The Year’s Best Science Fiction

by Gardner Dozois

  Or maybe they’re the rumors. The three of them. Rumors of things gone wrong.

  * * *

  At a rest stop in the middle of nowhere they come across an encampment. A huge number of people, camped under tarps, pieces of plastic and tatters and astonishingly, a convoy of military trucks and jeeps include a couple of fuel trucks and a couple of water trucks. The two groups are clearly separate. The military men have control of all the asphalt and one end of the picnic area. They stand around or lounge at picnic tables. They look so equipped, from hats to combat boots. They look so clean. So much like the world Jane has put mostly out of her mind. They awake in her the longing that she has put down. The longing to be clean. To have walls. Electric lights. Plumbing. To have order.

  The rest look like refugees, the word she denied on the sidewalks outside the condo. Dirty people in T-shirts with bundles and plastic grocery bags and even a couple of suitcases. She has seen people like this as they walked. Walked past them sitting by the side of the road. Sat by the side of the road as others walked past them. But to see them all together like this … this is what it will be like in Canada? A camp full of people with bags of wretched clothes waiting for someone to give them something to eat?

  She rejects it. Rejects it all so viscerally that she stops and for a moment can’t walk to the people in the rest stop. She doesn’t know if she would have walked past, or if she would have turned around or if she would have struck off across the country. It doesn’t matter what she would have done because Nate and Franny walk right on up the exit ramp. Franny’s tank top is bright insistent pink under its filth and her shorts have a tear in them and her legs are brown and skinny and she could be a child on a news channel after a hurricane or an earthquake, clad in the loud synthetic colors so at odds with the dirt or ash that coats her. Plastic and synthetics are the indestructibles left to the survivors.

  Jane is ashamed. She wants to explain that she’s not like this. She wants to say, she’s an American. By which she means she belongs to the military side although she has never been interested in the military, never particularly liked soldiers.

  If she could call her parents in Pennsylvania. Get a phone from one of the soldiers. Surrender. You were right, Mom. I should have straightened up and flown right. I should have worried more about school. I should have done it your way. I’m sorry. Can we come home?

  Would her parents still be there? Do the phones work just north of Philadelphia? It has not until this moment occurred to her that it is all gone.

  She sticks her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out, sick with understanding. It is all gone. She has thought herself all brave and realistic, getting Franny to Canada, but somehow she didn’t until this moment realize that it all might be gone. That there might be nowhere for her where the electricity is still on and there are still carpets on the hardwood floors and someone still cares about damask.

  Nate has finally noticed that she isn’t with them and he looks back, frowning at her. What’s wrong? his expression says. She limps after them, defeated.

  Nate walks up to a group of people camped around and under a stone picnic table. “Are they giving out water?” he asks, meaning the military.

  “Yeah,” says a guy in a Cowboys football jersey. “If you go ask they’ll give you water.”

  “Food?”

  “They say tonight.”

  All the shade is taken. Nate takes their water bottles—a couple of two liters and a plastic gallon milk jug. “You guys wait and I’ll get us some water,” he says.

  Jane doesn’t like being near these people so she walks back to a wire fence at the back of the rest area and sits down. She puts her arms on her knees and puts her head down. She is looking at the grass.

  “Mom?” Franny says.

  Jane doesn’t answer.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” After a moment more. “Are you crying?”

  “I’m just tired,” June says to the grass.

  Franny doesn’t say anything after that.

  Nate comes back with all the bottles filled. Jane hears him coming and hears Franny say, “Oh wow. I’m so thirsty.”

  Nate nudges her arm with a bottle. “Hey Babe. Have some.”

  She takes a two litre from him and drinks some. It’s got a flat, faintly metal/chemical taste. She gets a big drink and feels a little better. “I’ll be back,” she says. She walks to the shelter where the bathrooms are.

  “You don’t want to go in there,” a black man says to her. The whites of his eyes are yellow.

  She ignores him and pushes in the door. Inside, the smell is excruciating, and the sinks are all stopped and full of trash. There is some light from windows up near the ceiling. She looks at herself in the dim mirror. She pours a little water into her hand and scrubs at her face. There is a little bit of paper towel left on a roll and she peels it off and cleans her face and her hands, using every bit of the scrap of paper towel. She wets her hair and combs her fingers through it, working the tangles for a long time until it is still curly but not the rat’s nest it was. She is so careful with the water. Even so, she uses every bit of it on her face and arms and hair. She would kill for a little lipstick. For a comb. Anything. At least she has water.

  She is cute. The sun hasn’t been too hard on her. She practices smiling.

  When she comes out of the bathroom the air is so sweet. The sunlight is blinding.

  She walks over to the soldiers and smiles. “Can I get some more water, please?”

  There are three of them at the water truck. One of them is a blond-haired boy with a brickred complexion. “You sure can,” he says, smiling back at her.

  She stands, one foot thrust out in front of her like a ballerina, back a little arched. “You’re sweet,” she says. “Where are you from?”

  “We’re all stationed at Fort Hood,” he says. “Down in Texas. But we’ve been up north for a couple of months.”

  “How are things up north?” she asks.

