The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 15

by Gardner Dozois

  This gives me strength, to know that Sheila Downey will also die. I wonder, will she be studied, too?

  – You mean dissected? She laughs. – I can’t imagine anyone being interested.

  – I would be.

  Another laugh, a warmer one. – Tit for tat, is it? My inquisitive little worm. If only you had hands and eyes to do the job.

  – Give me them, I say. Give me arms and legs and ears and eyes. Please, Sheila Downey. Make me human.

  – I can’t, she says. I can’t do that. But I do have an alternative.

  – What’s that?

  – We have a goat.

  – A goat.

  – Yes. A fine Boer buck. A very handsome fellow. I think he’ll hold up nicely.

  – Hold up to what?

  – The surgery.

  She waits as if I’m supposed to answer, but I’m not sure what she’s asking. So I wait, too.

  – Well? she asks.

  – Well what?

  – Should we give it a shot? Take your brain and put it in this goat? See what happens?

  She’s not joking.

  I ask her why.

  – Why what?

  – A goat. Why a goat?

  – Ah. Because we have one.

  Of course. Science is nothing if not expedient.

  – The other reason is because it’s feasible. That is, we think we have a chance. We think we can do it.

  This I should have known. But the fact is, I’ve never wanted to be a goat. Not ever. Not once. Not even part of once.

  – Maybe so, she says. But remember, you never wanted to be a human until you got a human brain.

  I recall her saying once that living within limits is what living is. I’m sure I should be grateful, but this so-called alternative is hard to stomach. It’s like offering an arm to a person who’s lost a leg. A pointless charity.

  Moreover, it seems risky. How, I wonder, can they even do it, fit a human brain into a goat?

  – With care, says Sheila Downey.

  Of that I have no doubt. But I’m thinking more along the lines of size and shape and dimensional disparity. I’m thinking, that is, of my soft and tender brain stuffed into the small and unforgiving skull of a goat. Forgive me, but I’m thinking there might be a paucity of space.

  She admits they’ll have to make adjustments.

  – What kind of adjustments?

  – We’ll pare you down a bit. Nothing major. Just a little cortical trim.

  – Snip snip, eh, Sheila Downey?

  – If it’s any consolation, you won’t feel it. Most likely you won’t even notice.

  That’s what scares me most. That I’ll be different and not know it. Abridged, reduced, diminished.

  I’d rather die.

  – Posh, she says.

  – Help me, Sheila Downey. If you care for me at all, do this for me. Give me a human body.

  She sighs, denoting what, I wonder? Impatience? Disappointment? Regret? – It’s not possible. I’ve told you.

  – No?

  – No. Not even remotely possible.

  – Fine. Then kill me.

  An ultimatum! How strange to hear such words spring forth. How unwormly and – dare I say it – human of me.

  I can’t believe that she will actually do it, that she will sacrifice what she herself has made. I can’t believe it, and yet of course I can.

  She sighs again, as though it’s she who’s being sacrificed, she who’s being squeezed into a space not her own.

  – Oh, worm, she says. What have we done?

  I’ve had a dream. I wish that I could say that it was prescient, but it was not. I dreamed that I was a prince, a wormly prince, an elegant, deserving prince of mud and filth. And in this dream there was a maiden sent to test me, or I her. An ugly thing of golden hair and rosy cheeks, she spurned me once, she spurned me twice, she spurned me time and time again, until at last she placed me in her palm and took me home. She laid me on her bed. We slept entwined. And when I woke, I had become a human, and the maiden had become a princess, small enough to fit in my palm. I placed her there. I thought of all her hidden secrets, her mysteries. I’d like to get to know you, I said, enraptured. Inside and out. I’d like to cut you up (no harm intended). I really would.

  Did I say I’d never be a goat? Did I say I’d rather die? Perhaps I spoke a bit too hastily. My pride was wounded.

  In point of fact, I will be a goat. I’ll be anything Sheila Downey says. She has the fingers and the toes. She has the meddlesome nature and the might.

  Words and thoughts are wonderful, and reason is a fine conceit. But instinct rules the world. And Sheila Downey’s instinct rules mine. She will slice and dice exactly as she pleases, pick apart to her heart’s content and fuss with putting back together until the cows come home. She’s eager and she’s restless and she has no way to stop. And none to stop her. Certainly not me.

  So yes, I will be a goat. I’ll be a goat and happy for it. I’ll be a goat and proud.

  If this means a sliver or two less cortex, so be it. Less cortex means less idle thought. Fewer hopes that won’t materialize. Fewer dreams that have no chance of ever coming true.

  I doubt that I will love again, but then I doubt that I will care.

  I doubt that I will doubt again, but this, I think, will be a blessing. Doubt muddies the waters. Doubt details. Sheila Downey doesn’t doubt. She sets her sights, and then she acts. She is the highest power, and I’m her vessel.

  Make that vassal.

  Command me, Sheila Downey. Cut me down to size. Pare me to your purpose.

  Yours is a ruthless enterprise. Ruthless, but not without merit.

