The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Actually we want you to work with Measurement.”

  “Schrödinger’s Dog?”

  Ruefully, Atkins smiles. “That gag’s leaked, has it? Rumors and gags seem to travel by quantum tunneling.”

  “Well, I hope you can do a better job with this damned virus.”

  “Yes. The point is, we think we’ve found a way to splice the two programs, to everyone’s advantage. Call it serendipity. Your lexical nanos could be just what we need for the next stage of our own research.”

  Daniel regards him bleakly. “How convenient. What a shame you’re not working up a cure for HIV-6. Then we could really tool along together.” Reaching for the video controller, he clicks Bogey back on. “I’m knackered, Pearson. If Jill’s out there, tell her I’m asleep. She can come back in a couple of hours.”

  “Okay, champ.” Pearson shoots him a virile salute. “Have a snooze. But think it over.”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Instruments flicker, hum, click, buzz. Flat on his back, Daniel Ng regards the ceiling with rare humor. “That’s some good shit they gave me, baby.”

  “Shoosh, Danny!” his wife says through her protective mask. “We have a twenty-four track tape running in here. Wanna get busted?”

  “What can they do? Kill me?” He giggles. “You look silly covered in latex.” The Measurement lab’s inner door opens, and four more technicians or scientists come into the room. “Oh no, there’s more! What is this, the Flying Condom Brothers?”

  Tom Manchetti offers manly greetings. “Hi, pal. Feeling relaxed?”

  “I’m the only one not dressed for the orgy.”

  “Just standard containment gear, Danny. No offense, buddy, but you’re pretty lethal right now.”

  “’S okay. No pain, no gain.” His voice slurs. “My best friend, Ngo Gain, comes from a good Vietnamese family.”

  Tam leans across him. “We’re going to retract you into the scanner now, Daniel. Try to suppress your vocalization. Use the nanolink.”

  Daniel’s pallet is withdrawn with a soft whine into the body of the quantum scanner. “Okay, team, testing testing, one two three four? Surrounded by giant plastic bags with faces, and a thousand squids.”

  “Two thousand and forty-eight SQUIDs, Dan,” Manchetti tells him. “One K anterior and one K posterior. All the better to see you with.”

  “Posterior my ass. You mean dorsal and ventral.” His last words, muffled by the enclosure, are amplified by his enhanced nano-mediated voice, which eerily lacks vowels: “Y’ m’n d’rs’l ’nd v’ntrl.”

  “Without your mouth,” Tam chides him.

  “Tw’ K s’p’r c’nd’ct’ng q’nt’m ’nt’rfrence devices on the seashore.”

  “We’ve got it, I think,” Binh says. “Say again, Danny.”

  “Two K superconducting quantum-interference devices on the seashore. I feel like a naked fish.”

  Manchetti clears his throat. “I think we’re ready, ladies and gentlemen. Hang in there, Daniel. Just keep the nanolink running and we’ll track your resonance wherever you end up.”

  “My life as a … dog.”

  The room whines with power. “The SQUIDs have formed a Gell-Mann Manifold,” Jill reports in a professional voice.

  Manchetti notes, “Coarse-grained decoherence is collapsing. Danny Ng,” he adds in high humor, “These Are Your Lives!”

  “I can’t feel anything different. Sounds like I’m going through a tunnel—”

  “Doubling has commenced. Danny,” Jill says, “I love you.”

  * * *

  The monitor interface slams into pounding rock music, and the happy shrieks of a woman at the peak of climax. On the screen, Jill’s own face, distorted by sex and proximity, cries, “Ah, ah, ah, Christ, oh, oh, yes, oh Danny, I love you, aaaAAARR…”

  Daniel moans, “Oh, oh, yeah, Jill, that was—” And in instant terror, “—God, we can’t do this!” He reaches to the bedside and slaps off the sound system. Jill gapes up at him.

  “What? What’s wrong, darling?”

  “We can’t do this! My God, I’m not even wearing a condom!”

  “What are you talking about? Danny Ng, get back into this bed at once! Sam won’t be home till tomorrow night, I’ve told you—”

  “Who’s Sam? Don’t you understand, I’m positive, I’m lethal!”

