Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “I don’t know.” She stands peering out between some slats. “I’m not sure where we are. Rather, I know where we’re not. This isn’t a murder sequence. It’s another cataclysm zone.”

  “You heard?”

  “I’m afraid I was partly responsible. My following you is what’s been causing the drift in your signal. My people have corrected for it now, but—”

  “Where is he?”

  “The rogue? Nowhere.”

  “Dead?”

  “No. Unconnected as it is to an external power souce, his shifting equipment must carry its own energy supply. He needs to recharge after every shift. He does this between probabilities.”

  He does not even ask her what this means. “Then why are we here?”

  “This is where he was heading when he dropped out of interface.”

  “You said I could help you trap him. How?”

  She takes something from a pocket. “See these? They’re like the tracer chips you’re carrying. We’ve been able to do some scans of his unit, and we think that if we can manage to get these into him, we can remove the unit from his neural control and take over his shifting-capability.”

  “You think.”

  “We think.”

  “At least he doesn’t have a burner any longer.”

  “At least we managed to do that much. He won’t be killing any more Shapiros.” She squats beside him. “Roger, I’m sorry.”

  “For me?” She cannot answer his tone. The cat has crouched, still suspicious, but no longer afraid. “You say this is a cataclysm zone?”

  “See for yourself.” He looks out at devastation. Under the Moon, the town is dead. The stucco looks scoured. Duval Street is strangled with rubble: rusted cars; masonry; blackened, leafless trees.

  “What did it?”

  “We don’t know. My people have never monitored this probability before. They report no radiation or plague.”

  “Somehow, knowing that doesn’t really comfort me.” He looks at her. “You’ve sold out to them, haven’t you? To your version of Lifetimes. You’re their woman. You’re sad because your lousy shot killed Shep, but not undone.”

  “Give me a break, you sanctimonious creep,” she answers.

  ROGER PRIME, says base. WE HAVE RECEIVED A COMMUNICATION FROM AN ORG—

  I know all about it. Be ready to transfer me out of here if the Crawling Eye shows up.

  COOPERATE WITH THEM, ROGER.

  “Roger,” she says urgently. “My people say he’s interfacing. Here in the building.”

  The rogue is there. He has a weapon in his hand. Catherine yells and grab’s Roger’s arm. The world flares. His head fills with a low hum. He opens his eyes. Catherine has kept a hold of him. A cocoon of opalescent light has woven itself around them; through it they can see the rogue, cowering against a wall. His mouth is open. Roger-Prime fumbles for his burner. “Don’t be stupid. You’d fry us both.”

  The rogue vanishes. Their shield dissipates with a little sigh. The cat has managed to work its head between two slats in an effort to escape the room. Numb, he watches it wriggle, but cannot summon the interest to help it. “Who works your shield, you or your people?” he asks. So much for our little gain.

  “There’s no time for this. He’s on the run now. We have to catch him. Come with me.” She heads for the lavatory. It is shut tight. Roger realizes that he has not seen a women’s room in any of the probabilities. This strikes him as funny, and he giggles. She gives him a sharp look and takes her gun to the locked door. It flames and sags. A stench envelopes them. “Oh, Christ,” she says. “Don’t look.” He looks. The lavatory is packed with skeletons. Roger-Prime leaps backward with a cry. She fires the weapon a second time. Bones blacken, fall to charcoal. Heat hits their faces. The stench does not lessen. She clears a space for them and leads him into the bathroom. “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “I don’t like death.” They were running, he thinks. From what?

  “Nobody likes it. Not even our rogue.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  She takes him by the shoulders. “Some people deal with death by ignoring it. My mother was one. For three years after Daddy died she kept his dressing-table exactly as it had been on the day of the accident. She’d talk to him when she thought I wasn’t listening. Other people deal with death by embracing it. The ‘my life is over’ bit. And some people accept it as part of living and get past it. Which sort of person do you think we’re dealing with in our alter ego?”

  “Let’s talk about this someplace else,” Roger says. She sighs and consults her palm. READY FOR TRANSFER, his wink-blink announces. TRANSFERRING. She vanishes. He is alone among the stinking bones. “What in Hell happened?” he screams.

