Year's Best Science Fiction 02 # 1985

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Well, I could have argued all of that. But the only part I answered, as we stopped to unlock the chain-link gate, was the last part. And all I said was, “I don’t think so.”

  Mooney laughed out loud. “You always were a googoo,” he said. “You sure Michaelis didn’t stick you with some of the stuff in reverse?”

  I hadn’t been able to find the entrance of the wine cellar, but that pair of NSA men had no trouble at all. They realized at once that there had to be a delivery system to the main dining room—I hadn’t thought of that. So that’s where they went, and found a small elevator shaft that went two stories down. There wasn’t any elevator, but there were ropes and Mooney’s partner climbed down while Mooney and I went back to the shopping floor. About two minutes after we got there a painters’ scaffold at the end of the hall went over with a crash, and the NSA man pushed his way out of the door it had concealed. Mooney gave me a contemptuous look. “Fire stairs,” he explained. “They had to be there. There has to be another entrance, too—outside, so they can deliver the wine by truck.”

  He was right again. From the inside it was easy to spot, even though we had only flashlights to see what we were doing. When Mooney pushed it open we got a flood of tropical light coming, and a terrible smell to go with it. For a moment I wondered if the graveyard wind had shifted again, but it was only a pile of garbage—rotted garbage—long-gone lobster shells and sweepings from the mall and trash of all kinds. It wasn’t surprising no one had found the entrance from outside; the stink was discouraging.

  No matter what else I was, I was still a man paid to do a job by his company. So while the NSA team was prodding and peering and taking flash pictures, I was looking at the cellar. It was large enough to handle all the wines a first-class sommelier might want to store; the walls were solid, and the temperature good. With that outside door kept closed, it would be no problem to keep any vintage safely resting here. The Dutchman shouldn’t have given up so easily, just because he was faced with a lot of lawsuits—but maybe, as Dick Kavilan had said, people were meaner then.

  I blinked when Joe Mooney poked his flashlight in my face. “What are you daydreaming about?” he demanded.

  I pushed his hand away. “Have you seen everything you need?” I asked.

  He looked around. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, really. Along one wall there were large glass tanks—empty, except for a scummy inch or two of liquid at the bottom of some of them, fishy smelling and unappetizing. There were smaller tanks on the floor, and marks on the rubber tile to show where other things had been that now were gone. “He took everything that matters out,” he grumbled. “Son of a bitch! He got clean away.”

  “We’ll find him,” his partner said.

  “Damn right, but what was he doing here? Trying out his stuff on the natives?” Mooney looked at me searchingly. “What do you think, Wenright? Have you heard of any cases of epidemic craziness on the island?”

  I shrugged. “I did my part when I called you,” I said. “Now all I want is to go home.”

  But it wasn’t quite true. There was something else I wanted, and that was to know if there was any chance at all that what I was beginning to suspect might be true.

  The next day I was on the home-bound jet, taking a drink from the stew in the first-class section and still trying to convince myself that what I believed was possible. The people were meaner then. It wasn’t just an offhand remark of Kavilan’s; the hotel manager told me as I was checking out that it was true, yes, a few years ago he had a lot of trouble with help, but lately everybody seemed a lot friendlier. Val Michaelis was a decent man. I’d always believed that, in the face of the indecencies of his work at the labs … having left, would he go on performing indecencies?

  Could it be that Michaelis had in fact found a different kind of virus? One that worked on different parts of the brain, for different purposes? That made people happier and more gentle, instead of suspicious, paranoid, and dangerous?

  I was neither biologist nor brain anatomist to guess if that could be true. But I had the evidence of my eyes. Something had changed the isle from mean, litigious, grasping—from the normal state of the rest of the world—to what I had seen around me. It had even worked on me. It was not just Edna Buckner’s sweet self, sweet though she was, that had let me discharge eight years of guilt and horror in one night. And right here on this plane, the grinning tour groups in the back and even the older, more sedate first-class passengers around me testified that something had happened to them … .

  Not all the first-class passengers.

