The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “Beats me.” The night watchman shrugged, grimaced again. “I guess we climb out.”

  Therese eyed the fire-eaten beams and sagging ceiling doubtfully, squeezed by the cavernous darkness. If they couldn’t get out … surely somebody would check on the night watchman eventually. But what about Jazz? And her?

  The night watchman grabbed one of the fallen beams, leaned his weight on it cautiously. It held. He clambered onto it, reaching for a broken segment of pipe.

  With a crackle of breaking wood, the tangle shifted. He fell, landing on his feet, raising a cloud of fine ash. “So much for that.” He coughed, holding his head, his shoulders hunched in pain.

  “You’re too heavy, guy. I gotta get out of here.” Jazz’s voice rose. “They’re coming for me tonight. I know it.”

  “They.” The night watchman’s voice was slow and oddly shy. “They’re always calling someone. In your pictures. Looking up and just … calling. It makes me look, too. I thought it was God at first, but it isn’t, is it?” His voice got brisker. “They’re coming, huh?”

  “Yeah, they’re coming.” Jazz tilted his head back, staring up at the gap in the ceiling. “I never thought about God much. He didn’t do anything for me. If you boost me, I can make it.” His eyes flicked from one to the other of them. “I’ll find something to let down to you guys. I promise.”

  He had no reason to come back here, or help them at all. He had a lot of reason not to. Like the camps, if he got busted, and maybe the night watchman would bust him, once they were back outside in the usual world. And he thought his aliens might come, and why shouldn’t they come while he was helping them? He’d just take off, and there they would be. Stuck.

  And he had been right about her lights painting the poetry of loneliness across the night sky. And if there were any aliens up there, how could they not hear it—his call and hers. How could they not come? And … the night watchman believed. You could hear it in his voice. Why should he believe?

  “We’ll boost you.” She held out her hands to the night watchman, like they’d already agreed. And he clasped them halfway, because they had.

  “Try for that pipe.” He jerked his chin upward as he laced his fingers with hers. “One, two…”

  Eyes glinting, Jazz rested a foot lightly on their hands.

  “Three!”

  Therese and the watchman heaved together, straightening their knees, flinging Jazz at the ceiling. He rose in a perfect leap, caught the pipe. Swung once, twice for momentum, then reached one-handed, grabbed a solid joist. Feet kicking, showering them with dust and ash, he scrambled over the lip of the fallen ceiling and vanished.

  Silence.

  The flashlight yellowed and shadows drew in around them. Therese looked at the watchman.

  “A couple of more minutes.” The cut on his forehead was still oozing blood. “We can try the old escalator. The ceiling came down there, but we can probably get through. You know, your flying lights are … neat.” The flash’s glow reflected in his dark eyes, like distant campfires, or lost stars. “They’re never the same twice, you know? It makes them special. I can’t go back and call them up again, like with a video on the Net. I came here when I was a kid—I was flying down to live with my uncle in LA. All these people coming and going, happy and sad, excited. Everybody wanting to be somewhere, or wanting somebody to be here.” He looked past her, frowned. “Your lights are like that—kind of a tangle, you know? All bright, and never the same again.”

  Therese swallowed a sudden thickness in her throat, because maybe he understood something better than she did. “But you cut them down. You paint out Jazz’s tags.”

  “Well, yeah.” He looked at her sadly. “I’d lose my job if I didn’t. It matters, my job.” And his voice had that same shyness as when he talked about Jazz’s pictures.

  “Yo.” Scuffle from above, and a patter of new debris raining down.

  “You came back.” Therese looked up, grinning because she hadn’t really expected him to, had already forgiven him.

  “Yeah, but hurry, okay? They’re here.” Urgency roughened his voice. “I’m not kidding. They’re looking for me, but they might not know where to look.”

  The light was nothing more than a glimmer, barely illuminating the fall of tangled, snaky coils. Therese reached up, flinched as they tumbled down around her head and onto her shoulders. Some sort of electrical cable, black and pliable.

  “It’s tied. Come on.” Jazz’s voice echoed through the darkness.

  “Go ahead.” As the night watchman nodded, the flash beam died. Darkness rushed in to fill the space where the light had been, expanding the terminal into infinity. She fumbled blindly for footing, trying to hurry, afraid they’d leave without him. Pulled herself upward, banging knees and elbows on invisible obstacles, found a good foothold, slipped, gasped with terror, then relief as Jazz grabbed her arms.

