Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 22

"Oh, love, what does it matter?" Cade had said. "I'm comfortable. And isn't all this stuff just a bit... twee? Isn't it, now?"

"But Cade-"

"I rather like what I'm used to."

"You're not used to it!" Suzanne had cried in anguish. "You can't be! You've only had it for a season!"

"Really? I guess so. Seems longer," Cade said. "See you later, love. Or not."

Now Suzanne scowled at the pills in her hand. There was a real problem here. If she took them, she would be garbed in the gentle sweet tremulousness of youth.

Gentle, sweet, tremulous-and ineffective. That was the whole point. Ingenues were acted upon, not actors. But without the whole force of her will, could she persuade Cade to stop being such an a.s.s?

On the other hand, if she didn't take the pills, she would be dressed wrong for the occasion. She pictured showing up at the Donnison lunch in the Alliani Towers, at the afternoon reception in the Artificial Islands, at Kittery's party tonight, dressed badly, shabbily, in last season's worn-out feelings... no, no. She couldn't. She had a reputation to maintain. And everyone would think that she couldn't afford new feelings, that she had lost all her money in data-atoll speculation or some other ghastly nouveau thing... d.a.m.n Cade!

He came back from his stroll a few hours later, whistling carelessly. The vid was already crammed with "Where are you?" messages from their friends at the Donnison lunch. Breathless, ingenue messages, from people having a wonderful youthful time. And there was Cade, cool and off-hand in those detestable boring tweeds, daring to whistle...

"Where have you been?" Suzanne said. "Don't you know how late we are? Come on, get dressed!"

"Don't whine, Suzanne, it's terribly unattractive."

"I never whine!" she cried, stung.

"Well, then, don't do whatever you're doing. Come lie down beside me instead."

It was the most a.s.sertive thing he'd said in months. Encouraged, Suzanne lay with him on the bed, trying to control her panic. Maybe if she were sweet enough to him..."You haven't dressed yet, either, have you, love?" Cade said. He was smiling.

"That isn't the tentative embrace of an ingenue."

"Would you like that?" Suzanne said hopefully. "I can just change..."

"Actually, no. I've been thinking, Suzanne. I don't want to get all tricked out as some sort of ersatz boy-child, and you don't want to go on wearing these casual emotions. So what about what I suggested at the end of last summer? Let's just go naked for a while. See what it's like."

"No!" Suzanne shrieked.

She hadn't known she was going to do it. She never shrieked like that-not she, Suzanne! Except, of course, when fas.h.i.+on decreed it, and that didn't really count...

What was she thinking? Of course it counted, it was the only thing that kept them all safe. To go naked in front of each other! Good G.o.d, what was Cade thinking?

Civilized people didn't parade around naked, everything personal on display for any pa.s.sing observer to pick over and chortle at, nude and helplessly exposed in their deepest feelings!

Or lack of them.

She struggled to sound casual. And she succeeded-or last season's pills did.

"Cade... I don't want to go naked. Really, I don't think you're being very fair. We had it your way for a season. Now it should be my turn."

A long silence. For a moment Suzanne thought he'd actually fallen asleep. If he had dared...

"Suzanne," he said finally, "it's my detached impression that you always have it your way."

It hurt so much that Suzanne's legs trembled as she climbed off the bed. How could he say that? She always thought in terms of the two of them! Always! She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Shaky, she leaned against the wall, and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked lovely. Blue eyes wide with surprised hurt, pale lip trembling, like a young girl suddenly cut to her vulnerable heart...

And she hadn't even yet taken the season's pills!

Cade would have to come around. He would simply have to.

He didn't. Suzanne argued. She stormed. She begged. Finally, after missing three days of wonderful parties-irreplaceable parties, a season only opened once, after all-she dressed herself in the pills and a white cotton frock, and pleaded with him tremulously, weeping delicate sweet tears. Cade only laughed affectionately, and hugged her casually, and went off to do something else off-hand and detestable.

She dissolved the pills in his burgundy.

It bothered her, a little. They had always been honest with each other. And besides, it was such a scary thing for a young girl to do, her fingers shook the wholetime as she broke open the capsules and a single s.h.i.+ning crystalline tear dropped into the gla.s.s (how much salt would one tear add? Cade had a keen palate). But she did it. And, wide-eyed, she handed him the gla.s.s, her girlish bosom heaving with silent emotion. Then she excused herself and went to take a scented bath in pink bubbles and to do her hair in long drooping ringlets.

By the time she came out, Cade was waiting for her. He held a single pink rose, and his eyes met hers shyly, for just a moment, as he handed it to her. They went for a walk before dinner along a beach, and the stars came out one by one, and when he took her hand, Suzanne thought, her heart would burst. At the thought that he might kiss her, the V-R waves blurred a little, and her breath came faster.

It was going to be a wonderful winter.

"Suzanne," Cade said, very low. "Sweet Suzanne..."

"Yes, Cade?"

"I have something to tell you."

"Yes?" Emotion thrilled through her.

"I don't like burgundy."

"What... but you..."

