The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Perri asked, “What’s the matter, love?”

  She said nothing.

  “Can I help, darling?”

  “I forgot to tell you something,” she began. “A friend of yours visited … oh, it was almost a year ago.”

  The roguish charm surfaced, reliable and nonplussed. “Which friend?”

  “Orleans.”

  And Perri didn’t respond at first, hearing the name and not allowing his expression to change. He stood motionless, not quite looking at her; and Quee Lee noticed a weakness in the mouth and something glassy about the smiling eyes. She felt uneasy, almost asking him what was wrong. Then Perri said, “What did Orleans want?” His voice was too soft, almost a whisper. A sideways glance, and he muttered, “Orleans came here?” He couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.…

  “You owed him some money,” she replied.

  Perri didn’t speak, didn’t seem to hear anything.

  “Perri?”

  He swallowed and said, “Owed?”

  “I paid him.”

  “But … but what happened…?”

  She told him and she didn’t. She mentioned the old seals and some other salient details, then in the middle of her explanation, all at once, something obvious and awful occurred to her. What if there hadn’t been a debt? She gasped, asking, “You did owe him the money, didn’t you?”

  “How much did you say it was?”

  She told him again.

  He nodded. He swallowed and straightened his back, then managed to say, “I’ll pay you back … as soon as possible…”

  “Is there any hurry?” She took his hand, telling him, “I haven’t made noise until now, have I? Don’t worry.” A pause. “I just wonder how you could owe him so much?”

  Perri shook his head. “I’ll give you five thousand now, maybe six … and I’ll raise the rest. Soon as I can, I promise.”

  She said, “Fine.”

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  “How do you know a Remora?”

  He seemed momentarily confused by the question. Then he managed to say, “You know me. A taste for the exotic, and all that.”

  “You lost the money gambling? Is that what happened?”

  “I’d nearly forgotten, it was so long ago.” He summoned a smile and some of the old charm. “You should know, darling … those Remoras aren’t anything like you and me. Be very careful with them, please.”

  She didn’t mention her jaunt on the hull. Everything was old news anyway, and why had she brought it up in the first place? Perri kept promising to pay her back. He announced he was leaving tomorrow, needing to find some nameless people who owed him. The best he could manage was fifteen hundred credits. “A weak down payment, I know.” Quee Lee thought of reassuring him—he seemed painfully nervous—but instead she simply told him, “Have a good trip, and come home soon.”

  He was a darling man when vulnerable. “Soon,” he promised, walking out the front door. And an hour later, Quee Lee left too, telling herself that she was going to the hull again to confront her husband’s old friend. What was this mysterious debt? Why did it bother him so much? But somewhere during the long tube-car ride, before she reached Port Beta, she realized that a confrontation would just further embarrass Perri, and what cause would that serve?

  “What now?” she whispered to herself.

  Another walk on the hull, of course. If Orleans would allow it. If he had the time, she hoped, and the inclination.

  * * *

  His face had turned blue, and the eyes were larger. The pits were filled with black hairs that shone in the light, something about them distinctly amused. “I guess we could go for a stroll,” said the cool voice. They were standing in the same locker room, or one just like it; Quee Lee was unsure about directions. “We could,” said Orleans, “but if you want to bend the rules, why bend little ones? Why not pick the hefty ones?”

  She watched the mouth smile down at her, two little tusks showing in its corners. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Of course it’ll take time,” he warned. “A few months, maybe a few years…”

  She had centuries, if she wanted.

  “I know you,” said Orleans. “You’ve gotten curious about me, about us.” Orleans moved an arm, not so much as a hum coming from the refurbished joints. “We’ll make you an honorary Remora, if you’re willing. We’ll borrow a lifesuit, set you inside it, then transform you partway in a hurry-up fashion.”

  “You can? How?”

  “Oh, aimed doses of radiation. Plus we’ll give you some useful mutations. I’ll wrap up some genes inside smart cancers, and they’ll migrate to the right spots and grow.…”

  She was frightened and intrigued, her heart kicking harder.

