The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Okay,” I said. She and Letty had probably been talking about me. “Are we leaving soon?”

  Mom looked down at the table. “Michael, honey, I’m sorry. We can’t leave right away. I’m waiting for a call from the doctor.”

  I squinted at her. “From the doctor?”

  “I’m fine,” Mom said. “It’s nothing, really. She’s looking at some test results, that’s all, and I may need to take some antibiotics. But I don’t want to miss the call. We’ll go right after that, okay?”

  “I’m going now,” I said. I thought they had to wear condoms. “He’s been up there since last night, Mom!”

  Letty started to stand up. “Mike, I’ll drive you—”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. Right then, as much as I wanted to reach Bobo quickly, I wanted to be alone even more. “You can catch up with me after the doctor calls. Stay and talk to Mom.” Stay and keep Mom and David out of each other’s hair, I meant, and maybe Letty knew that, because she nodded and sat back down.

  “Okay. We’ll follow you as soon as we can. Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s not like you don’t know where I’m going.”

  It felt good to be out, away from Mom and David, where I could finally breathe again. I cut over to the wild strip on the edge of our subdivision and started working my way up, past the new construction sites where the dumptrucks and jackhammers were roaring away, even on Saturday, up to where all the signs say Bureau of Land Management and National Forest Service. The signs don’t mean much, because the Forest Service and the BLM can sell the land to developers anytime they want. Right now, though, the signs meant that I was on the edge of wildness stretching for miles, all the way to Tahoe.

  When the construction noises faded, I started hearing the gunfire. Shooters come up on Peavine for target practice; you can always find rifle shells on the trails, and there are all kinds of abandoned cars and washing machines and refrigerators that people have hauled up here and shot into Swiss cheese. Sometimes the metal has so many holes you wonder how it holds its shape at all. “Redneck lace,” Dad used to call it—Dad who’d grown up in a trailer, and was so proud that he’d gotten us out of one: Dad who couldn’t stand being called a redneck, even though he came up on Peavine every weekend with George Schuster and Howard Flanking, so they could drink beer and shoot skeet.

  After he died, I couldn’t come up on the mountain for a long time. But gunfire’s one of those things you can’t get away from here, anymore than you can avoid new subdivisions, and Peavine’s the only place I can come to be alone, really alone. I can hike up here for hours and never see anybody else. The gunfire’s far away, and nearby are sagebrush and rabbits and hawks. In the summer you see lizards and snakes, and in the winter, in the snow, you see the fresh tracks of deer and antelope. I’ve seen prints that looked like mountain lion; I’ve seen prints that looked like dog, but were probably coyote.

  I hiked hard, pushing myself, taking the steepest trails. It takes me three hours to get to the top of Peavine in good weather, and today I wanted the most direct route I could find. When you’re slogging up a 15 percent grade in the snow, it’s harder to think about how miserable your cat would be, stuck up here in weather like this, and it’s harder to think about what you want to do to your brother for letting him out. It’s harder to think about who you know might be wearing condoms, or how condoms can break even when they’re used right. It’s harder to think about how angry you are that your mother’s connections don’t have to be tested before she is, to make sure she doesn’t catch anything.

  Mom never lied to me. She wouldn’t say “some antibiotics” if she really meant “years of AIDS drugs.” She wouldn’t say it was nothing if she was scared she might be infected with something that could kill her. I was angry anyway, because nothing was fair.

  So that 15 percent grade was just what I needed. If Mom and Letty followed me, they’d be coming the easy way, up the road. They’d probably be angry if they couldn’t find me, but they’d also get to the mine before I did, and they’d be able to drive Bobo back down. I hadn’t been able to bring the carrying case with me, but I wouldn’t be able to get it back down the mountain with Bobo in it anyway, not by myself. I hoped Mom had remembered to put the carrying case in the SUV. I hoped Bobo would still be in any kind of shape to need the carrying case at all.

  I’m sorry, I told him as I climbed. I’m sorry I didn’t come after you sooner. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from David. I’m sorry about whatever scared you. Bobo, please be alive. Please be okay.

