Year's Best Scifi 8 Part 31

"Wait one," I muttered. More alert now, I'd spotted a movement below as a figure appeared overthe curve of the tank. Even at that distance I knew it was Witcove. I gestured Remi to remain down.

I maintained a blank expression as Witcove approached. He landed with a grunt. "So...how's it going?"

"Out catching a little sun."

"Little..." he frowned. "Oh...little sun. Sure. Hehheh...Say, I was taking a look at your ship. Quite a bird."

"Gets me around."

"Surprised how quick you got here, but...this is kind of an important thing, I guess. I mean, lot of people interested, right? Might go straight back to Charon, or maybe even deeper."

I nodded.

"So...word will get around. People will talk. Unless they maybe...cla.s.sify it? But there's such things as leaks, too. See, you can't win."

He shook his head and sighed. "Y'know, you get work out here by rep. Word of mouth. Somebody says, Powder Monkeys do a great job, never have to tell 'em things twice...That's how you get hired.

No other way-advertising, bidding, forget about it. You need a good rep. And you don't get one overnight see, takes decades of hard, solid work. We got a good rep, the Monkeys. And we get our share of contracts. But here's the thing..."

He bent close, his grotesque, vacuum-adapted face all intent. "People hear there's runaways hanging around the hall, and one of the Monkeys well, working with it. Now that wouldn't be so good. For the reputation, see. So I been thinking about that."

"Go on."

"What I was thinking, what if it happened different. What if Morgan quit. A few weeks back. Not too long ago, month or two. What if n.o.body could say, 'Rog Morgan, Powder Monkey.' What about that?"

"You're saying you want me to falsify a report."

"Noooo-I'm not saying that." Witcove snorted at my obtuseness. "But if you waited a bit, so I could mess with Morgan's files, see, I could make it look like he was forty AUs from here, with another outfit, or prospecting on his own...yeah, that'd be best. He quit and went out on his own. Come back to trade for supplies. Say, I ever tell you that the Monkeys are a public company?"

He bobbed his head. "That's right. PM plc. Traded on all the big boards. Stock went up another tick last week. Never drops. Better than blue chip. We got a pretty good-size block of una.s.signed certificates right in my office and what do you say about that report?"

"I could change it." I p.r.o.nounced the words carefully, trying to hide the disgust I felt. Witcove seemed to shrink into himself with relief. "Sure. Or I could bust you and lock you up in my ship this minute."

He stared at me in utter silence. "Or maybe freeze your systems and let you wait six or seven months for a magistrate to come by."

His eye membranes flicked once, as if he was blinking. "Nah-we'll go for the bust." Raising my voice as if it could, in fact, carry through vacuum, I contacted the ship. "...prepare s.p.a.ce for a single perp, charge attempted bribery of a Mandate law enforcement officer, that calls for maximum security, I believe."

Witcove came back to life, waving his arms wildly, swinging his head in all directions as if to catch the ship sneaking up on him. I watched him for a moment.

"Or maybe we won't do that either." He went still, arms extended. "Instead, maybe you'll give me the recordings you held back, you simple SOB."

His arms fell and he recited the codes in a monotone. He remained silent as I sent them on to the ship with instructions to go through them for anomalies. "Wasn't just for me," he muttered after I finished. "I was thinking of the guys-"

"I know that."

Witcove wasn't bad. There were any number worse scattered across the Halo. Foremen and plant owners who didn't think of the guys at all, or thought of them only to cheat them, terrorize them, abusethem, let them down in every conceivable way. Whatever Witcove might be, he wasn't one of them. He was on the high end, as such things are graded. "Now go on."

I stopped him as he swung over the railing. "What's the code to that shed lock?"

He gave it to me and left without another word.

Remi chuckled. "Knew you'd do that," I grimaced. As if I'd take a bribe in front of a witness.

"Go on with the story, Remi."

"Not much to tell. When he looked up she was gone, and he went back to bed lay there thinking.

You know that old story about the guy the munchkins took away to Manhattan? Only there couple weeks but when he got back it was centuries and everybody was dead, and he had him a long beard.

Ever hear that one?"

"Something like it, yeah."

