The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016

by Paula Guran

I did the old man first. I’m ashamed to admit that I was a bit cavalier about going in. I’ve found you can modulate—is that the word?—the level of discomfort you cause when you look through the side of someone’s head; on this occasion, I didn’t bother too much. The memories I wanted were easy enough to find—half of the things he’d found out about me weren’t even true. I bundled them up, wiped the memory of the pain, and got out fast. Same for his son. Then I did the clerk. Then out again. By this time I was feeling shattered, sweat running down my face and inside my shirt, as though I’d just run up a steep hill with a hay bale hanging from each hand.

  “He’s telling the truth,” I said. “He never stole from you, and he hasn’t got your money.”

  The old man opened his mouth, then closed it again. The young man called me a liar and various other things; his father sighed and told him to be quiet.

  The clerk’s head had rolled forward onto his chest; he was asleep. “You’d better untie him and dump him in an alley somewhere,” I went on. “I’ve taken away all his memories of what you’ve done to him, he’ll wake up and have no idea how he got in this state, it’ll save you having to kill him.” I smiled. “Now, then,” I said, “I don’t think we discussed my fee. The usual rate?”

  The old man gave me a puzzled look, then wrote out a draft for three hundred angels. I didn’t argue. “Well,” I said, “it’s been a pleasure working for you, but as I told your son, I’m retired now, so we won’t be seeing each other again. Rest assured you can rely on my discretion. Don’t bother giving me a lift, I can walk.”

  I got out of there as quickly as I could, and headed straight for the Sword of Justice, simply because it was nearest and I badly needed a drink. So badly, in fact, that I stuck to black tea with honey and pepper, because some things you need you shouldn’t always get. I was sipping it when a man I used to know came up and told me they’d got a game going out back, if I was interested.

  I looked at him and grinned. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m broke. Look at me,” I added.

  He did so, noting the farm clothes and the worn-out boots. “Screw you, then,” he replied pleasantly, and left me in peace.

  How was it, I hear you ask, that I came to develop my unique talent and establish a career as the Empire’s leading consulting memory engineer?

  It’s a classic success story. There I was, an ignorant farm boy on the run from the law, turning up in the big city with nothing but the rags on his back and a dream of a better life. An early but significant demonstration of my powers came about when hunger drove me to the back door of the old Industry and Enterprise in Sheep Street—remember it? It’s gone now, of course, pulled down to make space for the new cattle pens. The door was open, and I could see through into the kitchen, where they were roasting chickens on a spit. There didn’t seem to be anybody about, so I nipped in and helped myself.

  I was cheerfully stuffing my face when the landlord loomed up out of the shadows and kicked me halfway across the room. Then he picked up a cleaver. I swear it was instinct; I stared right through his skull, picked out the sight of me tiptoeing in and grabbing a chicken, and darted back out again. There was the landlord, cleaver in hand, puzzled frown on face. Who the hell are you? he asked me. Got any work? I answered. No, get lost. I nodded (I’d stuck the chicken down the front of my shirt) and headed back into the street as fast as I could go.

  For someone who’d had to work for his living, this episode was a revelation to me; a flawless modus operandi, fully formed and perfected, like suddenly waking up one morning to find that you’d learned the silversmith’s trade overnight, in a dream. I refined it a bit, of course. I know, they say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but I modified the original pattern to leave out the getting-kicked-across-the-room stage, and in the event it worked just as well without it. Instead, I’d go into teashops when there were no other customers, eat and drink as much as I liked, then cause the owner to forget me completely. Same with dosshouse-keepers and landladies of furnished accommodation: as soon as they asked me for rent, they’d never seen me before in their lives. I got into a few scrapes, it’s true, but that’s all done and forgotten about now. In due course, I refined my business model and started getting jobs that actually paid money; eventually, lots of money, which somehow never stayed with me very long, but that’s not the point. I was a success. I made something of myself, and there’s not many men from my background who can say that.

