Year's Best SF 17 полностью

Abigail dashed toward Junior’s prone body. She knelt beside him, her face all concern, her hands busy at his sides. His son cast a long look between him and her. She had run to help Junior. She was asking him if it hurt. Javier knew already that it didn’t. It couldn’t. They didn’t suffer, physically. But his son was staring at him like he was actually feeling pain.

“What happened?”

He turned. Brigid was standing there in her office clothes, minus the shoes. She must have come home early. “I’m sorry about the tiles,” Javier said.

But Brigid wasn’t looking at the tiles. She was looking at Junior and Abigail. The girl kept fussing over him. She pulled his left arm across her little shoulders and stood up so that he could ease his leg back into place. She didn’t let go when his stance was secure. Her stubborn fingers remained tangled in his. “You’ve gotten bigger,” Abigail said quietly. Her ears had turned red.

“Junior kissed me.”

It was Saturday. They were at the playground. Brigid had asked for Junior’s help washing the car while Javier took Abigail to play, and now he thought he understood why. He watched Abigail’s legs swinging above the ground. She took a contemplative sip from her juicebox.

“What kind of kiss?” he asked.

“Nothing fancy,” Abigail answered, as though she were a regular judge of kisses. “It was only right here, not on the lips.” She pointed at her cheek.

“Did that scare you?”

She frowned and folded her arms. “My daddy kisses me there all the time.”

“Ah.” Now he understood his son’s mistake.

“Junior’s grown up really fast,” Abigail said. “Now he looks like he’s in middle school.”

Javier had heard of middle school from organic people’s stories. It sounded like a horrible place. “Do you ever wish you could grow up that fast?”

Abigail nodded. “Sometimes. But then I couldn’t live with Mom, or my daddy. I’d have to live somewhere else, and get a job, and do everything by myself. I’m not sure it’s worth it.” She crumpled up her juicebox. “Did you grow up really fast, like Junior?”

“Yeah. Pretty fast.”

“Did your daddy teach you the things you’re teaching Junior?”

Javier rested his elbows on his knees. “Some of it. And some of it I learned on my own.”

“Like what?”

It was funny, he normally only ever had this conversation with adults. “Well, he taught me how to jump really high. And how to climb trees. Do you know how to climb trees?”

Abigail shook her head. “Mom says it’s dangerous. And it’s harder with palm trees, anyway.”

“That’s true, it is.” At least, he imagined it would be for her. The bark on those trees could cut her skin open. It could cut his open, too, but he wouldn’t feel the pain. “Anyway, Dad taught me lots of things: how to talk to people; how to use things like the bus and money and phones and email; how stores work.”

“How stores work?”

“Like, how to buy things. How to shop.”

“How to shoplift?”

He pretended to examine her face. “Hey, you sure you’re organic? You sure seem awful smart …”

She giggled. “Can you teach me how to shoplift?”

“No way!” He stood. “You’d get caught, and they’d haul you off to jail.”

Abigail hopped off the bench. “They wouldn’t haul a kid off to jail, Javier.”

“Not an organic one, maybe. But a vN, sure.” He turned to leave the playground.

“Have you ever been to jail?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

They were about to cross a street. Her hand found his. He was careful not to squeeze too hard. “When I was smaller,” he said simply. “A long time ago.”

“Was it hard?”

“Sometimes.”

“But you can’t feel it if somebody beats you up, right? It doesn’t hurt?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt.”

In jail they had asked him, at various times, if it hurt yet. And he had blinked and said No, not yet, not ever. Throughout, he had believed that his dad might come to help him. It was his dad who had been training him. His dad had seen the policia take him in. And Javier had thought that there was a plan, that he would be rescued, that it would end. But there was no plan. It did not end. His dad never showed. And then the humans had turned on each other, in an effort to trigger his failsafe.

“Junior didn’t feel any pain, either,” Abigail said. “When you let him fall.”

The signal changed. They walked forward. The failsafe swam under the waters of his mind, and whispered to him about the presence of cars and the priority of human life.

“What do you mean, he’s not here?”

Abigail kept looking from her mother to Javier and back again. “Did Junior go away?”

Brigid looked down at her. “Are you all packed up? Your dad is coming today to get you.”

“And Momo, Mom. Daddy and Momo. They’re both coming straight from the airport.”

“Yes. I know that. Your dad and Momo. Now can you please check upstairs?”

Abigail didn’t budge. “Will Junior be here when I come back next Friday?”

“I don’t know, Abigail. Maybe not. He’s not just some toy you can leave somewhere.”

Abigail’s face hardened. “You’re mean and I hate you,” she said, before marching up the stairs with heavy, decisive stomps.