The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17

by Gardner Dozois

  “Who the hell are you?” she asks.

  “I’m Phil Berger. I live here.”

  “Hm.” She eyes him speculatively. “Do you speak Spanish?”

  He shakes his head. “Not much. I’m still learning.”

  Instantly, she turns her head and shouts toward the kitchen in rapid Spanish. Matia comes out, her hands covered with corn meal. The exchange is heated, and Phil does not understand one word of it. Matia waves Chela away in disgust and returns to the kitchen.

  “What was that all about?”

  She ignores him. “Have you ever been arrested?”

  “What?”

  She looks up at him. “What for?”

  “Assault,” he says nervously. “I got drunk and got into a fight.”

  “Drink a lot?”

  “No! Not much at all.”

  She spreads her hands. “Are you sure? Esteban brought you home drunk.”

  “Not true. I brought him home. I just drank with him afterward.”

  “How long are you going to be here?”

  Phil sits down on the sofa. “I have no idea.”

  “I see.” She sits comfortably on the piano stool, watching him. He feels uncomfortable enough to leave the living room and go back outside, irritated with himself.

  From then on, Phil can never predict what she’s going to say. Her confidence makes him nervous and he avoids her, preferring the company of the younger children, who like him without reserve. On those rare occasions that he talks with Chela, Esteban and Matia supervise them so subtly that Phil is never aware of it.

  Esteban’s family is from San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Each November, he takes Matia and his children there for the Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. He invites Phil along, but Phil declines. Not this year, he says.

  Instead, he decides to hike up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, where the Pecos River arises as a rumbling little stream. His life has been too hot and he longs for the cold and the ice.

  Chela interrupts the conversation: “It’s pretty country up there. I’ll give you a lift. I have to go up to Raton anyway.”

  Esteban looks at them both, shrugs. Matia starts to say something, but Esteban glances quickly at her and she stops.

  “I have my own car,” Phil says quietly.

  “It’s better not to drive alone.” She smiles at him sweetly. “Besides, it’s cheaper.”

  Gas has gone up again, and a continuing discussion in the Correleos family is whether or not to buy a new electric vehicle. Esteban has been against it for some time, since most of his clients are still using ancient gasoline trucks and tractors.

  The conversation is surprisingly easy between them as they drive north. As Chela’s little car reluctantly climbs into the high country, Phil watches the spine of the land gradually become visible. These are not ancient piles of rubble such as he grew up with in New England. These are bare scarps of rock, shoved through the surface of the earth like a knife.

  It’s much colder than he thought it would be, and he’s worried he will freeze.

  They stop at the edge of the Taos Wilderness, and Chela parks the car. He pulls his pack out of the back seat and adjusts it. When he looks up, she is admiring the mountains up above them.

  On impulse, he says: “Want to come along?”

  Chela grins at him. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

  She pulls out extra clothes and hands them to him, then pulls out her own pack from the trunk.

  “Excuse me?” he says. “I thought you had to be in Raton?”

  She nods. “Next week. Do you think Papa would have let me come if he knew I might go into the wilderness with you?”

  “Did you plan this?”

  She smiles again and he likes the way her face brightens. “Let’s say I was hedging my bets.” She laughs and Phil smiles. Her laugh is deep and infectious. “Besides, you’ve never been up here. I have a bunch of times. I can show you things you’ve never seen before.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  She looks up at him, amused, shoulders her pack, and leads the way up the switchback trail.

  At first, Phil is unsure what to talk about, and loses the easy comfort of the drive up here. Chela, for her part, does not press him, and for the first day, they only speak of the trip: should they try to camp at the base of yonder peak or the closer one, should they follow the mesa or take the edge trail down into the valley?

  The trail they choose ascends the smooth shoulders of the high peaks before turning onto a long, gentle decline into one of the campgrounds. At the top, in the distance, Phil can see something that looks like a herd of deer. He looks at Chela. She nods and says, “Elk. They’ll be moving down when it starts to get colder.”

