Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition Read online

  “Tamar, I’m sorry—”

  “Go away,” Tamar says.

  “Love,” I say.

  “Go away,” they say. “Go away, I don’t love you anymore, I can’t stand to watch somebody I love go through what you’re going through. Marq, just go away. Let me do this alone.”

  “Love,” I say.

  “Don’t call me that.” Eyes still closed, they turn their face away.

  Sixteen years, eight months, and fifteen days ago

  I took Tamar to the gorge.

  I’d never taken anybody to the gorge before. It’s my favorite place in the world, and one of the things I love about it is that it’s so private and inaccessible. If you love something, and it’s a secret, and you tell two people, and they love it, and they tell two people … well, pretty soon it’s all over the net and it’s not private anymore.

  We sat on the bridge over the waterfall—I think it must have been somebody’s Eagle Scout project, and so long ago that nobody maintains the trail up to it anymore. It was a cable suspension job, and it swayed gently when we lowered ourselves to the slats.

  The waterfall was so far below that we could hear each other speak in normal tones, and the spray couldn’t even drift up to jewel in Tamar’s hair.

  There were rainbows, though, shifting when you turned your head, and I turned my head a lot, because I was staring at Tamar and pretending I wasn’t staring at Tamar.

  Tamar was looking at their hands.

  “I used to come up here as a kid,” I said. “To get away.”

  “How on earth did you ever find it?” They kicked their feet like a happy child.

  “It was less overgrown then.” My hands were still sticky from cutting through the invasive bittersweet to get here. I was glad I’d remembered to throw the machete I used for yard work in the trunk. And to tell Tamar to wear stout boots.

  “Where did you live?”

  I pointed back over my shoulder. “That way. The house is gone now, thank God.”

  “Burned down?”

  “No, they took it apart to make … something. I didn’t care. I was long gone by then.” Tamar already knew I’d left at eighteen and never looked back. “This was the closest thing I had to a home.”

  “How long do you think this has been here?”

  I shrugged. “Since the Big Melt? It will probably be here forever now. At least until the next Ice Age.”

  I saw the corner of Tamar’s smile out of the corner of my eye. “You’re showing me your home?”

  The idea brought me short I kicked my own feet in turn. “I guess I am.”

  We looked at rainbows for a little while, until a cloud went over the sun.

  “You were sexy with that machete,” Tamar said, and looked up from their folded hands into my eyes.

  We both reeked of tick spray.

  And they kissed me anyway.

  Now

  I go home.

  I sit on the couch we picked out together. There’s music playing, because I don’t seem to have the energy to turn it off. My feet are cold. I should go and get socks.

  Part of the problem is not having anywhere to be. I shouldn’t have taken that family medical leave. Except if I hadn’t, what use exactly would I be to my students and the college right now?

  Fifteen minutes later, my feet are even colder. I still haven’t found the wherewithal to go and get the socks. My phone beeps with a message and I think maybe I should look at it.

  Ten minutes later, it beeps again. I pick it up without thinking and glance at the notifications.

  I drop the phone.

  Marq, this is Tamar’s Tenant, Atticus.

  We need to talk.

  I fumble it back up again. The messages are still there. Still burning at me while the day grows dim. The ground and the sky outside seem to blur into each other.

  I’ve spoken with Atticus before. We were in-laws, after a fashion. But not recently. Recently … I’ve been avoiding it. Avoiding even thinking about it.

  Avoiding even acknowledging its existence.

  Because it’s the thing that is killing my spouse.

  I get up. I put socks on. I start a pot of tea, and though I usually drink it plain, today I put milk and sugar in.

  I need to answer this text. Maybe Atticus can help me. Help me explain to Tamar.

  Maybe Atticus can help me with my transition specialist.

  But when I slide my finger across the screen, a tremendous anxiety fills me. I type and delete, type and delete.

  Nothing is right. Nothing is what I mean to say.

