The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  Instantly, I wanted to leap through the lens and shove her away from my baby. Leave her alone, you bitch, she’s mine! Pam was pretty but not gorgeous, a girl-next-door type if the door happened to open on a Hamptons beach house. Sun-streaked hair, fine sun lines around brown eyes, no makeup, vintage lululemon workout clothes. On the street I’d never have noticed her. Her body looked nicely curved but neither buxom nor model-elegant. What did she have that I didn’t?

  Becky spat applesauce at her and the view vibrated—she must have been giggling. Pam giggled back.

  Stop. Leave her alone! She’s mine!

  He’s mine.

  By Sunday afternoon, when Jake brought Becky back, I had slept a total of three hours. All weekend I’d sat by the screen, seldom eating, scarcely going to the bathroom. Becky might wake in the night; there might be something to see. It was, as I’d discovered online, a one-bedroom apartment. Did Jake wheel her crib out into the living room so he and Pam could have sex in the bedroom? Or did they do it with Becky asleep beside them?

  By order of the court, ever since that stupid misunderstanding two months ago, Jake and I had no contact when Becky was returned on Sunday. Jake brought his sister with him every single week. Linda brought Becky into my building, and the two of us did not exchange a word.

  I unwrapped Becky and studied every inch of her, looking for—what? Anything amiss, a bruise or a dirty diaper or ripped pj’s. There was nothing, of course. Jake had always been a terrific father.

  The baby was asleep by seven o’clock. I called Trevor to come over; my call went straight to voice mail. Felicity had a date. TV was boring. I roamed the house, unable to sit for even a moment.

  Until I stopped cold, feeling my own mouth open into an O. After checking on Becky one last time, I brought the small, dedicated computer into the living room and connected it to my wall system.

  Trevor had made his fortune with Holo-Shop. He invented it, patented it, and sold it for an exorbitant sum plus royalties to Microsoft.

  There had been other holographic conversion programs on the market, but they were quirky, experimental, difficult to use. Holo-Shop was none of those, and the results were sharper than anything before it. You brought up a flat image on a screen, set the parameters you wanted, and touched the H-S icon. The image sprang from the screen in holographic three dimensions. It could be small or large, although the larger you made it, and the farther away the hologram from the screen, the lower the resolution. A three-inch rose was a miracle of dense perfection; a room-sized puppy was insubstantial vapor.

  Holo-Shop could not evoke moving images, not yet, although Microsoft was reportedly working on it. Meanwhile, advertisers and artists and retail outlets manipulated holograms to sometimes powerful effect, sometimes laughable kitsch. Ditto the millions of users who wanted the pyramids to decorate their trendy Egyptian-themed living room but to disappear when they needed to set up a card table for poker.

  I ran the camera images of Jake as Becky saw him until I found a good one: Jake crouching on the floor, smiling, green eyes alight, arms extended for the baby to crawl into them. I froze the image, projected it with H-S, and fooled with it for a while. When it was done, Jake sat life-size on my bedroom floor, ghostly enough to see the dresser behind him, arms outstretched. The dresser didn’t matter. I got down on the floor and moved to sit in the circle of his arms.

  The second weekend that Jake had Becky, Pam was there all weekend. I watched them every minute that Becky was awake. They kissed in the kitchen, took Becky to the park, watched something on TV while she crawled around the floor. Pam wore Carson Davies boots in calfskin, $800. When Trevor called with tickets to the hottest play in town, I told him I had the flu. By Sunday afternoon, when Linda handed Becky back to me, I was groggy from sleeplessness, reeking from not bathing. I didn’t look at Linda looking at me.

  I once saw a show about toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease. When mice contract it, they lose their natural fear of cats, making it easier for cats to eat them and the parasite to get into the cat. There was some evidence from brain scans that the mice realized this lack of fear was stupid, but they couldn’t help themselves. They were compelled to let the cats see them.

