The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  "What do you see?" the doctor asked. I told her. When I turned back, the echo was gone.

  And I began to understand, however vaguely, what the echoes truly were ... I went home about two weeks later, and though the number of echoes increased when I did, they no longer terrified me the way they had; with Dr. Carroll's help-mainly concentration techniques-I was able to reduce them to the level of background noise, like a television set accidentally left on. And I began noticing other things about them: how some echoes looked as real, as three-dimensional, as I did; how others seemed curiously flat, like watercolors painted on the air; bow still others were vague, hazily defined, flickering in and out of existence as though their purchase on reality was tenuous at best. As the years passed and my vocabulary increased, my ability to describe what I saw increased with it-and I dutifully reported everything to Dr. Carroll.

  I returned to school, but found that my absence had only made things worse for me there; word had gotten out that I'd checked into a hospital, and though "nervous exhaustion" may be relatively value-neutral for adults, for children it is one more way to set someone apart. My classmates-some of them-would call out to me in the hallway, "Hey, Nervous!" Or, "Hey, Nervie!" If I objected, got angry, they just made a bigger deal of it: "Hey, Nervie, take it easy! Don't wanna go back to the bughouse!" All I could do was ignore them as best I could; if I could ignore the echoes, I told myself, I could ignore anything.

  But even the classmates who didn't actively torment me shied away from me, and my loneliness went from tolerable to profound. I didn't mention it to my parents on the reasonable and usually accurate assumption that parents only made things like this worse; I stuck it out until I moved on into high school, where I thought I could melt unobtrusively into a larger student body, and where-amid the normal quotient of violence, drugs, and gangs-I hoped a week in a mental hospital was hardly worth mentioning. But there were still those who remembered, still those who took delight in harassing me; my only solace was my music, and my only friend, Dr. Carroll.

  Most if not all of any echoes made the transition to high school with me; but the majority, luckily, seemed to take no notice of me-they walked, talked, laughed, and moved like images on a movie screen that just happened to be the world. A few, like Robert, continued to interact with me occasionally. Sometimes they would try to do this in the middle of a class, and I had to do my best to not react, to keep my expression stony. They never seemed to appear during my piano lessons with Professor Laangan, and I finally realized why: there was only one piano in my instructor's home, and while I was sitting at it, I couldn't see any of the echoes who were doubtless occupying that same space. On occasion, however, I heard snatches of melody, other hands fingering other keys in some other reality: some not as well as I, some just as well, and some, to my great annoyance, better than I. On rare occasions, an echo found me alone, as on one overcast day in March, as I walked home from school to find a smiling Robert pacing me, paint-box tucked under one arm.

  "Hi," he said. I looked around. There was no one else on the street; it didn't much matter if I answered him or not. Perhaps it was a mark of my loneliness that I wanted to answer him.

  "Hi," I said. Like me, Robert was entering puberty, but unlike me, it seemed to agree with him. I was a slow starter, short and flat where my classmates were growing taller and rounder. Robert was going through a normal growth spurt, filling out, becoming more muscular; his voice was deeper too. More and more I felt uncomfortable around him, uncomfortable with the feelings he evoked in me. But I tried to be friendly; I smiled. "See you got that paint-box for Christmas," I said. "Yeah, it's great. You get that sequencing program you wanted?"

  It had been so long I'd almost forgotten. I nodded. We walked in silence a long moment, then he said, quietly, "I wish we could be together."

  I felt suddenly anxious. "I ... don't think that's possible," I said, picking up my pace just a little.

  He thought a moment, then nodded sadly. "Yeah. I guess not," he said. Then he shrugged.

  Something occurred to me, then. "Do you ... see them?" I asked. "The others?"

  He looked at me with puzzlement. "’Others'?"

  No; clearly, he didn't. "Never mind," I said. "Well. See you."

  I started to veer off the path we'd been sharing-but he reached out, as though to take my hand! I'm sure he couldn't, not really, but I never found out; I flinched, pulled back my hand before he made-or didn't make-contact. He looked hurt. "Do you have to go?"