  “Can we get closer to them?”

  Chela shakes her head. “They’ll start to run pretty soon. Usually.”

  “Usually?”

  Chela doesn’t say anything for a moment. “When I was a kid, Papa brought me up here and took me camping in a little valley on the west side. I think I was ten. We came up on them at sunset. They didn’t move. We got so close I could have touched one.” She watches the elk in silence. “Papa said it was because they knew who I was.”

  Phil turns to her. It is late in the day, and the shadow of the peaks has started to darken the valley, but there’s clarity in the light. The air is sharp, and there’s the cold metal taste of snow in the air. Chela’s face glows as reddish-brown as the earth. The whole world seems to emit its own light.

  Who are you? he thinks.

  That night, their breath coats the inside of the tent with frost as they talk. She speaks of first finding shards of pottery in the plowed land and wondering how they got there. He tells her of Danny’s letters. The ground beneath them feels changed. It is the most natural thing in the world to curl up together. Phil holds her close, enjoying the smell of her, the texture of her skin and the sound of her voice as they talk. Something in him lets go, and he closes his eyes as he falls asleep, convinced that he can feel the earth turning beneath him.

  Gordie Howe dies on Christmas Eve at the age of ninety-nine. Phil is twenty-eight. He has been working with Esteban for five years. He sends flowers to Murray Howe. Murray replies with a short post, and they develop a correspondence. The following year, when Phil and Chela are married, Murray comes down for the wedding.

  It is a warm fall night in Portales. The desert air has a chill, but the earth is still radiating heat. Murray and Phil are drinking beer, and from a broken picnic table in the darkness deep behind the house, they watch the people. Phil can see Jake and Carol talking with Matia and Esteban. He wonders what they are talking about. He is continually surprised at how well his parents and new in-laws get along.

  The party is starting to wind down, though many of the guests are still dancing. Esteban has brought up a Marielito band from Santa Fe and the high tenor of the singer wafts over them.

  “Does your new wife know about you and Dad?”

  Phil nods. “I told her a couple of years ago. Esteban knows, too. I had to explain who Gordie Howe was.”

  Murray laughs shortly. “Not something I’ve ever experienced.”

  Phil pulls a plastic bottle from the pocket of his suit, along with two Styrofoam cups. He pours a viscous yellow fluid into them, and hands one to Murray.

  “And this is?”

  “Pulque. Esteban makes it himself.”

  “Will I go blind?”

  “The effect is temporary.”

  Murray sips. He closes his eyes and makes a face. “Now, that’s a flavor not found in nature.”

  “You get used to it.”

  Murray opens his mouth experimentally. “Is it supposed to make your mouth numb like that?”

  “That’s just part of the effect.”

  Murray nods, and they fall silent. He points toward the house. “I’m glad I came down here. Dad was always a little worried about you.”

  Phil smiles. “I never wanted to bother h
im.”

  “Yes. I can understand that. He was sorry you didn’t go on into the NHL. He said,” Murray thinks for a moment. “He said he was glad that he knew about the cloning, but he wished you didn’t. So he could watch you. He thought you had what it took.” Murray stops for a moment. “He thought you made a mistake leaving Boston. You should have gone on in the minors. You would have made it to the NHL eventually.” Murray points to Phil suddenly. “Not that he disapproved of you. He understood perfectly.”

  Phil looks back at Esteban’s house. Chela has joined Jake and Carol. Somebody says something – Carol, probably – and Chela bursts into laughter. He can hear it float in the air like music. “Thanks,” he says finally. “But I did okay.”

  Murray shrugs. “So, are you going to stay around here?’

  Phil shakes his head. “Chela wants to go back to Albuquerque. She wants to finish her degree. Wants me to go back to school, too.”

  “Ah. She’s in archeology?”

  “Yeah. Says she’s tired of working on other people’s digs. She wants to start some of her own.”

  “And you?”

