The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (105 page)

LBJ pulled the door open. Helen Gandy stood there.

“You boys can be heard in the hallway,” she said, sweeping in as if the leader of the free world wasn’t holding the door for her. “And it’s embarrassing. It was precisely this kind of thing the Director hoped to avoid.”

Then she nodded at LBJ. Kennedy watched her. The dragon lady. Jack, as usual, had been right with his jibes. Only the dragon lady would walk in here as if she were the most important person in the room.

“Mr President,” she said, “these files are the Director’s personal business. He wanted me to take care of them, and get them out of the office, where they do not belong.”

“Personal files, Miss Gandy?” LBJ asked. “These are his secret files.”

“If they were secret, Mr President, then you wouldn’t be here. Mr Hoover kept his secrets.”

Mr Hoover used his secrets
, Kennedy thought, but didn’t say.

“These are just his confidential files,” Miss Gandy was saying. “Let me take care of them and they won’t be here to tempt anyone. That’s what the Director wanted.”

“These are government property,” LBJ said with a sly look at Kennedy. For the first time, Kennedy realized his Goldwater argument had gotten through. “They belong here. I do thank you for your time and concern, though, ma’am.”

Then he gave her a courtly little bow, put his hand on the small of her back, and propelled her out of the room.

Despite himself Kennedy was impressed. He’d never seen anyone handle the dragon lady that efficiently before.

LBJ grabbed one of the cabinets and slid it in front of the door he had just closed. Kennedy had forgotten how strong the man was. He had invited Kennedy down to his Texas ranch before the election, trying to find out what Kennedy was made of, and instead, Kennedy had realized just what LBJ was made of – strength, not bluster, brains and brawn.

He’d do well to remember that.

“All right,” LBJ said as he turned around. “Here’s what I’m gonna offer. You can have your family’s files. You can watch while we search for them and you can have everything. Just give me the rest.”

Kennedy raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t felt this alive since November. “No.”

“I can fire your ass in five minutes, put someone else in this fancy office, and then you can’t do a goddamn thing,” LBJ said. “I’m being kind.”

“There’s historical precedent for a cabinet member barricading himself in his office after he got fired,” Kennedy said. “Seems to me it happened to a previous president named Johnson. While I’m barricaded in, I’ll just go through the files and find out everything I need to know.”

LBJ crossed his arms.

It was a stand-off and neither of them had a good play. They only had a guess as to what was in those files – not just theirs but all of the others as well. They did know that whatever was in those files had given Hoover enough power to last in the office for more than forty years.

The files had brought down presidents. They could bring down congressmen, supreme court justices, and maybe even the current president. In that way, Helen Gandy was right.

The best solution was to destroy everything.

Only Kennedy wouldn’t. Just like he knew LBJ wouldn’t. There was too much history here, too much knowledge.

And too much power.

“These are our files,” Kennedy said after a moment, although the word “our” galled him, “yours and mine. Right now we control them.”

LBJ nodded, almost imperceptibly. “What do you want?”

What did he want? To be left alone? To have his family left alone? At midnight, he might have said that. But now, his old self was reasserting itself. He felt like the man who had gone after the corrupt leaders of the Teamsters, not the man who had accidentally gotten his brother murdered.

Besides, there might be things in that file that could head off other problems in the future. Other murders. Other manipulations.

He needed a bullet-proof position. LBJ was right: the Attorney General could be fired. But there was one position, constitutionally, that the President couldn’t touch.

“I want to be your Vice President,” Kennedy said. “And in 1972, when you can’t run again, I want your endorsement. I want you to back me for the nomination.”

LBJ swallowed hard. Colour suffused his face and for a moment, Kennedy thought he was going to shout again.

But he didn’t.

Instead he said, “And what happens if we don’t win?”

“We move these to a location of our choosing. And we do it with trusted associates. We get this stuff out of here.”

LBJ glanced at the door. He was clearly thinking of what Helen Gandy had said, how it was better to be rid of all of this than it was to have it corrupting the office, endangering everyone.

But if LBJ and Kennedy controlled the entire cache, they also controlled their own files. LBJ could destroy his and Kennedy could preserve his family’s legacy.

If it weren’t for the fact that LBJ hated him almost as much as Kennedy hated LBJ, the decision would be easy.

“You’d trust me to a gentleman’s agreement?” LBJ asked, not disguising the sarcasm in his tone. He knew Kennedy thought he was too uncouth to ever be considered a gentleman.

