The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “It’s not so bad, being the Flying Dutchman. Often, I’ve enjoyed it.” She tried to strike a light note. “One doesn’t get many opportunities to do laundry, however. One must seize each when it occurs.” Were they in the shadows, somewhere near, waiting for him to leave? She listened intently but heard only the song of the wind, the sea slowly slapping the hull like the tickings of a clock, tickings that had always reminded her that death waited at the end of everyone’s time.

  He said, “A Hong Kong dollar for your thoughts.”

  “I was thinking of a quotation, but I don’t want to offend you.”

  “About laundry? I’m not going to be on the run like you think, but I wouldn’t be mad. I don’t think I could ever be mad at you after—” He jerked his head at the door of her cabin.

  “That is well, because I need another favor.” She held up her books. “I was going to show you these, remember? But we kissed, and—and forgot. At least I did.”

  He took one and opened it; and she asked whether he could see well enough in the darkness to read. He said, “Sure. This quote you’re thinking of, it’s in here?”

  “Yes. Look under Kipling.” She visualized the page. “The fifth, I believe.” If he could see in the dark well enough to read, he could surely see her sailors, if her sailors were there at all. Did they know how well he saw? Almost certainly not.

  He laughed softly. “If you think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”

  “That’s not Kipling.”

  “No, but I happened to see it, and I like it.”

  “I like it too; it’s helped me through some bad moments. But if you’re saying that mosquitoes bite you, I don’t believe it. You’re a genuine person, I know that now—but you’ve exchanged certain human weaknesses for others.”

  For an instant, his pain showed. “They don’t have to bite me. They can buzz and crawl around on me, and that’s plenty.” He licked his forefinger and turned pages. “Here we go. It may be you wait your time, Beast, till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast—quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass—follow after with the others, where some dusky heathen smothers us with marigolds in lieu of English grass. Am I the Beast? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “You—in a way it was like incest.” Her instincts warned her to keep her feelings to herself, but if they were not spoken now … “I felt, almost, as though I were doing all those things with my son. I’ve never borne a child, except for you.” He was silent, and she added, “It’s a filthy practice, I know, incest.”

  He started to speak, but she cut him off. “You shouldn’t be in the world at all. We shouldn’t be ruled by things that we have made, even though they’re human, and I know that’s going to happen. But it was good—so very, very good—to be loved as I was in there. Will you take my books, please? Not as a gift from your mother, because you men care nothing for gifts your mothers give you. But as a gift from your first lover, something to recall your first love? If you won’t, I’m going to throw them in the sea here and now.”

  “No,” he said. “I want them. The other one too?”

  She nodded and held it out, and he accepted it.

  ‘‘Thanks. Thank you. If you think I won’t keep these, and take really good care of them, you’re crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy,” she told him, “but I don’t want you to take good care of them, I want you to read them and remember what you read. Promise?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I will.” Quite suddenly she was in his arms again and he was kissing her. She held her breath until she realized that he did not need to breathe, and might hold his breath forever. She fought for air then, half-crushed against his broad metal chest, and he let her go. “Good-bye,” she whispered. “Good-bye.”

  “I’ve got a lot more to tell you. In the morning, huh?”

  Nodding was the hardest thing that she had ever done. On the other side of the railing, little waves repeated, “No, no, no, no—” as though they would go on thus forever.

  “In the morning,” he said again; and she watched his pale, retreating back until hands seized and lifted her. She screamed and saw him whirl and take the first long, running step; but not even he was as quick as that. By the time his right foot struck the deck, she was over the rail and falling.

  The sea slapped and choked her. She spat and gasped, but drew only water into her mouth and nostrils; and the water, the bitter seawater, closed above her.

  At her elbow the shark said, “How nice of you to drop in for dinner!”

  HOW WE GOT IN TOWN AND OUT AGAIN

  Jonathan Lethem

  Here’s a wry but poignant look at an impoverished future America desperate for almost any kind of entertainment … and at the down-and-outers desperate enough to provide it for them.…

  Jonathan Lethem is yet another of those talented new writers who are continuing to pop up all over as we progress through the decade of the 1990s. He has worked at an antiquarian bookstore, written slogans for buttons and lyrics for several rock bands (including Two Fettered Apes, EDO, Jolley Ramey, and Feet Wet), and is also the creator of the “Dr. Sphincter” character on MTV. In addition to all these Certifiably Cool credentials, Lethem has also made a number of memorable sales in the last few years to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Interzone, and Crank! as well as to New Pathways, Pulphouse, Universe, Unusual Suspects, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Aboriginal Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel as well as the Crawford Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was one of the most talked-about books of the year. His most recent books are a new novel, Amnesia Moon, and a collection of his short fiction, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye. A new novel, As She Climbed Across the Table, has just been published. His stories have appeared in our Eighth and (with Lukas Jaeger) Tenth Annual Collections. After living for several years in Berkeley, California, he has recently moved to Brooklyn, New York.

  When we first saw somebody near the mall Gloria and I looked around for sticks. We were going to rob them if they were few enough. The mall was about five miles out of the town we were headed for, so nobody would know. But when we got closer Gloria saw their vans and said they were scapers. I didn’t know what that was, but she told me.

