John Adams - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

After a moment the face smiled, tightly, in a way that bared its teeth.

Or would have bared them if what was inside the mouth was teeth.

They scanned the small craft. Nothing harmful detected, no extraordinary presences, nothing to give pause. Out of caution they kept the craft quarantined, alone at its dock, for several weeks before finally sending a team in.

The man was out of his chair, eyes wide open, staring up at the upper portion of the vessel’s bulkhead. He had been torn free of the chair and his legs were tangled with a snarl of tubes and wires, many of which were still attached to his body. A discolored spill of dried fluid spread in a trail behind him. His neck was bent impossibly upward, his body desiccated and bloodless.

“Where’s his suit?” asked one of the technicians.

The other shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“What’s with his arm?”

“Arm?” said the other. “Is that what that is?”

It was contorted, and little more than bone. He reached out and pushed down on the arm with his boot. The body yawed to one side, hollow or nearly so. When he drew his boot back, the body rocked back and forth, slowly settling onto the floor.

He grunted. “What do we do with him?”

“Incinerate him,” said the other.

“And the craft?”

There was a long moment before the other responded. “No reason to destroy that,” he finally said. “We can salvage it.”

But he wasn’t looking at the other technician as he said it. Instead he seemed to be looking at a spot high up the bulkhead, near the curve where wall became ceiling. He took a step forward and reached his hand out through the air, as if to touch something. Then he drew back and stared at his gloved hand.

“What is it?” asked the other.

“Nothing,” he said, confused. “I thought I saw something. My… faceplate must be dirty.”

The other nodded. He started for the airlock. When he realized the first wasn’t following, he stopped, looked back.

“Coming?” he asked.

“Just a moment,” said the first. He had pulled one arm from its sleeve and back into his suit and now had it pressed between the suit and his chest. He worked the fingers up past where the suit joined the helmet, trying to rub at the faceplate from the inside.

“Come on,” the other pressed.

“You go ahead,” the first managed to say. “I’ll follow you out in just a moment.”

All alone, he just stood there, hand caught between his throat and the rim of the helmet, waiting. He had seen something, he was sure. Or almost. A swath, a fluttering, something almost visible.

What was it? he wondered.

Or not quite that: Query: what was it? he wondered. Yes, that was what the thought had been. What a strange way to think.

He wriggled his fingers, swallowed.

I sing the city.

Fucking city. I stand on the rooftop of a building I don’t live in and spread my arms and tighten my middle and yell nonsense ululations at the construction site that blocks my view. I’m really singing to the cityscape beyond. The city’ll figure it out.

It’s dawn. The damp of it makes my jeans feel slimy, or maybe that’s ‘cause they haven’t been washed in weeks. Got change for a wash-and-dry, just not another pair of pants to wear till they’re done. Maybe I’ll spend it on more pants at the Goodwill down the street instead… but not yet. Not till I’ve finished going AAAAaaaaAAAAaaaa (breath) aaaaAAAAaaaaaaa and listening to the syllable echo back at me from every nearby building face. In my head, there’s an orchestra playing “Ode to Joy” with a Busta Rhymes backbeat. My voice is just tying it all together.

Shut your fucking mouth! someone yells, so I take a bow and exit the stage.

But with my hand on the knob of the rooftop door, I stop and turn back and frown and listen, ‘cause for a moment I hear something both distant and intimate singing back at me, basso-deep. Sort of coy.

And from even farther, I hear something else: a dissonant, gathering growl. Or maybe those are the rumblers of police sirens? Nothing I like the sound of, either way. I leave.

“There’s a way these things are supposed to work,” says Paulo. He’s smoking again, nasty bastard. I’ve never seen him eat. All he uses his mouth for is smoking, drinking coffee, and talking. Shame; it’s a nice mouth otherwise.

We’re sitting in a cafe. I’m sitting with him because he bought me breakfast. The people in the cafe are eyeballing him because he’s something not-white by their standards, but they can’t tell what. They’re eyeballing me because I’m definitively black, and because the holes in my clothes aren’t the fashionable kind. I don’t stink, but these people can smell anybody without a trust fund from a mile away.

“Right,” I say, biting into the egg sandwich and damn near wetting myself. Actual egg! Swiss cheese! It’s so much better than that McDonald’s shit.

Guy likes hearing himself talk. I like his accent; it’s sort of nasal and sibilant, nothing like a Spanish-speaker’s. His eyes are huge, and I think, I could get away with so much shit if I had permanent puppy eyes like that. But he seems older than he looks—way, way older. There’s only a tinge of gray at his temples, nice and distinguished, but he feels, like, a hundred.

He’s also eyeballing me, and not in the way I’m used to. “Are you listening?” he asks. “This is important.”

“Yeah,” I say, and take another bite of my sandwich.

He sits forward. “I didn’t believe it either, at first. Hong had to drag me to one of the sewers, down into the reeking dark, and show me the growing roots, the budding teeth. I’d been hearing breathing all my life. I thought everyone could.” He pauses. “Have you heard it yet?”

“Heard what?” I ask, which is the wrong answer. It isn’t that I’m not listening. I just don’t give a shit.

He sighs. “Listen.”

“I am listening!”

“No. I mean, listen, but not to me.” He gets up, tosses a twenty onto the table—which isn’t necessary, because he paid for the sandwich and the coffee at the counter, and this cafe doesn’t do table service. “Meet me back here on Thursday.”

I pick up the twenty, finger it, pocket it. Would’ve done him for the sandwich, or because I like his eyes, but whatever. “You got a place?”

He blinks, then actually looks annoyed. “Listen,” he commands again, and leaves.

I sit there for as long as I can, making the sandwich last, sipping his leftover coffee, savoring the fantasy of being normal. I people-watch, judge other patrons’ appearances; on the fly I make up a poem about being a rich white girl who notices a poor black boy in her coffee shop and has an existential crisis. I imagine Paulo being impressed by my sophistication and admiring me, instead of thinking I’m just some dumb street kid who doesn’t listen. I visualize myself going back to a nice apartment with a soft bed, and a fridge stuffed full of food.

Then a cop comes in, fat florid guy buying hipster joe for himself and his partner in the car, and his flat eyes skim the shop. I imagine mirrors around my head, a rotating cylinder of them that causes his gaze to bounce away. There’s no real power in this—it’s just something I do to try to make myself less afraid when the monsters are near. For the first time, though, it sort of works: the cop looks around, but doesn’t ping on the lone black face. Lucky. I escape.

I paint the city. Back when I was in school, there was an artist who came in on Fridays to give us free lessons in perspective and lighting and other shit that white people go to art school to learn. Except this guy had done that, and he was black. I’d never seen a black artist before. For a minute I thought I could maybe be one too.