The Best Science Fiction of the Year: 1

by Unknown

  Nobody made movies about two-year men. They said four-year men had honor, six-year men had responsibility, and eight-year men had glory. Two-year men had nothing but shame. But it wasn’t true. Hyam said so.

  Two-year men had families—parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, children and wives who depended on them. They had jobs, humble jobs but important all the same. Without two-year men, who would grub away the garbage, crawl the sewers, lay the carpets, clean the chimneys, fix the roofs? Without two-year men there would be nobody to bring in the harvest—no sweet strawberries or rich wines. And most important, Hyam said, without two-year men there would be nobody parents could point at and say to their sons, “Don’t be like him.”

  Hyam was smart. He could have been a four-year man easy, even a six-year man. But he was a Jew and that meant a two-year man, almost always. Gypsies too, and Hutterites, and pacifists. Men who couldn’t walk or talk. Even blind men. All drafted and sent to fight and die in the colonies for two years, and then sent home to live in shame while the four-year men fought on. Fought to survive and come home with honor.

  Hyam returned swinging a plastic bag in one hand and a carton of eggs in the other. A bottle of milk was tucked under his arm.

  “This is mostly diapers,” he said, brandishing the bag. “You’ll never have too many. We spend more on laundry than we do on food.”

  “I can wash them by hand.”

  “No you can’t, take my word for it.” Hyam laughed and ran up the stairs. “Welcome to fatherhood, Mikkel. You’re a family man now.”

  Mikkel laid the baby on the bed. He diapered and dressed the baby, and then trimmed her talons with Anna’s nail scissors. He fitted a sock over each of the baby’s hands and pinned them to her sleeves. Then he wedged Anna’s pillow between the bed and the wall, tucked the baby in his arms, and fell into sleep.

  He woke to the clacking of the baby’s beak. She yawned, showing her colorful throat frill. He cupped his hand over her skull and breathed in the milky scent of her skin.

  “Let’s get you fed before Mama comes home,” he said.

  He warmed milk in the soup pot. A baby needed a bottle when it didn’t have a breast, he knew, but his baby—his clever little girl—held her beak wide and let him tip the milk into her, teaspoon by teaspoon. She swallowed greedily and then demanded more. She ate so fast he could probably just pour the milk in a steady stream down her throat. But milk was too expensive to risk spitting up all over the kitchen floor.

  “Mikkel,” said Anna.

  She was standing in the doorway in her scarf and coat. Mikkel gathered the baby in his arms and greeted Anna with a kiss like he always did. Her cheek was cold and red.

  “How was your day?” he asked. The baby looked from him to Anna and clacked her beak.

  Anna wouldn’t look at the baby. “I was late. I got on the wrong bus at the interchange and had to backtrack. Mrs. Spiven says one more time and that’s it for me.”

  “You can get another job. A better one. Closer to home.”

  “Maybe. Probably not.”

  Anna rinsed the soup pot, scooped cold stew into it and set it on the stove. She was still in her coat and hat. The baby reached out and hooked Anna’s red mitten out of her pocket with the trimmed talon poking through the thin grey knit sock. The mitten dangled from the baby’s hand. Anna ignored it.

  “Sweetheart, take off your coat,” Mikkel said.

  “I’m cold,” she said. She struck a match and lit the burner.

  Mikkel gently pulled on her elbow. She resisted for a moment and then turned. Her face was flushed.

  “Sweetheart, look,” he said. Anna dropped her gaze to the floor. The baby clacked her beak and yawned. “I thought we could name her after your mother.”

  Anna turned away and stirred the stew. “That’s crazy. I told you we’re not keeping her.”

  “She has your eyes.”

  The spoon clattered to the floor. Anna swayed. Her elbow hit the pot handle and it tipped. Mikkel steadied it and shut off the flame.

  Anna yanked back her chair and fell into it. She thrust her head in her hands for a moment and then sat back. Her eyes were cold and narrow, her voice tight. “Why would you say that? Don’t say that.”

  Why couldn’t Anna see? She was smart. So much smarter than him. And he could see it so easily.

  Mikkel searched for the right words. “Your eggs. Where did they go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I needed money so I sold my ovaries. That’s the end of it.”

  Mikkel ran his fingers over his wife’s chapped hand, felt the calluses on her palm. He would tell her the awful things, and then she would understand.

  “I know where your eggs went. I see them in the tanks every night. And in the labs. In the incinerator. I mop their blood off the floor.”

  Anna’s jaw clenched. He could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. “Mikkel. Lots of women sell their ovaries. Thousands of women. They could be anyone’s eggs.”

  Mikkel shook his head. “This is your baby. I know it.”

  “You don’t know anything. What proof do you have? None.” She laughed once, a barking sound. “And it doesn’t matter anyway because we’re not keeping her. People will find out and take her away. Arrest you and me both, probably. At the very least, we’d lose our jobs. Do you want us to live in the street?”

  “We can tell people you birthed her.”

  “With that beak?”

  Mikkel shrugged. “It happens.”

  Anna’s flushed face turned a brighter shade of red. She was trying not to cry. He ached to squeeze her to his chest. She would just pull away, though. Anna would never let him hold her when she cried.

