Year's Best Scifi 6 Part 5

But Pica.s.so pours. Vulpius drinks.

"Let me see if I understand what you are trying to say--"

Somewhere during the long boozy night the truth finds him like an arrow coursing through darkness: These men are fiercely resentful of being clones and want to destroy the world's past so that their own lives can at last be decoupled from it. They may be striking at the Blue Mosque and the Sistine Chapel, but their real targets are Pica.s.so, Hemingway, Cleversmith and Einstein. And, somewhere much later in that sleepless night, just as a jade-hued dawn streaked with broad swirling swaths of scarlet and topaz is breaking over the Alps, Vulpius' own resistance to their misdeeds breaks down. He is more tipsy than he has ever been before, and weary almost to tears besides. And when Pica.s.so suddenly says, "By the way, Vulpius, what are the great accomplishments of your life?" he collapses inwardly before the thrust.

"Mine?" he says dully, blinking in confusion.

"Yes. We're mere clones, and nothing much is to be expected from us, but what have you managed to do with your time?"

"Well, I travel, I observe, I study phenomena--"

"And then what?"

He pauses a moment. "Why, nothing. I take the next trip."

"Ah. I see."

Pica.s.so's cold smile is diabolical, a wedge that goes through Vulpius with shattering force. In a single frightful moment he sees that all is over, that the many months of his quest have been pointless. He has no power to thwart this kind of pa.s.sionate intensity. That much is clear to him now. They are making an art form out of destruction, it seems. Very well. Let them do as they please. Let them. Let them. If this is what they need to do, he thinks, what business is it of his? There's no way his logic can be any match for their lunacy.

Cleversmith is saying, "Do you know what a train is, Vulpius?"

"A train. Yes."

"We're at the station. The train is coming, the Millennium Express. It'll take us from the toxic past to the radiant future. We don't want to miss the train, do we, Vulpius?"

"The train is coming," says Vulpius. "Yes." Pica.s.so, irrepressible, waves yet another flask of brandy at him. Vulpius shakes him off. Outside, the first shafts of golden sunlight are cutting through the dense atmospheric vapors. Jagged Alpine peaks, mantled in jungle greenery reddened by the new day, glow in the distance, Mont Blanc to the west, the Jungfrau in the north, Monte Rosa to the east. The gray-green plains of Italy unroll southward.

"This is our last chance to save ourselves," says Clever-smith urgently. "We have to act now, before the new era can get a grasp on us and throttle us into obedience." He looms up before Vulpius, weaving in the dimness of the room like a serpent. "I ask you to help us."

"Surely you can't expect me to take part in--"

"Decide for us, at least. The Louvre has to go. That's a given. Well, then: Implosion or explosion, which is it to be?"

"Implosion," says Einstein, swaying from side to side in front of Vulpius. The soft eyes beg for his support. Behind him, Hemingway makes vociferous gestures of agreement.

"No," Pica.s.so says. "Blow it up!" He flings his arms outward. "Boom! Boom!"

"Boom, yes," says Cleversmith very quietly. "I agree. So, Vulpius, you will cast the deciding vote."

"No. I absolutely refuse to--"

"Which? Which? One or the other?"

They march around and around him, demanding that he decide the issue for them. They will keep himhere, he sees, until he yields. Well, what difference does it make-explode, implode? Destruction is destruction.

"Suppose we toss a coin for it," Cleversmith says finally, and the others nod eager agreement.

Vulpius is not sure what that means, tossing a coin, but sighs in relief: Apparently he is off the hook. But then Cleversmith produces a sleek bright disk of silvery metal from his pocket and presses it into Vulpius'

palm. "Here," he says. "You do it."

Coinage is long obsolete. This is an artifact, hundreds of years old, probably stolen from some museum. It bears a surging three-tailed comet on one face and the solar system symbol on the other.

"Heads, we explode; tails, we implode," Einstein declares. "Go on, dear friend. Toss it and catch it and tell us which side is up." They crowd in, close up against him. Vulpius tosses the coin aloft, catches it with a desperate lunge, claps it down against the back of his left hand. Holds it covered for a moment.

