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The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection

Page 24

by Gardner Dozois


  “Still, they’re your family now. Family’s got to take you in when you got nowhere else to go.” He coughed and turned away from me to spit something on the ground.

  I looked at the ground. “I want you and Mama back.” I stood up and walked away from him a little. “Why’d you have to go and get killed?”

  “It had to be done, Ira. There were reasons—”

  “Family! You and Mama ran off and left me with Gray. Family.”

  “Ira—”

  “Gray’s all the family I got.”

  I turned around and he was gone. There was nothing there but wind.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean it.”

  I waited there for a long time, but he didn’t come back.

  * * *

  Sam was painting the front deck when she drew the dory along the dock. “Hey,” she called out to him.

  “Yo!” Sam leaned over the railing. “You got a little trouble brewing.”

  She brought the dory close to him so he could speak softly. “With Gray?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t think so. Between Jack and Ira. Ira left this morning running like hell was after him—angry, you understand. Came back about an hour ago dragging his tail. Sad little kid. The big guy hasn’t been around all day.”

  “Hm.”

  “I think,” he looked up quickly at her and back at the water, a little embarrassed grimace on his face, “Jack doesn’t take too kindly to Ira.”

  Sara pondered that. “I should get home,” she said abruptly.

  “Yeah, I’ve got to finish the forward deck before it gets too cold for the paint to dry.” He left the railing and she could hear him whistling a quiet, mournful tune.

  She tied up the dory and walked down the dock towards their slip. She was still a good distance away when she heard a slap and Ira crying. Jack was shouting something unintelligible. There was an eruption of water next to the boat and Gray was suddenly standing on the deck. He moved inside faster than she’d ever seen him move. Sara started to run.

  From the deck she heard Gray’s voice: “Stop talking like that.”

  “How come, creep? Huh?” Jack shouted.

  She stopped outside. There was a short pause.

  “Because you are torturing someone you love,” said Gray.

  There was no sound for perhaps a minute, then Jack began sobbing and she ran inside.

  “What’s going on?” she cried. Jack ran to her and buried his face against her. “Did he hurt you? Jack! What’s going on?”

  Gray was motionless. Ira looked at Gray, then back at Sara.

  Jack pulled back from her and she could see the mark of a slap on the side of his face. “Did Gray do this to you?” she said quietly.

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “If you hurt my son,” she said to Gray. Her voice was low and terrible. “If you ever touch my son … I’ll hurt you.”

  “I did it,” said Ira. His face was white but calm.

  She looked at Jack. “Is that true?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Why?”

  Ira put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “He called Gray a creep. It wasn’t the first time.”

  She looked at Ira, then back to Jack, then back to Ira. Finally, she turned to Gray. “I still meant what I said.”

  “I know,” said Gray.

  * * *

  Gray and I were gone the next day before sunup. I was ready to run off right then. I was ready to run off after dinner, but Gray said it wasn’t right. I told him about what Papa had said and he said remember the three loves. Hell, I said, he’d been drilling me with that spatien stuff since I could talk. You shouldn’t abandon your family, he said.

  It was that kind of conversation.

  Family.

  On the way to the wreck, Gray didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I could tell he was thinking pretty hard about something. I guessed it was about Sara and Jack.

  The egg was nearly twice as big as it had been the day before yesterday, and the smears were gone. Whatever it was, it had to have something better inside it than this. I began to think about what it could be. Gray was no help. He wouldn’t even guess what it was. It always makes me mad, the way he won’t guess anything. He only says things when he knows the answer to them, and what’s the fun of that?

  The egg was even more pretty now, with speckles of gold and silver, and the gray had begun to turn to a light blue. Whatever was inside of it had to be beautiful, too. I was still thinking of griffins and dragons, but if it wasn’t either of them, it was probably something strange and unusual. I began to think about selling it. With the money, maybe we could buy a ticket out of here. Even Maxwell Station was better than this.

