Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)
Page 109
"I hate to sound all business," said Miss March, "but I'll need Ahmo to sign the witness statement now.” She said this to no one in particular, but Ahmo felt it as a blow to his heart.
"All right.” He stood and quickly signed the paper without reading it. He did not want to linger over this task. He felt as if he were signing his grandmother's death sentence.
"Is it done yet?” Grandfather yelled from the kitchen. "Are you dead yet, Ivana?"
Ivana laughed nervously and brushed away her tears. "No, not yet. Make a pot of coffee. By the time it's perked I'll be dead. Make decaffeinated. You'll be up all night if you don't."
"We're out of decaf!” he shouted. "I put it on the list but you never bought it."
"I bought it. Look in the refrigerator behind the pickles. How are you going to live without me? Tomorrow I won't be around to tell you where to find things.” Then she looked into Ahmo's eyes. "_Cuvajte se_, little Ahmo, take care of yourself. I love you with all my heart."
Ahmo clutched the ring in his hand, and stepped behind the sofa, where Grandmother Ivana could not see his pain.
* * * *
Ahmo walked past "sniper alley" in Sarajevo, and watched an ambulance driver lose control of his vehicle after he'd been shot in the neck. The ambulance spun out of control, flipped over, and crashed silently into a café. The injured victims in the ambulance spilled out onto the street like lumber from a broken sheaf.
Outside the general headquarters of UNPROFOR, the United Nations Protection Force, a woman from the humanitarian agency Equilibre burned to death after being caught in the flames of a Molotov cocktail. She was most likely killed by a Chetnik guerrilla. The Chetniks took great pleasure in the killing of volunteers, women, and children.
The sky was cloudless, the sun beat down mercilessly. Ahmo's eyes stung and his mouth felt sandy from the blowing dust. He could feel the skin on the back of his neck beginning to sunburn. He walked the road between Butmir and Dobrinja. The southwest was one of the hardest hit in all of Sarajevo during the war. There were no trees or mountain ranges to protect it.
At the old airport, Hercules airplanes packed with medical relief and rice and beans from the West came under heavy anti-aircraft fire, and crashed one after another as they attempted to land. There was a phosphorescent glean[?] to their aerial distress that made the sky itself look drunk and confused.
Ahmo watched for a while, and began to wonder if these tired old airplanes were fed up with crashing and burning over and over again, if their pilots had long ago given up trying to set down safely. Had Allah truly asked them to do this great thing, to make this sacrifice?_Haunt Sarajevo!_ Ahmo imagined Allah commanding, and then he saw thousands of Sarajevans, legions of the dead, spirit-zombies, obeying their one true God.
A smartbot from the Bureau of Tourism approached Ahmo as he stood in front of the airport. It said, "Slovák? English? Deutsch? Italiano? Français? Español? -- "
"English," Ahmo interrupted.
"Good day, sir," it began without pause. "Do you know what started all the killing in Sarajevo? Do you know the details behind the Bosnia-Herzegovina vote for independence from the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, and how the Serbian Democratic Party violently disagreed? Would you like to learn the truth about the evil war criminals Milosevic and Karadzic and their policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide?"
This smartbot was tall and thin with a galeate head, a newer model sporting copper alloy legs, a pristine voice chip, and glass eyes that looked almost real. Its exoskeleton was the color of almond, giving it the appearance of a walking corpse. The 'bot wore a navy-blue smock with an official patch on its breast, and held a neatly wrapped computer virtuware package in its dull, brass hand.
It clicked and hummed forward. "Why did the Europeans and Americans, the holy and righteous people of the civilized world who prided themselves on their humanitarianism, allow the slaughter of innocent victims when they could have easily put an end to it? Why was this peaceful city allowed to degenerate into the world's largest concentration camp? You can learn all about it from this commemorative Sarajevo virtuware, the only presentation package sanctioned by the Sarajevo Historical Society."