  Phil shrugs. “I’m not sure. I like working with Esteban. I like working with machines.” He stares back at the party. “But I’m going to be thirty soon. There ought to be something more.”

  Murray sips the mescal and makes a face. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Did Gordie ever work on old cars?”

  Murray stares at him a moment. “I have no idea. Why?”

  Phil watches Chela move in front of the window. She sees him and waves. He waves back. He is surer of her than he has been of anything else in his life. “No reason. Just curious.”

  Albuquerque is a real city with buildings and businesses, and, at the heart of it, the University of New Mexico. After six years in a small town like Portales, Phil finds himself edgy at first. He discovers, though he remained essentially at rest in Portales, the rest of the world has continued to move. Any residual problems with the cloning techniques that produced him have been rectified, but there are still very few clones in existence. Advances in fertility medicine have made the obvious use of cloning unnecessary. There is a caution in the debate now that he didn’t remember from when it seemed to center around him. A surreptitious search for his name in the news brings up only a small article about Frank Hammett leaving the Globe Corporation to return to the Middlesex-Worcester News Group.

  They find a small four-room house a few blocks from the university. The house has a yard perhaps twenty feet square and abuts against three other similar houses. Like other newlyweds, they explore each other’s bodies. They discover that in normal conversation, they speak English. When they make love, it is in Spanish.

  A number of times in the last few years, when Esteban had been unable to build, borrow, or buy a part for the old tractors of the Portales farmers, he had called Frost Fabrications in Albuquerque and had the part made. Phil knows John Frost, and gets a job there.

  Chela starts studying in earnest. Phil supports the two of them. Phil likes fabrication and Chela likes school, so for the moment they are happy.

  Frost Fabrications builds parts for many clients like Esteban, and uses several old mills and other machines to do it. They joke about all the gray hair at Frost. Phil is the youngest person on the staff, and gets his share of ribbing.

  There’s also a more modern section of the plant that receives fully-formed designs from different feeds across the country. Some of the machines connected to the feeds are automated and can build simple components without supervision. Phil is excited by the prospect, and before long, he leaves the manual fabrication part of Frost and is working exclusively with the telefabrication units.

  Even Frost’s telefabricators are out-of-date. Phil reads about general fabrication systems that do not directly build components at all, but instead design and build microscopic automated tools that then build the components. There is research in this area going on at the University by a man named Mishra. John introduces them, and over the next year or so, Phil and Mishra exchange techniques.

  Chela finishes in two years and starts to work for the Archeology department. Phil starts in the Mechanical Engineering department with Mishra as his advisor. He splits his time between Frost Fabrications and school. There’s little time for anything else. Working very hard, he finishes his degree in three years. Then, with a loan from Esteban, he and Chela buy the telefabrication business from John Frost and start Berger Operations.

  One warm February night, with a glass of champagne and over a wonderful dinner, they ritually flush Chela’s birth control prescription down the toilet. Then, they make aching sweaty love in the heat.

  By April, she is pregnant.

  They name the boy Jake Esteban Berger, making both grandfathers swell with pride. He is a January baby. Days after he is born, Phil still finds himself holding the baby, searching the child’s face for signs of Gordie Howe. A few things must have come from him: the blue eyes, the shape of the hands. The rest, it seems, came from Chela. Phil’s eyes are settled in Chela’s dark face and framed by Chela’s black hair. Phil finds this comforting.

  Little Jake is born in a mild January, and Chela and Phil make plans to take a leisurely trip late in the summer through Texas and the Deep South, up the Atlantic coast, stopping in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, before spending time with the Bergers. Jake’s second heart attack eliminates those plans.

  Instead, Phil hastily leaves everything in Mishra’s hands. He, Chela, and little Jake fly out and land in Providence. An automated cab takes them the last hour directly to the hotel.