Reveals it. The comet is showing. But is that side heads or tails? He has no idea.

Cleversmith says sternly, "Well? Heads or tails?"

Vulpius, at the last extremity of fatigue, smiles benignly up at him. Heads or tails, what does it matter?

What concern of his is any of this?

"Heads," he announces randomly. "Explosion."

"Boom!" exclaims a jubilant Pica.s.so. "Boom! Boom! Boom!"

"My friend, you have our deepest thanks." Cleversmith says. "We are all agreed, then, that the decision is final? Ernest? Albert?"

"May I go back to my hotel now?" Vulpius asks.

They accompany him down the mountainside, see him home, wish him a fond farewell. But they are not quite done with him. He is still asleep, late that afternoon, when they come down into Zermatt to fetch him. They are leaving for Paris at once, Cleversmith informs him, and he is invited to accompany them.

He must witness their deed once more; he must give it his benediction. Helplessly he watches as they pack his bag. A car is waiting outside.

"Paris," Cleversmith tells it, and off they go.

Pica.s.so sits beside him. "Brandy?" he asks.

"Thank you, no."

"Don't mind if I do?"

Vulpius shrugs. His head is pounding. Cleversmith and Hemingway, in the front seat, are singing raucously. Pica.s.so, a moment later, joins in, and then Einstein. Each one of them seems to be singing in a different key. Vulpius takes the flask from Pica.s.so and pours some brandy for himself with an unsteady hand.

In Paris, Vulpius rests at their hotel, a venerable gray heap just south of the Seine, while they go about their tasks. This is the moment to report them to the authorities, he knows. Briefly he struggles to find the will to do what is necessary. But it is not there. Somehow all desire to intervene has been burned out of him. Perhaps, he thinks, the all-too-placid world needs the goad of strife that these exasperating men so gleefully provide. In any case the train is nearing the station; it's too late to halt it now.

"Come with us," Hemingway says, beckoning from the hallway.

He follows them, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. They lead him to the highest floor of the building and through a doorway that leads onto the roof. The sky is a wondrous black star-speckled vault overhead. Heavy tropic warmth hangs over Paris this December night. Just before them lies the river, glinting by the light of a crescent moon. The row of ancient bookstalls along its rim is visible, and the bulk of the Louvre across the way, and the spires of Notre Dame far off to the right.

"What time is it?" Einstein asks.

"Almost midnight," says Pica.s.so. "Shall we do it, Vjong?"

"As good a time as any," Cleversmith says, and touches two tiny contacts together.

For a moment nothing happens. Then there is a deafening sound and a fiery lance spurts up out of the gla.s.s pyramid in the courtyard of the museum on the far side of the river. Two straight fissures appear in the courtyard's pavement, crossing at 90-degree angles, and quickly the entire surface of the courtyard peels upward and outward along the lines of the subterranean incision, hurling two quadrants toward theriver and flipping the other two backward into the streets of the Right Bank. As the explosion gathers force, the thick-walled medieval buildings of the surrounding quadrangle of the Louvre are carried high into the air, the inner walls giving way first, then the dark line of the roof. Into the air go the h.o.a.rded treasures of the ages, Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo and the Law-Codex of Hammurabi, Rembrandt and Botticelli, Michelangelo and Rubens, t.i.tian and Brueghel and Bosch, all soaring grandly overhead. The citizenry of Paris, having heard that great boom, rush into the streets to watch the spectacle. The midnight sky is raining the billion fragments of a million masterpieces. The crowd is cheering.

And then an even greater cry goes up, wrung spontaneously from 10,000 throats. The hour of the new millennium has come. It is, very suddenly, the year 3000. Fireworks erupt everywhere, a dazzling sky-splitting display, brilliant reds and purples and greens forming sphere within sphere within sphere.

