Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14

by Gardner Dozois

  Devore interrupted him. “Don’t say any more if you don’t want to, Milo.” Milo froze, then slumped back into the chair. Dr Devore was standing up, hands on his sacrum, arching back and stretching his neck from side to side. It made a little crackling sound. “Anyway, our hour is about up. This was good, Milo. This was very good. You shared some of your dreams with me. We talked a little about your sleep problem, and about your sister… “

  “I didn’t tell you anything about my sister.”

  “Right. We’ve got to get you to relax, you know? I am going to increase your chlorpromazine. Your house parents will give you the tablets in the morning and at night. I’ll talk to them about it. You shouldn’t worry. Just try to do the best you can, you know? And keep track of those dreams for me, will you, Milo?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Dr Devore stood before Milo, waiting for him to get up. He had set up his psychic vacuum pump again, to suck Milo out of the club chair and get rid of him, Milo thought. Devore needed his beauty sleep.

  Milo stood, turned, and walked out the door without saying thank you or goodbye. The waiting room was empty. Milo crossed the waiting room, opened the hall door and shut it again without going through. He waited thirty seconds, then returned to Dr Devore’s office door and cupped his ear against it.

  He heard Devore part the drapes and open one of the windows; it shuddered and squeaked against the casement. Then he heard the rolltop clack open, and Devore spoke into his tape recorder:

  “Milo is on the verge of finding out. He would have blurted it out just now if I hadn’t stopped him. It would be most inopportune for him to know everything just now. I think the best course would be to slow him down. The thorazine should help, but we can’t rely on it. This is a tricky business. If he’s too tight, something fatigues inside him and he manifests in spite of himself; if he’s too loose, of course, he changes. Can’t leave him at the home much longer the way things are going. Somebody’s sure to see something, and what happens next may be out of my control. Get Sylvie in there, that’s the only way. Remember to call Sylvie tonight, now, soon.

  “Oh, yes! He said the thing about smell again, but he doesn’t seem to understand what it means—which is good. There’s a little time… God! I’ve got to take a nap. My knees are buckling.”

  The machine clicked off. Milo heard Devore stretch and yawn, then the rustle of clothing peeling off, the two chairs scraping the floor as Devore pushed them together. A moment later he was snoring.

  The little machine! The box sheathed in perforated black leather hiding inside Dr Devore’s rolltop with all of Milo’s secrets! Like the totemic soul of a primitive: a pouch, a feather or a whittled doll secreted in a hollow log, proof against soul-snatching demons and enemies. Only, the demon was in possession of Milo’s soul.

  There was a fake window in the waiting room, drapery with a solid wall behind it, and opposite that, a print of some famous painting, a different one every time Milo visited. Sometimes, in fact, it was different when he left than it had been when he arrived; Devore must have paid someone he never saw to slip in and change it periodically, like a diaper service. Mondrian to Dali, Manet to Munch or an anonymous Byzantine, each with a brass name tag on an ornate frame, while Milo conveyed his soul, via Devore, to the skin-covered box! Just now, it was a Chinese painting of a warrior monkey standing on a cloud in a great, plumed hat, brandishing a cudgel.

  Milo tiptoed away from the door, hid behind the drapes and waited. He made quite a perceptible bulge there, but he was relying on Devore’s drowsiness to get by with it. Being caught might not be so bad either. The way they looked at you then, at the home or at school, cross as it was, felt a lot like love.

  It was hard to tell how much time had passed, because there was no daylight in there, but it seemed like a long time, and Milo had not had his thorazine. Below his stomach, inside the habitual knot, an older knot was beginning to ache. Aches in aches, Milo stood flush to the wall, breathing dust behind the drapery.

  At last, he ventured out. The snoring had stopped. He pressed his ear to the door and heard nothing. What did he look like dreaming, the little man who harvested Milo’s dreams? Milo turned the knob, degree by degree, soundlessly, until it stopped; then he pulled the door ajar and peeked in.

