Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition

by Rich Horton

  We started playing croquet. I had quite the little run there, making it to the middle wicket from the first tap. Then my sister came out of the starting double wicket and I could tell she was intent on hitting my ball, then getting to send me off down the hill. We had a rule that if you were knocked out of bounds, you could put the ball back in a mallet-head length from where it went out. But if you hit it hard enough, the ball went out of bounds, over the gravel parking area, down the long driveway, all the way down the hill and out onto Alabama Highway 12. You had to haul your ass all the way down the dirt drive, dodge the traffic, retrieve the bail from your cousin's front yard, and climb all the way back up to the croquet grounds to put your ball back into play.

  My sister tapped my ball at the end of a long shot. She placed her ball against it, and put her foot on top of her croquet ball. She lined up her shot. She took a practice tap to make sure she had the right murderous swing.

  "Hey!” I said “My ball moved! That counts as your shot!"

  "Does not!” she yelled.

  "Yes it does!” I yelled.

  "Take your next shot! That counted!” I added.

  "It did not!” she screamed.

  "You children be quiet!” my grandmother yelled from her bed of pain.

  About that time was when Ethel hit me between the eyes with the green-striped croquet mallet; I kneecapped her with the blue croquet ball, and, with a smile on my swelling face as I heard the screen door open and close, I went away from there.

  * * * *

  This time I felt like I had been beaten with more than a mallet wielded by a six-year-old. I felt like I'd been stoned by a crowd and left for dead. I was dehydrated. My right foot hurt like a bastard, and mucus was dripping from my nose. I'm pretty sure the crowds in the hall as classes let out noticed—they gave me a wide berth, like I was a big ugly rock in the path of migrating salmon.

  I got home as quickly as I could, cutting History of the Totalitarian State 405, which was usually one of my favorites.

  I called the lab long distance. Nobody knew about my sister. Maybe it was her day off. I called the Motel 6. Nobody was registered by her name. The manager said, “Thank you for calling Motel 6.” Then he hung up.

  Maybe she'd come back to Dallas. I called her number there.

  "Hello,” said somebody nice.

  "Is Ethel there?"

  "Ethel?"

  "Yeah, Ethel."

  "Oh. That must have been Joanie's old roommate."

  I'd met Joanie once. “Put Joanie on, please?” I asked.

  She was in, and took the phone.

  "Joanie? Hi. This is Franklin—Bubba—Ethel's brother."

  "Yeah?"

  "I can't get ahold of her in North Carolina."

  "Why would you be calling her there, honey?"

  "'Cause that's where she was the last two weeks."

  "I don't know about that. But she moved out of here four months ago. I got a number for her, but she's never there. The phone just rings and rings. If you happen to catch her, tell her she still owes me four dollars and thirty-one cents on that last electric bill. I'm workin’ mostly days now, and I ain't waitin’ around two hours to see her. She can leave it with Steve; he'll see I get it."

  "Steve. Work. Four dollars,” I mumbled.

  She gave me the number. The prefix meant south Oak Cliff, a suburb that had been eaten by Dallas.

  I dialed it.

  "Ethel?"

  "Who is this? What the hell you want? I just worked a double shift."

  "It's Bubba,” I said.

  "Brother? I haven't heard from you in a month of Sundays."

  "No wonder. You're in North Carolina; you come back without telling me; you didn't tell me you'd moved out from Joanie's..."

  "What the hell you mean, North Carolina?! I been pullin’ double shifts for three solid weeks—I ain't had a day off since September 26th. I ain't never been to North Carolina in my life."

  "Okay. First, Joanie says you owe her $4.31 on the electric bill..."

  "Four thirty-one,” she said, like she was writing it down. “I'll be so glad when I pay her so she'll shut up."

  "Okay. Let's start over. How's your leg?"

  "Which leg?"

  "Your left leg. The polio leg. Just the one that's given you trouble for fifteen years. That's which leg."

  "Polio. Polio? The only person I know with polio is Noni's friend Frances, in Alabama."

