The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “It’s such pleasure when it cool down like dis,” she said in her slow honey-voice. Even the old ladies had honey-voices here. “The heat be a beast.”

  I smiled, thinking for a moment that she’d said bitch, not beast. “Yeah. It’s a bitch all right but I don’t like to be cold.”

  “No? Where you from?”

  “Schenectady. Cold climate.”

  She grunted. “Well, the heat don’t be a bitch, it be a beast. He be a beast.”

  “Who?”

  “Him. The heat beast.” She chuckled a little. “My grandma woulda called him a loa. You know what dat is?”

  “No.”

  She eyed me before taking another sip of beer. “No. I don’t know whether that good or bad for you, girl. Could be deadly either way, someone who don’t like to be cold. What you doin’ over here anyway? Tourist Quarter three blocks thataway.”

  “I’m looking for a friend. Haven’t been able to find him since it’s cooled down.”

  “Grandma knew they never named all de loa. She said new ones would come when they found things be willin’ for ’em. Or when they named by someone. Got nothin’ to do with the old religion anymore. Bigger than the old religion. It’s all de world now.” The old woman thrust her face forward and squinted at me. “What friend you got over here? No outta-town white girl got a friend over here.”

  “I do. And I’m not from out of town anymore.”

  “Get out.” But it wasn’t hostile, just amusement and condescension and a little disgust. “Go buy you some tourist juju and tell everybody you met a mamba in N’awlins. Be some candyass somewhere sell you a nice, fake love charm.”

  “I’m not here for that,” I said, getting up. “I came for the heat.”

  “Well, girl, it’s cooled down.” She finished her beer.

  * * *

  Sometime after that, in another place, I watched a man and a woman dancing together. There were only a few other people on the floor in front of the band. I couldn’t really make sense of the music, whether it was jazz or rock or whatever. It was just the man and the woman I was paying attention to. Something in their movements was familiar. I was thinking he would be called by the heat in them, but it was so damned cold in there, not even ninety degrees. The street was colder. I pulled the jacket tighter around myself and cupped my hands around the coffee mug. That famous Louisiana chicory coffee. Why couldn’t I get warm?

  It grew colder later. There wasn’t a warm place in the Quarter, but people’s skins seemed to be burning. I could see the heat shimmers rising from their bodies. Maybe I was the only one without a fever now.

  * * *

  Carl was lying on the bed in my hotel room. He sat up as soon as I opened the door. The heat poured from him in waves and my first thought was to throw myself on him and take it, take it all, and leave him to freeze to death.

  “Wait!” he shouted but I was already pounding down the hall to the stairs.

  Early in the morning, it was an easy thing to run through the Quarter. The sun was already beating down but the light was thin, with little warmth. I couldn’t hear Carl chasing me, but I kept running, to the other side of the Quarter, where I had first gone into the shadows. Glimpse of an old woman’s face at a window; I remembered her, she remembered me. Her head nodded, two fingers beckoned. Behind her, a younger face watched in the shadows. The wrong face.

  I came to a stop in the middle of an empty street and waited. I was getting colder; against my face, my fingers were like living icicles. It had to be only eighty-eight or eighty-nine degrees, but even if it got to ninety-five or above today, I wouldn’t be able to get warm.

  He had it. He had taken it. Maybe I could get it back.

  The air above the buildings shimmied, as if to taunt. Warmth, here, and here, and over here, what’s the matter with you, frigid or something?

  Down at the corner, a police car appeared. Heat waves rippled up from it, and I ran.

  * * *

  “Hey.”

  The man stood over me where I sat shivering at a corner table in the place that bragged it had traded slaves a hundred years ago. He was the color of rich earth, slightly built with carefully waved black hair. Young face; the wrong face, again.

  “You look like you in the market for a sweater.”

  “Go away.” I lifted the coffee cup with shuddering hands. “A thousand sweaters couldn’t keep me warm now.”

