The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  She set a second pot of water to boil and placed a slightly smaller pot within to make a double-boiler. She dumped the crayons into the smaller pot and watched them soften and wilt, periwinkle blue folding over aquamarine, goldenrod yellow over bittersweet brown.

  When the noodles were done, she strained them and dumped them onto a plate. The crayons were all melted by then, and she briskly stirred them into a brown swirl, and then a chocolate mess. She poured the crayons over the noodles, took up a spoon, and began eating.

  * * *

  Sheila found Peter just inside the sanctuary door. One hand rested on a stone arch, and a trace of steam curled up from his nostrils. “Peter,” she said, “the nursery rooms are freezing. Isn’t there anything you can do about it?”

  “Already taken care of,” he answered abstractedly. “The water was low in the boiler so the automatic shutoff cut in. I bled in water, and the radiators should be heating up soon.”

  “Everything seems to be going wrong now that Sam isn’t here in the daytime anymore. Why does the heat keep going off?”

  “Well, you could say it’s because there’s a leak where the radiator pipes loop under the sanctuary. When the water heats up the pipe expands and dumps into the dirt floor there until the system shuts itself off. Or you could say it’s because most apprentice plumbers were of draft age, so the master plumbers have to do the scutwork themselves, so there’s more demand than they have time for, and they charge accordingly. Or you could say that as long as I can correct it by adding water, it’s not an emergency, and we won’t allocate money to fix it.”

  “But—”

  “The thing to keep in mind,” Peter said, “is that this kind of problem is normal with a system this old.”

  “I guess so, but—oh! Do you want to hear the latest? The children have seen a ghost!”

  “A ghost?” Peter said blankly.

  “Yes, a girl ghost—they say she’s very pretty. They’re all excited, and now they’re trying to set up ghost traps. They’re all so cute!”

  Peter was giving her his undivided attention now, and Sheila found his steady green gaze disconcerting. He said nothing, but she had no difficulty following his thoughts.

  “Oh,” she said. “You think the person in the basement … Peter, you’ve got to call the police and get her out of there!”

  “As long as the nursery school guarantees the false-call fee.”

  “They wouldn’t hurt her, would they?” Sheila asked, suddenly apprehensive.

  Peter smiled cynically. “They’d beat the crap out of her for sure. The police have been taking a real tough line on street people lately.”

  “Then there must be some other way!”

  “No,” Peter said calmly, “it’s the police or else let her stay.” His expression was distant, abstracted, again. He reached out and took her hand, placed it against the stone arch. “Feel this, would you?”

  The stone was as cold as ice. It throbbed ever so slightly under her touch. Now that she was aware of it, too, it hummed subliminally, like a machine or a high-tension power line. Attuned, it seemed as if the entire building were full of the almost inaudible vibration. “What is it?” she asked.

  Peter shrugged.

  “It must have something to do with how cold it is,” she decided.

  * * *

  Peter turned from locking up the church to see that someone was standing before the manse door, futilely waiting for someone to come answer the bell. He walked up behind the man, keys out, said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that implied he couldn’t, and began unlocking the door.

  “Yes,” the man said, “I’d like to see the inside of your church.” He was well dressed and clean shaven and good-looking in a perfectly forgettable sort of way. There was something cold about him.

  “Services are ten-thirty Sunday mornings,” Peter said, stepping inside and preparing to close the door.

  “It’s not about that, sir!” the man said quickly, bringing his hands up before him. He proffered a wallet-badge—badly printed allegorical figures with a shield, Latin slogan, space for name typed in and signature squiggle—and put it away when Peter shrugged. “I’m from the Cancer Research Center at Philadelphia Medical College—perhaps you’ve heard of us?” Of course Peter had; the college was only a few blocks distant. “We’re doing a building-to-building canvass in this area.”

  “We give through the church’s national headquarters.”

  “Oh, it’s not that, sir.” The man gave a short, insincere laugh. “We’re searching for some stolen—and very valuable—research materials, and we have good reason to believe that the thief has hidden them in this area. If you could only—”

  “No,” Peter said.

