The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  She’d felt Pegasus tugging at the strands of the lights. Like those planes had tugged at her as they lifted from the blue-lighted lanes of the runways. One day she would let go and … fly with him.

  To where? A tiny voice whispered in her head. To somewhere, Therese told herself. She’d know when she got there. Her shoes squished the predawn quiet. Overhead, a shooting star streaked across the spangled sky, east to west, vanishing into the city glow. A message from the gods? She wished she could read it.

  * * *

  The apartment lights didn’t come on when she opened the door. Cheap hardware. She slapped the manual switch, blinked in the harsh fluorescent glare, and stumbled over the package that had been set just inside the door. With a stifled yelp, she caught herself on the back of the futon sofa, anger flushing through her, making her cheeks burn.

  The landlord again, with his damned pass key. Being nice? She didn’t want him to be nice if it meant opening her door. He was probably snooping for drugs or illegal hardware. Therese scooped the package up and prowled the single big room, neck prickling like a dog with its hackles raised, looking for any signs he’d poked around. Inside the box, something shifted; mass packed not-quite-solidly. Therese turned it over and looked at the label. Vancouver, BC, return address.

  Selva.

  Why now, after all these months of silence?

  She set it on the kitchen counter, stared at it. Presents were never really gifts. They were messages or obligations or both. Send it back, she told herself, but she was already reaching for a knife to saw through the packing tape. Inside, color peeked from foam packaging—a flash of rich crimson and gold that caught the ugly light, flung it back with gem-sparkle warmth. She dug into the white beads, a part of her mind noticing that it had been professionally packed, money thrown away to convenience—she’d never been that rich.

  Her fingertips touched slick cool … glass.

  She lifted it out. A fountain of crystal ice, turned static in a skyward splash, it glittered with streaks of ruby and embedded flakes of gold. The artist had filled that crystallized silicon with life, so that you saw more than this frozen instant, you saw the molten glass leap skyward, scattering into gem-bright droplets, falling back to earth all in an instant.

  Beautiful, with no apology offered to function. Like her light-nets. Therese looked around her room. Futon sofa, low table in front of it, both Salvation Army crummy. The silent pile of electronic hardware that was the only thing that really mattered. She set the glass down on the table. It gave the room a feel of … failure. Loser turf. And she wondered suddenly if Selva had meant that piece of glass to have exactly this effect, if she was that subtle and vengeful.

  You’re hungry, Therese told herself, and that was certainly so. She turned her back on the sculpture, grabbed a stale bagel from the bag on top of the microwave.

  You have a call, her House system intoned. From Selva Portofino-Harris.

  Selva? Therese laid the untouched bagel down, mouth open to refuse the call. The glass caught her eye, made her momentarily breathless with its beauty. “I … okay.” She fumbled for her gloves and goggles, clumsy suddenly, always clumsy around Selva’s deft competence. “House, take the call.”

  Gloves on, she pulled the virtual goggles down over her forehead, plastic edges scraping softly across her skin. And found herself on a polished wood floor. Huge windows offered green lawns and distant white columns like Greek ruins. Sun, lovely sleek furniture. Selva Portofino-Harris leaned one bony hip against a polished slab of teak desktop that matched the color of her perfect shoulders.

  She lifted weights in the flesh, wore her muscles proudly in virtual, her dark, Brazilian skin accented by a simple white tank-top and shorts.

  Therese turned her face away, struggling suddenly with a hard lump in her throat. “Well.” Inane word. Say something, or say nothing and get the hell out. “I got your … present. Just now.”

  “I … don’t know why I sent it to you. I guess … it made me think of you.”

  The tone was wrong for vengeance, or even anger. Therese looked, in spite of herself. Yearning on that strong, almost harsh face? You could wear any mask you wanted in virtual. It didn’t have to be real.… “It makes my apartment look like shit.” She wasn’t wearing her skinthins, only gloves and goggles, so all Selva was seeing was a rather boring simulation. A two-dee icon with no emotional cues. She took a deep breath, feeling slightly more in control. “So thanks.” Which would cue a nice smile. “That was sweet of you to send it.”

