The Year's Best Science Fiction--Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  She got it then. “Frank! You took a contract from the frigging aliens?”

  “Sssh,” he said, as if every phone in America weren’t bugged. “It’s strictly confidential.”

  “Jesus,” she breathed out. She had done some crazy things for Frank, but this was over the top. “When, where, what?”

  “Leaving tonight. D.C. to St. Louis. A converted tour bus.”

  “Tour bus? How many of them are going?”

  “Two passengers. One human, one … whatever. Will you do it?”

  She looked into the immaculate condo living room, where her brother, Blake, and his husband, Jeff, were playing a noisy, fast-paced video game, oblivious to her conversation. She had promised to be at Blake’s concert tomorrow. It meant a lot to him. “Just a second,” she said to Frank.

  “I can’t wait,” he said.

  “Two seconds.” She muted the phone and walked into the living room. Blake saw her expression and paused the game.

  She said, “Would you hate me if I couldn’t be there tomorrow?”

  Disappointment, resignation, and wry acceptance crossed his face, as if he hadn’t ever really expected her to keep her promise. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A job,” she said. “A really important job. Never mind, I’ll turn it down.”

  “No, Ave, don’t worry. There will be other concerts.”

  Still, she hesitated. “You sure?” she said. She and Blake had always hung together, like castaways on a hostile sea. They had given each other courage to sail into the wind. To disappoint him felt disloyal.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Now I’ll be sorry if you stay.”

  She thumbed the phone on. “Okay, Frank, I’ll do it. This better not get me in trouble.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said. “I’ll email you instructions. Bye.”

  From the couch, Jeff said, “Now I know why you want to do it. Because it’s likely to get you in trouble.”

  “No, he gave me his word,” Avery said.

  “Cowboy Frank? The one who had you drive guns to Nicaragua?”

  “That was perfectly legal,” Avery said.

  Jeff had a point, as usual. Specialty Shipping did the jobs no reputable company would handle. Ergo, so did Avery.

  “What is it this time?” Blake asked.

  “I can’t say.” The email had come through; Frank had attached the instructions as if a PDF were more secure than email. She opened and scanned them.

  The job had been cleared by the government, but the client was the alien passenger, and she was to take orders only from him, within the law. She scanned the rest of the instructions till she saw the pickup time. “Damn, I’ve got to get going,” she said.

  Her brother followed her into the guest room to watch her pack up. He had never understood her nomadic lifestyle, which made his silent support for it all the more generous. She was compelled to wander; he was rooted in this home, this relationship, this warm, supportive community. She was a discarder, using things up and throwing them away; he had created a home that was a visual expression of himself—from the spare, Japanese-style furniture to the Zen colors on the walls. Visiting him was like living inside a beautiful soul. She had no idea how they could have grown up so different. It was as if they were foundlings.

  She pulled on her boots and shouldered her backpack. Blake hugged her. “Have a good trip,” he said. “Call me.”

  “Will do,” she said, and hit the road again.

  * * *

  The media had called the dome in Rock Creek Park the Mother Ship—but only because of its proximity to the White House, not because it was in any way distinctive. Like the others, it had appeared overnight, sited on a broad, grassy clearing that had been a secluded picnic ground in the urban park. It filled the entire creek valley, cutting off the trails and greatly inconveniencing the joggers and bikers.

  Avery was unprepared for its scale. Like most people, she had seen the domes only on TV, and the small screen did not do justice to the neck-craning reality. She leaned forward over the wheel and peered out the windshield as she brought the bus to a halt at the last checkpoint. The National Park Police pickup that had escorted her through all the other checkpoints pulled aside.

  The appearance of an alien habitat had set off a battle of jurisdictions in Washington. The dome stood on U.S. Park Service property, but D.C. Police controlled all the access streets, and the U.S. Army was tasked with maintaining a perimeter around it. No agency wanted to surrender a particle of authority to the others. And then there was the polite, well-groomed young man who had introduced himself as “Henry,” now sitting in the passenger seat next to her. His neatly pressed suit sported no bulges of weaponry, but she assumed he was CIA.

  She now saw method in Frank’s madness at calling her so spur of the moment. Her last-minute arrival had prevented anyone from pulling her aside into a cinderblock room for a “briefing.” Instead, Henry had accompanied her in the bus, chatting informally.

  “Say, while you’re on the road…”

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “The alien’s my client. I don’t spy on clients.”

  He paused a moment, but seemed unruffled. “Not even for your country?”

  “If I think my country’s in danger, I’ll get in touch.”

  “Fair enough,” he said pleasantly. She hadn’t expected him to give up so easily.

  He handed her a business card. “So you can get in touch,” he said.

  She glanced at it. It said “Henry,” with a phone number. No logo, no agency, no last name. She put it in a pocket.

  “I have to get out here,” he said when the bus rolled to halt a hundred yards from the dome. “It’s been nice meeting you, Avery.”

  “Take your bug with you,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The bug you left somewhere in this cab.”

  “There’s no bug,” he said seriously.