  ROGER-PRIME, YOU’RE NOT TRANSFERRING. Something thumps the eaves of the building. “A seagull,” suggests Roger to a skull. He knows it is not a seagull. He runs to the lavatory door. A dull green light is leaking through the slats of the boarded windows. For the first time he notices that the windows are boarded up on the inside. The pregnant cat is still stuck, and her wriggling has become fevered. “Get me out of here, base,” There is an unhealthy look to the light that makes his skin crawl. “Base!”

  “Roger.” He jumps and yells. She is back. “Your signal is being jammed. It might be the rogue, or whatever’s out there.”

  “‘Whatever’?” he says. “I love horror movies. Can I link with you?” One of the boards springs loose and clatters on the floor. He takes his gun and fires at the frantic cat. She flames briefly, then hangs still. “Can I link with you?” he asks again.

  “Yes. We’ve never done this before, though; it might cut you off from your own people.”

  “I’d rather be stuck in your probability than here. Hurry up, Catherine; Jesus.” Light slops from the space the board has vacated and leaks into the room. They retreat to the lavatory. Masonry groans somewhere; wood splinters and collapses. The doorway is filled with the sickly light. The stench increases. Roger cannot stop giggling; it is so much like a Lord Dunsany story he once read. The woman grips his left palm and presses her left palm to it. Base squawks in his head, then goes silent. A strange voice resonates within him: TRANSFERRING, CATHERINE-PRIME.

  It does not happen. The wall to the men’s room dissolves into a writhe of worms. Something rears up, not at all pleasant. More power, base, thinks someone. You have five seconds.

  READY, says her base.

  Then do it! they cry together. The light sucks at them. Roger does not notice the transfer; he is too busy screaming. It is 10:33.

  They are falling, the three of them. It is a strange fall, more like a dance than a fall: at junctures they seem to orbit one another, and interweave, and very nearly coincide. Roger-Rogue fires his reserve weapon repeatedly. The beams exit the nozzle and spread into rainbows, and ribbons. Catherine! cries Roger-Prime. Between, she replies. He reaches for her, and finds her moving away from him. Roger-Rogue fires a spray of silver, edged with blue. You bastard! cries Roger-Prime. You filthy Nazi! His words become pillows, which strike the rogue about the ears and send him tumbling in a great cartwheel.

  Catherine-Prime is at Roger-Prime’s elbow. Let it take you, she says to him. Don’t fight.

  I’ve never fought, he thinks. The words string themselves out against a milk-white sky, black as beads. Give me the chips.

  Wait till it ends, she cries. We’re between interfaces.

  I know where we are, he says. The chips. She gives him two of the four. He dives for the tumbling rogue.

  The first thing he notices is the sound of a fountain. He is lying under a curve of concrete. He pulls himself up to sitting position; he has materialized in a messy garden. It is surrounded by a high brick wall matted with jasmine. An arbor of glory-bower spills its blood-red, white-bracted blooms into the nights, but the trusses need trimming, and several of the slat supports are broken. In the fountain bowl, a bird floats gently. He does not put his hand into the water. The sky is clea
r. On the other side of the wall, a royal poinciana displays its plumage. He recognizes it as the one that has grown outside the bar in most of the sequences. Base, he calls. His mind is empty.

  Another dead zone, he thinks. He gets to his feet. He feels fatigued but not exhausted. Catherine is nowhere to be seen.

  The house at the back of which he stands is something from a Key West guidebook: a two-storied, New-England-style structure with peeling white paint and gingerbread railing on its balconies. He finds a door and opens it. There is a wood-burning stove, copper pans on hooks; copper sinks with ornamented fittings that look as though they are made of brass. Noting the disrepair of the garden, he is not surprised that the metals are tarnished and dull. Things tarnish quickly in the salt air of the island. He notices no plastics or paper toweling. He roams the house rapidly, searching for the rogue. There is much wickerwork, mostly white. There are no electric outlets. One room is a Victorian fantasy of lace, velvet, and polished wood. The wood has been polished recently, and smells of honey.

