Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984 Page 17

“At your house, too?” asked Dr. Wu.

  Wu’s attendant was dressed in Buddhist robes and seemingly paid no attention to either of them.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Man-Mountain Gentian.

  “Physically, no. This is nothing a pain shift can help. Emotionally, there is.”

  “What?”

  “You can win tomorrow, though I won’t be around to share it.”

  Man-Mountain Gentian was quiet a moment. “I’m not sure I can promise you that.”

  “I didn’t think so. You are forgetting the kitten and the bowl of milk.”

  “No. Not at all. I think I’ve finally come up against something new and strong in the world. I will either win or lose. Either way, I will retire.”

  “If it did not mean anything to you, you could have lost by now,” said Dr. Wu.

  Man-Mountain Gentian was quiet again.

  Wu shifted uneasily on his pillows. “Well, there is not much time. Lean close. Listen carefully to what I have to say.

  “The novice Itsu went to the Master and asked him, ‘Master, what is the key to all enlightenment?’

  “‘You must teach yourself never to think of the white horse,’ said the Master.

  “Itsu applied himself with all his being. One day while raking gravel, he achieved insight.

  “‘Master! Master!’ yelled Itsu, running to the Master’s quarters. ‘Master, I have made myself not think about the white horse!’

  “‘Quick!’ said the Master. ‘When you were not thinking of the horse, where was Itsu?’

  “The novice could make no answer.

  “The Master dealt Itsu a smart blow with his staff.

  “At this, Itsu was enlightened.”

  Then Dr. Wu let his head back down on his bed.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  In his bed in the lamasery in Tibet, Dr. Wu let out a ragged breath and died.

  Man-Mountain Gentian, standing in his bedroom in Tokyo, began to cry.

  Kudzu House took up a city block in the middle of Tokyo. The taxes alone must have been enormous.

  Through the decreasing snow, Melissa saw the lights. Their beams stabbed up into the night. All that she could see from a block away was the tangled kudzu.

  Kudzu was a vine, originally transplanted from China, raised in Japan for centuries. Its crushed root was used as a starch base in cooking; its leaves were used for teas and medicines; its fibers, to make cloth and paper.

  What kudzu was most famous for was its ability to grow over and cover anything that didn’t move out of its way.

  In the Depression Thirites of the last century, it had been planted on road cuts in the southeastern United States to stop erosion. Kudzu had almost stopped progress there. In those ideal conditions it grew runners more than twenty meters long in a single summer, several to a root. Its vines climbed utility poles, hills, trees. It completely covered other vegetation, cutting off its sunlight.

  Many places in the American south were covered three kilometers wide to each side of the highways with kudzu vines. The Great Kudzu Forest of central Georgia was a U.S. national park.

  In the bleaker conditions of Japan the weed could be kept under control. Except that this owner didn’t want it to. The lights playing into the snowy sky were part of the heating and watering system that kept vines growing year-round. All this Melissa had read. Seeing it was something again. The entire block was a green tangle of vines and lights.

  “Do you ever trim it?” she asked.

  “The traffic keeps it back,” said Killer Kudzu, and he laughed. “I have gardeners who come in and fight it once a week. They’re losing.”

  They went into the green tunnel of a driveway. Melissa saw the edge of the house, cast concrete, as they dropped into the sunken vehicle area.

  There were three boats, four road vehicles, a Hovercraft, and a small sport flyer parked there.

  Lights shone up into a dense green roof from which hundreds of vines grew downward toward the light sources.

  “We have to move the spotlights every week,” he said.

  A butler met them at the door. “Just a tour, Mord,” said Killer Kudzu. “We’ll have drinks in the sitting room in thirty minutes.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “This way.”

  Melissa went to a railing. The living area was the size of a bowling alley, or the lobby of a terrible old hotel.

  The balcony on the second level jutted out from the east wall. Killer Kudzu went to a console, punched buttons.

  Moe and the Meanies boomed from dozens of speakers.

