Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  Nobody knew which one was the original, and that's the way it should be. Otherwise it would ruin the Closure for everybody else. I can tell you ours wasn't, though. It was just a feeling I had. That's why we just shot him and got it over with. I just couldn't get real excited about killing something that seemed barely alive, even though it supposedly had all his feelings and memories. But some people got into it and attended several executions. They had a kind of network.

  Let me see your list. These two are the ones I would definitely talk to: 112 and 43. And maybe 13.

  *

  Is that what they call us, 112? So I'm just a number again. I thought I was through with that in the army. I figured we had the real one, the real McCoy, because he was so hard to kill. We cut him up with a chain saw, a little Homelite. No sir, I didn't mind the mess and yes, he hated every minute of it. All twenty some odd which is how long it took. I would have fed him to my dogs if we hadn't had to turn the body in. End of fucking story.

  *

  Oh, yeah. Double the pleasure, double the fun. Triple it, really. The only one I was against was this one, 61. The crucifixion. I think that sent the wrong message, but the neighbors loved it.

  Drown in the toilet was big. Poison, fire, hanging, you name it. People got these old books from the library but that medieval stuff took special equipment. One guy had a rack built but the neigbors objected to the screaming. I guess there are some limits, even to Victims' Rights. Ditto the stake stuff.

  *

  I'm sure our mac wasn't the real McCoy. You want to know why? He was so quiet and sad. he just closed his eyes and died. I'm sure the real one would have been harder to kill. My mac wasn't innocent, but he wasn't guilty either. Even though he looked like a thirty year old man he was only eighteen months old, and that sort of showed.

  I killed him just to even things out. Not revenge, just Closure. After spending all the money on the court case and the settlement, not to mention the cloning and all, the deliveries, it would have been wasteful not to do it, don't you think?.

  I've heard that surviving thing but it's just a rumor. Like Elvis. There were lots of rumors. They say one family tried to pardon their mac and send him to Canada or somewhere. I don't think so!

  You might try this one, 43. They used to brag that they had the real one. I don't mind telling you I resented that and still do, since we were supposed to all share equally in the Closure. But some people have to be number one.

  It's over now anyway. What law firm did you say you worked for?

  *

  I could tell he was the original by the mean look in his eye. He wasn't quite so mean after a week in that rat box.

  Some people will always protest and write letters and such. But what about something that was born to be put to death? How can you protest that?

  Closure, that's what it was all about. I went on to live my life. I've been married again and divorced already. What college did you say you were from?

  *

  The real McCoy? I think he just kept his mouth shut and died like the rest of them. What's he goin to say, here I am, and make it worse? And as far as that rumor of him surviving, you can file it under Elvis.

  There was also a story that somebody switched bodies after a car wreck and sent their mac to Canada. I wouldn't put too much stock in that one, either. Folks around here don't even think about Canada. Forgiveness either.

  We used that state kit, the Kevorkian thing. I heard about twenty families did. We just sat him down and May pushed the plunger. Like flushing a toilet. May and myself--she's gone now, God bless her--we were interested in Closure, not revenge.

  *

  This one, 13, told me one time he thought he had the real McCoy, but it was wishful thinking, if you ask me. I don't think you could tell the real one. I don't think you should want to even if you could.

  I'm afraid you can't ask him about it, because they were all killed in a fire, the whole family. It was just a day before the ceremony they had planned, which was some sort of slow thing with wires. There was a gas leak or something. They were all killed and their mac was destroyed in the explosion. Fire and explosion. What insurance company did you say you worked for?

  It was--have you got a map? oooh, that's a nice one--right here. On the corner of Oak and Increase, only a half a mile from the site of the original explosion, ironically. The house is gone now.

  *

  See that new strip mall? That Dollar Store's where the house stood. The family that lived in it was one of the ones that lost a loved one in the Oklahoma City bombing. They got one of the macs as part of the Victims' Rights Closure Settlement, but unfortunately tragedy struck them again before they got to get Closure. Funny how the Lord works in mysterious ways.

