The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Where that phrase sprang from in memory, she had no idea. But it had an alarming effect. Felipe swallowed with vast and visible effort, and restored his attention to his driving.

  Nor, during the rest of the bumpy ride, could Elsa coax another word from him save yes and no.

  * * *

  As they drew nearer to the town, the wind bore the sound of a cracked bell’s chime, and on entering the plaza they found the reason for it. Cursing under his breath, Felipe slowed to a bare walking pace.

  The townsfolk were assembled at the church. For a funeral. Being borne from the door was the body of, presumably, a child. It had no coffin, not in this treeless land, but only a coarse canvas shroud. A handcart stood ready to serve in lieu of a hearse.

  Who was substituting for a priest?

  Of course. The alcalde. Who else? The women wore black—but then most of them did, most of the time. The men had put on black armbands, knotted out of strips of cloth, but the mayor had donned a black suit and tie, over a more-or-less white shirt whose collar button he could no longer do up. The women and two or three of the men as well had been weeping, but at the appearance of the jeep they fell silent and turned to stare, their faces full of accusation.

  “We picked a bad day,” Felipe muttered. “Perhaps you ought to change your mind about leaving. If I work on Bernard hard enough, he might agree to ask one of our visitors whether you can hitch a plane ride—”

  For a fleeting instant Elsa could have believed this had been staged for her benefit. But the idea, she concluded, was absurd. No, she was going to brazen it out. Though if the bus arrived late, as had the one that brought her, it could be difficult.… At least, though, she could insist on Felipe waiting with her until it turned up.

  She said as much, and he sighed and nodded, parking the jeep beside the two-armed signpost.

  “I expected you to say that. Of course I’ll stay. And in case of trouble…” He patted something under his jacket. “But,” he added, “if I’d known, I’d have brought a couple of the workers. Armed.”

  “What—?” Elsa had to swallow hard. “What does make them hate you so, Felipe? I’ve tried not to pry into your work. I’ve tried to respect Bernard’s desire to keep it secret till the time is ripe, but I must have a straight answer to at least one question before I leave. I’ve asked before and been fobbed off, but aren’t I entitled to just one snippet of the truth?”

  Making no move to get out, warily eying the townsfolk, Felipe muttered, “Yes, of course. I told you: I wish with all my heart I could have been more frank with you.… But this at least I can explain. The answer, in essence, is in the shroud with that dead child.”

  Elsa shook her head, uncomprehending.

  “Think, woman!” he snapped. “What must it be like for them, superstition-ridden, when they see us in such good health and hardly a month goes by without some child or hale young man or girl being carried off by the sort of fever that laid you so low? Had it not been for Lawrence’s serum, you might not have survived!”

  “You’re saying it’s all due to jealousy?”

  “All? Not all. But I think most.” He started, shading his eyes as he peered into the distance. “Incredible! The bus is running on time for once! Look, see the cloud of dust? It can’t be more than ten minutes away.”

  They’re going to be ten of the longest minutes of my life.

  After the momentary silence, a buzz of muttering had begun among the townsfolk. The alcalde’s authority seemed to be under threat, as though there were a movement to drag Elsa and Felipe from the jeep. Simultaneously, other people—especially three women whom Elsa guessed to be the dead child’s mother and her friends or sisters—were insisting that the funeral proceed as scheduled to the cemetery. As though afraid of trouble, a few of the other bystanders slipped away from the edge of the group. She waited tensely for the outcome.

  Abruptly there was a shout from behind her, and a noise of smashing glass. She twisted her head toward the cantina. From it, staggering drunk and mad with rage, rushed Diego brandishing a pistol, screaming at the top of his voice. She caught just enough of the words to realise he wanted vengeance for the death of his son—

  Before he shot her. Drunk or not, his aim was true.

  She felt the bullet like a blow beneath her left collarbone. It hurled her back against the seat. Pain followed, and the world became a maelstrom whirling her to darkness. With her last grip on consciousness she heard another shot, a scream of agony, and thought, Felipe?

  Not able to guess whether he had fired back, or whether he too had been gunned down.

