The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Though I had insinuated myself into the group, I was not immediately accepted. My adolescence showed plainly against the backdrop of their experience. I had no store of anecdotes, no expertise with flute or guitar, and my conversation was lacking in hip savoir faire. In their eyes I was a kid, a baby, a clever puppy who had learned how to beg, and I was often the object of ridicule. Three factors saved me from worse ridicule: my size (six feet three, one-ninety), my erratic temper, and my ability to consume enormous quantities of drugs. This last was my great trick, my means of gaining respect. I would perform feats of ingestion that would leave Don Washington, a consummate doper, shaking his head in awe. Pills, powders, herbs—I was indiscriminate, and I initiated several dangerous dependencies in hopes of achieving equal status. Six weeks after moving to the beach I raised myself a notch in the general esteem by acquiring a girlfriend, a fey California blond named Anne Fisher. It amuses me to recall the event that led Anne to my bed, because it smacked of the worst of cinema verité, an existential moment opening onto a bittersweet romance. We were walking on the beach, a rainy day, sea and sky blending in a slate fog toward Africa, both of us stoned near to the point of catatonia, when we happened upon a drowned kitten. Had I been unaccompanied I might have inspected the corpse for bugs and passed on; but as it was, being under Anne’s scrutiny, I babbled some nonsense about “this inconstant image of the world,” half of which I was parroting from a Eugenio Montale poem, and proceeded to give the kitten decent burial beneath a flat rock. After completing this nasty chore I stood and discovered Anne staring at me wetly, her maidenly nature overborne by my unexpected sensitivity. No words were needed. We were alone on the beach, with Nina Simone’s bluesy whisper issuing from a window of one of the houses, gray waves slopping at our feet. As if pressed together by the vast emptiness around us, we kissed. Anne clawed my back and ground herself against me: you might have thought she had been thirsting for me all her nineteen years, but I came to understand that her desperation was born of philosophical bias and not sexual compulsion. She was deep into sadness as a motif for passion, and she liked thinking of us as two worthless strangers united by a sudden perception of life’s pathetic fragility. Fits of weeping and malaise alternating with furious bouts of lovemaking was her idea of romantic counterpoint. By the time she left me some months later, I had grown thoroughly sick of her; but she had—I believed—served her purpose in establishing me as a full-fledged expatriate. Wrong. I soon found that I was still the kid, the baby, and I realized that I would remain so until someone of even lesser status moved to the beach, thereby nudging me closer to the mainstream. This didn’t seem likely, and in truth I no longer cared; I had lost respect for the group: had I not, at seventeen, become as hiply expatriated as they, and wouldn’t I, when I reached their age, be off to brighter horizons? Then, as is often the case with reality, presenting us with what we desire at the moment desire begins to flag, two suitably substandard people rented the house next to mine.

  Their names were Tom and Alise, and they were identical twins a couple of years older than I, hailing from—if you were to believe their story—Canada. Yet they had no knowledge of things Canadian, and their accent was definitely Northern European. Not an auspicious entrée into a society as picky as Pedregalejo. Everyone was put off by them, especially Richard Shockley, who saw them as a threat. “Those kind of people make trouble for everybody else,” he said to me once. “They’re just too damn weird.” (It has always astounded me that those who pride themselves on eccentricity are so quick to deride this quality in strangers.) Others as well testified to the twins’ weirdness: they were secretive, hostile; they had been seen making strange passes in the air on the beach, and that led some to believe they were religious nuts; they set lanterns in their windows at night and left them burning until dawn. Their most disturbing aspect, however, was their appearance. Both were scarcely five feet tall, emaciated, pale, with black hair and squinty dark eyes and an elfin cleverness of feature that Shockley described as “prettily ugly, like Munchkins.” He suggested that this look might be a product of inbreeding, and I thought he might be right: the twins had the sort of dulled presence that one associates with the retarded or the severely tranquilized. The fishermen treated them as if they were the devil’s spawn, crossing themselves and spitting at the sight of them, and the expatriates were concerned that the fishermen’s enmity would focus the attention of the Guardia Civil upon the beach. The Guardia—with their comic opera uniforms, their machine guns, their funny patent leather hats that from a distance looked like Mickey Mouse ears—were a legitimate menace. They had a long-standing reputation for murder and corruption, and were particularly fond of harassing foreigners. Therefore I was not surprised when a committee led by Shockley asked me to keep an eye on my new neighbors, the idea being that we should close ranks against them, even to the point of reporting any illegalities. Despite knowing that refusal would consolidate my status as a young nothing, I told Shockley and his pals to screw-off. I’m not able to take pride in this—had they been more friendly to me in the past, I might have gone along with the scheme; but as it was I was happy to reject them. And further, in the spirit of revenge, I went next door to warn Tom and Alise. My knock roused a stirring inside the house, whispers, and at last the door was cracked and an eye peeped forth. “Yes?” said Alise.

