The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Saturday night the Carlton was like an asylum with all the attendants out on strike. The party took up three large downstairs rooms, the dining room, the lounge and bar. I carried the shopping bag in with me and made my way to the cloakroom. I had decided to check it with my coat and pass her the claim check when we met; it seemed the best I could do. Moving through the lobby was a slow business; I knew half the people there, it seemed, and had not seen many of them for a long time. Everyone was happy and loud.

  At the cloakroom I waited in line, then passed over the coat and the shopping bag, talking to one of my old teachers and his wife. The young woman behind the counter pressed the claim check into my hand, and at the touch, I pivoted. You. She smiled pleasantly and was already taking the coat of the next man in line. I looked at my hand; I held the claim check, and also a room key.

  She had told me the time, I realized: ten thirty. Room parties were going on up and down the tenth floor. Men were reliving moments of glory, reenacting plays, throwing a pillow here, a real football there.… A bunch of them were lined up for the kickoff in the hall.… I visited one party after another, stayed for a minute or two, then moved on. Nine thirty, nine forty, nine forty-five. I hit another room, accepted another drink that I would not taste, talked to people, and instantly forgot what we talked about and even who they were. I didn’t know who was watching me, but then, I never did. Ten twenty. I got on the elevator on the tenth floor and rode down to six with people I did know. On six I left the group, entered the stairwell, and started the climb up to the fourteenth floor.

  If I saw anyone I hadn’t known for a long time, I would go to ten, do another party or two, and then go home, I told myself. I was sure that no one had noticed when I entered the stairwell, and you couldn’t find anyone in the crowds milling about if you had to. Just to make certain, I left the stairs on eleven and walked the length of the corridor. It was quiet up here; the parties were being confined to ten, eight, and six, and the main floor. I found other stairs and went up the remaining floors. No thirteen.

  On fourteen an elderly couple passed me in the hall. We all nodded; they went on to the elevator and I went on to room number fourteen eighteen. At first I thought she wasn’t there yet. A small table was near tall double windows that were open to a tiny balcony with a lovely vista of Atlanta by night. Everything out there glittered. On the table was a champagne bottle in a cooler and two glasses. Then she moved into sight on the balcony. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. She had changed her clothes from the black and white uniform she had worn earlier to a long pale blue skirt and matching sweater. She was more beautiful than I remembered.

  “I have a present for you,” she said, and picked up a slim package on the table.

  “And I checked a present for you.”

  Her eyes shifted and widened. Staring past me, she whispered, “Promise you’ll take them home, Win. Keep the presents as mementoes. Promise. Don’t forget me.”

  I spun around to see Kersh and two other men entering the room without a sound. One of them leaped toward her, knocking me out of the way, but she was on the balcony, the table between her and the rest of us. She looked at me another second, turned, and swung her legs over the railing, and then stepped off.

  For a moment no one moved, then I screamed, and lunged toward the balcony. Someone clipped me behind the ear and I fell to my knees.

  They took me to a different room where I sat in a large chair while people came and went. I couldn’t weep for her; I had no tears, only the deadening knowledge that I had done it, I had failed her. I failed my mother who drove her car into a tree doing ninety miles an hour. Failed my ex-wife who thought she needed plastic breasts. Failed Aunt Bett who had lived so many years in poverty and loneliness. Failed the little girls who oiled the wheels of New York. Failed the social worker who wept because they wouldn’t give her what she needed to save children. Failed them all.

  Kersh brought the little package from the other room and asked me to open it. It was a book with handpainted illustrations of common flowers with their names. He leafed through it and handed it back to me. “Do you want someone to take you home?”

  I stood up and started to walk toward the door.

  “Seton, hold on a second,” Kersh said heavily. He regarded me for a moment, then said, “It’s over. We aren’t going to bother you anymore. You understand? You couldn’t have prevented this. We’ve been getting closer for weeks now. We weren’t going to wait any longer. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Get in that big pretty car of yours and drive, Seton. Just drive a long time.”

  Someone went down the elevator with me; although it was after two in the morning, there was still a mob in the lobby, but subdued, huddling in small groups. No one paid any attention as the agent led me through the clusters of people and retrieved my coat and shopping bag. He went to the outer door with me, and I walked on alone to my car.

