Year's Best SF 10, page 37
Still bearing the banner Martha Custis had given him, Washington climbed in front of Apollo Leven’s wings. The eagle took a single bound and streaked over the great river.
Yet fast as they were, the monster strode far ahead. It steadily approached the gates of York, dwarfing the city’s gleaming spires. Washington was still some distance behind it as it raised its mace, preparing to sweep the city away.
In desperation, General lifted Valleyforge and tied the banner to its pommel. As he let it fly, the weapon streaked toward the giant, the flag streaming behind, and as it flew it grew, powered by the flag’s enchantment. It struck Britannia full in the back, and the monster writhed away, stumbling as it went, its massive feet missing the gates of York.
In its frenzy, it thrashed into the water. Most of its lower body was stone, and it moved with awkward, hesitant jerks. Crossing the bay, it pulled itself onto a massive rock rising out of the harbor. By the time it reached the top, its waist had turned to stone, leaving it unable to move its legs. Gradually the effect crept up its body. It raised its enormous mace in defiance and turned its face toward the sea, looking for its home across the waters.
Washington’s axe, returned to its former size, fell from the giant’s back and clattered down the rocks.
With the giant and the wizard destroyed, the Red Army, thinking the fireworks the beginning of an enormous assault, fled in terror. Washington returned to his men and led them back into the city in triumph, the whole company singing When General comes marching home again. Washington was declared a great hero and some wanted to make him king, but he refused, remembering Custard’s words of a new office of president.
He recalled what the Pilgrim had said as well, and saw that America was indeed a land of second chances.
The Gauls retreated from Mexico and Hitler drew his boats back across the sea. But though Washington searched through all of York for many weeks, he found no sign of Martha Custis, nor anyone who knew her. However, he did find his axe with the flag still tied to its pommel, on the shores of the rock where the giant stood.
Afterward, a great Convention was held in honor of Washington’s victory. A tremendous plan was conceived to build an enormous door, gilded with gold, across York harbor, to prevent the Huns from ever attacking again.
There was talk of tearing down the stone titan, but Lafayette had the last word. “Let it rather be a symbol, this vanquished foe. And we will call it Lady Liberty, for with its defeat we have won our freedom.”
Being a poet as well as a warrior, in mockery of the words the wizard had spoken, Lafayette etched the following lines upon the base of the rock where the giant stood:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
The Convention ordered a flame lit atop the statue’s mace, that became a torch burning across the waters, so bright it could be seen from the shores of the Old World. And when the kings and emperors of that shadowy realm looked upon it, they trembled.
Loosestrife
LIZ WILLIAMS
Liz Williams [www.arkady.btinternet.co.uk/] lives in Brighton, England. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Cambridge, and her anti-career ranges from reading tarot cards on Brighton pier to teaching in Central Asia. She has been publishing fantasy and science fiction in Asimov’s, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and The Third Alternative, among others, since the turn of the century, and was coeditor of the anthology Fabulous Brighton. In an SF Site interview, she said: “there are some excellent new people writing in the field [in the UK] at the moment—China [Miéville], Justina [Robson], Neal Asher, John Meaney—and I would like to be regarded as being in that stable.” Her novels are The Ghost Sister, a New York Times Notable Book of 2001—a rare accomplishment for a paperback original; Empire of Bones (2002), nominated, as was the first, for the Philip K. Dick Award 2003; The Poison Master (2002); Nine Layers of Sky (2003); and Banner of Souls (2004). Her first collection, The Banquet of the Lords of Night, is out in 2005.
“Loosestrife” was published in Interzone, the best UK SF magazine, which underwent a transformation and change of owner and editor in 2004. It is set in a post-global-warming, post-catastrophe London. The protagonist is a retarded girl raised in a single room by an insane mother. She now lives alone in a condemned building with a baby, whom she leaves alone sometimes to go out and forage. But things are not what they seem.
She knew that there was something wrong with her baby, because Ellie’s eyes did not follow her as she moved about the room and she had once been told that this was important. Aud crouched over the baby, passing a hand across Ellie’s face.
“Ellie? What’s wrong?”
This time, the baby’s eyes twitched to follow the passage of her hand and Aud breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing wrong, after all, and probably she was just being silly, but she had been told so often that she did not understand things that once she had taken a fact into her head she clung to it. She thought she understood the baby a little better now and as long as it remained just Ellie and herself, no one else, she thought she could cope. Ellie was doing fine, and if she still seemed to eat so little when Aud gave her the bottle, at least she appeared healthy and well. Aud would surely know if a change occurred; she watched Ellie for hours, noticing every movement, every sound.
Picking Ellie up, Aud stepped carefully over the piles of broken plaster and carried her out onto the little concrete balcony.
“Look,” she said. “You can see Big Ben from here. See it? See the big clock? And there’s the Houses of Parliament, where all the rich people go.” She thought that the distant clock face read ten to eight, or perhaps it was twenty to ten. She could never remember which hand meant which, no matter how often she had been told, and it was so easy to lose track of the time. But Ellie, lying quietly in her arms, would never question her; never ask uncomfortable things like “what time is it?” and “what does that say?” and “what is Parliament?” Maybe when Ellie grew up she would be able to answer these things on her own.