  She stares at him. “I’m positive you’re off your head. Look, I’ve told you before, he’s still very important to me, I wouldn’t let him get hurt by barging in on us—”

  Daniel scrabbles off the bed and clutches his arms about himself. “Oh my God. Oh my God. This is a different world.”

  His wife—his lover, Jill—squints at him crossly. “Danny, this is a really stupid game. I’m going to have a shower. Turn the damn CD back on and make us a drink. I don’t know what’s got into you.”

  Urgently, he grabs her hand, draws her back to the bed. “No, no, just a moment. Here, sit down. Jill, the most incredible—Your name is Jill?”

  “What?!”

  “Bear with me, darling. Pretend I’ve just had a stroke. Something’s gone wrong with my memory.”

  Uneasily, she guesses, “This is a game. Pretty creepy if you ask me. What happens next, you get dressed up in my clothes and pretend to be Ms. Saigon?”

  “You’re a quantum engineer,” Daniel tells her, watching her face closely, “and you’re married to this guy Sam.”

  “One out of two’s not bad.” She grins uncertainly. “Since I haven’t had a job since the universities were closed down, I’d hardly consider myself a—”

  Danny jaw drops. “Closed down? Wow, this is exactly the sort of thing they sent me here to find out. And look, um, I don’t want to alarm you, Jill—”

  “Oh, good, I wouldn’t want you to alarm me!”

  “—but I don’t have, I mean you don’t happen to know if I have any…” He wants to hold her, to hug her passionately, to make love to this woman with his redeemed, healthy body, and he dare not. He struggles for words.

  “Any? Any?”

  In a tiny voice, he asks, “Sexual disease?”

  She is away across the room in two bounds. “Urk! Get out of that bed! You pig!”

  “Just a minute! Hold your horses! I’m not who you think I am.”

  “You can say that again!” The woman is baffled and furious. “Look, go away. Just. Go. Away.”

  “Schrödinger’s Dog.”

  “Cat. You mean Cat. Look, this just isn’t funny.”

  “I’m Schrödinger’s Dog.”

  “Schrödinger’s Pig!”

  Shivering and naked, Daniel Ng tells the woman who is not his wife in the world which is not his world, “Just try and get your fabulously well-trained and beautiful mind around this, Jill. In a universe at right angles to this one, there’s a guy lying in a scanner surrounded by 2048 SQUIDs—”

  She begins to relax. “Okay, it is a sex game. This better be good, baby. Superconducting quantum-interference devices. But you couldn’t have that many, they have these huge magnets at minus two-hundred degrees or something.”

  He shakes his head. “Room-temperature superconductors.”

  “Oh, this is in the future?”

  “So you don’t have room-temperature superconductors.” He is agog. “And the universities are closed down?”

  “Gosh, Danny, you’re scaring me.”

  “Where I come from … I mean, the Danny you’re talking to right now, not the body, but the … I don’t know how to describe it, the quantum personality…”

  Jill really is getting frightened now. “You think you’re from an alternate dimension. Like those kids’ TV programs. Sliders. Quantum Jump.”

  Daniel is enchanted. “Did you watch them too? I’d forgotten. Quantum Leap.”

  “Jump. Trust me, I’m an expert. Used to be.”

  “In my version of reality, you’re still an expert. In fact, you’re sitting at the console monitoring all this right now through my nano im
plants. We’re married.” Abruptly he blushes, and the color goes from his face all the way down. “Oh God, that means she probably heard you—”

  “I won’t divorce him,” Jill says bluntly. “I don’t love him anymore, but I won’t put him through that. He doesn’t deserve to lose his job just because I want to sleep with a pretty boy from Vietnam.”

  Daniel Ng stands up, turns his face to the wall, and mutters, “Get me out of here, Jill. It’s pointless. Let’s just forget the damned experiment.”

  * * *

  At the console, Jill says, “Switching to State Two of the Sigma Sequence.” The large HD monitor freezes while the script-mediated display hunts through its search-trees. Its blue field scrolls to black, then shows in line cartoon King’s Street, busy with cars and well-dressed young men and women. The sound track contrives a hint of jazz fusion from a nearby club. A young man in somewhat Edwardian clothing peers disdainfully into the screen.

  “My word, Cordelia, look what they’re allowing on the streets these days.”

  A beautiful girl says in an upper-class voice, “Tacky, very tacky. Bold as brass up on the footpath, Jonathan.”

