The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “Where are we?”

  “Don’t laugh,” said Cathy, “but we call it Cathyland. Turn around.” When she did, Anne saw a picturesque log cabin, beside a vegetable garden in the middle of what looked like acres and acres of Cathys. Thousands of Cathys, young, old, and all ages in between. They sat in lotus position on the sedge-and-moss-covered ground. They were packed so tight they overlapped a little, and their eyes were shut in an expression of single-minded concentration. “We know you’re here,” said Cathy, “but we’re very preoccupied with this Simopolis thing.”

  “Are we in Simopolis?”

  “Kinda. Can’t you see it?” She waved toward the horizon.

  “No, all I see are mountains.”

  “Sorry, I should know better. We have binaries from your generation here too.” She pointed to a college-aged Cathy. “They didn’t pass the Lolly test, and so are regrettably nonhuman. We haven’t decided what to do with them.” She hesitated and then asked, “Have you been tested yet?”

  “I don’t know,” said Anne. “I don’t remember a test.”

  Cathy studied her a moment and said, “You’d remember taking the test, just not the test itself. Anyway, to answer your question, we’re in proto-Simopolis, and we’re not. We built this retreat before any of that happened, but we’ve been annexed to it, and it takes all our resources just to hold our own. I don’t know what the World Council was thinking. There’ll never be enough paste to go around, and everyone’s fighting over every nanosynapse. It’s all we can do to keep up. And every time we get a handle on it, proto-Simopolis changes again. It’s gone through a quarter-million complete revisions in the last half hour. It’s war out there, but we refuse to surrender even one cubic centimetre of Cathyland. Look at this.” Cathy stooped and pointed to a tiny, yellow flower in the alpine sedge. “Within a fifty-metre radius of the cabin we’ve mapped everything down to the cellular level. Watch.” She pinched the bloom from its stem and held it up. Now there were two blooms, the one between her fingers and the real one on the stem. “Neat, eh?” When she dropped it, the bloom fell back into its original. “We’ve even mapped the valley breeze. Can you feel it?”

  Anne tried to feel the air, but she couldn’t even feel her own skin. “It doesn’t matter,” Cathy continued. “You can hear it, right?” and pointed to a string of tubular wind chimes hanging from the eaves of the cabin. They stirred in the breeze and produced a silvery cacophony.

  “It’s lovely,” said Anne. “But why? Why spend so much effort simulating this place?”

  Cathy looked at her dumbly, as though trying to understand the question. “Because Cathy spent her entire life wishing she had a place like this, and now she does, and she has us, and we live here too.”

  “You’re not the real Cathy, are you?” She knew she wasn’t; she was too young.

  Cathy shook her head and smiled. “There’s so much catching up to do, but it’ll have to wait. I gotta go. We need me.” She led Anne to the cabin. The cabin was made of weathered, grey logs, with strips of bark still clinging to them. The roof was covered with living sod and sprinkled with wildflowers. The whole building sagged in the middle. “Cathy found this place five years ago while on vacation in Siberia. She bought it from the village. It’s been occupied for two hundred years. Once we make it livable inside, we plan on enlarging the garden, eventually cultivating all the way to the spruce forest there. We’re going to sink a well, too.” The small garden was bursting with vegetables, mostly of the leafy variety: cabbages, spinach, lettuce. A row of sunflowers, taller than the cabin roof and heavy with seed, lined the path to the cabin door. Over time, the whole cabin had sunk a half-metre into the silty soil, and the walkway was a worn, shallow trench.

  “Are you going to tell me what the doxie was talking about?” said Anne.

  Cathy stopped at the open door and said, “Cathy wants to do that.”

  Inside the cabin, the most elderly woman that Anne had ever seen stood at the stove and stirred a steamy pot with a big, wooden spoon. She put down the spoon and wiped her hands on her apron. She patted her white hair, which was plaited in a bun on top of her head, and turned her full, round, peasant’s body to face Anne. She looked at Anne for several long moments and said, “Well!”

  “Indeed,” replied Anne.

  “Come in, come in. Make yourself at home.”

