The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  "May I ask why?"

  His voice was dispassionate. "No."

  "But these boys are going to die — "

  "That can't be your concern."

  "It already is."

  Eakins took a breath, one of those I'm-about-to-say-something-important inhalation/exhalations. He leaned across the desk and fixed me with an intense glare. "Listen to me. Life is empty and meaningless. It doesn't mean anything — and it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything. Drop the case."

  "That's not an answer."

  "It's the only answer you're ever going to get. This conversation is over." He started to rise —

  I stayed sat. "No."

  He stopped, half out of his chair. "I gave you an instruction. I expect you to follow it."

  "No."

  "I wasn't asking you for an argument."

  "Well, you're getting one. I'm not abandoning those boys to die. I need something more from you."

  He sank back down into the chair. "There are things you don't know. There are things you don't understand. That's the way it is. That's the way it has to be."

  "I made a promise to one of those boys that nothing's going to happen to him."

  "You got involved — ?"

  "I made a promise."

  "Which boy?"

  "Number two."

  Eakins opened the folder. Turned pages. "This one?" He held up Matty's picture. I nodded. Eakins dropped the picture on the desk, leaned back in his chair. Held up the other pictures. "He's not part of this case."

  "Eh?"

  "The others are part of this case. That one isn't."

  "I don't understand."

  "And I'm not going to explain it. The case is over. Disengage. We'll send you somewhere else. Georgia's got a courier job up in the Bay Area — "

  "I don't want it."

  "That wasn't a request. You'll take the courier job and we won't say anything about where you were Sunday night."

  "No."

  "We're paying you a lot of money—"

  "You're renting my judgment, not buying my soul. That's why you're paying so much."

  Eakins hesitated—not because he was uncertain, but because he was annoyed. He glanced away, as if checking a cue card, then came back to me. "I knew you were going to refuse. But we still had to have the conversation."

  "Is that it?" I put my hands on the arms of the chair, preparing to rise.

  "Not quite. This ends your employment here. Georgia has your severance check. We'll expect the return of all materials related to this case by the end of business today."

  "You think that'll accomplish anything? You can't stop me from saving their lives as a private citizen."

  Eakins didn't respond to that. He was already sorting files on his desk, as if looking for the next piece of business to attend to. "Close the door on your way out, will you?"

  Georgia was waiting for me. Her face was tight. I knew that look. There was a lot she wanted to say, but she couldn't, she wasn't allowed. Instead, she held out an envelope. "The apartment and the car are in your name, we've subtracted the cost from your check. The bank book has your ancillary earnings. You'll be all right. Oh —and I'll need your ID card."

  I took it out of my wallet and passed it over. "You knew, didn't you?"

  "There was never any doubt."

  "You know me that well?"

  "No. But I know that part of you." She pressed the envelope into my hands. Pressed close enough for me to tell that she still wore the same sweet perfume.

  Went down the stairs slowly. Stopped to have my shoes shined one last time while I looked through the contents of the envelope. A fat wad of cash, a hefty check, a surprisingly healthy bank account, several other bits of necessary paperwork—and a scrap of paper with a hastily written note. "Musso & Frank's. IS minutes." I sniffed the paper, recognized the perfume, nodded, tipped Roy a fiver, and started west on the boulevard. I'd get there just in time.

  I asked for a table in the back, she came in a few minutes later, sat down opposite me without a word. I waited. She held up a finger to catch the waiter's eye, ordered two shots of Glenfiddich, then looked straight across to me. "Eakins is a first-class prick."

  Shook my head. "Nah, he's only a second-class prick."

  She considered it. "Not even that high. He's a dildo."

  My silence was agreement. "So… ?"

  She opened her purse, took out another envelope, laid it on the table. "You weren't supposed to get this case. No one was. When he found out I'd assigned it to you, he almost fired me. He might still."

  "I don't think so. You're still there as far uptime as I've been."

