The Future, Imperfect: Short Stories Read online

  "I read about it—"

  "Almost 150."

  "That's nothing compared to Rome or Athens—"

  "150 children who didn't live to play in this peaceful, poisonous river," he said leaning into her, his breath hot on her cheek. "Per thousand. Fifteen per cent."

  Alis moved away from him. "Okay, maybe it was thoughtless of me to admire the tranquility, to even dare think it would be worth keeping. But the price for Bioco's help will be high."

  He shrugged. "The price is always high."

  Alis finished her wine and placed the glass on the table. "I think we're on the same side."

  Mihailo grinned and finished his glass too, then threw it over his shoulder in a cartoon Slavic gesture that made her laugh. "Yes."

  "Thanks for the wine." She extended her hand.

  "My pleasure," he said, taking her hand in both of his. "But why so short?"

  "No time," Alis said, businesslike. "I still have work to do."

  Before he let her go, he raised her hand to his lips, an archaic mannerism that turned her insides to jelly in two seconds flat.

  She let herself into her own room, took a deep breath, and leaned against the door. On the other side of the hotel room she could see that Sophie was done with the analysis, the wait symbol gone from the screen. She sat down at the table and scrolled quickly through the results.

  "That bastard," she muttered beneath her breath. "That fucking bastard."

  * * * *

  Alis barely let Mihailo out of her sight the next morning when they visited the Podgorica airport south of the city, accompanied by a fleet of officials. While the mayor was unpleasantly effusive, Mihailo was his same self-assured, casual self. Try as she could, she found it hard to imagine him part of a conspiracy. No one could have known she intended to interview survivors of the epidemics when she arrived, since she had told no one of her plans. So how could the government have planted people on such short notice? Mihailo could hardly have done it on his own.

  The effusive mayor led them around the little airport, assuring them the location was suitable for expansion, that there would be no problem with extensive tourist traffic. Alis watched Mihailo, trying to detect duplicity, trying to understand why.

  When they were finally in their car alone and on their way south, she was about to explode with unsaid accusations.

  "Did you not sleep well, Ali?" Mihailo asked, looking at her with concern.

  "No." She paused. "I had Sophie do an analysis of my interviews with the villagers."

  "Sophie?"

  "My AI."

  "Ah, yes. I forgot you have given a personality to a machine."

  Alis resisted the urge to retort. It was true. She had programmed Sophie to be a perfect colleague and friend.

  "Don't you want to know what her conclusions were?" she asked, not taking her eyes off of him.

  He continued to watch the road ahead, but a slight smile played around his generous lips. "I'm sure you will tell me."

  "As far as Sophie can determine, to all intents and purposes the villagers I spoke to about the epidemic were reciting from a script."

  Mihailo nodded, his eyes still on the road. No surprise, no alarm, just acknowledgement. Alis didn't know what to make of it.

  "With dialectical variations, they said the same thing about the epidemics — the same choice of words, the same phrases," she persisted. "Don't tell me you didn't know."

  "I knew."

  "Then explain yourself!"

  "How can I? I had nothing to do with it."

  "Yeah, right."

  "I swear. All I tried to do was hide it from you."

  "That's what I'm accusing you of."

  "No. You are accusing me of being responsible. That's different."

  "Huh?"

  "We are on the same side, Ali," he said quietly.

  Alis stared out the window of the car, watching the still forested hills of Crna Gora — Black Mountain, Montenegro — pass by. "I don't think so."

  "Yes," Mihailo insisted.

  The mountains of Montenegro were much rockier than those of the Pacific Northwest, the trees stunted in comparison. At regular intervals between the patches of forest were patches of gray stone, a harsh but beautiful refrain.

  "Then what are you trying to hide?" Alis finally asked, not turning away from the view out the window.

  Mihailo was silent so long she finally looked at him again. When he noticed her eyes on him, he shrugged. "My suspicions."

  He turned off the main road abruptly and she didn't reply. When he pulled into a small gravel parking lot and got out, Alis followed. They hiked up a low, rocky hill, and at the top of the rise, he stopped in front of her.

  "Skadarsko Jezero," he said. "Home."

  Alis joined him and her breath caught in her throat. Laid out before her was Lake Skadar, a majestic expanse reaching to mountains of gray and green far beyond. On all sides, the hills rose up at 45 degree angles from the water, and here and there out of the middle of the lake itself, forming islands and peninsulas.

  "Is it good enough for Bioco to buy?" he asked, a trace of bitterness in his voice.

  "Yes."

  "Once there were so many fish in this lake, tourists did not even need a fishing license. And the fishermen still caught a thousand tons of fish a year." His voice was distant, the humor she had grown used to gone.

  Alis didn't say anything for a while, and they stood looking out over the lake.

  "According to the studies Bioco ran," she finally said, "Virpazar would be the most favorable location for a resort. Could we go there now?"

  "Later. Now I would like to take you to another village where perhaps you will find an answer to your questions."

