“Lots of children have imaginary worlds,” said Elliot. “I think you’re worrying over nothing.”
* * *
Jessica woke in the morning when the sunlight slid off the bedroom wall and onto her face. The house was quiet; the door to her bedroom was shut. She didn’t like that. She couldn’t go to sleep at night without the hall light, but her parents always turned the light out and shut the door when they went to bed because the fire department had told them sleeping with the door shut was safer. It didn’t feel safer to Jessica.
There was a lump in her back which turned out to be Beatrice, the stuffed gray mouse with pearly eyes that Jessica had slept with. Jessica pulled Beatrice out from underneath her and dropped her to the floor. She lay still a few more minutes trying to guess if her parents were awake. They tiptoed about the house when they thought Jessica was sleeping. They spoke in hushed voices and opened doors slowly. But Jessica heard them anyway. This morning there was nothing.
Jessica got up and put her sling on, round her neck, over her pajamas. She opened the door and went across the hall to her parents’ bedroom. She found her mother sitting back on her heels on the floor by the closet. “What are you doing?” asked Jessica.
“Good morning, sleepy-head,” said her mother. She leaned forward and swept a flat palm over the rug. “I’m looking for my necklace. I dropped it last night when I was getting undressed and then it was too dark to find it.”
“I’ll help look,” said Jessica. She crawled slowly about in front of the closet, her face close to the pile. It soon bored her. “I’m hungry,” she hinted. “Starving.”
Her mother stood up. “Well, I’ll make you breakfast then. You go get dressed. We can find it later. What would you like to eat?”
“Cheerios,” said Jessica. “From the new box.” The new boxes contained prizes, small bugs with lots of legs that stuck wherever you put them and glowed in the dark. Jessica had seen them on television. There were pink ones and green ones and yellow ones and Jessica wanted at least one of every color; she knew she would have to eat several boxes of cereal to make this happen.
She returned to her own room and her own closet. The window was open. She could smell something nice—the neighbors’ flowers, the ones that looked like the brush her mother used to use to wash out her baby bottle, the ones that were purple, the ones with all the bees. Charlie had gotten stung last week and howled and howled. Jessica jumped on her bed twice to see if Charlie was in the yard. He was sleeping, stretched out on the patio in the shade.
“Good morning, Charlie,” Jessica called and then dropped to the bed and out of sight before he could locate her. She waited until he might have gone back to sleep. Then she did it again, this time kicking her feet out from under her so that she landed on the bed on her back. She lay for a moment smiling.
“Your Cheerios are ready,” her mother called. “I’m pouring the milk.” Jessica bounced off the bed, grabbing the clothes she had worn the night before. She dressed as quickly as she could. The pants were turned inside out, but she left them that way in the interest of speed. She found socks. She put them both on the same foot, one on top of the other.
“How about wearing two socks?” her mother said when she saw her.
“I am,” said Jessica.
Her mother didn’t pursue it as Jessica had hoped she would. “Sit down,” she said instead.
There was something about her mother’s face Jessica didn’t like this morning. Her mother looked tired and rubbed the sides of her head as though they hurt. “Where’s daddy?” asked Jessica.
“Jogging.”
“Are you crying? About your necklace? Was it your very favorite, favorite one? You can get another.”
“No, I’m not crying,” her mother assured her. “I’m sure the necklace will turn up. How far could it have gotten all on its own?”
“Maybe it fell between?” Jessica suggested.
“Between what?”
“Between now. To the other place.”
Jessica’s mother looked at Jessica’s face. Jessica smiled and her mother reached out and petted her hair. It was tangled and her mother’s fingers caught in it and pulled a little. “Ouch,” Jessica said, just as a warning.
“It was my favorite necklace,” her mother said. “Because Paw-paw gave it to me when you were born. I’m supposed to give it to you someday. So it always made me think of you and of the day you came. A new necklace wouldn’t do that. Does that seem silly?”