  Impossibly, the room was empty. Devore was gone. The club chair and the cabriole chair were still pushed together in the centre of the room to form an odd, uncomfortable bed. Milo strode in and slammed the door behind him, as if to test, to make sure his senses hadn’t fooled him, that Devore was actually absent. Nothing stirred. There was no other way out except the window, which was actually open, but the office was six storeys up.

  Milo squinted and cocked his head like a cat listening for rats in the wall. However he had managed it, Devore was not there. Maybe, unawares, Milo had dozed standing up, and Devore had simply left through the waiting room. Milo went to the rolltop and pulled it open. The tape recorder was there. He opened it and took out the cassette. It had Milo’s name on it, a cassette all to himself. He put it back in the machine and rewound.

  The last rays of sunlight to skirt the top of the building across the street shone through a crystal suspended from the window sash, splashing rainbows on the office wall. As the land breeze breathed it back and forth, the crystal shook and spun, whirling colours about the room. Milo had never before seen Dr Devore’s crystal or the rainbows. So there was a dance in the old bagface yet!

  The prism clacked against the shivering glass. The tape whirred, then stopped. Milo pressed PLAY:

  “Milo Smith. Smith not his real name. An assigned name. Nobody knows his real name. First name’s probably Milo, though. Fourteen. Sporadically guilty of many relatively minor offences such as disorderly conduct, battery against other children, petty thefts and so on. Frequently truant. Has been under state guardianship in group homes for about seven years. Generally shy and withdrawn, presents as extremely nervous, with many obsessive mannerisms. Plays his cards close to the chest, this one.

  “Referred because of violent, disturbing dreams, waking other boys. Also some evidence of self-inflicted wounds. Chronic sleeplessness, nervosity. Looks like a mess, sunken eyes, thin as a rail, reminds me of the old photos of liberated camps at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau. All he needs is the striped pants and a star of David.

  “Seemed like he came in, then just waited for the hour to end. But he came in! Why? Something going on here. OKed chlorpromazine for now. Next week… ?”

  Milo PAUSED to think that one over. Why had he come? Nobody could force him. Nobody could hurt him. He hurt himself so badly already, just squeezing and squeezing to stay in control, that there was nothing worse to threaten Milo with. He stretched out on the two armchairs, cradling the tape recorder in his arms like a teddy bear. Think it over: why?

  Outside the window, the street lamps flicked on. Milo had dozed off, he didn’t know for how long, but it was dark. Unusual, dangerous, to sleep so long. Luckily, there had been no dream. There was still a rainbow on the wall—that was a new one! Milo walked to the window and passed his hand in front of the crystal.

  That explained it; the crystal was a prop. The rainbow didn’t move. It was somehow painted on the wall, painted no doubt over the real rainbow, the one from the crystal at the rainbow moment, sunset behind the MacCauly Building. Funny he’d never noticed it, but he always sat with his back to that wall, and when he came in or left this room, he always had a lot on his mind, or a lot to keep out of his mind.

  PLAY:

  “I want to remind myself here that Sylvie has come up with a way of using Zorn’s Lemma for shape-shifting. She finds the maximal element of all the upper bounds of the chains in the shape she’s departing from… “

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “…shape-shifting… “

  REWIND. PLAY:

  “…shape-shifting… “

  STOP.

  Below, a car drove by with its windows rolled down and the radio blastin
g, about a hound dog… The old song faded out of hearing, along with the clatter of a dragging muffler. Then there were voices and honking horns. The theatre crowd was arriving. Milo stared up at the rainbow on the wall, dimly aglow in the shadowy light of neon from outside.

  PLAY:

  “… Why do I always think of Sylvie when I think of Milo? Could he be like us?”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “… Could he be like us?”

  There was a click, then static, an intentional erasure or else a dumb mistake: the wrong button pressed, the machine dropped, or just old, stretched tape. Then it resumed:

  “Now I know something about Milo Smith. I know what he’s doing here, with me. Once he trusted me enough to start describing those dreams of his, it came together for me—the odd inanimate object romances, the animal reveries, the sensations of bodiless flight, his deep terror; and the physical evidences, like fairy dust on the dreamer’s bedclothes in the old folk tales.

