Asimov's SF, February 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Thirty seconds to bridge reconnection."

  The pliers were tossed as the wire cutters plunged into the terminal. Think! Think of something! She wrapped its teeth around two power lines.

  “Twenty seconds to—"

  Induce multiple drags by—reroute—think! Maybe it won't radiate through! Maybe it—spin end over—

  Ten.

  She was crouched over, helmet resting against the terminal. Feeling the vibrations as Betty readied herself. Grass-stained fingers.

  She squeezed, and felt the wires give.

  “Betty reporting failed link. Retrying,” came Ceevee's calm voice.

  “Failure. Retrying..."

  “Failure. Retrying..."

  She didn't move until she heard: “Link full failure. Betty shutting down.” She opened her eyes and watched the wire cutters drift gently out of her hand.

  She stood slowly, making sure her boots had a good magnetic lock, facing back toward Betty's stern. The same gray sky greeted her in every direction. Some thickness towards the Milky Way, but otherwise the unbroken mist of stars.

  “Ceevee, show me Sol. Show me Ohio."

  A crosshair fluttered to life around an otherwise nondescript yellow star.

  “Aim your communications array toward Sol."

  Ceevee confirmed. She stared at the tiny star. At two and a half light years away, she was seeing old light. She thought about where she was, what she was doing two and a half years ago when she was first in that light. Ceevee confirmed the array was aligned. She wanted nothing so much as to be able to wipe at her eyes.

  “This is Commander Tessa Bruncsak of CV One, Mission 973. Commander Loránd Delago has died as a result of injuries sustained out-transit. By now you are already aware that the wormhole was not able to link due to a failure of Betty. We discovered that a singularity existed near Betty's flight course. When we arrived, we discovered that we would be too near the singularity to allow Betty to open again. I disconnected Betty's linkage. I was unsuccessful in changing Betty's course.

  “Commander Delago performed admirably despite significant injuries. His last words were of his wife, Marith.” She paused. Clenched her teeth twice.

  “I anticipate intersecting the singularity in approximately ten minutes. I would like to thank all the governments who made this program possible. And I'd like to thank my mother and father for their support of my role in it.” She started clenching her teeth again.

  “Ceevee, send that."

  When she turned around, the singularity was clearly visible. A simple, black disk of emptiness, surrounded by the twisting, fluttering images of contorting starlight. Her breath caught in her throat and she breathed heavily to fight it.

  “Ceevee, time to tidal threshold?” She was surprised how she almost yelled.

  “Three minutes, eighteen seconds."

  Her flimsy flesh wouldn't last even that long. The blackness grew visibly larger, looming, twisting light as she plummeted toward it. She locked her knees and squared her shoulders as the drain of the sea opened before her. Her eyes grew wide.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Hold my hand, Dad."

  * * * *

  He was working in the garden when the call came. Tessa's transmission.

  In the long two and a half years since the bridge failure, experts from around the world had parsed the data until they'd pieced it together. They'd hoped the crew managed a radio transmission. It came the day they'd expected.

  He listened to it with Tessa's mother, sitting in their living room, the two gentlemen from the space agency playing the recording. They wanted them to hear it before it was released to the world in the morning. The collapsed star would be officially named Bruncsak-Delago. They said kind words and left politely. He went back to work in the garden.

  * * * *

  Long after he went to bed and watched the moon ease itself down the panes of his window, the fields were still quiet.

  Copyright(c) 2006 Jonathan Sherwood

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Alien Invasion

  by Peter Payack

  These words are now inside your head.

  —Peter Payack

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Change of Life

  by Kat Meltzer

  Kat Meltzer has no kids and no pets, not even cats. “The care and feeding of a husband and a garden are about all I'm qualified to handle. I've been a mime, a stage tech, and a health care educator. Good practice, I suppose, for my writing career.” Kat has published a few stories and essays, but her first tale for Asimov's comes after a five year dry spell. She's working on a novel about faith v. materialism.

  * * * *

  Everybody wants to be paid: doctors, hospitals, the landlord who wishes Glinda would hurry up and get senile so that her rent-controlled apartment could be vacated. So Glinda perches on her new donut cushion, and types.

