The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Whore, he had called her.

  “Azara was wrong.” Kayla waited for Jeruna’s gaze to focus.

  “Wrong about what?” She was just starting to worry.

  “We didn’t just make love,” Kayla said. “We fell in love. That’s what you meant to happen, wasn’t it? Throw us together, put us in danger, but do it in Ethan’s backyard, so he was comfortable and I was scared.” You bitch, she thought. “Well, you didn’t need to go to all that trouble.” The bitter knot of words nearly choked her. “And that love is not for sale.”

  “We have a contract.” Jeruna’s face had gone white. Her image froze. Multitasking.

  “Don’t bother.” Kayla laughed harshly. “My broker was wrong about the degrade deadline. You don’t have time to call in the storm troopers.”

  “You can’t keep it. I know how this works.” Jeruna clenched her fists. “Don’t be stupid. You’ll never work as a chameleon again, I’ll make damn sure of that.”

  “Oh, my broker will take care of that. Don’t worry.” Kayla looked at the numbers flickering at the base of the holo field. “We both lose. Right ... now.”

  She had cut it fine but it happened as if she had pushed a button. She had never done this, had wondered how it would differ from the filter, where she slept, woke up fresh and new.

  Ethan, she thought, focusing on his remembered face, his touch on her skin, the feel of him inside her, part of her. I can’t just forget.

  It faded ... faded ... lost meaning ... a face ... name gone ... like water running out of the bathtub. Cup it in your hands, it’s still gone....

  A shrieking howl split her skull. Kayla blinked.

  In her holo field, an aged woman clutched her head with both hands, her short-cropped hair sticking up in tufts between her fingers. The client she had just interviewed with. Jeruna something...

  “No, you bitch, you’re scamming me,” the woman shrieked. “Ethan, give me Ethan.”

  She had gone for the dose, she remembered that. Nano failure? The woman was still screaming. “You’ll have to talk to my broker,” she said and blanked the field. The familiar headache clamped steel fingers into her skull and she sucked in a quick breath, groaned. This should be happening at An Yi’s clinic, not here. Kayla touched her aching head gingerly and shuffled to her kitchen wall for tea. It had to be a failure. How long ago had she taken the dose? “Date check?” she said and the numbers leaped to life in the now-empty field.

  She stared at them numbly, cold fear filling her.

  Not possible.

  She dropped her tea, barely felt the scalding splash as the cup bounced, raced to the futon sofa, pulled her private journal from its place beneath the frame. The book fell open, a dry and wrinkled fern leaf marking the place. A page had been torn out ... the notes about the last dose? The one for the woman who had screamed at her?

  I’m through. The looping letters leaped off the page at her. I know you’re going to freak, but this has to stop. I lost something in the past few days. You don’t know about it because you never experienced it, but it mattered. Every time I do this, I create a “we” ... the me who lived this, and the you on the other side of the filter. I ... we ... we’re a hundred women, and what have we all lost? I don’t know. You don’t know. I’m not going to tell you any more, because it really is gone forever, and it didn’t happen to you. But it’s not going to happen again. I kept the dose until it expired. Start looking for a job, honey. We ... all of us ... are done being a whore and we’re out of a job.

  Kayla dropped the book, numb. I didn’t write this, she thought, but she had. The thoughts weren’t all that unfamiliar. They mostly bothered her in the middle of the night, right after she’d shed the dose.

  What had happened?

  She groped, strained, trying to remember, saw An Yi’s office, recalled their casual conversation, the feel of the recliner as An Yi prepared the dose....

  ...saw the woman’s screaming face in her holo-field.

  Azara’s icon shimmered to life in the holo-field, seeming to pulse with anger. Kayla didn’t bother to access it. You only stole one dose. After that, you were blacklisted. “I hope it was good,” she said, and for all the bitterness in the words she felt ... a tiny flicker of relief. Which was crazy. She looked around the apartment. “Nice while we had it.”

  * * * *

  Azara sent her a termination notice and an official citation that her union seal had been rescinded permanently. And a quiet promise of vengeance couched in polite langauge. Kayla left the city, went east, covering her tracks and hoping Azara wasn’t willing to spend too much money to find her. She found a studio in a sprawling suburban slum, part of an ancient single-family home, maybe the living room, she thought. Communal bath and kitchen, but her room had a tiny sink with cold but drinkable water and she had cooked with a microwave and electric grill for years before she became a chameleon, so it wasn’t too bad. She found a job, too, working as a waitress in one of the city hotspots. Good tips because she was pretty and the empathy that had made her a good chameleon made customers like her.

  Some mornings she remembered her dreams. And then she sifted through them, wondering if they were part of those final, lost, few days.

  Fall came with rain, and mud, and long, wet waits for the light rail into the city. And then, one morning, as she watered the little pots of blooming plants she had bought in the night market to brighten the room, someone knocked on her door. “Who’s there?” she asked, peering through the tiny peephole in the door that constituted “security” in this place. Her neighbor, Suhara, asking to “borrow” a bit of rice, she thought. Again.