  * * *

  And then, dizzily, she was awake again. Moments only could have passed: long enough for Diego to be overpowered and dragged away, and the alcalde and his usual companions to reach the jeep. As she opened her eyes, astonished at how little pain she felt (but was that not a bad sign, indicative of death impending?), she saw first them and then Felipe, pistol in hand, ordering them to help her to the ground, bring cloths to wipe the blood and bind her wound.…

  Bastards. Maybe it was all a setup. A drastic trick to make sure I don’t get away so easily. Now they have an excuse to put me back to bed again and keep me there.…

  “Madre de Dios!” said a soft and fearful voice. The words were echoed, but the first to speak them, despite his stated contempt for priests and priest-craft, was Felipe.

  Elsa struggled to sit up. She could. Quite easily.

  The crowd fell back, wide-eyed, everybody including the alcalde making the sign of the cross, some moaning prayers. Why in the—?

  She glanced down at herself. There was blood on the front of her shirt. It had been ripped away on the side where the bullet had entered, exposing her left breast. That, though, was not what they were staring at.

  The hole. The bullet hole. Was closing. The blood. Had already ceased to flow. The pain. Was no worse than an ache. Already.

  Facts entered her mind, sluggishly, and trailed like the trail of a slug the terrible truth of what had been done to her. She was not, though, the first to realise. Felipe was already saying under his breath, “Lawrence. The son of a bitch. Maybe Mina, too. Wanting to take the credit. Wanting to take the money. Who did they have lined up in Cachonga?”

  Everything in the world seemed to recede to a vast distance except herself and Felipe. She drew a deep breath. There was a gurgling noise, and she had to cough up and spit away a mouthful of blood, but it hurt scarcely at all. She said, in English to prevent the locals from understanding, “This time I’m not asking you to admit the truth. I’ve worked it out. You just stand there and suffer!”

  Hands pale-knuckled on his gun, he forced a nod.

  “These people have a right to hate you, don’t they? Because the trial version of what you’re infected with, and me, didn’t work right. Made them sickly, slow-witted, took them off with fevers that you don’t know how to cure!”

  The agony in his face told her as plain as words how right her guess was.

  “How did it get loose?” And when he hesitated: “Tell me, damn you!”

  “The ticks, I suppose,” was his miserable answer. “But Bernard was so sure it wouldn’t be contagious! He thought he’d designed it so it couldn’t be!”

  “And despite his Nobel prize, he was wrong?”

  A miserable nod. “We found out later. Too late…” He swallowed painfully. “I didn’t refuse you last night because I didn’t want you, Elsa. Or because of Patti. I was lying. I didn’t want you to catch—But I should have known! I very nearly did know!”

  “Because I threw off the drug Mina gave me? And woke up too soon?”

  Vaguely from the corner of her eye Elsa noticed that the alcalde and his companions had moved away. The funeral had resumed; the body was on the cart and being pushed toward its humble grave. She paid no heed.

  “You all volunteered to be infected?” And answered her own question before he could because now she knew what Greta had started to say about her bravery in
driving off the bull—something like, Since she doesn’t have the protection the rest of us have.… “Well, why not? Since it makes you pretty well invulnerable! To be tossed and trampled by a bull, and eat a hearty breakfast the next day—”

  And checked, remembering that she had used that phrase before, and coupled it with the cliché about the condemned man, and …

  “But it has to be paid for,” she said. Her heart turned to ice as she listened to the words she was uttering.

  Felipe put away his gun and wiped his forehead, whether of sweat or wind-blown dust she could not tell.

  “Yes. That’s why Bernard won’t announce his results.”

  “Go on.”

  Licking his lips, avoiding eye contact, he said, “It makes you sterile. Men and women, both.”

  A pang of wild relief flooded Elsa’s mind. She thought: For me that’s no drawback at all!

  And calmed in an instant.

  “Is that why there are so few children in Los Tramos?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Who are your visitors, who come by plane?”

  Felipe’s face, that had been like an idol’s carved in stone, twisted into a bitter smile.