Hemingway and Pica.s.so are dancing together about the rooftop, the big man and the small. Einstein does a wild solo, flinging his arms about. Cleversmith stands statue still, head thrown back, face a mask of ecstasy. Vulpius, who has begun to tremble with strange excitement, is surprised to find himself cheering with all the rest. Unexpected tears of joy stream from his eyes. He is no longer able to deny the logic of these men's madness. The iron hand of the past has been flung aside. The new era will begin with a clean slate.

Patient Zero

TANANARIVE DUE.

Tananarive Due (p.r.o.nounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo-according to her Web site: www.tananarivedue.com) came into prominence in the 1990s as a writer of supernatural horror with The Between (1994) and My Soul to Keep (1997), both genre award nominees, after a career as a journalist and columnist for the Miami Herald . She was one of thirteen writers with ties to South Florida who co-auth.o.r.ed the bestselling novel Naked Came the Manatee (Putnam), a comic thriller. One of her proudest moments, awards and accolades aside, was performing as a keyboardist/vocalist/dancer with The Rockbottom Remainders-the infamous rock band fronted by Stephen King, with fellow Miami Herald writer Dave Barry and novelist Amy Tan as members.

She married SF writer Steven Barnes and moved from Miami to Kelso, Was.h.i.+ngton, in 1998.

Currently, she is working on a sequel to My Soul to Keep and researching a nonfiction book on the civil rights movement in Florida, co-written with her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due.

"Patient Zero" appeared inFantasy & Science Fiction, the distinguished magazine that was purchased last year by its editor, Gordon Van Gelder, from retired owner and distinguished former editor Edward L. Ferman. This tale is the author's first published SF story. It is an isolated captive child story, and one of a number of stories published in the SF field in 2000 about dreadful disease epidemics.

September 19 The picture came! Veronica tapped on my gla.s.s and woke me up, and she held it up for me to see. It's autographed and everything! For you, Veronica mouthed at me, and she smiled a really big smile. The autograph says, TO JAY-I'LL THROW A TOUCHDOWN FOR YOU. I couldn't believe it.

Everybody is laughing at me because of the way I yelled and ran in circles around my room until I fell on the floor and sc.r.a.ped my elbow. The janitor, Lou, turned on the intercom box outside my door and said, "Kid, you gone crazier than usual? What you care about that picture for?"

Don't they know Dan Marino is the greatest quarterback of all time? I taped the picture to the wallover my bed. On the rest of my wall I have maps of the United States, and the world, and the solar system. I can find Corsica on the map, and the Palau Islands, which most people have never heard of, and I know what order all the planets are in. But there's nothing else on my wall like Dan Marino. That's the best. The other best thing I have is the ca.s.sette tape from that time the President called me on the telephone when I was six. He said, "Hi, is Jay there? This is the President of the United States." He sounded just like on TV. My heart flipped, because it's so weird to hear the President say your name. I couldn't think of anything to say back. He asked me how I was feeling, and I said I was fine. That made him laugh, like he thought I was making a joke. Then his voice got real serious, and he said everyone was praying and thinking about me, and he hung up. When I listen to that tape now, I wish I had thought of something else to say. I used to think he might call me another time, but it only happened once, in the beginning. So I guess I'll never have a chance to talk to the President again.

After Veronica gave me my picture of Marino, I asked her if she could get somebody to fix my TV so I can see the football games. All my TV can play is videos. Veronica said there aren't any football games, and I started to get mad because I hate it when they lie. It's September, I said, and there's always football games in September. But Veronica told me the NFL people had a meeting and decided not to have football anymore, and maybe it would start again, but she wasn't sure, because n.o.body except me was thinking about football. At first, after she said that, it kind of ruined the autograph, because it seemed like Dan Marino must be lying, too. But Veronica said he was most likely talking about throwing a touchdown for me in the future, and I felt better then.

This notebook is from Ms. Manigat, my tutor, who is Haitian. She said I should start writing down my thoughts and everything that happens to me. I said I don't have any thoughts, but she said that was ridiculous. That is her favorite word, ridiculous.

