Year's Best SF 17

But when Judy finally breaks free of Doug’s hand, and turns to flee, she’s hit with a blinding headrush, like a one-minute migraine. Three scoops of ice cream on top of three beers, or maybe just stress, but it paralyzes her, even as she’s trying to run. Doug tries to throw himself in her path, but he overbalances and falls down the river bank, landing almost in the water.

“Gah!” Doug wails. “Help me up. I’m hurt.” He lifts one arm, and Judy puts down her bike, helps him climb back up. Doug’s a mess, covered with mud, and he’s clutching one arm, heaving with pain.

“Are you okay?” Judy can’t help asking.

“Breaking my arm hurt a lot more …” Doug winces. “… than I thought it would.”

“Your arm.” Judy can’t believe what she’s seeing. “You broke … your arm.”

“You can see for yourself. At least this means it’s over.”

“But you were supposed to break your leg.”

Doug almost tosses both hands in the air, until he remembers he can’t. “This is exactly why I can’t deal with you any more. We both agreed, on our very first date, I break my arm. You’re just remembering it wrong, or being difficult on purpose.”

Doug wants to go to the hospital by himself, but Judy insists on going with. He curses at the pain, stumbling over every knot and root.

“You broke your arm.” Judy’s half-sobbing, half-laughing, it’s almost too much to take in. “You broke your arm, and maybe that means that all of this … that maybe we could try again. Not right away, I’m feeling pretty raw right now, but in a while. I’d be willing to try.”

But she already knows what Doug’s going to say: “You don’t get to hurt me any more.”

She doesn’t leave Doug until he’s safely staring at the hospital linoleum, waiting to go into X-ray. Then she pedals home, feeling the cold air smash into her face. She’s forgotten her helmet, but it’ll be okay. When she gets home, she’s going to grab Marva and they’re going straight to Logan, where a bored check-in counter person will give them dirt-cheap tickets on the last flight to Miami. They’ll have the wildest three days of their lives, with no lasting ill effects. It’ll be epic, she’s already living every instant of it in her head. She’s crying buckets but it’s okay, her bike’s headwind wipes the slate clean.

“And Weep Like Alexander” NEIL GAIMAN

Neil Gaiman (neilgaiman.com) lives with his wife, Amanda Palmer, in Boston, Massachusetts, and maintains an office near Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a celebrity. He became prominent in the late 1980s as a writer of intellectually and aesthetically satisfying comics, particularly Sandman, at the same time he was improving his craft as a writer of fiction and emerging as a popular writer of stories. His first novel (after the popular collaboration with Terry Prachett, Good Omens, 1990) was Neverwhere (1996), followed by Stardust (1999). His third novel, American Gods (2001), won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and signaled a new level of achievement in his literary career. His young adult novels, Coraline (2002) and The Graveyard Book (2008), are particularly notable. Some of his short fiction is collected in Smoke and Mirrors (1998), M Is for Magic (2004), and Fragile Things (2006). He is currently writing a novel that may be a sequel to American Gods.

“And Weep Like Alexander” was published in an original collection of SF tall tales told in a bar, Fables from the Fountain, edited by Ian Whates. It is in the British SF tradition of Arthur C. Clarke’s humorous Tales from the White Hart. It features Obediah Polkinghorn, uninventor, and answers such questions as why we have no flying cars today. We think it is a delightful answer.