The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction Part 18

"I mean quit everything: running, swimming, practicing. . ."

"Quit practicing?" Her face set. "I can't afford to stop practicing. Gordy, it's time she doesn't use. She hasn't missed it before, and if Tm careful not to let her catch me out again, sh.e.l.l never miss it" I shook my bead. "You're breaking an agreement"

"I'm not taking over, though. You know that's just a paranoid fantasy. I use only enough time for practice and no more." I sighed. "You seem to have all the best of it"

She snorted. "I wonder. Do you have any idea what ifs like being locked up in her head for six months, continuously aware but able to do nothing? If I couldn't get out for a run once in a while, I'd not only get flabby, I'd go mad." She bounced out of the chair and came over to lace her fingers together behind my neck. "What about you? It's three months until January. How can I give up seeing you for three whole months?"

I did not like that idea, either, but ... "What else can we do? Shall I lie to Amanda and hate you for making me do it?"

She winced. "No."

"Well be able to see each other all we like in January."

"January." She groaned the word. "That's forever. Kiss me good-by, Gordy."

Kissing Selene was like grabbing a high-voltage wire. The charge in her swept through us both. I could almost smell the smoke from my sizzling nerve endings. And this time when I pushed her onto the pad before the fireplace, she did not resist I came out of the post-coital la.s.situde to realize my nerves were . not cauterized after all. They recognized that the room was chilling.

Selene was already fastening her dress. I groped halfheartedly for my clothes.

"This would be a nice night for a fire. Shall I build one?" I asked.

Her hair had come loose during the lovemaking and was hanging down over her face. She parted it to look at me. My breathing stopped. Her eyes were goldstone.

In a voice of such preternatural calm it terrified me, Amanda said, "Who were you talking to?"

It was impossible to answer with ice in my chest. I could only stare back while she hunted around for her hairpins.

"I do hope you aren't going to say it was me, not with a chair adapted to Selene right beside you."

There appeared to be nothing I could say. I crawled into my pants.

She found the pins. Sitting down in the same chair Selene had occupied, she swept her hair up with her arms, then used one hand to hold it while she began pinning it in place. The poly turned a bright mottle of yellow and orange.

"I checked the clock," she said.

Her voice faltered only a little but her hands began to shake. The orange in the chair's color went darker and the yellows bled away. Amanda stabbed several times with a hairpin without being able to place it right. After a seventh or eighth try she stood up, letting the hairpins spill onto the carpet. She walked to the far end of the fireplace, where she stood with her back to me, toying with the tops of the fire tools. "It hasn't been long at all since-since I told you I... trusted you."

That hurt. I climbed to my feet and reached out to touch her shoulder. "I was talking to her for your sake."

She turned. "For my sake? Matthew, please don't lie to me again." There were tears in her voice."I'm not lying. I was arguing that Selene shouldn't use any of your time."

"It was a very . . . short argument." Her voice began to catch. "And I find the ... conclusion rather . . .

inconsistent" Her control was cracking. Tears spilled out of her eyes. Her hand was white on the handle of the tool caddy.

Guilt and her pain tore at me. I chased through my head for something to comfort her. "Mandy, I-"

I bit my tongue but it was too late. She shrieked like a stricken animal and came at me swinging.

There was a poker in her hand.

I backed away, throwing my arms up to protect my head. Amanda might not be athletic, but she had all her released emotion and Selene's sinewy gymnastic strength behind that swing. What probably saved my life was that she did not have Selene's conscious coordination. The poker only brushed my forearm before smas.h.i.+ng into the stone of the fireplace.

I forgot to watch out for the rebound. Pain lanced up my arm. I went down, bouncing my head off the edge of the hearth shelf as I fell.

Amanda screamed again. I tried to roll sideways but my body would not respond and I steeled myself for the second, almost surely fatal blow. But, instead, there was the thud of something dropping on the floor. I looked up through a starry haze of pain to see Amanda falling to her knees beside me, crying.

