The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

On Thursday Cody did a pen and ink cartoon of Sharkey crawling up a Mt. Everest-sized breast. He placed it on the man’s bed in preparation for his home-coming. Sharkey’s room was a hodge-podge of interrupted projects, from his beer can collection to dead marijuana plants in a terrarium that had once housed a garter snake nobody could find. Motorcycle magazines and magazines full of naked beauties were stacked everywhere. A guitar hung on one wall and Cody wondered if Sharkey had been as good on the instrument as he claimed. His voice in the shower wasn’t half bad, with a slight Louisiana inflection. Sharkey was always happy in the shower until the water ran cold. “It’s never goddamn long enough,” he would complain as Adam lifted him from the shower chair, dripping and shivering. It occurred to Cody that maybe that was Sharkey’s escape. He reached up and stroked the guitar strings with a thumbnail. The strings were out of tune. He wondered if Mac had ever learned how to play his guitar. He hoped so. He hoped it was the center of smoky parties and good times as it had been once, long ago. He wanted its amber wood saturated with music, layered with melodies, not hung on a wall like a decorative icon.

  On Friday the blue van pulled up and opened its metal mouth to disgorge Project R.A.B.B. It wasn’t exactly a confetti and ticker tape return. Sharkey looked no different than he had when he left on Monday. He wasn’t sporting any new mechanical devices. His wild copper hair was caught in a sloppy ponytail which was the way he always wore it. His Van Dyke beard was the same, the chipped front tooth from an ancient brawl was still there—nothing at all was changed. And yet Cody sensed a difference. Sharkey rolled up the ramp and into the house and asked what was for dinner.

  “Missed your cookin’,” he told Adam. “Never thought I’d hear me say that.”

  Bushnell offered him a beer. “So, how was Project Rockabye Baby? You cover any new terrain?”

  Sharkey maneuvered his long lifeless fingers through the plastic mug handle and hoisted it to his mouth, spilling beer down the front of his T-shirt. “God, I been cravin’ a beer all week,” he sighed, belching.

  Cody watched him wipe his face on his arm. What was different? Something had changed. Sharkey glanced up at him and then he saw what it was. Fear. His face was rigid with fear.

  “So what did they do?” Fielding asked.

  “Nothin’. Just ran a bunch of tests.”

  “All week?”

  “All week.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  Sharkey belched again. “You name it, they ran it. Lot of, you know, head tests, I.Q. junk.”

  “And they found out you didn’t have an I.Q.” Bushnell said. “Hell, I could have told them that.”

  “Nutsy tests,” Sharkey went on. “What do you call ’em, those ink blot things. And a physical like you wouldn’t believe, man. Felt like I was gettin’ ready to go to the Moon.” He accepted another beer. “They said I passed.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Cody asked.

  “Good. I guess. Anyway, I got ’til next Wednesday to decide if I wanna do it.”

  “Do what?”

  Sharkey wiped at the beer stain on his T-shirt. “Can’t talk about it.”

  Bushnell lifted himself a few inches out of his chair to exercise. “Probably going to graft his head onto another body. If I was the body I’d sue. Nobody deserves a head like that. Total vacuum.”

  Suddenly Sharkey slung his beer mug at Bushnell, splashing the man and splitting his lip.

  Bushnell wiped at his mouth and saw the blood. “You sonovabitch.” In one swift move he rammed Sharkey’s chair and swung his arm, clipping him on the cheek before Adam shoved them apart.

  “You start poundin’ on each other and I’ll take your damned chairs away,” the man warned.

  Bushnell moved out onto the back patio to cool off. Sharkey departed for his room and asked to be put to bed. After he was settled Cody knocked on his open door. None of them ever closed their doors once they were in bed, for if they needed help Adam wouldn’t hear them yell.

  “This Project Rockabye Baby,” said Cody, “is it risky?”

