The Year’s Best Science Fiction (St Martin's) 26

by Gardner Dozois

  He turned away from those obsidian-flake eyes. “You misunderstand.”

  She waited, didn’t say anything.

  “Once upon a time there was a woman.” He stared at the sun-baked emptiness of the main street on the vid screen. A tumbleweed skeleton turned slowly, fitfully across dust and cracked asphalt. “She had a promising career in academics, but she preferred field work.”

  “Field work?”

  “She was a botanist. She created some drought-tolerant GMOs and started field testing them. They were designed for the drip irrigation ag areas, but she decided to test them . . . out here. She . . . got caught up in it . . . establishing adaptive GMOs out here to create sustainable harvests. She . . . gave up an academic career. Put everything into this project. Got some funding for it.”

  Ella sat without speaking as the silence stretched between them. “What happened to her?” She asked it, finally.

  “I don’t know.” The tumbleweed had run up against the pole of a rusted and dented No Parking sign and quivered in the hot wind. “I . . . lost contact with her.”

  Ella nodded, her face creased into thoughtful folds. “I see.”

  No, you don’t, he thought.

  “How long ago?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “So he’s not your son.”

  He flinched even though he’d known the question was coming. “No.” He was surprised at how hard it was to speak that word.

  Ella levered herself to her feet, leaning hard on the table. Pain in her hip. The osteo-sarcoma antibodies his chickens produced weren’t specific to her problem. A personally tailored anti-cancer panel might cure her, but that cost money. A lot of money. He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d seen enough osteo out here to measure her progress. It was the water, he guessed. “I brought you a present.” He reached up into the cupboard again, brought out a flat plastic bottle of mescal with the Mexico state seal on the cap. Old stuff. Very old.

  She took it, her expression enigmatic, tilted it, her eyes on the slosh of pale golden liquor. Then she let her breath out in a slow sigh and tucked the bottle carefully beneath her loose shirt. “Thank you.” Her obsidian eyes gave nothing away.

  He caught a glimpse of rib bones, faint bruising, and dried, shrunken flesh, revised his estimate. “You’re welcome.”

  “I think you need to leave here.” She looked past him. “We maybe need to live without your eggs. I’d just go right now.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Listened to the chuckle of the hens. “Can I come to dinner tonight?”

  “That’s right. You’re crazy. We both know that.” She sighed.

  He held the door for her as she lowered herself stiffly and cautiously into the oven heat of the fading day.

  She was right, he thought as he watched her limp through the heat shimmer, back to the main building. She was definitely right.

  He took his time with the chickens, letting them out of their cages to scratch on the grass carpet and peck at the vitamin crumbles he scattered for them. While he was parked here, they could roam loose in the back of the Dragon. He kept the door leading back to their section locked and all his hens were good about laying in their own cages, although at this point, he could tell who had laid which egg by sight. By the time he left the Dragon, the sun was completely down and the first pale stars winked in the royal blue of the darkening sky. No moon tonight. The wind had died and he smelled dust and a whiff of roasting meat as his boots grated on the dusty asphalt of the old main street. He touched the small hardness of the stunner in his pocket and climbed the sagging porch of what had once been a store, back when the town had still lived.

  They had built a patio of sorts out behind the building, had roofed it from the sun with metal sheeting stripped from other derelict buildings. Long tables and old sofas clustered inside the building, shelter from the sun on the long hot days where residents shelled sunflower seed after harvest or worked on repair jobs or just visited, waiting for the cool of evening. He could see the yellow flicker of flame out back through the old plate-glass windows with their taped cracks.

  The moment he entered he felt it—tension like the prickle of static electricity on a dry, windy day. Paloma was easy, friendly. He let his guard down sometimes when he was here, sat around the fire pit out back and shared the mescal he brought, trading swallows with the local stuff, flavored with cactus fruit, that wasn’t all that bad, considering.

  Tonight, eyes slid his way, slid aside. The hair prickled on the back of his neck, but he made his smile easy. “Hola,” he said, and gave them the usual grin and wave. “How you all makin’ out?”

