Year's Best SF 1 Page 3

  I tried to pretend she'd made a joke. “You know the dinos won't let us open the bar for migrators. The scanner might misread your brain chemistry and your visit to Gend would be nothing but a three year drunk.”

  “Don't you understand?” She was right back at the edge of hysteria. “I am not going!” I didn't really blame her for the way she was acting but, at that moment, all I wanted was to get rid of Kamala Shastri. I didn't care if she went on to Gend or back to Lunex or over the rainbow to Oz, just as long as I didn't have to be in the same room with this miserable creature who was trying to make me feel guilty about an accident I had nothing to do with.

  “I thought I could do it.” She clamped hands to her ears as if to keep from hearing her own despair. “I wasted the last two years convincing myself that I could just lie there and not think and then suddenly I'd be far away. I was going someplace wonderful and strange.” She made a strangled sound and let her hands drop into her lap. “I was going to help people see.”

  “You did it, Kamala. You did everything we asked.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn't not think. That was the problem. And then there she was, trying to touch me. In the dark. I had not thought of her since.…” She shivered. “It's your fault for reminding me.”

  “Your secret friend,” I said.

  “Friend?” Kamala seemed puzzled by the word. “No, I wouldn't say she was a friend. I was always a little bit scared of her, because I was never quite sure of what she wanted from me.” She paused. “One day I went up to 10W after school. She was in her chair, staring down at Bloor Street. Her back was to me. I said, ‘Hi, Ms. Ase.’ I was going to show her a genie I had written, only she didn't say anything. I came around. Her skin was the color of ashes. I took her hand. It was like picking up something plastic. She was stiff, hard—not a person anymore. She had become a thing, like a feather or a bone. I ran; I had to get out of there. I went up to our apartment and I hid from her.”

  She squinted, as if observing—judging—her younger self through the lens of time. “I think I understand now what she wanted. I think she knew she was dying; she probably wanted me there with her at the end, or at least to find her body afterward and report it. Only I could not. If I told anyone she was dead, my parents would find out about us. Maybe people would suspect me of doing something to her—I don't know. I could have called security but I was only ten; I was afraid somehow they might trace me. A couple of weeks went by and still nobody had found her. By then it was too late to say anything. Everyone would have blamed me for keeping quiet for so long. At night I imagined her turning black and rotting into her chair like a banana. It made me sick; I couldn't sleep or eat. They had to put me in the hospital, because I had touched her. Touched death.”

  =Michael,= Silloin whispered, without any warning flash. =An impossibility has formed.=

  “As soon as I was out of that building, I started to get better. Then they found her. After I came home, I worked hard to forget Ms. Ase. And I did, almost.” Kamala wrapped her arms around herself. “But just now she was with me again, inside the marble…I couldn't see her but somehow I knew she was reaching for me.”

  =Michael, Parikkal is here with Linna.=

  “Don't you see?” She gave a bitter laugh. “How can I go to Gend? I'm hallucinating.”

  =It has broken the harmony. Join us alone.=

  I was tempted to swat at the annoying buzz in my ear.

  “You know, I've never told anyone about her before.”

  “Well, maybe some good has come of this after all.” I patted her on the knee. “Excuse me for a minute?” She seemed surprised that I would leave. I slipped into the hall and hardened the door bubble, sealing her in.

  “What impossibility?” I said, heading for the control room.

  =She is pleased to reopen the scanner?=

  “Not pleased at all. More like scared shitless.”

  =This is Parikkal.= My earstone translated his skirring with a sizzling edge, like bacon frying. =The confusion was made elsewhere. No mishap can be connected to our station.=

  I pushed through the bubble into the scan center. I could see the three dinos through the control window. Their heads were bobbing furiously. “Tell me,” I said.

  =Our communications with Gend were marred by a transient falsehood,= said Silloin. =Kamala Shastri has been received there and reconstructed.=

  “She migrated?” I felt the deck shifting beneath my feet. “What about the one we've got here?”

