The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The Beloved One holds out his hands to still them. “Quiet, please, brothers and sisters of the Pentecostal,” he says. “Peace be with you.”

  “And also with you,” the crowd roars back, the sound distorted, frayed. He places his hands on the back of the wheelchair.

  “Today, we come together to witness a miracle. My daughter, will you stand up and walk?”

  And Pearl does.

  10. CALL TO PRAYER

  The restaurant is fancy with a buffet of Pakistani food, korma and tikka and kabobs and silver trays of sticky sweet pastries. The athletes have to pose for photographs and do more interviews with Bryan Corwood and other people. The girl with purple streaks in her hair and the metal ring in her lip asks her, “Aren’t you afraid you’re gonna die out there?” before Tomislav intervenes.

  “Come on! What kind of question is that?” he says. “Can’t you be normal?”

  But the athletes don’t really eat and there is a bus that takes them home early so they can be fresh, while the promoters peel away, one by one, in fancy black cars that take them away to other parts of the city, looking tense. “Don’t you worry, kitten” Tomislav smiles, all teeth, and pats her hand.

  Back in her room, Pearl finds a prayer mat that might be aligned toward Mecca. She phones down to reception to ask. She prostrates herself on the square of carpet, east, west, to see if it is any different, if her God will be annoyed.

  She goes online to check the news and the betting pools. Her odds have improved. There is a lot of speculation about Grange’s injury and whether Rachman will be disqualified. There are photographs of Oluchi Eze posing naked for a men’s magazine, her tail wrapped over her parts.

  Pearl clicks away and watches herself in the replay, her strikes, her posture, the joy in her face. She expects Dr. Arturo to comment, but the cochlear implant only hisses with faint static.

  “Mama? Did you see the race?” she says. The video connection to Gugulethu stalls and jitters. Her mother has the camera on the phone pointed down too low so she can only see her eyes and the top of her head.

  “They screened it at the church,” her mother says. “Everyone was very excited.”

  “You should have heard them shouting for you, Pearl,” her uncle says, leaning over her mother’s shoulder, tugging the camera down so they are in the frame.

  Her mother frowns. “I don’t know if you should wear that vest, it’s not really your color.”

  “It’s my sponsor, Mama.”

  “We’re praying for you to do well. Everyone is praying for you.”

  11. DESERT

  She has a dream that she and Tomislav and Jesus are standing on the balcony of the Karachi Parsi Institute looking over the slums. The fine golden sand rises up like water between the concrete shacks, pouring in the windows, swallowing up the roofs, driven by the wind.

  “Did you notice that there are only one set of footsteps, Pearl?” Jesus says. The sand rises, swallowing the houses, rushing to fill the gaps, nature taking over. “Do you know why that is?”

  “Is it because you took her fucking legs, Lord?” Tomislav says.

  Pearl can’t see any footsteps in the desert. The sand shifts too quickly.

  12. RARE FLOWERS

  Wide awake. Half past midnight. She lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. Arturo was supposed to boost her dopamine and melatonin, but he’s busy. The meeting went well then. The message on her phone from Tomislav confirms it. Good news!!!! Tell you in the morning. Sleep tight kitten, you need it.

  She turns the thought around in her head and tries to figure out how she feels. Happy. This will mean that she can buy her mother a house and pay for her cousins to go to private school and set up the Pearl Nitseko Sports Academy For Girls in Gugulethu. She won’t ever have to race again. Unless she wants to.

  The idea of the money sits on her chest.

  She swings her stumps over the bed and straps on her blades. She needs to go out, get some air.

  She clips down the corridors of the school building. There is a party on the old cricketing field outside with beer tents and the buzz of people who do not have to run tomorrow, exercising their nerves. She veers away from them, back towards the worn-out colonial building of the IPC, hoping to get onto the race track. Run it out.

  The track is fenced off and locked, but the security guard is dazed by his phone, caught up in another world of sliding around colorful blocks. She clings to the shadows of the archway, right past him and deeper into the building, following wherever the doors lead her.