  Since the bus was probably wired like a studio, she shrugged and resolved not to scratch anywhere embarrassing till she had a chance to search. As she closed the door behind Henry, the soldiers removed the roadblock and she eased the bus forward.

  It was almost evening, but floodlights came on as she approached the dome. She pulled the bus parallel to the wall and lowered the wheelchair lift. One of the hexagonal panels slid aside, revealing a stocky, dark-haired young man in black glasses, surrounded by packing crates of the same pearly substance as the dome. Avery started forward to help with loading, but he said tensely, “Stay where you are.” She obeyed. He pushed the first crate forward and it moved as if on wheels, though Avery could see none. It was slightly too wide for the lift, so the man put his hands on either side and pushed in. The crate reconfigured itself, growing taller and narrower till it fit onto the platform. Avery activated the power lift.

  He wouldn’t let Avery touch any of the crates, but insisted on stowing them himself at the back of the bus, where a private bedroom suite had once accommodated a touring celebrity singer. When the last crate was on, he came forward and said, “We can go now.”

  “What about the other passenger?” Avery said.

  “He’s here.”

  She realized that the alien must have been in one of the crates—or, for all she knew, was one of the crates. “Okay,” she said. “Where to?”

  “Anywhere,” he said, and turned to go back into the bedroom.

  Since she had no instructions to the contrary, Avery decided to head south. As she pulled out of the park, there was no police escort, no helicopter overhead, no obvious trailing car. The terms of this journey had been carefully negotiated at the highest levels, she knew. Their security was to be secrecy; no one was to know where they were. Avery’s instructions from Frank had stressed that, aside from getting the alien safely where he wanted to go, insuring his privacy was her top priority. She was not to pry into his business or allow anyone else to do so.

  Rush hour traf
fic delayed them a long time. At first, Avery concentrated on putting as much distance as she could between the bus and Washington. It was past ten by the time she turned off the main roads. She activated the GPS to try and find a route, but all the screen showed was snow. She tried her phone, and the result was the same. Not even the radio worked. One of those crates must have contained a jamming device; the bus was a rolling electronic dead zone. She smiled. So much for Henry’s bugs.

  It was quiet and peaceful driving through the night. A nearly full moon rode in the clear autumn sky, and woods closed in around them. Once, when she had first taken up driving in order to escape her memories, she had played a game of heading randomly down roads she had never seen, getting deliberately lost. Now she played it again, not caring where she ended up. She had never been good at keeping to the main roads.

  By 3:00 she was tired, and when she saw the entrance to a state park, she turned and pulled into the empty parking lot. In the quiet after the engine shut off, she walked back through the kitchen and sitting area to see if there were any objections from her passengers. She listened at the closed door, but heard nothing and concluded they were asleep. As she was turning away, the door jerked open and the translator said, “What do you want?”

  He was still fully dressed, exactly as she had seen him before, except without the glasses, his eyes were a little bloodshot, as if he hadn’t closed them. “I’ve pulled over to get some sleep,” she said. “It’s not safe to keep driving without rest.”

  “Oh. All right,” he said, and closed the door.

  Shrugging, she went forward. There was a fold-down bunk that had once served the previous owner’s entourage, and she now prepared to use it. She brushed her teeth in the tiny bathroom, pulled a sleeping bag from her backpack, and settled in.

  * * *

  Morning sun woke her. When she opened her eyes, it was flooding in the windows. At the kitchen table a yard away from her, the translator was sitting, staring out the window. By daylight, she saw that he had a square face the color of teak and closely trimmed black beard. She guessed that he might be Latino, and in his twenties.

  “Morning,” she said. He turned to stare at her, but said nothing. Not practiced in social graces, she thought. “I’m Avery,” she said.

  Still he didn’t reply. “It’s customary to tell me your name now,” she said.

  “Oh. Lionel,” he answered.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  He said nothing, so she got up and went into the bathroom. When she came out, he was still staring fixedly out the window. She started making coffee. “Want some?” she asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Coffee.”

  “I ought to try it,” he said reluctantly.

  “Well, don’t let me force you,” she said.

  “Why would you do that?” He was studying her, apprehensive.

  “I wouldn’t. I was being sarcastic. Like a joke. Never mind.”

  “Oh.”

  He got up restlessly and started opening the cupboards. Frank had stocked them with all the necessities, even a few luxuries. But Lionel didn’t seem to find what he was looking for.

  “Are you hungry?” Avery guessed.

  “What do you mean?”

  Avery searched for another way to word the question. “Would you like me to fix you some breakfast?”

  He looked utterly stumped.

  “Never mind. Just sit down and I’ll make you something.”

  He sat down, gripping the edge of the table tensely. “That’s a tree,” he said, looking out the window.

  “Right. It’s a whole lot of trees.”

  “I ought to go out.”

  She didn’t make the mistake of joking again. It was like talking to a person raised by wolves. Or aliens.

  When she set a plate of eggs and bacon down in front of him, he sniffed it suspiciously. “That’s food?”

  “Yes, it’s good. Try it.”

  He watched her eat for a few moments, then gingerly tried a bite of scrambled eggs. His expression showed distaste, but he resolutely forced himself to swallow. But when he tried the bacon, he couldn’t bear it. “It bit my mouth,” he said.