"I mean, duppies. What they want? Who knows? Who's gonna hang around find out? So he waited til it was real quiet, and got up. His suit was right outside the door, like it was waiting for him. He put it on, ran a check. All powered up, reservoirs full, and there was extra supply packs stacked on the floor.

He went down this hallway, and round the corner the lights were on, leading to what sure as h.e.l.l looked like a lock. He went over, and he's just about to step in and he stops, 'cause he's sure, see, they gonna grab him..."

Right then I got a buzz from the ship. Slipping the handset from my belt, I read a message about the recorder footage. I told it to play.

"...got in the lock, about to shut the door and he stops again. Helmet still open, see. Heard a sound from inside. A song, way quiet, like she was saying goodbye..."

The scene playing on my handset was much as I'd imagined it: the brightly-lit haze, the jacks spread out, that unwelcome ent.i.ty feinting between them. A flashing caret marked Rog Morgan. I watched as the impi swung toward him, as his hands rose, as the thing slipped past into open sky.

"And whacha think he did?"

The screen displayed another angle of the same scene: Jacks, Morgan, the impi...I lifted the set, paying close attention to his hands. "Turned around, went back."

"You got it!" Remi sounded delighted.

I called for a closeup of Morgan's hands, went through it twice in slow motion. "Yeah, that's what he did. And she came in a few minutes later, and he was on the bed in his suit, and he said, 'I like that song.'

I'da kept going."

"So would I."

The screen began another replay. I canceled and it went dark. No point in watching it again. There was not a single doubt in my mind as to what had occurred. "Remi...I thank you, the Mandate thanks you..."I looked up at the shed's single lonely window. I didn't think Morgan was going to thank him.

I started toward the shed, muscles quivering, mind ablaze with that feeling you get only when a case is coming together. A warning notice flashed as I approached the next level. I kicked up and over, barely pausing to catch my balance as I landed.

The impis had gotten to him. There was no way around it; the footage was clear. Morgan was in full and witting contact with rogue ent.i.ties and all that implied. It was the break we'd been waiting for, the first sign of an active human/impi organization.

I needed immediate backup, every ship within a month's radius. The hall's higher-level activities would have to be frozen, to make sure it didn't wander off. A lot of people would be coming to look the place over. They'd be studying this hall down all the way down to the gluons for years to come. As for Morgan...I didn't want to think about that part.

I paused at the door, almost breathless. With quick stabs I punched in the code. I charged inside before it was half open. "Okay, ace-what did she pa.s.s to you?"

Morgan barely started. He gave me a mournful look, then reached into his jacket pocket. He gazed down at the object in his hand and with a sigh tossed it to me.

It was a piece of scrim. I'd seen that even as he took it out. I hefted it. Some kind of metal, an alloy I couldn't identify. The bust of a woman, head c.o.c.ked to one side, a smile on her face, hair lifting away asif blown by an invisible breeze.

I raised my eyes to Morgan. "She went...You're telling me the impi went after this for you."

"No." Morgan shook his head. "Alerted some others. They picked it up."

I turned the statuette over in my hand. It's hollow, I told myself. Imprinted on the molecular level with some message, some command...

I examined the face once again, the laughing eyes, the lips so lifelike they seemed about to speak, to give word to everything Morgan had left behind: light, and warmth, air to breathe. He'd put a lot of work into the thing. It occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that it was a portrait of someone he knew. Had once known. No wonder he wanted it back.

For a second or two my mind struggled against the evidence of simple kindness, desperate for a reason to raise the alarm after all. But it wasn't hollow, and contained nothing, and it wouldn't take me anywhere. I tossed it back to Morgan. "Nice piece." I got out of my handset. "Okay-does our little pal have a name?"

"Isis," he said softly. I had to ask him to repeat it.

I left the door unlocked. The hall's top level was only a few yards overhead. I kicked off for it, setting down amidst a jungle of antennas and cables and junk. That grand glowing tube of dirty-yellow muck towered above me. I eyed it with the weariness of years, seeing my own youth vanish over that bright curve, its roaring song fading relentlessly into gray. Some are meant for the sunlight and some for the shadowed places. It was pretty clear to me which portion was mine.