  I helped Gray replace the rags over the egg, then the two of us sat on the edge of the wreck watching the ocean.

  “I still want to run off,” I said.

  “You want your family back,” he said.

  It almost made me cry I felt so lonesome. He always did this to me, just when I thought I had things figured out, he’d say something true like that and it’d bust everything up.

  “Do you remember the three loves?” he said quietly.

  I’d known that since I could talk. “Again? Love of family, love of work, love of duty.”

  “Just so,” he murmured. “And always in that order.”

  I shrugged, having a feeling I wasn’t going to like what followed. But he didn’t say anything more, just looked out to sea for a long time.

  “I have to go to the Miller’s Hall on Friday. Do you want to come?” he said finally.

  Go to Alien’s Center? Was he serious? “Sure.” I was hot to go.

  Gray nodded. “Just so. We will leave close to dawn. Can you be up that early?”

  You bet I could.

  * * *

  Sam was standing on top of the beam, a safety line leading from him to the crane cable above him. He was so little, Sara thought. But it seemed no hardship for him to use the fourteen pound sledgehammer. He lifted it high in the air and brought it down on the edge of the beam. The beam rang like a great steel bell and edged another quarter inch between the two framing girders.

  He was much stronger than he looked.

  He suddenly smiled at her and she started, realizing how closely she had been watching him.

  “Hey, lady,” he called down to her softly. Sam leaned back over the edge of the girder, looking from one end to the other. He pulled himself back on top and walked to the other end and again lifted the hammer. Bells rang among the towers.

  She lit a cigarette, watching the gulls fly down below them.

  “Okay, check your end.”

  Sara nodded and pulled herself up to the edge of the framing girder and measured the angle. “Okay here.”

  “Weld that sucker.”

  She pulled down the mask and lit her torch. Three spot welds to hold the end, then up with the mask and she walked the beam to the other side. Three more spot welds.

  “Come on down so I can get the rest,” she grinned up at him, took a drag on the cigarette. He smiled and danced off the beam like a leprechaun.

  Later, at noon, he brought his lunchbox over to her and they ate, watching the sunlight reflect between the buildings.

  “You know what I like about Fridays,” he said finally.

  “No. What?”

  He rubbed his hands together maniacally. “Payday. I can buy the world.”

  She laughed. “Hardly. Not on these wages.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, it’s my first payday.” He looked away towards the harbor. “Say, how about dinner?”

  “Dinner?” It was as if a sudden wind blew through her. The air did not grow colder but it seemed closer to her skin. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos. “It’s been a long summer. I’ve been out on the Bank, you’ve been here. I could use the company—do you know what
it’s like to talk about fishing for three months?”

  She laughed and felt relieved and a little disappointed. “I have to go home tonight, though. The kids would worry if I didn’t show up.”

  “Gray could take care of them.”

  “Gray.” She started putting the remains of her lunch back into the lunch-box. “I don’t want him around my kids when I can help it.”

  “Hey.” He reached out and touched her arm.

  Sara looked at him. He was smiling. “That was a joke,” he said gently.

  “Yeah.” She smiled a little. “Not much of a joke.”

  “So I’m brain damaged. Three months with the fishing fleets’ll do that to you.”

  “Well,” she said slowly. “I still can’t go out tonight. I got to get home.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long minute and Sara suddenly wanted to stroke his cheek, feel the smooth skin laid over with a light bristle. A man’s cheek. It had been a long time since she had touched a man’s skin. Or a woman’s skin. Just hugs and touching with Jack, or Ira. But not the touching between—

  “You could come over to my boat for dinner tonight,” he said. His eyes were bright and his munchkin face was crinkled with a silent laughter.

  She couldn’t help grinning. “Are you going to make me dinner?”

  “You bet.” He rubbed his hands together. “Got some bluefish I brought back and some snapper. I know a guy on the pier I can trade with for a lobster. If you don’t like that, I can get—”

  Sara touched his arm and he stopped, looked at her hand, then at her.

