Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

He could go to the nocturnal thrift market, Els Encants, and find some ancient books to read just for pleasure. Or return to his apartment and begin his next project. Something about spas… some ideas had been bugging him, bubbling away in his mind as if it was the very hot tub he wanted to talk about.

Yes, he should be doing one of those things. Why then was he walking in the direction suggested that morning by the paper serpent? Carrer de n’Arai. Why had he memorized it?

He should be avoiding trouble. Going to the place specified by the message would be madness. What if the message wasn’t just a joke, or a random bureaucratic trap? What if someone really knew about his infractions? And, even scarier, what if these unknown friends really wanted to help him avoid punishment?

But he couldn’t help himself. He was doomed, trapped by his own curiosity, and so walked down to Portaferrissa with a frozen smile of dissimulation. Oddly, he was more afraid in the open street than he had been at the office. Maybe the work space, so familiar, had provided reassurance.

There was no one in the street. When Perucho was younger, Barcelona had been a vibrant city. He remembered the cinema Les Delícies, with its crowd of kids, workers, and grandparents; he remembered going to Tibidabo and its spooky museum of automatons, to Parc de la Ciutadella with its spectacular greenhouse. But that city was lost forever. The bombs had fallen in a thick rain, devastating blocks and even entire quarters, erasing a world, an entire age.

He was almost in Portaferrissa. And then, at the corner, he saw an archer. Partially hidden in shadows, the woman, dressed in the official uniform of an urban cleaner, was tensing her arm, an arrow pointing at a cat. She looked stressed.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “It’s trapped on the roof, meowing constantly. A cat without an owner is a menace to hygiene, a potential pest carrier, and we have already received a complaint from the neighbors. On the other hand… He looks so confused. But I can’t reach him from the ground. Maybe if I could the poor animal might have a chance… The zoo…? Or I could get fired for not killing it.”

Perucho felt something tickle his nose, like static or the presence of an intruding insect. It was the taste of the unexpected, of the marvelous. It was so rare, and mixed deliciously with the feeling of fear.

Curiosity killed the cat, Perucho thought immediately, or qui escolta pels forats, sent els seus pecats in Catalan: he who pokes around in inappropriate places finds his own sins. In both cases, the wrong, the devil , lay in the thirst for the new, for information, knowledge. The archer looked like a personification, or even a prosopopoeia , as the ancients might have said, of curiosity herself.

“Maybe you can fire an arrow at the wall, just there, you see? Maybe the cat could use that as a step and get down by himself… Then you could catch it.”

And then he added, in a whisper.

“Or not.”

The woman looked at him.

“You don’t want me to kill the cat?”

Perucho had a moment of doubt. A normal citizen would have supported killing the cat, or even threatened the cleaning agent for not fulfilling her duty.

Instead, he said, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No one needs to die in the name of words.”

The archer smiled and then took away her hat, revealing she had no right ear, exactly like the demon in the works of Sor Assumpció Ardebol. She looked at him intently. Perucho felt a shiver.

“Will you come with me?” the archer asked.

“Yes.”

At this point, the sensation of being inside one of his own stories outweighed his fear.

Perucho followed his guide through narrow streets and arrived in front of another door, almost invisible among the shadows. He entered the building and, on seeing what was inside, couldn’t believe his eyes.

He saw a fully functioning old-fashioned press, hosting every kind of printing device since printing began. Several people were making artisanal papers. There was even a copyist monk, called La Moreneta: a monastic scribe alive and well in 1975.

It was, obviously, a clandestine workshop. The windows were small and translucent, and the walls were designed to absorb any noise. Only in El Raval could a place like this remain hidden. The shadows wrapping all the quarter were simultaneously warning and protection.

And then Perucho saw el bombín . He was walking among the industrious workers, and his attitude was very different from the one Perucho was used to. Instead of looking for irregularities and tiny faults, he seemed relaxed. Happy, even. He looked like a completely different person.

“Ah! Perucho, so glad to see you!” he said in Catalan. Perucho hadn’t realized el bombín was fluent in the traditional language. “Come, come here! There is nothing you need to worry about. Just enjoy watching the amazing crafts of all these artisans, as I do. You will not have much time to relax, since our team of writers are keen to ask you questions…”

“Is this him ?” asked a woman with glasses, dressed in an unusual shade of green.

“Yes! Let me introduce you: Joan Perucho, this is Rosa Fabregat, one of our most brilliant writers.”

“Writer…”

Perucho savored the taste of the word in his mouth. It was a long time since he had heard it, not to mention pronounced it himself. He felt envious of the young woman.

“Mr. Perucho,” she said in Catalan, “I am a big admirer of your work.”

Perucho was having difficulty processing the events.

“But I don’t have any ‘work’… I’m just one of the editors of the…”

El bombín and Rosa smiled.

“You are an amazing creator. You have built entire literary careers and even provided most of their works. Octavi de Romeu, Pere Serra y Postius and his monster Bernabó…”

Perucho felt a shiver of fear course down his spine. The woman was talking about his fictional characters as if they were beloved writers. As if they had really existed outside his imagination.

“… by the way, I have a question about Bernabó. We know that he has black fur, no mouth, and three eyes. But when he spies on the writer, does he focus all eyes on him or do they move independently?”

“Give Perucho a break, my dear Rosa…”

“No, no…,” said Perucho. “I’ve never thought about Bernabó’s eyes! It is a beautiful question. Maybe he needs each eye to see a different part of reality—he needs one to see the light and the colors yellow and white, another for the shadows, the blues and greens, and the third for passions, red, purple, pink, magenta. Does this make sense?”

“Then he needs to focus all three eyes on one point at a time… Thank you so much, Mr. Perucho.”

“You will doubtless get more from him later, Rosa. But for now, he just needs to take in the place.”

“Okay,” she said, a bit frustrated. “Only one more thing… That study about mirrors was… simply perfect.”

And she left, failing to see how Perucho blushed.

“She’s right. And the medieval stories… they’re memorable,” continued el bombín . Perucho was immensely flattered that this man had spent so much time studying him.

“Manuel”—and el bombín pointed to one of the artists working over a bench—“is working on that codex you profusely described last year.”

“I… I don’t understand. Are you creating false documents following the indications I… I made up? Whole ones?”

“That is exactly what we are doing. Amazing, isn’t it? You will never get caught as a delinquent because the supposedly fake references you have introduced will actually exist . Therefore, your work will prove to be factual.”