  With airy menace, the youth says, “Be off, slope-head, or I’ll kick you downstairs.” There is a burst of appreciative laughter from his elegant cronies.

  Daniel Ng gapes about him. “Are you speaking to me?”

  “Get in the gutter,” suggests another youth. “And shut your mouth.” He shoves him forcefully in the chest.

  “Hey, keep your hands to yourself.” Without his intending it, Daniel finds his hands in a defensive karate posture.

  “Gentlemen, pay attention,” announces the first lout. “We’ve found a rare treasure—a gook at liberty.”

  The lovely girl says, with an insouciant smirk, “Are you staring at my tits, Chopsticks?”

  “One can’t blame him, darling, they are rather conspicuous.”

  “Dirty little beast. Make him give us his money, Tristan.”

  The youth reaches with no sense of danger, and Danny slaps his hand aside. “Hey! Hey! Calm down. Jesus, where am I?”

  Languidly sarcastic, the second youth clips his ear stingingly. “Well, you’re not in fucking Ho Chi Minh Crater, I can assure you of that.”

  They begin to beat him up. Through their scuffling, passing cars swerve and honk their horns, but nobody stops. In terror, Daniel calls, “Jill! Jill! Get me out of here!” Fists and elbows strike him despite his resistance. Someone drags a wallet out of his back pocket.

  “What’s this rubbish? This isn’t Australian pounds, it’s some damned gook scrip! Tristan, do you know, I believe we’ve caught a spy!”

  “Let’s chuck him in the Yarra with his legs broken, see if he can swim home to the Crater!”

  “For God’s sake,” Daniel screams, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

  * * *

  At her console, Jill reports, “I’m sorry, Dr. Manchetti, we’re tracking two alternate metrics at present but we seem to have lost contact with Daniel’s lexical implants. Should I terminate the Sigma Sequence?”

  “Stay locked in, Jill. We’re getting a very fuzzy signal here, but the implant techs think they can clean it up. Try another step in the superposition sequence; see if that helps.”

  The screens flicker to a new state.

  * * *

  Daniel stands in a low doorway, looking into a room where a fat gentleman sits cross-legged before an elegant walnut table covered in documents. In the distance, he hears sounds from his childhood, all mixed together, Asian and Australian: magpies whistle, food-sellers call. A manual typewriter clatters desultorily in an adjacent room, and a large fan thrums overhead.

  “Come in, don’t dither,” orders the stout man. “Are you ready for the examination?”

  “Jill! Jill, what the hell—”

  “Jee-al? I’m sorry, young man, this is not my name. I am Hussein Abdul bin Mohammed, a true son of the Prophet may his name be blessed, and if I am not mistaken you are one of the Fish-eaters of the Red River Delta people. Well, sit down. On the cushion, lad, what’s wrong with you?”

  Daniel sits, his legs giving way. He touches his unbroken ribs, feels tenderly at his eyes and cheeks. Nothing is damaged. But of course that was another world. “Um,” he says desperately. “Mr. Hussein, I may have given the wrong impression. An examination, you said? Are you a doctor, sir?”

  Abdul Hussein looks down his nose over his half-spectacles. “I don’t find that especially amusing, young Fish-eater. Neither you nor I will ever attain such elevated rank. Now, I had your employment file right here. You are…?”

  “Daniel Ng, Mr. Hussein. Could you … ah, could you tell me a little about—The position, is it?”

  The man shakes an admonitory finger. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. First we assess your grades in arithmetic, calligraphy, and familiarity with the classics. If you are very fortunate indeed, we shall thereafter discuss employment options. Yes, I see here that you wish to strive toward a cleaning position on the Han Orbital Ring.”

  “The Han—Yes, I’m sorry, that’s right, the orbital—You mean, as in satellite?”

  Hussein sighs. “Your wit is dry to the point of idiocy, young man. Tell me, what are you doing here in the External Territories? Isn’t there a bond of marriage between your family and the Lower Lords Nguyen in Da Nang? Danyeel … A Dayak name, perhaps? Or Malay?”

  “Mr. Hussein, my head is spinning. I’m terribly sorry, something I ate. Please, can I ask you a question?”

  “Naturally.” The heavy gentleman preens. “As the prophet Mao tells us, one may pose any question to the servants of the people, though one is not always prepared to receive the answer.”

