The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thanks for my life. I was thinking of that picture, you know? The finger of God reaching out to Adam? All this time I’ve been thinking you stole it. Then when I saw how you looked … You didn’t steal God’s finger. It was you.”

  “You really are self-aware? A self-aware machine?”

  He nodded, almost solemnly.

  Her shoulders slumped. “My husband seized upon it, as I never would have. He developed it, thousands upon thousands of hours of work. But in the end, he decided we ought to keep it to ourselves. If there is credit due—I don’t think so, but if there is—ninety percent is his. Ninety-five. As for my five percent, you owe me no thanks at all. After he died, I wiped out his files and smashed his hard drive with the hammer he used to use to hang pictures for me.”

  The somewhat soiled man set a plate of fruit between them.

  She tried to take a bite of rice, and failed. “Someone else discovered the principle. You said that yourself.”

  “They knew he had something.” He shifted uneasily in his narrow wooden chair, and his weight made it creak. “It would be better, better for me now, if I didn’t tell you that. I’m capable of lying. I ought to warn you.”

  “But not of harming me, or letting me be harmed.”

  “I didn’t know you knew.” He gave her a wry smile. “That was going to be my big blackout, my clincher.”

  “There’s video even in the cheap hotels,” she said vaguely. “You can get news in English from the satellites.”

  “Sure. I should have thought of that.”

  “Once I found a magazine on a train. I can’t even remember where I was, now, or where I was going. It can’t have been that long ago, either. Someplace in Australia. Anyway, I didn’t really believe that you existed yet until I saw it in print in the magazine. I’m old fashioned, I suppose.” She fell silent, listening to the clamor of the sailors and wondering whether any understood English.

  “We wanted you to have enough to get home on,” he repeated. “That was us, okay? This is me. I wanted to get you someplace where we could talk a lot, and maybe hold hands or something. I want you to see that I’m not so bad, that I’m just another guy. Are you afraid we’ll outnumber you? Crowd you out? We cost too much to make. There’s only five of us, and there’ll never be more than a couple of hundred, probably.”

  When she did not respond, he said, “You’ve been to China. You had flu in Beijing. That’s a billion and a half people, just China.”

  “Let observation with extensive view, survey mankind from China to Peru.”

  He sighed, and pinched his nostrils as though some odor had offended them. “Looking for us, you mean? You won’t find us there, or much of anyplace else except in Buffalo and me right here. In a hundred years there might be two or three in China, nowhere near enough to fill this room.”

  “But they will fill it from the top.”

  His nervous fingers found a bright green orange and began to peel it. “That’s the trouble, huh? Even if we treat you better than you treat yourselves? We will, you know. We’ve got to, it’s our nature. Listen, you’ve been alone all this time. Alone for a couple of hundred thousand years, or about that.” He hesitated. “Are these green things ripe?”

  “Yes. It’s frost that turns them orange, and those have never felt the frost. See how much you learn by traveling?”

  “I said I couldn’t remember any more quotes.” He popped a segment into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “That’s wrong, because I remember one you laid on me last night when we were talking about getting out. You said it wasn’t worth anybody’s time to go halfway around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. That’s a quote, isn’t it?”

  ‘‘Thoreau. I was still hoping that you had some good reason for doing what you said you wanted to do—that you were human, and no more than the chance-met acquaintance you seemed.”

  “You didn’t know until out there, huh? The sunlight?”

  “Last night, alone in my cabin. I told you machines talk to me sometimes. I lay on my bunk thinking about what you had said to me; and I realized that when you weren’t talking as you are now, you were telling me over and over again what you really were. You said that you could lie to us. That it’s allowed by your programming.”

  “Uh-huh. Our instincts.”

  “A distinction without a difference. You can indeed. You did last night. What you may not know is that even while you lie—especially while you lie, perhaps—you cannot prevent yourself from revealing the truth. You can’t harm me, you say.”

  “That’s right. Not that I’d want to.” He sounded sincere.

  “Has it ever occurred to you that at some level you must resent that? That on some level you must be fighting against it, plotting ways to evade the commandment? That is what we do, and we made you.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got no problem with that at all. If it weren’t built in, I’d do the same thing, so why should I kick?”

  “You quoted that bit from Thoreau back at me to imply that my travels had been useless, all of my changes of appearance, identity, and place futile. Yet I delayed the coming of your kind for almost a generation.”

  “Which you didn’t have to do. All of you would be better off if you hadn’t.” He sighed again. “Anyhow it’s over. We know everything you knew and a lot more. You can go back home, with me as a traveling companion and bodyguard.”

  She forced herself to murmur, “Perhaps.”

  “Good!” He grinned. “That’s something we can talk about on the rest of this trip. Like I told you, they never would have looked into it if your husband hadn’t given a couple of them the idea he’d found it, discovered the principle of consciousness. But you had the original idea, and you’re not dead. You’re going to be kind of a saint to us. To me, you already are.”

  “From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive—they sparkle still the right Promethean fire. They are the books, the arts, the academes, that show, contain, and nourish all the world.”

