The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  Billy was back in three months, with new pink skin, and a hand that clicked a little when he moved his thumb in a certain way, and white hair in a patch on the right side of his head. And he still had seven months to go. He never talked about the hospital this time, and Frank didn’t ask him. We shared a lot more beer and a bottle of vodka Billy had smuggled back, and talked about sports and video and women and everything but war. But Billy kept rubbing his hand through the patch of soft white hair and clicking his thumb.

  And finally, after one long time of silence and clicking and Frank turning pages, he seemed to notice his thumb. He stared at his hand curiously and said, “What do you think they can’t fix? I mean, what if the suckers had burned off both my legs and my balls, too? Would I be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life? Or would I walk around clicking, with a little pump in my pocket for getting it up?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “We’ve seen a lot of guys come back.”

  “So who doesn’t come back? I mean, what the hell does it take to get out of this?” I shook my head and offered him the bottle, but he didn’t see it. He answered himself. “I’ll tell you what—you gotta be a goddamn vegetable, that’s what. I mean, you really gotta be maimed. ’Cause they sure aren’t gonna let a little mechanical damage get in the way. I mean, shit, that’s just a little pain. Just kiss it, make it better.” Then he took the bottle. Later that night, Frank and I had to put him to bed.

  Billy was real careful for three months. He walked slowly, in camp and on patrol. His eyes moved left to right all the time, scanning. He got thin. Frank and I watched him go from being tense to being scared. It became part of him. He talked and moved and even told jokes scared. He acted calm, but it was fatalism.

  Anyway, it was Frank who got hit next, just a month after Billy got back. It was a dumb thing, even for a war. The unit had a bunch of pedros pinned down in a farmhouse, waiting for a chopper to come up and douse them. We were back a ways in some trees tending the casualties. I was putting Band-Aids on a couple of guys who’d gotten nicked, and Frank was trying to stop all the blood from running out of another guy who’d been gut-shot. Suddenly somebody was shooting at us. The two walking wounded started shooting back, and things got real hot.

  There wasn’t much I could do, so I crawled over to Frank and started working on the other guy with him. Frank kept his usual calm, plugging and stapling, and we were making headway on his stomach when the pedros shot him in the leg. The GI was past feeling, but Frank got mad. He handed me the stapler and picked up his gun and started shooting back.

  The extra firepower seemed to help, because it got real quiet. Then four pedros came out of the woods with bayonets and knives. They got one of the GIs before he even heard them, but Frank and the other guy started firing. Two of them went down right then, but the other two took out the second GI and kept coming. Frank kept pulling the trigger and they kept coming, but then one dropped and the last one made a flying lunge and ended up on his face at Frank’s feet with the top of his head open. And his gun sticking up out of Frank’s foot. The bayonet went straight through six inches into the dirt.

  Frank looked down at his foot and up at me. He put down his own gun, wiped his face, and pulled the other gun up out of his foot. Then he sat down and started treating himself for shock. I carried his kit over to him.

  “You know,” he said. “That was really dumb.”

  I didn’t know if he meant the pedros or his foot. I went over to the first GI and started patching. Billy and some of the other guys showed up just then, and I felt a little better. Billy knelt by Frank and helped him cut the boot away. They took a look at the foot, and Billy squeezed his shoulder.

  “You’ll be back in a month, Frank,” he said.

  * * *

  It was only three weeks. Frank said they were getting better at it. He also said there was one thing they hadn’t worked out. Anesthetic. They couldn’t give you too much, because it slowed the healing. It was a long three weeks for him.

  He smuggled in some more vodka, though, and brought some news from the States.

  “No more draft,” he told us.

  “You’re shitting me,” Billy said. He clicked his thumb, a nervous habit now.

  “No. They say they don’t need it anymore. The volunteers are enough.”

  “They can’t be getting that many,” I said. Half my graduating class had been against the war.

  Frank shook his head. “They don’t need as many,” he said. “All they have to do is keep the old ones running.”

  “You sound like a mechanic.”

