The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  But they weren’t, really. That was just her own fear talking.

  You trust too much, Carrie, Dr Erdmann had said just last week.

  In a small room on the second floor, he sat heavily on one of the three metal folding chairs. The room held the chairs, a grey filing cabinet, an ugly metal desk, and nothing else. Carrie, a natural nester, pursed her lips, and this Dr DiBella caught that, too.

  “I’ve only been here a few days,” he said apologetically. “Haven’t had time yet to properly move in. Dr Erdmann, can you tell me what happened?”

  “Nothing.” He wore his lofty look. “I just fell asleep for a moment and Carrie became alarmed. Really, there’s no need for this fuss.”

  “You fell asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Has that happened before?”

  Did Dr Erdmann hesitate, ever so briefly? “Yes, occasionally. I am ninety, doctor.”

  DiBella nodded, apparently satisfied, and turned to Carrie. “And what happened to you? Did it occur at the same time that Dr Erdmann fell asleep?”

  Her eye. That’s why people had stared in the lobby. In her concern for Dr Erdmann, she’d forgotten about her black eye, but now it immediately began to throb again. Carrie felt herself go scarlet.

  Dr Erdmann answered. “No, it didn’t happen at the same time. There was no car accident, if that’s what you’re implying. Carrie’s eye is unrelated.”

  “I fell,” Carrie said, knew that no one believed her, and lifted her chin.

  “Okay,” DiBella said amiably. “But as long as you’re here, Dr Erdmann, I’d like to enlist your help. Yours, and as many other volunteers as I can enlist at St Sebastian’s. I’m here on a Gates Foundation grant in conjunction with Johns Hopkins, to map shifts in brain electrochemistry during cerebral arousal. I’m asking volunteers to donate a few hours of their time to undergo completely painless brain scans while they look at various pictures and videos. Your participation will be an aid to science.”

  Carrie saw that Dr Erdmann was going to refuse, despite the magic word “science”, but then he hesitated. “What kind of brain scans?”

  “Asher-Peyton and functional MRI.”

  “All right. I’ll participate.”

  Carrie blinked. That didn’t sound like Dr Erdmann, who considered physics and astronomy the only “true” sciences and the rest merely poor step-children. But this Dr DiBella wasn’t about to let his research subject get away. He said quickly, “Excellent! Tomorrow morning at eleven, Lab 6B, at the hospital. Ms Vesey, can you bring him over? Are you a relative?”

  “No, I’m an aide here. Call me Carrie. I can bring him.” Wednesday wasn’t one of her usual days for Dr Erdmann, but she’d get Marie to swap schedules.

  “Wonderful. Please call me Jake.” He smiled at her, and something turned over in Carrie’s chest. It wasn’t just that he was so handsome, with his black hair and grey eyes and nice shoulders, but also that he had masculine confidence and an easy way with him and no ring on his left hand . . . idiot. There was no particular warmth in his smile; it was completely professional. Was she always going to assess every man she met as a possible boyfriend? Was she really that needy?

  Yes. But this one wasn’t interested. And anyway, he was an educated scientist and she worked a minimum-wage job. She was an idiot.

  She got Dr Erdmann up to his apartment and said good-night. He seemed distant, pre-occupied. Going down in the elevator, a mood of desolation came over her. What she really wanted was to stay and watch Henry Erdmann’s TV, sleep on his sofa, wake up to fix his coffee and have someone to talk to while she did it. Not go back to her shabby apartment, bolted securely against Jim but never secure enough that she felt really safe. She’d rather stay here, in a home for failing old people, and how perverted and sad was that?

  And what had happened to Dr Erdmann on the way home from the college?

  THREE

  Twice now. Henry lay awake, wondering what the hell was going on in his brain. He was accustomed to relying on that organ. His knees had succumbed to arthritis, his hearing aid required constant adjustment, and his prostate housed a slow-growing cancer that, the doctor said, wouldn’t kill him until long after something else did – the medical profession’s idea of cheerful news. But his brain remained clear, and using it well had always been his greatest pleasure. Greater even than sex, greater than food, greater than marriage to Ida, much as he had loved her.