“You know where your interests lie. Just like I do,” Kennedy said. “If we don’t let Miss Gandy have the files, then this is the only choice.”

LBJ sighed. “I hoped to be rid of the Kennedys by inauguration day.”

“And what if I planned to run against you?” Kennedy asked, even though he knew he wouldn’t. Already the party stalwarts had been approaching him about a 1964 presidential bid, and he had put them off. He had been too shaky, too emotionally fragile.

He didn’t feel fragile now.

LBJ didn’t answer that question. Instead, he said, “You can be an incautious asshole. Why should I trust you?”

“Because I saved Jack’s ass more times than you can count,” Kennedy said. “I’m saving yours too.”

“How do you figure?” LBJ asked.

“Your fear of those files brought you to me, Mr President.” Kennedy put an emphasis on the title, which he usually avoided using around LBJ. “If I barricade myself in here, I’ll have the keys to the kingdom and no qualms about letting the information free when I go free. If you work with me, your secrets remain just secrets.”

“You’re a son of bitch, you know that?” LBJ asked.

Kennedy nodded. “The hell of it is you are too or you wouldn’t’ve brought up Jack’s death before we knew what really happened to Hoover. So let’s control the presidency for the next sixteen years. By then the information in these files will probably be worthless.”

LBJ stared at him. It took Kennedy a minute to realize that although he’d won the argument, he wouldn’t get an agreement from LBJ, not if Kennedy didn’t make the first move.

Kennedy held out his hand. “Deal?”

LBJ stared at Kennedy’s extended hand for a long moment before taking it in his own big clammy one.

“You goddamn son of a bitch,” LBJ said. “You’ve got a deal.”

It took Bryce only one phone call. The guy who ran the motorpool told him who checked out the sedan without asking why Bryce wanted to know. And Bryce, as he leaned in the cold telephone booth half a block from the first crime scene, instantly understood what had happened and why.

The agent who checked out the sedan was Walter Cain. He should’ve been on extended leave. Bryce had recommended it after he had told Cain that his ex-fiancée had tried to commit suicide. On getting the news, Cain had just had that look, that blank, my-life-is-over look.

And it had scared Bryce. Scared him enough that he asked Cain be put on indefinite leave. How long ago had that been? Less than twelve hours.

More than enough time to get rid of the morals police – the one man who made all the rules at the FBI. The man who had no morals himself.

J. Edgar Hoover.

Bryce had spent the past week studying Cain’s file. Cain had had HooverWatch off and on throughout the past year. Cain knew the procedure, and he knew how to thwart it.

He’d killed fve agents.

Because no one would listen to Bryce about that vacant look in Cain’s eye.

Bryce let himself out of the phone booth. He walked back to the coroner’s van. If he didn’t have back-up by now, he’d call for some all over again. They couldn’t leave him hanging on this. They had to let him know, if nothing else, what to do with the Director’s body.

But he needn’t’ve worried. When he got back to the alley, he saw five more sedans, all FBI issue. And as he stepped into the alley proper, the first person he saw was his boss, crouching over Hoover’s corpse.

“I thought I told you to secure the scene,” said the SAC for the District of New York, Eugene Hart. “In fact, I ordered you to do it.”

“The scene extends over six blocks. I’m just one guy,” Bryce said.

Hart walked over to him. He looked tired.

“I need to speak to you,” Bryce said. He walked Hart back to the two sedans, explained what he’d learned, and watched Hart’s face.

The man flinched, then, to Bryce’s surprise, put his hand on Bryce’s shoulder. “It’s good work.”

Bryce didn’t thank him. He was worried that Hart hadn’t asked any questions. “I’d heard Cain bitch more than once about Hoover setting the moral values for the office. And with what happened this week —”

“I know.” Hart squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll take care of it.”

Bryce turned so quickly that he made Hart lose his grip. “You’re going to cover it up.”

Hart closed his eyes.

“You weren’t hanging me out to dry. You were trying to figure out how to handle this. Son of a bitch. And you’re going to let Cain walk.”

“He won’t walk,” Hart said. “He’ll just . . . be guilty of something else.”

“You can’t cover this up. It’s too important. So soon after President Kennedy —”

“That’s precisely why we’re going to handle it,” Hart said. “We don’t want a panic.”

“And you don’t want anyone to know where Hoover and Tolson were found. What’re you going to say? That they died of natural causes in their beds? Their
separate
beds?”

“It’s not your concern,” Hart said. “You’ve done well for us. You’ll be rewarded.”

“If I keep my mouth shut.”

