Year's Best SF 10, page 38
“Someone wasn’t minding their own business, then.”
“It’s no place for a young child. We just want to help.” The woman sounded kind, Aud thought, and she was being very patient with Danny. But they always did sound kind. It didn’t stop them messing you around.
Ellie was silent, staring up at Aud’s face. Aud swallowed hard, then went out to the balcony. Pulling the window shut behind her, she climbed over the partition that divided the balcony from that of the neighboring flat. She made her way along the row, avoiding the litter and the needles, until she came to the walkway and the stairs that led down. She stopped and looked back. No one was there. She could still see the van parked outside in the courtyard. She hurried down the stairs, clutching Ellie.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry…” And Ellie did not utter a sound.
The only place she could think of was the railway bridge. She would wait there for a bit, then go back and see if the van had gone. She thought of taking Ellie into the pub, because it would be warmer, but she was afraid of being seen. If she wrapped Ellie up tightly, perhaps it would not be too cold. There was no one about on the canal path and that made her feel safer.
She crouched under the bridge in the damp dimness, watching the boats going back and forth across the narrow glimpse of the Thames. She lost track of the day. It grew cloudy, but did not rain. Ellie slept and Aud grew cold and hungry. She would go back, look for the van—but then a shadow fell across her. Aud looked up and felt filled with relief, because it was Danny.
“They’ve gone,” he said. “You heard them, didn’t you?”
“I thought they’d take her away.”
“Probably would have done, too.” He squatted on his heels, looking down at the baby in her arms. He said, gently, “What do you want to do, Aud?”
“About what?”
“About the baby.”
Aud nearly told him, then, but she clamped her lips shut against the words. She did not want to hear herself say: “I stole her, out of someone else’s pram.” Because then Danny would surely stop being her friend. Instead, she said something else that was the truth.
“I want to take her away. It’s not right, bringing her up in London, in that flat. I try to make it as nice as I can, but—”
“—but it’s a dump.”
“Yeah, and I can’t get anywhere else.”
“You’re not claiming money for her?”
“No. I haven’t told them about her.”
She waited for him to ask “Why not?” and it occurred to her then that perhaps he knew, or at least suspected, that Ellie was a stolen child. But he only said, “Okay. Listen, Aud. If you’re really serious about leaving, then I can help you. Give you some cash and put you on the boat to Ireland. I’ve got friends there, the ones I told you about.”
“The ones in the farmhouse?”
“It might be a squat, Aud, but it’s a nice place. A good place for a kid to grow up in. And I think they’d look after you. They don’t like the Deserving Poor business—that’s why they left England. And things are a bit easier over there. People help each other out.”
“Okay,” Aud whispered, and her heart beat fast at the thought of the boat, the sea silver in the cold light, a green place at the end of it. She added, “You’re really good to me,” and embarrassed, he looked away.
The thought of traveling alone scared her, but in the end, she didn’t have to. Danny went with her. His dad was sick, he said, and he might as well see the old man before he died.
“But you’ve only just got back,” Aud said.
“It doesn’t matter. You know me, back and forth, to and fro. Don’t like to stay too long in one place.”
But she wondered why she felt guilty, all the same.
They left at the end of the week. Aud tried to give him some money, and at last he took a bit of it for the bus. She sat with her face pressed to the chilly window, looking out at the motorway. They left London behind, and soon there was nothing but flooded fields and the barbed wire enclaves of the shires, where the rich people lived. Once they saw an armored car, crossing the great bridge into the Republic of Wales. Aud, frozen with nerves, had to show her DP documents, but they let her through without saying anything. Ellie dozed until they got to the ferry and then she woke up, crying a little.
“Does she need feeding?” Danny asked, frowning.
“I don’t think so.”
“She doesn’t seem to want her bottle much, does she? I though babies were all ‘in one end, out the other.’ Maybe she needs changing.”
“I changed her in the service station,” Aud lied. “She had her bottle then.”
“Oh, right.” And to her relief, Danny lost interest.
