The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF

by Gardner Dozois

“I do not know how to respond, Mr. Beaumont. You have the list. Read it now and tell me please with which item you have a problem.”

  I snatched the hundred dollars from him and jammed it into my pants pocket. “Why don’t you trust me?”

  He stiffened as if I had hit him.

  “I let you stay here. I didn’t tell anyone. You have to give me something, Mr. Cross.”

  “Well then . . .” He looked uncomfortable. “I would ask you to keep the change.”

  “Oh jeez, thanks.” I snorted in disgust. “Okay, okay, I’ll buy this stuff right after school tomorrow.”

  With that, he seemed to lose interest again. When we opened the Risk board, he showed me where his island was, except it wasn’t there because it was too small. We played three games and he crushed me every time. I remember at the end of the last game, watching in disbelief as he finished building a wall of invading armies along the shores of North Africa. South America, my last continent, was doomed. “Looks like you win again,” I said. I traded in the last of my cards for new armies and launched a final, useless counter-attack. When I was done, he studied the board for a moment.

  “I think Risk is not a proper simulation, Mr. Beaumont. We should both lose for fighting such a war.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “Both sides can’t lose.”

  “Yet they can,” he said. “It sometimes happens that the victors envy the dead.”

  That night was the first time I can remember being bothered by Mom talking back to the TV. I used to talk to the TV too. When Buffalo Bob asked what time it was, I would screech It’s Howdy Doody Time, just like every other kid in America.

  “My fellow citizens,” said President Kennedy, “let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out.” I thought the president looked tired, like Mr. Newell on the third day of a campout. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

  “Oh my god!” Mom screamed at him. “You’re going to kill us all!”

  Despite the fact that it was close to her bedtime and she was shouting at the President of the United States, Mom looked great. She was wearing a shiny black dress and a string of pearls. She always got dressed up at night, whether Dad was home or not. I suppose most kids don’t notice how their mothers look, but everyone always said how beautiful Mom was. And since Dad thought so too, I went along with it – as long as she didn’t open her mouth. The problem was that a lot of the time, Mom didn’t make any sense. When she embarrassed me, it didn’t matter how pretty she was. I just wanted to crawl behind the couch.

  “Mom!”

  As she leaned toward the television, the martini in her glass came close to slopping over the edge.

  President Kennedy stayed calm. “The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are – but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high – but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”

  “Shut up! You foolish man, stop this!” She shot out of her chair and then some of her drink did spill. “Oh, damn!”

  “Take it easy, Mom.”

  “Don’t you understand?” She put the glass down and tore a Kleenex from the box on the end table. “He wants to start World War III!” She dabbed at the front of her dress and the phone rang.

  I said, “Mom, nobody wants World War III.”

  She ignored me, brushed by, and picked up the phone on the third ring.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. I could tell from the sound of her voice that it was Dad. “You heard him then?” She bit her lip as she listened to him. “Yes, but .

  Watching her face made me sorry I was in the sixth grade. Better to be a stupid little kid again, who thought grown-ups knew everything. I wondered whether Cross had heard the speech.

  “No, I can’t, Dave. No.” She covered the phone with her hand. “Raymie, turn off that TV!”

  I hated it when she called me Raymie, so I only turned the sound down.

  “You have to come home now, Dave. No, you listen to me. Can’t you see, the man’s obsessed? Just because he has a grudge against Castro doesn’t mean he’s allowed to . . .”

  With the sound off, Chet Huntley looked as if he were speaking at his own funeral.

  “I am not going in there without you.”

  I think Dad must have been shouting, because Mom held the receiver away from her ear.

  She waited for him to calm down and said, “And neither is Raymie. He’ll stay with me.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I said. I bounced off the couch. The look she gave me stopped me dead.

  “What for?” she said to Dad. “No, we are going to finish this conversation, David, do you hear me?”

