Years best sf 18, p.90
Year's Best SF 18, page 90
I try not to think about that night, because it gave me nightmares. It happened when I was pretty little, like eight. Sometimes I thought maybe I just dreamed it, because the next time Lou came he acted just like normal. He even smiled at me a little bit. Before he stopped coming here, Lou was nice to me every day after that.
Ms Manigat did not sound surprised when I told her what Lou said about putting me to sleep. “Yes, Jay,” she told me, “for a long time, there have been people outside who didn’t think we should be taking care of you.”
I never knew that before!
I remember a long time ago, when I was really little and I had pneumonia, my mom was scared to leave me alone at the hospital. “They won’t know how to take care of Jay there,” she said to my dad, even though she didn’t know I heard her. I had to stay by myself all night, and because of what my mom said, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was afraid everyone at the hospital would forget I was there. Or maybe something bad would happen to me.
It seems like the lights go off every other day now. And I know people must really miss Lou, because the dirty grey water is all over the floor outside my glass and there’s no one to clean it up.
* * * *
February 14
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
I remember the numbers already! I have been saying them over and over in my head so I won’t forget, but I wanted to write them down in the exact right order to be extra sure. I want to know them without even looking.
Oh, I should start at the beginning. Yesterday, no one brought me any dinner, not even Ms Manigat. She came with a huge bowl of oatmeal this morning, saying she was very sorry. She said she had to look a long time to find that food, and it wore her out. The oatmeal wasn’t even hot, but I didn’t say anything. I just ate. She watched me eating.
She didn’t stay with me long, because she doesn’t teach me lessons any more. After the French doctor left, we talked about the Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King, but she didn’t bring that up today. She just kept sighing, and she said she had been in bed all day yesterday because she was so tired, and she was sorry she forgot to feed me. She said I couldn’t count on Rene to bring me food because she didn’t know where Rene was. It was hard for me to hear her talk through her hot suit today. Her mask was crooked, so the microphone wasn’t in front of her mouth where it should be.
She saw my notebook and asked if she could look at it. I said sure. She looked at the pages from the beginning. She said she liked the part where I said she was my best friend. Her face-mask was fogging up, so I couldn’t see her eyes and I couldn’t tell if she was smiling. I am very sure she did not put her suit on right today.
When she put my notebook down, she told me to pay close attention to her and repeat the numbers she told me, which were 6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3.
I asked her what they were. She said it was the security code for my door. She said she wanted to give the code to me because my buzzer wasn’t working, and I might need to leave my room if she overslept and nobody came to bring me food. She told me I could use the same code on the elevator, and the kitchen was on the third floor. There wouldn’t be anybody there, she said, but I could look on the shelves, the top ones up high, to see if there was any food. If not, she said I should take the stairs down to the first floor and find the red EXIT sign to go outside. She said the elevator doesn’t go to the first floor any more.
I felt scared then, but she put her hand on top of my head again just like usual. She said she was sure there was plenty of food outside.
“But am I allowed?” I asked her. “What if people get sick?”
“You worry so much, little man,” she said. “Only you matter now, my little one-of-a-kind.”
But see I’m sure Ms Manigat doesn’t really want me to go outside. I’ve been thinking about that over and over. Ms Manigat must be very tired to tell me to do something like that. Maybe she has a fever and that’s why she told me how to get out of my room. My brother said silly things when he had a fever, and my father too. My father kept calling me Oscar, and I didn’t know who Oscar was. My dad told us he had a brother who died when he was little, and maybe his name was Oscar. My mother didn’t say anything at all when she got sick. She just died very fast. I wish I could find Ms Manigat and give her something to drink. You get very thirsty when you have a fever, which I know for a fact. But I can’t go to her because I don’t know where she is. And besides, I don’t know where Dr Ben keeps the hot suits. What if I went to her and she wasn’t wearing hers?