  Save and print. Esther Smyley, DOB 8/14/1922, is getting a Final Reminder. Miss Smyley rated a single ho-hum inch in the paper when her purse was snatched last year. If she had died, she would have gotten better coverage and some plastic bouquets to mark the spot. Instead, if she does not remit $22,980 for her ER VISIT; X-RAYS; CAST, FIBERGLASS; and LAB WORK, Glinda will be forced to notify the Credit Bureau.

  At least she will never have to make the phone calls. At an overripe fifty-seven, she has been at Bay Medical Collections longer than anyone, even her supervisor Mr. Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd says Glinda's voice is dulcet. He says the deadbeats (S-Z) don't know what they're missing, but if she can fill her quota without calls, then Stuart (A-I) and Cece (J-R) should chill.

  The WKED News Chicken squawks for headlines at the half-hour. Glinda leans closer to her clock radio.

  More tiger attacks, one in Brooklyn, two in Miami—

  “Hello-ooo!” singsongs Stuart. “Some of us are working!"

  And I am the Queen of Romania, thinks Glinda as she lowers the volume.

  “Of course I love you,” Stuart murmurs into his headset. “She just needs someone to talk to, you know?"

  —and the Director of Homeland Security counsels the nation not to panic.

  Glinda fidgets in her ergonomically stupid chair, made more so by the cushion, a gift from Mr. Shepherd. Cece said it was sexual harassment that he didn't give her one too.

  Miss Smyley's Final Notice is eight pages long. Why on earth did she let the doctor wrap her L ARM in a fiberglass cast? Medicare would have covered plaster, but because she got fiberglass, they're denying the whole visit, period.

  Poor old thing. Poor all the old things, all the Esther Smyleys who have the bad judgment to get sick without winning the Lotto. Glinda reminds herself to be thankful for her health. Such as it is.

  Ka-thunk. Cece's stapler technique is the pounding method favored by five-year-olds. Cece is twenty-two, a pierced fireplug of a girl, with Chinese characters tattooed on her calves. She goes through staplers like diet candies. Glinda aligns the pages of Miss Smyley's notice. Her own stapler is missing.

  Ka-thunk.

  Miss Smyley will have to make do with a paperclip. Glinda draws a little heart by her signature so that the woman will know that she, Glinda, is a caring human being, not a fish-lipped cad or a floozy with a pierced tongue.

  Gettin’ you ready for WKED's Wicked Weekend, he's more donut than man! Donut Man!

  Jojo the mailboy hunches over her Out Tray. “Ma'am? How's it going, ma'am?"

  “Just peachy, Joseph. And you?"

  She hopes a formal name will somehow bestow a soupçon of dignity. Alas, he really does look like a Jojo—smallish and stooped, with watery eyes and a spindly mustache. Once Cece accidentally stapled his thumb and Jojo bled on the mail. Stuart said bloody envelopes would send a message to the deadbeats. But Glinda took Jojo to the break room and dressed the punctures with peroxide and a Band-Aid.

  “Can I talk to you, ma'am?” He empties the tray, one envelope at a time.
“It's kinda important."

  Glinda hands him the envelope containing Miss Smyley's Final Notice. “Actually, Joseph—"

  Up next, hots and hotties, Donut Man's FRIDAY WTF!

  “Turn it up!” yells Stuart.

  Work halts as everyone listens to the now infamous Larry King interview with Christian Defense spokesman Reed Randall.

  —missing since our anniversary. I simply asked Marion if she'd like that laser thing because she was getting a little mustache.

  A great gift, sir. Truly great.

  I even said she could have liposuction. Whereupon Satan possessed her.

  Clearly Mrs. Randall needed psychological help. But last night on this very show Satan denied any involvement with your wife's disappearance. How do you respond, sir?

  She tore up the couch. She defecated on my pillow. In my shoes! But I didn't kill her!

  “I would have,” snorts Stuart.

  “He should have. When I'm fifty, I'm going to kill myself!” says Cece.

  Ka-thunk ka-thunk.

  Time to go. Glinda turns off the radio and her computer. She shoulders her purse, a sleek leather bag that contains a small hairbrush, sunglasses, lotion, her cell phone, and her tidy billfold. Then she steps daintily past Jojo and the stacks of manila folders that surround her desk.

