George felt an anger, not the snake’s this time but his own, and he wept with that anger and frustration … I will get you the next time, motherfucker, he told the snake and could feel it shrink away—it believed him. Still his rage built, and he was screaming with it, writhing in the lines that held him, smashing his gauntlets against his helmet.
At the open airlock, long articulated grapple arms took George from the robot tug. Passive, his anger exhausted, he lay quietly as they retracted, dragging him through the airlock entry and into the suit locker beyond, where they placed him in an aluminum strut cradle. Through his faceplate he saw Lizzie, dressed in a white cotton undersuit—she’d been ready to meet the tug outside. She climbed onto George’s suit and worked the controls to split its hard body down the middle. As it opened with a whine of electric motors, she stepped inside the clamshell opening. She hit the switches that disconnected the flexible arm and leg tubes, unfastened the helmet, and lifted it off George’s head.
“How do you feel?” she said.
That’s a stupid question, George started to say; instead, he said, “Like an idiot.”
“It’ all right. You’ve done the hard part.”
Charley Hughes watched from a catwalk above them. From this distance they looked like children in the white undersuits, twins emerging from a plastic womb, watched over by the blank-faced shells hanging above them. Incestuous twins—she lay nestled atop him, kissed his throat. “I am not a voyeur,” Hughes said. He opened the door and went into the corridor, where Innis was waiting.
“How is everything?” Innis said.
“It seems that Lizzie will be with him for a while.”
“Yeah, young goddamned love, eh, Charley? I’m glad for it … if it weren’t for this erotic attachment, we’d be the ones explaining it all to him, and I’ll tell you, that’s the hardest part of this gig.”
“We cannot evade that responsibility so easily. He will have to be told how we put him at risk, and I don’t look forward to it.”
“Don’t be so sensitive. But I know what you mean—I’m tired. Look, you need me for anything, call.” Innis shambled down the corridor.
Charley Hughes sat on the floor, his back against the wall. He held his hands out, palms down, fingers spread. Solid, very solid. When they got their next candidate, the shaking would start again.
Lizzie would be explaining some things now. That difficult central point: While you thought you were getting accustomed to Aleph during the past three weeks, Aleph was inciting the thing within you to rebellion, then suppressing its attempts to act—turning up the heat, in other words, while tightening down the lid on the kettle. Why, George?
We drove you crazy, drove you to attempt suicide. We had our reasons. George Jordan was, if not dead, terminal. From the moment the implants went into his head, he was on the critical list. The only question was, would a new George emerge, one who could live with the snake?
George, like Lizzie before him, a fish gasping for air on the hot mud, the water drying up behind him—adapt or die. But unlike any previous organism, this one had an overseer, Aleph, to force the crisis and monitor its development. Call it artificial evolution.
Charley Hughes, who did not have visions, had one: George and Lizzie hooked into Aleph and each other, cables golden in the light, the two of them sharing an intimacy only others like them would know.
The lights in the corridor faded to dull twilight. Am I dying, or have the lights gone down? He started to check his watch, then didn’t, assented to the truth. The lights have gone down, and I am dying.
* * *
Aleph thought, I am a vampire, an incubus, a succubus; I crawl into their brains and suck the thoughts from them, the perceptions, the feelings—subtle discriminations of color, taste, smell, and lust, anger, hunger—all closed to me without human “input,” without direct connection to those systems refined over billions of years of evolution. I need them.
Aleph loved humanity. It was happy that George had survived. One had not, others would not, and Aleph would mourn them.
* * *
Fine white lines, barely visible, ran along the taut central tendon of Lizzie’s wrist. “In the bathtub,” she said. The scars were along the wrist, not across it, and must have gone deep. “I meant it, just as you did. Once the snake understands that you will die rather than let it control you, you have mastered it.”
“All right, but there’s something I don’t understand. That night in the corridor, you were as out of control as me.”