  “But it’s hardly time for Milo to be told anything. First we have to build up the psychic container. If he were to realize it now, it would blast him to pieces. Sylvie went through the same sort of thing, but Milo’s got the additional problem of this distorted, secret past.

  “My approach has been all wrong. I mustn’t precipitate any sudden epiphanies. More chlorpromazine. Slow, careful work. Test the ground before each step, Devore, or you’ll land the both of you in a dark hole. If the state won’t keep paying, screw them! Call it a charity case. God knows, there’s plenty in it for me!”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “#8230; plenty in it for me!”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “… plenty in it for me!”

  STOP.

  “Dr Devore?” — a voice out in the corridor. “Dr Devore? Dr Devore? Security, Dr Devore! You in there, sir?” A rapping at the outer door. Fumbling for keys.

  The knot in the knot in Milo’s belly tightened further. He had to get up to ease the pain. He padded to the office door and peeked into the waiting room. The only light in there was the grey-green light that leaked out the door when he opened it, light through the office window from the lamps and signs on the street and the buildings nearby—and the glow of the wall rainbow reflected in the corner of Milo’s eye. In the dark of the waiting room Milo saw what must have been an afterimage of the rainbow, as if it were a small animal that had sneaked out ahead of him through the office door.

  Except for the rainbow, the waiting room was empty now, but Milo must have been dead-out dozing before, because the painting had been changed again. Someone must have gone in and out of the waiting room without waking him. The monkey warrior was gone. Instead, it was Munch’s screamer on the screaming bridge, the air and river screaming.

  He heard the key in the lock. For a moment, Milo had a sense of déjà vu, the feeling that the turning key was himself. He shut himself in the office again, his heart pounding. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he heard Dr Devore’s voice in the waiting room: “No, wait. I’m sorry. I’ll open it for you. I must have fallen asleep.”

  The sneak! Everybody wants a piece of me. Milo ran to the open window, swung his feet over the ledge—it was a long way down—and listened. He yanked Devore’s crystal off the sash by the string that held it, and he threw it out the window. A tiny, occasional glint, it plummeted six storeys and shattered on a kerbstone.

  “… plenty in it for me!”

  He stared at the rainbow wall—all dark. No rainbow. Probably, it was Milo’s own shadow blocking the window light from shining on it. He heard the hallway door opening. The voice outside went up nearly an octave: “Oh. Sorry, Doctor. I just had to check. I thought I heard somebody in here. I mean, I thought it was you, but I had to make sure.”

  “No problem. I’m glad you checked. It might not have been me, after all. I might have been somebody else.”

  “Right. Everything OK then, right?”

  “Right. And I have a weapon, remember?”

  “I remember. I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “I do.”

  “You’re the doctor.”

  The door clicked shut. The inner door opened. Milo jumped.

  “Can you fly like that all the time, or was it just some kind of crazy fluke?” The big kid speared one of Milo’s fries—”You mind?”—and shovelled it on in. He was only an inch taller than Milo, if that, but the swagger made it six. He never stopped talking except to swallow. “Because if you can do that whenever you want to, little man, I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  They sat in a corner of the big, greasy restaurant. The light there was like bleach, harsh and merciless. Cadaverous chain smokers sucked coffee and talked to themselves, silently or aloud. With one hand, a lean, gaptoothed Okie was rocking her toddler’s walker, while, with the other, finger by finger, she managed a hot-dog bun oozing green. At the next table, three college students discussed Heidegger over meatloaf. The proprietor, Aristotle Jitsi, sweet-talked a girlfriend on the phone pinched between his ear and shoulder, while he scraped the grill.

  The big kid wore a bowler hat and a black leather jacket, the overcoat kind favoured by suave Italian street toughs, not the motorcycle kind. He had drawstring pants on, loose, with wide vertical stripes, red and white. His shoes were black leather Danskins—a rope walker? A ballet dancer? The ensemble didn’t make much sense. “Well? Can you?”

