Year's Best SF 17

The next time I woke, it was nearly dawn. I felt … human. I lay on my side and the warmth at my back wasn’t welts. It was Fox, his body spooned around mine. He was snoring, each breath ever so faintly stirring the hair on the nape of my neck.

I marveled, refusing to move. I wanted that moment to last. It might have to, the way things were going. My desensitization treatments had all failed. Unless and until something new came through, I’d be living like this the rest of my life.

At least I wasn’t allergic to him.

I smiled. With Rey, it was like bedding a virgin. I guess he was so used to having the piercings, the implants and such … well, for one thing, he had to be careful. Those things can tear skin off. But when he had to do without them, it seemed to throw him off his rhythm. His tentative moves were incredibly gentle, however, and I couldn’t help but respond in kind. His attitude, too, was so sweet. He was almost childlike about his discoveries. Lying there, I started feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing, as if somehow I were taking advantage of him and his innocence.

A disturbing thought. It was interrupted by a tickle, then a sneeze. Then another. Monster sneezes. I wound up on the floor, with Rey’s arm around me as I convulsed again and again. As my Mexican yaya would say, “?Que romantico!”

“What is it? You need something? Cortisone? Huh? Do you have an inhaler?” He was in full panic mode, ready to start mouth to mouth. “Is it … is it me?”

I shook my head. “No.” I was wheezing a bit, but it wasn’t because of congestion, which it would be if this were a chemical thing. It was more of a physical prickling, way up inside my nose somewhere. I blew my nose, hard, and got no relief at all. That’s when I remembered my skin itching so badly, all on account of the Bi’Ome’s infection.

What was happening this time? And where?

We found a good eighteen inches of snow on the ground when we tumbled out the front door. No fair. The snow should have been rain, this late in the season.

The drifts had nearly buried Rey’s bike, though the sky above us was perfectly clear by then. In the east, I could see dawn’s light edging the Sierra Nevada with an ethereal white lacework of fresh powder. Beautiful—almost beyond words.

Until, that is, something fluttered right into my face, grabbing at me with tiny claws. I flailed at it, knocking the thing off my nose. Then another one came at me.

What were they, owls? Bugs?

I snatched up Rey’s discarded, now frozen, towels and swung them at the pesky creatures, trying to keep them at bay. Not so, Rey. He climbed up on the porch railing, peering at the roofline as more of them fluttered around the house.

“What are they?” I whispered, half-afraid I’d draw them my way again if I spoke any louder. I could hear faint squeaking as it was, like tiny fingernails on a blackboard.

“Stay there,” answered Rey.

What?

He swung off the porch and climbed up the access ladder built into the siding. That took him up to a vent near the roof, a triangle opening into the attic space. Like so much of the house, the vent resembled its organ of origin —my nose. While I watched, the small fluttering forms flew at it. They folded up into smaller shapes as they reached its nostrils. Then they vanished altogether.

Scritch scritch … Achoo!!

I sneezed so hard, I blew one of the little airborn devils backward by nearly a yard. That finally scared the buggers off! They veered away from me and joined their fellows upstairs.

Rey climbed back down again. He was grinning.

I demanded, aloud this time, “What?”

He laughed, not exactly at me, but I still didn’t take it well. “Love,” he said, “you’ve got bats in your belfry. Your sinuses, anyway!”

I didn’t buy it at first, but when daylight arrived, Rey went back up the ladder and opened the vent’s screen. He reached inside and plucked one of them off its roost. When he brought it back down, I was startled to see just how small it was, bodily. With the wings all folded up, it was mouse-size. A baby mouse.

“See that chipmunk stripe down its back?” Rey said. “That’s not a natural species. It’s a nu-bat. They’re gene- gineered, like the house. They’ve had some human alleles added so they’re resistant to white-nose fungus, and rabies too. Replacements for what’s gone extinct.”

“But … but … what is it doing here?”

He grinned. “My guess is, they found a nice, warm, comfy cave in the attic that literally smells like them, like home. You have a whole colony of them,” Rey told me. “It’s easy to fix, though. All you need is screens with a smaller mesh size.”

I nodded, thinking dire thoughts about bat guano. No wonder my sinuses felt congested so much of the time, in spite of my living way up here.

Then revelation dawned.

“How ‘human’ are they?” I asked Rey. “Could they catch other viruses? Like, say, chicken pox?”

The company rep tried to pooh-pooh the notion, but Rey sent in bat samples, using a sterilized trap/container they lowered to us the same way as the calamine lotion. A couple days later, there was no doubt. My bats had the chicken pox, all right. And nu-bats were clearly the vector that had spread it throughout almost all of the Bi’Omes in northern California. That led to the mass eviction of nu-bats by means of a saline sinus wash and some speedy replacement of natural filters with metal jobs, at least until they could tweak the Bi’Omes’ phenotypes. The nu-bats’ too, for all I know.

In another week’s time, the rash faded away, healing almost as rapidly as it had bloomed. I reveled in my relief from both itching and sinus congestion. My major concern by then was the fast-approaching end of our quarantine.

Rey couldn’t wait for a chance at a steak dinner. I couldn’t quite make myself say farewell. When the day came, though, he seemed reluctant to go.

“It’s been … interesting,” he told me. “I never imagined …,” he started to say, but then stopped, blushing so furiously, his mandala’s colors began to fade in comparison.

“Haven’t you ever done it au naturel?” I asked gently.

He frowned. Slowly, thoughtfully, he said, “I got my first piercing when I was twelve. My first implant. …” He shut himself off, then said, simply, “No.”

So I gave him a rueful smile. “You know those things were only meant to help people when they have problems. Or when they want to synchronize things exactly. For a treat? But two normal, wholly organic and natural people don’t need enhancement. They don’t really need anything but each other, and. …”

My petite sermon was cut short by Rey’s lips attaching themselves to my earlobe. When we came back up for air, an hour later, he told me, “You shouldn’t be so alone up here.”

All I could do was shrug.

“What about online support groups?” Rey asked.

I shrugged again. “Who needs ’em? What? Do they make it all better? Make everything go away? Make things like they were before?”

“No, but—”

“Whining about it is useless,” I blurted, unable to shut off the tap once the seal was cracked. “I’ve dealt with it, okay? I’ve got my Bi’Ome. I’ve rebuilt my life. Now I’ve got to get on with it. I’ve just got to go on. …”

I fell silent, but not from exhaustion. I was suddenly, acutely aware of how empty my Bi’Ome was. There were no bowling trophies, no Niagara Falls souvenirs, no clutter of toys. No family photos hung from my soft pink walls. Well, why look at what you can’t have? I demanded, but Self wasn’t fooled for a moment. The walls, and the rooms, and the shelves were all empty of everything I’d walked away from.

To save yourself, I told me sharply.

Yeah, right, Self answered. You’re saving yourself … for what?