Jessica shook her head.
“My mother had a watch. It was a man’s watch and very expensive, but it wouldn’t work at all because someone had worn it in swimming and it wasn’t waterproof. The man who owned it first just left it when he saw it was ruined. But my father picked it up and gave it to my mother and she kept it all her life.”
“That seems silly,” said Jessica. She felt more interest in the necklace now that she knew it was to be hers someday and also a slight irritation with her mother, whose carelessness had lost it. She wanted to go and look for it some more and her irritation increased when her mother insisted she stay and eat her Cheerios first. Jessica took a large spoonful, chasing and catching many of the floating circles. She chewed and wondered if her mother would let her dump the box out into the bowl to find the prize if she was very careful and put all the Cheerios back without spilling.
“Do you go to your other place when you’re unhappy here?” her mother asked and Jessica had to swallow some of her cereal in order to answer.
“No. I just go when I feel like it.”
“Do you feel that you’re different from other children?”
“How?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know. Do you feel that you look different or like different things or that other kids don’t like you? Your teacher says you’re very quiet at school. That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Everybody’s special in their own way.” Jessica had learned that from Mr. Rogers. She said it with appropriate authority.
“But sometimes being different, even being special, can be hard. Sometimes it makes people feel bad. Do you ever feel like that?”
“No,” said Jessica. She paddled her spoon in the cereal bowl and watched the Cheerios move on the currents she made. With Paw-paw a meal was over when your plate was empty. With her mother it was more a matter of how much time you had spent sitting still. Soon her mother would be satisfied and would let her go and look for the necklace. The Cheerios were already soggy and there was really no need to eat them. “Am I different?” Jessica asked.
“You have the other place. That’s different.”
“Lots of children have imaginary worlds,” Jessica reminded her. Even though she didn’t know exactly what was meant by an imaginary world. She thought it might be like on television when children begin by pretending that they’re on a boat in the ocean and then they really are and their clothes have changed and their stuffed animals can talk. Which wasn’t really much like the other place. The other place wasn’t something you would pretend.
“Paw-paw said that something frightened you last night,” her mother told her. Her mother was speaking slowly and carefully. Her mother wanted her to remember what Jessica had been trying to forget.
“Can I have toast?” Jessica asked.
“What frightened you?”
Jessica dropped her spoon and pushed the cereal bowl away. “I’m not going to eat anymore.” It was a deliberate attempt to change the subject; it was supposed to make her mother mad.
“What frightened you, Jessica?”
Jessica pushed the spoon off the table with her elbow. It bounced with a tinny sound on the floor. She slid lower and lower in her seat until her mother disappeared below the horizon of the tabletop. Jessica slipped off the chair entirely and sat by the spoon underneath the table. The woodgrain was rough from this angle. It felt like being in a box. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Jessica told her mother’s shoes. They were gray sneakers with pink stars—kids�
� shoes except that they were so big.
Her mother slid forward; her knees came closer to Jessica’s face and then back again and her mother was sitting on the floor under the table beside her, crosslegged. Her mother had to hunch a little bit to fit. “I really need you to tell me about it, sweetheart,” she said. “I really need to know what happened.”
Jessica looked away. “I went to the other place,” she said. “And then I couldn’t get back. I thought I’d never see you or Daddy or Paw-paw again. That never happened to me before.” Jessica was doing her best to talk about it without really remembering. She didn’t want to feel it again. “I was scared,” she said, just as a fact. “Finally I heard Paw-paw calling me and then I knew where she was and I could get back out. Paw-paw let me sleep on the couch.”
Her mother took Jessica’s face in her hands; she pressed a little too hard. Jessica let her mouth go all funny, like a fish’s, but her mother didn’t laugh.
“You must never go again,” her mother said.
“It’s never been like that before.”
“Still. It’s too risky. What if Paw-paw hadn’t found you? I couldn’t bear it. Please, Jessica. Promise me you won’t go back.”