  “It won’t happen overnight, of course. And it depends on how much you want done.” A pause. “And you should know that it’s not strictly legal. The captains have this attitude about putting passengers a little bit at risk.”

  “How much risk is there?”

  Orleans said, “The transformation is easy enough, in principle. I’ll call up our records, make sure of the fine points.” A pause and a narrowing of the eyes. “We’ll keep you asleep throughout. Intravenous feedings. That’s best. You’ll lie down with one body, then waken with a new one. A better one, I’d like to think. How much risk? Almost none, believe me.”

  She felt numb. Small and weak and numb.

  “You won’t be a true Remora. Your basic genetics won’t be touched, I promise. But someone looking at you will think you’re genuine.”

  For an instant, with utter clarity, Quee Lee saw herself alone on the great gray hull, walking the path of the first Remora.

  “Are you interested?”

  “Maybe. I am.”

  “You’ll need a lot of interest before we can start,” he warned. “We have expenses to consider, and I’ll be putting my crew at risk. If the captains find out, it’s a suspension without pay.” He paused, then said, “Are you listening to me?”

  “It’s going to cost money,” she whispered.

  Orleans gave a figure.

  And Quee Lee was braced for a larger sum, two hundred thousand credits still large but not unbearable. She wouldn’t be able to take as many trips to fancy resorts, true. Yet how could a lazy, prosaic resort compare with what she was being offered?

  “You’ve done this before?” she asked.

  He waited a moment, then said, “Not for a long time, no.”

  She didn’t ask what seemed quite obvious, thinking of Perri and secretly smiling to herself.

  “Take time,” Orleans counseled. “Feel sure.”

  But she had already decided.

  “Quee Lee?”

  She looked at him, asking, “Can I have your eyes? Can you wrap them up in a smart cancer for me?”

  “Certainly!” A great fluid smile emerged, framed with tusks. “Pick and choose as you wish. Anything you wish.”

  “The eyes,” she muttered.

  “They’re yours,” he declared, giving a little wink.

  * * *

  Arrangements had to be made, and what surprised her most—what she enjoyed more than the anticipation—was the subterfuge, taking money from her savings and leaving no destination, telling her apartment that she would be gone for an indeterminate time. At least a year, and perhaps much longer. Orleans hadn’t put a cap on her stay with them, and what if she liked the Remoran life? Why not keep her possibilities open?

  “If Perri returns?” asked the apartment.

  He was to have free reign of the place, naturally. She thought she’d made herself clear—

  “No, miss,” the voice interrupted. “What do I tell him, if anything?”

  “Tell him … tell him that I’ve gone exploring.”

  “Exploring?”

  “Tell him it’s my turn for a change,” she declared; and she left without as much as a backward glance.

  * * *

  Orleans found help from the
same female Remora, the one who had taken Quee Lee to him twice now. Her comma-shaped eyes hadn’t changed, but the mouth was smaller and the gray teeth had turned black as obsidian.

  Quee Lee lay between them as they worked, their faces smiling but the voices tight and shrill. Not for the first time, she realized she wasn’t hearing their real voices. The suits themselves were translating their wet mutterings, which is why throats and mouths could change so much without having any audible effect.

  “Are you comfortable?” asked the woman. But before Quee Lee could reply, she asked, “Any last questions?”

  Quee Lee was encased in the lifesuit, a sudden panic taking hold of her. “When I go home … when I’m done … how fast can I…?”

  “Can you?”

  “Return to my normal self.”

  “Cure the damage, you mean.” The woman laughed gently, her expression changing from one unreadable state to another. “I don’t think there’s a firm answer, dear. Do you have an autodoc in your apartment? Good. Let it excise the bad and help you grow your own organs over again. As if you’d suffered a bad accident.…” A brief pause. “It should take what, Orleans? Six months to be cured?”

  The man said nothing, busy with certain controls inside her suit’s helmet. Quee Lee could just see his face above and behind her.