  I think about what I’m going to text back to Atticus for so long that I do not text it back at all. It’s not so much that I talk myself out of it; it’s just that I’m exhausted and profoundly sad and can’t find much motivation for anything, and despite the tea and sugar I transition seamlessly from lying on the sectional staring at the popcorn texture of the ceiling to a deep sleep punctuated by paranoid nightmares that are never quite bad enough to wake me completely.

  Sunrise finds me still on the sofa, eyes crusty and neck aching. Texts still unanswered, and now it feels like too much time has gone by, even though I tell myself I do want to talk to Atticus. Other than me, it’s the being in the world who loves Tamar most, at least theoretically. I’m just anxious because I’m so sad. Because the situation is so fraught.

  Because I’m furious with Atticus for taking Tamar away from me, even though I know that’s not reasonable at all. But since when are brains and feelings reasonable?

  And it’s dying along with Tamar, although I’m sure it has cells in stasis for eventual reproduction. I know that Atticus has at least two offspring already, because I’ve met them and their Hosts occasionally.

  That should comfort me a little, shouldn’t it? That some bit of Tamar is immortal, and will carry on in those Tenants, and their offspring on down the line? And maybe, if I am convincing enough, in me.

  I think of my own parent’s blood in me, of my failure to reproduce. Isn’t it funny how we phrase that? Failed to reproduce. I didn’t fail. I actively tried not to. It was a conscious choice.

  Childhood is a miserable state of affairs, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody I loved.

  I gave up trying to win my parent’s affection long before they died. I gave up trying to be seen or recognized.

  I settled for just not fighting anymore.

  Sixteen years, eight months, and sixteen days ago

  I reached over in the darkness and stroked Tamar’s hair. It had a wonderful texture, springy in its loose curls. Coarse but soft.

  “You’re thinking, Marq,” they said.

  “I’m always thinking.”

  I heard the smile in Tamar’s voice as they rolled to face me. “It’s not good for you if you can’t turn it off once in a while, you know. What were you thinking about?”

  “You … Atticus.”

  “Sure. There’s a lot to think about.” They didn’t sound upset.

  “Do you remember?”

  A huff of thoughtful breath. A warm hand on my side. “Remember?”

  “All of Atticus’s other lives?”

  Tamar made a thoughtful noise. “That’s a common misconception, I guess. Atticus itself didn’t have other lives. It’s a clone of those older Tenants, so in a sense—a cellular sense—the same individual. The Tenants only bud when they choose to, which is why those first Hosts were so unlucky. The Tenants knew infecting them without consent was unethical.”

  “But the alternative was to let their species die.” I thought about that. What I would do. If it were the entire human race on the line.

  Tamar said, “I can assure you, one of the reasons the Tenants work so hard for us is that they have a tremendous complex of guilt about that, and still aren’t sure they made the right decision.”

  Who could be? Let your species die, or consume another sentient being without its consent?

  What would anyone do?

  Tamar said, “And it’
s true that we do share experiences. It can’t perceive the world outside my body without me, after all—the same way I can perceive my interior self much better through its senses. And it has—there’s some memory transferred. More if you use a big sample of the parent Tenant to engender the offspring. Though that’s harder on the Host.”

  “So it—you—don’t remember being a Neanderthal.”

  More than a huff of laughter this time; an outright peal. “Not exactly. It can share some memories with me that are very old. I have a sense of the Tenants’ history.”

  It had been before I was born: The lead paleoanthropologist and two others working on several intact Homo neanderthalensis cadavers that had been discovered in a melting glacier had all developed the same kind of slow-growing cancer. That had been weird enough, though by then we knew about contagious forms of cancer—in humans, in wolves, in Tasmanian devils.

  It got weirder when the cancers had begun, the researchers said, to talk to them.

  Which probably would have been dismissed as crackpottery, except the cancer also cured that one paleobotanist’s diabetes, and suddenly they all seemed to have a lot of really good, coherent ideas about how that particular Neanderthal culture operated.

