The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Ronnie didn’t make me no promises, kiddies. Best she could do was shrug and tell me this story about a horse. This guy was going to get his head cut off by some old-timy king, y’see, so he pipes up and tells the king that if he’s given a year, he’ll teach the king’s horse to talk. The king likes this idea, for some reason, maybe he’s a Mister Ed fan, I dunno, but he gives the guy a year. And the guy’s friends say, hey, what is this, you can’t get no horse to talk. So the guy says, well, I got a year now, that’s a long time, all kinds of things could happen. Maybe the king will die. Maybe I’ll die. Maybe the horse will die. Or maybe the horse will talk.

  I’m too damn drunk, I am, I am, and my head’s full of geeks and talking horses and falling dominoes and unrequited love, and all of a sudden I got to see her. I set down the bottle, oh so carefully, even though it’s empty, don’t want no broken glass on geek row, and I wheel myself out into the corridor, going slow, I’m not too coordinated right now. The guard is at the end of the hall, looking wistful. I know him a little bit. Security guy, big black fellow, name of Dex. “Hey, Dex,” I say as I come wheeling up, “screw this shit, let’s us go party, I want to see li’l Ronnie.” He just looks at me, shakes his head. “C’mon,” I say. I bat my baby blues at him. Does he let me by? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Hell no, old Dex says, “I got my orders; you stay right here.” All of a sudden I’m mad as hell, this ain’t fair, I want to see Ronnie. I gather up all my strength and try to wheel right by him. No cigar; Dex turns, blocks my way, grabs the wheelchair and pushes. I go backward fast, spin around when a wheel jams, flip over and out of the chair. It hurts. Goddamn it hurts. If I had a nose, I woulda bloodied it, I bet. “You stay where you are, you fucking freak,” Dex tells me. I start to cry, damn him anyhow, and he watches me as I get my chair upright and pull myself into it. I sit there staring at him. He stands there staring at me. “Please,” I say finally. He shakes his head. “Go get her then,” I say. “Tell her I want to see her.” Dex grins. “She’s busy,” he tells me. “Her and Major Salazar. She don’t want to see you.”

  I stare at him some more. A real withering, intimidating stare. He doesn’t wither or look intimidated. It can’t be, can it? Her and the Maje? Her and old Sally Greenface? No way, he’s not her type, she’s got better taste than that, I know she has. Say it ain’t so, Joe. I turn around, start back to my cubicle. Dex looks away. Heigh-ho, fooled him.

  Creeper’s room is the one beyond mine, the last one at the end of the hall. Everything’s just like he left it. I turn on the set, play with the damn switches, trying to figure out how it works. My mind isn’t at its sharpest right at this particular minute, it takes me a while, but finally I get it, and I jump from scene to scene down in the Cracker Box, savoring all these little vignettes of life in these United States as served up by Creeper’s clever ghost. Each scene has its own individual charm. There’s a gang bang going on in the commissary; right on top of one of the tables where Ronnie and I used to play chess. Two huge security men are fighting in the airlock area; they’ve been at it a long time, their faces are so bloody I can’t tell who the hell they are, but they keep at it, staggering at each other blindly, swinging huge, awkward fists, grunting, while a few others stand around and egg them on. Slim and Rafe are sharing a joint, leaning up against my coffin. Slim thinks they ought to rip out all the wires, fuck up everything so I can’t go timeriding. Rafe thinks it’d be easier to just bash my head in. Somehow I don’t think he loves me no more. Maybe I’ll cross him off my Christmas list. Fortunately for the geek, both of them are too stoned and screwed up to do anything at all. I watch a half-dozen other scenes, and finally, a little reluctantly, I go to Ronnie’s room, where I watch her screwing Major Salazar.

  Heigh-ho, as Creeper would say, what’d you expect, really?

