The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “Certainly could,” Greg murmured.

  “I owe you an apology, Mr. Mandel,” Mike Wilson said.

  “Not a problem,” Greg assured him.

  “Congratulations,” Wilson said to Amanda. “So it was a burglary which went wrong, then. Which means it was a professional who broke in. That explains why we’ve been banging our heads against the wall.”

  “A pre-planned burglary, too, if he’d brought a forgery with him,” she said. “I bet Tyler would never have noticed it had gone.”

  “Which means it was someone who knew Tyler had the McCarthy on his wall, and how much it was worth.”

  Amanda went up to the McCarthy; and gave it a happy smile. “I’ll get forensics back to take a closer look at it,” she said.

  Three—Degrees of Guilt

  Greg managed three hours of sleep before Christine decided it was time to begin another bright new day. His eyes blinked open as her cries began. Nothing in focus, mouth tasted foul, limbs too heavy to move. Classic symptoms—if only it were a hangover, that would mean he’d enjoyed some of last night.

  “I’ll get her,” Eleanor grumbled.

  The duvet was tugged across him as she clambered out of bed and went over to the cot. “Isn’t it my turn?” he asked as the timber of the crying changed.

  “Oh, who cares?” Eleanor snapped back. “I just want her to shut up.”

  He did the brave thing, and kept quiet. In his army days he’d gone without sleep for days at a time during some of the covert missions deep into enemy territory. Oh, to be back in those halcyon times. Christine could teach the Jihad Legion a thing or two about tenacity.

  Eleanor started to change their daughter’s nappy.

  The doorbell rang. Greg knew he’d misheard that. When he squinted, the digital clock just made it into focus: 6:23. The bell went again. He and Eleanor stared at each other.

  “Who the hell … ?”

  Whoever they were, they started knocking.

  The hall tiles were cold against his feet as he hopped over them to the front door. He managed to pull his dressing gown shut just before he flicked the lock over and pulled the door open. A young man with broad bull shoulders had his arm raised to knock again.

  “What the bloody hell do you want?” Greg yelled. “Do you know what time it is?” Christine was wailing plaintively behind him.

  The young man’s defiance melted away into mild confusion. “Eleanor lives here doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Greg noticed what the man was wearing, a pair of dark dungarees with a cross stitched on the front, blue wool shirt, sturdy black leather boots. It was his turn for a recoil; he hadn’t seen a kibbutznik since the night he faced down Eleanor’s father. “Who are you?” He ordered a tiny secretion from his gland, imagining a tiny mushroom squirt of white liquid scudding around his brain, neurohormones soaking into synaptic clefts. Actually, the physiological function was nothing like that; picturing it at all was a psychological quirk that most Mindstar Brigade veterans employed. There’s no natural internal part of the human body which can be consciously activated; only muscles, and you can see that happen. So the mind copes by giving itself a picture of animation to explain the onrush of ethereal sensation. The result left him sensing an agitated haze of thoughts, entwined by grief. The man had forced himself to the Mandel farm against all kinds of deep-rooted doubts.

  “I’m Andy,” he said it as though puzzled that Greg didn’t already know … as though his name explained away everything. “Andy Broady. Eleanor’s brother.”

  Andy sat in a chair at the kitchen table, uncomfortable despite the cushion. He’d glanced around with a type of jealous surprise at the oak cupboards and tiled work surfaces. Greg followed his gaze with a mild embarrassment. The fittings were only a few years old, and Mrs. Owen came in to clean and help with Christine three times a week; but the room was still a mess. Baby bottles, washed and unwashed were all over the worktops, two linen baskets overflowing with clothes, packets of rusks, jars of puréed apple and other mushy, disgusting-tasting food were stacked in shop bags ready to be put away. Last night’s plates and dishes were waiting on top of the dishwasher. Big, rainbow-colored fabric toys underfoot. Half the broad ash table was littered with the financial printouts which Eleanor had generated as she worked through summaries of the citrus grove crop and market sales.