Ahmo looked past the smartbot. Another aircraft spun out of control on the runway, tipped over, and snapped a wing. A fiery mushroom of bleached smoke consumed the plane.
"Walk the streets of Sarajevo, the City of Tolerance, before it was completely destroyed by the war and inhabited by ghosts. Learn how the Croats, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and even the Serbs lived in peace for centuries, side by side. See exclusive interviews with Sarajevans who miraculously escaped the violence. Hear theories from internationally renowned mystagogues on why the hauntings continue to transpire. All of this can be yours for only two-thousand dinars, the same amount of money it once cost for one-half kilo of macaroni here in Sarajevo during the terrible war of aggression!"
Ahmo donated the money to the Historical Society in German Deutchmarks, the preferred tender in the Balkan region, but told the smartbot he did not have the stomach for its virtuware.
In Dobrinja, there was nothing left but collapsed mosques and synagogues, ruined minarets and housing complexes, and ghosts forever dying. Ahmo was swiftly learning to ignore them, just as the world had learned to ignore the real thing so many years ago. But Ahmo felt as if he had earned this right. He was one of them now, under siege with the incendiaries, mortars, cannons, and snipers silently stalking him.
Ghosts, now, were everywhere...
dancing...
dancing...
So many had died here that the phantoms expired in paranormal heaps, creating numinous silhouettes of multiple executions, of blood and brains and entrails superimposed over torn flesh, exposed bone, and silently screaming faces -- a macabre choreography of vision and light, transparency and color, life and death. There was an absurd, mythical quality to all of it that was just now beginning to take shape in Ahmo's mind, a fuzzy surrealism, a sense of floating adrift in a psychotic nightmare that neither permitted him to succumb to its terrors, nor played itself out of its own accord. Ahmo was nothing more than a prisoner waiting to be set free from Sarajevo, this land of restless, tortured spirits.
Finally it was the ring, of all things, the ring burning in Ahmo's hand that released him, centered him, reminded him of who and what he was and why he had come. Somehow Grandmother Ivana's ring had gotten from his hip pack into the palm of his hand and had it not been for this delicate band of gold, he might very well have become a ghost himself.
By the time Ahmo found his grandmother's building, he was both mentally and physically exhausted. He felt the hot wind on his face. Sweat streamed down his ribs. He sipped water from the canteen he'd purchased in the gift shop at the Sarajevo Marriott. He wanted only to fulfill his promise and be gone.
Ahmo watched a family blown to literal bits in his grandmother's old building. At first they were just sitting there. Then a little girl ran into the room. The bomb hit and the room caved in on them. The little girl looked so much like his grandmother that Ahmo watched the scene unfold again and again, trying to peer through the other ghosts and study her face.
His grandmother had been one of the lucky children. She'd gotten out before the winter, before temperatures of below zero forced people to burn furniture in their stoves to keep from freezing. When the mortar fire hit, Ivana was not killed. The rest of her family had died but she'd survived with only minor cuts and bruises and some ringing in her ears that would not clear for many months. The day after the bombing, a delegation from The Children's Embassy spirited her away among a group of Italian journalists. From there she'd been placed in an American home.
This girl's resemblance to Ahmo's grandmother was uncanny -- the structure of her cheeks and the curvature of her jaw, the delicate nose and lofty forehead, the upturned lips and small mouth. Ahmo had heard that as people grew older they began to resemble their childhood likenesses. Perhaps this thought moved him forw
ard. The ghost of the young girl glanced in his direction, and Ahmo saw clearly, for the first time in this hauntingly familiar child, his grandmother Ivana's dark, plum eyes.
No. It was not possible. His grandmother had escaped to America. She could not have been killed in Sarajevo. Perhaps this was a cousin, or even a sister he'd never heard about. How many of his ancestors had died in this building? It was so long ago. Perhaps Ahmo was beginning to see ghosts of his own design on top of ghosts on top of ghosts.