  God, the things that age let you admit.

  Which were the best years? No question there: Los Alamos, working on Operation Ivy with Ulam and Teller and Carson Mark and the rest. The excitement and frustration and awe of developing the “Sausage,” the first test of staged radiation implosion. The day it was detonated at Eniwetok. Henry, a junior member of the team, hadn’t of course been present at the atoll, but he’d waited breathlessly for the results from Bogon. He’d cheered when Teller, picking up the shock waves on a seismometer in California, had sent his three-word telegram to Los Alamos: “It’s a boy.” Harry Truman himself had requested that bomb —” to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor” – and Henry was proud of his work on it.

  Shock waves. Yes, that was what today’s two incidents had felt like: shock waves to the brain. A small wave in his apartment, a larger one in Carrie’s car. But from what? It could only be some failure of his nervous system, the thing he dreaded most of all, far more than he dreaded death. Granted, teaching physics to graduate students was a long way from Los Alamos or Livermore, and most of the students were dolts – although not Haldane – but Henry enjoyed it. Teaching, plus reading the journals and following the on-line listserves, were his connection with physics. If some neurological “shock wave” disturbed his brain . . .

  It was a long time before he could sleep.

  “Oh my Lord, dear, what happened to your eye?”

  Evelyn Krenchnoted sat with her friend Gina Somebody in the tiny waiting room outside Dr O’Kane’s office. Henry scowled at her. Just like Evelyn to blurt out like that, embarrassing poor Carrie. The Krenchnoted woman was the most tactless busybody Henry had ever met, and he’d known a lot of physicists, a group not noted for tact. But at least the physicists hadn’t been busybodies.

  “I’m fine,” Carrie said, trying to smile. “I walked into a door.” “Oh, dear, how did that happen? You should tell the doctor. I’m sure he could make a few minutes to see you, even though he must be running behind, I didn’t actually have an appointment today but he’d said he’d squeeze me in because something strange happened yesterday that I want to ask him about, but the time he gave me was supposed to start five minutes ago and you must be scheduled after that, he saw Gina already but she —”

  Henry sat down and stopped listening. Evelyn’s noise, however, went on and on, a grating whine like a dentist drill. He imagined her on Eniwetok, rising into the air on a mushroom cloud, still talking. It was a relief when the doctor’s door opened and a woman came out, holding a book.

  Henry had seen her before, although he didn’t know her name. Unlike most of the old bats at St Sebastian’s, she was worth looking at. Not with Carrie’s radiant youthful beauty, of course; this woman must be in her seventies, at least. But she stood straight and graceful; her white hair fell in simple waves to her shoulders; her cheekbones and blue eyes were still good. However, Henry didn’t care for the way she was dressed. It reminded him of all those stupid childish protestors outside Los Alamos in the 1950s and 60s. The woman wore a white tee-shirt, a long cotton peasant skirt, a necklace of beads and shells, and several elaborate rings.

  “Erin!” Evelyn cried. “How was your appointment? Everything okay?”

  “Fine. Just a check-up.” Erin smiled vaguely and moved away. Henry strained to see the cover of her book: Tao Te Ching. Disappointment lanced through him. One of those.

  “But you weren’t scheduled for a check-up, no more than I was. So what happened that —” Erin walked quickly away, he
r smile fixed. Evelyn said indignantly, “Well, I call that just plain rude! Did you see that, Gina? You try to be friendly to some people and they just —”

  “Mrs Krenchnoted?” the nurse said, sticking her head out the office door. “The doctor will see you now.”

  Evelyn lumbered up and through the door, still talking. In the blessed silence that followed, Henry said to Carrie, “How do you suppose Mr Krenchnoted stood it?”

  Carrie giggled and waved her hand toward Mrs Krenchnoted’s friend, Gina. But Gina was asleep in her chair, which at least explained how she stood it.