  At work I accomplished nothing. I’d set the retransmitter to send the images of Jake and Pam to my wrister; the hell with what Trevor said. Whenever I could, I ducked into the ladies’ room and brought up images to study. Felicity went from warmly supportive (“You don’t feel well? Oh, I can finish that copy, Amanda”) to faintly resentful (“You haven’t even started on the McMahon account stuff? But we got it over a week ago”).

  On Thursday night, Trevor called. I told him I had the flu. On Friday night, he let himself into my apartment with his emergency key. I barely had time to dart out of the bedroom and close the door.

  “Trevor! I told you I’m sick!”

  “It’s not flu season, Mandy.” His handsome face looked strange without its habitual smile.

  “If I say I have the flu, then I have the flu!”

  “I don’t think you do. You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Two restraining orders and a court fine weren’t enough?”

  “I’m not. I’m not stalking Jake.”

  “Swear on pussy willows’ pussies?” Our childhood oath; at ten years old it had seemed hilarious.

  “Swear on pussy willows’ pussies.”

  “Then you’re obsessing over the Opti-Cam images.”

  “Isn’t that my business?”

  Trevor lost his temper, something even rarer than losing his smile. “Oh, Christ, Mandy, you’re my business! Don’t you know that if I were straight, you and I would have married and had three Beckys of our own? Don’t you know how much better I’d have been for you than Jake? I can handle your intensity, he couldn’t. And I know when you’re lying to me.”

  “Please go, Trevor. I’m not up to this right now, really I’m not—”

  He left, slamming the door behind him. Once, nothing in the world would have kept me from following him. Trevor, my best friend, my support and confidant….

  On the screen in the bedroom, Becky lay in her infant seat, studying her bare toes. She must have just woken up. On the rug, barely within the circle of her unknowing vision, Jake and Pam made love.

  Frantically I keyed in his cell number. Anything to disrupt them, anything! The call went to voice mail. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop, stop, stop!” The cell must have been on silent; they didn’t stop.

  I am not sane, I thought, which was my last sane thought.

  I called in sick to work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I never left my bedroom. It began to smell: of Becky’s diapers, piled in the corner whenever I changed her. Of a pizza molding on the dresser. Of me.

  On Thursday morning, Trevor returned.

  “Mandy?”

  “Go away! Go away!” I’d waited all week for 10:00 a.m. on Thursday! Trevor was not going to spoil this!

  “Mandy…oh my God.” He stood in the door to my bedroom. Becky gurgled in her swing. She was dressed in her snowsuit; the window stood open to help with the stench.

  “Go away!” I barely glanced at him—it was 9:57!

  “Mandy, darling, whatever you’re going to do…don’t.”

  9:58.

  “Let me help you. You know we’ve always helped each other.”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “I won’t. You know I won’t if you don’t want me to. I’m just going to pick up Becky, okay? Here we go, sweetheart, come to Uncle Trevor….”

  9:59.

  Jake’s law office was superefficient. The partners would be gathering in his spacious office for the regular Thursday morning meeting. His wall screen would be on, ready to bring up the week’s data. He didn’t know I had his office password; I’d stolen it right after he told me he was leaving me, but despite everything that had led to the restraining order I’d never used it. Until now.

  Trevor said, “Mandy, what are you doing? Put down your cell if you’re c
alling the cops. I’m not here to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, I promise. Put down the cell.”

  10:00.

  I pushed both buttons simultaneously, my cell and the “Send” button on the computer. The phone number bypassed Jake’s office answering system—a direct line for privileged clients who needed to reach their lawyer instantly for some legal emergency. Jake would not recognize the number of my new, throwaway cell. His voice said, “Hello?”

  Now it would happen. Now I would get what I had been trying for so long, what I needed more than food or water or even Becky: I would get a reaction from Jake. The image of him and Pam naked on the rug would burst from the wall screen in his office in all its color-saturated, three-dimensional luridness, and Jake would know I had done it. That he could not erase me.

  “Hello? Who is this?” Jake said, still calm. “Can I help you?”

  I waited.

  Nothing happened.

  No one in the background gasped or laughed or said, “What the hell—?” Nothing.

