Year's Best SF 15 - By David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer Page 0,75

in future trials, I assure you.”

A grad student with wire-rimmed glasses poked her head around the door. “Solada, we’ve got the people from the Empty Moon here.”

“Start going over their parameters,” said Solada. “I’ll be done with this in a minute.”

“Empty Moon?” asked Leslie.

“It’s a new café,” said Solada. “We’ve come to an agreement with them about marketing. Volunteers—who have all the forms filled out, Dr. Baxter—will be infected with positive memories of the food at the Empty Moon Café, and we’ll track their reports of how often they eat there and what they order compared to what they remember.”

“Don’t you have an ethical problem with this?” Leslie demanded.

Solada shrugged. “Not everybody likes the same food. If they go to the Empty Moon and have a terrible sandwich or the service is slow, they’ll figure their first memory was a fluke. They’ll go somewhere else. Or if they’re in the mood for Mexican, they’ll go for Mexican. We’ll make sure that this virus is far less mutative and virulent than the others—which were really not bad considering how colds usually spread on a college campus. Well within the error range one might expect.”

“Not within the error range I’d expect,” said Leslie. “I’ll be conveying this to a faculty ethics committee, Dr. Srisai.”

Solada shrugged and smiled dismissively. “You must do as your conscience dictates, of course.”

The business at the Empty Moon Café was booming. Leslie told herself very firmly that her memory of the awesome endive salad she’d had there was a snare and a delusion; she stayed away even when Amy wanted to meet there for coffee.

No one else seemed to care when she tried to tell them about the newest marketing ploy.

A few weeks later, Leslie was doing the dishes while her husband put Nicholas to bed. Her doorbell rang three times in quick succession, and then there was a pounding on the door. Wiping her hands on the dishtowel, she went to answer it. Amy was standing on the doorstep, an ashen undertone to her dark skin.

“There’s been—” Amy swallowed hard, and managed to get a strangled, “Oh, God,” past her lips.

“Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you tea. What’s happened?”

“Tom Barras—he’s—”

“Deep breaths,” said Leslie, putting the kettle on.

“You know I’ve been one of the faculty advisors to the GLBT group on campus,” said Amy. “There’s been an attack. A member of the group—Tom Barras—a nice bi boy, civil engineering major—is in the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know! I thought we were—I know gay-bashing still happens, but I thought we were better than that here.” Leslie bit back a comment about illusions of the ivory tower. Her friend needed a listening ear, not a lecture. Amy got herself calmed down, gradually, and Leslie went to bed feeling faintly ill. She and her husband insisted on putting Amy’s bike in the back of their car and driving her home, just in case.

The story of the assault came out gradually: Tom’s attacker, Anthony Dorland, said he had previously been set upon behind Hogarth Hall by a group of men. One of them had groped him repeatedly, making suggestive personal comments, while the others looked on and laughed. “I couldn’t do anything about it,” Anthony told campus security in strangled tones. “I was alone. But then I was out last night, and I heard his voice. It was the same voice, I know it. I would know it anywhere. He was coming out of his meeting, and so I waited until he was alone. I don’t care what he does with people who like it, but I’m not that way! He shouldn’t force himself on people like that! It’s not right! So I thought, well, let’s see how you like it when you’re all alone and someone jumps on you.”

When campus security asked Dorland why he had not fought back immediately or reported the incident, he looked confused. “He was so much bigger than me, and he had all his friends—I don’t know—I just felt like I couldn’t. Like no one would believe me.” Pressed for a time of incident, he said, “I don’t know. A while ago. A few weeks ago, maybe? I don’t know.”

The police officers looked from one young man to the other. Tom was several inches shorter than Anthony and slightly built.

Tom returned to consciousness a day later, to the great relief of his family and friends, including Amy. A few days after that, the faculty started hearing rumors of other students who had experienced the same thing