Hart sighed. He didn’t seem to have the energy to glare. “I don’t honestly care. I’m glad to have the old man gone. But I’m not in charge of this. We’ve got orders now, and everything’ll get taken care of at a much higher level than either you or me. You should be grateful for that.”

Bryce supposed he should be. It took the political pressure off him. It also took the personal pressure off.

But he couldn’t help feeling if someone had listened to him before, if someone had paid attention, then none of this would have happened.

No one cared that an FBI agent was going to marry a former prostitute. If the Bureau knew – and it did – then not even the KGB could use that as blackmail.

It was all about appearances. It would always be about appearances. Hoover had designed a damn booklet about appearances, and it hadn’t stopped him from getting shot in a back alley after a party he would never admit attending.

Hoover had been so worried about people using secrets against each other, he hadn’t even realized how his own secrets could be used against him.

Bryce looked at Hart. They were both tired. It had been a long night. And it would be an even longer few weeks for Hart. Bryce would get some don’t-tell promotion and he’d stay there for as long as he had to. He had to make sure that Cain got prosecuted for something, that he paid for five deaths.

Then Bryce would resign.

He didn’t need the Bureau, any more than he had needed Mary, his own pre-approved wife. Maybe he’d talk to O’Reilly, see if he could put in a good word with the NYPD. At least the NYPD occasionally investigated cases.

If they happened in the right neighbourhood.

To the right people.

Bryce shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back to his apartment. Hart didn’t try to stop him. They both knew Bryce’s work on this case was done. He wouldn’t even have to write a report.

In fact, he didn’t dare write a report, didn’t dare put any of this on paper where someone else might discover it. The wrong someone. Someone who didn’t care about handling and the proper information.

Someone who would use that information to his own benefit.

Like the Director had.

For more than forty-five years.

Bryce shook the thought off. It wasn’t his concern. He no longer had concerns. Except getting a good night’s sleep.

And somehow he knew that he wouldn’t get one of those for a long, long time.

THE ERDMANN NEXUS

Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid-1970s, and she has since become a frequent contributor to
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Omni
,
SCI FICTION
, and elsewhere. Her books include the novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-awards-winning story,
Beggars in Spain
, and a sequel,
Beggars and Choosers
, as well as
The Prince of Morning Bells
,
The Golden Grove
,
The White Pipes
,
An Alien Light
,
Brain Rose
,
Oaths & Miracles
,
Stinger
,
Maximum Light
,
Crossfire
,
Nothing Human
, and the space opera trilogy
Probability Moon
,
Probability Sun
, and
Probability Space
. Her short work has been collected in
Trinity and Other Stories
,
The Aliens of Earth
,
Beaker’s Dozen
, and
Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories
. Her most recent books are the novels
Crucible
and
Dogs
; coming up is a new novel,
Steal Across the Sky
. In addition to the awards for “Beggars in Spain,” she has also won Nebula awards for her stories “Out of All Them Bright Stars” and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.”

In the complex and powerful story that follows, she takes us to visit people waiting for death in an old folks’ home who discover unexpected new possibilities at the very edge of life.

“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow,

He who would reach for pearls must dive below.”

– John Dryden

T
HE SHIP WHICH
would have looked nothing like a ship to Henry Erdmann, moved between the stars, traveling in an orderly pattern of occurrences in the vacuum flux. Over several cubic light-years of space, subatomic particles appeared, existed, and winked out of existence in nanoseconds. Flop transitions tore space and then reconfigured it as the ship moved on. Henry, had he somehow been nearby in the cold of deep space, would have died from the complicated, regular, intense bursts of radiation long before he could have had time to appreciate their shimmering beauty.

All at once the “ship” stopped moving.

The radiation bursts increased, grew even more complex. Then the ship abruptly changed direction. It accelerated, altering both space and time as it sped on, healing the alterations in its wake. Urgency shot through it.

Something, far away, was struggling to be born.

ONE

Henry Erdmann stood in front of the mirror in his tiny bedroom, trying to knot his tie with one hand. The other hand gripped his walker. It was an unsteady business, and the tie ended up crooked. He yanked it out and began again. Carrie would be here soon.

He always wore a tie to the college. Let the students – and graduate students, at that! – come to class in ripped jeans and obscene tee-shirts and hair tangled as if colonized by rats. Even the girls. Students were students, and Henry didn’t consider their sloppiness disrespectful, the way so many did at St Sebastian’s. Sometimes he was even amused by it, in a sad sort of way. Didn’t these intelligent, sometimes driven, would-be physicists know how ephemeral their beauty was? Why did they go to such lengths to look unappealing, when soon enough that would be their only choice?

