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

by Gardner Dozois

  In the complex and powerful story that follows, she takes us to visit people waiting for death in an old folks’ home who discover unexpected new possibilities at the very edge of life.

  “Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow,

  He who would reach for pearls must dive below.”

  —John Dryden

  The ship, which would have looked nothing like a ship to Henry Erdmann, moved between the stars, traveling in an orderly pattern of occurrences in the vacuum flux. Over several cubic light-years of space, subatomic particles appeared, existed, and winked out of existence in nanoseconds. Flop transitions tore space and then reconfigured it as the ship moved on. Henry, had he somehow been nearby in the cold of deep space, would have died from the complicated, regular, intense bursts of radiation long before he could have had time to appreciate their shimmering beauty.

  All at once the “ship” stopped moving.

  The radiation bursts increased, grew even more complex. Then the ship abruptly changed direction. It accelerated, altering both space and time as it sped on, healing the alterations in its wake. Urgency shot through it.

  Something, far away, was struggling to be born.

  ONE

  Henry Erdmann stood in front of the mirror in his tiny bedroom, trying to knot his tie with one hand. The other hand gripped his walker. It was an unsteady business, and the tie ended up crooked. He yanked it out and began again. Carrie would be here soon.

  He always wore a tie to the college. Let the students—and graduate students, at that!—come to class in ripped jeans and obscene tee-shirts and hair tangled as if colonized by rats. Even the girls. Students were students, and Henry didn’t consider their sloppiness disrespectful, the way so many did at St. Sebastian’s. Sometimes he was even amused by it, in a sad sort of way. Didn’t these intelligent, sometimes driven, would-be physicists know how ephemeral their beauty was? Why did they go to such lengths to look unappealing, when soon enough that would be their only choice?

  This time he got the tie knotted. Not perfectly—a difficult operation, onehanded—but close enough for government work. He smiled. When he and his colleagues had been doing government work, only perfection was good enough. Atomic bombs were like that. Henry could still hear Oppie’s voice saying the plans for Ivy Mike were “technically sweet.” Of course, that was before all the—

  A knock on the door and Carries’s fresh young voice. “Dr. Erdmann? Are you ready?”

  She always called him by his title, always treated him with respect. Not like some of the nurses and assistants. “How are we today, Hank?” that overweight blonde asked yesterday. When he answered stiffly, “I don’t know about you, madame, but I’m fine, thank you,” she’d only laughed. Old people are so formal—it’s so cute! Henry could just see her saying it to one of her horrible colleagues. He had never been “Hank” in his entire life.

  “Coming, Carrie.” He put both hands on the walker and inched forward—clunk, clunk, clunk—the walker sounding loud even on the carpeted floor. His class’s corrected problem sets lay on the table by the door. He’d given them some really hard problems this week, and only Haldane had succeeded in solving all of them. Haldane had promise. An inventive mind, yet rigorous, too. They could have used him in ’52 on Project Ivy, developing the Teller-Ulam staged fusion H-bomb.

  Halfway across the living room of his tiny apartment in the Assisted Living Facility, something happened in Henry’s mind.

  He stopped, astonished. It had felt like a tentative touch, a ghostly finger inside his brain. Astonishment was immediately replaced by fear. Was he having a stroke? At ninety, anything was possible. But he felt fine, better in fact than for several days. Not a stroke. So what—

  “Dr. Erdmann?”

  “I’m here.” He clunked to the door and opened it. Carrie wore a cherry red sweater, a fallen orange leaf caught on her hat, and sunglasses. Such a pretty girl, all bronze hair and bright skin and vibrant color. Outside it was drizzling. Henry reached out and gently removed the sunglasses. Carrie’s left eye was swollen and discolored, the iris and pupil invisible under the outraged flesh.

  “The bastard,” Henry said.

  That was Henry and Carrie going down the hall toward the elevator, thought Evelyn Krenchnoted. She waved from her armchair, her door wide open as always, but they were talking and didn’t notice. She strained to hear, but just then another plane went overhead from the airport. Those pesky flight paths were too near St. Sebastian’s! On the other hand, if they weren’t, Evelyn couldn’t afford to live here. Always look on the bright side!