  After a while, it started to snow. I kept going. I was wearing my warmest thermals and I was covered in Gore-Tex, and I had enough food in the pack for three days. And if Mom and Letty drove up in the snow and couldn’t find me because I’d come back down, they’d really start freaking. So I headed on up, except that as soon as I could, I cut over to the road. I didn’t see any fresh tire marks, which meant they were still behind me. I tromped along, checking the GPS every once in a while to make sure the signal hadn’t moved, and then I heard a horn and turned around and saw headlights.

  It was Dr. Mills. “Hey, Mike. I drove by your house when I got off work, and your mom said you’d headed up here.” I scrambled into his truck; he had the heater blasting, and it felt good. “I hope you don’t mind that your mom didn’t come. My old truck can take the wear better than that fancy Suburban she has, and there’s only so much room in here.”

  There was still plenty of room in the front seat. I glanced back at the flatbed: Dr. Mills had brought a carrying case, but of course on the way down, we’d want to be able to have Bobo in front with us, where it was warm. The part about Mom could have meant just about anything, depending on whether it was his excuse or hers. If it was hers, she could have been hoping that Dr. Mills would run a male-bonding father-figure trip on me, or she could have still been waiting for the doctor to call, or she and Letty could have been trying to force David to stay in the house somehow. Or all of the above. If it was his—I didn’t want to think about what it meant for him to be saving wear on her SUV, or not wanting her in the truck at all. Dr. Mills is married. I didn’t want to think about him driving down to Carson.

  So I looked at the handheld again. “He’s in an old mine up here,” I said.

  “Mmm-hmmm. That’s what your mom told me. How long since he’s moved?”

  “Not since the satellites came back up,” I said, and Dr. Mills nodded. He stayed quiet for a long time, and finally I said, “You think he’s dead, don’t you? That’s what Mom thinks.”

  The snow was coming down harder now, the windshield wipers squeaking in a rhythm that kept trying to lull me to sleep. Dr. Mills could have told me he didn’t want to go on; he could have turned around. He didn’t do that. He knew I had to see as much as I could. “Michael,” he said finally, “I’ve been a vet for fifteen years, and I’ve seen plenty of miracles. Animals are amazing. But I have to tell you, I think it would take a miracle for Bobo not to be dead.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “With coyotes,” he said, “usually it’s quick. They break the necks of their prey, the same as cats do with birds and mice. So unless Bobo got away for a few minutes and then got caught again, he wouldn’t have suffered long.”

  “Okay,” I said, and looked at my hands. I wondered how long it would take me to break David’s neck, and how much I could make him suffer while I did it. And then I thought, there goes David again, making me want to do something stupid, something that would only mean I was hurting myself.

  It took us ten more minutes to get to the mine, and by then the snow was coming down so hard that we could hardly see a foot ahead of the truck. We got out and started walking toward where the mine should have been, snow stinging our faces. It was really cold. I couldn’t see anything but snow: no rocks, not even the scrubby pines that grow up here. And within about ten feet I realized that the mine entrance was completely buried, and
that even if we’d been able to find it, we’d probably need to dig through five feet of snow to get to Bobo.

  “Michael,” Dr. Mills yelled into my ear, over the wind. “Michael, I’m sorry. We have to go back.”

  I tried to say, “I know,” but my voice wouldn’t work. I turned around and headed toward the truck, and when I was back inside it, I started shivering, even when the heat was blasting again. I sat in the front seat, with the empty space between me and Dr. Mills where Bobo should have been, and shivered and hugged myself. Finally I said, “You get warm, just before you freeze to death. If the coyotes didn’t kill him—or if he went up on his own—”

  “He’s not in pain,” Dr. Mills said. “That’s a cliché, isn’t it? But it’s true. Michael, wherever he is now, he doesn’t hurt. I can promise you that.” And then he started telling me about some poem called “The Heaven of Animals,” where the animals remain true to their natures. The predators still hunt and exult over their kill, and their prey rise up again every morning, perfectly renewed, joyously taking their proper part in the chase.

