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

by Gardner Dozois

  Captain Groton slumped in a chair in his spartan but private sitting room. The transformation in his appearance was even more remarkable; he was now tall and slender, even for a human, and his facial features had a distinctly human cast. He might have passed for an ordinary man in dim light.

  An exceedingly miserable ordinary man. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face unshaved (she noted the facial hair with surprise), and his voice was a hoarse croak when he said, “Susan! I was just thinking I should thank you for your kindness before.... “He was interrupted by a sneeze.

  Still preoccupied with his appearance, she said, “You are turning human, aren’t you?”

  “Your microbes evidently think so.” He coughed phlegm. “I have contracted an exceedingly repulsive disease.”

  She drew up a chair next to him. “What are your symptoms?”

  He shook his head, obviously thinking the subject was not a fit one. “Don’t be concerned. I am resigned to die.”

  “I’m asking as a professional.”

  Reluctantly, he said, “This body appears to be dissolving. It is leaking fluids from every orifice. There, I told you it was repulsive.”

  “Your throat is sore? Your nose is congested? Coughing and sneezing?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “My dear captain, what you have is called a cold.”

  “No!” he protested. “I am quite warm.”

  “That’s probably because you have a fever.” She felt his forehead. “Yes. Well, fortunately, I’ve brought something for that.” She brought out a bottle of aspirin, some antihistamine, decongestant, and cough suppressant. She added a bottle of Vitamin C for good measure.

  “You are not alarmed?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Not very. In us, the disease normally cures itself in a week or so. Since your immune system has never encountered it before, I’m not sure about you. You have to level with me, captain. Have you become human in ways besides appearance?”

  Vaguely, he said, “How long has it been?”

  “How long has what been?”

  “Since I first saw you.”

  She thought back. “About six weeks.”

  “The transformation is far advanced, then. In three weeks I will be indistinguishable from one of you.”

  “Internally as well?”

  “You would need a laboratory to tell the difference.”

  “Then it should be safe to treat you as if you were human. I’ll be careful, though.” She looked around the room for a glass of water. “Where’s your ba—” It was a Wattesoon apartment; of course there was no bathroom. By now, she knew they excreted only hard, odorless pellets. “Where can I get a glass of water?”

  “What for?” He looked mildly repulsed.

  “For you to drink with these pills.”

  “Drink?”

  “You mean to tell me you’ve had no fluids?”

  “We don’t require them....”

  “Oh, dear Lord. You’re probably dehydrated as well. You’re going to have to change some habits, captain. Sit right there. I need to run to the grocery store.”

  At the grocery she stocked up on fruit juices, bottled water, tissues, and, after a moment’s hesitation, toilet paper—though not relishing having to explain that one to him. She also bought soap, a washcloth, mouthwash, shaving gel, a packet of plastic razors, a pail, and a washbasin. Like it or not, he was going to have to learn.

  She had dealt with patients in every state of mental derangement, but never had she had to teach one how to be human. When she had gotten him to down the pills and a bottle of orange juice, she explained the purpose of her purchases to him in plain, practical language. She showed him how to blow his nose, and explained how a human bladder and bowel worked, and the necessity of washing with soap and water. When she finished he looked, if anything, more despairing than before.

  “It is not common knowledge to us that you are hiding these bodily deficiencies,” he said. “I fear I made a grave error in judgment.”

  “You’re a soldier,” she said. “Stop dramatizing, and cope with it.”

  For a moment he stared, astonished at her commanding tone. Then she could see him marshaling his courage as if to face dismemberment and death. “You are justified to rebuke me,” he said. “I chose this. I must not complain.”

  Soon the antihistamine was making him drowsy, so she coaxed him to return to bed. “You’re best off if you just sleep,” she told him. “Take more of the pills every four hours, and drink another bottle every time you wake. If you feel pressure and need to eliminate liquid, use the pail. Don’t hold it in, it’s very bad for you. Call me in the morning.”

  “You’re leaving?” he said anxiously.

  She had intended to, but at his disconsolate expression she relented. It made her realize that she could actually read expressions on his face now. She drew up a chair and sat. “I must say, your comrades here don’t seem very sympathetic.”

  He was silent a few moments, staring bleakly at the ceiling. At last he said, “They are ashamed.”

  “Of what? You?”

  “Of what I am becoming.”

  “A human? They’re bigots, then.”

  “Yes. You have to understand, Susan, the army doesn’t always attract the highest caliber of men.”