  Just across the aisle from me one couple was busy berating the stewardess. They didn’t like their appetizer.

  “Langouste salad, you call it?” snapped the man. “I call it poison. Didn’t you ever hear of allergy? Jesus, we’ve been spending the whole week trying to keep them from pushing those damned lobsters on us everywhere we went … .”

  Lobsters.

  Lobsters were neither mammal nor insects. And the particular strains of Retroviridae that wouldn’t reproduce in either, I remember, had done just fine in crustaceans.

  Like lobsters.

  V

  The NSA team caught up with me again six months later, in my office. I was just getting ready to leave, to pick Edna up for the drive down to Chesapeake Bay, where the company was considering the acquisition of an elderly and declining hotel. I told them I was in a hurry.

  “This is official business,” Mooney’s partner growled, but Mooney shook his head.

  “We won’t keep you long, Wenright. Michaelis has been reported in the States. Have you heard anything from him?”

  “Where in the States?”

  “None of your business,” he snapped, and then shrugged, “Maryland.”

  I said, “That would be pretty foolish of him, wouldn’t it?” He didn’t respond, just looked at me. “No,” I said, “I haven’t heard anything at all.”

  He obviously had not expected anything more. He gave me a routinely nasty look, the whatever-it-is-you’re-up-to-you-won’t-get-away-with-it kind, and stood up to go. His partner gave me the routinely unpleasant warning: “We’ll be watching you,” he said.

  I laughed. “I’m sure you will. And don’t you think Michaelis will figure that out, too?”

  That night I told Edna about the interview, though I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t care about that, having already told her so much that I wasn’t supposed to about Michaelis’s work and my suspicions. There was a lot of laws that said I should have kept my mouth shut, and I had broken all of them.

  She nibbled at her salad, nodding. We were dining in the hotel’s open-air restaurant; it was late spring, and nearly as warm as it had been back on the island. “I hope he gets away,” she said.

  “I hope more than that. I hope he lives and prospers with his work.”

  She giggled. “Johnny Happyseed,” she said.

  I shook my head slightly, because the maitre d’ was approaching and I didn’t want him to hear. He was a plump young man with visions of a career at the Plaza, and he knew what I was there for. He was desperately anxious to make my report favorable. The hotel itself was fine. It was the top management that was incompetent, and if we bought it out there would be changes—as he knew. Whether he would be one of the changes I didn’t yet know.

  So when he asked, “Is everything satisfactory, Mr. Wenright?” he was asking about more than the meal. I hadn’t been there long enough to have made up my mind—and certainly wouldn’t have told him if I had. I only smiled, and he pressed on: “This is really a delightful old hotel, Mr. Wenright, with all sorts of marvelous historical associations. And it’s been kept up very well, as you’ll see. Of course, some improvements are always in order—but we get a first-class clientele, especially in the softshell crab season. Congressmen. Senators. Diplomats. Every year we get a series of seminars with Pentagon people—”

  Edna dropped her fork.

  I didn’t, but I was glad to have him distracted
by the necessity of clapping his hands so that a busboy could rush up at once with a fresh one. Then I said, “Tell me, isn’t it true that the crabbing has been very poor lately? Some sort of disease among the shellfish?”

  “Yes, that’s true, Mr. Wenright,” he admitted, but added eagerly, “I’m sure they’ll come back.”

  I said, “I absolutely guarantee it.” He left chuckling, and wondering if he’d missed the point of the joke.

  I looked at Edna. She looked at me. We both nodded.

  But all either of us said, after quite a while, was Edna’s, “I wonder what kind of seafood they eat in Moscow?”

  PAT CADIGAN

  Rock On

  Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and now lives in Overland Park, Kansas, where she works for Hallmark Cards. One of the best new writers in SF, Cadigan made her first professional sale in 1980, to New Dimensions, and soon became a frequent contributor to Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Shadows, among other markets. She is the co-editor, along with husband Arnie Fenner, of Shayol, perhaps the best of the semiprozines; it was honored with a World Fantasy Award in the “Special Achievement, Non-Professional” category in 1981. She has also served as a World Fantasy Award judge, and as Chairwoman of the Nebula Award Jury. She is currently at work on her first novel, tentatively entitled Captives. Her story “Nearly Departed” was in our First Annual Collection.