  I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more. She walks in beauty like the night. But she’s not so pretty, not really, back in 1808 there are lovelier women, and Bengt’s just the man to land ’em, too, although Jägerhorn probably does even better. My Veronica’s just the queen bee of a corrupt, poisoned hive, that’s all. They’re done now. They’re talking. Or rather the Maje is talking, bless his soul, he’s into his ice-cream litany, he’s just been making love to Ronnie and now he’s lying there in bed talking about Sveaborg, damn him. “… only a thirty percent chance that the massacre will take place,” he’s saying, “the fortress is very strong, formidably strong, but the Russians have the numbers, and if they do bring up sufficient reinforcements, Cronstedt’s fears may prove to be substantial. But even that will work out. The assassination, well, the rules will be suspended, they’ll slaughter everyone inside, but Sveaborg will become a sort of Swedish Alamo, and the branching paths ought to come together again. Good probability. The end results will be the same.” Ronnie isn’t listening to him, though; there’s a look on her face I’ve never seen, drunken, hungry, scared, and now she’s moving lower on him and doing something I’ve seen only in my fantasies, and now I don’t want to watch anymore, no, oh no, no, oh no.

  * * *

  General Suchtelen had established his command post on the outskirts of Helsinki, another clever ploy. When Sveaborg turned its cannon on him, every third shot told upon the city the fortress was supposed to protect, until Cronstedt finally ordered the firing stopped. Suchtelen took advantage of that concession as he had all the rest. His apartments were large and comfortable; from his windows, across the white expanse of ice and snow, the gray form of Sveaborg loomed large. Anttonen stared at it morosely as he waited in the anteroom with Cronstedt’s other courier and the Russians who had escorted them. Finally the inner doors opened and the dark Russian captain emerged. “The general will see you now,” he said.

  General Suchtelen sat behind a wide, wooden desk. An aide stood by his right arm. A guard was posted at the door, and the captain entered with the Swedish couriers. On the broad, bare expanse of the desk was an inkwell, a blotter, and two signed safe conducts, the passes that would take them through the Russian lines to Stockholm and the Swedish king, one by the southern and the other by the northern route. Suchtelen said something, in Russian; the aide provided a translation. Horses had been provided, and fresh mounts would be available for them along the way; orders had been given. Anttonen listened to the discussion with a curiously empty feeling and a vague sense of disorientation. Suchtelen was going to let them go. Why did that surprise him? Those were the terms of the agreement, after all, those were the conditions of the truce. As the translator droned on, Anttonen felt increasingly lost and listless. He had conspired to get himself here, the voices had told him to and now here he was, and he did not know why, nor did he know what he was to do. They handed him one of the safe conducts, placed it in his outstretched hand. Perhaps it was the touch of the paper; perhaps it was something else. A sudden red rage filled him, an anger so fierce and blind and all-consuming that for an instant the world seemed to flicker and vanish and he was somewhere else, seeing naked bodies twining in a room whose walls were made of pale-green blocks. And then he was back, the rage still hot within him, but cooling now, cooling quickly. They were staring at him, all of them. With a sudden start, Anttonen realized he had let the safe conduct fall to the floor, that his hand had gone to the hilt of his sword instead, and the blade was now half-drawn, the metal shining dully in the sunlight that streamed through Suchtelen’s window. Had they acted more quickly, they might have stopped him, but he had caught them all by surprise. Suchtelen began to rise from his chair, moving as if in slow motion. Slow motion, Bengt wondered briefly, what was that? But he knew, he knew. They sword was all the way out now. He heard the captain shout something behind him, the aide began to go for his pistol, but Quick Draw McGraw he wasn’t, Bengt had the drop on them all, heigh-ho. He grinned, spun the sword in his hand, and offered it, hilt first, to General Suchtelen.

  “My sword, sir, and Colonel Jägerhorn’s compliments,” Bengt Anttonen heard himself say with something approaching a
we. “The fortress is in your grasp. Colonel Jägerhorn suggests that you hold up our passage. I concur. Detain us here, and you are certain of victory. Let us go, and who knows what chance misfortune might occur to bring the Swedish fleet? It is a long time until the third of May. In such a time, the king might die, or the horse might die, or you or I might die. Or the horse might talk.”