  =The simplicity is to load the redundant into the scanner and finalize.…=

  “I've got news for you. She's not going anywhere near that marble.”

  =Her equation is not in balance.= This was Linna, speaking for the first time. Linna was not exactly in charge of Tuulen Station; she was more like a senior partner. Parikkal and Silloin had overruled her before—at least I thought they had.

  “What do you expect me to do? Wring her neck?”

  There was a moment's silence—which was not as unnerving as watching them eye me through the window, their heads now perfectly still.

  “No,” I said.

  The dinos were skirring at each other; their heads wove and dipped. At first they cut me cold and the comm was silent, but suddenly their debate crackled through my earstone.

  =This is just as I have been telling,= said Linna. =These beings have no realization of harmony. It is wrongful to further unleash them on the many worlds.=

  =You may have reason,= said Parikkal. =But that is a later discussion. The need is for the equation to be balanced.=

  =There is no time. We will have to discard the redundant ourselves.= Silloin bared her long brown teeth. It would take her maybe five seconds to rip Kamala's throat out. And even though Silloin was the dino most sympathetic to us, I had no doubt she would enjoy the kill.

  =I will argue that we adjourn human migration until this world has been rethought,= said Linna.

  This was the typical dino condescension. Even though they appeared to be arguing with each other, they were actually speaking to me, laying the situation out so that even the baby sapient would understand. They were informing me that I was jeopardizing the future of humanity in space. That the Kamala in reception D was dead whether I quit or not. That the equation had to be balanced and it had to be now.

  “Wait,” I said. “Maybe I can coax her back into the scanner.” I had to get away from them. I pulled my earstone out and slid it into my pocket. I was in such a hurry to escape that I stumbled as I left the scan center and had to catch myself in the hallway. I stood there for a second, staring at the hand pressed against the bulkhead. I seemed to see the splayed fingers through the wrong end of a telescope. I was far away from myself.

  She had curled into herself on the couch, arms clutching knees to her chest, as if trying to shrink so that nobody would notice her.

  “We're all set,” I said briskly. “You'll be in the marble for less than a minute, guaranteed.”

  “No, Michael.”

  I could actually feel myself receding from Tuulen Station. “Kamala, you're throwing away a huge part of your life.”

  “It is my right.” Her eyes were shiny.

  No, it wasn't. She was redundant; she had no rights. What had she said about the dead old lady? She had become a thing, like a bone.

  “Okay, then,” I jabbed at her shoulder with a stiff forefinger. “Let's go.”

  She recoiled. “Go where?”

  “Back to Lunex. I'm holding the shuttle for you. It just dropped off my afternoon list; I should be helping them settle in, instead of having to deal with you.”

  She unfolded herself slowly.

  “Come on.” I jerked her roughly to her feet. “The dinos want you off Tuulen as soon as possible and so do I.” I was so distant, I couldn't see Kamala Shastri anymore.

  She nodded and let me march her to the bubble door.

  “And if we meet anyone in the hall, keep your mouth shut.”

  “You're being so
mean.” Her whisper was thick.

  “You're being such a baby.”

  When the inner door glided open, she realized immediately that there was no umbilical to the shuttle. She tried to twist out of my grip but I put my shoulder into her, hard. She flew across the airlock, slammed against the outer door and caromed onto her back. As I punched the switch to close the door, I came back to myself. I was doing this terrible thing—me, Michael Burr. I couldn't help myself: I giggled. When I last saw her, Kamala was scrabbling across the deck toward me but she was too late. I was surprised that she wasn't screaming again; all I heard was her ferocious breathing.

  As soon as the inner door sealed, I opened the outer door. After all, how many ways are there to kill someone on a space station? There were no guns. Maybe someone else could have stabbed or strangled her, but not me. Poison how? Besides, I wasn't thinking, I had been trying desperately not to think of what I was doing. I was a sapientologist, not a doctor. I always thought that exposure to space meant instantaneous death. Explosive decompression or something like. I didn't want her to suffer. I was trying to make it quick. Painless.