  She realized then that the drug, or the reprieve from death, had broken down his usual reticence. It put her in an odd position, to have the occupying commander relying on her in his current unguarded condition. Extracting military or political secrets would clearly violate medical ethics. But was personal and cultural information allowed? She made a snap decision: nothing that would hurt him. Cautiously, she said, “I didn’t know that you Wattesoons had this ... talent ... ability ... to change your appearance.”

  “It only works with a closely related species,” he said drowsily. “We weren’t sure you were similar enough. It appears you are.”

  “How do you do it?”

  He paused a long time, then said, “I will tell you some day. The trait has been useful to us, in adapting to other planets. Planets more unlike our own than this one is.”

  “Is that why you changed? To be better adapted?”

  “No. I felt it was the best way to carry out my orders.”

  She waited for him to explain that; when he didn’t, she said, “What orders?”

  “To oversee the evacuation on time and with minimal disturbance. I thought that looking like a human would be an advantage in winning the cooperation of the local populace. I wanted you to think of me as human. I did not know of the drawbacks then.”

  “Well, I don’t think you would have fooled us anyway,” Susan said a little skeptically. “Can you change your mind now?”

  “No. The chameleon process is part of our reproductive biology. We cannot change our minds about that, either.”

  The mention of reproduction brought up something she had often wondered about. “Why are there no Wattesoon women here?” she asked.

  The subject seemed to evoke some sort of intense emotion for him. In a tight voice, he said, “Our women almost invariably die giving birth. The only ones who survive, as a rule, are childless, and they are rare. If it were not for the frequency of multiple births, we would have difficulty maintaining our population. We see the ease with which you human women give birth, and envy it.”

  “It wasn’t always this way,” Susan said. “We used to die much more frequently, as well. But that wasn’t acceptable to us. We improved our medicine until we solved the problem.”

  Softly, he said, “It is not acceptable to us, either.”

  A realization struck her. “Is that what happened to your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  She studied his face. “I think you must have loved her.”

  “I did. Too much.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for her death.”

  “Who should I blame?”

  “The doctors. The researchers who don’t find a cure. The society that doesn’t
put a high enough priority on finding a solution.”

  He gave a little laugh. “That is a very human response.”

  “Well, we have solved our problem.”

  He considered that answer so long she thought he had fallen asleep. But just as she was rising to check, he said, “I think it is better to go through life as a passerby, detached from both the good and the bad. Especially from the good, because it always goes away.”

  Gently, Susan said, “Not always.”

  He looked at her with clouded eyes. “Always.”

  And then he really did fall asleep.

  That evening, after the boys had gone up to their rooms, Susan told Tom everything over wine. Some of her medical details made him wince.

  “Ouch. The poor bastard. Sounds worse than puberty, all crammed into nine weeks.”

  “Tom, you could really help him out,” Susan said. “There are things you could tell him, man to man, that I can’t—”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t,” Tom said. “No way.”

  She protested, “But there are things about male anatomy—you expect me to warn him about all that?”

  “Better you than me,” Tom said.

  “Coward,” she said.

  “Damn right. Listen, men just don’t talk about these things. How am I supposed to bring it up? More to the point, why? He got himself into this. It was a military strategy. He even admitted it to you: he wanted to manipulate us to cooperate in our own conquest. I don’t know why you’re acting as if you’re responsible for him.”

  Tom was right. She studied the wine in her glass, wondering at her own reaction. She had been empathizing as if Captain Groton were her patient, not her enemy. He had deliberately manipulated her feelings, and it had worked.

  Well, she thought, two could play at that game.

  * * * *

  It was not to be a summer of days at the beach, or fishing trips, or baseball camp. Everyone was busy packing, sorting, and getting ready to move. Susan marshaled Nick and Ben into the attic and basement to do the easy part, the packing and stacking, but the hardest part of moving was all hers: making the decisions. What to take, what to leave. It was all a referendum on her life, sorting the parts worth saving from the rest. No object was just itself: it was all memories, encapsulated in grimy old toys, birthday cards, garden bulbs, and comforters. All the tiny, pointillist moments that together formed the picture of her life. Somehow, she had to separate her self from the place that had created her, to become a rootless thing.

  The summer was punctuated with sad ceremonies like the one when they started disinterring the bodies from the town cemetery, the day when the crane removed the Civil War soldier from the park, and the last church service before they took out the stained glass windows. After the dead had left, the town paradoxically seemed even more full of ghosts.

  The protests did not die down. Red Bluff was in a state of open rebellion; a hidden sniper had picked off three Wattesoon soldiers, and the army was starting house-to-house searches to disarm the populace. In Walker, angry meetings were televised, in which residents shouted and wept.