  “All the kinks ain’t been worked out, so they tell me.” He hooked his arm through the bed rail and tried to roll to his side. “But, I swear to God, man, if it works…” His eyes were wet. “If it works … it could fuckin’ turn the world around.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t tell you. God, I wanna talk to somebody about it. You’d be the one I’d wanna tell, man … Cody … it could change everything. But they’re a long way off from gettin’ it perfect. There would be things … I’d have to forfeit they said, if I decide to do it. The way I look at it, it ain’t givin’ up much.”

  “My God, it’s not a head transplant is it?”

  Sharkey’s laugh was without humor, closer to hysteria, Cody thought, and the emptiness of it, the madness in it, chilled him.

  “No. I told you—no cuttin’. I just … go to sleep sort of, for a little while and … when I wake up—”

  “Oh shit, not cryogenics. They’re not going to freeze you until they figure out a way to regenerate a severed spinal cord in about two hundred years—”

  Sharkey stared at him. “No. No cryo … stuff. Cody … what if I told you … it ain’t gonna take two hundred years … that it’s now. They can do it now.”

  Cody heard himself swallow. It seemed to take a long time to remember how to breathe again. He could hear Adam in the kitchen whistling as he prepared supper.

  “I never told you,” Sharkey said finally. “I’ll call you a damn liar if you ever repeat it.”

  It took a minute to make his mouth and mind work again. “How … do you know it’s now? That they can regenerate nerves? There’s no way—”

  “There’s a way. But it ain’t all worked out. There’s a few … drawbacks … I can’t tell you no more. But if it works—” Sharkey waved an uncoordinated arm at his room, “they can have it all. It don’t matter to me, everything that went before … it’s nothin’ to give up … for what I could have—”

  He refused to elaborate further. Cody wondered if hopeless hope had finally broken him. Of the four of them, only Sharkey had refused to accept his body the way it was. Cody had, during his year in the VA hospital, gone through what the psychiatrist had called a “period of mourning” for his body. He had even contemplated suicide, hoarding the various pills proffered at night until he had a regular pharmaceutical company. But he had never been able to go through with it. Now, in spite of his limitations, there was a sense of peace within him. He savored every breath. He made plans. He … accomplished. His existence had meaning. All Sharkey had were memories of Before, and a pathetic collection of empty beer cans.

  “Shark, whatever R.A.B.B. is … I hope it works for you. I really do.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Hey … thanks for the drawing.”

  * * *

  He said goodbye to them while the blue van waited, mouth gaping. The farewell was oddly subdued. He had told them to rent his room to a new quad, not to wait for him to come back. “I don’t know how long this is gonna take, man,” he said, “so don’t keep a light on for me.”

  “Are you sure you read all the fine print this time?” Fielding said, squinting in the morning sun.

  “Yeah. I read it all. Hey, Bushnell, if you ever find my snake, you can keep him. Code, take care of my beer cans, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Cody spent the afternoon with country and western blaring on the stereo, drawing naked women in chains.

  * * *

  A month went by. They kept his room ready. Fielding’s nine-year-old son was planning to visit him during Christmas vacation so Adam tidied up Sharkey’s room a bit to use as a guest room. He hauled the men’s magazines out to the garage and stored the beer can collection in boxes in the closet. Fielding was nervous about the marijuana terrarium so that, too, went out to the garage. It was his son’s first extended visit since the man’s divorce, and he was worried about how it would go. Few marriages could survive a broken neck, Cody had
come to realize, and not many old friendships endured. He had heard horrible stories from other quads and pares—of being taken for every cent they had as fast as their wives could pack, of aides and housekeepers who stripped their homes of everything, abandoning them in the night. Bushnell had once almost married, post-accident, but when he demanded that his fiancée sign a carefully worded prenuptial contract, she backed out. Had they divorced, she would have relinquished all rights to any of his possessions. Cody felt it was the distrust that had killed the relationship, not the contract.

  Fielding’s divorce had been amicable and at his request. His ex-wife still talked to him on the phone and he worshiped his son who had been three at the time of the accident.

  “What am I going to do with him for five days?” he said. “What do we do after Disneyland, for Chrissake?”

  “You’ll think of something,” Cody assured him.

  “What if I embarrass him?”

  “If you do, he’ll get over it. He’ll get used to you—to all of us. Kids adapt.”