  “Which translates to ‘fuck off.’” Selva’s smile bared her teeth. “Not yet, girl. How’s your stuff doing?” She planted both palms on the desktop, swung her butt between them, like she did when she was upset. “Any new sales?”

  “No.” To hell with cool. Therese crossed her arms, wishing she had put on skins, go ahead and see how pissed I am.… “Barrain tossed me out of the gallery. I wasn’t selling enough. Hey, like you said—” she flung the words like stones, “stationary holoture isn’t hot. Virtual interactives are all the thing, now.”

  “I never said…” Selva closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry about the gallery slot. So what are you doing?”

  “You mean to pay the rent? I’m doing virtual recordings.” She had to look away again, even though it didn’t matter because Selva wasn’t really seeing her expression. “Cityscapes, countryside—buy a park permit, splash around in a couple of waterfalls, and someone will buy it.” She’d recorded for herself, once. For her holoture work. “Hey, the VR artists can at least pay good money.” Laugh. “A midnight walk under the full moon is good for a week’s worth of rent.” Another wasted shrug. “I already had most of the hardware.”

  “You could work for Xavier,” Selva said quietly. “He’s always got room for another talented designer.”

  “Designing advertising riffs? Or fancy offices for bored Net execs?”

  “Sorry.” Selva flushed. “I forgot, you’re an artist.”

  “No, I’m a camera.” It came out too soft for effect. “Listen, it’s late and I’ve got to go to bed.”

  “Where were you?” Selva stopped swinging, stood straight and still in front of her skin-toned wooden desk. “Out at the airport again? Flying your kites?”

  Flying your kites? “Go to hell. House…”

  “Don’t you exit on me!” Selva’s voice cracked like a whip. “You never would share that with me—your airport stuff. I think that’s part of why I could move up here without you. Because you wouldn’t let me in on it at all. I guess it sent me a message.”

  And what message had she sent back in that piece of beautiful glass? “I asked you to come along. You were too busy.”

  “I was.”

  Therese’s anger lost its razor edge because Selva had looked away, and she never did that. It made her look vulnerable.

  Selva was never vulnerable.

  “Hey.” She filled in the silence with words, not wanting to see that unexpected curve of neck with its exposed groove of jugular vein and carotid. “Any time you want to see, just hop a shuttle. I’ll be glad to show you.” Would she? Therese wondered suddenly. Take Selva out to the airport? It would mean … what it might or might not mean didn’t matter, because Selva was shaking her head anyway.

  “I can’t. Not right now, anyway. We’re using stationary equipment to do some high-end decorating for Boise-Quebec’s new offices. And we’ve got this deadline. So I can’t work remote through a set of skins.”

  “I didn’t think so. Look, it’s late. I’m yawning, even if you can’t see it. Time for bed.”

  “Yeah.” Selva wasn’t looking vulnerable any more. “I’ll see you,” she said. Coolly. Virtually. And was gone.

  Banished from this electronic room, this reality, because she wasn’t real any more. The room squeezed her—stranger’s room, stranger’s futon and shitty little table. Stranger’s life. The glass sculpture announced it in shards of crystalline light. She grabbed it, raised it over her head,
muscles hard with anticipation of the coming smash.

  It was its own frozen instant of beauty, never mind Selva, never mind the message it carried. She set it down very gently, snagged her jacket from the sofa, and slammed the door on the way out.

  * * *

  The riverside highway looked different in the gray dawn light. Mist rose from the water, pooling white and thick in the sloughs. Tree branches thrust up through it, their twigs stiff and cold, trailing the last yellowed rags of summer leaves. She missed her hidden turnoff entirely, tricked by the daylight topography of the berry thickets. Didn’t matter. She hadn’t planned to park there anyway, it wasn’t safe during the day. Some satellite traffic-eye might spot her, bust her for trespass. The terminal buildings looked so drab, off in the distance. The main entrance was on the far side of the complex, barricaded and lighted. Protected. From here, the gate aprons looked stained and forlorn, drifted with rotting leaves and soggy trash.

