The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Clavain nodded assent, ready for the loom of machines to embrace his mind. He was ready to defect.

  Milo and Sylvie

  ELIOT FINTUSHEL

  Eliot Fintushel made his first sale in 1993, to tomorrow magazine. Since then, he has become a regular in Asimov’s Science Fiction, with a large number of sales there, has appeared in Amazing, Science Fiction Age, Crank!, Aboriginal SF, and other markets, and is beginning to attract attention from cognoscenti as one of the most original and inventive writers to enter the genre in many years, worthy to be ranked among other practitioners of the fast-paced Wild And Crazy gonzo modern tall tale such as R. A. Lafferty, Howard Waldrop, and Neal Barrett, Jr. Fintushel, a baker’s son from Rochester, New York, is a performer and teacher of mask theater and mime, has won the National Endowment for the Arts’ Solo Performer Award twice, and now lives in Santa Rosa, California. Here, in something of a change of pace for him (although still wry, funny, and almost extravagantly inventive), a story to me reminiscent of Theodore Sturgeon at his poetic best, he takes a lyrical, tender, and bittersweet look at an odd relationship between two very peculiar people.

  “Everything has its portion of smell,” Milo said. His skin and bones were enthroned in a plush, gold club chair facing the doctor’s more severe straight-back with the cabriole legs. Milo strummed his fingers nervously against the insides of his thighs as he looked around the room, richly dark, with scrolled woodwork, diplomas in gilded frames hanging on the wall behind the doctor’s mahogany rolltop next to the heavily curtained window. He could smell the doctor’s aftershave. He could smell the last client too, a woman, a large woman, a sweating carnivore with drugstore perfume.

  “Smell?” Doctor Devore always looked worried. Inquisitive and worried—the look was like a high trump, drawing out all your best cards before you had planned to play them. He had white, curly hair. He wore sweaters and baggy pants that made him look like a rag doll. He was old. His cheeks and jowls sagged like the folds of drapery beside him. He wore thick, wire-rimmed glasses that made his tired eyes look bigger and even more plaintive. He was small, a midget, almost; one got over that quickly, though, because he never acted short.

  “It’s something my sister used to say.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember.” Like so much else. Milo moved too quickly for memories to adhere, or for sleep for that matter, except in evanescent snatches. Memories, sleep, haunted him. They were never invited guests. His sister’s name, for example, which he did not remember, did not remember, did not remember, was death to pronounce or even think of.

  There was a long pause. Devore was trying to use the silence to suck something out of him—horror vacui— but it didn’t work. Milo had a practiced grip. The things he had to hold down bucked harder than this shrink.

  Dr. Devore broke the silence: “Have you been sleeping any better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taking the prescription, hmm?”

  “Yes.” That was a trade-off. The pills let him sleep dreamlessly for longer spells, but with the danger that his grip would loosen.

  “Let’s talk about one of your dreams. Do you have one you want to talk about?”

  Grudgingly, Milo said, “Yes.” Could he snatch the cheese and escape the wire?

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s dark. The fog is rolling in.”

  “Where are you?” Devore said. Milo began to cry. “That’s all right. Just let the tears come. You don’t have to answer right away, you know?”

  “I have another dream.”

  “Okay …”

  “A Dumpster. One of those big, steel Dumpsters full of scraps and garbage. A car runs into it.”

  “Are you driving the car?”

  “You don’t get it!” Milo hooked one thumb over the side of his pants and tugged down the waist, hiking up his shirt so that Dr. Devore could see his hip. “It was all smashed up! Everything was steaming and sputtering and dripping.”

  “What are you showing me? Are you telling me you hurt yourself? I don’t see any marks, Milo—we’re talking about a dream, yes?”

  “Yeah. That was while I was in the waiting room just now. I dozed off.”

  “You dreamed that you hurt your hip in a car crash, is that it?”