  Carrie said, “I’m glad you have this appointment today, Dr Erdmann. You will tell him about what happened in the car yesterday, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.” Why were all women, even mild little Carrie, so insistent on regular doctor visits? Yes, doctors were useful for providing pills to keep the machine going, but Henry’s view was that you only needed to see a physician if something felt wrong. In fact, he’d forgotten about this regularly scheduled check-up until this morning, when Carrie called to say how convenient it was that his appointment here was just an hour before the one with Dr DiBella at the hospital lab. Ordinarily Henry would have refused to go at all, except that he did intend to ask Dr Jamison about the incident in the car.

  Also, it was possible that fool Evelyn Krenchnoted was actually right about something for once. “Carrie, maybe you should ask the doctor to look at that eye.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Has Jim called or come around again since —”

  “No.”

  Clearly she didn’t want to talk about it. Embarrassment, most likely. Henry could respect her reticence. Silently he organized his questions for Jamison.

  But after Henry had gone into the office, leaving Carrie in the waiting room, and after he’d endured the tediums of the nurse’s measuring his blood pressure, of peeing into a cup, of putting on a ridiculous paper gown, it wasn’t Jamison who entered the room but a brusque, impossibly young boy in a white lab coat and officious manner.

  “I’m Dr Felton, Henry. How are we today?” He studied Henry’s chart, not looking at him.

  Henry gritted his teeth. “You would know better than I, I imagine.”

  “Feeling a bit cranky? Are your bowels moving all right?”

  “My bowels are fine. They thank you for your concern.”

  Felton looked up then, his eyes cold. “I’m going to listen to your lungs now. Cough when I tell you to.”

  And Henry knew he couldn’t do it. If the kid had reprimanded him – “I don’t think sarcasm is appropriate here” – it would have at least been a response. But this utter dismissal, this treatment as if Henry were a child, or a moron . . . He couldn’t tell this insensitive young boor about the incident in the car, about the fear for his brain. It would degrade him to cooperate with Felton. Maybe DiBella would be better, even if he wasn’t an M.D.

  One doctor down, one to go.

  DiBella was better. What he was not was organized.

  At Redborn Memorial Hospital he said, “Ah, Dr Erdmann, Carrie. Welcome. I’m afraid there’s been a mix-up with Diagnostic Imaging. I thought I had the fMRI booked for you but they seem to have scheduled me out, or something. So we can do the Asher-Peyton scan but not the deep imaging. I’m sorry, I —” He shrugged helplessly and ran his hand through his hair.

  Carrie tightened her mouth to a thin line. “Dr Erdmann came all the way over here for your MRI, Dr DiBella.”

  “‘Jake’, please. I know. And we do the Asher-Peyton scan back at St Sebastian’s. I really am sorry.”

  Carrie’s lips didn’t soften. It always surprised Henry how fierce she could be in defence of her “resident-assignees”. Why was usually gentle Carrie being so hard on this young man?

  “I’ll meet you back at St Sebastian’s,” DiBella said humbly.

  Once there, he affixed electrodes on Henry’s skull and neck, eased a helmet over his head, and sat at a computer whose screen faced away from Henry. After the room was darkened, a series of pictures projected onto one white wall: a chocolate cake, a broom, a chair, a car, a desk, a glass: four or five dozen images. Henry had to do nothing except sit there, and he grew bored. Eventually the pictures grew more interesting, interspersing a house fire, a war scene, a father hugging a child, Rita Hayworth. Henry chuckled. “I didn’t think your generation even knew who Rita Hayworth was.”

  “Please don’t talk, Dr Erdmann.”

  The session went on for twenty minutes. When it was over, DiBella removed the helmet and said, “Thank you so much. I really appreciate this.” He began removing electrodes from Henry’s head. Carrie stood, looking straight at Henry.

  Now or never.

  “Dr DiBella,” Henry said, “I’d like to ask you something. Tell you something, actually. An incident that happened yesterday. Twice.” Henry liked the word “incident”; it sounded objective and explainable, like a police report.

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “The first time I was standing in my apartment, the second time riding in a car with Carrie. The first incident was mild, the second more pronounced. Both times I felt something move through my mind, like a shock wave of sorts, leaving no after-effects except perhaps a slight fatigue. No abilities seem to be impaired. I’m hoping you can tell me what happened.”

