by Jerry
Silence. Then we hear Ernest running back toward one of the stairwells. Outside there is a chorus of sirens. A disembodied voice connected to a bullhorn is telling Ernest Purcell to come out with his hands up. I sit by Amy with my hands folded tightly across my stomach. At least they’re not in my hair. “Is his ex with them?”
“No. I don’t see her.”
Amy’s breathing has steadied somewhat. I smooth the cold sweat off her forehead and brush her hair back with my fingers. Amykins lies still, sporting ugly discolorations around the rips in her syntheskin and circuitry. A tiny fist jerks up and down at one-second intervals.
Minutes later, another voice comes over the bullhorn: “Benito Alvares? Are you there?”
Ben reaches for the principal’s bullhorn and opens the window. “We’re over here,” he says. “Me, Peggy Sinclair, Amy Purcell, and Amykins.”
“The father is on his way to the precinct now for holding. Do you have transportation?”
“None of us would be too good behind the wheel right now. And we need medics, including computer technicians; we have evidence that needs to be preserved. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative. There is an ambulance on its way.”
“Repeat: we need computer technicians. A.S.A.P.” He puts the bullhorn down, pushes himself from the window and pours some of the Scotch into a mug that says Teachers Do It With Class.
He passes it to me first.
I calmly shake my head. “My hands are perfectly comfortable knotted in my stomach, thank you.”
He nods, and quickly raises the mug to his lips.
“What you are about to see,” I tell a group of reporters, “is a portion of what the Lazuli doll, Amykins, has recorded in her memory chip. It is in true color, and if the angle of observation seems unusual, remember that it is from the viewpoint of a three-year-old girl equivalent.
“We have insisted that this press conference not be broadcast live, for reasons that will soon become apparent to you. We have taken the liberty of editing for this short presentation those portions of Amykins’ subjective experience that are within the moderate range of abuse which she has undergone during the past two years. For those of you who would wish to have a more complete picture of her experiences, our records are available for your inspection.”
Ben sits to the side of the podium. Statements having to do with Amy’s condition at County General, Ernest’s status at the precinct, investigations into the abuse of Lazuli dolls and their possible connection to the decline in child abuse reports, are in his hands. I do not envy him. He will be grilled.
I do not envy Amy, because I don’t know what will become of her.
I do not envy Social Services, because I do not know what will become of us.
I do not envy the camera crews around me, who will want to turn off their eyes.
I do not envy the reporters, who will want to stare at their pads and who won’t be able to.
I gaze into the blankness of the white movie screen behind me, while it is still clean and spotless.
Then I reach for the switch on the wall, and I turn out the lights.
1985
A TOUCH BEYOND
Stephen L. Burns
If a sufficiently advanced technology is really indistinguishable from magic, it may require some difficult emotional adjustments.
Brightflash silver, catching the light.
The silver metal pin shaped so: Two hands, crossed at the wrists, arms ending just before the elbows, fingers spread wide.
Some say that the palms and fingers are turned inward, to protect the heart that they cover. Some say that they turn outward to connect that same heart to the world.
Both may be right.
Dr. Georgory Marchey arrived on Ixion Station. He moved out onto the ramp slowly, feeling light and irresolute as a balloon in the .75-g of the Station. After the high-speed shuttle ride he felt as if different parts of his body were moving at different speeds.
Almost as if to guarantee that he remain off-balance, he was greeted by an unexpected, unnerving sea of upturned faces filling the receiving bay. His ears were filled with the sea-sound of the echoing rumour they made. He knew that they were not gathered there to greet him specifically, but he still felt like he had been thrust into a sudden spotlight.
Marchey’s mood was much heavier than his blocky body felt. He had not seen Ella in over eight years. They had been desolate years of missing her, years of a new pride and shame, years during which a reached dream had taken on the dark trappings of nightmare. To see her again might be the first light of a new morning or the last glimpse of light before darkness reclaimed him.