  Something in his eyes, his tone, disturbed me. Suddenly this felt wrong; unnatural.

  "I- I'm sorry," I said, turning. I hurried off down the street; he didn't follow, but stood staring after me for what seemed the longest time. I kept walking, head down, and when I finally looked back, lie was no longer there, as though the wind itself had taken him.

  "Why can they see me, but not each other?"

  By now most of my sessions with Dr. Carroll resembled physics lessons more than psychotherapy; we would sit in her office and discuss all the books she'd given me, the ones comprehensible to a teenager, and she could now give more sophisticated answers to my questions than she could a few years ago.

  "Because you're the observer," she explained. "They're just ... probability wave functions. You're real; they just have the potential to be real." She thought a moment, then added, "Actually, some of them can see each other-the ones in your hospital room, the ones who 'split off' from you fairly recently."

  "Robert seems awfully real for someone who isn't."

  She got up, poured herself a cup of coffee. "Well, some of the echoes had more potential to be real than others. Obviously, at some point your parents seriously considered having a boy, as well as genetically enhancing his artistic skills. The more chance that that 'you' might actually have been born, the more real their echo seems to you."

  I shook my head. "I've read all this stuff," I said, "and it seems to me like everybody should have these echoes."

  "We probably do," she allowed. "For all we know everyone on Earth may be a nexus of an infinite number of probability lines, with the more likely waves creating artifacts-echoes. More today, maybe, than ever before, with the advent of genetic engineering. Thirty years ago, there were only a limited number of combinations possible from a normal conception; now there are billions."

  "So why can I see mine, but you can't see yours?"

  She sat down at her desk again and sighed.

  "Sometimes," she said with a smile, "I think we have as many theories as you have echoes. Kohler draws an interesting analogy. Zygotes grow by cellular proliferation-one cell becoming two, two becoming four-and differentiation, that is, some cells become muscle, some nerve, et cetera. Probability waves, the theory goes, proliferate in much the same way-one wave splitting in two, the second differentiating from the first on a quantum level, creating various quantum , ghosts.' Perhaps you remember the quantum split in the same way the body remembers things on a cellular level. Perhaps the process of enhancement creates some structural change in the brain that enables you to see the echoes."

  "In other words," I said, "you don't know."

  She shrugged. "We know more than we did when you first came here, but that's only been a few years. Chances are it will be another generation before we have enough-forgive me-enough autopsies to collect a decent amount of data."

  I envisioned my body lying inert on a laboratory table, my skull split open like a coconut, scientists studying the ridges of my brain like tea readers. The image stayed with me for days. Sometimes the worst part of my "ability" was that it reminded me too clearly, too consistently, of my origins. My musical talent was all I had, I clung to it desperately, but at times I had to wonder how special, how real, was a talent that had been so carefully graphed, mapped, plotted. I tried not to dwell on it, but it was hard not to; hard to fight off the depressions which took periodic hold of me. And they often came at the worst times.

  In March of my senior year my parents, Professor
Laangan, and I took the train to New York City, where I auditioned for the Juilliard School. My audition pieces, I had decided, would be Chopin's Etude in E major, a prelude and fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata, and my longtime favorite, Alessandro Marcello's Concerto in D minor. The Marcello, originally written for oboe and orchestra, I would play in a reduction for piano, but I needed someone to perform the orchestral part of the score (Juilliard had only recently allowed the use of concerti at auditions, but still didn't permit computerized accompaniment), and Professor Laangan had graciously agreed to do so at a second piano. As the train hurtled closer to New York I felt thrilled, energized, terrified-all normal things to be feeling, to be sure. But as I walked into the classroom and faced the panel of three Juilliard instructors, my insecurities surged up inside me. I imagined that they were all looking at me as though they knew, as though I bore some stigmata instantly identifying me as a fraud, a genetic cheat (though I told myself that I could hardly be unique in that, here at Juilliard). At the piano I hesitated a long moment, trying to stave off my self-consciousness and fear, unable to look the faculty panel in the eye ... until Professor Laangan prompted me by clearing his throat, and, unable to put it off any longer, I took a deep breath and launched into the -Otude. As soon as I began playing, thank God, my fears vanished. I was no longer a gene freak, I was no longer even Kathy Brannon, I was the instrument of this music, the medium through which it came to life two centuries after it was written, and that was enough.

