The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “You’re a bad, bad boy. You told me you’d stay home today. Look at you!”

  Daniel shrugs. In the fluorescent light, his face is drawn. “I’m okay. How’d you get past the dragon?”

  “You look terrible, if you must know.”

  “Tired, love. We’re all tired. You don’t look fantastic yourself.”

  Jill’s lips quirk.

  “We’re very busy, dear,” Daniel tells her, returning to his workstation. “I’m prepping for a cerebral bloodflow scan in five minutes.”

  His wife sits on a swivel stool and regards her hands. “I know. The mandarins upstairs want someone from Measurement down here to observe. Luck of the draw.”

  Daniel is not pleased. “Don’t be offended, Jill, but I disapprove of their choice. Interferes with objectivity.”

  “You should come by our labs one day, Danny—you’d soon learn there’s no such thing as objectivity.”

  The intercom says, “Dr. Ng, they’re waiting for you in prep.”

  “Coming, Trish. Jill, you can look but you can’t touch. There’s an observation platform above the scanners. Be my guest.”

  “Well, Sir Bryce Powell’s guest, apparently.” She gives him a quick kiss. “Take care, love. And ask one of the real doctors to give you a checkup when you’re done.”

  * * *

  Craning toward the large sloping window of the observation bay, mirror twin of the Measurement lab where she works, Jill Ng says, “He really does look awful, Binh.”

  “It’s the lights. Don’t forget, he’s full of muscle relaxants and tracer isotope gas. Perfectly safe, of course. We’ve all had our turn in the scanner.”

  The speaker brings them Tam’s voice. “Daniel, just keep your eyes on the readout and continue subvocalizing. We’re getting good activity in the speech centers.”

  Jill looks around incredulously. “Your machine can read Danny’s mind through the nanos? Actually monitor his thoughts?”

  “Not really. His stream of awareness. We sample a terabyte stream from his speech-processing cells, and plug it into a neural net loaded with English grammar and syntax and a bunch of Schank scripts. What we get out is a reconstruction, like enhancing a grainy photo.”

  The monitor brings them a technician’s disembodied voice. “Scanning on reentrant verbal fields locked in.”

  Daniel’s voice, or its simulation, childish and peevish, issues from the sound system: “It’s so hot. I want my mama. Where’s my mama?” His voice changes, then, into an impersonation of a quavery old man: “Be quiet, child. It’s terrible for all of us, you know.”

  And another intonational shift suggests a woman: “Hush, little fellow. Your Mama’s sick, you see, so they’ve moved her to the front of the boat to get some air.”

  Jill surges from her comfortable seat, aghast. “You can’t do that! It’s not fair!”

  Binh reaches out, takes her hand. “We use the strongest emotional vectors available, Jill. Daniel’s given his consent, you must understand that.”

  The tech reports: “We’re bringing up full-spectrum interpolation.”

  Daniel’s voice vanishes, and a monitor displaying medical data above Jill’s head suddenly turns into a cartoon, real-time animation in full density montage: crashing waves, ship motor thrumming, people moaning. A child’s voice complains, “Stop shoving your knees in my back! Oh, I’m so thirsty.” An old Vietnamese man cries, “Sweet Lord Jesus, send us some rain. Dear Lord Buddha, we’ll perish without water.” The images flick, as if the viewpoint has exceeded the limits of visual constancy. An old woman lurches into the frame, her mouth twisted. Everyone speaks English with a faint Viet accent; the translation is working perfectly. “Too much water, husband. Gah, it stinks! My poorfeet are swelling up in it.” Yells break out: “A boat! A big boat!” Ship engines cease; there are two dull gunshots, shoving, yells, a body crashes down the gangway. Dan the child, watching all this hideous confusion, cries piteously, “Stop pushing! I want my mama! Tien!” A Thai pirate looms into the gangway. In a comic-strip accent all the more terrible for its invocation of childhood fears, he roars, “Shut up and stay where you are. All we want’s ya money and ya jewels. Come on, they’ll do you no good in the afterlife.” Terrified people scream, men laugh and swagger and shout for gold and jewels; there are more gunshots, children whimper, a woman screams. The old woman whispers to the screen, “Stay down, boy. Here, get underneath me.” A pirate grabs his sister Tien. “Hey, fancy this little beauty, shipmate? She stinks, but so do you.” A burst of raucous male laughter. Danny screams and his arms flail on the screen. “Stay down, child,” his grandmother hisses. “Shut your eyes. The Lord Buddha will protect.” The image is lost for a moment: clothing tears, a girl’s frightened scream, male laughter. Little Danny squeals, “Oh, the filthy, filthy dogs. What’s that dirty man doing? Oh. Oh. Oh.” The sound effects cut off abruptly, and the screen returns to medical readouts. The tech’s voice says calmly, “Terminate processing scan. That’s great guys, we had major activation in cortical and limbic modules with ninety-one-percent echo in the net. Thanks, Dr. Ng. You done real good, little guy.”