  Throughout the house he finds many photographs of poor quality in gilt frames. They are all of stern bearded men and unsmiling dour women, dressed in clothing similar to that which was worn in the century before his own. One he picks up and studies. The man stands behind the woman. She is seated on a white chaise. They are dressed in black. Their expressions are restrained, but not miserable. The woman could be Catherine; the man, the rogue. He finds them in another portrait, too: she is aswirl with lace and satin and he wears a top hat. The formality of the moment cannot hide their happiness. Her hand is clasped in his.

  The photograph is faded, and a bit smudged, as if it has been handled many times.

  In one of the upstairs bedrooms he finds a chair, and he sits in it. It is a man’s room, darkened by many mauves; but there is lace at the windows. He looks out of one of them. Duval Street has been stripped of its tarmac down to hard-packed earth. The trees far outnumber the houses. There are no streetlamps, no traffic lights. Men in queer costumes stalk up and down, some in groups of three and four, most alone. The moon touches sails on the harbor. A saloon spills noise far down the street; occasionally a horse trots by. Once he sees a black woman, burdened and solitary; some sailors catch at her, and she flees from their laughter. Mosquitoes dance about his neck.

  Not a dead zone, he thinks. just a quiet house owned by an indifferent housekeeper. Maybe he’s too poor to keep servants, or too fearful to. He begins a methodical search of the room. At the base of the big oak wardrobe he feels something give; a hidden spring uncoils, and a drawer slides open. In it lies a raygun.

  The creature must have screwed up our signals. I shifted sideways, and he shifted backwards and sideways. No other explanation occurs to him. He wonders if the bride is she. There is another bedroom; he walks into it. It is a woman’s room, full of bric-a-brac. The bed is turned down, the mosquito netting lovingly arranged. About the dressing table hangs a scent of rose. He traces the perfume to a small porcelain jar filled with leathery petals, topped with a perforated cover. There are more photographs. The rogue is in some of them, but most of them are of her: perched on a horse looking uncomfortable; in an ugly travelling-costume, standing with an old woman against the backdrop of Big Ben; very young, with her hair down, at a piano.

  Young, and with her hair down. He looks more closely. The girl is perhaps fifteen.

  There is another wardrobe. Inside it he finds a row of gowns. Most of them are silken, many faded. Some are so rotted that they fray under his fingers. Things rot fast here, he thinks, but none of these have been worn in years. He looks around again, and for the first time notices the stain on the ceiling, high up near one corner. He rushes back to the photograph of the girl. “Damn,” he murmurs. “Goddam, it isn’t her!” Catherine has never had a childhood here. He goes back downstairs. In the photograph in the parlor, the woman is in her forties, the man in his fifties.

  She never made it here, he tells himself. But he did. At some point, sometime. His wife must have been our persona in this probability. He does not understand the time inconsistency, and he does not care. She died, and he left her dressing-table as it was. It is all part of the same pattern: the ignoring of death. It is finally clear to him why the rogue has killed. Probability sequences are choices made manifest, he thinks. Before shifting was brought home to us as a reality, we could dream of ourselves as we might have been, and somewhere deep down hold out to ourselves the illusion that there’s still time to do that one great thing. To recoup our losses. Probability mechanics put an end to that indulgence. It told us, “Too late; you could have been this if .you’d done this then, but not any more.”

  The rogue has not been able to accept the reminders of his could-have-beens. Roger thinks of Catherine. We’re lucky, he thinks. I might be able to accept your sequence, and you might be able to accept mine. But would either of us be willing to change places with him?

  “So there you are,” says Roger-Rogue. “I expected you years ago. You don’t know our Amazon friend never made it here. Perhaps she did, and I killed her.” He is no longer fat. There is a strange scar on his forehead, and he is whiskered. “I see you found my burner.”

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” Roger says. The man laughs. There is much of Carl in him; a little of Roj. “You’ve been stranded, haven’t you?”

  “Beached,” says the rogue, and jumps him.