  After Chopin came Bach, and after Bach, the complex counterpoint of Carter's Sonata; and then Professor Laangan took his place at a second piano, and together we began the concerto. I had played the others well enough, I knew, but this piece was different; this I felt deeply, and as I played, I understood for the first time why it held such special attraction for me. As I played the first movement, the Andante with its sweep and eloquence, its sometimes breathless pace, it seemed to represent all the promise and impatience of youth-my promise, the promise that my parents had instilled in me. I segued into the second movement, that sense of bright expectation replaced by the slow, haunting strains of the Adagio, at once lyrical and sad-mirroring the turns my own life had taken, the shifting harmonies sounding to me like the raised voices of ghosts, of echoes. And finally the third movement, the Presto, returning to the faster pace of the first-lighter of heart, a structure to it that seemed to promise a calmer, more ordered existence. No wonder I loved it; I was living it.

  When I finished the instructors smiled and thanked me, impossible to read their expressions, but I didn't care-I knew I had done well, that I had exhibited both technique and feeling, and, more importantly, that I had done the best I was capable of. My parents, the professor, and I celebrated with an early dinner at Tavern on the Green, the took the 7:00 train back to Washington; and as the train cleaved the darkness around us, I felt as happy, as secure, as I had ever felt.

  The feeling, of course, did not last long. I returned to school the next day, where I was judged-where I judged myself-on a different standard. Ever the outsider, I would walk alone from class to class, but all around me-in the halls, on the grounds, in the cafeteria-my echoes walked and talked and laughed with unseen orbers: friends I could not see, friends I would never know. Blonde Kathi was now a cheerleader, always laughing, always surrounded (I imagined) by hordes of well-wishers-, I watched her flirt with unseen admirers and I wondered how she found the courage, I longed to do the same. Another echo, a flautist, walked by in her band uniform, nodding and talking to other (invisible) band members, and I coveted that uniform, the solidarity it represented; there was no place for a pianist in a high school band, and no time for me to learn another instrument. Even bratty, bitchy Katia seemed to have friends, God knew how; what was so wrong with me?

  At night, as I lay in bed, it became harder and harder to ignore the echoes swarming in the darkness. The red-haired Kathy with perfect, genetically sculptured features undressed by my wardrobe closet, casting no reflection in the mirrored door, but I saw every perfect curve of her body outlined in the moonlight: full breasts where mine had barely budded, baby fat long gone, wavy hair cascading down her back. I looked away. The gymnast, tall and lithe, was doing yoga at the foot of my bed; she moved with grace and assurance, with a serene confidence in her body and herself that I lacked, that I envied. Glancing away, I caught a flickering glimpse of a male echo-not Robert or the mathematician but another boy, a football player I think-taking off his clothes. His image was vague and tenuous-a more remote potential for existence, I suppose-but I could still make out his wide shoulders, his muscled torso, thick penis hanging like a rope between his legs, and in a way I envied him too, his apparent strength, his male power. Sometimes it felt as though I lacked any power over my life, and he-and the gymnast, and the redhead-seemed to have so much strength, so much confidence. It wasn't fair. Any of them could have been me, I could have been them, it wasn't fair.

  Dr. Carroll tried to convince me that I couldn't, shouldn't compare myself to the echoes; you can't bold yourself up, she said, to every infinite possibility, every unrealized ambition. I knew she was right, but I was feeling particularly insecure; it bad been weeks since my audition in New York, and still no word from Juilliard. I told her I was afraid I might not get in, she assured me I would ... and then, after a moment's hesitation, she added, "And even if you don't, there are other ways you can use your gifts."

  I nodded; sighed. "I know. There are plenty of colleges with fine music departments around, but Juilliard-"

  "I didn't mean your music," she said. "I meant your other gift."

