The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “No, I’m not feeling better today,” he says nastily. “God’s fresh out of miracles.”

  “Are you at least adjusting to your new surroundings?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “You will.”

  “I damned well better not!”

  I stare at him. “You’re not leaving here.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you might as well get used to the place.”

  “Never!”

  “I don’t understand you at all,” I say.

  “That’s because you’re a fool!” he snaps. “Look at me! I have no money and no family. I can’t feed myself or even sit up.”

  “That’s no reason to be so hostile,” I say placatingly. I am about to tell him that his condition is no different from most of my charges, but he speaks first.

  “All I have left is my rage. I won’t let you take it away; it’s all that separates me from the vegetables here.”

  I look at him and shake my head sadly. “I don’t know what made you like this.”

  “One hundred and fifty-three years made me like this,” he says.

  I continue staring at him, at the atrophied legs that will never walk again, at the shrivelled arms and skeletal fingers, at the deathmask skull with its burning, sunken eyes, and I think: Maybe – just maybe – senility is Nature’s way of making life in such a body tolerable. Maybe you’re not as lucky as I thought.

  The major’s chin is wet with drool, and I walk over to him and wipe it off.

  “There,” I say. “Clean as a whistle.”

  Okay, I think, staring down at him. You’re not grateful, but at least you don’t hate me for doing what you can no longer do for yourself. Why can’t they all be like you?

  * * *

  “Why don’t you ask for a transfer to another ward if he’s bothering you that much?” asks Felicia.

  “What would I say?” I reply. “That this old man who can’t even roll over without help is driving me away?”

  “Just tell them you want a change.”

  I shake my head. “My work is important to me. My charges are important to me. I can’t turn my back on them just because he makes my life miserable.”

  “Maybe you should sit down and figure out why he upsets you.”

  “He makes me think uncomfortable thoughts.”

  “What kind of uncomfortable thoughts?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply. But what I really mean is: I don’t want to think about it.

  I just wish I could get my brain to listen to me.

  Superintendent Bailey enters the ward and approaches me.

  “I’m going to need you to work a little overtime today,” he informs me.

  “Oh?” I reply. “What’s the problem?”

  “There must be some virus going around,” he says. “A third of the staff has called in sick.”

  “All right. I’ll just have to let Felicia know I’ll be late for dinner. Where do you want me to go when I’m through here?”

  “Ward 87.”

  “Isn’t that a women’s ward?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d rather have a different assignment, sir.”

  “And I’d rather have a full staff!” he snaps. “We’re both doomed to be disappointed today.”

  He turns and leaves the ward.

  “What have you got against women?” croaks Mr Goldmeier. I had thought he was asleep, but he’s been lying there, motionless, with his eyes (and his ears) wide open.

  “Nothing,” I answer. “I just don’t think I should bathe them.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It’s a matter of respecting their dignity.”

  “Their dignity?” He snorts derisively.

  “Their modesty, if you prefer.”

  “Dignity? Modesty? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “They’re human beings,” I answer with dignity of my own.

  “Not any more,” he replies contemptuously. “They’re a bunch of vegetables that don’t give a damn who bathes them.” He closes his eyes. “You’re a blind, sentimental fool.”

  I hate it when he says things like that, because I want to explain that I am not a blind, sentimental fool. But that requires me to prove he is wrong, and I can’t – I’ve tried.

  All human beings have modesty and dignity. If they haven’t any, then they’re not human beings any more – and if they’re not human beings, why are we keeping them alive? Therefore, they must have modesty and dignity.

  Then I think of those shrivelled bodies and atrophied limbs and uncomprehending eyes, and I start getting another migraine.

  Two days have passed, and I am not eating or sleeping any better than Mr Goldmeier.

  “What did he say this time?” says Felicia wearily, staring across the dining room table at me.

  “I’m not sure,” I answer. “He kept talking about youth in Asia, so finally I looked them up in the encyclopedia. All it says is that there are a lot of them and they’re starving.” I pause, frowning. “But as far as I can tell, he’s never been to Asia. I don’t know why he kept talking about them.”

  “Who knows?” says Felicia with a shrug. “He’s an old man. They don’t always make sense.”

  “He makes too goddamned much sense,” I mutter bitterly.

  “Could you have misunderstood the words?” she asks. “Old men mumble a lot.”

  “I doubt it. I understand everything else he says, so why not this?”

  “Let’s find out for sure,” she says, activating the dining room computer. It glows with life. “Computer, find synonyms for the term ‘youth in Asia’.”

  The computer begins rattling them off. “Young people in Asia. Adolescents in Asia. Children in Asia. Teenagers in –”

  “Stop!” commands Felicia. “Synonym was the wrong term. Computer, are there any homonyms for the term ‘youth in Asia’?”

  “A homonym is an exact match,” answers the computer, “and there is no exact match.”

  “Are there any close approximations?”

  “One. The word euthanasia.”

  “Ah,” says Felicia triumphantly. “And what does it mean?”

  “It is an archaic word, no longer in use. I can find no definition of it in my memory bank.”