  She comes out into a hall around a pit of sunken tiles. An old swimming pool. Siska Rachman is sitting on the edge, waving her feet in the ghost of water, her face perfectly blank with her hair a dark nest around it. Pearl lowers herself down beside her. She can’t resist. She flicks Rachman’s forehead. “Heita. Anyone in there?”

  The body blinks and suddenly the eyes are alive and furious. She catches Pearl’s wrist. “Of course, I am,” she snaps.

  “Sorry, I didn’t think—”

  Siska has already lost interest. She drops her grip and brushes her hair away from her face. “So, you can’t sleep either? Wonder why.”

  “Too nervous,” Pearl says. She tries for teasing, like Tomislav would. “I have tough competition.”

  “Maybe not,” Siska scowls. “They’re going to fucking disqualify me.”

  Pearl nods. She doesn’t want to apologize again. She feels shy around Siska, the older girl with her bushy eyebrows and her sharp nose. The six years between them feels like an un-crossable gap.

  “Do they think Charlotte is present?” Siska bursts out. “Charlotte is a big dumb animal. How is she more human than me?”

  “You’re two people,” Pearl tries to explain.

  “Before. You were half a person before. Does that count against you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what this used to be?” Siska pats the blue tiles.

  “A swimming pool?”

  “They couldn’t maintain the upkeep. These things are expensive to run.” Siska glances at Pearl to make sure she understands. In the light through the glass atrium, every lash stands out in stark relief against the gleam of her eyes, like undersea creatures. “They drained all the water out, but there was this kid who was … damaged in the brain and the only thing he could do was grow orchids, so that’s what he did. He turned it into a garden and sold them out of here for years, until he got old and now it’s gone.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “The guard told me. We smoked cigarettes together. He wanted me to give him a blowjob.”

  “Oh.” Pearl recoils.

  “Hey, are you wearing lenses?”

  She knows what she means. The broadcast contacts. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  “They’re going to use you and use you up, Pearl Nit-seeko. Then you’ll be begging to give some lard-ass guard a blowjob, for spare change.”

  “It’s Ni-tse-koh.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You say tomato, I say ni-tse-koh.” But Siska gets it right this time. “You think it’s all about you. Your second chance and all you got to do is run your heart out. But it’s a talent show and they don’t care about the running. You got a deal yet?”

  “My promoter and my doctor had a meeting.”

  “That’s something. They say who?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Pharmaceutical or medical?”

  “They haven’t told me yet.”

  “Or military. Military’s good. I hear the British are out this year. That’s what you want. I mean, who knows what they’re going to do with it, but what do you care, little guinea pig, long as you get your pay out.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “My body is drunk. I’m just mean. What do you care? I’m out, sister. And you’re in, with a chance. Wouldn’t that be something if you won? Little girl from Africa.”

  “It’s not a country.”

  “Boo-hoo, sorry for you.”

&nb
sp; “God brought me here.”

  “Oh that guy? He’s nothing but trouble. And He doesn’t exist.”

  “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel Him.”

  “Can you still feel your legs?”

  “Sometimes,” Pearl admits.

  Siska leans forward and kisses her. “Did you feel anything?”

  “No,” she says, wiping her mouth. But that’s not true. She felt her breath, that burned with alcohol, and the softness of her lips and her flicking tongue, surprisingly warm for a dead girl.

  “Yeah,” Siska breathed out. “Me neither. You got a cigarette?”

  13. EMPTY SPACES

  Lane five is empty and the stadium is buzzing with the news.

  “Didn’t think they’d actually ban her,” Tomislav says. She can tell he’s hungover. He stinks of sweat and alcohol and there’s a crease in his forehead just above his nose that he keeps rubbing at. “Do you want to hear about the meeting? It was big. Bigger than we’d hoped for. If this comes off, kitten…”

  “I want to concentrate on the race.” She is close to tears but she doesn’t know why.

  “Okay. You should try to win. Really.”

  The gun goes off. They tear down the track. Every step feels harder today. She didn’t get enough sleep.