  In Okanoggan Falls, they negotiated. The Wattesoons were now paying to move three of the most significant historic buildings, and the school district would be kept intact after relocation. Captain Groton had even agreed to move the deadline two weeks into September so the farmers could harvest the crops—a concession the captains in Red Bluff and Walker were eventually forced to match, grudgingly.

  The captain became a familiar face around town—no longer in a limousine, but driving a rented SUV to supervise contractors, meet with civic groups, or simply to stop for lunch at Earl’s Cafe and chat with the waitress. Outwardly, there was no longer a hint of anything Wattesoon about him, unless it was his awkwardness when asked to tie a knot or catch a baseball. He had turned into a tall, distinguished older man with silver hair, whose manners were as impeccable as his dress. In social settings he was reserved, but occasionally something would catch his whimsy, and then he had a light, tolerant laugh. At the same time, a steely authority lay just under the surface.

  The women of Okanoggan began to notice. They began to approach and engage him in conversation—urgently, awkwardly warm on their side, full of self-conscious laughter; and on his side, studiously attentive but maddeningly noncommittal. People began to talk about the fact that he went every week to dine at the Abernathy home, whether Tom was there or not. They noticed when Susan took him to the barber shop, and when they drove together to La Crosse to visit the mall. Her good humor began to irritate the other women in ways it never had before, and their eyes followed her when she passed by.

  “She must of kissed that frog good, ‘cause he sure turned into a prince,” said Jewell Hogan at the beauty salon, and the remark was considered so witty it was repeated all over town.

  For herself, Susan had found one more reason to love her life in Okanoggan Falls just before losing it. She was playing a game that gave her life an exotic twist, excitement it had lacked. It was her patriotic duty to lie awake each morning, thinking of ways to get closer to a thrillingly attractive, powerful man who clearly enjoyed her company and relied on her in some unusually intimate ways. In the last month before it all fell apart, her life had become nearly perfect.

  Between arranging to move his business and the mayoral duties, Tom was often gone on the nights when Captain Groton came over for dinner. Susan was aware of the gossip—a blushing Nick had told her the boys were taunting him about his mother—but she was not about to let small-mindedness stop her. “Just wait till they see how it pays off,” she said to Nick.

  It made her think she needed to start making it pay off.

  By now, Captain Groton was perforce conversant with the ceremonial foods of the Midwest—string bean casserole, jello salad, brats and beans—and the communal rituals at which they were consumed. So Susan had been entertaining herself by introducing him to more adventurous cuisine. His tastes were far less conservative than Tom’s, and he almost invariably praised her efforts. On one night when Tom was returning late, she ordered a pizza for the boys and prepared shrimp with wild rice, cilantro, artichokes, and sour cream, with just a hint of cayenne pepper and lemon. They ate in the dining room with more wine than usual.

  The captain was telling her how the amateur scholar who ran the landfill, in one of the endless efforts to deter the Wattesoons from their plans, had tried to convince him that there was an important archaeological site with buried treasure underneath the town. He had even produced proof in the form of an old French map and a photo of a metallic object with a mysterious engraved design.

  Susan laughed, a little giddy from the wine. “You didn’t fall for it, did you?”

  Captain Groton looked at her quizzically. “No, I didn’t fall down.”

  His English was so good she almost never encountered a phrase he didn’t know. “It’s an expression, to fall for something. It means he was pulling your leg.”

  “Pulling my leg. And so I was supposed to fall down?”

  “No, no,” she said. “It’s just an idiom. To fall for something is to be deceived. On the other hand, to fall for someone means to become fond of them, to fall in love.”

  He considered this thoughtfully. “You use the same expression for being deceived and falling in love?”

  It had never struck her before. “I guess we do. Maybe it means that you have to have illusions to fall in love. There is a lot of self-deception involved. But a lot of truth as well.”

  She suddenly became aware how seriously he was watching her, as if the topic had been much on his mind. When their eyes met, she felt a moment of spontaneous chemical reaction; then he looked away. “And when you say ‘Okanoggan Falls,’ which do you mean, deception or love?” he asked.

  “Oh, love, no question.”

  “But if it meant deception, you would not tell me,” he said with a slight smile.

  “I am not deceiving you, captain,” she said softly. And, a little to h
er own surprise, she was telling the truth.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Susan rose from the table, throwing her napkin down. “Let’s go to the back yard,” she said.

  He followed her out into the hot summer night. It was late August; the surrounding yards were quiet except for the cicadas buzzing in the trees and the meditative sigh of air conditioners. When they reached the deeper grass under the trees, the captain came to a halt, breathing in the fragrant air.