The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  He raised an eyebrow. "And I thought I was a prodigy. My parents started me on a half-size violin when I was five." He smiled, then said, "Why don't we try something together?"

  We did-that day and every day for the next week. I was the stodgy traditionalist, Gerald the pop culture maven; in addition to classical pieces we collaborated on Gershwin, Copland, and a lovely violin concerto by the 20th century motion picture composer Miklos Rozsa. Gerald sight-read as quickly as I did, and for a while we tried to one-up each other with increasingly difficult pieces on a cold reading. Gerald didn't bat an eye-which started me wondering about him. I watched him more and more closely as he played-noticing that every once in a while he seemed ... distracted; his head turning ever so slightly, as though hearing something just beyond his sight. It took me weeks to work up the courage to say something, but finally, over coffee one evening, the cafe we sat in nearly deserted, I found the nerve:

  "Gerald?" My voice was soft, and it trembled a little. "Have you ... I mean, do you ever ... hear. Things?"

  He looked at me, bemusedly. "Do I-hear? Things?"

  I flushed with embarrassment. "Never mind. Forget I said-"

  Quickly, he put a hand on mine. "No. It's all right. I ... think I know what you mean.

  My eyes widened. "You do?"

  He nodded. As it turned out, I was right: Gerald and I had more in common than we first realized. Like me, he was gene enhanced-but unlike me, he had only partial vision when it came to echoes. "It's like when you look at something bright, a red stop light," he said, "and then you look away, and you see, just for a moment, a spot of green, because green is red's complementary color? That's what it's like for me. Complements, I call them; opposites. I only see them for a moment, and then they're gone."

  "Lucky you," I said.

  "Actually, I do feel lucky, at times. One of the first 'complements' I ever saw was a 'me' who was-don't ask me how I could tell this; I just did-a me who was straight. Not macho, just ... hetero. I saw him look at something, and somehow I knew he was looking at a woman, and I just knew.

  "And I realized, all at once, how fortunate I was. Because the doctors, they've known for years which genes incline us one way or the other, they had to have known which way I'd turn out ... and my parents didn't 'correct' it, as they could have; as so many parents do these days. And I just felt very fortunate, that my parents-even if they did want a violinist-loved me enough to let me, in this one way at least, be myself."

  I smiled, a bit wistfully, but before I could say anything Gerald suddenly leaned in: "Listen," and I could feel him changing the subject, perhaps uncomfortable with all this, "do you know Bach's Musical Offering?"

  "Of course."

  "I'm performing it in recital later this semester." His eyes were bright as he said it. "Me, another violinist, a cellist, a flautist, and a pianist. How'd you like to audition for it?"

  If I was disappointed that Gerald was only partly a kindred spirit, I quickly got over it; I was thrilled at the prospect, thrilled even to be asked. I agreed readily, spent the next several days being coached by Gerald; at the audition I competed with several other piano students, all of them quite gifted, but I felt no trepidation or fear: it was refreshing, exhilarating, to be competing with someone other than myself. With Gerald accompanying me on violin, I performed the sonata that was part of the Offering-and was stunned and delighted when, the next day, Gerald called to tell me I had, in his words, "gotten the gig"!

  "Now, of course," he said, deadpan, "we beat you senseless with practice for the next six weeks." I laughed. The only happier moment in my life was the day I was actually accepted to Juilliard.

  A week later, another first: Chris, a cute dark-eyed boy in my sight-singing class, actually asked me out on a date. I was eighteen years old, ashamed to admit that I had never been on one before, trying to act casual as I said, "Sure. I'd love to." As soon as I got home I called Gerald and asked his advice. "Be yourself," he counseled, "and try not to bump into the furniture." I liked Gerald, but as a confidant he left something to be desired.

  Chris took me to the campus Drama Theater, where students from the drama department were staging Edward AJBEE's A Delicate Balance. Chris put a hand gently on my arm as we made our way to our seats; I sat there, excited not just by his presence but by how very normal it all felt-by the prospect that perhaps, after all, I would have a normal life, filled with normal joys and only normal pains. I barely paid attention to the play, and it wasn't until almost the end of the first act-at the entrance of "Harry and Edna," the older couple so shaken with existential fear that they take refuge in their best friends' home-that I sat up and took notice. Edna walked on stage, timid, fearful-and I gasped. Edna was me.