  “No, no! The fender, the hood, the engine! That’s what was hurt!” Milo began crying again. “I’m a monster, that’s all! Give me some more medicine! Give me something stronger! I can’t hold on much longer!”

  Dr. Devore paused. “Milo, when the car crashed into the Dumpster, where were you?”

  “I have another dream,” Milo blurted. He was angry, like a small child choking back tears to shout his malediction.

  “Let’s stay with the last one …”

  “A window shatters.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.” Milo felt his skin and skull shattering like glass. He was collapsing into his own pelvis and lacerating the soft tissue of his remaining viscera—but it was the dream. He shouted too loudly, as if trying to be heard against the roar of a hurricane. “It hurts!”

  “The glass hits you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think I follow, Milo. In all these dreams, where are you?”

  “The fog, the Dumpster and the car, the window …” Milo clamped his bony fingers around the scrolls at the edges of his armchair as if it were an electric chair. He stared straight ahead, straight through Dr. Devore, focusing on ghosts three thousand miles distant, waving from the past like dead men from the ports of a sunken ship.

  Devore interrupted him. “Don’t say anymore if you don’t want to, Milo.” Milo froze, then slumped back into the chair. Dr. Devore was standing up, hands on his sacrum, arching back and stretching his neck from side to side. It made a little crackling sound. “Anyway, our hour is about up. This was good, Milo. This was very good. You shared some of your dreams with me. We talked a little about your sleep problem, and about your sister …”

  “I didn’t tell you anything about my sister.”

  “Right. We’ve got to get you to relax, you know? I am going to increase your chlorpromazine. Your house parents will give you the tablets in the morning and at night. I’ll talk to them about it. You shouldn’t worry. Just try to do the best you can, you know? And keep track of those dreams for me, will you, Milo?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Dr. Devore stood before Milo, waiting for him to get up. He had set up his psychic vacuum pump again, to suck Milo out of the club chair and get rid of him, Milo thought. Devore needed his beauty sleep.

  Milo stood, turned, and walked out the door without saying thank you or goodbye. The waiting room was empty. Milo crossed the waiting room, opened the hall door and shut it again without going through. He waited thirty seconds, then returned to Dr. Devore’s office door and cupped his ear against it.

  He heard Devore part the drapes and open one of the windows; it shuddered and squeaked against the casement. Then he heard the rolltop clack open, and Devore spoke into his tape recorder:

  “Milo is on the verge of finding out. He would have blurted it out just now if I hadn’t stopped him. It would be most inopportune for him to know everything just now. I think the best course would be to slow him down. The thorazine should help, but we can’t rely on it. This is a tricky business. If he’s too tight, something fatigues inside him and he manifests in spite of himself; if he’s too loose, of course, he changes. Can’t leave him at the home much longer the way things are going. Somebody’s sure to see something, and what happens next may be out of my control. Get Sylvie in there, that’s the only way. Remember to call Sylvie tonight, now, soon.

  “Oh, yes! He said the thing about smell again, but he doesn’t seem to understand what it means—which is good. There’s a little time … God! I’ve got to take a nap. My knees are buckling.”

  The machine clicked off. Milo heard Devore stretch and yawn, then the rustle of clothing peeling off, the two chairs scr
aping the floor as Devore pushed them together. A moment later he was snoring.

  The little machine! The box sheathed in perforated black leather hiding inside Dr. Devore’s rolltop with all of Milo’s secrets! Like the totemic soul of a primitive: a pouch, a feather, or a whittled doll secreted in a hollow log, proof against soul-snatching demons and enemies. Only, the demon was in possession of Milo’s soul.

  There was a fake window in the waiting room, drapery with a solid wall behind it, and opposite that, a print of some famous painting, a different one every time Milo visited. Sometimes, in fact, it was different when he left than it had been when he arrived; Devore must have paid someone he never saw to slip in and change it periodically, like a diaper service. Mondrian to Dalí, Manet to Munch or an anonymous Byzantine, each with a brass name tag on an ornate frame, while Milo conveyed his soul, via Devore, to the skin-covered box! Just now, it was a Chinese painting of a warrior monkey standing on a cloud in a great, plumed hat, brandishing a cudgel.