Before going through the lock and out onto the ramp he had nervously checked himself over one last time. The gray velvet gloves he wore were clean and secure. His darker gray coverall was clean as well and the sleeves were snug at the wrist. The few strands of gray and black hair he still possessed were pushed back in place. Lastly, unconsciously, he had touched the silver metal pin he wore over his heart.
When he realized what he was doing he took his hand away, clasping it with his other hand as if to keep it from straying there again. But his awareness of the pin—and what it meant to him—remained at the fore of his mind. Not that it was ever forgotten.
He had tried to leave it behind, but found that he could not. It was a part of him, marking him for what he now was, medal and stigma all in one. Sleeves and gloves might hide what he had become from Ella’s eyes for a while, putting off the dreaded moment for a brief respite, but she would know in the end.
He could only hope that she would understand. The lower gravity of Ixion Station did nothing to lighten the burden of his fear that she would not.
Ella Prime tried to bear the press of bodies about her stoically. She failed, but she stayed. It seemed to her that almost every resident of the Station had turned out to greet the shuttle’s arrival. She had not been near that many people all at once in longer than she cared to remember—since she had fled Earth and come to Ixion Station.
Ixion was a great wheel that hung turning in the lonesome gulf between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, roughly 6.3 AU from Earth at their closest conjunction. Only about once a year would a supply ship venture out into the vast and daunting emptiness beyond the Io and Europa Bases to visit Ixion Station. The UNSRA labs, observatories and training facilities—along with the small but thriving society that had grown with those installations—rated no more than that. It was hoped that when Saturn’s mysteries were brought into mankind’s realm this would change for the better.
But until then Ixion would remain humankind’s furthest-flung outpost and the annual arrival of the supply ship with its shuttleloads of personnel and supplies would be a cause for celebration. Nearly everyone dropped what they were doing and hurled themselves into a desperate round of partying called ShipTime.
This was the first ShipTime that Ella had not made a point of avoiding. Five people in a room was horror for her, the densely packed bay a visit to Hell. Yet she stayed, one quiet member of the rowdy throng, a recluse far removed from her element, full of fear and hope.
Nothing but strangers had yet come down the ramp. Most of the new arrivals were unknown to those residents jammed into the vast bay, yet every single one to step onto the ramp was met with cheers. Any new face was a treat in their small, closed society, and it would be a year before they saw any more.
Then Ella saw Marchey emerge, blinking against the light and noise. Her heart leapt. He had come. Now they would be together again. She began to push her way to the foot of the ramp.
Marchey spotted Ella and halted uncertainly. She was not that hard to pick out of a crowd; she stood a head taller than nearly everyone else, as if her genius had raised her up and marked her for all to see. Her long, plain face, always so unhappy and watchful when she was out in public, broke into a sunny smile as she saw him.
Marchey clamped down on the urge to turn and run. After a few moments he smiled ba
ck hesitantly, took a deep breath, then continued to shuffle down the ramp. He wondered if his fear had shown on his face. He hoped not.
They met at the bottom of the ramp, two mismatched figures embracing to become one. Ella was almost freakishly tall, thin, and plain-featured, her skin and hair so pale that she could pass for albino. Only her bottle-green eyes spoiled the effect. Marchey was short, swarthy, and gnomish, the balding top of his head barely reaching the level of Ella’s small, low breasts. They held each other wordlessly, desperately.
Whispers buzzed outward from them and many eyes turned their way. Almost every resident knew of—though almost none knew—their famous resident, Ella Prime. They knew of her fame and reputation in the art world, for a bit of it rubbed off on their Station.
They also knew that she pursued a life of near-total solitude, an end so important to her that she had come to lonesome Ixion Station to live and work. Not long after her arrival she had tripled her fees and commissioned an off-station habitat to be built and shipped on the next supply ship.
