The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  She waited, panting, terrified. A minute later she heard Felipe calling.

  “Here! Over here! Help!”

  Elsa could no more have resisted that appeal than (the comparison struck her as ironical even as it passed through her mind) a mother could ignore the crying of her child. She jumped up and ran toward him. The gate was open, the alarms had been switched off, and he was kneeling beside a young man whose clothes were smeared with red.

  Hearing her footsteps but not glancing up, he said furiously, “Why won’t they let us help them before it’s too late? They always bring us the ones that are too far gone! Takes the fear of death to make them see sense, doesn’t it? Here, we must get him inside.”

  Then, and only then, did he realise who had come to his aid.

  Sitting back on his heels, his face a mask of incredulity, he said, “You? I thought—Oh, never mind! Don’t just stand there like a dummy! Take his feet!”

  But in the same moment as Felipe recognised her, Elsa had recognised who was lying blood-weltered on the ground.

  Juan.

  His eyes opened. His tongue moved across his lips. He said something very faintly. She thought it might possibly have been, “Madre…”

  And his eyes closed, his head lolled aside, and he was dead.

  And then there were more people coming from the direction of town: the workers who had attended the dance. Elsa didn’t have to carry the boy’s feet, after all. She followed dumbly at a distance, half-hearing what was being said: some drunk had insulted Juan’s mother once too often; the boy had rushed at him with a kitchen knife; drunk though he was, the other man was faster, and he too had a knife, a fighting knife.…

  The runway lights came on; the plane started up; the important visitor was escorted back to it, and it took off in a considerable hurry.

  But all that happened a long way away.

  * * *

  Early in the morning, shortly after dawn, people from Los Tramos came for Juan’s body, doomed no doubt to occupy another mounded grave with no more memorial than a cross sketched in pebbles, with no priest to conduct his funeral. She woke because one of the bearers was sobbing, the same man as last night. It had to be Diego, Juan’s father.

  But by the time she had slipped out of bed, donned her robe, crept to the head of the stairs, they were gone. She caught one glimpse of them leaving through the main gate.

  Good-bye, Juan who liked independent women.

  * * *

  She said at breakfast, “When is the next bus?”

  Grave, Bernard said, “I can well understand your wish to be on your way, especially after what occurred last night. But you can scarcely blame us if the natives regard our powers as magical.”

  Elsa had slept badly and her mind was fuzzy. She looked at him blankly.

  “Magical!” Bernard repeated. “It isn’t the first time such a thing has happened, is it, Greta?”

  His wife shook her head. “Just the first time it was so—so violent. You must understand, my dear, that for all their rejection of our overtures, the townsfolk do regard us with a sort of superstitious awe. They bring us their dying relatives, of all ages from babyhood to senility, and leave them at the gate expecting us to work a miracle. If only they had the sense to come when there’s still hope! I blame it on the priest, myself. Excuse me”—to Felipe and his companions.

  “Since coming here,” Felipe answered curtly, “I’ve seen how useless priests really are. I suspected it; now I know.”

  “You still haven’t told me,” Elsa said. “When does the next bus leave?”

  A multiple exchange of glances.

  “There was one yesterday,” Lawrence said at length.

  Trapped …

  Elsa forced a smile to her face. “I’ll catch the next, then. I should be properly rested up. Meantime, whatever I can do to help, I will. I’d like to repay your generosity in part, at least.”

  The eyes turned to her were cold and blank as stones. Stones from the dried-up riverbeds that she had crossed. Not for the first time she felt she had come to a place that was somehow unreal.

  Were they afraid to let her go, even though she hadn’t seen their mysterious visitor?

  Eventually Bernard pushed his chair back, smiling.

  “That’s very kind. I’m sure we all appreciate the offer. But you already know the greatest service you can perform before you leave.”

  “Uh … Do I?”

  “Sure you do.” Lawrence was smiling too. “A few c.c. of blood so we can check whether it is your group that made you react so violently to those tick bites. What group are you, by the way—do you know?”

  “O positive.”

  “So am I!” Lawrence looked theatrically lugubrious. “Well, bang goes another favourite hypothesis. I’ll have to figure out a new one.”

  And somehow everybody was laughing and dispersing for the day’s work before Elsa had time to voice the rest of what was on her mind. She had intended to promise that if they wished, she would refrain for the rest of her life from mentioning the Snider Foundation, or at least until its director chose to seek publicity. In other words, she had intended to forestall what she expected they’d insist on.

  Whether their disregard of the matter was welcome, or sinister, she could not tell.

  Into the bargain, she wanted to ask why, after being drugged, she had woken up so soon. But the room emptied so suddenly, and then the entire house, that she had no chance to speak of that, either.

  * * *

  As though her decision to depart as soon as possible had erased her from the staff’s collective consciousness, once Lawrence had withdrawn his syringeful of blood from her arm, she found herself left entirely to her own devices.

  And at a total loss.

  It was a fine morning, but clouds were building on the horizon and there was a hint of dampness in the air, as though the rains were due to break early. She wandered around the estate at random, with only Panza for company, trying to make sense of what had happened to her.

