The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Natalie writes awhile in her notebook and I figure I’m roasted. Then she looks up and says, “Janee, when you first came here you had a very negative, a very ego-centered attitude. I want you to know I’m astonished and impressed at the progress you’ve made.” And then she smiles at me.

  Some people are nodding to themselves. Some are like Paul, staring at their hands. Roy is looking at me, naked hate on his face.

  In bed, after lights out, Paul says to me, “Why did you say that?”

  “Because I figured it out, from what you told me.”

  I think he’ll at least say something nice, but he just sighs.

  “I figured it out, myself,” I say.

  “I know you did,” he says.

  “You told me to tell them what they wanted,” I say. Even though I didn’t just say it because it’s what they want me to say.

  He doesn’t answer me. Sometimes I don’t understand him at all.

  The next evening, at dinner, I get two extra chunks of cornbread. I must looked surprised because Ears, one of the cooks, says, “Camp Director’s orders, Janee.”

  After dinner Natalie says, “I made a report on your progress in self-analysis and self-education.”

  For a moment I think, I owe her. Then I think, she looks good for having someone make progress, so maybe we’re even. I try to give Paul a chunk of cornbread.

  “You earned it,” he says.

  “You act like I did something bad,” I say. “You told me to tell them what they want. You told me to think about it. Things would be better if everybody was socialist, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” he says, just agreeing with me.

  “You don’t believe in socialism.”

  “Janee,” he says, then stops. “Janee, you don’t ever talk about escaping anymore.”

  “I am,” I say. “I’m still thinking about it. But I can’t do anything about it until spring.” I sound kind of whiny, even to me. “You never talk to me,” I say. “You think I’m stupid. I figured that stuff out myself, nobody told me.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid,” he says.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “Look at you, Mr. Schoolteacher. You still think you’re special, an intellectual. Well, if it wasn’t for me, people like Sal would have you for lunch. And I can figure things out, too. And I can figure out that you gotta be here for a reason and you didn’t off no streetjock with the lid off a trash barrel. But you don’t want to talk about it. Why don’t you ever talk about it, huh? What are you afraid of? ‘Cept you think none of us dumbshits can understand.”

  All the time he’s shaking his head, standing there shaking his head, no, no, no, no. “I wrote a couple of articles on socialist trends in America before the revolution,” he says, “about attempts to establish Christian utopias along socialist lines. I didn’t toe the party line.”

  “Yeah? How come when I say something like I did at the political instruction last night you act like you’re all disappointed in me?”

  “I’m not disappointed in you,” he says.

  “Bullshit, jack-jockey. I been in your bunk for a couple of months, I know you pretty well, even if I don’t use twenty-dollar words to say what I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t care about your vocabulary,” he says. “Janee, Janee. You’re tough and you’re smart. I’m glad you’re figuring out what they want. But when you say that the labor camp helped make you a better citizen I’m not going to like it.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I say. He twists things. He twists them around. Listen to television, that’s what political people do.

  * * *

  “In political instruction,” he said. “What do you think you got brownie points with the Camp Director for if not your impassioned defense of reeducation?”

  “That’s not true!” I say. “That’s not true! I said I didn’t want everybody to go to labor camps!”

  “But if you never went to a labor camp, you never would have learned about socialism!” he says.

  “So? So I might have said that. So it’s true. Maybe I had to come to a place like this, where I had to learn about it, or I never would have paid any attention.”

  “And what, all of society has to go through re-education?” he says. “That’s what I was studying, in the nineteenth century, people used to try to establish socialist communities, they were all people willing to give up everything. And not one of those communities worked. Not one. They all died out after a few years, the Oneida Colony, the Shakers, all of them.”

  “So you don’t believe,” I say. Which scares me, I don’t know why, but it scares me. Because what if he’s right, what if it’s all wrong?

  He shakes his head. “I don’t believe in re-education. I don’t know, I don’t know what I believe. But I know one thing, I mean, look at you, practical, tough little Janee who saw this goddamn system for what it is, slave labor! And now you’re talking about re-educating all of society!”

  “I don’t even understand what you’re talking about. You said that we were evolving,” I say. “First the Indians, then feudalism, then capitalism, now socialism. We still have all of these capitalist ideas in our heads, how are we going to get rid of them?”

  And all of the sudden I start crying. I never cry. I mean, I feel like crying sometimes at the camp, but I never cry. And I don’t even know why I’m crying except I am. I want socialism, I want things to be better. I want to go home. Paul hugs me.

  “I’m so scared,” I tell him. “I’m so scared we’re all going to die, like Nesly.”

  In political instruction Natalie has lapboards again but only certain people have to write, all the rest of us can do whatever we want. Paul is one of the people who has to write. I lie in the bunk, wrapped up in both blankets and doze, waiting.

  Lately, when I’m half asleep, I sort of dream. It happens when I’m sewing, it happens at break sometimes. I’m not really sound asleep, just barely into sleep. Nothing ever happens, sometimes I dream I’m at work. I always dream about things that are at the camp, and usually I’m just doing something real. This time I dream about morning, when it’s blue. While we are getting our breakfast, when the sun is just coming up and some of the sky is black and still night off in the west, Kansas turns blue, like water, like air.

  It’s real beautiful when that happens. I never knew places could be blue. The lake could be blue, the sky could be blue, but I never knew hills could be blue. Blue isn’t a solid color, it’s an air color, a water color. If something as big as Kansas can turn blue, I feel like I can disappear. Nothing happens while I am dreaming, Kansas is just blue and I feel like I could disappear.

  I wake up scared.

  So I get up, wrapped in both blankets, and sit on the concrete at the foot of the bunk beds where I can see the end of the barracks where the political instruction is going on. I can see Paul, he’s not writing, and I can see Natalie when she walks in the part of the room where the bunks aren’t blocking my view.

  Finally she stops in front of Paul and she says, “Is that all?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “You’re resisting.”

  “You want me to accuse people,” he says.

  She shakes her head, “No, we don’t need you to accuse people, we already know. We are trying to help you.” And when he doesn’t say anything she says, “You’re only one person. You’re full of egotism. You’re saying everyone else is wrong and you’re right.”

  He is only one person. Natalie and Corbin and a lot of people believe in socialism, why should Paul be right and everybody else wrong?

  Eventually Paul comes back and lies down, all tense and shaky.

  He’s cold when I curl up against him, but we get our blankets all in the right place and I go right back to sleep, like falling down, like slipping under water, and Kansas is blue. Soft, without having real edges, blue. I don’t dream about anybody else, and nothing happens, just Kansas, rolling away toward the sunrise, blue.

  In the morning when we
get our breakfast, Kansas is blue.

  When we take our break, I sit down where I can lean against the wall, and when I close my eyes, Kansas is blue.

  So I work, and I eat, and I conduct self-analysis. Now in political instruction we are testifying. That means that people get up, and they say their name and what they did wrong, like when I testify I will say, “I am Janee Scott, and I am a thief and a criminal.” And then we have to tell about our life.

  It’s not like it was when we stood up at the first instruction and said that, now only people who want to stand up and testify. Sometimes someone will stand up to testify and Natalie will say, “No, you’re not ready.”

  I figure I’m not ready. But one day Natalie says to me, “Janee, why don’t you tell us your story.” She says it in the nice way she sometimes talks to me now, real gentle. So I stand up and I say, “I am Janee Scott and I am a thief and a criminal. I was born in Lorraine, Ohio, but my mother moved to Cleveland when I was real little.”

  I tell my whole life, just standing there talking. My voice just goes on and on. And I tell about the things I did, and how unhappy I was sometimes, and how I hated people who were just normal, and I start to cry. Like I never realized how much I wanted to be like the people on television. I tell about the woman I assaulted, and how I never thought about how’d she feel, and I keep crying. It’s awful, but it feels good. And the group understands, nobody says anything, everybody just listens, we are all together.

  And when I’m all done, I’m so tired, but I feel so light and empty. I feel pure. Paul is watching me, and I think he’ll never understand this feeling.

  That night, when I sleep, I don’t dream about Kansas being blue.

  * * *

  Summer in Kansas is almost as bad as winter, it’s so hot in the factory buildings that people faint. But when we wake up it’s already getting light, and I never feel like I’m going to drown in the blue while we’re getting breakfast.

  It’s been hot for awhile, it’s maybe July, and Natalie says one morning, “Paul, get your things together and don’t go over to the factory building today.”

  I know what it is, he’s being transferred. I grab hold of both Paul’s hands.

  “They’re transferring Politicals,” Natalie says.

  Paul nods. He looks thin and sad. His hair is long and he looks scraggly.

  “Natalie,” I say, “I’d like to give Paul a haircut so that group thirty-six will make a good impression when he is transferred.”

  She knows I just want to say good-bye, but she nods. So Corbin lets me have a pair of scissors and I try to cut his hair.

  We don’t say very much. I’m not a good barber, but he looks better when I’m finished. I even trim his beard. I don’t know what to say. I keep thinking of political instruction, sometimes I think he’s looking at me, that way he does, like he’s disappointed, but most of the time when I look at him, he is looking at his hands and he just looks sad.

  I carry his blanket roll out for him, even though he could carry it himself. There are some other people waiting, other Politicals from other groups, all standing by themselves. He touches my shoulder and then my face with his long spider fingers.

  “Be careful, okay?” I say.

  “You pick better next time,” he says, “okay? No Politicals.”

  “You find someone to look out for you,” I say.

  Then I have to go back to the factory. In a funny way, I’m relieved. No one is watching me anymore.

  But that night, I have a hard time falling asleep by myself. And when I do, I dream of blue Kansas, and Paul’s in my dream. Just one person, way out in the blue, hard to see.

  But I know it’s Paul, who else would it be?

  THE LAST CARDINAL BIRD IN TENNESSEE

  Neal Barrett, Jr.

  Born in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Neal Barrett, Jr., spent several years in Austin, hobnobbing with the likes of Lewis Shiner and Howard Waldrop, and now makes his home with his family in Fort Worth, Texas. He made his first sale in 1959, and has been a full-time freelancer for the past twelve years. In the last half of the ‘80s, Barrett became one of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’s most popular writers, and gained wide critical acclaim for a string of his pungent, funny, and unclassifiably weird stories, such as “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus,” “Perpetuity Blues,” “Stairs,” “Highbrow,” “Trading Post,” and “Class of ‘61.” Other great stories of his, such as “Diner,” “Sallie C,” and “Winter on the Belle Fourche,” were published in markets as diverse as Omni, The Best of the West, and The New Frontier. He has had stories in our Fourth and Sixth Annual Collections, and two stories in our Fifth Annual Collection. His books include Stress Pattern, Karma Corps, the four-volume Aldair series, the critically acclaimed novel, Through Darkest America and its sequel Dawn’s Uncertain Light, and a very strange novel called The Hereafter Gang, which the Washington Post referred to as “the Great American Novel.” His most recent books are the comic Mafia novel Pink Vodka Blues, which has just been optioned for a big-budget Hollywood movie, and a collection of some of his shorter work, Slightly Off Center.

  Here he gives us a strange, funny, and brilliantly bleak look at the future, in a one-act play that, we guarantee, no one will ever dare to actually stage …

  THE TIME: The near future.

  THE SET: The set is a shabby, dimly-lit kitchen, the reflection of a rundown high-tech world where everything is broken, and nothing gets fixed. This is tomorrow held together by a string.

  A weak beam of sunlight slants through a narrow window. The light captures dust motes in the air. The sun itself is seen occasionally through a choking industrial haze; it tells us all we need to know about the scarcities, turmoil and ecological problems of the world outside.

  HOWARD is a character in the play, but he is also a part of the set. He sits in a life-support wheelchair to stage left, apart from the area of action. His chair is a patched-up array of plastic and copper tubing, wires and makeshift braces and supports. Fluids pump sluggishly through the system—and through HOWARD himself. He is totally confined within this torturous maze; only his head is wholly visible.

  THE BABY is in a bottle on the kitchen shelf. Light seems to emerge from the bottle. As the play opens, the bottle is shrouded by a bird cage cover.

  THE CHARACTERS: LOUISE ANN is an average Southern Belle. She retains her dignity by living in the past. CARLA is Puerto Rican and streetwise. She no longer remembers—or cares—which of her many “adventures” are true. It is possible that LOUISE ANN and CARLA are thirty and look forty. Or maybe they are forty and look fifty. They look a bit like bag ladies in their very best clothes. Times are hard.

  (Kitchen door opens on STAGE RIGHT. LOUISE ANN enters first, carrying a patched cloth sack of groceries. A shotgun on a frayed string is slung over one shoulder. She wears an air-filter apparatus over her nose and mouth. She removes the apparatus as she enters. CARLA comes in behind LOUISE ANN. She carries an assault rifle, and two sacks of groceries.)

  CARLA: These guy, wha’s he think? You hear these guy, you hear wha’ he is sayin’ to me? Like I am a love toy or somethin’? I’m what, the flavor of the week? (CARLA pushes her filter up on her head.)

  LOUISE ANN: (Rolls her eyes to the ceiling as she sets her sack on a work table) He asked you where the navy beans were, Carla. I believe that’s what he said. (She takes off her shotgun and leans it against the sink; she begins pawing through her sack.)

  CARLA: Oh, sure. You see the guy’s eyes? A man he tell you wha he is thinkin’ with his eyes. He is sayin’ navy bean with his mouth, but he is thinkin’ big banana with his eyes, huh? Do I know this? Do I know wha I am sayin? I know wha I am sayin’.

  LOUISE ANN: (Mouths silently along with her): Do I know what I am saying? I know what I am saying … (These two have known one another a long time. They know each other’s lines).

  CARLA: (Points to sack) This is yours, that little one is mine. I don’ buy
out the whole store.

  LOUISE ANN: Right there’s fine. (Glances at HOWARD) Hi, honey, you doin’ all right? Ever’thing just fine?

  CARLA: (Waves, but makes no effort to look at HOWARD) Hey, Howar’, Merry Christmas … Feliz Navidad …

  LOUISE ANN: (Pulls out pitiful twig about eight inches long, with tarnished ornaments and star) I got the tree, Howard, Isn’t that nice? It’s got a star and a ornament and ever’thing. I’ll just put it right here. (Walks toward HOWARD and sticks “tree” on one of his tubes) You can see it real good, okay? You need anything? That’s fine …

  (All this is rhetorical. She doesn’t look at HOWARD, though he makes an effort to get her attention.)

  (CARLA busies herself making tea, moving about)

  CARLA: I don’ think I am goin’ to do a tree. Is a lot of trouble, you know? Is just me, I don’ need a tree.

  LOUISE ANN: Now you ought to get a tree. It just brightens things up so much.

  CARLA: You got a family on the way. (Kisses LOUISE ANN’S cheek) Tha’s a differen’ thing. Christmas with a little child in the house, huh?

  LOUISE ANN: Howard and I are so happy. Aren’t we, hon? (Takes CARLA’s hand, turns to kitchen shelf)

  CARLA: Hey, now don’ wake him or nothin for me, don’ do that …

  LOUISE ANN: Why, it is perfectly all right. Hi, baby? Peek-a-boo. (Lifts up bird cage cover to reveal baby in bottle) Hi … here’s your Aunt Carla come to see you.

  CARLA: Hello …

  LOUISE ANN: Hello, baby …

  CARLA: Hello …

  LOUISE ANN: Hello …

  (CARLA and LOUISE ANN act “baby silly,” alternately bobbing their heads toward the baby)

  LOUISE ANN: Baby, you want to see the kitty? You want to see the little kitty? (Picks up limp dead kitty on the end of a stick, waves it at baby) Huh? Do you? Meow-meow. He just loves that ol’ kitty. We couldn’t keep pets at that other place.

  CARLA: Meow-meow … Meow-meow …