  “Six months and you can walk in public again.”

  “I don’t mean it that way,” Quee Lee countered, swallowed now. A pressure was building against her chest, panic becoming terror. She wanted nothing now but to be home again.

  “Listen,” said Orleans, then he said nothing.

  Finally Quee Lee whispered, “What?”

  He knelt beside her, saying, “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

  His old confidence was missing. Perhaps he hadn’t believed she would go through with this adventure. Perhaps the offer had been some kind of bluff, something no sane person would find appealing, and now he’d invent some excuse to stop everything—

  —but he said, “Seals tight and ready.”

  “Tight and ready,” echoed the woman.

  Smiles appeared on both faces, though neither inspired confidence. Then Orleans was explaining: “There’s only a slight, slight chance that you won’t return to normal. If you should get hit by too much radiation, precipitating too many novel mutations … well, the strangeness can get buried too deeply. A thousand autodocs couldn’t root it all out of you.”

  “Vestigial organs,” the woman added. “Odd blemishes and the like.”

  “It won’t happen,” said Orleans.

  “It won’t,” Quee Lee agreed.

  A feeding nipple appeared before her mouth.

  “Suck and sleep,” Orleans told her.

  She swallowed some sort of chemical broth, and the woman was saying, “No, it would take ten or fifteen centuries to make lasting marks. Unless—”

  Orleans said something, snapping at her.

  She laughed with a bitter sound, saying, “Oh, she’s asleep…!”

  And Quee Lee was asleep. She found herself in a dreamless, timeless void, her body being pricked with needles—little white pains marking every smart cancer—and it was as if nothing else existed in the universe but Quee Lee, floating in that perfect blackness while she was remade.

  * * *

  “How long?”

  “Not so long. Seven months, almost.”

  Seven months. Quee Lee tried to blink and couldn’t, couldn’t shut the lids of her eyes. Then she tried touching her face, lifting a heavy hand and setting the palm on her faceplate, finally remembering her suit. “Is it done?” she muttered, her voice sloppy and slow. “Am I done now?”

  “You’re never done,” Orleans laughed. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  She saw a figure, blurred but familiar.

  “How do you feel, Quee Lee?”

  Strange. Through and through, she felt very strange.

  “That’s normal enough,” the voice offered. “Another couple months, and you’ll be perfect. Have patience.”

  She was a patient person, she remembered. And now her eyes seemed to shut of their own volition, her mind sleeping again. But this time she dreamed, her and Perri and Orleans all at the beach together. She saw them sunning on the bone-white sand, and she even felt the heat of the false sun, felt it baking hot down to her rebuilt bones.

  She woke, muttering, “Orleans? Orleans?”

  “Here I am.”

  Her vision was improved now. She found herself breathing normally, her wrong-shaped mouth struggling with each word and her suit managing an accurate translation.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  Orleans smiled and said, “Lovely.”

  His face was blue-black, perhaps. When she sat up, looking at the plain gray locker room, she realized how the colors had shifted. Her new eyes perceived the world differently, sensitive to the same spectrum but in novel ways. She slowly climbed to her feet, then asked, “How long?”

  “Nine months, fourteen days.”

  No, she wasn’t finished. But the transformation had reached a stable point, she sensed, and it was wonderful to be mobile again. She managed a few tentative steps. She made clumsy fists with her too-thick hands. Lifting the fists, she gazed at them, wondering how they would look beneath the hyperfiber.

  “Want to see yourself?” Orleans asked.

  Now? Was she ready?

  Her friend smiled, tusks glinting in the room’s weak light. He offered a large mirror, and she bent to put her face close enough … finding a remade face staring up at her, a sloppy mouth full of mirror-colored teeth and a pair of hairy pits for eyes. She managed a deep breath and shivered. Her skin was lovely, golden or at least appearing golden to her. It was covered with hard white lumps, and her nose was a slender beak. She wished she could touch herself, hands stroking her faceplate. Only Remoras could never touch their own flesh.…

  “If you feel strong enough,” he offered, “you can go with me. My crew and I are going on a patching mission, out to the prow.”