  * * *

  It was a long time before I turned the key in the ignition, a long time before I shifted into gear and began to drive. At home, I carried in the packages. Promise. Don’t forget me. I opened the book but could not focus on the pictures, the words. A gold bookmark was in it. I opened to that page, and the words seemed to leap at me. “‘Sassy Francie,’ Saxifraga, sometimes called Mother of Thousands.”

  I looked up at the shopping bag then, and I knew. I had noticed without conscious awareness, but I knew it held more than I had put in it. My hand was shaking when I reached inside and brought out a small box, the size of a shoebox for children’s shoes. It was wrapped in silver foil and had been pierced all over. Carefully I lifted the top and saw her, our daughter, curled in sleep, clothed in a tiny garment attached to the sides of the box, which was padded and covered with pink silk. Then I wept.

  She had known it could never end as long as she lived, but our daughter was free. I would find the mountainside with the forests all around; I would teach her what she needed to know, and her children and theirs. It would take careful planning; no one must suspect until they had scattered everywhere, like seeds on the wind. There would be time to think and plan as I drove.

  “Your name will be Rose,” I murmured to my child, who would fit in the palm of my hand. I had begun naming the flowers.

  SNODGRASS

  Ian R. MacLeod

  Here’s another quirky and brilliant story by British writer Ian R. MacLeod, whose story “Grownups” appears elsewhere in this anthology. In this one, he tells the gritty yet poignant story of how things might have gone very differently indeed for a world-famous celebrity … for both better and worse.

  I’ve got me whole life worked out. Today, give up smoking. Tomorrow, quit drinking. The day after, give up smoking again.

  It’s morning. Light me cig. Pick the fluff off me feet. Drag the curtain back, and the night’s left everything in the same mess outside. Bin sacks by the kitchen door that Cal never gets around to taking out front. The garden jungleland gone brown with autumn. Houses this way and that, terraces queuing for something that’ll never happen.

  It’s early. Daren’t look at the clock. The stair carpet works greasegrit between me toes. Downstairs in the freezing kitchen, pull the cupboard where the handle’s dropped off.

  “Hey, Mother Hubbard,” I shout up the stairs to Cal. “Why no fucking cornflakes?”

  The lav flushes. Cal lumbers down in a grey nightie. “What’s all this about cornflakes? Since when do you have breakfast, John?”

  “Since John got a job.”

  “You? A job?”

  “I wouldn’t piss yer around about this, Cal.”

  “You owe me four weeks’ rent,” she says. “Plus I don’t know how much for bog roll and soap. Then there’s the TV licence.”

  “Don’t tell me yer buy a TV licence.”

  “I don’t, but I’m the householder. It’s me who’d get sent to gaol.”

  “Every Wednesday, I’ll visit yer,” I say, rummaging in the bread bin.

  “What’s th
is job anyway?”

  “I told yer on Saturday when you and Kevin came back from the Chinese. Must have been too pissed to notice.” I hold up a stiff green slice of Mighty White. “Think this is edible?”

  “Eat it and find out. And stop calling Steve Kevin. He’s upstairs asleep right at this moment.”

  “Well there’s a surprise. Rip Van and his tiny Winkle.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. You know what Steve’s like if you give him an excuse.”

  “Yeah, but at least I don’t have to sleep with him.”

  Cal sits down to watch me struggle through breakfast. Before Kevin, it was another Kevin, and a million other Kevins before that, all with grazed knuckles from the way they walk. Cal says she needs the protection even if it means the odd bruise.

  I paste freckled marge over ye Mighty White. It tastes just like the doormat, and I should know.

  “Why don’t yer tell our Kev to stuff it?” I say.

  She smiles and leans forward.

  “Snuggle up to Dr. Winston here,” I wheedle.

  “You’d be too old to look after me with the clients, John,” she says, as though I’m being serious. Which I am.

  “For what I’d charge to let them prod yer, Cal, yer wouldn’t have any clients. Onassis couldn’t afford yer.”

  “Onassis is dead, unless you mean the woman.” She stands up, turning away, shaking the knots from her hair. She stares out of the window over the mess in the sink. Cal hates to talk about her work. “It’s past eight, John,” she says without looking at any clock. It’s a knack she has. “Hadn’t you better get ready for this job?”

  * * *

  Yeah, ye job. The people at the Jobbie are always on the look-out for something fresh for Dr. Winston. They think of him as a challenge. Miss Nikki was behind ye spit-splattered perspex last week. She’s an old hand—been there for at least three months.

  “Name’s Dr. Winston O’Boogie,” I drooled, doing me hunchback when I reached the front of ye queue.

  “We’ve got something for you, Mr. Lennon,” she says. They always call yer Mister or Sir here, just like the fucking police. “How would you like to work in a Government Department?”

  “Well, wow,” I say, letting the hunchback slip. “You mean like a spy?”

  That makes her smile. I hate it when they don’t smile.

  She passes me ye chit. Name, age, address. Skills, qualifications—none. That bit always kills me. Stapled to it we have details of something clerical.

  “It’s a new scheme, Mr. Lennon,” Nikki says. “The Government is committed to helping the long-term unemployed. You can start Monday.”

  So here’s Dr. Winston O’Boogie at the bus stop in the weird morning light. I’ve got on me best jacket, socks that match, even remembered me glasses so I can see what’s happening. Cars are crawling. Men in suits are tapping fingers on the steering wheel as they groove to Katie Boyle. None of them live around here—they’re all from Solihull—and this is just a place to complain about the traffic. And Monday’s a drag cos daughter Celia has to back the Mini off the drive and be a darling and shift Mummy’s Citroen too so yer poor hard-working Dad can get to the Sierra.

  The bus into town lumbers up. The driver looks at me like I’m a freak when I don’t know ye exact fare. Up on the top deck where there’s No standing, No spitting, No ball games, I get me a window seat and light me a ciggy. I love it up here, looking down on the world, into people’s bedroom windows. Always have. Me and me mate Pete used to drive the bus from the top front seat all the way from Menlove Avenue to Quarry Bank School. I remember the rows of semis, trees that used to brush like sea on shingle over the roof of the bus. Everything in Speke was Snodgrass of course, what with valve radios on the sideboard and the Daily Excess, but Snodgrass was different in them days. It was like watching a play, waiting for someone to forget their lines. Mimi used to tell me that anyone who said they were middle class probably wasn’t. You knew just by checking whether they had one of them blocks that look like Kendal Mint Cake hooked around the rim of the loo. It was all tea and biscuits then, and Mind, dear, your slip’s showing. You knew where you were, what you were fighting.

  The bus crawls. We’re up in the clouds here, the fumes on the pavement like dry ice at a big concert. Oh, yeah. I mean, Dr. Winston may be nifty fifty with his whole death to look forward to but he knows what he’s saying. Cal sometimes works at the NEC when she gets too proud to do the real business. Hands out leaflets and wiggles her ass. She got me a ticket last year to see Simply Red and we went together and she put on her best dress that looked just great and didn’t show too much and I was proud to be with her, even if I did feel like her dad. Of course, the music was warmed-over shit. It always is. I hate the way that red-haired guy sings. She tried to get me to see Cliff too, but Dr. Winston has his pride.

  Everywhere is empty round here, knocked down and boarded up, postered over. There’s a group called SideKick playing at Digbeth. And waddayou-know, the Beatles are playing this very evening at the NEC. The Greatest Hits Tour, it says here on ye corrugated fence. I mean, Fab Gear Man. Give It Bloody Foive. Macca and Stu and George and Ringo, and obviously the solo careers are up the kazoo again. Like, wow.

  The bus dumps me in the middle of Brum. The office is just off Cherry Street. I stagger meself by finding it right away, me letter from the Jobbie in me hot little hand. I show it to a geezer in uniform, and he sends me up to the fifth floor. The whole place is new. It smells of formaldehyde—that stuff we used to pickle the spiders in at school. Me share the lift with ye office bimbo. Oh, after you.

  Dr. Winston does his iceberg cruise through the openplan. So this is what Monday morning really looks like.