  In the vivid and compassionate story that follows, she demonstrates the truth of the old adage “rock ‘n’ roll never forgets” … even if you want it to.

  Rain woke me. I thought, shit, here I am, Lady Rain-in-the-Face, because that’s where it was hitting, right in the old face. Sat up and saw I was still on Newbury Street. See beautiful downtown Boston. Was Newbury Street downtown? In the middle of the night, did it matter? No, it did not. And not a soul in sight. Like everybody said, let’s get Gina drunk and while she’s passed out, we’ll all move to Vermont. Do I love New England? A great place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit here.

  I smeared my hair out of my eyes and wondered if anyone was looking for me now. Hey, anybody shy a forty-year-old rock ‘n’ roll sinner?

  I scuttled into the doorway of one of those quaint old buildings where there was a shop with the entrance below ground level. A little awning kept the rain off but pissed water down in a maddening beat. Wrung the water out of my wrap-pants and my hair and just sat being damp. Cold, too, I guess, but didn’t feel that so much.

  Sat a long time with my chin on my knees: you know, it made me feel like a kid again. When I started nodding my head, I began to pick up on something. Just primal but I tap into that amazing well. Man-O-War, if you could see me now. By the time the blueboys found me, I was rocking pretty good.

  And that was the punchline. I’d never tried to get up and leave, but if I had, I’d have found I was locked into place in a sticky field. Made to catch the b&e kids in the act until the blueboys could get around to coming out and getting them. I’d been sitting in a trap and digging it. The story of my life.

  They were nice to me. Led me, read me, dried me out. Fined me a hundred, sent me on my way in time for breakfast.

  Awful time to see and be seen, righteous awful. For the first three hours after you get up, people can tell whether you’ve got a broken heart or not. The solution is, either you get up real early so your camouflage is in place by the time everybody else is out, or don’t go to bed. Don’t go to bed ought to work all the time, but it doesn’t. Sometimes when you don’t go to bed, people can see whether you’ve got a broken heart all day long. I schlepped it, searching for an uncrowded breakfast bar and not looking at anyone who was looking at me. But I had this urge to stop random pedestrians and say, Yeah, yeah, it’s true, but it was rock ‘n’ roll broke my poor old heart, not a person, don’t cry for me or I’ll pop your chocks.

  I went around and up and down and all over until I found Tremont Street. It had been the pounder with that group from the Detroit Crater—the name was gone but the malady lingered on—anyway, him, he’d been the one told me Tremont had the best breakfast bars in the world, especially when you were coming off a bottle-drunk you couldn’t remember.

  When the c’muters cleared out some, I found a space at a Greek hole-in-the-wall. We shut down 10:30 A.M. sharp, get the hell out when you’re done, counter service only, take it or shake it. I like a place with Attitude. I folded a seat down and asked for coffee and a feta cheese omelette. Came with home fries from the home fries mountain in corner of the grill (no microwave gar-bazhe, hoo-ray). They shot my retinas before they even brought my coffee, and while I was pouring the cream, they checked my credit. Was that badass? It was badass. Did I care? I did not. No waste, no machines when a human could do it, and real food, none of this edible polyester that slips clear through you so you can stay looking like a famine victim, my deah.

  They came in when I was half-finished with the omelette. Went all night by the look and sound of them, but I didn’t check their faces for broken hearts. Made me nervous but I thought, well, they’re tired; who’s going to notice this old lady? Nobody.

  Wrong again. I became visible to them right after they got their retinas shot. Seventeen-year-old boy with tattooed cheeks and a forked tongue leaned forward and hissed like a snake.

  “Sssssssinner.”

  The other four with him perked right up. “Where?” “Whose?” “In here?”

  “Rock ‘n’ roll ssssssinner.”