  Christine gurgled quietly in Andy’s lap, and he looked down at his new niece with guilty surprise. His lips twitched with a tentative smile. He held her with the stiff terror of every bachelor, frightened that he’d drop her, or she’d start crying, or burp, or choke or …

  “How old is she?”

  “Coming up six months.” Eleanor opened the dishwasher and retrieved three cups.

  “She’s lovely.”

  “Make me an offer, you can take her home with you today.”

  Andy’s head came up in shock. Greg gave him a reassuring wink. Eleanor filled the cups from the Twinings carton and put them in the microwave. Greg never used to like instant tea, quietly fancying himself as a reasonable cook. These days everything was in convenience units.

  Eleanor sat opposite her brother, and gave him a sympathetic look. “All right, what’s happened, Andy?”

  “Happened?”

  “You wouldn’t have come here otherwise.”

  He nodded reluctantly. “It’s dad. There was an accident.”

  “Oh, shit.” Eleanor let out a sigh, rubbing at her eyes. “How bad?”

  “He was hit by a car. We took him back home, but he can’t move. He hurts a lot, and he’s hot … like with fever. Coughs blood. Other end, too.”

  “And of course he won’t go to hospital.”

  Andy shook his head, too glum to speak.

  She put her hand on his arm, squeezing reassuringly. “Who’s looking after him?”

  “Paddy, but he’s not as good as you were at medicine and such. Don’t have real training. Dad didn’t want any of us to go to college for courses, not after you left. Said that all outside the kibbutz was an evil place, that it corrupts us.” He gave Greg a nervous glance. “Said that the devil stole you away.”

  “I wasn’t stolen, Andy; I was driven away. I saw what life can be like if you just have the courage to live it.” Her hand moved to Greg. “And have a little help.”

  He kissed the top of her head. Andy’s expression hardened.

  “I’m not arguing with you Andy,” she said. “But we’re all free to make choices. Even you, because I know he didn’t ask you to come up here today.”

  “So? Will you come and see him?”

  “Yes, Andy, I’ll come.”

  It was a funny kind of day to find the perfect definition of mixed feelings, Greg thought, but now here he was torn between complete disapproval and devotion. Didn’t want Eleanor to go anywhere near the kibbutz, let alone back inside, and couldn’t leave her to do it alone.

  It didn’t take long to drive to Egleton. The kibbutz was on the other side of the tiny village, on a flat expanse of land that bordered the road. One side of it was Rutland Water, a shoreline which ironically put only a short stretch of water between them and the Mandel farm’s citrus groves on the peninsula. Close in miles, but not in time.

  Eleanor had described the kibbutz to him often enough, there were even a few places on the farm where he could just make out their roofs over the top of the coconut palms they’d planted along their section of shore. Even so it came as a surprise. The buildings were all single-story, clumped together in three concentric rings with the church in the center. Long huts that were half house, half barn or stable. Unlike anything else built since the Warming, they didn’t have glossy black solar-panel roofs, just flat wooden slates. Brick chimney stacks fumed wisps of gray wood smoke into the clear sky. Beyond the outermost ring, a pair of donkeys were harnessed to a wooden pole, circling a brick well-shaft, turning some incredibly primitive pump.

  The fields surrounding the buildings were planted with corn, barley, maize and potato
es; dense clumps of kitchen vegetables in each one made them resemble oversized allotments. Some had fruit trees, small and wizened, with zigzag branches and dark-green glossy leaves. Greg drove the Ranger down a rough dirt track that indicated a boundary. They stopped at a gate in the maze of tall sturdy wooden fences which surrounded the buildings; paddocks and corrals containing goats, donkeys, cows, some elderly horses, llamas. Neither the crops nor the livestock were genetically modified varieties, Greg noticed.

  He busied himself unstrapping a sleeping Christine from her baby seat while Eleanor looked around her old home with pursed lips. She grunted abruptly, and pulled the first-aid case from the Ranger’s boot, slamming it down. They made quite a spectacle walking to the Broady home through the dried mud which filled the space between the buildings, while dogs barked and giant black turkeys waddled away squawking loudly. Several children ran alongside, giggling and calling to Andy. They seemed well fed, Greg thought, though their clothes were all homemade and patched. The adults still milling among the buildings eyed them suspiciously. Several must have recognized Eleanor; because they nudged each other and traded meaningful looks.

