All was futile, as he had known it would be. Every plea sure was spoiled by the fear and trembling of the performers, visible just below the glittering surface. Acrobats missed their grips. The dancing girls stumbled. Their beauty was a joke; they stank with fear. The great chefs sweated into the food.
A trembling old man, a chess "grand master" from the old days, was brought to Glory One in shackles. Told that he was to play C. in the morning, and ordered to play to the best of his ability, the grand master spent the night in his cell swallowing pieces one by one, until they ruptured his intestines and he died.
This was always the story. C."s very presence proved the spoiler to these extravagances designed to elevate his humor. He could not command the world to bring him joy. The very fruit of his victory now disgusted him, and his disgust deepened his sadness.
On C."s next inspection tour, he lingered in the village squares, peering into the eyes of his slack-mouthed subjects, subjecting to lengthy interviews people who clearly knew nothing, understood nothing. He cracked open ancient trunks that once might have contained munitions, and were now empty, dust-blown, ransacked by rats and moles. He did not find that which he barely knew he was looking for: in some debased subject, a spark of anger; in some squalid corner, a cache of arms.
Flying home, C. stared unblinking from the shaded window of the air-frigate, tasting bitter, paradoxical truth. True plea sure in his unquestioned power required the existence of a contrary authority.
* * * * C. returned to Glory One and descended in the rattlebox to the 46th floor. He walked down the long steel floor toward his private quarters. Pa.s.sing the kitchens, C. caught a glimpse of the food taster"s boy.
III: The Food Taster"s Boy Later, he couldn"t say for certain what he saw in the child. Some fleeting spark of defiance around the eyes, like a single wicked star glimmering in a black-hole night. Some sign of intelligence in the face, some steel in the posture, where he stood just inside the doorway of the kitchens, watching wordlessly as C. strode past.
At the sight of him, the idea sprang into C."s head fully formed, in all of its cruelty and hopelessness.
The boy was taken first, and lashed to the floor.
His father, the food taster, was delivered up, trussed and gagged, and after him, the wife, naked and bound.
The depredations C. performed upon the food taster and the wife outstripped any he had done before. Not in their cruelty, for he had performed many cruelties in his long vicious slog from obscurity to domination, but in their variety and sheer imaginative force.
And C. did these things himself, by hand. The guards were dismissed from the room. He himself wielded the blade and the hook, the gas and the heat, the boot heel and the p.r.o.ng. The food taster"s boy witnessed every stroke, every lash, each twist of the knife. Saw the imaginative uses of electricity, of water, of the bladed floor, and the kitchen dog.
It lasted a very long time.
He was no hero, the food taster"s boy. He was a child. He wept and he moaned, he begged as children beg, stomping his little bare feet and slapping his hands on the horrible floor, stickied with the blood of those he most loved.
Surely, if there had been a spark of defiance, it had been brutally dimmed, if not snuffed. Not for the last time, C. (bent with the exertion of many hours) wondered if he had made a mistake, if all of this was for nothing. But he continued, and never said a word; he offered no explana tions, never called this a punishment for any crime. A display, that is, of pure, arbitrary, and personal horror.
A display for the benefit of the food taster"s boy.
IV: Waiting In the decade that followed, C. continued as he was, carrying the memory of the food taster"s boy with him always, like a secret jewel clasped in a closed fist. At night, he dreamed rich dreams of the food taster"s boy, of his ragged baby"s face, tear-clouded and wild with grief, his tiny mouth a distorted wail. He dreamt of that face growing older, filling out, the boy becoming stronger- hardened by time, by rage . . .
By day, he lingered on the gravel roof of Glory One, staring into distances, sweeping his spygla.s.s. Waiting.
Waiting for the food taster"s boy to return.
This waiting, he knew, was a form of faith, and almost certainly in vain. C. had issued no orders concerning the food taster"s boy; no squadron to track his movements, to watch him from a distance, to send back reports, to ensure that he lived. No- for in that version of events, the child would be but another acrobat, a dancing girl, another play ghostwritten by C. for his own enjoyment.