  “They gave me a tour of the surgery. They move ’em in, they move ’em out. There’s not much they can’t fix.”

  Billy nodded, his eyes hard. Then he had a thought, and he smiled. It looked strange after all that time. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What about us suckers that got drafted already? They’re gonna have to send us home, aren’t they?”

  Frank laughed. “Don’t bet on it, Billy boy. You’ve got miles of tread left.” He laughed again, but it was pretty flat.

  One thing I learned from Frank getting shot: As far as they were concerned, I was a gringo and I had no right to be there. I agreed with them, but I wasn’t leaving in a box if I could help it. Nonviolence doesn’t preclude self-defense, not when the guy who wants to kill you won’t stop to hear your side of it. That’s what I told myself, at least. I picked up a .45 in exchange for some pure grain alcohol, practiced a few hours, and started carrying it on patrol. It made me feel a little safer. And it wasn’t as blatant as a rifle.

  Meanwhile, Billy let his hopes get up about going home. The news came about the draft, and he started waiting for the word. He was still waiting a month later when the pedros got him again.

  It was short and dirty, a quick burst of fire from the bushes. Then the pedros took off. The squad went after them and left Frank and me with Billy in the middle of the trail. It was a bad wound. They’d opened his stomach with a shredder and left it and half his intestines lying out on the ground with hundreds of little needles stuck in them. Billy was conscious, beyond pain, watching the organs move as though they were the most interesting thing in the world.

  I called for a chopper. Then we clamped the big veins and arteries, pulled out all the needles we could see, poured in some gel, and poured the entrails in with it to move him. Billy stayed awake, watching, and finally I had to walk up the trail to get away from his eyes.

  When I looked back, Frank had his rifle up against Billy’s head.

  I shouted “Frank!” and ran back toward him. He looked up at me and I stopped, kicking up dust that drifted over him and Billy. “Frank, what the hell are you doing?” He looked down at Billy and then back at me. He kept the gun aimed at the white patch in Billy’s hair. “Frank?”

  He cleared his throat and I waited, sweating. The sun glared. Finally he said. “He asked me to do it.”

  I looked at Billy. His eyes were closed. “And you were going to?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s murder.”

  He laughed. “You can’t murder a dead man.”

  “He’s not dead.” He wasn’t. I could see him breathing.

  Frank shrugged. “Brain death. That’s the only thing that will kill him. That’s why he asked me.”

  “Frank, a doctor’s got to save lives, not take them. You don’t have the right to make that decision.”

  “How many times do I have to save them?” But he put down his gun.

  The chopper came and took Billy away, and we went back to base. The next day the Major called me in on the floor to ask what had happened out there. Apparently Frank had come in yelling about zombies and throwing his textbooks at anyone with brass. Somewhere in there he threatened to shoot every wounded soldier on the front. They sent him off, and I heard later that they had him in an institution Stateside. Mentally incompetent. I stayed in the woods with the squad, and eventually Billy came back.

&n
bsp; He was down to four months, but he looked like he wasn’t going to make it. They all looked like that now, even the lucky ones who’d never been hit. Hell, most of them were volunteers. They’d come in ready to give their lives for their country. Well, they’d done that. And then some.

  Two weeks later Billy got it again, another gut wound. I plugged up the holes in his new stomach and looked at the piece of Teflon tubing or whatever it was that ran out of it. My own stomach twisted. The plastic was worse than blood.

  His eyes were closed, and he was breathing unevenly. I’d done all I could with my kit, so I took his hand and held it. I thought he was out, but he opened his eyes and looked at me. He squeezed my hand, and I felt his thumb click in my palm.

  “How many times are you going to let them kill me?” he said.

  Then he went out for good. I checked for a pulse, but it was gone. I closed his eyes and sat back on my heels and thought about how many times I’d sent him off on the chopper. And how many times he’d come back. And then I remembered that he still had three months and two weeks to go.

  That’s when I took out the .45 and shot him in the head. It’s a big bullet, big enough to break your arm with a near miss. No one asked any questions.

