The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Children began to pour out of the playlands, most resentful at having their V-R time interrupted. Kyra had never told me Daniel’s last name. Nor did I have any idea what name she was using now. But if she simply wanted to pass unnoticed among ordinary people, his name would do, and Kyra had always been sentimental. The government, of course, would know exactly where she was, but they would know that no matter what name she used or what paper trails she falsified. Her DNA was on record. The press, too, could track her down if they decided to take the trouble. The alien landing meant they would take the trouble.

My handheld displayed, “Daniel Ethan Parmani, died June 16, 2025, age forty-two, and Jane Julia Parmani, died June 16, 2025, age three.”

“Second search. United States. Locate Kyra Parmani, ages-” What age might Kyra think she could pass for? In prison, twenty years ago, she had looked far older than she was. “Ages fifty through seventy.”

“Searching.”

Lehani appeared at the JungleLand door, looking furious. She spied me and ran over. “Lady sayed I can’t play!”

“I know, sweetie. Come sit on Grandma’s lap.”

She climbed onto me, buried her head in my shoulder, and burst into angry tears. I peered around her to see the handheld.

“Six matches.” It displayed them. Six? With a name like “Parmani” coupled with one like “Kyra”? I sighed and shifted Lehani’s weight.

“Call each of them in turn.”

Kyra was the second match. She answered the call herself, her voice unconcerned. She hadn’t heard. “Hello?”

“Kyra. It’s Amy, your cousin. Listen, they’ve just spotted an alien ship coming in. They’ll be looking for you again.” Silence on the other end. “Kyra?”

“How did you find me?”

“Lucky guesswork. But if you want to hide, from the feds or the press…” They might put her in jail again, and who knew this time when she would get out? At the very least, the press would make her life, whatever it was now, a misery. I said, “Do you have somewhere to go? Some not-too-close-but-perfectly-trusted friend’s back bedroom or strange structure in a cowfield?”

She didn’t laugh. Kyra never had had much of a sense of humor. Not that this was an especially good time for joking.

“Y es, Amy. I do. Why are you warning me?”

“Oh, God, Kyra, how do I answer that?”

Maybe she understood. Maybe not. She merely said, “All right. And thanks. Amy…”

“What?”

“I’m getting married again. I’m happy.”

That was certainly like her: blurting out the personal that no one had asked about. For a second I, too, was the old Amy, bitter and jealous. I had not remarried since my terrible divorce from David, had not even loved any one again. I suspected I never would. But the moment passed. I had Robin and Lem and Lehani and, intermittently when she was in the country, Lucy.

“Congratulations, Kyra. Now get going. They can find you in about forty seconds if they want to, you know.”

“I know. I’ll call you when this is all over, Amy. Where are you?”

“Prince George’s County, Maryland. Amy Suiter Parker. Bye, Kyra.” I broke the link.

“Who on link?” Lehani demanded, apparently having decided her tears were not accomplishing anything.

“Somebody Grandma knew a long time ago, dear heart. Come on, let’s go home, and you can play with Mr. Grindle’s cat.”

“Yes! Yes!”

It is always so easy to distract the uncorrupted.

The alien ship parked itself in lunar orbit for the better part of three days. Naturally we had no one up there; not a single nation on Earth had anything you could call a space program anymore. But there were satellites. Maybe we communicated with the aliens, or they with us, or maybe we tried to destroy them, or entice them, or threaten them. Or all of the above, by different nations with different satellites. Ordinary citizens like me were not told. And of course the aliens could have been doing anything with their ship: sampling broadcasts, scrambling military signals, seeding clouds, sending messages to true believers’ back teeth. How would I know?

On the second day, three agents from People’s Safety Commission, the latest political reincarnation of that office, showed up to ask me about Kyra’s whereabouts. I said, truthfully, that I hadn’t seen her in twenty years and had no idea where she was now. They thanked me politely and left. News cams staked out her house, a modest foamcast building in a small Pennsylvania town, and they dissected her current life, but they never actually found her, so it made a pretty lackluster story.

After three days of lunar orbit, a small alien craft landed on the upland savanna of East Africa.

Somehow it sneaked past whatever surveillance we had as if it didn’t exist. The ship set down just beyond sight of a Kikuyu village. Two small boys herding goats spotted it, and one of them went inside.