Year's Best Scifi 6 Part 35

Grandma left, but I didn't unpack. I was feeling curious. I decided to go out exploring, first thing.

Grandma's bedroom was at the end of the hall-a big dark place with the shades down and the heat thick just the same. I took a couple steps inside, looking at the old-person stuff on the walls and on top of the dressers. Brown pictures were in silver frames, and there were some fancy doo-dads. Three out of four pictures showed my mom, one from back when she was my age. I found only one shot of Grandpa, and it was set behind the others. As if he was hiding back there, almost.

Compared to upstairs, it was practically cool at ground level. I turned on the little TV in the living room. There wasn't any cable attached, and no dish outside. There was just one local channel, and it was mostly static and snow. What was I going to do for six whole weeks?

I wandered through the smelly kitchen, then outside. Tractors and a fancy combine were parked in the yard. The combine had big metal arms in front for sweeping and plucking at the crops, and on top, a big gla.s.s cab and foam-padded seat. I climbed up and sat with my hands on the wheel. Maybe Grandma would teach me to drive, I was thinking. If I asked real nice. Rocking the wheel back and forth, I made engine sounds, thinking how much fun it would be to mow through a field of corn.

Sam's cottage was behind the other buildings. I found it eventually-a tiny white wood building-and walking up onto its groaning porch, I peered into the dusty windows.

Mom had told me the story a million times. Grandpa died when she was little. It was at the end of the war, but the fighting didn't kill him. His tractor rolled over him, by accident. Mom barely remembered him. What she remembered were the tough times afterwards. Two billion people had died. Life had fallen back a hundred years, or more. Grandma had to farm with old tractors and her own hands. Help was scarce and stupid, the best men still in the military. Finally Grandma said enough was enough, and she marched down to the prison camp and gave its warden ten chickens and her problems. Was there a prisoner who could be loaned to her? Just once in a while? She needed someone who knew machinery, someone who could keep a murderous old tractor in the field. Was there any jumpie worth trusting? And that's how Sam came to Grandma, on loan from the United States government.

"He was brought up every morning for a year," Mom told me. "By armed guard. But that was silly, said your grandma. She took Sam permanently and took responsibility, letting him live in the cottage. Hot in summer, but in the winter, just right for a jumpman."

Jumpies come from a cold place. A place that was getting even colder-too cold for life, they like to claim-which was why they moved here to live.Mom would always laugh, telling how Grandma promised that Sam wouldn't escape, that if he tried she would hunt him down by herself. "And the warden, knowing her, said that she was better than a ten-foot wall of electrified razor-wire." That's the part that always made her laugh the hardest, shaking her head and looking off into the distance. "And now it's been what? Thirty years. Sam likes it so well there that he's never left. Even when the treaties were signed, when he could have gone home, he didn't.

He won't ever."

"Why not?" I always asked.

And here Mom always said something different. Sam was too accustomed to our heat, or he liked Grandma's peach cobbler too much. Always a new reason why, and I got the feeling that none of those reasons were entirely true.

I was staring into the cottage's dirty windows, seeing nothing, and Sam sneaked up behind me, saying, "Can I help you, Timmy?"

I jerked around. He wasn't smiling, but he didn't seem angry either. At least none of his red fur was standing on end. He asked if he had startled me. I told him no. I was thinking about leading the attack on his people. I almost told him what I was thinking. But instead he told me, "I doubt if you can see anything through that grime, Timmy. For that I apologize."

I wished he wouldn't say my name so much.

Despite everything, I stood my ground. This was my first day on the farm, and I'd be d.a.m.ned if he was going to spook me.

"You're remarkably quiet, I think." He laughed and reached into a pocket on his overalls.

I watched his hand.

He brought out a single key, saying, "Let's go inside and look. Would you like that, Timmy?"

"Inside?" I muttered.

"Because you're feeling curious. You want to see where I live." He came past me, smelling of hay and something else. Something sweet. He fought with the lock for a minute, then the door swung open.

