Year's Best Scifi 7 Part 34

At 0140 on 15th October, Sam woke and lay there in the dark, listening to the wind stir in the dream hedges. He was surprised that he could sleep at all, that he didn't wake more often. It was almost as if the soughing and other hedge sounds were deliberately there to lull the lagan-blessed. Like the dross, the spindrift, the honey-balm, it too was benign. The hedges breathing, thriving, being whatever they were.

Even as he drowsed, settled back toward sleep, that slipping, dimming thought made Sam rouse himself, leave his bed and go out onto the verandah. Of course it was deliberate. Look at how everyone accepted the phenomenon now, built it into their lives.

Sam regarded the fields picked out by the half-phase spring moon. He smelled the honey-balm wind that blew up from the hedgerows and made himself listen to the "croisie," not just hear it-that mysterious, oscillating tone produced by nearly all lagan blooms, a barely there, modulating drone set with what one moment sounded for all the world like someone shaking an old spray can, the next jingling bangles together on a waving arm. Never enough to annoy or intrude. Oh no. Not the croisie. Lulling. A welcome and welcoming thing. Always better than words made it seem. Something that would be missed like birdsong and insect chorus when the bloom ended and the hedges were left to dry out and rattle and fall to slow dust on the ordinary wind.

Sam left the verandah and walked down to the road. The hedges stretched away like screens of coral in the moonlight or, better yet, like frames, nets and trellises of moonlight, all ashimmer-all "flicky-flashy"

as Howard would say-yes, like blanched coral or weathered bone robbed of their day colors but releasing a flickering, deep, inner light, an almost-glow. Better still-fretted cloudforms, heat-locked, night-locked, calcined, turned to salt like Lot's wife, turned to stone by the face of this world meeting the Gorgon-stare of some other.

The croisie murmured. The honey-balm blew. Spindrift lofted and feather-danced in the bright dark.

The air smelled wonderful.

What a wondrous thing, he thought. What a special time. If only Jeanie were here to see it. The different world. The dream hedges and lagan. The spindrift dancing along the road and across the fields.

His own MF legacies too, though she wouldn't have cared.

There are enough children in the world, she would've said. Who needs more than six in ten to be fertile anyway? The world is the birthright, not people. It doesn't need more people. Hasn't for more than a century. Can't have too many people or people stop caring for each other. Only common sense.

She would never have mentioned his face-or perhaps only to quip: "My Tiger. You were always too handsome anyway."

She would have made it-easier.

Sam watched the ghostly palisades in their warps and woofs, their herringbones and revetments, found himself counting visible towerheads till he reached the riot of the notre dame. Then he shut his eyes and listened to the ever-shifting, ever-the-same voice of the croisie and tried to find, beyond it, the rush of the old night wind in the real-trees. He could, he was sure he could, anchoring himself in the other, larger, older world by it.

But he wouldn't let it take his thoughts from Jeanie. No. He kept her there in the questing-most vividly by adding to the list of things he would have said to her, imagining what she might have said to him. Like how you did start to count your life more and more as doors closed to you, that was a Jeanie line. How it took the MF pandemic damaging much of the genetic viability first of Europe, then Africa and Asia, on and on, to close some important doors for everyone, to unite the world, make them finally destroy the old weapons. The destroyable ones.

Jeanie would have put her spin on it. Her spindrift.

Sam grinned at the night. More language from the sea. More shipwreck talk. Spindrift blew along the road, the skeins and eddies of spores and hedge-dust, the "moonsilk," the "flit," the "dross"-there wereso many names-but, whatever it was, all safely moribund, sufficiently chemically inert, they said, though still finely, subtly psychoactive just by being there. Had to be. Part of the night. This night. His.

Theirs. Jeanie keenly there. His lagan love. Still.

Sam breathed in the bounty, filled his lungs with all the changed nature. Howard was right. Blooms and hedges. Lagan. Watchtowers, thunderheads, cathedrals and hutches. So much better than crystalline molecular skeuomorphs with key attributes of long-chain polymer-calcinite hybrids or whatever they were touting in the net journals.

Then the cathedral sighed, the only word for it. A single falling note swelled against the croisie, a distinct sad trailing-away sound that left the alien lagan-tone, the honey-balm and the night-wind beyond like a strange silence when it had gone.

From the cathedral?

Sam accepted that it was, knowing that almost all the logged lagan anomalies were around the big cloudform and cathedral loftings. The hutches and nestings, the bas.e.m.e.nts and even stranger subbas.e.m.e.nts were always silent, but the loftings sometimes belled and breathed and sounded like this, like great whales of strangeness making their song.

The mikes would have tracked it. Nearby stats had to be homing in, risking burn. Tomorrow there'd be extra flybys and spec groups.

Sam walked closer to the looming thirty-meter structure, looked up into the interstices of the triple spire, the converging, just-now braiding Salisbury points, then down to where the portal and narthex would be in a true cathedral. He began a circuit. There was only the croisie now and the distant wind if you listened for it.

There were no doors in the logged salisburys, chartres and notre dames. There were outcroppings like porches and lintels, but no doors, no chambers. The loftings were always solid lagan.