  Did they or did they not care that she had seen so much of the achievements they disdained to publicise? Of course she had no intention of flying straight home next chance she got and telling the world, for a fat fee, where Snider the maverick Nobelist was proving his point; how, though, could she have convinced them she was to be trusted?

  There was a lot of money behind this project; that she was certain of. And people with funds on that scale—

  A cry.

  She whirled. Chance had brought her back to the bull pasture. (In passing, she registered that the canted fence post had been set upright.) And Felipe was here again, with two of the local hands—no, not local: Greta’s term was more apt, native—and it looked as though he had been trying to take a sample of the saliva that the largest young bull drooled. Had she seen such a thing done before? She felt she must have, if not here then elsewhere on her travels, for until this moment she had felt no qualms.

  Now, in a single instant, she was possessed by terror.

  For, discovering his chief rival was distracted, the next-to-largest bull was lowering his head to charge—

  And did, and tossed Felipe like a straw-stuffed dummy, while the native workers fled.

  There was a gap in the progress of time.

  Then, not knowing how she came to be there, she was astride his prostrate body, shouting and waving as though her windmill arms could drive the bulls away, while Panza snapped and snarled at their heels and help came at a run: Lawrence, Armin, two other labourers with pitchforks held like spears. Another few seconds, and Lawrence was clapping her on the back, babbling congratulations, and the bulls were in headlong retreat.

  Felipe, though …

  Elsa looked down at him. His eyes were closed. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, ajar and gasping. She thought of Juan and wished she didn’t have to, but she did. She husked, “Felipe…”

  “Don’t worry.” Lawrence had regained his normal calm. “He’ll be all right to
morrow. Fine! You’ll see!”

  Absurdly Elsa said, “What are you doing here? I thought you were testing my blood.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. Better than okay, in fact. I never dreamed anybody could recover so quickly from—”

  He caught himself. But his words had set her mind ablaze. She had never felt such piercing insight in her life.

  “From the drug that Mina gave me in my chocolate?”

  “What nonsense!” But he had to interrupt and correct himself. “What sort of nonsense is that? You think you were drugged by Mina—by my wife? No, you were overtired after your long day’s walk. I said as much … Look, we must take Felipe indoors and dress his wounds. We can’t talk now.”

  * * *

  And, next day at breakfast, even as she was bracing herself to ask how Felipe was:

  “Oh my God! Is it really you?”

  Imagining some duplicate had been contrived, some twin. It would not have been too much, she’d come to think, given the miracles these people could perform with living creatures.

  Even that, though, was not as terrifying as the reality. Here he was, paler than usual, moving unsteadily perhaps but without need of assistance, and betraying no other trace of the injuries he must have suffered. (She had seen him tossed and trampled: horn-stabs, broken ribs, maybe concussion.) And there was small sign of weakness in the arms he threw around her.

  “Elsa! I don’t know how to thank you! It was so brave of you! So brave! To drive the bull away when it had knocked me out!”

  “Especially since—”

  That came from Greta, and broke off. Her husband had laid a hand on her wrist, and, Elsa thought, closed tight. He said now, jovially, “Yes! It was heroic! Come! Sit down, and let us toast in coffee, since that’s what there is, your courage when you saved Felipe’s life! When you arrived so unexpectedly, something about you told me that we ought to make you welcome in our little group. I don’t know what. That is, I didn’t then. But now I do!”

  He raised his cup and beamed at her.

  Blushing—she who had imagined nothing in the world could make her blush again, yet grateful for it, since it masked her terror—Elsa smiled at those who copied their leader’s gesture. All the time wondering:

  What did Greta mean to say, that was cut short?

  And why, and how, was Felipe on his feet again so soon?

  And what on earth did Bernard mean? He wasn’t anywhere around when she arrived. The first time that they met, she was already weak with fever.…

  Beside such questions, the identity of the recent visitor signified nothing.

  * * *

  And she could obtain no answers. The community had closed against her, oyster-tight. She tried to talk to those whom she had come to regard as friends, and met a wall of silence. For all their protestations she was no longer welcome even in the kitchen.

  As she drifted aimlessly around the house, around the nearby grounds, struggling to control her impulse to flee, she reverted again and again to the suspicion that she was the subject of continual secret debate. She could imagine the matters that were being discussed: had she seen too much; did she understand too much; had she glimpsed the latest visitor; had she identified him; if she returned to the States, would she spread sensational rumours about the Foundation…?

  Perhaps also: how had she recovered so quickly from the drug in her chocolate? She was sure that was what Lawrence had been on the point of betraying, and the explanation for Felipe’s astonishment on finding her at his side.

  As though her fever were even yet affecting her brain, she felt she was becoming paranoid. And could not escape the old, no longer funny, cliché:

  Paranoids too have real enemies.…

  The sole exception was Felipe. Despite his astonishing physical recovery, he admitted to not yet being capable of resuming his normal work—whatever it was; on that subject he refused to be drawn—but when he could snatch a chance, away from Lawrence’s ministrations or the tests Bernard and Greta wanted to perform on him, to check, he said, the rate his wounds were healing, he sought out Elsa and repeated his effusive gratitude. It wasn’t hard to track her down. Wherever she had wandered to, he needed only to whistle and Panza, now her regular companion, would bark a reply.