  Eleanor didn’t even hesitate when she reached the front door. Shoved it open and walked in. Greg and Andy followed. It was a single long room, brick oven with iron doors at one end, bed at the other, with a few simple pieces of furniture between. The walls were hung with pictures of Jesus and Mary. Windows had shutters rather than glass.

  A pale figure lay on the bed, covered by a single thin blanket. Greg probably wouldn’t have recognized Noel Broady. He’d only seen the old man once before, years ago, the night he met Eleanor. If any two people in the world were destined never to be friends, it was him and Noel.

  Now though, that stubborn face was sunken and sweating. Grey hair had thinned out, several days’ stubble furred his cheeks and chin, flecked with dry saliva.

  His eyes flickered open and he turned his head at the commotion. A dismissive grunt. “I told that boy not to go bother you.”

  “Andy’s not a boy anymore, father, he’s a man who makes his own decisions. If he wants to tell me about you, he can do.”

  “Stubborn. Stubborn.” He coughed, his shoulders quaking, and dropped his head back on the thin pillow. “Have you not yet learned God’s humility, girl?”

  “I respect God in my own way, father.”

  “By leaving us. By turning your back on Jesus and your family.” His finger rose to point at Greg. “By lying with that abomination. You live in sin, you will drown in sin.”

  “Greg is my husband now, father. You were invited to the wedding.”

  “I would not despoil all I have taught my flock by giving you my blessing.”

  “Really?” Eleanor put the first-aid case on the floor, and opened it. She took out the diagnostic patch, and applied it to the side of her father’s neck. He frowned his disapproval, but didn’t resist.

  “You have a granddaughter,” she said in a milder tone. She began running a handheld deep-scan sensor along his arms, switching to his ribcage. A picture of his skeleton built up in the cube of her Event Horizon laptop terminal.

  Noel’s weak gaze moved to the bundle riding in Greg’s papoose; for a moment surprise and a lonely smile lifted the exhaustion from his face.

  “She’s called Christine,” Greg said, moving closer so he could see. Christine stirred, yawning, her little arms wiggling about.

  “She looks handsome, a good strong child. I will pray for her.” Talking was a big effort for him, the words wheezing out. He coughed again, dabbing a pink-stained handkerchief to his lips.

  Eleanor took a breath, consulting the terminal cube again. Greg didn’t need his gland to see how worried she was.

  “Dad, you have to go to hospital.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got broken bones, and there’s a lot of internal damage, bleeding. You have to go.”

  “If God calls me, then I will go to Him. All things are written, all lives decreed.”

  “God gave us the knowledge to save ourselves … that’s why we’ve got doctors and medicine. They’re his gifts—are you going to throw them back in his face?”

  “How well I remember these arguments. Always questioning and testing, you were. There are even some nights when I miss them.” Noel gave her a thin smile. “How quickly you forget your scriptures. It was the serpent who gave us knowledge.”

  “Dad, please. It’s really bad. I can’t fix this sort of damage. You have to go to hospital. And quickly.”

  “I will not. Do not ask me again.”

  “Andy?” Eleanor appealed.

  “Your brother’s faith is strong, unlike yours. He respects all we have achieved, all we have built. Ours is a simple life, my dearest Eleanor. We live, and we believe. That is all. It is sufficient for any man. Everything else—his fast, plastic, electronic existence you have chosen—is the road to your own destruction. You can learn no values from it. It teaches you no respect for His glory.”

  “I value your life.”

  “As do I. And I have lived it true to myself. Would you take that dignity from me, even now? Would you punish me with your chemicals and mutilate me with your surgeon’s laser scalpels?”