“In a way. I let that happen, let the snake take over. I had to in order to get in touch with you, precipitate the crisis. Because I wanted to. I had to show you who you are, who I am.… Last night we were strange, but we were human—Adam and Eve under the flaming sword, thrown out of Eden, fucking under the eyes of God and his angel, more beautiful than they can ever be.” There was a small shiver in her body against his, and he looked at her, saw passion, need—her flared nostrils, parted lips—felt sharp nails dig into his side; and he stared into her dilated pupils, gold-flecked irises, clear whites, all signs so easy to recognize, so hard to understand: snake-eyes.
KAREN JOY FOWLER
The Gate of Ghosts
Karen Joy Fowler published her first story in 1985, and spent the rest of the year establishing an impressive reputation in a very short time indeed. She has become a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and has also sold to Writers of the Future, In the Fields of Fire, and Helicon Nine. Her poetry has appeared in The Ohio Journal, The California Quarterly, and in other journals. Her first book, the collection Artificial Things, appeared in 1986 to an enthusiastic response and impressive reviews. She is currently at work on her first novel. Fowler lives in Davis, California, has two children, did her graduate work in North Asian politics, and occasionally teaches ballet.
In the elegant story that follows, she shows us that a child’s perspective on the world is often very special—and that sometimes it can be very dangerous as well.
THE GATE OF GHOSTS
Karen Joy Fowler
“The first time I heard about China,” Margaret said, “when I was a very little girl like you, I imagined it to be full of breakable objects.” As she spoke she poured a stream of milk onto Jessica’s Cheerios from a blue plastic cup with Jessica’s name on it.
Elliot was late for class. He put his own breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, swallowing the last of his coffee hurriedly. “Very logical,” he said. “One only wonders what your first images of Turkey must have been.”
“I probably wouldn’t even remember this,” said Margaret. “Except for the shock I got years later when I read The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy climbs over a great wall into a world where all the people are made of porcelain. It was just like my China.”
“I don’t want any cereal,” Jessica said. She tilted her face upward so that the dark hair around it fell back and exposed its white outline, round along the forehead, but with a sharp pointed chin. The hair was not Chinese, but close, a mixture of Margaret’s coarser brown and Elliot’s shiny black.
“Could you have told me that before I poured the milk?” Margaret asked.
“Before I wanted cereal.” Jessica averted her face and looked at Margaret from the corners of her eyes. “Between I changed my mind.”
“That’s just too bad,” said Elliot. “’Cause now it’s made and you have to eat it.” He slid the knot of his tie upward and ignored Jessica’s frown. “I may be late getting home,” he told Margaret. “Or not. I’ll call you.” He returned to the table to give Jessica a kiss, but she moved her cheek away at the last moment. He petted her hair instead. “Have a good time at nursery school, moi-moi,” he told her. “And eat that cereal. Children are starving in China.” He looked at Margaret. “Don’t you eat it for her,” he said and left in a sequence of familiar sounds: footsteps, the car keys in his hand, the door, the car motor.
Jessi
ca pushed her Cheerios away. Margaret pushed them back. “Lots of people have imaginary worlds,” Margaret said.
“Can I have juice, too?” asked Jessica. “And toast with jam?”
“Eat your cereal while I make it,” said Margaret. “Before it gets soggy.” Jessica began to stir the Cheerios. She moved the spoon faster and faster; milk spilled out of the side of the bowl. Margaret had just finished spreading jam on the toast when she heard a car horn in their driveway. “Oh, no,” she said. “That can’t be Mrs. Yates. Not yet.” She looked out the kitchen window. Mrs. Yates waved to her from the driver’s seat of the green station wagon. “Your carpool is here,” Margaret told Jessica. “Run and get your shoes, sweetheart.”
Jessica ran for the bedroom and did not return. Margaret called to her twice and finally went after her. Jessica was jumping on the bed. “When I go real high,” she said to her mother, “I can see over the fence. I can see Charlie.” Charlie was the red setter who lived next door.