  What a weird, archaic word, glacier.

  I said, “It just seems weird that I’m in bed with somebody I’ve never met.”

  As I said it I realized how foolish it was. Anytime you’re in bed with somebody, you’re in bed with everybody who came before you—everybody who hurt them, healed them, shaped them. All those ghosts are in the room.

  Tamar’s Tenant was just a little less vaporous than most.

  A rustle of sliding fabric as Tamar sat upright. “Do you want to?”

  Now

  “I’m sorry, Mx. Tames, but you’re not on the visitor list anymore.”

  “But Tamar—”

  “Mx. Sadiq specifically asked that you not be admitted, Mx. Tames.” The nurse frowns at me, their attractive brown eyes crinkling kindly at the corners.

  I stare. I feel like somebody has just thrust a bayonet through me from behind. Like my diaphragm has been skewered, is spasming around an impalement, and nothing—not breath nor words—will come out until someone drags it free.

  The bayonet twists and I get half a breath. “But they’re my spouse—”

  “They named you specifically,” the nurse says again. They glance sideways. In a lowered voice, dripping with unexpected sympathy, they say, “I’m so sorry. I know it doesn’t make it easier for you, but sometimes … sometimes, toward the end, people just want to be alone. It can be exhausting to witness the pain and fear of loved ones. Do you have other family members you could contact? It’s not my place to offer advice, of course—”

  I waved their politeness away with one hand. “You have more experience with this sort of thing than I … than I … thank…”

  The sobs spill over until they are nearly howls. I bend over with my hands on my knees, doubled in pain. Gasping. Sobbing. I try to stand upright and wobble, catching my shoulder on the wall. Then someone has dragged a chair over behind me and the nurse is guiding me gently into it, producing a box of Kleenex, squeezing my shoulder to ground me.

  Surprisingly professional, all of it.

  Well, this is an oncology ward. I guess they have some practice.

  “Mx. Tames,” the nurse says when I’ve slowed down and I’m gasping a little. “Is there another family member we can call? I don’t think you ought to go home alone right now.”

  * * *

  One of the things that drew me to Tamar was their joy. They were always so happy. I mean, not offensively happy—not inappropriately happy or chirpy or obnoxiously cheerful. Just happy. Serene. Joyful.

  It was infectious.

  Literally.

  Tamar’s relationship with Atticus gave them purpose, and that was part of it. It also gave them a financial cushion such that they could do whatever they wanted in life—pursue art, for example. Travel. (And take me with them.) Early on, the Tenants had bargained with a certain number of elderly, dying billionaires; another decade or so of pain-free, healthier life … in each case, for a portion of their immense fortune.

  And then there were the cutting edge types, the science-sensation seekers who asked to get infected because it was a new thing. An experience nobody else had. Or because they were getting old, their best and most creative years behind them.

  As a mathematician in their fifties, I can appreciate the strength of that motivation, let me tell you.

  Some of those new Hosts were brilliant. One was Jules Herbin, who with the help of their Tenant, Maitreyi, went on to found Moth.me.

  Herbin was not the only Host who built a business empire.

  The Tenants had had a hundred years to increase those fortunes. The Tenants, as a collective—and their Hosts, by extension!—did not lack for money. Sure, there were still fringe extremists who insisted that the Tenants were an alien shadow government controlling human society and that they needed to be eradicated, but there hadn’t been a lynching in my lifetime. In North America, anyway.

  And there are still fringe extremists who insist the earth is flat. The Tenants have brought us a lot of benefits, and they insist on strict consent.

  For Tamar, those benefits included being able to be pain-free and energetic, which is not a small thing when, like Tamar, you’ve been born with an autoimmune disorder that makes you tired and sore all the time.

  And Atticus used its control over Tamar’s endocrine system to make them truly, generously happy. Contented. Happy in ways that perhaps evolution did not prepare people for, when we were born into and shaped by generations of need and striving.

