The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

by John Joseph Adams

  I had been able to get my place for little more than a song. It was too big for me, with a yard that opened onto an incredible view of the Sound, all blue water and endless sky. Opening the front door revealed a living room done up in varying shades of beige, with water stains on the walls and ancient curtains covering the windows. I locked up behind myself, making my way to the back bedroom, which I had prepared meticulously for this moment.

  Blackout curtains kept the sunlight at bay, while humidifiers and heaters brought the temperature up to something heavy and tropical. The creature had breathed acid, biological and bright, and the eggs had been nestled in cradles of melted sand, with channels dug around them, as if to keep them dry. I had gambled on the fact that the acid had been a part of the gestation process, intended to tell the babies when it was safe for them to emerge. I removed them from my backpack, placing them in the beds of sculpting foam that I had constructed. There were four beds, a moment of wild optimism given physical reality. I pushed two of them under the desk with my foot and went for my field kit. It was time to take some basic measurements.

  The active egg weighed eight pounds and had an ambient temperature of eighty-four degrees. The inactive egg weighed twelve pounds and had an ambient temperature of sixty degrees. I still tucked them both in, putting enough distance between them to mirror the setup in the cave, before leaving the room and scavenging a dinner for myself from the meager supplies in the kitchen. My bed beckoned. Cracker crumbs still clinging to my lips, I collapsed into it without removing my clothes. The work, the real work, was about to begin.

  The next six weeks passed in a blur of tests and measurements. The active egg grew warmer by the day, and on Day 6 it began to swell, growing so quickly that I fancied I could almost see it happen. I cooed to it, increased the humidity, and began wiping it down with a dilute acid bath, helping the shell to weaken and thin. I had made a study of the creature’s biology, reading every report, examining every biological breakdown, and the acid had to do something other than belch forth to dissolve cities. It took too many resources to be that limited. But as a way to protect the young . . .

  The eggshell was so thick. The acid would wear it away, telling the baby that it was safe to emerge. In the absence of a parent, erosion would do the same thing, but it would take so much longer. So very, very much longer.

  I was wiping the mixture of acid and seawater across the shell when the egg gave an almighty shake, almost hopping in its cradle. I pulled back and watched in delighted awe as the shell split and tore under the force of a sharp-jawed saurian head pushing its way to freedom.

  All vertebrates practice cuteness as a survival mechanism. Even baby snakes and lizards are adorable compared to the adults, with large eyes, outsized skulls, and a certain rounded softness. The infant creature was no different. It blinked its round golden eyes at me, all four of its pupils contracting, and made a small, querulous sound. I smiled.

  “Hello, little one,” I said.

  It made the sound again, louder this time, before beginning to chirp, pushing its arms through the remnants of the shell and holding them out to me.

  The creature had been bipedal. Its child was no different, built like the hybrid offspring of a human and an alligator, with soft scales in a dozen shades of green, from mellow jade across its belly to deep malachite on its back. It had the beginning of what would eventually be jagged spikes running the length of its spine, and tiny, pearlescent claws on the ends of its fingers. Like most reptiles, it had been born with a full complement of teeth, each one sharp enough to tear through flesh. Strangest of all were its eyes, two large and placed where I would expect on a bipedal predator, two smaller and placed above them, giving it an incredible range of vision. Nothing would ever sneak up on this child of the deeps.

  It chirped again. I took a breath. It could be trying to lure me in, to make a meal of me, in which case I would die and so would it, starved and unable to escape the house at its current size. It could also be an imprinted infant, turning to its presumed parental figure, seeking comfort.

  “You and me, kid,” I said, and leaned forward, scooping it out of the eggshell, into my arms.

  The infant creature made a softer sound, somewhere between a purr and a sigh, and pressed its face against the curve of my neck, huddling into the warmth of me. I held it tightly, looking at the wrecked remains of its eggshell, and thought of the people who would give anything, anything, to be where I was now, to have this tiny, innocent thing at their disposal. Think of the secrets they could learn by taking a juvenile apart!

  I could have anything I wanted with a single phone call. Money, fame, all the attention in the world. I could be the new darling of the sciences, the one who changed the field forever. Or I could have this baby, who was already falling asleep in my arms, heavy and content and absolutely sure that I would keep it safe.

  I kissed the top of its head. “You and me, kiddo,” I murmured. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Geode toddled around the backyard on increasingly strong legs, tail waving wildly to help them stay stable and upright. Only a month out of the egg and they were already up to my chest, capable of knocking me over with the innocent enthusiasm of their play. With only two known exemplars of their species, I couldn’t have said whether they were male or female, but I had lost the ability to think of them with the dispassionate it by the time they were a week old, happily shredding salmon with their talons and trying to lure me into eating the bits they didn’t want. They were an individual. Not a human, but not a beast either.

  And they knew me. Geode couldn’t speak, but they understood their own name and all the things I was inclined to ask them for. They even allowed me to continue taking blood samples, despite their dislike of the needle, because I said please and promised them their favorite delicacies when I was done.