  Or at least one of them was. The actress portraying Edna in my world, the real world, was a short blonde; but in some other near-reality, I was playing the part. This echo was slightly taller than me, her hair somewhat lighter, and her form was translucent, shimmery, in the way I associated with the more remote echoes-separated from me by hundreds if not thousands of other potentialities.

  I heard the two actresses' voices transposed on one another, even their bodies occasionally superimposed, and I fought to keep calm when I really wanted to wail with grief, to mourn the loss of my newfound individuality: I'd thought I was alone, thought I had something to call my own, and now Tears welled in my eyes and I turned away, terrified to let Chris see. I fell back on old concentration techniques, trying not to watch the echo on stage; luckily it was near the end of the first act, and at intermission I ducked into the ladies' room to compose myself. Hands gripping the sink, I told myself I could not, would not, cry. Steeling myself for the rest of the play, I went back inside the auditorium with Chris ... but it was even worse than I thought. When the curtain rose on Act Two, it came up on the character of Julia, the daughter ... and that, too, was me.

  A different me; short, Plump, familiar features set in a round face, chubby arms waving angrily, in character. Oh, Jesus, I thought; oh, God, no. I managed to keep my despair from showing throughout all of that first scene, but when "Edna" appeared in the middle of the next one-when I saw two echoes of myself strutting about the stage, four different voices playing as though in quadraphonic stereo-my agitation started to show. Chris couldn't help but notice; I told him I wasn't feeling well, reluctantly we left the show, and in my discomfort I must have appeared distant and unfriendly, because he took me home, bussed me on the cheek, and never called again.

  As I fell asleep that night, the sobbing echo returned for the first time in months, sitting in a corner of my previously untainted apartment-and, from that point on, never left ... I should have known; should have realized that my parents' ambitions for me would be so alike in so many other potential realities. In the weeks to come a day did not go by that I did not see at least one echo: Passing a dance class I caught a glimpse of a graceful, poised Katherine (Katrina, the instructor called her) at the ballet barre, dark hair in a chic chignon, long legs pirouetting flawlessly to Swan Lake, her face almost regal in its serenity. In my sight-singing class I heard my own voice drowned out by another, familiar in some ways but with a perfect pitch and soaring beauty I could never hope for; I saw her out of the corner of my eye, a Katherine who looked much like me but one who used the instrument of her voice better than I did my own piano, and I hated her.

  I tried talking to Gerald about what was happening, but sympathetic as he tried to be, his "gift" was nowhere near as developed as mine, he truly didn't understand the full horror of what I was going through, and could offer no advice to help me cope with it. He seemed uncomfortable even talking about it, and after a few attempts I backed off, not wishing to lose a friendship, however flawed.

  As I crossed campus one evening, on my way home, I caught a glimpse of Chris, heading alone toward the dormitories. I looked away, hoping he wouldn't see me, then, unable to resist, looked back for one last glance-and this time, he was no longer alone. This time, the air
next to him boiled and shimmered with an echo of another Katherine-the dancer, Katrina, no mistaking the long legs, the regal face-her arm looped through his, her mouth open in a laugh. Chris-being in my world, of course-paid no attention to her, and after a few moments the dancer's form rippled and vanished; but I knew that in some other potential reality, another Chris walked with her, laughed with her, and I felt an anger and a compulsion rising within me.

  I fell into step behind Chris, at a safe enough distance that he didn't notice. I knew I should turn around, knew I should go home right now, but I couldn't, and as he entered Rose Hall I poked my head in just long enough to determine which room was his. First floor; room six. I circled round the back of the dorm, found the window outside his room; crouched beside a concealing shrub, watched the light snap on inside. Carefully I raised myself up, peering into the window.