She spent as much time as she could on the deck, watching the gulls and the waves with silent delight. The rocky Welsh coast was soon gone. Aud leaned against the rail, Ellie held tightly in her arms.
“Mind you don’t get cold,” Danny said. Before she could stop him, he reached out and drew Ellie’s blanket aside to tuck it in more securely.
“This trip is the first time I’ve really seen her in daylight,” he said, smiling. Aud closed her eyes, too tightly; she did not want to see his face change. There was a long moment of silence, shattered by a baby’s cry. Aud’s eyes snapped open, but it was only a gull, wheeling overhead.
She felt him take the baby from her and this time, she let him. Ellie made no protest at all.
After a long time, he said, “Jesus, Aud. Where did you get her?”
Aud did not answer, but he did not sound angry, only bewildered and it gave her a little hope.
“Did you nick her out of someone’s car, or what?”
“Her name’s Ellie,” Aud whispered.
Danny handed Ellie back to her, carefully, and stood with his feet braced, staring out to sea.
“Need a cig,” he murmured. She watched him roll up in silence, waiting for him to say something. His hands looked cold. He fumbled with the papers, with the tobacco, with the lighter. Then, after a long breath, he said, “Shouldn’t be too long, now. Look. That’s Wexford, over there.”
His friends lived in the countryside near Cork, and when Ellie saw the place she thought it was the most beautiful house she had ever seen, even if half of it was a ruin. A lot of Danny’s friends seemed to live in vans, anyway, so the state of the house didn’t really matter. A girl called Jade, with a mat of beaded hair and a big smile, took Aud under her wing and showed her to a warm room with a fire.
“You can crash in here. This’ll be your space, and the baby’s.”
She brought Aud a bowl of stew and once Aud had eaten it, the journey seemed to tumble down on her, all at once. She yawned. She thought she would just sit down for a moment, but when she next looked up, it was nearly dark outside. Jade was sitting with Ellie in her arms.
“It’s all right, Aud,” she said. “Everything’s all right.”
So Aud went back to sleep. She woke later, and there were voices outside the warm room: Danny and Jade.
“Her name’s Ellie, right?” Jade was saying.
“Yeah.” Danny gave a tight laugh. “Well, that’s what it says on the back of her neck.”
“She’s amazing. I thought she was a real baby.”
“So did I, until halfway across the bloody Irish Sea. When the Social came round, I realized Aud’d nicked her, and I knew what would happen. I thought: just get her to Ireland, with the kid, whether it’s hers or not.”
“You didn’t stop to think about her mum?” Jade said, angrily, and Aud cringed.
“Of course I did! I knew it wasn’t right, Jade, but Aud’s never had a thing of her own and so I thought: just give her a chance. And then, on the boat, I realized. Huge weight off my mind.”
“But Ellie’s not plastic, is she? She feels real. Like flesh. And she looks at you, and cries—she even seems to pee and eat, but not as much as a real baby.”
“She is flesh, Jade. They grow them, in tanks. They’re for rich girls who can’t have kids—it’s some kind of psychological charity initiative. They cost a fortune. But they don’t grow up. They’re not much more than a toy, really.”
I am dreaming, Aud told herself. I don’t want to listen any more. She pulled the blanket over her ears, and huddled back against the wall. In the firelight, Ellie watched her with round dark eyes and did not blink even when Jade came back through the door.
“Shhh,” she said, when she saw that Aud was awake. She gave Aud a long measuring look, as though she wanted to say something else. But then she added, “I’ll be quiet, okay? I don’t want to disturb the baby.” And reassured, Aud closed her eyes and slept.
The Dark Side of Town
JAMES PATRICK KELLY
James Patrick Kelly [www.jimkelly.net] lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire. A well-known award winner for his science fiction stories, he has in fact written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays, and planetarium shows, and writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His collections include Strange but Not a Stranger (2002) and Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories (1997), and his novels include Wildlife (1994) and Look into the Sun (1989).