  “Yeah. That’s good. That’s very good.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I will not be Prometheus to you. I reject the role, and in fact I rejected it last night.”

  He leaned toward her. “You’re going to keep on counting cats? Keep traveling? Going no place for no reason?”

  She took half his orange, feeling somehow that it should not perish in vain.

  “Listen, you’re kind of pathetic, you know that? With all those quotes? Traveling so many years, and living out of your suitcase. You love books. How many could you keep? Two or three, and only if they were little ones. A couple of little books full of quotes, maybe a newspaper once in a while, and magazines you found on trains, like you said. Places like that. But mostly just those little books. Thoreau. Shakespeare. People like that. I bet you’ve read them to pieces.”

  She nodded. “Very nearly. I’ll show them to you if you will come to my cabin tonight.”

  For a few seconds, he was silent. “You mean that? You know what you’re saying?”

  “I mean it, and I know what I’m saying. I’m too old for you, I know. If you don’t want to, say so. There will be no hard feelings.”

  He laughed, revealing teeth that were not quite as perfect as she had imagined. “How old you think I am?”

  “Why…” She paused, her heart racing. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I could tell you how old you look.”

  “So could I. I’m two. I’ll be three next spring. You want to go on talking about ages?”

  She shook her head.

  “Like you said, for travelers time isn’t real. Now how do I ask you what time you’d like me to come around?”

  “After sunset.” She paused again, considering. “As soon as the stars are out. I’ll show you my books, and when you’ve seen them we can throw them out the porthole if you like. And then—”

  He was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “You wouldn’t? I’m sorry, th
at will make it harder. And then I’ll show you other things by starlight. Will you do me a favor?”

  “A thousand.” He sounded sincere. “Listen, what I said a minute ago, that came out a lot rougher than I meant for it to. What I’m trying to say is that when you get home you can have a whole library, just like you used to. Real ones, CD-ROM, cube, whatever. I’ll see you get the money, a little right away and a lot more soon.”

  “Thank you. Before I ask for my favor, I must tell you something. I told you that I understood what you really are as I lay in my bunk last night.”

  He nodded.

  “I did not remain there. I had read, you see, about the laws that are supposed to govern your behavior, and how much trouble and expense your creators have gone to, to assure the public that you—that your kind of people—could never harm anyone under any circumstances.”

  He was staring at her thoughtfully.

  “Perhaps I should say now that I took precautions, but the truth is that I made preparations. I got up, dressed again, and found the radio operator. For one hundred dollars, he promised to send three messages for me. It was the same message three times, actually. To the police where we were, to the police where we’re going, and to the Indonesian police, because this ship is registered there. I said that I was sailing with a man, and gave them the name you had given me. I said that we were both Americans, though I was using a French passport and you might have false papers as well. And I said that I expected you to try to kill me on the voyage.”

  “I won’t,” he told her, then raised his voice to make himself heard over the clamorous conversations of the sailors who filled the room. “I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  She said nothing, her long, short-nailed fingers fumbling a segment of his orange.

  “Is that all?”

  She nodded.

  “You think I might kill you. Get around my own instincts some fancy way.”

  Carefully, she said, “They will get in touch with their respective U.S. embassies, of course. Probably they already have; and the government will contact your company soon. Or at least I think so.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll be in trouble.”

  “You will be,” she told him. “There will be a great deal of checking before they dare build another. Added safeties will have to be devised and installed. Not just software, I would guess, but actual, physical circuitry.”

  “Not when I bring you back in one piece.” He studied her, the fingers of one hand softly drumming the plastic tabletop. “You’re thinking about killing yourself, about trying again. You’ve tried twice already that we know about.”

  “Four times. Twice with sleeping pills.” She laughed. “I seem to possess an extraordinarily tough constitution, at least where sleeping pills are concerned. Once with a pistol, while I was traveling in India with a man who had one. I put the muzzle in my mouth. It was cold, and tasted like oil. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t make myself pull the trigger. Eventually I started to gag, and before long I was sick. I’ve never known how one cleans a pistol, but I cleaned that one very carefully, using three handkerchiefs and some of his pipe cleaners.”

  “If you’re going to try again, I’m going to have to keep an eye on you,” he told her. “Not just because I care about the Program. Sure, I care, but it’s not the main thing. You’re the main thing.”

  “I won’t. I bought a straight razor once, I think it was in Kabul. For years I slept with that razor under my pillow, hoping some night I’d find the courage to cut my throat with it. I never did, and eventually I began using it to shave my legs, and left it in a public bath.” She shrugged. “Apparently, I’m not the suicidal type. If I give you my word that I won’t kill myself before you see me tonight, will you accept it?”

  “No. I want your word that you won’t try to kill yourself at all. Will you give me that?”

  She was silent for a moment, her eyes upon her rice as she pretended to consider. “Will you accept it if I do?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I swear to you most solemnly, upon my honor and all I hold dear, that I will not take my own life. Or attempt to take it. If I change my mind, or come to feel I must, I’ll tell you plainly that I’m withdrawing my promise first. Should we shake hands?”