  It was summer. Two days before this Gloria and I had broken out of a pack of people that had food but we couldn’t stand their religious chanting anymore. We hadn’t eaten since then.

  “So what do we do?” I said.

  “You let me talk,” said Gloria.

  “You think we could get into town with them?”

  “Better than that,” she said. “Just keep quiet.”

  I dropped the piece of pipe I’d found and we walked in across the parking lot. This mall was long past being good for finding food anymore but the scapers were taking out folding chairs from a store and strapping them on top of their vans. There were four men and one woman.

  “Hey,” said Gloria.

  Two guys were just lugs and they ignored us and kept lugging. The woman was sitting in the front of the van. She was smoking a cigarette.

  The other two guys turned. This was Kromer and Fearing, but I didn’t know their names yet.

  “Beat it,” said Kromer. He was a tall squinty guy with a gold tooth. He was kind of worn but the tooth said he’d never lost a fight or slept in a flop. “We’re busy,” he said.

  He was being reasonable. If you weren’t in a town you were nowhere. Why talk to someone you met nowhere?

  But the other guy smiled at Gloria. He had a thin face and a little mustache. “Who are you?” he said. He didn’t look at me.

  “I know what you guys do,” Gloria said. “I was in one before.”

  “Oh?” said the guy, still smiling.

  “You’re going to need contestants,” she said.

  “She’s a fast one,” this guy said to the other gu
y. ‘‘I’m Fearing,” he said to Gloria.

  “Fearing what?” said Gloria.

  “Just Fearing.”

  “Well, I’m just Gloria.”

  “That’s fine,” said Fearing. “This is Tommy Kromer. We run this thing. What’s your little friend’s name?”

  “I can say my own name,” I said. “I’m Lewis.”

  “Are you from the lovely town up ahead?”

  “Nope,” said Gloria. “We’re headed there.”

  “Getting in exactly how?” said Fearing.

  “Anyhow,” said Gloria, like it was an answer. “With you, now.”

  “That’s assuming something pretty quick.”

  “Or we could go and say how you ripped off the last town and they sent us to warn about you,” said Gloria.

  “Fast,” said Fearing again, grinning, and Kromer shook his head. They didn’t look too worried.

  “You ought to want me along,” said Gloria. “I’m an attraction.”

  “Can’t hurt,” said Fearing. Kromer shrugged, and said, “Skinny, for an attraction.”

  “Sure, I’m skinny,” she said. “That’s why me and Lewis ought to get something to eat.”

  Fearing stared at her. Kromer was back to the van with the other guys.

  “Or if you can’t feed us—” started Gloria.

  “Hold it, sweetheart. No more threats.”

  “We need a meal.”

  “We’ll eat something when we get in,” Fearing said. “You and Lewis can get a meal if you’re both planning to enter.”

  “Sure,” she said. “We’re gonna enter—right, Lewis?”

  I knew to say right.

  * * *

  The town militia came out to meet the vans, of course. But they seemed to know the scapers were coming, and after Fearing talked to them for a couple of minutes they opened up the doors and had a quick look then waved us through. Gloria and I were in the back of a van with a bunch of equipment and one of the lugs, named Ed. Kromer drove. Fearing drove the van with the woman in it. The other lug drove the last one alone.

  I’d never gotten into a town in a van before, but I’d only gotten in two times before this anyway. The first time by myself, just by creeping in, the second because Gloria went with a militia guy.

  Towns weren’t so great anyway. Maybe this would be different.

  We drove a few blocks and a guy flagged Fearing down. He came up to the window of the van and they talked, then went back to his car, waving at Kromer on his way. Then we followed him.

  “What’s that about?” said Gloria.

  “Gilmartin’s the advance man,” said Kromer. “I thought you knew everything.”

  Gloria didn’t talk. I said, “What’s an advance man?”

  “Gets us a place, and the juice we need,” said Kromer. “Softens the town up. Gets people excited.”

  It was getting dark. I was pretty hungry, but I didn’t say anything. Gilmartin’s car led us to this big building shaped like a boathouse only it wasn’t near any water. Kromer said it used to be a bowling alley.

  The lugs started moving stuff and Kromer made me help. The building was dusty and empty inside, and some of the lights didn’t work. Kromer said just to get things inside for now. He drove away one of the vans and came back and we unloaded a bunch of little cots that Gilmartin the advance man had rented, so I had an idea where I was going to be sleeping. Apart from that it was stuff for the contest. Computer cables and plastic spacesuits, and loads of televisions.

  Fearing took Gloria and they came back with food, fried chicken and potato salad, and we all ate. I couldn’t stop going back for more but nobody said anything. Then I went to sleep on a cot. No one was talking to me. Gloria wasn’t sleeping on a cot. I think she was with Fearing.