  They tripped over a rock in the yard and stumbled, making a distressed groaning noise that turned into a hacking sound, like a cat in the process of coughing up a hairball. They moaned once and spat a ball of faintly glowing, semisolid goo onto the ground, where it began to smolder and sink into the earth. Geode moaned again, now sounding ashamed.

  “Oh, no, baby,” I said, rushing to their side and rubbing the scales on the top of their head soothingly. “That was a good thing you did just now. What a fine, strong baby you are! Why, I’m sure most unidentified sea-dwellers can’t make acid until they’re much larger than you are!”

  Geode creeled hopefully. I laughed.

  “Yes, you can have some chopped squid as a reward. Greedy little one.”

  They bumped their head against my sternum. I laughed again, planting a kiss on their cheek before turning and starting for the house.

  As soon as they couldn’t see me, I let my smile fade. Acid. They were spitting acid. I’d known that was a normal part of their development, but between that and the speed with which they were growing . . . their childhood was going to be much shorter than I wanted it to be, and there was no way I’d be able to hide them forever. Honestly, I was going to be hard-pressed to hide them much longer. They ate more every day. There were only three stores within reasonable driving distance, and even rotating which ones I went to, and when, they were starting to notice how much fish I bought. The money would run out soon, and that was assuming no one tipped off the authorities to the tourist with the strange shopping habits.

  Was it paranoid of me to think that buying too much fresh salmon could bring the government down on my head? Maybe. But I was the only person known to be living in my area, and I was from out of state, and this was a different world from the one that I’d been born into. This was a world where monsters were real.

  Geode chirped and nudged their head against my arm, asking for more scritches. Maybe this had always been a world where monsters were real. We were just finally being forced to admit that maybe we’d been wrong about what they were.

  Another month passed in furtive shopping expeditions and the increasing hunger of my ad
opted child. The first time I stepped into the backyard to find them with their head buried in the ripped-open chest cavity of a stag I stopped, heart thundering in my ears, questions of radiation and exposure racing through my mind. It wasn’t safe to hunt here. It wasn’t safe to fish here. It wasn’t—

  It wasn’t safe to starve here, and I couldn’t buy enough meat to keep Geode from crying in the night, or apparently to keep them from running off to hunt. They were taller than I was, still growing at an incredible rate, and their acid projectiles were no longer accidental but were instead aimed and fired with pinpoint precision, usually to object to something I had asked, like another blood sample or for Geode to lift their tail out of the way while I worked. We danced through the increasingly cramped house with exquisite care, me trying to keep records of their astonishing growth, them snarling and snapping and shedding strips of too-small skin everywhere. I gathered every single one, the marine biologist’s equivalent of a baby book, and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. Yes, Geode was the scientific discovery of a lifetime. A proper laboratory could have learned so much more from them. I didn’t care. They were my responsibility, my adopted child, and I knew how this would end.

  I just didn’t expect it to end so soon.

  We were in the backyard, Geode lying on their back in the sun, me wiping down their belly with a mixture of saltwater and dilute acid—the same mixture I’d used on their eggshell to encourage them to hatch, now used to encourage a shed—and me in a tank top and old jeans, half draped across the slope of their thigh, which held me up and kept me balanced. It was a beautiful day, that rare Seattle sunshine pouring out of the clear blue sky, warming the both of us to the bone.

  Geode was mumbling and whistling, a soft, sweet sound that filled my ears enough that I didn’t hear the truck pulling up in front of the house, didn’t hear the door slam as the inspector got out. He must have tried the door first, ringing the bell on an empty but clearly occupied house, and when he didn’t get an answer, he went looking for the source of the sound. Maybe he was even trying to help, wanting to warn me about the looters that had been seen moving closer and closer to this area. Whatever his reasons, he came around the corner of the house, tablet in one hand, the other hand raised to block out the sun, calling, “Hello? Is there anyone home? I’m from the state, and—oh my God!”

  His voice became a shout at the end, terrified and shrill and unlike any sound Geode had ever heard a human make before. I had to assume that was why they surged to their feet, pushing me gently behind them, and roared, spitting balls of acid with terrible precision to strike the man in the face, throat, and stomach.

  I screamed. The man fell, acid eating the flesh away, revealing blood-mottled bone. Geode looked back at me, as if reassuring themself that I was all right, before ambling over to bend over the body, beginning to rip the acid-softened flesh away.

  I turned and vomited into the grass.

  Geode was a carnivore. There was footage of their mother eating humans, shoving bodies into her mouth as she continued her rampage through the streets of Seattle. This wasn’t a surprise. But seeing it happen wasn’t the same thing as knowing that it was a possibility, and the inspector hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t offered any threat to my lumbering, rapidly growing child. All he’d done was startle them.

  Geode, sensing my distress, stopped devouring the man and came to crouch by my side, nudging me ever so gently with the tip of their snout. I braced myself with one hand, pressing the other to their scales. My beautiful, glorious, impossible child, the baby I’d dreamt about for my entire adult life, looked at me and crooned, confused and hopeful that I would somehow make things all right.

