The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology] Read online

“A ghost?” asked Seymore. “A ghost? He’s not a ghost He’s just an artist.”

  “But he looks so thin,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s eaten for a week. I’m sure he needs a woman to take care of him.”

  “It’s not a woman he needs,” said Seymore. “What he needs is talent.”

  I didn’t like this crack, especially in front of Mr. Stettheimer. I reached out and grabbed Seymore by one of his satin lapels and pulled him toward me.

  “Seymore,” I said, “I want my check.”

  “What check?”

  “The money for the Pollock.”

  “What Pollock?”

  “You know what Pollock. Give me my check!”

  Seymore looked at me coldly. His face was tense and a little nasty.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about”

  “You’re a goddam liar!”

  Seymore turned to Mr. Stettheimer. “Would you mind,” he said, “if I threw this creep into your lake?”

  Both the girl and Mr. Stettheimer stepped in between us. I heard her saying, “Seymore, darling, couldn’t you try to be a little more agreeable?” And at the same time Mr. Stettheimer said, “You boys should talk business at the office, not at my party.” He grabbed my arm, and with extraordinary vitality for his years, hustled me past the bar, through the dancers, out to the steps that led down to the lake. “You stay here,” he ordered, “and pull yourself together. And keep away from Seymore. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. Stettheimer,” I said. “I understand.” After all, he’d always been very nice to me.

  The music was getting loud now, the party was moving into high gear. I turned my back on it. Even then, near at hand, I saw the shadows of the dancers jumping in the water. Farther out, the lake was dark and still. A nice place to be in a boat. Then I noticed that there was a boat, hidden in the grasses, its long rope tied to an iron ring on the bottom step.

  The knot was complicated, but I solved it. I found the oars, fitted them into the locks, and was about to shove off when I saw against the light the figure of a woman on the steps above me. It wasn’t hard to tell who she was. Silhouettes aren’t cut that way very often.

  “How about a ride?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, but she let me take her hand and help her in. I began to row through the grasses, out into the open water. I rowed for quite a while.

  “Why didn’t you tell Seymore I was right?” I asked suddenly.

  “But how could I?”

  “But why couldn’t you?”

  “Because you were probably both right!”

  “But that’s just not possible,” I said sharply.

  I let the boat drift. She sat quietly. The Milky Way was behind her. Its light had gathered in her diamond necklace; a phosphorescent glow fell on her shoulders and her hands. She sighed deeply.

  “What’s the trouble?” I asked.

  “I’m not for this world,” she said.

  “But why not?”

  “Because nobody seems to realize that as the ambiance changes, the truth changes.”

  I started to row again. The moving figures at Mr. Stettheimer’s party grew smaller and smaller. Pretty soon I couldn’t hear the music. And then I began to hear the pounding of the surf. I realized we were getting near the sand spit that separated the lake from the ocean.

  “Let’s go ashore,” I said.

  I beached the boat. We climbed out and walked to the high part of the sand. In front of us the ocean waves were breaking heavily; on either side of us there were big dunes. Down the beach, black against the ocean, a man was walking briskly toward us—a member of the Coast Guard on his nightly patrol. We turned back to the boat.

  I took her arm in one hand and with the other I pointed out across the lake.

  “What can you see?” I asked.

  “I can see the Nebula of Andromeda,” she said. “It’s a pity it’s lying on its side. The top view is much more exciting.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean way out there. I mean just on the other side of the lake.”

  “I can see Mr. Stettheimer’s party. There’s a man, apart from the others, sitting on the balustrade.”

  “Can you see what he’s thinking?” I asked.

  “Why yes, as a matter of fact, I can. Can you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s trying to figure out how much he could get for a Rubens from the Art Institute of Chicago.”

  She laughed softly.

  “Darling,” she whispered. “Why don’t you and I take a little walk in the dunes?”

  “Let me tie up the boat first,” I said.

  There was a large piece of driftwood at our feet. I got down on my knees and started to dig in the sand under the driftwood so I could get the rope around it.

  “Do you know,” she said suddenly, “there’s a very attractive man in a uniform watching us. He’s just on the top of the rise. Who do you think he is? Do you mind if I go over and talk to him?”

  Before I could answer she had gone.

  <>

  * * * *

  PARKY

  by David Rome

  David Rome is another new writer, whose work has appeared only in the past year in the two British magazines. New Worlds and Science Fantasy. This is his first American publication.

  * * * *

  Drop Parky into a crowd anywhere and he’d stand out like a Roman nose in Basutoland. Tall and excessively thin, with eyes like twin tail-lights - that was Parky. But get him alone, start a conversation, and he’d seem to shrink a foot. His voice was high-pitched, like a woman’s; his baby-white hands never stopped moving.