"At least not that burgundy. I didn't drink it. But I did run it through the molecular a.n.a.lyzer."

She pulled away from his hand. Suddenly, she was very afraid.

"I'm so disappointed in you, Suzanne. I rather hoped that whatever fas.h.i.+on said, we at least trusted each other."

"What..." she had trouble getting the words out, d.a.m.n this tremulous high-pitched voice-"What are you going to do?"

"Do?" He laughed carelessly. "Why do anything? It's not really worth making a fuss over, is it?"

Relief washed over her. It was last season's fas.h.i.+on. He was still wearing it, and it was keeping him casual about her betrayal. Nonchalant, off-hand. Oh, thank heavens...

"But I think maybe we should live apart for a bit. Till things sort themselves out.

Don't you think that would be best?"

"Oh no! No!" Girlish protest, in a high sweet girlish voice. When what she wanted was to grab him and force her body against his and convince him to change his mind by sheer brute s.e.xuality... but she couldn't. Not dressed like this. It would be ludicrous.

"Cade..."

"Oh, don't take it so hard, love. I mean, it's not the end of the world, is it?

You're still you, and I'm still me. Be good, now." And he loped off down the beach and out the apartment door.Suzanne turned off the V-R. She sat in the bare-walled apartment and cried. She loved Cade, she really did. Maybe if she agreed to go naked for a season... but, no.

That wasn't how she loved Cade, or how he loved her, either. They loved each other for their multiplicity of selves, their basic and true complexity, expressed outwardly and so well through the art of change. That was what kept love fresh and romantic, wasn't it? Change. Growth. Variety.

Suzanne cried until she had no tears left, until she was completely drained. (It felt rather good, actually. Ingenues were allowed so much wild sorrow.) Then she called Sendil, at home, on a s.h.i.+elded frequency.

"Sendil? Suzanne."

"Suzanne? What is it? I can't see you, my dear."

"The vid's malfunctioning, I have audio only. Sendil, I've got some rather awful news."

"What? Oh, are you all right?"

"I'm... oh, please understand! I'm so alone! I need you!" Her voice trembled.

She had his complete attention.

"Anything, love. Anything at all!"

"I'm..." Her girlish voice dropped to a whisper drenched in shame. "I'm...

enceinte. And Cade... Cade won't marry me!"

"Suzanne!" Sendil cried. "Oh my G.o.d! What a master stroke! Are you going to keep it going all season?"

"I'm... I'm going away. I can't... face anyone."

"No, of course not. Oh my G.o.d, darling, this will just make your reputation!"

Suzanne said acidly, "I was under the impression it was already made," realized her mistake, and dropped back into ingenue. It wasn't hard, really; all she had to do was take a deep breath and give herself up to the drugs. She said gaspingly, "But I can't... I can't face it completely by myself. I'm just not strong enough. So you're the only person I'm telling. Will you come see me in my shame?"

"Oh, Suzanne, of course I'll stand by you." Sendil said, boyish emotion making his voice husky. Sendil always took a dose and a half of fas.h.i.+on.

"I leave tomorrow," Suzanne gasped. "I'll write you, dear faithful Sendil, to tell you where to visit me..." She'd get a holo of her body looking pregnant custom-made. "Oh, he just threw me away! I feel so wretched!"

"Of course you do," Sendil breathed. "Poor innocent! Seduced and abandoned!

What can I do to cheer you up?"

"Nothing. Oh, wait... maybe if I know my shame won't go on forever... but, oh, Sendil, I couldn't ask you what follows this season! I know you'd never let out a peep in advance!"

"Well, not ordinarily, of course, but in this case, for you...""You're the only one I'm going to let visit me, to hear about everything that happens. Everyone else will simply have to play along with you."

"Ahh." Sendil's voice thickened with emotion. "I'd do anything to cheer you up, darling. And believe me, you'll love the next season. After a whole season away, everyone will be panting to see how you look, every eye will be trained on you...

and the look is going to be a return to military! You're just made for it, darling, and it for you!"

"Military," Suzanne breathed. Sendil was right. It was perfect. Uniforms' and swords and guns and stern, disciplined command breaking into bawdy barracks-room physi-cality at night... Officers pulling rank in the bedroom... That's an order, soldier-Yes, sir!... The s.e.xual and social possibilities were tremendous.

And Cade would never skip two seasons of fas.h.i.+on. She would come back from the winter's exile with everyone buzzing about her, and then Cade in the uniform of, say, the old Royal Guards... and herself outranking him (she'd find out somehow what rank he'd chosen, bribery or something), able to command his allegiance, keeping a military bearing and so having to give away nothing of herself...

It was going to be a wonderful spring.

Chapter 15 - Canary Land By Tom Purdom.