What he needed from the food taster"s boy, he could only get by performing the act of creation, and then standing back, an uncaring G.o.d. The boy had been reduced to rubble and then let go, a ragged and horrified orphan, hurled by his scruff from the gates of Glory One, to stumble to what ever mercy he could find in the parched world. With nothing. Only a memory- of what had happened, and how. Nothing in his pockets, and nothing in his breast but hatred.
It was hatred, C. whispered to himself, hatred and vengeance that would keep the food taster"s boy alive, and bring him home.
* * * * The scenarios he imagined ran the gamut of plausibility: some utterly preposterous, some carrying the faint silvery gleam of the possible.
The food taster"s boy would return at the head of a great army, on horse back or in the c.o.c.kpit of a hijacked viperclaw. Or perhaps at the controls of some flying death-dealing supermachine of his own invention, shooting barrel-rounds from the sky, raining barrier breakers on Glory One. This would require a scramble to action for the often-drilled but never-employed higher-level guards. It would require C. himself to take to the skies, to slip into the c.o.c.kpit and feel the swoosh and roar of air beneath the wing . . . eyes closed, mouth open, he tasted the smoke and blast powder of aerial combat.
Or the food taster"s boy would return alone, under cloak of night. He would short circuit the alarms and dispatch each guard with a hushed and brutal neck-breaking blow, creep into C."s chamber and hover above him until he woke. And then combat, hand to hand, the choking grasps and pummeling kicks, the wizened old soldier facing off in the darkness with the vengeance-mad young man, his body honed to an iron edge by years of bitterness.
The thought of it sent C. yearning to the window, leaning against the gla.s.s. The thought of it sent him to the rattle-box, carried him again and again up to the gravel roof of Glory One. He stood at the northern lip with his spygla.s.s and told himself the food taster"s boy was out there, hidden in some garret, encamped in a dank fen, preparing to make his move.
Late at night, C. knew with bitter cert.i.tude that all this was a joke, a taunting cruelty he had played upon himself. The food taster"s boy was a rotting pile of bones, dead in a ditch years ago, starved or murdered. Or mad, raving through the dirt street of one of these broken villages, poorer and more pathetic than any of the rest of them.
* * * * Brutal black winters changing to chemical summers changing to dead gray autumns, years pa.s.sing in the burnt-out world. And in those years, a certain efficiency returned to C."s movements: a swiftness and decision in his step, a sharpness in his gaze- all attributable, he knew, to the subtle thrill, known to himself alone, of what he had loosed upon the world.
Sometimes, at night, C. sang to the food taster"s boy: low, rasping melodies, unheard.
V: The Return And when he came, in a shatter of gla.s.s and a b.l.o.o.d.y howl, it took seconds- less than seconds- it took instants for C. to know that all was wasted. The years and the hope, all wasted.
The food taster"s boy was an animal, a horrid slavering creature, sloping and grunting, moving on all fours through the room, saliva and mucous dripping in thick tendrils from the corners of his mouth, a crooked mess of mandible and fang. His hair was long and knotted- filthy-and he stank of rot and s.h.i.t. When he kicked into the room, he had blood on his lips; he had not dispatched the guards with cunning martial blows, but devoured them, as a dog or hyena falls with violence on its prey. His thick fingertips scuttled across the floorboards as he moved like some land-bound cephalopod through the room, baring his teeth, moaning gutturally, moving crab-ways at C.
"Ahh," C. moaned, holding up his hands, his chin trembling.
The food taster"s boy flexed his upper body like a gorilla. He growled and spat. C. had a sudden vision of years in the woods, a demented, friendless child; an outcast from Glory, untouchable; exiled from human contact, foraging and rooting. A beast"s existence. And now he had returned, not as a monomaniacal mastermind returning to take his vengeance, but like a bear that wends its way atavistically home.
