The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “Where’s that?”

  “It is in the Indian Ocean, Mr Beaumont, near Madagascar.”

  I knew where Madagascar was from playing Risk, so I told him that, but then I couldn’t think of what else to say. Finally, I had to blurt out something – anything – to fill the silence. “It’s nice here. Real quiet, you know. Private.”

  “Yes, I had not expected to meet anyone.” He, too, seemed at a loss. “I have business in New York City on the twenty-sixth of October.”

  “New York, that’s a ways away.”

  “Is it? How far would you say?”

  “Fifty miles. Sixty, maybe. You have a car?”

  “No, I do not drive, Mr Beaumont. I am to take the train.”

  The nearest train station was New Canaan, Connecticut. I could’ve hiked it in maybe half a day. It would be dark in a couple of hours. “If your business isn’t until the twenty-sixth, you’ll need a place to stay.”

  “The plan is to take rooms at a hotel in Manhattan.”

  “That costs money.”

  He opened a wallet and showed me a wad of crisp new bills. For a minute I thought they must be counterfeit; I hadn’t realized that Ben Franklin’s picture was on any money. Cross was giving me the goofiest grin. I just knew they’d eat him alive in New York and spit out the bones.

  “Are you sure you want to stay in a hotel?” I said.

  He frowned. “Why would I not?”

  “Look, you need a friend, Mr Cross. Things are different than on your island. Sometimes people do, you know, bad stuff. Especially in the city.”

  He nodded and put his wallet away. “I am aware of the dangers, Mr Beaumont. I have trained not to draw attention to myself. I have the proper equipment.” He tapped the pocket where the camo was.

  I didn’t point out to him that all his training and equipment hadn’t kept him from being caught out by a twelve-year-old. “Sure, okay. It’s just . . . look, I have a place for you to stay, if you want. No one will know.”

  “Your parents, Mr Beaumont . . .”

  “My dad’s in Massachusetts until next Friday. He travels; he’s in the window business. And my mom won’t know.”

  “How can she not know that you have invited a stranger into your house?”

  “Not the house,” I said. “My dad built us a bomb shelter. You’ll be safe there, Mr Cross. It’s the safest place I know.”

  I remember how Cross seemed to lose interest in me, his mission, and the entire twentieth century the moment he entered the shelter. He sat around all of Sunday, dodging my attempts to draw him out. He seemed distracted, like he was listening to a conversation I couldn’t hear. When he wouldn’t talk, we played games. At first it was cards: Gin and Crazy Eights, mostly. In the afternoon, I went back to the house and brought over checkers and Monopoly. Despite the fact that he did not seem to be paying much attention, he beat me like a drum. Not one game was even close. But that wasn’t what bothered me. I believed that this man had come from the future, and here I was building hotels on Baltic Avenue!

  Monday was a school day. I thought Cross would object to my plan of locking him in and taking both my key and Mom’s key with me, but he never said a word. I told him that it was the only way I could be sure that Mom didn’t catch him by surprise. Actually, I doubted she’d come all the way out to the shelter. She’d stayed away after Dad gave her that first tour; she had about as much use for nuclear war as she had for science fiction. Still, I had no idea what she did during the day while I was gone. I couldn’t take chances. Besides, it was a good way to make sure that Cross didn’t skin out on me.

  Dad had built the shelter instead of taking a vacation in 1960, the year Kennedy beat Nixon. It was buried about a hundred and fifty feet from the house. Nothing special – just a little cellar without anything built on top of it. The entrance was a steel bulkhead that led down five steps to another steel door. The inside was cramped; there were a couple of cots, a sink, and a toilet. Almost half of the space was filled with supplies and equipment. There were no windows and it always smelled a little musty, but I loved going down there to pretend the bombs were falling.

  When I opened the shelter door after school on that Monday, Cross lay just as I had left him the night before, sprawled across the big cot, staring at nothing. I remember being a little worried; I thought he might be sick. I stood beside him and still he didn’t acknowledge my presence.