  “Uh,” I said, taken aback by this suspicious response. “My name’s Lucius. From next door. I’ve got something to tell you about the people around here.” Silence. “They’re afraid of you,” I went on. “They’re nervous, because they’ve got dope and stuff, and they think you’re going to bring the cops down on them.”

  Alise glanced behind her, more whispers, and then she said, “Why would we do that?”

  “It’s not that you’d do it on purpose,” I said. “It’s just that you’re … different. You’re attracting a lot of attention, and everyone’s afraid that the cops will investigate you and then decide to bust the whole beach.”

  “Oh.” Another conference, and finally she said, “Would you please come in?”

  The door swung open, creaking like a coffin lid centuries closed, and I crossed the threshold. Tom was behind the door, and after shutting it, Alise ranged herself beside him. Her chest was so flat, their features so alike, it was only the length of her hair that allowed me to tell them apart. She gestured at a table-and-chairs set in the far corner, and, feeling a prickle of nervousness, I took a seat there. The room was similar to the living room of my house: whitewashed walls, unadorned and flaking; cheap production-line furniture (the signal difference being that they had two beds instead of one); a gas stove in a niche to the left of the door. Mounted just above the light switch was a plastic crucifix; a frayed cord ran up behind the cross to the fixture on the ceiling, giving the impression that Christ had some role to play in the transmission of the current. They had kept the place scrupulously neat; the one sign of occupancy was a pile of notebooks and a sketch pad lying on the table. The pad was open to what appeared to be a rendering of complex circuitry. Before I could get a better look at it, Tom picked up the pad and tossed it onto the stove. Then they sat across from me, hands in their laps, as meek and quiet as two white mice. It was dark in the room, knife-edges of golden sunlight slanting through gaps in the shutter boards, and the twins’ eyes were like dirty smudges on their pale skins.

  “I don’t know what more to tell you,” I said. “And I don’t have any idea what you should do. But I’d watch myself.” They did not exchange glances or in any visibly communicate, yet there was a peculiar tension to their silence, and I had the notion that they were again conferring: this increased my nervousness.

  “We realize we’re different,” said Tom at length; his voice had the exact pitch and timbre of Alise’s, soft and faintly burred. “We don’t want to cause harm, but there’s something we have to do here. It’s dangerous, but we have to do it. We can’t leave until it’s done.”

  “We think you’re a good boy,�
� chimed in Alise, rankling me with this characterization. “We wonder if you would help us?”

  I was perplexed. “What can I do?”

  “The problem is one of appearances,” said Tom. “We can’t change the way we look, but perhaps we can change the way others perceive us. If we were to become more a part of the community, we might not be so noticeable.”

  “They won’t have anything to do with you,” I told him. “They’re too—”

  “We have an idea.” Alise cut in.

  “Yes,” said Tom. “We thought if there was the appearance of a romantic involvement between you and Alise, people might take us more for granted. We hoped you would be agreeable to having Alise move in with you.”

  “Now wait!” I said, startled. “I don’t mind helping you, but I—”

  “It would only be for appearance’s sake,” said Alise, deadpan. “There’d be no need for physical contact, and I would try not to be an imposition. I could clean for you and do the shopping.”

  Perhaps it was something in Alise’s voice or a subtle shift in attitude, but for whatever reason it was then that I sensed their desperation. They were very, very afraid … of what, I had no inkling. But fear was palpable, a thready pulse in the air. It was a symptom of my youth that I did not associate their fear with any potential threat to myself; I was merely made the more curious. “What sort of danger are you in?” I asked.

  Once again there was that peculiar nervy silence, at the end of which Tom said, “We ask that you treat this as a confidence.”

  “Sure,” I said casually. “Who am I gonna tell?”

  The story Tom told was plausible; in fact, considering my own history—a repressive, intellectual father who considered me a major disappointment, who had characterized my dropping out as “the irresponsible actions of a glandular case”—it seemed programmed to enlist my sympathy. He said that they were not Canadian but German, and had been raised by a dictatorial stepfather after their mother’s death. They had been beaten, locked in closets, and fed so poorly that their growth had been affected. Several months before, after almost twenty years of virtual confinement, they had managed to escape, and since then they had kept one step ahead of detectives hired by the stepfather. Now, penniless, they were trying to sell some antiquities that they had stolen from their home; and once they succeeded in this they planned to travel east, perhaps to India, where they would be beyond detection. But they were afraid that they would be caught while waiting for the sale to go through; they had had too little practice with the world to be able to pass as ordinary citizens.

