The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

flat-out love to write. I fully expect the day of the Nebula Awards to be the second-best day of my life. The best was my wedding day. Originally I ranked the birth of my twins, Miles and Hannah, second, and the Nebulas third, but my wife Alison reminded me that the day of their birth actually sucked pretty badly.

THE WORDS WERE gentle strokes, drawing her awake.

“Hello. Hello there.”

She felt the light on her eyelids, and knew that if she opened her eyes they would sting, and she would have to shade them with her palm and let the light bleed through a crack.

“Feel like talking?” A man’s soft voice.

And then her mind cleared enough to wonder: where was her mom? She called into the corners of her mind, but there was no answer, and that could not be. Once she’d let mom in, there was no tossing her out. It was not like letting Mom move into her apartment; there was no going back once mom was in her mind, because there was no body for mom to return to.

So where was she?

“Aw, I know you’re awake by now. Come on, sleeping beauty. Talk to me.” The last was a whisper, a lover’s words, and Mira felt that she had to come awake and open her eyes. She tried to sigh, but no breath came. Her eyes flew open in alarm.

An old man was leaning over her, smiling, but Mira barely saw him, because when she opened her mouth to inhale, her jaw squealed like a sea bird’s cry, and no breath came, and she wanted to press her hands to the sides of her face, but her hands wouldn’t come either. Nothing would move except her face.

“Hello, hello. And how are you?” The old man was smiling gently, as if Mira might break if he set his whole smile loose. He was not that old, she saw now. Maybe sixty. The furrows in his forehead and the ones framing his nose only seemed deep because his face was so close to hers, almost close enough for a kiss. “Are you having trouble?” He reached out and stroked her hair. “You have to press down with your back teeth to control the air flow. Didn’t they show you?”

There was an air flow — a gentle breeze, whooshing up her throat and out her mouth and nose. It tickled the tiny hairs in her nostrils. She bit down, and the breeze became a hiss — an exhale strong enough that her chest should drop, but it didn’t, or maybe it did and she just couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t lift her head to look.

“Where—” Mira said, and then she howled in terror, because her voice sounded horrible — deep and hoarse and hollow, the voice of something that had pulled itself from a swamp.

“It takes some getting used to. Am I your first? No one has revived you before? Not even for an orientation?” The notion seemed to please him, that he was her first, whatever that meant. Mira studied him, wondering if she should recognize him. He preened at her attention, as if expecting Mira to be glad to see him. He was not an attractive man — his nose was thick and bumpy, and not in an aristocratic way. His nostrils were like a bull’s; his brow Neanderthal, but his mouth dainty. She didn’t recognize him.

“I can’t move. Why can’t I move?” Mira finally managed. She looked around as best she could.

“It’s okay. Try to relax. Only your face is working.”

“What happened?” Mira finally managed.

“You were in a car accident,” he said, his brow now flexed with concern. He consulted a readout on his palm. “Fairly major damage. Ruptured aorta. Right leg gone.”

Right leg gone? Her right leg? She couldn’t see anything except the man hanging over her and a gold-colored ceiling, high, high above. “This is a hospital?” she asked.

“No, no. A dating center.”

“What?” For the first time she noticed that there were other voices in the room, speaking in low, earnest, confidential tones. She caught snippets close by:

“…neutral colors. How could anyone choose violet?”

“…last time I was at a Day-Glows concert I was seventeen…”

“I shouldn’t be the one doing this.” The man turned, looked over his shoulder. “There’s usually an orientation.” He raised his voice. “Hello?” He turned back around to face her, shrugged, looking bemused. “I guess we’re on our own.” He clasped his hands, leaned in toward Mira. “The truth is, you see, you died in the accident…”

Mira didn’t hear the next few things he said. She felt as if she were floating. It was an absurd idea, that she might be dead yet hear someone tell her she was dead. But somehow it rang true. She didn’t remember dying, but she sensed some hard, fast line — some demarcation between now and before. The idea made her want to flee, escape her body, which was a dead body. Her teeth were corpse’s teeth.

“…your insurance covered the deep-freeze preservation, but full revival, especially when it involves extensive injury, is terribly costly. That’s where the dating service comes in—”

“Where is my mother?” Mira interrupted.

The man consulted his palm again. He nodded. “You had a hitcher. Your mother.” He glanced around again, raised his hand as if to wave at someone, then dropped it.

A hitcher. What an apropos term. “Is she gone?” Mira wanted to say, “Is she dead?” but that had become an ambiguous concept.

“Yes. You need consistent brain activity to maintain a hitcher. Once you die, the hitcher is gone.”

Like a phone number you’re trying to remember, Mira thought. You have to hold it with thought, and if you lose it, you never get it back. Mira felt hugely relieved. From the moment she waked, she kept expecting to hear her mother’s voice. Now she knew it wouldn’t come, and she could relax. She felt guilty for feeling relieved that her mother was dead, but who would blame her? Certainly not anyone who’d known her mother. Certainly not Lynn.

“I have a sister,” she said. “Lynn.” Her jaw moved so stiffly.

“Yes, a twin sister. Now that would be interesting.” The man grinned, his eyebrows raised.

“Is she still alive?”

“No,” he said in a tone that suggested she was a silly girl. “You’ve been gone for over eighty years, sleeping beauty.” He made a sweeping gesture, as if all of that was trivial. “But let’s focus on the present. The way this works is, we get acquainted. We have dates. If we find we’re compatible,” he raised his shoulders toward his ears, smiled his dainty smile, “then I might be enticed to pay for you to be revived, so that we can be together.”

Dates.

“So. My name is Red, and I know from your readout that your name is Mira. Nice to meet you, Mira.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mira murmured. He’d said she died in a car accident. She tried to remember, but nothing came. Nothing about the accident, anyway. The memories that raced up at her were arguments — arguments with her mother. An argument at a shopping mall. Mom hating everything Mira liked, trying to get Mira to go to the Seniors section and buy cheap, drab housedresses. Mom had had no control of Mira’s body (she was only a hitcher, after all), but there are lots of ways to control.

“So. Mira.” Red clapped his hands together. “Do you want to bullshit, or do you want to get intimate?”

The raised eyebrows again, the same as when he made the twins comment. “I don’t understand,” Mira said.

“Weeeell. For example, here’s a question.” He leaned in close, his breath puffing in her ear. “If I revived you, what sorts of things would you do to me?”

Mira was sure that this man’s name was not Red, and she doubted he was here to revive anyone. “I don’t know. That’s an awfully intimate question. Why don’t we get to know each other first?” She needed time to think. Even just a few minutes of quiet, to make sense of this.

Red frowned theatrically. “Come on. Tease me a little.”

Should she tell Red she was gay? Surely not. He would lose interest, and maybe report it to whoever owned the facility. But why hadn’t whoever owned the facility known she was gay? Maybe that was to be part of the orientation she’d missed. Whatever the reason, did she want to risk being taken out of circulation, or unplugged and buried?

Would that be the worst thing?

The thought jangled something long-forgotten. Or more like deeply forgotten; everything in her life was