Year's Best Fantasy 5 by David G. Hartwell

Author:David G. Hartwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061757730
Publisher: HarperCollins

In the vault, he removed a polished walnut case. Then he flipped up the brass catches, pulled the lid back, and turned the case toward me.

Gray-white bones, dry-looking on a red silk lining.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Pick one up.”

I bit my lip.

“I’m not sure I—”

Cortindo’s mouth twisted in an almost-smile.

“You’ll never understand what you’re facing, until you do this.”

Peaceful paradise enveloped me.

I was warm and happy in my abstract dreams: emerald swirling light; golden shapes which drifted and called to me; divine human figures who laughed and played, and sang on a silver shore by waves of liquid cobalt. Music, sublime, brought tears to my…

Something was wrong.

A plot in Paradise?

No.

Something, someone, wanted to tear me away from all that was peaceful, all that was forgiveness, all that was simply love.

“NO!”

Images rippled and tore.

No…

And I hurled myself at the director with hands outstretched, going for the throat—

Die now!

—but he was too quick for me, snatching back the bones in his gauntlet-covered hands, backstepping and spinning away—so fast—then I came to my senses and stood there, chest heaving and panting, drenched with sweat.

Paradise. Fading now.

What the hell—?

“Well done, Lieutenant. Most people take longer to come to their senses.”

I looked down at my empty hands.

At my palms, which had held those gray-white bones.

“I’ve trained since childhood in pa-kua,” Director Cortindo added. “It’s a soft martial art, heavy on circular avoidance techniques.”

Squinting at him, I swallowed, and said: “I don’t understand.”

“Otherwise”—with a gentle smile—“I’d have had security guards in here with me. It’s a wrench, when you leave the dream.”

My eyes were watering, my head splitting with a stone-hard migraine.

A dream?

The bones induced a dream. A powerful alternative to reality.

“A wrench, you call it. That’s a mild way of putting it.”

If I wasn’t here at the commissioner’s suggestion—read: on his order—I’d be considering other words. Assault on a law officer. Obstruction while in the pursuit of official duties.

“The time”—Cortindo took out his antique silver pocket watch—“is half past three.”

“I don’t—”

But then I realized what he was saying.

I arrived at noon.

The bones’ dreams had held me in their clutch for over three hours.

And I felt like weeping, that Cortindo tore me away so soon.

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