Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition

by Rich Horton

  No. He's known her, but she hasn't known him, Shelly realises.

  Back then Alex was a catch—tall and broad, a junior while she was a sophomore, and even though he wasn't on any teams he was strong and athletic. He was dangerous in a way that she couldn't define. He didn't do drugs, didn't get into fights, didn't really do anything normal like that.

  "I'm always unhappy and out of control in school. I don't know how to act,” Alex told her after his graduation, told her as an explanation as to why he hadn't applied to college.

  "It's like you're free or something,” Shelly said. During her sophomore year they were in the same physics class. She used to watch Alex when she should have been taking notes. It was in physics class that Shelly chose Alex. She picked him as her lab partner.

  Doing the day's experiment with her, Alex grabbed one end of the Slinky and took off down the hall with it, past the freshman lockers, while she held the other end with both hands and watched the metal loops stretch. She watched him move. She liked the way he didn't seem to care about it, liked the way he held the coil with his thumb and just kept going.

  When he got to the other end of the hall, when the Slinky was pulled as far as it could be pulled, Shelly kneeled down and slipped her end of the Slinky through the shoelaces of her sneaker. Then she stood up and stretched, the metal coil twisting down to her foot. She swept her long blonde hair back and rubber-banded it into a ponytail. She used both hands to sweep back her hair, and then she jerked on her sweater to cover her navel. She used both hands to smooth out her skirt.

  She knew he was watching her adjust herself, watching her preening. Fifteen feet of hallway separated them, but they were connected by a metal strand, a taut Slinky.

  * * * *

  "I hear voices sometimes,” Alex says. “Since the saucers showed up I can hear them. At least I think it's them."

  "What do they say?” Shelly asks him now. She still loves him. He's still sexy and dangerous. He's more dangerous than ever.

  "They say that it's our time,” Alex says. “They talk about a change, it's time for the change."

  "What does that mean?” Shelly asks.

  "How am I supposed to know? I don't know anything. Why doesn't anyone see them? Why does the TV keep saying they're not there?” Alex says.

  "What kind of change? What's going to change?"

  Alex doesn't know. He takes another swig of beer and then he hums under his breath, a long, slow hum.

  "Stop that,” Shelly says. “Don't do that again."

  "What should we do?” Alex says.

  "I don't know. I don't hear voices,” she says. “I can't float."

  Alex finishes his beer and then leans over to her until they're nose to nose. “You just don't want to hear voices."

  "What?"

  "You just don't want to fly,” Alex says. “So you pretend you can't."

  Shelly lights a cigarette and then waves the smoke away, flaps her hand back and forth in front of her face. “Why wouldn't I want to fly?"

  "For the same reason!"

  "What?"

  "Why don't people see the saucers? Because they're afraid,” Alex says. “You're afraid. Well, don't you think I'm afraid? Do you think I understand anything? I don't understand anything! I don't know what to believe, and don't believe in anything."

  Shelly takes another puff of smoke into her lungs and stares at him. She doesn't respond.

  "I'm floating, you know?” Alex leans back in his chair. “I can't even keep my feet on the ground."

  * * * *

  Shelly is waiting to use the toilet, standing in the polluted air inside the Blue Moon Pub; she wonders which she resents more, the saucers or her husband. She glances at the skyline through the plate glass windows at the front, she sees the spinning, flashing saucers, and she resents them, but she decides that she resents him more.

  It must make Alex happy, she decides. There are UFOs and he's communing with them somehow, and it's just another way for him to feel superior.

  She's waiting for the restroom, thinking of all the ways she resents her husband, when she starts to sway, unconsciously at first, to the music from the jukebox. Stan Getz's “Corcovado” is on and Shelly moves back and forth to the sound of Getz's sax. Shelly is dancing with her eyes closed. She wanders out of line, and when the song comes to an end she sits down in an empty booth. She leans across the aisle to get a cigarette from a kid in a backward baseball cap.

  "Thanks,” she says.

  "Can I buy you a drink."

  "Sure,” she says. “Gin and tonic."

