Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 28

The Big Dog was not mollified. "What if you get her in pup? The b.i.t.c.h could be bait. I do not want any half-Visconti b.a.s.t.a.r.ds running about, hoping to be put up asheirs to Verona."

Down-and-out though they were, it remained the Visconti dream to hold all the Piedmont, plus as much of Tuscany and the Veneto as they could grab. Even in exile, they were far too cozy with the Emperor-and would happily use Verona as a step to regain Milan. "Have no more to do with her," Cangrande commanded, his habitual inane grin masking a ruthless will no sane -nephew dared brook.

Bidding the Big Dog a stormy farewell, Antonio stalked off to do as he pleased.

His obsession might be unhealthy- but by G.o.d it was his. If he wanted a horse or a dog, he got it. Women were at least as important. True, he did feel a little like that old fool Dante, who still mooned over some woman he had glimpsed in the market decades ago. But at least Antonio was going after his Silvia, not locking himself away in a borrowed room, wasting paper on some impossible terza ritna epic to her.

On the east bank of the Adige, he pa.s.sed the Teatro Romano, the ancient open-air theater, and the old cathedral of Santo Stefano with its great octagonal red-brick campanile. There he paused, treating himself to a last view of the city, wreathed in breakfast smoke and still recovering from Carnival. Then he was off, riding through the Porta Vescovo, with Proteus at his heels.

The Corso Venezia, the dusty via Venezia that led to Padua, Venice, and the sea, rolled through green pastures cut with stone fences. Antonio stopped only once near Soave to rest the horses, and put in a supply of light, dry white wine. On his left, vineyards came right down to the road. In the hazy distance he could see the Alps.

At the bridge over the Alpone, he caught up with her. Just past the fork that leads to Belfiore, Antonio spotted the woman a few hundred paces ahead, riding a pretty black mare. Even at a distance, there was no mistaking her. She wore the same lace mask, and her gold-link belt glittered in the sun. Besides, by now Antonio knew her style. There was not another young n.o.blewoman in North Italy likely to be riding alone on the Venice" road. She ga7e him a single over-the-shoulder glance, then, with a flick of her mare's tail, she made for the bridge.

Giving spur, Antonio set off at a gallop. Mounted on a blooded stallion with twice the strength of her little mare, he felt certain that he had her. As they neared the bridge, he cut her lead to two hundred paces. Then one hundred. Then fifty. Then twenty. He could see the Visconti serpents on her horse cloth.

But by then they were into the bridge traffic, peddlers pus.h.i.+ng handcarts, and a big hay wagon half-blocking the ramp. Peasants with their bundles leaped into the ditches rather than be trampled, but the carts could not be brushed aside. Antonio had to rein in. Weaving deftly between the obstacles, she beat him to the bridge, and, as-soon as she was over it, she picked up speed, opening the gap.

Cursing like a condottiere, Antonio forced his way through the throng with the flat of his sword. On the far side of the bridge was the town of Villanova, where the road forked. The right fork ran south along the Alpone through the marshes to Arcola. The left fork kept on along the line of the Chiampo, headed for Venice andPadua.

Again, Antonio had to rein in. There was no telling which fork she had taken. But she was headstrong and willful, not likely to change direction just because a man was after her. So he put spurs to his stallion and took the left fork, keeping to the Via Venezia.

Beyond San Bonifacio, he caught sight of her. Giving a great hurrah, he redoubled his efforts. But by now, his horse was blown. Her mare must have been better rested-as well as carrying a lighter load. Getting her second wind, the filly easily kept her distance, daring his stallion to catch her. The chase slowed from a gallop, to a canter, then finally to a tired trot, with his winded mount unable to gain on her mare.

Antonio heard a hail behind him. Twisting in his saddle, he turned to see Proteus pounding up behind him with the led horses-just when he needed the man most.

Proteus had a spare mount already saddled and ready to ride. Tired as he was, Antonio did not bother to rein in. Instead, Proteus brought the fresh horse up alongside his, and Antonio leaped aboard his new mount without breaking stride, shouting his thanks. Proteus handed him the horse's reins, then dropped back, taking charge of the winded stallion. He was one manservant in a million-worth the price of a duchy!

Surging forward on his fresh mount, Antonio ran head-down at full gallop, the mane whipping his face. Silvia's tired mare had no chance. The distance shrank rapidly-two hundred paces. One hundred. Fifty. They hit a long stretch of rising ground, doubly favoring his fresh horse. He closed the gap, tasting her dust in his mouth, seeing little clods thrown up by the hooves of her flagging mare. Her blue eyes showed in the mask holes when she looked back. Tall towers and castle battlements reared above the hill ahead, overlooking Montecchio Maggiore, but Antonio meant to have her long before she reached the town.