  Chris was sitting at his desk, a small table lamp spilling light over textbooks and notepad computer. But though he did not realize it, he was not alone in the room. Less than five feet away, on his unmade bed, I saw her: the dancer: her nude body, toned and trim, lying on the sheets, her arms wrapped around something, someone, I could not see, her pelvis jerking back and forth, taking in that someone. She moaned; she cried out his name. Chris, she said, oh, Chris ... It was almost comical; it was crushing, horrible. I felt as though I'd been physically struck; I stumbled backwards, gravel crunching noisily underfoot, away from Katrina, but her sighs and the sound of Chris's name seemed to follow me all the way home ... That night, the sobbing echo in my apartment slowly stopped crying, falling into a silence I found even more disturbing; she sat in a corner, half-dressed, hair unwashed, staring into space. I tried not to meet her eyes-the irises a flat blue, dimmed by some cataract of spirit-their dead light constantly threatening to pull me in, pull me down ... Desperate to perform well at the Bach recital, I practiced as best I could, trying to ignore the echoes of better, more talented Katherines all around me. When the night arrived, I felt a twinge of an old excitement as I walked onto the stage at Alice Tully Hall wearing a simple but elegant white gown, joining an ensemble that included Gerald, another violinist, a flautist, a cellist, and myself.

  The Musical Offering is a suite of tense, somber beauty, the first ricercare scored in this instance for piano; I played well, I thought, due in no small part to my affinity for the mood of the piece: a lament of sorts, perfectly in keeping with my own mood. We moved from the first ricercare to the canons which followed, my piano playing at times with one or more of the strings, strings and flute together, or not at all (as in the fourth canon, a duet between Gerald and the other violinist). It was during one such moment, as I "sat out" and listened to the other instruments, that I began to hear-faintly but distinctly-the sound of another piano. A piano taking the same part the cello was now playing; an echo from a reality in which this piece was arranged differently. The pianist, damn her, was brilliant, the technique letter-perfect. Her vigor and conviction so rattled me that I almost missed my entrance into the next ricercare, probably the most demanding part of the suite for me: I was not only performing it solo, I was playing six melodic lines all at the same time. Difficult under the best of circumstances-but now I heard the echo of that other piano, my piano, also performing the ricercare, but ever so slightly time-displaced (my other self having begun the piece moments before I had). The dissonance nearly drove me to distraction; for the next six and a half minutes I struggled to keep my concentration, I felt my gown growing embarrassingly wet with perspiration, and when I finally finished the ricercare I felt not triumph but mere relief-and then disgust, convinced that my performance had suffered for it. I got a bit of a breather in the next three canons, but when we came to the sonata I once more found myself playing, in some strange quantum duet, the same part as my echo-and once again, not playing it as well, the echo's rendering more controlled, the lamentation somehow deeper, truer, than mine. This was perhaps the bitterest pill of all to swallow: though I knew my share of torment, even at that there was someone better.

  By the end of the recital I was drained, exhausted beyond anything I had ever known; and though everyone congratulated me on a fine performance, I took no joy in it, and fled home to my apartment, fighting the temptation to cry with sleep.

  The next day I did not go to sight-singing class, for fear of hearing the Katherine with perfect pitch and soaring voice. I stayed at home and cranked up my stereo, Mathis der Maler again, in a desperate attempt to drown out the faintest whisper of any echoes.

  The day after that I didn't go to piano class, terrified I might hear the same Katherine who had outclassed me in the recital. I stayed at home and left the television on all day, trying to fill the apartment with more acceptable ghosts, electronic ghosts, phosphor ghosts.

  Gerald called, concerned at my absence from school. I told him that my mother was ill, that I was leaving that afternoon for Virginia, that I might be away for a while. He extended his sympathies and I took them. When he hung up, I switched on my answering machine and never turned it off. My parents left occasional messages and I answered them, keeping the conversations brief, pretending to a hectic schedule I didn't have, rushing off when I could no longer keep up the crushing pretense of normality.