  Milo tiptoed away from the door, hid behind the drapes and waited. He made quite a perceptible bulge there, but he was relying on Devore’s drowsiness to get by with it. Being caught might not be so bad either. The way they looked at you then, at the home or at school, cross as it was, felt a lot like love.

  It was hard to tell how much time had passed, because there was no daylight in there, but it seemed like a long time, and Milo had not had his thorazine. Below his stomach, inside the habitual knot, an older knot was beginning to ache. Aches in aches, Milo stood flush to the wall, breathing dust behind the drapery.

  At last, he ventured out. The snoring had stopped. He pressed his ear to the door and heard nothing. What did he look like dreaming, the little man who harvested Milo’s dreams? Milo turned the knob, degree by degree, soundlessly, until it stopped; then he pulled the door ajar and peeked in.

  Impossibly, the room was empty. Devore was gone. The club chair and the cabriole chair were still pushed together in the center of the room to form an odd, uncomfortable bed. Milo strode in and slammed the door behind him, as if to test, to make sure his senses hadn’t fooled him, that Devore was actually absent. Nothing stirred. There was no other way out except the window, which was actually open, but the office was six stories up.

  Milo squinted and cocked his head like a cat listening for rats in the wall. However he had managed it, Devore was not there. Maybe, unawares, Milo had dozed standing up, and Devore had simply left through the waiting room. Milo went to the rolltop and pulled it open. The tape recorder was there. He opened it and took out the cassette. It had Milo’s name on it, a cassette all to himself. He put it back in the machine and rewound.

  The last rays of sunlight to skirt the top of the building across the street shone through a crystal suspended from the window sash, splashing rainbows on the office wall. As the land breeze breathed it back and forth, the crystal shook and spun, whirling colors about the room. Milo had never before seen Dr. Devore’s crystal or the rainbows. So there was a dance in the old bagface yet!

  The prism clacked against the shivering glass. The tape whirred, then stopped. Milo pressed PLAY:

  “Milo Smith. Smith not his real name. An assigned name. Nobody knows his real name. First name’s probably Milo, though. Fourteen. Sporadically guilty of many relatively minor offenses such as disorderly conduct, battery against other children, petty thefts, and so on. Frequently truant. Has been under state guardianship in group homes for about seven years. Generally shy and withdrawn, presents as extremely nervous, with many obsessive mannerisms. Plays his cards close to the chest, this one.

  “Referred because of violent, disturbing dreams, waking other boys. Also some evidence of self-inflicted wounds. Chronic sleeplessness, nervosity. Looks like a mess, sunken eyes, thin as a rail, reminds me of the old photos of liberated camps at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau. All he needs is the striped pants and a star of David.

  “Seemed like he came in, then just waited for the hour to end. But he came in! Why? Something going on here. Okayed chlorpromazine for now. Next week … ?”

  Milo PAUSED to think that one over. Why had he come? Nobody could force him. Nobody could hurt him. He hurt himself so badly already, just squeezing and squeezing to stay in control, that there was nothing worse to threaten Milo with. He stretched out on the two armchairs, cradling the tape recorder in his arms like a teddy bear. Think it over: why?

  Outside the window, the street lamps flicked on. Milo had dozed off, he didn’t know for how long, but it was dark. Unusual, dangerous, to sleep so long. Luckily, there had been no dream. There was still a rainbow on the wall—that was a new one! Milo walked to the window and passed his hand in front of the crystal.

  That explained it; the crystal was a prop. The rainbow didn’t move. It was somehow painted on the wall, painted no doubt over the real rainbow, the one from the crystal at the rainbow moment, sunset behind the MacCauly Building. Funny he’d never noticed it, but he always sat with his back to that wall, and when he came in or left this room, he always had a lot on his mind, or a lot to keep out of his mind.