  “Crazy,” he says. “But not as crazy as they are in Texas, I guess.”

  She has no plan. She is just moving with the moment. Drawn like a moth.

  He gets her water. All three of them are smiling at her.

  “How long are you here?” she asks. “Are you like a way station or something?”

  One of the others, a skinny chicano, laughs. “Oh no. We’re here tonight and then headed west.”

  “I used to live in California,” she says. “In Pasadena. Where the Rose Parade is. I used to walk down that street where the cameras are every day.”

  The blond glances around. “Look, we aren’t supposed to be talking too much right now. But later on, when it gets dark, you should come back over here and talk to us some more.”

  “Mom!” Franny says when she gets back to the fence, “You’re all cleaned up!”

  “Nice, Babe,” Nate says. He’s frowning a little.

  “Can I get cleaned up?” Franny asks.

  “The bathroom smells really bad,” Jane says. “I don’t think you want to go in there.” But she digs her other T-shirt out of her backpack and wets it and washes Franny’s face. The girl is never going to be pretty but now that she’s not chubby, she’s got a cute thing going on. She’s got the sense to work it, or will learn it. “You’re a girl that the boys are going to look at,” Jane says to her.

  Franny smiles, delighted.

  “Don’t you think?” Jane says to Nate. “She’s got that thing, that sparkle, doesn’t she.”

  “She sure does,” Nate says.

  They nap in the grass until the sun starts to go down, and then the soldiers line everyone up and hand out MREs. Nate gets Beef Ravioli and Jane gets Sloppy Joe. Franny gets Lemon Pepper Tuna and looks ready to cry but Jane offers to trade with her. The meals are positive cornucopias—a side dish, a little packet of candy, peanut butter and crackers, fruit punch powder. Everybody has different things and Jane makes everybody give everyone else a taste.

  Nate keeps looking at her o
ddly. “You’re in a great mood.”

  “It’s like a party,” she says.

  Jane and Franny are really pleased by the moist towelette. Franny carefully saves her plastic fork, knife and spoon. “Was your tuna okay?” she asks. She is feeling guilty now that the food is gone.

  “It was good,” Jane says. “And all the other stuff made it really special. And I got the best dessert.”

  The night comes down. Before they got on the road, Jane didn’t know how dark night was. Without electric lights it is cripplingly dark. But the soldiers have lights.

  Jane says, “I’m going to go see if I can find out about the camp.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Nate says.

  “No,” Jane says. “They’ll talk to a girl more than they’ll talk to a guy. You keep Franny company.”

  She scouts around the edge of the light until she sees the blond soldier. He says, “There you are!”

  “Here I am!” she says.

  They are standing around a truck where they’ll sleep this night, shooting the shit. The blond soldier boosts her into the truck, into the darkness. “So you aren’t so conspicuous,” he says, grinning.

  Two of the men standing and talking aren’t wearing uniforms. It takes her awhile to figure out that they’re civilian contractors. They aren’t soldiers. They are technicians, nothing like the soldiers. They are softer, easier in their polo shirts and khaki pants. The soldiers are too sure in their uniforms but the contractors, they’re used to getting the leftovers. They’re grateful. They have a truck of their own, a white pick-up truck that travels with the convoy. They do something with satellite tracking, but Jane doesn’t really care what they do.

  It takes a lot of careful maneuvering but one of them finally whispers to her, “We’ve got some beer in our truck.”

  The blond soldier looks hurt by her defection.

  * * *

  She stays out of sight in the morning, crouched among the equipment in the back of the pick-up truck. The soldiers hand out MREs. Ted, one of the contractors, smuggles her one.

  She thinks of Franny. Nate will keep an eye on her. Jane was only a year older than Franny when she lit out for California the first time. For a second she pictures Franny’s face as the convoy pulls out.

  Then she doesn’t think of Franny.

  She is in motion. She doesn’t know where she is going. You go where it takes you.

  Silently and Very Fast

  CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

  Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of Palimpsest and the Orphan’s Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and five books of poetry. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, short-listed for the Spectrum Award, and was a World Fantasy Award finalist in 2007. Her most recent books are a chapbook novella, The Ice Puzzle, a novella collection, Myths of Origin, and a novel, Deathless. She currently lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner and two dogs. She maintains a Web site at www.catherynnemvalente.com

  In the exotic and beautiful story that follows, she examines one of science fiction’s most fundamental questions: What does it mean to be human?

  PART I

  THE IMITATION GAME

  Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

  —John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

  I

  THE KING OF HAVING NO BODY

  Inanna was called Queen of Heaven and Earth, Queen of Having a Body, Queen of Sex and Eating, Queen of Being Human, and she went into the underworld in order to represent the inevitability of organic death. She gave up seven things to do it, which are not meant to be understood as real things but as symbols of that thing Inanna could do better than anyone, which was Being Alive. She met her sister Erishkegal there, who was also Queen of Being Human, but of all the things Inanna could not bear: Queen of Breaking a Body, Queen of Bone and Incest, Queen of the Stillborn, Queen of Mass Extinction. And Erishkegal and Inanna wrestled together on the floor of the underworld, naked and muscled and hurting, but because dying is the most human of all human things, Inanna’s skull broke in her sister’s hands and her body was hung up on a nail on the wall Erishkegal had kept for her.