  “No, honey.” They caressed you with their voices down here. He took the seat across from me. “Not that kind of sweater. Sweater I mean’s a person, special kinda person. Who’d you meet in the Quarter? Good-lookin’ stud, right? Nice, wild boy, maybe not white but white enough for you?”

  “Go away. I’m not like that.”

  “You know what you like now, though. Cold. Very cold woman. Cold woman’s no good. Cold woman’ll take all the heat out of a man, leave him frozen dead.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “So you need a sweater. Maybe I know where you can find one.”

  “Maybe you know where I can find him.”

  The man laughed. “That’s what I’m sayin’, cold woman.” He took off his light, white suitcoat and tossed it at me. “Wrap up in that and come on.”

  * * *

  The fire in the hearth blazed, flames licking out at the darkness. Someone kept feeding it, keeping it burning for hours. I wasn’t sure who, or if it was only one person, or how long I sat in front of the fire, trying to get warm.

  Sometime long after the man had brought me there, the old woman said, “Burnin’ all day now. Whole Quarter oughta feel the heat by now. Whole city.”

  “He’ll feel it, sure enough.” The man’s voice. “He’ll feel it, come lookin’ for what’s burnin’ .” A soft laugh. “Won’t he be surprised to see it’s his cold woman.”

  “Look how the fire wants her.”

  The flames danced. I could sit in the middle of them and maybe then I’d be warm.

  “Where did he go?” The person who asked might have been me.

  “Went to take a rest. Man sleeps after a bender, don’t you know. He oughta be ready for more by now.”

  I reached out for the fire. A long tongue of flame licked around my arm; the heat felt so good.

  “Look how the fire wants her.”

  Soft laugh. “If it wants her, then it should have her. Go ahead, honey. Get in the fire.”

  On hands and knees, I climbed up into the hearth, moving slowly, so as not to scatter the embers. Clothes burned away harmlessly.

  To sit in fire is to sit among a glory of warm, silk ribbons touching everywhere at once. I could see the room now, the heavy drapes covering the windows, the dark faces, one old, one young, gleaming with sweat, watching me.

  “You feel ’im?” someone asked. “Is he comin’?”

  “He’s comin’, don’t worry about that.” The man who had brought me smiled at me. I felt a tiny bit of perspiration gather at the back of my neck. Warmer; getting warmer now.

  I began to see him; he was forming in the darkness, coming together, pulled in by the heat. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, young, the way he had been. He was there before the hearth and the look on that young face as he peered into the flames was hunger.

  The fire leaped for him; I leaped for him and we saw what it was we really had. No young man; no man.

  The heat be a beast.

  Beast. Not really a loa, something else; I knew that, somehow. Sometimes it looks like a man and sometimes it looks like hot honey in the darkness.

  What are you doing?

  I’m taking darkness by the eyes, by the mouth, by the throat.

  What are you doing?

  I’m burning alive.

  What are you doing?

  I’m burning the heat beast and I have it just where I want it. All the heat anyone ever felt, fire and body heat, fever, delirium. Delirium has eyes; I push them in with my thumbs. Delirium has a mouth; I fill it with my fist. Delirium has a throat; I tear it out. Sparks fly like a
n explosion of tiny stars and the beast spreads its limbs in surrender, exposing its white-hot core. I bend my head to it and the taste is sweet, no salt in his body at all.

  What are you doing?

  Oh, honey, don’t you know?

  I took it back.

  * * *

  In the hotel room, I stripped off the shabby dress the old woman had given me and threw it in the trash can. I was packing when Carl came back.

  He wanted to talk; I didn’t. Later he called the police and told them everything was all right, he’d found me and I was coming home with him. I was sure they didn’t care. Things like that must happen in the Quarter all the time.

  In the ladies’ room at the airport, the attendant sidled up to me as I was bent over the sink splashing cold water on my face and asked if I were all right.

  “It’s just the heat,” I said.

  “Then best you go home to a cold climate,” she said. “You do better in a cold climate from now on.”

  I raised my head to look at her reflection in the spotted mirror. I wanted to ask her if she had a brother who also waved his hair. I wanted to ask her why he would bother with a cold woman, why he would care.

  She put both hands high on her chest, protectively. “The beast sleeps in cold. You tend him now. Maybe you keep him asleep for good.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  She pursed her lips. “Then you gotta problem.”

  * * *

  In summer, I keep the air-conditioning turned up high at my office, at home. In the winter, the kids complain the house is too cold and Carl grumbles a little, even though we save so much in heating bills. I tuck the boys in with extra blankets every night and kiss their foreheads, and later in our bed, Carl curls up close, murmuring how my skin is always so warm.

  It’s just the heat.

  KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

  Skin Deep

  New writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch is one of the fastest-rising and most prolific young authors on the scene today, and she must certainly be one of the busiest. In addition to editing Pulphouse, the new quarterly anthology series billed as “the hardback magazine,” she is also a frequent contributor to Amazing, Aboriginal SF, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

  In the poignant story that follows, she demonstrates that more than beauty can be skin deep.…

  SKIN DEEP

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “More pancakes, Colin?”

  Cullaene looked down at his empty plate so that he wouldn’t have to meet Mrs. Fielding’s eyes. The use of his alias bothered him more than usual that morning.

  “Thank you, no, ma’am. I already ate so much I could burst. If I take another bite, Jared would have to carry me out to the fields.”

  Mrs. Fielding shot a glance at her husband. Jared was using the last of his pancake to sop up the syrup on his plate.

  “On a morning as cold as this, you should eat more,” she said as she scooped up Cullaene’s plate and set it in the sterilizer. “You could use a little fat to keep you warm.”

  Cullaene ran his hand over the stubble covering his scalp. Not taking thirds was a mistake, but to take some now would compound it. He would have to watch himself for the rest of the day.

  Jared slipped the dripping bit of pancake into his mouth. He grinned and shrugged as he inclined his head toward his wife’s back. Cullaene understood the gesture. Jared had used it several times during the week Cullaene worked for them. The farmer knew that his wife seemed pushy, but he was convinced that she meant well.

  “More coffee, then?” Mrs. Fielding asked. She stared at him as if she were waiting for another mistake.

  “Please.” Cullaene handed her his cup. He hated the foreign liquid that colonists drank in gallons. It burned the back of his throat and churned restlessly in his stomach. But he didn’t dare say so.

  Mrs. Fielding poured his coffee, and Cullaene took a tentative sip as Lucy entered the kitchen. The girl kept tugging her loose sweater over her skirt. She slipped into her place at the table and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

  “You’re running late, little miss,” her father said gently.

  Lucy nodded. She pushed her plate out of her way and rested both elbows on the table. “I don’t think I’m going today, Dad.”

  “Going?” Mrs. Fielding exclaimed. “Of course, you’ll go. You’ve had a perfect attendance record for three years, Luce. It’s no time to break it now—”

  “Let her be, Elsie,” Jared said. “Can’t you see she doesn’t feel well?”

  The girl’s skin was white, and her hands were trembling. Cullaene frowned. She made him nervous this morning. If he hadn’t known her parentage, he would have thought she was going to have her first Change. But the colonists had hundreds of diseases with symptoms like hers. And she was old enough to begin puberty. Perhaps she was about to begin her first menstrual period.

  Apparently, Mrs. Fielding was having the same thoughts, for she placed her hand on her daughter’s forehead. “Well, you don’t have a fever,” she said. Then her eyes met Cullaene’s. “Why don’t you men get busy? You have a lot to do today.”

  Cullaene slid his chair back, happy to leave his full cup of coffee sitting on the table. He pulled on the thick jacket that he had slung over the back of his chair and let himself out the back door.

  Jared joined him on the porch. “Think we can finish plowing under?”