  No, none of them are left. There was a homeless guy who used to hang around but the police ran him off. Beard like yours. Might have been a friend of the family, some crazy cousin, who knows. So much tragedy they had. Now he lives in the back of the mall in a dumpster.

  *

  There. That yellow thing. It never gets emptied. I don't know why the city doesn't remove it but it's been there for almost five years just like that.

  I wouldn't go over there. People don't fool with him. He doesn't bother anybody, but, you know.

  Suit yourself. If you knock on it he'll come out, figuring you've got some food for him or something. Kids do it for meanness sometimes. But stand back, there is a smell.

  *

  "Daddy?"

  SARAJEVO

  Nick DiChario

  In Sarajevo, at Rade Koncar Square, Ahmo watched a young boy fall to the bullet of a sniper. The shell blasted into his left ear and exploded out his jaw. The spurt of blood and chunk of meat and bone that was once his delicate, rounded chin burst into the air like a champagne cork. His body snapped in fierce retroflex before it collapsed. His neck twisted grotesquely underneath him. This was one of the first things Ahmo saw in Sarajevo. He watched it again and again, unable to believe his eyes.

  The boy, for all his ghostly appearance, died his perpetual deaths in exquisite detail: His bruised left elbow hitched against his ribs. The torn, dirty, olive shirt he wore flapped airily in the breeze. A look of utter confusion crossed his face as the bullet introduced itself as smooth as an ice pick to tender skin and fragile bone. Even the dust settled around the boy's broken body as it must have done a century ago, captured by the extravagant miracle of his never-ending death. The boy died with his eyes open, questioning, as if there was something about the entire experience he'd just plain misunderstood.

  "Excuse me, sir," a smartbot said in metallic English, rolling toward Ahmo on two trim wheels. "Should I call medical assistance for you?” It was an outdated model, short and broad-framed, with arms like brass sticks. It had a square head, no neck, and an old RetnaNet scanner strip for visuals, winking peridot and platinum. "English?” it asked in its scratchy voice. "Do I presume correctly?"

  Ahmo felt the summer heat closing in on him. It was a bright afternoon, and there was nowhere to hide from the sun. He must have looked very pale. "I'm all right," he said.

  "Very good. Will you please accept reading material from the Sarajevo Council on Spiritual Awareness?” The smartbot had a stack of pamphlets tucked under its stiff arm. It pinched one of the pamphlets with its adept robotic fingers and held it out to him. "By the grace of Allah, you are allowed to tread upon this Holy Soil. Allah offers the Miracle of Ghosts to all people who --_ssschkitch_ -- travel to Sarajevo. The ghosts are prophets of Allah sent to remind us never to forsake peace. Peace with Allah, peace with one's soul, peace with each other and all living things is paramount. The people of the world were once guilty of turning their backs on Sarajevo, but Allah will not permit the world to-to-to_click, nnnnnnnn_ -- so easily forget. Read this pamphlet, please."

  "I'll read it.” Ahmo took the paper and folded it into his pocket.

  "Sir, are you planning to visit Vase Miskin Street and the infamous Bread Queue Massacre?"
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  "Dobrinja," Ahmo answered.

  "If you pass the BQM, maybe it is best for you to --_skeeeeeech_ -- close eyes. You do not look so good.” The smartbot rolled away toward a group of Eastern Indian tourists on the other side of the square.

  The machine was right about Miskin Street. Hundreds of ghosts gathered outside what was, during the siege on Sarajevo, the city's only working bakery. On the morning of the massacre, the people came in hopes of buying a loaf of bread for their families with what little money they had. Ahmo knew from what his grandmother had told him that the people had no food, no water, no electricity, their telephones had all been cut off. They suffered the indignity of inadequate sanitation. They had not eaten eggs, meat, fruits or vegetables for many months. They survived on bread and rain water and what little rice they received from humanitarian aid.

  The grenades exploded in the center of the crowd. Arms and legs were thrown into the air, landing on nearby balconies.

  This was Sarajevo in the year 1992, and 2092, and all the years in-between. Welcome.