"Matthew-Matthew, I'm sorry. I didn't meant to hurt you." Her hand stroked my forehead. "It was the name you called me. I hit out at the name. I know what happened wasn't really your fault Selene started it"

I started to frown. It hurt h.e.l.lishly. There seemed to be silver wrapped around the edges of my vision, too. "Selene isn't the evil genius you think, Amanda." My voice sounded thin.

"Don't defend her. She's just like her mother, and my father told me what she was. Selene's been after my time ever since her mother died. Now she wants everything that makes my time worth living, too." She clutched her hands together, lacing and unlacing the fingers.

I was appalled. This kind of thinking had been going on behind her Madonna's serenity? "You can't really believe that."

"She probably let me catch the two of you making love so I'd throw you out and she could have you to herself." Amanda sat back hugging herself as though cold. "I know what she's doing but I don't know what to do to stop her. If she were a cancer, I could cut her out. How do I cure myself of this-this parasite of the mind?"

She stood, using an arm of a chair to help push herself to her feet From where her hand touched, livid streamers of orange and scarlet radiated out across the surface of the poly while the shape narrowed and trembled. A marbled pool of the same colors spread from her feet into the carpet. She stood with her eyes searching the cabin as though she expected to find an answer there. Her gaze fixed on the kitchen.

"Cut her out," she said.

She ran for the kitchen, her feet leaving a path like b.l.o.o.d.y stepping stones.

"Amanda," I called.

I tried to sit up but my head weighed a thousand kilos. I managed to turn over on my side and, as though down a silver tunnel, watched Amanda jerk open a drawer. She reached in. I gritted my teeth against the nausea the effort of moving brought and lurched onto my hands and knees.

Her hand came out of the drawer with a thin knife.

"Amanda!" I crawled toward the kitchen, dragging the weight of my head with me. "Amanda, what are you doing?"

The arm the poker had hit gave away, dropping my head and shoulders onto the carpet The shock sent a new wave of nausea through me and m.u.f.fled my vision and hearing in black velvet.

I could not have been out more than moments. When my sight cleared I was staring into polycarpet turned murky green. There was a soft whisper of crus.h.i.+ng pile, then a tide of scarlet and purple eddied against the edge of my green.

"I'm going to cut her out, Matthew," Amanda's voice said from above me. It was tow but trembling, a breath away from hysteria. "She only comes to dance. I read once about a horse whose tendons were cut just a little, but he never was able to race again.""My G.o.d!" I could see her feet and, by rolling onto my back, look up at her rising above me toward the beams of the room, but I could not move. My head seemed nailed to the floor. The knife gleamed in her hand. "Selene," I called. "I can't reach her. Help me."

Amanda cried, "Matthew, don't-" Her eyes widened with horror. Her mouth moved again.

But this time it was Selene's voice, firm and brisk, that spoke. "I think we'd better have a talk, Mandy."

There was another twisting of the facial features. Amanda, her voice rising, said, "You can't do this, Selene. You're cheating."

"I can't let you ruin my dancing career."

"It's the only way I know to make you go away and leave me alone."

Amanda backed as she spoke, until she was stopped by a wall. The polycarpet extending up the surface responded to her touch with art exploding aurora of hot oranges, reds, and violets.

"I've tried living with you," Amanda said, "but it doesn't work. Now I won't have anything more to do with you!"

"You have no choice." Tendrils of green and blue wormed their way into the pattern. "I'm as much a part of this body as you are. Hamstring me and we'll just both be cripples."

Scarlet wiped out the blues and greens. Amanda cried, "Let's see."

She swooped toward her ankles with the knife. The long skirt of her dress bung in the way. Before she could pick up the hem, her left hand stiffened.

"No," she screamed. "Selene, let go of my hand!"

Behind the left shoulder the polycarpet turned bright blue. The left hand reached for the right wrist.

Amanda wrenched herself sideways, stabbing at the left hand. "Leave me alone."