  This world of yours, of hybrids and chimeras, humans and part humans, promises to be an interesting world. Perhaps it will also be a better one. Perhaps more fun.

  What good in this? For humans, the good inherent in making things. The good in progress. The good in living without restraint.

  What good for worms? That’s simple. No good.

  All the better, then, that I won’t know.

  But will I? Will I know? Today’s the day, and soon I’ll be this capricornis personality, yet one more permutation in a line of permutations stretching back to the dawn of life. I will lose speech, that much seems certain. But thought, will that building also crumble? And words, the bricks that make the building, will they disintegrate, too?

  And if they do, what then will I be, what kind of entity? A lesser one I cannot help but think. But less of more is still more than I ever was before. It does no good to rail at fate or chew the cud of destiny, at least no good to me. If I lose u’s, so what? I’ll lose the words unhappy and ungrateful. I’ll lose unfinished and unrestrained. Uxorious I doubt will be an issue. Ditto usury. And ululation seems unlikely for a goat.

  And after that, if I lose more, who cares? I’ll fill my mind with what I can, with falling rain, crisp air and slanting light. I’ll climb tall hills and sing what I can sing. I’ll walk in grass.

  Living is a gift. As a tiny crawly, as a fat and hairy ram, and as a man.

  Call a pal.

  Bang a pan

  Say thanks.

  Adapt.

  RUSSIAN VINE

  Simon Ings

  British writer Simon Ings is the author of four SF novels, In the City of the Iron Fish, Hot Head, Hot Wired, and Headlong. His most recent novel, Painkillers, is a mainstream novel with SF undertones set in contemporary London. His short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Sci Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Infinite Matrix, New Worlds, Other Edens, Zenith, Omni Online, The Third Alternative, and elsewhere. Other recent projects have included a children’s animation series, work with a German jazz band, and a TV movie developed with the British Film Institute and the BBC, Gloria. His story “Open Veins” was in our Fifteenth Annual Collection. He lives in London.

  In the quietly harrowing story that follows, he reaffirms the old wisdom that the pen is mightier than the sword. Particularly i
f you use the pen anymore.

  ONE

  THAT AFTERNOON IN PARIS – a cloudy day, and warmer than the late season deserved – they met for the last time. She wore her red dress. Did she intend to make what he had to say more difficult? (He felt his scribe hand tingle, that he should blame her for his own discomfort.) Perhaps she only meant a kind of closure. For the sake of her self-esteem, she was making it clear to him that nobody ever really changes anybody. Even her hair was arranged the same as on that first day.

  “And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.”

  They sat on the terrasse, away from the doors, seeking privacy. The preacher – if that was the right word for him, for he did not preach, but had instead launched into an apparently endless recitation – stabbed them irregularly with a gaze from eyes the colour of pewter.

  His testament tangled itself up in the couple’s last words to each other.

  Connie called for the bill. (He had long since conformed his name to the range of the human palate. Being the kind of animal he was, he was not bothered by its effeminate connotations.) He said to her: “This deadening reasonableness. I wish we had smashed something.”

  She said: “You wish I had smashed something. I’ve let you down today.”

  “And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”

  She said: “You’ve left us both feeling naked. We can’t fight now. It would be undignified: emotional mud-wrestling.”

  Connie let the reference slide by him, uncomprehended.

  “Then spake the woman whose living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine or thine, but divide it.”

  With a gesture, the girl drew Connie’s attention to the man’s recitation. “You see?” she said. “Undignified. Like it says in the Bible.” She laughed at the apposite verses, a laugh that choked off in a way that Connie thought might be emotion.

  But how could he be sure? His ear was not – would never be – good enough. He was from too far away. He was, in the parochial parlance of these people, “alien.”

  He picked up his cup with his bludgeon hand – a dashing breach of his native etiquette – and dribbled down the last bitter grounds. Already he was preening; showing off his rakish “masculinity.” His availability, even. As though this choice he had made were about freedom!

  He found himself, in that instant, thinking coldly of Rebecca, the woman who lived with him, and for whom (though she did not know this) he had given up this enchanting girl.

  “Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.

  “And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment.”

  Still listening, the girl smiled, and bobbed her head to Connie, in a mock bow.

  She had done nothing, this afternoon, but make light of their parting. He hoped it was a defence she had assembled against sentiment. But in his heart, he knew she had not been very moved by the end of their affair. She would forget him very quickly.

  Hadmuhaddera’s crass remarks, the day Connie arrived on this planet, seemed strangely poignant now: “Trouble is, my friend, we all look the bloody same to them!”

  “And these were the princes which he had . . .”

  There was no purpose to that man’s recitation, Connie thought, with irritation, as he kissed the girl goodbye and turned to leave. There was no reasoning to it; just a blind obedience to the literal sequence. As though the feat of memory were itself a devotional act.

  “Ahinadab the son of Iddo had Mahanaim . . .”

  In spite of himself, Connie stopped to listen. The “preacher” faced him: was that a look of aggression? It was so impossibly hard to learn the body language of these people – of any people, come to that, other than one’s own.

