Year’s Best SF 16

by Hartwell, David G. ; Cramer, Kathryn

  “What about biological weapons?” I replied.

  My question was translated, and the response was nervous laughter. Only the patriarch and Claude didn’t cackle at my paranoid suspicions.

  “What do you think?” Claude pressed. “That if you let us toy with microbes and crops, we’d brew up plagues that would kill only Americans?”

  Really, I hadn’t thought for two minutes about our policy toward bacteria. But hundreds of hours of overheard news commentaries gave me the language to say, “The Soviets tried just that. When I was a boy, in the early sixties, they built that secret lab in the Urals and started to weaponize—”

  I hesitated. This was probably the first time in my life that I had said that peculiar word. “Weaponize,” I said again. Then I said, “Anthrax and smallpox and Ebola,” with the certainty of a clinical biochemist.

  “I’m not talking about disease,” the woman insisted. “I’m talking about those miracle crops or yours, the biogenetic soybeans and tomatoes and rice. If a field isn’t under your control, it’s forbidden. If your precious seeds are lost, your spies and satellites track down the thieves, burning every field that shows any sign of your trademarked plants.”

  “That’s not my decision,” I managed.

  Yet most of the table seemed to think that I was the president and Congress too, sitting before them in some kind of court proceeding.

  Claude offered a few slow words to the others. Judging by the tone, he was trying to calm spirits.

  But it took the patriarch to regain control of the meeting. He leaned forward, silencing the others. Something important was coming, no doubt about it. He shook his head as if it were heavy and looked at the others, and in French, he told his associates, “Of course it cannot hold, these taboos. These constrictions. Seeds will sprout and thrive, and there aren’t enough eyes in the sky to keep all of the American secrets safely their own.”

  I knew what he said because Claude, remembering his job, hunched down and translated every word.

  Then the old man looked at me. One apolitical soul to another, he said, “But you see, Kyle. My friend. This is the problem that I face. These emotions are ragged and unpleasant. And not just with my staff, but with our stockholders too. I wish to do business with you. I believe what you offer is respectable and fair, and I take no offense. But I am not this company, only its servant. I’m sorry that you saw this display today, but at least now you will appreciate my reasons when I tell you no. I will thank you for your time, and on the behalf of everyone, I wish you the best. A safe, uneventful flight back to your homeland, and good day to you.”

  Like most twelve-year-old boys, my favorite movies usually involved World War II. Battles and tremendous explosions were my passion, and it didn’t hurt having brave men not even twice my age doing fearless, selfless acts. New releases were cause for celebration. My father would treat my brothers and me to a matinee, and afterward we’d wrestle our way back to the car, arguing about which scene was best and which soldiers we wanted to be like. Classic films were an excuse to gather around the black-and-white RCA, two wondrous hours spent watching the slaughter of Japs and Krauts. It seemed like such good fun, even when I was old enough to know that war was a truly awful business.

  I had limits too: I never much liked the atomic bomb movies. The best of that bad lot was the Hiroshima epic, directed by William Wyler, starring Charlton Heston as Paul Tibbets. Despite my love for large explosions, I considered mushroom clouds to be more forces of nature than tools of war. Besides, I wasn’t an unthinking monster, and the effects of the blast and radiation were bad enough to stave off any wide-eyed pleasure with that impossibly bright flash of light.

  My father was an Alfred Hitchcock fan. With the excuse of an education, he took us to see the classic Intrigue. But the movie’s charms and subtle power were slow to work their way into my flesh. Espionage was a difficult species of warfare. Dad had to explain quite a lot to his boys, including how the Soviets had placed spies in the heart of the Manhattan Project and how a pair of intelligence officers achieved miracles, rooting out the bastards before any damage could be done.

  “If those heroes hadn’t done their jobs,” he warned, “our world would be a very different place today.”

  “Different how?” I asked.