  The man smiled plausibly. “I believe you will find it easier, sir, if you—”

  “I’m halfway through the week and already I’m two days behind schedule. I’ve got a bulletin and two mailings to get out, and I can’t spare the time to nursemaid visitors. Now if you want to go through channels, the pastor here is associated with PMC through the chaplain’s office. If you can get him to agree that you are more important than my usual work—fine. If not, you can always come to services. Ten-thirty Sunday mornings.” He shut the door in the man’s face.

  But my God, that man’s eyes were cold.

  * * *

  Jeremy was playing hide-and-go-seek. Normally it was hard to get away from the teachers, but today Debbie was sick and the substitute never showed up, and neither did one of the parent volunteers, so they were short on adults. And then Gregory’s mother had called because he’d forgotten his lunch, and Ming-su had started crying because she always cried at that time of day, and there was someone banging on the door to get in, so for a minute there was no one in the room but kids. So Jeremy told Heather, who was his girlfriend and who was going to marry him when they grew up, to close her eyes and count real slow, and he ran into the kitchen looking for a place to hide.

  The kitchen was full of cupboards and stuff, but they were either locked or else the knobs were too high to reach. It was too narrow behind the refrigerator and too open under the sinks. Then he noticed that someone had left the oven door open.

  Jeremy knew that ovens were dangerous, so he put his hand in first to make sure it was off and not hot. Then he crawled in. It was roomy inside, and easy to shut the door after him, because it was springy and light. You just tapped it and it closed on its own.

  It was dark inside the oven. Lying on the floor, Jeremy stifled a giggle at the thought of Heather looking for him. There was a little hole near his nose, and a funny smell came out of it that made him feel sleepy.

  He had just closed his eyes for a minute or two when the oven door opened and the ghost looked in. She was real pretty and real skinny too. She did not look surprised to see Jeremy and he was too sleepy to be surprised himself. “Shhh,” he said. “I’m hiding.”

  “Oh,” the ghost said. Then, “Is it fun?”

  Jeremy thought about that for a moment, then said, “No.” It had been fun, but now it was mostly just dull.

  The ghost smiled then, and said, “Well, why don’t you come out?” She reached in her arm—a long, long way—and gently tugged him out.

  For an instant, he felt dizzy and funny and cold, but then he was standing blinking on the kitchen floor and the ghost was gone. The kitchen looked funny, because the shadows had shifted and the light had changed since he had crawled inside. It was all of a sudden a lot later in the day.

  He ran off to find Heather.

  * * *

  Peter was the only attendee from the church staff at the monthly tenants’ meeting. They sat around a table in the old manse’s conference room, in front of the fireplace with its glazed tile and tinned-up front, swapping gossip and sharing news. Peter listened and nodded and answered questions and constructed the month’s complaint list:

  1. Heat!! (Leak under sacristy—fix?)

  2. Mice

  —more traps?
r />   —poison not working?

  3. Light bulbs (if can find source will extend credit))

  4. Toilet paper (tell Sam)

  5. Building Security

  —more padlocks

  —everyone more care

  6. Dupe key for WomensRights

  7. Rent Schedule

  —can wait another week, nursery school?

  —can wait another month, STPPRCDC?

  The afternoon volunteer for the Stop the Point Pleasant Radio-Chemical Dump Coalition complained that the Latin American campaign was drawing off most of their volunteer labor, and wanted to know why there were so many derelicts around the building of late. Peter shrugged, promised to find out, and made a note:

  8. Why winos?

  Mrs. Untiedt, of WomensRights—a relatively successful organization that rented the entire basement floor of the old manse, and mostly used the door directly out through the nursery school play yard—asked why they hadn’t gotten their doorbell fixed yet. Peter explained that their usual handyman didn’t like working for churches, which were notoriously slow to pay, and made another note:

  9. Nudge Jack—doorbell!

  Sheila told about one of the nursery school children who had been lost for several hours that morning, and who claimed to’ve hidden in the kitchen oven. “He couldn’t have hidden there,” she said, “or he’d have suffocated. So we don’t know where he was hiding for most of that time.” Then, thoughtfully, “I don’t think that oven is safe, though, Peter. You’ve really got to do something.”

