Year's Best SF 3 by David G. Hartwell

Author:David G. Hartwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061757785
Publisher: HarperCollins

Mother took her back into her bedroom, and sat with her, holding her hand. By the time the shuddering sobs released her—long after she had run out of tears—Wendy felt a new sense of grievance. Mother kept looking at the door, wishing that she could be out there, adding her voice to the argument, because she didn't really trust Father to get it right. The sense of duty which kept her pinned to Wendy's side was a burden, a burning frustration. Wendy didn't like that. Oddly enough, though, she didn't feel any particular resentment at being put out of the way while Father and the Ministry of Health haggled over her future. She understood well enough that she had no voice in the matter, no matter how unlimited her selfconsciousness had now become, no matter what progressive leaps and bounds she had accomplished as the existential fetters had shattered and fallen away.

She was still a little girl, for the moment.

She was still Wendy, for the moment.

When she could speak, she said to Mother: “Can we have some music”?

Mother looked suitably surprised. “What kind of music”? she countered.

“Anything,” Wendy said. The music she was hearing in her head was soft and fluty music, which she heard as if from a vast distance, and which somehow seemed to be the oldest music in the world, but she didn't particularly want it duplicated and brought into the room. She just wanted something to fill the cracks of silence which broke up the muffled sound of arguing.

Mother called up something much more liquid, much more upbeat, much more modern. Wendy could see that Mother wanted to speak to her, wanted to deluge her with reassurances, but couldn't bear to make any promises she wouldn't be able to keep. In the end, Mother contented herself with hugging Wendy to her bosom, as fiercely and as tenderly as she could.

When the door opened it flew back with a bang. Father came in first.

“It's all right,” he said, quickly. “They're not going to take her away. They'll quarantine the house instead.”

Wendy felt the tension in Mother's arms. Father could work entirely from home much more easily than Mother, but there was no way Mother was going to start protesting on those grounds. While quarantine wasn't exactly all right it was better than she could have expected.

“It's not generosity, I'm afraid,” said Tom Cartwright. “It's necessity. The epidemic is spreading too quickly. We don't have the facilities to take tens of thousands of children into state care. Even the quarantine will probably be a shortterm measure—to be perfectly frank, it's a panic measure. The simple truth is that the disease can't be contained no matter what we do.”

“How could you let this happen”? Mother said, in a low tone bristling with hostility. “How could you let it get this far out of control? With all modern technology at your disposal you surely should be able to put the brake on a simple virus”.

“It's not so simple,” Cartwright said, apologetically.

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