Tom Purdom has been writing solid science fiction since the 1960s. His first story was published in 1957 and his second novel, The Tree Lord oflmeten, was the other side of an Ace Double from a Samuel R. Delany novel. Other novels followed and he was an active writer for a decade or so. Then he more or less disappeared from SF between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s, but he has been back with a vengeance in this decade with some first-rate fiction. One of the things he did in the meantime was to become music critic for a Philadelphia newspaper, which contributes to this story. He has not yet published a novel in the 90s, but his stories, mainly in Asimov's (as this one was), are deeply grounded in setting and have a pleasant complexity of motivation. "Canary Land" has those virtues in spades, and a surprising turn of plot that subst.i.tutes music and harmony for a more normal cathartic moment. Sometimes life is like this.

Back home in Delaware County, in the area that was generally known as the "Philadelphia region," the three guys talking to George Sparr would probably have been descended from long dead ancestors who had immigrated from Sicily. Here on the Moon they were probably the sons of parents who had been born in Taiwan or Thailand. They had good contacts, the big one explained, with the union that "represented" the musicians who played in eateries like the Twelve Sages Cafe. If George wanted to continue sawing on his viola twelve hours a day, thirteen days outof fourteen, it would be to his advantage to accept their offer. If he declined, someone else would take his place in the string quintet that the diners and lunchers ignored while they chatted.

On Earth, George had played the viola because he wanted to. The performance system he had planted in his nervous system was top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art.

There had been weeks, back when he had been a normal take-it-as-it-comes American, when he had played with a different trio or quartet every night, including Sat.u.r.day, and squeezed in two sessions on Sunday. Now his performance system was the only thing standing between him and the euphoric psychological states induced by malnutrition. Live music, performed by real live musicians, was one of the lowest forms of unskilled labor. Anybody could do it, provided they had attached the right information molecules to the right motor nerves. It was, in short, the one form of employment you could count on, if you were an American immigrant who was, when all was said and done, only a commonplace, cookbook kind of biode-signer.

George's grasp of Techno-Mandarin was still developing. He had been sc.r.a.ping for money when he had left Earth. He had sold almost everything he owned-including his best viola- to buy his way off the planet. The language program he had purchased had been a cheap, quick-and-dirty item that gave him the equivalent of a useful pidgin. The three guys were talking very slowly.

They wanted to slip George into one of the big artificial ecosystems that were one of the Moon's leading economic resources. They had a contact who could stow him in one of the carts that delivered supplies to the canaries-the "long term research and maintenance team" who lived in the ecosystem. The contact would think she was merely transferring a container that had been loaded with a little harmless recreational material.

George was only five-eight, which was one reason he'd been selected for the "opportunity." He would be wearing a guaranteed, airtight isolation suit. Once inside, he would hunt down a few specimens, a.n.a.lyze their genetic makeup with the equipment he would be given, and come out with the information a member of a certain Board of Directors was interested in. Robots could have done the job, but robots had to be controlled from outside, with detectable radio sources. The Director (George could hear the capital, even with his limited knowledge of the language), the Director wanted to run some tests on the specimens without engaging in a direct confrontation with his colleagues.

There was, of course, a very real possibility the isolation suit might be damaged in some way. In that case, George would become a permanent resident of the ecosystem-a des-tiny he had been trying to avoid ever since he had arrived on the Moon.

The ride to the ecosystem blindsided George with an unexpected rush of emotion. There was a moment when he wasn't certain he could control the sob that was pressing against the walls of his throat.He was sitting in a private vehicle. He was racing along a strip of pavement, with a line of vehicles ahead of him. There was sky over his head and a landscape around him.

George had spent his whole life in the car-dominated metropolitan sprawls that had replaced cities in the United States. Now he lived in a tiny one-room apartment, in a corridor crammed with tiny one-room apartments rented by other immigrants.

His primary form of transportation was his own legs. When he did actually ride in a vehicle, he hopped aboard an automated cart and shared a seat with someone he had never seen before. He could understand why most of the people on the Moon came from Asiatic countries. They had crossed two hundred and fifty thousand miles so they could build a new generation of Hong Kongs under the lunar surface.

The sky was black, of course. The landscape was a rolling desert composed of craters pockmarked by craters that were pockmarked by craters. The cars on the black strip were creeping along at fifty kilometers per hour-or less-and most of the energy released by their batteries was powering a life support system, not a motor. Still, he looked around him with some of the tingling pleasure of a man who had just been released from prison.

The trio had to explain the job to him and some of the less technical data slipped out in the telling. They were also anxious, obviously, to let him know their "client"

had connections. One of the corporation's biggest products was the organic interface that connected the brains of animals to electronic control devices. The company's major resource was a woman named Ms. Chao who was a big expert at developing such interfaces. Her company had become one of the three compet.i.tors everybody in the field wanted to beat.

In this case the corporation was upgrading a package that connected the brains of surveillance hawks to the electronics that controlled them. The package included genes that modified the neurotransmitters in the hawk's brain and it actually altered the hawk's intelligence and temperament. The package created, in effect, a whole new organ in the brain. You infected the brain with the package and the DNA in the package built a new organ-an organ that responded to activity within the brain by releasing extra transmitters, dampening certain responses, etc. Some of the standard, medically approved personality modifications worked exactly the same way. The package would increase the efficiency of the hawk's brain and multiply the number of functions its owners could build into the control interface.