  He is strong, and he knows how to fight. He gets on top of Roger and pummels him. His face is full of glee. The burner bumps and skitters. Roger-Prime reaches up through the blood and slaps two chips against the man’s neck. Then he puts the heel of his right hand under the rogue’s chin and pushes hard. The gray head snaps back. They grapple, Roger biting and screaming Shep’s name. He has never hit anyone as hard as he could; he does this now. The rogue sags. Roger scrambles to his feet and dives atop the burner. It is somewhat larger than his own, with a battery compartment. He points the muzzle.

  The man has his face. “So get it over with, already,” Roger-Rogue says.

  “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere to right angles of your 1982,” his persona answers.

  “A retarded time, and quite racist. Kill me, will you?” The rogue keeps his tone light.

  Roger grins, knowing better.

  “You find this situation amusing?”

  “Those telemetry-chips are glowing,” Roger says. He grins and grins. They have not lost him. “You’re about to enjoy a belated visit home.” The man touches his neck. The chips have sunk into the flesh, shedding pearly light. “Beached, huh? That scar have something to do with it?”

  “You’re perceptive,” Roger-Rogue says. “I knew you were both after me; I’d killed enough of us to feel reasonably avenged. I shifted at random. It was foolish. I shifted to—not a cataclysm zone, precisely, but a disaster sequence—an improbability. It was—” He laughs and rolls his bleeding head. “Oh, Jesus. I still dream about it. They weren’t human at all. Not at all. We’d evolved into something quite different; I can’t imagine what ancestry. I rather horrified them, I imagine. They attacked me.”

  “Sounds human enough.”

  “Yes. I was struck,” he taps his forehead, “here. You may know that I designed the shifter to be a plate of microcircuitry, a glorified Fresnel disc, actually. I had them implant it against my skull. I had good reasons at the time: it made for a more efficient tie-in to the volitional centers. When our cousins struck me, they disrupted the circuitry. I made one more shift. I landed here.”

  “Was that before or after the rainbows?” demands Roger-Prime.

  “What rainbows?”

  “The ones in the between-place. You shot them out of your raygun.”

  “I’m not going home,” says Roger-Rogue. He claws at his throat.

  “Goddam you, this is my home!”

  “Calm down or I’ll burn this house to the ground.” It works. The man drops his hands. “Get up.” He does. “Now tell me what was so goddam terr
ible that you had to kill twenty-five nebbish bartenders to avenge it.”

  The man looks astonished. “Don’t joke with me.”

  “I’m asking. One of them could have been a very dear friend of mine.

  “Why, to avenge this.” He spreads his hands. “This. Look.” There is a mirror hanging on the parlor wall. He stands before it, his lean face full of loathing. “Can’t you see? It’s indelible. I’ll never lose their mark on me. It was always, ‘Work, work,’ and I was always alone. My private life? I didn’t have one. They were surprised that I should even want one. I didn’t look like something out of an ad campaign, you see. I was Roger the Researcher. I hope you’re finding this entertaining.”

  “Illuminating.”

  “Confession is good for the soul. When people weren’t there, food was. It was my only comfort for some years, that and masturbation. I tried to shed the weight; I never could. Eventually I tried to quit that goddam research position. They wouldn’t let me do that, either. Do you know what it’s like to breathe air like sterile gauze day in and day out?”

  “You could have left.”

  “Don’t tell me what I could have done.” The skin around his nostrils has turned pale. His fists are knotted. “You’ve made it. You got out. You’ve never had to wrestle night in, night out with the weight of your goddam flesh. Don’t tell me what I could have done. Her family found me when I showed up here: the Sappers. It’s unwise to be Jewish in this sequence. I convinced them I was their cousin, somehow; who knows? And she,” he says, the tears streaming, “she loved me. Now old man Sapper is dead; now Kathy’s dead; T.B., it’s still deadly here. And I’m back where I started. Alone.” Suddenly he laughs. “God, what a penchant I have for melodrama. I should have written plays. At least I ended up in Key West. You know? When I was in college I wanted to be a bartender? It seemed—so sexual. And free.” He holds out his hands. “Please shoot me.”