“The Dark Side of Town” was published in Asimov’s. In this future USA, things are pretty bad for some people, and Talisha and Ricky are struggling to save enough to have a baby. So Talisha gets really enraged when she discovers a supply of very expensive nano-tech VR pills in her husband’s dresser drawer, the kind that are advertised to promote powerful sexual fantasies. Kelly explores some uncomfortable possibilities in the cyberpunk tradition about the not-too-distant future with more optimism than it might seem to merit. What does it say about reality when fantasy is better?
Talisha found the pills in Ricky’s underwear drawer under the maroon boxers she had never seen him wear. There were three of them in a cotton nest tucked into a flat cardboard box. She dumped them onto her palm: clear capsules, about as long as her fingernail with the Werefolk logo imprinted on the side. She thought she could almost see the nano beasties swimming inside.
It made her angry that Ricky had not tried harder to hide the pills. Did he think she was stupid? She subscribed to Watch This! and Ed Explains It All and usually opened new episodes the moment they popped into her inbox. Her earstone was set to deliver The Two-Minute Report three times a day, whether she was near a pix or not. She had even uploaded an Introduction to Feng Shui course last year. From Purdue, a name brand college!
All that time he’d been telling her there wasn’t enough money for them to have their baby, much less buy a house, he’d been wasting it on some mechdream. It was one thing to pay for nano to mess with your brain so you could design living rooms or program searchlets or speak Russian or something. Talisha understood that you had to spend money to make money. But it was another thing altogether to spend the grocery money building some virtual sex playpen. And everyone said that Werefolk made the sickest mechdreams of all. Creatures with the legs of giraffes and four tits stroking one another with power tools and chicken giblets. Stuff so dark that even Ed himself couldn’t quite explain it.
Her hands trembled as she waved the pills in front of the pix and waited for it to scan them. It was a slow, twelve-yearold Sony and the screen had more bad pixels than interpolation could correct, but it was all they could afford.
“X-Stasis release 7.01 from Werefolk Corporation,” said the pix. “List price: seven hundred and ninety-eight dollars for a multiplex map-and-transmit regime.”
Eight hundred dollars! “What does it do?” she said grimly.
An ad popped onto the pix. It began with a tight shot on a talking head. “With the Werefolk virtual reality six-pack,” said a beautiful young woman, “we bring ecstasy to a new level.” She appeared to be standing on a beach; behind her a blue sky melted into a glassy ocean. “Using our exclusive X-Stasis personality probe, we’ll help you plumb the depths
of your pleasure centers.” She smiled and was immediately transformed into a beautiful young man. “Only X-Stasis can access the neurons where your unconscious lurks and transmit your innermost desires to Werefolk. Together we can build a secret world for you to enjoy on our secure servers, the world they said you could never have.” The camera pulled back slowly and Talisha could see that the beautiful young man wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Surprise yourself today with an tour of your hidden self and begin your intimate journey into rapture.”
Just before the camera could reveal that the beautiful young man wasn’t wearing any pants either, the ad cut away to an older, roundish woman in a daisy-print dress. A caption identified her as Mrs. Lonnie Foster of Holland, Michigan. She was standing in front of a barn.
“There was a time a couple of months ago when I felt about as dry as a saltine, you know? I’d look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Hey Lonnie, who’s doing for you? Then I heard about Werefolk and decided to do for myself. Now don’t you be asking what goes on up in Lonnie’s Castle.” She giggled like a little girl. “Like they said, that’s private. But I do love to spend time there, oh my yes. And it’s safe as taking a nap….”
Talisha waved the ad off; it was only confusing her. Of course, she didn’t care anything about the beautiful young people in the ad; they weren’t even real. But Lonnie’s question had struck home. Who was doing for Talisha?
“Call Ricky,” she said. The pix queried his workshop.
Ricky answered in voice mode. “What?” He didn’t like to be bothered when he was working.
“Are you plumbing the depths?”
“Talisha, I’m busy.”
“Give me video, you bastard.”
