were closed this hour on Sunday night. But this caveat little recked with the zeal of Predicant Prush, even now ascending into the pulpit, as Eszterhazy tried to collect his information as unobtrusively as possible from the marble plaque set in the wall. “My text, dear and beloved trustworthy brothers and sisters,” boomed the Preacher from beneath the sounding-board, “is Jeremiah, V, 6. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: everyone that goeth out shall be torn to pieces: because their transgressions are many, and their backslidings are increased. Miserable sinners, there is nevertheless hope in repentance!” cried out the Predicant in a plenitude of Christian comfort. And went on to demonstrate that the animals mentioned in the text were types, which is to say, foreshadowings, with the lion signifying the Church of Rome, the wolf implying Luther; and the leopard, recalcitrant paganism. As for transgressions and backsliding, Dr. Prush gave them quite a number for exempla, ranging from Immodest Attire to Neglect Of Paying Tithes. “Woe! Woe!” he cried, smiting the lectern.