  Jill, shaking with fury, stares at Binh. “You bastards. You bastards.”

  “It’s really all right, Jill. I’m sure Daniel’s happy to be part of this important—”

  “Shut up, Binh. Just shut up.”

  * * *

  Daniel knocks on the team physician’s paneled door. An overweight woman in her forties opens it, guides him in with a hand on his shoulder. “How are you feeling, Daniel?”

  “Okay.”

  “Pop up on the couch. You don’t look okay to me. Have you been out on the tiles?”

  “I wish. I’m just tired, Lisa.”

  “Let me look at your eyes. Open your mouth.”

  “It’s this building, you know,” Dan says when she takes the light out of his mouth. “Really lethal feng-shui. Buildings should reflect the order of nature.”

  The doctor sits back. “So should human bodies. And I have to tell you, Daniel, yours is not in good shape. I want to run some tests.”

  “Give me a break, doctor. I’m the human pincushion.”

  Lisa fetches out a hypodermic. “Roll up your sleeve, chum. We’ll see if your blood’s worth bottling. You’ll just feel a little prick.”

  “That’s what I tell my wife. Ouch.”

  * * *

  Jill whispers, “Are you asleep?”

  Danny snores in a marked manner. After a moment, he relents. “What?”

  “When Binh and I watched them working on you today, I—I wanted to kill her.” In the darkness, he says nothing. “Well, smash her bloody teeth in, anyway. How dare they?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” Jill sits up, pushing her pillow against the wall, hugs her arms against her breasts. “It was like some … What was that old horror movie? A Clockwork Orange.”

  He rolls on his back. “Don’t be melodramatic, Jill. They’re just prodding my memory, that’s all. Anyway, the nanos do all the work.”

  “I hated it. God, Dan, you were only five years old—”

  “Six. No, I had my sixth birthday in the refugee camp.”

  His wife shudders, and reaches for him. “I just can’t imagine it. People are so vile.”

  “Some people. Not us, sweetheart.”

  “Thank God.” She shudders. “Come here, I need a cuddle.”

  Cautiously, gritting his teeth, Daniel says, “Just a cuddle.”

  “You can’t be that tired.”

  “Um.” Daniel does not move. “The quack says we shouldn’t make love for a week or so.”

  Laughing, uncertain, Jill says, “I’d rather you didn’t make love to the quack at all, if you don’t mind!” After a moment, she says, “Danny, what do you mean? You’re pulling my leg, right?”

  “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. They’re running some tests.”

  “Tests?” She draws away from him.

>   “The nano injectors might have been contaminated. It can’t be anything too dangerous. The place is spicker than a clean-room.”

  “This is outrageous!” Jill strikes the lamp at the side of the bed, and half the room floods with soft yellow light. “And they think you might pass something on to me?”

  “Sweetheart, I’m so tired. Let’s not fight.” Still he does not move. “Come on, just curl up and go to sleep.”

  Jill sits up straighter in bed and clenches her fists. Shadows jump over her husband’s weary face. “I’m not fighting with you, Danny. Tests! My God!”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel,” Dr. Lisa says in her most balanced voice, through a lightweight respiration mask, “I have bad news for you.”

  Daniel listens in dread. “Unh. It’s cancer, isn’t it?” Speculation has rioted in his imagination. Somehow the nanos have triggered an oncogene. Brain tumor. His mind will be eaten away from the inside.

