The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Over the past few months, Mara had grown used to experiencing a new alienation every time she looked in the mirror. She’d seen a parade of strangers’ faces, each dimmer and hollower than the last.

  Her face was her own again.

  * * *

  She spent her first days doing tests. Abba watched her jump and stretch and run on a treadmill. For hours upon hours, he recorded her answers to his questions.

  It was tedious for her, but abba was fascinated by her every word and movement. Sometimes he watched as a father. Sometimes he watched as a scientist. At first Ruth chafed under his experimental gaze, but then she remembered that he had treated Mara like that, too. He’d liked to set up simple experiments to compare her progress to child-development manuals. She remembered ima complaining that he’d been even worse when Mara was an infant. Ruth supposed this was the same. She’d been born again.

  While he observed her, she observed him. Abba forgot that some experiments could look back.

  The abba she saw was a different man than the one she remembered sitting with Mara. He’d become brooding with Mara as she grew sicker. His grief had become a deep anger with G-d. He slammed doors and cabinets, and grimaced with bitter fury when he thought she wasn’t looking. He wanted to break the world.

  He still came down into the basement with that fury on his face, but as he talked to Ruth, he began to calm. The muscles in his forehead relaxed. He smiled now and then. He reached out to touch her hand, gently, as if she were a soap bubble that might break if he pressed too hard.

  Then he went upstairs, back to that other Mara.

  “Don’t go yet,” Ruth would beg. “We’re almost done. It won’t take much longer.”

  He’d linger.

  She knew he thought she was just bored and wanted attention. But that wasn’t why she asked. She hated the storm that darkened his eyes when he went up to see the dying girl.

  After a few minutes, he always said the same thing, resolute and loyal to his still-living child. “I must go, nu?”

  He sent Abel down in his place. The dog thumped down and waited for her to greet him at the foot of the stairs. He whuffed hello, breath humid and smelly.

  Ruth had been convinced—when she was Mara—that a dog would never show affection for a robot. Maybe Abel only liked Ruth because his sense of smell, like the rest of him, was in decline. Whatever the reason, she was Mara enough for him.

  Ruth ran the treadmill while Abel watched, tail wagging. She thought about chasing him across the snowy yard, about breaking sticks off of the bare-branched trees to throw for him. She could do anything. She could run; she could dance; she could swim; she could ride. She could almost forgive abba for treating her like a prototype instead of a daughter, but she couldn’t forgive him for keeping her penned. The real Mara was stuck in the house, but Ruth didn’t have to be. It wasn’t fair to have spent so long static, waiting to die, and then suddenly be free—and still remain as trapped as she’d ever been.

  After the disastrous Shabbat, she went back down to the basement and sat on one of abba’s workbenches. Abel came down after her. He leaned against her knees, warm and heavy. She patted his head.

  She hadn’t known how Mara was going to react.

  She should have known. She would have known if she’d thought about it. But she hadn’t considered the story of Mara and Ruth. All she’d been thinking about was that Ruth wasn’t her name.

  Their experiences had branched off. They were like twins who’d shared the womb only to be delivered into a world where each new event was a small alienation, until their individual experiences separated them like a chasm.

  One heard a name and wanted her own back. One heard a name and saw herself as bitterness.

  One was living. One was dying.

  She was still Mara enough to feel the loneliness of it.

  The dog’s tongue left a trail of slobber across the back of her hand. He pushed his head against her. He was warm and solid, and she felt tears threatening, and wasn’t sure why. It might have been grief for Mara. Perhaps it was just the unreasonable relief that someone still cared about her. Even though it was miserly to crave attention when Mara was dying, she still felt the gnaw of wondering whether abba would still love her when Mara was gone, or whether she’d become just a machine to him, one more painful reminder.

  She jumped off of the table and went to sit in the dark, sheltered place beneath it. There was security in small places—in closets, under beds, beneath the desk in her room. Abel joined her, pushing his side against hers. She curled around him and switched her brain to sleep.