  Mr. Shepherd's door is open. Glinda tugs her over-sized black turtleneck sweater further toward her knees and knocks. The body-bag look does not flatter the mature woman. Cece snickers.

  “Glinda!” Mr. Shepherd smoothes his hairplugs. “Glinda Glinda Glinda!"

  “I'm off to my doctor's appointment, sir."

  “But you went last week!” He bounds to her side and smothers her hands in both of his. “You're all right, aren't you? Nothing's wrong?"

  His nosy pink nose is immense. She would like to swat it. But then he would have to fire her, after which he would vow to console her. She forces a smile.

  “Just some female trouble, sir."

  “Well. Right then. Okey-dokey.” Nothing backs up the male of the species faster than a hint of vaginas and gore. “You'll be in Monday?"

  “Oh yes.” Glinda extricates herself from his grip. As she exits to the street, Cece says loudly:

  “OMG, she's getting fat. Can you believe her ass?"

  Glinda tugs her sweater again and hails a cab. She feels like an elegant hairball.

  Glinda, it seems, is growing a tail.

  * * * *

  The Sutter-Hyde Professional Building is faux-marble outside, and slick chrome and mauve inside. An earthquake might sink Bay Medical into liquefied landfill, but this building is situated on bedrock. She scratches her neck as the elevator rises to the tenth floor. Everything is going to be fine.

  Dr. Opoku's receptionist says that at the millennium, the planet began vibrating at a higher frequency. Tails and so forth are a beautiful and natural part of the new aging process. She accepts Glinda's co-pay with a bouncy Buddha bow. “And how are we this week?"

  Glinda can feel the other women in the waiting area adjust their radar. They want to know if she is better or worse than they are, if she has heard about a cure, or for that matter, a cause.

  “Oh, about the same."

  The girl hands her a disposable paper gown and points her down the hall. “Room two. She's running behind. Again."

  Dr. Opoku is growing a tail as well. There is a silent epidemic of tail-growing. Everywhere women of a certain age are seeing female physicians, female x-ray technicians, and female therapists of similar mileage with whom to discuss their life changes. Males are not in this loop.

  Glinda strips, and scratches her backside. Yesterday's paper is in the magazine rack. CHER GOES INTO SECLUSION. RELIGIOUS LEADERS CONDEMN THE DRAMATIC INCREASE IN DIVORCE ACTIONS. IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES DECRIED AS FEMINIST PLOT, says the headline. They have no idea, thinks Glinda.

  She discards the paper gown, and curls up on the exam table. Its leather pad is warm and soft. Her naked pink tail flicks the back of her thighs and she dozes.

  “Wakey wakey.” Dr. Opoku enters without knocking. She is long-limbed and dark. Glinda covets her slim figure, but genes are genes, and Glinda's mother began to widen in her forties. Her own slinky days are over.

  Dr. Opoku snaps on her surgical gloves. “I had four walk-ins this morning and my back is killing me."

  Glinda and her tail are poked, prodded, and gently pulled. Dr. Opoku's touch is hypnotically pleasurable.

  “Just over fourteen inches.” Dr. Opoku drops the tape measure in her lab coat pocket. “Very nice. Every woman wants fourteen inches."

  “Ha ha.” Dr. Opoku made the same joke last week at ten inches, and the week before that at eight. “How long is yours now?"

  “Twenty-one and three-quarters.” She presses the long muscles along Glinda's spine. “Mm-hm. Roll over please. Any discomfort?"

  “Everything itches back there."

  “That's the fur coming in.” Dr. Opoku pats Glinda's hip. “Come on, come on. Over you go."

  Fur? Glinda stares at the ceiling while Dr. Opoku chats.

  “You've already got a nice posterior fuzz going. The facial fur will start in a day or two. Okay, all done.” Dr. Opoku removes her gloves. She pulls her stool beneath her and spins over to the counter and begins scribbling in Glinda's chart. “Any questions?"

  “Fur!?"

  “The pharmacy downstairs has something called Epi-crème. It's over the counter but don't get carried away. Face and hands only. It burns like crazy. Trust me."