  It is an odd spring for Massachusetts. Unseasonably warm weather has been suddenly shattered by winter storms. The result is ice over trees, flowers, bushes. It gives the place an odd sort of beauty. Phil sees azalea blossoms encased in glass. The birches in the front yard are bent over nearly to the ground with cathedral effect.

  They drop off their bags and continue on to the MetroWest hospital in Framingham. Carol is sitting with Jake in the coronary unit. He is enshrouded in wires, tubes, and sensors. Behind him is a huge display unit, with perhaps two dozen windows showing his heartbeat, his oxygen, his breathing, and other information arcane to Phil. Jake’s heart is on an artificial assist, but he still looks thin and pale. His eyes light up when he sees little Jake. He reaches up his hands.

  Phil glances at Chela. She nods. Against his better judgment, Phil gently puts the child in Jake’s arms. Little Jake is only four months old. Phil is ready to catch the baby if Jake’s hands fail him, but Jake carefully folds the infant in the crook of his arm, safely away from tubes and wires. He croons gently to the child. Little Jake watches him with an unwavering gaze, as fixed and eternal as a sphinx.

  Carol explains the options to them. Jake can get a completely artificial heart, a human donor heart, a pig-derived heart, or keep the artificial assist. However, he does not seem to be handling the artificial assist well, and there are no human donors available. That leaves the artificial heart and the pig-derived heart. There is the very real possibility that if Jake cannot tolerate the artificial assist, he might have difficulty with the artificial heart. The doctors want him to take the pig heart. Jake is resistant to the idea and wants to hold out for a human donor.

  Carol shakes her head. She looks as if she is about to cry. “I don’t know what to do with him. I really don’t.”

  Chela holds her, murmuring over and over: “We’ll think of something.” She looks at Phil and points with her chin toward Jake.

  Phil stands near his father. Jake is tickling the baby’s chin. Little Jake laughs and spits up. Jake cleans him up with a tissue from the nightstand.

  “Dad – ”

  “Hush,” Jake says. “I’m busy.” He coos to the baby and tickles him again. Little Jake laughs and waves his hands in the air.

  Jake looks up at Phil. “This is the best gift you ever could have brought me.”

  “Dad. We have to tal
k about your heart.”

  “No,” Jake says. “We don’t. It’s not your decision, Phil.”

  “I know that. But – ”

  “I’ll lay it out for you.” Jake tucks Little Jake against his side. “I don’t want a pig’s heart in me.”

  “It’s not a pig’s heart. It’s a human heart that was grown in a pig.”

  “I don’t want it. This thing – ” Jake points to the incision in his chest. “Is just barely good enough to keep me alive. I don’t want another one.”

  “Dad – ”

  “So, it’ll just have to keep me alive long enough to get a real heart.”

  Phil stares at him. “Even if it kills you?”

  Jake nods slowly. “Yes. Even then.”

  “Okay.” Phil closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Okay. I accept that. Now, explain it to me.”

  “The pig’s heart – I just don’t want an animal in me. I don’t care if it started out as a human or a goat, I don’t want it.” He falls silent. “I thought a lot about this when I had my first heart attack. You know what you want out of a heart? Besides keeping you alive, I mean.”

  “No. What?”

  “You want it to do its job. You want it to keep beating day in and day out without you thinking about it and monitoring it and wondering if it’s going to stop this time because of a software error or a battery failure.” Jake touches Little Jake’s forehead. “You want it to be alive and part of you like you’re alive. I want a human heart, Phil. Is that so crazy?”

  “No,” says Phil. He leans forward and carefully lifts Little Jake and holds him. “Let me tell you what I want. I want my son to know his grandfather. I want him to grow up strong and straight and know you like I did. I want him to know who he came from and where he came from and why. I can’t tell him that. Only you can.” He breathes for a moment. “That means I want you to live, fake heart or pig heart. Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Jake looks at him, startled. “You turned a little tough out there in New Mexico.”

  “Can’t grow a thing without good seed. I got that from you.”

  “Not from Mr. Howe?”