  "Does the year 1954 ring a bell?” I asked.

  "Yeah. That was the first time we spent the whole summer in Alabama. Mom and Dad sure fooled us the second time, didn't they? Hi. Welcome back from vacation, kids. Welcome to your new broken homes."

  "They should have divorced long before they did. They would have made themselves and a lot of people happier."

  "No,” she said. “They just never should have left backwoods Alabama and come to the Big City. All those glittering objects. All that excitement."

  "Are we talking about the same town here?” I asked.

  "Towns are as big as your capacity for wonder, as Fitzgerald said,” said Ethel.

  "Okay. Back to weird. Are you sure you never had polio when you were a kid? That you haven't been in North Carolina the last month at some weird science place? That you weren't causing me to hallucinate being a time-traveler?"

  "Franklin,” she said. “I have never seen it, but I do believe you are drunk. Why don't you hang up now and call me back when you are sober. I still love you, but I will not tolerate a drunken brother calling me while I am trying to sleep.

  "Good-bye now—"

  "Wait! Wait! I want to know, are my travels through? Can I get back to my real life now?"

  "How would I know?” asked Ethel. “I'm not the King Of Where-You-Go."

  "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "Go sober up now. Next time call me at work. Nights."

  She hung up.

  * * * *

  And then I thought: what would it be like to watch everyone slow down; the clock start whirling clockwise around the dial til it turned gray like it was full of dishwater, and then suddenly be out at the spaceport they're going to build out at the edge of town and watch the Mars rocket take off every Tuesday?

  And: I would never know the thrill of standing, with a satchel full of comics under my arm, waiting at the end of Eve Arden's driveway for her to get home from the studio...

  Dedicated to Ms. Mary Ethel (Waldrop)

  Burton Falco Bray Hodnett, my little sister...

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Policeman's Daughter by Wil McCarthy

  —

  1.

  Bourbon, Interrupted

  —

  The courier didn't come bearing packages, or letters marked Carmine Strange Douglas, esq., Adjudicant, Juris Doctor and Attorney at Law. He didn't need to. Instead, he came barreling down the hallway like a team of horses, shouting “Door!” at the wall of my office. When a rectangle of frosted glass appeared and swung inward, he jumped inside.

  "Carmine. I have something for you,” he panted.

  "Did you run all the way over here?” I asked him. “There are quicker ways—"

  But the courier didn't answer. Instead, he approached the fax machine—a vertical plate of gray material, vaguely shimmery in the wellstone light of my office—and said, “Reconverge.” Then he threw himself at the plate and vanished with a faint blue sizzle.

  Reconverge, hell. I'd sent two couriers out to question potential witnesses in the Szymanski divorce, and one had self-destructed rather than share his waste of time with me. The other, apparently, had come back with something both critical and hard to explain. Go figure.

  Myself, I'd just finished researching the details on the case, poring over written documents and public records, mental notes and fax traces in an effort to figure out who, if anyone, had promised Albert the cabana boy permanent residence on that tiny estate. Certainly he'd made the claim in public several times, within the hearing of one or both
Szymanskis, and neither had corrected him.

  This by itself carried a certain legal weight, even if the original claim was baseless, so if the Szymanskis sold the property—and it looked like they were going to have to—Albert's claim might have to be bought out at his own named price, or sold along with the property as an easement in perpetuity. And in a world without death, perpetuity could be a long damned time! Oh, what a jolly old mess.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon, late enough to kill brain cells with a clear conscience, and I'd just cracked the seal on an opensource bourbon of excellent pedigree. Damn. Sitting open to the atmosphere would not improve it. Still, the courier's news sounded important in a pay-the-mortgage kind of way, and like most decent bourbons this cost almost nothing to print. And when you're immorbid, baby, there's always tomorrow.

  Sighing, I got up from my desk, from my too-comfortable chair, and strode over to the fax's print plate. “Confirming reconvergence, all parameters normal.” Then I followed the courier through.