  He was a seer, and I owned him. Leastways, I owned an hour of his time Mondays to Saturdays when he’d sit up there on his rostrum and drone through his act.

  Sundays, Parky was free; but he never went anywhere. He’d loll around my caravan drinking warm beer, telling me I should be paying him double his wage. His red eyes would glow and his fingers would tap out a melancholy tune on the side of the can.

  ‘Listen,’ I said once. ‘Your act is deader than Dodo.’

  Dodo was a highwire, no-net, artist I once had.

  So Parky would tell me then that because I wasn’t paying him enough he wasn’t getting enough to eat.

  ‘Reading the future takes energy, Charlie.’

  Then he’d finish his beer, poke around in the fridge until he found a leg of chicken, and start chewing it for its energy.

  ‘Look, Parky,’ I said. ‘You read the future, eh? Well, read it now. See any raise in the ether? Any big money about to materialise?’

  He didn’t, and I knew it. His act wasn’t worth half what I was paying him now. I opened another can and avoided his eyes.

  ‘I could always go elsewhere,’ he said.

  Like hell he could. I’d tried to shuffle him out of my hand months ago, but nobody else was having any.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I said. ‘And have a beer.’

  He took the huff at that. He grabbed the can I was holding out to him, mumbled a word or two under his breath, and off he went. I never saw him again that day. I wrote up my accounts, put the books away in my safe, and started out on my Sunday check of the fairground.

  * * * *

  I was halfway around, with two kids and a stray dog to my credit, when I first saw the little guy with yellow hair. Just a glimpse. There, then gone. I changed my direction and went after him.

  Rounding a tent, I caught sight of him again. He was walking towards Parky’s pitch, his bright hair shining like a halo under the afternoon sun.

  ‘Hey!’ I called out.

  He turned slowly. Neatly pressed suit; collar-and-tie. He was well dressed. He waited until I was closer, then he said, ‘Yes?’

  Funny that. I’d thought he was little; when he spoke, though, he seemed taller than I was.

  ‘Look,’ I said carefully. ‘I don’t want to be unpleasant.’

  An up-and-down line creased his brow. He stared at me.<
br />
  ‘The fact is - ah - the fairground is closed.’

  Silence.

  ‘Sunday, you know.’

  He spoke then, very softly, without malice. ‘I’m not certain I understood your first remark.’

  Peculiar accent he had. Some kind of foreigner. I retrospected. First remark? ‘I don’t want to be ...’

  ‘Unpleasant?’ The question came sharply.

  ‘That’s right.’

  He sighed gently. ‘Ahhh!’ Then he said frankly, ‘I like your system down here.’

  My heart warmed suddenly. ‘Like it?’ I turned in a slow circle, taking in the tents and caravans under a blue sky. ‘Yes I suppose it’s not a bad layout. You’re in the entertainment world, then?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Government.’

  Well, you can understand that this rocked me a little. I mustered up my talking-to-big-brass tone and said politely, ‘Local MP?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘IGC. Inter-Galaxy.’

  Some kind of European was my guess. Anyway, I was beginning to wonder about something else. The main gate had been locked, so how had he got in? I looked at his immaculate suit. Kids crawl through the holes, and performers have their own keys. He wasn’t a performer, and he hadn’t been doing any crawling.

  ‘How -’

  He cut me short. ‘I’m looking for Ephraim Parkinson,’ he said.

  For Ephraim Parkinson. That stumped me for a moment. But sometime in the past I had seen that name scratched out on a contract.

  ‘For Parky?’ I said.

  ‘Yes - for Ephraim Parkinson. You can direct me?’

  Well, I was able to direct him all right. I pointed out Parky’s pitch to him, and off he went. It wasn’t until he was yards away that I remembered to ask him how he’d got in.

  He turned when I called out the question.

  He smiled brightly.

  ‘Oh, I came over the gate,’ he said.

  * * * *

  In my business you don’t let anything worry you. There are funnymen in every walk of life, and if they’re from the government I leave them alone.

  I finished my rounds without further incident and went back to my caravan. I had a drink, read the papers, turned on the radio, turned it off. Then I went to sleep.

  If Parky was in trouble it was his lookout.

  Next morning I was up at ten. I was shaving when Parky came in. He didn’t say anything. He sat down in one of my chairs and watched me scraping the razor around my face.

  ‘That’s a fine, well-fed face you’ve got, Charlie,’ he said finally.

  I wiped the razor, rinsed my face, and mopped it dry.

  ‘Thanks, Parky,’ I said.

  He watched me, eyes blinking slowly.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I once weighed a hundred and ninety.’