  We were walking back to the car. “Our enemies would have stolen our atomic bomb,” he said grimly, emphasizing that stealing element. Political systems aside, his sons were brought up to believe that thieves were cowards and worse. “And without our spy-busters working in the shadows, the Communists would have gotten the hydrogen bomb too.”

  “What’s the difference?” my youngest brother asked. “Between atomic . . . and what’s the word . . . ?”

  “Hydrogen,” I told him, using my smart, twelve-year-old voice. “Hydrogen bombs are much, much worse.”

  “They’re just bigger,” Dad corrected. “A weapon isn’t good or bad. It just is. What makes it evil is how it is used.”

  “Have we ever used H-bombs?” asked my other brother.

  “Three times,” Dad allowed. “Only three times. And they hopefully won’t be needed again.”

  “But we have them,” I added confidently.

  “And we keep them at the ready,” he allowed. “Warheads on missiles, bombs in bombers, and there’s always at least one nuclear submarine hiding in the ocean, ready to fire its payload on a moment’s notice.”

  This was all good and reasonable, in other words. And with that, we let the topic drop, getting back to the important business of wrestling our way to the car.

  When I was in college, The Good Hand came to one theatre. I knew nothing about the little film, except that it was set in some bizarre future New York City. My girlfriend had read a favorable review and we went together, but she wasn’t a very strong person. The filth and disease and easy deaths of that first half hour proved too much. Leaning close, she demanded that we leave. And since I was hoping for sex, either that night or in my own near future, I did the gracious thing.

  The title, The Good Hand, remained a small mystery. It wasn’t until eight or nine years later, living in a large city with an art house movie theatre, I finally watched that violent nightmare to its conclusion. The director, Martin Scorsese, did very little work after The Good Hand, and it was easy to see why. His hypothetical world was brutal and suffocating. Powerful, faceless entities controlled every aspect of knowledge. Books were kept under lock and key, even the least sensitive titles subject to layers upon layers of restrictions and bureaucratic hoops.

  The story was preposterous, yet after the first frames, utterly believable. The protagonist was a young fellow who wanted nothing but to make a better spaghetti sauce. That’s all. The twentieth century was famous for its delicious sauces, and wanting to know more about tomatoes and basil and garlic and sausage, he filled out the appropriate forms. But one box on the backside of one page was checked when he should have left it empty, and his request was dropped into a much more dangerous pile of forms.

  At that point, a brutal comedy took flight. One tiny misunderstanding caused people to die while others barely survived. The young chief lost friends and family, and he had to kill two strangers and avoid a fast-moving car before the pursuing intelligence officer finally caught him.

  “This is a sad, essential business,” the officer explained to his prisoner. “If a citizen believes he can reach for any title, to slake any intellectual thirst, how do we keep our grip on society?”

  “Why do we need any grip?” the bloodied but valiant hero responded. “Can’t people do what they want? Can’t they learn what they want . . . just so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone . . . ?”

  Played by a young De Niro, the intelligence officer was an intoxicating mixture of acid and charm. He laughed for a few moments. Then with grave certainty, he said, “You don’t know the dangers waiting in these old texts. And I don’t know much about them either. But I’m one tough bastard, and what I do know scares me. Th
e bombs and poisons that you could make up in your kitchen . . . well, I’d do anything to protect my world from those horrors. And every time I meet someone naïve, someone like you, it reminds me. Inside each of us, there’s a fatal flaw. We suffer from a crazy urge that keeps us chasing every bit of knowledge, including nightmares that can doom our species and our world.”

  The young Al Pacino played the would-be cook. “Are you crazy? This is about spaghetti sauce,” he screamed. “That’s all I want to know!”

  “Not according to these forms,” his opponent countered.

  “I made a mistake,” Pacino swore, and not for the first time.

  “No,” his nemesis replied. “You used the system against us. You put your mark in that box to allow your nose where it didn’t belong. Your plan was clever, and you had this ingenious excuse waiting. In case an official more gullible than me happened to grab your case.”

  “You aren’t listening to me,” the prisoner complained.