  Stepping into a fax machine is like falling face-first into a swimming pool. The sensation isn't cold, or liquid, or electric, but it's just as distinct. There is, of course, no sensation of being inside the fax machine, since the part of you that passes through the print plate is immediately whisked apart into component atoms. Technically speaking, there should be no consciousness at all as the head disappears, as the body is destroyed and rebuilt, sometimes in combination with other stored images. But consciousness is a funny thing, an illusion that struggles to preserve itself against any insult. The courier and I stepped out of the plate only a moment after I'd stepped into it. Facing into the room, now, not out of it.

  The courier was, of course, myself. We were one and the same, briefly split and now rejoined in that seamless ball of wonderfulness that was Carmine Strange Douglas. Like any good investigative counsel, I did this five or six times a day. Hell, if not for plurality laws—three thousand copy-hours per month, rigidly enforced by the fax network itself—I'd do it more than that.

  Anyway, now that I was one person again I knew details of my—of the courier's—meeting with Lillia Blair, and I knew all the details of my morning and afternoon research. Reconvergence: the collapsing of two waveforms into one. Like any scattered thoughts the pieces took a few seconds to come together in my mind, but when they did, the legal strategy was clear.

  "Call Juniper,” I said to the wall.

  The wall considered this for a moment before answering, “I assume you mean Juniper Tall Szymanski."

  I glared at the wall without answering, irritated because I'd already called June Szymanski twice this week, and the only other Juniper I knew—Juniper Pong—I hadn't spoken to in months. Taking the hint, the wall patched the message through, and created a hollie window beside the open doorway.

  For two seconds it displayed nothing but gray; that deep, foggy, three-dimensional gray that some people—myself included—use for a null screen. But then, presently, June Szymanski's face appeared in the hollie, and behind it her living room. She might as well be standing right outside my office. She might as well be solid, physical, here. I've had some practice in distinguishing real windows from hollies, but it takes a microscope and some patience.

  "Hi,” June said, looking both anxious and pleased to hear from me. “What've you got?"

  People are always glad to hear from Carmine while their case is unresolved, and especially when the strategy hadn't been figured out yet. At times like these, I'm everybody's best friend. If the issue came to trial, I figured June and I would be friends for another week, week and a half. But in light of what I'd just figured out, a trial seemed rather unlikely.

  "According to Lillia,” I said, “Albert's exact words were ‘I can stay until I decide to leave.’”

  "So?” she asked, absorbing that without really getting it.

  "So, that's a very different thing from ‘I can stay forever,’ or even ‘I can stay as long as I want.’ Because ‘decide to leave’ is a distinct event in time and space. It can be measured, logged, and read into the court records. And we can make a case—a strong one—that simply setting foot outside that cabana will bring the implied contract to an end."

  "Huh. Meaning what? I can evict him?"

  Can anyone evict anyone these days? “No,” I told her. “Not now, and not without a lot of work. But you can inform him that leaving the poolhouse is grounds for eviction."

  Juniper's face relaxed. “Oh, my God. Thank you so much. I do want to be civil about this, but I can't have that ... I can't face this ... well, this makes everything a lot easier. You're a genius, Carmine."

  And that was true. I was a genius, I am, but so are all the other lawyers in town. These days it's impossible practice law—to practice much of anything—if you aren't unimaginably good at it. Because if you're not, someone who is will simply print an extra copy of him- or herself, and take over another chunk of your market.

  False modesty is bad for business; I'm not ashamed to say I aced my bar exam, went to the best schools and did well in them. I reckon I'd make a good generalist, not only in the practice of law but in a range of other fields. I was one hundred years old, immorbid, and absorbed knowledge voraciously.

  But even that wasn't enough to hold a job in Denver anymore. You had to be generalist and a specialist. You had to be broad and brilliant, but lensed down to a unique pinpoint. You had to get your name associated with some particular little quirk or gimmick of the business so that people, when they ran afoul of it, would know whom to call. Even ‘interpersonal disputes’ cut too broad a swath for a viable legal practice. And anyway it was boring: the same disputes over and over again, with only the names and faces changing. And anymore the faces—sculpted by faxware to beauty and perfection—weren't so different either.