Three hors.e.m.e.n appeared atop the rise, emerging silently from the trees along the road to stand silhouetted at the crest.

They were dressed in carnival garb-a Saracen, a Jester, and a Plague Doctor.

Parting ranks, they let Silvia pa.s.s between them. As she disappeared over the crest, they closed up, cutting Antonio off.

d.a.m.n. Another emergency call. This was more than Toni could take. He found his cyborg body right where he had left it, sitting on a mossy jungle trail beside a pile of baggage. Great vine covered tree-ferns towered over him, their huge fronds shading the path.

He stood up, shooing off the forest imps that were climbing curiously over the baggage pile. "What is it? And it better be bad."'

"The worst." That was Harpo.

"We lost the client." Doc cut in.

Toni was up and trotting down the trail, leaving the baggage to the forest imps."Wasn't he radio-tagged?"

"Not lost like in misplaced. Lost like in dead."

"Torn to pieces," Harpo explained.

"Wyvyrn got him," Ali added.

They were nervous as h.e.l.l, all talking at once. "Bulls.h.i.+t!" Toni retorted, giving his snap professional opinion.

"See for yourself," Harpo suggested.

Toni got to see it all different ways. First in 3V, then through his own optical sensors. The kill site looked like some huge mowing machine had gone berserk.

Shattered tree-ferns leaned at crazy angles. Big lycopods lay broken and uprooted.

Even the mossy forest floor was gouged and furrowed. A great gaping hole ripped in the canopy overhead showed where the Wyvyrn had made its exit.

And there was blood all about. Big splotches of it stained the moss. Smaller drops speckled the torn fronds. In the center of the broken clearing sat a SuperChimp's head, glaring at the mess.

Reviewing recordings was singularly unproductive. The Guide had gone on ahead to "flush" the Wyvyrn. Gracchus and his bodyguards had been waiting, armed with enough firepower to take out a platoon of light tanks-staring at the surrounding wall of cycads, fern fronds, hanging lianas, and vine covered trunks, all about as transparent as green-painted reactor s.h.i.+elding. Until you've been on a Wyvyrn hunt, you'll never be able to imagine how hard it is to spot a hundred-meter flying monster in dense cover.

A faint rustle off to the right caught everyone's attention. Then the Wyvyrn burst on them.

There was no time for a brain shot, heart shot, or even a frantic toe stab. Toni got to see the carnage from three different angles-from the point of view of Gracchus and his two Chimp bodyguards. One of the Chimps lasted the longest, but all he saw was his master being shredded before the Wyvyrn turned on him. So much for realtime adventure.

And the sickest part was that Dragon Hunt had set it all up, using the Wyvyrn's control collar, electronically torturing a semi-intelligent omnivore until it turned killer.

Some "sport." Brutal, but real. Which was what Gracchus had paid for-at least he got his money's worth.

Meticulous search of the area turned up a profusion of body parts, some of them human. But only one object of interest-a torn diamond neck piece, and several loose stones. Toni recognized it as soon as Harpo showed it to him. "It's Pandora's slave collar."

"She's missing," Harpo informed him.

Toni scoffed, "No s.h.i.+t."

"The blood on the stones came from a Chimp," Doc added. "She could still bealive."

"Right." Toni remembered her at the dock, cheerfully handing out stim pills-and a pair of earrings. "But for how long?" If the Wyvyrn carried her off, they were going to have a G.o.dawful time finding the body.

"Well, we've got to make the attempt." That was Ali, always the optimist.

Toni could see an absolutely pointless search stretching out ahead of them. Of course they had to make the attempt. But Elysium covered thousands of square klicks, most of it as dense as the mora.s.s around them. Given time and patience, each square centimeter could be gone over for clues, until something turned up. But when they did find parts of Pandora, so what? Dragon Hunt was dead. They had just killed one of the richest men in the galaxy. No one was going to award them points for bringing back pieces of his most junior wife.

THE COURT OF A MILLION LIES.

Antonio arrived in Venice by boat, one of the small lateen-rigged craft that ply the lagoon, with their strange hooked masts and old-fas.h.i.+oned side rudders. A crude, ungainly means of transport, utterly beneath his station-but the easiest way to enter the island republic, unless you had wings, or were willing to swim.

Braced against the curved prow, he watched "Byzantium's Favorite Daughter"

draw closer, seeming to rise up out of the low gleaming lagoon chop. At first, all he could see were roofs and upper floors, topped by bell towers, cupolas, oriental battlements, fancifully colored domes, and the lace-like stone facades that gave the city her Eastern cast. A vision built on mud flats. Then came the jumble of walkways, bridges, streets, ca.n.a.ls, and the great ma.s.s of pilings that kept Venice from was.h.i.+ng out to sea. Venice had no city gates, no rich or poor quarters. Lines of wash hung over side ca.n.a.ls and small alleys. s.h.i.+ps' masts moved among the steeples.