Every window was closed, and the air inside was staler than it was hot, and it was plenty hot. The cottage was just one room with a bed at the back and some curling photographs stuck on the plaster wall. Sam was behind me, starting to pant. I went to take a look at the photos, long red faces smiling at me in that goofy jumpie way; and he said, "My family. From long ago." His voice sounded more like I expected it to be, high-pitched and sloppy. Talking past his panting tongue, he asked, "Do you see me, Timmy?"

I wasn't sure.

With a long black nail, he pointed at a photo, at a little jumpie with adults on one side of him, a giant crab or spider on the other.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A pet. It's called a such-and-such." I couldn't understand what he was saying. "There's nothing like it on Earth. I know it doesn't look it, but a such-and-such is almost as smart as a pig."

The kid in the photo did sort of look like him. Sort of. I swallowed and asked, "What's your real name?"

"Sam."

"I don't mean that one." Why was he being this way?

"My birth-name was such-and-such." He said it twice, slower the second time. But it never sounded like real words.

"Did Grandma pick Sam?"

"No, that was me. It's a very American name."

There was another photo of him as a boy. A really strange one. He was standing beside a dead jumpie, the carca.s.s propped up with poles and wire, its body dried out and both of its eyes gone.

"A famous ancestor of mine," he told me. Then a moment later, with a different voice, he said, "I know you don't approve of me, Timmy."

I blinked and looked at him."I know what you're taught in school."

"You're a war criminal," I said. Point blank.

"Am I?"

"You bombed our cities."

"I was a navigator on an attack craft, yes. But we never dropped our bombs, if that makes any difference to you. It was my first mission, and we were intercepted before we reached our target. A purely military target." He tried another human smile. "One of your brave pilots shot me down before I could harm a soul."

But war criminals are war criminals, I was thinking. You can't just be a little one.

Walking around the cottage, I ended up at the nightstand. Its wind-up clock wasn't running. I pulled a couple fingers through the dust that covered everything. And I was thinking something, that something working on my insides.

"Who am I?"

I looked at him, wondering what he meant.

"Names matter," he told me. "To my species, a name is essential. It's the peg on which an individual hangs his worth."

I watched the spit dripping off his red tongue.

"Long ago," he told me, "I made peace with my circ.u.mstances. I knew I would never return home. I had died in that crash, and I was reborn. And that's why I claimed my good American name."

I started slipping toward the door.

"In many ways, I am lucky. My particular tribe, my race...we came from the warmest part of our home world. By our standards, I'm quite tolerant of heat..."

Tolerant or not, he looked like h.e.l.l.

"I never expected the exchange of prisoners. That's not a Chonk-squeal-squeal-oonkkkk thing to do." He was looking out the grimy windows, talking quietly. "When the exchange was looming, your grandmother was kind enough to use her influence, and a death certificate went home in my stead. '

Such-and-such died while working in the field,'it read. 'Out of ignorance, the body was buried where it fell, his master unaware of his species's customary mummification rite.' "

I felt sorry for him, sort of. He wasn't what I'd expected, and I tried not to listen, trying not to feel anything at all.

"This is my home, Timmy." He meant the cottage, only he didn't mean it. "You're welcome to visit me any time. All right?"

I didn't answer. I shuffled outdoors, the air feeling a hundred degrees cooler. But Sam stayed inside, opening windows and dusting with his sleeves and thumbs. When I stepped off the groaning porch, he said, "Good-bye."

I might have muttered, "Bye."

I'm not sure.

I went back to Grandma's house, aiming for my room but ending up in hers. I knew something-a huge secret-only I didn't know it. I couldn't find the words. I kept staring at that darkened room, trying to think. Finally I walked over to the big bed, bending down. And sure enough, I could smell hay and that sweet something that I'd smelled on Sam. And I had a big weight on my chest, making me gasp, the force of it trying to steal my breath away.

