Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 26

"If you want to save yourself, you have to do it, Jack. So do it."

"And what about you?"

"You're more his match, Jack. Go."

Slowly I rose from the bed.

We had no weapons on board. Coupon didn't trust them. On legs as nerveless as wood, I stumbled toward the galley for a butcher knife, but then I realized that was where he would go. Since the study was closer to the galley than the master stateroom, he would beat me there. Looking for a weapon, I would only find him there, armed. So I turned and hurried aft and then downward toward the engine room, where surely there would be a heavy tool such as a crowbar.

Then I stopped short. Would he second-guess me and go to the engine room instead of the galley?

For a long moment I stood swaying. The deck was increasingly unsteady as the weather topside grew nastier. It seemed that he was reading my thoughts and countering each impulse. Although I couldn't see him, our knowledge of each other seemed like a long tunnel of mirror images, each image slightly smaller, less precise and askew.

His almost perfect possession of my own mind enraged me. "I am not you!" Ishouted.

Downward I hustled. I burst into the engine room, where I found emergency equipment secured to the wall. I had my choice of a sledgehammer, a fireman's ax and a crowbar. I chose the crowbar.

Back up the ladders I hurried. Coupon was cowering in the galley, no doubt, clutching the butcher knife- A sharp sudden agony pierced my back. Reflexively I wheeled, striking out with the crowbar. Through a haze of pain that reddened my sight, I saw the tip of the crowbar clip the temple of the head identical to mine. The lucky blow stunned him. I raised the crowbar again, but it seemed we both were down. I remember wanting to strike, but I don't remember striking.

Hours later, I rose once again to consciousness. I was face-down in a postoperative sling so all I could see was a communications station moving, while my own body hung unmoved. The screen fired into the image of Cecilia's face.

"Jack," she said. "You're going to be all right."

"I feel fine," I said. "I feel wonderful."

"You're heavily sedated," she said. "The surgery system *had to fuse your left kidney and repair some nerve and muscle damage. It'll take you a few weeks. But you'll be fine."

"Yes. Yes. And..."

"He's gone," she said. "You left quite a mess, but it's been cleaned up. I'm wiping the janitor system's memory now."

"He's... in the ocean?"

"Under the ocean. Chained to ten kilogram free weights."

"Gone."

"Never talk about him again," Cecilia said. "Now, are you up to making the Morita pitch in eight hours?"

"Possibly."

"It would be better. Failing to make the pitch would be suspicious."

"I know. And it's such an important pitch. Let me check how far he got in pulling the pieces together."

"Give me the cryptokey, darling, and I'll help."

"It's nothing you can help me with."

"Yes I can," Cecilia said. "I'm an emulator too."

Her naked statement stunned me. For a long moment, I stared into the image of her eyes, finally beginning to see the truth.

"On whose behalf?" I asked."I don't know," she said. "Either she put me in place because she wanted to escape from him, or he put me here because he killed her. It's a double blind contract. I don't know. I think she's dead. But I'm trained, Jack. I can help you.

Give me the cryptokey, please."

"No," I said.

"Why not? Don't you trust me?"

"Trust you? I don't even know who you are."

"I'm the same as you, Jack. The same. Just a poor girl who didn't want to be useless. You're hurt, darling. Let me help."

Despite my medicated state, I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Having been stabbed in the back hours previously did nothing to raise my confidence in human nature. Strangely, I felt betrayed, because while I had made love to Cecilia as Coupon, this stranger had made love to me as Cecilia.

And why was she telecommunicating? Why wasn't she at my side?

"Where are you?" I asked.

"In the communications center," she said. "I've got to overwrite the memory of fifteen different systems. Some of them are cryptolocked with your code... with Coupon's code, Jack. I've got to have it."

"I'll clean them out later," I said. "There's time."

"You don't trust me!" she wailed.

"No," I said. "But maybe I will later. Give me time."

Cecilia's image stared at me. For a moment she seemed to have frozen.

"All right," she said. "That's fair. Let's just get through this b.l.o.o.d.y presentation."

"There's a lot of work ahead of us," I said.

