Year's Best Scifi 5 Part 13

"Come on, Margot. I got a green on your headset. Now answer me, d.a.m.nit!"

The stranger wins. She got Margot Rusch after all.

"She didn't even get a chance to say good-by to Jordan. That's the bad part," she murmured.

"Margot?" came back the voice of Nick's stranger. "Margot, this is Nick. We're receiving you.

Acknowledge."

Why are they still calling her Margot? They must know the stranger had her by now. She would have liked to know the stranger's name. Maybe she wouldn't mind burning to ash when they fire the correction burst. Margot Rusch certainly wouldn't mind. Margot Rusch was dead.

The explorer jerked. Mildly curious, Margot looked toward the Forty-Niner. A figure in a bright yellow hard-suit leaned out of the s.h.i.+p's airlock. Its hands hauled on the tethers, as if they were hauling on curtain cords. The Forty-Niner drew minutely closer and the pair of s.h.i.+ps began to spin ever so gently around their common center. Margot felt herself leaning against the straps.

"Margot Rusch!" Nick's voice. Nick's stranger? A quick burst fired from the Forty-Niner's port nozzle. The spin slowed.

"Margot Rusch, wake up, you stupid fly-jock and pull!" Jean now. Jean's stranger? Jean's stranger trying to save Margot Rusch's stranger?

Jean trying to save her? But she was dead, she as dead as Ed and Paul and Tracy and Tom.

No, not Tom. Tom's still alive.

What if I'm still alive?

Cold and pain inched up her leg and emptied into her knee, her thigh. Her head spun. Readings flashed in the corner of her helmet. The suit had sealed itself. Blood pressure was elevated, respiration fast, shallow, pulse elevated. Recommend termination of EVA.

"Margot Rusch, help her get your b.u.t.t back in here!" shouted Nick.

Margot leaned as far forward as the straps would let her. Her gloved fingers grappled with the tether and snared some of the slack. Margot pulled. The Forty-Niner came a little closer. The suited figure became a little clearer.

"I knew you were still with us!" cried Jean, jubilantly. "Come on, Margot. Pull!"

Margot pulled. Her arms strained, her joints ached. Her suit flashed red warnings. The Forty-Niner moved closer. The spin tried to start, but another burst from the engines stalled it out again. Margot's breath grew harsh and echoing in the confining helmet. Her lungs burned. The cold pain reached her hip and started a new path down her fingers. The Forty-Niner filled her world now, its white skin, its instrumentation, its black stenciled letters and registry numbers.

And Jean. She could see Jean now, hauling on the tether as if it was her life depending on it. She could even see her eyes. Her eyes and herself, her soul, looking out through them. Margot knew if she looked at Nick she would see him too. Not strangers, not anymore. Maybe not ever.

They had done what they had done. Maybe Nick had faked that message, maybe they'd had help from unknown friends. They'd sort it all out when they got home. What mattered now was that they would get home, all of them, as they were. Not strangers, just themselves.

Margot grabbed up another length of tether and pulled.

Visit the Sins

CORY DOCTOROW.

Cory Doctorow was born and raised in Toronto, and grew up in the shadow of science-fiction, exposed at an early age to writer/editor Judith Merril and the writers' workshops she founded, and then going to work at Bakka, the world's oldest science-fiction bookstore, for three years.

Doctorow works with computers. He "does technology stuff" for ad agencies, offsh.o.r.e casinos,film companies, TV stations, multimedia companies, lawyers, videoconference MBA programs, and international development agencies. He's a smart, fast-talking guy who always has the latest new hi-tech gadget close by, and publishes new issues of his business card the way some fans publish new issues of their fanzines. His fiction has appeared in SF Age, Asimov's, On Spec, Tesseracts, Pulphouse, and elsewhere. He writes a regular column on science-fictional Web-stuff for SF Age, and other nonfiction for Wired, Sci-Fi Entertainment, Sci-Fi Universe, New York Review of Science Fiction, and 2600.

This story is about a theme that will be even more important in the future than it is now: communication between the young and the old. It is also about retreat into technology from engagement with the real world, which happens at any age.