  “Do you want the door welded shut?” Peter asked.

  “No, don’t do that,” Shiela said. “We need the oven because sometimes we bake for the children.”

  Peter nodded, and wrote:

  10. Make oven safe for children.

  Before Sheila could think to ask how he intended doing this, he rose and broke up the meeting.

  Sam was waiting at the desk. “Listen,” he said, “I got to talk with Mr. Alverson.” His neck was still puffed out beyond his chin, and his skin was a gruesome color gray. Peter nodded, dialed, and told the secretary: “This is Harry’s brother—Fred Alverson? I’m in town unexpectedly, and thought I could have lunch with Harry.”

  When Alverson’s voice cried, “Fred! You old son-of-a-bitch, what are you—” Peter handed the phone over to Sam and walked out of the room.

  Sheila was waiting in the hallway. She nodded toward the room and in a low voice said, “How is he?”

  Peter shook his head. “He’s going to die.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “He’s going to die,” Peter said stubbornly. “And he’s going to keep working here until he drops. Every time I go to the bathroom I expect to open the stall door and find him sitting dead on the crapper.”

  * * *

  There were a lot of different paints in the cabinet, and some were good to drink and others were not. There was a thunderstorm going on, and as Jennifer crouched in the dark and tasted, she could hear distant rumblings and stone-rattling cracks in the air overhead. There was also the sound of pouring water and a few snaps of blue electricity from the steel cable of one lightning rod that ran through the cellar into the earth.

  Sated at last, she fetched the sexton’s keys and went exploring.

  The door to the organ room was off the sacristy and it didn’t open all the way. Jennifer slid inside, closing the door after her, and waited for her eyes to adjust. Outside, the storm still raged.

  Everything was gray and dark and dusty. The organ workings were mostly tier upon tier of wood pipes and electrical fixtures, with two long rows of leather bellows-hinges, all hammered together a lot looser and more haphazardly than one would expect. They towered up and up, behind the metal arch of the treble pipes, and Jennifer found a wooden ladder nailed to the works and clambered up to the first landing.

  The dust was finger-thick there, and other than a half-burnt candle stub or two, there was nothing of interest. She found the next set of rungs off to one side, and went up.

  As she climbed, she became aware of a strange, expectant feeling in the air, a crackly sense of static electricity. Glancing over a shoulder, she saw pale pastel lights shimmer on the treble pipes—St. Elmo’s fire.

  With a surge, she heaved herself onto the top level. She could see all of the sanctuary from here, through the pipes, and the electrical fires blazed up brighter, shifting in quicksilver fashion. She saw the thing afloat over the altar too, but to her untutored eye it was of no greater interest than any other part of the building.

  Jennifer’s hair lifted lightly upward, the ends trailing blue sparks so that it formed an aura about her face. Fata morganas drifted through the floating mass.

  The flames leaped from organ pipe to organ pipe, blazing up and subsiding like one of Bach’s masses played on a color organ. There was sparkling electricity everywhere, in the cables and fixtures and wires, and the stops began opening and shutting on their own accord, in a silent electric symphony.

  Jennifer stretched up on her toes. Her auburn hair afloat, the world crackling with color and energy, thin electrical flames sizzling about her, she danced.

  Later she found a burnt-out lightbulb there, on the upper catwalk, and ate the filament at its heart. She had to break the inside to get at it, but she fixed it up afterward, as good as new.

  * * *

  The minutes were waiting for Peter on his desk, with a new notation in the pastor’s hand: “Salaries must be cut somewhere—please notify Sam.” It was as close to an explicit threat as he was going to get.