  If anything, though, talking to Felipe was worse than being left to her own thoughts because it filled her with a sense of betrayal. It became plainer and plainer that he wanted—wanted desperately—to confide in her, if only out of obligation. But some higher loyalty, presumably to the Sniders, prevented him.

  Or was it that simple? Was he perhaps afraid of the consequences if he broached the secrets she was now certain underlay the Foundation’s veneer of humanitarian scientific research? Not that she had any idea what they might be, but she was well aware of what might happen to even the most disinterested research programme once sufficient money was at stake. All too often she had witnessed the way in which pharmaceutical companies strove to recoup from the Third World profits they had been deprived of in advanced countries, thanks to legislation against drugs with dangerous side effects.

  Even as she systematically played on Felipe’s sense of indebtedness, she was wondering whether it would not be more honourable to confront Bernard directly, or better yet, Greta, who might be more vulnerable—

  No. Now she was being sexist.

  But she had resolved not to leave without fathoming at least part of the mystery … and thought of the original meaning of that word: craft, skill, trade secret.

  That was what they were concealing. She was convinced of it now. On an isolated farmstead in—ah, but she could not say backwoods, for there were no woods: so, instead (farmstead/instead? She was confused anew)—this grassy desert, some process was afoot that caused millionaires to call by in their private planes, risking a crash away from proper radar beacons, risking exposure thanks to her, a stranger. Not a disinterested programme for the rehabilitation of the despoiled areas of Mother Earth. A project designed to make those who invested in it billionaires.

  At whose expense?

  Well—everybody else’s. The planet, after all, was finite.

  And the time of her bus was drawing near, and she still knew nothing she could impart to anyone by way of warning. She didn’t even know what she would be uttering a warning against. She sensed, she suspected … yet she did not know.

  What can I swear to? That someone who should have lain at death’s door from his injuries was on his feet next day and eating breakfast? They’d laugh at me! They’d cheer!

  I wish I didn’t keep remembering the young men at Los Tramos, shivering with fever. And that their priest is dead and hasn’t been replaced.

  And since even her shameless pumping of Felipe evoked no solid data, she began to suspect she might, after all, be misjudging the Sniders. After all, that amazing plantation …

  * * *

  On the last evening she grew desperate enough to try to seduce Felipe. Clad only in her towelling robe she stole to his room—she had found out which one he slept in, and alone—tapped on the door, and said she wanted to before she left. He was proofed against her, though; he kissed her, with much warmth and many thanks, but chastely on the cheek, and pleaded his involvement with young Patti.

  And sent her back to bed with promises to drive her to town in good time for the bus.

  He, though, somehow, wasn’t speaking. In his voice she heard the boom of Bernard Snider, as though all the private arguments had tended to the same conclusion:

  Let her go. She doesn’t realise what she’s stumbled on. And no one that she talks to will believe her.

  To herself she said bitterly: They’re right. I don’t know what I’ve stumbled on. Now I suppose I never shall. Not, at least, until Bernard the Nobel laureate chooses to divulge it. Ah, well. So what? In India I met a dozen teachers who were convinced they could transform the world with no supporting evidence at all.

  * * *

  Next afternoon:

  Bernard emer
ged from his laboratory to embrace her; so did Greta; Lawrence and Mina did the same; they all did, and they all said much the same: how glad they were that Elsa had found her way here; what a welcome distraction her presence had been from their routine; how much they admired her bravery in driving the bulls away from Felipe.…

  It was like being entwined by snakes: dry-rustling, not in the least slimy, but revolting on a level so deep in her subconscious that she dared not guess the reason for it.

  Of those who took their leave of her, she found only one less than disgusting: Panza, who came up and wagged his tail and licked her hand and went back to his usual duties.

  Pity. She had had the momentary impulse to ask whether he might ride along.

  “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten anything? Mina, you gave back all her clothes from being laundered?”

  Bernard, imposing, officious, very much el Jefe. And adding to Greta, “She didn’t have a camera, did she?”

  Another hint. Another clue she would have like to follow up. But it was far too late. She was waving good-bye from the jeep as it bounced down the track to town, far rougher to four wheels than to her feet.

  They also waved. As though they had been ordered to.

  * * *

  During the brief interval while they were out of sight of both the Foundation and Los Tramos, Felipe said, “I’m sorry, Elsa.”

  “What for?”

  “I would have liked to tell you more.”

  “What about?”

  “Our work, of course. But it is so important, so very unbelievably important.… Perhaps in a few years it will be safe to tell you.”

  “In a few years you’ll have forgotten all about me.”

  “No!” He turned to stare at her for so long she grew afraid he might overlook the need to steer. “No, I swear, for so long as I live, I shall not forget the brave woman who drove away the bull!”

  “It didn’t do you much harm, did it? Back on your feet next morning, the condemned man eating a hearty breakfast!”