Asimov's SF, October-November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

Above the beat of the rain, there was a sudden cry and the pounding ended abruptly. Something scraped across the gravel.

  “It's Willy—"

  “It isn't! It's a White!” Martha pulled with all her strength and he tripped backward onto her. She wriggled out from beneath him and struggled to hold him down. Tears streamed down her face. “Please, please, please—"

  Sheets of rain slammed against the house.

  Freddy disentangled himself and pulled the aphid hook from its place by the coat pegs. He flung the door open and plunged into the drenching night. He could make out nothing but wildly waving grasses and obscuring rain. He ran down the path.

  There, in the gravel, a White hunched over Willy's long form, face down in the muck. Her compound eyes glittered in the light from the house. Her wings were folded and her body braced against the gale, but she gripped his legs with three of her claws. Her proboscis pierced his rain slicker.

  With a shout, Freddy leapt forward. In one motion, he stepped on her mouth parts, locking them in place, and, buttressing himself against the base of her wing, jammed the aphid hook through her eye into the soft place beneath, where her small brain resided. Still, she struggled to free her mouth, to open her wings and fly. Scrambling her brain didn't stop her; she braced her forelegs and clawed at him with a hind leg.

  Freddy pulled the aphid hook out of her eye and stabbed at the joint between her head and thorax, repeatedly, trying to sever her body. He leaned on her bony hump to crush her down, to use the leverage to snap her head, and to keep her rear claws from raking his legs.

  The carapace cracked and thick fluids gushed over his knees. The gnat crumpled, twitching in the gravel, her wings fluttering in the wind.

  Panting, Freddy dislodged the proboscis from Willy's ribs. Blood pumped from a ragged wound below Willy's knee.

  A clicking above the gale drew his gaze to the sky. Another White flicked overhead, battling the storm to land. A second gnat crawled toward him from the direction of the barn.

  Freddy clasped his hands under Willy's armpits and heaved. Willy's long limbs dragged over the gravel as Freddy inched him up the path to the house.

  A third gnat landed by the machine shed.

  Adrenaline gave Freddy a burst of strength, and he pulled Willy's body to the door. He beat on the window. “Martha!” he called.

  He shoved on the door but it held tight. No light shone through the window. “Martha!"

  A fourth gnat appeared out of the gloom, creeping over Elsie's carcass.

  “Martha!"

  The door gave, suddenly, and he tumbled inside, pulling Willy over the threshold. Martha kicked Willy's feet inside the sill and slammed the door in the path of the attacking White.

  Freddy lay back and panted in a puddle of rain and gnat guts and blood, Willy limp across his legs, and Martha sobbing across his chest. By God. By God, they were alive.

  Alive.

  * * * *

  Freddy paid Willy's hospital bills. He paid for Willy's prosthesis after his leg was amputated. He milked Willy's aphids and built him two sturdy gnat bins. He gave Willy a dead goat injected with gnat eggs and bought him a combination diagnostic and fungicide treatment computer for his aphids. He puttered around Willy's farm, mending a fence, tidying drawers of nuts and screws.

  “I suppose you think this makes us square,” Willy said when Freddy finally came to the hospital.

  “No, Willy,” Freddy said.

  Willy coughed and held his ribs, frowning through the window at the desolate plain. His dinner lay on a table, untouched.

  Freddy shook his head. “We'll never be square."

  “Darned right!” Willy growled. “Me and my crippled leg. How am I supposed to milk my aphids now? I don't have a machine like you."

  “We'll never be square.” Freddy's voice was hoarse and low and he held his lips tight. “But I've done all I'm going to do. Good-bye, Willy."

  “What—"

  “No. I'm gone.” Freddy slipped from the room.

  “A curse on you!” Willy cried out.

  Freddy stopped in the corridor, arrested by the words. He stared at the blank wall. He would not go back.

  “Freddy!"

  A nurse rattled a cart down the hall, and someone moaned in another room.

  “Freddy!"