  Into an office at the far end. Smells of coffee. Snodgrass has got a filter machine bubbling away. A teapot ready for the afternoon.

  “Mr. Lennon.”

  We shake hands across the desk. “Mr. Snodgrass.”

  Snodgrass cracks a smile. “There must have been some mistake down in General Admin. My name’s Fenn. But everyone calls me Allen.”

  “Oh yeah. And why’s that?” A voice inside that sounds like Mimi says Stop this behaviour, John. She’s right, of course. Dr. Winston needs the job, the money. Snodgrass tells me to sit down. I fumble for a ciggy and try to loosen up.

  “No smoking please, Mr.… er, John.”

  Oh, great.

  “You’re a lot, um, older than most of the casual workers we get.”

  “Well this is what being on the Giro does for yer. I’m nineteen really.”

  Snodgrass looks down at his file. “Born 1940.” He looks up again. “And is that a Liverpool accent I detect?”

  I look around me. “Where?”

  Snodgrass has got a crazy grin on his face. I think the bastard likes me. “So you’re John Lennon, from Liverpool. I thought the name rang a faint bell.” He leans forward. “I am right, aren’t I?”

  Oh fucking Jesus. A faint bell. This happens about once every six months. Why now? “Oh yeah,” I say. “I used to play the squeezebox for Gerry and the Pacemakers. Just session work. And it was a big thrill to work with Shirley Bassey, I can tell yer. She’s the King as far as I’m concerned. Got bigger balls than Elvis.”

  “You were the guy who left the Beatles.”

  “That was Pete Best, Mr. Snodgrass.”

  “You and Pete Best. Pete Best was the one who was dumped for Ringo. You walked out on Paul McCartney and Stuart Sutcliffe. I collect records, you see. I’ve read all the books about Merseybeat. And my elder sister was a big fan of those old bands. The Fourmost, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla, the Beatles. Of course, it was all before my time.”

  “Dinosaurs ruled the earth.”

  “You must have some stories to tell.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I lean forward across the desk. “Did yer know that Paul McCartney was really a woman?”

  “Well, John, I—”

  “It figures if yer think about it, Mr. Snodgrass. I mea
n, have you ever seen his dick?”

  “Just call me Allen, please, will you? Now, I’ll show you your desk.”

  Snodgrass takes me out into the openplan. Introduces me to a pile of envelopes, a pile of letters. Well, Hi. Seems like Dr. Winston is supposed to put one into the other.

  “What do I do when I’ve finished?” I ask.

  “We’ll find you some more.”

  All the faces in the openplan are staring. A phone’s ringing, but no one bothers to answer. “Yeah,” I say, “I can see there’s a big rush on.”

  On his way back to his office, Snodgrass takes a detour to have a word with a fat Doris in a floral print sitting over by the filing cabinets. He says something to her that includes the word Beatle. Soon, the whole office knows.

  “I bet you could write a book,” fat Doris says, standing over me, smelling of pot noodles. “Everyone’s interested in those days now. Of course, the Who and the Stones were the ones for me. Brian Jones. Keith Moon, for some reason. All the ones who died. I was a real rebel. I went to Heathrow airport once, chewed my handbag to shreds.”

  “Did yer piss yourself too, Doris? That’s what usually happened.”

  Fat Doris twitches a smile. “Never quite made it to the very top, the Beatles, did they? Still, that Paul McCartney wrote some lovely songs. ‘Yesterday,’ you still hear that one in lifts don’t you? And Stu was so good-looking then. Must be a real tragedy in your life that you didn’t stay. How does it feel, carrying that around with you, licking envelopes for a living?”

  “Yer know what your trouble is don’t yer, Doris?”

  Seems she don’t, so I tell her.

  * * *

  Winston’s got no money for the bus home. His old joints ache—never realised it was this bloody far to walk. The kids are playing in our road like it’s a holiday, which it always is for most of them. A tennis ball hits me hard on the noddle. I pretend it don’t hurt, then I growl at them to fuck off as they follow me down the street. Kevin’s van’s disappeared from outside the house. Musta gone out. Pity, shame.