  ‘Too much,’ I said. But I knew he was getting at something. As I pulled my shirt over my head I said, ‘What’s eating you today?’

  His long fingers were picking at his sleeves.

  ‘We’ve been together a long time, Charlie.’

  This I knew.

  ‘But I’ve never had a raise, Charlie.’

  I knotted my tie and watched him in the mirror.

  ‘You’ve never had a wage-cut either, Parky.’

  I saw his red eyes spark. Suddenly he seemed to reach a decision in his own mind. He got to his feet.

  ‘Charlie - I’ve got to ask you for a raise. If you can’t give me a raise I’ll be -’ He hesitated, then said it:

  ‘I’ll be leaving.’

  I didn’t move a muscle. ‘Leaving?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, but I’ve had another offer.’

  I sat down. I smiled across at him. Every move was calculated now. For months I’d been trying to shake Parky off my lists - but this was something different. If a performer gets an offer, then somebody thinks that performer is worth something. And if you’ve still got all your screws, this starts you thinking. What had I missed in Parky? What did he have that I hadn’t seen?

  ‘Parky,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to talk about this.’

  He shook his head grimly. ‘I can’t talk about it, Charlie. I’ve been offered another job at a higher rate of pay. That’s all there is to it. I can’t tell you who. I can’t tell you where.’

  ‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

  He didn’t answer me. Just shook his head.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Give me until after the show tonight.’

  He nodded, satisfied. ‘That’s fine, Charlie.’

  ‘You won’t do anything rash?’

  He shook his head like a child. I wondered if he realised that he was legally bound to me. Unless I gave him the OK he couldn’t go anywhere. I could hold him to his contract if I had to.

  But I wouldn’t do that to the old fraud.

  He went off down the steps, beaming, and I opened a beer, gulped it down, and started thinking.

  Who the hell was after Parky? That was the first question. Nobody wants psi minds these days. Science has proved that the Power is so much s.f. It’s the equivalent of the headless woman nowadays.

  I wondered if the yellow-haired guy had anything to do with it. What did he call his department? IGC? Something connected with government. And what the hell had he meant about ‘unpleasant’?

  Angrily I tossed the empty beer-can into a corner and pulled on my coat. I locked the door of the caravan behind me and crossed the battered stretch of grass that separated my place from the rest of the fairground.

  The remainder of the morning was spent in futile questioning. Nobody else had been approached. Nobody else had seen the guy with yellow hair. Finally, after lunch, I decided that all I could do was watch Parky’s act. If he had something new, I would spot it.

  Accordingly, with two cans of beer and a plate of sausage-and-mash under my belt, I made my way over to Parky’s tent at about seven o’clock. There was a handful of people sown over the wooden benches, all of them looking around without interest, or watching a couple of kids who were trying to pull down the pale-blue curtain that screened Parky’s rostrum.

  The dim yellow lights were shining uncertainly on the muddy grass inside the tent, and somewhere behind his curtain Parky was playing the harmonica while he changed his robes.

  I sat down at the back of the tent, looking around. There was no sign of the guy with yellow hair. The spectators were an ordinary looking bunch. I would’ve bet my profits that none of them were talent scouts.

  * * * *

  Five minutes went by, and the harmonica rose on a weird note, and fell silent. Quite suddenly, the lights went out. A girl in the second row giggled, of course, and for a moment the sound caught my attention. I almost missed the entry of two men who slipped into their seats unobtrusively in the half-darkness. Then Parky flung his curtain open with a flourish and the light from the rostrum fell on the hair of one of the men.

  Government my pink eye. Yellow Hair was after Parky.

  Almost in the same instant my eyes switched back to the tall, thin figure on the rostrum. I didn’t want to miss anything. So Parky did have something. So what the hell was it?

  * * * *

  An hour later I was still asking myself the same question. Parky read the minds of two mindless youths; he foretold the futures of half a dozen seedy couples. But hell! The whole act was corn. His patter was feeble. His stage manner was laughable.

  When it was over I ducked out quick because I didn’t want the embarrassment of seeing the guy with yellow hair turning Parky down. It was raining outside - a fine drizzle. I walked back to my caravan through the milling crowds with that rain slanting down into my face and Parky’s troubles in my mind.

  I couldn’t give him a raise - he was already operating at a loss. And after tonight’s performance he wouldn’t be getting his offer. If one had been made, it was going to be withdrawn fast. I knew the business. I knew no one would want Parky now.

  It was sometime
after eight when I reached the caravan. I went inside and shut the door. I stripped off my wet clothes, put on my dressing-gown and started to make supper. I turned on the radio and got some soft music playing.