  Last night, she had trapped Pegasus in a net of jewels. In the bright light of sunrise, the place looked drab—a dead end, without magic or future. Beyond the fence, the old hangar slumped in the cold morning mist. No sign of her light-net, of course. Probably trashcanned by the boogeyman night watchman. She braked hard and suddenly, pulled off onto the shoulder.

  She’d looked at it a hundred times: tagger art. Ego, hormones, desperation, and anger, sprayed bright and immediate across any vertical surface. But the tag on the hangar doors was … different. Faces stared upward, surreal and huge. Their neon eyes were terrible—bright with hope and yearning that seared her, made her hands tremble on the wheel. Their enormous mouths opened, whispering, not shouting, calling softly, like you’d call your lover to bed.

  Calling who? Therese climbed out of the car, shivering in the dank morning chill. She wanted to know who …

  A tiny sound made her turn her head—nothing more than a rustle in the dew-spangled thistles that edged that asphalt. He was sitting there, screened by the weeds; the kid from last night. Asian skin, African lips, hazel eyes. Face too broad, chin too long. He was ugly, as if his genes warred, like the races that had donated them. He was watching her, head tilted, shadow pooling beneath those stark cheekbones.

  “Hey.” He grinned.

  “Hey.” Fourteen, Therese guessed. “Your tag?” She nodded at the distant hangar.

  “Uh huh. The geek hasn’t painted it out yet. He’s weird—waits till I finish ’em, at least. This one’s gonna be the last.” Triumph in those words, not defeat.

  “Why the last?” She looked again, her eyes drawn to the sky by those yearning, calling faces.

  “They’re gonna come for me.” He stood, lazy and laidback. “They hang around here, up high, where you can’t see ’em. Only once in a while, you know? Maybe they’re everywhere, or maybe there’s some kind of hole here, like the hole in the ozone that everybody figured was gonna wipe us out? I’m one of them.” His grin mocked her, challenging her, so that Therese wasn’t sure if he was shitting her or not. “I figured that out when I finally realized that everybody else on this fucking planet is an alien. I don’t belong here. I got left behind or lost or something.” He tilted his head, still grinning, still challenging. “I’m Jazz. You gonna do some more lights tonight?”

  “Therese.” No, he wasn’t shitting her. Above that grin, his eyes were the eyes of the faces on the wall, full of that same terrible, loving, yearning cry. “I might fly tonight,” she said. “If the wind’s right.”

  “It’ll be better with the two of us. Your lights say the same thing, so I figure you’re one, too. See you around.” And then he took off running through the weeds, leaping tangled clumps of thistle like a deer. A scraggly clump of hawthorn swallowed him, and the verge was empty again, silent except for the dead weed stems rattling in the breeze. Therese shaded her eyes to stare at the mural one more time.

  Those faces drew her eyes skyward again, clenched her chest with that yearning. Like last night, when Pegasus had tugged at her light-net. I don’t belong here. Jazz’s voice came back to her. Yeah, she thought bitterly. Me neither. You’re right.

  A tall figure, wide-shouldered and dressed in a dull green coverall, strolled across the concrete apron. The night watchman? A watchman, Therese told herself. This would be a different shift, surely. For an awful moment, she thought he was on his way to Jazz’s mural, to paint it out or deface it somehow, to choke that rending cry.

  As a kid, this place had been a magic doorway to a bright future, a future as colorful and full of promise as the bustle and light of the airport concourse. It had been more real than the faded silent mother who lived in her own universe of work and fatigue and TV, and the dark warehouse of the public school system. In the grip of the grim days, she’d thought about the airport and had been … homesick.

  That’s it, Jazz, she thought and laughed out loud. We’re homesick for a world that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it would take aliens to bring you there!

  Therese turned away, climbed back up onto the asphalt, tired now, her feet wet again. She tapped her code into the door, opened it, and slid onto the cold plastic seat.

  Therese Marie Oberti? Her cheap dashboard speaker squawked at her. Will you please insert your ID card in the ignition slot?

  Uh-oh. Cold sweat prickled beneath her armpits as she fumbled her card into the ignition.

