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.
He extended his hand and Audra took it on pure instinct. “You’re Dagmar’s Alexander.”
The old man’s eyes widened a little in shock, and then he smiled slowly. “Yes. She sent me to tell you that she is alive and well.”
Slightly accented English, oddly antique phrasing with a little quaver of age or weakness over it all.
“Where is she?”
“That, I cannot say. The situation is complicated. Her results were applauded, her methods less so. Perhaps history will give her the laurels she deserves, but for now my work is to shield her from the courts of law.”
Audra lowered her head and smiled sadly. She suspected that whatever illegal or semilegal methods Dagmar had employed to get the data, she had embraced the risks bravely, with no half-heroic measures to trouble her conscience. She tilted her head up again and blinked, trying not to cry in front of Alexander and failing . . . but that was all right, because it meant she was finally free to feel again.
“Will you get her cleared? Dagmar said you were rich. Old money, noble family. Isn’t that right?”
Alexander looked even more apologetic. “More or less. More noble than rich, that is. But I do have a marvelous reputation, and there are many people, both old and new money, who trust me to recommend worthwhile investments and endeavors.” He gave a wry chuckle. “We label it charity most of the time, at least for our accountants and auditors.”
He sobered quickly and gave her a stern look. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m not an angel. I’m a facilitator. What I and my associates do is neither legal nor illegal, but it might be considered . . . a bit irregular. Dagmar understood that. The whistleblower who gave her the data understood that as well.
“Dagmar saved my husband and my son from the first phase of the plague when no other doctor would come near them. Now she has saved them from living with the dread of a second-phase death. Only two among many, but they are all the world to me. I owe her everything, and I’ll do everything I can for her, but I can offer no guarantees.
“But what do you want? Do you need anything?”
Audra startled at the segue, then seriously considered the request. “Our Network will always need resources. Continue to be our facilitator, and find people to fund us. But don’t dare call it charity. Tell them to invest in the world they’d like to live in, the world they’d like to leave to future generations.”
Alexander inclined his head. “I know a few who have learned the hard way that a luxury bunker is too narrow a world at any price. No more moats and walls. We will tend the garden for everyone.”
Later, after the GNU mobile had driven away with its three occupants, Audra looked at the empty building that was her gutted laboratory, the house that was too big for one person, and considered for a mad, brief moment the empty months and years that lay ahead. Alexander’s words echoed in her mind.
What do you want?
She walked to her old lab, opened the door, and hovered at the threshold, marveling at the huge, half-lit, hollowed-out space, emptied of furniture and equipment, as anonymous as any random storeroom. Memories of faces on screens—Gilles, Jennifer, Dagmar—floated amid the gilded dust motes. The new doctor at the diagnostic lab would work with the Network now. Audra had said her farewells to her remaining colleagues—hasty, unthinking, distracted farewells. Only now, in the silence and shadow, did she realize how much she missed them, how much she missed the work.
A sharp ding! interrupted her musings. She sighed and fished her tablet out of her bag, and frowned in confusion. She’d never deleted the Network’s communications app from her device, even though she no longer had access to the lab account. Now, instead of a generic login page, it was showing her a message with YES and NO buttons and a few lines of text.
we need a full-time admin with medical experience
license not required, tech will be provided
low pay, high risk
ready to continue the work Y/N?
Eyes on her tablet, Audra absently closed the door of the lab with one hand. The air was fragrant with plumeria blossoms, the sun shone with bright promise, and Audra’s heart was soaring with sudden excitement. She poised a finger above the screen, hesitated to savor the moment, and pressed.
YES
SARAH PINSKER
Two Truths and a Lie
In his last years, Marco’s older brother, Denny, had become one of those people whose possessions swallowed them entirely. The kind they made documentaries about, the kind people staged interventions for, the kind people made excuses not to visit, and who stopped going out, and who were spoken of in sighs and silences. Those were the things Stella thought about after Denny died, and those were the reasons why, after eyeing the four other people at the funeral, she offered to help Marco clean out the house.
“Are you sure?” Marco asked. “You barely even knew him. It’s been thirty years since you saw him last.”
Marco’s husband, Justin, elbowed Marco in the ribs. “Take her up on it. I’ve got to get home tomorrow and you could use help.”
“I don’t mind. Denny was nice to me,” Stella said, and then added, “but I’d be doing it to help you.”
The first part was a lie, the second part true. Denny had been the weird older brother who was always there when their friends hung out at Marco’s back in high school, always lurking with a notebook and a furtive expression. She remembered Marco going out of his way to try to include Denny, Marco’s admiration wrapped in disappointment, his slow slide into embarrassment.
She and Marco had been good friends then, but she hadn’t kept up with anyone from high school. She had no excuse; social media could reconnect just about anyone at any time. She wasn’t sure what it said about her or them that nobody had tried to communicate.
On the first night of her visit with her parents, her mother had said, “Your friend Marco’s brother died this week,” and Stella had suddenly been overwhelmed with remorse for having let that particular friendship lapse. Even more so when she read the obituary her mother had clipped, and she realized Marco’s parents had died a few years before. That was why she went to the funeral and that was why she volunteered. “I’d like to help,” she said.
Two days later, she arrived at the house wearing clothes from a bag her mother had never gotten around to donating: jeans decades out of style and dappled with paint, treadworn gym shoes, and a baggy, age-stretched T-shirt from the Tim Burton Batman. She wasn’t self-conscious about the clothes—they made sense for deep cleaning—but there was something surreal about the combination of these particular clothes and this particular door.
“I can’t believe you still have that T-shirt,” Marco said when he stepped out onto the stoop. “Mine disintegrated. Do you remember we all skipped school to go to the first showing?”
“Yeah. I didn’t even know my mom still had it. I thought she’d thrown it out years ago.”
“Cool—and thanks for doing this. I told myself I wouldn’t ask anybody, but if someone offered I’d take them up on it. Promise me you won’t think less of me for the way this looks? Our parents gave him the house. I tried to help him when I visited, but he didn’t really let me, and he made it clear if I pushed too hard I wouldn’t be welcome anymore.”