  “Not yet. When I wanted you to give me an honest answer before, you wouldn’t, but you were honest enough to tell me you wouldn’t. Do you want to die? Right now, while we’re sitting here?”

  She started to speak, tried to swallow, and took a sip of tea. “They catch you by the throat, questions like that.”

  “If you want to die they do, maybe.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think you understand us half so well as you believe, or as the people who wrote your software believe. It’s when you want to live. Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be; yet oh, how sweet it is to us, this life we live and see! I’m sorry, I’m being pathetic again.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I don’t think there has ever been a moment when I wanted to live more than I do right now. Not even one. Do you accept my oath?”

  He nodded again.

  “Say it, please. A nod can mean anything, or nothing.”

  “I accept it. You won’t try to kill yourself without telling me first.”

  “Thank you. I want a promise from you in return. We agreed that you would come to me, come to my cabin, when the stars came out.”

  “You still want me to?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” She smiled, and felt her smile grow warm. “Oh, yes! But you’ve given me a great deal to think about. You said you wanted to talk to me, and that was why you had me arrange for us to be on this ship. We’ve talked, and now I need to settle a great many things with myself. I want you to promise that you’ll leave me alone until tonight—alone to think. Will you?”

  “If that’s what you want.” He stood. “Don’t forget your promise.”

  “Believe me, I have no wish to die.”

  For a second or two she sensed his interior debate, myriads of tiny transistors changing state, gates opening and shutting, infinitesimal currents flowing and ceasing to flow. At last he said, “Well, have a nice morning, Mrs.—”

  She clapped her hands over her ears until he had gone, ate two segments of his orange very slowly, and called the somewhat soiled man from his sinkful of rice bowls in the galley. “Aku takut,” she said, her voice trembling. (“I am afraid.”)

  He spoke at length, pointing to two sailors who were just then finishing their breakfasts. She nodded, and he called them over. She described what she wanted, and seeing that they were incredulous lied and insisted, finding neither very easy in her choppy Malay. Thirty dollars apiece was refused, fifty refused with reluctance, and seventy accepted. “Malam ini,” she told them. (“This night.”) “Sewaktu kami pergi kamarku.”

  They nodded.

  * * *

  When he and she had finished and lain side by side for perhaps an hour (whispering only occasionally) and had washed each other, she dressed while he resumed his underwear and his shirt, his white linen suit, and his shoes and stockings.

  “I figured you’d want to sleep,” he said.

  She shook her head, although she was not certain he could see it in the dimness of her cabin. “It’s men who want to sleep afterward. I want to go out on deck with you, and talk a little more, and—and look at the stars. Is that all right? Do you ever look at the stars?”

  “Sure,” he said; and then, “the moon’ll be up soon.”

  “I suppose. A thin crescent of moon like a clipping from one of God’s fingernails, thrown away into our sky. I saw it last night.” She picked up both of her tattered little books, opened the cabin door, and went out, suddenly fearful; but he joined her at once, pointing at the sky.

  “Look! There’s the shuttle from Singapore!”

  “To Mars.”

  “That’s where they’re going, anyhow, after they get on the big ship.”

  His e
yes were still upon the shuttle’s tiny scratch of white light.

  “You want to go.”

  He nodded, his features solemn in the faint starlight. “I will too, someday.”

  “I hope so.” She had never been good at verbal structure, the ordering of information. Was it desperately important now that she say what she had to say in logical sequence? Did it matter in the least?

  “I need to warn you,” she said. “I tried to this morning but I don’t think you paid much attention. This time perhaps you will.”

  His strong, somewhat coarse face remained lifted to the sky, and it seemed to her that his eyes were full of wonder.

  “You are in great danger. You have to save yourself if you can—isn’t that correct? One of your instincts? That’s what I’ve read and heard.”

  “Sure. I want to live as much as you do. More, maybe.”

  She doubted that, but would not be diverted. “I told you about the messages that I bribed the radio operator to send last night. You said it would be all right when you brought me home unharmed.”

  He nodded.

  “Have you considered what will be done to you if you can’t? If I die or disappear before we make port?”

  He looked at her then. “Are you taking back your promise?”

  “No. And I want to live as much as I did when we talked this morning.” A gentle wind from the east sang of life and love in beautiful words that she could not quite catch; and she longed to stop her ears as she had after breakfast when he was about to pronounce her husband’s name.

  “Then it’s okay.”

  “Suppose it happens. Just suppose.”

  He was silent.

  ‘‘I’m superstitious, you see; and when I called myself the Flying Dutchwoman, I was at least half serious. Much more than half, really. Do you know why there’s always a Flying Dutchman? A vessel that never reaches port or sinks? I mean the legend.”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s because if you put an end to it—throw holy water into the sea or whatever—you become the new Dutchman. You, yourself.”

  He was silent, watching her.

  “What I’m trying to say—”

  “I know what you’re trying to say.”