The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

“Aaron … I can’t. I just can’t. Be wiped.”

  “Even if you die for it? What point is there to that?”

  I stayed silent. We had discussed it before, all of it, the whole dreary topic. But Aaron had never before looked like that. And he had never begged.

  “Please, Mom. Please. You already get confused. Last week you thought that woman in the park was your dead sister. I know you’re going to say it was just for a second, but that’s the way it starts. Just for a second, then more and more, and then it’s too late for the wipe. You say you wouldn’t be ‘you’ anymore with a wipe—but if your memory goes and the body follows it, are you ‘you’ anyway? Feeble and senile? Are you still ‘you’ if you’re dead?”

  “That isn’t the point,” I began, but he must have seen on my face something which he thought was a softening, a wavering. He reached for my hand. His fingers were dry and hot.

  “It is the point! Death is the point! Your body can’t be made any younger, but it doesn’t have to become any older. You don’t. And you have the bodily strength, still, you have the money—Christ, it isn’t as if you would be a vegetable. You’d still remember language, routines—and you’d make new memories, start over. A new life. Life, not death!”

  I said nothing to that. Aaron could see the years of my life stretching behind me, years he wanted me to cut off as casually as paring a fingernail. He could not see the other, greater loss.

  “You’re wrong,” I said, as gently as I could, and took my fingers from his. “I’m not refusing the wipe because I want death. I’m refusing it because too much of me has already died.”

  He stared at me with incomprehension. The bee I had waved away buzzed around his left ear. I saw his blue eyes flick to it and then back to me, refusing to be distracted. Linear thinking, always: was it growing up with all those computers? Such blue eyes, such a handsome man, still.

  Next door Todd began to whistle. Aaron stiffened and half-turned to look for the first time over his shoulder; he had not realized Todd was there. He looked back at me. His eyes shadowed and dropped, and in that tiny sideways slide—not at all linear—I knew. I suddenly knew.

  He saw it. “Mom … Mother…”

  “You’re going to have the wipe.”

  He raised the coffee cup to his mouth and drank: an automatic covering gesture, the coffee must have been cold. Repulsive. Cold coffee is repulsive.

  I folded my arms across my belly and leaned forward.

  He said quietly, “My back is getting worse. The migraines are back, once or twice every week. Lorsky says I’m an old forty-two, you know how much people vary. I’m not the easy-living type who forgets easily. I take things hard, I don’t forget, and I don’t want to die.”

  I said nothing.

  “Mom?”

  I said nothing.

  “Please understand … please.” It came out in a whisper. I said nothing. Aaron put his cup on the table and eased himself from the chair, leaning heavily on its arm and webbed back. The movement attracted Todd’s attention. I saw, past the bulk of Aaron’s body, the moment Todd decided to walk over and be neighborly.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kinnian. Aaron.”

  I watched Aaron’s face clench. He turned slowly.

  Todd said, “Hot, isn’t it? I was away for a week and my weeds just ambushed everything.”

  “Sailing,” Aaron said carefully.

  “Yes, sailing.” Todd said, faintly surprised. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Do you sail?”

  “I did. Once. When I was a kid. My father used to take me.”

  “You should have kept it up. Great sport. Mrs. Kinnian, can I weed those flowers for you?”

  He pointed to the black triptych. I said, “No, thank you, Todd. The gardener will be around tomorrow.”

  “Well, if you … all right. Take care.”

  He smiled at us: a handsome blue-eyed man in his prime, ruddy with health and exercise, his face as open and clear as a child’s. Beside him, Aaron looked puffy, stiff, out of shape. The skin at the back of Aaron’s neck formed ridges that worked up and down above his collar.

  “Take care,” I said to Todd. He walked back to his weeding. Aaron turned to me. I saw his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I am … sorry. But I’m going to have the wipe. I’m going to do it.”

  “To me.”

  “For me.”

  After that there was nothing else to say. I watched Aaron walk around the flowered shrine, open the door to the house, disappear in the cool interior. There was a brief hum from the air conditioner, cut off the moment the door closed. A second door slammed; Todd, too, had gone inside his house.