  I heard the whoosh of escaping air and thought that was it; the body had been ejected into space. I had actually turned away when thumping started, frantic, like the beat of a racing heart. She must have found something to hold onto. Thump, thump, thump! It was too much. I sagged against the inner door—thump, thump—slid down it, laughing. Turns out that if you empty the lungs, it is possible to survive exposure to space for at least a minute, maybe two. I thought it was funny. Thump! Hilarious, actually. I had tried my best for her—risked my career—and this was how she repaid me? As I laid my cheek against the door, the thumps started to weaken. There were just a few centimeters between us, the difference between life and death. Now she knew all about balancing the equation. I was laughing so hard I could scarcely breathe. Just like the meat behind the door. Die already, you weepy bitch!

  I don't know how long it took. The thumping slowed. Stopped. And then I was a hero. I had preserved harmony, kept our link to the stars open. I chuckled with pride; I could think like a dinosaur.

  I popped through the bubble door into Reception D. “It's time to board the shuttle.”

  Kamala had changed into a clingy and velcro slippers. There were at least ten windows open on the wall; the room filled with the murmur of talking heads. Friends and relatives had to be notified; their loved one had returned, safe and sound. “I have to go,” she said to the wall. “I will call you when I land.”

  She gave me a smile that seemed stiff from disuse. “I want to thank you again, Michael.” I wondered how long it took migrators to get used to being human. “You were such a help and I was such a…I was not myself.” She glanced around the room one last time and then shivered. “I was really scared.”

  “You were.”

  She shook her head. “Was it that bad?”

  I shrugged and led her out into the hall.

  “I feel so silly now. I mean, I was in the marble for less than a minute and then—” she snapped her fingers— “there I was on Gend, just like you said.” She brushed up against me as we walked; her body was hard under the clingy. “Anyway, I am glad we got this chance to talk. I really was going to look you up when I got back. I certainly did not expect to see you here.”

  “I decided to stay on.” The inner door to the air-lock glided open. “It's a job that grows on you.” The umbilical shivered as the pressure between Tuulen Station and the shuttle equalized.

  “You have got migrators waiting,” she said.

  “Two.”

  “I envy them.” She turned to me. “Have you ever thought about going to the stars?”

  “No,” I said.

  Kamala put her hand to my face. “It changes every-thing.” I could feel the prick of her long nails—claws, really. For a moment I thought she meant to scar my cheek the way she had been scarred.

  “I know,” I said.

  Wonders of the

  Invisible World

  PATRICIA A. McKILLIP

  Patricia McKillip is one of the most distinguished living fantasy writers, winner of the first World Fantasy award for best novel (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, 1974), and author of the classic Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy. She is also one of the finest and most underrated short fiction writers in the F& SF field for the 1990s. Her stories in recent years display a breadth of humane vision worthy of comparison to the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and are the work of a first-rate literary talent at the height of her powers. This story is a hip, dark vision of the future and the past, tightly plotted, ironic, rich, and deep. It appeared in Full Spectrum 5, one of the outstanding original anthologies from 1995.

  I am the angel sent to Cotton Mather. It took me some time to get his attention. He lay on the floor with his eyes closed; he prayed fervently, sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting. Apparently the household was used to it. I heard footsteps pass his study door; a woman—his wife Abigail?—called to someone: “If your throat is no better tomorrow, we'll have Phillip pee in a cup for you to gargle.” From the way the house smelled, Phillip didn't bother much with cups. Cotton Mather smelled of smoke and sweat and wet wool. Winter had come early. The sky was black, the ground was white, the wind pinched like a witch and whined like a starving dog. There was no color in the landscape and no mercy. Cotton Mather prayed to see the invisible world.

  He wanted an angel.