This time he got the tie knotted. Not perfectly – a difficult operation, one-handed – but close enough for government work. He smiled. When he and his colleagues had been doing government work, only perfection was good enough. Atomic bombs were like that. Henry could still hear Oppie’s voice saying the plans for Ivy Mike were “technically sweet.” Of course, that was before all the —

A knock on the door and Carries’s fresh young voice. “Dr Erdmann? Are you ready?”

She always called him by his title, always treated him with respect. Not like some of the nurses and assistants. “How are we today, Hank?” that overweight blonde asked yesterday. When he answered stiffly, “I don’t know about you, madame, but I’m fine, thank you,” she’d only laughed.
Old people are so formal – it’s so cute!
Henry could just see her saying it to one of her horrible colleagues. He had never been “Hank” in his entire life.

“Coming, Carrie.” He put both hands on the walker and inched forward – clunk, clunk, clunk – the walker sounding loud even on the carpeted floor. His class’s corrected problem sets lay on the table by the door. He’d given them some really hard problems this week, and only Haldane had succeeded in solving all of them. Haldane had promise. An inventive mind, yet rigorous, too. They could have used him in ’52 on Project Ivy, developing the Teller-Ulam staged fusion H-bomb.

Halfway across the living room of his tiny apartment in the Assisted Living Facility, something happened in Henry’s mind.

He stopped, astonished. It had felt like a tentative
touch
, a ghostly finger inside his brain. Astonishment was immediately replaced by fear. Was he having a stroke? At ninety, anything was possible. But he felt fine, better in fact than for several days. Not a stroke. So what —

“Dr Erdmann?”

“I’m here.” He clunked to the door and opened it. Carrie wore a cherry red sweater, a fallen orange leaf caught on her hat, and sunglasses. Such a pretty girl, all bronze hair and bright skin and vibrant colour. Outside it was drizzling. Henry reached out and gently removed the sunglasses. Carrie’s left eye was swollen and discoloured, the iris and pupil invisible under the outraged flesh.

“The bastard,” Henry said.

That was Henry and Carrie going down the hall toward the elevator, thought Evelyn Krenchnoted. She waved from her armchair, her door wide open as always, but they were talking and didn’t notice. She strained to hear, but just then another plane went overhead from the airport. Those pesky flight paths were too near St Sebastian’s! On the other hand, if they weren’t, Evelyn couldn’t afford to live here. Always look on the bright side!

Since this was Tuesday afternoon, Carrie and Henry were undoubtedly going to the college. So wonderful the way Henry kept busy – you’d never guess his real age, that was for sure. He even had all his hair! Although that jacket was too light for September, and not water-proof. Henry might catch cold. She would speak to Carrie about it. And why was Carrie wearing sunglasses when it was raining?

But if Evelyn didn’t start her phone calls, she would be late! People were depending on her! She keyed in the first number, listened to it ring one floor below. “Bob? It’s Evelyn. Now, dear, tell me – how’s your blood pressure today?”

“Fine,” Bob Donovan said.

“Are you sure? You sound a bit grumpy, dear.”

“I’m fine, Evelyn. I’m just busy.”

“Oh, that’s good! With what?”

“Just
busy
.”

“Always good to keep busy! Are you coming to Current Affairs tonight?”

“Dunno.”

“You should. You really should. Intellectual stimulation is so important for people our age!”

“Gotta go,” Bob grunted.

“Certainly, but first, how did your granddaughter do with —”

He’d hung up. Really, very grumpy. Maybe he was having problems with irregularity. Evelyn would recommend a high colonic.

Her next call was more responsive. Gina Martinelli was, as always, thrilled with Evelyn’s attention. She informed Gina minutely about the state of her arthritis, her gout, her diabetes, her son’s weight problem, her other son’s wife’s step-daughter’s miscarriage, all interspersed with quotations from the Bible (“‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’ – first Timothy”). She answered all Evelyn’s questions and wrote down all her recommendations and —

“Evelyn?” Gina said. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I —” Evelyn fell silent, an occurrence so shocking that Gina gasped, “Hit your panic button!”

“No, no, I’m fine, I . . . I just remembered something for a moment.”

“Remembered something? What?”

But Evelyn didn’t know. It hadn’t been a memory, exactly, it had been a . . . what? A feeling, a vague but somehow strong sensation of . . . something.

“Evelyn?”

“I’m here!”

