The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four (57 page)

"Twenty," Darcy said. She came over and sat on the couch beside him. She smelled awful. A rank, feral smell, like something that lived in a cave. He'd heard his stepfather tell his mother that half the time Darcy only ran the water and then splashed it around with her hands behind a locked door. Make-believe baths, which was funny when you thought about how much she worshipped Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
. When Darcy really took a bath she left a ring of grime around the tub. He'd seen it with his own eyes.

Peter said, "What does this involve, exactly?"

"We could play Three Little Pigs. Or Cinderella. You be the evil stepsister."

Like everything was already decided. Just to annoy her, Peter said, "For a lousy twenty bucks I get to be whoever I want. I'm Cinderella. You can be the evil stepsister."

"You can't be Cinderella!"

"Why not?"

"Because you're a boy."

"So what?"

Darcy seemed to have no answer to this. She examined the hem of her princess dress. Pulled a few remaining sequins off, as if they were scabs. Finally she said, "My dad says I have to be nice to you. Because this is really my house, and you're a guest, even though I didn't invite you to come live here and now you're going to live here all the time and never go away unless you die or get sent away to military school or something."

"Don't count on it," Peter said, feeling really annoyed now. So that was his stepfather's plan. Or maybe it was his mother, still working out the details of her new, perfect life, worrying that Peter was going to mess things up now that she'd gotten it. He'd gone in and out of three schools in the last two years. It was easy enough to get thrown out of school if you wanted to be. If they sent him away, he'd come right back. "Maybe I like it here."

Darcy looked at him suspiciously. It wasn't like she was problem free, either. She went to see a therapist every Tuesday to deal with some "abandonment issues" which were apparently due to the fact that her real mother now lived in Hawaii.

Peter said, "I'm Cinderella. Deal with it."

His stepsister shrugged. She said, "If I'm the evil stepsister then I get to tell you what to do. First you have to go put the toilet seat down in the bathroom. And I get to hold the remote and you have to go to bed first. And you have to cry a lot. And sing. And make me a peanut butter sandwich with no crusts. And a bowl of chocolate ice cream. And I get your Playstation, because Cinderella doesn't get to have any toys."

"I've changed my mind," Peter said, when she seemed to have finished. He grinned at her.
My what big teeth I have.
"I'm going to be the
evil
Cinderella."

She bared her teeth right back at him. "Wrong. Cinderella isn't evil. She gets to go to the ball and wear a princess dress. And mice like her."

"Cinderella might be evil," Peter said, thinking it through, remembering how it went in the Disney movie. Everybody treated Cinderella like she was a pushover. Didn't she sleep in a fireplace? "If her evil stepsister keeps making fun of her and taking away her Playstation, she might burn down the house with everyone in it."

"That isn't how the story goes. This is stupid," Darcy said. She was beginning to sound less sure of herself, however.

"This is the new, improved version. No fairy godmother. No prince. No glass slipper. No happy ending. Better run away, Darcy. Because evil Cinderella is coming to get you." Peter stood up. Loomed over Darcy in what he hoped was a menacing way. The werewolves were howling on the TV.

Darcy shrank back into the couch. Held up her fairy wand as if it would keep her safe. "No, wait! You have to count to one hundred first. And I'll go hide."

Peter grabbed the stupid, cheap wand. Pointed it at Darcy's throat. Tapped it on her chest and when she looked down, bounced it off her nose. "I'll count to ten. Unless you want to pay me another ten bucks. Then I'll count higher."

"I only have five more dollars!" Darcy protested.

"You got fifty bucks from your grandparents last weekend."

"Your mom made me put half of it into a savings account."

"Okay. I'll count to twenty-three." He put the werewolf movie on pause. "One."

He went into all the bedrooms on the second floor, flicking the light switches on and off. She wasn't under any of the beds. Or in the closets. Or behind the shower curtain in the show-off master bathroom. Or in either of the other two bathrooms on the second floor. He couldn't believe how many bathrooms there were in this house. Back in the dark hallway again he saw something and paused. It was a mirror and he was in it. He paused to look at himself. No Cinderella here. Something dangerous. Something out of place. He felt a low, wild, wolfish delight rise up in him. His mother looked at him sometimes as if she wasn't sure who he was. He wasn't sure, either. He had to look away from what he saw in the face in the mirror.