  “You okay?” From below. Worried.

  “Yes.” And scrambled up onto the solid floor, face down on the crappy carpeting.

  Behind her, in the dark, the timbers creaked as the night watchman climbed after her. She sat up, as he scrambled over the edge, so close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. Caught a whiff of sweat and musky man-smell. It came to her suddenly that she was still recording. She was so used to the rig she’d forgotten, and neither of the others had noticed her headband. She touched her eyelid, fingertips searching for, finding the tiny track-patch miraculously still in place. Laughed softly. Once.

  “Now what’s funny?” Jazz asked.

  “Smile,” she said, and stopped laughing, because in a second it would fall over into hysteria. “I wonder what dear Xavier will do with this bit?”

  “Huh?” Jazz was dancing with urgency, footsteps shaking the fragile floor. “Let’s go. Which way out of here, huh?”

  “Left.” The night watchman’s fingers closed around her hand. “Watch out. There’s stuff all over the floor.”

  She reached, found Jazz’s hand in the dark, as if it had been waiting for her. They followed the watchman’s lead, playing a weird blindman’s-bluff through the blackness. Do you feel Jazz trembling, Selva? He’s afraid they won’t wait. And if they don’t, if they’re not there, will he have the courage to wait any longer? And the night watchman is pulling because … he believes.

  And she didn’t know why, but in here, in the sooty dark, they all believed. Light ahead. It scattered her thoughts on a wave of relief. Main entrance—chipboard and sometimes panes of glass, amazingly unbroken. The night watchman tapped an urgent code into a dusty security box beside an intact door. A lock clicked and he shoved it open. Night air rushed in—no colder than the air in here, but fresh and full of earth-scent, diminishing the smoke-reek. With a cry, Jazz darted through the doorway.

  “There.” He pointed, every fiber in his body taut and alive. Glow across the hummocky abandoned fields, opalescent in the thin fog that was rising. It could be a truck, Therese thought. Coming slow in the fog along the riverbed highway.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a flying saucer landing, touching down to collect a lost child, take him home. Overhead, Pegasus soared, his wings spread above the rising fog, offering a ride to anyone who dared.

  Jazz leaped onto the curb, paused, head lifted like a spike buck, looked back. His face was like the moon, brilliant with reflected light. The light of home. “Take it easy.” He lifted his hand in a wave or a salute. Then he was gone, vaulting over the low concrete wall of the huge parking structure beyond the grass, running like a deer through the tall grass.

  Across the wet, cold grass, the glow brightened. A truck, Therese thought. And when it took the curve where the riverbed bent, where she parked her car, she’d see the headlights. And would know it was a truck.

  She closed her eyes.

  Alien trapped among aliens—and aren’t we all? Homesick for a home we can’t remember, but we know it has to be there. Because if it isn’t there somewhere, lying back behind memory, like the
darkness lies behind the stars … then what’s all this for? Her tears surprised her, scalding hot beneath her closed eyelids. You won’t feel them, Selva. Because my face isn’t covered by a skinthin mask, she thought bitterly. You won’t know that I’m crying. You can dub that in later, if you want. If it seems right.

  Beside her, the night watchman shared her silence. The wind blew through the overgrown grass of the field, whispering in its own language as it probed the cracks and corners of the abandoned terminal. Therese sighed, and opened her eyes. The highway was dark. Truck or flying saucer, the light was gone. And so was Jazz.

  Back to the city? Back to doorways and shelters, back to the ten-dollar blow jobs and the threat of the camps?

  Or was he on his way home? Therese wiped her face on the back of her arm.

  “Are you all right?” The night watchman’s voice was gentle.

  “I guess.” Therese climbed over the low wall that Jazz had leaped so easily, shivering because she was freezing in her light skins.

  “I’ll lend you a jacket.” He stopped beside a small gray door in the wall of the parking structure. “If you want.”

  He had believed, too, down there. “Thanks,” she said, because he wanted her to take it. “I’d appreciate it.” And for the first time, she really looked at him, saw, not a boogeyman, not a shadowy presence, but a man, a person, in the flesh. The halogen security lamps cast shadow beneath his cheekbones, turned his face stark and craggy. His dark eyes were on hers, and light glowed in their depths.