  But the man on the far side of the door was a stranger.

  “Kayla, you don’t remember me. But we were ... friends.”

  The catch in his voice ... or maybe it was his voice alone ... made her start, like an electric shock. The key, she thought, and thought about ignoring him, calling Dario, the big wrestler in the back unit, to come run this guy off.

  I don’t want to know, she thought, but she opened the door after all and stepped back to let him in. Cute guy. Her heart began to beat faster. He looked around, his expression ... agonized.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “You don’t ... remember me.”

  It was a statement, but his eyes begged.

  She took her time, examining his hair, his slightly haggard face, the casual clothes made of expensive natural fiber, whose labels made him an insider, one of the elite. Well, those had been her clients. As she shook her head, his shoulders drooped.

  “I know something happened,” she said. “Maybe between us. The memory is simply gone. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t find ... any notes to yourself? Letters about ... about what happened?”

  About me, he had started to say. She shook her head.

  “That was my fault. I was angry. And then...” He closed his eyes. “I got sick, really sick, had picked up some kind of drug-resistant tropical epizootic. By the time I was well enough to look ... it was too late. The nano had expired, you had moved, and ... I couldn’t find you. And I was angry when you last saw me. I knew you’d think that I.... “He balled his fist suddenly, slammed it into his thigh. “You really don’t remember, it’s all gone, all of it.”

  His anguish was so strong that it filled the room. Without thought she took a step forward, put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know that I want you to ... tell me.” She met his eyes, hazel, but with gold flecks in their depths. “It really is gone.” And you’re an insider, she thought. And I am not.

  He looked past her, his eyes fixed on a middle distance. “Will you come have dinner with me?”

  “I told you....”

  “I know. I heard you.” He looked at her finally and the ghost of a crooked smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “I won’t talk about ... that time. I just want to have dinner with you.”

  She was good at reading people and he didn’t feel like a
threat. “Sure,” she said. Because he was cute, whatever had happened in the past. And she liked him. “I’m off tonight.”

  “Great.” His eyes gleamed gold when he smiled. “I play music ... when I’m not rooting around in the jungle for no very lucrative reason.” He waited for a heartbeat and sighed. “I have a gig tonight on the other side of the city. After dinner ... would you like to come listen? I play classical jazz. Really old stuff. And...” His gold eyes glinted. “I come from a family branch that breaks rules. Sometimes really big ones.”

  Whatever that meant. He was actually nervous, as if she might refuse. “Sure.” She smiled, took his hand. For an instant, as their hands touched, she saw green leaves, golden light, smelled humidity, flowers, rot, and soil. Funny how smell was the strongest link to the fragments of past jobs that had seeped past the nano. All of a sudden, his hand felt ... familiar. “I’d love to come hear you play.”

  * * * *

  DAMASCUS

  Daryl Gregory

  New writer Daryl Gregory has made sales to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, and Asimov’s. His story “Second Person, Present Tense” was in several Best of the Year anthologies last year, including this Twenty-third Annual Collection. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

  In the harrowing story that follows, he takes us behind the scenes of a strange cult to reveal the conspiracy at its heart—a far-reaching one that turns out to be very sinister indeed.

  * * * *

  I

  WHEN PAULA BECAME conscious of her surroundings again, the first thing she sensed was his fingers entwined in hers.

  She was strapped to the ambulance backboard—each wrist cuffed in nylon, her chest held down by a wide band—to stop her from flailing and yanking out the IV. Only his presence kept her from screaming. He gazed down at her, dirty-blond hair hanging over blue eyes, pale cheeks shadowed by a few days’ stubble. His love for her radiated like cool air from a block of ice.

  When they reached the hospital, he walked beside the gurney, his hand on her shoulder, as the paramedics wheeled her into the ER. Paula had never worked in the ER, but she recognized a few of the faces as she passed. She took several deep breaths, her chest tight against the nylon strap, and calmly told the paramedics that she was fine, they could let her go now. They made reassuring noises and left the restraints in place. Untying her was the doctor’s call now.

  Eventually an RN came to ask her questions. A deeply tanned, heavyset woman with frosted hair. Paula couldn’t remember her name, though they’d worked together for several years, back before the hospital had fired Paula. Now she was back as a patient.

  “And what happened tonight, Paula?” the nurse said, her tone cold. They hadn’t gotten along when they worked together; Paula had a temper in those days.

  “I guess I got a bit dizzy,” she said.

  “Seizure,” said one of the paramedics. “Red Cross guy said she started shaking on the table, they had to get her onto the floor before she fell off. She’d been seizing for five or six minutes before we got there so we brought her in. We gave her point-one of Lorazepam and she came out of it during the ride.”

  “She’s the second epileptic this shift,” the nurse said to them.

  Paula blinked in surprise. Had one of the yellow house women been brought in? Or one of the converts? She looked to her side, and her companion gazed back at her, amused, but not giving anything away. Everything was part of the plan, but he wouldn’t tell her what the plan was. Not yet.