  “O Lord,” he said, in desperate, hoarse, weary cadences, like a sick child talking itself to sleep. “Thou hast given angelic visions to Thy innocent children to defend them from their demons. Remember Thy humble servant, who prostrates himself in the dust, vile worm that I am, forsaking food and comfort and sleep, in humble hope that Thou might bestow upon Thy humble servant the blessing and hope at this harsh and evil time: a glimpse of Thy shadow, a flicker of light in Thine eye, a single word from Thy mouth. Show me Thy messengers of good who fly between the visible and invisible worlds. Grant me, O God, a vision.”

  I cleared my throat a little. He didn't open his eyes. The fire was dying down. I wondered who replenished it, and if the sight of Mather's bright, winged creature would surprise anyone, with all the witches, devils and demented goldfinches perched on rafters all over New England. The firelight spilling across the wide planks glowed just beyond his outstretched hand. He lay in dim lights and fluttering shadows, in the long, long night of history, when no one could ever see clearly after sunset, and witches and angels and living dreams trembled just beyond the fire.

  “Grant me, O God, a vision.”

  I was standing in front of his nose. He was lost in days of fasting and desire, trying to conjure an angel out of his head. According to his writings, what he expected to see was the generic white male with wings growing out of his shoulders, fair-haired, permanently beardless, wearing a long white nightgown and a gold dinner plate on his head. This was what intrigued Durham, and why he had hired me: he couldn't believe that both good and evil in the Puritan imagination could be so banal.

  But I was what Mather wanted: something as colorless and pure as the snow that lay like the hand of God over the earth, harsh, exacting, unambiguous. Fire, their salvation against the cold, was red and belonged to Hell.

  “O Lord.”

  It was the faintest of whispers. He was staring at my feet.

  They were bare and shining and getting chilled. The ring of diamonds in my halo contained controls for light, for holograms like my wings, a map disc, a local-history disc in case I got totally bewildered by events, and a recorder disc that had caught the sudden stammer in Mather's last word. He had asked for an angel; he got an angel. I wished he would quit staring at my feet and throw another log on the fire.

  He straightened slowly, pushing himself off the floor while his eyes traveled upward. He was scarcely thirty at the time of the trials; he resembled his father at that age more than the familiar Pelham portrait of Mather in his sixties, soberly dressed, with a wig lik
e a cream puff on his head, and a firm, resigned mouth. The young Mather had long dark hair, a spare, handsome, clean-shaven face, searching, credulous eyes. His eyes reached my face finally, cringing a little, as if he half expected a demon's red, leering face attached to the angel's body. But he found what he expected. He began to cry.

  He cried silently, so I could speak. His writings are mute about much of the angel's conversation. Mostly it predicted Mather's success as a writer, great reviews and spectacular sales in America and Europe. I greeted him, gave him the message from God, quoted Ezekiel, and then got down to business. By then he had stopped crying, wiped his face with his dusty sleeve and cheered up at the prospect of fame.

  “There are troubled children,” I said, “who have seen me.”

  “They speak of you in their misery,” he said gratefully. “You give them strength against evil.”

  “Their afflictions are terrible.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “You have observed their torments.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have taken them into your home, borne witness to their complaints, tried to help them cast out their tormentors.”

  “I have tried.”

  “You have wrestled with the invisible world.”

  “Yes.”

  We weren't getting very far. He still knelt on the hard floor, as he had done for hours, perhaps days; he could see me more clearly than he had seen anything in the dark in his life. He had forgotten the fire. I tried to be patient. Good angels were beyond temperament, even while at war with angels who had disgraced themselves by exhibiting human characteristics. But the floorboards were getting very cold.

  “You have felt the invisible chains about them,” I prodded. “The invisible, hellish things moving beneath their bedclothes.”

  “The children cannot seem to stand my books,” he said a little querulously, with a worried frown. “My writing sends them into convulsions. At the mere act of opening my books, they fall down as dead upon the floor. Yet how can I lead them gently back to God's truth if the truth acts with such violence against them?”