  So why, I hear you ask, did I turn my back on all that, a lifetime of achievement, not to mention the money, in order to go scurrying back to my grubby roots and relapse into peasant farming?

  Actually, I should think that was obvious. I was terrified. Ever since I’d done that job on the girl who was raped, I knew something was terribly wrong. I’d tried to figure out what had happened, couldn’t—no matter. I’m not a scholar or a scientist, just an honest artisan practicing his trade. But when the trade gets dangerous and not worth the risk, I stop. Simple: if I don’t go back there, it can’t hurt me. And I was horribly sure that if I did go back, I’d get hurt.

  I could remember it all perfectly; the skinny girl, standing next to me. She had a long, thin nose, and no lobes to her ears. She was staring at me—not eye to eye, she was gazing at the side of my head. Get out of it, I shouted at her—I mouthed the words but could make no sound. Stop doing that. Get out of my mind. She turned her head and looked at me, frowning, as if I were a spelling mistake. She said something, but I couldn’t hear it. Her lips were thin and practically colorless, and I couldn’t read them. It’s for your own good, you stupid girl, I tried to tell her. She couldn’t understand me. She reached for the scroll in my hand, but I pulled it away. I could feel her looking through the wall of my skull. It hurt like hell. I yelled, and got out quick—

  So what’s the chance, I kept asking myself, that there’s someone else out there with the same knack or talent I’ve got; a skinny girl, nobody really, but she can see through the walls of skulls into the library inside? Except that wasn’t what I’d encountered, was it? I met her inside her own head, conscious of me; she’d tried to get at my memories, but I’d been too quick for her and got away before she could break in. Conclusion: she could do what I can do, but there was more to it than that. She was aware of me gatecrashing her mind; she was actually there, in person, and nearly managed to snatch the scroll out of my hand.

  And still only young, twenty or so; not much older than I was when I started. Give her a few years to come to terms with her ability and put on a bit of mental muscle—what other tricks could she do, I wondered? What sort of monster had I blundered into?

  I owed her a drink, of course. If it hadn’t been for the scare she’d put into me, I’d never have found the strength to quit the job and get out of the City. That change was definitely an improvement, no question at all about it.

  I cashed the old man’s draft and got them to write a letter of credit to the Social and Beneficent; another couple of hundred couldn’t do any harm, after all, even if I was highly unlikely ever to need it. Then I caught the carrier’s cart to my village and walked the rest of the way. It had been raining, and the wet grass soaked my trousers up to the knees. I walked past the ruin—they’d roofed it over with wooden shingles, over which I’d specified a single continuous sheet of burnished copper, but they hadn’t got round to that yet. I peered at it from a distance, too far away to make out what the builders’ men were saying, and cut through the woods to get home. The smell of the wet grass was wonderful. It was nearly dark by then. The back door was slightly ajar, just as I’d left it. I went inside and groped for the lamp and the tinderbox. I was just about to wind the tinderbox handle when light filled the room.

  Two of them; I can picture them to this day—one lifting the shutter of a dark lantern, the other rising gracefully to his feet and leveling the crossbow he’d been cradling on his knees. He was the one who messed it all up, of course, because as he stood up he got between his target and the light, giving me plent
y of time to back out and slam the door in his face; I felt it quiver as the bolt hit it. I was almost as stupid as he was. I wasted a good second looking round for something to wedge the door with, instead of legging it straightaway into the friendly, conspiratorial dark. But I got smart as soon as I felt his weight slam against the door; I let go, allowing him to sprawl out and trip over his feet, while I scampered across the yard toward the hay barn. The only reason I went that way was a vague memory of where I’d left a hayfork, which was the only weapon I had that wasn’t in the house.

  The trouble with a vague memory is it doesn’t help you find things in the pitch dark. Furthermore, while I was groping about in the hay, I trod on that damned loose floorboard, the one that creaks like a soul in torment. The sound carried wonderfully in the still night air. I froze. Not tactics, terror. Then I heard the scrape of a hobnail on the slate lintel.

