The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  I wake up once and there’s automatic weapon fire somewhere below us and maybe the slick gets hit once or twice. Another time I wake up and the three guys are talking quietly, real serious, but I’m hurting from no needle and I don’t even listen.

  When the rotors change I wake up. It’s first light and cool and we’re coming in on this big clearing, everything misty and beautiful. It’s triple-canopy jungle I’ve never seen before and I know we’re so far from Cam Ranh Bay or Saigon it doesn’t matter. I don’t see anything that looks like a medevac, just this clearing, like a staging area. There are a lot of guys walking around, a lot of machinery, but it doesn’t look like regular Army. It looks like something you hear about but aren’t supposed to see, and I’m shaking like a baby.

  When we hit the LZ the three guys don’t even know I exist and I barely get out of the slick on my own. I can’t see because of the wash and suddenly this Green Beanie medic I’ve never seen before—this captain—has me by the arm and he’s taking me somewhere. I tell myself I’m not going back to the Big PX, I’m not going to some VA hospital for the rest of my life, that this is the guy I’m going to be assigned to—they need a nurse out here or something.

  I’m not thinking straight. Special Forces medics don’t have nurses.

  I’m looking around me and I don’t believe what I’m seeing. There’s bunkers and M-60 emplacements and Montagnard guards on the perimeter and all this beautiful red earth. There’s every kind of jungle fatigue and cammie you can think of—stripes and spots and black pajamas like Charlie and everything else. I see Special Forces enlisted everywhere and I know this isn’t some little A-camp. I see a dozen guys in real clean fatigues who don’t walk like soldiers walk. I see a Special Forces major and he’s arguing with one of them.

  The captain who’s got me by the arm isn’t saying a thing. He takes me to this little bunker that’s got mosquito netting and a big canvas flap over the front and he puts me inside. It’s got a cot. He tells me to lie down and I do. He says, “The CO wants you to get some sleep, Lieutenant. Someone will come by with something in a little while.” The way he says it I know he knows about the needles.

  I don’t know how long I’m in the bunker before someone comes, but I’m in lousy shape. This guy in civvies gives me something to take with a little paper cup and I go ahead and do it. I’m not going to fight it the shape I’m in. I dream, and keep dreaming, and in some of the dreams someone comes by with a glass of water and I take more pills. I can’t wake up. All I can do is sleep but I’m not really sleeping and I’m having these dreams that aren’t really dreams. Once or twice I hear myself screaming, it hurts so much, and then I dream about a little paper cup and more pills.

  When I come out of it I’m not shaking. I know it’s not supposed to be this quick, that what they gave me isn’t what people are getting in programs back in the States, and I get scared again. Who are these guys?

  I sit in the little bunker all day eating ham-and-mother-fuckers from C-rat cans and I tell myself that Steve had something to do with it. I’m scared but it’s nice not to be shaking. It’s nice not to be thinking about a needle all the time.

  The next morning I hear all this noise and I realize we’re leaving, the whole camp is leaving. I can hear this noise like a hundred slicks outside and I get up and look through the flap. I’ve never seen so many choppers. They’ve got Chinooks and Hueys and Cobras and Loaches and a Skycrane for the SeaBee machines and they’re dusting off and dropping in and dusting off again. I’ve never seen anything like it. I keep looking for Steve. I keep trying to remember the dreams I had while I was out all those days and I can’t.

  * * *

  Finally the Green Beanie medic comes back. He doesn’t say a word. He just takes me to the LZ and we wait until a slick drops in. All these tiger stripes pile in with us but no one says a thing. No one’s joking. I don’t understand it. We aren’t being hit, we’re just moving, but no one’s joking.

  We set up in a highlands valley northwest of where we’d been, where the jungle is thicker but it’s not triple canopy. There’s this same beautiful mist and I wonder if we’re in some other country, Laos or Cambodia.