  * * *

  After Shabbat, there was no point in separating Ruth and Mara anymore. Abba told Ruth she could go wherever she wanted. He asked where she wanted to sleep. “We can put a mattress in the parlor,” he said. When she didn’t react, he added, “Or the studio…?”

  She knew he didn’t want her in the studio. Mara was mostly too tired to leave her room now, but abba would want to believe that she was still sneaking into the studio to watch ima’s videos.

  Ruth wanted freedom, but it didn’t matter where she slept.

  “I’ll stay in the basement,” she said.

  When she’d had no choice but to stay in the basement, she’d felt like a compressed coil that might spring uncontrollably up the stairs at any moment. Now that she was free to move around, it didn’t seem so urgent. She could take her time a little, choose those moments when going upstairs wouldn’t make things worse, such as when abba and Mara were both asleep, or when abba was sitting with Mara in her room.

  Once she’d started exploring, she realized it was better that she was on her own anyway. Moving through the house was dreamlike, a strange blend of familiarity and alienation. These were rooms she knew like her skin, and yet she, as Ruth, had never entered them. The handprint impressed into the clay tablet on the wall wasn’t hers; it was Mara’s. She could remember the texture of the clay as she pushed in her palm, but it hadn’t been her palm. She had never sat at the foot of the plush, red chair in the parlor while ima brushed her hair. The scuff marks on the hardwood in the hallway were from someone else’s shoes.

  As she wandered from room to room, she realized that on some unconscious level, when she’d been Mara, she’d believed that moving into a robotic body would clear the haze of memories that hung in the house. She’d imagined a robot would be a mechanical, sterile thing. In reality, ima still haunted the kitchen where she’d cooked, and the studio where she’d danced, and the bathroom where she’d died.

  Change wasn’t exorcism.

  * * *

  Ruth remained restless. She wanted more than the house. For the first time in months, she found herself wanting to visit attic space, even though her flock was even worse about handling cancer than adults, who were bad enough. The pity in Collin’s eyes, especially, had made her want to puke so much that she hadn’t even let herself think about him. Mara had closed the door on her best friend early in the process of closing the doors on her entire life.

  She knew abba would be skeptical, though, so she wanted to bring it up in a way that seemed casual. She waited for him to come down to the workshop for her daily exam, and tried to broach the subject as if it were an afterthought.

  “I think I should go back to the attic,” she ventured. “I’m falling behind. My flock is moving on without me.”

  Abba looked up from the screen, frowning. He worried his hands in a way that had become troublingly familiar. “They know Mara is sick.”

  “I’ll pretend to be sick,” Ruth said. “I can fake it.”

  She’d meant to sound detached, as if her interest in returning to school was purely pragmatic, but she couldn’t keep the anticipation out of her tone.

  “I should go back now before it’s been too long,” she said. “I can pretend I’m starting to feel better. We don’t want my recovery to look too sudden.”

  “It is not a good idea,” abba said. “It would only add another complicatio
n. If you did not pretend correctly? If people noticed? You are still new-made. Another few weeks and you will know better how to control your body.”

  “I’m bored,” Ruth said. Making another appeal to his scholarly side, she added, “I miss studying.”

  “You can study. You’ve been enjoying the poetry, yes? There is so much for you to read.”

  “It’s not the same.” Ruth knew she was on the verge of whining, but she couldn’t make her voice behave.

  Abba paused, trepidation playing over his features as he considered his response. “Ruth, I have thought on this … I do not think it is good for you to go back to attic space. They will know you. They might see that something is wrong. We will find you another program for home learning.”

  Ruth stared. “You want me to leave attic space?” Almost everyone she knew, apart from abba and a few people in town, was from the attic. After a moment’s thought, the implications were suddenly leaden in her mind. “You don’t just want me to stop going for school, do you? You want me to stop seeing them at all.”

  Abba’s mouth pursed around words he didn’t want to say.

