Year's Best SF 17

by David G. Hartwell

  “And?”

  He had to yank his gaze upward to meet my eyes, but he managed it. “It’s … not an allergy.”

  “Okay. What is it, then?”

  “Well, um, listen. I took a look at the specs on this house. You may remember that Bi’Ome had to alter the house’s immune system.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, so it wouldn’t react so strongly to all the things that make me sick.”

  “That’s right. They, ah, we had to selectively cripple the antigen-recognition system, so that it wouldn’t react to … well, all sorts of things. Especially the man-made stuff—plastics and paints, and perfumes, insecticides—”

  “Of course,” I said, getting a little impatient, I do admit. I mean, the man was standing there in a silk and cotton moonsuit, just so that he wouldn’t set me off.

  “Well, that meant reducing the immunities that you’d already acquired to certain natural … biological hazards.”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Has my house been poisoned?”

  “Technically, no!” Reynard answered.

  “Then what the devil is wrong?”

  “The house is infected.”

  What? I stared at him. He mostly stared at the floor. Despite the faceplate, I could see how red he was. Like he was sick.

  “Infected with … what?”

  Reynard flicked a glance upward, then fled my gaze again. “At first, I thought it might be a herpes virus—”

  “Herpes?!”

  He jumped when I hit high C, but I just couldn’t help it. I screeched at the man. “Are you trying to tell me my house has a social disease? My house has never had sex!”

  “I, uh, well, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” answered Reynard, “but, um, that’s not exactly the virus I’m talking about.”

  Huh? But … a thin shred of memory fled through my mind. What I’d thought was a dream. Erotic, sensual—surely that hadn’t been real?

  Paralyzed by the sudden suspicion that my house might have more of a social life than I did, I glared at Reynard. I spoke softly, for fear of cutting my own throat with the razor’s edge of anger slicing at me from the inside out. “So what are you talking about?”

  “Varicella zoster.”

  Zoster? I’d heard that before. But I couldn’t quite make it click. “Vari-what?”

  “It’s a childhood disease. Used to be. Hardly anyone gets it these days because most kids are immunized.”

  “Most kids,” I repeated, arms akimbo. I found myself leaning forward. With reckless daring, I went right on leaning, ignoring the fact that my robe had flapped open. In fact, I took a giant step closer before I demanded, “What about houses?”

  Reynard licked his lips. “We, uh, we didn’t think there would be any need. The odds against exposure, up here—”

  Right. “Exposure—To—What?”

  Then the Latin words clicked, somewhere deep down in my memory. Oh, no. I backed off again, staring at him. I threw wild glances at every wall. Every pale, red-speckled, minutely blistered wall.

  “Dewdrop on a rose petal” … that’s how my mother’s medical books had described the rash. I rounded on Reynard. “My house has … chicken pox?”

  He shrugged again. “There’s, um, a blood test we can run. To make sure.”

  I shook my head, willing my hands to stay put on my hips, to remain fisted. I would not give in, not to the itchiness or to the need to slap the living shit out of this so-called tech aide. “Don’t bother. Just treat it.”

  “Well, I, um …”

  “Honest to God, I can’t take much more of this,” I told him, squirming. The oatmeal solution on my skin was drying up. My bathrobe was stuck to the stuff, so my every move tugged at it, making everything itch all the more. “Do something!” I pleaded.

  “I can’t.”

  “But—”

  “The only treatment available is an antiviral—acyclovir, but it has to be started within the first twenty-four hours after exposure. Three or four days ago it might have done you some good. But it’s too late now.”

  “Too … late?”

  The white hood nodded. “The virus has already multiplied. It’s everywhere. All we can do now is—”

  “Oh, God,” I whimpered and sat down, right there on the floor. The furry rug and my behind were both so inflamed, I began to rotate, pushing myself around in a circle with all four hands and feet. The wiry fur did a wonderful job of scrubbing my arse, but it didn’t help one bit overall. The resulting friction just made the house and me itch even more. I began to weep. “Go away, will you? Just go away.”

  Ever so quietly, he did.