  “You can drop it off any time.” He unlocked the door, touched on the lights.

  Therese blinked in the sudden glare. His office. Terminal screen on a desk, basic kitchen-wall with microwave and freezer above a cheap new counter top and tiny sink. A bookshelf full of old hardcopy books. A small futon lay on the floor by the wall, scattered with a few toys, a bright green blanket tucked around the curled and sleeping shape of a small child.

  “My son.” His face softened for a minute. “He lives here with me. Sorry about the mess.” He sounded apologetic as he picked up a plastic trashbag from the floor.

  This was home, she thought. For him and his son. She’d heard the echo in his voice when he’d said “the job matters.” Home. He’d still been able to understand what Jazz had painted on the hangar wall, what she had woven across the night sky.

  “Here.” He held out a plastic trash bag.

  She opened it, looked in. Tangled strands of light fiber. Neat rolls of transparent plastic. String. “My stuff.” She looked up, met his dark eyes, brilliant in his soot-streaked face. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll walk you to the gate.” He ushered her out, closed the door gently and protectively on the sleeping child.

  They didn’t speak as they followed the empty driveway out to the main gate. It was chainlink, but new, topped with shiny thorns of razor-wire. He touched a keypad set into a concrete pillar, and the gate groaned, began to rumble open. “I got to go chase the boarders.” He smiled crookedly. “They’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”

  “This is your performance art.” She returned his smile.

  “Hey, whatever.” He spread his hands, then hesitated. “I … didn’t look. When Jazz ran. You didn’t either, did you?”

  “No,” she murmured. If she had, if he had, they would have turned that flying saucer back into a truck, have turned Home back into a Front Street meat rack, or a detention camp.

  “I’m glad,” he said, and home hummed beneath his words.

  Maybe that’s what let him understand. Because he’d made his home here, for himself and his son. But the gate was open now, no longer a barrier between Therese and the real world of money and deadlines. She sighed, resenting that open gate, feeling subtly betrayed. “Why did you call in my car for trespass?” She had to ask. “I can’t afford the fine.”

  “I didn’t.” Genuine confusion—his turn to look betrayed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  And he wouldn’t. “You’re right,” she said, and sudden grief clutched her. She stretched up, and kissed him on the mouth. After a moment of surprise, he responded, lips pressing against hers, warm and firm with life.

  Then she walked away, and he didn’t try to stop her, as she marched down the asphalt driveway and then out to her car, feet dry on the asphalt, heart heavy. And went … not home, but back to where she lived.

  It only occured to her when she was halfway there that she didn’t know the night watchman’s name, and that he had never asked for hers.

  * * *

  Urgent messages from Selva greeted her. Call me. Call me right away. And the grief weighed on her shoulders, heavy as lead. When she put on her goggles, Selva’s image coalesced instantly, as if she’d been waiting for Therese to call. “My God, ’Rese, are you okay?”

  Her face looked haggard, head and shoulders only against a pastel wall—which meant that this was realtime, a straight video transmission from her apartment, not translated through a virtual self. No tricks of programmed emotion, then. Except the ultimate, the one she’d already pulled. “You were looking over my shoulder tonight.” The first time she’d called, she’d known that Therese had been at the airport. Were you flying your kites? she had asked, but she had known. I missed it, Therese thought numbly. I wanted to miss it. “How long have you been in my filespace?”

  Selva looked away, convicted by her own worry.

  “Did you watch it all? My flight, our fall, everything? You turned in my car for trespass.” Therese’s voice cracked. “My God, Selva, why?”

  “I didn’t watch. Not much.” Selva faced her, eyes bleak. “I was monitoring the transmission, watching the parameters in digital, and when the activity went to the end of the scale, I checked the visuals.” She paused for a heartbeat. “I saw you fall. For a minute, I thought…” Her shoulders jerked. “I stopped watching when you climbed out.”

  “Nice.” Therese’s lips felt numb. She was beyond anger now, as stunned as if the sky had cracked and rained down on her head. “So, not only do you get my car busted, you can sell my recording direct to Xavier. Hey, always cut out the middleman whenever possible!”