  “Can’t you guess? What kind of people most want a technique that can heal bullet wounds and almost every other kind of injury in hours at worst, sometimes in minutes?”

  “In spite of it making people sterile?”

  “Oh, they think of that as being a problem that can be solved by throwing enough money at it—as and when they get control of that much money!”

  Elsa nodded. Were there not candidates enough—dictators at risk of assassination, army commanders dreaming of a force of supermen…? But Felipe was adding in an anxious tone, “You can’t blame Bernard, though! He doesn’t live in the same world as they do. He’s a dreamer, an idealist, a genius!”

  “In other words,” said Elsa stonily, “he thinks he’s right and everybody else is wrong. Don’t contradict. I didn’t tell you, but I finally remembered the scene he made when they gave him his prize. He said he could put the world right single-handed if the cowards and the conservationists would let him! Didn’t he?”

  “I—”

  “Wasn’t there? I’m sure you weren’t. But you’ve worked with him, watched him spend people like renewable resources—”

  “It was Lawrence!” Felipe flared, like any disciple hearing an insult to his teacher. “He—”

  “You’ve told me enough to let me work it out. Under the guise of treating me for tick-borne fever Lawrence infected me with the whatever-it-is—don’t say the name, it won’t mean anything and I don’t want to know. He didn’t realise it might make me resistant to soporific drugs as well, or he’d have told Mina to give me a double dose.” Elsa tugged absently at her torn shirt, wondering whether she could tie it together, and decided it was impossible. She reached for her backpack, trying to remember which compartment she had stowed her other shirts in. And went on:

  “And it’s your opinion, or suspicion rather, that he must have struck a bargain with one of your visitors, behind Bernard’s back. He arranged that if someone like me turned up, he’d give me an injection of the stuff and either persuade Bernard to let me fly out or arrange for someone to kidnap me at my next stop and pass me on. You said you wondered who he has waiting at Cachonga, or words to that effect. Whereupon—”

  She pulled off and tossed aside the ruined shirt, heedless of the eyes that were staring from all corners of the plaza and the windows of every house in sight.

  Donning a clean intact one, she concluded, “Whereupon he and Mina would be handsomely rewarded, and the rest of you, including Snider, would be left with the problem of curing the sterility effect before it was too late. Is the stuff very infectious?”

  “Not infectious. It can’t survive outside the body. Contagious.”

  “Like AIDS? Like leprosy?”

  “I guess. But once it’s established in your system, you just throw those off. And pretty well everything else, down to the common cold. It—well, it mends you.”

  The grumbling of the bus was loud by now. It would enter the town in no more than another minute. Felipe glanced around.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Elsa’s hand moved like lightning. She snatched the gun from under his coat and levelled it at his belly.

  “I’m going to Cachonga,” she said calmly. “And I propose to get laid there. I don’t like men all that much, but I propose to get laid a lot because in a country like this men can pass it on to women more easily than I can. And at every other place I move on to. But I’m not going to take the bus.”

  “What?” Felipe put his hand to his head, as though dizzy.

  “No. I’m going to drive there. You and I are going to wait until the bus has left. Then we are going to tank up the jeep and buy as many extra cans of gas as possible. Then you are going to drive me, at gunpoint, about twenty kilometres. I happen to be quite good with these things”—she hefted the pistol—“and I am one hundred per cent certain that a hole in your brain would not repair itself the way muscles do, and bones. Then you are going to walk back to the Foundation and tell your precious Nobelist that it is up to him, and you, to save the world. They’d better do it fast. I rather like the idea that poor people may stop breeding and become invulnerable.”

  “You’re crazy!” Felipe whispered. The bus arrived. The townsfolk waited out the usual routine—the delivery of mail and official notices—and wondered aloud why Elsa wasn’t getting on. Concealing the gun with her body, she waved a cheerful greeting to the policeman, in case he was the same one.

  Its brief visit concluded, the bus roared away. Watching Felipe closely, Elsa gave a thin smile.

  “You’re right, of course. The jeep can easily overtake it. When I drop you off, you can wait for it to catch up and tell the policeman to radio ahead and have me met at the terminal.… My God, I was right! I didn’t think I was, but I just read it in your face!”

