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.
She looked forward to slamming her front door, but that tiny indulgence was denied her. Colin was already there, standing at the threshold, his face stern with suppressed and weary anger.
“You’re late,” he stated.
“It’s Monday,” she told her brother impatiently.
“You’re usually back before three.” He looked exhausted. She should have been kind and understanding, but she was tired, too, and her fears were larger than his, and heavy with the secrecy of professional confidentiality. Ensure there will be no panic. She chose something simple to shout about, not a lie, but not the full truth. She would cry over the full truth with her colleagues later.
“We had fourteen bodies today, Colin. Fourteen!” She pushed past him into the house and went to check her messages. “Hi, Maisie,” she greeted her niece absently before she sat at her desk.
“Hi, Aunty Audra,” the little girl replied after a slight pause to make sure the adults had finished arguing. She sounded subdued.
Audra looked up immediately. “Oh. Okay.” She didn’t say anything more.
Promises were impossible to keep, so she didn’t make them. She merely put her work down and walked over to the translucent boundary that had separated Maisie from the world for more than half a year. From a distance, the room glowed white and warm, like the sick bay of some futuristic space station, but with a closer look the painted plywood and plastic sheeting became obvious and the coolness factor evaporated. The main lab was also white-walled, but with tile and aged grout instead of plywood. No illusions there, no glow or pretense at coolness.
Audra knelt, set her hand against the plastic, and leaned her face beside it. She waited patiently until Maisie approached and mirrored her motion, answering the warmth of hand and cheek with her own.
Colin ended the moment by entering the quarantine area in gown, gloves, mask, and goggles. He carried a tray with a cup, a mini teapot, and a small plate of sweet biscuits. Maisie ran to him, laughing. Audra went back to her desk, blinking tears away.
Three days after her exposure to the infected body, Maisie had showed the usual progression: mild fever and a slight rash on her chest, eruption of a few oozing blisters, and then those blisters dried, scabbed, and healed within a fortnight. Colin hadn’t even had a sniffle, far less a blister, and his immunological tests remained clear—which was a great relief to everyone but Colin, who would have gladly gifted his luck to Maisie instead.
Instead of strictly following the official procedures, which would have meant sending both Colin and Maisie away to Salt Rock Quarantine Center, Dr. Pereira had suggested setting up in an unused storage shed next to Audra’s house, behind the diagnostic lab. Audra wouldn’t have dared ask for that privilege, and she was terribly grateful for it. She was also guiltily relieved that her colleagues were both willing and able to spare her the burden of counseling Colin and Maisie. After Maisie’s skin had healed completely, Dr. Pereira and Antonio Williams, the clinic’s pediatric nurse practitioner, sat down with father and daughter to discuss the disease, its consequences, and future steps—Antonio and Audra in their protective equipment within the quarantine section with Dr. Pereira and Colin sitting close on the other side of the barrier.
“Maisie, I know you feel much better now, but you’re going to have to stay in your aunt’s sickroom for a little longer, okay?” Antonio told her.
“Why, Mr. Williams?” Maisie’s voice was very soft and a little scared.
“Because you got the gray pox, that’s why. It hasn’t really gone away. It went to sleep, but it can wake up any time.”
Maisie nodded.
“We all want to keep you safe, especially your father. He was very lucky: he didn’t get sick. Problem is, if you leave quarantine, he could catch it from you, and it would make him a lot sicker than it made you. It’s kinder to children, you see. And when it gets into you, it doesn’t want to leave. If something else makes you sick, or very tired, the gray pox will wake up again, and this time it could make your father sick, or anyone else you might sneeze on.”
“I don’t sneeze on people. That’s rude.” Maisie crossed her arms, frowning.
Audra watched her niece’s face intently. Maisie was paying close attention to Antonio’s story of the gray pox, but did she really understand?
“Of course you don’t. But you wouldn’t have to be too close for the germs from a sneeze, or a cough, to reach them. That’s how germs are; it’s not your fault.”
Maisie began to look doubtful about the direction this was heading.
“But you have to stay here so your aunt and your father can take care of you and make sure the pox stays asleep. You’ll see your friends and take your classes on the island school intranet. Our nutritionist, Mrs. Bishop, will check in on you regularly and make sure you’re getting all the good food you’ll need to stay strong and healthy.”
Antonio leaned closer, his eyes warm but stern over his mask. “But Maisie, you must do what your aunt and your father tell you to do. Otherwise, people could die. Your father could die. And Maisie, if you get sick a second time, the pox won’t be kind to you anymore. It will be a plague, then.”
She gulped and nodded, tears welling up. He gathered her up in his long-gloved, long-sleeved arms and hugged her with as much comfort as a gown and apron could provide. Audra gripped her own apron with shaking hands and breathed deeply. She would not let Maisie see her cry.
At the time, Dr. Pereira had estimated only another month or two of isolation for Maisie while she contacted friends and colleagues connected to institutions and clinics on the mainland. No one wanted to send Maisie away, but even Colin agreed that permanent quarantine was no place for a child to grow up. In a country where the gray pox was fairly widespread Maisie could at least live openly among others who had survived that first phase of the disease. And, if the worst should happen, if she progressed to the second phase, she would be near resources for her care—far better resources than Pelican Island could offer.
A sensible plan that should have worked . . . but Dr. Pereira’s contacts did not bear fruit. Instead, communication grew exponentially worse. Messages arrived truncated, or stripped of attachments, or did not arrive at all. “It’s like we’re in the middle of a war, and the mainland is one of the front lines,” Dr. Pereira had said. “No one can give me a straight answer. We can’t send Maisie there.”
“Is there anywhere else she can go?” Audra asked. Her voice faltered; she already knew the truth.
Dr. Pereira had only given her a sympathetic look, and they did not discuss the possibility further.
Now it was almost six months later, with one birthday and several holidays celebrated—or endured—in quarantine. The island’s sole hospital struggled with the reduction of key imports; the quarantine center was about to reach maximum capacity; and more and more bodies were appearing in spite of the best efforts of the navy and coast guard to keep the beaches clear.
Audra forced herself to focus on her work. Her screen showed messages from Gilles Caron in Seychelles, Jennifer Tuatara in Rakiura, and Tom Isaac in Woleai, and a general mailing with the monthly newsletter of the Community Clinics Association of Raja Ampat. She still wasn’t sure how she’d ended up on the mailing list for that one. Why was it so difficult to receive emails and news from established hospitals and universities on the mainland, but personal messages from the staff of far-flung community clinics on distant islands and mountain retreats constantly filled her inbox?