  It reminded me of a night, many years earlier, when I’d crept through a dark garden towards the wall of a house and looked up at a narrow window. The architect who built that house had no daughters, or he wouldn’t have allowed the window of the best east-facing bedroom, looking out over the rose garden, to be so easily accessible by drainpipe.

  I was quite athletic in those days, but just as clumsy as I am now. The heel of my boot dragged on the stone windowsill, making a noise that sounded like morning shift in the slate quarries. I froze and counted to twenty; her mother’s maid slept in the next room, and was no friend of mine. But twenty came and went, no banging doors or raised voices. I hauled myself over the sill and got my feet down on a good, discreet Vesani rug.

  But something was wrong. She should have been there. I was alone in someone else’s house. Suddenly, I felt like a burglar.

  Fortuitously, I knew about burglary, thanks to a paying customer. I knew how to walk quietly, and what to watch out for. I crept through the dressing room into her bedroom. It was dark. I knew its geography, of course. I have a blind man’s memories of how to navigate in the dark. I found the bed, and my fingertips told me it was made up. I stood there, feeling incredibly stupid. Then the door opened, and the light almost blinded me.

  I should explain that I’d been away for nearly six months, for my health. I hadn’t dared write, and all the time I was away I’d been out of my mind with worry. The first thing I did when I got back was leave the agreed sign—a hand-and-flower, chalked on the foot of the sundial at the end of the rose garden; when I came back the next night, her countersign was there, with two crosses, meaning in two days’ time. So she was still there, still wanted to see me, but her room was empty.

  Framed in the light was a man I knew only too well, though we’d never met face to face or spoken to each other. At that time, her father was a senator and a wealthy merchant, doing extremely well in the cotton and linen business; this was several years before the crash came and it turned out that the only money he had was what he’d embezzled from Party funds. He was a big man, bald, with the arms and shoulders of a country blacksmith, and his attitude towards me, as far as I could gather, was basically agnostic; he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that I existed, but he had lurking suspicions. He was alone, but all that signified was a sensible disinclination to share the next few minutes with any witnesses.

  I’d already turned to run for it, but he said, “No, wait,” and there was something in the way he said it—not anger, just sadness. I stayed where I was and he came up close and held the lamp so he could see my face. “You’re shorter than I expected,” he said.

  “Where is she?”

  For a moment I thought he was going to go for me. The little, isolated part of my mind that arranges tactical details was busy taking note of the fact that he was holding the lamp in his right hand and his left hand was empty; no weapon, so either he was unarmed or he’d have to shift the lamp to his left to draw; or if he planned on killing me with his bare hands, he’d have to lead with his left, and his feet were all wrong for that, unless he was a natural southpaw—But then he shook his head, and the look on his face made me go cold. “She’s dead,” he said.

  It’s so easy to say: in that moment, I died. Grand overstatement. Melodrama. I wish I had the words, but I don’t.

  He went on: “There was a problem with the pregnancy. It was blood poisoning.”

  All I could do was repeat: “Pregnancy.”

  He made this noise. It was a big, cold laugh. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I—” I ran out of words and just stood there.

  “Ah.” He nodded slightly. “Interesting. She assumed you’d guessed and run out on her because of it. Well, it killed her. It took a long time. They gave her poppy extract, but the pain was—” He stopped and shrugged. “You killed my daughter.”

  This tactical part of my mind—I wonder, do other people have the same thing, or is it just me? If it’s just me, is it somehow connected with the special thing I do? I’ve often wondered. In any event, at that moment it was busy again. It was telling me: his wife, her mother, died five years ago, and he has no close family; I could wipe her out of his memory and spare him the pain, it was the least I could do. But that wouldn’t work. He was a man in public office, with about a million acquaintances, all of them properly sympathetic. It wouldn’t really help matters if I got him a reputation for having been driven insane by grief.

  “I was going to kill you,” he said. He was looking straight at me, the way an arrow looks at a target. “But I think I’ll let you live. It’d be crueller.”