Sean had a way of getting his way-a way of delivering argument that implied that everyone in earshot was savvy and bold, and that the diatribe-du-jour was directed at the Enemies of Art ranged without. His thesis advisor bought it every time. Sean turned in his due-diligence, a bunch of theses written in the last century: collected memoirs of the survivors of electroshock, lobotomies, thalidomide. His advisor signed off and within twenty-four hours, he was debarking in Orlando and renting a car to take him to the Home.

He didn't tell his father. He'd have to, eventually, before he could finish the thesis. But for now, it was just him and Grampa, head-to-head.

Grampa was switched off when Sean found him on the ward, which throbbed with a coleslaw of laser-light and videogames and f.u.c.k-pix and explosions and car-wrecks and fractals and atrocities.

Sean remembered visits before the old man was committed, he and his dutiful father visiting the impeccable apartment in the slate house in Kingston, Ontario. Grampa made tea and conversation, both perfectly executed and without soul. It drove Sean's father bugf.u.c.k, and he'd inevitably have a displaced tantrum at Sean in the car on the way home. The first time Grampa had switched on in Sean's presence-while Sean was trying out a prototype of Enemies of Art against his father's own As All Right-Thinking People Know-it had scared Sean stupid.

Grampa had been in maintenance mode, running through a series of isometric stretching exercises in one corner while Sean and his father had it out. Then, suddenly, Grampa was between them, arguing both sides with machine-gun pa.s.sion and lucidity, running an intellect so furious it appeared to be steam-driven. Sean's tongue died in his mouth. He was made wordless by this vibrant, violent intellect that hid inside Grampa. Grampa and his father had traded extemporaneous barbs until Grampa abruptly switched back off during one of Sean's father's reb.u.t.tals, conceding the point in an unconvincing, mechanical tone. Sean's father stalked out of the house and roared out of the driveway then, moving with such speed that if Sean hadn't been right on his heels, he would never have gotten into the car before his father took off.

And now, here was Grampa in maintenance mode. He was sitting at a table, flexing his muscles one at a time from top to bottom. It was an anti-pressure-sore routine. Sean guessed that it was after-market, something the Home made available for low-functioning patients like Grampa.

Sean sat down opposite him. Grampa smiled and nodded politely. Sean swallowed his gorge. The ones who'd had the surgery had been scattered, unable to focus, until they'd had the operation, and suddenly it wasn't a problem anymore. Whenever their attention dropped below a certain threshold, they just switched off, until the world regained some excitement. It had been a miracle, until the kids stopped making the effort to keep their attention above the threshold, and started to slip away into oblivion.

"h.e.l.lo, Grampa," Sean said.

Grampa stared at him from dark eyes set in deep, wrinkled nests. Behind them, Sean could almost see the subroutines churning. "Sean," Grampa said. Woodenly, he stood and came around the table, and gave Sean a precise hug and cheek-kiss. Sean didn't bother returning either.

He put the recorder on the table between them and switched it on.

Grampa was a moderately wealthy man. He'd achieved much of that wealth prior to his retirement, working as a machinist on really delicate, tricky stuff. The family a.s.sumed that he did this work switched off, letting the subroutines run the stultifying repet.i.tions, but in his prelim research, Sean had talked to one of Grampa's co-workers, who said that Grampa had stayed switched on more often than not. Grampa had acquired the rest of the wealth shortly before Sean's father had sent him south, to the Home. The years-old cla.s.s action suit brought by the guilty, horrified families of accidental zombies had finally ended with a settlement, and all the Survivors became instant millionaires-in-trust.

For all the good it did them.

"How are you?" Grampa asked, placidly.

"I'm working on my thesis, Grampa. I'm here to interview you-I'll be around for the next couple weeks."

"That's nice," Grampa said. "How's your father?"

"He's fine. I didn't tell him I was coming down, though. You're a touchy subject for him."

Grampa settled back into his chair. Sean was distantly aware of other Survivors on the ward, gabbling and twitching at videogames and smoking all at once. They were high-functioning-they could be switched on with simple stim; Grampa only switched on for important occasions.

Sean said, "Dad wishes you'd die."

That did it. It was easy to tell when Grampa was switched on; the rhythmic, methodical maintenance twitching was replaced with a restless, all-over fidget; and his eyes darted around the room. "Is he in some kind of financial trouble? He doesn't need to wait for a bequest-I'll write to the trustees right now."