  “When?”

  “Now, actually.” He lowered the mirror. “The others are waiting in the shuttle. Stay here for a couple more days, or come now.”

  “Now,” she whispered.

  “Good.” He nodded, telling her, “They want to meet you. They’re curious what sort of person becomes a Remora.”

  A person who doesn’t want to be locked up in a bland gray room, she thought to herself, smiling now with her mirrored teeth.

  * * *

  They had all kinds of faces, all unique, myriad eyes and twisting mouths and flesh of every color. She counted fifteen Remoras, plus Orleans, and Quee Lee worked to learn names and get to know her new friends. The shuttle ride was like a party, a strange informal party, and she had never known happier people, listening to Remora jokes and how they teased one another, and how they sometimes teased her. In friendly ways, of course. They asked about her apartment—how big; how fancy; how much—and about her long life. Was it as boring as it sounded? Quee Lee laughed at herself while she nodded, saying, “No, nothing changes very much. The centuries have their way of running together, sure.”

  One Remora—a large masculine voice and a contorted blue face—asked the others, “Why do people pay fortunes to ride the ship, then do everything possible to hide deep inside it? Why don’t they ever step outside and have a little look at where we’re going?”

  The cabin erupted in laughter, the observation an obvious favorite.

  “Immortals are cowards,” said the woman beside Quee Lee.

  “Fools,” said a second woman, the one with comma-shaped eyes. “Most of them, at least.”

  Quee Lee felt uneasy, but just temporarily. She turned and looked through a filthy window, the smooth changeless landscape below and the glowing sky as she remembered it. The view soothed her. Eventually she shut her eyes and slept, waking when Orleans shouted something about being close to their destination. “Decelerating now!” he called
from the cockpit.

  They were slowing. Dropping. Looking at her friends, she saw a variety of smiles meant for her. The Remoras beside her took her hands, everyone starting to pray. “No comets today,” they begged. “And plenty tomorrow, because we want overtime.”

  The shuttle slowed to nothing, then settled.

  Orleans strode back to Quee Lee, his mood suddenly serious. “Stay close,” he warned, “but don’t get in our way, either.”

  The hyperfiber was thickest here, on the prow, better than ten kilometers deep, and its surface had been browned by the ceaseless radiations. A soft dry dust clung to the lifesuits, and everything was lit up by the aurora and flashes of laser light. Quee Lee followed the others, listening to their chatter. She ate a little meal of Remoran soup—her first conscious meal—feeling the soup moving down her throat, trying to map her new architecture. Her stomach seemed the same, but did she have two hearts? It seemed that the beats were wrong. Two hearts nestled side by side. She found Orleans and approached him. “I wish I could pull off my suit, just once. Just for a minute.” She told him, “I keep wondering how all of me looks.”

  Orleans glanced at her, then away. He said, “No.”

  “No?”

  “Remoras don’t remove their suits. Ever.”

  There was anger in the voice and a deep chilling silence from the others. Quee Lee looked about, then swallowed. “I’m not a Remora,” she finally said. “I don’t understand.…”

  Silence persisted, quick looks exchanged.

  “I’m going to climb out of this … eventually…!”

  “But don’t say it now,” Orleans warned. A softer, more tempered voice informed her, “We have taboos. Maybe we seem too rough to have them—”

  “No,” she muttered.

  “—yet we do. These lifesuits are as much a part of our bodies as our guts and eyes, and being a Remora, a true Remora, is a sacred pledge that you take for your entire life.”

  The comma-eyed woman approached, saying, “It’s an insult to remove your suit. A sacrilege.”

  “Contemptible,” said someone else. “Or worse.”

  Then Orleans, perhaps guessing Quee Lee’s thoughts, made a show of touching her, and she felt the hand through her suit. “Not that you’re anything but our guest, of course. Of course.” He paused, then said, “We have our beliefs, that’s all.”