  She listened for a moment. “Okay, all right, but don’t you dare hang up.” She waved me over and slapped the phone into my hand as if I had put the missiles in Cuba. She stalked to the kitchen.

  I needed a grown-up so bad that I almost cried when I heard Dad’s voice. “Ray,” he said, “your mother is pretty upset.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I want to come home – I will come home – but I can’t just yet. If I just up and leave and this blows over, I’ll get fired.”

  “But, Dad . . .”

  “You’re in charge until I get there. Understand, son? If the time comes, everything is up to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered. I’d heard what he didn’t say – it wasn’t up to her.

  “I want you to go out to the shelter tonight. Wait until she goes to sleep. Top off the water drums. Get all the gas out of the garage and store it next to the generator. But here’s the most important thing. You know the sacks of rice? Drag them off to one side, the pallet too. There’s a hatch underneath, the key to the airlock door unlocks it. You’ve got two new guns and plenty of ammunition. The revolver is a .357 Magnum. You be careful with that, Ray, it can blow a hole in a car but it’s hard to aim. The double-barreled shotgun is easy to aim but you have to be close to do any harm. And I want you to bring down the Gamemaster from my closet and the .38 from my dresser drawer.” He had been talking as if there would be no tomorrow; he paused then to catch his breath. “Now, this is all just in case, okay? I just want you to know.”

  I had never been so scared in my life.

  “Ray?”

  I should have told him about Cross then, but Mom weaved into the room. “Got it, Dad,” I said. “Here she is.”

  Mom smiled at me. It was a lopsided smile that was trying to be brave but wasn’t doing a very good job of it. She had a new glass and it was full. She held out her hand for the phone and I gave it to her.

  I remember waiting until almost ten o’clock that night, reading under the covers with a flashlight. The Fantastic Four invaded Latveria to defeat Doctor Doom; Superman tricked Mr. Mxyzptlk into saying his name backward once again. When I opened the door to my parents’ bedroom, I could hear Mom snoring. It spooked me; I hadn’t realized that women did that. I thought about sneaking in to get the guns, but decided to take care of them tomorrow.

  I stole out to the shelter, turned my key in the lock and pulled on the bulkhead door. It didn’t move. That didn’t make any sense, so I gave it a hard yank. The steel door rattled terribly but did not swing away. The air had turned frosty and the sound carried in the cold. I held my breath, listening to my blood pound. The house stayed dark, the shelter quiet as stones. After a few moments, I tried one last time before I admitted to myself what had happened.

  Cross had bolted the door shut from the inside.

  I went back to my room, but couldn’t sleep. I kept going to the window to watch the sky over New York, waiting for a flash of killing light. I was all but convinced that the city would burn that very night in the thermonuclear fire and that Mom and I would die horrible deaths soon after, pounding o
n the unyielding steel doors of our shelter. Dad had left me in charge and I had let him down.

  I didn’t understand why Cross had locked us out. If he knew that a nuclear war was about to start, he might want our shelter all to himself. But that made him a monster and I still didn’t see him as a monster. I tried to tell myself that he’d been asleep and couldn’t hear me at the door – but that couldn’t be right. What if he’d come to prevent the war? He’d said he had business in the city on Thursday; he could be doing something really, really futuristic in there that he couldn’t let me see. Or else he was having problems. Maybe our twentieth-century germs had got to him, like they killed H. G. Wells’s Martians.

  I must have teased a hundred different ideas apart that night, in between uneasy trips to the window and glimpses at the clock. The last time I remember seeing was quarter after four. I tried to stay up to face the end, but I couldn’t.

  I wasn’t dead when I woke up the next morning, so I had to go to school. Mom had Cream of Wheat all ready when I dragged myself to the table. Although she was all bright and bubbly, I could feel her giving me the mother’s eye when I wasn’t looking. She always knew when something was wrong. I tried not to show her anything. There was no time to sneak out to the shelter; I barely had time to finish eating before she bundled me off to the bus.