  When he was gone, I made myself get up again. I could hardly walk for the need to bend over and scratch the floor with my fingernails. But that would only make things worse, so I tottered toward the lavatory, randomly raking the walls as I went, intending to dive right back into my warm oatmeal bath.

  Never made it, though.

  Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

  The freaking house alarm went off. It scared me half to death. I fell over, then rolled around on the carpet as that set off more of my skin and I tried in vain to scratch everything at once. What with the frenzied boogaloo going on, I didn’t realize what had happened, not till I noticed the flashing lights. Oh, boy. The whole friggin’ wall screen had lit up, the background crimson, the space taken up by a single word:

  QUARANTINE!

  It was a notice from the Health Department, putting me and mine under full quarantine for ten days. As if I could leave.

  I goggled. I crawled toward it. I slapped at buttons and entered the reset codes, and then sysop codes, and got nowhere. My house’s smartnet was no longer mine to command. The county had taken control of it, of everything. Swearing, I got up all over again and staggered toward the front door. “That little son of a bitch! The nerve!”

  I flung the front door open, groping for my crossbow as whiffets of cold air threw last year’s leaves in my face. I peered through the fingers of one hand, trying to take aim, intending to plant one in his tiny heinie, but stopped when I saw even more flashing lights on my front gate. On his bike, too. His hazard lights were flashing, and so were his headlights. Likewise, something on his bike’s handlebars pulsed in lurid scarlet. Then his horn started beeping.

  He bent over, staring at some kind of screen on the bike, oblivious to me and my outrage. Then, ripping his cleansuit’s helmet off, he flung it down. He swore at the bike, ran three steps forward, and kicked the helmet a full forty yards down the driveway.

  Bad Idea. As the helmet sailed past the gate, more flashing lights appeared. “Warning!” the house cried. “Perimeter armed! Do not pass posted limits! This house is now under quarantine!”

  As if to underline the point, a red laser beam hit the helmet. It flew ten more feet down the drive and sat there staring back at us, a smoking hole dead-center in the faceplate.

  “What the … ?” Fox started toward it, but stopped when I yelled at him.

  “Don’t! It’ll shoot you too!”

  He turned, glared at me in disbelief, looked at the hole again, and demanded, “What kind of burglar alarm is that?!”

  Excessive, of course, because that’s what I had to have.

  “Look, I’m all alone up here,” I tried to explain. “And people … they don’t read the signs. Or they think it’s a Gingerbread House and they try to cut chunks off.”

  I’d caught some picnickers back in October, attempting to barbecue one of my red window shutters. For lunch, the fucking cannibals.

  “Well, shut it off!”

  “I can’t.”

  His face darkened, matching the lowering sky behind him. “Look, lady, I’ve gotta get the fuck out of here! I’ve got a date tonight!”

  “You think this was my idea?”

  Rather than answer me, he slung his leg over the bike and attempted to start it up. When the ignition key failed him, he used his boot to flip out a bar on one side of the motor. He
tried to kick-start the machine. My God, did he think a crotch rocket could outrun a laser?

  No go, in any case.

  I heard a voice. Not his. From his bike, from the console. Don’t know what it told him, but he began swearing all over again, only louder this time. Then he jumped off the bike, kicked the front tire, and snarled as the bike shuddered once and the kickstand gave way. Ever so slowly, it fell over onto its side.

  Oh, boy. Had to weigh, what? Five hundred pounds?

  Apparently, he’d run out of cuss words. He fell silent. His shoulders sagged. Eventually, he turned to face me. “They say they disabled the bike. I’m fucking stuck here.”

  Which would have pissed me off even more if he weren’t quite so hangdog about it. I stared at him, not even itching for one blessed moment. “What?”

  He gazed at the ground. He licked his lip rings. “They, uh, they said they don’t know yet if this is the same strain as regular chicken pox, so they’re worried I’m going to catch it. Or give it to somebody else. So I’ve been quarantined too.”

  I rolled my eyes toward the swiftly darkening sky. “Well, shit oh dear. I’m so friggin’ sorry to hear that. Best of luck, Fox.” I turned back toward the house.