Wasn't there some other fairy tale?
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down.
He'd like to blow this house down. The first time his mother had brought him over for dinner, she'd said, "Well, what do you think?" In the car, as they came up the driveway. What he'd thought was that it was like television. He'd never seen a house like it except on TV. There had been two forks at dinner and a white cloth napkin he was afraid to use in case he got it dirty. Some kind of vegetable that he didn't even recognize, and macaroni and cheese that didn't taste right. He'd chewed with his mouth open on purpose, and the little girl across the table watched him the whole time.

Everyone was always watching him. Waiting for him to mess up. Even his friends at his last school had acted sometimes like they thought he was crazy. Egged him on and then went silent when he didn't punk out. No friends yet at this new school. No bad influences, his mother said. A new start. But she was the one who had changed. Said things like, "I always wanted a little girl and now I've got one!" And, "It will be good for you, having a little sister. You're a role model now, Peter, believe it or not, so try to act like one."

Peter's mother let Darcy climb into bed with her and her new husband. Lay on the floor of the living room with her head in her new husband's lap, Darcy curled up beside them. Pretending to be a family, but he knew better. He could see the way Darcy wrinkled her nose when his mother hugged her. As if she smelled something bad, which was ironic, considering.

Peter went down the stairs two at a time. That black tide of miserable joy rose higher still, the way it always did when he knew he was doing exactly the wrong thing. As if he were going to die of it, whatever it was that he was becoming.

Darcy wasn't in the laundry room. Or the dining room. Peter went into the kitchen next, and knew immediately that she was here. Could feel her here, somewhere, holding her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, picking at her sequins. He thought of the babysitter, Mrs. Daly, and how afraid she'd looked when she left. Almost wished that she hadn't left, or that his mother and stepfather had skipped the movie, come home when they were supposed to. Wished that he'd told them about Mrs. Daly, except that his mother had sounded as if she were having a good time. As if she were happy.

He kicked a chair at the kitchen table and almost jumped out of his skin to hear it crash on the floor. Stomped around, throwing open the cabinet doors. Howling tunelessly, just for effect, except that it wasn't just for effect. He was enjoying himself. For a moment he didn't really even want to find his stepsister. Maybe no one would ever see her again.

She was folded up under the kitchen sink. Scrambled out when the door was flung open, and slapped his leg when he tried to grab her. Then scooted away on her hands and knees across the floor. There was a sort of sting in his calf now and he looked down and saw a fork was sticking out of him. It looked funny there. The tines hadn't gone far in, but still there were four little holes in the fabric of his jeans. Around the four little holes the black jeans turned blacker. Now it hurt.

"You stabbed me!" Peter said. He almost laughed. "With a fork!"

"I'm the evil stepsister," his stepsister said, glaring at him. "Of course I stabbed you. I'll stab you again if you don't do what I say."

"With what, a spoon?" he said. "You are going to be in so much trouble."

"I don't care," Darcy said. "Evil stepsisters don't care about getting in trouble." She stood up and straightened her princess dress. Then she walked over and gave him a little furious shove. Not such a little shove. He staggered back and then lurched forward again. Swung out for balance, and hit her across her middle with the back of one hand. Maybe he did it on purpose, but he didn't
think
he'd meant to do it. Either way the result was terrible. Blow your house down. Darcy was flung back across the room like she was just a piece of paper.

Now I've done it, he thought. Now they really will send me away. Felt a howling rage so enormous and hurtful that he gasped out loud. He darted after her, bent over her, and grabbed a shoulder. Shook it hard. Darcy's head flopped back and hit the refrigerator door and she made a little noise. "You made me," he said. "Not my fault. If you tell them—"

And stopped. "My mother is going to—" he said, and then had to stop again. He let go of Darcy. He couldn't imagine what his mother would do.