  The nurse saw Paula’s shift in attention and her expression hardened. “Let’s have you talk to a doctor, Paula.”

  “I’m feeling a lot better,” Paula said. Didn’t even grit her teeth.

  They released the straps and transferred her to a bed in an exam room. One of the paramedics set her handbag on the bedside table. “Good luck now,” he said.

  She glanced at the bag and quickly looked away. Best not to draw attention to it. “I’m sorry if I was any trouble,” she said.

  The nurse handed her a clipboard of forms. “I don’t suppose I have to explain these to you,” she said. Then: “Is there something wrong with your hand?”

  Paula looked down at her balled fist. She concentrated on loosening her fingers, but they refused to unclench. That had been happening more often lately. Always the left hand. “I guess I’m nervous.”

  The nurse slowly nodded, not buying it. She made sure Paula could hold the clipboard and write, then left her.

  But not alone. He slouched in a bedside chair, legs stretched in front of him, the soles of his bare feet almost black. His shy smile was like a promise. I’m here, Paula. I’ll always be here for you.

  * * * *

  II

  Richard’s favorite album was Nirvana’s In Utero. She destroyed that CD first.

  He’d moved out on a Friday, filed for divorce on the following Monday. He wanted custody of their daughter. Claire was ten then, a sullen and secretive child, but Paula would sooner burn the house down around them than let him have her. Instead she torched what he loved most. On the day Paula got the letter about the custody hearing, she pulled his CDs and LPs and DATs from the shelves—hundreds of them, an entire wall of the living room, and more in the basement. She carried them to the backyard by the box. Claire wailed in protest, tried to hide some of the cases, and eventually Paula had to lock the girl in her room.

  In the yard Paula emptied a can of lighter fluid over the pile, went into the garage for the gas can, splashed that on as well. She tossed the Nirvana CD on top.

  The pile of plastic went up in a satisfying whoosh. After a few minutes the fire started to die down—the CDs wouldn’t stay lit—so she went back into the house and brought out his books and music magazines.

  The pillar of smoke guided the police to her house. They told her it was illegal to burn garbage in the city. Paula laughed. “Damn right it’s garbage,” She wasn’t going to be pushed around by a couple of cops. Neighbors came out to watch. Fuck them, she thought.

  She lived in a neighborhood of Philadelphia that outsiders called “mixed.” Blacks and Latinos and whites, a handful of Asians and Arabs. Newly renovated homes with Mexican tile patios side by side with crack houses and empty lots. Paula moved there from the suburbs to be with Richard and never forgave him. Before Claire was born she made him install an alarm system and set bars across the windows. She felt like they were barely holding on against a tide of criminals and crazies.

  The yellow house women may have been both. They lived across the street and one lot down, in a cottage that was a near-twin of Paula’s. Same fieldstone porch and peaked roofs, same narrow windows. But while Paula’s house was painted a tasteful slate blue, theirs blazed lemon yellow, the doors and window frames and gutters turned out in garish oranges and brilliant whites. Five or six women, a mix of races and skin tones, wandered in and out of the house at all hours. Did they have jobs? They weren’t old, but half of them had trouble walking, and one of them used a cane. Paula was an RN, twelve years working all kinds of units in two different hospitals, and it looked to her like they shared some kind of neuromuscular problem, maybe early MS. Their yellow house was probably some charity shelter.

  On the street the women seemed distracted, sometimes talking to themselves, until they noticed someone and smiled a bit too widely. They always greeted Paula and Richard, but they paid special attention to Claire, speaking to her in the focused way of old people and kindergarten teachers. One of them, a gaunt white woman named Steph who wore the prematurely weathered face of a long-time meth user, started stopping by more often in the months after Richard moved out. She brought homemade food: Tupperware bowls of bean soup, foil-wrapped tamales, rounds of bread. “I’ve been a single mom,” she said. “I know how tough things can be on your own.” She started babysitting Claire a couple nights a week, staying in Paula’s house so Claire could fall asleep in her own bed. Some afternoons she took Claire with her on trips to the grocery or the park. Pau
la kept waiting for the catch. It finally came in the form of a sermon.

  “My life was screwed up,” Steph said to Paula one afternoon. Claire had vanished to her bedroom to curl up with her headphones. The two women sat in the kitchen eating cheese bread someone in the yellow house had made. Steph drank wine while Paula worked her way through her afternoon Scotch. Steph talked frankly about her drug use, the shitty boyfriends, the money problems. “I was this close to cutting my wrists. If Jesus hadn’t come into my life, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  Here we go, Paula thought. She drank silently while Steph droned on about how much easier it was to have somebody walk beside her, someone who cared. “Your own personal Jesus,” Steph said. “Just like the song.”

  Paula knew the song—Richard loved that ‘80s crap. He even had the Johnny Cash remake, until she’d turned his collection to slag. “No thanks,” Paula said, “I don’t need any more men in my life.”