The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24

by Gardner Dozois

  Lucas touches his phone. Eyes scroll and blink to make the call. What isn’t a second phone rings in a place that isn’t a place. After four rings, he expects voicemail. But the fifth ring breaks early.

  “What are you doing?” says the voice.

  “Standing. What are you doing?”

  “Standing,” says Wade.

  “Why aren’t you running with us?”

  “Nobody wanted to talk before. So I turned early and finished.” A lip-smack sound comes across. “Have I ever told you? The coffee always tastes great over here.”

  Lucas stands, knees a little achy.

  “Everybody’s panting, judging by these paces I’ve been watching.”

  “Do you know where they are?” Lucas says.

  “Standing where you left Jaeger, mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “I’ve got one phone moving.”

  “But you can’t watch Carl. He doesn’t carry a phone.”

  “Even if he did, I wouldn’t know anything. A person has to call a person, and the line has to be opened. That’s how I get a lock on positions. And I don’t think the Jaeger wants to trade running stories with me.”

  “By the way,” Lucas says. “Carl looks pretty innocent.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking the shit might have gotten himself a bad break.”

  “And what do you think about me?” Lucas says.

  Silence is the answer, persistent and unnerving.

  “So how long does a phone lock last?” Lucas says.

  “Four hours, give or take. Then the AI attendant spills me back into the normal mode.”

  Lucas digs his mittens out of his tights, warming the fingers. “You said one phone is moving.” Then he says, “Never mind, I see her.”

  A brown cap and a pale little face comes out from the trees, the ponytail swaying behind.

  “How’s Sarah look?” Wade says.

  “Real, real tired.”

  “Poor girl.”

  “Yeah.”

  What isn’t quite a laugh comes into his ear. “I pester you,” says Wade. “I know you don’t like it sometimes. But she’s a lot worse about calling me, and usually for no good reason.”

  “See you, Wade.”

  “Yeah,” the voice says. “Take care.”

  Sarah wants to hurry, but the legs are short and stiff. She shuffles and cries and then stops crying. She comes at Lucas with her face twisting, fresh agonies piled on the old, and as soon as she is in arm’s length, she makes a fist inside the pink mitten and jabs at his stomach. But even the arms are drained. Lucas catches the fist between his hands. She can’t hurt him, so he lowers his hands. “Okay,” he says, sticking his stomach out. “If it helps.”

  Sarah doesn’t hit. She falls to her knees, sobbing hard.

  Nobody moves in the woods to the north. To the west is the unseen creek with its shackling trees. The empty Amtrak line runs down the east side of the park. A quarter mile south stands a row of ancient cottonwoods, tall as hills, the silvery bark glowing in the rising light. Past those trees is a second rail line. A long oak trestle was built across the floodplain and the older line where the Amtrak would eventually run. Dirt was brought in and dumped under the trestle, creating a tall dark ridge. That line was abandoned decades ago. The rails were pulled up for scrap, old ties sold to gardeners. Only the ridge remains, sprouting trees and angling across the park on its way to towns that exist as history and as memory and as drab little dots on yellowed maps.

  Sarah stands and takes in one worthless breath. “You told Jaeger,” she says. “You think somebody hired somebody.”

  Lucas watches her.

  “Somebody paid a professional to kill Wade. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think a person put down money to have it done.”

  She watches him.

  “Remember that guy who was kiting checks?” he says. “I once mentioned him to Wade, that I had this bad feeling about the Stingray man. What was his name?”

  “Wails.”

  “Something about Wails was wrong. Talking to the guy, I could see that he was full of shit. I didn’t think of check-kitting and stealing millions. That wasn’t what I expect. But I told Wade what I thought, and you know him. He took me seriously. ‘I’ll make some inquiries, see what’s what,’ he said. Then a week later, cops opened an investigation, and a couple days after that, Wails drove out here . . . to the parking lot we just ran through, if I remember this right . . . and killed himself . . .”

  “But that was a year ago,” Sarah says. “Wade was still alive.”

  “I didn’t say Mr. Wails hired it. I’m asking: What if he had a backup?”