Morgan hadn't told me much; whatever didn't feel like betrayal. I'd lase it back to Charon, where they'd give it to some specialist to ponder. Maybe they'd find more in it than I had. I doubted it.

"Hey, mandy." I turned to see Remi gazing at me through his helmet visor, ready, I suppose, to go on shift. It was a moment before I recalled the remote riding on my ear. I plucked it off and handed it back.

"All straighten out?"

"More or less. He'll be ready to leave tomorrow. He wants you to run the catapult."

"He ain't stridin' again?"

"Not like he has a lot to worry about."

"Ahh...I gotcha."

"Nice to have friends," I said. He shook his head. "Can't stand him myself. He chatters."

I watched him leave. For a moment he was silhouetted against the tower, and I saw him as an impi might, a human figure outlined by light. Then he vanished, the way jacks do.

It wasn't as dark as it had been. The shadows had lifted somewhat. I knew the names of one of the spirits, the right questions to ask, and the fact that the dragons might not be dragons after all. A pretty good day, all considered.

I looked over my shoulder toward home. The stars glared back, but I couldn't, for the life of me, decide which was which. After a moment I gave up and went to tell Witcove how it was going to be.

Grandma

CAROL EMSHWILLER.

Carol Emshwiller (www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller/) lives in New York City and has been publishing in the SF field since the 1950s, when her attractive image graced the covers of many SF books and magazines ill.u.s.trated by her husband, Ed Emshwiller, who signed his paintings EMSH. By the early 1970s, her fiction had moved into the area of the literary avant-garde, and she became a respected feminist writer as well-her first story collection was Joy in Our Cause (1975). Her career flowered in the last decade or so, with several collections of stories- Verging on the Pertinent (1989), The Start of the End of it All (1990), and Report to the Men's Club (2002)-and three novels-Carmen Dog (1990), Ledoyt (1995), Leaping Man Hill (1999), and The Mount (2002). In the year 2002, she published at least four fine new stories and two books. "Grandma," from F&SF , is a feminist SF story rich in metaphorical resonances, perhaps a satire on superheroes, or perhaps at the same time an allegory of generational changes in feminism. Grandma was a superhero (sort of like Wonder Woman) in her younger days, who spent her time righting wrongs and defending justice. She could fly through the air, wore a special costume, and was world-famous. Now she is quite old, and her granddaughter (who, in the shadow of her reputation, feels that she can never do anything right) lives with her in the country.

Grandma used to be a woman of action. She wore tights. She had big b.o.o.bs, but a teeny weeny bra.

Her waist used to be twenty-four inches. Before she got so hunched over she could do way more than a hundred of everything, pushups, sit-ups, chinning.... She had naturally curly hair. Now it's dry and fine and she's a little bit bald. She wears a babushka all the time and never takes her teeth out when I'm around or lets me see where she keeps them, though of course I know. She won't say how old she is.

She says the books about her are all wrong, but, she says, that's her own fault. For a long while she lied about her age and other things, too.

She used to be on every search and rescue team all across these mountains. I think she might still be able to rescue people. Small ones. Her set of weights is in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She has a punching bag. She used to kick it, too, but I don't know if she still can do that. I hear her thumping and grunting around down there-even now when she needs a cane for walking. And talk about getting up off the couch!

I go down to that gym myself sometimes and try to lift those weights. I punch at her punching bag. (I can't reach it except by standing on a box. When I try to kick it, I always fall over.) Back in the olden days Grandma wasn't as shy as she is now. How could she be and do all she did?

But now she doesn't want to be a bother. She says she never wanted to be a bother, just help out is all.

She doesn't expect any of us to follow in her footsteps. She used to, but not anymore. We're a big disappointment. She doesn't say so, but we have to be. By now she's given up on all of us. Everybody has.

It started...we started with the idea of selective breeding. Everybody wanted more like Grandma: strong, fast thinking, fast acting, and with the desire...that's the most important thing...a desire for her kind of life, a life of several hours in the gym every single day. Grandma loved it. She says (and says and says), "I'd turn on some banjo music and make it all into a dance."

Back when Grandma was young, offspring weren't even thought of since who was there around good enough for her to marry? Besides, everybody thought she'd last forever. How could somebody like her get old? is what they thought.