  * * * *

  It was a little town near the Albanian border, a few dozen houses, no more. Compared to the other places Mihailo had shown her, there was nothing exotic about it, just anachronistic, an impression strengthened by the living room of the house where the women had gathered. The walls were covered with pictures and knick-knacks, a jumble of memorabilia, mementos of a life. There was no trace of the twenty-first century, no sign of AI units or networked appliances anywhere, not even a computer.

  "Meet the survivors of the epidemic who live in this particular village, Alis. All twelve of them."

  "All women?" Alis asked.

  "Yes."

  "Have any died since then?"

  "Certainly. But no men. They all died in the epidemic."

  He turned to the women sitting in a circle in the living room. The youngest was perhaps forty and the oldest nearly seventy. They all wore colorful shawls over their heads and tied beneath their chins. Like the house, the women looked as if time had passed them by.

  "Ovo je Gospodja Petrovich," Mihailo told the women, and they looked at Alis, smiling.

  "Dobar dan," Alis said.

  "Is your Sophie listening?" he asked over his shoulder.

  "My AI is on."

  "Good. It will check up on me."

  "But how do I know you didn't plant these women?"

  Mihailo smiled at her, a smile that didn't even come near his eyes. "Ah, Alis, I wish I had."

  He turned back to one of the younger women and began to question her, translating quickly after each response. The woman had only been a girl of six at the time of the epidemics, and she couldn't remember much. She had been sick for many weeks, and when she recovered, nearly half the village was dead. No, she couldn't remember the symptoms, only that she was very sick. They said it was the water, but she didn't know. No, she didn't know who said it was the water — everyone said that. They always boiled it after that. She had been so young, she said to Alis apologetically, she was sorry she couldn't remember more. Mihailo asked her a little about her life after the epidemic, and she became much more responsive. She told them how she and her mother had to come to this village to live with her aunt because her father had died in the epidemic. Many people had gone because there was so little left.
r />   Mihailo repeated his questions to the circle of women, and they repeated their answers, again and again. No, she couldn't remember her symptoms, but she had been very sick. When she recovered, nearly half the village was dead. Her husband, son, brother had died in the epidemic. They said it was the water. The same words, exactly the same words were repeated so often, Alis could almost imagine she was beginning to understand the dialect herself. Mihailo's voice wove in and out of the women's refrain, the sing-song tale of death and sickness, over and over. And all of the dead were men, always men, from boys of fifteen to fathers of forty-five. This was no sickness Ali was familiar with. But what? A knot began to form in the pit of her stomach.

  Then every time Mihailo asked about after, or before, or now, the sing-song was gone, and the women's voices took on more life and detail; one remembered the color of her relatives' car when they drove away, another the first meal they ate in a new village, another the time when they went back and couldn't even find a grave.

  "No," Alis whispered.

  Mihailo looked over his shoulder at her, and his eyes said "yes."

  Those men had not died of an epidemic and these women would never visit their graves. Alis felt ill.

  * * * *

  Alis could barely touch her meal of japraci, a rich beef stew, but she was partaking heavily of the wine.

  "So you think the epidemic is a cover-up," she said, pushing the food around on her plate. After visiting Virpazar, they had continued on to Sveti Stefan, a small island near the coast, connected to the mainland by a short isthmus of sand. The rise in sea level had flooded the original land bridge, so the inhabitants had simply piled on more sand and built a new road. After the Balkan conflict flared up again, however, tourism disappeared, the resort was abandoned, and many of the once noble hotels and restaurants on the mainland stood empty.

  "Ali," Mihailo said reprovingly, looking from her plate to her glass.

  "But how did they do it?" Alis asked, ignoring his admonishments and taking another deep drink of wine. "How did they make the women forget?"

  He shrugged.

  "You know," she stated. "Just like you knew the epidemic was no epidemic. You know and you're not telling. Why did you try to hide this from me? So my company wouldn't turn down the project?"

  Mihailo shook his head. "You don't want to know."

  "If you don't tell, I'll recommend the project be turned down for sure."

  They sat at a table overlooking the Adriatic, the remnants of a decadent sunset slowly leaking across the horizon. Anyone watching would have thought them a couple from some contaminated European metropolis on a romantic vacation together. "I know nothing for certain," Mihailo said. "I only suspect."

  "And what do you suspect?"

  He finished his glass and poured himself another from the bottle standing between them. "Have you told anyone from Bioco that you are researching the epidemic?" he asked in return.

  It took her a moment to realize the significance of the question. And a moment more to realize the significance of Philip's reaction when she'd told him.

  Alis took a shuddering breath. "No."

  Mihailo said nothing, but his eyes said yes.

  "You think Bioco had something to do with it?"

  He tried to take her hand but she pulled away. "The Serbian government has business contacts with your company going back decades," he said. "That is why they contacted Bioco about the Lake Skadar project and not Hypersystems or some other bioengineering firm."

  "But you can't prove anything."

  "Other than the business contacts, no."

  Alis leaned back in her chair and looked out at the colors bleeding away over the water. She knew he was right. Her denial had been instinctive, emotional; logic told her it all fit too well. Bioco had built its reputation on a chemical process to treat trauma disorders which involved altering memories — a perfect tool for a morally bankrupt government which wanted to quiet the provinces it had forced back into the fold by military means. Once, the EU and the rest of the international community wouldn't have allowed such a thing to happen, but now it was each for himself and devil take the neighbor who was having even more problems than you.