  “Well,” I said when he had finished. “If you want to move in”—I nodded at Alise—“I guess it’s all right. I’ll do what I can to help you. But first thing you should do is quit leaving lanterns in your window all night. That’s what really weirds the fishermen out. They think you’re doing some kind of magic or something.” I glanced back and forth between them. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s just a habit,” said Alise. “Our stepfather made us sleep with the lights on.”

  “You’re better stop it,” I said firmly; I suddenly saw myself playing Anne Sullivan to their Helen Keller, paving their way to a full and happy life, and this noble self-image caused me to wax enthusiastic. “Don’t worry,” I told them. “Before I’m through you people are going to pass for genu-wine All-American freaks. I guarantee it!”

  If I had expected thanks I would have been disappointed. Alise stood, saying that she’d be right back, she was going to pack her things, and Tom stared at me with an expression that—had I not been so pleased with myself—I might have recognized for pained distaste.

  * * *

  The beach at Pedregalejo inscribed a grayish white crescent for about a hundred yards along the Mediterranean, bounded on the west by a rocky point and on the east by a condominium under construction, among the first of many that were gradually to obliterate the beauty of the coast. Beyond the beachfront houses occupied by the expatriates were several dusty streets lined with similar houses, and beyond them rose a cliff of ochre rock surmounted by a number of villas, one of which had been rented by an English actor who was in the area shooting a bullfighting movie: I had been earning my living of late as an extra on the film, receiving the equivalent of five dollars a day and lunch (also an equivalent value, consisting of a greasy sandwich and soda pop). My house was at the extreme eastern end of the beach and differed from the rest in that it had a stucco porch that extended into the water. Inside, as mentioned, it was almost identical to the twins’ house; but despite this likeness, when Alise entered, clutching an airline bag to her chest, she acted as if she had walked into an alien spacecraft. At first, ignoring my invitation to sit, she stood stiffly in the corner, flinching every time I passed; then, keeping as close to the walls as a cat exploring new territory, she inspected my possessions, peeking into my backpack, touching the strings of my guitar, studying the crude watercolors with which I had covered up flaking spots in the whitewash. Finally she sat at the table, knees pressed tightly together and staring at her hands. I tried to draw her into the conversation but received mumbles in reply, and eventually, near sunset, I took a notebook and a bagful of dope, and went out onto the porch to write.

  When I was even younger than I was in 1964, a boy, I’d assumed that all seas were wild, storm-tossed enormities, rife with monsters and mysteries; and so, at first sight, the relatively tame waters of the Mediterranean had proved a disappointment. However, as time had passed, I’d come to appreciate its subtle shifts in mood. On that particular afternoon the sea near to shore lay in a rippled sheet stained reddish orange by the dying light; farther out, a golden haze obscured the horizon and made the skeletal riggings of the returning fishing boats seem like the crawling of huge insects in a cloud of pollen. It was the kind of antique weather from which you might expect the glowing figure of Agamemnon, say, or of some martial Roman soul to emerge with ghostly news concerning the sack of Troy or Masada. I smoked several pipefuls of dope—it was Moroccan kif, a fine grade of marijuana salted with flecks of white opium—and was busy recording the moment in overwrought poetry, when Alise came up beside me and, again reminding me of a white mouse, sniffed the air. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the pipe. I explained and offered a toke. “Oh, no,” she said, but continued peering at the dope and after a second added, “My stepfather used to give us drugs. Pills that made us sleepy.”

  “This might do the same thing,” I said airily, and went back to my scribbling.

  “Well,” she said a short while later. “Perhaps I’ll try a little.”

  I doubt that she had ever smoked before. She coughed and hacked, and her eyes grew red veined and weepy, but she denied that the kif was having any effect. Gradually, though, she lapsed into silence and sat staring at the water; then, perhaps five minutes after finishing her last pipe, she ran into the house and returned with a sketch pad. “This is wonderful,” she said. “Wonderful! Usually it’s so hard to see.” And began sketching with a charcoal pencil.

  I giggled, taking perverse delight in having gotten her high, and asked, “What’s wonderful?” She merely shook her head, intent on her work. I would have pursued the question, but at that moment I noticed a group of expatriates strolling toward us along the beach. “Here’s your chance to act normal,” I said, too stoned to recognize the cruelty of my words.

  She glanced up. “What do you mean?”

  I nodded in the direction of the proto-hippies. They appeared to be as ripped as we were: one of the women was doing a clumsy, skipping dance along the tidal margin, and the others were staggering, laughing, shouting encouragement. Silhouetted against the violent colors of sunset, with their floppy hats and jerky movements, they had the look of shadow actors in a medieval mystery play. “Kiss me,” I suggested to Alise. “Or act affectionate. Reports of your normalcy will be all over the beach before dark.”

  Alise’s eyes widened, but she set down her pad. She hesitated briefly, then ed
ged her chair closer; she leaned forward, hesitated again, waiting until the group had come within good viewing range, and pressed her lips to mine.