  “It’s nothing to do with your research program, Daniel,” Lisa tells him in a level voice. “I’m sorry, but you’ve tested positive for HIV-6.”

  Daniel is thunderstruck. “What? HI—What?” He cannot take it in. “That’s a venereal disease!”

  “STD—sexually transmitted, yes.”

  “Impossible! I haven’t—Oh, shit, Lisa, the injectors really did get contaminated? How the hell could that—”

  Lisa sends him a hard look. “Out of the question, Daniel. We’ve done a thorough screening of the nanomachines, of course. There’s no way you could have been infected in the lab.”

  He is boneless and shaking. “I’m going to die?”

  The doctor turns away slightly. “We’ll support you all the way, Daniel. Total insurance cover, naturally, and it’s company policy to—”

  “How long?”

  “Unless there’s a breakthrough, a month. Maybe less. Six is a mutant, it’s fast.”

  Daniel’s face is very pale. He might faint at any moment. “Oh my God. Oh my God. How long have I been carrying it?”

  “A month or two. Your T-cell count’s massively compromised, and you have several opportunistic infections in your gastric system. The point right now is—”

  Belatedly he understands what he has been denying all this time. “God! Have I infected Jill?”

  “I’m truly sorry, Daniel. If you’ve had unprotected sex in the last month, there’s a high probability she’s also infected.”

  Beside himself, Daniel Ng shouts, “Of course we’ve bloody had sex in the last month, you stupid cow. Oh shit. Oh my God.”

  “One of my colleagues is seeing your wife right now, Daniel,” Lisa tells him stiffly. “She’ll get the same tests. In the meantime, we’re moving you straight into biohazard containment. Jill can visit you there.”

  Daniel lurches to his feet. “I’m going home, doctor. I’m out of here.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t allow that, Daniel.” The physician stands, hesitates, takes one of his hands in hers. She wears thin-film surgical gloves. “Look, it’s not hopeless. There’s a frantic research program. We’ve got gene-engineered cures for the earlier strains.”

  “Great! A triumph for medicine. I might as well have drowned in the Gulf of Thailand.” Tears are rolling from his eyes.

  “You have one chance,” Lisa tells him crisply, directing him to his chair. “Total isolation and barrier care. It’s the only way we know to slow down the course of your disease. We need to exclude all further secondaries and control the ones you have.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lisa. This isn’t a hospital, it’s a neuroscience-research complex. Do you have any idea how much it would cost—”

  “Cost is no object, Dr. Ng. Let’s not forget, your cranium’s full of unique and very expensive nanos. Neurochip isn’t going to let you die if we can possibly help it.”

  Incredulously, swiping at his eyes, Daniel asks, “You want me to keep working?”

  “You’ll have the best of care and support, Daniel. We’ll even put aside a suite for your wife so she can stay here twenty-four hours a day.” The physician holds his gaze. “As of course she must if she’s also infected.”

  “God, you’ve thought of everything. Look, I’ve got to talk to Jill now.” His limbs shake despite his best efforts.

  “There’s a phone in the next room, Daniel. Come back when you’re done and I’ll take you across to containment.”

  * * *

  Jill’s face is darked by a triple thickness of laminated glass. “A charming turn of events, Daniel.”

  “Darling, thank heavens they’ve let you in here. Come over to the window, put your hands against the glass.”

  She draws back. “Keep your hands to yourself. How could you?”

  Frantic, he asks, “Are you all right? Have you got your results back yet?”

  “Wednesday. That’s the soonest I can expect to hear. Should make for a couple of nice nights. They’re keeping me here, you know.”

  “That’s best.” He searches her face for any sign of illness. “They’re bringing in a whole team of autoimmune specialists. Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. God, I’ll never forgive myself if I’ve given you—”

  “You selfish, stupid man.” She is wearing jeans and an old pullover, and her makeup is smudged. “It makes me sick to look at you.”

  Appalled, Daniel recoils from the window. “Jill! You don’t think I caught this!”

  “Oh, shut up!” Spots of red bloom on her cheeks, and her nose is white as bone. “I thought I knew you, I thought I loved you, I thought we’d have children together—”

  “Yes. Be brave. You still could be negative; they say I’ve only been infected for a month or so.”