“And then you’ll be a help to me, won’t you?” Aud said. She and Ellie watched as one of the boats glided down the Thames, just above the water like a big wing, rising as it came to the barrier. Wealthy tourists came on those boats, Aud’s mum had told her, to see what was left of London. This puzzled Aud, too: surely you couldn’t leave a piece of a city, not like a bit of cabbage that you tried to hide on your plate. When she had asked where the rest of London had gone, her mum said that it was under the water, that it was all to do with the world getting warmer. But to Aud, London always seemed a cold place.
They did not spend a long time looking out of the window, because it was time for Ellie’s nap and Aud had to check that the door was locked. She did this many times a day, worrying in case the gangs came. She could hear them at night, running around the bottom of the flats and she was sure that they got into the lift shaft, even though the lift hadn’t been working for years. Sometimes, when she went to the food charity or to collect her money, there was a sharp smell in the hallway. It did not smell like anything natural, but as though someone had been burning something. It made Aud nervous and so she did not want to be seen going in and out of the flat. She made sure that the steel door was locked every time. She always tried to take a different way to get her money, too, even though it meant leaving Ellie alone for longer. Sometimes, she got lost, and that was worst of all.
“Where’s Highstone Road?” she would ask some passerby, who always looked as though they had more important places to go. And once someone had snapped, “You’re standing in it. Can’t you read?”
“No,” Aud said, and the man just stared at her before walking away. She felt stupid, then, but it was true. How was she to know how to read, when her mum had never put her in school, keeping her up night after night for company. Later, when she had signed on with the Deserving Poor board, they had tried to teach her, but it was only a short course and the letters just hadn’t seemed to stick. She couldn’t tell half of them apart, no matter how hard she tried.
“You can’t help it,” Danny had told her, when she said that she wasn’t going back. “You’re just a bit thick, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I know,” Aud said sadly, but there wasn’t anything either of them could do about it. And Danny seemed to know this, too, because he helped her so much: taking the Council seal off the flat and turning the steel slab into a proper door that you could lock, and bringing her veg from the allotments. Sometimes, now that he was back from Ireland, he even offered to look after Ellie, but Aud always said no. She thought it was kind of him, but she didn’t feel that it was right. Ellie was her daughter, not his. She did not like anyone even to hold Ellie, and she would not let Danny get too close.
“At least now you’ve got the baby, you’ll get more money,” Danny said. “And you’re 18, aren’t you? That should qualify you for extra benefits.”
“I suppose so.” Aud was doubtful.
“Oh, come on. You’re Deserving Poor, they had you checked, didn’t they? Not like me,” and Danny laughed, sitting in the ragged-sleeved sweater, head shaved and the code clearly visible just above the nape of his heck. “Undeserving, that’s what they said I was. Not that I expected anything else, mind. You’re lucky you’re not too bright, really.”
His gaze fell on Ellie and Aud could tell that he was wondering about the baby again. She had not told him anything about Ellie; it had never seemed the right time, somehow.
He said, hesitantly, “Aud—who’s her dad? Not that I’ve any right to ask, mind. Just wondering. I know she’s not mine—well, obviously she isn’t. But you don’t go out much, and if someone’s been bothering you—I’d have put off going to Ireland, if I’d known.”
“Just someone,” Aud had said. “No one you know.”
“Come on, Aud. You don’t know anyone except me and Gill and the lot down the Social.”
“It was someone I met, all right? Just the once.” And that was all she was saying, Aud thought. She clammed up and wouldn’t look at him, and after a bit more coaxing he gave up and let it rest. But she didn’t want to lie to Danny, and she couldn’t tell him about Ellie. Not yet.
Now, she hurried down the stairwell, trying not to stumble over the piles of rubbish that had blown in through the open doors. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she paused and looked around her. The courtyard was empty apart from a few boys and a dog. Aud liked dogs, but not kids: sometimes they shouted things and she did not always understand what they said. It was never nice, she could tell that. But the boys ignored her and so she slipped between the blocks of flats and took the path that led down along the run-off canal. There was a lock at the top, Danny had told her, which opened if the river got too full and let the water out. Aud wondered where it went; she pictured it running dark and secret under the streets. It was a comforting thought. She passed the old railway bridge which crossed the run-off: it was pretty in summer, with loosestrife and nettles and long grass. She had come here with Danny, before he went to Ireland, and he’d told her which flower was which. Because it was Danny who told her, she had remembered. Now, the plants had died back and there was only bare earth beneath the bridge, but she still liked it.