  She turned to Greg, miserable and helpless. He put his arm around her, holding her tight. Noel was badly wrong about his own son, Greg sensed. Andy was desperate to intervene. There was a layer of fear and uncertainty running through his mind that was struggling to rise and express itself, held in check only by ingrained obedience. When he let his perception expand, Greg could feel a similar anxiety suffusing the entire kibbutz. It wasn’t just shock and worry that their leader was harmed; some other affliction was gnawing at them.

  “Well, I’m giving you some treatment anyway,” Eleanor said defiantly. She bent down to the first-aid case, and began selecting vials for the infuser. “You can’t run away from me.”

  Noel lay back, a degree of contentment showing. “The absence of pain is a strong temptation. I will succumb and pay my penance later.”

  Christine woke up and began her usual gurgle of interest at the world all around. “I’ll take her out,” Greg said. “Andy, could you give me a hand.”

  Andy gave his father an uncertain glance. Noel nodded permission.

  Outside, Greg turned so that Christine was shielded from the bright rising sun. The kibbutz had resumed its normal routine of activity, interest in the visitors discarded. He looked across the collection of worn buildings with a kind of annoyed bemusement. Ten years of his life had been spent in active rebellion against an oppressive government, a decade of pain and death and blood so that people could once again have a chance to gather some dignity and improve their lives. And here on his own doorstep this group strove to return to medievalism at its worst, burdened by everlasting manual labor and in thrall to evangelical priests who could never accept anyone else was even entitled to a different point of view. A community where progress is evil.

  The irony made him smile—something he would never have done before meeting Eleanor. A freedom fighter (now, anyway—after all, they were the ones writing the history files) appalled by the use to which his gift of freedom had been put. People … they’re such a pain in the arse.

  “He’s gonna die, isn’t he?”

  Greg bounced Christine about, enjoying her happy grin at the motion. “Yes, Andy, I think he is.” The young man knew it anyway, just needed to be told by someone else. As if saying it would make it so, would make it his fault.

  “I can’t believe it. Not him. He’s so strong … where it counts, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know it. I had to face him down once. Toughest fight in my life.”

  “That’s my father.” Andy was on the point of tears.

  “What happened?” Greg scanned the kibbutz again. “There’s no cars here, no traffic.”

  Andy’s arm was raised, pointing away over the fields toward the road. “There. We found him over there. Helped carry him back myself.
”

  “Can you show me, please?”

  They tramped over the sun-baked mud tracks, moving along the side of the tall fences, a long winding route. Andy was quiet as they walked. Nervous, Greg assumed, after years of being warned of the demon who had captured his big sister.

  “This is where we found him,” Andy said eventually.

  They were on a stretch of track running between two of the fences. Two hundred meters away toward Oakham was a gate which opened onto the tiny road linking Egleton with the A6003: a hundred meters in the other direction it led out into a paddock with other tracks and footpaths spreading off over the kibbutz land, a regular motorway intersection.

  Greg knelt down beside the fence where Andy indicated. A herd of cattle on the other side watched them idly, chewing on the few blades of grass they could find amid the buttercups. The three lower bars of the fence were splintered, bowing inward; and they were thick timber. It had taken a lot of force to cause that much damage. They had some short paint streaks along them, dark blue; a dusting of chrome flakes lay on the mud. Greg stood and tried to work out the angle of the impact. The car or whatever would have had to veer very sharply to dint the fence in such a fashion. It wasn’t as though it would be swerving to avoid oncoming traffic.

  “Was he right up against the fence?” Greg asked.

  “Yeah, almost underneath it when we found him.”

  “Did he say what happened?”

  “Not much. Just that the car was big, and it had its headlights on full. Then it hit him, he got trapped between it and the fence.”

  “Headlights? Was it nighttime?”

  “No. It was early evening, still light.”

  “Did anyone else see it happen?”

  “No. We started searching when he didn’t turn up for evening chapel. It was dark by then; didn’t find him till after ten.”

  “What about the car?” Greg indicated the gate onto the road. “It must have come from that direction, where was it going?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t come to us; haven’t had no visitors for a while. We’re the only ones that use this bit of track. It’s the quickest way out to the road.”