“They’re just dandy, and they sure do want to see you!” To Jane he says, “The tornado passed west of Lawrenceburg but Frankfort got clobbered. An EF3, they’re saying. We been busy.” He looks Jane over critically, sees she’s not too badly hurt. “Okay, let’s get going then,” the guy says, turning to head back to the chopper.
Kaylee starts to hurry after him, but stops abruptly. “The hatchlings! Wait, I have to get …” she doubles back and pops through the window.
While she’s stuffing a few things into her backpack, and putting the bowl of tree swallows into a rainproof plastic bag, she can hear them talking. “Baby birds,” Jane’s explaining. She’ll just be a second. But I’ve got two dogs here, I can’t leave them. I’ll stay till we can all be lifted out together. Or till the road’s open.” Kaylee’s mouth falls open; Jane’s not coming?
“What about the cut?” says the guy in the slicker, and Jane’s voice says, “It’ll keep.”
“Supplies?”
“Running low, but enough for another day or so.”
“We’ll drop you a bag of stuff on the next trip out. Should be able to pick you all up tomorrow.”
Jane’s not coming! Kaylee pops through the window between the dogs, who are barking again because of all the commotion, without the bowl of hatchlings or her backpack. “Jane, listen, if you’re not leaving, I’m not either. You need me to change your bandage.”
She’s the only one not wearing rain gear and she’s standing in the rain getting soaked. The adults look at her with surprise and consternation. “Honey, your parents need to see you, I’ll be fine here for another day or so.”
“We’ll be back tomorrow to pick up this lady and the dogs,” says the EMS guy. “You need to get on home.”
“No,” Kaylee says. She backs away from them. “I won’t go so don’t try to make me. Not till Jane does. As long as my parents know I’m fine, I’m staying here with her.”
“I appreciate it, hon, I really do,” Jane starts to say, “but—”
“No!” She stamps her foot; why won’t they take her seriously? “I’m not leaving you here by yourself!”
The rain stops after all in time for them to have a hot supper, consisting of some of the food the chopper dropped off an hour before. Hot soup. Bacon and cheese sandwiches on fresh bread, mm. Apples. Bananas. Even Ding Dongs. Kaylee got the fire going herself, though not with one match. More like fifteen. “How long do you think it’ll take to get your new house built?” she asks now, licking Ding Dong off her lips. She feeds each dog a piece of banana.
Jane is staring into Kaylee’s fire. She looks up. “Hm?”
“To replace this one,” Kaylee says. “How long?”
“Oh—” Jane sighs heavily. “I don’t think … it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Everybody says I’m nuts anyway, living out here alone in the middle of nowhere. I’m almost seventy, Kaylee. I’d been hoping to hang on a while longer, but maybe the tornado just forced a decision I’ve been putting off.”
Kaylee sits up straight on the log. Her heart starts pounding. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a retirement community in Indiana I’ve been looking at. Maybe it’s time.”
Stricken, Kaylee says, “But—you have to build a new house here! What about the birds, what are they supposed to do if you’re not here? What would the hatchlings have done?”
Jane smiles. “The birds got along without me before I came. They’ll be okay. I gave them a nice boost for a while, that’s worth something; and as for the hatchlings, they have you to thank more than me.”
Abruptly Kaylee bursts into tears, startling herself and making Jane jump. “What about me then? How am I gonna learn everything if you go away? What if the Hubbells went somewhere, just when you found out you wanted to live like them and be like them, and come see them all the time and help out, and—and feed the goats when they cut their arms or whatever, how would you feel?” She wipes her face on her sleeve, but the tears won’t stop coming.
“Mercy,” Jane says mildly after a minute. “I apologize, Kaylee. I had no idea you felt like that.”
“Well, I do,” she says, sniffling.
“Well, in that case, I guess I might have to think again. No promises, mind, but I won’t decide anything just yet.” She smiles. “You came at me out of left field with that one.”
Kaylee wipes her sleeve across her eyes and smiles back shakily. “We’ll get you a cell phone. Then if something happens, you won’t be out here alone in the middle of nowhere ’cause you can call me. You wouldn’t have to text message or anything.”
Mercies
GREGORY BENFORD
Gregory Benford (www.gregorybenford.com) lives in Irvine, California. He is a CEO of several biotech companies devoted to extending longevity using genetic methods. He retains his appointment at UC Irvine as a professor emeritus of physics. He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Jupiter Project, Artifact, Against Infinity, Eater, and the famous SF classic, Timescape (1980). Many of his (typically hard) SF stories are collected in In Alien Flesh, Matters End, and Worlds Vast and Various. Benford says, “I have just reissued in a new edition my cryonics novel Chiller, have out a new short story collection, Anomalies. In Fall 2012, I have A Big Smart Object novel out with Larry Niven, The Bowl of Heaven.”
“Mercies” was published in the original anthology Enginering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, the first of two selections from that excellent book we choose to reprint here. This story explores the real meaning of the science fiction cliché of going back in time to kill someone in order to change history. Never mind what you would do to history. If you took it up as a hobby, what would this say about you?
All scientific work is, of course, based on some conscious or subconscious philosophical attitude.
He rang the doorbell and heard its buzz echo in the old wooden house. Footsteps. The worn, scarred door eased open half an inch and a narrowed brown eye peered at him.
“Mr. Hanson?” Warren asked in a bland bureaucratic tone, the accent a carefully rehearsed approximation of the flat Midwestern that would arouse no suspicions here.
“Yeah, so?” The mouth jittered, then straightened.
“I need to speak to you about your neighbour. We’re doing a security background check.”
The eye swept up and down Warren’s three-piece suit, dark tie, polished shoes—traditional styles, or as the advertisements of this era said, “timeless.” Warren was even sporting a gray fedora with a snap band.
“Which neighbour?”
This he hadn’t planned on. Alarm clutched at his throat. Instead of speaking he nodded at the house to his right. Daniel Hanson’s eye slid that way, then back, and narrowed some more. “Lemme see ID.”
This Warren had expected. He showed an FBI ID in a plastic case, up-to-date and accurate. The single eye studied it and Warren wondered what to do if the door slammed shut. Maybe slide around to the window, try to—
The door jerked open. Hanson was a wiry man with shaggy hair—a bony framework, all joints and hinges. His angular face jittered with concern and Warren asked, “You are the Hanson who works at Allied Mechanical?”
The hooded eyes jerked again as Warren stepped into the room.
“Uh, yeah, but hey—whassit matter if you’re askin’ ’bout the neighbour?”