  She says nothing, staring past his face now.

  “I’m not talking about an official, carry-the-same-name kind of backup,” he says. “There have to be ways to fake a name and slip clear of your past life, living in the clouds like Wade does. Being everywhere, nowhere. Sitting on whatever stolen money the man was able to hide, and nothing to do with its days but get angrier and angrier about the son-of-a-bitch that made this happen.”

  Sarah lifts both hands, piling them on top of her head while she slowly rocks back and forth.

  “Wail’s backup hates Wade Tanner. So he goes out into the living world and finds somebody to help get revenge. Maybe it’s for the money, or maybe for personal reasons. And like Carl says, it has to be somebody strong enough and fast enough to keep close to Wade when they’re running.”

  Sarah drops her arms, leaning into Lucas.

  He holds her and looks everywhere. The world moves under the wind, but there aren’t any people. After another half minute, he says, “I was guessing Pete. He’s got the muscle and enough pop in the legs. I figured I was going to see him come out of the trees, looking to shut me up. You I didn’t expect.”

  “It isn’t Pete,” she says.

  “Yeah, I don’t want it to be.”

  “No. I mean it isn’t him.”

  “Why not?”

  She pulls out of his grip, wiping her swollen eyes. “Pete made us run this course. Remember? And Jaeger just happened to be up on the levee at the right time. Those aren’t coincidences. While we were chasing you, Pete explained everything. He said he bumped into Jaeger last week and threw a few insults at him, and Carl came back with the same arguments he used on the bridge. That’s when Pete started to believe him. He began wondering that if Carl wasn’t guilty, then maybe the best suspect left was you.”

  Lucas keeps watch to the north, and nothing changes.

  A hard sorry laugh comes out of her. “You won’t believe this,” she says. “Probably nobody would at this point. But I want you to know: I have never, ever cheated on my husband. Not with Masters, and not even with Wade.”

  Lucas listens to the winds, waiting.

  Then she giggles, brightly and suddenly, saying, “But of course it doesn’t count, playing games with a machine.”

  Lucas shakes his head and breathes.

  “Harris,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Maybe he’s the killer.”

  “It can’t be,” she says. “Pete looked at the kid, sure. We know he’s strange and we don’t know much about his story. But like Carl says, this was a personal killing. A fury killing. Pete says that an ex-Mormon goofball who isn’t here six weeks isn’t going to want to hurt Wade Tanner. That’s why Pete sent him charging off in the wrong direction this morning. He’s not a suspect.”

  “He’s telling you that? In front of the kid?”

  She shakes her head. “No, Harris was gone by then.”

  “Gone?”

  “The train went past and we caught up to Carl, and Carl gave us your message, and then we stood there talking. And then Harris said we were nuts and stupid and he’d rather run with the deer than waste time standing around with old farts. So he ran back to the train tracks and headed . . . I don’t remember where . . .”

  Lucas says nothing.
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br />   Sarah takes a breath and holds it. Then all at once, her eyes become big, and she says, “What if . . . ?”

  Lucas tells his phone to redial.

  Wade picks up and says, “Still standing, still drinking my coffee.”

  “So,” Lucas says. “You talk to Harris today?”

  A very brief silence ends with the sound of people being politely quiet, ten million backups stuffed inside that very crowded room. And from the busy silence, Wade says, “Today? No, I haven’t talked to the boy. Why? What’s our new stallion up to?”

  The meadow trail leads south to the cottonwoods. Where shadows begin, Lucas stops and stows the mittens and looks back. Sarah is slowly making her way to the north edge of the grass, and the rest of the runners have come out to meet her. Jaeger stands in the middle of the group. Hands on hips or on top of their heads, they look like soldiers in mismatched uniforms ready to quit the war. Sarah stops and talks, pointing back at Lucas, and everybody stares across the grass, and he can feel the doubts and suspicions thrown his way.

  Turning, he settles into a lazy trot.

