The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “No thank you,” Paula said. “I don’t want to bother them.”

  “I really think you should consider it.”

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Louden.” She wanted to pat his arm, but that would probably embarrass him in front of Dr. Gerrholtz. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  Louden rubbed a hand across his skull. After a long moment he said, “Aren’t you curious about why we ordered a PET scan?” Dr. Gerrholtz gave him a hard look.

  Paula shrugged. “Okay, why did you?”

  Louden shook his head, disappointed again that she wasn’t more concerned. Dr. Gerrholtz said, “You’re a professional, Paula, so we’re going to be straight with you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “We’re looking for amyloid plaques. Do you know what those are?” Paula shook her head and Gerrholtz said, “Some types of proteins weave into amyloid fibers, forming a plaque that kills cells. Alzheimer patients get them, but they’re also caused by another family of diseases. We think those plaques are causing your seizures, and other symptoms.”

  Other symptoms. Her companion leaned against her shoulder, his hand entwined in hers. “Okay,” Paula said.

  Louden stood up, obviously upset. “We’ll talk to you after the test. Dr. Gerrholtz?”

  The CDC doctor ignored him. “We’ve been going through the records, Paula, looking for people who’ve reported symptoms like yours.” She said it like a warning. “In the past three months we’ve found almost a dozen—and that’s just at this hospital. We don’t know yet how many we’ll find across the city, or the country. If you have any information that will help us track down what’s happening, you need to offer it.”

  “Of course,” Paula said.

  Gerrholtz’s eyes narrowed. She seemed ready to say something else--accuse her, perhaps—but then shook her head and stalked from the room.

  Esther watched her go. After a minute of silence, the woman said, “Don’t you worry, honey. It’s not the doctors who are in charge here.”

  “Oh I’m not worried,” Paula said. And she wasn’t. Gerrholtz obviously distrusted her—maybe even suspected the nature of Paula’s mission—but what could that matter? Everything was part of the plan, even Dr. Gerrholtz.

  By noon they still hadn’t come to get her for the scan. Paula drifted in and out of sleep. Twice she awoke with a start, sure that her companion had left the room. But each time he appeared after a few seconds, stepping out from a corner of her vision.

  The orderly came by just as the lunch trays arrived, but that was okay, Paula wasn’t hungry. She got into the wheelchair and the orderly rolled her down the hall to the elevators. Her companion walked just behind them, his dusty feet scuffing along.

  The orderly parked her in the hall outside radiology, next to three other abandoned patients: a gray-faced old man asleep in his chair; a Hispanic teenager with a cast on her leg playing some electronic game; and a round-faced white boy who was maybe twenty or twenty-one.

  The boy gazed up at the ceiling tiles, a soft smile on his face. After a few minutes, Paula saw his lips moving.

  “Excuse me,” Paula said to him. It took several tries to get his attention. “Have you ever visited a yellow house?” The young man looked at her quizzically. “A house that was all yellow, inside and out.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry.”

  None of the women still at the yellow house would have tried to save a man, but she had to ask. The boy had to be one of the converts, someone Paula’s mission had saved.

  “Can I ask you one more question?” Paula said, dropping her voice slightly. The old man slept on, and the girl still seemed engrossed in her game. “Who is it that you’re talking to?”

  The boy glanced up, laughed quietly. “Oh, nobody,” he said.

  “You can tell me,” Paula said. She leaned closer. “I have a companion of my own.”

  His eyes widened. “You have a ghost following you too?”

  “Ghost? No, it’s not a—“

  “My mother died giving birth to me,” he said. “But now she’s here.”

  Paula touched the boy’s arm. “You don’t understand what’s happened to you, do you?” He hadn’t come by way of the yellow house, hadn’t met any of the sisters, hadn’t received any instruction. Of course he’d tried to make sense of his companion any way he could. “You’re not seeing a ghost. You’re seeing Jesus himself.”

  The boy laughed loudly, and the teenage girl looked up from her game. “I think I’d know the difference between Jesus and my own mother,” the young man said.

  “Maybe that’s why he took this form for you,” Paula said. “He appears differently for each person. For you, your mother is a figure of unconditional love. A person who sacrificed for you.”

  “Okay,” the young man said. He tilted his head, indicating an empty space to Paula’s right. “So what does yours look like?”

  * * * *

  VI

  God came through the windshield on a shotgun blast of light. Blinded, Paula cried out and jammed on the brakes. The little Nissan SUV bucked and fishtailed, sending the CDs piled on the seat next to her clattering onto the floorboards.

  White. She could see nothing but white.

  She’d stopped in heavy traffic on a four-lane road, the shopping center just ahead on her right: She’d been heading for the dumpsters behind the Wal-Mart to dispose of those CDs once and for all.

  Brakes shrieked behind her. Paula ducked automatically, clenched against the pending impact, eyes screwed shut. (Still: Light. Light.) A thunderclap of metal on metal and the SUV rocked forward. She jerked in her seatbelt.

  Paula opened her eyes and light scraped her retinas. Hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

  She clawed blindly at her seatbelt buckle, hands shaking, and finally found the button and yanked the straps away. She scrambled over the shifter to the passenger seat, the plastic CD cases snapping and sliding under her knees and palms.

  She’d found them deep in Claire’s closet. The girl was away at her father’s for the mandated 50 percent of the month, and Paula had found the stacked CDs hidden under a pile of blankets and stuffed animals. Many of the cases were cracked and warped by heat and most CDs had no cases at all. The day after the bonfire, Paula had caught the girl poking through the mound of plastic and damp ashes and told her not to touch them. Claire had deliberately disobeyed, sneaking out to rescue them sometime before the garbage men took the pile away. The deception had gone on for months. All the time Paula thought Claire was listening to her own music—crap by bubble-gum pop stars and American Idols—her headphones were full of her father’s music: Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Pearl Jam, Nirvana.

  Paula pushed open the passenger door and half fell out the door, into the icy March wind. She got her feet under her, stumbled away from the light, into the light. Her shins struck something—the guard rail?—and she put out a hand to stop from pitching over. Cold metal bit her palms. Far to her right, someone shouted angrily. The blare and roar of traffic surrounded her.

  Paula dropped to her knees and slush instantly soaked her jeans. She covered her head with both arms. The light struck her neck and back like a rain of sharpened stones.

  The light would destroy her. Exactly as she deserved.

  Something touched the top of her head, and she shuddered in fear and shame and a rising ecstasy that had nothing to do with sex. She began to shake, to weep.

  I’m sorry, she said, perhaps out loud. I’m sorry.

  Someone stood beside her. She turned her head, and he appeared out of the light. No—in the light, of the light. A fire in the shape of a man.

  She didn’t know him, but she recognized him.

  He looked down at her, electric blue eyes through white bangs, his shy smile for her only. He looked like Kurt Cobain.

  * * * *

  VII

  “I’m not taking the meds anymore,” Paula said. She tried to keep her voice steady. Louden stood beside the bed, Gerrholtz behind him holding
a portfolio in her hands as big as the Ten Commandments. They’d walked past Esther without saying a word.

  Her companion lay on the floor beside her bed, curled into a ball. He seemed to be dissolving at the edges, dissipating into fog. He’d lain there all morning, barely moving, not even looking at her.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Dr. Louden said. He pulled a chair next to the bed, scraping through her companion as if he wasn’t there. Paula grimaced, the old rage flaring up. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

  “I’m telling you to stop the drugs,” she said. “Unless I’m a prisoner here you can’t give me medicine that I refuse.”

  Louden exhaled tiredly. “This isn’t like you, Paula,” he said.

  “Then you don’t know me very well.”

  He leaned forward, resting elbows on knees, and pressed the fingers of one hand into his forehead. More TLE patients were rolling in every day. The nurses murmured about epidemics. Poor Dr. Adequate had been drafted into a war he didn’t understand and wasn’t prepared for.

  “Help me then,” he said without looking up. “Tell me what you’re experiencing.”

  Paula stared at the TV hanging from the ceiling. She left it on all the time now, sound off. The images distracted her, kept her from thinking of him on the floor beside her, fading.

  Gerrholtz said, “Why don’t I take a guess? You’re having trouble seeing your imaginary friend.”

  Paula snapped her head toward the woman. You bitch. She almost said it aloud.

  Gerrholtz regarded her coolly. “A woman died two days ago in a hospital not far from here,” she said. “Her name was Stephanie Wozniak. I’m told she was a neighbor of yours.”

  Steph is dead? She couldn’t process the thought.

  Gerrholtz took the sheets from her portfolio and laid them on Paula’s lap. “I want you to look at these.”

  Paula picked them up automatically. The photographs looked like microscope slides from her old biochem classes, a field of cells tinged brown by some preserving chemical. Spidery black asterisks pockmarked the cells.

  “Those clumps of black are bundles of prions,” Gerrholtz said. “Regular old proteins, with one difference—they’re the wrong shape.”

  Paula didn’t look up. She flipped the printouts one by one, her hand moving on its own. Some of the pictures consisted almost entirely of sprawling nests of black threads. Steph deserved better than this. She’d waited her whole life for a Fore funeral. Instead the doctors cut her up and photographed the remains.

  “I need you to concentrate, Paula. One protein bent or looped in the wrong way isn’t a problem. But once they’re in the brain, you get a conformational cascade—a snowball effect.”

  Paula’s hands continued to move but she’d stopped seeing them. Gerrholtz rattled on and on about nucleation and crystallization. She kept using the word spongiform as if it would frighten her.

  Paula already knew all this, and more. She let the doctor talk. Above Gerrholtz’s head the TV showed a concerned young woman with a microphone, police cars and ambulances in the background.

  “Paula!”

  Dr. Gerrholtz’s face was rigid with anger. Paula wondered if that was what she used to look like when she fought with Richard or screamed at Claire.

  “I noticed you avoided saying ‘Mad Cow,’ “ Paula said. “And Kuru.”

  “You know about Kuru?” Louden said.

  “Of course she does,” Gerrholtz said. “She’s done her homework.” The doctor put her hands on the foot of Paula’s bed and leaned forward. “The disease that killed Stephanie doesn’t have a name yet, Paula. We think it’s a Kuru variant, the same prion with an extra kink. And we know that we can’t save the people who already have it. Their prions will keep converting other proteins to use their shape. You understand what this means, don’t you, Paula?”

  Still trying to scare her. As if the promise of her own death would break her faith.

  On the screen, the reporter gestured at two uniformed officers sealing the front door with yellow tape that looked specially chosen to match the house. Paula wondered if they’d found Merilee yet.

  “It means that God is an idea,” Paula said. “An idea that can’t be killed.”

  * * * *

  VIII

  The house shimmered in her vision, calling her like a lighthouse; she understood now why they’d painted it so brightly. Minutes after the accident her vision darkened like smoked glass, and now only the brightest things drew her attention. Her companion guided her down the dark streets, walking a few feet in front of her, surrounded by a nimbus of fire.

  Steph opened the door. When she saw the tears in her eyes Steph squealed in delight and pulled her into a hug. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “We’ve been waiting so long.” And then Steph was crying too.

  “I’m sorry,” Paula said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…”

  The other women came to her one by one, hugging her, caressing her cheeks, all of them crying. Only Merilee couldn’t get up to greet her. The woman lay on the same couch as four months ago, but her limbs had cinched tighter, arms and legs curled to her torso like a dying bug. Paula kneeled next to her couch and gently pressed her cheek to Merilee’s. Paula spoke the Fore greeting: I eat you.

  That was the day one life ended and another began.

  Her vision slowly returned over the next few days, but her companion remained, becoming more solid every day. They told her she didn’t have to worry about him leaving her. She called in sick to work and spent most of the next week in the yellow house, one minute laughing, the next crying, sometimes both at the same time. She couldn’t stop talking about her experience on the road, or the way her companion could make her recognize her vanity or spite with just a faint smile.

  Her old life had become something that belonged to a stranger. Paula thought of the blank weekends of Scotch and Vicodin, the screaming matches with Richard. Had she really burned his record collection?

  When she called him, the first thing she said was, “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it, Paula.” His voice flat, wary. The Paula he knew only used “sorry” to bat away his words, deflect any attack.

  “Something wonderful’s happened,” she said. She told him about Steph and the women of the house, then skipped the communion to tell him about the accident and the blinding light and the emotions that flooded through her. Richard kept telling her to slow down, stop stumbling over her words. Then she told him about her companion.

  “Who did you meet?” he said. He thought it was someone who’d witnessed the accident. Again she tried to explain.

  Richard said, “I don’t think Claire should come back there this weekend.”

  “What? No!” She needed to see Claire. She needed to apologize to her, promise her she’d do better. She gripped the receiver. Why couldn’t Richard believe her? Why was he fighting her again?

  She felt a touch on the back of her head. She turned, let her hand fall to the side. His blue eyes gazed into hers.

  One eyebrow rose slightly.

  She breathed. Breathed again. Richard called her name from the handset.

  “I know this is a lot to adjust to,” Paula said. The words came to her even though her companion didn’t make a sound. “I know you want the best for Claire. You’re a good father.” The words hurt because they were true. She’d always thought of Richard as a weak man, but if that had once been true, Claire’s birth had given him someone weaker to protect. As their daughter became older he took her side against Paula more and more often. The fights worsened, but she broke him every time. She never thought he’d have the guts to walk out on her and try to take Claire with him. “If you think she’d be better off with you for a while, we can try that.” She’d win his trust soon enough.

  In the weeks after, Claire stayed with Richard, and Paula did hardly anything but talk with the yellow house women. At work the head nurse reprimanded her for her absences but she didn’t care. Her life was with
the women now, and her house became almost an annex to theirs. “We have room for more,” Paula said dozens of times. “We have to tell others. It’s not right to keep this to ourselves when so many people are suffering.” The women nodded in agreement—or perhaps only in sympathy. Each of them had been saved, most of them from lives much worse than Paula’s. They knew what changes were possible.

  “You have to be patient,” Steph told her one day. “This gift is handed from woman to woman, from Merilee’s grandmother down to us. It comes with a responsibility to protect the host. We have to choose carefully—we can’t share it with everyone.”