  I left the apartment less and less, leaving only to buy groceries and pay the rent. I spent more and more of each day in bed, but, asleep, I seemed not to dream myself but to share the dreams of others: vivid, highly visual dreams filled with color and form, Robert's dreams; pleasant, happy dreams, the inner life of the gorgeous, red-headed Kathy, prosaic but peaceful-, jarring, violent dreams of conflict and competition, Katia's dreams; dreams of movement and physicality, the gymnast's dreams. At first I found them disturbing; slowly they became a kind of narcotic, as I realized that through them I could, however briefly and incompletely, become my echoes. The redhead's confidence, the gymnast's grace, the ordered geometry of the math major's mind. One moment I'm the football player, reliving the glories of a touchdown, a thirty-yard pass, beer after the game, fast sweaty sex with my girlfriend, my penis swelling inside her; the next moment I'm the singer, hearing/feeling the resonance in my voice, shaping the sound, diaphragm relaxed, the peculiar but satisfying sensation of being my own instrument; a moment later my body is still my instrument but this time I manipulate it not just with voice but with posture, expression, movement, an actress's devices.

  I drift from dream to dream, mind to mind, the casual clutter of the actress's thoughts, the laser-sharp focus of Katia's, the passion and discipline of Katrina's, all a welcome respite from me, from being me, and more and more I'm not me, I'm them; I'm only me when I have to be, when my body demands it. Asleep, I feel a pressure in my bladder and reluctantly I wake, dragging myself to the bathroom, relieving myself, sometimes getting something to cat, sometimes not, then returning to bed. This goes on for days; weeks. And then one day, amidst dreams of being smarter, prettier, happier, more talented, I feel my body call and grudgingly answer, padding to the bathroom, doing what's necessary, glancing into the vanity mirror on my way back to bed And I stopped, suddenly shaken by what I saw.

  The Katherine in the mirror was half-dressed, her hair unruly and unwashed, with a dead light in her flat blue eyes that threatened to pull me in; pull me down. It was the echo who'd first appeared in the hospital, so many years before; who'd lain in a corner of my bed in Virginia and cried her lament of long years; who joined me here, in New York, and whose sobs slowly gave way to silence and gray despair, in her eyes an ancestral memory of my grandfather.

  But the echo wasn't sitting in the corner. The echo was in my mirror.

  I felt a surge of panic, the first emotion in weeks I hadn't dreamed, hadn't borrowed. I looked desperately around the apartment, hoping I was wrong hoping to catch a glimpse of the echo, somewhere else in the apartment-but the echo wasn't there.

  Of course she wasn't. I'd become the echo.

  Once, we had been separated by countless other probability lin
es; other paths, the ones closest to me diverging only slightly, the ones closest to her diverging more. Slowly, subtly, I had traveled from one path to the next, like fingers moving absently from key to key on my piano, drawing closer and closer to her probability line ... until it became mine. I had made the transition so slowly, so gradually, that I hadn't even realized it was happening..

  At first I couldn't accept it. It wasn't true; this couldn't be happening! I raced out of the bedroom into the living room, still hoping, praying, that I might see my echo, that I wasn't her I didn't see her in the living room, of course. But I saw someone else.

  I saw a Katherine who looked very much as I had, once: short dark hair, well groomed, neatly dressed ... with bright, clear, sky-blue eyes, undimmed by time or pain. She was sitting at the piano, playing the Largo movement from the Musical Offering, and for a moment I thought she might have been the echo I'd heard on stage at the recital; but as I got close enough to see her fingers on the keys, close enough to recognize my own style, I knew that she was not.

  I looked into her face, and was shocked by what I saw; what I thought I saw.

  Contentment? Peace? It had been so long since I had known anything like either, I wasn't sure I recognized them. I tried to think when I had last felt such contentment, and I thought of the day I had moved in here, the joy I'd felt, the promise of a brighter, happier life.

  My heart sank. This Kathy, this echo in front of me-she had lived that happier life. The life that should have been mine. The probability line I should have traveled-but I veered from it, taking a darker path.

  My legs gave way beneath me, I dropped to the floor, and I cried. For how long, how many minutes or hours, I can't tell you now. But toward the end of it, as I gave up the grief I'd held for too long, I began to understand something. Something I should have realized years before: