Year’s Best SF 15

by David G. Hartwell; Kathryn Cramer

And that also causes me to remember something I forgot. Amanda Sam had always worn clothes that revealed or highlighted her breasts. Sometimes, when talking, she’d smile and look down and you’d have no choice but to follow her gaze. I was eager to hold and touch and kiss Amanda Sam’s breasts, and I thought of Noriko’s streamlined chest, her aroused nipples, and just the yearning for Amanda Sam’s breasts made me feel a terrible guilt.

  She says, I’m sure you got over the guilt.

  I’m not sure I got over the guilt.

  But Amanda Sam had to urge me on. “They’re waiting for your attention.” She kissed me again. “I’m waiting for your attention. Soldier girl is gone, hon, I’m here.”

  I should tell her I loved her breasts but I had no right to them. But I also thought about how she’d come to my room, how she’d chosen me, and how I knew she was right, that I probably would never see Noriko again. I kissed her breasts. I worshipped her nipples. I only had worshipped Noriko’s nipples and I thought there was only one way to pray before this altar. Amanda Sam directed my mouth and tongue in different ways, and I was surprised, even though it was obvious, that there were so many ways to go about this. Soon we were both naked, but she wore this little skirt thing. I knew what she was hiding, but I pretended that she was just wearing a skirt. I realized that when we kissed she never pressed herself against me.

  She went down on me, and I thought after all my time with Noriko that I would last forever. But it was a new body and a new sensation to that body. Suddenly, after orgasm, Amanda Sam was a stranger. At that point, I was afraid. It was my turn to reciprocate. Or worse, sometimes, Noriko would just want to lie back and talk, and I had nothing to say to Amanda Sam. But she kissed me and did something I didn’t know you could do because Noriko had never done it. She used her mouth, and I was hard, and she had me lie down, then she turned her back to me before lowering herself down.

  The sensation was wonderful, but I lay there and felt like a part of me was distant. I wanted to be with Noriko and the way her hands pulled me into the rhythm she wanted or the way she wrapped her arms around me as if she was going to pull my body into hers. I admired Amanda Sam’s back. I admired the way she leaned forward so I could admire her backside. I thought, So this is what sex is like when you don’t care. But I didn’t want it to stop for a second. I wanted to feel more. I sat up, and I leaned my cheek against her shoulder blade and I held her breasts, and she breathed about how good that felt, and maybe I was wrong about the nature of caring because now I felt like I was with her and how alone we both were and as she breathed nice exclamations, I felt my hand make its way down from her breast, down her belly, I’d truly somehow forgotten, because I somehow expected to touch those moist creases.

  Not the most poetic naming you’ve done, she says.

  The words are a distraction. I’ve lowered my own hand, feeling I should reciprocate the pleasure I now feel, but her hand returns my hand to her breast.

  She says, So you don’t find a vulva. Were you shocked?

  I pulled my hand away so fast. There were two shocks. The shock of memory, the realization that in spite of what I knew, I’d pictured Amanda Sam as a woman and now I couldn’t. But sweet breathing aside, her encouragements aside, I’d discovered that Amanda Sam was not aroused at all, and now I felt like we were just two mechanisms completing some insistent task.

  Amanda Sam didn’t understand my mistake. She took my hand. Part of me wanted to pull back. Another part insisted that it was only fair to reciprocate. But she became more passionate, and it ended up with me on top, she kissing me, she holding her body against mine. After it was over, I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to get up and leave, but the bed was in my guesthouse room. She lay down in front of me, and we spooned, my hand on her breast, her back against my chest. I could lie there and go back to pretending she was a woman.

  “I really like you,” she said.

  “I like you, too.” I was relieved someone had booked me passage on a ship; I would soon be gone.

  “If I sleep in your room again, I’ll have to charge you.”

  “I understand,” I said. I didn’t have the money to sleep with her.

  “But if you come with me to my room, at my invitation, that’s different.”

  “How is it different?” I asked, because I knew I was supposed to ask.