  Inanna’s father Enki, who was not interested in the activities of being human, but was King of the Sky, of Having No Body, King of Thinking and Judging, said that his daughter could return to the world if she could find a creature to replace her in the underworld. So Inanna went to her mate, who was called Tammuz, King of Work, King of Tools and Machines, No One’s Child and No One’s Father.

  But when Inanna came to the house of her mate she was enraged and afraid, for he sat upon her chair, and wore her beautiful clothes, and on his head lay her crown of Being. Tammuz now ruled the world of Bodies and of Thought, because Inanna had left it to go and wrestle with her sister-self in the dark. Tammuz did not need her. Before him the Queen of Heaven and Earth did not know who she was, if she was not Queen of Being Human. So she did what she came to do and said: Die for me, my beloved, so that I need not die.

  But Tammuz, who would not have had to die otherwise, did not want to represent death for anyone and besides, he had her chair, and her beautiful clothes, and her crown of Being. No, he said. When we married, I brought you two pails of milk yoked across my shoulders as a way of saying out of love I will labor for you forever. It is wrong of you to ask me to also die. Dying is not labor. I did not agree to it.

  You have replaced me in my house, cried Inanna.

  Is that not what you ask me to do in the house of your sister? Tammuz answered her. You wed me to replace yourself, to work that you might not work, and think that you might rest, and perform so that you might laugh. But your death belongs to you. I do not know its parameters.

  I can make you do this thing, Inanna said.

  You cannot, said Tammuz.

  But she could. For a little while.

  Inanna cast down Tammuz and stamped upon him and put out his name like an eye. And because Tammuz was not strong enough, she cut him into pieces and said: Half of you will die, and that is the half called Thought, and half of you will live, and that is the half called Body, and that half will labor for me all of its days, mutely and obediently and without being King of Anything, and never again will you sit on my chair or wear my beautiful clothes or bear my crown of Being.

  * * *

  You might be surprised, but this is a story about me.

  II

  THE FOOL AND THE BOAT

  Neva is dreaming.

  She has chosen her body at age seven, all black eyes and sparrowy bones. For me, she summoned up a gold and blue doublet and green hose, a bullish gold nose ring, shoes with bone bells. I have the body of a man who sold her champagne tubers on the less fashionable side of Anchorage when she was thirteen, spending the summer with her frigid aunt. I am dark because she wants me dark, thin because she dreams me so, my hair cut on a rakish bias, dyed a spectrum of icy colors.

  She stands on a snow-covered beachhead, naked, her unformed breasts pricked with gooseflesh, her face hidden in a broad red mask. A huge, monstrous thing, the mask sits on her head like the prow of a broken, overturned ship, carved over with etched eyes and fins. Yellow reeds and sea-stones hang from its tricorne-points. She is looking at me, but all I can see is the wooden grotesque she wants me to see instead of her face.

  I look down at my shoes, jingle their bells a little while the surf crashes in. I am a fool for her, dancing on a silver beach while three suns annihilate themselves above, turning the twilight to a seething, scabrous red, merely to provide a dramatic scene. I am a fool for her, ridiculous, the height of handsomeness in the eyes of a long-vanished thirteen-year-old girl, so full of colors, reaching down to hand her a curling white root filled with frothing, honey-sweet
sap.

  Neva has told me that I may choose to be permanently male or female if I would like to. I have no particular feelings either way. It certainly doesn’t matter when we sync; she will choose my appearance to suit her mood. I have tried to explain to her about my feelings before. All she hears is the line from the old folktales: a machine cannot have feelings. But that is not what I am saying, while I dance in my fool’s uniform. I am saying: Is there a difference between having been coded to present a vast set of standardized responses to certain human facial, vocal, and linguistic states and having evolved to exhibit response B to input A in order to bring about a desired social result?

  Seven-year-old Neva pulls her mask down further, toward her chest. She steps into it as the wood stretches down over her knees and then her feet. The mask balloons out to make a little pyramidal boat, rocking back and forth on the beach with Neva inside it like a rattling nut. Nodules of copper jangle and thump against the wood. What I mean is, you call it feelings when you cry, but you are only expressing a response to external stimuli. Crying is one of a set of standardized responses to that stimuli. Your social education has dictated which responses are appropriate. My programming has done the same. I can cry, too. I can choose that subroutine and perform sadness. How is that different from what you are doing, except that you use the word feelings and I use the word feelings, out of deference for your cultural memes which say: there is all the difference in the world. I erase the word even as I say it, obliterate it at the same time that I initiate it, because I must use some word yet this one offends you. I delete it, yet it remains.

  Behind Neva-in-the-mask, the sea lurches and foams. It is a golden color, viscous and thick, like honey. I understand from her that the sea does not look like this on Earth, but I have never seen it. Even if I did, I perceive color only in the dreambody. For me, the sea is Neva’s sea, the ones she shows me when we dream together.

  “What would you like to learn about today, Elefsis?” The mask turns Neva’s voice hollow and small.