  Ahmo stepped into the shadow of a decrepit building of worn and crumbling Jerusalem stone. He wiped the perspiration from his face with a bandanna already dampened by sweat. He dug in his pocket, unfolded the pamphlet the smartbot had given him, and read a quote from the_Holy Qur'an:

  ‘Men began to fear the strong and oppress the weak,

  To boast in prosperity, and curse in adversity.

  And to flee each other, pursuing phantoms,

  For the truth and reality of Unity

  Was gone from their minds.’

  Ahmo wanted nothing more than for the truth and reality of this horrible place to be gone from his mind. He had to remind himself of why he'd come. He'd come for his beloved grandmother. He'd made her a promise he would not break. He reached in his hip pack for the gold ring Grandmother Ivana had given him on the day she'd died, felt it at his fingertips, brought it to his lips. "Soon," he whispered. "Soon I will take you home."

  Ahmo stepped out of the shadows and walked toward the suburb of Dobrinja, where Grandmother Ivana had lived when she was just a little girl.

  * * * *

  Ahmo rushed into his grandparents' small brownstone on the outskirts of Greenwich. He was late for Grandmother Ivana's death. He hadn't meant to be late, but the tube from East Jersey had stalled twice, and the demonstration against new government regulations on webnet virtuware had drawn thousands, clogging up eight blocks of prime downtown real estate.

  "I can't wait around here all afternoon," said the Hemlock technologist, a petite young woman with a stiff posture aimed at Ahmo's grandfather. She wore a blazer the color of blush clay, a tight skirt, and a pair of black pumps that made her feet look large. "I've got two more deaths scheduled before six o'clock."

  Grandfather's face turned crimson. "We pay Hemlock advance for job, you are going to do job. Or else you refund money. All of money!” He smacked his hands together.

  Grandmother Ivana smiled up at Ahmo from the quilted sofa. In spite of all her sickness, she looked beautiful. She wore a long, silky, agate-blue wrap over an ivory-colored gown. She'd primped her hair, and Ahmo could see a trace of makeup on her blanched face. She was not even shaking much today. Ahmo took a moment to savor this picture of her.

  The Hemlock lady noticed Ahmo standing just inside the parlor. "Is this the young man we've been waiting for?"

  The woman's voice no longer sounded quite so tart. Not many women could remain angry around Ahmo. He had what his grandmother called "pouty little lips" and a baby boy's complexion. He'd inherited his mother's long, thin face and thick black hair, his father's strong chin and sky-blue eyes. Ahmo had developed a lean and muscular physique from his years of high school and collegiate basketball, and his job as assistant basketball coach at East Jersey University kept him fit and trim. The fact that he was an English Lit intern, teaching under a highly respected professor at the university, was something he kept to himself until he met a woman impressed by such things, a rare occurrence in his social circles that still revolved mainly around athletics.

  "Ahmo," said his Grandmother, "I knew you would come.” She spoke to Ahmo as if no one else were in the room. His grandmother had always talked to him this way, even when he was a child. She'd always made him feel special. Ahmo was almost thirty years old now and still hadn't found anyone else who could do that for him. There were plenty of women who wanted his body, and vice versa to be sure, but_special_ was hard to come by. This was one of the reasons he didn't want Grandmother Ivana to go through with the euthanasia. Selfish, but true.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," he said, not really meaning it. "It wasn't my fault. The tube stalled, and the demonstration downtown -- "

  "It's all right, Ahmo," said his grandmother.

  The young woman smoothed her woolen jacket. "I don't believe we've met," she said.

  Grandmother said, "Miss March, this is my grandson, Ahmo. He'll be your second witness. Ahmo, this is Miss March. She's single."

  Miss March smiled. "The pleasure is all mine."

  She had the sort of pinched face that made a smile look pained and exaggerated. She smelled too strongly of powdery perfume, putting Ahmo in mind of the funeral homes her clients were one step away from. He said, "I'm glad you can find some pleasure in this."

  His grandmother frowned. "Don't be like that."

  "It's okay," said Miss March. "We at Hemlock are often treated like_betes noires_. We learn to overlook it."

  "Miss March is a kind young girl, Ahmo. You know I want this or she wouldn't be here."

