The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

A feathered blur whipped through his field of vision. Carson looked over the top of his binoculars. Two birds skimmed the treetops, heading upriver. He stood, breath coming quick. Narrow wings. Right size. He found them in the binoculars. Were they the same kind of bird he’d seen yesterday? What luck! But they flew too fast and they were going away. He’d never be able to identify them from this distance. If only they’d circle back. Then, unbelievably, they turned, crossing the river, coming toward him. The binoculars thumped against his chest when he dropped them, as he picked up the camera, tripod and all. He found the birds, focused, and snapped a picture. They kept coming. He snapped again, both birds in view. Closer even still until just one bird filled the frame. Snap. Then they whipped past, only twenty feet overhead. And fast! Faster than any bird he’d seen except a peregrine falcon on a dive.

His hands trembled. Definitely a bird new to him. A new species to add to his life list. And the bird he’d seen yesterday couldn’t be a single, misplaced wanderer, not if there were two of them here. Maybe a flock had been blown into the area. He knew Colorado birds, and these weren’t native.

He stayed another hour, counting starlings and recording the other river birds that crossed his path, but his heart wasn’t in it. In his camera waited the image of the new bird, but he’d have to transfer it to the computer where he could study it.

Tillie was in bed. Beside her, on the nightstand, were packets of seeds. She hadn’t moved them since he’d brought them to her in the spring. The television was on. There were, of course, no broadcasts, so gray snow filled the screen, and the set softly hissed. Carson turned it off, darkening the room. Sunlight leaked around the closed curtains, but after the brightness outside, he could barely see. In the silence, Tillie’s breathing rasped. He tiptoed around her bed to put his hand to her forehead. Distinctly warm. She didn’t move when he touched her.

“Tillie?” he said.

She mumbled but didn’t open her eyes.

Carson turned on her reading light, painting her face in highlights and sharp shadows. He knelt beside her. Her lips were parted slightly, and she licked them before taking her next rattling breath. He wanted to jostle her awake. She slept so poorly most nights that he resisted. The fever startled him. As long as it was just a cough, he hadn’t worried much. A cough, that could be a cold or an allergy. But a fever, that was a red flag. He remembered all the home defense brochures with their sobering titles: Family Triage and Know Your Symptoms. “Tillie, I need to check your chest.”

His fingers shook as he pulled the blanket away from her chin. Her neck was clammy, and underneath the covers she was sweating. She smelled warm and damp. Clumsily he unbuttoned her nightgown’s top buttons, then he moved the light so he could see better. No rash. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could see that the tops of her breasts looked smooth. “Tillie?” he whispered, really not wanting to wake her. Her eyes moved under her eyelids. Maybe she dreamed of other places, the places she would never talk to him about. Gently he rubbed his fingertips over the skin below her collarbones. No boils. No “bumpy swellings” the brochures described.

Tillie mumbled again. “Bob Robert,” she said.

“I’ll get some aspirin and water.” He pulled the blanket back up. She didn’t move.

“You’re nice,” she said, but her head was turned away, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or continuing a conversation in her dream.

As he poured water from a bottle in the refrigerator, he realized that it would be difficult to tell if Tillie became delirious. If she started talking sense, then he’d have to worry about her.

The distribution manager had said to come back the next day, so there was nothing to do other than to give her aspirin and keep her comfortable. She woke up enough to take the medicine, but closed her eyes immediately. Carson patted her on the top of her hands, made sure the water pitcher was full, then went to his office where he printed the pictures from his camera. The last one was quite good. Full view of the bird’s beak, head, neck, breast, wing shape and tail feathers. Identification should have been easy, but nothing matched in his books. He needed better resources.