  DiBella paused, an electrode dangling from his hand. Henry could smell the gooey gel on its end. “I’m not an M.D., as I told you yesterday. This sounds like something you should discuss with your doctor at St Sebastian.”

  Carrie, who had been upset that Henry had not done just that, said, “In the car he sort of lost consciousness and his eyes rolled back in his head.”

  Henry said, “My doctor wasn’t available this morning, and you are. Can you just tell me if that experience sounds like a stroke?”

  “Tell me about it again.”

  Henry did, and DiBella said, “If it had been a TIA – a mini-stroke – you wouldn’t have had such a strong reaction, and if it had been a more serious stroke, either ischemic or haemorrhagic, you’d have been left with at least temporary impairment. But you could have experienced a cardiac event of some sort, Dr Erdmann. I think you should have an EKG at once.”

  Heart, not brain. Well, that was better. Still, fear slid coldly down Henry’s spine, and he realized how much he wanted to go on leading his current life, limited though it was. Still, he smiled and said, “All right.”

  He’d known for at least twenty-five years that growing old wasn’t for sissies.

  Carrie cancelled her other resident-assignees, checking in with each on her cell, and shepherded Henry through the endless hospital rituals that followed, administrative and diagnostic and that most ubiquitous medical procedure, waiting. By the end of the day, Henry knew that his heart was fine, his brain showed no clots or haemorrhages, there was no reason for him to have fainted. That’s what they were calling it now: a faint, possibly due to low blood sugar. He was scheduled for glucose-tolerance tests next week. Fools. It hadn’t been any kind of faint. What had happened to him had been something else entirely, sui generis.

  Then it happened again, the same and yet completely different.

  At nearly midnight Henry lay in bed, exhausted. For once, he’d thought, sleep would come easily. It hadn’t. Then, all at once, he was lifted out of his weary mind. This time there was no violent wrenching, no eyes rolling back in his head. He just suddenly wasn’t in his darkened bedroom any more, not in his body, not in his mind.

  He was dancing, soaring with pointed toes high above a polished stage, feeling the muscles in his back and thighs stretch as he sat cross-legged on a deep cushion he had embroidered with ball bearings rolling down a factory assembly line across from soldiers shooting at him as he ducked —

  It was gone.

  Henry jerked upright, sweating in the dark. He fumbled for the bed lamp, missed, sent the lamp crashing off the nights
tand and onto the floor. He had never danced on a stage, embroidered a cushion, worked in a factory, or gone to war. And he’d been awake. Those were memories, not dreams – no, not even memories, they were too vivid for that. They’d been experiences, as vivid and real as if they were all happening now, and all happening simultaneously. Experiences. But not his.

  The lamp was still glowing. Laboriously he leaned over the side of the bed and plucked it off the floor. As he set it back on the nightstand, it went out. Not, however, before he saw that the plug had been pulled from the wall socket during the fall, well before he bent over to pick it up.

  The ship grew more agitated, the rents in space-time and resulting flop transitions larger. Every aspect of the entity strained forward, jumping through the vacuum flux in bursts of radiation that appeared now near one star system, now another, now in the deep black cold where no stars exerted gravity. The ship could move no quicker without destroying either nearby star systems or its own coherence. It raced as rapidly as it could, sent ahead of itself even faster tendrils of quantum-entangled information. Faster, faster . . .

  It was not fast enough.

  FOUR

  Thursday morning, Henry’s mind seemed to him as clear as ever. After an early breakfast he sat at his tiny kitchen table, correcting physics papers. The apartments at St Sebastian’s each had a small eat-in kitchen, a marginally larger living room, a bedroom and bath. Grab rails, non-skid flooring, overly cheerful colours, and intercoms reminded the residents that they were old – as if, Henry thought scornfully, any of them were likely to forget it. However, Henry didn’t really mind the apartment’s size or surveillance. After all, he’d flourished at Los Alamos, crowded and ramshackle and paranoid as the place had been. Most of his life went on inside his head.