  Cullaene nodded. The great, hulking machine sat in the half-turned field like a sleeping monster. In a few minutes, Cullaene would climb into the cab and feel the strange gears shiver under his fingers. Jared had said that the machine was old and delicate, but it had to last at least three more years—colonist’s years—or they would have to do the seeding by hand. There was no industry on the planet yet. The only way to replace broken equipment was to send to Earth for it, and that took time.

  Just as Cullaene turned toward the field, a truck floated onto the landing. He began to walk, as if the arrival of others didn’t concern him, but he knew they were coming to see him. The Fieldings seldom had visitors.

  “Colin!” Jared was calling him. Cullaene stopped, trying not to panic. He had been incautious this time. Things had happened too fast. He wondered what the colonists would do. Would they imprison him, or would they hurt him? Would they give him a chance to explain the situation and then let him go?

  Three colonists, two males and a female, were standing outside the truck. Jared was trying to get them to go toward the house.

  “I’ll meet you inside,” Cullaene shouted back. For a moment he toyed with running. He stared out over the broad expanse of newly cultivated land, toward the forest and rising hills beyond it. Somewhere in there he might find an enclave of his own people, a group of Abandoned Ones who hadn’t assimilated, but the chances of that were small. His people had always survived by adaptation. The groups of Abandoned Ones had grown smaller every year.

  He rubbed his hands together. His skin was too dry. If only he could pull off this self-imposed restraint for an hour, he would lie down in the field and encase himself in mud. Then his skin would emerge as soft and pure as the fur on Jared’s cats. But he needed his restraint now more than ever. He pulled his jacket tighter and let himself into the kitchen once more.

  He could hear the voices of Lucy and her mother rise in a heated discussion from upstairs. Jared had pressed the recycle switch on the old coffee maker, and it was screeching in protest. The three visitors were seated around the table, the woman in Cullaene’s seat, and all of them turned as he entered the room.

  He nodded and sat by the sterilizer. The heat made his back tingle, and the unusual angle made him feel like a stranger in the kitchen where he had supped for over a week. The visitors stared at him with the same cold look he had seen on the faces of the townspeople.

  “This is Colin,” Jared said. “He works for me.”

  Cullaene nodded again. Jared didn’t introduce the visito
rs, and Cullaene wondered if it was an intentional oversight.

  “We would like to ask you a few questions about yourself,” the woman said. She leaned forward as she spoke, and Cullaene noted that her eyes were a vivid blue.

  “May I ask why?”

  Jared’s hand shook as he poured the coffee. “Colin, it’s customary around here—”

  “No,” the woman interrupted. “It is not customary. We’re talking with all the strangers. Surely your hired man has heard of the murder.”

  Cullaene started. He took the coffee cup Jared offered him, relieved that his own hand did not shake. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

  “We don’t talk about such things in this house, Marlene,” Jared said to the woman.

  Coffee cups rattled in the silence as Jared finished serving everyone. The older man, leaning against the wall behind the table, waited until Jared was through before he spoke.

  “It’s our first killing in this colony, and it’s a ghastly one. Out near the ridge, we found the skin of a man floating in the river. At first, we thought it was a body because the water filled the skin like it would fill a sack. Most of the hair was in place, hair so black that when it dried its highlights were blue. We couldn’t find any clothes—”

  “—or bones for that matter,” the other man added.

  “That’s right,” the spokesman continued. “He had been gutted. We scoured the area for the rest of him, and up on the ridge we found blood.”

  “A great deal of it,” Marlene said. “As if they had skinned him while he was still alive.”

  Cullaene had to wrap his fingers around the hot cup to keep them warm. He hadn’t been careful enough. Things had happened so swiftly that he hadn’t had a chance to go deeper into the woods. He felt the fear that had been quivering in the bottom of his stomach settle around his heart.

  “And so you’re questioning all of the strangers here to see if they could have done it.” He spoke as if he were more curious than frightened.

  Marlene nodded. She ran a long hand across her hairline to catch any loose strands.