  A sound rises in Glinda's throat, almost a snarl. Dr. Opoku taps her pen to her lip. “I take it I didn't tell you about the fur?"

  Glinda suppresses an alien urge to violence, involving somehow ... her teeth? “I would have remembered."

  Dr. Opoku's tail slides below the hem of her lab coat, a sleek undulation of gleaming black fur that hangs almost to the floor. It lifts away from the stool's wheels and she pushes off from the counter and rolls to Glinda.

  “All I know is what I see from my other patients. Which is after you hit twelve inches or so, things happen pretty fast."

  Glinda's skin prickles. “What things?"

  Dr. Opoku raises her right hand. She flexes the palm and claws unfurl from her fingertips.

  * * * *

  Glinda's apartment is tidy and spare. An asparagus fern. A small television, a few CDs—Sinatra, some Miss Peggy Lee, and everything by the Ramones. Joey Ramone's caterwauling drove her wild. But he is gone and now, if she has a vice, it is pillows. She will never be rich or famous, but at least she can lounge without having to hold up her own weight.

  She orders sushi from the Japanese restaurant on the corner. When she hears the delivery boy's scooter, she can't get to the door fast enough. Her order is double-bagged and still the fishy fog is so thick and rude it reaches under her clothes and tickles her nipples, even the tiny new ones.

  “Excuse me? This is fresh, isn't it?"

  But the boy revs his scooter and speeds off.

  Glinda dabs saliva from the corners of her mouth. Either the fish is old or someone's created a sumo-salmon. The specter of food poisoning and an ER visit win. Ah well, she's got ice cream upstairs. She tosses the sushi in the dumpster.

  Her tail aches. She spends an itchy night, up and down, up and down. The apartment smells of Epi-crème, the sheets wind around her legs, she is hot, she is so hot. Maybe she should call in sick Monday. But she isn't sick. She is merely a woman on the verge of fur. And possibly claws. She flexes her fingers. Nothing. Around four, the dumpster lid bangs and something or things have a grand old time in the garbage.

  Saturday morning: her tail has grown another inch. The Epi-crème has turned her face to boiled meat. She is missing most of one eyebrow. The rest of her body is covered with silky golden fuzz. So she is to be a blonde. That's something, at least.

  The day's breaking news is a press conference by the Director of Homeland Security.

  —a leopard shot after attacking t
he Vice President at his home in Virginia ... attacks coordinated by sleeper cells in our universities ... anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of David Attenborough—

  Glinda unplugs the TV. Perhaps a stroll in the most beautiful city in the world? Even Union Square is lacking any women of a vintage similar to Glinda's. There are only baffled old men, tourist families, and youthful immortals whose tattoos will never sag. Then there is that corporate water feature, a black marble waterfall in the center of a koi pond...

  She decides she is more in the mood for a stay-at-home weekend. She excavates her fat clothes from the back of her closet and stacks up her Ramones CDs. Tail or not, she still has bills to pay. Bay Medical does not have a dress code, but Glinda does. She passes the hours napping amid her pillows, and altering her skirts, while listening as Joey wails on Subterranean Jungle.

  * * * *

  Mr. Shepherd is alarmed by her asymmetrical brows. He escorts her to her desk, asking if there's anything he can do, yap yap yap. His hair restorer is a bile-colored halo. She's gagging, but he simply won't leave. There's nothing for it. She presses his re-sodded head to her bosom.

  “Thank you for your concern, sir."

  It's the most glorious hug of Mr. Shepherd's life. She rubs his head on her breasts until the stench fades into her own clothes.

  He stammers that she is a valued member of the team and that his utmost respect will be reflected in her next performance review.

  Glinda excuses herself to the ladies’ room. She scrubs her clothes with damp paper towels until she can breathe.

  “Suck-up,” mutters Stuart, when she emerges.

  “Slut,” coughs Cece.

  Glinda's tail is stuffed inside her Kevlar-strength support hose, and she is dying for a good scratch. She has half a mind to urinate on their chairs, and professionalism be damned. But her hose and wet clothes would ruin the gesture: she would simply pee on her tail and feet. So instead she turns off the radio.

  “Heyyyy!” Stuart and Cece protest in vain. WKED Marty Ray's Morning Bonanza is forever lost.