  The lady identified me. She bore much resemblance to nobody at all, and if she had a heart it wasn’t even sprained a little. With a sinner, she was probably Madame Magnifica. “Gina,” she said, with all confidence.

  My left eye tic’d. Oh, please. Feta cheese on my knees. What the hell, I thought, I’ll nod, they’ll nod, I’ll eat, I’ll go. And then somebody whispered the word, reward.

  I dropped my fork and ran.

  Safe enough, I figured. Were they all going to chase me before they got their Greek breakfasts? No, they were not. They sent the lady after me.

  She was much the younger, and she tackled me in the middle of a crosswalk when the light changed. A car hopped over us, its undercarriage just ruffling the top of her hard copper hair.

  “Just come back and finish your omelette. Or we’ll buy you another.”

  “No.”

  She yanked me up and pulled me out of the street. “Come on.” People were staring but Tremont’s full of theatres. You see that here, live theatre, you can still get it. She put a bring-along on my wrist and brought me along, back to the breakfast bar, where they’d sold the rest of my omelette at a discount to a bum. The lady and her group made room for me among themselves and bought me another cup of coffee.

  “How can you eat and drink with a forked tongue?” I asked Tattooed Cheeks. He showed me. A little appliance underneath, like a zipper. The Featherweight to the left of the big boy on the lady’s other side leaned over and frowned at me.

  “Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t turn you in for Man-O-War’s reward.”

  I shook my head. “I’m through. This sinner’s been absolved.”

  “You’re legally bound by contract,” said the lady. “But we could c’noodle something. Buy Man-O-War out, sue on your behalf for nonfulfillment. We’re Misbegotten. Oley.” She pointed at herself. “Pidge.” That was the silent type next to her. “Percy.” The big boy. “Krait.” Mr. Tongue. “Gus.” Featherweight. “We’ll take care of you.”

  I shook my head again. “If you’re going to turn me in, turn me in and collect. The credit ought to buy you the best sinner ever there was.”

  “We can be good to you.”

  “I don’t have it any more. It’s gone. All my rock ‘n’ roll sins have been forgiven.”

  “Untrue,” said the big boy. Automatically, I started to picture on him and shut it down hard. “Man-O-War would have thrown you out if it were gone. You wouldn’t have run.”

&
nbsp; “I didn’t want to tell him. Leave me alone. I just want to go and sin no more, see? Play with yourselves, I’m not helping.” I grabbed the counter with both hands and held on. So what were they going to do, pop me one and carry me off?

  As a matter of fact, they did.

  In the beginning, I thought, and the echo effect was stupendous. In the beginning … the beginning … the beginning …

  In the beginning, the sinner was not human. I know because I’m old enough to remember.

  They were all there, little more than phantoms. Misbegotten. Where do they get those names? I’m old enough to remember. Oingo-Boingo and Bow-Wow-Wow. Forty, did I say? Oooh, just a little past, a little close to a lot. Old rockers never die, they just keep rocking on. I never saw The Who, Moon was dead before I was born. But I remember, barely old enough to stand, rocking in my mother’s arms while thousands screamed and clapped and danced in their seats. Start me up … if you start me up, I’ll never stop … 763 Strings did a rendition for elevator and dentist’s office, I remember that, too. And that wasn’t the worst of it.

  They hung on the memories, pulling more from me, turning me inside out. Are you experienced? Only a record of my father’s because he’d died, too, before my parents even met and nobody else ever dared ask that question. Are you experienced? … Well, I am.

  (Well, I am.)

  Five against one and I couldn’t push them away. Only, can you call it rape when you know you’re going to like it? Well, if I couldn’t get away, then I’d give them the ride of their lives. Jerkin’ Crocus didn’t kill me but she sure came near … .

  The big boy faded in first, big and wild and too much badass to him. I reached out, held him tight, showing him. The beat from the night in the rain, I gave it to him, fed it to his heart and made him live it. Then came the lady, putting down the bass theme. She jittered, but mostly in the right places.