  “I’ve heard every word,” the interrogator promised. “And now what you need to do is pay attention when I tell you this: The past is forbidden. There are things that can’t be revealed. Certainly not to the likes of you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m not worthy, either,” the officer replied, laughing aside even the suggestion of special treatment. Then from a shelf where important tools were kept, he pulled down a steel cleaver of obvious heft and sharpness. “Regardless what you think, I’m not a monster. I have mercy, and I genuinely want to let you off with a warning. So tell me now. Be honest. Which one is your good hand?”

  “My what?”

  “Which hand do you cook with?”

  The hero was right-handed—a point made several times in the narrative. But he was a clever sort, having the presence of mind to lift his left hand as far as the shackles allowed.

  “Very well,” said the officer, smiling with a professional coolness. Then he turned to two nameless fellows waiting in the shadows. “Hold the right wrist,” he instructed. “Hold it very tight now.”

  As the cleaver rose, the hero shouted, “Not that hand, no!”

  “Then you should have answered differently,” was the response. And at least one member of the audience—an apolitical sort on his best day—grimaced and curled up tight, fending off the blows that came only in his imagination.

  Following the Great Lunch Disaster, I retreated to my room and called home, leaving a very sorry report on the office answering machine. I was exhausted, and with an evening event with another French firm scheduled, I stripped and collapsed under the covers, drifting into a wonderful, dreamless sleep.

  Noises woke me.

  First came the precise knocking on wood, and then a loud, uncomfortable voice saying my name.

  Sitting up, I assumed I was late for my appointment. Clumsy apologies preceded the realization that Claude wasn’t speaking. In fact, it was a woman’s voice. I coughed, muttered, “Just a minute,” and managed to put one leg into my pants before finding enough curiosity to ask the obvious question:

  “Who is it?”

  “Noelene.”

  “Oh.” Why did I know that name? My mind saw the woman at lunch, but that seemed unlikely. My memory was playing games with me. “Just a moment,” I begged, fastening my pants and buttoning my shirt halfway before realizing that I hadn’t lined up the buttons and holes properly. Fine. I reached for the door regardless, and that was when another possibility occurred to me. Noelene was a sweet voice standing in the hallway, flanked by a pair of French thugs, the three of them ready to rob the vulnerable American.

  No peephole had been bored into the heavy old door. I left the chain attached, and with my foot serving as a second line of defense, I looked through the tiniest gap.

  My first instinct had been right. Except for her smile, the woman from lunch looked perfectly miserable. “It is bad,” she announced.

  “What is?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t.” Nodding at my bed, I admitted, “I have jet lag.”

  “You bombed us.”

  Startled, I stepped back.

  The woman stared at the chain and then at me. Her smile had become something else. The anger was perfectly reasonable, but there was compassion as well. She put her arms around her waist, sighing deeply before saying, “We could be at war.”

  “No,” I managed. “Not war.”

  Quietly, almost tenderly, she said, “Kyle. Please let me inside.”

  I shut the door and unfastened the chain and opened it again. Then I turned on the television, preprogrammed to find the hotel’s most useless channel—classical music playing while a slide show proved what a fine city Nancy was. Where was the BBC? I punched buttons, absorbing repeated images of the same fire and smoke. The other networks were full of the news, but at least the British voices could explain what I was seeing.

  “Algeria?” I managed. “What’s in Algeria?”

  “Our space program,” she claimed.

  “You have one?” I blurted, using an unfortunate tone.

  Noelene grimaced. But for a minute or two she said nothing, allowing me to gain some appreciation for what had happened in the middle of the North African desert. Rockets and the assembly buildings, fuel tanks and even the railroad lines leading south from Algiers had been obliterated. Smart-bombs and small teams of commandoes had done the brutal work. Casualties were less than fifty, although those numbers were preliminary. Then that wise BBC voice explained that a wing of long-range Skyrangers was fueling in Missouri, preparing to strike the uranium enrichment facility outside Grenoble.

