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

Then they turned a corner, where faceless men wearing fashion from ten years ago danced together in a shop window, and saw the cathedral.

It had grown to gargantuan size, dwarfing every other building around it. It was an anthill of dark-red brick and hexagonal doorways. It buzzed with life. Cats with sapphire claws clung to its walls like sleek gargoyles. Thick pigeon flocks fluttered around its towers. Packs of azure-tailed rats ran in and out of open, massive doors like armies on a mission. And there were insects everywhere, filling the air with a drill-like buzzing sound, moving in dense black clouds like a giant’s black breath.

“Oh, jumalauta ,” Kosonen said. “ That’s where it fell?”

“Actually, no. I was just supposed to bring you here,” Pera said.

“What?”

“Sorry. I lied. It was like in Highlander: there is one of them left. And he wants to meet you.”

Kosonen stared at Pera, dumbfounded. The pigeons landed on the other man’s shoulders and arms like a gray fluttering cloak. They seized his rags and hair and skin with sharp claws, wings started beating furiously. As Kosonen stared, Pera rose in the air.

“No hard feelings, I just had a better deal from him. Thanks for the soup,” he shouted. In a moment, Pera was a black scrap of cloth in the sky.

The earth shook. Kosonen fell to his knees. The window eyes that lined the street lit up, full of bright, malevolent light.

He tried to run. He did not make it far before they came, the fingers of the city: the pigeons, the insects, a buzzing swarm that covered him. A dozen chimera rats clung to his skull, and he could feel the humming of their flywheel hearts. Something sharp bit through the bone. The pain grew like a forest fire, and Kosonen screamed.

The city spoke. Its voice was a thunderstorm, words made from the shaking of the earth and the sighs of buildings. Slow words, squeezed from stone.

Dad, the city said.

The pain was gone. Kosonen heard the gentle sound of waves, and felt a warm wind on his face. He opened his eyes.

“Hi, Dad,” Esa said.

They sat on the summerhouse pier, wrapped in towels, skin flushed from the sauna. It was evening, with a hint of chill in the air, Finnish summer’s gentle reminder that things were not forever. The sun hovered above the blue-tinted treetops. The lake surface was calm, full of liquid reflections.

“I thought,” Esa said, “that you’d like it here.”

Esa was just like Kosonen remembered him, a pale, skinny kid, ribs showing, long arms folded across his knees, stringy wet hair hanging on his forehead. But his eyes were the eyes of a city, dark orbs of metal and stone.

“I do,” Kosonen said. “But I can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“There is something I need to do.”

“We haven’t seen each other in ages. The sauna is warm. I’ve got some beer cooling in the lake. Why the rush?”

“I should be afraid of you,” Kosonen said. “You killed people. Before they put you here.”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Esa said. “The plague does everything you want. It gives you things you don’t even know you want. It turns the world soft. And sometimes it tears it apart for you. You think a thought, and things break. You can’t help it.”

The boy closed his eyes. “You want things too. I know you do. That’s why you are here, isn’t it? You want your precious words back.”

Kosonen said nothing.

“Mom’s errand boy, vittu . So they fixed your brain, flushed the booze out. So you can write again. Does it feel good? For a moment there I thought you came here for me. But that’s not the way it ever worked, was it?”

“I didn’t know—”

“I can see the inside of your head, you know,” Esa said. “I’ve got my fingers inside your skull. One thought, and my bugs will eat you, bring you here for good. Quality time forever. What do you say to that?”

And there it was, the old guilt. “We worried about you, every second, after you were born,” Kosonen said. “We only wanted the best for you.”

It had seemed so natural. How the boy played with his machine that made other machines. How things started changing shape when you thought at them. How Esa smiled when he showed Kosonen the talking starfish that the machine had made.

“And then I had one bad day.”

“I remember,” Kosonen said. He had been home late, as usual. Esa had been a diamond tree, growing in his room. There were starfish everywhere, eating the walls and the floor, making more of themselves. And that was only the beginning.

“So go ahead. Bring me here. It’s your turn to make me into what you want. Or end it all. I deserve it.”

Esa laughed softly. “And why would I do that, to an old man?” He sighed. “You know, I’m old too now. Let me show you.” He touched Kosonen’s shoulder gently and

Kosonen was the city. His skin was of stone and concrete, pores full of the god-plague. The streets and buildings were his face, changing and shifting with every thought and emotion. His nervous system was diamond and optic fiber. His hands were chimera animals.

The firewall was all around him, in the sky and in the cold bedrock, insubstantial but adamantine, squeezing from every side, cutting off energy, making sure he could not think fast. But he could still dream, weave words and images into threads, make worlds out of the memories he had and the memories of the smaller gods he had eaten to become the city. He sang his dreams in radio waves, not caring if the firewall let them through or not, louder and louder —

“Here,” Esa said from far away. “Have a beer.”

Kosonen felt a chilly bottle in his hand, and drank. The dream-beer was strong and real. The malt taste brought him back. He took a deep breath, letting the fake summer evening wash away the city.

“Is that why you brought me here? To show me that?” he asked.

“Well, no,” Esa said, laughing. His stone eyes looked young, suddenly. “I just wanted you to meet my girlfriend.”

The quantum girl had golden hair and eyes of light. She wore many faces at once, like a Hindu goddess. She walked to the pier with dainty steps. Esa’s summerland showed its cracks around her: there were fracture lines in her skin, with otherworldly colors peeking out.

“This is Säde,” Esa said.

She looked at Kosonen, and spoke, a bubble of words, a superposition, all possible greetings at once.

“Nice to meet you,” Kosonen said.

“They did something right when they made her, up there,” said Esa. “She lives in many worlds at once, thinks in qubits. And this is the world where she wants to be. With me.” He touched her shoulder gently. “She heard my songs and ran away.”

“Marja said she fell,” Kosonen said. “That something was broken.”

“She said what they wanted her to say. They don’t like it when things don’t go according to plan.”

Säde made a sound, like the chime of a glass bell.

“The firewall keeps squeezing us,” Esa said. “That’s how it was made. Make things go slower and slower here, until we die. Säde doesn’t fit in here, this place is too small. So you will take her back home, before it’s too late.” He smiled. “I’d rather you do it than anyone else.”

“That’s not fair,”Kosonen said. He squinted at Säde. She was too bright to look at. But what can I do? I’m just a slab of meat. Meat and words.

The thought was like a pine cone, rough in his grip, but with a seed of something in it.

“I think there is a poem in you two,” he said.

Kosonen sat on the train again, watching the city stream past. It was early morning. The sunrise gave the city new hues: purple shadows and gold, ember colors. Fatigue pulsed in his temples. His body ached. The words of a poem weighed on his mind.