  “Is that a ‘yes’?” he said.

  “Christ. You—Christ.” She threw up her hands. “Dinner. Now, let’s work before Fitzpatrick fires us both.”

  * * *

  Miller’s Hall is named after this guy that first saw the aliens when they landed at Provincetown. Well, they didn’t really land there. Some came out of the ship and asked directions to Boston. That’s the way the story goes. Gray said it was a little different. He says they weren’t really sure what was going on and whatever they asked those people might have sounded like asking for directions, but it wasn’t that at all. Anyway, Miller is the guy’s name.

  We caught a ride with Kendall to Wellington Station and took the subway into town.

  I’d never been downtown before. Miller’s Hall sits across the street from the North End—where the Old North Church is. Gray told me about it and this guy named Paul Revere who carried these lights all across the towns, giving people fire. Up the other street from it is the old Customs House. Gray said it was also called the Gateway to the West. I’d never read anything like this, but maybe he’d read something I didn’t.

  The building itself was designed by the aliens so it doesn’t look like people ought to live in it. Some do, though. I met a few. One side looks kind of melted, and the other shoots way up above the other buildings in this sharp pointed tower. It’s a big place, most of a city block and maybe thirty or forty stories tall. There’s a bigger diplomatic building out past Long Wharf in the harbor. It’s huge, maybe two hundred stories or something. But, it’s for big meetings and things. Miller’s Hall is where the aliens rest.

  While we were coming in on the subway, I tried to get Gray to tell me what we were doing here. He wouldn’t tell me, just made that buzzing noise he makes when he doesn’t want to answer a question.

  “Well,” I said, exasperated, “is it about the egg? At least tell me that.”

  He stopped and picked me up so I was looking at him straight in the eye. He didn’t say anything for a minute and I began to get scared. Gray’d never acted that way before. He suddenly looked so different from me. I began to think maybe I should have stayed on the Hercules.

  “Ira. Do you trust me?” he said in a very quiet voice.

  “Sure.” I shrugged.

  “This is very important. Do not mention this thing at all today. Not on the street. Not in this building. Not on the train. Not on the boat home. Nowhere. Not until I say you can. Do you understand me?” Papa was behind him nodding.

  That made me mad, both of them ganging up on me like that. “Then why didn’t you leave me home if things are so secret.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. “We are finding out information. Some information may have something to do with the egg. Some may not. It is useless to speculate. But because we, together, are hatching the egg, this concerns you. You have a right to be here.”

  “Okay, okay.” I punched him on the shoulder. “Okay, already. Don’t go formal on me.”

  “You still don’t understand.” He paused. “It is important you don’t speak here. I do not know how to threaten or persuade you. I can only ask. More: do not display any untoward knowledge. You know my language, you know Lingua—this I have taught you. Hide that.”

  He put me down and we went inside.

  The lounge had ten or twenty aliens of weird types. None of them paid much attention to us—I guess we weren’t any weirder to them than they were to us. But the place looked strange to me. I mean it was all windows on all four sides, big windows, looking out over the harbor from maybe ten or twenty meters up. I looked back out the door we came in and it was glass and showed the street.

  “What are these window things. Holograms?” I asked.

  Gray shook his head. “No. They are windows.” He looked at them a moment, then turned his head back to me. “N-space was used in the construction of Miller’s Hall.”

  A little alien, shorter than me, came stalking over to me. He stood up at me, all shrunk up and deformed looking, wrinkled brown skin and these big blue eyes, swearing a blue streak. Finally, he calmed down enough to stare at me. “What are you staring at?” he said finally.

  I started to get mad again, but I remembered what I promised Gray.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He humphed and hawed a minute. “Nothing. Nothing, he says. Nothing.” He put his face almost nose to nose with me and all I could see was those blue eyes.

  “Nothing. Tell me, runt, do you believe in fairies.”

  “No,” I muttered.