She had three... "husbands" they called them (donors more like it), first a triathlon champion, then a prize fighter, then a ballet dancer.

There's this old wives tale of skipping generations, so, after nothing good happened with her children, Grandma (and everybody else) thought, surely it would be us grandchildren. But we're a motley crew.

n.o.body pays any attention to us anymore.

I'm the runt. I'm small for my age, my foot turns in, my teeth stick out, I have a lazy eye.... There's lots of work to be done on me. Grandma's paying for all of it though she knows I'll never amount to much of anything. I wear a dozen different kinds of braces, teeth, feet, a patch over my good eye. My grandfather, the ballet dancer!

Sometimes I wonder why Grandma does all this for me, a puny, limping, limp-haired girl? What I think is, I'm her real baby at last. They didn't let her have any time off to look after her own children-not ever until now when she's too old for rescuing people. She not only was on all the search and rescue teams, she was a dozen search and rescue teams all by herself, and often she had to rescue the search and rescue teams.

Not only that, she also rescued animals. She always said the planet would die without its creatures.

You'd see her leaping over mountains with a deer under each arm. She moved bears from camp grounds to where they wouldn't cause trouble. You'd see her with handfuls of rattlesnakes gathered from golf courses and carports, flying them off to places where people would be safe from them and they'd be safefrom people.

She even tried to rescue the climate, pulling and pushing at the clouds. Holding back floods.

Reraveling the ozone. She carried huge sacks of water to the trees of one great dying forest. In the long run there was only failure. Even after all those rescues, always only failure. The bears came back. The rattlesnakes came back.

Grandma gets to thinking all her good deeds went wrong. Lots of times she had to let go and save...maybe five babies and drop three. I mean, even Grandma only had two arms. She expected more of herself. I always say, "You did save lots of people. You kept that forest alive ten years longer than expected. And me. I'm saved." That always makes her laugh, and I am saved. She says, "I guess my one good eye can see well enough to look after you, you rapscallion."

She took me in after my parents died. (She couldn't save them. There are some things you just can't do anything about no matter who you are, like drunken drivers. Besides, you can't be everywhere.) When she took me to care for, she was already feeble. We needed each other. She'd never be able to get along without me. I'm the saver of the saver.

How did we end up this way, way out here in the country with me her only helper? Did she scare everybody else off with her neediness? Or maybe people couldn't stand to see how far down she's come from what she used to be. And I suppose she has gotten difficult, but I'm used to her. I hardly notice. But she's so busy trying not to be a bother she's a bother. I have to read her mind. When she holds her arms around herself, I get her old red sweatshirt with her emblem on the front. When she says, "Oh dear," I get her a cup of green tea. When she's on the couch and struggles and leans forward on her cane, trembling, I pull her up. She likes quiet. She likes for me to sit by her, lean against her, and listen to the birds along with her. Or listen to her stories. We don't have a radio or TV set. They conked out a long time ago and no one thought to get us new ones, but we don't need them. We never wanted them in the first place.

Grandma sits me down beside her, the lettuce planted, the mulberries picked, sometimes a mulberry pie already made (I helped), and we just sit. "I had a grandma," she'll say, "though I know, to look at me, it doesn't seem like I could have. I'm older than most grandmas ever get to be, but we all had grandmas, even me. Picture that: Every single person in the world with a grandma." Then she giggles. She still has her girlish giggle. She says, "Mother didn't know what to make of me. I was opening her jars for her before I was three years old. Mother.... Even that was a long time ago."

When she's in a sad mood she says everything went wrong. People she had just rescued died a week later of something that Grandma couldn't have helped. Hantavirus or some such that they got from vacuuming a closed room, though sometimes Grandma had just warned them not to do that. (Grandma believes in prevention as much as in rescuing.) I've rescued things. Lots of them. Nothing went wrong either. I rescued a junco with a broken wing.

After rains I've rescued stranded worms from the wet driveway and put them back in our vegetable garden. I didn't let Grandma cut the suckers off our fruit trees. I rescued mice from sticky traps. I fed a litter of feral kittens and got fleas and worms from them. Maybe this rescuing is the one part of Grandma I inherited.