  “Does the house smell okay? I mean, not like pee or anything.”

  Cody sniffed. “I can’t speak for Sharkey’s room. It may smell of dead snake. I’m not sure. Right now all I smell is barbecued chicken in the oven.”

  The visit went smoothly. Cody got a neighbor to come over and take snapshots of the little boy so he could later make sketches to give Fielding for his birthday. He wondered fleetingly if he might have had children of his own by now had his life not been so altered. Would they have looked like Jenny, he mused. He calculated. He was now into his sixth year as a quad. Had he married Jenny he might have had a child ready for kindergarten by now. He began to sketch imaginary children, and traveled into mind territory he’d never thought about before.

  * * *

  When two months had passed without word from Sharkey, Bushnell called the Bio-Med Research Center to find out what was going on. “They said he’s not there anymore,” Bushnell reported to the others after he hung up.

  Cody pulled away from the drafting table. “What do they mean he’s not there? He’s got to be there.”

  “Well, he’s not there now. They were real closed-mouthed about it—wanted to know what I knew about Project R.A.B.B. You don’t think—”

  “No,” said Fielding. “They would have told us if he was dead. Wouldn’t they?” He looked at Cody. “I mean, we’ve got all his stuff … everything.”

  The next day two men from the research center came to take away Sharkey’s personal effects. They seemed uninterested in the beer can collection, selecting only Sharkey’s loud Hawaiian shirts, jeans, and other personal things, including his guitar. They were evasive concerning the man’s whereabouts. They did say he would not be returning to the house.

  “He’s dead. He’s gotta be dead,” Bushnell said. “And they’re afraid if word gets out that they wasted a human guinea pig they’ll lose all their government funding. That’s why they’re not talking. They killed Shark. They killed him.”

  “No,” Cody said slowly. “If he were dead they wouldn’t have taken his guitar.” A sudden coolness spilled down through him as if all the blood in his body had just rushed to his stomach.

  “Why would he want his guitar?” Fielding asked.

  “To play it,” said Cody.

  “Sure. Very funny.”

  Cody nodded. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Sharkey’s absence was a little like that of a friendly alley cat that just wasn’t around anymore, Cody thought. As a kid he’d always had cats. They came and went and when they disappeared he sort of wanted to believe it was because they’d found someplace better, not that they had met with disaster. That was the way he thought about Sharkey. At least it let him think of other things. Still, sometimes at night when sleep didn’t come, he wondered.

  They waited two more months for some kind of contact from the man before reluctantly putting word out for another tenant. No one spoke of him, but they kept his beer can collection and other paraphernalia in storage, waiting. His magazine subscriptions mysteriously stopped so they knew somebody, somewhere, had made some address changes. Cody seized on an inspiration one day and typed out a letter to him in care of the research center. It was returned with all kinds of red-stamped cancellations. It seemed as if Sharkey himself had been cancelled out of existence. Cody tried a second letter addressed to the house and laboriously printed PLEASE FORWARD on the envelope. That letter didn’t come back. But they still didn’t hear from him.

  The rainy season tapered off into the dry season—California summer. Cody became totally absorbed in a graphic arts course. He designed a music festival poster for a contest and won first prize. More commissions came in, more than he could handle. He was happy. Wilson, the new quad, introduced Cody to his sister. Wilson had been a copter pilot in the Navy. He had never even had a near miss. He got his falling off a roof while putting up a TV antenna. Wilson’s sister was pretty. She asked Cody out to a movie. He invited her to the Sawdust Arts Festival in Laguna Beach. Cody found her easy to be with, for she was used to quads and the idiosyncrasies that were a part of their world. But he didn’t think he could love her. The essence of Jenny was still present in all his fantasy women and always would be.

  * * *

  Cody was waiting for Adam to meet him outside the Book Nook on Hollywood Boulevard when he saw Sharkey crossing the street. Walking. Free and easy. Cody stared. It definitely was Sharkey. There was no mistake. His red hair was cropped neatly and only the mustache remained from his Van Dyke. But it was Sharkey. Cody felt his voice leave him as he tried to shout to the man. Sharkey reached Cody’s side of the street and started moving down the walk, away from him.