  “Everyone?” asked Ruth. “Collin? Everyone?”

  Abba wrung his hands. “I am sorry, Mara. I only want to protect you.”

  “Ruth!” Ruth said.

  “Ruth,” abba murmured. “Please. I am sorry, Ruthele.”

  Ruth swallowed hard, trying to push down sudden desperation. She hadn’t wanted the name. She didn’t want the name. But she didn’t want to be confused for the Mara upstairs either. She wanted him to be there with her, talking to her.

  “You can’t keep me stuck here just because she is!” she said, meaning the words to bite. “She’s the one who’s dying. Not me.”

  Abba flinched. “You are so angry,” he said quietly. “I thought, now that you were well—You did not used to be so angry.”

  “You mean Mara didn’t used to be so angry,” Ruth said. A horrible thought struck her and she felt cold that she hadn’t thought of it before. “How am I going to grow up? Am I going to be stuck like this? Eleven, like she is, forever?”

  “No, Ruth, I will build you new bodies,” said abba. “Bodies are easy. It is the mind that is difficult.”

  “You just want me to be like her,” Ruth said.

  Abba fumbled for words. “I want you to be yourself.”

  “Then let me go do things! You can’t hide me here forever.”

  “Please, Ruth. A little patience.”

  Patience!

  Ruth swung off of the stool. The connectors in her wrist and neck tore loose and she threw them to the floor. She ran for the stairs, crashing into one of the diagnostic machines and knocking it over before making it to the bottom step.

  Abba said nothing. Behind her, she heard the small noise of effort that he made as he lowered himself to the floor to retrieve the equipment.

  It was strange to feel such bright-hot anger again. Like abba, she’d thought that the transfer had restored her even temper. But apparently the anger she’d learned while she was Mara couldn’t just be forgotten.

  She spent an hour pacing the parlor, occasionally grabbing books off of a shelf, flipping through them as she walked, and then putting them down in random locations. The brightness of the anger faded, although the sense of injustice remained.

  Later, abba came up to see her. He stood with mute pleading, not wanting to reopen the argument but obviously unable to bear continuing to fight.

  Even though Ruth hadn’t given in yet, even though she was still burning from the unfairness, she couldn’t look into his sad eyes without feeling thickness in her throat.

  He gestured helplessly. “I just want to keep you safe, Ruthele.”

  They sat together on the couch without speaking. They were both entrenched in their positions. It seemed to Ruth that they were both trying to figure out how to make things right without giving in, how to keep fighting without wounding.

  Abel paced between them, shoving his head into Ruth’s lap, and then into abba’s, back and forth. Ruth patted his head and he lingered with her a moment, gazing up with rheumy but devoted eyes.

  Arguing with abba wasn’t going to work. He hadn’t liked her taking risks before she’d gotten sick, but afterward, keeping her safe had become obsession, which was why Ruth was even alive. He was a scientist, though; he liked evidence. She’d just have to show him it was safe.

  Ruth didn’t like to lie, but she’d do it. In a tone of grudging acceptance, she said, “You’re right. It’s too risky for me to go back.”

  “We will find you new friends,” abba said. “We will be together. That’s what is important.”

  * * *

  Ruth bided her time for a few days. Abba might have been watching her more closely if he hadn’t been distracted with Mara. Instead, when he wasn’t at Mara’s bedside or examining Ruth, he drifted mechanically through the house, registering little.

  Ruth had learned a lot about engineering from watching her father. Attic space wasn’t complicated technology. The program came on its own cube which meant it was entirely isolated from the household AI and its notification protocols. It also came with standard parental access points that had been designed to favor ease of use over security—which meant there were lots of back-end entryways.

  Abba didn’t believe in restricting access to knowledge so he’d made it even easier by deactivating the nanny settings on Mara’s box as soon as she was old enough to navigate attic space on her own.