  * * *

  Gilmartin the advance man had really done his work. The town was sniffing around first thing in the morning. Fearing was out talking to them when I woke up. “Registration begins at noon, not a minute sooner,” he was saying. “Beat the lines and stick around. We’ll be serving coffee. Be warned, only the fit need apply—our doctor will be examining you, and he’s never been fooled once. It’s Darwinian logic, people. The future is for the strong. The meek will have to inherit the here and now.”

  Inside, Ed and the other guy were setting up the gear. They had about thirty of those wired-up plastic suits stretched out in the middle of the place, and so tangled up with cable and little wires that they were like husks of fly bodies in a spiderweb.

  Under each of the suits was a light metal frame, sort of like a bicycle with a seat but no wheels, but with a headrest too. Around the web they were setting up the televisions in an arc facing the seats. The suits each had a number on the back, and the televisions had numbers on top that matched.

  When Gloria turned up she didn’t say anything to me but she handed me some donuts and coffee.

  “This is just the start,” she said, when she saw my eyes get big. “We’re in for three squares a day as long as this thing lasts. As long as we last, anyway.”

  We sat and ate outside where we could listen to Fearing. He went on and on. Some people were lined up like he said. I didn’t blame them since Fearing was such a talker. Others listened and just got nervous or excited and went away, but I could tell they were coming back later, atleast to watch. When we finished the donuts Fearing came over and told us to get on line too.

  “We don’t have to,” said Gloria.

  “Yes, you do,” said Fearing.

  On line we met Lane. She said she was twenty like Gloria but she looked younger. She could have been sixteen, like me.

  “You ever do this before?” asked Gloria.

  Lane shook her head. “You?”

  “Sure,” said Gloria. “You ever been out of this town?”

  “A couple of times,” said Lane. “When I was a kid. I’d like to now.”

  “Why?”

  “I broke up with my boyfriend.”

  Gloria stuck out her lip, and said, “But you’re scared to leave town, so you’re doing this instead.”

  Lane shrugged.

  I liked her, but Gloria didn’t.

  The doctor turned out to be Gilmartin the advance man. I don’t think he was a real doctor, but he listened to my heart. Nobody ever did that before, and it gave me a good feeling.

  Registration was a joke, though. It was for show. They asked a lot of questions but they only sent a couple of women and one guy away, Gloria said for being too old. Everyone else was okay, despite how some of them looked pretty hungry, just like me and Gloria. This was a hungry town. Later I figured out that’s part of why Fearing and Kromer picked it. You’d think they’d want to go where the money was, but you’d be wrong.

  After registration they told us to get lost for the afternoon. Everything started at eight o’clock.

  * * *

  We walked around downtown but almost all the shops were closed. All the good stuff was in the shopping center and you had to show a town ID card to get in and me and Gloria didn’t have those.

  So, like Gloria always says, we killed time since time was what we had.

  * * *

  The place looked different. They had spotlights pointed from on top of the vans and Fearing was talking through a microphone. There was a banner up over the doors. I asked Gloria and she said “Scape-Athon.” Ed was selling beer out of a cooler and some people were buying, even though he must have just bought it right there in town for half the price he was selling at. It was a hot night. They were selling tickets but they weren’t letting anybody in yet. Fearing told us to get inside.

  Most of the contestants were there already. Anne, the woman from the van, was there, acting like any other contestant. Lane was there too and we waved at each other. Gilmartin was helping everybody put on the suits. You had to get naked but nobody seemed to mind. Just being contestants made it all right, like we were invisible to each other.

  “Can we be next to each other?” I said to Gloria.


  “Sure, except it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We won’t be able to see each other inside.”

  “Inside where?” I said.

  “The scapes,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  Gloria got me into my suit. It was plastic with wiring everywhere and padding at my knees and wrists and elbows and under my arms and in my crotch. I tried on the mask but it was heavy and I saw nobody else was wearing theirs so I kept it off until I had to. Then Gilmartin tried to help Gloria but she said she could do it herself.

  So there we were, standing around half naked and dripping with cable in the big empty lit-up bowling alley, and then suddenly Fearing and his big voice came inside and they let the people in and the lights went down and it all started.

  ‘‘Thirty-two young souls ready to swim out of this world, into the bright shiny future,” went Fearing. “The question is, how far into that future will their bodies take them? New worlds are theirs for the taking—a cornucopia of scapes to boggle and amaze and gratify the senses. These lucky kids will be immersed in an ocean of data overwhelming to their undernourished sensibilities—we’ve assembled a really brilliant collection of environments for them to explore—and you’ll be able to see everything they see, on the monitors in front of you. But can they make it in the fast lane? How long can they ride the wave? Which of them will prove able to outlast the others, and take home the big prize—one thousand dollars? That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Gilmartin and Ed were snapping everybody into their masks and turning all the switches to wire us up and getting us to lie down on the frames. It was comfortable on the bicycle seat with your head on the headrest and a belt around your waist. You could move your arms and legs like you were swimming, the way Fearing said. I didn’t mind putting on the mask now because the audience was making me nervous. A lot of them I couldn’t see because of the lights, but I could tell they were there, watching.

  The mask covered my ears and eyes. Around my chin there was a strip of wire and tape. Inside it was dark and quiet at first except Fearing’s voice was still coming into the earphones.