  I guess it’s a nice idea, but all I could think about was Bobo, shivering, hiding his head under my arm because he was scared.

  So we drove on down the mountain, and pretty soon the snow stopped coming down so hard, and when we got back down to the developments, there was hardly any snow at all. You could still hear the construction equipment, and gunfire far off. Maybe the target shooters had moved farther down to get away from the snow. Dr. Mills hadn’t said anything for a while, but when we started hearing the guns, he looked over at me.

  Don’t, I thought. Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Just take me home, Dr. Mills, please. Don’t say it.

  “I never told you,” he said, very quietly, “how sorry I am about what happened to your dad.”

  I stared straight ahead, thinking about Bobo, thinking about the hiker who’d died on Peavine. I wondered how long it would take the snow to melt.

  When Bobo was a kitten, Dad used to dangle pieces of string for him. He always dangled them just high enough so Bobo couldn’t get at them, and he’d laugh and laugh, watching Bobo jump. “We’re going to enter this cat in the Olympics,” he said. “Look at him! He must’ve made three feet that time!”

  Bobo had lots of toys he could play with anytime he wanted, balls and catnip mice and crumpled-up pieces of paper I’d toss on the floor for him. But the minute Dad dangled that string, he’d stop playing with the stuff he could catch and go after the thing he couldn’t have.

  “Just like you,” Mom always told him, watching them. “Just like you, Bill, jumping at what you’ll never be able to get.”

  “Aw, now, Sherry! Why can’t we have a Lexus? Why can’t we have one of those fancy home theaters, huh?”

  I thought he was kidding. Maybe Mom did, too.

  When Dr. Mills dropped me off at home, David was gone, which was a good thing, because I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to look at him. Mom and Letty were still there. They tried to talk to me.

  I didn’t want to talk. I went straight up to my room and took off all the Gore-Tex and went to bed. I didn’t want to think about what we didn’t need anymore: the toys and the litter box and Bobo’s food and water bowls. I knew I’d have to throw it all away. Mom had told David he had to get me another cat, but how could I get another cat? David would just let it out again. When I got into bed, I remembered that the handheld was still in my jacket pocket, and somehow that hurt more than anything else. I pulled my pillow over my head and turned my face to the wall. The pillow blocked out a lot, but I still heard the phone, and I still heard the jangling bells when Letty left, and I still heard them again when David came in. I couldn’t block out the sounds of him and Mom yelling at each other, no matter how hard I tried.

  I got up and tried to do homework, but that just made me think about how I was going to have to go to school on Monday morning. I tried to read, but all the words seemed flat and tasteless, like week-old bread. So finally I just sat on my bed, staring out at the casinos. They looked so small from here, little boxes you could pick up and throw like dice. And then I heard a coyote, off in the other direction.

  Being good is one of the smallest boxes there is: Mom knows that, and so do I, and so did Dad. Mom was the only one who never complained about it, but what did I know? Maybe she hated it as much as I did. I didn’t see how she could like it. Maybe she felt like Dad said he’d always felt, like the walls were closing in on her. “If I could just get outside,” he always told me. “Working in that damn casino, no daylight anywhere, all those people watching you all the time, you just want to go outside and take a walk, Mike, you know what I mean?”

  After Dr. Mills drove me up to the mine, I knew what Dad meant. I sat there with the walls closing in on me, and I couldn’t breathe. I needed more room. I wanted to be outside with the coyotes, running around the outside of the boxes, invisible. Even if you try to watch a coyote to see what it’s doing, even if you try to track it, it will disappear on you. It will fade into the grass, into the sagebrush, into shadows. And you’ll know that wherever it is, it’s laughing.

  Sunday was quiet. David stayed in front of the TV, and I finally got my homework done, and Mom cleaned the house, humming to herself while she worked. She had to be on antibiotics for ten days, and she couldn’t work until the infection was gone. “Ten-day vacation,” she told me cheerfully, but she didn’t get paid vacations anymore than she got anything else. All it meant was ten days’ pay out of the nursing-school fund.