  She sees it happen, out of the corner of her eye. Oluchi’s tail swipes Charlotte, maybe on purpose.

  “Shit,” Grange says and stumbles in her exo-suit. Suddenly everything comes crashing down on Pearl, hot metal and skin and a tangle of limbs and fire in her side.

  “Get up,” Dr. Arturo yells into her head. She’s never heard him upset.

  “Ow,” she manages. Charlotte is already getting to her feet. There is a loose flap of muscle hanging from her leg, where they tried to attach it this morning. The blonde girl touches it and hisses in pain, but her eyes are already focused on the finish line, on Oluchi skipping ahead, her tail swinging, Anne Murad straining behind her.

  “Get up,” Dr. Arturo says. “You have to get up. I’m activating adrenaline. Pain blockers.”

  She sits up. It’s hard to breathe. Her vest is wet. A grey nub of bone pokes out through her skin under her breast. Charlotte is limping away in her exo-suit, her leg dragging, gears whining.

  “This is what they want to see,” Arturo urges. “You need to prove to them that it’s not hydraulics carrying you through.”

  “It’s not,” Pearl gasps. The sound is somehow wet. Breathing through a snorkel in the bath when there is water trapped in the u-bend. The drones buzz around her. She can see her face big on the screen. Her mama is watching at home, the whole of the congregation.

  “Then prove it. What are you here for?”

  She starts walking, then jogging, clutching her top to the bit of rib to stop it jolting. Every step rips through her. And Pearl can feel things slipping inside. Her structural integrity has been compromised, she thinks. The abdominal mesh has ripped and where her stomach used to be is a black hole that is tugging everything down. Her heart is slipping.

  Ndincede nkosi, she thinks. Please, Jesus, hep me.

  Ndincede nkosi undiphe amandla. Please, God, give me strength.

  Yiba nam kolu gqatso. Be with me in this race.

  She can feel it. The golden glow that starts in her chest, or, if she is truthful with herself, lower down. In the pit of her stomach.

  She sucks in her abdominals and presses her hand to her sternum to stop her heart from sliding down into her guts—where her guts used to be, where the hotbed factory sits.

  God is with me, she thinks. What matters is you feel it.

  Pearl Nitseko runs.

  Passage of Earth

  MICHAEL SWANWICK

  Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and in the years that have followed has established himself as one of SF’s most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and Asimov’s Readers’ Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story “Radio Waves.” He’s won the Hugo Award five times between 1999 and 2006, for his stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur,” “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” “Slow Life,” and “Legions In Time.” His other books include the novels In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Jack Faust, Bones of the Earth, and The Dragons of Babel. His short fiction has been collected in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Unknown Lands, Slow Dancing Through Time, Moon Dogs, Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, Tales of Old Earth, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, Michael Swanwick’s Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna, and The Periodic Table of SF. His most recent books are a massive retrospective collection, The Best of Michael Swanwick, and a new novel, Dancing with Bears. Coming up is a new novel, Chasing the Phoenix. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. He has a website at www.michaelswanwick.com and maintains a blog at www.floggingbabel.blogspot.com.

  Here he delivers the harrowing story of one man’s close encounter with an incursion of giant alien worms, an encounter that will transform his world forever …

  The ambulance arrived sometime between three and four in the morning. The morgue was quiet then, cool and faintly damp. Hank savored this time of night and the faint shadow of contentment it allowed him, like a cup of bitter coffee, long grown cold, waiting for his occasional sip. He liked being alone and not thinking. His rod and tackle box waited by the door, in case he felt like going fishing after his shift, though he rarely did. There was a copy of Here Be Dragons: Mapping the Human Genome in case he did not.

  He had opened up a drowning victim and was reeling out her intestines arm over arm, scanning them quickly and letting them down in loops into a galvanized bucket. It was unlikely he was going to find anything, but all deaths by violence got an autopsy. He whistled tunelessly as he worked.

  * * *

  The bell from the loading dock rang.