  “Why are we admitting that?” I asked the television.

  “Because you like us so much,” Noelene replied, sarcasm riding on her voice. “We are your friends. Your allies, on occasion. You’re giving us time to move our civilians out of harm’s way.” That’s how we did things in Israel: A stern warning followed less than a day later with a burrowing bomb, famous for its cleanliness but still throwing a horrible mess across the Negev.

  Not knowing what to say, I whispered, “All right.”

  She looked at my chest.

  Yes, my buttons. I undid them and began again, and when success was near, I thought to ask, “But why are you here?”

  She didn’t seem to notice the question.

  “You don’t like me,” I continued. “And you hate my country.”

  She looked at my eyes and said, “Kyle.”

  It’s silly, I know. But I liked the way my name sounded coming out of her wide, lovely mouth.

  “I don’t know you,” Noelene began. “And I don’t hate your country. But I know America enough to despise its government’s policies.”

  “But why are you here?”

  “This is my supervisor’s idea,” she explained. “When this news broke, he mentioned that he was worried about you. He turned to me and explained that he couldn’t get involved—his station and responsibilities wouldn’t allow it—but he thought that I might take pity on you. You need help. Yes? Before events swallow up all of our lives?”

  I settled on the corner of my bed.

  She considered the nearby chair. But sitting wasn’t her intention. “Your passport.”

  “What about it?”

  “You’ll need it and any essential belongings.”

  I was confused.

  “But leave your suitcase, and please don’t bother checking out of the hotel. My car is close. We can reach the highway before 17:00.”

  “When?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  It was that late. I stared at my watch, trying to decide what to take. If I was actually leaving, that is.

  “Kyle?”

  “Are we going back to Paris?”

  “God, no.” The ignorance of an average American amazed Noelene. “You have to leave this country as soon as possible. Germany isn’t far, if we start right now . . . !”

  Every face in the world suddenly seemed important.
Every glance from a stranger carried menace: Do they know who I am? Do they want revenge? The average pedestrian looked tense, distracted and angry. Two old men stood on a street corner, rigid fingers accusing the sky of something or another, and though I couldn’t understand them, I had no doubt that Algeria was the topic. A gentleman in a suit and tie leaned against a stone building, listening to the static and news on a small transistor radio. A young woman walking toward us suddenly looked at me, and a smile flickered before vanishing into an expression more grim than seemed possible on such a pretty face. Then as we passed each other, she whispered a few words to Noelene.

  Noelene replied with a phrase, nothing more.

  “Did you know her?” I asked.

  “No.” She fished a single car key from her purse. “I don’t. How would I?”

  “It just seemed—” I began.

  “Here,” she interrupted, steering me to a vehicle even tinier than Claude’s Renault. But remarkably, it was a Ford. A model not sold in America, but an unexpected harbinger of home. I took this as a good sign. Crawling into the passenger seat, I thanked Noelene for her unexpected help. She nodded and looked at the steering wheel, saying nothing. Then remembering the key in her hand, she started the little motor and took the wheel with both hands before facing me. “I’m doing what I was told to do,” she stated.

  “You’ve explained that. But thank you anyway.”

  Pushing the car into gear, she said, “I should warn you. My driving is rather spectacular.”

  “What is that?” I said above the revving. I assumed that “spectacular” was the wrong word.

  But it wasn’t.

  Minutes later, I was wearing my seat belt and shoulder harness and my door was locked, both hands wrapped around the plastic handle above the window. As promised, we were flying down the highway. It seemed as if we were on the same road on which I had entered Nancy. Noelene admitted that it was, then added, “But not for long.” Several quick turns followed, and I lost all track of where I was. Maybe we were heading for Germany, but why was the sun on my right? Didn’t we want the sun setting behind us? I asked myself that reasonable question, more than once, and she must have heard my thoughts because without prompting, she volunteered, “We will be turning in another few kilometers. Don’t worry.”