At the beginning of her second year she moved into it, using it as both home and studio, calling it the Fort. The name fit. Many a resident suspected that as long as there was Ella’s artwork leaving the Fort and riding back by supply ship they would not be entirely forgotten or budgeted out of existence.
Now here she was, out in public—during ShipTime, no less. To meet a man—a lover, judging by the intensity of their embrace. That was romance. That was a wonderful infusion of unexpected spice to add to the already heady brew of the day.
Heads turned. The whispers buzzed outward and on.
Ella loosened her embrace so that she could look at Marchey’s face. She was frightened by how drawn and haggard he appeared, how tired and defeated he looked, but did not mention it. She kissed the rough crag of one cheek, tasting dried salt. “I missed you,” she whispered hoarsely, rubbing her cheek against his.
“I missed you too,” he husked in return, his lips moving close to her ear so that he could be heard over the rising din in the receiving bay. Somewhere back in the crowd a ragged chorus of “The Long and Winding Road” had begun. Marchey recognized the song and knew that it had indeed been all of that.
Ella held him tighter yet, hunched over so their faces touched. “We can try again. Things will be just like before. Better!” She rested her cheek on the top of his head. “But this time it won’t end.”
Marchey said nothing. He clung to her desperately, hiding his face in the warm hollow of her shoulder, feeling at once elated and terribly afraid. He did not know how he could stand losing her again. For a moment he wished he had never come.
The gently sloping corridors of Ixion Station rang with the shouts and laughter of its merry-making residents. The ShipTime celebration was in full swing.
The outering floors were planted in a lush green carpet of hardy airgrass. Here and there the grassy concourse narrowed, providing semi-open alcoves where shrubs, flowers, and dwarf trees had been planted, creating several bowers or miniparks. Though not of the size and standards of the fields and groves of the great cylinder cities, it was a nice humanizing touch for people far from their green planet.
Many of these bowers held impromptu gatherings and individual parties. The traffic from bower to bower—party to party—was loud and constant. Toasts and songs pealed in at least ten different languages.
Ella and Marchey had removed their slippers and walked barefoot along the outering corridor—Park Row. Ella carried a bottle that had been thrust into her hands by a laughing, red-faced man wearing nothing but a bright red bow tied around his broad middle. He had proclaimed that “Astrophysics Ennobles, but Alcohol Enables!” then had run off before they could thank him or ask what that meant, exactly. He had been hotly pursued just moments later by a laughing black woman armed with a butterfly net.
“Wild place,” Marchey remarked mildly as they watched the woman vanish. He waited for Ella to take a drink, then accepted the bottle as she grinned and handed it over.
“Not usually—or so I hear. But this,” she did a loose-limbed little dance step. “—is a holiday!” She could not remember feeling this good in quite a long time and she smiled at the reason.
Marchey wiped his mouth and glanced at the bottle’s label with respect. “Good booze.” He winked at Ella. “And a dancing-lady. Where we headed, dancing lady?”
Ella leered, snagging the bottle. “I’m taking you to the Motel.”
“That so? No room at your place?” He watched her drink.
Ella lowered the bottle, staring blankly, then laughed. “I have a whole habitat to myself, dear man.” She took a long pull from the bottle. “But my bug’s down and you can’t get anything fixed during ShipTime. So we stay here on th’ Wheel.” She absently took another swig, shuddering as it went down.
“You don’t stay here at all?”
“Nope! I can ’ford my own place and I damn well use it! You gotta ’member that I,” she drew herself up grandly, brandishing the bottle like a trophy, “am Ella Prime, artsy enigma, famous artiste, an’ a very rich lady thanks to these hands.” She wriggled the fingers of one hand, staring at them intently. “I even ’sured ’em,” she muttered.
Marchey realized that she was getting quite drunk—she had never had any tolerance for alcohol. He relieved her of the bottle, then the bottle of a liberal portion of its contents.