  Earnestly, on the verge of tears, Daniel Ng tells him, “I seem to be lost. I seem to be very, very lost.”

  “Nothing to it, Mr. Ng! When our business is completed, a boy shall direct you to your hostelry. Its name? The Emerald Garden, perhaps? The Tower of Hanoi?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly frosty, Hussein puts his sheaf of documents aside. “Oh. Well, it’s your own business, of course. Let us turn without delay to the examination. Take out your brushes and ink.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Hussein. I’m very, very, very lost.”

  The bureaucrat gasps, gazing in speculation. “Not a shipwreck! But no, your garments are clean and in the best repair.” He struggles to his feet, backing away, breaking into a panicky shout. “Help! Help! An escapee! Murder! Rapine! May Allah and Mao protect us all!”

  Daniel is dumbfounded. “Mr. Hussein! Please! What’d I say? Hey, really, stop yelling, I’m going, I’m going.…”

  A muezzin begins the call to prayer amid the tumult from the outer offices. Hussein yells, “For shame! On your face, infidel! It is better to pray than sleep, and certainly better to pray than skulk!” He fails to catch Daniel’s arm as he turns and sprints from the room. “After him! The Fish-eater! A Zoroastrian! A Zoroastrian runaway in the lobby!”

  * * *

  Through the uproar, Jill’s console voice states: “We’re getting him into resonance again, Dr. Manchetti, but the sequence is bifurcating. Danny, can you hear me? Danny?” The monitor’s acoustic feed abruptly chops to softly running water and a crackling fire. Daniel’s frightened voice comes through the speaker system: “Oh. Oh. Jill, thank God. This is ridiculous! It’s like being back at school.”

  “Tom Manchetti here, Daniel. We lost you for a moment, but now you’re back on-line. Back at school, eh? Happy days, the best?”

  Bitterly, Daniel tells him, “Actually, I’m thinking of fourth grade at Collingwood Primary. That’s where they stuck my gook head down the dunny every day at playtime.”

  Over his shoulder a gaunt young black man says to him, reverently, making him jump, “You speak to the ancestors, my brother?”

  “God! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  “I’m sorry, kinsman. I would not have my shadow fall across your shadow. I thou
ght you might care for a piece of barramundi from the fire.” The young black man holds out pale, steaming flesh on a deep green leaf. Its aroma is delicious.

  Rueful, Daniel grins. “Everyone talks religion, then they try to kill me. Hey, that smells good. Um, what was that about shadows?”

  A second black man uncoils from the grass beside the open fire. “He’s just being pretentious. Hopes the elders’ll choose him for the rituals.”

  “Not fair! I just happen to have a subtle and poetic soul. Anyway, everyone knows that Ng’s the one they’ll be cutting and naming.”

  Danny recoils, dropping the sliver of hot fish. “Cutting? Oh, great.”

  Jill’s voice says inside his head, “Danny, we’re back to full resonance with your speech centres, so we’re picking up the others as well. How come they know your name?”

  “It’s not my name,” he tells her, still dazed, staring at the luminous landscape about him. “It’s the name of my quantum double.”

  “How can your double be called ‘Ng’? His history has to be completely different.”

  “Here we go again,” the second black man says wryly to his companion. “Ask the ancestors for a nice plump emu while you’re there, Ng.”

  His associate growls, “Kulan! Show some respect!”

  “Didn’t Tam and Dr. Manchetti cover this in the briefing?”

  “I’m just the quantum technician,” Jill says irritably. “And I had a few other things on my mind, darling.”

  “Yes, you did, poor thing.” Danny relents. “They’re probably not speaking English. My brain back there in the real world’s in resonance, so my lexical modules are running an automatic translation.”

  “Right. So they could be calling you ‘Two Dogs Fucking,’ and we’d hear it as ‘Ng’?”

  “Or ‘Dan’ or ‘Danny’ or ‘Daniel,’ or ‘Hey, you.’”

  Jill laughs. Her mood improves as she understands that he is in no danger. “Are you hanging in there, love?”

  “I’m okay. It’s better than being beaten up in an alley.”

  “Beaten up!”

  “I’m fine now, darling. I had some Vietnamese money in my pocket; they thought I was a spy. I probably was a spy in that world. Maybe the other one as well.”