  Killer Kudzu stood snapping his fingers for a moment. “Oh, send me! Honorable cats!” he said. “That’s from Spike Jones, an irreverent American musician of the last century. He died of cancer,” he added.

  Melissa followed him, noticing the things everyone noticed—the Chrome Room, the Supercharger Inhalorium, the archery range (“the object is not to hit the targets,” said Kudzu), the Mososaur Pool with the fossils embedded in the sides and bottom.

  She was more affected by the house and its overall tawdriness than she thought she would be.

  “You’ve done very well for yourself.”

  “Some manage it, some give it away, some save it. I spend it.”

  They were drinking kudzu-tea highballs in the sitting room, which was one of the most comfortable rooms Melissa had ever been in.

  “Tasteless, isn’t it?” asked Killer Kudzu.

  “Not quite,” said Melissa. “It was well worth the trip.”

  “You could stay, you know,” said Kudzu.

  “I thought I could.” She sighed. “It would only give me one more excuse not to finish the dishes at home.” She gave him a long look. “No, thank you. Besides, it wouldn’t give you an advantage in the match.”

  “That really never crossed my mind.”

  “I’m quite sure.”

  “You are a beautiful woman.”

  “You have a nice house.”

  “Hmmm. Time to get you home.”

  “I’m sure.”

  They sat outside her house in the cold. The snow had stopped. Stars peeped through the low scud.

  “I’m going to win tomorrow, you know,” said Killer Kudzu.

  “You might,” said Melissa.

  “It is sometimes possible to do more than win,” he said.

  “I’ll tell my husband.”

  “My offer is always open,” he said. He reached over and opened her door on the ruanabout. “Life won’t be the same after he’s lost. Or after he retires.”

  She climbed out, shaking from more than the cold. He closed the door, whipped the vehicle in a circle, and was gone down the crunching street. He blinked his lights once before he drove out of sight.

  She found her husband in the kitchen. His eyes were red, he was as pale as she had ever seen him.

  “Dr. Wu is dead,” he said, and wrapped his huge arms around her, covering her like an upright sofa.

  He began to cry again. She talked to him quietly.

  “Come to bed. Let’s try to get some sleep,” she said.

  “No, I couldn’t rest. I wanted to see you first. I’m going down to the stable.” She helped him dress in his warmest clothing. He kissed her and left, walking the few blocks through the snowy sidewalks to the training building.

  The junior wrestlers were awakened at four A.M. They were to begin the day’s work of sweeping, cleaning, cooking, bathing, feeding, and catering to the senior wrestlers. When they came in they found him, stripped to his mawashi, at the three-hundred-kilo push bag, pushing, pushing, straining, crying all the while, not saying a word. The floor of the arena was torn and grooved.

  They cleaned up the area for the morning workouts, one junior wrestler following him around with the sand trowel.

  At seven A.M. he slumped exhausted on a bench. Two of the juryo covered him with quilts and set an alarm clock beside him for one in the afternoon.

  “Your opponent was at the ba
ll game last night,” said Nayakano the stablemaster. Man-Mountain Gentian sat in the dressing room while the barber combed and greased his elaborate chon-mage. “Your wife asked me to give you this.”

  It was a note in a plain envelope, addressed in her beautiful calligraphy. He opened and read it.

  Her letter warned him of what Kudzu said about “more than winning” the night before, and wished him luck.

  He turned to the stablemaster.

  “Had Killer Kudzu injured any opponent before he became yokozuna last tournament?” Man-Mountain asked.

  Nayakano’s answer was immediate. “No. That’s unheard of. Let me see that note.” He reached out.

  Man-Mountain Gentian put it back in the envelope, tucked it in his mawashi.

  “Should I alert the judges?”

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” said Man-Mountain Gentian.

  “I don’t like this,” said the stablemaster.

  Three hefty junior wrestlers ran in to the dressing room carrying Gentian’s kesho-mawashi between them.

  The last day of the January tournament always packed them in. Even the maega-shira and komusubi matches, in which young boys threw each other, or tried to, drew enough of an audience to make the novices feel good.