Oh, I should say I'm ten today. If I were in a regular school, I would be in fifth grade like my brother was. I asked Ms. Manigat what grade I'm in, and she said I don't have a grade. I read like I'm in seventh grade and I do math like I'm in fourth grade, she says. She says I don't exactly fit anywhere, but I'm very smart. Ms. Manigat comes every day, except on weekends. She is my best friend, but I have to call her Ms. Manigat instead of using her first name, which is Emmeline, because she is so proper. She is very neat and wears skirts and dresses, and everything about her is very clean except her shoes, which are dirty. Her shoes are supposed to be white, but whenever I see her standing outside of the gla.s.s, when she hasn't put on her plastic suit yet, her shoes look brown and muddy.

Those are my thoughts.

September 20 I had a question today. Veronica never comes on Fridays, and the other nurse, Rene, isn't as nice as she is, so I waited for Ms. Manigat. She comes at one. I said, "You know how they give sick children their last wish when they're dying? Well, when Dr. Ben told me to think of the one thing I wanted for my birthday, I said I wanted an autograph from Dan Marino, so does that mean I'm dying and they're giving me my wish?" I said this really fast.

I thought Ms. Manigat would say I was being ridiculous. But she smiled. She put her hand on top of my head, and her hand felt stiff and heavy inside her big glove. "Listen, little old man," she said, which is what she calls me because she says I do so much worrying, "You're a lot of things, but you aren't dying.

When everyone can be as healthy as you, it'll be a happy day."

The people here always seem to be waiting, and I don't know what for. I thought maybe they were waiting for me to die. But I believe Ms. Manigat. If she doesn't want to tell me something, she just says, "Leave it alone, Jay," which is her way of letting me know she would rather not say anything at all than ever tell a lie.

October 5 The lights in my room started going on and off again today, and it got so hot I had to leave my s.h.i.+rtoff until I went to bed. Ms. Manigat couldn't do her lessons the way she wanted because of the lights not working right. She said it was the emergency generator. I asked her what the emergency was, and she said something that sounded funny: "Same old same old." That was all she said. I asked her if the emergency generator was the reason Dr. Ben took the television out of my room, and she said yes. She said everyone is conserving energy, and I have to do my part, too. But I miss my videos. There is nothing at all to do when I can't watch my videos. I hate it when I'm bored. Sometimes I'll even watch videos I've seen a hundred times, really a hundred times. I've seen Big with Tom Hanks more times than any other video. I love the part in the toy store with the really big piano keys on the floor. My mom taught me how to play Three Blind Mice on our piano at home, and it reminds me of that. I've never seen a toy store like the one in Big. I thought it was just a made-up place, but Ms. Manigat said it was a real toy store in New York.

I miss my videos. When I'm watching them, it's like I'm inside the movie, too. I hope Dr. Ben will bring my TV back soon.

October 22 I made Veronica cry yesterday. I didn't mean to. Dr. Ben said he knows it was an accident, but I feel very sorry, so I've been crying too. What happened is, I was talking to her, and she was taking some blood out of my arm with a needle like always. I was telling her about how me and my dad used to watch Marino play on television, and then all of a sudden she was crying really hard.

She dropped the needle on the floor and she was holding her wrist like she broke it. She started swearing. She said G.o.ddammit, G.o.ddammit, G.o.ddammit, over and over, like that. I asked her what happened, and she pushed me away like she wanted to knock me over. Then she went to the door and punched the number code really fast and she pulled on the doork.n.o.b, but the door wouldn't open, and I heard something in her arm snap from yanking so hard. She had to do the code again. She was still crying. I've never seen her cry.

I didn't know what happened. I mashed my finger on the buzzer hard but everybody ignored me. It reminded me of when I first came here, when I was always pus.h.i.+ng the buzzer and crying, and n.o.body would ever come for a long time, and they were always in a bad mood when they came.

Anyway, I waited for Ms. Manigat, and when I told her about Veronica, she said she didn't know anything because she comes from the outside, but she promised to find out. Then she made me recite the Preamble to the Const.i.tution, which I know by heart. Pretty soon, for a little while, I forgot about Veronica.