Sean restrained himself from saying h.e.l.lo again, now that Grampa was switched on. He kept himself focused on the task of keeping Grampa switched on. "He wishes you'd die because he hates you and he hates himself for it. When you die, he can stop hating you and start mourning you. He knows it wasn't your fault. That's why I'm here. I want to collect your stories and make some sense out of them, before you die." Sean took a deep breath. "Will you stay switched on?"

Grampa looked uncomfortable. "Your grandmother used to ask me that. I'd promise her I'd do it, every time, but then...it's not voluntary, Sean. It's reflex."

"It's a learned reflex, Grampa. It's not breathing. You didn't ask to have the surgery, but you learned the reflex all on your own. You allow your attention to drop below the threshold, you allow the chip to switch you off. Some people do it less," he jerked his head at the other old men and women, playing their twitch games and shouting arguments at each other. "Some don't do it at all."

"Bulls.h.i.+t!" Grampa said, leaning forward and planting his hands on his knees-aggro Type-A body-language that Sean often found himself a.s.suming. "Urban legend, kid. Everyone learned it. Once you had the surgery, you couldn't help it. You know what I'm talking about, or you wouldn't be here.

Your father, too-if he was ever honest enough to admit it. You've both got it as bad as me, but no one ever tried to cure you."

"I don't have it," Sean said. "I just got off a three-hour plane-ride, and I was able to just look out the window the whole way. It didn't bother me. That's not coping mechanism, either-I never even wanted to watch the seat-back vid or chat up my neighbor." It wasn't true, actually. He had fidgeted like crazy, splitting the screen-in-screen on the seat-back into sixteen quads and watching as many stations as he could. He'd tried to a.s.semble his thoughts on his recorder, but he'd been too wound up. Eventually, somewhere over Georgia, he'd surrendered to the screen and to counting powers of two.

Grampa pierced him with his stare. "If your ego demands that you believe that, then go ahead."

Sean restrained himself from squirming. He focused himself on directing the discussion. "What do you like best about the Home?"

Grampa considered the question for so long that Sean was afraid he'd switched off. "No one makes me feel guilty for switching off. No one tells me that I'm weak. Except your father, of course."

"Dad's been here?" Sean said, shocked. "When?"

"Your father visits every month. He shouts at me until I switch on, then he leaves. He does it becausethe doctor told him that if I didn't switch on more often that they'd move me to the zero-function ward.

Sounds fine to me, and I tell him so, but he's never thought much of his brain-damaged old man."

"Where do you go when you're switched off?" Sean asked. It was a question that was supposed to come later in the interview, maybe on day two, but he was rattled.

"I don't know. Away."

"Is it like sleep?" Sean said, forgetting the rule that you never ask the subject a simple yes/no question. His heart thudded in his chest, like he was giving the first interview of his life.

"No."

"How is it different from sleep?" Sean asked.

"I usually switch on for sleep-my subconscious is pretty good at entertaining me, actually. When I switch off, I just...go away. I remember it later, like it was a book that got read directly into my brain, but I'm not there. It's f.u.c.king great. You'd love it, Sean. You should get the surgery. I hear that there's a lot of black-market clinics where you can get it done. South-East Asia. The s.e.x-trade, you know."

Sean struggled to keep the discussion on-track. Grampa was often hostile when he was switched on, and his father always rose to the bait. Sean wasn't going to. "How do you know that you're not there?

Maybe you're there the whole time, bored stupid, screaming in frustration, and you forget it all as soon as you switch on?"

Grampa raised an eyebrow at him. "Of course I am! But that's not the me that's important-I'm the one that counts. And I get to fast-forward past all the slow parts. Which this is turning into, I'm afraid."

Grampa's eyes stopped seeking out the ward's corners, and he slipped back into maintenance mode.

The noise and lights of the ward closed in around Sean. He scooped up his recorder. "Thanks, Grampa,"

he said, woodenly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye, Sean," Grampa said, and came around the table for another hug and kiss.

Sean checked into the first motel he found, the Lamp-lighter Inn, on a dreary strip populated with disused water-parks and crumbling plazas. He lay down on the bed, fed the Magic Fingers, and played back the recording.

