Year's Best SF 17

by David G. Hartwell

  Darcy got a new glove and saw within a day that it had shredded along the wrist. Nothing had happened to him after the first hole, so when Brute said, “Damn, my suit’s ripped!” he said, “It doesn’t matter. Mine ripped a week ago. I’m fine.”

  They were coming inside. Jenks heard them both. She didn’t say anything; she kept thinking about it at dinner. “My suit was torn too,” she said finally. “No signs of anything.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Sibbetts said. “An alien bacteria, a disease—who says you would know by now? Take some antibiotics, get some new suits.”

  “We’re pretty much already done for, if we’re done for,” Darcy said.

  Sibbetts, always in her lab, could be seen as a figure bending over or lifting things, tapping at her computer or putting something in a jar. They could see her through the plexi window; she never seemed to look for them.

  “She’s so stuck,” Darcy said. “Never tries anything. Never takes a risk. And she calls herself an explorer.”

  “She calls herself a scientist,” Brute said.

  “I’m the explorer,” Squirrel said. The face window on his suit showed a big grin. He lifted his hands and took off the hood.

  “Put that back on,” Jenks said.

  “Look at my hands.” Squirrel lifted them up and showed the holes. “The air’s been getting in for two weeks, at least. Let me tell you,” he said, breathing in deep, his nostrils working, “it’s got a strange smell.” He sucked in air so hard his chest rose up. “Spicy.” His chest relaxed. “Good.”

  “Oh hell,” Brute said, taking off her hood as well. “It’s not like I haven’t done it already. I’ve been out sniffing it when no one’s looking. I swear, sir, it’s harmless.” She looked at Jenks and saluted.

  Darcy already had his off. “Sir,” he said, “the smell gets better at sunset. It has something to do with the colors, I think.”

  They looked at Jenks, waiting. She considered the facts: they were all exposed anyway. So she took her hood off. The air was moist, which was surprising; the sea never evaporated, it just rolled around. There was never moisture on their suits. But the smell was good, indeed.

  “The colors are brighter,” Brute said, looking at the sea. Even though it wasn’t evening yet, the colors wove into the sky: yellow, saffron, salmon, butter, carnelian, ruby, blood.

  They shed their hoods and then they shed their suits. The weather was perfect. There seemed no variation in temperature as they felt it. They did keep on shoes, because the arches of their feet were always tender, but they stripped down to their underwear.

  And then they began touching the water.

  It was irresistible. “Did you notice the variations?” Brute asked. “The variations of shade. How it runs from almond to cream? How you can watch the colors move?”

  “To think I didn’t notice it before,” Darcy said. “What do you think caused that? The hoods? Maybe it was too subtle to make it through that plastic window of ours.”

  “Plastic window,” Jenks laughed. “I think so. Look at Sibbetts, now, she doesn’t notice anything.” They turned and looked at Sibbetts, who straightened up and looked out at them, then turned away again.

  “See that color there,” Squirrel said, pointing. “The way it laps.” They came up next to each other, forming a line. They stood very close. They were naked along their arms and legs, and they pulled in close to each other, so their skin touched. “I would hate to leave this place.”

  “True, it’s getting to be more and more like home.” This was from Brute, who stepped forward and bent down, scooping up a ball of water. “All the comforts.” Her face got a sudden illumination and her eyes narrowed a little and she got a wicked grin. She looked at the ball of water in her hand, said, “Here goes, kids,” and neatly split it in two, dropping half and popping the other half in her mouth.

  Jenks wasn’t fast enough to stop her, and it would have been half-hearted anyway. They understood each other better, so they all knew that they agreed with Brute: test the water. The air had proved to be all right, the temperature was perfect. They had never felt better, never been happier. Sibbetts in her little window looked ridiculous; out here, in the creamy sunlight, near the iridescent sea—out here was a higher order of perfection.

  Still, they watched as Brute swallowed and her eyes went internal, tracking the feel of the water going down.

  “Brute? What’s it like?” Jenks took a step closer.