He knelt down. Saw his own blood smeared on the tiles. Not much. His leg felt warm. Darcy looked up at him, her ratty hair all in her face. She had her pajama bottoms on under that stupid dress. She was holding one arm with the other, like maybe he'd broken it. She didn't cry or yell at him and her eyes were enormous and black. Probably she had a concussion. Maybe they'd run into Mrs. Daly and her husband when they went to the hospital. He felt like throwing up.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do!" he said. It came out in a roar. He didn't even know what he meant. "I don't know what I'm doing here! Tell me what I'm doing here."

Darcy stared at him. She seemed astonished. "You're Peter," she said. "You're being my stepbrother."

"Your evil stepbrother," he said and forced out a laugh, trying to make it a joke. But it was a wild, evil laugh.

Darcy got up, rubbing her head. She swung her other arm in a way that suggested it wasn't broken after all. He tried to feel relieved about this, but instead he just felt guiltier. He could think of no way to make things better and so he did nothing. He watched while Darcy went over and picked up the fork where he'd dropped it, carried it over to the sink, and then stood on the footstool to rinse it off. She looked over at him. Said, with a shrug, "They're home."

Car lights bounced against the windows.

His stepsister got down off the stool. She had a wet sponge in her hand. Calmly she crouched down and scrubbed at the bloody tiles. Swiped once at the blood on his jeans, and then gave up. Went back to the sink, stopping to pick up and straighten the chair he'd knocked over, and ran the water again to get the blood out of the sponge while he just sat and watched.

His mother came in first. She was laughing, probably at something his stepfather had said. His stepfather was always making jokes. It was one of the things Peter hated most about his stepfather, how he could make his mother laugh so easily. And how quickly her face would change from laughter, when she talked to Peter, or like now, when she looked over and saw Darcy at the sink, Peter on the floor. His stepfather came in right behind her, still saying something funny, his mouth invisible behind that bearish, bluish-blackish beard. He was holding a doggy bag.

"Peter," his mother said, knowing right away, the way she always did. "What's going on?"

He opened up his mouth to explain everything, but Darcy got there first. She ran over and hugged his mother around the legs. Lucky for his mother she wasn't holding a fork. And now here it came, the end of everything.

"Mommy," Darcy said, and Peter could see the magical effect this one word had, even on accountants. How his mother grew rigid with surprise, then lovingly pliant, as if Darcy had injected her with some kind of muscle relaxant.

Darcy turned her head, still holding his mother in that monstrously loving hold, and gave Peter a look he didn't understand until she began to speak in a rush. "Mommy, it was Cinderella because I couldn't sleep and Mrs. Daly had to go home and I woke up and we were waiting for you to come home and I got scared. Don't be angry. Peter and I were just playing a game. I was the evil stepsister." Again she looked at Peter.

"And I was Cinderella," Peter said. The leg of his pants was stiff with blood, but he could come up with an explanation tomorrow if only Darcy continued to keep his mother distracted. He had to get upstairs before anyone else. Get changed into his pajamas. Put things away in the forbidden room, where the werewolves waited patiently in the dark for their story to begin again. To begin the game again. No one could see what was in Darcy's face right now but him. He wished she would look away. He saw that she still had a smear of his blood on her hand, from the sponge and she glanced down and saw it too. Slowly, still looking at Peter, she wiped her hand against the princess dress until there was nothing left to see.

Stephen Baxter is one of the most important science fiction writers to emerge from Britain in the past thirty years. His "Xeelee" sequence of novels and short stories is arguably the most significant work of future history in modern science fiction. Baxter is the author of more than forty books and over 100 short stories. His most recent books are the near-future disaster duology,
Flood
and
Ark
. Upcoming is a new novel,
Stone Spring,
first of a new alternate-prehistory saga, and a major omnibus of the "Xeelee" novels.

As the women tried to pull her away, Ama hammered with her fist on the blank wall of the Building. "Let me inside! Oh, let me inside!"

But the Building had sealed itself against her. If the Weapon decreed that you were to have your child in the open air, that was how it was going to be, and no mere human being could do anything about it.