  I blinked, not understanding at first; I hardly thought of it as a gift. "What do you mean?" I asked, a bit warily.

  She shrugged. "You have a unique skill, Kathy. You see possibilities. I know for a fact that there are others, with the same ability, who've put that talent to work."

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  "In research," she explained. "Think about it. In medical research, for instance, certain decisions are made in the course of an experiment; combinations of chemicals, of drugs, chains of combinations. Sometimes you work months, years, only to find out it's a dead end.

  "But someone like you-simply by becoming part of the experiment-can change all that. You make one decision, one we may even know the outcome of in advance-and a whole spectrum of potential outcomes is created, echoes, some of which you may be able to communicate with. You could save weeks or months or years of precious work time, hasten the invention of cures, speed up the pace of science a hundredfold. People's lives might be saved who would otherwise die waiting for drugs to be developed, vaccines created."

  It sounded like a sales pitch. I looked at her; my face must have been ashen. I thought of the flowered barrettes she had given me, and knew I would never be able to look at them again in the same way.

  I stood up, feeling lost, feeling sick. "I have to go."

  Realizing she'd overplayed her hand, Dr. Carroll stood as well. "Kathy-"

  "I have to go." And I fairly well ran to the door, not listening to her frantic calls, and I never went back.

  That night, the sobbing echo appeared again, crying herself to sleep in a corner of my bed; I lay in the dark, ear plugs a poor insulation from her cries, wanting desperately to take up her lament, to join her in her sad chorus, knowing I could not; I must not. As terrible as that night was, I told myself that the Adagio had to end sometime ... didn't it?

  Word came two weeks later: I was accepted to Juilliard. I was ecstatic at the thought. Not just the opportunity to study at the world's most renowned college for the performing arts, but the chance to start fresh in a new city, a new school, where no one knew me and no one would ever call me "Nervie" again. Mother and Father went to New York with me to find me a place to live, no dorm rooms being available in Rose Hall; they were sad to see me leave Virginia, but jubilant that I had (they believed) overcome my "problems" and was "ful
filling my potential"-and their expectations.

  After a week of apartment-hunting we finally found a small, unremarkable one-bedroom on West 117the Street, near Columbia University. Once, it had probably been a nice enough neighborhood; now it was somewhere between a funky off-campus environment and a war zone, with gangs, drugs, and streetwalkers a stone's throw from my building. My parents were quietly horrified, but as I stood there in the empty flat with its bare floors and scabrous walls, I felt almost delirious with joy: because the flat truly was empty, empty of echoes, of ghosts: for the first time in five years, I was alone. Over my parents' reservations I signed a one-year lease, went back to Virginia to pack and ship my belongings, and by summer's end was living in New York, truly "on my own" in a way my family could never comprehend. By moving here, I'd diverged from the paths the echoes were taking; this apartment, this life, was mine, and I had to share it with no one else. Oh, to be sure, once or twice I caught a glimpse of some small echo, a left turn instead of a right, a blue dress instead of a white one but they disappeared quickly, like ripples on water; the worst of them, the Kathis and Katias and Roberts, I had left well behind me. I rented a small piano, kept it in a place of honor in the living room, and began my new life.

  In addition to classes in piano, I took courses in sight-singing and music theory (first semester, harmony; second, counterpoint), and it was in the latter class that I made my first real friend. His name was Gerald: warm eyes, a slightly sardonic smile, blond hair already receding a bit above a high forehead. A violinist, in his second year at Juilliard, I gathered he had already made something of a splash here; we got to talking, he invited me out for coffee after class.

  It was evident, just in the way his eyes tracked men more than women as we walked across campus to a coffee shop on 65th Street, that Gerald was gay, and to be honest I was relieved; I had no experience at dating, and the concept was both exciting and daunting. Over coffee, Gerald said he'd like to hear me play, so we found an empty practice room in Rose Hall and I played the Chopin etude I had performed at my audition. He seemed impressed. "How long have you been playing?" he asked. "Since I was four."