  Brute sighed. “It’s good.” She looked around, to the sea, the horizon, the rock shelf behind them. “It’s very satisfying. I can feel it.”

  Brute was fine that day and the next and the next. Jenks caught Darcy and Squirrel pulling small rolls of water from the edge, pushing it around in their palms, eating it. She watched in silence.

  “Everything’s sharper,” they said. “Not at the edges, no, in the center. It’s hard to describe, but it’s great. Don’t be afraid.”

  That was from Darcy, who whispered to her. Jenks was already considering it. She bent down and pulled a bead of water out. It had soft edges, reforming slowly. She took it in her mouth, rolled it on her tongue, and swallowed.

  “Well,” Darcy said. “Welcome to the club.”

  The thick water was all they needed—that and the gray seaweed that formed like a frost along certain rocks; slightly crisp, a small taste that lingered. “You guys are nuts,” Sibbetts said tightly when they showed dutifully up for meals. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, the effects, the long-term significance. You’ve left me all alone here now. If something happens, I’m the only one who can take care of you.”

  “You could join us,” Brute said, shrugging. “We’re not so bad. And you’ll have more fun.”

  “I have work to do,” Sibbetts answered, lowering her eyes. She ate her food industriously, chewing vigorously and swallowing carefully. They all watched her.

  “Why are you watching me?” she said finally.

  “You don’t look comfortable with us,” Squirrel said.

  Sibbetts put down her fork. “You’re not wearing clothes. You don’t eat. You stare at me when you come in. You eat the water. None of you is acting normal.” She looked around the room. They looked at her, all of them, and they were all smiling. One by one, they held their hands out to her. “You should come with us,” one of them said. She couldn’t tell which one.

  The next day Brute came up to the plexi window. Sibbetts didn’t see her at first; she was waiting for the centrifuge to stop spinning. She had no hope that anything new would be discovered, but she was thorough. If she did a test once, she did a test twice.

  She looked up to relieve her eyes from the fine work. She looked out the plexi window.

  And there was Brute, grinning at her through the window, staring and grinning, her lips pulling back more and more from her teeth. Brute’s eyelids rose even higher and she moved back as if confounded, then she pushed her head fast against the plexi. Sibbetts could even see the plexi move a little, and she was annoyed.

  What if she broke it? Sibbetts stood up, raised her hand, about to yell, when her hand dropped and her mouth opened.

  Brute’s face was smack against the plexi, yes, and it was entirely flat. Like a balloon against the plexi. Sibbetts stared, her mind slowing down, trying to make it into some trick, when Brute slowly peeled her flat face off the plexi, and Sibbetts watched as the face reshaped itself, back to Brute’s face. Even then, she stood frozen, waiting for some explanation to occur to her, something sensible. Brute stared at her, winked at her!

  Sibbetts stood there, trying to think, watching Brute wave at the others, who were standing together and watching. They all met together, waving arms gently, bobbing in and out. She could almost feel how much they gravitated together. In the old days, they wouldn’t have tolerated that. Everyone had been conscious of personal space.

  She spent the afternoon wondering if she had caught some kind of dementia; if she were seeing things. She checked herself and dou
bted herself and shivered a little, and took some antibiotics.

  They ate less and less, yet they seemed healthy. They came to dinner most of the time, arriving together and staying for a while, then drifting away. Drifting. Well, it was hardly drifting with all that laughter. They giggled together, they cast glances together, they squealed with joy when Sibbetts asked if they had done their reports, if they had checked any of the equipment, if they had brought more samples.

  “Samples?” Darcy asked. “Samples?” And with that he pulled a hair out of his head. He held it out dramatically and then dropped it into the soup. His cohorts laughed again. Sibbetts could feel herself tense; laughter laughter laughter. They were monsters.

  “I don’t like that,” she said. “That’s food. Who knows what contamination—”

  “Absolutely none,” Jenks said. “You can write that down somewhere.”