  “Zip.” Ella heaved herself up from one of the sofas, crossed the floor with firm strides, hands out, face turning up to kiss his cheeks. Grim determination folded the skin at the corners of her eyes tight. “Glad you could eat with us. Thanks for that egg today, I feel better already.”

  Ah, that was the issue? “Got to keep that blood sugar low.” He gave her a real hug, because she was so solid, was the core of this settlement, whether the others realized it or not.

  “Come on.” Ella grabbed his arm. “Let’s go out back. Rodriguez got an antelope, can you believe it? A young buck, no harm done.”

  “Meat?” He laughed, made it relaxed and easy, from the belly. “You eat better than I do. It’s all vat stuff or too pricey to afford, down south. Good thing maize and beans are in my blood.”

  “Hey.” Daren popped in from the firelit back, his eyes bright in the dim light. “Can my friends come see the chickens?”

  My friends. The shy, hopeful pride in those words was so naked that Zipakna almost winced. He could see two or three faces behind Daren. That same tone had tainted his own voice, back when he had been a government scholarship kid from the wilds beyond San Cristobal, one of those who spoke Spanish as a second language. My friends, such a precious thing when you did not belong.

  “Sure.” He gave Daren a “we’re buddies” grin and shrug. “Any time. You can show ’em around.” Daren’s eyes betrayed his struggle to look nonchalant.

  A low chuckle circulated through the room, almost too soft to be heard, and Ella touched his arm lightly. Approvingly. Zipakna felt the tension relax a bit as he and Ella made their way through the dusk of the building to the firelit dark out back. One by one the shadowy figures who had stood back, not greeted him, thawed and followed. He answered greetings, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything, exchanged the usual pleasantries that concerned weather and world politics, avoided the real issues of life. Like illegal crops. One by one, he identified the faces as the warm red glow of the coals in the firepit lit them. She needed the MS egg from Negro, he needed the anti-malaria from Seca and so did she. Daren had appeared at his side, his posture taut, a mix of proprietary and anxious.

  “Meat, what a treat, eh?” Zipakna grinned down at Daren as one of the women laid a charred strip of roasted meat on a plate, dumped a scoop of beans beside it and added a flat disk of tortilla, thick and chewy and gritty from the bicycle-powered stone mill that the community used to grind maize into masa.

  “Hey, you be careful tomorrow.” She nodded toward a plastic bucket filled with water, a dipper and cups beside it. “Don’t you let my Jonathan hurt any of those chickens. He’s so clumsy.”

  “I’ll show ’em how to be careful.” Daren took the piled plate she handed him, practically glowing with pride.

  Zipakna smiled at the server. She was another diabetic, like Ella. Sanja. He remembered her name.

  “Watch out for the chutney.” Sanja grinned and pointed at a table full of condiment dishes. “The sticky red stuff. I told Ella how to make it and she made us all sweat this year with her pequins.”

  “I like it hot.” He smiled for her. “I want to see if it’ll make me sweat.”

  “It will.” Daren giggled. “I thought I’d swallowed coals, man.” He carried his plate to one of the wooden tables, set it down with a possessive confidence beside Zipakna’s.

  U
sually he sat at a crowded table answering questions, sharing news that hadn’t yet filtered out here with the few traders, truckers, or wanderers who risked the unserviced Dry. Not this time. He chewed the charred, overdone meat slowly, aware of the way Daren wolfed his food, how most of the people here ate the same way, always prodded by hunger. That was how they drank, too, urgently, always thirsty.

  Not many of them meant to end up out there. He remembered her words, the small twin lines that he called her “thinking dimples” creasing her forehead as she stared into her wine glass. They had plans, they had a future in mind. It wasn’t this one.

  “That isn’t really why you come out here, is it? What you said before—in your big truck?”

  Zipakna started, realized he was staring into space, a forkful of beans poised in the air. He looked down at Daren, into those clear hazel eyes that squeezed his heart. She had always known when he wasn’t telling the truth. “No. It isn’t.” He set the fork down on his plate. “A friend of mine . . . a long time ago . . . went missing out here. I’ve . . . sort of hoped to run into her.” At least that was how it had started. Now he looked for her ghost. Daren was staring at his neck.