"Ahh," C. said again, stepping backward. He had within arm"s reach a small army"s worth of weaponry: optically guided knives and three gauges of hand-cannon and a close-range incendiary device of terrible power. But he did not reach for a trigger, did not move. He stared at the food taster"s boy and cried.
"My child," he said. "My child."
The food taster"s boy advanced, closed the last feet between them, pushed his malformed body up against C."s. One of his eyes bulged queerly from his head, like a tumor, grayish and watery. His nostrils flared. His forehead pulsed. Behind him, through the south-facing window, C. saw the lights of fast-approaching viperclaws, a squadron, charging through the sky, to his rescue. The food taster"s boy had short-circuited no alarms.
"Oh my child," C. repeated. "My boy."
In a moment, the window would be kicked in, strikers would flow into the room and the food taster"s boy destroyed.
And then . . .
What then?
C. moved forward instead of away, got to his knees and sprawled his body into the foul embrace of the food taster"s boy. He might have whispered "I"m sorry," or only known it. He saw the lights of the viperclaws hovering now outside the windows, heard the urgent hollering of soldiers.
He leaned back, opening up his neck to the sharpened teeth of the boy.
The food taster"s boy whispered a word, his hot foul breath fogging onto C."s cheek, droplets of rank saliva in his ear. One clear and human word: "No."
Ben H. Winters is the best-selling author of two posthumous, "mash-up" collaborations: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (with Jane Austen) and Android Karenina (with Leo Tolstoy). He is also the author of the pre-apocalyptic murder mystery The Lost Policeman, the supernatural thriller Bedbugs, and two middle-grade novels: The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman and The Mystery of the Missing Everything. To learn more, visit benhwinters .com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Many thanks to the following:.
Jim Frenkel at Tor Books for publishing this anthology, and for shepherding the book through the publication process. Helen Chin for her copyediting prowess, production editor Kevin Sweeney, Heather Saunders for designing the book, and Nathan Weaver for guiding the book through production.
My former agent Jenny Rappaport, who sold this book and otherwise helped me launch my anthology career, and my current agent, Joe Monti, for keeping it going. Thanks, too, to Joe for the incredible amount of support he"s provided since taking me on as a client- he"s gone above and beyond the call of duty. To any writers reading this: you"d be lucky to have Joe in your corner.
Ben Templesmith, for the megalomaniacal cover art.
Wendy N. Wagner for her a.s.sistance wrangling the header notes.
Gordon Van Gelder, the Dr. Frankenstein to my Igor. I never would be where I am today without his tutelage. Gordon, you created a monster!
My amazing wife, Christie, and my mom, Marianne, for all their love and support, and their endless enthusiasm for all my new projects.
My dear friends Robert Bland, Desirina Boskovich, Christopher M. Cevasco, Douglas E. Cohen, Jordan Hamessley, Andrea Kail, David Barr Kirtley, and Matt London.
The readers and reviewers who loved my other anthologies, making it possible for me to do more.
And last, but certainly not least: a big thanks to all of the authors whose stories appear in this anthology.
ABOUT THE EDITOR.
John Joseph Adams ( www .johnjosephadams .com) is the best -selling editor of many anthologies, such as Epic Other Worlds Than Those Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Lightspeed: Year One, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, By Blood We Live, Federations, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He is a four time finalist for the Hugo Award and a three-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In addition to his anthology work, John is also the publisher and editor of Lightspeed Magazine, and is the co-host of Wired .com"s The Geek"s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
ALSO EDITED BY J O H N J O S E P H A D A M S.
Armored.
Brave New Worlds.
By Blood We Live Epic.
Federations.
The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Lightspeed Magazine.
Lightspeed: Year One The Living Dead.
The Living Dead 2 Other Worlds Than These.
Seeds of Change.
Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom.
Wastelands.
The Way of the Wizard.
end.