  She shook her head as if that weren't important now. "The whole thing is… it doesn't make sense. Why would he abrogate a contract? Anyway—" She pushed the envelope across. "Here. See what you can make out of this."

  "What is it?"

  "I have no idea. He disappears for days, weeks, months at a time. Then he shows up as if not a day has passed. I started xeroxing stuff from his desk, a few years ago. I don't know why. I thought—I thought maybe it would give me some insights. There's things that… I don't know what they are. There's pictures. Like this thing—" She shuffled through the photos. "—I think it's a telephone. It's got buttons like a phone, but it looks like something from Star Trek, it flips open—but it doesn't work, it just says 'no service.' And this other thing, it looks like a poker chip, one side is sticky, you can stick it to a wall, the other side is all black—is it a bug of some kind? A microphone? A camera? Or maybe it's a chronosensor? And then there are these silver disks, five inches wide, what the hell are they? They look like diffraction gratings. Some of them say Memorex on the back. Are they some kind of recording tape, only without the tape? And there's all these different kinds of pills. I tried looking up the names, but they're not listed in any medical encyclopedia. What the hell is Tagamet? Or Viagra? Or Xylamis? Or any of these others?"

  "Are there dates on any of this material?"

  "Not always. But sometimes. The farthest one is 2039. But I think he's gone farther. A lot farther. I think he's gotten hold of the Caltech local-field time-maps. Or maybe he's been dropping his own sensors and making his own maps, I don't know. But I've never seen anything that looks like a map. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But then again —there's that thing that he says, that if we could go back to say, 1907 with a bunch of stuff from today—a transistor radio, a princess phone, a portable TV, a record album, birth control pills, things like that—none of it would make sense to someone living in that time. Even a copy of a news magazine wouldn't make much sense because the language would have shifted so much. So if Eakins has stuff from thirty, forty, fifty years into the future, we wouldn't get much of it—"

  "Yes and no. Eifty years ago, they didn't have the same experience of progress, so they didn't have the vocabulary to encompass the kinds of changes that come with time. We have a different perspective —because change is part of our history, we expect it to be part of our future. So, if anything, we look at this stuff and we don't see a mystery as much as we see the limits of our experience."

  "Now, you sound like me."

  "I was quoting you. Paraphrasing." I shuffled through the papers, the photos, the notes. "None of this has any bearing on this case, does it?"

  "I don't know. But I thought you should see it. Maybe it'll give you an insight into Eakins."

  Shook my head. "It proves that he knows more than he's telling us. But we already knew that."

  She glanced at her watch. "Okay, I'm out of time." She stood up, leaned over and kissed me quickly. "Take care of yourself—and your little boyfriend too."

  "He's not my—" But she was already gone.

  I shoved everything back into the envelope and ordered a steak sandwich. The day had started weird and gotten weirder, and it wasn't half over. I might as well face the rest of it on a full belly.

  Went back to the apartment. Photographed everything. Then gathered it up a
nd went straight to the local copy shop. Five copies, collated. Paid in cash. Put one copy in the trunk of the car, put another in the apartment safe, and mailed the other three to three different P.O. boxes. Delivered the originals back to Georgia who accepted them without comment. Eakins had already left the building. But neither of us said anything; it was possible he had the offices bugged — maybe even with his funny poker chips.

  By the time I got home, Matty was unpacking groceries. The whole scene looked very domestic. "Did you have a good day?" he asked. All I needed was a pair of slippers and the evening newspaper.

  When I didn't answer, he looked up. Worried. "You okay?"

  "Yeah. I'm just… thinking about stuff."

  "You're always thinking about stuff."

  "Well, this is stuff that needs thinking about."

  He got it. He shut up and busied himself in the kitchen. I went out onto the balcony and stared at Melrose Avenue. Cold and gray, it was going to rain again tonight; a second storm right behind the first. Something Eakins had said —none of it made sense, but one piece of it had its own particular stink of wrongness. Why is Matty not important to this case?