  “Where did you get that necklace?”

  Zipakna touched the carved jade cylinder on its linen cord. “I found it diving in an old cenote—that’s a kind of well where people threw offerings to the gods centuries ago. You’re not supposed to dive there, but I was a kid—sneaking in.”

  “Are the cenotes around here?” Daren looked doubtful. “I never heard of any wells.”

  “No, they’re way down south. Where I come from.”

  Daren scraped up the last beans from his plate, wiped it carefully with his tortilla. “Why did your friend come out here?”

  “To bring people plants that didn’t need much water.” Zipakna sighed and eyed the remnants of his dinner. “You want this? I’m not real hungry tonight.”

  Daren gave him another doubting look, then shrugged and dug into the last of the meat and beans. “She was like Pierre?”

  “No!”

  The boy flinched and Ziapakna softened his tone. “She created food plants so that you didn’t need to grow as much to eat well.” And then . . . she had simply gotten too involved. He closed his eyes, remembering that bitter bitter fight. “Is your mother here?” He already knew the answer but Daren’s head shake still pierced him. The boy focused on wiping up the last molecule of the searing sauce with a scrap of tortilla, shoulders hunched.

  “What are you doing?

  At the angry words, Daren’s head shot up and he jerked his hands away from the plate as if it had burned him.

  “I was just talking with him, Pierre.” He looked up, sandy hair falling back from his face. “He doesn’t mind.”

  “I mind.” The tall, skinny man with the dark braid and pale skin frowned down at Daren. “What have I told you about city folk?”

  “But . . .” Daren bit off the word, ducked his head. “I’ll go clean my plate.” He snatched his plate and cup from the table, headed for the deeper shadows along the building.

  “You leave him alone.” The man stared down at him, his gray eyes flat and cold. “We all know about city folk and their appetites.”

  Suddenly the congenial chatter that had started up during the meal ended. Silence hung thick as smoke in the air. “You satisfied my appetite quite well tonight.” Zipakna smiled gently. “I haven’t had barbecued antelope in a long time.”

  “You got to wonder.” Pierre leaned one hip against the table, crossed his arms. “Why someone gives up the nice air conditioning and swimming pools of the city to come trekking around out here handing out free stuff. Especially when your rig costs a couple of fortunes.”

  Zipakna sighed, made it audible. From the corner of his eye he noticed Ella, watching him intently, was aware of the hard lump of the stunner in his pocket. “I get this every time I meet folk. We already went through it here, didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “Yeah, they did.” Pierre gave him a mirthless smile. “And you want me to believe that some non-profit in Mexico—Mexico!—cares about us? Not even our own government does that.”

  “It’s all politics.” Zipakna shrugged. “Mexico takes quite a bit of civic pleasure in the fact that Mexico has to extend aid to US citizens. If the political situation changes, yeah, the money might dry up. But for now, people contribute and I come out here. So do a few others like me.” He looked up, met the man’s cold, gray eyes. “Haven’t you met an altruist at least once in your life?” he asked softly.

  Pierre looked away and his face tightened briefly. “I sure don’t believe you’re one. You leave my son alone.” He turned on his heel and disappeared in the direction Daren had taken.

  Zipakna drank his water, skin prickling with the feel of the room. He looked up as Ella marched over, sat down beside him. “We know you’re what you say you are.” She pitched her voice to reach everyone. “Me, I’m looking forward to my egg in the morning, and I sure thank you for keeping an old woman like me alive. Not many care. He’s right about that much.” She gave Zipakna a small private wink as she squeezed his shoulder and stood up. “Sanja and I’ll be there first thing in the morning, right, Sanja?”

  “Yeah.” Sanja’s voice emerged from shadow, a little too bright. “We sure will.”

  Zipakna got to his feet and Ella rose with him. “You should all come by in the morning. Got a new virus northwest of here. It’s high mortality and it’s moving this way. Spread by birds, so it’ll get here. I have eggs that will give you immunity.” He turned and headed around the side of the building.

