Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

“Here,” I tell him. “Wear these diamond earrings. They always looked better on you than me.”

We don pearls and gloves and set off. It takes a while to circumvent Buck’s security system, but Dana has Herbert’s smarts. Outside the secret lair, the winter sky is cobalt blue and the bitter air makes my skin tingle. Trees along the frozen river have long since fallen under the weight of ice and snow, leaving a splintered landscape. I should have brought snowshoes. Dana tosses his skate guards aside and we help each other stay upright. It’ll be nice if Buck’s plan succeeds. If the world’s gardens and forests return after such a long, deep sleep.

“There once was a boy named Cass,” Dana says, after we’ve gone maybe a half mile. The breeze blows his hair back from his handsome face. “Whose balls were made of brass. In stormy weather, they would bang together…”

He sits down on an icy boulder. “Funny. I can’t remember.”

He’s never forgotten a limerick. I sit down beside him and pat his gloved hand. His blue eyes stay fixed on the distance. I think he sees Neill. I think I see Neill, too. Neill with his white hat, and Cody with his green bandana, and Yuri with his big old leather boots. There’s Doc, too, smiling like he knows a secret. It’s a hallucination, of course, and the only one I’ve ever had without the help of illegal chemicals. Those four sexy robots come over and pull Dana to his feet.

“Time to skate, partner,” Neill says.

I stand up, too, but Doc shakes his head fondly. “Not you, Katherine. You’ve got a world to rebuild and a new body to do it in.”

“Buck doesn’t want me,” I say vehemently. “He wants an ideal. He wants someone to worship him, the bastard. Seventy years and nothing’s changed.”

“Doesn’t matter what Buck wants,” Neill tells me. “You get a chance at life, you live it. Write more books.”

“You never read my other ones,” I sniff.

“Sure I did,” he says. “When you weren’t looking. Didn’t want you to get a swelled head.”

“Write stories about us,” Cody adds. “Tell them we lived, and we loved, and we ate lots of flapjacks.”

Yuri blows me a kiss. “Persevere, sweet Kay.”

They skate off into the sunset, my five sexy robots, doing triple lutzes on the way.

I guess, for the boys, I can live some more. I can write their stories, and the story of life before the Big Ice. I can cut Skylar’s hair, get rid of that cowboy skirt, and bang a notion or two through Buck’s thick metal skull. But first I have to get off this rock and back up the frozen river. The wind is strong but the sun warms my face, and along the way I hear the sound of water dripping off trees. The world is renewing. I’m glad I’ll be here to see it.

Sarah Rees Brennan was raised in Ireland where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish, but she chose instead to read books under her desk in class. The books most often found under her desk were by Jane Austen, Margaret Mahy, Anthony Trollope, Robin McKinley, and Diana Wynne Jones, and she still loves them all today.

After college she lived briefly in New York and somehow survived in spite of her habit of hitching lifts in fire engines. She began working on her first novel while doing a Creative Writing MA and library work in Surrey, England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write and to use as a home base for future adventures. The Demon’s Lexicon was published in 2009, followed by The Demon’s Covenant. A final volume in the series, The Demon’s Surrender , is due later this year.

There is a magic shore where children used to beach their coracles every night.

The children have stopped coming now, and their little boats are tipped over on their sides, like the abandoned shells of nuts eaten long ago. The dark sea rushes up to the pale beach and just touches the crafts, making them rattle together with a sound like bones.

You and I cannot reach that shore again. We’ve forgotten everything. Even the sound of the waves and the mermaids singing. But the men in Her Majesty’s Secret Service can go anywhere.

The submarine drifted to a stop not far from the island, its periscope breaking the surface of the water like the lifted nose of an inquisitive pointer dog. After a few minutes, a man emerged from the submarine and got into a boat, one not at all like the children’s boats arrayed on the shore.

When the boat sliced through water to white sand, the man stepped out of it. They had given him a number and taken away his name. Unfortunately for him, his number was 69. This was a subject of many tasteless jokes in the Service, but nobody would have known that from 69’s serious face and his extremely dapper black suit.

He took a few purposeful steps along the shore to the forest, then looked down. Under his feet, and under a layer of the black grease of age and filth, were pebbles like jewels and children’s toys and human bones.

There was a barely perceptible shift in the air before his face, but the men and women in Her Majesty’s Secret Service are extremely highly trained. 69 looked up.

The boy before him was beautiful in a slightly terrible way, like a kiss with no innocence in it.

More to the point, he was holding a sword as if he knew how to use it, and floating about a yard above the ground.

“Dark and sinister suit,” said the boy. “Have at thee.”

“I am afraid I do not have time to indulge you,” 69 said. “I am here on a mission from Her Majesty.”

“Ah,” said the boy, tilting his chin. “I know it well.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Majesty,” the boy said, waving his sword vaguely. “Belonging to… Her. I know all about it.”

“Her Majesty the Queen ,” 69 said, with a trifle more emphasis than was necessary.

“I knew that,” the boy informed him.

“She feels that the Service has a need for a man—”

The boy hissed like a vampire exposed to sunlight, lifting his free arm as if to protect himself from the word. Man .

“Excuse me. A boy of your special talents,” 69 said smoothly.

He had been raised in diplomatic circles.

The boy spun around in a circle, like a ballerina with a sword in zero gravity.

“My talents are special! So awfully special!”

“Indeed,” said 69. His countenance remained unchanged. 69 was very highly trained, and also a gifted amateur poker player.

“And the Queen needs—someone of such talents for a job.”

The boy started to laugh, a high lovely laugh that wavered between a baby’s gurgle and the peal of bells. It did not sound quite sane.

“A job?” he asked. “Make a man of me, will you? Oh no, oh no. You sailed your boat to the wrong shore.” He made a quick, deadly gesture with his small sword to the island around them, the dark stones and trees with branches like bared claws. “This is no place for men.”

“So I see,” said 69.“And I see there is nobody here who would be brave enough to risk all for Her Majesty’s sake: nobody who is enough of a patriot to die for their country.”

Peter was not entirely sure what a “patriot” was, but he would have scorned to betray this fact. He did not even acknowledge it to himself, really: Peter’s thoughts always move like a stone on water, skipping and skimming along the surface until they hit a certain spot.

69 had turned toward the sea, but he was not entirely surprised when a sword landed, light as a very sharp butterfly’s wing, on his shoulder.

He turned back to meet the sight of the lovely, terrible smile.

“To die for your country,” said Peter. “Would that be an awfully big adventure?”