  Sibbetts looked at the captain cautiously. She had gotten thinner, tauter, quicker, but there was a little blurring around the edges. Her chin wasn’t exactly the same shape? Could that be possible?

  The rest of them all looked at Sibbetts eagerly, as if she might perform. Then they laughed again, their bodies bouncing around. They each rested their right hand on their stomachs, as if the laughing hurt.

  Sibbetts lowered her head and ate her soup. When she was finished, she looked around. None of them had eaten and they were all still looking at her, expectantly.

  “What?” she said.

  “We can see that soup move down your esophagus,” Squirrel said. “Like going down a drain.”

  “No you can’t,” Sibbetts said.

  “We have x-ray vision,” Brute said. And she winked.

  Sibbetts’ heart was racing. “If you guys don’t eat, then I’m going to stop cooking for you. We shouldn’t waste food. But you have to eat?” She had changed her tone halfway through, careful not to be out of line. The captain was her superior, after all.

  “We eat the urden,” Jenks said.

  “Urden?”

  “The seaweed thing. It’s delicious. And it takes care of your appetite for hours, maybe days. You don’t need much and your whole body feels light and clear.”

  “You shouldn’t eat it!” Sibbetts burst out. “How do you know what it will do to you?”

  “We do know what it will do to us,” Brute said, standing up. “Because we’ve eaten it.”

  And they stood up smoothly, all together, and faced her. All their faces looked the same, and Sibbetts couldn’t be sure if she was looking at Brute or Jenks or Darcy or Squirrel. How could all their faces look the same? She wanted to weep, but she never did that. It was just this sense of total frustration, this sense that it had gotten away from her. Could this be some kind of hallucination?

  “I think I’m sick,” she said finally. “I keep seeing things that can’t be.”

  “Oh really,” the person most on her left said. “Like what?”

  “You keep changing. Physically.” She lifted her head. “Right now, I can’t tell any of you apart.”

  “You’re all cooped up,” Brute said (if it was Brute). “That’s the problem.”

  “Come out and play!” Squirrel hooted.

  “I’m a scientist,” Sibbetts said feebly. “I don’t think what you’re doing is right. It’s untested. We don’t know what will happen.”

  “It’s funny. You said ‘we.’ We’re the we, now. You’re just an I.”

  Who said that, Sibbetts wondered, squinting a little. Was it Darcy? Or Squirrel?

  “Awfully lonely,” Jenks said. “Isn’t it?”

  And with that, they left, like a bunch of puppets. Thank God they slept outside. She cleaned up, wiping down the chairs and the table with antibacterials. They were “off,” she was sure of it. They had abandoned their duties, such as they were. They had, really, abandoned her. And she thought, again and again, this is unforgivable. It gave her a small sense of triumph, that she could define their behavior that way. But the sense of anger faded—what good did it do, after all, to blame them for their actions? They had bonded. They had excluded her. Against all the rules. Against advice. How could they do it, do something so fundamentally wrong? Her anger was rising again. Leaving her to face it all alone!

  She felt it strongly. She was the one now who had to maintain civilization on this planet. Was that it—had they gone native? What could that mean in a place with no natives? She stared out the plexi, scanning the beach for them. There they were now, knee deep in that thick water. One of them bent down, snaking her arm into the water. From this distance, it looked like the arm became part of the water.

  She turned her back on them. It was up to her to do all the work, then. She went back to her office. She would stop preparing food for them. Until they changed their behavior, it was nothing more than an ordeal for her, and a farce if they didn’t eat. It would keep them from slipping something in the food, too; that had to be a consideration. If they could drop a contaminated hair in, who knew what else. … What if they snuck some of that water in, behind her back?

  She would lock them out during mealtimes because, really, they were no longer members of her team. That was true, wasn’t it? She stopped and looked out the window. They weren’t there, so she moved into the next dome and looked through that window.

  There they were, she realized with a jolt, standing lined up, all facing her. Just standing. And then they all waved at her and walked away.