  So Connie stood there like a lemon, knowing full well he looked like a lemon, and listened:

  “Ahimaaz was in Naphtali; he also took Basmath the daughter of Solomon to wife:

  “Baanah the son of Hushai was in Asher and in Aloth:

  “Jehoshaphat the son of Paruah, in Issachar:

  “Shimei the son of Elah, in Benjamin . . .”

  Connie realised that he had given too little mind to these feats of recitation. This was more than a display of the power of human memory. This was more than a display of defiance towards the Puscha invader: “See how we maintain our culture, crippled as we are!”

  “Geber the son of Uri was in the country of Gilead, in the country of Sihon king of the Amorites, and of Og king of Bashan; and he was the only officer which was in the land.”

  Connie bowed his head. Not out of respect, surely, since this was, when you came down to it, absurd: to raise an ancient genealogy to a pedestal at which educated men must genuflect. But it said something about the will of this people, that they should have so quickly recovered the skills and habits of a time before reading and writing.

  The man might have been an evangelistic scholar of the 1400s by the Christian calendar, and the subsequent six hundred years of writing and printing and reading no more than a folly, a risky experiment, terminated now by shadowy authorities.

  When Connie passed him, on his way to the Gare du Nord and the London train, the man did not cease to speak.

  “Judah and Israel were many,” he declaimed, from memory, “as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry!”

  It was only twenty years since the Puscha had established a physical presence upon the planet, though their husbandry of the human animal had begun some thirty years before first contact. It took time and care to strike upon the subtle blend of environmental “pollutants” that would engineer illiteracy, without triggering its cousin afflictions: autism in all its extraordinary and distressing manifestations – not to mention all the variform aphasias.

  Faced with the collapse of its linguistic talent, the human animal had, naturally enough, blamed its own industrial processes. The Puscha armada had hung back, discrete and undetected, until the accusations dried up, the calumnies were forgotten, and all the little wars resolved – until transmissions from the planet’s surface had reduced to what they considered safe levels.

  Human reactions to the Puscha arrival were various, eccentric, and localized – and this was as it should be. Concerted global responses, the Puscha had found, were almost always calamitous.

  So, wherever Connie appeared along the railway line – and especially at the Suffolk terminus where he drank a cup of milkless tea before driving out in the lorry the thirty miles to his orchard – there was a respect for him that was friendly. He had been travelling back and forth, in the same way, for ten years.

  There was a clubhouse at the junction: an old white house with lofty, open rooms, where he sometimes had a quick breakfast before driving onto the orchards. There was also an army station near, and as the pace of Autonomy quickened, the club had become a mere transit camp, with both Puscha and human administrators piling bedrolls in the halls, and noisy behaviour in the compounds. There were often civilian hangers-on there too, and the woman who lived with him now – the woman to whom he was faithful once again (the idea of being “faithful again” made more sense in his culture than hers) – had been one of these.

  Her name was Rebecca – a name that translated fluently and comically into his own tongue, as a kind of edible, greasy fish. When he first laid eyes on her, she was drinking cocktails with a party of Puscha newcomers lately recruited to some dismal section of government finance (and who were in consequence behaving like abandoned invaders). Quite how she had fallen in with them wasn’t clear. She was simply one of those maddening, iconic figures that turbulent events throw up from time to time: less real people, so much as windows
onto impossible futures, no less poignant for being chimerical.

  A few days later, on the connecting train to Paris, as he considered where to sit, vacillating as usual, he nearly walked straight past her.

  She was sitting alone. She was white-skinned. Her hair was long and straight, gold-brown, and a fold of it hung down over one eye, lending her face an asymmetry that appealed to him.

  The seat opposite her was invitingly empty.

  He sat and read a while, or pretended to, racking his brain for the correct form, the correct stance, for an introduction. Horror stories abounded in the clubs and classes: a visiting male dignitary of the Fifty-Seventh Improvement, informed that human women are flattered by some moderate reference to their appearance, congratulates the First Lady of the North Americas on the buttery yellowness of her teeth –

  And how, after all, could you ever learn enough to insure yourself against such embarrassments?

  Eventually, it was she who spoke: “What is it you’re reading?”

  His scribe hand tingled, that he had left the opening gambit to her.

  As for what he was reading – or pretending to read – it was dull enough: a glib verse narrative from his own culture. In his day bag, Connie carried more interesting material: novels from the last great centuries of human literacy; but he had felt that it would be indelicate to read them in front of her.

  By the end of the journey, however, she had all too easily teased out his real enthusiasms, persuading him, finally, to fetch from his bag and read to her – eagerly and loudly and not too well – two stories by Saki and some doggerel by Ogden Nash. They were old, battered paperback editions, the pages loose in both, and once a page of Saki fell by her foot. She stooped to pick it up for him. She studied it a moment, while he in turn studied the fold of her hair hanging over her eye; he surprised in himself a strong desire to sweep it behind her ear.

  He saw with a pang that she was studying the page upside-down.

  “I sing,” she told him later, as they passed through the Parisian suburbs. “I am a singer.”