  That had been decades ago. It would be hard to prove now.

  "What are we going to do?" she asked quietly.

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing." Alis imagined what would happen if she went back and accused Bioco of participating in war crimes — one of the most powerful corporations in the United States, which was run by corporations. She'd lose her job, Montenegro wouldn't get the assembler technology, and Bioco would probably argue that Serbia had gotten the drugs on the black market and their corporation had nothing to do with it anyway. She took a deep breath. "That's why you tried to hide it from me, tried to translate the women's words in such a way that I wouldn't notice."

  Mihailo nodded. "You strike me as a moral person, Ali. I did not know what you would do if you found out. But we need Bioco, need their technology. And we need you to get it for us."

  Alis put her elbows on the table and her forehead in her hands. Her stomach hurt. "Because I'm a Petrovich," she whispered.

  "Because you're a Petrovich," Mihailo repeated. She lifted her head and looked at him, at the wry smile which was her only encouragement.

  * * * *

  She called Philip again the next day, after they had spent the afternoon checking the other two sites the computer analysis had chosen as possible resort locations. The camaraderie between her and Mihailo was gone, and they hadn't spoken much. The options he had given her were no options. Her conscience told her to confront Bioco with her suspicions — and her conscience told her to do whatever was necessary to help the people of Montenegro.

  "Hello, dear," Philip said when his face appeared on the screen. "Have you been making progress?"

  Stick to business, that was the ticket. "We've checked out all three sites. The lake is huge, and it would be a big job no matter what, but it's shallow and the pollution levels are relatively low." Alis observed his expression carefully as she spoke.

  "So you think the project should go through?"

  She nodded. "There's so much here, it's hard to describe."

  "But you haven't been running off doing any more private projects?" he asked teasingly, and her heart sank. Despite her doubts, she had still allowed herself to hope, hope he wouldn't ask, hope there would be no hint of suspicion behind his words. She knew Philip too well — and not well enough.

  "No time," she said, doing her best to keep her voice level, ignoring the pain. "You were right, I'm here to get a job done for Bioco."

  "Good for you, Alis."

  But it wasn't, it wasn't good for Alis at all.

  * * * *

  Probably the worst thing was returning to Philip, knowing what she knew. But if she wanted to save Skadarsko Jezero, save the Tara valley and Pljevlja and Crna Gora, she had to pretend nothing had changed. She had to go back and give her report and convince Bioco to invest in Montenegro, turn the lake and the nearby region into an amusement park for rich Americans who wanted a taste of Europe and beyond, in a place where the environment had been cleaned up and the health risk made minimal.

  Because she did want to save it. Honesty was a small price to pay.

  The flock of government officials who brought her to the Belgrade airport to see her off were beaming, sure she would present their case positively to Bioco and consortium. She shook hands bravely, exchanging a secret look with Mihailo as she neared him. He took her hand more tightly than proper, held it longer than necessary.

  "Perhaps you will come back once the project is started?" he said. "I can be your guide again."

  She gave him a smile more proper than the hand still clenching her own. "Perhaps."

  "There will always be a place in Crna Gora for a Petrovich." He squeezed her hand and released it.

  Alis looked into his dark eyes. "I'll see what I can do."

  In memory of Ruth Glavi
novich, 1940-1999

  A Handful of Dust

  "How long since you've heard from these communities?" Dane asked the burb boss. He tucked a damp strand of hair behind his ear and rubbed his temple, feeling a headache coming on. The final leg of the drive to the Bay area had been a good six hours — on a typical, hot spring afternoon. Like most burbs, San Rafael only had enough generators for a few hours of electricity a day, and it couldn't be wasted on air conditioning.

  Marie sighed. "We lost contact with the new burb boss in Anaheim two days ago. Some towns in the San Joaquin Valley haven't been in touch with the Network for more than two months."

  "Do you think Sosostris or GenCorp or one of the other corporations confiscated their satellites?" he asked. In Dane's opinion, the corporations were capable of anything. Those who tried to make it outside of corporate control had to get by in a poisoned world where epidemics and violence had decimated the population, a wasted land on the edge of civilization.

  Marie shook her head. "Why should they? There isn't anything in the Wasteland they want."

  He took a sip of the chicory coffee and stared out the picture window of the former restaurant. Most of the windows were boarded up, but the glass in this one had been replaced when the newly created burb administration moved in and began making repairs. Wilting lilacs grew next to the stony ruins of the patio, and San Pablo Bay was calm, the water glinting in the cruel April sun.

  Dane hadn't wanted to go so far south, but this was serious. "Your detox facilities could clean me up again when I come back north, yes?"

  She leaned across the table and placed a hand on his bare forearm. "Dane, you're a hero to a lot of people who aren't fortunate enough to live in the corporate zones. We need the technology your group has been able to smuggle out, need transgen plants to grow in land that's gone barren — "