  “Because when I make love to someone I like, I prefer to be Sam rather than Amanda.”

  I said nothing, and she asked what I was thinking. I told her that it was the Amanda part of her I liked.

  “If you really liked me, the me inside, you wouldn’t notice the difference.”

  I think it was the next day when I was back at the hospital dining hall. I maybe had two days left, and I overheard some nurses talk about how busy it would be the next day, my last full day on Haven. There would be a whole set of newborns. Noriko could be among them, but even if she wasn’t, there had to be people who knew something about what had happened to my unit. I pictured myself returning home without that knowledge. I imagined all the empty silences in that ruined house in that neighborhood where people went when they had no place left to go.

  It would just take a few days, a few days before they were out and showing up in various eateries and taverns. If Noriko just happened to be among them, she would show up at the Wake, she’d see me with Amanda Sam. My whole adventure the night before now seemed sordid. I spent some of my per diem so the guest-house staff would change the bed-clothes. I showered for a long time. I resolved I wouldn’t return to the Wake. But all alone in my bed that night, I couldn’t help but think that I was leaving Haven too soon.

  The next morning I left for the spaceport to cash in my ticket. The woman there shook her head. “I can’t do it. You have to show a place of residence, not a guest house. This is not a tourist spot.”

  I hung around at the hospital foodstop until I saw the same nurse. I went to get some food and sat down near her. She grumbled to a friend how tired she was. They had to rebirth more than a unit. The military wanted them turned around quickly.

  “They’ll get some downtime, won’t they?” her friend asked.

  “Of course. This place would close down otherwise. We gotta get them out of therapy two days sooner than usual. Can you imagine how they’ll look when they go ambulatory?”

  I walked and walked. I kept counting out my options.

  I showed up at the Wake and Amanda Sam was not there. The bartender offered me a drink on the house. “Amanda Sam says you’re a good one. Here’s one for the road.”

  I decided that this drink was my farewell. I would never know what happened. I would never see Noriko again. Temptation is the sun drawing in a comet. Good sense is just some distant steady orbit.

  I had a second beer and sat off in a corner. Amanda Sam walked in, and she scanned the tavern as if looking for someone. When she saw me, she smiled, and sat down next to me. “Hi, gorgeous,” she said. “Buy me a brandy.”

  I told her my ship left tomorrow afternoon. She said she’d miss me. I told her about the unit being rebirthed tomorrow. I told her that I wanted to stay, to see if Noriko was among them.

  “Your soldier girl won’t be there,” she said.

  “But they’ll be able to tell me what’s happened. I’ll know my story.”

  “That story was part of your other life,” she said.

  I told her that, in the end, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a place to stay. Staying was just wishful thinking.

  “You can stay with me,” she said.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, and standing there was a couple. “Oh,” she said, “I was looking for you two. It’s been a while.” She turned and waved to me.

  The next morning she was at my door and walked me down to the port. “If you want to stay, you’re going to have to establish residency and profession. There are no tourists here. I created documentation that says you’re living with me and that you’re my partner.”

  “Your
partner, like we’re married?”

  “No, hon. Profession, I said profession. I’m more than happy to lie about your profession.” And she stopped me here. She looked me in the eye. “Your money is going to run out. You’re not going to find the soldier girl. All you lost was a few months of another life. How badly do you need them, hon?” Her two hands wrapped themselves warmly around one of mine. Her green eyes were warm. “You have a free ticket home. Take it.”

  When we found the right office, she produced the document, and after some back and forth she got the full price of what the military had paid for the ticket. She laid down her pinky to get half; I got the other half. “We’ll say that’s rent for a month,” she said. What was left of my per diem had evaporated the moment the transaction was complete; all I had was one-sixth of the cost of passage.

  Her apartment was tiny, half the size of the guest house room, a double bed, drawers built into the wall, and a cubicle for what’s necessary. There was no sofa to sleep on, no place to stretch out on the floor with a blanket.

