The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Hey,” I shake him gently. “Come on, wake up.” For the first time it occurs to me that maybe he’s brain-damaged. Helga made it sound as if you had to do it a couple of times, but how do I know? I don’t want him to be brain-damaged. I need him. “Come on,” I say, “look at me. Politics, look at me.”

  He groans and opens his eyes.

  “Come on,” I say, “sit up.”

  He sits up and grabs his head with those long fingers. Spider fingers.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Paul,” he says. Well, at least he understands.

  “I’m Janee,” I say, “and we’re going to stick together, okay Paul?” If he’s brain-damaged I’ll ditch him later.

  He looks at me; his head is really killing him, but the way he looks at me, kind of judging, figuring, and I think, well, if he’s brain-damaged he must have been a genius before. “Janee,” he says, hoarse sounding. “Okay, Janee.”

  I prowl up and down the barracks. Out in the yard is an old-fashioned water spigot. I don’t have anything to get water in, not even a juice bulb, but I open the door—it’s dark and clear, the stars are still bright except off to the east—and check. The perimeter is brightly lit but our door isn’t locked and I don’t see anyone walking a beat. I sneak out to the spigot.

  It’s got weeds right around the base, then the rest of the ground is dry and cracked. It’s real hard to turn on, and the water comes out in a trickle. I soak the outermost shirt I’m wearing, rinse it out real good, then bring it back in. I crawl into Paul’s bunk and hand him the shirt.

  “It’s wet,” he says, sounding surprised.

  “There’s a spigot outside.”

  He wipes his face and holds it against his forehead. “Thanks, Janee,” he says.

  “I told you, we stick together.”

  “You don’t want to stick with me,” he says. “I’m Political.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’ll let you know when it’s a problem.”

  The guy in the bottom bunk across from Paul’s is watching us. I look right at him, then give him a long, slow, skitzy smile. He looks away first. Little victories.

  * * *

  The camp is hell. That’s all there is to it. And Protection isn’t as bad as Green River, or so they say. I can’t see how that could be true. All the time I’m hungry, and either too hot or too cold. My bones hurt from sleeping on a shelf. I figure out the reason why the lights go on half-an-hour early, so we can lie there hungry and dread the day. We get up every morning and wait half-an-hour to go out to roll call. Roll call takes twenty minutes if there’s no lecture, and then we get twenty minutes for breakfast. The first day we are all given a cup, a bowl, and a spoon. We march in lines to the mess, which is just a roof, no walls. For breakfast we get something that’s mostly water and a steamed roll. And coffee, if you can call it that. When they pour the soup stuff into my bowl I think it’s some kind of yeast soup, it’s just brown watery slop. It doesn’t have much taste. In the bottom are a couple of tablespoons of barley or something. The coffee is clear, like tea.

  I look at it, ten years of this if I don’t figure out how to cross that perimeter. This is day one. I have 3,650 days, plus a couple of leap days.

  Paul gets his and goes to a pole holding up the roof and squats down sliding against it. He hasn’t bothered to get coffee, I can’t understand it, I’m so dry I could drink a gallon and I got water in the morning at the spigot. He hands me his bowl.

  “What,” I say.

  “I can’t eat it,” he says.

  “You got to,” I say.

  “I’ll get sick,” he says. Then with this kind of sickly smile, “I like mine with milk and sugar anyway.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Oatmeal,” he says.

  Oatmeal? I sniff at it. It does smell sort of like oatmeal. I take his cup and pour some of the liquid into it. “You’ve got to have something in your stomach.”

  “I’ll get sick,” he says.

  “So you get sick. Maybe then you’ll feel better.”

  “It’s not a hangover,” he says. But while I’m eating our breakfast, he drinks it. I stash the rolls in my bag, I could eat them but I figure he’s going to get hungry eventually.