  A thin scatter of replies drifted after him and he found Ella walking beside him, her hand on his arm. “They change everything,” she said softly. “The flowers.”

  “You know, the sat cams can see them.” He kept his voice low as they crunched around the side of the building, heading toward the Dragon. “They measure the light refraction from the leaves and they can tell if they’re legit or one of the outlaw strains. That’s no accident, Ella. You don’t realize how much the government and the drug gangs use the same tools. One or the other will get you.” He shook his head. “You better hope it’s the government.”

  “They haven’t found us yet.”

  “The seeds aren’t ready to harvest, are they?”

  “Pierre says we’re too isolated.”

  Zipakna turned on her. “Nowhere is isolated any more. Not on this entire dirt ball. You ever ask Pierre why he showed up here? Why didn’t he stay where he was before if he was doing such a good job growing illegal seeds?”

  Ella didn’t answer and he walked on.

  “It’s a mistake to let a ghost run your life.” Ella’s voice came low from the darkness behind him, tinged with sadness.

  Zipakna hesitated as the door slid open for him. “Good night, Ella.” He climbed into its cool interior, listening to the hens’ soft chortle of greeting.

  They showed up in the cool of dawn, trickling up to the Dragon in ones and twos to drink the frothy blend of fruit and soymilk he offered and to ask shyly about the news they hadn’t asked about last night. A few apologized. Not many.

  Neither Daren nor Pierre showed up. Zipakna fed the hens, collected the day’s eggs, and was glad he’d given Daren his immunization egg the day before. By noon he had run out of things to keep him here. He hiked over to the community building in the searing heat of noon, found Ella sewing a shirt in the still heat of the interior, told her goodbye.

  “Go with God,” she told him and her face was as seamed and dry as the land outside.

  This settlement would not be here when he next came this way. The old gods wrote that truth in the dust devils dancing at the edge of the field. He wondered what stolen genes those seeds carried. He looked for Daren and Pierre but didn’t see either of them. Tired to the bone, he trudged back to the Dragon in the searing heat. Time to move on. Put kilometers between the Dragon and the dangerous magnet of those ripening seeds.


  You have a visitor, the Dragon announced as he approached.

  He hadn’t locked the door? Zipakna frowned, because he didn’t make that kind of mistake. Glad that he was still carrying the stunner, he slipped to the side and opened the door, fingers curled around the smooth shape of the weapon.

  “Ella said you were leaving.” Daren stood inside, Bella in his arms.

  “Yeah, I need to move on.” He climbed up, the wash of adrenalin through his bloodstream telling him just how tense he had been here. “I have other settlements to visit.”

  Daren looked up at him, frowning a little. Then he turned and went back into the chicken room to put Bella back in her traveling coop. He scratched her comb, smiled a little as she chuckled at him, and closed the door. “I think maybe . . . this is yours.” He turned and held out a hand.

  Zipakna stared down at the carved jade cylinder on his palm. It had been strung on a fine steel chain. She had worn it on a linen cord with coral beads knotted on either side of it. He swallowed. Shook his head. “It’s yours.” The words came out husky and rough. “She meant you to have it.”

  “I thought maybe she was the friend you talked about.” Daren closed his fist around the bead. “She said the same thing you did, I remember. She said she came out here because no one else would. Did you give it to her?”

  He nodded, squeezing his eyes closed, struggling to swallow the pain that welled up into his throat. “You can come with me,” he whispered. “You’re her son. Did she tell you she had dual citizenship—for both the US and Mexico? You can get citizenship in Mexico. Your DNA will prove that you’re her son.”

  “I’d have to ask Pierre.” Daren looked up at him, his eyes clear, filled with a maturity far greater than his years. “He won’t say yes. He doesn’t like the cities and he doesn’t like Mexico even more.”

  Zipakna clenched his teeth, holding back the words that he wanted to use to describe Pierre. Lock the door, he thought. Just leave. Make Daren understand as they rolled on to the next settlement. “What happened to her?” he said softly, so softly.