  The call for the ozeki-class wrestlers came, and they went through the grandiose ring-entering ceremony, wearing their great kesho-mawashi aprons of brocade, silk, and gold, while their dew sweepers and sword-bearers squatted to the sides.

  Then they retired to their benches, east or west, to await the call by the falsetto-voiced yobidashi.

  Man-Mountain Gentian watched as the assistants helped Killer Kudzu out of his ceremonial apron, gold with silk kudzu leaves, purple flowers, yellow stars. His forehead blazed with the People’s Republic of China flag.

  He looked directly at Gentian’s place and smiled a broad, crooked smile.

  There was a great match between Gorilla Tsunami and Typhoon Takanaka, which went on for more than thirty seconds by the clock, both men straining, groaning, sweating until the gyoji made them stop, and rise, and then get on their marks again.

  Those were the worst kind of matches for the wrestlers, each opponent alternately straining, then bending with the other, neither getting advantage. There was a legendary match five years ago that took six thirty-second tries before one wrestler bested the other.

  The referee flipped his fan. Gorilla Tsunami fell flat on his face in a heap, then wriggled backwards out of the ring.

  The crowd screamed and applauded Takanaka.

  Then the yobidashi said, “East—Man-Mountain Gentian. West—Killer Kudzu.”

  They hurried their shikiris. Each threw salt twice, rinsing once. Then Man-Mountain Gentian, moving with the grace of a dancer, lifted his right leg and stamped it, then his left, and the sound was like the double echo of a cannon throughout the stadium.

  He went immediately to his mark.

  Killer Kudzu jumped down to his mark, glaring at his opponent across the meter that separated them.

  The gyoji, off guard, took a few seconds to turn sideways to them and bring his fan into position.

  In that time, Man-Mountain Gentian could hear the quiet hum of the electrical grid, hear muffled intake of breath from the other wrestlers, hear a whistle in the nostril of the north-side judge.

  “Huuu!” said the referee, and his fan jerked.

  Man-Mountain Gentian felt as though two freight trains had collided in his head. There was a snap as his mucles went tense all over and the momentum of the explosion in his brain began to push at him, lifting, threatening to make him give or tear through the back of his head.

  His feet were on a slippery, sandy bottom, neck-high wave crests smashed into him, a rip tide was pushing at his shoulder, at one side, pulling his legs up, twisting his muscles. He could feel his eyes pushed back in their sockets as if by iron thumbs, ready to pop them like ripe plums. His ligaments were iron wires stretched tight on the turnbuckles of his bones. His arms ended in strands of noodles, his face was soft cheese.

  The sand under him was soft, so soft, and he knew that all he had to do was to sink in it, let go, cease to resist.

  And through all that haze and blindness he knew what it was that he was not supposed to think about.

  Everything quit: He reached out one mental hand, as big as the sun, as fast as light, as long as time, and he pushed against his opponent’s chest.

  The lights were back, he was in the stadium, in the arena, and the dull pounding was applause, screams.

  Killer Kudzu lay blinking among the ring bales.

  “Hooves?” Man-Mountain Gentian heard him ask in bewilderment before he picked himself up.

  Man-Mountain Gentian took the envelope from the referee with three quick chopping motions, then made a fourth to the audience, and they knew then and only then that they would never see him in the ring again.

  The official clock said 0.9981 second.

  “How did you do it, Man-Mountain?” asked the Tokyo paparazzi as the wrestler showered out his chon-mage and put on his clothes. He said nothing.

  He met his wife outside the stadium. A lone newsman was waiting with her, “Scoop” Hakimoto.

  “For old times’ sake,” begged Hakimoto. “How did you do it?” Man-Mountain Gentian turned to Melissa. “Tell him how I did it,” he said.

  “He didn’t think about the white horse,” she said. They left the newsman standing there, staring.

  Killer Kudzu, tired and pale, was getting in his vehicle. Hakimoto came running up. “What’s all this I hear about Gentian and a white horse?” he asked.

  Kudzu’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

  “No comment,” he said.