  That first day we go to the “factory” and learn how to stitch quilts on these old black sewing machines with “Singer” on them in gold letters. I guess because of the noise they make, although it doesn’t sound like singing to me. I sit next to Paul. We put the backs on, the blank, not-pretty parts. We’re supposed to finish three an hour. I don’t know jackshit about sewing, I mean, I didn’t sit around doing this a whole lot, you know? So I ruin the first one, big time, and the second one looks like hell, but the third one isn’t too bad. It’s not hard, just, ziiiip, up one side, ziiiip, across the top, ziiiip, ziiiip, side and bottom, a big square.

  The first day Paul is so sick he’s lucky to be able to do one an hour. By the third day we’re doing six an hour, but that first day I can do two extra for Paul. The problem is getting them into his basket without getting caught. He doesn’t say anything about my doing them. His basket is always the first one they check.

  I think I’m pretty fast at making quilts. It never hurts to be good at something. But that day and the next day, I don’t push, there’s no reason to work any harder than I have to.

  By the third day Paul’s doing as well as anyone, long spider fingers aren’t shaking anymore.

  We work until two-thirty, then we get a twenty-minute break, then we work until seven. By dinner I’m so empty I echo. We stand in the wind with our plates and cups. Dinner is two rolls each, pale beans with a bit of white pork fat and bitter coffee.

  The second day, Paul says we should pick grass and use it in our bunks, but it’s hard to find much in the camp. That’s the problem with politicals, people like that are always thinking, but the stuff never works in the real world.

  The third day they let us mix with the people who’ve been here for awhile.

  I know we’re in trouble when Paul and I squat down by our pole. I happen to look around and most of the guards are gone, only a string left to protect the mess cooks, who are turning the stinking stuff they use to rinse the kettles onto the ground. “Hey,” I say.

  Paul looks up.

  The walking dead are headed toward us. All these skinny people in filthy clothes, maybe fifty of them. The first time, I don’t know catshit about the walking dead, I think everybody looks like that after they’ve been here awhile and I feel sick. I’m still planning to get out of here before winter, but the business of crossing the perimeter is a real problem, and besides, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I’m not going to just walk to St. Louis and hitch a ride on a transport.

  “Keep eating,” I whisper to Paul, so we do. When they get to the edge of the mess I notice that the last of the guards and the cook detail are disappearing. I keep eating. The first dead gets to a guy who’s holding his half-empty bowl and without much ado, kicks him in the ribs, and two of them fall on top of the guy, steal his food.

  They start moving through and jumping people. They don’t jump everybody, somebody looks big, they just go around them. Man, I’ve got to do something. Some of them have sticks and I think to myself, I got to find out where they get those sticks. The walking dead don’t make much noise. They’re either all nuts or they’re trying to scare people. It’s creepy, watching them come through. I got a feeling that Paul and I are people they’ll press.

  I’ve got to do something. We’re going to lose our dinner no matter what we do. I could just put down my bowl and then maybe they wouldn’t touch us, but that’s a bad thing to do. You don’t give in, or you become a pushover. So I’ve got to make myself so much trouble that after this they don’t mess with me.

  So I look right into the face of one skinny bastard walking towards me and I smile. Then I start screaming and running, right at him, just screaming as loud as I can, and battering at him with my bowl, beans
spattering. It wasn’t exactly what he expected, he’s not ready for some lunatic and I get him down, one hand pressed against his throat and keep hitting him in the face with my bowl.

  Then another one of them grabs my arms and tries to pull me off. They’re real skinny, these walking dead, and I’m all pumped up, so he’s having real trouble, even with the one I’m sitting on struggling like mad. Then Paul tries to grab the one pulling on me, and a guy named Carlos starts whacking on the one Paul is pulling on (which is good because Paul is a lousy fighter).

  I guess that’s when the guards decide enough is enough and start moving in, swinging the butts of the deal guns. I end up with a split lip and a black eye and the next morning all of us in the fight have to stand for an extra hour and miss breakfast—plus, we’re not supposed to get behind on our quota of quilts even though we missed forty minutes. But I also get a stick one of the walking dead dropped. And I have a good idea people are pretty much going to leave me alone.