  Since this was Tuesday afternoon, Carrie and Henry were undoubtedly going to the college. So wonderful the way Henry kept busy—you’d never guess his real age, that was for sure. He even had all his hair! Although that jacket was too light for September, and not water-proof. Henry might catch cold. She would speak to Carrie about it. And why was Carrie wearing sunglasses when it was raining?

  But if Evelyn didn’t start her phone calls, she would be late! People were depending on her! She keyed in the first number, listened to it ring one floor below. “Bob? It’s Evelyn. Now, dear, tell me—how’s your blood pressure today?”

  “Fine,” Bob Donovan said.

  “Are you sure? You sound a bit grumpy, dear.”

  “I’m fine, Evelyn. I’m just busy.”

  “Oh, that’s good! With what?”

  “Just busy.”

  “Always good to keep busy! Are you coming to Current Affairs tonight?”

  “Dunno.”

  “You should. You really should. Intellectual stimulation is so important for people our age!”

  “Gotta go,” Bob grunted.

  “Certainly, but first, how did your granddaughter do with—”

  He’d hung up. Really, very grumpy. Maybe he was having problems with irregularity. Evelyn would recommend a high colonic.

  Her next call was more responsive. Gina Martinelli was, as always, thrilled with Evelyn’s attention. She informed Gina minutely about the state of her arthritis, her gout, her diabetes, her son’s weight problem, her other son’s wife’s step-daughter’s miscarriage, all interspersed with quotations from the Bible (“‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’—First Timothy”). She answered all Evelyn’s questions and wrote down all her recommendations and—

  “Evelyn?” Gina said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I—” Evelyn fell silent, an occurrence so shocking that Gina gasped, “Hit your panic button!”

  “No, no, I’m fine, I . . . I just remembered something for a moment.”

  “Remembered something? What?”

  But Evelyn didn’t know. It hadn’t been a memory, exactly, it had been a . . . what? A feeling, a vague but somehow strong sensation of . . . something.

  “Evelyn?”

  “I’m here!”

  “The Lord decides when to call us home, and I guess it’s not your time yet. Did you hear about Anna Chernov? That famous ballet dancer on Four? She fell last night and broke her leg and they had to move her to the Infirmary.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, poor thing. They say it’s only temporary, until they get her stabilized, but you know what that means.”

  She did. They all did. First the Infirmary, then up to Seven, where you didn’t even have your own little apartment any more, and eventually to Nursing on Eight and Nine. Better to go quick and clean, like Jed Fuller last month. But Evelyn wasn’t going to let herself think like that! A positive attitude was so important!

  Gina said, “Anna is doing pretty well, I hear. The Lord never sends more than a person can bear.”

  Evelyn wasn’t so sure about that, but it never paid to argue with Gina, who was convinced that she had God on redial. Evelyn said, “I’ll visit her before the Stitch ’n Bitch meeting. I’m sure she’ll want company. Poor girl—you know, those dancers, they just abuse their health for years and years, so what can you expect?”

  “I know!” Gina said, no
t without satisfaction. “They pay a terrible price for beauty. It’s a little vain, actually.”

  “Did you hear about that necklace she has in the St. Sebastian safe?”

  “No! What necklace?”

  “A fabulous one! Doris Dziwalski told me. It was given to Anna by some famous Russian dancer who was given it by the czar!”

  “What czar?”

  “The czar! You know, of Russia. Doris said it’s worth a fortune and that’s why it’s in the safe. Anna never wears it.”

  “Vanity,” Doris said. “She probably doesn’t like the way it looks now against her wrinkly neck.”

  “Doris said Anna’s depressed.”

  “No, it’s vanity. ‘Lo, I looked and saw that all was—’”

  “I’ll recommend acupuncture to her,” Evelyn interrupted. “Acupuncture is good for depression.” But first she’d call Erin, to tell her the news.

  Erin Bass let the phone ring. It was probably that tiresome bore Evelyn Krenchnoted, eager to check on Erin’s blood pressure or her cholesterol or her Isles of Langerhans. Oh, Erin should answer the phone, there was no harm in the woman, Erin should be more charitable. But why? Why should one have to be more charitable just because one was old?