  And that led directly to the next question: What did Eakins know that he wasn't telling me? And why wasn't he telling? Because if I knew… it would affect things. What things? What other plan was working?

  Obviously, we weren't on the same side. Had we ever been? Never mind that. That's a dead end right now. I had to think about Matty.

  If Matty is irrelevant, then… is he still in danger? No, of course he's in danger. He disappeared. We know that. But if he disappeared, then why is he irrelevant… ? Unless his disappearance is unrelated. And if his disappearance is unrelated, then… of course, he would be entirely useless to this case. Shit.

  But how would Eakins know that? Unless Eakins knew something about Matty. Or knew something about all the others.

  And of course, all of that assumed that Eakins was telling the truth. What if he was purposely trying to mislead me? But then that brought me back to the first question. What was Eakins up to?

  Not having the answers to any of these questions annoyed me. I didn't have a plan, I didn't have anything on which to base a plan. The only thing I could think was to continue with the plan that Eakins had scuttled —not because it was a good plan, but because it would force the situation. It would force Eakins to… to do what?

  When the rain finally started, I went back in and sat down to dinner. Baked chicken. It was cold.

  "Why didn't you call me?"

  "You were thinking."

  "Urn-" I stopped myself. He was being considerate. "Okay."

  "Do you want me to warm that up for you?"

  "No, it's okay." I ate in silence for a bit, feeling uncomfortable. Finally I put my fork down and looked across at him. "Y'know what I just realized. I don't know how to talk to you."

  He looked puzzled.

  "This is good — " I indicated the cold chicken. "You can cook. I keep wanting to say you'll make someone a wonderful wife someday. But I can't say that because — "

  "It's different when you say it. When you say it, it isn't mocking."

  "It's still the wrong thing to say. It's demeaning, isn't it?"

  "I don't mind. Not from you." He started to clear the table.

  I took a breath. "Are you — ?" I stopped. "I don't know how to ask this. Are you… attracted to me?"

  He nearly dropped the plates. He was facing away so I couldn't see his expression, but his body was suddenly tense. He finally turned around so he could look at me. "Do you want me to be?"

  "It's like this. I don't connect well to people. Not anybody. Male or female. I can go through the motions. For a while. But only for a while. I'm always… holding back."

  "Why?"

  I shrugged.

  "That's your answer?"

  "When you start raveling, you get unraveled yourself. You get detached. You don't belong to any time, you can't belong to any person. So you turn off that part of yourself."

  He didn't respond right away. He got the coffee pot from the stove and filled two cups. He brought cream and sugar to the table, for himself, not me. As he stirred his coffee, he finally asked, "So why are you telling me this? Are you telling me I shouldn't care about you because you can't care back?"

  "I don't know if I can care about anybody. When I try, it doesn't work out. So I've stopped trying."

  "You didn't answer my question. Why are you telling me this?"

  "Because… right now, you're the only person I have to talk to."

  "Not your dad?"

  "This is not a conversation I could have with my dad."

  He shook his head in frustrated confusion. "Just what are we talking about?"

  "About the fact that I am so fucking angry and confused and upset and annoyed and frustrated and—and even despairing—that if you weren't here, right now tonight, if you weren't here to talk to… I'd end up sitting alone in a chair again — with my gun barrel in my mouth, wondering if I have the courage to pull the trigger. I've known guys who've sucked the bullets out of their guns. It makes a mess on the wall. And I used to wonder why they did it. That was before. Not anymore. Now I'm starting to understand."

  His face was white. "You're scaring the hell out of me."

  "You don't have to worry. I'm not going to do anything stupid. I just—I just want you to know that right now… you're doing me the favor by staying here."

  "This is a lot more than I can deal with —I'm not—"

  I nodded. "Kiddo. I'm more than most people can deal with. That's why they leave. Look—I figured, after all you've been through, you'd understand what it feels like to feel so separated from everyone else. I'm coming from the same place —same place, different time zone."