  Jake tried one last “Can I help you?” and then cut the connection.

  Trevor, patting Becky’s back, said softly, “Mandy….”

  I cried, “Why didn’t it work?”

  Trevor’s face changed. His gaze moved to the computer. He knew, then; he was always smarter than anybody else I knew. He said, “Because Jake knew you’d do something like that. He put a detailed blocker on his system.”

  “I just wanted him to acknowledge I exist!”

  “Oh, he acknowledges it,” Trevor said. “How do you think he knew what you’d do?”

  He held Becky, now squirming in her snowsuit, away from him and stared into her eyes, first the right and then the left, again the right, again the left. “The technology’s available to everyone. Including Jake.”

  I don’t like to lie to Trevor. Sometimes, however, you have to do certain things you might not want to do. He went with me to the clinic, but of course he couldn’t sign any papers; he is not related to Becky. I told him I’d had both Opti-Cams removed. I swore on pussy willows.

  Now I stand in my bedroom, which sparkles with cleanliness. Becky sits in her swing, gurgling at me. I lean closer to her. My hair, clean and shining, swings toward her. My makeup has been professionally done. My cleavage gets help from a $200 bra. I smile at my baby.

  Jake is watching.

  Afterword to “Someone To Watch Over Me”

  This is the newest story in this volume, written at the request of the editor of IEEE Spectrum. The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world’s largest professional organization for the advancement of technology, does not usually deal in fiction. In 2014, however, the publication decided to solicit six stories featuring plausible, near-future technology.

  I do not do well with cameras. I end up with pictures of my thumb, or the top of someone’s head, or a blurry tree. Recently I didn’t realize I had my camera set on “video” and ended up with a film of Mt. Ranier instead of a series of stills. Mountains don’t change much in 3 ½ minutes. So a camera that photographed continuously, sharply, and in focus, would be great. However, I would never put it where Amanda did, or for the purpose she chose.

  Is this tech possible? My sources say yes, it is. Not now, but maybe soon—a genuinely creepy possibility.

  THE FLOWERS OF AULIT PRISON

  My sister lies sweetly on the bed across the room from mine. She lies on her back, fingers lightly curled, her legs stretched straight as elindel trees. Her pert little nose, much prettier than my own, pokes delicately into the air. Her skin glows like a fresh flower. But not with health. She is, of course, dead.

  I slip out of my bed and stand swaying a moment, with morning dizziness. A Terran healer once told me my blood pressure was too low, which is the sort of nonsensical thing Terrans will sometimes say—like announcing the air is too moist. The air is what it is, and so am I.

  What I am is a murderer.

  I kneel in front of my sister’s glass coffin. My mouth has that awful morning taste, even though last night I drank nothing stronger than water. Almost I yawn, but at the last moment I turn it into a narrow-lipped ringing in my ears that somehow leaves my mouth tasting worse than ever. But at least I haven’t disrespected Ano. She was my only sibling and closest friend, until I replaced her with illusion.

  “Two more years, Ano,” I say, “less forty-two days. Then you will be free. And so will I.”

  Ano, of course, says nothing. There is no need. She knows as well as I the time until her burial, when she can be released from the chemicals and glass that bind her dead body and can rejoin our ancestors. Others I have known whose relatives were under atonement bondage said the bodies complained and recriminated, especially in dreams, making the house a misery. Ano is more considerate. Her corpse never troubles me at all. I do that to myself.

  I finish the morning prayers, leap up, and stagger dizzily to the piss closet. I may not have drunk pel last night, but my bladder is nonetheless bursting.

  At noon a messenger rides into my yard on a Terran bicycle. The bicycle is an attractive design, sloping, with interesting curves. Adapted for our market, undoubtedly. The messenger is less attractive, a surly boy probably in his first year of government service. When I smile at him, he looks away. He would rather be someplace else. Well, if he doesn’t perform his messenger duties with more courteous cheer, he will be.

  “Letter for Uli Pek Bengarin.”

  “I am Uli Pek Bengarin.”