  “Are you all right, Mr Cross?” I said. “I brought Risk.” I set it next to him on the bed and nudged him with the corner of the box to wake him up. “Did you eat?”

  He sat up, took the cover off the game and started reading the rules.

  “President Kennedy will address the nation,” he said, “this evening at seven o’clock.”

  For a moment, I thought he had made a slip. “How do you know that?”

  “The announcement came last night.” I realized that his pronunciation had improved a lot; announcement had only three syllables. “I have been studying the radio.”

  I walked over to the radio on the shelf next to the sink. Dad said we were supposed to leave it unplugged – something about the bombs making a power surge. It was a brand-new solid-state, multi-band Heathkit that I’d helped him build. When I pressed the on button, women immediately started singing about shopping: Where the values go up, up, up! And the prices go down, down, down! I turned it off again.

  “Do me a favour, okay?” I said. “Next time when you’re done, would you please unplug this? I could get in trouble if you don’t.” I stooped to yank the plug.

  When I stood up, he was holding a sheet of paper. “I will need some things tomorrow, Mr Beaumont. I would be grateful if you could assist me.”

  I glanced at the list without comprehension. He must have typed it, only there was no typewriter in the shelter.

  To buy:

  – One General Electric transistor radio with earplug

  – One General Electric replacement earplug

  – Two Eveready Heavy Duty nine volt batteries

  – One New York Times, Tuesday, October 23

  – Rand McNally map of New York City and vicinity

  To receive in coins:

  – twenty nickels

  – ten dimes

  – twelve quarters

  When I looked up, I could feel the change in him. His gaze was electric; it seemed to crackle down my nerves. I could tell that what I did next would matter very much. “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “There are inaccuracies?”

  I tried to stall. “Look, you’ll pay almost double if we buy a transistor radio at Ward’s Hollow. I’ll have to buy it at Village Variety. Wait a couple of days – we can get one much cheaper down in Stamford.”

  “My need is immediate.” He extended his hand and tucked something into the pocket of my shirt. “I am assured this will cover the expense.”

  I was afraid to look, even though I knew what it was. He’d given me a hundred-dollar bill. I tried to thrust it back at him but he stepped away and it spun to the floor between us. “I can’t spend that.”

  “You must read your own money, Mr Beaumont.” He picked the bill up and brought it into the light of the bare bulb on the ceiling. “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. A kid like me doesn’t walk into Village Variety with a hundred bucks. Mr Rudowski will call my mom!”

  “If it is inconvenient for you, I will secure the items myself.” He offered me the money again.

  If I didn’t agree, he’d leave and probably never come back. I was getting mad at him. Everything would be so much easier if only he’d admit what we both knew about who he was. Then I could do whatever he wanted with a clear conscience. Instead, he was keeping all the wrong secrets and acting really weird. It made me feel dirty, like I was helping a pervert. “What’s going on?” I said.

  “I do not know how to respond, Mr Beaumont. You have the list. Read it now and tell me pl
ease with which item you have a problem.”

  I snatched the hundred dollars from him and jammed it into my trouser-pocket. “Why don’t you trust me?”

  He stiffened as if I had hit him.

  “I let you stay here. I didn’t tell anyone. You have to give me something, Mr Cross.”

  “Well then . . . ” He looked uncomfortable. “I would ask you to keep the change.”

  “Oh jeez, thanks.” I snorted in disgust. “Okay, okay, I’ll buy this stuff right after school tomorrow.”

  With that, he seemed to lose interest again. When we opened the Risk board, he showed me where his island was, except it wasn’t there because it was too small. We played three games and he crushed me every time. I remember at the end of the last game, watching in disbelief as he finished building a wall of invading armies along the shores of North Africa. South America, my last continent, was doomed. “Looks like you win again,” I said. I traded in the last of my cards for new armies and launched a final, useless counter-attack. When I was done, he studied the board for a moment.