"I'll help you, Jack."

"I need your help... Cecilia."

"I'm Luiza," she said. "Luiza Johnson."

"Luiza."

"Call me Cecilia, though, Ja-Fred. Cecilia. Otherwise we'll have to keep rewriting over the memories. And someday you might slip in front another person."

"Cecilia."

"Yes, Fred."

"Frederick."

"Of course. Frederick."

We muddled through the presentation. I healed well enough that I was able to attend the necessary meetings inSt. Petersburg. At the first opportunity, however, Cecilia and I escaped in the Sephora. We set course for the lesser Antilles. By the time we anch.o.r.ed off the Ochos Rios recreational complex, Cecilia's and my relationship had taken its new, more loving form. To all the world, it seemed as if Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Coupon had undergone a marital renaissance.

We grew into a good team. Besides her emulator training, Cecilia refused to talk about her past. For my own part, it was difficult to try to explain who or what a Jack Quimby was or once had been. Our work together seemed the most fruitful topic of conversation. Eventually I came to believe that a romantic relationship is a complex of behaviors and chemistries, with ident.i.ty having little to do with it. Did it really matter? Men had loved women throughout history, but what man had ever claimed to know them?

Yet I was beginning to trust her enough that I was contemplating sharing Coupon's cryptokey. As luck would have it, I was on the cusp of deciding to do so, the day the message came in from the Taiwanese black arts enterprise.

Unlocking the code with Coupon's cryptokey, I read the following message: Most excellent Mr. Coupon, We of Red Dragon Semantic Arts have been honored with your patronage. We regret the tardiness of our delivery, but since the outer message code was irreducible, we had to resort to special actions to obtain the key. Decoding the inner code, of course, relies on your own private key.

We have billed the indicated account by 50 MYen. May we suggest that you exercise the utmost delicacy in your further dealings with Universal Emulators. We look forward to the next opportunity to be of service.

I tapped in the two large prime numbers which const.i.tuted Coupon's private key.

The original text then became sense: -start transmission- Special Emulator Reichmanf, Your most recent request to allow Emulator Quimby to relieve you on station is most emphatically denied. The current team in place is highly functional. We will not entertain any more communications on this issue. You will continue to perform your duties as stipulated by your indenture contract, which will not be up for renegotiation for another three years, six months, eleven days.

Find comfort in the knowledge that your private account now totals over 39 trillion yen.

-end transmission- I studied the message for long minutes, unable to comprehend. Finally, when I did understand, I wondered if Emulator Reichmanf had taken the place of the original Coupon, or had he merely a.s.sumed the place of an n-1 generation copy?

And who was I? Nothing about me seemed so important as the fact that I was theonly man in the world who held Coupon's private cryptokey. Reichmanf had shared it with me and it had been the death of him.

Out on the sponson, staring at the hypocritical blue face of the tropical ocean, I realized down to my grafted bones who I was.

The bearer of Coupon's cryptokey. In other words, Coupon.

Chapter 17 - Fair Verona by R. Garcia Y.

Robertson R. Garcia y Robertson is the author of a fantasy, The Spiral Dance; several SF novels, including The Virgin and the Dinosaur; and the recent historical novel (but only in the sense that Berger's Little Big Man is an historical novel-it has a contemporary sensibility) American Woman. His stories have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov's with some regularity for the last ten years and are characterized by their broad range of concerns, stylistic sophistication, and attention to historical detail. Garcia has tended toward time travel or historical settings both for his fantasy and SF stories. His fiction has been underappreciated since the small flash of critical and peer attention garnered by his first novel, The Spiral Dance.

This story, from Asimov's, shows all his strengths, but is particularly fine at plot surprises. This is the work of a fully accomplished writer.

"In fair Verona, where we lay our scene..." -Romeo and Juliet, Prologue

THE n.o.bLE DOG.

Antonio first saw her in the night, at Carnival on the Via Cappello. He had just staggered out of the inn that came to be called the Casa di Giulietta, because of its marble balcony. A surge of revelers filled the torchlit street.