At the Cannaregio docks, Antonio sent Proteus prowling into the city for news of his quarry, while he changed to a black gondola, setting out down the "Ca.n.a.l Regio." Cats prowled near the Campo San Giobbe-but the nearby church stood empty. Bells were gone from the church towers, packed away in straw. Venice lay under a papal interdict. A theological calamity that meant no ma.s.ses, no communion, no Holy Mother Church to stand between the people of Venice and the fires of h.e.l.l.

Worse yet, G.o.d-fearing merchants were free to renounce their debts to Venice and plunder her cargoes.

Uncorking a bottle of bardolino, Antonio offered it to the gondolier, asking what he thought of the ban. The man stopped poling, took a swig, and thought it through.

He was a blunt broad-shouldered brute who made his living with his back, and clearly cared little for mainland n.o.bility. He admitted in thick Venetian, "I miss the bells. But interdict also means no marriage and no confession. Twin blessings there!"

Antonio laughed and called him a scoundrel.He took a second swig. "And no Holy Inquisition."

Antonio ventured that Venice was coming out well ahead.

"So it would be, were it not for the dead."

"Death undoes us all," Antonio agreed, eyeing the houses piled one atop the other. No church burials badly burdened a city that saw deaths every day but lacked fields to take the bodies. Dig too deeply and they'd be burying folks at sea.

"What is your lords.h.i.+p's religion?" the gondolier asked.

"I don't speak French." Antonio's stock reply. It was what some Flemish burgher said to Robert of Artois, brother-in-law to King Philip of France, before braining the Count with a club at the battle of Courtrai.

The gondolier laughed, handed back the bottle, and began poling again. The French had managed to put religion to shame, beating one Pope to death and poisoning the next. Clement V was their creature, afraid to set foot in Rome, keeping the Papacy in Babylonian Captivity at Avignon- which the French claimed to be part of Italy since Avignon was a fief of the Two Sicilies, making a farce of both faith and geography. Clement V and Philip the Fair had gone on to commit the crime of the century, looting the treasury of the Knights Templars, burning and torturing innocent knights- including the aged Grand Master, who was G.o.dfather to Philip's children. It was hard to fear a church that put faith and justice up for sale.

The Ca.n.a.l Regio ran right into the Ca.n.a.lazzo, the Grand Ca.n.a.l, a magnificent S-shaped waterway that cut sweeping backward curves through the heart of Venice, following the bed of an ancient river now buried beneath wharves, palazzi, and granaries. Barges and pleasure boats crowded the city's greatest thoroughfare, grand showpiece, and primary sewer. Merchant princes could walk out of their doors onto a gangway and not step ash.o.r.e again until they were in Ma.r.s.eilles or Alexandria.

Antonio got off at the Rialto, in the city center, beside the only bridge spanning the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Cogs and trading galleys unloaded in the shadow of the silent and empty San Giacomo, disgorging wares from around the world-wheat, figs, frankincense, almonds, Byzantine gla.s.s, and slaves from the East. Proteus caught up with him at a stall selling perfumed lace and dyed wax. "Tonight she'll be at the Court of a Million Lies, attending a fete in her honor."

Antonio nodded. He knew this type of commercial soiree stocked with overfed ignoramuses and flirtatious women. Ordinarily, he found them as inviting as the plague.

"And on the morrow," Proteus added, "she will be gone."

"Gone? Where?" Would she ever stop running?

"A merchant galley is waiting at San Marco to take her to the East."

"In G.o.d's name, why?"

"She is heiress to Visconti lands in the Levant worth millions of ducats. Word is she wants a new life."What woman did not? Antonio aimed to give her one.

"If you are to succeed with her, it must be tonight, at the Court of a Million Lies."

"Of course I'll succeed." Antonio never failed.

"Naturally." His manservant made a mocking bow. If Proteus weren't irreplaceable, Antonio would have booted him into a ca.n.a.l.

The Court of a Million Lies, just north of the Rialto on the outskirts of Cannaregio, was really two courts: the Court of the First Million Lies, and the Court of the Second Million Lies. Both were owned by the Polo family, Venice's most notorious merchant adventurers. A villainous-looking Tartar, with dark slanted eyes and a devil's leer, greeted guests at the door. He wore Polo livery and had been christened "Peter" after the doorman to Heaven.

Inside, the crowd was equally mixed. Antonio saw brown, black, and tan faces, beneath fur hats, damask turbans, and scented peac.o.c.k feathers. He heard Greek, Spanish, Arabic, and every type of Italian-mostly in male tones. Venice took after the East, where good wives stayed at home and only wh.o.r.es walked the streets. But Silvia was there, attended by old Marco _Polo's own daughters, acting the gracious guest of honor. (A Visconti Pope had blessed the Polo mission to Kublai Khan.) She had exchanged her mask for a gold half-veil. Blue eyes flashed Antonio a greeting as he came in.