  The translator put away his pistol and began to translate. Bengt Anttonen found himself possessed of an eloquence that even his good friend Jägerhorn might envy. He spoke on and on. He had one moment of strange weakness, when his stomach churned and his head swam, but somehow he knew it was nothing to be alarmed at, it was just the pills taking effect, it was just a monster dying far away in a metal coffin full of night, and then there were none, heigh-ho, one seige was ending and another would go on and on, and what did it matter to Bengt, the world was a big, crisp, jeweled oyster. He thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and what the hell, maybe he’d save their asses after all, if he happened to feel like it, but he’d do it his way.

  After a time, Suchtelen, nodding, reached out and accepted the proffered sword.

  * * *

  Colonel Bengt Anttonen reached Stockholm on the third of May, in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Eight, with a message for Gustavus IV Adolphus, King of Sweden. On the same date, Sveaborg, impregnable Sveaborg, Gibraltar of the North, surrendered to the inferior Russian forces.

  At the conclusion of hostilites, Colonel Anttonen resigned his commission in the Swedish army and became an emigré, first to England and later to America. He took up residence in New York City, where he married, fathered nine children, and became a well-known and influential journalist, widely respected for his canny ability to sense coming trends. When events proved him wrong, as happened infrequently, Anttonen was always surprised. He was a founder of the Republican Party, and his writings were instrumental in the election of John Charles Fremont to the presidency in 1856.

  In 1857, a year before his death, Anttonen played Paul Morphy in a New York chess tournament and lost a celebrated game. Afterward, his only comment was, “I could have beat him at dominoes,” a phrase that Morphy’s biographers are fond of quoting.

  HOWARD WALDROP

  Flying Saucer Rock and Roll

  Born in Huston, Mississippi, Waldrop now lives in Austin, Texas, where (along with Bruce Sterling, Leigh Kennedy, Lewis Shiner, and others) he is a member of the well-known Turkey City Writers Workshop. He has sold short fiction to markets as diverse as Omni, Analog, Playboy, Universe, Crawdaddy, New Dimensions, Shayol, and Zoo World. His story “The Ugly Chickens” won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award in 1981. His first solo novel, Them Bones, was published in 1984 as part of the new Ace Specials line. Upcoming is a collection of his short fiction, from Doubleday. His story “Man-Mountain Gentian” was in our First Annual Collection.

  Like R. A. Lafferty, Waldrop is known for his strong, shaggy humor, offbeat erudition, and bizarre fictional juxtapositions. In the past, he has given us a first-rate SF story about dodos (“The Ugly Chickens”), a tale set in an alternate world where Eisenhower and Patton are famous jazz musicians and Elvis Presley is a state senator (“Ike at the Mike”), a story in which the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy travel back in time to attempt to prevent the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly (“Save A Place in the Lifeboat for Me”), and a stylish and meticulously-researched fantasy in which Izaak Walton goes fishing in the Slough of Despond with John Bunyan (“God’s Hooks”).

  Here he brings together flying saucers and a rock and roll band—with some rather startling results.

  FLYING SAUCER ROCK & ROLL

  Howard Waldrop

  They could have been contenders.

  Talk about Danny and the Juniors, talk about the Spaniels, the Contours, Sonny Till and the Orioles. They made it to the big time: records, tours, sock hops at $500 a night. Fame and glory.

  But you never heard of the Kool-Tones, because they achieved their apotheosis and their apocalypse on the same night, and then they broke up. Some still talk about that night, but so much happened, the Kool-Tones get lost in the shuffle. And who’s going to believe a bunch of kids, anyway? The cops didn’t and their parents didn’t. It was only two years after the President had been shot in Dallas, and people were still scared. This, then, is the Kool-Tones’ story:

  Leroy was smoking a cigar through a hole he’d cut in a pair of thick, red wax lips. Slim and Zoot were tooting away on Wowee whistles. It was a week after Halloween, and their pockets were still full of trick-or-treat candy they’d muscled off little kids in the projects. Ray, slim and nervous, was hanging back. “We shouldn’t be here, you know? I mean, this ain’t the Hellbenders’ territory, you know? I don’t know whose it is, but, like, Vinnie and the guys don’t come this far.” He looked around.