  “Hey!”

  I stopped.

  “What am I s’posed to do now?”

  “How should I know?” I demanded. “Go put up a pup tent or something.”

  “Lady!? I don’t have a freakin’ tent. I don’t have any camping gear. And look at that sky. There’s an effing snow storm blowing in. I’ll freeze to death out here.”

  “If I let you bring all that inside,” I made a squiggly hand gesture meant to encompass the whole of his sartorial splendor, “I’ll die. You can’t come back inside unless you’re wearing a clean suit.”

  We both cast a glance at his ruined helmet, now well beyond our reach even if it had still been intact.

  In the end, we compromised.

  Well, that’s my word for it. He has another one I won’t mention here.

  I did let him in, but first I made him shuck the clean suit altogether. Then all his clothes and his jewelry. Then all his implants. When he was done, he stood there, using his hands to cover up the empty jacks instead of his groin. Apparently he felt more naked without the machinery than he did without his clothes.

  I was firm, however, refusing to turn my back on him until he’d bundled it all up and stashed it in one of his bike’s saddlebags.

  He made even more noise when I threw a bar of soap his way and made him scrub down with it on the spot, twice, me squirting him with the hose.

  Well, it was pretty cold, I suppose, but what was I gonna do? Let him walk right in wearing hair gel and aftershave? The bodywash? Antiperspirant? And whatever the doofus had used to turn his pubic hair pink and purple?!

  If I could, I’d have made him take off the tattoos as well. He had two of the new interactive type, with glowing colors that swirled when he touched them. The one on his chest, a mandala, spun with his every breath. Since it was sealed in by his epidermis, however, I’d have to flay him to get it off.

  A tempting thought, I admit. Or maybe I could get him to skin me. Anything to stop the itching!

  While I fought for self-control, he dove through the front door. I followed, having to fight the wind just to close the door again. There really was quite a storm blowing in.

  Once inside, Fox didn’t seem to know what to do.

  That made two of us. I edged my way past him, tossed him a couple of all-cotton towels, then dug out an old shirt and pants made of unbleached madras, the stretchy stuff. He was only an inch or two taller than me, and slender too, so I thought they’d fit well enough for the moment. The house, thank God, was running a slight fever anyway, giving us both a good chance to warm up.

  I spent the next two hours yelling at people, and getting nowhere. The county would not bend an inch, and the company barely responded at all. Even when their man Fox called them, they didn’t have time to chat. They were up to their corporate necks in what was clearly an epidemic. Unless I needed acute care, meaning hospitalization, they weren’t letting either of us out of there.

  By the time I gave up, I was hoarse from shouting, and coughing again. I didn’t hear the whop whop outside right away.

  Fox did. “What’s that?” he asked.

  A helicopter—it hovered about forty feet off the ground, whipping snowflakes into my eyes as I tried to get them to land. They weren’t having it. Instead, in silence except for the noise of the chopper’s engines and rotors, they lowered a cargo net full of five gallon buckets. Then they simply released the net, winched up the cable, and left again.

  “What the … where are they going?” I yelled at Fox.

  He shrugged, and shivered. The wind had a real bite to it by then, so we grabbed a bucket and lugged it indoors.

  The canister was metal, and a bitch to pry open. When we did, I shared a puzzled look with my uninvited guest. Pepto-Bismol? Then the odor reached out to me. I backed away, beginning to panic before I recognized the smell. Not Pepto. Calamine lotion.

  The net, when we looked, had some all-organic paintbrushes, rollers, trays, and extension handles stuffed into the meshwork too. We hauled it all inside, and got busy.

  The calamine lotion worked wonders. I can’t really use it myself because I react somewhat to one of the chemicals in it, but the house didn’t mind. Anyway, I was careful to wear gloves and slippers. I let Fox paint the ceiling, too, not wanting the stuff to drip into my hair or my face. It was still quite a job. The house has four major rooms, a laundry, and a bathroom, and we had to paint it all, everything but the tilework.

  You have any idea how much calamine lotion that takes?