  Once I asked her what would happen if the Lyon County sheriff’s office saw her transmitter signal outside the building where she works. What if they tracked it and found her in a bar, or in a casino, or in a restaurant with a man? Would she go to jail?

  She’d shaken her head and said very gently, “No, honey, I’d just lose my job. And I’d never do that, because it would be stupid.” Because it would be like what Dad did, she meant. “Don’t worry.”

  When I got up on Monday morning, my stomach hurt already. I hadn’t been able to sleep very well, because I kept thinking about Bobo buried in the snow. I kept wondering about what I hadn’t been able to see, worrying that maybe there’d been some way to save him and I hadn’t figured it out.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of going to school. I couldn’t stand facing Johnny and Leon; I couldn’t stand the idea of going through all that and not being able to come home and have Bobo comfort me, curling up on my stomach the way he always did to get warm. I’d always been able to tell Bobo everything I couldn’t talk about to anybody else, and now he was gone.

  But I had to go to school, so I wouldn’t upset Mom.

  I had an algebra test first period. I knew the material; I could have done all the problems, but I couldn’t make my hands move. I just sat there and stared at the paper, and when Mrs. Ogilvy called time, I handed it in blank.

  She looked at it, and both her eyebrows went up. “Michael?”

  “I didn’t feel like it,” I said.

  “You didn’t—Michael, are you sick? Do you want to go to the nurse?”

  “No,” I said, and walked away, out into the hall, to my next class, which was English. We were talking about Julius Caesar. I sat against the back wall and fell asleep, and when the bell rang I got up and went to Biology, where we were dissecting frogs. Biology was always bad, because Johnny and Leon were in there. They grabbed the lab station next to mine, and whenever they thought they could get away with it they whispered, “Hey, Mike, know what we’re gonna do after school? Hey, Mike—we’re gonna drive down to Carson. We’re gonna drive down to Carson and fuck your mother!”

  Donna Mauro, my lab partner, said, “They are such jerks.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but I couldn’t even look at Donna, because I was too ashamed. I knew that everybody in school knew what my mother did, but that didn’t mean I liked it when Johnny and Leon reminded them. I wondered if one of Donna’s parents worked for the BLM and had talk
ed to Letty, but it could have been just about anybody.

  I stared down at the frog. We were supposed to be looking for the heart. I pretended it was Johnny instead, and sliced off a leg. Then I pretended it was Leon, and sliced off the other leg.

  Donna just watched me. “Um, Mike? What are you doing?”

  “I thought I’d have frog legs for lunch,” I said. My voice sounded weird to me, tinny. “Want one?”

  “Um—Mike, that’s cool, but we have to find the heart now.”

  I handed her the scalpel. “Here. You find the heart.”

  And then I turned and walked away.

  It was really easy, actually. I just walked out of the room, like I had to go to the bathroom but had forgotten to ask permission. Behind me I could hear Mr. Favaro, our teacher, saying something, and Donna answering, but the voices didn’t really reach me. I felt like I was inside a bubble: I could see outside, but everything was muffled, and no one could get inside. They’d just bounce off.

  It was wonderful.

  I walked along the hall, and Mr. Favaro ran up behind me, gabbling something. I had to listen really carefully to make out what he was saying. It sounded like he was on the moon. “Mike? Michael? Is there something you need to tell me?”

  I considered this. “No,” I said. If I’d been Leon or Johnny or one of the bad kids, Mr. Favaro probably would have yelled at me and told me to get back inside the room, now, but he was spooked because it was me acting this way. So he gabbled some more, and I ignored him, and finally he ran away in the other direction, toward the principal’s office.

  I just walked out the door. My jacket was back in my locker, but it was pretty warm out, at least in the sun, and I wasn’t cold. The bubble kept me warm. I started walking down a gully that angled down past the football field. I could hear voices behind me; I didn’t stop to try to figure out what they were saying. But then a van pulled up alongside the gully, and people got out, and the voices started again. “Michael. Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael.”