But here was a door-rather a shadowing, a doorness beneath such an outcropping, a cleft between b.u.t.tress swellings that held darkness like one.

Why now? Why mine? Sam thought, but came back, Jeanie-wise, with: Why not? If not now, when?

Still he resisted. He'd finally-mostly-accepted the lagan. He'd welcomed the wealth, but mainly the companionship the lagan had brought, a new set of reasons for people doing things together. But he wanted nothing more, no additional complications. Another old fin-de-siecle saying from Life Studies covered it: "not on my watch."

Had to be -ready, the words came, bewildering him till he realized they answered his two unspoken questions.

A sentient, talking, telepathic cathedral? It was too much. It was bathos.

But it made him move in under the overhang, the lip of the porch, whatever it was, made him step into the darkness.

He found her there, found her by the darkness lightening around her; the final corner of the narthex, apse or niche ghost-lighting this latest, incredible lagan gift.

She would never be beautiful, if she were even the right word. The eyes were too large, the face too pinched, the ears and nose too small, like something half-made, a maquette, a Y99 j.a.panese anime figure, a stylized, waxy, roswell mannequin. The naked body too doll-smooth, too androgynous, with not even rudimentary genitalia or b.r.e.a.s.t.s that he could tell, yet somehow clearly not meant to be a child.

He knew who she was meant to be.

"You're not Jeanie." He had to say it.

No. It sounded in his mind.

"You're something like her. A bit."

"It was-your thoughts-there." Spoken words this time. The creature enunciated them so carefully, seemed to agonize over each one, fiercely concentrating, being so careful. Could it be, did he imagine it or was there perspiration on the forehead, the sheen of stress or panic? "I know-Jeanie."

"You do!"

The mannequin frowned, desperately confused, clearly alarmed if the twisting of the face were any indication. "It was-there. There. The-anchor?" The final word was a question. "Ah." Sam felt hope vanish, felt fascination empty out and drain away, then refill from what truly, simply was on this strangest, most magical night.

"Who are you?" he said, gentler, easier now. "What are you?"

"Yours?" Again, it was almost a question. This creature seemed in shock, far more troubled than he was, but a shock almost of rapture as well as panic. At the wonder of being here. Being lost, bereft, but here. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Sam couldn't help himself. He stepped back, did so again and again, moved out of the chamber, out from under the porch. He had to anchor himself too. He looked around at the night, at the rising laganform looming over him, at the spread of coral barricades sweeping away in the vivid dark. No wonder they called them dream hedges. He saw it all now. Others had had these visitations. That's what the official Alien Influence spec groups were really looking for. Motile manifestations. Lifesign. The cathedrals were concentrations for hiding pa.s.sengers, for delivering them into this world.

What to do? Tell the others? Share this latest, strangest, most important discovery-not the word!-this benefice, this gift? The orbitals were nightsighted, but Sam and this creature, this-Kyrie?

-the name was just there-Kyrie!-just was, were in the lagan, with the croisie at full song and the honey-balm strengthening, both caught in the richest rush of spindrift he'd seen in weeks, with the most vivid runs of ghost-light making the hedges all flicky-flashy. Flickers of lagan dance, lagan blush.

Semaph.o.r.es of dream. The tides of this other sea bringing up its bounty.

He made himself go back into the darkness. He had to. It was a chance, a chance for something. He barely understood, but he knew.

"Kyrie?" He named it. Named her. What else could he do?

She was standing out from the chamber wall, just standing there naked and waiting.

"Kyrie?" he said again, then gave her his dressing gown, moved in and draped it about her shoulders.

How could he not?

Before he quite knew he was doing so, he was leading her out into the night, holding her, steadying her. She walked stiff-legged, with a strange and stilted gait, new to walking, new to everything, but flesh-warm and trembling under his hands. She was hurting, panicking, desperately trying to do as he did.

Sam guided her up the path and into the house. It was all so unreal, yet so natural. It was just what you did, what was needed.

Because it seemed right, because he needed it, Sam put her in Jeanie's room, in Jeanie's bed, in the room and bed Jeanie had used in her final days before hospitalization was necessary and she had gone away forever. He did that and more. Though he balked at it, he couldn't help himself. He left the photos and quik-sims of Jeanie he'd put there when she'd left, made himself do that, hating it, needing it, needing it knowing what this brand-new Kyrie was trying to become.

She was still there the next morning and, yes, hateful and wonderful both, there did seem more of Jeanie in the drawn, minimalist face. Did he imagine it? Yearn for it too much? Was it the light of day playing up the tiniest hint?

Sam felt like a ghoul, like something cruel and perverse when he brought in more pictures of Jeanie and set them on the sideboard, even put one in the en suite.

It was mainly curiosity, he kept telling himself. But need too, though too dimly considered to be allowed as such. He just had to see.

No one had observed their meeting. Or, rather, no queries came, no AIO agents, no officials quizzing him about an overheard conversation, about a late-night lagan-gift from the cathedral. It seemed that the lagan had masked it; the croisie had damped it down; the honey-balm had blurred the words to nothing-perhaps their intended function all along. Misleading. Deceiving. Hiding the pa.s.sengers.