  She kissed me. “You don’t have to thank me tonight. We can wait until you’re ready. Go see if you can find your girl.”

  At midday I haunted the hospital foodstop. I listened for whispers. The nurse turned up again, this time alone, and I stepped up to the food vendor so that I’d be next to her. She punched out her meal request. I found something to say, and we ended up at the same table. I remember that she looked familiar, that suddenly I worried she was the nurse who’d birthed me. But if she was, she didn’t seem to recognize me. I was worried that she’d ask me all sorts of questions about where I lived, what I did, but she was more than happy to complain about her husband, her job, the difficulty of having so many troops coming back to life.

  I thought of the ship, how it was heading for the edge of this stellar system. I felt like there might be an alternate me on board, heading off, finding people to talk with, books to read, maybe even a lover, to ease the burden of three months of travel. But here I was, back in the hospital, listening to the nurse telling me how the war must be going badly because they’d received orders to start growing more bodies, to prepare another unit’s worth for rebirth.

  I tried to get a sense of how many of these men and women she saw. Would she recognize a picture of Noriko if I showed it to her? Every now and then, she groused about something, then swore me to silence. “I’m really not supposed to talk about that.” Could I give her Noriko’s name and combat number to input into a computer? I didn’t dare.

  In the evenings I stayed at the Wake as long as I could, only going home when I had drunk too much to stand. In bed, I pretended to be asleep while Amanda Sam cuddled up to me, one hand draped gently over my penis, her own penis erect against my backside. She whispered how much she liked me and desired me until one of us actually drifted off. More and more, she spent her evenings with me. If she disappeared, she told me which taverns she would visit. I realized how little work she’d been getting, what a relief it must have been to get one-sixth of the cost of passage. “The whole economy is drying up,” she said to me. “If they don’t give these reborns any shore leave, this place will go crazy. It happened once before, just watch.”

  Suddenly I saw it, the way locals glared at me if I looked at them too long, the clipped sentences, the constant complaint in almost every conversation. The nurse joined me with a therapist friend. It was one of my therapists. He was sure to ask what I was doing here, but no, he talked about how he preferred working with civilians and officers. When you do therapy in groups…. He shook his head bitterly. “I hope they don’t send them back to battle before shore leave. There’s a major here who thinks shore leave is just for fun. My soldiers—” His voice became high-pitched so the major might have been a woman or castrato “—don’t need to get drunk and get laid to fight well. Their morale is just fine. Well, fuck their morale. How about their fine motor skills? How about their gross motor skills? That’s what shore leave is about. They’re brand-new bodies and they need the real world to operate in before you throw on some body armor and throw them out into free fall.”

  He kept going on, and I barely listened. He was angry enough, I thought, that maybe he would tell me anything, but the nurse was advising him to watch what he was saying, and he was nodding, his face red, his look recalcitrant, then chagrined.

  One night, Amanda Sam insisted that we go back home—I always thought of it as the apartment—before I’d drunk too much. “You’ll spend up all your money,” she said, “and then what?” Back at her place, she said she wanted me so badly that she would be Amanda for me. I soaked up her skin’s warmth like a sponge.

  It probably wasn’t the next day, but it’s the next thing I remember, how suddenly sections of Haven were flooded with stumbling reborns. Their hair was wild and shaggy. Most of them looked like they’d chosen to be in their twenties, but a few, probably officers, were in their thirties. A guy, his face dour, concentrated on every step he took. Another stumbled, fell, got up, laughing, looking to his more cautious friends. I kept walking where they walked. Every time I saw tanned skin, black hair, compact body, I’d walk to catch up, but before I even caught a glimpse of the face, I’d see that the shoulders were too wide, the hips too flat.

  And what would I say to her, if she was there? I watched for her at various lunchrooms, where I saw the newborns shake their forks at each other as if angry, but their faces showed a range of reactions to their bodies’ refusal to learn their way through the world instantly.