  Peter lit up a cigarette, realized that he already had one going in the ashtray, and stubbed it out. He rubbed the back of his neck, then restlessly strode to the chancellery kitchen, off of the conference room. It was tiny, and contained a broken refrigerator, a rusting gas stove that no one dared fire up, and a dozen empty cupboards. The linoleum was browned and buckling.

  Taking a glass from the strainer, Peter washed it thoroughly under the tap and drew a drink of water. He tapped his cigarette’s ashes into the sink, and washed them down the drain with a long spurt of water. Then, back at his desk, he rummaged through the small emergencies drawer until he found a bottle of aspirin among the tampons and the lollipops.

  Where, he asked himself, was the loophole? He popped the aspirin dry, thought a minute, took a sip of water. Finally, he slapped on the typewriter. The pastor hadn’t actually ordered him to fire Sam in person.

  It took three tries to come up with a final draft of the memo. He typed up a clean copy, read it through, and was satisfied. He forged the pastor’s signature to it and dropped it in Sam’s mailslot.

  Done, he lit up a cigarette, noticed the previous one burning in the ashtray and, exasperated, let them both burn. He was too wired to type now, so he scooped up a box of old clothing that had been donated to the church weeks ago, and which he’d been meaning to store in the church with the rest.

  Outside, en route to the church, he noticed several clutches of wine bottles against the church wall, and made a mental note to lift some more padlocks from the hardware store, to firm up security. He passed through the sanctuary without once looking at the altar, and went to the front narthex, where the staircases to the balcony were.

  He was halfway up one set of stairs when a pale face appeared at the top. A slender young woman in denim—a redhead. “The church is closed, miss,” he called to her, and the face disappeared.

  A cold touch of fear in his stomach, he jogged up the stairs, looked around. “If you need some help…” he called. Something stirred off to one side, a ripple of stained-glass light over red hair, and the woman shifted into the shadows of the far stairway.

  “Hey!” He dropped the box and stumbled over piles of dusty cartons crammed with donations for the annual rummage sale. At the foot of the stairs, the door between the narthex and the sanctuary was swinging shut. He pushed through.

  He was just in time to see the woman disappear behind the presbyte
ry beyond the altar. A door closed gently.

  Peter didn’t try to follow. The thing over the altar was swirling madly, like a pinwheel. He couldn’t understand how the woman could have moved so quickly, and he yelled after her, “I wasn’t going to hurt you! What do you think I am, some kind of fucking monster?”

  * * *

  The children were playing a run-around game, so Sheila felt secure in leaving them to the supervision of parent volunteers while she went up to the old chapel for supplies. She retrieved the library paste first, paused, then went into the Toddlers’ Room for the construction paper.

  The Toddlers’ Room had been part of the Sunday School program, when Covenant was still an expanding congregation. A good dozen cribs stood serene in the soft light. They were arranged neatly against the walls, sidebars up and plasticized mattresses growing dusty. To the near corner a stairway rose to the west balcony. The stairs were so cluttered with broken furniture and toys that only a narrow, twisting pathway led upward.

  Sam sat on the third step up. His eyes were dry and hard, and he was staring sightlessly at the cribs.

  “Sam?” Sheila said. “Is everything all right—why aren’t you at the hospital?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even move.

  “Sam!” She was genuinely alarmed now, and reached out to touch his arm.

  It was as if her touch broke a spell. Sam snapped his head her way, eyes startled, and scrambled awkwardly to his feet. “I was just taking some things upstairs,” he said defensively. “That’s all I was doing.”

  “I believe you, I believe you!” Sheila protested. The old man scooped up a broken hobbyhorse, cradled it in his arms.

  “It ain’t no question of believing or not believing,” he said. “I was just going upstairs.” He turned and ascended.

  Sheila stared after him for a long moment before hoisting her supplies and turning to go. As soon as she was far enough down the stairs that he wouldn’t hear her, she threw back her head and said aloud, “I do not believe that man! He is so exasperating.” It made her feel a lot better.