Working to let this happen privately, secretly. Who could say?

He helped her become human.

It was hard to work in the hedges in the days that followed, so hard to chat and make small-talk knowing that she was up in the house with the books and the sims, learning his world, learning to behuman, eating and drinking mechanically but una.s.sisted now, if without evident pleasure, being imprinted.

Becoming. The only word for it.

They saw that he was distracted, took it as an allowable relapse by their MF recluse, the famous Tilby Tiger. Becoming was an appropriate word for Sam too. Though he made himself work at doing and saying the right things, remaining courteous and pleasant, it was like doing the compulsory Life Studies modules all over again, all those mandatory realtime, facetime tetes and citizenship dialogues for getting along. Comfortable handles for the myriad, net-blanded, online, PC global villagers. Words, words and words. Sam hated it but managed.

He had Jeanie back in a way he hadn't expected. Like a flower moving with the sun or a weathervane aligning with the wind, he just found himself responding to what was natural in his life. Kyrie was of this time, this place, this moment, but with something of Jeanie, just as the old song had it. My Lagan Love indeed.

Sam cherished the old words anew, and sang them as he worked in the hedgerows below her window.

Where Lagan stream sings lullaby There blows a lily fair; The twilight gleam is in her eye, The night is on her hair.

And, like a love-sick lenanshee, She hath my heart in thrall; Nor life I owe, nor liberty, For Love is lord of all.

And often when the beetle's horn Hath lulled the eve to sleep, I steal unto her shielding lorn And thro' the dooring peep.

There on the cricket's singing stone She spares the bog wood fire.

And hums in sad sweet undertone The song of heart's desire.

But Sam remained the skeptic too, was determined not to become some one-eyed Love's Fool. Even as he guided Kyrie, added more photos, ran the holos, he tried to fit this visitation into the science of lagan.

It was a cycle, a pendulum swing. One moment he'd be sitting with his alien maquette in her window-shaded room, singleminded, determined, perversely searching for new traces of Jeanie. The next, he was touring the online lagan sites-scanning everything from hard science briefs to the wildest theories, desperately seeking anything that might give a clue.

There was so much material, mostly claims of the "I know someone who knows someone" variety, and Sam was tempted to go the exophilia route and see the World Government muddying up the informational waters, hiding the pearls of truth under the detritus.

Finally, inevitably, he went back to his bower-bird friend, brought up the subject during a morning tour of the hedges.

"Howie, official findings aside, you ever hear of anything found alive in the lagan?"

"Apart from the lagan itself? Nothing above the microbial."

"But unofficial."

"Well, the rumors are endless. People keep claiming things; the UN keeps saying it's reckless exophilia. And I tell myself, Sam, if something was found, how could they keep a lid on it? I mean, statistically, there'd be so many visitations, pa.s.sengers, whatever, word would get out." "What if people are hiding them?"

Howie shook his head. "Doesn't follow. Someone somewhere would go for the gold and the glory instead, bypa.s.s the authorities and go to the media direct. You'd only need one."

Sam didn't press it too closely, didn't say: unless they were loved ones. Returnees. Things of the heart.

He kept it casual, made it seem that he was just-what was Howie's saying?-shooting the breeze.

"Ever meet anyone who claims to have seen someone?"

"Sure. Bancroft, but he's always claiming one thing or another about the lagan. Sally Joule's neighbor, Corben, had a stroke, but she won't buy it. Reckons the lagan did it to him because he discovered something."

"Would he mind if I visited?"

"Probably not. I know Corben. He's two counties over, an hour's drive or more. But I go sit with him sometimes. Talk's ninety-eight percent one-sided these days, but that's okay.

And you've got things in common. He wildcatted his field too, just as you've done. I can take you out."

Ben Corben seemed pleased to see them. At least he tracked their approach from his easy chair on the front porch and gave a lopsided smile when Howie greeted him and introduced Sam. He couldn't speak well anymore, and took ages to answer the same question Sam had put to Howie: had he ever heard of anything found alive in the lagan.

"Sum-thin," Corben managed. "Stor-ees."

And that was it for a time. The live-in nurse served afternoon tea, helped Corben with his teacup and scones.

Which was fine, Sam found. It gave him time to look out over Corben's lapsed domain, let him see what his own bloom would one day become.

Finally Howard brought them back to the question as if it hadn't been asked.

"Ever find anything out there, Corb? Anything alive?" He gestured at what remained of Corben's hedges, stripped and wasted now, the towers and barricades fallen, the bas.e.m.e.nts collapsed in on themselves, just so many spike-fields, kite-frames and screens of wind-torn filigree, rattling and creaking and slowly falling to dust.

"No," Corben said, so so slowly, and his skewed face seemed curiously serene, alive with something known.

"It's important, Ben," Sam said. "It's just-it's really important. I've got hedges now. Never expected it. Never did. But I think something's out there. Calling at night." He didn't want to give too much away.

And Howie had gone with it, bless him, hadn't swung about and said: hey, what's this? Good friend.