  They ate in silence. Mikkel watched the baby sleep on the table between them. Her soft cheek was chubby as any child’s, but it broadened and dimpled as it met the beak, the skin thinning and hardening like a fingernail. The baby snuffled and snot bubbled from one of her tiny nostrils. Mikkel wiped it away with the tip of his finger.

  Mikkel checked the clock as Anna gathered the dishes and filled the sink. Only a few minutes before he had to leave for the lab. He snuggled the baby close. Her eyelids fluttered. The delicate eyelash fringes were glued together with mucus.

  “You have to go,” said Anna. She put his lunch pail on the table.

  “In a minute,” he said. Mikkel dipped his napkin in his water glass and wiped the baby’s eyes.

  Anna leaned on the edge of the sink. “Do you know why I married you, Mikkel?”

  He sat back, startled. Anna didn’t usually talk like this. He had wondered, often. Anna could have done better. Married a smart man, a four-year man, even.

  “Will you tell me, sweetheart?”

  “I married you because you said it didn’t matter. I explained I could never have babies and you still wanted me—”

  “Of course I want you.”

  “I told you why I was barren. Why I sold my ovaries. Do you remember?”

  “Your mother was sick. You needed the money.”

  “Yes. But I also said it was easy because I never wanted babies. I never wanted to be a mother.” She leaned forward and gripped his shoulders. “I still don’t. Take her back to the lab.”

  Mikkel stood. He kissed the baby’s forehead. Then he put the baby in Anna’s arms.

  “Her name is Maria,” he said. “After your mother.”

  Mikkel was tired walking up the street toward the bus stop. But that was fatherhood. He would get used to it. Anna would get used to being a mother too. He was sure. All women did.

  The thought of his wife and child kept him warm all the way to the Josefstadt streetcar station. Then a four-year man shoved an elbow in his ribs and spat on his coat. Mikkel watched the spittle freeze and turn white. He stood shivering at the edge of the curb, taking care to stay out of everyone’s way.

  Mikkel relied on Anna’s kindness, sure she would always do the right thing, the generous thing. She was good to him, good
to everyone. For ten years she had taken care of him, cooking, cleaning, making their two rooms into a home. In return he did his best to fill those two rooms with love. It was all he could do.

  As he stood in the wind at the edge of the station, doubts began to creep in with the cold. Why would Anna say she didn’t want to be a mother? It couldn’t be true. They lived surrounded by families—happy, noisy families—three and four, even five generations all living together. Healthy children, happy mothers, proud fathers. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Family everywhere, but he and Anna only had each other.

  Anna must regret being barren. Some part of her, buried deep, must long for children. But she said she didn’t, and if it was true, then something in her must be broken.

  He had seen broken men during his two years in the colonies, men with whole bodies and broken minds, who said crazy things and hurt themselves, hurt others. Anna could never be like them.

  But his doubts grew with every step further from home. By the time he could see the lights of the lab glowing through the falling snow, the doubts were clawing at him. He imagined coming home in the morning to find Anna alone, ready to leave for work, pretending Maria had never been there.

  He turned back home, but then one of the four-year men shouted at him through the glass doors.

  “You’re late, you stupid ass.”

  Mikkel watched his lunch pail slide though the x-ray. The guards ran it back and forth through the machine, just to waste time. Mikkel had to run to the time clock. He stamped his card just as it clicked over to eight.

  Normally Mikkel loved the rhythm of work, the scrubbing, mopping, wiping. Even cleaning toilets brought its own reward. He knew the drip of every tap, every scratch on the porcelain and crack in the tiles. He took an inventory of them night by night as he cleaned, taking his time, double-checking every corner for dust, scanning every window and mirror for streaks, even getting down on his knees to swab behind the toilets, scrubbing away any hint of mildew from the grout, finding all the little nooks and crannies.

  Tonight he rushed through his work, but each room felt like it took twice as long as usual. He kept checking the time, sure he was falling behind. Thinking about Anna dragged on the clock hands. Worrying made him forgetful, too. He left the four-year men’s bathroom with no memory of cleaning it. He had to go back and check just to be sure.

  In the tank room he began to feel better. He loved the noise of the tanks— the bubbling pumps and thumping motors. Here he always took his time, no matter what. It was his favorite place in the whole building. He wasn’t supposed to touch the tanks, but he always took a few extra minutes to polish the steel and glass and check the hose seals. He even tightened the bolts that fixed each heavy tank to the floor and ceiling.

  The tinted glass was just transparent enough to show the babies floating inside. Mikkel watched them grow night by night. He kept a special rag just for polishing the tanks, a soft chamois that a six-year man had discarded years ago. It was specially made for precious things—the logo of a sports car company had long since worn off. He always polished the glass with long slow caressing strokes, sure the babies could feel his touch.

  Two of the tanks were empty. Mikkel polished them too, in their turn, making them perfect for the next baby. Maria’s tank was in the last row on the far side of the room, two from the end. It was refilled but the baby was still too small to see, just a thin filament dangling from the fleshy organ at the top of the tank.