After my lessons, Ms. Manigat left and called me on my phone an hour later, like she promised. She always keeps her promises. My telephone is hooked up so people on the inside can call me, but I can't call anybody, inside or outside. It hardly ever rings now. But I almost didn't want to pick it up. I was afraid of what Ms. Manigat would say.

"Veronica poked herself," Ms. Manigat told me. "The needle stuck through her hot suit. She told Dr.

Ben there was a sudden movement."

I wondered who made the sudden movement, Veronica or me?

"Is she okay?" I asked. I thought maybe Ms. Manigat was mad at me, because she has told me many times that I should be careful. Maybe I wasn't being careful when Veronica was here.

"We'll see, Jay," Ms. Manigat said. From her voice, it sounded like the answer was no.

"Will she get sick?" I asked.

"Probably, yes, they think so," Ms. Manigat said.

I didn't want her to answer any more questions. I like it when people tell me the truth, but it always makes me feel bad, too. I tried to say I was sorry, but I couldn't even open my mouth.

"It's not your fault, Jay," Ms. Manigat said.

I couldn't help it. I sobbed like I used to when I was still a little kid.

"Veronica knew something like this could happen," she said.

But that didn't make anything better, because I remembered how Veronica's face looked so scaredinside her mask, and how she pushed me away. Veronica has been here since almost the beginning, before Ms. Manigat came, and she used to smile at me even when n.o.body else did. When she showed me my picture from Dan Marino, she looked almost as happy as me. I had never seen her whole face smiling like that. She looked so pretty and glad.

I was crying so much I couldn't even write down my thoughts like Ms. Manigat said to. Not until today.

November 4 A long time ago, when I first came here and the TV in my room played programs from outside, I saw the first-grade picture I had taken at school on TV. I always hated that picture because Mom put some greasy stuff in my hair that made me look like a total geek. And then I turned on the TV and saw that picture on the news! The man on TV said the names of everyone in our family, and even spelled them out on the screen. Then, he called me Patient Zero. He said I was the first person who got sick.

But that wasn't really what happened. My dad was sick before me. I've told them that already. He got it away on his job in Alaska. My dad traveled a lot because he drilled for oil, but he came home early that time. We weren't expecting him until Christmas, but he came when it was only September, close to my birthday. He said he'd been sent home because some people on his oil crew got sick. One of them had even died. But the doctor in Alaska had looked at my dad and said he was fine, and then his boss sent him home. Dad was really mad about that. He hated to lose money. Time away from a job was always losing money, he said. He was in a bad mood when he wasn't working.

And the worse thing was, my dad wasn't fine. After two days, his eyes got red and he started sniffling. Then I did, too. And then my mom and brother.

When the man on TV showed my picture and called me Patient Zero and said I was the first one to get sick, that was when I first learned how people tell lies, because that wasn't true. Somebody on my dad's oil rig caught it first, and then he gave it to my dad. And my dad gave it to me, my mom and my brother.

My Aunt Lori came here to live at the lab with me at first, but she wasn't here long, because her eyes had already turned red by then. She came to help take care of me and my brother before my mom died, but probably she shouldn't have done that. She lived all the way in California, and I bet she wouldn't have gotten sick if she hadn't come to Miami to be with us. But even my mom's doctor didn't know what was wrong then, so n.o.body could warn her about what would happen if she got close to us.

Sometimes I dream I'm calling Aunt Lori on my phone, telling her please, please not to come. Aunt Lori and my mom were twins. They looked exactly alike.

After Aunt Lori died, I was the only one left in my whole family.

I got very upset when I saw that news report. I didn't like hearing someone talk about my family like that, people who didn't even know us. And I felt like maybe the man on TV was right, and maybe it was all my fault. I screamed and cried the whole day. After that, Dr. Ben made them fix my TV so I couldn't see the news anymore or any programs from outside, just cartoons and kid movies on video. The only good thing was, that was when the President called me. I think he was sorry when he heard what happened to my family.