  But I've always had a flair for the dramatic and a nose for the bizarre. My directory ad said it all: “If you've been wronged, call a lawyer. If you've been stranged, call Carmine Strange Douglas."

  "This could still turn ugly,” I warned June. “That's a wellstone cabana, right? Fully programmable, no restrictions? And he's got his own fax machine in there. Creme brulee and ostritch bisque, anytime he likes. If he decides to make a siege of it, he could hold out for a long time."

  "Can't we just shut off the electricity?"

  "Ahem! No. And even if you could, he's got the right to generate his own. Wind, sun, and rain—the Free Three, as they say. Albert has taken sides, Mrs. Szymanski. Specifically he's taken your husband's, and he's not going to vacate just because you ask him nicely. He wants this to be difficult.

  "I'll write a threatening letter if you want, give him something to think about, but my advice to you as a friend is to talk things over with your husband. It's all right to get bored with each other—if we're going to live forever, it's almost inevitable. But somebody's got make a gesture, here. This is no way for two people to behave, who ever loved each other."

  At this, Juniper Szymanski's face closed down. “You don't know anything about it, Carmine. Beyond the bare facts. I'm guessing it's a long time since you've been hurt."

  And then she cut the connection, and her hollie window winked out.

  What a small-minded thing for her to say! I'd been hurt plenty, and bad. In the broken-heart shuffle that began the moment people stopped dying, everyone got hurt. Or maybe they always had, and always would. This was just one of those facts of life, which you could put out of mind if you didn't happen to be an interpersonal lawyer. Divorces were far and away the worst part of the job, and if I didn't get the strange ones—the ones snarled hopelessly in unique legal challenges—I don't know what I would've done. Soldiered on, probably; an eternity of less-than-happy labors.

  "Close door,” I said to the wall, and it obliged me by swinging shut that rectangle of white frosted glass and, with a slight crackle of programmable matter, merging it back with my yellow marble decor again.

  Too late, I realized there was someone out there in th
e corridor. There came a polite rapping on the wall outside, and a muffled voice murmuring, “Door. Door."

  With a whispered command, I could make the wall perfectly soundproof. I even did it sometimes, but only when I was really busy and wanted the world to go away. Generally, I liked to feel I was part of the world.

  Anyway the office would, of course, not obey the commands of a stranger, so I said, “Door.” And like some crayon rubbing on a bas relief, the door magically reappeared, then clicked and swung open with a phony creak of phony hinges. A man stood on the other side with his hat pulled down and his shoulders hunched, glancing furtively to his left and then his right. He stepped inside, then quite rudely pushed the door until it swung closed again, engaging with a click of imaginary latches. “Carmine Douglas,” the stranger said, “I hear you solve people problems."

  "I help people with problems,” I answered guardedly.

  "That's fine,” the man said. “That's close enough. It's good to see you, Carmine. You're looking well."

  The lighting in my office—yellow spotlights and venetian-blinded daylight—created pools of atmospheric shadow, and the man had gravitated into one of these, denying me a clear view. But suddenly there was something very familiar about his face, his voice, the way he moved. “Double apparent brightness,” I told the room, though I hated it the way that washed things out. “And whiten it up a bit. Kill these shadows."

  The windows and ceiling did as I commanded, and there, plain as day, like a ghost from the past, was the face of Theodore Great Kaffner, my old roommate from my last three years at North Am U. He hadn't aged a bit, which shouldn't surprise me at all, since I'd never known anyone who did. But still, the sight of my old friend was a shock, a discontinuity. How many decades did that image leap across?

  "Theddy?"

  "Hey, Carbo. It's been a long time."

  "You look terrible,” I said, because that was true as well. “What sort of problem are you having?"

  Theddy seemed to cringe at the question. He pointed to the windows on the office's other wall. “Can we darken those? D'you have some sort of privacy mode, here? A really strong one?"