  By the time we were done, it was late. I was wiped. I guess Fox was, too.

  “So, ah … where do I sleep?” he inquired.

  The couch was more of a love seat, and not long enough to accommodate him. Besides, we’d been forced to paint that too, and both of the armchairs, since they’d all developed a rash. I wasn’t about to suggest he try sleeping on the floor either. Nestled in my pubic hair? I don’t think so! But if we were going to be stuck here together for several days, then I’d have to do something. All things considered, it was sure to be something well outside my comfort zone.

  Get over it, I told myself. That didn’t make it easy.

  “Well, uh, there’s m … my room,” I stammered. “You can come … take a look.”

  Given my behavior earlier with the crossbow, I guess he had a right to look askance at me, to wonder about my hesitation. So I bit my lip and led him toward the one room I’d painted all by myself. As we went, I reminded him, “As you’ve seen, the furniture is all part of the house. So pretty much everything in here is … me.”

  He nodded as he glanced through the arching doorway. Then he froze, and frankly gaped.

  I knew what he was looking at. The beds. A pair of rounded mounds, each had a single dark brown cushion at one end that rose about six inches higher than everything else if you stroked them a little. Softly wrinkled, the pillowy masses were circled by smooth brown areolas and there was simply no mistaking what part of the body they’d been derived from.

  To give him credit for having some sense, he didn’t comment on that. Instead, he inquired, “No blankets?”

  “I’ve never needed them,” I said. Which was true. The beds were as warm as my own skin. They were my own skin. Normally, I didn’t bother with PJs either. Tonight, I decided, was different. I’d sleep in my clothes. I dug out a comforter for him, and we both more or less collapsed.

  I woke in the dark, still exhausted, not quite certain what had roused me. Then I heard it—a slurping sound of mumbled contentment.

  Sitting up, I peered at my unwanted roommate.

  He was sleeping peacefully, sprawled on the other bed. His head had slipped off the cushion, however, and he’d wrapped an arm around it. In his sleep, he nuzzled it. As I watched, the nippillow grew fi
rmer, rising, and so did its counterparts, on my own bed, on my chest. It’s hard to describe the sensation. Electric yet ghostly, unlike anything I’d felt before. I found myself stretching out, reaching out, longing for something I couldn’t name.

  But even that much movement set off my skin. I wasn’t used to wearing clothes at night. They clung to me, the wrinkles leaving welts, rasping at my neck and my shoulders and hips, and I couldn’t help wrapping my arms around myself and digging in. Pretty soon, I was a ball of misery, tears rolling down my face. Every part of me that I could reach lay next to a piece that I couldn’t. I was so freakin’ miserable, I didn’t even know I was whimpering. I never heard him get up either. He was just suddenly there, beside me.

  I sobbed. “I can’t stand it!” I dug in again, but he stopped me.

  “Easy, now,” he murmured and called up the room lights. He slowly forced my hands down into my lap. He lifted my face, frowning as he caught sight of the multiple tracheotomy scars on my throat. He rubbed one thumb across them. Then he got behind me and began rubbing my back. My shoulders. My hips. And when the cloth got in his way, he eased the shirt off me and worked on my bare skin. It wasn’t the kind of massage you’d get at the spa, like I was a loaf of bread being kneaded. This was more like being stroked, over and over again. He did it just hard enough to move blood through my skin but without any hard edges. Slowly, the itching subsided, becoming a layer of heat, as if the whole outermost inch of me was slowly combusting.

  Laying me down, he continued his work, down each arm and leg and back up again.

  “You have such beautiful skin,” he said, breathing the words at my bare shoulder. “Beautiful. …”

  “Yeah, sure. As long as I stay clear of plastic,” I whispered. Last time I wore rayon, I looked like a leper for most of a week, and Rick … well, Rick seemed to think he might catch it. When I reacted to his aftershave as well … I shuddered, trying to shake off the memory. “History,” I told myself.

  Fox didn’t notice. He was too busy caressing the sensitive skin at the base of my spine, where tiny hairs had begun to tremble.

  So long, I thought, since anyone touched me.