  “Shark! Sharkey! Wait!” Cody hit the switch on his chair and moved after him, weaving between pedestrians. “Sharkey!” he bellowed with what little force his lungs could muster.

  The man stopped and turned around. Cody gaped at him. It wasn’t Sharkey. The face was so similar—even the gray of his eyes and the Roman nose were like Sharkey’s. Cody had an eye for detail and every shadow of cheekbone in that man he knew, for he had sketched his friend many times. But Sharkey’s skin was pitted. There had been a scar over his left eye from a broken beer bottle in a gang fight when he was fifteen. This man’s face was flawless—without so much as a worry line.

  “I’m sorry,” Cody said. “I … thought you were somebody I knew.”

  “You called me something,” the man said. There was no hint of Louisiana in his voice. He didn’t sound remotely like Sharkey.

  “You look … a lot like somebody I used to know … an old friend.”

  The man stared at him. “Am I? Your old friend?”

  Cody swallowed. The early evening crowd was out. He didn’t like hanging out on the boulevard after dark. “No. My mistake. Sorry.” He wished Adam would show up with the van.

  “Did you call my name?” the man asked, continuing to stare at Cody.

  “Just a mistake.” Cody turned around to head back to the book store.

  “My name is Sharkey. John Sharkey. Do you know me?”

  Cody spun around so fast he almost tripped a woman with his foot rest.

  * * *

  They sat in a table in the smoke-filled bar. Cody couldn’t get his chair under the table top, so he parked at an angle. The waitress didn’t hide her irritation as she took their order, addressing Sharkey only, as if Cody were mentally incapacitated as well as physically handicapped. It was a reaction he was long used to, but it never ceased to anger him. The fact that he was crying didn’t help the situation. Sharkey ordered a beer for Cody and Perrier for himself.

  “Oh my God—” was all Cody could say for several minutes. “It can’t be you. How can it be you? What happened? Oh Christ! They did it! They really did it.” Every time he thought he was under control, the tears welled up again. “It’s a goddamn miracle! You’re a walking miracle. Shark, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you come back?”


  “I’m … not supposed to contact anyone from … Before. I didn’t know anyone to contact. I don’t know you. You tell me your name is Cody. You tell me we were friends. I must have known you once. But I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of Before.”

  Cody watched him pour the Perrier into a glass, grasping the bottle easily with long tapered fingers. He had never realized how tall Sharkey was. “How did they do it? What did they do to you, Sharkey?”

  “I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry. I’m not allowed.”

  “Shark, this is me. This is Cody. I know about Project R.A.B.B. You told me about it. Remember?”

  “No. I don’t remember. How much do you know?”

  Cody maneuvered the glass beer mug to the edge of the table, but couldn’t lift it. “I’ve got a plastic mug in my backpack. Can you pour this in it?”

  Sharkey reached into the cloth pouch tied to the back of the wheelchair, and transferred the beer to the lighter container.

  “I know R.A.B.B. stands for Rockabye Baby. That the research dealt with nerve regeneration. That’s all you told me. Sharkey, what happened?”

  Rock music blared out of a jukebox. “Did I like music like that?” Sharkey asked. “They tell me I was interested in music, but I don’t know what kind. I have a guitar. But I don’t know how to play it. I’ve tried, but—”

  Cody watched him make wet circles on the table with his glass. “You like country and western. I like R&B and rock. We used to have fights about it.”

  “We did?”

  “Sharkey, look at me. What the hell did they do to you?”

  “I don’t know. All I know about anything is what they tell me. I’m still … learning, I don’t remember Before. But I want to. Can you tell me about Before? What was I like?”

  “Different.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure—beyond the obvious. You’re on your feet.” Cody frowned. “Your arms … roll up your sleeves.” The tattoes were still there. It was really Sharkey all right. “But your face is smooth. And … your tooth is fixed. And there’s no scar over your eye. Did they do plastic surgery, too? Why?”