The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Winston,” I said.

  “Mr. Winston, we are terribly concerned about your aunt living out here alone. I’ve written to her sons, both of them, but no one seems to be able to persuade her that she should give up the house, move into something more manageable. She should not be alone, Mr. Winston. Not at her age. And she can’t afford a live-in companion.”

  “Where you do think she should go?” I could imagine Aunt Bett’s reaction to any suggestion from this woman. And as for Bob and Tyler, they would both treat Hadley Pruitt with such gracious courtesy she would think she was being courted, but they would then defer to their mother.

  “There are government housing developments,” Hadley Pruitt said eagerly, smiling now, “especially designed for elderly people. She has a tiny pension, but they base the rent on what the tenants can afford. She could manage quite well.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so, ma’am,” I said very politely.

  She stiffened. “Since she has company, I won’t bother her today. Goodbye, Mr. Winston.”

  I watched her drive off, and returned to the paint job, but she had given me the first workable idea I’d had. I took the brushes and paint around back to clean up, and saw Aunt Bett on the porch in her old rocker, the sun on her legs, her eyes closed, and the child on the step nearby. I motioned to her, put my finger to my lips so we wouldn’t wake up Aunt Bett.

  “I’m not asleep,” Aunt Bett said, sitting up straight. “I’m trying to figure out a riddle. What has eighteen legs and bats.”

  The child was watching her with suppressed glee. She had found a joke book and was going right through it with Aunt Bett who was being a good sport.

  “I give up,” Aunt Bett said finally.

  “A baseball team!” She laughed and Aunt Bett laughed along with her.

  “What’s your name today?” I asked the child.

  “I already told you. Don’t you remember?”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Nope. You have to guess.”

  Aunt Bett winked at her and got up and went inside. I waited until the door closed behind her and then said, “If Aunt Bett wants to take care of you, do you want to stay here with her for a while?”

  “Are you going away?” she asked, instantly sober.

  “I have to pretty soon. You know, I have work to do, people who expect me to be there. I can’t stay away much longer, and I can’t take you home with me. They’ll be watching for you.”

  “It’s Francie,” she said, looking at her new shoes.

  “Sassy Francie?” I asked, smiling.

  She shook her head. “Just Francie.”

  I put my arm around her stiff little figure, and after a moment she buried her face against my shoulder and held onto me. I stroked her hair. “I wish I could take you with me,” I said softly.

  “That’s all right,” she said, her words muffled.

  I waited until she was in bed before I brought it up with Aunt Bett, who looked troubled. “What’s wrong with her, Win? She isn’t Joe Marcos’s child, is she? Is she yours?”

  “No. I wish she were. She has a growth problem, hormones or something. No treatment. All she needs is a place where she can feel safe and wanted. You can imagine what it would be like for her to try to go to school, outgrow everyone in her class, be mocked and teased.”

  She nodded gravely. “Yes, I can imagine that. Whose child is she? Where does she belong?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said after a moment. Then in a rush I told her, “She’s a foundling, and researchers are after her to see what makes her tick. That’s all I know about her.” It was close enough to the whole truth.

  “I’ve known you from the day you were born,” she said. “Tell me the truth, Win. Have you done something wrong?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve done something I probably shouldn’t have done in hiding her, bringing her here. But nothing wrong.”

  The troubled look did not yet leave her wrinkled face. “You know I’ll be eighty in March? Eighty,” she said in a musing way. “I don’t expect I’ll be around very much longer, Win. This wouldn’t be a permanent home, is what I mean.”

  “I don’t think she’ll need a permanent home,” I said slowly.

  “Well, then, maybe it’ll all come out even. Maybe it will. I’ll take good care of her, dear.”

  We talked about money for the child’s care, a touchy subject. If I suggested too much Aunt Bett would be insulted, feel that I was treating her as a charity case, but it had to be enough not to impoverish her further. The kid outgrew everything within weeks. And she ate like a horse. Then I had to make certain about communications; they had to be able to get me if necessary; I had to know how she was doing. Joey Marcos would be the go-between, I decided.