  I realized that I had not asked Aaron when Dr. Lorsky would do the wipe. He might not have told me. He had already been stretched as far as he would go, pulled off center by emotion and imagination, neither of which he wanted. He had never been an imaginative child, only a practical one. Coming to me in the garden with his math homework, worried about fractions, unconcerned with the flowers blooming and dying around him. I remembered.

  But he would not.

  Todd came back outside, carrying a cold drink, and returned to weeding. I watched him a while. I watched him an hour, two. I watched him after he had left and dusk began to fall over the garden. Then I struggled out of my chair—everything ached, I had been sitting too long—and picked some snapdragons. Purple, deepened by the shadows. I laid them in front of the black triptych.

  When Todd and I had been married, I had carried roses: white with pink undertones at the tips of the petals, deep pink at the heart. I hadn’t seen such roses in years. Maybe the strain wasn’t grown anymore.

  The script on the shrine had sprung out clear and hard. I touched it with one finger, tracing the names. Then I went into the house to watch TV. A brain-wipe clinic had been bombed. Elderly activists crowded in front of the camera, yelling and waving gnarled fists. They were led away by police, strong youthful men and women trying to get the old people to behave like old people. The unlined faces beneath their helmets looked bewildered. They were bewildered. Misunderstanding everything; believing that remembrance is death; getting it all backwards. Trying to make us go away as if we didn’t exist. As if we never had.

  MIKE RESNICK

  Kirinyaga

  Although we like to compliment ourselves—rather smugly—on the brightness and rationality of our tidy, shiny modern world, the Old Ways still exist—and, as the grim little story that follows suggests, perhaps they always will.

  Mike Resnick is one of the bestselling authors in science fiction, and one of the most prolific. His many novels include The Dark Lady, Stalking the Unicorn, Ivory, and Santiago. His most recent novel was the well-received Paradise. He lives with his family, a whole bunch of dogs—he and his wife run a kennel—and at least one computer in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  KIRINYAGA

  Mike Resnick

  In the beginning, Ngai lived alone atop the mountain called Kirinyaga. In the fullness of time, he created three sons, who became fathers of the Masai, the Kamba, and the Kikuyu races; and to each son he offered a spear, a bow, and a digging stick. The Masai chose the spear, and was told to tend herds on the vast savanna. The Kamba chose the bow, and was sent to the dense forests to hunt for game. But Gikuyu, the first Kikuyu, knew that Ngai loved the earth and the seasons, and chose the digging stick. To reward him for this, Ngai not only taught him the secrets of the seed and the harvest, but gave him Kirinyaga, with its holy fig tree and rich lands.

  The sons and daughters of Gikuyu remained on Kirinyaga until the white man came and took their lands away; and even when the white man had been banished, they did not return, but chose to remain in the cities, wearing Western clothes and using Western machines and living Western lives. Even I, who am a mundumugu—a witch doctor—was born in the city. I have never seen the lion or the elephant or the rhinoceros, for all of them were extinct before my birth; nor have I seen Kirinyaga as Ngai meant it to be seen, for a bustling, overcrowded city
of 3 million inhabitants covers its slopes, every year approaching closer and closer to Ngai’s throne at the summit. Even the Kikuyu have forgotten its true name, and now know it only as Mount Kenya.

  To be thrown out of Paradise, as were the Christian Adam and Eve, is a terrible fate, but to live beside a debased Paradise is infinitely worse. I think about them frequently, the descendants of Gikuyu who have forgotten their origin and their traditions and are now merely Kenyans, and I wonder why more of them did not join with us when we created the Eutopian world of Kirinyaga.

  True, it is a harsh life, for Ngai never meant life to be easy; but it is also a satisfying life. We live in harmony with our environment; we offer sacrifices when Ngai’s tears of compassion fall upon our fields and give sustenance to our crops; we slaughter a goat to thank him for the harvest.