  The kid waves to the waitress as he slides in across from Shelly. He lights Shelly's cigarette and puts his hand on her knee.

  He's a pudgy kid with sideburns and a goatee. He couldn't be more than twenty-one years old, half a decade younger than she is, and doesn't look too bright. In fact he looks stupid and angry, but another Stan Getz song comes on the jukebox and Shelly is distracted again.

  This time it's “The Girl from Ipanema” that fills the bar with sax.

  Shelly lets the kid keep his hand where he wants it. She closes her eyes again and takes a long, deep drag from her cigarette.

  "Where are you from?” she asks the kid.

  "Wyoming."

  "Yeah?"

  "Where are you from?” he asks her.

  "Me? I'm from Neptune,” she says. “I just got off one of those ships up there.” She points, her whole body moving languidly, towards the windows.

  The kid takes his hand off her knee.

  "I don't know what you're talking about,” he says.

  Shelly blows out a cloud of smoke, and winks at the kid before tipping back her gin and tonic.

  "There aren't any saucers,” the kid says. “You're crazy."

  Shelly takes another good look at the kid; he's almost funny sitting there in his football shirt and baseball cap. He's almost sad. She stubs out her cigarette, and then stands up to leave. She doesn't need this, and besides, she's suddenly remembered why she came inside the bar to begin with.

  "Tell me that there aren't any saucers,” the kid says. He stands up and blocks her exit, won't let her leave the booth.

  "I've got to pee,” she says. “Get out of my way or I'll get your shoes wet."

  "Say it!"

  "I'm warning you."

  The song is over, the jukebox stops playing, and the room is suddenly quiet. The room is quiet except for this fat kid breathing on her. “Tell me that there aren't any."

  "There are no saucers,” Shelly says. “Now let me go to the bathroom."

  Inside the stall Shelly pees and then just sits there, staring at nothing. She's obviously drunker than she'd thought. She sits on the toilet, inert for the moment, and stares at the words somebody has scratched into the green paint on the stall door.

  "When will we wake up?"

  Shelly stares and stares, reads and rereads. Then she wipes herself, pulls up her skirt, and leaves the question behind.

  * * * *

  This is a story about the New Normal, about life during wartime. It would be titled “UFOs and the End of the World” if I hadn't already written enough stories with the words “the End of the World” in the title.

  Last December the Washington Park Zoo had a Christmas light display. These zoo lights were shaped like crocodiles, made into leaping frogs, giant dragons, swimming otters. There were millions of tiny light bulbs clumped together, strung along the trees, and everywhere.

  It was raining hard, the night we went out to see the display. The kids were excited, but I just felt wet. The zipper on my jacket was broken, I'd left my umbrella in my cubicle at work, and while my wife and kids were wearing raincoats and hats, I had only my overcoat and my unruly mop of hair to protect me.

  A light-up giraffe picked up a neon heart and swung it up into place on top of a neon Christmas tree. Then the lights went out, the giraffe and the tree disappeared, and there was a moment of darkness until the giraffe lit up again and the whole process
started over. The giraffe picked up a neon heart from the ground, the Christmas tree appeared, and the giraffe placed the heart at the top. And again it happened. And again. Water poured down my face.

  "It's the myth of Sisyphus as a Christmas display,” I said. “That giraffe is cursed."

  "What's Sissypus?” my son asked.

  "Look, dancing hippos,” my daughter said.

  Electricity. Watching the decorations through the streamlets on my glasses I saw the light-up hippos, the light-up monkeys, as just another deception. Free electricity forever, and never mind the dwindling oil supplies, the wars, the nightmare of scarcity that was just around the corner.

  We finally found shelter in the monkey house. We watched real ring-tailed lemurs pace back and forth in their concrete cells.

  "That one is sleeping,” my daughter said. She pointed to a nest on a metal perch. She pointed to the infant lemur sleeping there and asked why the zookeeper didn't turn out the light for the monkey.

  "There is no night or day in the zoo,” I said.

  "There is too,” my son objected. “It's nighttime now, so the monkeys are inside."