  The wind beat at the window and the machines and hospital caregivers nursed their charges. No further sound came from Willy's room. Freddy stood back where Willy couldn't notice, and peered through the door. Good-bye, Willy. Pallid sunlight grayed the plastic floor and synthetic blankets. Willy had pulled his table closer and hunched over it, sucking his dinner through a straw.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Susan Forest

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  * * *

  Poetry: MODERN CONSTELLATIONS

  by Pat Tompkins

  What would we designate:

  Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse,

  a bike, a pigeon, a house?

  -

  Or constellation IBM, Wal-Mart, Nestle?

  It's best there's no space left in sight

  for giants to buy naming rights.

  -

  We've exhausted our heroes and myths.

  The binary system covers our needs.

  We worship efficiency and speed.

  -

  An American constellation?

  I figure it would be

  a chocolate-chip cookie.

  —Pat Tompkins

  Copyright (c) 2007 Pat Tompkins

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  * * *

  Novelette: NIGHT CALLS

  by Robert Reed

  Although Robert Reed's latest tale is clearly a homage to one of science fiction's most famous stories, inspiration for this piece came from elsewhere, too. As Bob tells us, “despite what the outside world might believe, little Lincoln, Nebraska, has a substantial immigrant population. I once worked with Vietnamese refugees, and a substantial group of Sudanese have lately come to town. There's also a strong Iraqi community. By some odd coincidence, I have seen several young Muslim women having meetings with boyfriends in the city parks. And at one of those big patriotic events, my family and I found ourselves sitting with Iraqis, listening to patriotic music while watching patriotic pyrotechnics. One young lady had a blond, blue-eyed man-friend. He looked comfortable, but only to a point. And I got interested in him and his situation. And everybody was watching the sky."

  Ferrum was no Believer.

  In that, he felt normal. This was an age when the powers of religion were plainly on the run. The old temples stood empty, except for the rare exceptions populated with worshippers embracing a thin, heartless scripture. Much of the world seemed eager to mock superstition and ritual, and every plaintive cry for God's vengeance was conspicuously ignored. Indeed, despite these heretical attitudes, modern life was abundant and generous and often fat. The sciences constantly generated new understandings and powers, each revolution delivered to all the races and distant creeds. Yet if some supernatural punishment ever became necessary, those same sciences promised more suffering than any Deity sitting in the most perfect Heaven could deliver. Really, Ferrum could not understand why any sober, honest citizen would entertain the preaching of mad souls and charlatans. After all, this was the Day of those twin Geniuses, Invention and Discovery, and hadn't history proved that nothing in the Creation was as half as powerful or a tenth as good as what was best about people?

  Yet Rabiah insisted on finding weakness in the fashionable disbelief.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ferrum sharply. “What weaknesses do you see?"

  “Start with your name,” she suggested. “It's old, and it means iron."

  “I know what ‘Ferrum’ means."

  “To the ancients, our world was the obvious center of the universe. And since what is heavy must sink, it was only reasonable to assume that the world's heart was made of iron and the rarer metals."

  “The core is iron,” he agreed, l
aughing without much heart. “Those old fools happened to get one puzzle right."

  “'Ferrum’ comes from the Fifth Day.” She looked past her newest lover, concentrating with her usual intensity. “That was when the Boy Emperor conquered half of the world's land. Then the Sixth Day began, and an obscure tribe marched across a slightly different half of everything. And then the Seventh Day emerged from the darkness, and the Pale Prophet appeared, claiming to have walked with the True God who told Him to subjugate the world."

  “Which those zealots nearly did,” Ferrum interjected.

  “And then that Day came to its end, and my ancestor stumbled out of the desert, inspiring a holy war that set the scene for our very long Day."

  The young woman had a temper. While it was popular to deny the value of stereotypes, Rabiah nonetheless fit the model of her people: She was passionate with a preference for strong opinions. Suggesting she was wrong, even in the most minimal fashion, brought the risk that she would explode with hard words or even a few defiant slaps delivered to her lover's bare chest.