  They were already ten feet tall, and growing every day. They could devour most of the predators they’d find in the sea, and ward off the ones they couldn’t fight. The inspector . . . he’d been the first. He wouldn’t be the last. His disappearance would be the trigger that brought down an entire world of trouble on our heads.

  “It’s time,” I said, and Geode creeled, and if they knew why I was crying, they had no way to tell me so.

  The inspector’s pickup was sturdy, designed to navigate the broken roads and crumbling infrastructure of Washington State. Geode was heavy enough to weigh it down, but not enough to stop it from rolling. They sat in the back, head tilted into the wind, making small sounds of delight as I drove toward the coast as fast as I dared. The hibernating egg was an accusing presence in the passenger seat, concealed inside my half-zipped backpack. I’d known there was no real chance I’d have the time to hatch it, had been half intending, when this moment came, to leave it with my notes for future scientists to study. Maybe one of them would have fallen in love with its contents the way I’d fallen for Geode. Maybe it would have made it back to the sea.

  But that had always been me lying to myself. My love had begun with a glimpse of agonized eyes as Geode’s mother fell, with a feeling too big for me to put a name on but big enough to drive my entire life going forward, to steer me, inevitably, toward a cove and a cave and a child and a conclusion. I couldn’t gamble on that kind of love happening again.

  We were almost to the edge of the wood when the sirens started behind us. The truck jounced as Geode shifted position, barking their distress and slapping their tail against the side of the cab. I swore, fighting to keep control, and hit the gas harder. We needed to reach the trees. We needed—

  They must have been following us for longer than I’d expected. A bullet shattered the windshield next to my head, and my focus became only and entirely stopping the truck before I lost control. I grabbed the backpack and kicked the door open, leaving the keys in the ignition as I flung myself out of the vehicle.

  “Geode! Come on!” I ran for the distant tree line like my life depended on it, and Geode ran after me, confused and frightened but still obedient to the only authority they had ever known. They were faster than I was, but not so fast that I lost sight of them as we dove into the trees, beast and biologist both fleeing for their lives.

  Well. Not really. I wasn’t fleeing for my own life anymore. I was fleeing for theirs. They were the endangered species; they were the promise I had made to myself before my mother turned the news off in that long-ago living room. My own life had been forfeit the moment I sat down with a map of the coastline and the intent to bring a legend home.

  The trees slowed Geode enough that I was able to catch up, and we ran together to the place where the forest dropped off, replaced by empty coast. Geode stiffened at the sight of the sea, making a sound that was something like wonder and something like longing and something like betrayal. I grabbed one talon, heedless of the way it sliced into my palm.

  “Come on!”

  Together we slid down the embankment, the sound of shouts and sirens echoing behind us, our pursuers growing closer by the moment. I stumbled at the bottom, my ankle twisting on the stones, and yelped in pain and surprise. Geode didn’t pause in striding toward the sea, only swept me up in one massive arm, carrying me as easily as I had carried them only a few short weeks before. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon, a soft, humming sound building in their chest. It sounded like a sigh. It sounded like a song.

  It sounded like going home.

  Bullets bit into the beach. I looked back. Soldiers in olive green were lined up at the top of the bluff, guns drawn, shouting and gesturing to each other. They looked at my precious child and saw only the threat of an unfamiliar species, of competition, when we were all only seeking to survive on this planet. The seas are deep. Geode’s mother could have been down there for millennia before she rose to lay her eggs and clear away any predators that might threaten them. We didn’t have to fight. We could share.

  Geode hesitated at the water’s edge, the hum turning confused. I put my unwounded hand against their arm, smiling.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “Take me home.”

  It came out of the sea; it destroyed a city; it died. That’s the story.
>
  She came out of the sea; she tried to protect her children; she died. That’s the story too.

  As the water closed over my head and my lungs began to ache, I relaxed in Geode’s arms, content to give my life for my child, even as their mother had done, so many years ago. They kept walking, and the darkness grew around us, until there was nothing but the feel of scaled arms around me and the nylon strap of the backpack in my hand. And then even that was gone, and so was I, part of the deep, drowned world where monsters walk, and promises are made, and stories older than the tide, older than the stone it wears away, are told over and over again, forever.

  That’s the story. That’s what everyone knows.

  N. K. Jemisin

  The Storyteller’s Replacement

  from How Long ’til Black Future Month?

  The storyteller could not make it this evening. He sent me in his stead. Why, because I am one whose task it is to speak for the dead. Perhaps you’ve heard of others like me? In different places I am called by different names: shaman, onmyouji, bokor, freak. Since the dead are in no short supply, I know many tales. But if you do not like my tales, just say so. I am sure to know some means or another of keeping you entertained.

  So.

  King Paramenter of Sosun, wishing to dispel rumors of his impotence, inquired privately of his wizard as to how he might fortify his virility. “I have seen mention of dragons in lore on the subject,” the wizard told him. “In specific, eating the heart of a male dragon should accord you some of that creature’s proclivity.” As it was rumored that male dragons could seed as many as a dozen females in a day, Paramenter immediately sent scouts forth from his palace in search of one.