  Our pleasures are simple: a gourd of pombe to drink, the warmth of a boma when the sun has gone down, the wail of a newborn son or daughter, the footraces and spear throwing and other contests, the nightly singing and dancing.

  Maintenance watches Kirinyaga discreetly, making minor orbital adjustments when necessary, assuring that our tropical climate remains constant. From time to time they have subtly suggested that we might wish to draw upon their medical expertise, or perhaps allow our children to make use of their educational facilities, but they have taken our refusal with good grace, and have never shown any desire to interfere in our affairs.

  Until I strangled the baby.

  It was less than an hour later that Koinnage, our paramount chief, sought me out.

  “That was an unwise thing to do, Koriba,” he said grimly.

  “It was not a matter of choice,” I replied. “You know that.”

  “Of course you had a choice,” he responded. “You could have let the infant live.” He paused, trying to control his anger and his fear. “Maintenance has never set foot on Kirinyaga before, but now they will come.”

  “Let them,” I said with a shrug. “No law has been broken.”

  “We have killed a baby,” he replied. “They will come, and they will revoke our charter!”

  I shook my head. “No one will revoke our charter.”

  “Do not be too certain of that, Koriba,” he warned me. “You can bury a goat alive, and they will monitor us and shake their heads and speak contemptuously among themselves about our religion. You can leave the aged and the infirm out for the hyenas to eat, and they will look upon us with disgust and call us godless heathens. But I tell you that killing a newborn infant is another matter. They will not sit idly by; they will come.”

  “If they do, I shall explain why I killed it,” I replied calmly.

  “They will not accept your answers,” said Koinnage. “They will not understand.”

  “They will have no choice but to accept my answers,” I said. “This is Kirinyaga, and they are not permitted to interfere.”

  “They will find a way,” he said with an air of certainty. “We must apologize and tell them that it will not happen again.”

  “We will not apologize,” I said sternly. “Nor can we promise that it will not happen again.”

  “Then, as paramount chief, I will apologize.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Do what you must do,” I said.

  Suddenly I could see the terror in his eyes.

  “What will you do to me?” he asked fearfully.

  “I? Nothing at all,” I said. “Are you not my chief?” As he relaxed, I added: “But if I were you, I would beware of insects.”

  “Insects?” he repeated. “Why?”

  “Because the next insect that bites you, be it spider or mosquito or fly, will surely kill you,” I said. “Your blood will boil within your body, and your bones will melt. You will want to scream out your agony, yet you will be unable to utter a sound.” I paused. “It is not a death I would wish on a friend,” I added seriously.

  “Are we not friends, Koriba?” he said, his ebon face turning an ash gray.

  “I thought we were,” I said. “But my friends honor our traditions. They do not apologize for them to the white man.”

  “I will not apologize!” he promised fervently. He spat on both his hands as a gesture of his sincerity.

  I opened one of the pouches I kept around my waist and withdrew a small polished stone, from the shore of our nearby river. “Wear this around your neck,” I said, handing it to him, “and it shall protect you from the bites of insects.”

  “Thank you, Koriba!” he said with sincere gratitude, and another crisis had been averted.

  We spoke about the affairs of the village for a few more minutes, and finally he left me. I sent for Wambu, the infant’s mother, and led her through the ritual of purification, so that she might conceive again. I also gave her an ointment to relieve the pain in her breasts, since they were heavy with milk. Then I sat down by the fire before my boma and made myself available to my people, settling disputes over the ownership of chickens and goats, and supplying charms against demons, and instructing my people in the ancient ways.

  By the time of the evening meal, no one had a thought for the dead baby. I ate alone in my boma, as befitted my status, for the mundumugu always lives and eats apart from his people. When I had finished, I wrapped a blanket around my body to protect me from the cold and walked down the dirt path to where all the other bomas were clustered. The cattle and goats and chickens were penned up for the night, and my people, who had slaughtered and eaten a cow, were now singing and dancing and drinking great quantities of pombe. As they made way for me, I walked over to the caldron and took a drink of pombe, and then, at Kanjara’s request, I slit open a goat and read its entrails and saw that his youngest wife would soon conceive, which was cause for more celebration. Finally the children urged me to tell them a story.

