The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF Read online

  If fear did not hold your tongue, you would ask what I am. Men have called my people by many names – ghoul, demon. Does a word matter so very much? What I am, learned one, is Abdel Jameela’s wife.

  For long moments I don’t speak. If I don’t speak this nightmare will end. I will wake in Baghdad, or Beit Zujaaj. But I don’t wake.

  She speaks again, and I cover my ears, though the sound is beauty itself.

  The words you hear come not from my mouth, and you do not hear them with your ears. I ask you to listen with your mind and your heart. We will die, my husband and I, if you will not lend us your skill. Have you, learned one, never needed to be something other that what you are?

  Cinnamon scent and the sound of an oasis wind come to me. I cannot speak to this demon. My heart will stop if I do, I am certain. I want to run, but fear has fixed my feet. I turn to Abdel Jameela, who stands there wringing his hands.

  “Why am I here, Uncle? God damn you, why did you call me here? There is no sick woman here! God protect me, I know nothing of . . . of ghouls, or—” A horrible thought comes to me. “You . . . you are not hoping to make her into a woman? Only God can . . .”

  The old hermit casts his eyes downward. “Please . . . you must listen to my wife. I beg you.” He falls silent and his wife, behind the screen again, goes on.

  My husband and I have been on this hilltop too long, learned one. My body cannot stand so much time away from my people. I smell yellow roses and hear bumblebees droning beneath her voice. If we stay in this place one more season, I will die. And without me to care for him and keep age’s scourge from him, my sweet Abdel Jameela will die, too. But across the desert there is a life for us. My father was a prince among our people. Long ago I left. For many reasons. But I never forsook my birthright. My father is dying now, I have word. He has left no sons and so his lands are mine. Mine, and my handsome husband’s.

  In her voice is a chorus of wind chimes. Despite myself, I lift my eyes. She steps from behind the screen, clad now in a black abaya and a mask. Behind the mask’s mesh is the glint of wolf-teeth. I look again to the floor, focusing on a faded blue spiral in the carpet and the kindness in that voice.

  But my people do not love men. I cannot claim my lands unless things change. Unless my husband shows my people that he can change.

  Somehow I force myself to speak. “What . . . what do you mean, change?”

  There is a cymbal-shimmer in her voice and sandalwood incense fills my nostrils. O learned one, you will help me to make these my Abdel Jameela’s.

  She extends her slender brown hands, ablaze with henna. In each she holds a length of golden sculpture – goatlike legs ending in shining, cloven hooves. A thick braid of gold thread dances at the end of each statue-leg, alive.

  Madness, and I must say so though this creature may kill me for it. “I have not the skill to do this! No man alive does!”

  You will not do this through your skill alone. Just as I cannot do it through my sorcery alone. My art will guide yours as your hands work. She takes a step toward me and my shoulders clench at the sound of her hooves hitting the earth.

  “No! No . . . I cannot do this thing.”

  “Please!” I jump at Abdel Jameela’s voice, nearly having forgotten him. There are tears in the old man’s eyes as he pulls at my galabeya, and his stink gets in my nostrils. “Please listen! We need your help. And we know what has brought you to Beit Zujaaj.” The old man falls to his knees before me. “Please! Would not your Shireen aid us?”

  With those words he knocks the wind from my lungs. How can he know that name? The Shaykh hadn’t lied – there is witchcraft at work here, and I should run from it.

  But, Almighty God, help me, Abdel Jameela is right. Fierce as she is, Shireen still has her dreamy Persian notions – that love is more important than money or duty or religion. If I turn this old man away . . .

  My throat is dry and cracked. “How do you know of Shireen?” Each word burns.

  His eyes dart away. “She has . . . ways, my wife.”

  “All protection comes from God.” I feel foul even as I steel myself with the old words. Is this forbidden? Am I walking the path of those who displease the Almighty? God forgive me, it is hard to know or to care when my beloved is gone. “If I were a good Muslim I would run down to the village now and . . . and . . .”