  She glares at him, lips colorless. “How dare you! Wasn’t I enough for you? Obviously not! Is it those whores in Richmond?” Her mouth writhes. “Or do you prefer boys in public lavatories? It makes me puke to think about it.”

  “Whores?” He shakes his head in confusion. “I love you more than my own life, surely you know that?”

  “Your own life. Well, we know what that’s worth now, don’t we Danny? It’s those nights you go out by yourself, isn’t it? Down to Little Saigon and the league of heartbreak kids from the refugee boats. Twenty years ago that was, Daniel! Thirty! What bullshit! You’re stuck in the past, Daniel Ng, you and all your victim buddies. But that doesn’t give you the right to screw them in the park lavatory and pick up some filthy fucking disease that’s going to kill me! What, did you get a taste for it from the Thai pirates?” She is sobbing.

  “Oh, Jill! This is so completely wrong! Don’t you understand, I love you?” Daniel is cold from head to toe, appalled as his life is devoured, everything distant but whirring, blurting out useless words. “You’re the only thing that holds me to this terrible earth.”

  “Christ, I’m going mad.” Her hands press to her lips for a moment of horrified silence. “I can’t believe what just came out of my mouth, Danny, that was vile. But how can I believe you? Binh and Tam told me it couldn’t have been an accident. These Neurochip labs are about as sloppy as a … a military gene-splicing facility. Or do you think they slipped you a merry little mutant virus along with your flu shot?”

  “Oh, darling, come over here. Look at my face and you’ll know what’s true.”

  “Danny. I don’t know what to think. You’re going to die! I’m probably going to die! One day we’re unpicking the mysteries of the soul, clever clever clever, the next we’ve turned into polluted garbage. How do you expect me to feel?”

  He is weeping, disconsolate. “I just want one thing, Jill love, darling girl. Two things. I want you to trust and believe me. None of that filthy stuff’s true. And I want you to love me. Hold on. Hold on and love me until we die.”

  * * *

  The intercom chimes through the closing scene of Casablanca. Flatly, Daniel voice-activates it. A hearty male voice says, “Good evening, Dr. Ng. I wonder if we might talk for a moment.”

  Without lowering the video’s vol
ume, Danny says, “Why not? I’d invite you in for a drink, but as you see—”

  “I’m Pearson Atkins, Daniel, comptroller of research projects. I believe your wife mentioned that I’d be dropping by.”

  “Probably.”

  “How are you feeling? Are you comfortable?”

  “Could be worse. I could be behind on my rent.” He turns off the movie. “How can I help you, Dr. Atkins?”

  “Pearson, please. We were terribly relieved to hear that Jill’s clear. She’ll be dropping by to see you in an hour or so. She’s asked for some time off.”

  Daniel is roused by this. “I don’t want that. What good could it do? She’d just sit around at home brooding.”

  “She’ll stay in her suite here, Daniel. But I agree with you. Work’s what she needs to get her through this … melancholy crisis. I think it’s what you need too.”

  He laughs bitterly. “No, I think the Home Movie channels’ll suit me fine. Are you a big disco fan?”

  “Uh, I don’t really recognize the—”

  “This morning I screened The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Yes, folks, me and John Travolta.”

  “Immune disorders, I assume. What happened to this Travolta?”

  “He’s a kid, see, Pearson, and he falls in love. And he can’t leave the bubble without catching a hundred lethal bugs, but he says he can’t stand living like this any longer and just busts out and kisses the girl and they all live happily ever after.”

  “Oh. Well, of course we’re hoping that you’ll…”

  “The movie lied,” Daniel says venomously. “The kid—the real bubble kid—he was dead as a doornail. She killed him with her kiss.”

  “In your case, of course, we haven’t yet tracked down the virus vector,” the comptroller says cautiously. “But as I say, at least we can rest assured now that your wife isn’t a carrier.”

  He shakes his head. “I did think it might be her. God, I’m so ashamed. But they tell me it couldn’t be a lab accident either.”

  “I’m no medico, Daniel. Let me change the subject, if I may? We want you back at work, if you’re up for it.”

  “Tam says I’m too far off the baseline now. My data’s unreliable. They’ve wasted months of work. Not to mention all these expensive nanos in my head.”