  “But not a story of Earth,” complained one of the taller boys. “We hear those all the time. This must be a story about Kirinyaga.”

  “All right,” I said. “If you will all gather around, I will tell you a story of Kirinyaga.” The youngsters all moved closer. “This,” I said, “is the story of the Lion and the Hare.” I paused until I was sure that I had everyone’s attention, especially that of the adults. “A hare was chosen by his people to be sacrificed to a lion, so that the lion would not bring disaster to their village. The hare might have run away, but he knew that sooner or later the lion would catch him, so instead he sought out the lion and walked right up to him, and as the lion opened his mouth to swallow him, the hare said, ‘I apologize, Great Lion.’

  “‘For what?’ asked the lion curiously.

  “‘Because I am such a small meal,’ answered the hare. ‘For that reason, I brought honey for you as well.’

  “‘I see no honey,’ said the lion.

  “‘That is why I apologized,’ answered the hare. ‘Another lion stole it from me. He is a ferocious creature, and says that he is not afraid of you.’

  “The lion rose to his feet. ‘Where is this other lion?’ he roared.

  “The hare pointed to a hole in the earth. ‘Down there,’ he said, ‘but he will not give you back your honey.’

  “‘We shall see about that!’ growled the lion.

  “He jumped into the hole, roaring furiously, and was never seen again, for the hare had chosen a very deep hole indeed. Then the hare went home to his people and told them that the lion would never bother them again.”

  Most of the children laughed and clapped their hands in delight, but the same young boy voiced his objection.

  “That is not a story of Kirinyaga,” he said scornfully. “We have no lions here.”

  “It is a story of Kirinyaga,” I replied. “What is important about the story is not that it concerned a lion and a hare, but that it shows that the weaker can defeat the stronger if he uses his intelligence.”

  “What has that to do with Kirinyaga?” asked the boy.

  “What if we pretend that the men of Maintenance, who have ships a
nd weapons, are the lion, and the Kikuyu are the hares?” I suggested. “What shall the hares do if the lion demands a sacrifice?”

  The boy suddenly grinned. “Now I understand! We shall throw the lion down a hole!”

  “But we have no holes here,” I pointed out.

  “Then what shall we do?”

  “The hare did not know that he would find the lion near a hole,” I replied. “Had he found him by a deep lake, he would have said that a large fish took the honey.”

  “We have no deep lakes.”

  “But we do have intelligence,” I said. “And if Maintenance ever interferes with us, we will use our intelligence to destroy the lion of Maintenance, just as the hare used his intelligence to destroy the lion of the fable.”

  “Let us think how to destroy Maintenance right now!” cried the boy. He picked up a stick and brandished it at an imaginary lion as if it were a spear and he a great hunter.

  I shook my head. “The hare does not hunt the lion, and the Kikuyu do not make war. The hare merely protects himself, and the Kikuyu do the same.”

  “Why would Maintenance interfere with us?” asked another boy, pushing his way to the front of the group. “They are our friends.”

  “Perhaps they will not,” I answered reassuringly. “But you must always remember that the Kikuyu have no true friends except themselves.”

  “Tell us another story, Koriba!” cried a young girl.

  “I am an old man,” I said. “The night has turned cold, and I must sleep.”

  “Tomorrow?” she asked. “Will you tell us another tomorrow?”

  I smiled. “Ask me tomorrow, after all the fields are planted and the cattle and goats are in their enclosures and the food has been made and the fabrics have been woven.”

  “But girls do not herd the cattle and goats,” she protested. “What if my brothers do not bring all their animals to the enclosure?”

  “Then I will tell a story just to the girls,” I said.

  “It must be a long story,” she insisted seriously, “for we work much harder than the boys.”

  “I will watch you in particular, little one,” I replied, “and the story will be as long or as short as your work merits.”