  Scowling, he hands me the letter and pedals away. I don’t take the scowl personally. The boy does not, of course, know what I am, any more than my neighbors do. That would defeat the whole point. I am supposed to pass as fully real, until I can earn the right to resume being so.

  The letter is shaped into a utilitarian circle, very business-like, with a generic government seal. It could have come from the Tax Section, or Community Relief, or Processions and Rituals. But of course it hasn’t; none of those sections would write to me until I am real again. The sealed letter is from Reality and Atonement. It’s a summons; they have a job for me.

  And about time. I have been home nearly six weeks since the last job, shaping my flowerbeds and polishing dishes and trying to paint a skyscape of last month’s synchrony, when all six moons were visible at once. I paint badly. It is time for another job.

  I pack my shoulder sack, kiss the glass of my sister’s coffin, and lock the house. Then I wheel my bicycle—not, alas, as interestingly curved as the messenger’s—out of its shed and pedal down the dusty road toward the city.

  Frablit Pek Brimmidin is nervous. This interests me; Pek Brimmidin is usually a calm, controlled man, the sort who never replaces reality with illusion. He’s given me my previous jobs with no fuss. But now he actually can’t sit still; he fidgets back and forth across his small office, which is cluttered with papers, stone sculptures in an exaggerated style I don’t like at all, and plates of half-eaten food. I don’t comment on either the food or the pacing. I am fond of Pek Brimmidin, quite apart from my gratitude to him, which is profound. He was the official in R&A who voted to give me a chance to become real again. The other two judges voted for perpetual death, no chance of atonement. I’m not supposed to know this much detail about my own case, but I do. Pek Brimmidin is middle-aged, a stocky man whose neck fur has just begun to yellow. His eyes are gray, and kind.

  “Pek Bengarin,” he says, finally, and then stops.

  “I stand ready to serve,” I say softly, so as not to make him even more nervous. But something is growing heavy in my stomach. This does not look good.

  “Pek Bengarin.” Another pause. “You are an informer.”

  “I stand ready to serve our shared reality,” I repeat, despite my astonishment. Of course I’m an informer. I’ve been an informer for two years and eighty-two days. I killed my sister, and I will be an informer until my atonement is over, I can be fully real again, and Ano can be released from death to join our ancestors.
Pek Brimmidin knows this. He’s assigned me every one of my previous informing jobs, from the first easy one in currency counterfeiting right through the last one, in baby stealing. I’m a very good informer, as Pek Brimmidin also knows. What’s wrong with the man?

  Suddenly Pek Brimmidin straightens. But he doesn’t look me in the eye. “You are an informer, and the Section for Reality and Atonement has an informing job for you. In Aulit Prison.”

  So that’s it. I go still. Aulit Prison holds criminals. Not just those who have tried to get away with stealing or cheating or child-snatching, which are, after all, normal. Aulit Prison holds those who are unreal, who have succumbed to the illusion that they are not part of shared common reality and so may do violence to the most concrete reality of others: their physical bodies. Maimers. Rapists. Murderers.

  Like me.

  I feel my left hand tremble, and I strive to control it and to not show how hurt I am. I thought Pek Brimmidin thought better of me. There is of course no such thing as partial atonement—one is either real or one is not—but a part of my mind nonetheless thought that Pek Brimmidin had recognized two years and eighty-two days of effort in regaining my reality. I have worked so hard.

  He must see some of this on my face because he says quickly, “I am sorry to assign this job to you, Pek. I wish I had a better one. But you’ve been requested specifically by Rafkit Sarloe.” Requested by the capital; my spirits lift slightly. “They’ve added a note to the request. I am authorized to tell you the informant job carries additional compensation. If you succeed, your debt will be considered immediately paid, and you can be restored at once to reality.”

  Restored at once to reality. I would again be a full member of World, without shame. Entitled to live in the real world of shared humanity, and to hold my head up with pride. And Ano could be buried, the artificial chemicals washed from her body, so that it could return to World and her sweet spirit could join our ancestors. Ano, too, would be restored to reality.