  “You’re probably not used to the salt. What do you normally eat?”

  He reached in a pocket and took out some brown pellets that looked like dog kibble. Avery made a face of disgust. “What is that, people chow?”

  “It’s perfectly adapted to our nutritional needs,” Lionel said. “Try it.”

  She was about to say “no thanks,” but he was clearly making an effort to try new things, so she took a pellet and popped it in her mouth. It wasn’t terrible—chewy rather than crunchy—but tasteless. “I think I’ll stick to our food,” she said.

  He looked gloomy. “I need to learn to eat yours.”

  “Why? Research?”

  He nodded. “I have to find out how the feral humans live.”

  So, Avery reflected, she was dealing with someone raised as a pet, who was now being released into the wild. For whatever reason.

  “So where do you want to go today?” Avery said, sipping coffee.

  He gave an indifferent gesture.

  “You’re heading for St. Louis?”

  “Oh, I just picked that name off a map. It seemed to be in the center.”

  “That it is.” She had lived there once; it was so incorrigibly in the center there was no edge to it. “Do you want to go by any particular route?”

  He shrugged.

  “How much time do you have?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Okay. The scenic route, then.”

  She got up to clean the dishes, telling Lionel that this was a good time for him to go out, if he wanted to. It took him a while to summon his resolve. She watched out the kitchen window as he approached a tree as if to have a conversation with it. He felt its bark, smelled its leaves, and returned unhappy and distracted.

  Avery followed the same random-choice method of navigation as the previous night, but always trending west. Soon they came to the first ridge of mountains. People from western states talked as if the Appalachians weren’t real mountains, but they were—rugged and impenetrable ridges like walls erected to bar people from the land of milk and honey. In the mountains, all the roads ran northeast and southwest through the valleys between the crumpled land, with only the brave roads daring to climb up and pierce the ranges. The autumn leaves were at their height, russet and gold against the brilliant sky. All day long Lionel sat staring out the window.

  That night she found a half-deserted campground outside a small town. She refilled the water tanks, hooked up the electricity, then came back in. “You’re all set,” she told Lionel. “If it’s all right with you, I’m heading into town.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  It felt good to stretch her legs walking along the highway shoulder. The air was chill but bracing. The town was a tired, half-abandoned place, but she found a bar and settled down with a beer and a burger. She couldn’t help watching the patrons around her—worn-down, elderly people just managing to hang on. What would an alien think of America if she brought him here?

  Remembering that she was away from the interference field, she thumbed on her phone—and immediately realized that the ping would give away her location to the spooks. But since she’d already done it, she dialed her brother’s number and left a voice mail congratulating him on the concert she was missing. “Everything’s fine with me,” she said, then added mischievously, “I met a nice young man named Henry. I think he’s sweet on me. Bye.”

  Heading back through the night, she became aware that someone was following her. The highway was too dark to see who it was, but when she stopped, the footsteps behind her stopped, too. At last a car passed, and she wheeled around to see what the headlights showed.

  “Lionel!” she shouted. He didn’t answer, just stood there, so she walked back toward him. “Did you follow me?”

  He was standing with ha
nds in pockets, hunched against the cold. Defensively, he said, “I wanted to see what you would do when I wasn’t around.”

  “It’s none of your business what I do off duty. Listen, respecting privacy goes both ways. If you want me to respect yours, you’ve got to respect mine, okay?”

  He looked cold and miserable, so she said, “Come on, let’s get back before you freeze solid.”

  They walked side by side in silence, gravel crunching underfoot. At last he said stiffly, “I’d like to re-negotiate our contract.”

  “Oh, yeah? What part of the contract?”

  “The part about privacy. I…” He searched for words. “We should have asked for more than a driver. We need a translator.”

  At least he’d realized it. He might speak perfect English, but he was not fluent in Human.

  “My contract is with your … employer. Is this what he wants?”

  “Who?”

  “The other passenger. I don’t know what to call him. ‘The alien’ isn’t polite. What’s his name?”

  “They don’t have names. They don’t have a language.”

  Astonished, Avery said, “Then how do you communicate?”

  He glowered at her. She held up her hands. “Sorry. No offense intended. I’m just trying to find out what he wants.”

  “They don’t want things,” he muttered, gazing fixedly at the moonlit road. “At least, not like you do. They’re not … awake. Aware. Not like people are.”

  This made so little sense to Avery, she wondered if he were having trouble with the language. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You mean they’re not … sentient?”

  “They’re not conscious,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

  “But they have technology. They built those domes, or brought them here, or whatever the hell they did. They have an advanced civilization.”

  “I didn’t say they aren’t smart. They’re smarter than people are. They’re just not conscious.”

  Avery shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t imagine it.”

  “Yes, you can,” Lionel said impatiently. “People function unconsciously all the time. You’re not aware that you’re keeping your balance right now—you just do it automatically. You don’t have to be aware to walk, or breathe. In fact, the more skillful you are at something, the less aware you are. Being aware would just degrade their skill.”