Her mother was staring at her, all unhappy. It made Jessica uncomfortable. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“Promise.” Did she mean it, Jessica wondered. No, she decided. She just would never go back at night. Any world was scary at night. “Can I go look for my necklace now?” Jessica’s mother released her with obvious reluctance. Jessica took it as an answer. She crawled between the chairs and stood up. Her mother didn’t move. “I’ll put my shoes on first,” said Jessica. It was a conciliatory gesture. She ran down the hall and into her room. The curtains waved at her when she opened the door. She slammed it to make them wave again. Her knee itched around the scab she had gotten two days ago at the park when she jumped off the swing while she was still swinging. Jessica rolled up the leg of her pants and picked the scab off. There was blood. She should go show her mother. Her mother would want to know. But her mother was already sad. Jessica decided to find the necklace first. Then her mother would be happy and Jessica would get a Band-Aid. Jessica went to her mother and father’s room.
The rug was empty. In Jessica’s room the rug had puzzle pieces on it and books and dirty socks and Legos and papers from nursery school and a shell from the beach that you couldn’t really hear the ocean in no matter what they said and a teddy bear with one eye glued shut in a permanent wink and kite string, but no kite, it had gone up in the sky and was lost. It would be hard to find a necklace in Jessica’s room. It should be easy here.
Jessica lay on her stomach and looked. She pressed her chin into the rug; the pile was like grass. There was a whole different world in the rug, now that she was close enough to see it. Perhaps bugs lived there or odors like it said in the commercials. Small creatures making their homes at the roots of the pile so the rug towered over their heads and Jessica never saw them. Creatures that were sucked up in the vacuum, that would be horrible.
She couldn’t find the necklace. She looked around the closet and by the bed and at the door to her parents’ bathroom, a bathroom with no bathtub in it like hers had, but just a shower and a toilet. There was only one other place Jessica could think of to look. She squeezed through into it.
Today it was filled with wind, so hard, so fast, it lifted her right off her feet. Jessica laughed when she realized she was flying. The wind lifted her hair from her neck and held it in the air over her head. It turned her around and around, higher and higher. The shapes of the landscape changed as Jessica moved faster—straight lines curved into fans, closed walls opened like windows. And then Jessica was moving too fast to see shapes at all; they changed into rings of color which encircled her; objects which had had places before now became endless bands, their beginnings and ends fused together. Jessica made no attempt to control her height or her speed; she let herself go completely limp and went wherever she was taken.
She thought she heard her mother calling her. Jessica ignored it. Her mother would still be calling her whenever Jessica chose to return. She had learned that these trips took no time at all. They happened between time, no matter how long she felt she had stayed. Except for last night. The thought came to Jessica suddenly, making her frown. Last night Paw-paw had missed her and come looking. Jessica extended her arms, hands wide open facing backward to see if that slowed her spinning. Instead the wind slapped against them, turning her even faster. She was moving so fast now that it was hard to breathe and there was a pressure against her eyes so she closed them. Colors happened inside her head like fireworks, the colors you see when you press your fingers against your eyelids and leave them there. Colors in lines like snakes and bursts like stars and drips like paint. Jessica pulled her arms in and the spinning slowed so that she could get her breath.
Her mother called again; the voice came from below her. The second call made Jessica realize that time was passing. If her mother found her, like Paw-paw, then her mother would know she had not kept her promise. Jessica opened her eyes and tried to return. She put her arms straight up over her head and fell toward her mother’s voice. The wind caught her up again. She arched and straightened and fell. And was carried up. It was like a swing, up and down, up and down. Jessica worked harder. She made a little progress, but only slowly. She remembered the last time. She began to be frightened. Her mother was closer now and she wanted to beat her mother to the place between the worlds, to the door, but the flying was so effortless and the returning so tiring. She gave it up and felt herself being lifted away.