Whatever it was, he'd had enough. He could not take the sight of anymore death. He placed the gold ring on the ground, among the ruins, just as Grandmother Ivana had instructed him to do. He was ashamed to admit that he was glad to be rid of it. He turned his back on the building and strode away. But something stopped him. Ahmo could not say what. He turned around to look one last time at the young girl who had died her horrible death over and over again in this building, her eternal coffin.
But on this occasion something very different happened. The girl did not go running into the room. She stopped short. Her beautiful wine-colored eyes caught a golden wink in the summer sunlight on the ground where Ahmo had laid his grandmother's ring. She walked over to it and reached for the tiny band of gold. The grenade struck again, but this time the girl was not in the room. This time she was thrown out onto the street. She rolled across the pavement, almost to Ahmo's feet, and began to cry.
She was alive!
And then the scene faded. The little girl vanished. She no longer lay crying on the street. She no longer appeared in the ghostly reincarnation of her family's death. She was not anywhere.
Ahmo walked back to the place where he'd dropped Grandmother Ivana's ring. It was gone. His grandmother's ring was gone.
* * * *
Ahmo sat on the quilted sofa and cradled Ivana's head and shoulders. She was so light her spirit might have already fled her body. It had been six minutes since the Hemlock technologist, Miss March, had administered the fatal injection. Miss March said it would take no more than ten minutes for his grandmother to die, for the Seconal and Lace to furnish her a painless, peaceful, dreamy death.
Ivana's eyes were closed, but she smiled thinly, and whispered, "Ahmo."
"I'm here, Grandmother."
"Have I ever told you how fortunate I was to survive Sarajevo? Not so many people were lucky like me.” Her voice was very weak.
"You were meant to live," Ahmo whispered in her ear. He gently squeezed his grandmother's shoulders, as if his hands held the power to keep her forever by his side.
"Sometimes I dream of Sarajevo," she said, "but in my dreams it is always beautiful and peaceful. No one is afraid. I am with my family. We are all alive and happy. Isn't that nice, Ahmo? It was strange when the bomb hit our home. I was running to my mother, but then I saw a light, just a twinkle of light, and I thought it was Allah calling me."
His grandmother had not mentioned Allah in many years. Ahmo's family had given up the old ways, the old religion. Ahmo himself had followed his parents in having no particular religious associations. He wished now that it was not so. It would have been nice to have a god to pray to at a time like this, a god who cared.
"I can see that light again, Ahmo," she said. "I can see it. A twinkle...just a twinkle...far off...calling me..."
Ahmo forced himself to smile through his tears. He gripped the ring in the palm of his hand and thought of Sarajevo. For some reason the journey no longer frightened him. Grandmother Ivana had made him feel special one last time.
HOTHOUSE FLOWERS
Mike Resnick
I TEST the temperature. It is 83 degrees, warm but not hot. Just right.
I spend the next hour puttering around, checking medications, adjusting the humidity, cleaning one of the life stations. Then Superintendent Bailey stops by on his way out to dinner.
"How are your charges doing?" he asks. "Any problems today?"
"No, sir, evrything's fine," I answer.
"Good," he says. "We wouldn't want any problems, especially not with the celebration coming up."
The celebration is the turn of the century, although there is some debate about that, because we are all preparing to celebrate the instant the clock hits midnight and 2200 A.D. begins, but some spoilsport scientists (or maybe they're mathematicians) have told the press that the new century really begins a year later, when we enter 2201.
Not that my charges know the difference, but I'm glad we're celebrating it this year, because it means that we'll decorate the place with bright colors -- and if we like it, why, we'll do it again in 2201.
* * * *
I have been married to Felicia for 17 years, and I hardly ever regret it. She was a little bit pudgy when we met, and she has gotten pudgier over the years so that now she is honest-to-goodness fat and there is simply no other word for it. Her hair, which used to be brown, is streaked with gray now, and she's lost whatever physical grace she once had. But she is a good life partner. Her taste in holos is similar to mine, so we almost never fight about what to watch after dinner, and of course we both love our work.