He hastened to present himself to Master Marco, who was busy spinning tales of the East to drunken skeptics. An Italian scoffer waved a wine cup, asking if the holy yogis of India really went about buck-naked, "With their members hanging out. They sound as shameless as Dominicans."

"So they do," Marco a.s.sured him. "But by living in abstinence, they do not use the male member for sin. They say it is no more sinful to show it than your hand or your face."

Someone snickered, "And what about those who sin with hand and face?" The skeptic still looked doubtful, "With all this abstinence, how can there be so many of them?"

Marco shrugged. "The East is vast, with mult.i.tudes of people and customs. In some provinces in Cathay, they care so little for chast.i.ty that wives take in strangers off the road. If a husband finds a traveler's cloak hanging by the door, he stays away, even for days at a time."

Men laughed. Stories like this had earned him the name Marco of the Million Lies.

"Sounds like France," someone suggested. "The poor sods. Our wives at least have the Christian decency to do it behind our backs!"

"That's not the way they see it," Polo protested. "The traveler leaves the wife some token payment, a trinket, or bit of cloth. Both husband and wife see him off, waving the token. 'This was yours,' they say 'Now it is ours. What are you taking away with you? Nothing at all!'"

A woman's favors might well be nothing, but Antonio had ridden halfway acrossItaly for one particular woman. Thanking his host, he strode across the court to where Silvia waited alongside a fountain whose demi-G.o.d faces spit wine into a silver basin. He could see her lively eyes above the veil. The same eyes that laughed at him in Verona at Carnival. He bowed. "Silvia Luoetta Visconti."

"Bold Antonio, you have caught me at last."

"Not without effort," he admitted. It was the first time he had heard her voice, but already it sounded familiar-as familiar as the form he had been chasing for days.

"Are you ready to lift my veil, and claim your reward?"

"More than ready." Antonio had never seen a minx so secure in her mystery. He reached out, seizing her veil, triumphantly drawing it aside. When he saw her face, his hand froze. He stared speechless. Beneath the gold veil and blond wig was the face of Pandora-Gracchus's junior wife-last seen at the site of the Wyvyrn attack. Her lips parted. "Save me," she whispered. "Save me, bold Antonio."

"... 7 am but a shadow, And to your shadow will make true love."

-Proteus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV

BUT A SHADOW.

Toni jerked off his headset, staring at the walls of the sanitary unit. This was way worse than any flashback. Virtual junkies got used to being dumped into the middle of a street brawl at Carnival or having long dead friends tap you on the shoulder. But nothing topped a whiff of reality invading your dreams. He punched PROTEUS.

An answer flashed back: PROGRAM ERROR-PLEASE WAIT-FREE FOUR HOUR UPGRADE.

Four free hours. Wow! How generous. Way too generous for some little program glitch. Upgrades usually came measured in minutes. PROTEUS was going to great expense to get him to sit tight and not ask questions, waiting for his reward like one of Pavlov's dogs.

Toni leapt up, jerking the glucose drip out of his arm, shutting down his life-support pack, pulling on his pants. He might be an addict, but he wasn't an idiot.

Toni knew what happened to lab dogs when they were no longer needed.

Tucking his deck and his life-support pack under his arm, he hit the release on the sanitary unit door. He hated leaving the exercise bike. Bright slanting sunlight nearly blinded him. Half-blind and wobbly on his feet, he steadied himself against the open door, getting his eyes in focus. "Elvis Saves," was scrawled above the words OUT OF ORDER.

Peeling OUT OF ORDER off the door, he put the letters in his pocket to use later-if he ever got the chance. Then he set off at a stumbling run down a wooded path. The sanitary unit sat in a little-used part of a public park. Kilometer-tall trees soared overhead. Brightly colored flying eels snaked between vine-covered trunks.For the first time in days, Toni had to move under his own power. He did not find it easy. Or comfortable. Were it not for Ariel's .5 gravity, he would have had to do it on all fours. He tottered up a side trail leading to a cargo field on the shoulder of Mt.

Beanstalk. Above him towered the peak, with the razor-straight Beanstalk disappearing into the deep blue stratosphere.

Toni did not see the spark falling from orbit, but he heard the blast as it hit. Shock waves rattled the foliage, showering him with twigs. Scratch one sanitary unit.

Alarms rang across the cargo field. Cargo handlers in mint-striped coveralls raced over, peering into the vegetation, though there was nothing left to see. Whoever offered him FOUR FREE HOURS had not even waited two minutes before blowing his dingy cubicle to bits. They must have a.s.sumed he was a moron. Hopefully, they now a.s.sumed he was a dead moron.

As guards came running up to take their look, Toni walked casually the other way.