  A feeling of exhaustion overcame her, and a longing for someone to talk to about it. Then she saw them walking into the water, sinking down, and disappearing. No bubbles, no outstretched hand (just as well: what would she do in that case?).

  And then they slowly rose again. It was very graceful, but she found herself straining for air long before she could see the tops of their heads slowly begin to surface.

  It did look beautiful. They did look happy. She wasn’t happy, that much was certain. But she had no inclination to join them, whatever they were doing. If, in some future time, they proved themselves to be right, proved her to be wrong—fine.

  The next day, she didn’t open the door to let them in for meals. She could hear their voices, now, very dimly, all of them sounding exactly the same. Sometimes they were right outside her window, saying things, as if speaking to her. But the words sounded made-up. She wouldn’t put that past them, that they were speaking some language not their own. Or, well, not hers. Too infuriating, really. Like pig-Latin, meant to point out how she didn’t fit in.

  Each morning she got up and wrote her report and transmitted it although it went nowhere—the planets blocked her words from reaching anyone. It was comforting all the same. In less than a year, some morning not unlike this one, she would hear a blip, a beep, some startled movement on the line. It would be a warm voice, a human voice, a relief after all this weirdness—and maybe this wasn’t even the end of it, maybe they would become sand or rock or pellets of water themselves (she couldn’t know)—there would be a voice over the line, telling her, You made it. You were right, to seal that door. You are the one who is valuable. You are the one who saved the mission, and we adore you.

  And she liked the sound of that so much—the love that was in that voice—that she began to fear that Jenks or Brute or Squirrel or Darcy would knock on the door someday and ask to come in. And she would be uncertain. She would want to open the door because for once they would sound normal. And they would complain they were hungry. How would she be able to withstand that? If they did that? Or if they bumped their foreheads against the plexi, crying, “Sibbetts, Sibbetts, we’re sorry, let us in!”

  That would be unfair. To endure for almost all the way, and then have them trick her like that at the end. She would have to set up some rules. She would be clear about what they could and could not do. If they wanted food, she would leave it outside. That was reasonable. If they wanted anything else, they could leave her a note.

  She found a notebook and pen to give them and suited up. Just because they
had survived without a suit didn’t mean she would change procedure. Who knew what was growing inside their brains or in their blood vessels, biding its time?

  She waited for the air lock to empty, then she stepped outside. Where were they now? They’d been in sight before she suited up. She turned around and bam! something hit her. She dropped the notebook, staggering a little. She still held on to the pen.

  Then another strike. Her mind was trying to figure it out. She looked down at her arm and saw something moving down it. Like oil.

  It was the thick water, of course. She turned to the left, and another one hit her.

  “Can Sibbetts come out and play?” Squirrel called, his voice high and squeaky. He had his own face today, Sibbetts saw.

  “Stop it,” Sibbetts said. “It isn’t funny.”

  Someone put on a hand on her, from behind. She twisted as best she could in the suit. It was Jenks. “We miss you, Sibbetts. It’s hard to command someone who stays inside all day. Don’t you feel like you’re in prison?”

  “I’m not sure who’s in prison,” Sibbetts answered. “I’m happier inside.”

  “But I want you out here,” Jenks said. “I order you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sibbetts said, backing up. “Just let me stow my gear and I’ll be right back.”

  Someone laughed. “Fat chance.” That was Brute. “Just get her helmet off.”

  She was close to the door, close enough to get in and slam it.

  That was that, then. Her heart was pounding. She went to the clean room. She stood under the spray. When she was done, she took off her suit. One of the clasps for the helmet had been undone. Luckily, they hadn’t gotten farther than that.

  There really was no reason to go outside anymore. But they knew everything about the domes—could she really keep them from coming in?

  If she wanted to survive, she would have to get rid of them. Her hands got very still, she clasped them together in her lap. The idea was horrific. Could she really kill them? No, it was too much. She could never be driven that far. If she stayed inside, and they stayed outside, then there was no reason for it. They would just keep to their own sides of the door.