  “I think Risk is not a proper simulation, Mr Beaumont. We should both lose for fighting such a war.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “Both sides can’t lose.”

  “Yet they can,” he said. “It sometimes happens that the victors envy the dead.”

  That night was the first time I can remember being bothered by Mom talking back to the TV. I used to talk to the TV too. When Buffalo Bob asked what time it was, I would screech It’s Howdy Doody Time, just like every other kid in America.

  “My fellow citizens,” said President Kennedy, “let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out.” I thought the president looked tired, like Mr Newell on the third day of a camp-out. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

  “Oh my God!” Mom screamed at him. “You’re going to kill us all!”

  Despite the fact that it was close to her bedtime and she was shouting at the President of the United States, Mom looked great. She was wearing a shiny black dress and a string of pearls. She always got dressed up at night, whether Dad was home or not. I suppose most kids don’t notice how their mothers look, but everyone always said how beautiful Mom was. And since Dad thought so too, I went along with it – as long as she didn’t open her mouth. The problem was that a lot of the time, Mom didn’t make any sense. When she embarrassed me, it didn’t matter how pretty she was. I just wanted to crawl behind the couch.

  “Mom!”

  As she leaned toward the television, the martini in her glass came close to slopping over the edge.

  President Kennedy stayed calm. “The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are – but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high – but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”

  “Shut up! You foolish man, stop this!” She shot out of her chair and then some of her drink did spill. “Oh, damn!”

  “Take it easy, Mom.”

  “Don’t you understand?” She put the glass down and tore a Kleenex from the box on the end table. “He wants to start World War III!” She dabbed at the front of her dress and the phone rang.

  I said, “Mom, nobody wants World War III.”

  She ignored me, brushed by, and picked up the phone on the third ring.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. I could tell from the sound of her voice that it was Dad. “You heard him then?” She bit her lip as she listened to him. “Yes, but . . . ”

  Watching her face made me sorry I was in the sixth grade. Better to be a stupid little kid again, who thought grown-ups knew everything. I wondered whether Cross had heard the speech.

  “No, I can’t, Dave. No.” She covered the phone with her hand. “Raymie, turn off that TV!”

  I hated it when she called me Raymie, so I only turned the sound down.

  “You have to come home now, Dave. No, you listen to me. Can’t you see, the man’s obsessed? Just because he has a grudge against Castro doesn’t mean he’s allowed to . . . ”

  With the sound off, Chet Huntley looked as if he were speaking at his own funeral.

  “I am not going in there without you.”

  I think Dad must have been shouting, because Mom held the receiver away from her ear.

  She waited for him to calm down and said, “And neither is Raymie. He’ll stay with me.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I said. I bounced off the couch. The look she gave me stopped me dead.

  “What for?” she said to Dad. “No, we are going to finish this conversation, David, do you hear me?”

  She listened for a moment. “Okay, all right, but don’t you dare hang up.” She waved me over and slapped the phone into my hand as if I had put the missiles in Cuba. She stalked to the kitchen.

  I needed a grown-up so bad that I almost cried when I heard Dad’s voice. “Ray,” he said, “your mother is pretty upset.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I want to come home – I will come home – but I can’t just yet. If I just up and leave and this blows over, I’ll get fired.”

  “But, Dad . . . ”

  “You’re in charge until I get there. Understand, son? If the time comes, everything is up to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered. I’d heard what he didn’t say – it wasn’t up to her.