  He was right about that. Being dead is bad enough. Being dead and still having to walk around and eat is so much worse.

  Hence the sudden and immediate twist of pain when I heard that nail-on-stone noise. No bad thing, really; it prevented me from ignoring the sound or mistaking it for something else. Saved my life, actually. Now there’s irony.

  My tactical planner was giving me instructions; get down, keep still, make yourself small. I had no weapon and chances were the owner of the hobnailed boot was a much better fighter than me, but I had the advantage of the dark; I knew where he was, but he didn’t know where I was. He was, of course, between me and the door. I’ve been in worse situations.

  Then I had a stroke of luck. He uncovered his dark lantern. He saw me and I saw him.

  I went in through the side of his head like a slingstone. As I’d assumed, the old man had sent him; my reluctance and intention to retire had made me an unacceptable risk, no longer outweighed by my potential usefulness. Fine. I wiped that; then, in an excess of spite of which I am not proud, I wiped a whole lot more—his name, most of his past, more or less everything in easy reach. When I came out of his head, he was standing there looking stupid. There was a hay rake leaning up against the wall. I grabbed it and broke it over his head. I felt sorry for him, and ashamed of myself.

  He’d dropped the lantern, but it hadn’t gone out; a lit lantern on the floor of a hay barn is nobody’s friend. I grabbed it, and then it did go out. I went to the door and threw it away. One down.

  I stood in the doorway and tried to be sensible. Defeating one hired man wasn’t victory in any meaningful sense. If the old man had decided it was time for me to die, I could defeat a thousand of his foot soldiers in tense little duels and still be no safer. My own stupid fault. By buying a house and putting down roots, I’d made myself an easy target—one of the very few stupid things I’d never done before. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a secret part of me that won’t be satisfied until I’ve completed the set.

  Time to go. As I walked quietly up to the road, I cursed myself for cashing that two-hundred-angel draft. It’d be suicide to go anywhere near the Social and Beneficent, or even to write a draft; they’d track me down and that’d be that. My only hope lay in anonymity and distance.

  I started walking. About a week later, I stopped and asked where I was. They looked at me as if I were crazy and said, Scheria. Just my luck.

  Don’t get me wrong. There are worse places than Scheria. Four of them,
at least.

  I never had the time or the energy to learn a musical instrument; but I had the unhappy privilege of attending the great Clamanzi in his last illness, which was horribly exacerbated by memories of how badly he’d treated his wife. The poor man only had days to live, and it was certain he’d never play the flute again. It wasn’t really stealing, more a case of rescuing a glorious thing and keeping it safe.

  Partly out of respect, I’d never even picked up a flute since that day; but it was all there, in my head. My tactical adviser suggested that the old man’s people wouldn’t be looking for a traveling musician. And, whatever their other faults as a nation, the Scherians are fond of music.

  I’m ashamed to say, I stole the flute. I heard its music as I was walking down a village street. Pretty tune, I thought; then it stopped, and maybe its beauty reminded me of Clamanzi, I don’t know. I waited; it started again, and I traced it to a house in the corner of a little square. I went away and came back after dark. The blind man I mentioned just now helped me find the flute—it had been left lying around on the kitchen table, some people are just so careless. My flute now.

  To practice, I walked up into the hills. As well as the flute, I’d found a new loaf on that kitchen table, and there are plenty of sweet-water springs draining off the peat. I allowed myself three days to learn the flute. Took me about half an hour, in the event. The rest of the time I took to eat that loaf, I just enjoyed myself, playing music.

  I say myself; I can’t really claim any credit. I’m the first to admit I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. So please don’t make the mistake of thinking that listening to me was like listening to Clamanzi. I had the fingering, the breath control, the education, the technique—but no passion, no soul. Correction: I had my soul, which is a pretty inferior example of the type and certainly not something you’d want to listen to. No angel; I think we’ve established that. But I could pipe a tune, as well as most and better than some, and a piper can always earn a few stuivers in Scheria. Not that there’s much in those parts you’d want to spend it on.