  “Hell.” Hank put down his work, peeled off the latex gloves, and went to the intercom. “Sam? That you?” Then, on the sheriff’s familiar grunt, he buzzed the door open. “What have you got for me this time?”

  “Accident casualty.” Sam Aldridge didn’t meet his eye, and that was unusual. There was a gurney behind him, and on it something too large to be a human body, covered by canvas. The ambulance was already pulling away, which was so contrary to proper protocols as to be alarming.

  “That sure doesn’t look like—” Hank began.

  A woman stepped out of the darkness.

  It was Evelyn.

  “Boy, the old dump hasn’t changed one bit, has it? I’ll bet even the calendar on the wall’s the same. Did the county ever spring for a diener for the night shift?”

  “I … I’m still working alone.”

  “Wheel it in, Sam, and I’ll take over from here. Don’t worry about me, I know where everything goes. “Evelyn took a deep breath and shook her head in disgust. “Christ. It’s just like riding a bicycle. You never forget. Want to or not.”

  * * *

  After the paperwork had been taken care of and Sheriff Sam was gone, Hank said, “Believe it or not, I had regained some semblance of inner peace, Evelyn. Just a little. It took me years. And now this. It’s like a kick in the stomach. I don’t see how you can justify doing this to me.”

  “Easiest thing in the world, sweetheart.” Evelyn suppressed a smirk that nobody but Hank could have even noticed, and flipped back the canvas. “Take a look.”

  It was a Worm.

  Hank found himself leaning low over the heavy, swollen body, breathing deep of its heady alien smell, suggestive of wet earth and truffles with sharp hints of ammonia. He thought of the ships in orbit, blind locomotives ten miles long. The photographs of these creatures didn’t do them justice. His hands itched to open this one up.

&n
bsp; “The Agency needs you to perform an autopsy.”

  Hank drew back “Let me get this straight. You’ve got the corpse of an alien creature. A representative of the only other intelligent life-form that the human race has ever encountered. Yet with all the forensic scientists you have on salary, you decide to hand it over to a lowly county coroner?”

  “We need your imagination, Hank. Anybody can tell how they’re put together. We want to know how they think.”

  “You told me I didn’t have an imagination. When you left me.” His words came out angrier than he’d intended, but he couldn’t find it in himself to apologize for their tone. “So, again—why me?”

  “What I said was, you couldn’t imagine bettering yourself. For anything impractical, you have imagination in spades. Now I’m asking you to cut open an alien corpse. What could be less practical?”

  “I’m not going to get a straight answer out of you, am I?”

  Evelyn’s mouth quirked up in a little smile so that for the briefest instant she was the woman he had fallen in love with, a million years ago. His heart ached to see it. “You never got one before,” she said. “Let’s not screw up a perfectly good divorce by starting now.”

  “Let me put a fresh chip in my dictation device,” Hank said. “Grab a smock and some latex gloves. You’re going to assist.”

  * * *

  “Ready,” Evelyn said.

  Hank hit record, then stood over the Worm, head down, for a long moment. Getting in the zone. “Okay, let’s start with a gross physical examination. Um, what we have looks a lot like an annelid, rather blunter and fatter than the terrestrial equivalent and of course much larger. Just eyeballing it, I’d say this thing is about eight feet long, maybe two feet and a half in diameter. I could just about get my arms around it if I tried. There are three, five, seven, make that eleven somites, compared to say one or two hundred in an earthworm. No clitellum, so we’re warned not to take the annelid similarity too far.

  “The body is bluntly tapered at each end, and somewhat depressed posteriorly. The ventral side is flattened and paler than the dorsal surface. There’s a tripartite beak-like structure at one end, I’m guessing this is the mouth, and what must be an anus at the other. Near the beak are five swellings from which extend stiff, bone-like structures—mandibles, maybe? I’ll tell you, though, they look more like tools. This one might almost be a wrench, and over here a pair of grippers. They seem awfully specialized for an intelligent creature. Evelyn, you’ve dealt with these things, is there any variation within the species? I mean, do some have this arrangement of manipulators and others some other structure?”