  When it was done, Aunt Bett stood up to go to bed. At the doorway she glanced back at me and paused. “I know why I’m doing this, Win. I’m so lonely, and already I love the child, you see. She could be one of my own grandchildren. But why are you?”

  “She needed help, I happened to be there.”

  Aunt Bett regarded me another moment, then went on to her room, clearly unconvinced.

  Why? I echoed, alone in the living room. The world was full of kids who needed help; Atlanta was full of them. I gave to good causes, worthy charities, did my civic and moral duty through donations, and tried to put them all out of mind, and most of the time was quite successful at not thinking of the troubled world. Why? Because I had grown to love her? Maybe, but not the day I took her away in a borrowed car. I certainly had not loved her then, and was not sure I did now. I’d had very little experience in loving another person, after all. I was young enough to have half a dozen or more of my own children if this was a simple paternal urge. I could be married within a week, I knew, father a child within a year. I didn’t need a surrogate daughter. Why?

  The next day I took her shopping for the last time. We bought her a couple of things and then a lot of things she thought her big sister would like. I bought a new television for them, and arranged for cable, paid six months in advance. I bought her a computer, several programs, and half a dozen computer books, and that evening gave her a few elementary lessons in computing; that went exactly like all her other lessons. She saw no difference in learning the names of the flowers, learning the African tribes’ names, learning computerese.

  The following day I started the drive to New York. We did not delay over the goodbyes. No one cried. But when I looked back through the rear-view mirror and saw the ancient frail woman holding the hand of the child for whom age was meaningless, I wanted to cry. Oh, I wanted to cry.

  * * *

  In New York I returned Joey’s possessions and we had a long talk, and afterward Winston Seton reentered the world. I flew home. Special Agent James Hanrahan was my welcoming committee of one.

  He said Mr. Kersh would like a few words with me, if I didn’t mind. I said of course not and we went to the Federal Building FBI offices where I waited for three hours. The room was relatively comfortable, with twin sofas, a coffee machine, magazines, all the comforts, but no telephone.

  I stretched out on one of the sofas and went to sleep. At first, it was an act, to show how unconcerned I was, but then I was waking up and Kersh was standing over me.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said in a low voice. He stamped across the room and opened a door. “Come on.” This door had been locked earlier; it opened to a routine office with a government issue desk, several chairs, not much else.

  He motioned to a chair and seated himself behind the desk. He set up the tape recorder on the desk but did not turn it on. “Off the record,” he said. “How’d you get off the island? Where’s the kid? Who’s got the kid?”

  “No, Mr. Kersh,” I said. “On the record. Let’s keep everything on the record.” He flicked a switch on the tape recorder. “I’ve had a lot of time these past days,” I said. “I thought it would be interesting to write an account of our various conversations in which I insi
sted that the child I saw was three or four, too old to be either of the children you claimed to be looking for. I believe Mr. Milliken might become incensed if he learns that the whole FBI is using his personal tragedy as a screen, and it might amuse my correspondents to think of the whole FBI engaged in a manhunt for an infant hiding out by herself on the beach. I think the people I sent the copies to will share my sentiments. I told them all I would be back in town today, and if for any reason I didn’t show up, to open the sealed envelopes and read the fairy tale I had written.”

  He was not impressed. “You see too many movies. One of the things they don’t tell you is that we have the advantage of time. Next week, next month, next year, all the time in the world. We’ll find the child, you can be certain of that. But you’ll never know when someone will drop by to ask just a few more questions, to clarify another point. You won’t like that, Mr. Seton, never knowing if an agent is at the next table with another question. Now, about your statement.…”

  As far as my original statement was concerned, I cooperated fully. I had told him the truth and there was no reason to alter anything. I refused to say anything about where I had gone, how I had left, if I had seen the child again. “Charge me with something and let me call my attorney,” I said after four hours. “I want my car back and my various possessions. Now, if we’re done here.…” I stood up.

  I knew he had to be as tired and irritated as I was, but his smooth face remained imperturbable. He turned off the tape recorder and leaned back in his chair. “We really don’t want her genes in the gene pool,” he commented. “Bad, very bad mix. You’ve stashed her away somewhere, but not alone. Winter’s coming on. She’s with someone. We’ll find out who that is, Seton. As I said, we have the benefit of time. You’re free to go.”

  Cabs didn’t cruise in Atlanta; I had to walk several blocks to the Carlton Hotel where I knew I could get one, and on the way I thought about the various people they would find and question. All my friends in Atlanta, my employees, my relatives. My ex, Susan, and Steve Falco in Los Angeles. Eventually they would get around to Joey, my best friend in high school. Would they get to Aunt Bett? I didn’t see how. She had been my mother’s friend, not mine, and she was not a relative. Then I realized that Kersh would expect me to be worried, maybe to get in touch with someone, give a warning. A grimmer thought followed quickly: Kersh would expect me to figure that out. He was toying with me, trying to make me nervous. And succeeding.

  * * *

  I stepped back into my life as if nothing had changed. Everyone at the office wanted to know why the FBI had been asking questions, and I said I was as baffled as they were. Gracie, my secretary, said maybe I had robbed some banks up north, and then she dimpled; it bugged the bejesus out of me. Gracie was smart or she wouldn’t have had her job, that she did extremely well. But she still thought she could get a bigger payback through being cute. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. If I told her to stop being so damned cute, she would pout, but prettily. The topic lost interest after a day or two, and routine took over.

  I had been home a week, working hard to catch up, taking work home with me, staying at the office after hours. If they were watching, and I knew they were, there was nothing to report. On the next Saturday Kersh paid me a visit. I was working in my studio at home, in an old sweater, older sneakers, jeans. I opened the door and he was there, carrying his briefcase.

  “What do you want now, Kersh? I’m pretty busy.”

  “You look like it. What a life you lead, this kind of house, work in comfortable clothes like that. I brought your car home. She’s a real sweetheart.” He held up the keys. “Mind if I step inside?”

  It was a cold day, not rainy, but threatening, and a blustery wind started and stopped, started and stopped. I pulled the door open wider and stepped aside. He handed me the keys as he entered.

  “It’s really nice,” he said. “These old houses are the greatest, aren’t they?” He was looking past me into the living room.

  “Do you want to search it?”

  “No reason to. We know you’re alone. Just admiring it. Mind if I see your studio?”

  I shrugged and led him through the wide hall into a narrower one and on into one of the back rooms that had once been a sun room, or sewing room, something like that. It had wide windows, no curtains. Even on this overcast day it was bright. It held my desk, piled high with proofs, manuscripts, glossies, mail.… The big drafting table was almost buried under more heaps of stuff, but the smaller drawing table was relatively clear. On a shelf were watercolors that I hadn’t touched in several years. I had been working at the light table when he rang, spotting photographs, a job I shouldn’t have to do, I grouched now and then, but one that no one else did to suit me. I stood in the center of the room and watched him take it all in.

  Finally he nodded. “A real work room, isn’t it? Brought something to show you, if I can spread it out.” He pulled a rolled-up paper from his briefcase and I cleared off the drawing table by picking up the few things on it and dumping them on the floor.

  He grinned, and the change in his face was as remarkable as I recalled. He could change age at will by altering his expression.

  He unrolled the paper and spread it out. “You must know more about these things than I do,” he said, almost apologetically. “It’s how some of our people make projections.”

  What he had unrolled was a simple x,y graph.

  “This upright line here is marked off in apparent age by years,” he said, pointing, “and the bottom horizontal line is actual time in months. See?” He drew back and looked at me thoughtfully. “The really fine-tuned ones they’re using are in days, but this will do. She was born here, zero day, zero month, zero year. We just added the points we’re fairly sure of, you know, the foster parent who had her at one month, the Forbush woman who had her at six months, your report when she was eight months. Those are the points.”

  “And the lines?” I asked. My hands were sweating. I understood the lines drawn through the points.