  * * *

  My Paul. My Paul. He has long spider fingers and his skin is so thin you can see the copper-green stain of his neural jacks on his wrists. He never asks what I did to end up in a reform through labor camp. “Don’t you want to know?” I ask, curled up against him in our bunk.

  “No,” he says, “that’s outside, we’re inside.”

  He was a history teacher, a middle school teacher, I think. He’s older than I am, I’m twenty-three and he’s almost thirty. He’s here for twenty years, I’m here for ten. He wouldn’t have a chance if it wasn’t for me, he doesn’t have the first idea how to protect himself and he’s a Political, that makes him a target because the guards don’t care what happens to a Political. Nobody messes with him now, because everybody knows that Janee is crazy. Sometimes if I’m careful I can hook an extra bun and split it with him. I wonder about his life outside. “Did you have a girlfriend?” I ask. “Where did you live? What kind of flat did you have?” He’s from Pennsylvania, I think. “Did you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “That’s outside, Janee, it doesn’t matter here.”

  He sounds like our political instruction meetings. Our old lives are outside, now, inside, we have a chance to put together new lives.

  We have political instruction meetings a couple of times a week, the twelve rules are painted on the wall of the barracks.

  #1. We are not strong enough ourselves, we must rely on a power greater than ourselves.

  A power greater than ourselves is society, of course. The first time we go there’s this lecture, about how we are all maladjusted, and how we are denying that we are maladjusted. And the first thing we have to do is admit that we are. So we have to go all around the room and stand up and say our first name and what our problem is. Well, Catalano, one of the guards, is standing there, so everybody mostly just stands up and says their name and why they are there.

  First couple of guys aren’t much, they stand up and say things like, “My name is Derrick and I am a thief.”

  But then it gets to be a contest. Guys stand up and we kind of hold our breath to find out what sort of badass crime they’d committed. If a guy stands up and says he’s a thief or a pimp or that he’s in for assault everybody just sits there. But then this guy gets up, just a normal-looking guy, not very big, and he says, “My name is Vincent, not Vinny, Vincent. And I am a hijacker.”

  Everything gets real quiet. Even though the guy is supposed to sit down he sort of smiles and says, “I hijacked a city bus and killed the driver.”

  “That’s enough,” Natalie says. She’s a prisoner too, but she’s been here for years, and so she leads our political discussion group. She knows that Vincent is putting the whammy on us, and she makes a little note in this notebook she carries.

  Some people stand up and say their crimes real fast and sit down. One woman, she’s in for prostitution, but she’s not a hard case, you can tell. Maybe some smalltown girl who puts out, who got somebody bothered. She stands up and she’s crying and she says in this real little voice, real fast, “MynameisNancyandI’maprostitute,” and sits down.

  But Natalie makes her stand back up, and there she is crying, and makes her say it again, slower. Nobody can understand what she’s saying, she’s scared so bad and crying so hard. It’s just mean to make her stand up, a little piece of white meat like that, ‘cause the little girl knows, and she’s right, that these guys are going to be all over her once lights are out.

  But I’m thinking about my reputation. I’m only in for larceny and assault, which isn’t going to sound like much. And I’ve got a reputation between me and big trouble.

  Paul doesn’t have to stand up and say anything, politicals aren’t allowed to say anything in political instruction for the first two years, which is another weird rule. You’d think they’d need it worse than us.

  So I’m thinking, while it gets closer and closer to my turn, and finally I’ve got to stand up. I stand up and stand there a moment, thinking if I really want to go through with this, and just before Natalie says something, because I can see she’s going to, I say, “My name is Janee, and my problem is that I’m stuck in this goddamn camp.” And I sit down.

  A lot of guys laugh and a couple of them whistle and I don’t smile or anything. Catalano, the guard, reverses his deal gun and starts coming toward me, so I stand back up and say, “I’m in for larceny and assault.” Which makes it sound like there might be other stuff that they never got on me. And then I sit down and Natalie scribbles in her little book.

