Year's Best SF 17 полностью

I marveled, refusing to move. I wanted that moment to last. It might have to, the way things were going. My desensitization treatments had all failed. Unless and until something new came through, I’d be living like this the rest of my life.

At least I wasn’t allergic to him.

I smiled. With Rey, it was like bedding a virgin. I guess he was so used to having the piercings, the implants and such … well, for one thing, he had to be careful. Those things can tear skin off. But when he had to do without them, it seemed to throw him off his rhythm. His tentative moves were incredibly gentle, however, and I couldn’t help but respond in kind. His attitude, too, was so sweet. He was almost childlike about his discoveries. Lying there, I started feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing, as if somehow I were taking advantage of him and his innocence.

A disturbing thought. It was interrupted by a tickle, then a sneeze. Then another. Monster sneezes. I wound up on the floor, with Rey’s arm around me as I convulsed again and again. As my Mexican yaya would say, “¡Que romantico!”

“What is it? You need something? Cortisone? Huh? Do you have an inhaler?” He was in full panic mode, ready to start mouth to mouth. “Is it … is it me?”

I shook my head. “No.” I was wheezing a bit, but it wasn’t because of congestion, which it would be if this were a chemical thing. It was more of a physical prickling, way up inside my nose somewhere. I blew my nose, hard, and got no relief at all. That’s when I remembered my skin itching so badly, all on account of the Bi’Ome’s infection.

What was happening this time? And where?

We found a good eighteen inches of snow on the ground when we tumbled out the front door. No fair. The snow should have been rain, this late in the season.

The drifts had nearly buried Rey’s bike, though the sky above us was perfectly clear by then. In the east, I could see dawn’s light edging the Sierra Nevada with an ethereal white lacework of fresh powder. Beautiful—almost beyond words.

Until, that is, something fluttered right into my face, grabbing at me with tiny claws. I flailed at it, knocking the thing off my nose. Then another one came at me.

What were they, owls? Bugs?

I snatched up Rey’s discarded, now frozen, towels and swung them at the pesky creatures, trying to keep them at bay. Not so, Rey. He climbed up on the porch railing, peering at the roofline as more of them fluttered around the house.

“What are they?” I whispered, half-afraid I’d draw them my way again if I spoke any louder. I could hear faint squeaking as it was, like tiny fingernails on a blackboard.

“Stay there,” answered Rey.

What?

He swung off the porch and climbed up the access ladder built into the siding. That took him up to a vent near the roof, a triangle opening into the attic space. Like so much of the house, the vent resembled its organ of origin—my nose. While I watched, the small fluttering forms flew at it. They folded up into smaller shapes as they reached its nostrils. Then they vanished altogether.

Scritch scritch … Achoo!!

I sneezed so hard, I blew one of the little airborn devils backward by nearly a yard. That finally scared the buggers off! They veered away from me and joined their fellows upstairs.

Rey climbed back down again. He was grinning.

I demanded, aloud this time, “What?”

He laughed, not exactly at me, but I still didn’t take it well. “Love,” he said, “you’ve got bats in your belfry. Your sinuses, anyway!”

I didn’t buy it at first, but when daylight arrived, Rey went back up the ladder and opened the vent’s screen. He reached inside and plucked one of them off its roost. When he brought it back down, I was startled to see just how small it was, bodily. With the wings all folded up, it was mouse-size. A baby mouse.

“See that chipmunk stripe down its back?” Rey said. “That’s not a natural species. It’s a nu-bat. They’re gene-gineered, like the house. They’ve had some human alleles added so they’re resistant to white-nose fungus, and rabies too. Replacements for what’s gone extinct.”

“But … but … what is it doing here?”

He grinned. “My guess is, they found a nice, warm, comfy cave in the attic that literally smells like them, like home. You have a whole colony of them,” Rey told me. “It’s easy to fix, though. All you need is screens with a smaller mesh size.”

I nodded, thinking dire thoughts about bat guano. No wonder my sinuses felt congested so much of the time, in spite of my living way up here.

Then revelation dawned.

“How ‘human’ are they?” I asked Rey. “Could they catch other viruses? Like, say, chicken pox?”