The Year's Best SF 09 # 1991

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  I was putting in eighteen- and twenty-hour days. Sometimes all-hour days. The work involved some of the largest, fastest computing power in the Midwest, yet still it needed me to baby-sit. To sit and watch the essentials on the linkup screen, keeping alert with synthetic coffee and an assortment of pills. Doing all sorts of hell to my moods.

  This is about moods.

  One night, late, I wandered out into the kitchen and started cooking. Everything was ancient, half the appliances broken and the rest sputtering along. I started cleaning pots and killing the roaches as I found them. I let the tap water run, and the drain drained for a little while, then it quit. So I rooted under the sink and found a bottle of drain cleaner. The liquid was minty and blue, and the label said, “Poison,” aloud. “Poison, poison.” I poured in twice the suggested dosage and felt the curling pipe turn too hot to touch. Yet nothing was draining. Not even after I finished dinner. Well, I thought, what a bitch. I went downstairs and wrestled my bike out the door and rode to the nearest store. One of those little automated shops that were big twenty years ago. I could smell fresh smoke in the wind. Somewhere west of town, the prairie was burning itself black, and twice I saw deer in the street, their eyes bobbing in my headlight. At the store I bought a can of pressurized, perfumed air—blasting the pipe clear fit my mood. Then I rode home and bailed out the sink, dumping the dirty water down my toilet, and I emptied the can into the drain. Bang, bang, bang. Nothing happened. The pipes rattled, sure, and the house seemed to shake. But that was all. The blockage was out of my reach, and I didn’t have any choice but to call a random plumber—Whiteeagle Plumbing—and leave a message on his service.

  Then I worked all night.

  My high browsers were giving me trouble. And my sabertooths. The individual models built by the respective gene teams were full of hopeful projections and guesswork. Five and six generations into the simulation, and there were inadequate populations of camels and many too many sabertooths. Plus, the savanna itself—a strikingly African landscape of scattered trees and low grasses—was beginning to change. Ashes and oaks took the wrong shapes without being browsed. They were top-heavy, storms knocking them flat too often, and the wrong sorts of grasses were taking root and spreading. Ten generations later, and the sabertooths were causing a massive megafauna die-off. Camels were extinct—phantom bones on the imaginary ground—and the mammoths and horses and ground sloths were heading in much the same direction.

  How could it be? I wondered.

  What the hell is going on?

  It took me the night just to rework the camels. Not their actual genetics, no. Those were for the gene team. I concentrated on the basics. Birth weights. Parental care. Half a hundred little factors, and of course I didn’t know if it would work. Or if I was disrupting still other factors and facets. All I could do was guess, then wait for the next run to see how my luck was running.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when I finally punched up the sabertooth data. Nothing seemed obvious, at least at first glance. Something subtle? Something behavioral, maybe? I had the computers select a hundred successful hunts at random, and the linkup screen played each one at triple speed. What was that? I saw the big, muscular cats slipping through the grass and underbrush, stalking any and every piece of game in the area. Nothing was safe on the savanna. Even the adult mammoths, cagey and vast, were being killed. Two cats, working together, managed to panic the mammoths and drive them over a river bluff … and it didn’t take me any neural readouts to see the cats loved it. The butchering on a vast scale … it was a game to them. A diversion. What the hell was this? I wondered. What was going on?

  I got into the brain dimensions of the cats—reasonable—then into the neurological densities—very unreasonable!—and I beat on the table with a fist, screaming to myself. What were these fucking cat-people doing? Goddamn them and goddamn their mothers! Human beings didn’t have those densities. Would you look? How could I work with genius cats? All that spare brainpower, and, out of sheer boredom, the things were killing off the megafauna. For the fun of it. Hunting instincts coupled with a staggering cleverness led to sociopathic sabertooths … “Would you just look at this mess…!”

  There came a knocking sound.

  I didn’t notice it at first. I was draining my coffee mug while hunting for the little red pills that gave me wings and clear thinking. Then again someone was knocking. It sounded as if they were using a tire iron on my apartment door. Who was it?

  I stumbled into the living room, a little numb and stupid. For a minute I just stared at the door while it jumped in its frame, and I squinted, thinking it was the project head coming for a status report. Coming to remind me that our proposal had to be in at such-and-such time. The bastard.

  I managed to clear my throat and find my voice, saying, “Yeah?”

  Someone shouted something about pipes. Was I the guy with pipe troubles?

  I seemed to recall details from another life. Not my own. I opened the door and saw a short, massive man standing in the narrow hallway. He was dark like something left in the sun, and he was smiling. He had a round face pitted by some childhood infection, and his hair was long and black and rather oily. I could smell his breath. It was early in the morning, and his breakfast had been beer. A full-blooded member of some tribe or another, and I hadn’t seen his like since my fieldwork in the Badlands.

  His name was sewn on the pocket of his work shirt.

  Johnny Whiteeagle.

  “Hey, you don’t look so good,” he told me. Smiling. He had a big, effortless smile. “You’re not feeling good, mister?”