  The entire cabin was a single small room. It was dim inside, with only two small windows cut through the massive log walls. Anne walked around the cluttered space that was bedroom, living room, kitchen and storeroom. The only partitions were walls of boxed food and provisions. The ceiling beam was draped with bunches of drying herbs and underwear. The flooring, uneven and rotten in places, was covered with odd scraps of carpet.

  “You live here?” Anne said incredulously.

  “I am privileged to live here.”

  A mouse emerged from under the barrel stove in the centre of the room and dashed to cover inside a stack of spruce kindling. Anne could hear the valley breeze whistling in the creosote-soaked stovepipe. “Forgive me,” said Anne, “but you’re the real, physical Cathy?”

  “Yes,” said Cathy, patting her ample hip, “still on the hoof, so to speak.” She sat down in one of two battered, mismatched chairs and motioned for Anne to take the other.

  Anne sat cautiously; the chair seemed solid enough. “No offence, but the Cathy I knew liked nice things.”

  “The Cathy you knew was fortunate to learn the true value of things.”

  Anne looked around the room and noticed a little table with carved legs and an inlaid top of polished gemstones and rare woods. It was strikingly out of place here. Moreover, it was hers. Cathy pointed to a large framed mirror mounted to the logs high on the far wall. It too was Anne’s.

  “Did I give you these things?”

  Cathy studied her a moment. “No, Ben did.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I hate to spoil that lovely newlywed happiness of yours.”

  “The what?” Anne put down her clutch bouquet and felt her face with her hands. She got up and went to look at herself in the mirror. The room it reflected was like a scene from some strange fairy tale about a crone and a bride in a woodcutter’s hut. The bride was smiling from ear to ear. Anne decided this was either the happiest bride in history or a lunatic in a white dress. She turned away, embarrassed. “Believe me,” she said, “I don’t feel anything like that. The opposite, in fact.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” Cathy got up to stir the pot on the stove. “I was the first to notice her disease. That was back in college when we were girls. I took it to be youthful eccentricity. After graduation, after her marriage, she grew progressively worse. Bouts of depression that deepened and lengthened. She was finally diagnosed to be suffering from profound chronic pathological depression. Ben placed her under psychiatric care, a whole raft of specialists. She endured chemical therapy, shock therapy, even old-fashioned psychoanalysis. Nothing helped, and only after she died . . .”

  Anne gave a start. “Anne’s dead! Of course. Why didn’t I figure that out?”

  “Yes, dear, dead these many years.”

  “How?”

  Cathy returned to her chair. “When they decided her condition had an organic etiology, they augmented the serotonin receptors in her hind-brain. Pretty nasty business, if you ask me. They thought they had her stabilized. Not cured, but well enough to lead an outwardly normal life. Then one day, she disappeared. We were frantic. She managed to elude the authorities for a week. When we found her, she was pregnant.”

  “What? Oh yes. I remember seeing Anne pregnant.”

  “That was Bobby.” Cathy waited for Anne to say something. When she didn’t, Cathy said, “He wasn’t Ben’s.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Anne. “Whose was he?”

  “I was hoping you’d know. She didn’t tell you? Then no one knows. The paternal DNA was unregistered. So it wasn’t commercial sperm nor, thankfully, from a licensed clone. It might have been
from anybody, from some stoned streetsitter. We had plenty of those then.”

  “The baby’s name was Bobby?”

  “Yes, Anne named him Bobby. She was in and out of clinics for years. One day, during a remission, she announced she was going shopping. The last person she talked to was Bobby. His sixth birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks. She told him she was going out to find him a pony for his birthday. That was the last time any of us saw her. She checked herself into a hospice and filled out the request for nurse-assisted suicide. During the three-day cooling-off period, she co-operated with the obligatory counselling, but she refused all visitors. She wouldn’t even see me. Ben filed an injunction, claimed she was incompetent due to her disease, but the court disagreed. She chose to ingest a fast-acting poison, if I recall. Her recorded last words were, ‘Please don’t hate me.’ ”

  “Poison?”