The left hand dodged. "You don't seem to understand, Mandy-I can't. We're joined indissolubly, till death us do part," Selene said.

"All right!"

The knife turned toward her own chest. Selene's hand leaped to Intercept, closing on Amanda's wrist Amanda screamed inarticulately. Her whole body convulsed with the effort to tear loose. Selene held on.

Slowly, Selene twisted the wrist back and down while the poly around them swirled in wave after wave of color pulsating with every labored breath of the struggling body. The maelstrom spread out across the floor and up the walls, even affected the chairs so that they, too, raged with color and pulsed to * the time of Amanda's breathing.

Amanda's wrist bent back farther. Her fingers fought to hold on to the knife, but with each moment they loosed more.

Amanda sobbed. "I'm going to kill you, Selene. Sooner or later, I'll kill you."

"No." Selene's voice came through clenched teeth. "I won't allow that, Mandy. And I won't retire.

You'll just have to live with me as always."

"I won't I can't bear it." Amanda screamed once more as the knife dropped from her fingers.

Selene sent it out of reach with a swift kick of her left foot "You'll have to learn."

"Selene," I said, "don't push too hard."

Amanda was looking wild, her eyes darting around like those of a trapped animal.

"You're stuck, Mandy," Selene said. "There's no way out"

"No, no, no, no."

I was terrified by the desperation in Amanda's wail. "Selene, stop it!"

But she went on relentlessly, deaf to me. "We have to live together all our lives, Mandy. No matter how much you hate it, you're already a part of me, and I of you."

Amanda whimpered and fell silent The next moment it was Selene, wholly Selene, who stood there. She hurried across the room and knelt beside me. "Are you all right? You've got blood all over your head."

I grabbed her wrist. "Never mind me. How's Amanda?"

She snapped her wrist loose and stood. "You need a doctor." She turned toward the phone.

"What about Amanda?"Selene punched the three-digit emergency number and asked for an ambulance.

"Selene, where is Amanda?"

Selene hung up the phone. "She's gone."

"Gone?" I sat bolt upright. A wave of dizziness knocked me fiat again. "How can she be gone?"

"It was an intolerable situation for her. She went catatonic to escape."

Relief flooded me. "Then she's still alive."

"But I can't reach her. She won't respond to anything I do."

"Haven't you done enough?" I sighed. "When I called you, I didn't mean for you to push her like that.

Couldn't you guess what she might do? We'll call my psychiatrist friend and have her help bring Amanda back."

Selene moved around the room, touching the chairs, working her bare feet through the carpet, soothing away the bizarre reflections of the struggle. Gradually, the chairs and carpet softened to bright blue.

"Selene, did you hear me?"

She stopped moving. "I heard, Gordy."

"Then will you call my friend?"

She did not move or answer.

"Selene!"

She looked down at me with clouded topaz eyes. "I'll. . . think about it"

From Compet.i.tion 19: Limericks incorporating an sf t.i.tle into the last line A young physicist started to stray Toward metaphysical questions one day.

He said, "Research begins Not with angels and pins, But with, 'How much does one pearly Gateway?'

-David Labor Well curry your princess-turned-frogs, And groom your domestic balrogs, But for those with conventional pets we should mention, In pa.s.sing, We Also Walk Dogs.

-Margery Goldstein Though my vowels may sound a bit wuzzy, And my consonants (hie) somewhat muzzy, Don't drink I am thunk- I mean think I am drunk; My tongue's just a (hie) Little Fuzzy.

-Doris McElfresh Said the red-head, while curling a tress, "There have been (tho' I should not confess), Three earls; a bra.s.s band; Dukes numerous and Nine Princes In Amber, no less."-Phoebe Ellis Jane Yolen's cla.s.sic fantasy tales have been appearing in F&SF since 1976. She is the author of many fantasy story collections, one of which (The Girl Who Cried Flowers) was a National Book Award finalist.

Brother Hart