  Ferrum managed to restrain his mouth.

  “Of course neither of us Believes,” she continued. “Yet don't we assume that people should be good to one another, even if it serves their own selfish interests? Don't you hunger for a world where ethics have teeth and decent, generous citizens are called godly?"

  He continued to say nothing.

  “And now look at the rules and rituals embedded in our major faiths. What do you find waiting there? Codes and commandments—a set of principles that pave the path to excellence."

  Ferrum was breathing deeply, staring at the bland, water-stained ceiling above his bed.

  “You and I are creatures of science,” she continued. “But what is science? And by that, I am asking what it is that our discipline assumes, first and before anything else?"

  “Evidence,” he offered. “Science demands evidence."

  “It needs evidence to live, but that's not what it assumes.” She paused for a moment, carefully considering her next words. “The universe has order and meaning. Before anything, science must believe in that. What is true here, on our tiny patch of ground, has to apply everywhere. Scientific principles must be uniform and fair. Because if they are not fair, where's the value in lofty theories that only pretend to explain the questions worth asking?"

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, honestly confused.

  “I'm talking about God,” she admitted. “Not the old gods, who were tiny and not all that mighty. I mean the kingly Gods from the last Days. They taught us that the universe has a single overriding authority. With wind and floods, they proved what they said, and that made us ready for the Four Natural Forces and the eighty-one known elements."

  Ferrum couldn't agree. “What are you arguing here? If we never believed in God, we wouldn't have science today?"

  A happy wobble of the head ended with a fetching stare. “What I think ... well, yes, I do believe that if our ancestors hadn't surrendered to the idea of one viable answer, compelling and perfect, then our minds wouldn't have bothered to chase new ceramics or the principles of gravity, much less waste fortunes probing the depths of the sky."

  Ferrum lay still, taking a deep breath and holding it inside as long as possible. Meanwhile, Rabiah laughed and swung one leg over his hips, climbing on top. This was no lover's pose. She was a wrestler holding her opponent's arms flush against the spongy mattress, thick legs wrapped around his thighs and her long black hair falling loose, tickling his chest and belly.

  “So everybody is a Believer, even if we don't like thinking so. Is that it?"

  She laid her hand on his chest. “The two of us are Believers. Our souls are lashed to the faith of universal order."

  “And what about other people?” he asked.

  “Give me names."

  Ferrum offered candidates from their few shared friends—smart, well-educated souls—and then before she could answer, he mentioned her parents, and his. “Are they all secret Believers, like silly us? Or could they be only what they claim to be?"

  “What do they claim to be?"

  “Unrepentantly modern, godless and untouched by old foolish ways."

  “Some are like us.” Rabiah's weight had settled on his middle, her eyes watching him carefully. “But really, most of the world doesn't understand science. Not truly. What people like to do is throw out a few popular phrases, trying to fit in with what they perceive as convention."

  “And what about your cousin?” Ferrum asked.

  “Which cousin?"

  “You know who."

  But Rabiah didn't wish to talk about the man. So she changed topics, telling Ferrum, “You know what would happen, if the world ever changed for the worst...."

  Her voice trailed off.

  “What would happen?"

  She shifted her weight. “At the first sign of serious trouble—I guarantee it—every last temple would overflow with clumsy but devout worshippers."

  Ferrum watched her pretty face, skeptical about her arguments but unable to refute the words.

  “And if our civilization collapsed,” she continued, “then even our best scientists would pull out knives and start sacrificing livestock to the Moon and the lost Sisters. And when those desperate gestures didn't appease our old gods, our greatest minds would invent new ones and then happily, happily cut each other's throats...!"