  And what, learned one? Spread word of what you have seen? Bring men with spears and arrows? Why would you do this? Vanilla beans and the sound of rain give way to something else. Clanging steel and cleanburning fire. I will not let you harm my husband. What we ask is not disallowed to you. Can you tell me, learned one, that it is in your book of what is blessed and what is forbidden not to give a man golden legs?

  It is not. Not in so many words. But this thing can’t be acceptable in God’s eyes. Can it? “Has this ever been done before?”

  There are old stories. But it has been centuries. Each of her words spreads perfume and music and she asks, Please, learned one, will you help us? And then one scent rises above the others.

  Almighty God protect me, it is the sweat-and-ambergris smell of my beloved. Shireen of the ribbing remark, who in quiet moments confessed her love of my learning. She would help them.

  Have I any choice after that? This, then, the fruit of my study. And this my reward for wishing to be more than what I am. A twisted, unnatural path.

  “Very well.” I reach for my small saw and try not to hear Abdel Jameela’s weird whimpers as I sharpen it.

  I give him poppy and hemlock, but as I work Abdel Jameela still screams, nearly loud enough to make my heart cease beating. His old body is going through things it should not be surviving. And I am the one putting him through these things, with knives and fire and bone-breaking clamps. I wad cotton and stuff it in my ears to block out the hermit’s screams.

  But I feel half-asleep as I do so, hardly aware of my own hands. Somehow the demon’s magic is keeping Abdel Jameela alive and guiding me through this grisly task. It is painful, like having two minds crammed inside my skull and shadow-puppet poles lashed to my arms. I am burning up, and I can barely trace my thoughts. Slowly I become aware of the she-ghoul’s voice in my head and the scent of apricots.

  Cut there. Now the mercury powder. The cauterizing iron is hot. Put a rag in his mouth so he does not bite his tongue. I flay and cauterize and lose track of time. A fever cooks my mind away. I work through the evening prayer, then the night prayer. I feel withered inside.

  In each step Abdel Jameela’s wife guides me. With her magic she rifles my mind for the knowledge she needs and steers my skilled fingers. For a long while there is only her voice in my head and the feeling of bloody instruments in my hands, which move with a life of their own.

  Then I am holding a man’s loose tendons in my right hand and thick golden threads in my left. There are shameful smells in the air and Abdel Jameela shouts and begs me to stop even though he is half-asleep with the great pot of drugs I have forced down his throat.

  Something is wrong! The she-ghoul screams in my skull and Abdel Jameela passes out. My hands no longer dance magically. The shining threads shrivel in my fist. We have failed, though I know not exactly how.

  No! No! Our skill! Our sorcery! But his body refuses! There are funeral wails in the air and the smell of houses burning. My husband! Do something, physicker!

  The golden legs turn to dust in my hands. With my ears I hear Abdel Jameela’s wife growl a wordless death-threat.

  I deserve death! Almighty God, what have I done? An old man lies dying on my blanket. I have sawed off his legs at a she-ghoul’s bidding. There is no strength save in God! I bow my head.

  Then I see them. Just above where I’ve amputated Abdel Jameela’s legs are the swollen bulges that I’d thought came from gout. But it is not gout that has made these. There is something buried beneath the skin of each leg. I take hold of my scalpel and flay each thin thigh. The old man moans with what little life he has left.

  What
are you doing? Abdel Jameela’s wife asks the walls of my skull. I ignore her, pulling at a flap of the old man’s thigh-flesh, revealing a corrupted sort of miracle.

  Beneath Abdel Jameela’s skin, tucked between muscles, are tiny legs. Thin as spindles and hairless. Each folded little leg ends in a miniscule hoof.

  Unbidden, a memory comes to me – Shireen and I in the Caliph’s orchards. A baby bird had fallen from its nest. I’d sighed and bit my lip and my Shireen – a dreamer, but not a soft one – had laughed and clapped at my tender-heartedness.

  I slide each wet gray leg out from under the flayed skin and gently unbend them. As I flex the little joints, the she-ghoul’s voice returns.

  What . . . what is this, learned one? Tell me!