Harlequins, lace doves, street minstrels, and drunken louts-laughing, dancing, singing, and colliding, tripping over cobbles, falling into fountains, and p.i.s.sing on the bonfires.

Standing under "Romeo's" balcony, with enough good red bardolino aboard to float a boat, Antonio wondered what mischief he meant to get into. Should it be a woman, or a fight? Or maybe both. Then he saw her. His heavenly vision. Lady Love in a gold lace mask and a wide-sleeved gown. She turned, winked, blew a kiss, then was gone, whirled away by the throng.

Without taking fuddled eyes off the crowd, he grabbed Proteus, his manservant, who was busy tipping the innkeeper. "Did you see her? Who was she?"

Proteus pushed a silver groat on the barkeep, then turned to his drunken master."Who was who?"

"The woman in the gold mask. She was shockingly beautiful."

Proteus looked askance at the crowd. No woman seemed to stand out. "How could you tell? She was masked."

"I can tell," Antonio insisted. He had seen it in the smile above her swan white throat. "You can tell a beautiful woman by her walk. By the way she carries her head."

"Doubtless." Proteus slipped a spare bottle of bardolino into his jacket. The way tonight was headed, his master would be brought to bed soused. Or not at all.

"She has to be the most beautiful lady at Carnival. I'd stake my life on it. My fortune. My estates. Even my slim hope of seeing salvation."

"I have nothing to match against that," Proteus admitted.

That she was a lady was obvious. Her gown, her gold-linked belt, her wig powdered with gold dust-were all beyond the means of Verona's most industrious courtesans. Plunging cloth-of-gold decolletage had shown off sculpted neck and shoulders, and round firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s, right down to the nipples. But Antonio would have been wild for her if she had worn sack cloth. Or a nun's habit.

Pushing Proteus aside, he lurched into the street. The crowd parted smartly for him. Despite his black-feathered mask, none could mistake the prince's nephew in tight hose and pearl-studded jacket, sword at his side and spurred like a Tartar.

He looked up toward the Piazza Erbe, the herb market atop the ancient forum.

Nothing. Turning toward the Via Stella, he spotted a flash of gold in the throng.

Antonio took off, spurs striking sparks on the pavement.

The crowd parted even more promptly. Antonio Cansignorio della Scala was so used to such deference, he barely noticed. Everything in Verona seemed arranged for his pleasure. He was the n.o.ble Dog. Tall and handsome, an accomplished troubadour, a skilled condottiere, a pa.s.sable silversmith, and a good Catholic-but an enemy of the Pope. Most of all, he had the good luck to be a nephew to Cangrande della Scala, the "Big Dog" who lorded over Verona. Directly descended from Mastino I, the Mastiff, founder of the Scaligeri dynasty.

The woman in gold turned a corner, headed for the Piazza Bra. Antonio dashed down a side street, cutting her off.

But when he got to the Piazza, he could not pick her out of the costumed crowd.

Had he lost her? He doubled back up an alley. There was only one other way she could have gone. Ahead loomed the Arena, Verona's ancient Roman amphitheater.

Second only to the Colosseum in size, its colonnade blocked off the entire eastern side of the Piazza Bra. He had her trapped. Unless she hid in the Arena itself, hardly the place for a woman alone on Carnival Night.

Then he spotted her. Beyond the mouth of the alley, framed in one of the Arena's dark cavernous archways, a gold icon in a black niche. He called to her to stop. Sheturned to look back, standing still and composed. Waiting. She had the good sense to know when the game had gone far enough.

Two costumed men stepped out of the gloom at the head of the alley, coming between her and him. One wore a jester's belled cap and floppy straw boots. The other was tall, wearing the black cloak and white bird-faced mask of a plague doctor.

Both had swords at their sides.

The Jester called out, "Montague or Capulet?" The worst words any honest Veronan could hear in a dark alley.

"Neither, swine!" Antonio swore, drawing sword and dagger, not for an instant thinking that this was some honest mistake. Masked or not, all men knew the prince's nephew. Nor would it be the first time that a street feud was used to cover murder. "A thousand pardons, we thought the man was a Montague."