He told the cam to turn on and she saw that he was standing at his bench, surrounded by broken 1/18 scale model carbots: Mazdas and Duesenbergs and Chevys, dump trucks and road graders. He was tinkering with the harmonic speed reducer from the arm assembly of a Komatsu excavator. He stared up at her. “What did you just call me?”
“I called you a lying bastard pervert.”
He blanched and set the reducer down next to its servomotor.
“What are these?” She held the pills up to the pix.
“So you’ve been going through my things?” he said. She expected anger or remorse—something—but his eyes were empty.
“I was putting your damn underwear away.”
“And?” He glanced away from the pix as if something had distracted him.
“Where did you get eight hundred dollars?”
He picked up a circuit tester and turned his attention back to the Komatsu. “I earned it.”
“Ricky.” She couldn’t believe that he was acting as if nothing had happened. “Okay, you earned it. Where does that leave us?”
“Us?” He seemed preoccupied as he clipped the tester to the encoder cable. He shook his head. She couldn’t tell if he were disappointed in the signal or their marriage. “You know I love you, ’Sha.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.” She opened her hand and let his pills rattle onto the coffee table. “The air conditioner is broken. I had to cancel my subscription to church. Supper tonight is Beanstix from the Handimart.” She hated hearing herself whine. “Is it me, Ricky? You’d rather have a make-believe woman than me?” She waited for him to answer or defend himself or something.
“I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
His indifference took her breath away. It was as if he didn’t realize how he was hurting her. Then she remembered something Ed had explained about mechdreams. You could be in one and still go about your normal life, he said, as long as you didn’t have to pay too close attention to what you were really doing. He said you could tell when people were double-dipping because they acted like zombies. He said it was a growing problem. As many as a million people were living two lives at the same time, everyone from security guards to college professors.
“You’re there now,” she said. “In Ricky World or Ricky’s Dungeon or Temple Fucking Ricky.”
“Talisha,” he said, “I’m at work.” He waved the connection off.
She stared at the blank pix as if it were a hole through which her life was leaking. Then she swiped the pills off the coffee table, scattering them. “You goddamn bastard.” She stalked around their tiny studio apartment like it was a cage. It helped to keep swearing at Ricky. Some of the words she had never spoken before and they seemed to twist in her mouth. She tore the slick sheets off the bed where she had let that “sickass jackoff” make love to her. She stuffed them into the washing machine that was crammed next to the toilet in the tiny bathroom that was all the “loser suckwad” said they could afford. She flew at the galley kitchen and yanked open the door of their half-sized refrigerator. She didn’t know why exactly, since there was never anything in it that she wanted to eat. But she stared at the liter of Uncle Barth’s Rice Milk and a couple of Beefy Beanstix and some Handibrand Dijon mustard with the brown crust on the mouth of the jar and the Brisky Spread and the stub of a Porky Beanstix left over from last night and the wilting stalks of bak choi and the two bulbs of Miller Beer that the “cheap shiteating cheater” would expect to have with supper. She smashed them against the side of the sink and then sagged against the wall.
She would have cried then except that her earstone started whispering, “Talisha, ya ladyay, connect, Talisha.” It was her sister, Bea. Talisha waved the kitchen pix to clock mode and groaned. She was already twenty minutes late for work.
“I’m here, Bea.” She waved the pix on but backed away so her sister wouldn’t get a clear look at her. Talisha worked for her sister on Wednesdays and Fridays.
“Well, at least you’re somewhere, my ladyloo. Only not here on the job.” Bea was already wearing her stereoptic goggles. They made her look like a frog, but then her sister had never been a great beauty anyway. “The Herndens dropped another box yesterday.” Bea ran Tapeworm out of her attic; she was teaching her sister the business of extracting data from dead media. Her specialty was late twentieth-century consumer magnetic tape: reel-to-reel, eight track, cassette, Beta, VHS, Hi8, and DAT. “They’re blinky, but we can work them. Mostly type three and four decay: we got sticky shed and flaking. What are you standing offcam for?”