  “I want you to go out to the shelter tonight. Wait until she goes to sleep. Top off the water drums. Get all the gas out of the garage and store it next to the generator. But here’s the most important thing. You know the sacks of rice? Drag them off to one side, the pallet too. There’s a hatch underneath, the key to the airlock door unlocks it. You’ve got two new guns and plenty of ammunition. The revolver is a .357 Magnum. You be careful with that, Ray, it can blow a hole in a car but it’s hard to aim. The double-barrelled shotgun is easy to aim but you have to be close to do any harm. And I want you to bring down the Gamemaster from my closet and the .38 from my dresser drawer.” He had been talking as if there would be no tomorrow; he paused then to catch his breath. “Now, this is all just in case, okay? I just want you to know.”

  I had never been so scared in my life.

  “Ray?”

  I should have told him about Cross then, but Mom weaved into the room. “Got it, Dad,” I said. “Here she is.”

  Mom smiled at me. It was a lopsided smile that was trying to be brave but wasn’t doing a very good job of it. She had a new glass and it was full. She held out her hand for the phone and I gave it to her.

  I remember waiting until almost ten o’clock that night, reading under the covers with a flashlight. The Fantastic Four invaded Latveria to defeat Doctor Doom; Superman tricked Mr Mxyzptlk into saying his name backwards once again. When I opened the door to my parents’ bedroom, I could hear Mom snoring. It spooked me; I hadn’t realized that women did that. I thought about sneaking in to get the guns, but decided to take care of them tomorrow.

  I stole out to the shelter, turned my key in the lock and pulled on the bulkhead door. It didn’t move. That didn’t make any sense, so I gave it a hard yank. The steel door rattled terribly but did not swing away. The air had turned frosty and the sound carried in the cold. I held my breath, listening to my blood pound. The house stayed dark, the shelter quiet as stones. After a few moments, I tried one last time before I admitted to myself what had happened.

  Cross had bolted the door shut from the inside.

  I went back to my room, but couldn’t sleep. I kept going to the window to watch the sky over New York, waiting for a flash of killing light. I was all but convinced that the city would burn that very night in the thermonuclear fire and that Mom and I would die horrible deaths soon after, pounding on the unyielding steel doors of our shelter. Dad had left me in charge and I had
let him down.

  I didn’t understand why Cross had locked us out. If he knew that a nuclear war was about to start, he might want our shelter all to himself. But that made him a monster and I still didn’t see him as a monster. I tried to tell myself that he’d been asleep and couldn’t hear me at the door – but that couldn’t be right. What if he’d come to prevent the war? He’d said he had business in the city on Thursday; he could be doing something really, really futuristic in there that he couldn’t let me see. Or else he was having problems. Maybe our twentieth-century germs had got to him, like they killed H.G. Wells’s Martians.

  I must have teased a hundred different ideas apart that night, in between uneasy trips to the window and glimpses at the clock. The last time I remember seeing was quarter after four. I tried to stay up to face the end, but I couldn’t.

  I wasn’t dead when I woke up the next morning, so I had to go to school. Mom had Cream of Wheat all ready when I dragged myself to the table. Although she was all bright and bubbly, I could feel her giving me the mother’s eye when I wasn’t looking. She always knew when something was wrong. I tried not to show her anything. There was no time to sneak out to the shelter; I barely had time to finish eating before she bundled me off to the bus.

  Right after the morning bell, Miss Toohey told us to open The Story of New York State to Chapter Seven, “Resources and Products”, and read to ourselves. Then she left the room. We looked at each other in amazement. I heard Bobby Coniff whisper something. It was probably dirty; a few kids snickered. Chapter Seven started with a map of product symbols. Two teeny little cows grazed near Binghamton. Rochester was a cog and a pair of glasses. Elmira was an adding machine, Oswego an apple. There was a lightning bolt over Niagra Falls. Dad had promised to take us there someday. I had the sick feeling that we’d never get the chance. Miss Toohey looked pale when she came back, but that didn’t stop her from giving us a spelling test. I got a ninety-five. The word I spelled wrong was enigma. The hot lunch was American Chop Suey, a roll, a salad, and a bowl of butterscotch pudding. In the afternoon, we did decimals.

  Nobody said anything about the end of the world.