  They have my bunker dug in about an hour and I’m in it about thirty minutes before this guy appears. I’ve been looking for Steve, wondering why I haven’t seen him, and feeling pretty good about myself. It’s nice not to be shaking, to get the monkey off my back, and I’m ready to thank somebody.

  This guy opens the flap. He stands there for a moment and there’s something familiar about him. He’s about thirty and he’s in real clean fatigues. He’s got MD written all over him—but the kind that never gets any blood on him. I think of VA hospitals, psychiatric wards, and I get scared again.

  “How are you feeling, Lieutenant?”

  “Fine,” I say, but I’m not smiling. I know this guy from the dreams—the little paper cups and pills—and I don’t like what I’m feeling.

  “Glad to hear it. Remarkable drug, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  I nod. Nothing he says surprises me.

  “Someone wants to see you, Lieutenant.”

  I get up, dreading it. I know he’s not talking about Steve.

  * * *

  They’ve got all the bunkers dug and he takes me to what has to be the CP. There isn’t a guy inside who isn’t in real clean fatigues. There are three or four guys who have the same look this guy has—MDs that don’t ever get their hands dirty—and intel types pointing at maps and pushing things around on a couple of sand-table mockups. There’s this one guy with his back turned and everyone else keeps checking in with him.

  He’s tall. He’s got a full head of hair but it’s going gray. He doesn’t even have to turn around and I know.

  It’s the guy in civvies at the end of the hallway at the 23rd, the guy that walked away with Steve on Phan Hao Street.

  He turns around and I don’t give him eye contact. He looks at me, smiles, and starts over. There are two guys trailing him and he’s got this smile that’s supposed to be charming.

  “How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” he says.

  “Everybody keeps asking me that,” I say, and I wonder why I’m being so brave.

  “That’s because we’re interested in you, Lieutenant,” he says. He’s got this jungle outfit on with gorgeous creases and some canvas jungle boots that breathe nicely. He looks like an ad from a catalog but I know he’s no joke, he’s no pogue lifer. He’s wearing this stuff because he likes it, that’s all. He could wear anything he wanted to because he’s not military, but he’s the CO of this operation, which means he’s fighting a war I don’t know a thing about.

  * * *

  He tells me he’s got some things to straighten out first, but that if I go back to my little bunker he’ll be there in an hour. He asks me if I want anything to eat. When I say sure, he tells the MD type to get me something from the mess.

  I go back. I wait. When he comes, he’s got a file in his hand and there’s a young guy with him who’s got a cold six-pack of Coke in his hand. I can tell they’re cold because the cans are sweating. I can’t believe it. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, we’re probably not even supposed to be here, and they’re bringing me cold Coke.

  When the young guy leaves, the CO sits on the edge of the cot and I sit on the other and he says, “Would you like one, Lieutenant?”

  I say, “Yes, sir,” and he pops the top with a church key. He doesn’t take one himself and suddenly I wish I hadn’t said yes. I’m thinking of old movies where Jap officers offer their prisoners a cigarette so they’ll owe them one. There’s not even any place to put the can down, so I hold it between my hands.

  “I’m not sure where to begin, Lieutenant,” he says, “but let me assure you you’re here because you belong here.” He says it gently, real softly, but it gives me a funny feeling. “You’re an officer and you’ve been in-country for some time. I don’t need to tell you that we’re a very special ki
nd of operation here. What I do need to tell you is that you’re one of three hundred we’ve identified so far in this war. Do you understand?”

  I say, “No, sir.”

  “I think you do, but you’re not sure, right? You’ve accepted your difference—your gift, your curse, your talent, whatever you would like to call it—but you can’t as easily accept the fact that so many others might have the same thing, am I right, Mary—may I call you Mary?”

  I don’t like the way he says it but I say yes.

  “We’ve identified three hundred like you, Mary. That’s what I’m saying.”

  I stare at him. I don’t know whether to believe him.