  “Yes. Her ashes arrived in a little cardboard box on Bobby’s sixth birthday. No one had told him where she’d gone. He thought it was a gift from her and opened it.”

  “I see. Does Bobby hate me?”

  “I don’t know. He was a weird little boy. As soon as he could get out, he did. He left for space school when he was thirteen. He and Ben never hit it off.”

  “Does Benjamin hate me?”

  Whatever was in the pot boiled over, and Cathy hurried to the stove. “Ben? Oh, she lost Ben long before she died. In fact, I’ve always believed he helped push her over the edge. He was never able to tolerate other people’s weaknesses. Once it was evident how sick she was, he made a lousy husband. He should’ve just divorced her, but you know him – his almighty pride.” She took a bowl from a shelf and ladled hot soup into it. She sliced a piece of bread. “Afterwards, he went off the deep end himself. Withdrew. Mourned, I suppose. A couple of years later he was back to normal. Good ol’ happy-go-lucky Ben. Made some money. Respoused.”

  “He destroyed all my sims, didn’t he?”

  “He might have, but he said Anne did. I tended to believe him at the time.” Cathy brought her lunch to the little inlaid table. “I’d offer you some, but . . .” she said and began to eat. “So, what are your plans?”

  “Plans?”

  “Yes, Simopolis.”

  Anne tried to think of Simopolis, but her thoughts quickly became muddled. It was odd; she was able to think clearly about the past – her memories were clear – but the future only confused her. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I suppose I need to ask Benjamin.”

  Cathy considered this. “I suppose you’re right. But remember, you’re always welcome to live with us in Cathyland.”

  “Thank you,” said Anne. “You’re a friend.” Anne watched the old woman eat. The spoon trembled each time she brought it close to her lips, and she had to lean forward to quickly catch it before it spilled.

  “Cathy,” said Anne, “there’s something you could do for me. I don’t feel like a bride any more. Could you remove this hideous expression from my face?”

  “Why do you say hideous?” Cathy said and put the spoon down. She gazed longingly at Anne. “If you don’t like how you look, why don’t you edit yourself?”

  “Because I don’t know how.”

  “Use your editor,” Cathy said and seemed to unfocus her eyes. “Oh my, I forget how simple you early ones were. I’m not sure I’d know where to begin.” After a little while, she returned to her soup and said, “I’d better not; you could end up with two noses or something.”

  “Then what about this gown?”

  Cathy unfocused again and looked. She lurched suddenly, knocking the table and spilling soup.

  “What is it?” said Anne. “Is something the matter?”

  “A news pip,” said Cathy. “There’s rioting breaking out in Provideniya. That’s the regional capital here. Something about Manumission Day. My Russian isn’t so good yet. Oh, there’s pictures of dead people, a bombing. Listen, Anne, I’d better send you . . .”

  In the blink of an eye, Anne was back in her living room. She was tiring of all this instantaneous travel, especially as she had no control over the destination. The room was vacant, the spouses gone – thankfully – and Benjamin not back yet. And apparently the little blue-faced message medallion had been busy replicating itself, for now there were hundreds of them filling up most of the wall space. They were a noisy lot, all shrieking and cursing at each other. The din was painful. When they noticed her, however, they all shut up at once and stared at her with naked hostility. In Anne’s opinion, this weird day had already lasted too long. Then a terrible thought struck her – sims don’t sleep.

  “You,” she said, addressing the original medallion, or at least the one she thought was the original, “call Benjamin.”

  “The fuck you think I am?” said the insolent little face. “Your personal secretary?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not! In fact, I own this place now, and you’re trespassing. So you’d better get lost before I delete your ass!” All the others joined in, taunting her, louder and louder.

  “Stop it!” she cried, to no effect. She noticed a medallion elongating, stretching itself until it was twice its length, when, with a pop, it divided into two smaller medallions. More of them divided. They were spreading to the other wall, the ceiling, the floor. “Benjamin!” she cried. “Can you hear me?”

  Suddenly all the racket ceased. The medallions dropped off the wall and vanished before hitting the floor. Only one remained, the original one next to the door, but now it was an inert plastic disc with a dull expression frozen on its face.