We're eating supper in the kitchen. It's still day, still hot, but it's been hours since the explosions down at the prison camp. Grandma and Sam aren't talking about the camp or the soldiers in the truck. I can practically hear them not talking about those things. Instead they're making noise about a neighbor lady who broke her hip, and how many pheasants they've seen in the fields, and the chances that the local school can win State two years running. That's what they're saying. A lot of nothing. And then we hear someone at the front door, knocking fast and loud.

I beat Grandma to the door, but not by much. A man waits, tall and tired. "John?" says Grandma.

"What are you doing here?" A dusty bike is propped against the porch rail. "Come in here. Would youlike supper? We're just having a bite-"

"No. Rose," he says. "I can't. I'm going places."

She doesn't say anything, watching him.

Sam shuffles into the room. He's the one who asks, "What happened this afternoon, John? It seemed to involve the camp."

"It did," says the tall man. "Oh, it did."

"An accident?" Grandma asks. "Was it some kind of fire?"

"No, it was a fight." The man shakes his head, talking in a careful voice and not looking at anyone.

"This isn't to be told, okay? But I thought you should hear it. I was walking in my pasture north of the camp when the fight started-"

"Who was fighting?" asks Grandma.

"Soldiers. Special commandos, I guess they were." He shrugs his shoulders. "They went through the old wire, then broke into the barracks. They were after the prisoners."

I say, "But there aren't any."

The man halfway glances at me. "Drunks," he says. "Speeders. One wife beater. Remember Lester Potts...?" He pauses, shaking his head. "Anyway, a deputy spotted the soldiers. Shot one of them. Then the rest took cover in the east barracks-"

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," says Grandma.

"-and I heard the shooting. I got my deer rifle and went down to help. We had them surrounded.

The Guard was rus.h.i.+ng us help. You know the Wicker boys? The ones that drag race on the highway every weekend? Well, the sheriff freed them and gave them guns, and they were plugging the east end.

Which is the direction the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds decided to go. They set off the old stockpile for a diversion...that's the explosions you heard... and things just plain went to h.e.l.l!"

Grandma puts her fists on her hips, halfway looking at Sam. She has a tough face when she wants, blue eyes bright and strong. "When you say 'commandos,' do you mean human soldiers? Or not?"

"They were human, all right."

He says it quietly, as if it's a bad thing.

"At least it's not jumpies," I tell him. And everyone.

n.o.body seems to hear me.

"What happened to these commandos?" Grandma asks.

"Some died," John says. "I'm sure of that much."

n.o.body talked for a long moment. Then I said, "But at least it's not jumpies. It's not jumpies!"

Sam touched me, just for an instant. "But Timmy, why would humans be interested in the old camp?"

How should I know?

"On the other hand, jumpmen would be interested. They might send human agents." He's talking to everyone, including himself. "After all, humans can move at will here."

"But where would they get people like that?" I ask, not having a clue.

It was Grandma who says, "Think."

But I can't see it.

"Think of me," says Sam. "I stayed behind willingly. Didn't I? And doesn't it make sense that some of the human prisoners might have preferred life in s.p.a.ce?"

That's stupid idea, but I don't get a chance to say so.

Instead, Grandma says to John, "But these commandos are all dead now. That's what you've come to tell us, right?"

Sam asks, "How many were there?"

"Three or four," says the tall man. "Or five, maybe."

"How many are dead?" Grandma wants to know.

"We've found three bodies. So far." His eyes were seeing things. "The other bodies might be in the barracks. The Guard will search through the mess in the morning, when the ammo cools down enough."

Sam says, "I'm sure everything's being taken care of."

n.o.body else talks.Sam comes up beside Grandma and touches her arm, lightly. Both John and me watch him. Then he says, "What if one of them escapes? He saw no one but human prisoners. No one, and everything's fine."

Grandma's jaw is working, her teeth grinding.