She counted the paving stones as she walked, careful not to tread on the cracks. It was only a game, she knew; she had played it as a kid, but somewhere along the line it had turned serious, started to be important. She thought it had been when Ellie had come: the world became a different place, when you had a child. You became larger and smaller at the same time. But she was doing better than her mum, she knew that: letting Ellie sleep at night, not waking her up whenever she felt lonely or bored, not shouting at her. All the time: Tell me you love me; tell me you love me. You shouldn’t have to ask that of a child. It should come naturally, but her mum had never been able to let it rest. The Social had been round a few times and Aud had kept quiet. Her mum knew what they wanted to hear, she didn’t tell them anything that mattered and so Aud had stayed, the days not-quite-real, the nights sleepless. She did not know why her mother didn’t sleep like normal people; she’d always been that way, her mum had said. After the visit by the Social, she had overheard her mum talking to Auntie Julie.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Julie said. “You could have sold her off—there’s plenty of them that want one, even if you don’t. Even if she’s a bit defective. People can’t afford to be choosy these days.”
“I’ve been bossed around all my life,” her mum had said, hot and angry. “I just want something I can boss around, now.”
“You’re lucky you could have a kid,” Julie said. “Lots of ’em can’t. Something in the water, my dad said, or genetic modifications, or mad cows. If you ever want to get rid of Aud, you let me know. I know a bloke down the market.”
“I don’t like the idea, all the same,” Aud’s mum had muttered. “What if he sold her to some pervert? Plenty of those around, too. Look at my old man. ‘Keep it in the family,’ he used to say. I’d only sell her, Jule, if she went to a good home. And even then—I don’t know. We’re all right as we are.”
And now Aud was lucky, too, for she had Ellie and lots of richer people couldn’t have babies. She thought of this as she walked along the canal path, and she felt her luck running alongside her, like a dog. She found the DP office without too much trouble, this week.
“Fifty-three euros; here you are. Is it all right like that? Want me to put it in the envelope for you?” The woman at the DP was kind, Aud thought. They weren’t all like that: the one on the end always looked at her as though she was in the wrong office, as though she ought to be registered at the Undeserving side and have no money at all, just what she could scrounge off the streets on a beggars’ license. She plucked up her courage and asked.
“ ’Scuse me,” she said. She’d wanted to know about this ever since Danny had got back from Ireland. “Could you tell me, what’s the rate if you’ve got a baby?”
The woman frowned. “They’d have to be sure it was a genuine claim, love. Otherwise you could lose your registry and go onto the other list—they’re trying to discourage girls from getting pregnant to raise their rate. Because so many babies die, you see, or don’t come to term, and a lot of girls think they can fake it—get a false certificate. It’s not fair, but that’s the way things are, these days.” She gave Aud a sharp, sudden look. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“No,” Aud said, suddenly afraid. “It’s for someone else. A friend asked me.”
“Well, if you have a baby, and they let you keep it, you’d get a hundred euros a week, and some of the charities give maternity benefits, but you’d need to go to them for that.”
“Thanks,” Aud said. She bundled the money into her purse and went out, quickly. She had not told the DP about Ellie. As far as she knew, only Danny knew about the baby and that was the way Aud wanted things to stay.
It was cold out now. Aud’s fingers curled inside the thin gloves as she tried to remember what month it was. November, perhaps, but it was hard to tell because they put the Christmas stuff up so early in the shops. It cheered her up, thinking about Ellie and what to get her for Christmas. It would be Ellie’s first.
She was walking through the posh bit now, the little knot of streets they called the Village. Aud liked it here, but she felt out of place, as though at any moment someone might come up to her and ask her to leave for making the place look untidy. There was a group of girls clustered on the corner, dressed in coats with big fur collars and cuffs, high heels. Their perfume drifted through the air; they smelled expensive. They were gathered around a pram, cooing into it. Aud could not help looking. The baby looked exactly like Ellie, except its eyes were blue.
“He’s so gorgeous,” one of the girls was saying. “You’re so lucky.”
The girl holding the pram gave a small, smug smile. “I wanted a boy, but they’re a bit more difficult than girls.”
“When did you get him?”
The girl holding the pram turned and caught sight of Aud and her face grew thinner, as if she didn’t want a scruffy person near her baby. Aud felt herself grow hot with embarrassment and she hurried away. To cheer herself up, she started thinking about Christmas again and she kept it up all the way back to the flat, but when she got there, she saw that there was a van outside.
It wasn’t like the drugs van, which came every week. It was white, with a logo on the side. Aud could not read what it said, but she thought that the letters were a D and a P: perhaps two Ds, or two Ps. The windows were frosted over; she would not, in any case, have tried to look inside. She wasn’t that stupid. She skirted the van and made her way up the stairs. There was no sign of anyone in the stairwell. Once the door was shut behind her, she felt safer. Ellie was asleep on the blanket. Aud waited, listening. Someone knocked. Aud froze. Then, with relief, she heard Danny say, “Who are you looking for?”
“Do you live here?” A woman’s voice, which Aud did not recognize.
“No.”
“Do you know who does?”
“I came up to see one of my mates. It’s not his place—he’s staying with somebody. I don’t know what their name is.”
“You do know that this block’s been condemned?”
A pause, then Danny said, “Yeah, so what? Where are people supposed to live if they haven’t got any money?”
“Does your friend have a girlfriend?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Aud found herself moving to the bed, stealthily, so that her feet would make no sound on the concrete floor. She picked Ellie up, willing her to be quiet.
“We’d like to have a word, because someone heard a baby crying up here yesterday.”