As we eat dinner, the topic turns to our gardens, as always.
"I'm worried about Rex," she confides.
Rex is Begonia rex, her hanging basket.
"Oh?" I say. "What's wrong with him?"
She shakes her head in puzzlement. "I don't know. Perhaps I've been letting him get too much sun. His leaves are yellowing, and his roots could be in better shape."
"Have you spoken to one of the botonists?"
"No. They're totally absorbed in cloning that new species of Aglaonema crispum."
"Still?"
She shrugs. "They say it's important."
"The damned plant's been around for centuries," I say. "I can't see what's so important about it."
"I told you: they engineered an exciting mutation. It actually glows in the dark, as if it's been dusted with phosphorescent silver paint."
"It's not going to put the energy company out of business."
"I know. But it's important to them."
"It seems unfair," I say for the hundredth, or maybe the thousandth, time. "They get all the fame and money for creating a new species, and you get paid the same old salary for keeping it alive."
"I don't mind," she replies. "I love my work. I don't know what I'd do without my greenhouse."
"I know," I say soothingly. "I feel the same way."
"So how is your Rex today?" she asks.
It's my turn to shrug. "About the same as usual." Suddenly I laugh.
"What's so funny?" asks Felicia.
"You think your Rex is getting too much sun. I decided my Rex wasn't getting enough, so this afternoon I moved him closer to a window."
"Will it make a difference, do you think?" she asks.
I sigh deeply. "Does it ever?"
* * * *
I walk up to the Major and smile at him. "How are we today?" I ask.
The Major looks at me through unfocused eyes. There is a little drool running out the side of his mouth, and I wipe it off.
"It's a lovely morning," I say. "It's a pity you can't be outside to enjoy it." I pause, waiting for the reaction that never comes. "Still," I continue, "you've seen more than your share of them, so missing a few won't hurt." I check the screen at his life station, find his birthdate, and dope it out. "Well, I'll be damned! You've actually seen 60,573 mornings!"
Of course, he's been here for almost half of them: 29,882 to be exact. If he ever did count them, he stopped a long time ago.
I clean and sterilize his feeding tubes and his medication tubes and his breathing tubes, examine him for bedsores, wash him, take his temperature and blood pressure, and check to make sure his cholesterol hasn't gone above the 350 level. (They want it lower, of course, but he can't exercise and they've been feeding him intravenously for more than half a century, so they won't do anything about changing his diet. After all, it hasn't killed him so far, and altering it just might do so.)
Then it's on to Rex. Felicia has problems with her Rex, and I have problems with mine.
"Good morning, Rex," I say.
He mumbles something incomprehensible at me.
I look down at him. His right eye is bloodshot and tearing heavily.
"Rex, what am I going to do with you?" I say. "You know you're not supposed to stare at the sun."
He doesn't really know it. I doubt that he even knows his name is Rex. But cleansing his eye and medicating it is going to put me behind schedule, and I have to blame someone. Rex doesn't mind being blamed. He doesn't mind burning out his retina. He doesn't even mind lying motionless for decades. If there is anything he does mind, nobody's found it yet.
I spill some medication on him while fixing his eye, so I decide that rather than just change his diaper I might as well go all the way and give him a DryChem bath. I marvel, as always, at the sheer number of surgical scars that criss-cross his torso: the first new heart, the second, the new kidneys, the new spleen, the new left lung. There's a tiny, ancient scar on his lower belly which I think was from the removal of a burst appendix, but I can't find any record of it on the computer and he's been past talking about it for almost a century.
Then I move on to Mr. Spinoza. He's laying there, mouth agape, eyes open, head at an awkward angle. I can tell even before I reach him that he's not breathing. My first inclination is to call Emergency, but I realize that his life station will have reported his condition already, and sure enough, just seconds later the Resurrection Team arrives and sets up a curtain around him (as if any of his roommates could see or care), and within ten minutes they've got the old gentleman going again.