  She let the phone ring and returned to her book, Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. Greene’s world-weary despair was a silly affectation but he was a wonderful writer, and too much underrated nowadays.

  The liner came in on a Saturday evening: from the bedroom window they could see its long grey form steal past the boom, beyond the—

  Something was happening.

  —steal past the boom, beyond the—

  Erin was no longer in St. Sebastian’s, she was nowhere, she was lifted away from everything, she was beyond the—

  Then it was over and she sat again in her tiny apartment, the book sliding unheeded off her lap.

  Anna Chernov was dancing. She and Paul stood with two other couples on the stage, under the bright lights. Balanchine himself stood in the second wing, and even though Anna knew he was there to wait for Suzanne’s solo, his presence inspired her. The music began. Promenade en couronne, attitude, arabesque effacé and into the lift, Paul’s arms raising her. She was lifted out of herself and then she was soaring above the stage, over the heads of the corps de ballet, above Suzanne Farrell herself, soaring through the roof of the New York State Theater and into the night sky, spreading her arms in a porte de bras wide enough to take in the glittering night sky, soaring in the most perfect jeté in the universe, until . . .

  “She’s smiling,” Bob Donovan said, before he knew he was going to speak at all. He looked down at the sleeping Anna, so beautiful she didn’t even look real, except for the leg in its big ugly cast. In one hand, feeling like a fool but what the fuck, he held three yellow roses.

  “The painkillers do that sometimes,” the Infirmary nurse said. “I’m afraid you can’t stay, Mr. Donovan.”

  Bob scowled at her. But it wasn’t like he meant it or anything. This nurse wasn’t so bad. Not like some. Maybe because she wasn’t any spring chicken herself. A few more years, sister, and you’ll be here right with us.

  “Give her these, okay?” He thrust the roses at the nurse.

  “I will, yes,” she said, and he walked out of the medicine-smelling Infirmary—he hated that smell—back to the elevator. Christ, what a sorry old fart he was. Anna Chernov, that nosy old broad Evelyn Krenchnoted once told him, used to dance at some famous place in New York, Abraham Center or something. Anna had been famous. But Evelyn could be wrong, and anyway it didn’t matter. From the first moment Bob Donovan laid eyes on Anna Chernov, he’d wanted to give her things. Flowers. Jewelry. Anything she wanted. Anything he had. And how stupid and fucked-up was that, at his age? Give me a break!

  He took the elevator to the first floor, stalked savagely through the lobby, and went out the side door to the “remembrance garden.” Stupid name, New Age-y stupid. He wanted to kick something, wanted to bellow for—

  Energy punched through him, from the base of his spine up his back and into his brain, mild but definite, like a shock from a busted toaster or something. Then it was gone.

  What the fuck was that? Was he okay? If he fell, like Anna—

  He was okay. He didn’t have Anna’s thin delicate bones. Whatever it was, was gone now. Just one of those things.

  On a Nursing floor of St. Sebastian’s, a woman with just a few days to live muttered in her long, last half-sleep. An IV dripped morphine into her arm, easing the passage. No one listened to the mutterings; it had been years since they’d made sense. For a moment she stopped and her eyes, again bright in the ravaged face that had once been so lovely, grew wide. But for only a moment. Her eyes closed and the mindless muttering resumed.

  In Tijuana, a vigorous old man sitting behind his son’s market stall, where he sold cheap serapes to jabbering touristos, suddenly lifted his face to the sun. His mouth, which still had all its white flashing teeth, made a big O.

  In Bombay, a widow dressed in white looked out her window at the teeming streets, her face gone blank as her sari.

  In Chengdu, a monk sitting on his cushion on the polished floor of the meditation room in the ancient Wenshu Monastery shattered the holy silence with a shocking, startled laugh.

  TWO

  Carrie Vesey sat in the back of Dr. Erdmann’s classroom and thought about murder.

  Not that she would ever do it, of course. Murder was wrong. Taking a life filled her with horror that was only—

  Ground-up castor beans were a deadly poison.