  * * *

  I waited for him to come back. I waited three months before I began to believe that Frank was right. And I began to see more head wounds, always in the worst guys, the guys like Billy who’d been hit the most. The guys who had close buddies who’d help them out. Getting out was all they talked about anymore. I did it for one other GI. Like Billy, he asked me to.

  And I got a letter from Frank, with a clipping about a peace rally. He was out of the institution and working for some vet agency, writing letters to Congress and to newspapers. He said it was hard, because there was no draft so there was no pressure on anyone at home to save their own butts. But he said it was working. They were going to change things.

  I hope to God he’s right. I hope they change the regs tomorrow, or end the war so these guys really could get out. Frank’s the kind of guy who could make it happen.

  Me, I’ll do what I can here. I’ve still got six months to go—six real months. I figure I could still help out a lot of these guys. And you do help out. When they ask you, you do it. They’ve got a name for it now. They call it the million-dollar wound.

  R. GARCIA Y ROBERTSON

  The Moon of Popping Trees

  In the poignant and thoughtful story that follows, new writer R. Garcia y Robertson shows us that the most important journeys of discovery are often undertaken by those who have nothing left to lose.

  R. Garcia y Robertson has sold several stories to Amazing and has recently completed his first novel, The Silk Mountain. He was born in Oakland, California, has a PhD. in the history of science and technology, and currently lives with his family in Mt. Vernon, Washington, in a little cabin just off the Sound, halfway between Seattle and Canada.

  THE MOON OF POPPING TREES

  R. Garcia y Robertson

  “This is how the world will end.” Stays Behind showed neither fear nor regret. To her, the end of creation was merely a mathematical certainty. She watched through the leather lodge entrance as the storm shook white feathers of snow from a bitter black sky. The wind that drove the snow cut like blade steel, forcing cold fingers through the lacing holes in the tipi. She pulled the warm, woven trade blanket tighter, to completely cover her calico dress. The dress fabric was thin, but bright and red as summer.

  Heat from the lodge fire stirred the air. Its living motion made her warm. Heat was motion—she knew it, and felt it. Stays Behind also knew that when all the heat motion in the world was spent, that was how the world would end.

  This was not Stays Behind’s tipi, but a tiny twelve-skin lodge belonging to a womanless old Shyela named Yellow Legs. An old tipi, it was fashioned from thin, smoke-stained unpainted hides. All tipis were tattered now, and all hides were old and worn. There would be no new ones, now that the great herds were gone. Kiowas claimed that a Snake woman had seen the buffalo disappear into a mountainside. A tall peak in the Wichitas opened wide, inside was a world brimming with clear rivers and wild plum blossoms, the buffalo entered, and the mountain closed behind them. Neither Snakes nor Kiowas could be trusted to see things straight, nor to speak straight about what they had seen. Most Lakota said it was the Wasichu who had killed the buffalo. Either way, they were gone.

  “You have seen the world’s end?” Yellow Legs was on the far side of the fire, facing the entrance flap and the dawn. He sat in this place of honor, amid hanging parfleches and skin bags pawed by beaded bear claws. Years had hardened his skin, like old leather left in the sun. In the days when buffalo were many, and in the Spirit World, Yellow Legs had seen many strange sights. He accepted that someone one year into womanhood might have seen the world’s end.

  “No”—Stays Behind stirred the fire—“but the Wasichu say the world will end in snow and ice.”

  “Hetchetu aloh, then it is so, if that is what the Wasichu say.” When this Shyela meant to tease her, he spoke like an Ogalala.

  Stays Behind called the old Shyela uncle, though she was an Ogalala Lakota and no real relation to him. Long ago, before her parents left for the Spirit World in the Winter of Spotted Sickness, this Shyela had done her family some great service. Now he had no wives or daughters, so Stays Behind cooked his food, cut his wood, tended his fire, and mended those things that weren’t too sacred for a woman to touch. His needs were few, so the work was light. Since her sister, Antelope Woman, had married Handsome Dog, neither she nor Yellow Legs cared to stay in her family’s cabin. Instead, she slept just inside the entrance to his tipi, wrapped round a shaggy camp dog for warmth.