  Ruth waited until nighttime when Mara was drifting in and out of her fractured, painful sleep, and abba had finally succumbed to exhaustion. Abba had left a light on in the kitchen, but it didn’t reach the hallway to Mara’s room, which fell in stark shadow. Ruth felt her way to Mara’s threshold and put her ear to the door. She could hear the steady, sleeping rhythm of Mara’s breath inside.

  She cracked the door. Moonlight spilled from the window over the bed, allowing her to see inside. It was the first time she’d seen the room in her new body. It looked the same as it had. Mara was too sick to fuss over books or possessions, and so the objects sat in their places, ordered but dusty. Apart from the lump that Mara’s body made beneath the quilt, the room looked as if it could have been abandoned for days.

  The attic space box sat on a low shelf near the door. It fit in the palm of Ruth’s hand. The fading image on its exterior showed the outline of a house with people inside, rendered in a style that was supposed to look like a child’s drawing. It was the version they put out for five-year-olds. Abba had never replaced it. A waste of money, he said, when he could upgrade it himself.

  Ruth looked up at the sound of blankets shifting. One of Mara’s hands slipped free from the quilt. Her fingers dangled over the side of the bed, the knuckles exaggerated on thin bones. Inflamed cuticles surrounded her ragged nails.

  Ruth felt a sting of revulsion and chastised herself. Those hands had been hers. She had no right to be repulsed.

  The feeling faded to an ache. She wanted to kneel by the bed and take Mara’s hand into her own. She wanted to give Mara the shelter and empathy that abba had built her to give. But she knew how Mara felt about her. Taking Mara’s hand would not be hesed. The only loving kindness she could offer now was to leave.

  As Ruth sat in ima’s studio, carefully disassembling the box’s hardware so that she could jury-rig it to interact with the television, it occurred to her that abba would have loved helping her with this project. He loved scavenging old technology. He liked to prove that cleverness could make tools of anything.

  The complicated VR equipment that made it possible to immerse in attic space was far too bulky for Ruth to steal from Mara’s room without being caught. She thought she could recreate a sketchy, winnowed down version of the experience using low-technology replacements from the television and other scavenged equipment. Touch, smell, and taste weren’t going to happen, but an old stereo microphone allowed her to transmit on the voice channel. She found a way to
instruct the box to send short bursts of visuals to the television, although the limited scope and speed would make it like walking down a hallway illuminated by a strobe light.

  She sat cross-legged on the studio floor and logged in. It was the middle of the night, but usually at least someone from the flock was around. She was glad to see it was Collin this time, tweaking an experiment with crystal growth. Before she’d gotten sick, Ruth probably would have been there with him. They liked going in at night when there weren’t many other people around.

  She saw a still of Collin’s hand over a delicate formation, and then another of him looking up, startled. “Mara?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  His voice cracked when he spoke, sliding from low to high. It hadn’t been doing that before.

  “Hi, Collin,” she said.

  “Your avatar looks weird.” She could imagine Collin squinting to investigate her image, but the television continued to show his initial look of surprise.

  She was using a video skin capture from the last time Mara had logged in, months ago. Without a motion reader, it was probably just standing there, breathing and blinking occasionally, with no expression on its face.

  “I’m on a weird connection,” Ruth said.

  “Is it because you’re sick?” Collin’s expression of concern flashed onscreen. “Can I see what you really like? It’s okay. I’ve seen videos. I won’t be grossed out or anything. I missed you. I thought—we weren’t sure you were coming back. We were working on a video to say good-bye.”

  Ruth shifted uncomfortably. She’d wanted to go the attic so she could get on with living, not to be bogged down in dying. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  The next visual showed a flash of Colin’s hand, blurred with motion as he raised it to his face. “We did some stuff with non-Newtonian fluids,” he said tentatively. “You’d have liked it. We got all gross.”

  “Did you throw them around?” she asked.

  “Goo fight,” Collin agreed. He hesitated. “Are you coming back? Are you better?”

  “Well—” Ruth began.