  A man stood in the centre of the room. He smiled when Anne noticed him. It was the elderly Benjamin from the auditorium, the real Benjamin. He still wore his clownish leisure suit. “How lovely,” he said, gazing at her. “I’d forgotten how lovely.”

  “Oh, really?” said Anne. “I would have thought that doxie thingy might have reminded you.”

  “My, my,” said Ben. “You sims certainly exchange data quickly. You left the lecture hall not fifteen minutes ago, and already you know enough to convict me.” He strode around the room touching things. He stopped beneath the mirror, lifted the blue vase from the shelf, and turned it in his hands before carefully replacing it. “There’s speculation, you know, that before Manumission at midnight tonight, you sims will have dispersed all known information so evenly among yourselves that there’ll be a sort of data entropy. And since Simopolis is nothing but data, it will assume a featureless, grey profile. Simopolis will become the first flat universe.” He laughed, which caused him to cough and nearly lose his balance. He clutched the back of the sofa for support. He sat down and continued to cough and hack until he turned red in the face.

  “Are you all right?” Anne said, patting him on the back.

  “Yes, fine,” he managed to say. “Thank you.” He caught his breath and motioned for her to sit next to him. “I get a little tickle in the back of my throat that the autodoc can’t seem to fix.” His colour returned to normal. Up close, Anne could see the papery skin and slight tremor of age. All in all, Cathy had seemed to have held up better than he.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “just how old are you?”

  At the question, he bobbed to his feet. “I am one hundred and seventy-eight.” He raised his arms and wheeled around for inspection. “Radical gerontology,” he exclaimed, “don’t you love it? And I’m eighty-five per cent original equipment, which is remarkable by today’s standards.” His effort made him dizzy and he sat again.

  “Yes, remarkable,” said Anne, “though radical gerontology doesn’t seem to have arrested time altogether.”

  “Not yet, but it will,” Ben said. “There are wonders around every corner! Miracles in every lab.” He grew suddenly morose. “At least there were until we were conquered.”

  “Conquered?”

  “Yes, conquered! What else would you call it when they control every aspect of our lives, from RM acquisition to personal p
atenting? And now this – robbing us of our own private nonbiologiks.” He grew passionate in his discourse. “It flies in the face of natural capitalism, natural stake-holding – I dare say – in the face of Nature itself! The only explanation I’ve seen on the wad is the not-so-preposterous proposition that whole strategically placed BODs have been surreptitiously killed and replaced by machines!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Anne.

  He seemed to deflate. He patted her hand and looked around the room. “What is this place?”

  “It’s our home, your townhouse. Don’t you recognize it?”

  “That was quite a while ago. I must have sold it after you – ” He paused. “Tell me, have the Bens briefed you on everything?”

  “Not the Bens, but yes, I know.”

  “Good, good.”

  “There is one thing I’d like to know. Where’s Bobby?”

  “Ah, Bobby, our little headache. Dead now, I’m afraid, or at least that’s the current theory. Sorry.”

  Anne paused to see if the news would deepen her melancholy. “How?” she said.

  “He signed on one of the first millennial ships – the colony convoy. Half a million people in deep biostasis on their way to Canopus system. They were gone a century, twelve trillion kilometres from Earth, when their data streams suddenly quit. That was a decade ago, and not a peep out of them since.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “No one knows. Equipment failure is unlikely; there were a dozen independent ships separated by a million klicks. A star going supernova? A well-organized mutiny? It’s all speculation.”

  “What was he like?”

  “A foolish young man. He never forgave you, you know, and he hated me to my core, not that I blamed him. The whole experience made me swear off children.”

  “I don’t remember you ever being fond of children.”

  He studied her through red-rimmed eyes. “I guess you’d be the one to know.” He settled back in the sofa. He seemed very tired. “You can’t imagine the jolt I got a little while ago when I looked across all those rows of Bens and spouses and saw this solitary, shockingly white gown of yours.” He sighed. “And this room. It’s a shrine. Did we really live here? Were these our things? That mirror is yours, right? I would never own anything like that. But that blue vase, I remember that one. I threw it into Puget Sound.”