  For a long moment I am mute. Then I force words out, my throat still cracked. “I . . . I do not know. They are – they look like – the legs of a kid or a ewe still in the womb.”

  It is as if she nods inside my mind. Or the legs of one of my people. I have long wondered how a mere man could captivate me so.

  “All knowledge and understanding lies with God,” I say. “Perhaps your husband always had these within him. The villagers say he is of uncertain parentage. Or perhaps . . . Perhaps his love for you . . . The crippled beggars of Cairo are the most grotesque – and the best – in the world. It is said that they wish so fiercely to make money begging that their souls reshape their bodies from the inside out. Yesterday I saw such stories as nonsense. But yesterday I’d have named you a villager’s fantasy, too.” As I speak I continue to work the little legs carefully, to help their circulation. The she-ghoul’s sorcery no longer guides my hands, but a physicker’s nurturing routines are nearly as compelling. There is weakness here and I do what I can to help it find strength.

  The tiny legs twitch and kick in my hands.

  Abdel Jameela’s wife howls in my head. They are drawing on my magic. Something pulls at— The voice falls silent.

  I let go of the legs and, before my eyes, they begin to grow. As they grow, they fill with color, as if blood flowed into them. Then fur starts to sprout upon them.

  “There is no strength or safety but in God!” I try to close my eyes and focus on the words I speak but I can’t. My head swims and my body swoons.

  The spell that I cast on my poor husband to preserve him – these hidden hooves of his nurse on it! O, my surprising, wonderful husband! I hear loud lute music and smell lemongrass and then everything around me goes black.

  When I wake I am on my back, looking up at a purple sky. An early morning sky. I am lying on a blanket outside the hovel. I sit up and Abdel Jameela hunches over me with his sour smell. Farther away, near the hill-path, I see the black shape of his wife.

  “Professor, you are awake! Good!” the hermit says. “We were about to leave.”

  But we are glad to have the chance to thank you.

  My heart skips and my stomach clenches as I hear that voice in my head again. Kitten purrs and a crushed cardamom scent linger beneath the demon’s words. I look at Abdel Jameela’s legs.

  They are sleek and covered in fur the color of almonds. And each leg ends in a perfect cloven hoof. He walks on them with a surprising grace.

  Yes, learned one, my beloved husband lives and stands on two hooves. It would not be so if we hadn’t had your help. You have our gratitude.

  Dazedly clambering to my feet, I nod in the she-ghoul’s direction. Abdel Jameela claps me on the back wordlessly and takes a few goatstrides toward the hill-path. His wife makes a slight bow to me. With my people, learned one, gratitude is more than a word. Look toward the hovel.

  I turn and look. And my breath catches.

  A hoard right out of the stories. Gold and spices. Jewels and musks. Silver and silks. Porcelain and punks of aloe.

  It is probably ten times the dowry Shireen’s father seeks.

  We leave you this and wish you well. I have purged the signs of our work in the hovel. And in the language of the donkeys, I have called two wild asses to carry your goods. No troubles left to bother our brave friend!

  I manage to smile gratefully with my head high for one long moment. Blood and bits of the old man’s bone still stain my hands. But as I look on Abdel Jameela and his wife in the light of the sunrise, all my thoughts are not grim or grisly.

  As they set off on the hill-path the she-ghoul takes Abdel Jameela’s arm, and the hooves of husband and wife scrabble against the pebbles of Beit Zujaaj Hill. I stand stock-still, watching them walk toward the land of the ghouls.

  They cross a bend in the path and disappear behind the hill. And a faint voice, full of mischievous laughter and smelling of early morning love in perfumed sheets, whispers in my head. No troubles at all, learned one. For last night your Shireen’s husband-to-be lost his battle with the destroyer of delights.

  Can it really be so? The old vulture dead? And me a rich man? I should laugh and dance. Instead I am brought to my knees by the heavy memory of blood-spattered golden hooves. I wonder whether Shireen’s suitor died from his illness, or from malicious magic meant to reward me. I fear for my soul. For a long while I kneel there and cry.