  He stirred his coffee thoughtfully. "There's a quote I learned in school. Sometimes it helps me. It's from Edmund Burke. I don't know who he is or was, it doesn't matter. He said, 'Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.'"

  Considered it. "Yeah. That's good. It's useful."

  We sat there for a while. Not talking.

  Later. I came out of my bedroom. He was curled up on the couch. "Matt? Matty?"

  "Huh — ?" He rolled over, looked at me eroegily.

  "If you want to come sleep in the bed again, you can."

  "No, it's all right."

  But a little bit later, he pushed open the bedroom door, padded over, and slipped in next to me. So that was something. I just didn't know what. But then again, neither did he. Probably.

  The rain cleared up, leaving the air sparkling, the way it used to be in the thirties and the forties. Least, that's what they say. In two days, though, the smog levels would be back to their lung-choking worst. It's not just the million-plus internal combustion engines pouring out lead and carbon dioxide and all the other residues of inefficient fuel-burning. Los Angeles is ringed with mountains. That's why they call it a basin. Fresh air can't get in, stale air can't get out. It sits and stagnates. The Indians called it el valle de fumar. The valley of fumes. Only two things clean it— the once-in-a-while rainstorms of winter and spring, or the hot dry Santa Ana winds at the end of the summer. From June until October, don't bother breathing. You can breathe in November.

  But today, today at least, was beautiful. It was a go-to-Disneyland day. And I almost suggested it to Matty, but he had to work, and I hadn't figured anything else out yet, so we disentangled ourselves from the mustiness of sleep and stepped into the comfortable zombie-zone of routine.

  We had a week to go before Brad Boyd would disappear. I spent some of the daytime tailing him, even though that was probably a dead end. He worked at an adult bookstore on Vine, just across the street from the Hollywood Ranch Market. Sometimes he bought a Coke and a burrito from the counter in front. Usually he walked to work, leaving the motorcycle parked under a small covered patio in front of the apartments. It wouldn't be hard to sabotage the bike. That would keep him at home. But it wo
uldn't get me closer to Mr. Death.

  Twice, I drove out to visit Dad. The second time, I took him to the doctor. I already knew that it wouldn't do any good, wouldn't delay the inevitable, but I had to try. Maybe make it a little easier for him. Dad fussed at me, but not too much. He didn't have the same strength to argue that he'd had when I was eighteen, when I'd come back with the recruiting forms, when I told him of my decision, when I snapped back at him, "Well, if it's a mistake, it's my mistake to make, not yours." It wasn't until Duncan stepped on a land mine just a few paces ahead of me that I discovered what Dad had been so scared of. But by then, I was already starting to shut down. So the scared never got all the way in, never got to the bottom. Part of me remained convinced that it wasn't going to happen to me. Ever. Just the same, I got out of there as soon as my rotation ended.

  I sat at the kitchen table, puzzling over the photos and the copies of the notes Georgia had taken from Eakins' desk. Someday they'd make sense, but at this point in time —literally—they were incomprehensible. The only thing this stuff proved was that Eakins had time-hopped farther into the future than anyone I'd ever heard.

  In the evenings, Matty and I would shadow Brad again. Having an extra set of eyes helped. The first night motorcycle-boy started at Gino's, had no luck or didn't like what he saw, and rode over to the Stampede. We parked in the lot of the supermarket across the street, just behind the bus bench where we could watch the front entrance and his motorcycle. The Stampede had an emergency exit in the rear patio, but without an emergency the only way out was the front. We might be here awhile, how long does it take to cruise a bar? Matty went for doughnuts and coffee.

  "If he comes out before you get back, I have to follow him; if I'm not here, you wait in the doughnut shop. As soon as he lands somewhere, I'll come back for you. Understand? Don't talk to anyone."

  But the plan wasn't needed; Matty was back in five and Brad-boy didn't come out of the bar for forty minutes. He was alone. We followed him east on Melrose where he checked into the YMAC.

  "He could be there all night," said Matty. "Maybe till one or two."

  "How do you know? Have you ever—?"