  Right after the morning bell, Miss Toohey told us to open The Story of New York State to Chapter Seven, “Resources and Products,” and read to ourselves. Then she left the room. We looked at each other in amazement. I heard Bobby Coniff whisper something. It was probably dirty; a few kids snickered. Chapter Seven started with a map of product symbols. Two teeny little cows grazed near Binghamton. Rochester was a cog and a pair of glasses. Elmira was an adding machine, Oswego an apple. There was a lightning bolt over Niagara Falls. Dad had promised to take us there someday. I had the sick feeling that we’d never get the chance. Miss Toohey looked pale when she came back, but that didn’t stop her from giving us a spelling test. I got a ninety-five. The word I spelled wrong was enigma. The hot lunch was American Chop Suey, a roll, a salad, and a bowl of butterscotch pudding. In the afternoon, we did decimals.

  Nobody said anything about the end of the world.

  I decided to get off the bus in Ward’s Hollow, buy the stuff Cross wanted and pretend I didn’t know he had locked the shelter door last night. If he said something about it, I’d act surprised. If he didn’t . . . I didn’t know what I’d do then.

  Village Variety was next to Warren’s Esso and across the street from the Post Office. It had once been two different stores located in the same building, but then Mr. Rudowski had bought the building and knocked down the dividing wall. On the fun side were pens and pencils and paper and greeting cards and magazines and comics and paperbacks and candy. The other side was all boring hardware and small appliances.

  Mr. Rudowski was on the phone when I came in, but then he was always on the phone when he worked. He could sell you a hammer or a pack of baseball cards, tell you a joke, ask about your family, complain about the weather and still keep the guy on the other end of the line happy. This time though, when he saw me come in, he turned away, wrapping the phone cord across his shoulder.

  I went through the store quickly and found everything Cross had wanted. I had to blow dust off the transistor radio box but the batteries looked fresh. There was only one New York Times left; the headlines were so big they were scary.

  US IMPOSES ARMS BLOCKADE ON CUBA ON FINDING OF OFFENSIVE MISSILE SITES: KENNEDY READY FOR SOVIET SHOWDOWN

  Ships Must Stop President Grave Prepared to Risk War

  I set my purchases on the counter in front of Mr. Rudowski. He cocked his head to one side, trapping the telephone receiver against his shoulder, and rang me up. The paper was on the bottom of the pile.

  “Since when do you read the Times, Ray?” Mr. Rudowski punched it into the cash register and hit total. “I just got the new Fantastic Four.” The cash drawer popped open.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

  “All right then. It comes to twelve dollars and forty-seven cents.”

  I gave him the hundred-dollar bill.

  “What is this, Ray?” He stared at it and then at me.

  I had my story all ready. “It was a birthday gift from my grandma in Detroit. She said I could spend it on whatever I wanted so I decided to treat myself, but I’m going to put the rest in the bank.”

  “You’re buying a radio? From me?”

  “Well, you know. I thought maybe I should have one with me with all this stuff going on.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just pulled a paper bag from under the counter and put my things into it. His shoulders were hunched; I thought maybe he felt guilty about overcharging for the radio. “You should be listening to music, Ray,” he said quietly. “You like Elvis? All kids like Elvis. Or maybe that colored guy, the one who does the Twist?”

  “They’re all right, I guess.”

  “You’re too young to be worrying about the news. You hear me? Those politicians . . .” He shook his head. “It’s going to be okay, Ray. You heard it from me.”

  “Sure, Mr. Rudowski. I was wondering, could I get five dollars in change?”

  I could feel him watching me as I stuffed it all into my book bag. I was certain he’d call my mom, but he never did. Home was three miles up Cobb’s Hill. I did it in forty minutes, a record.

  I remember I started running when I saw the flashing lights. The police car had left skid marks in the gravel on our driveway.

  “Where were you?” Mom burst out of the house as I came across the lawn. “Oh, my God, Raymie, I was worried sick.” She caught me up in her arms.