  The presence of all these newborns made Amanda Sam happy. “Tonight, the best brandy for me, the best beer for you,” she said, even though I think Haven only stocked one variety of each, the drinkable and the barely drinkable. I remember one night, probably the first night the newborns were around, I just sat at the Wake, drinking beer, imagining that Noriko would walk in, that she would take me off to a guesthouse room, and we’d make love. Several other nights I wandered from tavern to tavern, maybe checking in some dinner spots beforehand, looking for Noriko, knowing I wouldn’t see her, from time to time running into Amanda Sam gaily chatting with some man or woman, once a couple. Each time she waved to me, offered me that big smile that said, I’m delighted to see you, keep walking.

  I spoke with some of the newborns. I heard the stories. One guy told me that their goal had been to take an orbital without destroying it, which meant they had to board it without using projectile weapons. At one point they were on the skin of the world, breaking into a compartment, and the enemy had fighters flying above. It was strange how silent everything was except for the way everyone was yelling orders and those voices reverberated in your helmet, voices darting about you as if your head was stuck in a fish-bowl. The enemy couldn’t risk projectiles, either. They used harpoons, a joke when you first heard it in training, but when one pierced your suit, when you watched your air drain away as you were dragged off into space, it wasn’t so funny anymore. “Actually, if it happened to you, you’d never remember it,” he said. “But when you watched it happen to your buddy, you’d go to sleep night after night imagining what it would be like happening to you. Worse, you’d relive it happening to your friend, wondering what he felt and thought as it happened. Well, then you became hardened to the whole process.”

  I tried to picture myself on the skin of a metal world, magnetic soles holding me in place, just enough of a pull to keep my balance, not enough to prevent a step, or a harpoon from pulling me away, and making a rush for an opened compartment, knowing that some of us would make it, and that some of us were there to die so others could make it, that our majors and colonels and generals felt free to overwhelm the other side with numbers because we’d all be back, the cost of our resurrection something for governors and senators and premiers at home to tally up. I felt a terrible beating in my heart just at the thought, and I was glad to have Amanda Sam wrap her arms around me, and most nights she was content and sated so there was no pressure to express my thanks for this half a bed i
n a tiny room.

  I worked up the courage to ask questions. I gave Noriko’s full name. No one had heard of her. I named the unit I was with. Most didn’t know it. One or two knew that my unit was dealing with orbitals circling the neighboring gas giant, which at the time was too far away in its orbit for anyone to care. One woman had gotten word that the first foray had been successful, the second was disastrous, the third could happen at any moment.

  When the newborns shipped out, I concluded I would never see Noriko, and I would never know what had happened to me. It was only then that I realized what a terrible situation I was in. Amanda Sam took me out to dinner to celebrate the great few days she’d had, and I drank brandy with her, and I told her that tonight would be the night. She kissed me passionately, and back in her apartment she was tender. She aroused me first, and the things she did to relax me actually felt good. She looked down at me and told me to hold her breasts, and entered me so slowly and carefully that it did not hurt at all. I suppose if I’d been in love with her or desiring this kind of moment, I might have felt something more than just the physical sensation, but instead I rubbed my hands up and down Amanda Sam’s back and remembered the one or two times Noriko had caressed my own back and said, “Let’s finish up, I’m ready to sleep,” and I now understood the distance Noriko must have felt (even though during the act I had been certain that because it was sex it must have felt good).

  During the days I worked on making the tiny apartment look better. I thought of the people Amanda Sam brought there. I prepared meals. When she pressed herself against me at night, I turned and kissed her and wrapped my legs around her thighs. She got me drunk the night she wanted me to reciprocate her oral ministrations. The next day I searched for some kind of work, but as I already knew, there was nothing official available. “Pinky-up,” the guy in charge of sewage said. The fingerprint produced the documentation, and he shook his head. “You don’t even have one death to your credit. I can’t hire you. If you’re going to stay on Haven, you’re gonna have to keep doing the job you registered for. My apologies. I wouldn’t want to do it.”