  But after a while I can cry no longer. Tears give way to hopes I’d thought dead. I stand and thank Beneficent God, hoping it is not wrong to do so. Then I begin to put together an acceptable story about a secretly wealthy hermit who has rewarded me for saving his wife’s life. And I wonder what Shireen and her father will think of the man I have become.

  Saladin Ahmed was born in Detroit. He has been a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer and the Harper’s Pen Award for Best Sword and Sorcery / Heroic Fantasy Short Story. His fiction has appeared in magazines and podcasts including Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and PodCastle, and has been translated into Portuguese, Czech, and Dutch. His fantasy novel Throne of the Crescent Moon is forthcoming from DAW Books. His website is www.saladinahmed.com.

  I REMEMBER

  THE FUTURE

  Michael A. Burstein

  FROM THE AUTHOR: When Apex Publications decided to publish a collection of my award-nominated short stories, I asked the readers of my LiveJournal if they could help me come up with an appropriate title. My high school friend Andrew Marc Greene suggested the title I Remember the Future as a fitting one for the type of stories I tend to write. I agreed, but that meant writing a new story with that title as well. I kept running the phrase “I Remember the Future” over and over in my head, but no story idea came to mind. And then on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 18, 2008, we heard the news that Arthur C. Clarke had died. (Oddly, because Clarke lived in a time zone farther east, he died on Wednesday, March 19, but those of us living in the West heard the news on Tuesday. It’s almost like time travel.)

  Late that night, as I stared into a mirror and thought about how the last of the Big Three was gone, I suddenly realized what this story had to be about. I quickly shared the idea with my wife, Nomi, and then jotted down a bunch of notes so I wouldn’t forget it. I also called Janna Silverstein, since I needed to tell another science fiction and fantasy writer about the epiphany I just had, and it was too late to call anyone on the East Coast. “I Remember the Future” is about an elderly science-fiction writer named Abraham Beard (the name is a joke between my high school friend Charles Ardai and me, as we both have used it for writers or editors who are characters in our stories). Abraham has spent his life writing of various hopeful futures, and he is disappointed that none of them have come to pass. He reaches out to his adult daughter Emma, to connect with the future one last time, but Emma and her own family are moving away, and she rejects his overtures as being too little, too late. From Emma’s perspective, her father spent far too much of his life pursuing his writing career with his head lost in the clouds and too little time connecting with his family. Abraham acknowledges this in the story when he says, “I consider once again telling her what I’ve told
her before: that times were tough, that money was tight, and that Sheila and I both had to work to support Emma properly. But then I recall the many times I shut the door of my home office on Emma to meet a deadline, and I realize that the chance for apologies and explanations has passed far into the mists of time.” As the story ends, Abraham connects with his other progeny, the characters he created in his infinite worlds.

  The story is somber but hopeful. I had fun writing the selections from Abraham’s own novels that I worked throughout the narrative, as I had to capture the feel of science fiction from the various decades of the twentieth century. The story also tackles head-on the minor controversy that nowadays many science fiction and fantasy writers are looking to the past more than to the future; the story suggests that we should embrace that past rather than reject it. As Shakespeare said in The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.”

  “I Remember the Future” isn’t my first foray into recursive science fiction meant to honor those writers who came before us; my Hugo nominees “Cosmic Corkscrew” and “Paying It Forward” also show my interest in this theme.

  “I Remember the Future” is dedicated to Arthur C. Clarke.

  I REMEMBER THE FUTURE.

  The future was glorious once. It was filled with sleek silver spaceships, lunar colonies, and galactic empires. The horizon seemed within reach; we could almost grasp the stars if we would but try.

  I helped to create that future once. We created it out of our blood, sweat, and tears for a penny a word. We churned that future out onto reams of wood pulp paper, only to see the bitter acids of the decades eat it away. I can still smell the freshness of that world, amidst the stale odors left in the libraries, real ink on real paper.

  But I despair that no one else does.

  Smith turned to Angela, whose face was obscured by the glass plate of her helmet. Despite the higher gravity and the bulkiness of his environmental suit, he felt like jumping a hundred feet into the vacuum.