  “Your sister says hello,” Mikkel whispered. “Her mama and papa are proud of her. Maria is going to grow up smart and strong.”

  The filament twisted and drifted in the fluid. Mikkel watched it for a few minutes, wondering what Anna and Maria were doing at that moment. He imagined them curled up in bed, skin to skin, the baby’s beak tucked under Anna’s chin. He squeezed his eyes tight and held the image in his mind, as if he could make it real just by wanting it so badly. And for a few minutes it did feel real, an illusion supported by the comforting tank room sounds.

  But he couldn’t stay there. As he lugged his bins and pails upstairs to the offices, worry began gnawing at him again.

  Women abandoned babies all the time. The mothers and grandmothers in the tenement always had a story to tell about some poor baby left out in the cold by a heartless and unnatural mother. Once, when they were first married, Anna told the woman next door that people did desperate things when they had run out of options. That neighbor still wouldn’t speak to her, years later.

  What if Anna bundled Maria up and put her on the steps of some six-year man’s house? Or left her at the train station?

  He could see Maria now, tucked into their big kitchen pail and covered with a towel. He could see Anna, her face covered by her red scarf, drop the pail on the edge of the Ostbahnhof express platform and walk away.

  No. His Anna would never do that. Never. He wouldn’t think about it anymore. He would pay attention to his work.

  On the wide oak table in the eight-year man’s office he found four peach pastries, their brandy jam dried to a crust. The bakery box was crushed in the garbage bin. When he was done cleaning the office he re-folded it as best he could and put the pastries back inside. Four was good luck. One for each of the guards. Then he made his way down to the basement.

  The incinerator was an iron maw in a brick wall. For years, Mikkel had walked down those concrete steps in the hot red light of its stare to find the sanitary disposal bin bloody but empty, its contents dumped by one of the four-year men who assisted in the labs. Back then, all Mikkel had to do was toss his garbage bags in the incinerator, let them burn down, then switch off the gas, bleach the bin, hose the floor, and mop everything dry.

  But now there was a new eight-year man in charge, and Mikkel had to start the incinerator and empty the disposal bin himself.

  The light from the overhead bulb was barely bright enough to show the trail of blood snaking from the bin to the drain. Mikkel felt his way to the control panel and began the tricky process of firing up the incinerator. The gas dial was stiff and the pilot light button was loose. He pressed it over and over again, trying to find the right angle on the firing pin. When the incinerator finally blasted to life Mikkel had sweated through his coveralls.

  The room lit up with the glow from the incinerator window and he could finally see into the bin. The top layer of bags dripped fluid tinged red and yellow. Most were double- and even triple-bagged, tied with tight knots. But they were torn and leaked. Sharp edges inside the disposal chute hooked and tore on the way down.

  Maria had been single-bagged. Her beak had pierced the plastic, ripped it wide enough for her to breathe. And she had landed at the far edge of the bin, mostly upright. If she had been face down or if another bag had fallen on top of her she could have suffocated.

  Mikkel wrenched open the incinerator door and began emptying the bin, carefully picking up each wet bag and throwing it far into the furnace. Some bags were tiny, just a few glass dishes and a smear of wax. One bag was filled with glass plates that spilled through a tear and shattered at his feet. The biggest bags held clear fluid that burst across the back wall of the incinerator with a hot blast that smelled like meat. He set the bloodiest bags aside, put them down safe on the pitted concrete floor, away from the glass.

  As the bin emptied, a pit began to form in Mikkel’s stomach. He turned away and kicked through the glass, pacing along the far wall where it was a little cooler.

  The tank room had two empty tanks. He’d polished them just a few hours ago, but he hadn’t paid much attention. He’d been thinking about Anna and Maria.

  He knew those babies, the ones who had been in the empty tanks. One was a little boy with a thick, stocky body covered in fine hair. The other was a tiny girl with four arms that ended in stubby knobs. Where were they now? Had they been sent away to the crèche or put down the chute? If they’d gone down the chute they would be in the bin, waiting for him to throw them into the fire with the blood and tank flu
id. With all of the failed experiments.

  Mikkel picked up a bloody bag and hefted it by the seal, feeling the contents with his other hand. The fluid sloshed heavily and clung to the sides of the bag like syrup. There were a few solid pieces inside the bag, but nothing big enough to be a baby, not even a tiny one. He threw it into the incinerator and picked up the other bag.

  Maria would probably be gone when he got home; he understood that now. The thought made a hollow in his chest, a Maria-shaped hole where he’d cuddled her to his heart. But if Maria was gone, if Anna had taken her to the train station and abandoned her, that only meant Anna needed time. He would give her time. He would be patient, like she always was with him, and gentle too. What was broken in her would heal and she would love their children. She would be a wonderful mother. Maybe not today, but soon.

  He would find more babies. Night after night he’d search for them. Maria had survived, so others would survive, too, and he would find them. Find every baby and bring them all home until Anna healed. He would fill their home with love. It was all he could do.

  Naomi is the only author to have two stories in this book.

  CAT PICTURES PLEASE

  Naomi Kritzer

  I don’t want to be evil.

  I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts—I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”—one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct; there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)