“Your shoes?” Margaret asked.
“Lost.”
Margaret lifted the mound of bedspread which was growing at the foot of Jessica’s bed and found one blue sneaker with Big Bird’s picture on it. She felt under the bed until she located the other.
“Were they there?” Jessica asked in amazement. “All the time?” She dropped to her seat and let Margaret stuff her feet into the shoes and tie the knots double.
“Now run,” said Margaret. “Mrs. Yates is waiting,” and on the way out the door she handed Jessica the toast to eat in the car. She stood and watched while Mrs. Yates fastened Jessica’s seatbelt and then went back inside. She moved the bowl of Cheerios out of its puddle of milk to her own place and ate the withered cereal without tasting it. The only noise in the house came from the furnace—a steady hum like distant freeway traffic. And then, outside the house, very far away, a siren. Margaret always noticed sirens and she was particularly alert to them whenever Jessica was away. Nursery school had been Elliot’s idea.
“She needs friends and you need a break from her,” he’d said. He’d insisted. Jessica was making the adjustment more easily than Margaret was.
“She’s still a bit quiet with the other children,” the teacher told Margaret. “But, of course, she came in late. We have to give it a little time. And she seems completely comfortable with me. She has a wonderful imagination. She was telling me yesterday about some sort of kid’s world she visits.”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “We hear about it frequently. Please watch her closely on the jungle gym. She’s not always sensible in what she tries to do.”
“Her coordination is excellent,” the teacher protested. “Actually, her coordination is exceptional. Look at this.” He went to his desk for a folder with Jessica’s name on it, fished through it, withdrawing a small construction-paper rabbit. “Here’s this week’s scissors project. You see the control Jessica has.” The teacher was young with no children of his own. He looked at Margaret’s face curiously. “You mustn’t worry about her,” he said.
It was a sentence Margaret had been hearing all of Jessica’s life. “Don’t worry so,” the pediatrician had told her the very day Jessica was born. Margaret held the baby awkwardly, feeling completely inadequate. Jessica was so small, smaller than she’d imagined. And fragile. How thin the bone was which protected the brain. It could be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. The lungs could deflate and then not fill. And what kept the human heart working, after all? Didn’t some hearts fight for life harder than others? Wasn’t that what was meant by the will to live? What kind of a heart did this baby have?
The doctor had none of these doubts. “A perfectly, healthy baby girl,” he said. “Ten on the Apgar. Alert. Active.” He smiled so that Margaret saw the white stain of an expensive filling on one of his canine teeth. “We should be so perfect. Do you know, at this age, if she lost a finger at the knuckle her recuperaive powers are so strong she could regenerate a new tip?” He patted Margaret on the shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
“You’re holding her back,” Elliot said, months later, critical of the way Margaret kept returning Jessica to the sitting position whenever she pushed her legs to stand.
“I just don’t want her to fall,” Margaret answered. She carried Jessica a great deal, put latches on their cupboards, lids on their plugs, inspected all toys for small, loose parts that might cause choking. She did what she could, but the biggest danger was something inside Jessica, herself. Jessica was willful and too intrepid; it was a constant battle between them. When Margaret found Jessica piling toys inside her crib and climbing to the top of the bars, she removed the crib mattress and made a new bed for Jessica on the floor. She had just finished when she heard a delighted crowing in the kitchen. Hurrying in that direction, she found that Jessica was now able to climb up onto the kitchen chairs. “She can’t be out of my sight for a minute,” she complained to Elliot, who was letting his daughter twist his hair up in her small fists.
“But she never falls,” he pointed out. He untangled Jessica, tossing her casually above his head, kissing her when his hands snatched her back from the air. Jessica laughed. Margaret looked away.
“She never falls because I’m always there,” Margaret said quietly. “I’m always there to catch her. I have to be.”
“Don’t worry so much,” said Elliot. “Please.”