“Jessica,” her mother called. It was a scream that the wind carried all around her like the colors. The scream dissolved into continuous sound. It was joined by another scream which went on and on. Jessica twisted in the wind and tried again to fall. She tried as hard as she could. She was crying now and the wind was so quick that the tears never even touched her cheeks but were blown away right out of her eyes. Her heart pounded on the wall of her chest. She wanted her mother. She wanted to go home. And suddenly the spinning slowed. The tears streaked her face. The wind began to fade and Jessica could do whatever she liked. She turned a cartwheel in the air, very slowly, arms and legs straight like a star, since this was something she could not manage in the other world. She closed her eyes. She opened them and she was lying in her mother’s lap.
Her mother’s face was something awful, the strangest color, and Jessica knew it was because of her, so she looked quickly away to pretend she hadn’t seen it. “Don’t be mad,” she said. The words came out like hiccoughs because of the crying. “I was scared.” Her mother held her so tightly her heart beat into Jessica’s body as if it were Jessica’s own. Jessica relaxed. “I was looking for your necklace,” she told her mother. “But it’s not there either. Maybe some other place.” Her mother did not answer. Jessica guessed she was mad about the broken promise. Jessica guessed that she was going to want to talk and talk about it again the way grown-ups never could let go of things until they repeated themselves and made you repeat yourself. Jessica, who did not want to think anymore about how frightened she had been, but knew she would be made to, felt very cross, herself. “I came back,” she pointed out sulkily.
Her mother’s grip on her tightened. “Jessica,” her mother said in a hoarse, funny voice. “Jessica.”
Jessica looked past her mother toward the window. It was raining outside and Jessica hadn’t even noticed. Her father would be home soon and he would stand in the kitchen and shake the water out of his hair like a dog. It cheered Jessica up to think about it. She slipped her arms around her mother’s neck and fastened her hands tightly over the opposite elbows. She would not let go. Not ever. When her mother stood up, and for the rest of her mother’s life, Jessica decided, she would be there, hanging from her mother’s neck like a stone.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Winter Market
Almost unknown only a few years ago, William Gibson won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award in 1985 for his remarkable first novel Neuromancer—a rise to prominence as fiery and meteoric as any in SF history. Gibson sold his first story in 1977 to the now-defunct semiprozine Unearth, but it was seen by practically no one, and Gibson’s name remained generally unknown until 1981, when he sold to Omni a taut and vivid story called “Johnny Mnemonic,” a Nebula finalist that year. He followed it up in 1982 with another and even more compelling Omni story called “Burning Chrome,” which was also a Nebula finalist … and all at once Gibson was very much A Writer To Watch. Now, with the publication of Neuromancer, he is widely regarded as one of the most important writers to enter the field in many years. Gibson’s stories have also appeared in Universe, Modern Stories, and Interzone. His most recent books are Count Zero, a novel, and Burning Chrome, a collection. Upcoming from Bantam is a new novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Gibson’s story “New Rose Hotel” was in our Second Annual Collection; his story “Dogfight,” written with Michael Swanwick, appeared in our Third Annual Collection. Born in South Carolina, Gibson now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife and family.
In the vivid, brilliant story that follows, he suggests that people who know exactly what they want can be a little frightening—particularly if they need you to get it for them.…
THE WINTER MARKET
William Gibson
It rains a lot, up here; there are winter days when it doesn’t really get light at all, only a bright, indeterminate gray. But then there are days when it’s like they whip aside a curtain to flash you three minutes of sunlit, suspended mountain, the trademark at the start of God’s own movie. It was like that the day her agents phoned, from deep in the heart of their mirrored pyramid on Beverly Boulevard, to tell me she’d merged with the net, crossed over for good, that Kings of Sleep was going triple-platinum. I’d edited most of Kings, done the brain-map work and gone over it all with the fast-wipe module, so I was in line for a share of royalties.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 83