  I admitted my mistake.

  "But there is no such thing as darkness at the zoo,” I said. “It's light every day, night and day, all the time."

  "I want to see the Christmas lights,” my daughter said.

  The kids were mesmerized as we wandered back into the rain to look at the lights. All four of us stared and stared at the lights through the rain. In the middle of it all, with “Jingle Bells” playing from the snack bar, surrounded by lights, I was overwhelmed.

  I looked at the front gate of the zoo, at the huge display of lights that loomed overhead. Red and green and orange and blue lights buzzing bright. I thought about the final scene in Close Encounters, about the book Childhood's End.

  The whole world seemed like a flying saucer.

  * * * *

  Shelly and Alex don't know what to say to each other. They're both drunk, tired, disengaged. The sky above their heads is still full of saucers, but it's getting more and more difficult to make them out. The sunlight is fading, and the Blue Moon's exterior lighting, the street lamps, the headlights and neon signs are on.

  "What we have to accept is that we don't know what to do."

  "What's that?” Alex asks.

  Shelly starts to take a sip from her last gin and tonic, but then stops and swirls the drink around in the glass; she watches the reflection of the saucers. They're lighting up now, red and yellow and green, each craft glowing and pulsing.

  "They look like radioactive M&M's,” Shelly says.

  Alex takes her glass away from her before she has a chance to take a sip, and sets it down on his side of the table.

  "What should we do?"

  Shelly doesn't answer, but takes Alex's hand in her own, makes him stroke her face. She likes the feeling of his warm fingers on her cheek.

  "Are we going to talk about it, or what?” Alex asks.

  "We can talk about it,” Shelly said. “But we can't answer it. We can't keep trying to answer."

  "But we can't pretend they're not there. We can't pretend this isn't happening,” Alex says.

  "It's happening. We know that much. Something is definitely happening."

  The saucers above their heads are blinking on and off, off and on.

  "Maybe they're sending out signals in Morse code,” Alex says.

  "And then again, maybe they aren't."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "I want to go home with you. To our home."

  Both Alex and Shelly gather up their belongings, try to piece themselves back together under a sky dotted by neon saucers. She grabs her handbag and he helps her with her red wool coat. Brushing herself off and trying to stand steady, Shelly slowly reaches over to Alex and takes his hand.

  Alex and Shelly leave the pub, make their way down 21st to Burnside, and Shelly holds Alex's hand tight, as tight as she can. She pulls on him, hard. But despite her efforts, he is floating. She holds his hand tight, but he's lifting off.

  Alex feels his wife's firm grip and squeezes back, but he isn't thinking about her. He isn't thinking at all. He's watching the sky, the saucers.

  Shelly pulls on him, tries to anchor herself with a tree branch, to dig in her heels, but Alex keeps rising, and when she feels her feet leave the ground Shelly gives up. She lets go.

  Alex is rising fast. She watches him drift, calls out to him, but before she can find her bearings, before she can think of what to do, he's gone.

  Shelly sits down on the pavement, stunned. She lies down across the sidewalk, stares up in the air to where Alex was last visible. She pulls her wool coat around her, and hums to herself, a low, long hum, though she's not aware that she's doing it.

  Shelly doesn't move for a long time, but just lies there on the concrete, watching the neon saucers.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Edge of Nowhere by James Patrick Kelly

  —

  Lorraine Carraway scowled at the dogs through the plate glass window of the Casa de la Laughing Cookie and Very Memorial Library. The dogs squatted in a row next to the book drop, acting as if they owned the sidewalk. There were three of them, grand in their bowler hats and paisley vests and bow ties. They were like no dogs Rain had ever seen before. One of them wore a gold watch on its collar, which was pure affectation since it couldn't possibly see the dial. Bad dogs, she was certain of that, recreated out of rust and dead tires and old Coke bottles by the cognisphere and then dispatched to Nowhere to spy on the real people and cause at least three different kinds of trouble.

  Will turned a page in his loose-leaf binder. “They still out there?” He glanced up at her, his No. 2 pencil poised over a blank page.