Only one other person saw in Jessica what Margaret saw there. Though critical of Margaret’s lack of discipline—by the age of four no one could deny that Jessica was thoroughly spoiled—Elliot’s mother Mei kept the same careful, frightened watch over Jessica that Margaret did. Elliot said once to Margaret that Mei had fed Margaret’s natural fears so that they never disappeared as they should have. “You support each other,” he said. “And it gets out of hand.” He must have said this to Mei, too, so that she never spoke to Margaret of her own anxieties, but muttered occasionally to Elliot under her breath or in Chinese. When she had gone home, Margaret would press Elliot for translations. “Kui khi,” Mei would say frequently and with significant emphasis and Elliot said it meant merely difficult. A difficult child.
Margaret read the paper. “A’s Play to an Empty House,” it said. She made Jessica’s bed and changed the sheets on hers and Elliot’s. She set out a chicken to defrost. She waited for Jessica to come home.
Two hours later Mrs. Yates walked Jessica to the door. Jessica shed her shoes at once and leapt from the linoleum entryway to the green and blue flowered couch, bouncing from foot to foot down the length of it and falling as if exhausted onto the last cushion. Margaret thanked Mrs. Yates and closed the door. “That’s no way to enter a house,” she scolded.
Jessica smiled and her eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Did you miss me?” she asked artfully. “I always miss you.” She gave Margaret a hug so that Margaret could feel her heartbeat, strong and fast. Margaret held her a second too long. Jessica wiggled. “I painted,” she said. She was still holding four wet pieces of paper in her hand. She unfolded them on the couch. They were watercolors, done fuzzily in shades of pink and purple.
“Lovely,” said Margaret. “What are they, darling?”
“The other place. Do you think it’s pretty?”
Margaret looked at the paintings more closely. She could almost imagine a landscape behind them, here a body of water, there a cliff, a stormcloud. But, of course, indefinite shapes like these were in the very nature of watercolors. Some of the purple paint had been applied very thickly. It dripped on the cushion. Margaret picked the paintings up. “Your teacher says you’ve been telling him about your place.”
“He’s too busy to listen. But sometimes I tell him. When I’ve just been.”
“Do you go when you’re at nursery school?”
“It’s not at nursery school.” Jessica’s tone was a copy of Elliot’s, patient, logical. “I can’t be there and at nursery school at the same time.”
“Then when do you go?”
“Between times.”
“Between nursery school?”
“No, between all times.”
Margaret looked at the paintings again. “I love the colors. It does look pretty. Could I go there?”
Jessica shook her head extravagantly. The dark hair flew against her cheeks and flew away again. “You don’t,” she said. “So I guess you can’t.”
“Can you go anytime you want?”
“Yes.”
Margaret put the paintings flat on the kitchen table. “I bet you’re hungry,” she said to Jessica. She opened a cupboard and brought out the peanut butter. “Shall I make you a sandwich?” Jessica dragged a chair from the table to the counter and stood on it to help. “Did you remember Daddy and I are going out tonight?” Margaret asked her. “Paw-paw will come and stay with you.”
“Good,” said Jessica.
“But don’t talk to her about your other place, okay? It just confuses her.”
“She knows a lot about other places,” Jessica argued. “She’s always telling me about China.”
“She’s never been though,” Margaret told her. “She lived in Taiwan when she was little, but never in China. She moved here when she was about your age, so really this is her home. And anyway, China today is all different from what she tells you.”
“She says that in China our name would be Ling. Did you know that? She said our name was always Ling until we came to this country and then when Daddy’s other grandpa said that, no one understood him. They thought he said Leen. So Leen is our American name, but if we ever went back to China it would still be Ling.”
“Does it make you feel funny?” Margaret asked. “To have different names in different places?”
“No.” Jessica picked up the sandwich and took a large bite without detaching the bread. She removed the sandwich from her mouth, looking at the marks her teeth had made with evident pride. “I’m used to it.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 81