  “Hah!” he yelled and jumped back, laughing and clapping his hands. “A smart one! Hah!” He walked off clapping his hands.

  I looked up at Gray and he looked down at me.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry. He likes you,” Gray said.

  “How can you tell?” I reached over and grabbed one of his lower legs and held it. I felt nervous all of a sudden.

  “He didn’t eat you, did he?”

  I looked up at him and he just stared back. I punched him hard on the leg. That was Gray’s idea of a joke. Like his name. All spatiens are Gray. No spatien had a human name until Gray. Naming himself something special with a name that all spatiens could use was Gray’s idea of a joke. Like this.

  It made me mad that he’d make a joke now, when ten minutes before he was warning me to keep quiet. Then, I figured out that Gray was trying to make me feel better, from what he had talked with me about outside. Maybe he’d even set it up. I punched him again on the leg.

  We took a long elevator up into the pointed part of the Hall. Up here you could see all the islands, the different buildings out in the harbor, all the hovercraft. I looked down into the city and saw all the Back Bay canals, all with these little boats and canoes going down like people walking down streets. Gray was watching me.

  “A hundred years ago, they were streets, not canals.”

  “Jeez.” I shook my head. “What happened?”

  “Boston sank. It’s still sinking. Before that it was water again. They dumped landfill into the river and made Back Bay. When the Mayflower first came here, Boston was nearly an island.” He pointed to the water in Back Bay, and the walls around the inner city ring. “The walls follow the contours of the original Boston.” He paused. “The borders are being recycled.”

  He stared at me and I wrinkled my nose at him. “Ha. Ha. Some joke.”
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  Gray shrugged and led me away from the windows through a long corridor. Again, there were windows on both sides. One side showed the harbor, the other showed the city. It was a different angle now, looking down on the streets with the big buildings, the old Customs House, things like that.

  In the next room, there were just two opposite walls made of windows, both looking out on the same section of the harbor. This made me dizzy. I could see the same gulls flying on opposite sides of the room.

  “Are these holograms?” I asked, not looking at either of them.

  “No. Just windows.”

  The room had high ceilings like an auditorium. On the floor there was a thick carpet and big pillows where there were various kinds of aliens—too many to keep track of. It was like in one of those bird zoos—aviaries, that’s the word—where there are forty or fifty kinds of birds and they move around and are these specks of color, some of them standing still and looking around, some of them hiding, a whole bunch of them shooting over you like bullets. But they aren’t all that separate. They’re all blurred together. The only way you can tell them apart is by staring hard at the ones that stand still, reading the little descriptions, and wait for the ones that are going like fire over you, hoping like hell you’ve remembered the names right. You just forget the ones that are hiding.

  Well, I didn’t have any descriptions.

  I saw the little guy that had bugged me in the lounge walking around the sides, kind of watching me from the edge of the crowd.

  We walked up to this one lounge and sat down. No one paid us much attention and we sat there for maybe ten minutes. I was getting fidgety.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We wait here.”

  “For what?” Maybe Gray had something planned.

  “I am not sure.”

  That was all I could get out of him. He wouldn’t even guess—spatiens are like that. They never talk about anything unless it’s right there. A pain.

  A couple of minutes later Gray began to rub my shoulders the way he does and I got relaxed and a little sleepy, so I leaned against him and he was real warm. I fell asleep like somebody clubbed me.

  I dreamed about Papa. He was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear him. It was like he was a long way away. He was all agitated and excited and nervous. He kept calling to me, and even though he was only across the room I couldn’t hear him. I woke up and there was a kind of buzzing in the room. I sat up and looked around and saw a lot of the aliens looking towards the other door—the other door from where Gray and I had come in, that is. Through the other door was this centaur—that’s what they’re called. Not like the Greek myths, you understand. This wasn’t half a man, half a horse. This was more like the body of a sow bug and the forward body of a praying mantis—like he was made of sharp points. All but his eyes. His eyes were big, with slit pupils like a cat’s.

 

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