  * * * *

  Ferrum met his difficult lover at the city's largest park—an abandoned silica mine too hilly to be farmed but perfectly suited for tough trees and sedges, with clay-lined ponds in the low spots and tended fields where children and adults could hike and play. He drove to the park after work but before the evening wind died down. On a whim, he had purchased a cheap paper-and-stick kite, and using skills that he hadn't employed for years, he assembled the toy, tied on fresh string and then managed to pull his creation far enough into the air that he could stop running, panting while he admired his achievement.

  It was a warm spring evening. The sun was setting, a perfect wind blowing from the north. Ferrum happily looked over his shoulder, the boyish part of him hoping for spectators. Three of the Sisters were still above the horizon, each bright enough to keep the evening pure, but their combined light too dim to feed plants or coax the tired mind into staying awake. He watched the Sisters for a long moment, observing how close they had drawn to each other; and then he glanced back at the ruddy skies to the west. That's when he noticed a small car parked close to his, and inside the car, what looked like a young woman. She was sitting behind the steering wheel, hands across her face, and, even at a distance, she looked as if she was suffering some awful, consuming grief.

  Ferrum wasn't an outgoing person. Pretending to see nothing was easy. He focused on his kite, and, as the wind died, its increasing demands. Then the wind vanished, and he had no choice but to reel in the string and carry his toy back to his car. The girl was still sitting close by. Nobody else was visible. She remained behind the wheel, but for the moment, her suffering was done. Sad swollen eyes glanced his way, and he noticed how pretty she was. Then with a mixture of embarrassment and expectation, she smiled: She didn't want to be noticed, but on the other hand, her pain was too large and important to hide away.

  In a moment of unusual fortitude, Ferrum approached. “Do you need help, miss?"

  For some reason, that was an extremely funny question. She broke into a smart little laugh, and just as suddenly, she was sobbing again.

  “I'm sorry,” Ferrum muttered, beginning his retreat.

  “But I liked watching,” she confessed.

  “Excuse me?"

  “The kite. I enjoyed its dance."

  In Ferrum's mind, she was exotic. The colored scarf and the style of her dress made her different from every other woman he normally spoke with. Refugees were fleeing their native lands, desperate to escape a host of political troubles. She must have been among the recent émigrés. Her voice carried a rich accent.
Her face and beautiful skin betrayed a history composed of the lost nation's ancient tribes.

  Ferrum asked, “Where are you from?"

  Laughing, the stranger named his home city.

  Of course, she was a naturalized citizen. What was he thinking?

  “I'm sorry,” he muttered. “That was a stupid question."

  The girl saw something worthy of a smiling stare. “You should ask something smart, then."

  Ferrum learned her name and pieces of her life story.

  It was Rabiah who brought up the possibility of dinner, and Ferrum mentioned that he was free for the rest of the evening.

  Unfortunately, she had a previous commitment.

  Eventually they settled on the evening after next, and following several meals and two concerts, not to mention the calculations and negotiations common to any romantic venture, their relationship moved into the physical realm.

  At that point, Ferrum finally asked about the sadness in the park.

  “Oh, that was nothing,” Rabiah said with a heavy tone, implying otherwise.

  “Nothing?"

  “I used to meet my old boyfriend there. That's all."

  But her confession wasn't quite honest. It took more weeks of prodding, plus some carefully gathered clues, before the ex-boyfriend's story was told. The man was considerably older than Rabiah, and he was married. He would meet his young girlfriend in the park, and they would make love in the passenger's seat. Rabiah carelessly offered details, letting Ferrum imagine her climbing on top of that old fellow, him yanking down her underwear and shoving his business inside her, enjoying her body until he was spent, or until he had to leave for home and his ugly old wife...

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked Ferrum, sickened yet aroused. “What do you think you're doing?"

  Now three people were lying in their little bed.

  Smiling with a calculated menace, his girlfriend asked, “Do you know who he was? And is?"

  “I don't want to,” he claimed.

  “My cousin,” she admitted.

  “Oh, God,” the agnostic whispered.

  “A second cousin, and you needed to know,” she claimed. “If we're going to continue seeing each other, darling ... there will be a moment when you have to meet the man..."