  “I’m only sorry, Mary, that you came to our attention so late. Being alone with a gift like yours isn’t easy, I’m sure, and finding a community of those who share it—the same gift, the same curse—is essential if the problems that always accompany it are to be worked out successfully, am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “We might have lost you, Mary, if Lieutenant Balsam hadn’t found you. He almost didn’t make the trip, for reasons that will be obvious later. If he hadn’t met you, Mary, I’m afraid your hospital would have sent you back to the States for drug abuse if not for what they perceived as an increasingly dysfunctional neurosis. Does this surprise you?”

  I say it doesn’t.

  “I didn’t think so. You’re a smart girl, Mary.”

  The voice is gentle, but it’s not.

  He waits and I don’t know what he’s waiting for.

  I say, “Thank you for whatever it was that—”

  “No need to thank us, Mary. Were that particular drug available back home right now, it wouldn’t seem like such a gift, would it?”

  He’s right. He’s the kind who’s always right and I don’t like the feeling.

  “Anyway, thanks,” I say. I’m wondering where Steve is.

  “You’re probably wondering where Lieutenant Balsam is, Mary.”

  I don’t bother to nod this time.

  “He’ll be back in a few days. We have a policy here of not discussing missions—even in the ranks—and as commanding officer I like to set a good example. You can understand, I’m sure.” He smiles again and for the first time I see the crow’s-feet around his eyes, and how straight his teeth are, and how there are little capillaries broken on his cheeks.

  He looks at the Coke in my hands and smiles. Then he opens the file he has. “If we were doing this the right way, Mary, we would get together in a nice air-conditioned building back in the States and go over all of this together, but we’re not in any position to do that, are we?

  “I don’t know how much you’ve gathered about your gift, Mary, but people who study such things have their own way of talking. They would call yours a ‘TPC hybrid with traumatic neurosis, dissociative features.’” He smiled. “That’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s quite normal. The human psyche always responds to special gifts like yours, and neurosis is simply a mechanism for doing just that. We wouldn’t be human if it didn’t, would we?”

  “No, we wouldn’t.”

  He’s smiling at me and I know what he wants me to feel. I feel like a little girl sitting on a chair, being good, listening, and liking it, and that is what he wants.

  “Those same people, Mary, would call your dreams ‘spontaneous anecdotal material’ and your talent a ‘REM-state precognition or clairvoyance.’ They’re not very helpful words. They’re the words of people who’ve never experienced it themselves. Only you, Mary, know what it really feels like inside. Am I right?”

  I remember liking how that felt—only you. I needed to feel that, and he knew I needed to.

  “Not all three hundred are dreamers like you, of course. Some are what those same people would call ‘kinetic phenomena generators.’ Some are ‘tactility-triggered remoters’ or ‘OBE clears.’ Some leave their bodies in a firefight and acquire information that could not be acquired in ordinary ways, which tells us that their talent is indeed authentic. Others see auras when their comrades are about to die, and if they can get those auras to disappear, their friends will live. Others experience only a vague visceral sensation, a gut feeling which tells them where mines and trip wires are. They know, for example, when a crossbow trap will fire and this allows them to knock away the arrows before they can hurt them. Still others receive pictures, like waking dreams, of what will happen in the next minute, hour, or day in combat.

  “With very few exceptions, Mary, none of these individuals experienced anything like this as civilians. These episodes are the consequence of combat, of the metabolic and psychological anomalies which life-and-death conditions seem to generate.”

  He looks at me and his voice changes now, as if on cue. He wants me to feel what he is feeling, and I do, I do. I can’t look away from him and I know this is why he is CO.

