Gardner Dozois: The Years Best Science Fiction, Vol. 18

The fight he’d had with Roz was just like one of his final spats with Helen, full of buried resentments and false assumptions. Roz’s accusations stung because there was an element of truth in them. But Roz was wrong to say Jack didn’t care about her. From the moment of her birth Jack had committed himself to Roz without reservation. Clearly he hadn’t paid enough attention to her troubles, but he would do anything to protect her.

Roz didn’t understand that things were hard for Jack. “All men are boys,” the Cousins said. In the case of a jerk like Keikosson, he could admit the saying’s truth. But it was as much a product of the way they lived as of the men themselves. The women of the Cousins indulged their boys their pleasures, kept them adolescents far into their adulthood. It was a form of control-by-privilege.

Jack chafed at the way a male in the colony was seldom respected for his achievements, but rather for who his mother and grandmother were. He hated the way women deferred to him once it got around that he was Eva Maggiesdaughter’s latest partner. He hated the sidelong glances he got about his relationship to Roz. He was Roz’s father. He was not anyone’s boy.

The biotech labs were located in a bunker a kilometer north of Fowler. He entered the personnel lock, air-blasted the fines from his suit, and removed it. Like the airlock, the lab was deserted. He passed through the greenhouse’s rows of juniper and pinon seedlings to the soils lab. The temperature on his latest batch of nematode soil was 30 centigrade. He drew on some boots, rolled back the cover on the reservoir, and waded into the loamy earth. The rich smell of nitrogen compounds filled his lungs, and he felt momentarily dizzy with relaxation.

Taking a cermet rake from the tool cabinet, he worked over the surface of the soil. His nematodes were doing their jobs nicely, increasing the water content, breaking down organics and hosting the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Once his team got the OK from the colony’s environmental committee, they would start a trial planting using the soil and the greenhouse seedlings on Fowler’s east slope.

He had not been working long when he heard the airlock alert. Startled, he dropped the rake and stood up. Some minutes later a figure emerged from the greenhouse and peered from around the rock crusher.

“Jack?”

“Over here, Carey,” Jack said.

The boy came over. He was taller than his mother, and blond instead of dark. Jack wondered once again who his father was. Carey was still wearing his pressure suit, helmet off.

“What are you doing here?” Jack asked. “How did you know I was here?”

“I was coming into the north airlock when I saw you cycling out,” Carey said. “By the time I got my suit on you were gone, but I figured you might be here. I wanted to speak with you about Roz, Jack.”

“What about her?”

“I think she’s having a hard time,” Carey said. “I think you might want to pay more attention to what’s going on with her. Fathers like you do that, right?”

“Fathers like what?”

“Come on, Jack, you know-Earth fathers.”

“What’s wrong with Roz?” Jack asked.

“She seems to have some sexual hang-ups. She hasn’t talked with you about it? She talks about you all the time.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Roz. Besides, it’s none of your business, Carey.”

“Well, it sort of is. At least if she’s not telling you these things, and you care about her, then I guess I need to tell you. Like after we slept together the first time, she cried.”

“You slept with her?” Jack’s own voice sounded leaden in his ears.

“Sure. I thought you knew.” Carey was completely unselfconscious. “I mean, we’re all in the same apartment. She didn’t tell you that, either?”

“No.”

“She needs help. She’s making some progress with the kids on the hockey team, but for every step forward she takes one back. I think she’s too hung up on you, Jack.”

“Don’t call me Jack.”

Carey looked confused. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t call me Jack, you little pissant. You don’t know a thing about me and Roz.”

“I know you’re immigrants and don’t understand everything. But a lot of people are starting to think you need to live separately. You don’t own Roz.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“She’s a woman. She can make up her own mind.”

The boy’s face was an open map of earnest, smug innocence. Jack couldn’t stand it. “Damn you, she’s not your whore!”

Carey laughed. “A whore? That’s an Earth thing, right? One of those sexual ownership practices?”

Jack took one step, grabbed the collar of the boy’s pressure suit, and yanked him forward. Carey’s feet caught on the edge of the reservoir. As he fell, he twisted around; Jack lost his own balance and shoved Carey downward to keep from falling himself. Much faster than normal in lunar-gee, Carey hit the ground. His head snapped sideways against the rake.

Catching his balance, Jack waited for Carey to get up. But he didn’t get up. Jack crouched over the boy.

Carey had fallen onto the head of the rake; one of the six-centimeter ceramic tines had penetrated his temple. Blood seeped into the soil.

Carefully, Jack drew out the tines, rolled him over. Carey shuddered and the blood flowed more freely.

The boy’s breathing was shallow, his eyes unfocused. As Jack watched, Carey’s breathing stopped.

After ten minutes of futile CPR, Jack fell back from Carey’s limp body and sat down heavily on the edge of the reservoir.

Jesus Christ. What had he done? What was he going to do now? Eva!-what would she think?

It was an accident. But that didn’t matter. He was an immigrant, an outsider, a man. Someone would surely accuse him of murder. They would drug him into insensibility, cut up his brain. At best they would expel him from the colony, and Roz with him-or worse still, they might not expel Roz. He sat there facing the cold reality of his thirty-eight years of screwed-up life.

Carey’s head lolled back into the muck, his mouth open. “You arrogant prick,” Jack whispered to the dead boy. “You fucked it all up.”

He looked around the room. In front of him was the reduction chamber, the crusher, the soil reservoir.

Shuddering, he went back to the tool chest and found a machete. He dragged Carey’s body over the edge of the reservoir, getting dirt up to his own elbows. The soil was rich with the heat of decomposition.

Jack was about to begin cutting off Carey’s arms when the airlock alert sounded again. He panicked. He stumbled out of the reservoir, trying to heft Carey’s body into the hopper of the crusher. Before he could conceal the body he heard steps behind him.

It was Roz. She stood for a moment staring at him as he held Carey’s bare ankle in his hand. “Dad?”

“Go away, Roz.”

She came over to him. “Dad, what’s going on?” She saw the body. “Jesus, Dad, what happened?”

“An accident. The less you know about it the better.”

She took a couple of steps closer. “Carey? Is he all right?”

“Go away, Roz.”

Roz put her hand to her mouth. “Is he dead?”

Jack let go of Carey and came over to her. “It was an accident, Roz. I didn’t mean to hurt him. He fell down.”

“Carey!” She rushed over, then backed away until she bumped into the rock crusher. “He’s dead! What happened? Dad! Why did you do this?”

Jack didn’t know what to do. He looked back at Carey, lying awkwardly on the concrete floor, the machete beside his leg. “It was an accident, Roz. I grabbed him, he fell. I didn’t mean to-”

“Carey,” she said. “Carey.” She would not look at Jack.