  “Eu-tha-na-sia,” says Mr Goldmeier, articulating each syllable. “How the hell can the dictionaries and encyclopedias not list it any longer?”

  “They list it,” I explain. “They just don’t define it.”

  “Figures,” he says disgustedly. As I wait patiently for him to tell me what the word means, he changes the subject. “How long have you worked here?”

  “Almost fourteen years.”

  “Seen a lot of patients come and go?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Where do they go when they leave here?”

  “They don’t, except when they’re transferred to another ward.”

  “So they come to this place, and then they die?”

  “You make it sound like it happens overnight,” I reply. “We’ve kept some of them alive for more than a century,” I add proudly. “A lot of them, in fact.”

  He stares at me. I recognize that particular stare; it means I’m not going to like what he says next.

  “You could save a lot of time and effort by killing them right away.”

  “That would be contrary to civil and moral law!” I reply angrily. “It’s our job to keep every patient alive.”

  “Have you ever asked them if they want to be kept alive?”

  “No one wants to die.”

  “Right. It’s against all civil and moral law.” He coughs and tries to clear his lungs. “Well, that’s why you won’t find it in the dictionary.”

  “Find what?” I ask, confused.

  “Euthanasia,” he says.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it?” he says. “It means mercy killing.�
��

  “Mercy killing?”

  “You’ve heard both words before. Figure it out.”

  I am still wondering why anyone would think it was merciful to kill another human being when my shift ends and I go home.

  “Why would someone want to die?” I ask Felicia.

  She rolls her eyes. “Goldmeier again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised,” she says in annoyed tones. She shakes her head sadly. “I don’t know where that man gets his ideas. No one wants to die.” She pauses. “Look at it logically. If someone’s in pain, he can go on medication. If he’s lost a limb, he can get a prosthesis. If he’s too feeble even to feed himself – well, that’s what trained people like you are there for.”

  “What if he’s just tired of living?”

  “You know better than that,” replies Felicia with unshakeable certainty. “Every living organism fights to stay alive. That’s the first law of Nature.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I agree.

  “He’s a nasty old man. Did he say anything else?”

  “No, not really.” I toy with my food. Somehow my appetite has vanished. “How were things at the greenhouse?”

  “They finally got exactly the shade of phosphorescent silver they want for the Aglaonema crispum,” she says. “I think they’re going to call it the ‘Silver Charm’.”

  “Cute name.”

  “Yes, I rather like it. They tell me there was once a famous racehorse, centuries ago, with that name.” She pauses. “Of course, it means some extra work for me.”

  “Potting them?”

  “They’re all potted. No, the problem is making room for them. I think we’ll have to get rid of the Browallia speciosa majorus.”

  “But those are your majors!” I protest. “I know how you love them!”

  “I do,” she admits. “They have exquisite blossoms. But they’ve got some kind of exotic root rot disease.” She sighs deeply. “I saw some discoloration, some slimy residue . . . but I didn’t identify it in time. It’s my fault they’re dying.”

  “Why not bring them home?” I suggest.

  “If you want majors, I’ll bring some young, healthy ones that will flower in the spring. But I’m just going to dump the old ones in the garbage. The disease won.”

  I’m grasping for something, but I’m not quite sure what. “Didn’t you just tell me that every living thing fights to stay alive?”

  “The majors don’t want to die,” said Felicia. “They’re infected, so I’m taking that decision out of their hands before the disease can spread to other plants.”

  “But if –”

  “Don’t go getting philosophical with me,” she says. “They’re only flowers. It’s not as if they feel any pain.”

  Later that night I find myself wondering when was the last time Rex or the major or Mr Spinoza or any of the others felt any pain.

  Fifty years? Seventy-five? A hundred? More?

  Then I realize that that’s what Mr Goldmeier wants me to think. He sees the weak and he wants them dead.

  But they’re not his targets at all. They never were.

  I finally know who he is trying to infect.

  I show up early for work and enter my ward. Everyone is sleeping.

  I look at my charges, and a warm glow comes over me. We are a team, you and I. I give you life and you give me satisfaction and a sense of purpose. I pledge to you that I will never let anyone destroy the bond between us.

  When I think about it, there is really very little difference between Felicia’s job and my own. She has to protect her flowers; I have to protect mine.

  I fill a syringe and walk silently over to Mr Goldmeier’s life station.

  It is time to start weeding my garden.

  EVERMORE

  Sean Williams

  “We must all hang together,” Benjamin Franklin is reported to have told his revolutionary peers, “or we will assuredly all hang separately.” This is a sentiment that’s even more appropriate, and more urgent, when you’re lost between the stars in a crippled and out-of-control ship, your shipmates aren’t talking to each other (and haven’t for thousands of years), and you don’t really exist in the first place . . .