  —made worse by her daily witnessing of old people’s aching desire to hold onto life. Also, she—

  Her step-brother had once shown her how to disable the brakes on a car.

  —knew she wasn’t the kind of person who solved problems that boldly. And anyway her—

  The battered-woman defense almost always earned acquittal from juries.

  —lawyer said that a paper trail of restraining orders and ER documentation was by far the best way to—

  If a man was passed out from a dozen beers, he’d never feel a bullet from his own service revolver.

  —put Jim behind bars legally. That, the lawyer said, “would solve the problem”—as if a black eye and a broken arm and constant threats that left her scared even when Jim wasn’t in the same city were all just a theoretical “problem,” like the ones Dr. Erdmann gave his physics students.

  He sat on top of a desk in the front of the room, talking about something called the “Bose-Einstein condensate.” Carrie had no idea what that was, and she didn’t care. She just liked being here, sitting unheeded in the back of the room. The physics students, nine boys and two girls, were none of them interested in her presence, her black eye, or her beauty. When Dr. Erdmann was around, he commanded all their geeky attention, and that was indescribably restful. Carrie tried—unsuccessfully, she knew—to hide her beauty. Her looks had brought her nothing but trouble: Gary, Eric, Jim. So now she wore baggy sweats and no make-up, and crammed her 24-carat-gold hair under a shapeless hat. Maybe if she was as smart as these students she would have learned to pick a different kind of man, but she wasn’t, and she hadn’t, and Dr. Erdmann’s classroom was a place she felt safe. Safer, even, than St. Sebastian’s, which was where Jim had blackened her eye.

  He’d slipped in through the loading dock, she guessed, and caught her alone in the linens supply closet. He was gone after one punch, and when she called her exasperated lawyer and he found out she had no witnesses and St. Sebastian’s had “security,” he’d said there was nothing he could do. It would be her word against Jim’s. She had to be able to prove that the restraining order had been violated.

  Dr. Erdmann was talking about “proof,” too: some sort of mathematical proof. Carrie had been good at math, in high school. Only Dr. Erdmann had said once that what she’d done in high school wasn’t “mathematics,” only “arithmetic.”

  “Why didn’t you go to colle
ge, Carrie?” he’d asked.

  “No money,” she said in a tone that meant: Please don’t ask anything else. She just hadn’t felt up to explaining about Daddy and the alcoholism and the debts and her abusive step-brothers, and Dr. Erdmann hadn’t asked. He was sensitive that way.

  Looking at his tall, stooped figure sitting on the desk, his walker close to hand, Carrie sometimes let herself dream that Dr. Erdmann—Henry—was fifty years younger. Forty to her twenty-eight—that would work. She’d Googled a picture of him at that age, when he’d been working at someplace called the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. He’d been handsome, dark-haired, smiling into the camera next to his wife, Ida. She hadn’t been as pretty as Carrie, but she’d gone to college, so even if Carrie had been born back then, she wouldn’t have had a chance with him. Story of her life.

  “—have any questions?” Dr. Erdmann finished.

  The students did—they always did—clamoring to be heard, not raising their hands, interrupting each other. But when Dr. Erdmann spoke, immediately they all shut up. Someone leapt up to write equations on the board. Dr. Erdmann slowly turned his frail body to look at them. The discussion went on a long time, almost as long as the class. Carrie fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was to Dr. Erdmann, leaning on his walker, gently jiggling her shoulder. “Carrie?”

  “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!”

  “Don’t be. We bored you to death, poor child.”

  “No! I loved it!”

  He raised his eyebrows and she felt shamed. He thought she was telling a polite lie, and he had very little tolerance for lies. But the truth is, she always loved being here.

  Outside, it was full dark. The autumn rain had stopped and the unseen ground had that mysterious, fertile smell of wet leaves. Carrie helped Dr. Erdmann into her battered Toyota and slid behind the wheel. As they started back toward St. Sebastian’s, she could tell that he was exhausted. Those students asked too much of him! It was enough that he taught one advanced class a week, sharing all that physics, without them also demanding he—