  “I got off the bus in Ward’s Hollow.” She was about to smother me; I squirmed free. “What happened?”

  “This the boy, ma’am?” The state trooper had taken his time catching up to her. He had almost the same hat as Scoutmaster Newell.

  “Yes, yes! Oh, thank God, officer!”

  The trooper patted me on the head like I was a lost dog. “You had your mom worried, Ray.”

  “Raymie, you should’ve told me.”

  “Somebody tell me what happened!” I said.

  A second trooper came from behind the house. We watched him approach. “No sign of any intruder.” He looked bored; I wanted to scream.

  “Intruder?” I said.

  “He broke into the shelter,” said Mom. “He knew my name.”

  “There was no sign of forcible entry,” said the second trooper. I saw him exchange a glance with his partner. “Nothing disturbed that I could see.”

  “He didn’t have time,” Mom said. “When I found him in the shelter, I ran back to the house and got your father’s gun from the bedroom.”

  The thought of Mom with the .38 scared me. I had my Shooting merit badge, but she didn’t know a hammer from a trigger. “You didn’t shoot him?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “He had plenty of time to leave but he was still there when I came back. That’s when he said my name.”

  I had never been so mad at her before. “You never go out to the shelter.”

  She had that puzzled look she always gets at night. “I couldn’t find my key. I had to use the one your father leaves over the breezeway door.”

  “What did he say again, ma’am? The intruder.”

  “He said, ‘Mrs. Beaumont, I present no danger to you.’ And I said, ‘Who are you?’ And then he came toward me and I thought he said ‘Margaret,’ and I started firing.”

  “You did shoot him!”

  Both troopers must have heard the panic in my voice. The first one said, “You know something about this man, Ray?”

  “No, I-I was at school all day and then I stopped at Rudowski’s . . .” I could feel my eyes burning. I was so embarrassed; I knew I was about to cry in front of them.

  Mom acted annoyed that the troopers had stopped paying attention to her. “I shot at him. Three, four times, I don’t know. I
must have missed, because he just stood there staring at me. It seemed like forever. Then he walked past me and up the stairs like nothing had happened.”

  “And he didn’t say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Well, it beats me,” said the second trooper. “The gun’s been fired four times but there are no bullet holes in the shelter and no bloodstains.”

  “You mind if I ask you a personal question, Mrs. Beaumont?” the first trooper said.

  She colored. “I suppose not.”

  “Have you been drinking, ma’am?”

  “Oh that!” She seemed relieved. “No. Well, I mean, after I called you, I did pour myself a little something. Just to steady my nerves. I was worried because my son was so late and . . . Raymie, what’s the matter?”

  I felt so small. The tears were pouring down my face.

  After the troopers left, I remember Mom baking brownies while I watched Superman. I wanted to go out and hunt for Cross, but it was already sunset and there was no excuse I could come up with for wandering around in the dark. Besides, what was the point? He was gone, driven off by my mother. I’d had a chance to help a man from the future change history, maybe prevent World War III, and I had blown it. My life was ashes.

  I wasn’t hungry that night, for brownies or spaghetti or anything, but Mom made that clucking noise when I pushed supper around the plate, so I ate a few bites just to shut her up. I was surprised at how easy it was to hate her, how good it felt. Of course, she was oblivious, but in the morning she would notice if I wasn’t careful. After dinner, she watched the news and I went upstairs to read. I wrapped a pillow around my head when she yelled at David Brinkley. I turned out the lights at 8:30, but I couldn’t get to sleep. She went to her room a little after that.

  “Mr. Beaumont?”

  I must have dozed off, but when I heard his voice I snapped awake immediately.

  “Is that you, Mr. Cross?” I peered into the darkness. “I bought the stuff you wanted.” The room filled with an awful stink, like when Mom drove with the parking brake on.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “I am damaged.”

  I slipped out of bed, picked my way across the dark room, locked the door and turned on the light.