  Milo mopped up ketchup with a crust of his grilled cheese, then didn’t eat it. He pushed the whole plate of French fries towards the big kid. “I don’t know what happened. Thanks, I’m not hungry any more.” Milo sneaked a look down at his own clothes. He never knew what he was wearing until he looked: T-shirt, faded jeans, sneakers, the cowboy belt they gave him last year on his birthday—lassoed Brahma bull buckle.

  “You weren’t trying to kill yourself, were you?”

  “No.”

  “I think you could do it again. I think you’ve got some kind of a talent. I was just walking by, and I saw you whistling down like a dropped bomb. I heard the thud. I just about threw up. Then I ran up, and there you were, folding in your wings. Are they wings? Where did you get them? Do you make ’em? Your wings and that furry stuff you tucked away somewhere. For aerodynamics, right? Come on! I’m in the show business, little man. I could do something for you. Tell me some stuff. How about a piece of pie?”

  Milo got up from the table and looked around for an exit.

  “Hey, sit back down. I’m not done with you. Where you going, anyway? I bet you got no place to stay. Look at you. I can get you a place to stay, no sweat, no charge, but talk to me, little man, talk to me.”

  Milo started to walk, but a twinge in his calves stopped him. He didn’t Know what to do with his legs any more. He felt like an unmagnetized compass. Where to go? Not the group home—they’d ship him back to Devore! Outside of that, one place seemed as good as another. He could live here, talking to himself, breathing cigarettes, eating grease. He could die here, rocking some toddler in a walker, waiting for his teeth to rot.

  “Come back,” the big kid said. “I’ll buy you a piece of pie. I’m rich as Croesus. I’m in the show business.”

  Milo sat down. “But I don’t feel like talking. I don’t know what happened, honest. Some guy was after me. He thought I had something he wanted, but I don’t have anything. Do I look like I have anything?”

  “What about those wings, boy? Those must be something to have.”

  “Do I look like I have any secret pockets on me?” Milo lifted his arms up over his head. “You must have been seeing things. I just landed lucky.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Something’s fishy here, little man, but I don’t care. I like you. I live off fishy, anyway. Look at this.” The big kid pulled a card out of his inner vest pocket and spun it across the table in front of Milo:

  MOON* AND STARS

  Spectacles, Phantasmagoria, Puppets

  for

  Festivals, Conventions, Parties,


  Theatrical Events, Promotions

  Of Every Conceivable Variety!!!

  by

  S. VERDUCCI, MASTER SHOWMAN

  (Equidecomposabilization Services Available

  to Select Clientèle)

  “What’s equidecohoozits?

  “That’s a sort of code word, little man. People who need it generally know that word; when they see it on my card, they know that I can supply it. It’s sort of a side line.”

  “What does it mean?”

  The big kid leaned across the table and spoke to Milo in a low voice. He watched Milo as he spoke, as if to measure Milo’s response, word by word. “Look here, suppose you got two balls, OK? A great big one and a little bitsy one, both of them thick as a brick. Suppose I told you I had a way of taking the bitsy one apart and putting it back together so it was just as big as the great biggy, or making the biggy into a bitsy without adding or taking away a single atom? You reckon that would be handy?”

  “That’s what Dede wanted to know!” Milo started in his chair as if he’d touched a high power line. He hadn’t spoken or thought that name for eight years. He coughed, trying to hide his shock, but the big kid hadn’t missed it.

  “Who’s Dede?”

  “I don’t know. Just somebody. I told you, I don’t feel like talking.”

  “Is she some kind of a brain?”

  “She was my sister. Leave it alone, OK?”

  “OK, OK!” the big kid said. “I got brains in my family too—brains and weirdoes, take your pick. I’m the only normal one. Look at the back of the card.” Milo had to tilt the card to catch the light just so, but then he saw—there was a rainbow across it. “I’m a puppeteer, little man. I’m S. Verducci, travelling showman: MOON & STARS, Inc. And I want you to work with me. What do you say to that? You’ll be rich as Croesus, too.”

  “I don’t know. You gonna put me up for the night?”