“The Lord decides when to call us home, and I guess it’s not your time yet. Did you hear about Anna Chernov? That famous ballet dancer on Four? She fell last night and broke her leg and they had to move her to the Infirmary.”

“No!”

“Yes, poor thing. They say it’s only temporary, until they get her stabilized, but you know what that means.”

She did. They all did. First the Infirmary, then up to Seven, where you didn’t even have your own little apartment any more, and eventually to Nursing on Eight and Nine. Better to go quick and clean, like Jed Fuller last month. But Evelyn wasn’t going to let herself think like that! A positive attitude was so important!

Gina said, “Anna is doing pretty well, I hear. The Lord never sends more than a person can bear.”

Evelyn wasn’t so sure about that, but it never paid to argue with Gina, who was convinced that she had God on redial. Evelyn said, “I’ll visit her before the Stitch ’n Bitch meeting. I’m sure she’ll want company. Poor girl – you know, those dancers, they just abuse their health for years and years, so what can you expect?”

“I know!” Gina said, not without satisfaction. “They pay a terrible price for beauty. It’s a little vain, actually.”

“Did you hear about that necklace she has in the St Sebastian safe?”

“No! What necklace?”

“A fabulous one! Doris Dziwalski told me. It was given to Anna by some famous Russian dancer who was given it by the tsar!”

“What tsar?”

“
The
tsar! You know, of Russia. Doris said it’s worth a fortune and that’s why it’s in the safe. Anna never wears it.”

“Vanity,” Doris said. “She probably doesn’t like the way it looks now against her wrinkly neck.”

“Doris said Anna’s depressed.”

“No, it’s vanity. ‘Lo, I looked and saw that all was —’”

“I’ll recommend acupuncture to her,” Evelyn interrupted. “Acupuncture is good for depression.” But first she’d call Erin, to tell her the news.

Erin Bass let the phone ring. It was probably that tiresome bore Evelyn Krenchnoted, eager to check on Erin’s blood pressure or her cholesterol or her Isles of Langerhans. Oh, Erin should answer the phone, there was no harm in the woman, Erin should be more charitable. But why? Why should one have to be more charitable just because one was old?

She let the phone ring and returned to her book, Graham Greene’s
The Heart of the Matter
. Greene’s world-weary despair was a silly affectation but he was a wonderful writer, and too much underrated nowadays.

The liner came in on a Saturday evening: from the bedroom window they could see its long grey form steal past the boom, beyond the —

Something was happening.

–
steal past the boom, beyond the –

Erin was no longer in St Sebastian’s, she was nowhere, she was lifted away from everything, she was beyond the —

Then it was over and she sat again in her tiny apartment, the book sliding unheeded off her lap.

Anna Chernov was dancing. She and Paul stood with two other couples on the stage, under the bright lights. Balanchine himself stood in the second wing, and even though Anna knew he was there to wait for Suzanne’s solo, his presence inspired her. The music began.
Promenade en couronne, attitude, arabesque effacé
and into the lift, Paul’s arms raising her. She was lifted out of herself and then she was soaring above the stage, over the heads of the corps de ballet, above Suzanne Farrell herself, soaring through the roof of the New York State Theater and into the night sky, spreading her arms in a
porte de bras
wide enough to take in the glittering night sky, soaring in the most perfect jeté in the universe, until . . .

“She’s smiling,” Bob Donovan said, before he knew he was going to speak at all. He looked down at the sleeping Anna, so beautiful she didn’t even look real, except for the leg in its big ugly cast. In one hand, feeling like a fool but what the fuck, he held three yellow roses.

“The painkillers do that sometimes,” the Infirmary nurse said. “I’m afraid you can’t stay, Mr Donovan.”

Bob scowled at her. But it wasn’t like he meant it or anything. This nurse wasn’t so bad. Not like some. Maybe because she wasn’t any spring chicken herself.
A few more years, sister, and you’ll be here right with us.

“Give her these, okay?” He thrust the roses at the nurse.

“I will, yes,” she said, and he walked out of the medicine-smelling Infirmary – he hated that smell – back to the elevator. Christ, what a sorry old fart he was. Anna Chernov, that nosy old broad Evelyn Krenchnoted once told him, used to dance at some famous place in New York, Abraham Centre or something. Anna had been famous. But Evelyn could be wrong, and anyway it didn’t matter. From the first moment Bob Donovan laid eyes on Anna Chernov, he’d wanted to give her things. Flowers. Jewellery. Anything she wanted. Anything he had. And how stupid and fucked-up was that, at his age? Give me a break!