It was junk. The noise of the ward masked nine words in ten, and what words made it through were empty, devoid of any kind of emotional freight. He tried to transcribe it longhand, filling in the blanks from memory, but couldn't keep his mind on it.

He took off his sweaty, wrinkled T-s.h.i.+rt and slacks, dumped out his suitcase on the chipped, cigarette-burned table, and found his bathing suit.

There was one other guest by the pool, an old, old, woman in a one-piece with a skirt, wearing a sunhat tilted to shade her from the last of the pounding Florida sun. Sean gave her a perfunctory nod and jumped in.

The water was p.i.s.s-warm, thickly chlorinated. It felt like swimming in pungent sweat. Sean managed one lap and then crawled out and sat in a sway-backed deck-chair.

"I wouldn't go swimming in that if I were you," the old woman said, in a husky, nicotine-stained voice. She clattered a grin at him through her dentures. She was the color and texture of rawhide, not so much tanned as baked.

"Now you tell me," Sean said, squinting at her under his hand.

"Old Ross doesn't like dealing with the pool, so he just keeps on shoveling in the chlorine. Don't be surprised if you're blond in the morning. My name's Adele. You here for long?"

"A couple weeks, at least," Sean said.

Adele smiled and nodded. "That's good. That's fine. A good stretch of time to see the Parks. Don't miss Universal, either-I think it's better than Disney. Most people don't bother with it, but for my money, it's better."

"I don't think I'll get a chance to visit either," Sean said. "I've got a lot of work to do down here." He waited for her to ask him what kind of work, and mentally rehea.r.s.ed the high-concept speech that he'd given a thousand times while working on the thesis proposal.

"What a shame," she said. "Where did you come down from?""Toronto," he said.

"Lord, not another s...o...b..rd!" she said, good-naturedly. "Seems like half of Canada's down here!

They come here to get away from the winter, then they complain about the heat! What do they expect, that's what I want to know! Was your flight good?"

"It was fine," Sean said, bemusedly. "A little dull, but fine."

"So, you're here for a few weeks," Adele said.

"Yes. Working," Sean said.

"Nice work if you can get it!" Adele said, and clattered her dentures again. "I moved here, oh, five years ago. To be near my boy. In the hospital. I used to work, but I'm retired. Used to work at a dairy-answering the phones! You tell people you used to work in a dairy, they think you were milking the cows! Old Ross, he gives me an annual rate for my room. It's better than living in one of those gated places! Lord! How much shuffleboard can a body stand?"

"Your son is sick?" Sean said.

"Not sick, no," Adele said. "You wouldn't believe the roaches you get down here! Old Ross fumigates regular, but Florida roaches don't seem to care. I've lived in New York, and I've seen some pretty big roaches in my day, but not like these. Like cats! My boy, Ethan, he'd clean and clean our apartment in New York, quiet as you please, a good boy. Then he'd see a roach and whim-wham, he'd be talking, joking, skipping and running. Old Ross says there's nothing he can do-he says, 'Adele, this is Florida, and the roaches were here long before us, and they'll be here long after, and nothing we do is going to keep them away.' That's all fine and good, but let me tell you, I've never seen a roach in the Home when I was visiting Ethan. They know how to keep them out. Maybe it's all the shouting. Lord, but they do shout!"

A small lightbulb blinked in Sean's mind. "Is Ethan very high-functioning?" he asked, carefully.

Adele glanced sidelong at him and said, "The doctor says no. But I think he is. He's always walking around when I'm there, doing push-ups and situps. He's not a young man, Ethan-sixty this year! When his father was that age, he didn't do any push-ups, no sir! But the doctor, he says that Ethan's at zero function. Doctors! What do they know?"

"How old was Ethan when he had the surgery?" Sean asked.

"Just seven," Adele said, without changing her light tone, but Sean saw knives of guilt in her eyes.

"He was going to be held back in the first grade, or sent to a special school. They sent a doctor around to explain it. Ethan was smart as a whip, everyone knew that, but he just couldn't concentrate. It made him miserable, and he'd pitch these hissyfits all the time. It didn't matter where he was: the cla.s.sroom, home, out on the street-in church! He'd scream and shout and kick and bite, you've never seen anything like it. The doctors, they told us that he'd just keep on getting worse unless we did something about it.

"It seemed like a miracle. In my day, they'd just drug you up."