  PLAY:

  “ … I want to remind myself here that Sylvie has come up with a way of using Zorn’s Lemma for shape-shifting. She finds the maximal element of all the upper bounds of the chains in the shape she’s departing from …”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “ … shape-shifting …”

  REWIND. PLAY:

  “ … shape-shifting …”

  STOP.

  Below, a car drove by with its windows rolled down and the radio blasting, about a hound dog … . The old song faded out of hearing, along with the clatter of a dragging muffler. Then there were voices and honking horns. The theater crowd was arriving. Milo stared up at the rainbow on the wall, dimly aglow in the shadowy light of neon from outside.

  PLAY:

  “ … Why do I always think of Sylvie when I think of Milo? Could he be like us?”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “ … Could he be like us?”

  There was a click, then static, an intentional erasure or else a dumb mistake: the wrong button pressed, the machine dropped, or just old, stretched tape. Then it resumed:

  “Now I know something about Milo Smith. I know what he’s doing here, with me. Once he trusted me enough to start describing those dreams of his, it came together for me—the odd inanimate object romances, the animal reveries, the sensations of bodiless flight, his deep terror; and the physical evidences, like fairy dust on the dreamer’s bedclothes in the old folk tales.

  “But it’s hardly time for Milo to be told anything. First we have to build up the psychic container. If he were to realize it now, it would blast him to pieces. Sylvie went through the same sort of thing, but Milo’s got the additional problem of this distorted, secret past.

  “My approach has been all wrong. I mustn’t precipitate any sudden epiphanies. More chlorpromazine. Slow, careful work. Test the ground before each step, Devore, or you’ll land the both of you in a dark hole. If the state won’t keep paying, screw them! Call it a charity case. God knows, there’s plenty in it for me!”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “ … plenty in it for me!”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY:

  “ … plenty in it for me!”

  STOP.

  “Dr. Devore?”—a voice out in the corridor. “Dr. Devore? Dr. Devore? Security, Dr. Devore! You in there, sir?” A rapping at the outer door. Fumbling for keys.

  The knot in the knot in Milo’s belly tightened further. He had to get up to ease the pain. He padded to the office door and peeked into the waiting room. The only light in there was the gray-green light that leaked out the door when he opened it, light through the office window from the lamps and signs on the street and the buildings nearby—and the glow of the wall rainbow reflected in the corner of Milo’s eye. In the dark of the waiting room Milo saw what must have been an afterimage of the rainbow, as if it were a small animal that had sneaked out
ahead of him through the office door.

  Except for the rainbow, the waiting room was empty now, but Milo must have been dead-out dozing before, because the painting had been changed again. Someone must have gone in and out of the waiting room without waking him. The monkey warrior was gone. Instead, it was Munch’s screamer on the screaming bridge, the air and river screaming.

  He heard the key in the lock. For a moment, Milo had a sense of déjà vu, the feeling that the turning key was himself. He shut himself in the office again, his heart pounding. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he heard Dr. Devore’s voice in the waiting room: “No, wait. I’m sorry. I’ll open it for you. I must have fallen asleep.”

  The sneak! Everybody wants a piece of me. Milo ran to the open window, swung his feet over the ledge—it was a long way down—and listened. He yanked Devore’s crystal off the sash by the string that held it, and he threw it out the window. A tiny, occasional glint, it plummeted six stories and shattered on a curbstone.

  “ … plenty in it for me!”

  He stared at the rainbow wall—all dark. No rainbow. Probably, it was Milo’s own shadow blocking the window light from shining on it. He heard the hallway door opening. The voice outside went up nearly an octave: “Oh. Sorry, Doctor. I just had to check. I thought I heard somebody in here. I mean, I thought it was you, but I had to make sure.”