Maybe the oatmeal was the only thing left in the kitchen, and now I ate it all. I hope not! But I’m thinking maybe it is because I know Ms Manigat would have brought me more food if she could have found it. She’s always asking me if I have enough to eat. I’m already hungry again.
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
6-4-6-7-2-9-4-3
* * * *
February 15
I am writing in the dark. The lights are off. I tried to open my lock but the numbers don’t work because of the lights being off. I don’t know where Ms Manigat is. I’m trying not to cry. What if the lights never come back on?
* * * *
February 16
There’s so much I want to say but I have a headache from being hungry. When the lights came back on I went out into the hall like Ms M told me and I used the numbers to get the elevator to work and then I went to the kitchen like she said. I wanted to go real fast and find some peanut butter or some Oreos or even a can of beans I could open with the can opener Ms M left me at Thanksgiving.
There’s no food in the kitchen! There’s empty cans and wrappers on the floor and even roaches but I looked on every single shelf and in every cabinet and I couldn’t find anything to eat.
The sun was shining really REALLY bright from the window. I almost forgot how the sun looks. When I went to the window I saw a big, empty parking lot outside. At first I thought there were diamonds all over the ground because of the sparkles but it was just a lot of broken glass. I could only see one car and I thought it was Ms M’s. But Ms M would never leave her car looking like that. For one thing it had two flat tyres!
Anyway I don’t think there’s anybody here today. So I thought of a plan. I have to go now.
Ms M, this is for you—or whoever comes looking for me. I know somebody will find this notebook if I leave it on my bed. I’m very sorry I had to leave in such a hurry.
I didn’t want to go outside but isn’t it OK if it’s an emergency? I am really really hungry. I’ll just find some food and bring it with me and I’ll come right back. I’m leaving my door open so I won’t get locked out. Ms M, maybe I’ll find your garden with cassavas and akee like you showed me and I’ll know the good parts from the bad parts. If someone sees me and I get in trouble I’ll just say I didn’t have anything to eat.
Whoever is reading this don’t worry. I’ll tell everybody I see please please not to get too close to me. I know Dr Ben was very worried I might make somebody sick.
* * * *
A COLDER WAR
Charles Stross
Here’s another brilliant story by Charles Stross, whose story “Antibodies” appears elsewhere in this anthology. In this one, he gives us a scary look at the proposition that, even in wartime, new allies may sometimes cost you more than they’re worth … more, in fact, than you have to spend …
* * * *
Analyst
Roger Jourgensen tilts back in his chair, reading.
He’s a fair-haired man, in his mid-thirties: hair razor-cropped, skin pallid from too much time spent under artificial lights. Spectacles, short-sleeved white shirt and tie, photographic ID badge on a chain round his neck. He works in an air-conditioned office with no windows.
The file he is reading frightens him.
Once, when Roger was a young boy, his father took him to an open day at Nellis AFB, out in the California desert. Sunlight glared brilliantly from the polished silverplate flanks of the big bombers, sitting in their concrete-lined dispersal bays behind barriers and blinking radiation monitors. The brightly coloured streamers flying from their pitot tubes lent them a strange, almost festive appearance. But they were sleeping nightmares: once awakened, nobody — except the flight crew — could come within a mile of the nuclear-powered bombers and live.
Looking at the gleaming, bulging pods slung under their wingtip pylons, Roger had a premature inkling of the fires that waited within, a frigid terror that echoed the siren wail of the air raid warnings. He’d sucked nervously on his ice cream and gripped his father’s hand tightly while the band ripped through a cheerful Sousa march, and only forgot his fear when a flock of Thunderchiefs sliced by overhead and rattled the car windows for miles around.
He has the same feeling now, as an adult reading this intelligence assessment, that he had as a child, watching the nuclear powered bombers sleeping in their concrete beds.