  That night, to celebrate, Man-Mountain Gentian took Melissa to the Beef Bowl.

  He had seventeen orders and helped Melissa finish her second one.

  They went back home, climbed onto their futons, and turned on the TV.

  Gilligan was on his island. All was right with the world.

  GREG BEAR

  Hardfought

  Born in San Diego, California, Greg Bear made his first sale at the age of fifteen to Robert Lowndes’ Famous Science Fiction. In the years since then, he has established himself as one of the top young professionals in the genre. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Galaxy, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Universe, and elsewhere, and his excellent 1982 short story “Petra” was a finalist for both the Nebula and the World Fantasy award. His novels include Hegira, Psychlone, Beyond Heaven’s River, and Strength of Stones. His most recent book is The Wind From a Burning Woman, a collection. Upcoming are three novels, The Infinity Concerto, Blood Music (both upcoming from Berkley), and Eon (upcoming from Bluejay Books). Bear lives in Spring Valley, California, and, with his wife, Astrid, co-edits the SFWA Forum.

  Bear lists his greatest interests as science and history, and this shows itself to stunning effect in “Hardfought,” a brilliant tour-de-force about the interplay between science and history that takes us simultaneously to the far reaches of the universe and deep inside the hearts of our distant descendants—people so changed by the consequence of a millennia-long war that they have become nearly as alien as the enigmatic enemy they fight …

  Humans called it the Medusa. Its long twisted ribbons of gas strayed across fifty parsecs, glowing blue, yellow, and carmine. Its central core was a ghoulish green flecked with watery black. Half a dozen protostars circled the core, and as many more dim conglomerates pooled in dimples in the nebula’s magnetic field. The Medusa was a huge womb of stars—and disputed territory.

  Whenever Prufrax looked at it in displays or through the ship’s ports, it seemed malevolent, like a zealous mother showing an ominous face to protect her children. Prufrax had never had a mother, but she had seen them in some of the fibs.

  At five, Prufrax was old enough to know the Mellangee’s mission and her role in it. She had already
been through four ship-years of indoctrination. Until her first battle she would be educated in both the Know and the Tell. She would be exercised and trained in the Mocks; in sleep she would dream of penetrating the huge red-and-white Senexi seedships and finding the brood mind. “Zap, Zap,” she went with her lips, silent so the tellman wouldn’t think her thoughts were straying.

  The tellman peered at her from his position in the center of the spherical classroom. Her mates stared straight at the center, all focusing somewhere around the tellman’s spiderlike teaching desk, waiting for the trouble, some fidgeting. “How many branch individuals in the Senexi brood mind?” he asked. He looked around the classroom. Peered face by face. Focused on her again. “Pru?”

  “Five,” she said. Her arms ached. She had been pumped full of moans the wake before. She was already three meters tall, in elfstate, with her long, thin limbs not nearly adequately fleshed out and her fingers still crisscrossed with the surgery done to adapt them to the gloves.

  “What will you find in the brood mind?” the tellman pursued, his impassive face stretched across a hammerhead as wide as his shoulders. Some of the fems thought tellmen were attractive. Not many—and Pru was not one of them.

  “Yoke,” she said.

  “What is in the brood-mind yoke?”

  “Fibs.”

  “More specifically? And it really isn’t all fib, you know.”

  “Info. Senexi data.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Zap,” she said, smiling.

  “Why, Pru?”

  “Yoke has team gens-memory. Zap yoke, spill the life of the team’s five branch inds.”

  “Zap the brood, Pru?”

  “No,” she said solemnly. That was a new instruction, only in effect since her class’s inception. “Hold the brood for the supreme overs.” The tellman did not say what would be done with the Senexi broods. That was not her concern.

  “Fine,” said the tellman. “You tell well, for someone who’s always half journeying.”

  Brainwalk, Prufrax thought to herself. Tellman was fancy with the words, but to Pru, what she was prone to do during Tell was brainwalk, seeking out her future. She was already five, soon six. Old. Some saw Senexi by the time they were four.