  "What the hell do they think they're doing?” Rain made brushing motions just under the windowsill. “Go away. Scram!"

  "Scram?” said Will. “Is scram a word?"

  Will had been writing The Great American Novel ever since he had stopped trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Before that he had been in training to run a sub four-minute mile. She'd had to explain to him that the mile was a measure of distance, like the cubit or the fathom or the meter. Rain had several books about ancient measurement in the Very Memorial Library and Will had borrowed them to lay out a course to practice on. They'd known each other since the week after Will had been revived, but they had first had sex during his running phase. It turned out that runners made wonderfully energetic lovers—especially nineteen year old runners. She had been there to time his personal best at 4:21:15. But now he was up to Chapter Eleven of The Great American Novel. He had taken on the project after Rain assured him that the great American novel had yet to be written. These days, not many people were going for it.

  "Where do dogs like that come from, anyway?” Will said.

  "Don't be asking her about dogs,” called Fast Eddie from his cookie lab. “Rain hates all dogs, don't you know?"

  Rain was going to deny this, but the Casa de la Laughing Cookie was Fast Eddie's shop. Since he let her keep her books in the broken meat locker and call it a library, she tried not to give him any headaches. Of course, Rain didn't hate dogs, it was just that she had no use for their smell, their turds hidden in lawns, or the way they tried to lick her face with their slimy tongues. Of course, this bunch weren't the same as the dim-witted dogs people kept around town. They were obviously creatures of the cognisphere; she expected that they would be better behaved.

  Will came up beside her. “I'm thinking the liver-colored one with the ears is a bloodhound.” He nodded at the big dog with the watch on its collar. “The others look like terriers of some sort. They've got a pointer's skull and the short powerful legs. Feisty dogs, killers actually. Fox hunters used to carry terriers in their saddlebags and when their hounds cornered the poor fox, they'd release the terriers to finish him off."

  "How do you know that?” said Rain, suddenly afraid that there would be d
ogs in The Great American Novel.

  "Read it somewhere.” He considered. “Jane Austen? Evelyn Waugh?"

  At that moment, the bloodhound raised his snout. Rain got the impression that he was sniffing the air. He stared through the front window at ... who? Rain? Will? Some signal passed between the dogs then, because they all stood. One of the terriers reared up on its hind legs and batted the door handle. Rain ducked from Will's side and retreated to the safety of her desk.

  "I'm betting they're not here to buy happy crumbs.” Will scratched behind his ear with the rubber eraser on his pencil.

  The terrier released the latch on the second try and the door swung open. The shop bell tinkled as the dogs entered. Fast Eddie slid out of the lab, wiping his hands on his apron. He stood behind the display case that held several dozen lead crystal trays filled with artfully broken psychotropic cookies. Rain hoped that he'd come to lend her moral support and not just to see if the dogs wanted his baked goods. The terriers deployed themselves just inside the door, as if to prevent anyone from leaving. Will stooped to shake the paw of the dog nearest him.

  "Are you an Airedale or a Welsh?” he said.

  "Never mind that now,” said the dog.

  The bloodhound padded up to Rain, who was glad to have the desk between them. She got a distinct whiff of damp fur and dried spit as he approached. She wrinkled her nose and wondered what she smelled like to him.

  The bloodhound heaved his bulk onto his hind legs. He took two shaky steps toward her and then his forepaws were scrabbling against the top of her desk. The dark pads unfolded into thick, clawed fingers; instead of a dew claw, the thing had a thumb. “I'm looking for a book,” said the dog. His bowler hat tipped precariously. “My name is Baskerville."

  Rain frowned at the scratches the dog's claws made on her desktop. “Well, you've got that wrong.” She leaned back in her chair to get away from its breath. “Baskerville wasn't the hound's name. Sir Charles Baskerville was Sherlock Holmes's client."

  "You may recall that Sir Charles was frightened to death by the hound well before Dr. Mortimer called on Holmes,” Baskerville said. He had a voice like a kettle drum. “The client was actually his nephew, Sir Henry."