There’s a blurry photograph of a concrete box inside the file, snapped from above by a high-flying U-2 during the autumn of ‘61. Three coffin-shaped lakes, bulking dark and gloomy beneath the arctic sun; a canal heading west, deep in the Soviet heartland, surrounded by warning trefoils and armed guards. Deep waters saturated with calcium salts, concrete coffer-dams lined with gold and lead. A sleeping giant pointed at NATO, more terrifying than any nuclear weapon.
Project Koschei.
* * * *
Red Square Redux
Warning
The following briefing film is classified SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM. If you do not have SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM clearance, leave the auditorium now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense.
You have sixty seconds to comply.
Video clip
Red Square in springtime. The sky overhead is clear and blue; there’s a little wispy cirrus at high altitude. It forms a brilliant backdrop for flight after flight of five four-engined bombers that thunder across the horizon and drop behind the Kremlin’s high walls.
Voice-over
Red Square, the May Day parade, 1962. This is the first time that the Soviet Union has publicly displayed weapons classified GOLD JULY BOOJUM. Here they are:
Video clip
Later in the same day. A seemingly endless stream of armour and soldiers marches across the square, turning the air grey with diesel fumes. The trucks roll in line eight abreast, with soldiers sitting erect in the back. Behind them rumble a battalion of T-56’s, their commanders standing at attention in their cupolas, saluting the stand. Jets race low and loud overhead, formations of MiG-17 fighters.
Behind the tanks sprawl a formation of four low-loaders: huge tractors towing low-sling trailers, their load beds strapped down under olive-drab tarpaulins. Whatever is under them is uneven, a bit like a loaf of bread the size of a small house. The trucks have an escort of jeep-like vehicles on each side, armed soldiers sitting at attention in their backs.
There are big five-pointed stars painted in silver on each tarpaulin, like outlines of stars. Each star is surrounded by a stylized silver circle; a unit insignia, perhaps, but not in the standard format for Red Army units. There’s lettering around the circles, in a strangely stylised script.
Voice-over
These are live servitors under transient control. The vehicles towing them bear the insignia of the second Guards Engineering Brigade, a penal construction unit based in Bokhara and used for structural engineering assignments relating to nuclear installations in the Ukraine and Azerbaijan. This is the first time that any Dresden Agreement party openly demonstrated ownership of this technology: in this instance, the conclusion we are intended to draw is that the sixty-seventh Guard Engineering Brigade operates four units. Given existing figures for the Soviet ORBAT we can then extrapolate a total task strength of two hundred and eighty eight servitors, if this unit is unexceptional.
Video clip
Five huge Tu-95 Bear bombers thunder across the Moscow skies.
Voice-over
This conclusion is questionable. For example, in 1964 a total of two hundred and forty Bear bomber passes were made over the reviewing stand in front of the Lenin mausoleum. However, at that time technical reconnaissance assets verified that the Soviet air force has hard stand parking for only one hundred and sixty of these aircraft, and estimates of airframe production based on photographs of the extent of the Tupolev bureau’s works indicate that total production to that date was between sixty and one hundred and eighty bombers.
Further analysis of photographic evidence from the 1964 parade suggests that a single group of twenty aircraft in four formations of five made repeated passes through the same airspace, the main arc of their circuit lying outside visual observation range of Moscow. This gave rise to the erroneous capacity report of 1964 in which the first strike delivery capability of the Soviet Union was over-estimated by as much as three hundred percent.
We must therefore take anything that they show us in Red Square with a pinch of salt when preparing force estimates. Quite possibly these four servitors are all they’ve got. Then again, the actual battalion strength may be considerably higher.
Still photographic sequence
From very high altitude — possibly in orbit — an eagle’s eye view of a remote village in mountainous country. Small huts huddle together beneath a craggy outcrop; goats graze nearby.
In the second photograph, something has rolled through the village leaving a trail of devastation. The path is quite unlike the trail of damage left by an artillery bombardment: something roughly four metres wide has shaved the rocky plateau smooth, wearing it down as if with a terrible heat. A corner of a shack leans drunkenly, the other half sliced away cleanly. White bones gleam faintly in the track; no vultures descend to stab at the remains.