  New Australian writer Sean Williams is the author of several novels in collaboration with Shane Dix, including The Unknown Soldier and The Dying Light, and of two solo novels, The Resurrected Man and Metal Fatigue, the latter of which won Australia’s Aurealis Award for 1996. His stories have appeared in Eidolon, Aurealis, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Altair, The Leading Edge, Alien Shores, Terror Australis, and elsewhere, and have been gathered in the collection Doorway to Eternity. His most recent books include a new collaborative novel with Shane Dix, Evergence: The Prodigal Sun, and a new collection, New Adventures in Sci-Fi. His collaborative story with Simon Brown, “The Masque of Agamemnon”, was in our eleventh Annual Collection. He has a web site at www.eidolon.net/sean_williams.

  WHEN I WAS A CHILD, MY father used to beat me with the buckle end of his belt, once so severely that I was unable to walk for a week. I recall this clearly and, on some levels at least, it feels real. From old photographs, I know what my father looked like and the sort of belts he wore; I know how such a beating would probably have been administered. Reconstructing the experience and calling it “memory” is no more difficult than daydreaming about Earth; it even causes me some discomfort to do so.

  I tell myself that just because I can’t actually remember the beatings doesn’t mean they never occurred. There’s no reason why I would lie to myself. The awareness that they had a profound effect on my adult life should be enough.

  Yet the fact remains: I am not the person I once was. I cannot speak for him, just as he could not speak for me. We are separated by a gulf that is widening every day, a gulf that will never close. There is no way, now, that I can ask him what went through his mind when he was submitting the data that would one day become the engram called Peter Owen Leutenk. All I can do is mourn the life I have lost.

  I am walking, as is my routine, along an empty beach at sunset. Every now and then, with the stick in my left hand, I scratch words into the sand; sometimes a whole sentence. I am in no great hurry.

  Without warning, I sense that someone is trying to talk to me. I stop and look around, but see no one. The sky is awash with colour; I sometimes feel as though I could dissolve in that sunset – drift upwards, catch fire and sparkle like the evening star, heralding a distant dawn. But not now.

  The call fades for a moment, then becomes twice as strong. I see someone walking across the dunes towards me. When I recognize who it is, I feel a shock like electricity pass through my entire body.

  “Emmett?”

  He smiles, and the twinkle in his eye is still there. “Hello, Peter.”

  I want to embrace him, but I refrain. “It’s been a long time.”

  “You’ve no idea how long.”

  “Twenty, thirty years?”

  “In slow-mo, yes, for you. I’ve been slogging it out in real-time. We just hit the millennium.”

  “Congratulations,” I say, but the pronoun is more significant to me than the years that have passed. “Who are ‘we’?”

  “Jurgen drifts in and out when he feels like it. Apart from him and the probe, there’s only me.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “Of course.” He shrugs. “But someone has to do it.”

  I turn away to avoid his stare. My stick makes skritch-skritch noises as it scribbles in the sand.

  “Still writing, Peter?”

  “Yes. And you? Still waiting?”

  “Yes.” I can tell by the tone in his voice that his smile has faded. “I want to call a general assembly.”

  I look up in surprise. “Why?”

  “I’ve found something we all need to talk about.”

  “Where? A colony? Another ship?”

  “No, no.” He raises a hand to quell my speculation. “Nothing like th
at. It is important, though.”

  His face is orange in the sunset: a perfect rendition, just like the silver suit he preferred on Earth that now looks so out of place on the beach. His hair is the same sandy hue as it was when I first met him. He certainly doesn’t look a thousand years old, and I can still tell when he means business. “Well, call the assembly. I’ll come.”

  “This deserves more than just you, Peter, and you’re all I’ll get if I do it myself. The others still won’t talk to me; they ignore me on principle. I gave up trying long ago.”

  “You want me to do it for you?”

  “Yes.” His frankness hints at a change in him. Once he would’ve used guile to get what he wanted. That was why he was on the probe in the first place: to keep things running smoothly, without confrontation if not without friction. The engrams are the cogs in the program, he used to say, and I am the oil. It’s ironic, in this light, how things have turned out.

  “Will you tell me what this is about?” I ask.

  “No, not until the assembly. But it really is important, I promise you that.”

  “What about Jurgen? Does he know?”

  “A little. He helped me look for part of it. If he guessed the rest, he never said.”

  “Why don’t you ask him instead?”

  “The others don’t like him much, either. You, I think they’ll trust.”

  “Because I was hurt?”

  “Yes. You’re one of them.”

  I look around at the beach and the sky. The sun has been setting for almost as long as the probe has been in flight, but I have not grown tired of it. I am reluctant to leave.

  “It’ll be hard,” I say, “for all of us.”

  “I know. But will you do it?”

  I cannot deny that I am curious. “Yes.”

  His smile returns. “Thank you, Peter. I knew you’d agree.”

  “You’ve worked me out, then?”

  “Yes.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. His eyes are solemn. “I think I’ve finally worked us all out.”

  My awakening occurred on the 24th of March, 2052. Emmett Longyear – the original, with whom I had become friends during the entrainment process – performed the final tests to ensure I had been recreated complete. I knew what had happened to me and was in no doubt at all what I had become, but it still didn’t hit home for some minutes. My reflexes had been wired to follow the old paths; I felt like my usual self. Only when I looked down and saw carpet instead of my body did the truth finally hit home.