Year's Best SF 17

By now, the whole living room, ceiling and walls and a patch of the floor, was adorned with the rash. The inflamed bit of flooring intrigued him the most. He stroked the wiry black hair with a gloved hand, and smiled when nearly half the room developed goose bumps in response. “Living carpet,” he said. “That’s so cool. But it’s not scalp hair, is it? Too dark.” He glanced up at my dirty-blond mane.

I was already breathless and frozen in place by my own sudden onslaught of gooseflesh. But then, catching up with his question, I flushed a hot scarlet that would have put a full-blown case of strep A to shame. Wheezing, wide-eyed, I sputtered, “No! No, it’s, uh, pubic. It stands up better … to wear and tear.”

To my surprise, he did not bust a gut over that one. Just nodded at me, looking owlish. “Yeah, that makes sense. As long as your hair growth is dense enough.”

Density, I thought, just might be the problem here. But not with the carpet.

“Is that itching too?” he asked, pointing at a hair-free slightly swollen strip of bare floor that served as a threshold, a lip between the inner and outer surfaces of the house.

Just thinking about it set off a furious prickling in the corresponding reaches of my anatomy. “Yes!” I snapped, forbidding my hands to go anywhere near the relevant body part. “What is it? And why is it making me itch? I don’t have the freakin’ rash!”

“A sympathetic reaction. Your nervous system is picking up on the symptoms affecting your better half.”

“My what?”

“The house.”

I planted my fists on my hips. “I think you’d better explain yourself, mister. I’m not married to this house.”

He grinned. “Oh, no. Your relationship is way closer than that.” Then, as he took in my unhappy reaction, he sobered up. “Look, you do know that this house was grown from your own stem cells, right?”

I nodded.

“We had to tweak the growth and development genes pretty hard. But underneath all that … the house is your twin. The DNA is the same. The nervous system—all the same. So, yeah, there have been some cases where Bi’Omes and their, uh, sources, have turned out to be just a little too sympatico.”

“That was not disclosed,” I told him. “Not when I bought mine.”

“Well, there’s still a big hairy argument. …” He broke off, flushing, trying real hard not to look at the carpet while his brain caught up with his mouth. “Uh, begging your pardon, ma’am, no pun intended—”

Impatience swept over me like a tidal wave. “Get on with it!” I nearly shouted. “What argument?!”

“Um, well, about whether the side effects are, ah, real, or, uh, psychosomatic.”

I glared at him, then barely managed to whisper the word, I was so stinking mad. “Psychosomatic?”

He nodded, bobbing his head up and down like a fifties-style hula girl off somebody’s dashboard.

“Are you aware that hyperallergic syndrome has, itself, been called psychosomatic?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, after all, you people do have … a lot of … neuroses.”

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion—him realizing what he was about to say, and yet not quite able to stop himself.

“ ‘You people,’ ” I repeated, feeling dangerous. “Neuroses?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

“Didn’t you? Listen, I think you’d better leave.”

He didn’t argue, just gathered up all his stuff and walked out the door. I slammed it behind him, threw the lock, and went to check on my supply of oatmeal soap. A soothing bath might calm my skin down enough to let me think.

I was lolling in the tub, enjoying some blessed relief from the itching while I used a deep-breathing exercise to try and get my lungs back under control. I was just getting into the zone when I heard a knock on the front door. For Christ’s sake. He’d only been gone half an hour, so now what?

Pulling a robe on, I padded out to the foyer to confront Fox. “Yes?” I inquired.

He just stood there, staring at me while his faceplate steamed up.

“What?”

“Uh. …”

Whoops. I hadn’t bothered to towel off all of the oatmeal. The robe was stuck to me here and there. I pulled it tighter, which was the wrong thing to do. Made his eyes bug out.

I snapped my fingers in front of his faceplate. “Hey! Fox! What … Do … You … Want?”

“Ma’am, if I tell you that … I’m afraid you’re gonna shoot me.”

Which is as close to a compliment as I’ve had in the last seven years, up here on the mountain. Yeah, so I glanced at the crossbow. I’ll admit that, but just for a second. Then I sighed. “I promise. I will not shoot you. Okay?”

Bozo nodded, but needed another half-minute or so to get back to the point. “Um, sorry to bother you.”

“Which you did because … ?”

“Oh. I, uh, I got a prelim diagnosis. On the house.”

“And?”

He had to yank his gaze upward to meet my eyes, but he managed it. “It’s … not an allergy.”

“Okay. What is it, then?”

“Well, um, listen. I took a look at the specs on this house. You may remember that Bi’Ome had to alter the house’s immune system.”

I nodded. “Yeah, so it wouldn’t react so strongly to all the things that make me sick.”

“That’s right. They, ah, we had to selectively cripple the antigen-recognition system, so that it wouldn’t react to … well, all sorts of things. Especially the man-made stuff—plastics and paints, and perfumes, insecticides—”

“Of course,” I said, getting a little impatient, I do admit. I mean, the man was standing there in a silk and cotton moonsuit, just so that he wouldn’t set me off.

“Well, that meant reducing the immunities that you’d already acquired to certain natural … biological hazards.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Has my house been poisoned?”

“Technically, no!” Reynard answered.

“Then what the devil is wrong?”

“The house is infected.”

What? I stared at him. He mostly stared at the floor. Despite the faceplate, I could see how red he was. Like he was sick.

“Infected with … what?”

Reynard flicked a glance upward, then fled my gaze again. “At first, I thought it might be a herpes virus—”

“Herpes?!”

He jumped when I hit high C, but I just couldn’t help it. I screeched at the man. “Are you trying to tell me my house has a social disease? My house has never had sex!”

“I, uh, well, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” answered Reynard, “but, um, that’s not exactly the virus I’m talking about.”

Huh? But … a thin shred of memory fled through my mind. What I’d thought was a dream. Erotic, sensual— surely that hadn’t been real?

Paralyzed by the sudden suspicion that my house might have more of a social life than I did, I glared at Reynard. I spoke softly, for fear of cutting my own throat with the razor’s edge of anger slicing at me from the inside out. “So what are you talking about?”

“Varicella zoster.”

Zoster? I’d heard that before. But I couldn’t quite make it click. “Vari-what?”

“It’s a childhood disease. Used to be. Hardly anyone gets it these days because most kids are immunized.”

“Most kids,” I repeated, arms akimbo. I found myself leaning forward. With reckless daring, I went right on leaning, ignoring the fact that my robe had flapped open. In fact, I took a giant step closer before I demanded, “What about houses?”