  The next morning, Vincent and I have to stand at roll call for an extra forty minutes, which was what Natalie was scribbling down. But Paul hooks an extra roll at breakfast, and gives me his and the extra. I’m real proud of him, he’s learning a little, too.

  At break he tells me that the political study is based on Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “Give me a break,” I say. “Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t about politics.”

  “No,” he says, “it’s about changing behavior. They use most of the old rules, maybe change them a little. Rule No. 1, about relying on a power greater than ourselves, that’s straight from AA. Except that traditionally the power greater than ourselves was God, not society.”

  “I knew they meant society,” I say, he probably thinks I’m stupid, and I’m not, I know a lot more about staying alive than some goddamn history teacher.

  But he isn’t paying any attention at all. “It backfired big time last night,” he says. “You and Vincent.” He grins at me. I thought he might not understand about what I did, he didn’t say anything when we crawled into our bunk the night before, but he does, he thinks it’s all right.

  * * *

  I gotta think about getting out. Paul keeps shaking his head every time I say something about it. “How are you going to get across the perimeter?” he asks.

  “I got in,” I say.

  “Are you going to wait until there’s a shipment of new prisoners and then just walk past them?” he says. Which is a point. I don’t know if the whole perimeter shuts off when prisoners come in or not.

  “I can test it,” I say.

  “Fry your brains?” he says.

  “Nah,” I say, “shove one of the walking dead across.”

  He laughs, but I’m serious. The walking dead don’t care about each other, they don’t care about anything. I can go snag me a walking dead and the others will just look at me.

  So I’m waiting. The only problem is that it isn’t like they post an arrival schedule for new prisoners. The first time we get new prisoners, we’re inside sewing quilts. We come out for dinner, and there are new people, so we have to wait because we can’t mix with them. Standing there in the wind, shivering, while these stupid people, looking even stupider with the backs of their heads still new-shaved, are getting their dinner.

  But it’s early October, I think, and we’re out for our break and somebody says, “Look.”

  There are a couple of the big green buses, rolling up to the perimeter. I star
t up, look around, can I get to one of the walking dead before the perimeter gets back up? Walking dead don’t wander far from their factory work room. I can’t even imagine one of them working. Most of them are in group six, which is officially the group for incorrigibles. Group six is pretty far from us, we’re group thirty-six.

  I don’t see how I can get to one and back, I look back at the perimeter, the first bus slows down and then speeds up and crosses. There are bunches of guards and deal guns at the road, but nothing between us and the perimeter. Maybe I should just try it? Helga made it sound like I’d have to get fried a couple of times before it would hurt me permanently.

  But this guy in Group thirty-three makes his decision before me, takes out running for the perimeter, away from the buses and the guards. I look back at the guards, expecting them to start firing. Deal guns aren’t real accurate if you’re too far away, he might still make it.

  But they don’t do anything. That tells me right there. I should have known, they’d be guarding if the whole perimeter went down. We all sit and watch the guy, he hits the perimeter, it’s just a bunch of white stakes with a string about ankle high, just to mark it. He leaps the wire and goes down. We can see him spasm in the grass, just beyond the wire.

  The guards aren’t in any hurry. After awhile two of them finally walk from the road across the compound to the guy.

  It’s time for us to be called back inside to sew more quilts, but the loudspeakers are still quiet, just that hum that means they’re on. I look up at Natalie, who is supposed to be calling us back inside and she’s looking at her feet.

  This is a lesson I guess. I figure they’re going to roast the guy.

  The guards walk across the perimeter like it wasn’t even there. It’s not for them. They grab the guy by the arms and drop him across the wire, and walk back, leaving him there.

  “What are they—” I say. But I know.

  “They’re leaving him to fry,” Paul says.

  Right. “Can he feel anything?” I ask.

  Paul doesn’t say anything for a moment. “No,” he says finally, “probably not.”