  “I’ve been better,” I allowed.

  “Maybe it’s your plumbing. Ever think about that?” He let out a big laugh, shaking his head as if he were wickedly clever. “Anyway, you going to let me inside? Or what?”

  “What for?”

  “Your pipes, mister. Remember?”

  I backed away. Pipes? Oh sure … that’s right. “All right,” I told him. “Come on.”

  He rattled when he walked. He wore an old leather belt heavy with tools and a portable battery, and the red-rimmed eyes took in the room with a glance. “In the kitchen?” He went straight to the sink and touched the drain with one hand, then the other, always gentle and professional. He was the picture of poise and ceremony, and it was kind of funny to watch. I saw him kneel and look at the curling pipe below, touching it in the same way while saying, “Would you look. They’re metal. Antiques, practically.” And he gave a satisfied nod. “You know something, mister? This is one fine old house you’ve got here.”

  I could smell facsimile peas rotting in the pipes, and grease from last night’s cultured hamburger. Yeah, I thought, it’s a splendid dear old place. But when are you getting to work?

  He asked what had happened. Had I tried fixing it myself?

  I kept the epic brief. I tried to seem pressed for time.

  “This is old plumbing, mister. If you want it to last,” he warned, “you’ve got to baby it.”

  “All it is is plugged.”

  “Oh sure.” He stood. He was massive and slow and fat, and when he moved, he breathed hard and wheezed. “Where’s the bathroom?” he asked. “Around back here?”

  He wanted to pee away his beer, I guessed. I looked at my watch and said, “That’s right—”

  “See, because the plug is way below us. I bet so. Has your bathtub been draining slow?”

  “I’ve got a shower—”

  “Has it?”

  I couldn’t remember.

  “I bet so.” He started toward the bathroom, rattling and wheezing. I considered going back to work and leaving him with his work, only I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t know him, and he was drunk, at least a little bit, and I had funny feelings because he was … well, who he was. A Native and all. Not that I’m a racist, of course. But I learned in the Badlands that these people have odd ideas about property, their culture so damned communal. And besides, I’d have to concentrate like a mania
c just to keep him out of my thoughts. I wouldn’t get shit done until he was gone. So I was his shadow. I watched him stand in the middle of the bathroom, turning and turning. He asked me, “What? Was this a bedroom once?” He said, “It looks like a bedroom. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look at how big it is!”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  “Hell,” he said, “it’s a hike from the shower to the john. Isn’t it?” He laughed and got his bearings and walked into the back corner. There was a simple closet built against the kitchen’s wall. I kept old boxes and whatnot inside it. He pulled open its curtain and asked, “Can I move the stuff—?”

  I started to say, “Sure.”

  Boxes were tumbling to the floor. Then he bent and started tapping his stubby fingernails on the enormous black pipe that I’d probably seen a thousand times. It was a vertical pipe and smooth, and he laid both hands on the angling joint with a screwed-in cap. “It’s as good as done,” he promised. “This is the place. It won’t take any time at all—”

  Everything takes time. I wanted to tell him that universal truth.

  “Here.” He produced an enormous monkey wrench and fastened it to the cap, its motor humming, and him helping the motor by jerking the wrench with all of his weight. Sweat broke out on his bare arms and forehead, and he gave a funny look while saying, “Help me,” through his teeth. Talking to the Great Spirit, I suppose. Years of rust resisted the pressures. Then there was a pop and a creaking sound, threads moving against threads. “Yeah!” he squealed. And when the cap was undone, he placed it upside down on one of the boxes, then leaned against the kitchen’s wall to pant.

  I watched him.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve worked everywhere in this town. For years. I used to work on the governor’s pipes and inside the government buildings.” He pulled a mechanical spider from a sealed pouch. It was old but still shiny, a cord sprouting from its back, and him plugging the cord’s free end into the battery riding on his hip. “Inside houses here and everywhere. I know this town from its pipes. Let me tell you—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mansions and trailers and everything between.”

  I waited.

  He asked, “What about you? What do you do?”

  “School.”

  “You in it or teach it?”

  “No, work for the university,” I explained. “See, I’m real busy with this project—”

  “It’s leaving soon, isn’t it? The professors and everything?”

  “That’s better than staying,” I replied. How long had it been since I’d talked to another person? I couldn’t remember. Days, at least, and I couldn’t help but say, “Once the farms collapsed, everything started to slide. To die. Nobody wants to live here anymore.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he told me. “Just like you say, mister. It’s all sliding. I’ve seen it happening since way back when.”

  Then I said, “Not that it’s all bad. Of course.”

  He looked at me, his smile changing.

  Did I say something wrong? I wondered.

  “No.” He told me, “You’re right,” and showed his yellow teeth. “I was thinking that just the other night. Telling my wife it was something watching all you folks heading out of here.” He touched a hidden switch on the spider’s back. The shiny long legs began to move, kicking and curling, and I nearly could smell the power in them. I nearly could feel their cutting tips slicing at the air. “There you go.” He was talking to the spider. He put it down the opened pipe and turned to me again, saying, “Yeah, I think it’s great to see. I mean, this country wasn’t meant to be corn and more corn, and I don’t miss it.”