  "I know, but that doesn't mean I want it.” Ahmo knelt beside his grandmother and held her hand. "Can't I talk you out of this?"

  "Stubborn boy, just like your grandfather. We've been all through this. I'm one-hundred-twelve years old and modern medicine has run out of miracles for me. It's time for me to go."

  "Time to go! Time to go!” snapped Grandfather. He stormed into the kitchen. "That's all you've said for the past three months. Go then. Get it over!"

  Ivana smiled. "You'll watch out for your grandfather when I'm gone, won't you, Ahmo? He's not so young anymore."

  "Of course I will," Ahmo answered uneasily. He knew Grandmother Ivana was ready to die. She had made all of the preparations with Hemlock and had undergone the required psychological evaluations. She had even thought to make Ahmo executor of her estate, whatever that meant to a woman who coveted so few possessions. But Ahmo was not ready to let her go.

  He thought about his family. Ahmo's parents, along with his sister and brother-in-law and their three children, lived a long way off, in George Washington Province, the new American colony in Canada. They would be angry when they learned of Ivana's passing. They would want to know why Ahmo hadn't notified them sooner. It was Grandmother's wish, he would tell them. She had not wanted anyone else to watch her die.

  "It's time! It's time!” Grandfather hollered from the kitchen. "Let her go!"

  Miss March placed what looked like a hard-plastic fishing creel on the end table. She snapped it open and removed some needles wrapped in white linen.

  Ahmo glanced around the small parlor where he had spent so much of his time since the rest of his family had moved north. The antique poster on the wall from the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo glinted in its burnished frame. His parents had bought it at an auction and had given it to Ivana on her one-hundredth birthday. He'd often caught his grandmother staring at it, appearing as if she might cry. The tiered curio table in the corner of the room had been cleaned and polished recently, along with all of the miniature pewter teacups his grandmother had collected over the years. He touched the large, round area-rug at his knees that he and his sister had helped Grandmother Ivana braid and sew when they were just children. Ahmo suddenly wished he'd gotten stuck in the tube, or lost in the crowd downtown. Anything, anything other than this.

  Ivana cupped Ahmo's chin and gently pulled him closer. She kissed his forehead. She had the most beautiful plum-co
lored eyes he'd ever seen. They flashed liquid and hypnotic in the dim light of the room, like wine and candlelight. Ahmo couldn't imagine no longer having those eyes to look into for warmth, for comfort, for his own sense of family and personal history. It was amazing that this old, frail woman had come to mean so much.

  "Ahmo," she said, "what are you holding on to? I'm happy. I'm free to say,_this is how I want to die_. Do you understand?"

  Ahmo understood, but he could not embrace it. His love was too strong.

  Ivana brushed her fingers through his coarse hair. "Listen to me. I have something important to ask of you. A last request. Will you promise to do something for me after I'm gone?"

  "Of course. Anything.” Ahmo kissed his grandmother's fingers. Her palms were clammy. He noticed that he'd been trying to warm her hands with his own, caressing them as if they were sticks he might alight by rubbing them briskly together.

  "I want you to go back. I want you to go back to Sarajevo for me."

  "Go back? Grandmother, I, I don't know...Sarajevo..."

  "Please," she said. "It is my last wish. I have set aside the money for the trip. It will cost you nothing but your time."

  Ahmo hesitated. He did not relish the thought of seeing the Miracle of Ghosts, of watching his ancestors die their horrible deaths.

  "Your mother will never go. She's afraid. I can't blame her. Maybe she's too close to it."

  What choice did Ahmo have? How could he say no to this beautiful woman, his precious grandmother? This was her last wish. "All right, if it's that important to you."

  Ivana lifted her left hand and removed the gold ring from around her finger. She placed the ring in Ahmo's hand. "Take this ring and bring it to Dobrinja, bring it to my home. I have all the information written out for you, with a map. When you get there, just leave the ring on the ground. That's all I ask. The ring has been with me all these years, and I want to return it. This is my dying wish.” Ivana's lips quivered, her delicate jaw trembled, her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, look at me. I promised I wouldn't cry."