  Insofar as he could, Felipe turned pale.

  “Isn’t that what you’d do if I let you?” she pressed.

  “I’ve got to stop you carrying out this crazy plan! You can’t turn it loose—”

  “Why not? Bernard’s been dickering—you said as much—with people whose only interest in his project is to turn it loose. You didn’t try to stop them, did you? Didn’t sabotage their planes on the runway, shoot them when their backs were turned!”

  It appeared that working up a fine rage helped the process of healing; now, she felt scarcely more than the ache of an old bruise.

  “So we will do exactly as I said. Bar one thing. I’m not going on to Cachonga. I’m going back to Vilagustin. And I think I’ll make you walk thirty kilometres. Get in!”

  * * *

  As the jeep rolled through the gathering darkness, he pleaded with her until his voice grew hoarse, and every time she said, “I think it’s time to turn the tables.”

  “Why, though? Why?”

  To which she merely shrugged. Finally, however, as the distance she had promised ticked up on the counter, she gave in and answered. Possibly, until that much time had passed, she hadn’t yet worked out her own motives … but that was nothing new in her life.

  “No matter how dazzled you are by the fat cattle, the new forest, doesn’t it make you sick, as a citizen of this country, to find experiments being conducted here that would be forbidden in a more advanced nation?”

  “Yes, of course. But—”

  “There is no but! For much too long the rich countries have treated poor ones as a dumping ground! I’ve seen! I don’t just mean poisonous garbage and radioactive waste—I mean banned drugs sold to the sick and ignorant! Surplus dried milk peddled to feed children who’d thrive better on their mother’s own, if their mothers were well enough to keep their breasts full! I like the idea—I told you!—I love the idea that in a few years people in poor countries won’t have so many kids to worry about, and when the rich send armies
to attack them, they’ll get up again and go on fighting! Unless of course they’re hit in a vital spot—No, Felipe. Don’t try anything. Sure my arm is getting tired of keeping this gun trained on your head, but thanks to Lawrence I’m not a tenth as tired as I would have been without the treatment.… Right. That’ll do. This is as near to the middle of nowhere as I remember passing on the way to Los Tramos. Out you go.”

  Almost snivelling, he obeyed, and she slid into the driving seat.

  “Leave me food and water, at least!” he begged.

  “You should have thought of that before,” she said composedly. “But I don’t suppose we’re much more vulnerable to thirst than we are to fatigue, not after what’s been done to us. You’ll make it. And—”

  “What?”

  She bent a burning gaze on him.

  “When you get back to the Foundation, tell the truth.”

  Reaching behind her with one hand, but never taking her eyes from him, she groped in her backpack for a chocolate bar and tossed it to him.

  “Wait! Elsa, wait—!”

  “No!” she snapped. “You wait, along with everybody else! But count yourself lucky! You have a chance to do something about it! Better hurry, though! And when you find the antidote for the sterility effect, don’t let it be reserved for the rich!”

  She gunned the engine and roared down the pathway of her headlights, leaving him weeping amid the grassy desert.

  * * *

  The police helicopter swooped when Elsa was still ten kilometres short of Vilagustin. Riddled by machine gun fire, the gas cans in the jeep exploded. When nothing much was left, the copter’s crew sprayed the wreckage with frozen carbon dioxide for fear stray sparks might fire the pampa, landed, and bore away her skull so it could be identified from the dentition. In the official record she was entered as a foreigner who had kidnapped a citizen and stolen a vehicle at gunpoint. Which, of course, was true.

  * * *

  Shortly after began the unification of Latin America into a world power, under the sway of the first soldiers since the ancient Persian Empire to be called Immortals, and with better reason: infantry who could be shot to ribbons on the battlefield but, if their brains remained intact, came back to fight again, again, again. Naturally, providing the animal protein necessary for their recovery called for confiscation of all sorts of livestock, but new and more productive strains had luckily appeared, let loose by accident—so rumour said—from some secret centre of research. (By then the Snider Foundation had of course been sacked, its staff was dead, its records burned.)