  “Stop it, ’Rese.” Selva didn’t look away this time, didn’t try to hide the pain in her face. “Yeah, I turned your car in. Xavier’s looking for new blood, and I figured if he saw your stuff—if you maybe found out that it isn’t so bad, working for somebody … If you’d turned it down, I would have paid the fine myself, but I wanted.…” She clenched her fists, her face pale and stark. “I wanted to make you hear me, okay? I love you. Don’t you get it? Do you have to tie our love to your definition of success? Can’t you just let us happen? Do you think I care if I’m paying the rent?”

  The anguish in her voice gutted Therese’s anger. Do you care that much? she wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. It was her turn to look away. She’d seen it after all—whether that light was a truck or not. She had it on file, and so did Selva—the conclusion of Jazz’s wild dash across the airport field. Stored in patterns of excited electrons.

  “I dumped the file from tonight.” Selva had turned away again, her shoulders drooping, where they never drooped, always lifted proudly, strong and muscular. “If you had gotten hurt … if you had died…” She swallowed, her throat leaping. “I also downloaded money for the fine into your account. You’re the one who has to decide, and I guess you have. I’m sorry. I love you, and I’ll leave you alone. Will you please … be careful out there?”

  And the screen went blank.

  Therese stared at it for a long moment; angry at Selva for the fine, for the betrayal of that hack into her filespace. She snapped her fingers, called up her workspace. The file was there, bounced from Earth to sky to Earth again, an airplane icon glowing in the air. She could know. She stared at it. Your lights say the same thing, he’d told her.

  “You’re wrong. I’m not like you,” she whispered. She had looked at the night watchman and seen a man, not a cop,
or an alien, or a boogeyman. She had peeked at his cramped apartment and his sleeping son, and had felt its tug.

  And Jazz knew. Poised on the curb, he hadn’t asked her to come along. Therese let her breath out slowly, touched the airplane. “System, delete,” she said.

  Are you sure you want to delete this file? her system asked. You have no backup.

  Maybe you had to define home for yourself, and then believe in it enough to make it real. “System, yes,” she said and let her breath out in a rush. “Delete the file.”

  File deleted. The airplane winked out of existence.

  “I hope you’re already home,” Therese murmured. And went into her bank account to find the three thousand dollars Selva had left there. And used it to pay her fine. On the table, the fountain of glass showered the room with fractured light. Maybe it wasn’t a message of failure. Maybe Selva had known her well enough to send her something that existed only for its own sake, for beauty. Maybe Selva was trying to define home for herself.

  Outside, Pegasus spread his wings to fly beyond the stars. Therese hung the night watchman’s jacket on a chair. Neatly. She would return it in the daylight, ask his name, and his son’s name, visit with them for a few minutes. And then … she’d buy a ticket for the mag-lev. Going to Vancouver, B.C. For a visit, or for a long time, she didn’t know yet. They were going to be angry at each other for awhile. Maybe there were depths beyond the anger. Therese picked up the glass, turning it to scatter the rays from the cheap light overhead. “You were right, Selva,” she murmured. “I was afraid.” Of the real world, of Pegasus’s broad back. Still was. But she would bring along the light-net that the night watchman had returned with her. Selva would know a good place to fly it. They could cast it one more time at Pegasus.

  LOOKING FOR KELLY DAHL

  Dan Simmons

  A writer of considerable power, range, and ambition, an eclectic talent not willing to be restricted to any one genre, Dan Simmons sold his first story to The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1982. By the end of that decade, he had become one of the most popular and best-selling authors in both the horror and the science fiction genres, winning, for instance, both the Hugo Award for his epic science fiction novel Hyperion and the Bram Stoker Award for his huge horror novel Carrion Comfort in the same year, 1990. He has continued to split his output since between science fiction (The Fall of Hyperion, The Hollow Man) and horror (Song of Kali, Summer of Night, Children of the Night) A few of his novels are downright unclassifiable (Phases of Gravity, for instance, is a straight literary novel, although it was published as part of a science fiction line); and some (like Children of the Night) could be legitimately considered to be either science fiction or horror, depending on how you squint at them. Similarly, his first collection, Prayers to Broken Stones, contains a mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and “mainstream” stories, as does his most recent collection, Lovedeath. His most recent book is Endymion. His stories have appeared in our First and Eleventh Annual Collections. Born in Peoria, Illinois, Simmons now lives with his family in Colorado.