  “You know,” he chided. “There’s some dispute about some of the projections, but they went ahead and prepared them all anyway. For instance, between this one at six months, when she appeared to be a year and a half, to the time you saw her, when she looked three to four, that’s pretty steep. But they went ahead and used it for one of the projections, although some of our people think she was stressed, that the stress resulted in the spurt that isn’t her norm. You know, the plane crash, Max and his girl friends, being alone on the beach. Pretty stressful. Anyway, if that’s her growth line, see here, she’ll reach twelve physically when she’s seventeen months old. If you take this one, the average rate of growth through all the points, then she’ll be two and a half when she reaches the physical age of twelve.”

  There were other lines and he explained them, but they were meaningless. If these projections were anywhere near right, then between one and a half to two and a half years after her birth, she would become an adolescent.

  He rolled up the chart again. “She has a secret, a new way of metabolizing food maybe, something. A hormone, an enzyme, a new combination. Was there a food supply in that placenta, or the long umbilicus, enough to sustain rapid growth for a few hours? What if they could find what let her do that and inject it into livestock? What if they could use it to cure cancer? The men in the white coats are frothing at the mouth for her. Believe me, Seton, they will not harm a hair on that child’s head. Hell, she could die of old age by the chronological age of six! They want her now. And they don’t want her out there breeding. They’d much prefer her alive, of course, and even bearing children under supervision, but they’d rather have her body than have her out there breeding.” The glint was in his eyes again.

  I didn’t know what it was. Fanaticism? Zeal? Earnestness? Fatigue? Whatever brought it on was well repressed most of the time. I turned away from him. “They don’t have a thing to base such conjectures on, and you know it. Hypotheses are cheap
, let them dream.”

  “For now. For now, but not very much longer. Think of what it would do to the population if women had kids that easily, every few months here comes another one. No pain, no sweat. Hell, think what it would do to women, and the way women and men treat each other. And in a couple of years each new one’s out doing it. You can make your own charts. Think about it, Seton. I’ll be seeing you.”

  I could make the charts, I thought after he had gone, and God help us all, in many ways he was right. I remembered what he had said about her, like a dinosaur on the beach, and with the memory I found myself at the drawing table sketching a dinosaur, then another, and another until I had a beach crowded with them, with one of them open-mouthed, displaying many dagger teeth, looking down at a rock that a tiny mouse crouched behind fearfully. I stared at it a long time until finally, reluctantly, I drew in the balloon and lettered the words in big, bold caps: YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHAT?

  * * *

  What was Kersh waiting for? He knew by now that I had no intention of cooperating. I had read the novels, had seen the movies; I believed they had ways to get information out of people if they had to. Kersh had warned me that they would use whatever means they chose if too much time passed. Why? He could be gambling that I would panic and get word to her to run again, and that he would be able to intercept that word. Probably that was part of it. But the bigger part, I felt certain, was that they were still using me as bait, dangling me in the water so that eventually she would come to me. I had no doubt they were intercepting my mail and monitoring my phone calls. Everyone I talked to would be scrutinized; everyone I had lunch with, dined with, went to a show with.

  Very quietly I began to drop out of the social circles that made up my Atlanta. I pleaded work, fatigue, deadlines, whatever came to mind. It wasn’t fair to involve anyone else in this. I began to draw again, and even got out the watercolors and played with them, and the waiting game continued. Joey came down to visit his parents over the holidays, as he usually did, and we had dinner together, as we usually did. I passed him a large envelope addressed to Aunt Bett and asked him to remail it from New York. No questions. Inside the big envelope was a thousand dollars in mixed bills, for the child, I had written, and another envelope, addressed to her. I was frustrated because I didn’t know what name she would be using, and finally I wrote Francie. In this letter I expressed my fears that they would be watching me forever, that she must never try to reach me directly. I warned her about AIDS, herpes, drugs, men … I told her everything I knew about her early months, the differences between her and other children. I told her that she had to move before June, and that I must not know where she had gone. They would wait until June, I prayed. It was parental stuff, I mocked myself, but I wrote it all out, and Joey took it to mail.