The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
KAREN LORD
The Plague Doctors
Wednesday 9 August 2079 was an extraordinary day. It was Memorial Day, and it seemed like half of Pelican Island’s population was swarming the beaches to take advantage of the midweek break. Beautiful weather was to blame no doubt, that and the lure of gentle swells of blue-green water and white foam. Colin Lee brought his daughter to his favorite spot on the western coast, where a broad, bright highway of sand stretched uninterrupted along the shore of a curved, sheltered bay, its four flat kilometers granted by the low water of a spring tide and the protection of a rocky cay not yet diminished by storms, shifting currents, and rising sea levels. Such a combination was a gift to parents, a party to young children, and a mixed blessing to lifeguards trying to keep an eye out for dangerous play.
Colin’s daughter, Maisie, had already decided that such shenanigans were not for her. The crowd and tumult bored her, and soon she wandered to the quiet southernmost end. There, the beach grew narrower and terminated in a cliff wall, a slight overhang that shaded rock pools filled with shy crabs, spindly and translucent gray amid the moss and seaweed. Maisie spent her time stooping over a pool for long, fascinated minutes, then she would spring up with a hop and a skip to dash to a new pool.
Colin scanned the area, set a blanket down between his daughter and the water’s edge, and took out a book to read. With five-year-old Maisie, sharp hearing and good peripheral vision were all he needed to keep aware of her doings: now she was singing a counting song from school, now she was testing the depth of each pool with a jump, a splash and a giggle. She was used to amusing herself; she got that from him. Always looking out for the new, every day seeking some small adventure—well, that had been him. The world changed; he changed. All the adventure he needed was right here . . . a quiet day at the beach with a crime novel and enough free time to enjoy both.
Everything was comforting and familiar, the background murmur and movement of home. He noticed the curve of the waves as they refracted around the rocky point, the occasional glimpse of a diligently patrolling coast guard vessel, and the sails of a few colorful paragliders swooping across the blue sky. His ears registered the constant susurration of water surging in and drawing out, and the nearby human and animal sounds of play—shrieks, barks, and sometimes a snarl or wail. He absorbed it all without concern, with even a little gratitude, as he concentrated on his book and let time pass without guilt.
He blinked, distracted from his reading as a certain quality of the quietness set the parental super senses on high alert. Maisie had been crouched over in one place for too long. He put down his book and looked up. There she was right against the cliff face, sitting on her heels, watching the crabs scuttle over a thick log of driftwood. He slowly walked over to see what she was finding so interesting.
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Daddy, why is it all polka-dotty?”
Parental super senses also came with super powers. In one long, slow second, Colin’s eyes realized the log was not a log, but a body. His blood ran hot, cold, electric—spurring him at top speed to grab the back of his daughter’s shirt and shorts, snatching her away from the air that surrounded the corpse. Holding her tightly, he raced into the water and triple-baptized her with mindless instinct, as if contagion could be washed from her skin and flushed from her lungs with a dose of drowning. The nearest lifeguard came running at the sound of her choked screams.
“Plague doctors!” he yelled as the lifeguard ran toward them. “Get the plague doctors!”
There was a protocol. Everyone knew the protocol, everyone practiced the drills, but not everyone had experienced real-life action. Colin was one of the few who had, and terror, not duty, raised the volume of his voice. The lifeguard planted a foot down hard and braked in the soft, heavy sand. He was close enough for Colin to see his passing expressions: disbelief, fear, realization. After a moment of brief indecision, he unfroze and started running north.
Was there enough salt in the water to save them; was there enough water in the ocean to wash them clean? Colin waited in the shallows, holding Maisie and soothing her as she sobbed. “Daddy’s sorry, baby. Don’t cry, hon.”
He glanced over at his blanket and his unfinished book. Gone. They’d be burned along with the body. He turned to watch the lifeguards clear the beach with disciplined swiftness. He heard the sound of distant sirens coming closer.
“Don’t cry, sweetie. Daddy’s here with you. Don’t cry.”
Memorial Day Wednesday 9 August 2079 was an extraordinary day. It was the day of the first recorded incidence of plague on the soil of Pelican Island.
Monday 26 February 2080 was an ordinary day. On Mondays, the plague doctors cleared the beaches. All the island’s beaches, not only Tempest Bay, were now largely deserted, with no holidaying families and no need for lifeguard stations—only watchtowers for the corpse-spotters.
Audra Lee had been assigned to beach-clearing duty for almost three months. She was more than competent, she knew the process by heart, but she refused to get so accustomed as to call her Mondays ordinary. A steady ocean current had taken to dumping the remains of refugees from the mainland into the southern crook of Tempest Bay. The current had been there for some time; it was the bodies that were new, and the number was slowly increasing.
Monday was the busiest day of Audra’s week. Besides herself, she counted one other plague doctor to carry out field autopsies, four orderlies to seal and move the bodies, and one registrar to witness the process from discovery at the beach to disposal at the crematorium. Every person on beach-clearing duty wore full personal protective equipment in the form of bespoke suits designed by a specialist on the mainland and constructed on the island using imported and local materials and a 3D printer. Standard suits were fine for occasional use, but the nature of their work demanded tech that was up to frequent dedicated use.
Their team leader and senior doctor for the district, Dr. Jane Pereira, was maddeningly philosophical about their situation. “Only a matter of time,” she said. “We had a good run. No such thing as an island in this day and age. Let’s do what we can.”
Beneath the calm words was the unspoken, unsettling truth—they could not do very much. If the mainland, with all its resources and expertise, had not solved the problem of the plague; if the navy of one of the world’s largest countries could not keep the desperate from seeking help elsewhere; and if the ocean itself had started to conspire against those formerly favored with isolation and health . . . what could the medical team of a small community clinic do?
“Our job,” was Dr. Pereira’s brisk reply when Audra spoke her fears aloud. “And part of our job is to ensure there will be no panic in the community. Please remember that.”
Audra returned to her lab in a fury. Grimly taciturn, she had borne the usual off-site decontaminating scrub down with her colleagues and said a curt farewell to Dr. Pereira, who was leaving to do the afternoon’s rounds for the community clinic. Perhaps it was her bleak expression, or the white square of her mask, or the severely monochrome scrubs that hinted at nonpatient duties. Perhaps it was just that everyone in the district knew by now that Audra Lee, doctor in charge of the diagnostic lab, was also one of the plague doctors. Either way, she spent the twenty-minute bus journey back home along a busy route with no one showing the least interest in taking the empty seat beside her.