  “It is almost impossible to reproduce them in a laboratory, Mary, and so these remarkable talents remain mere ancedotes, events that happen once or twice within a lifetime—to a brother, a mother, a friend, a fellow soldier in a war. A boy is killed on Kwajalein in 1944. That same night his mother dreams of his death. She has never before dreamed such a dream, and the dream is too accurate to be mere coincidence. He dies. She never has a dream like it again. A reporter for a major newspaper looks out the terminal window at the Boeing 707 he is about to board. He has flown a hundred times before, enjoys air travel, and has no reason to be anxious today. As he looks through the window the plane explodes before his very eyes. He can hear the sound ringing in his ears and the sirens rising in the distance; he can feel the heat of the ignited fuel on his face. Then he blinks. The jet is as it was before—no fire, no sirens, no explosion. He is shaking—he has never experienced anything like this in his life. He does not board the plane, and the next day he hears that its fuel tanks exploded, on the ground, in another city, killing ninety. The man never has such a vision again. He enjoys air travel in the months, and years, ahead, and will die of cardiac arrest on a tennis court twenty years later. You can see the difficulty we have, Mary.”

  “Yes,” I say quietly, moved by what he’s said.

  “But our difficulty doesn’t mean that your dreams are any less real, Mary. It doesn’t mean that what you and the three hundred like you in this small theater of war are experiencing isn’t real.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He gets up.

  “I am going to have one of my colleagues interview you, if that’s all right. He will ask you questions about your dreams and he will record what you say. The tapes will remain in my care, so there isn’t any need to worry, Mary.”

  I nod.

  “I hope that you will view your stay here as deserved R&R, and as a chance to make contact with others who understand what it is like. For paperwork’s sake, I’ve assigned you to Golf Team. You met three of its members on your flight in, I believe. You may write to your parents as long as you make reference to a medevac unit in Pleiku rather than to our actual operation here. Is that clear?”

  He smiles like a friend would, and makes his voice as gentle as he can. “I’m going to leave the rest of the Coke. And a church key. Do I have your permission?” He grins. It’s a joke, I realize. I’m supposed to smile. When I do, he smiles back and I know he knows everything, he knows himself, he knows me, what I think of him, what I’ve been thinking every minute he’s been here.

  It scares me that he knows.

  His name is Bucannon.

  * * *

  The man that came was one of the other MD types from the tent. He asked and I answered. The question that took the longest was “What were your dreams like? Be as specific as possible both about the dream content and its relationship to reality—that is, how accurate the dream was as a predictor of what happened. Describe how the dreams and their relationship to reality (i.e., their accuracy) affected you both psychologically and physically (e.g., sleeplessness, nightmares, inability to concentrate, anxiety, depression, uncontrollab
le rages, suicidal thoughts, drug abuse).”

  It took us six hours and six tapes.

  We finished after dark.

  * * *

  I did what I was supposed to do. I hung around Golf Team. There were six guys, this lieutenant named Pagano, who was in charge, and this demo sergeant named Christabel, who was their “talent.” He was, I found out, an “OBE clairvoyant with EEG anomalies,” which meant that in a firefight he could leave his body just like Steve could. He could leave his body, look back at himself—that’s what it felt like—and see how everyone else was doing and maybe save someone’s ass. They were a good team. They hadn’t lost anybody yet, and they loved to tease this sergeant every chance they got.

  We talked about Saigon and what you could get on the black market. We talked about missions, even though we weren’t supposed to. The three guys from the slick even got me to talk about the dreams, I was feeling that good, and when I heard they were going out on another mission at 0300 hours the next morning, without the sergeant—some little mission they didn’t need him on—I didn’t think anything about it.

  I woke up in my bunker that night screaming because two of the guys from the slick were dead. I saw them dying out in the jungle, I saw how they died, and suddenly I knew what it was all about, why Bucannon wanted me here.

  He came by the bunker at first light. I was still crying. He knelt down beside me and put his hand on my forehead. He made his voice gentle. He said, “What was your dream about, Mary?”

  I wouldn’t tell him. “You’ve got to call them back,” I said.

  “I can’t, Mary,” he said. “We’ve lost contact.”

  He was lying I found out later: he could have called them back—no one was dead yet—but I didn’t know that then. So I went ahead and told him about the two I’d dreamed about, the one from Mississippi and the one who’d thought I was a Donut Dolly. He took notes. I was a mess, crying and sweaty, and he pushed the hair away from my forehead and said he would do what he could.