  Your vehicle was reported as parked in a state no-trespass zone at one-fourteen-AM this morning. Your ID card was last used to access the ignition, and since you did not report the card stolen within six hours, the violation has been charged to you. Your file came up before state circuit court at eight-twenty-three this morning, and you were found guilty by the operating judicial program. Your fine, three thousand one hundred and thirty dollars, has been charged directly to your account. If you wish to contest the verdict, you must file an appeal and meet the accompanying fee by eight-twenty-three tomorrow morning. If you have any questions, please access legal assistance through your Net account.

  The tinny voice ended.

  A ticket. Therese stared numbly at the blue plastic dash. It was cracking in places, dried-out and damaged by sun and heat. She traced a long split, the curled-back edges of the cheap plastic sharp beneath her fingertip. A three thousand dollar state trespass ticket.… It was intended to discourage looters. Who had reported her car while it was parked here? The night watchman, of course. Therese closed her hand into a fist, nails biting into her palm. No wonder he didn’t waste his precious breath chasing her beyond the nice safe fence. It was so much easier to sneak around until he found her car and could turn her in.

  Well, she had been trespassing.

  He had violated something, though, sullied that perfect flight last night. “Bastard,” she said, very softly. Three thousand would clean out her savings. She wasn’t going to be able to make rent this month. Not after she paid for the Net time she used to create holoture nobody wanted. Numbly, she tapped the engine to life, pulled a tight U on the empty asphalt. Go home, she told herself. Take a hot shower. Eat some breakfast. And then get your recording gear out and go find some neat imagery to sell to the Xaviers of the world. Auction off a few bits of your reality for someone else to use.

  The sun was up, spearing her with dazzling light, striking the last glints of gold and yellow from the fall leaves. Eyes watering from the sun—not from tears, definitely not tears—she drove home, obeying every damn traffic law in the books.

  * * *

  You have two messages, her House system murmured as she let herself in. It turned on the lights, too, never mind that it was broad daylight.

  Therese sighed and hit the manual switch, clicking them off. “House, messages.” She pulled on her goggles and gloves.

  “Ms. Oberti.” The landlord’s voice emerged from a shifting matrix of color, because he only paid for voice access. “Just a little reminder that yesterday was the first of the month. I need to have the rent by Wednesday.”

  “Endit.” She glowered as the co
lor winked out. Bilious yellow. How appropriate. Last time she’d been short, she’d been able to stall him for more than a week. It wasn’t like people were standing in line to rent this dump, but maybe … somebody was.

  She smoothed a wrinkle from her glove, running down her list of clients. Most of them wanted fancy landscape takes; the beach in a storm, snow on the desert, that kind of thing. She didn’t even have the money for a park entry permit, never mind the time to wait for interesting weather. She could sell her skins. They were a custom job with all the high-end recording hardware you needed. Without them, she’d have to buy somebody else’s reality. Like Xavier did. And she’d never be able to afford another set this good.

  That wasn’t it. She’d never be optimistic enough about her career to risk that kind of money again. “House, next message,” she snapped.

  “’Rese?” Selva materialized, shimmering like airport fog. “Call me please? Realtime?”

  She sounded worried, and Selva never worried because she had it all under control. “Message Selva Portofino-Harris.” The words popped out on their own, spurred by fear.

  Fear for Selva—and she had no right to be afraid for her. Not any more. Therese opened her mouth to cancel, but Selva’s face was already shimmering into being, as if she’d been waiting for the call.

  “’Rese?” That hint of worry still showed. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” Big lie. “I’m just returning your call.”

  “Look, I was talking to Xavier just a little bit ago. And I mentioned your light-net stuff. He got pretty excited. He thinks we can use it. He was interested enough to offer a pretty good option.”

  She’d told Xavier about her flights.… “What’s he going to use it for?” Therese didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “An ad for booze? Virtual sex hardware? The latest genened oranges?”

  “What does it matter?” Selva refused to get pissed. “Xavier’s just optioning the raw imagery anyway. You won’t even recognize the final cut. And he pays well. Once you’re on his string, you’re in. And we use a lot of material. Are you interested?”