  The forest trail snakes its way toward Ash Creek. The abandoned rail line stands on his left, capped with a second trail that leads over the Amtrak line and back into town. Harris could be running the old right-of-way. If he was smart, the kid is galloping home now to pack a bag and make some last-second escape. But that would be sensible, and sensible isn’t Harris. He’s a charger and a brawler. And besides, he found them in the middle of a forest. So the boy isn’t completely stupid, and he has some clever way of tracking people.

  The five o’clock calls come back to Lucas – the sexy woman and the desperate father. Either one of them could have been Wails faking a voice to patch into the tracking system. But that feels unlikely. Why not just let him pick up, and then hang up? But maybe there’s some other trick. Trying to think it through, Lucas realizes that he isn’t running and can’t remember when he stopped. Staring at the ground, not certain about his own thoughts, his eyes grab onto his ankle, and he bends and pulls up the muddy black leg of the tights, staring at that fancy bracelet that does nothing but shouts at the world that he is here and he is sober.

  Lucas straightens and turns one full circle. Something is moving on top of the old trestle, but then the background of tree limbs swallows it. Or it never was. Lucas falls into running again, easy long steps eating distance. Get past the trestle, and a dozen trails are waiting to be followed, and there’s a hundred ways out of the park. But the best obvious plan is dialing 911, or at least calling somebody closer. Audrey. Lucas decides on her and touches the phone, and he touches it again when nothing happens. But despite having power and a green light, the machine refuses to find the world beyond.

  Lucas stops and looks left.

  A yellow shirt is on the high ground, not even pretending to hide. The face above it smiles, and maybe it tries laughing. Harris wants to laugh. He stands still, looking down at Lucas while saying a word or two. His glasses are clear enough to show the eyes. He is close enough that the bloody lip looks big and sweat makes the boy-face bright. Some little voice needs to be listened to, and he nods and says something else. Then the right hand lifts, holding a chunk of rusted steel – a piece of trash shaped by chance to resemble a small hatchet.

  Harris lifts a foot and drops it.

  Lucas breaks, sprinting toward the creek. This time he doesn’t obey the trail, cutting across the hard-frozen dirt wherever the brush is thin. He looks down and ahead, and ten strides into this race he turns stupid. It isn’t just the world that narrows. His mind empties, his entire day going away. Oxygen-starved and terrified, the brain drops into wild panic, and every step tries to be the biggest, and every downed limb and little gully is jumped with a grace that will never be duplicated. He doesn’t know where Harris is, and really, it doesn’t matter. Nothing counts but speed and conquering distance, and that wild perfect urgency lasts for most of a minute. And then Lucas runs dry of fuel and breath.

  He slows, tasting blood in his throat.

  He throws a glance to his left.

  The earth wall is close and tall, and Harris runs on top. The kid has never looked this serious, this mature. To somebody, he says, “Yeah.” Then he slows and makes a sharp turn, jumping onto a little deer trail that puts him behind Lucas, maybe twenty meters back.

  That feels like a victory, owning the lead.

  But Lucas can’t turn back now. Not without risking a hack from that piece of metal. Or worse than a hack. He throttles up again, and Harris matches his pace, and he cuts across that last loop in the trail, raspberry bushes snagging his tights. Then he slows, letting the kid buy maybe half of the distance between them while he makes ready for the next turn.

  Rusted iron legs hold the vanished tracks high above the stream. The trail lurches to the left and drops under the trestle, and then it lifts again, flattening and turning right before reaching a long pipe-and-wood bridge. Lucas runs the curve tight, saving a half-stride. Maybe ten meters separate them. Maybe eight. He listens to the chasing feet, measuring their pounding. Instinct knows what happens next: As soon as Harris is free of the bridge, he surges. Youth and fear and all that good rich adrenaline are going to demand that Harris ends this race here, in the next moments. That’s why Lucas surges first. He leaps off the end of the bridge and gains a little, but the pounding behind him ends with some fast clean footfalls that halve the distance and then halve it again. Harris is tucked behind him. A small last surge will put him in range, leaving the boy where he can clip Lucas with his weapon.