  “No, it is so.” Stays Behind jabbed her stick into the ashes, raising sparks and smoke. “Heat is motion. See how the fire leaps towards the smoke hole. Each moon, each day, this motion spreads through the world, like water spreading over the prairie. When all the heat motion has run away, then the world will end.”

  Yellow Legs looked into the leaping fire. Snow danced past the leather entrance flap, and the rush of warm air drew it into the fire pit. Red embers sputtered, the flakes vanished into rising vapor, and embers burned lower and cooler. “Yes, I see it. The world’s fire is always ebbing. Who would think the Wasichu were so wise? Is there anything they do not know?”

  “Many things.” Stays Behind became excited and authoritative. At one year into womanhood, men never asked her opinion. “The Wasichu wonder about the nature of light, which is like heat, but not like heat.”

  Leaning back against his buffalo-hide rest, the old Shyela closed his eyes. “Tell me more. I would like to dream of something that even the Wasichu do not understand.”

  * * *

  The Red Cloud Agency stood lonely on the prairie. A gray blanket of sky stretched from one end of the world to the other. The wood-frame Agency school was built to army specifications, weather-beaten, and old before its time. Since the Moon of Falling Leaves, none of the boys had come to class. That was the month, November 1890, that the Agent, Lakotas-Scare-This-Lad, had called many soldiers to the Agency. Half of the younger braves had left for the Badlands. The boys took this as a sure sign that school was out.

  Teacher Miller could hear them outside, whooping with glee as the girls filed out. Once the boys had feared to defy him openly; now even their skulking was no longer silent. When a Lakota brave-in-training lets an enemy hear him, it isn’t clumsiness, but defiance.

  Miller was a man of God and science, with sad thoughtful brows and nervous hands. His slender fingers fiddled with the cast iron stove and steel coffeepot. He pretended to ignore the lone girl who remained at her desk. She also looked down, neatly piling papers. Miller knew she could follow his movements without raising her eyes.

  Long raven hair framed high earth-brown cheekbones. To Miller, her face was flat and foreign, serious and savage. He had trouble thinking of her as a thirteen-year-old girl. It was
easier to picture her as a young animal, or even as a miniature warrior.

  Miller banged the lid down on the balky stove, then nudged the coffeepot back over the fire. The stove seldom stayed lit, and the steel pot had a broken handle. Together, they conspired to produce cold coffee and burnt fingers. Today, the stove stayed warm and the coffee was hot. Already it was a special day.

  The aroma of burning coffee filled the small schoolroom. The girl lifted her head. “May I have Black Medicine?”

  He was already filling her cup, stirring in big crystals of rock sugar. Miller managed to pass the steaming cup, without spilling or touching her hand. She drank and let the hot dark fluid flow through her, feeling the strength of its medicine. The world was brighter, and she became braver.

  “Tell me more about Professor Morley, and why the speed of light is…” She stumbled on the last word.

  “Invariant?” Miller suggested, and she nodded.

  The teacher smiled, for it had taken months to convince her that women’s questions weren’t rude, but now there was no stopping them. “As I said yesterday, Professors Michelson and Morley have done a number of exact experiments. These seem to show that no matter what our movement is, relative to the other, the speed of light appears constant in any given medium. This may imply that the speed of light is a constant which cannot be exceeded.”

  “Why is that important?”

  Miller stopped pacing and pointed to the door. “If you could exceed the speed of light, you could open that door, then race over here and see yourself coming in. Cause could precede effect. Time would appear to run backward. Past and future would both be visible.”

  Stays Behind studied the dark depths of her cup. Ghost Dancers saw themselves during spirit journeys. Any of the boys outside could have told Miller that Black Elk and Sitting Bull looked into the future. In a Sun Dance on the Rosebud, Sitting Bull had seen “many soldiers falling into camp.” Ten days later, Long Hair, who the Crows called Son of the Morning Star, attacked the Lakota and Shyela camped on the Greasy Grass. Long Hair and many soldiers fell.