  The farms began crumbling when the cheap ocean farms were formed off every coast. It was twenty years ago, and the deathblow came when the gene teams found ways to grow steaks and pork chops with natural gas and water. Better living through chemistry, and all that.

  “You smell the fires last night?” he asked.

  I said, “No,” because I’d forgotten them. Then I remembered my ride to the store and smelling the grass burning. Sure.

  “I smelled them. It was like old times for me.” And he laughed. The spider had been crawling down into the pipe for a minute now. I could hear its feet on the metal, then it stopped at the plug and started to cut. I presumed. The cord lay in Johnny Whiteeagle’s hand, and he smiled at me and said, “The fires made me think of the reservation. When I was a kid, even younger than you.” As if I were nine years old or something.

  “The reservation?” I said.

  “I’m Lakota,” he informed me. His free hand pointed at his considerable body, and he said, “Sioux to you.”

  “I know,” I managed. “Sure.” A bad bunch of fellows, I was thinking. We had never completely beaten them. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse weren’t the end of them. When I was a kid, I remembered, they started a little war up in South Dakota. Some snipers, some bombers. A low-grade war, and I had to wonder about my plumber. Maybe he was an old terrorist. It made me stop and think, I can tell you.

  A couple of moments passed.

  My companion gave a little nod, then asked, “So what do you do for the university? What’s this job?”

  I tried explaining. “All this empty country? Cheap and going to waste?” I said, “I’m helping the university make a proposal. It’s something nobody’s tried before. We want to use genetic engineering and ecological planning—”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard about you. Sure thing!” He was laughing and shaking his head. “Hey, this is great! I mean it! You guys … you’re the ones trying to put everything back together … aren’t you? I heard about you the other night, on television—”

  “I’m helping with the proposal,” I said. “We need funding over a lot of decades … if this is going to work at all.…”

  “It’s going to work fine. I’ve got a feeling.” He grinned and told me, “That’s so damned neat. I mean it, mister.”

  I shrugged and smiled. Who was I to ignore praise?

  “I’m Johnny Whiteeagle.” His free hand shot out, moist and squeezing my hand. “I told my old lady just this morning—I mean this—that something big was going to happen today. I had a feeling.” He laughed. He filled my oversized bathroom with sound, then he slapped me on the shoulder. “So what’s your name, mister?”

  “Aaron.”

  “Well, Aaron, this is swell.”

  It was nice to hear. It was nice just to stand there with him and have nothing to do but believe him.

  Johnny Whiteeagle bent toward the pipe and listened for a moment. “Sounds done.” Then he started retrieving the spider, hand-over-handing the cord while asking me, “What do you do? Work here? At home?”

  “Yeah—”

  “You’ve got a computer or something?”

  “I’m plugged into the university. Right now, in fact.” I nodded and gave my watch a meaningful glance. Assuming I could make changes in the sabertooths before noon, how long until I could run a good twenty-plus-generation simulation?

  The spider came out of the pipe. It was covered with the blackest goo I’d ever seen, foul like very old garbage, and Johnny unplugged the cord from the battery and asked, “Can I rinse this clean?” He was already walking, some of the goo dripping to the floor. He dropped the spider into the sink and ran the hottest water, steam in his face and him asking me, “So what’re you going to do to the land? How are you going to pull it back to where it started?”

  “We can’t. Not after everything.” Generations of cultivation and road building and dam building and people. People and more people, I explained, and there were all sorts of problems.

  “Oh sure.” He had an optimistic stance, legs apart and the scalding water cooking the spider clean. He added soap. He stirred the suds with the handle of my toothbrush. “But you can mostly do it, can’t you?”

  “With time. And money.”

  “Oh sure.”

  “I’ve got a mill
ion other problems to fix first.” I began to shift my weight from foot to foot. I looked at my watch again. “I’m running an enormous set of programs on the computers. In Osborne Hall. We’ve got to show it’s possible first, or there won’t be any government moneys. Or private moneys, for that matter.”

  “What? You’ve got a linkup here?” He turned off the water and dropped my toothbrush into the suds. “Can I look?”

  It wasn’t really a question.

  Johnny was gone. I blinked, and he was out of the room and down the hallway, past the kitchen before I could catch him. I couldn’t believe that a man of his bulk and sobriety could move half so fast. “I just have to take a glance. Real quick. It won’t take time at all—”

  “The thing is—”

  “Is this it?” The linkup screen was covered with data. Heavy sabertooth skulls floated beside population estimates, fire estimates, weather projections, and so on. “Hey,” said Johnny, “this is neat!”

  “Actually.” I said, “it’s rather confidential.”

  “Maybe I ought to get a drink then, huh.” He looked at me, deadly serious. “Got any in the fridge?”

  “I don’t think so—”

  “Let me check.” He found a couple cans of beer, offering me one and opening the other and giggling when the foam dripped to the carpet. “So show me something,” he said. “Some other stuff.”