  Atticus helped Tamar maintain boundaries, make good life choices, and determine the course of their life. It supported them in every conceivable way. In return, Tamar provided Atticus with living space, food, and the use of their body for a period every day while Tamar was otherwise sleeping. That took a little getting used to. But Tamar explained it to me as being similar to dolphins—half their brain sleeps while the other half drives.

  The Tenants really are good for people.

  It’s just that they also consume us. No judgment on them; we consume other living things to survive, and they do it far more ethically than we do. They only take volunteers. They make the volunteers go through an extensive long-term psychological vetting process.

  And they take very good care of us while they metastasize through our bodies, consuming and crowding out every major organ system. They want us to live as long as possible, of course, because the life span of the Tenant is delineated by the life span of the Host. And yes, when they metastasize into a new Host, they take some elements of their old personality and intellect along with them—and some elements of the personality and identity of every previous Host, too. And they often combine metastatic cells from two or more Tenants to create a combined individual and make sure experiences and knowledge are shared throughout their tribe.

  They’ve been a blessing for the aged and terminally ill. And even for those who are chronically ill, like Tamar, and choose a better quality of life for a shorter time over a longer time on earth replete with much more pain and incapacity.

  A lot of people with intractable depression have signed up for Tenancy. Because they just want to know what it’s like to be happy. Happy, and a little blind, I guess. It turns out that people with depression are more likely to be realistic about all sorts of things than those with “normal” neurochemistry.

  Depression is realism.

  The Tenants offer, among other things, an escape from that. They offer safety and well-being and not having to take reality too seriously. They offer the possibility that whatever you’re feeling right now isn’t as good as it gets.

  They can change you for real. They can make you happy.

  My reality, right now, is that the love of my life is dying, and doesn’t want to talk to me.

  Sixteen years, eight mo
nths, and fifteen days ago

  Atticus, it turned out, talks most easily by texting. Or typing. It could take direct control of Tamar’s voice—with their permission—but all three of us thought that would be weird. And would probably make me feel like the whole puppethead thing was more valid than I knew it to be. So we opened a chat, and Tamar and I sat on opposite sides of the room, and had one conversation out loud while Atticus and I had a totally different one via our keyboards.

  It wasn’t a very deep conversation. Maybe I had expected it to be revelatory? But it was like … talking to a friend of a friend with whom you don’t have much in common.

  We struggled to connect, and it was a relief when the conversation ended.

  Now

  There are protestors as I come into the clinic. They call to me. I resolutely turn my eyes away, but I can’t stop my ears. One weeps openly, begging me not to go in. One holds a sign that says: CHRIST COMFORTS THE AFFLICTED NOT THE INFECTED. There’re all the usual suspects: DOWN WITH PUPPETMASTERS. THE MIND CONTROL IS NOT SO SECRET ANYMORE.

  Another has a sign that says GIVE ME BACK MY CHILD.

  I wish I hadn’t seen that one.

  * * *

  “There’s a part of me,” I tell Evangeline, “that is angry that Tamar doesn’t love me enough to … to stay, I guess. I know they can’t stay; I know the decision was made long ago.”

  “Do you feel like they’re choosing Atticus over you?”

  “It sent me a text.”

  Evangeline makes one of those noncommittal therapist noises. “How did that make you feel?”

  “I want to talk to it.”

  “You haven’t?”

  I open my mouth to make an excuse. To say something plausible about respecting Tamar’s agency. Giving them the space they asked for. I think about. I settle back in my chair.

  Do I want a Tenant if I have to lie to get one?

  I say, “I’m angry with it. I want to ignore that it exists.”

  “Sometimes,” Evangeline says, “when we want something, we want it the same way children do. Without regard for whether it’s possible or not. Impossibility doesn’t make the wanting go away.”

  “You’re saying that this is a form of denial.”