Voice-over
These images were taken very recently, on successive orbital passes of a KH-11 satellite. They were timed precisely eighty-nine minutes apart. This village was the home of a noted Mujahedin leader. Note the similar footprint to the payloads on the load beds of the trucks seen at the 1962 parade.
These indicators were present, denoting the presence of servitor units in use by Soviet forces in Afghanistan: the four metre wide gauge of the assimilation track. The total molecular breakdown of organic matter in the track. The speed of destruction — the event took less than five thousand seconds to completion, no survivors were visible, and the causative agent had already been uplifted by the time of the second orbital pass. This, despite the residents of the community being armed with DShK heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers, and AK-47’s. Lastly: there is no sign of the causative agent even deviating from its course, but the entire area is depopulated. Except for excarnated residue there is no sign of human habitation.
In the presence of such unique indicators, we have no alternative but to conclude that the Soviet Union has violated the Dresden Agreement by deploying GOLD JULY BOOJUM in a combat mode in the Khyber pass. There are no grounds to believe that a NATO armoured division would have fared any better than these mujahedin without nuclear support …
* * * *
Puzzle Palace
Roger isn’t a soldier. He’s not much of a patriot, either: he signed up with the CIA after college, in the aftermath of the Church Commission hearings in the early seventies. The Company was out of the assassination business, just a bureaucratic engine rolling out National Security assessments: that’s fine by Roger. Only now, five years later, he’s no longer able to roll along, casually disengaged, like a car in neutral bowling down a shallow incline towards his retirement, pension and a gold watch. He puts the file down on his desk and, with a shaking hand, pulls an illicit cigarette from the pack he keeps in his drawer. He lights it and leans back for a moment to draw breath, force relaxation, staring at smoke rolling in the air beneath the merciless light until his hand stops shaking.
Most people think spies are afraid of guns, or KGB guards, or barbed wire, but in point of fact the most dangerous thing they face is paper. Papers carry secrets. Papers can carry death warrants. Papers like this one, this folio with its blurry eighteen year old faked missile photographs and estimates of time/survivor curves and pervasive psychosis ratios, can give you nightmares, dragging you awake screaming in the middle of the night. It’s one of a series of highly classified pieces of paper that he is summarizing for the eyes of the National Security Council and the President Elect — if his head of department and the DDCIA approve it — and here he is, having to calm his nerves with a cigarette before he turns the next page.
After a few minutes, Roger’s hand is still. He leaves his cigarette in the eagle-headed ash tray and picks up the intelligence report again. It’s a summary, itself the distillation of thousands of pages and hundreds of photographs. It’s barely twenty pages long: as of 1963, its date of preparation, the CIA knew very little about Project Koschei. Just the bare skeleton, and rumours from a highly-placed spy. And their own equivalent project, of course. Lacking the Soviet lead in that particular field, the USAF fielded the silver-plated white elephants of the NB-39 project: twelve atomic-powered bombers armed with XK-PLUTO, ready to tackle Project Koschei should the Soviets show signs of unsealing the bunker. Three hundred megatons of H-bombs pointed at a single target, and nobody was certain it would be enough to do the job.
And then there was the hard-to-conceal fiasco in Antarctica. Egg on face: a subterranean nuclear test program in international territory! If nothing else, it had been enough to stop JFK running for a second term. The test program was a bad excuse: but it was far better than confessing what had really happened to the 501st Airborne Division on the cold plateau beyond Mount Erebus. The plateau that the public didn’t know about, that didn’t show up on the maps issued by the geological survey departments of those governments party to the Dresden Agreement of 1931 — an arrangement that even Hitler had stuck to. The plateau that had swallowed more U-2 spy planes than the Soviet Union, more surface expeditions than darkest Africa.