Ella stared at him, her long plain face suddenly bleak. “I got what I wanted—far from th’ maddenin’ crowd, right? An’ movin’ out here strapped jets t’ my reputation.” She sighed. “But sometimes it’s lonely. Without anyone . . . Without you. This is th’ firs’ time I been in to th’ station in a’most five months. Work, y’know.”
Marchey winced. Work. One poor word to cover a whole world of meaning. He knew all too well the extremes one could be driven to by their work. Ella had left Earth and moved to one of the most isolated places imaginable. He had . . . found his own extremes. Would she be able to understand them? His good mood dissolved at the answer he expected to receive.
Ella stole the bottle back, drank. They had to step to one side to allow some chain-dancing revelers to snake by, beckoning them to join in. Ella ignored them, glaring at Marchey challengingly.
“How ’bout you? I better hear you’ve been takin’ some time from your damn med’cine t’do some sculpture yourself!” She was slurring her words so badly that sculpture came out skulcher.
Marchey wished that her question could be sidestepped as easily as the dancers just gone by, but knew she would demand some sort of answer before she let the matter drop. That had been what had brought the together some sixteen years before. He had been a practicing surgeon who dabbled in art with some success, and she had been an up-and-coming sculptor already making large waves in the art world. His hands had not touched clay or stone for quite a while, for more reasons than simple lack of heart for it after she had left his life.
“Not really—nothing that matters.” Would that be answer enough?
It was not. She glared down at him. “Matters, hell! You coulda been as good as me if you’d worked at it like you did med’cine!” She blinked owlishly. “Well, almost as good.” She began to giggle. “That’s two things!”
Marchey took the bottle away from her. She’d had enough, he thought, and he had not—not by a long shot. “What two things?”
“Two things t’ getcha back into. One, I gotta getcha back into skulcher, Gorey.” Then she leered at him, waggling her faint eyebrows. “Two—an’ most ’portant—gettin’ you back into me!” She licked her lips and turned solemn. “An’ soon.” Through the liquory haze she could hardly believe how badly she wanted him then.
It took all of Marchey’s self-control to keep from grimacing. It was too soon. That would be the worst way for her to learn what he had become. Was there a best way?
His free hand found its way to the pin he wore and again he wished he could renounce it. It was a brand proving that he was no lo
nger what he had been before and cast a long shadow over the promises made by the memories of what they had once shared. He wanted then and there to strip off his secrecy and show her his pride and his shame, to ask if it changed anything, changed everything.
Because of who and what she was, it had to; the memories confirmed it, seemed to cast the coming moment in stone. It had surely changed him. Somehow he managed to produce a smile and a light bantering tone when he spoke. Had Ella been sober she would have spotted both as artificial.
“Impatient, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Ella replied simply. She reached out hesitantly to stroke his face. Her hand trembled. “I’ve missed you so much. I—I remember your soft hands on me in the night, the way you’d run your fingers—” Giving voice to the memories made the need twist through her like a whirlwind.
Marchey died inside at what she chose to remember. He interrupted her hastily, fighting a tide of desperation.
“Can we wait for a bit—have something to eat first?” He felt a bit of control coming back. “The food on the shuttle was awful, and I’m going to need my strength—”
Ella could sense his fear and reserve but could not think clearly enough to find its source. The food might help sober her, she thought, and it was just too hard to think of an alternative.
“How fast c’n you eat?”
He looked into her face, seeing her disappointment and bewilderment. His love and his fear made him almost physically ill. “Fast enough,” he managed with false joviality. He held his breath.
“Then maybe . . . but don’t be s’prised if I drag you under a table an’ ravish you ’tween courses.”
Marchey thanked whatever gods there were. “I think I can stand the suspense.”
There were three restaurants as such on Ixion. Ella took Marchey to the best one. It was crowded, but Ella’s prestige quickly secured them a good table. The restaurant served a little of everything and went by the gloriously inelegant name of Casa Mondo Swino.