  But Lucas shortens his stride, just to help his legs move quicker, and Harris is paying a cost for matching him. He gives a hard grunt before accelerating. Except he has somehow fallen back another couple strides, and his exasperation comes out from his chest. He curses – not a word so much as an animal sound that says everything. Those baby legs start to fill with cement. Frustrated and baffled but still too stupid and young to know what has happened, Harris slows down just a little more. His intention is to rest on the fly, gathering his reserves for another surge. This will be easy, in the end. He can’t believe anything else. Lucas is nearly twice his age, and there’s only one ending in his head, stark and bloody and final. Harris lets the old man gain a full fifteen-meter lead, and just to make sure that Lucas knows, he calls out to him. He says, “Give up.” He breathes and says, “You can’t win.”

  Lucas has won. He knows it, and the only problem left is mapping out the rest of this chase.

  During one of the big storms last summer, an old cottonwood tumbled across the trail. The city didn’t have the money to remove it, and feet and bike tires made a new trail before winter. Trees fall and detours are made, and that’s one reason why there aren’t many straight lines in the woods. Chainsaws and rot take away the trunks, but new twists are added and established and eventually preferred. The dead tell the living where to walk, and the living never realize that that’s what they are doing, and it’s like that everywhere and with everything, always.

  Big turns are coming. Three, maybe four loops are going to practically double back for a few strides. Lucas doesn’t know which one to use, but his plan, much as he plans anything, is to work Harris into a numb half-beaten state and then take him around and jump through the brush, heading north again. But always keeping just ahead, teasing the kid with the idea that at any moment his luck will change, that his legs will get thirty minutes younger and he’ll close the gap between him and this gray old fool who doesn’t understand that he is beaten.

  Ten

  The annual track club meeting was held in the restaurant’s basement. A stale shabby room was crowded with long tables and folding chairs and fit if not always skinny bodies. Paper plates were stacked with pizza and breadsticks, tall plastic cups full of pop and beer. Conversations centered on the January’s fine weather and yesterday’s long run from the Y, bits of grim international news making it into the chatter. The Y group had claimed the back table, fendi
ng off most of the invaders. Chance placed Masters’ wife at one end – a heavily made-up woman who made no secret of her extraordinary boredom. Sarah sat between her husband and Crouse, her focus centered on photographs of the new baby. Pete and Varner and Gatlin ruled the room’s back corner, entertaining themselves with catty comments about everybody, including each other. Lucas was in the middle of the table, facing the rest of the party. Everybody was keenly aware that he was drinking Pepsi. Audrey had brought her daughter – the fastest fourth-grader in the state – and in a shrewd bid of manipulation set her next to Lucas. Children liked the rough voice and kid-like manner, and the girl was a relentless flirt. She said she liked watching him run. She said the two of them should run together sometime, and Mom could come along, if she could keep up. She asked Lucas how he trained and did he warm up ever and why didn’t he ever get hurt?

  Harris was sitting on the other side of Lucas. A big bellowing cackle grabbed everyone’s attention, and with a matching voice he said, “He doesn’t get hurt because of the booze, darling. Beer keeps joints limber.”

  Embarrassed silence took hold.

  Even Harris took note. Trying to make amends, he gave Lucas a friendly punch in the shoulder, and when that wasn’t sufficiently charming, he leaned back and said, “Naw, I’m just teasing. Forget it.”

  Pete noticed. Saying nothing, he stood and wormed his way along the back wall, reaching around Lucas to grab up the Pepsi, taking a long experimental sip. Then he smacked his lips, saying, “Just checking,” and he gave Harris a big wink, as if they shared the same joke. The kid laughed and shook his head. Pete set the cup aside, and as his hand pulled away, he kicked a table leg, and as the cup started to tumble, he made a show of reaching out, pushing it and its sticky dark contents into Harris’ lap.

  The boy cursed, but in a good-natured, only half-pissed way. And the rest of the runners choked their laughs until he had vanished into the bathroom.

  Sarah used the distraction to slip away.

  Masters’ wife noticed the second empty chair. From her regal place at the end of the table, she said to her husband, “What’s your girl doing at the podium? She’s talking to that camera, isn’t she?”