  Zoot, who was white and had the beginnings of a mustache, took the yellow wax-candy kazoo from his mouth. He bit off and chewed up the big C pipe. “I mean, if you’re scared, Ray, you can go back home, you know?”

  “Nah!” said Leroy. “We need Ray for the middle parts.” Leroy was twelve years old and about four feet tall. He was finishing his fourth cigar of the day. He looked like a small Stymie Beard from the old Our Gang comedies.

  He still wore the cut-down coat he’d taken with him when he’d escaped from his foster home.

  He was staying with his sister and her boyfriend. In each of his coat pockets he had a bottle: one Coke and one bourbon.

  “We’ll be all right,” said Cornelius, who was big as a house and almost eighteen. He was shaped like a big ebony golf tee, narrow legs and waist blooming out to an A-bomb mushroom of arms and chest. He was a yard wide at the shoulders. He looked like he was always wearing football pads.

  “That’s right,” said Leroy, taking out the wax lips and wedging the cigar back into the hole in them. “I mean, the kid who found this place didn’t say anything about it being somebody’s spot, man.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ray.

  They looked up. A small spot of light moved slowly across the sky. It was barely visible, along with a few stars, in the lights from the city.

  “Maybe it’s one of them UFOs you’re always talking about, Leroy,” said Zoot.

  “Flying saucer, my left ball,” said Cornelius. “That’s Telstar. You ought to read the papers.”

  “Like your mama makes you?” asked Slim.

  “Aww…,” said Cornelius.

  They walked on through the alleys and the dark streets. They all walked like a man.

  * * *

  “This place is Oz,” said Leroy.

  “Hey!” yelled Ray, and his voice filled the area, echoed back and forth in the darkness, rose in volume, died away.

  “Wow.”

  They were on what had been the loading dock of an old freight and storage company. It must have been closed sometime during the Korean War or maybe in the unimaginable eons before World War II. The building took up most of the block, but the loading area on the back was sunken and surrounded by the stone wall they had climbed. If you stood with your back against the one good loading door, the place was a natural amphitheater.

  Leroy chugged some Coke, then poured bourbon into the half-empty bottle. They all took a drink, except Cornelius, whose mother was a Foursquare Baptist and could smell liquor on his breath three blocks away.

  Cornelius drank only when he was away from home two or three days.

  “Okay, Kool-Tones,” said Leroy. “Let’s hit some notes.”

  They stood in front of the door, Leroy to the fore, the others behind him in a semicircle: Cornelius, Ray, Slim, and Zoot.

  “One, two, three,” said Leroy quietly, his face toward the bright city beyond the surrounding buildings.

  He had seen all the movies with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers in them and knew the moves backwards. He jumped in the air and came down, and Cornelius hit it: “Bah-doo, bah-doo, ba-doo—uhh.”

 
It was a bass from the bottom of the ocean, from the Marianas Trench, a voice from Death Valley on a wet night, so far below sea level you could feel the absence of light in your mind. And then Zoot and Ray came in: “Ooh-oooh, ooh-oooh,” with Leroy humming under, and then Slim stepped out and began the lead tenor part of “Sincerely,” by the Crows. And they went through that one perfectly, flawlessly, the dark night and the dock walls throwing their voices out to the whole breathing city.

  “Wow,” said Ray, when they finished, but Leroy held up his hand, and Zoot leaned forward and took a deep breath and sang: “Dee-dee-woo-oo, dee-eee-wooo-oo, dee-uhmm-doo-way.”

  And Ray and Slim chanted: “A-weem-wayyy, a-weem-wayyy.”

  And then Leroy, who had a falsetto that could take hair off an opossum, hit the high notes from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and it was even better than the first song, and not even the Tokens on their number-two hit had ever sounded greater.

  Then they started clapping their hands, and at every clap the city seemed to jump with expectation, joining in their dance, and they went through a shaky-legged Skyliners-type routine and into: “Hey-ahh-stuh-huh, hey-ahh-stuh-uhh,” of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay,” and when Leroy soared his “Hoh-wahh-yuh?” over Zoot’s singing, they all thought they would die.