Asimov's SF, October-November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It was crouching in the lee of the hull, in an opening. It held a human hand in its fist and was gnawing at the stump. It looked at Curlew from quiet red eyes and grinned at him with long curving teeth. Curlew stared at it, while the pony quivered beneath him, but the beast made no move. Then, it set the hand carefully on the metal beside it and opened its mouth, wider and wider, and Curlew hauled the pony's head around and kicked it crashing through the reeds while the baying of a thousand hounds tumbled through the air around him and opened up the worlds.

  He did not look back. He rode on as the light rose and did not look right or left, although he thought he heard a child's cold laughter as he rode, and a strange splitting wail. He rode straight past the broch and over the willow border of Whiteshadow's lands, and into the long reaches of water meadow that sloped to the small snaking rivers. He rode all the way back to the high court and did not stop until the gates slammed shut behind him.

  The high king was not there, but Whiteshadow was, sitting in her own carved chair at the table's head. She looked the same as ever, sad blue gaze and asphodel hair, but when he dropped the golden fleece of the bulrush head onto the table in front of her, saying not a word, she smiled.

  “He failed,” she said.

  “He died,” said Curlew.

  “And the beast?"

  “It lives yet. I think it will always live."

  Whiteshadow shrugged, but with an effort. “It came with the comet, my father thought. Those were rich enough lands before then, if wet. Perhaps one day it will go back where it came from."

  “Perhaps,” Curlew said, and he sat down beside her, staring at the gilded rush until the heat from the fire reached his bones and the last of the golden dust rose into the smoking air and was gone.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Liz Williams

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  * * *

  Poetry: INTO THE DEEP

  by Michael Meyerhofer

  The brains of whales are bigger than ours

  and more complex, they say,

  and the whales dive deeper than any living thing

  without machines. Deeper into the cold

  -

  dark water, miles below the light.

  They float down, their bodies full of milk

  and come back up, rising off the deep

  like fat blue angels. But they also say

  -

  that miles further than that,

  down at the very bottom,

  there are creatures

  who have never seen the light.

  -

  There are creatures

  tiny, like the head of a pin

  who do not breathe air.

  Who have never heard of the Kingston Trio

  -

  or the Voyager space probes.

  Nomads of an abyss

  so deep that stars do not exist.

  They float in colonies or live alone,

  -

  mouths with feet,

  without knowledge of what wheels

  through the heavens above

  or me, and how tonight

  -

  for reasons known only

  to this poem, I draw a steaming bath

  and sink in, mile by mile,

  until something within me breaks

  -

  and then unfolds—stretching

  its ancient webbing between this world

  and the last, between gods

  and the science they left behind.

  -

  —Michael Meyerhofer

  Copyright (c) 2007 Michael Meyerhofer

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  * * *

  Short Story: SKULL VALLEY

  by Michael Cassutt

  Michael Cassutt most recently appeared in Asimov's with his thought experiment, “Me and Deke and the Paradigm Shift” (February 2007). He is the author of eleven books of fiction, such as Missing Man, Red Moon, and Tango Midnight; non-fiction like Who's Who in Space; sixty teleplays for such SF series as Twilight Zone, Max Headroom, and The Dead Zone; and a regular column on SF television writing, “The Cassutt Files” on Scifi.com. He lives in Los Angeles, where among other projects he is currently working on his first video game. Unfortunately, Mike has not been a prolific provider of short stories for our pages. His first Asimov's story, “A Star Is Born” appeared in our July 1984 issue. It was six years before another of his tales showed up in the magazine and another six years before his third appeared in our October/November 1996 issue. While we hope we don't have to wait six, or even eleven, years for his next tale, we're glad that he's chosen to return to our pages with a thrilling and deadly chase through...

  “He's headed south,” the woman from Homeland Security said, clicking off her cell phone.

  Her name was Nicole Hulsey. Even swathed in a vest and khaki uniform, she was blonde and beautiful, impossible to ignore, especially when sitting next to you in the front seat of a car. But my admiring sideways glances had to be brief. Negotiating the switchbacks of old Highway 89 through the Cleopatra Hills demanded total concentration. The occasional roadside memorial of cross and withered flowers showed the penalty. So did my memories of a dozen—or was it twenty?—crash sites over the years.

  “Miss Hulsey,” I said, “'south’ doesn't tell me much. In fact, you haven't actually told me anything useful about this fugitive. Certainly not enough to let me catch him."

  She had arrived at the Yavapai County Sheriff Station in Prescott at six AM, waving Homeland Security identification and dropping incomprehensible acronyms while juggling a cell phone, a BlackBerry and a shiny laptop. It appeared that she was chasing a fugitive, or so I heard when I arrived for my shift. “What kind of fugitive?” I asked Dan Fennessy, my supervisor. “Bank robber? Escaped prisoner? Free-range Democrat?"

  He forced a smile, never an easy thing for him. “She hasn't said."

  I found this vagueness to be uncharacteristic; Fennessy was precise, dogged, quick to snap “bullshit” at fuzzy thinking and vague phrasing—hence his scorn for those who had what he believed to be soft, unfocused political views.

  “Is he armed?” This was usually an automatic trigger for a download of law enforcement jargon from Fennessy.

  “Won't say and likely don't know."

  “Okay,” I said, my frustration growing, “if it's such a big mysterious deal, where are the Federal marshals?” I nodded to our computer and fax machine. “Where is the bulletin from Phoenix?"

  Hulsey rejoined us at this point, and my amazement at Fennessy's uncharacteristic goofiness vanished: the agent from Homeland Security turned out to be tall, blonde, rangy and fit, the kind of woman who could appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated—a beach volleyball champ, perhaps. Her all-American beauty and exuberance had overwhelmed Fennessy's normal rigor; the man was in a stupor.

  Not that I was completely immune. But Fennessy is the station's alpha male—good-looking in spite of his years, always charming, twice-divorced. I'm younger, but not notably easy on the eyes, with a waistline that suggests (however falsely) domestic bliss ... and so stereotypically Latino that, compared to All-Americans like Fennessy and Hulsey, I might have belonged to a different species.

  The goddess spoke: “The existence of this fugitive is classified. We don't want the incident broadcast, we just want him caught with no noise."

  She waited for Fennessy or me to comment; we did not. “These are the only facts I'm authorized to release: approximately ten days ago, a male escaped from a Federal facility that was in the process of being closed—"

  Now Fennessy sat up straight. He was a Tom Clancy reader, a military junkie. He often bored my ears off with tales of Titan missile silos around Tucson and the vast swaths of Arizona that served as Air Force gunnery ranges. “What Federal facility is within running distance of us?"

  Hulsey blinked her long lashes, clearly not wanting to give up even this much hard data. “Table Mesa Research Station, up near Sycamore Po
int."

  “Table Mesa.” Now I couldn't help laughing.

  “What's so funny?” Hulsey said.

  “In Spanish they mean the same thing. ‘Table Table.'” Hulsey actually blushed. Probably hated to be one-upped by a rural deputy sheriff. Especially a fat, Latino deputy sheriff.

  “Either way,” Fennessy grumbled, “I've never heard of it."

  Hulsey's BlackBerry twittered at her. She moved off to let her fingers talk, leaving us alone.

  “You don't suppose they're parking Al-Qaeda out here,” Fennessy said. “Could this ‘Table Mesa’ be some kind of Gitmo?"

  I hadn't considered that. Maybe I am too trusting. “Here?"

  “Shit, yeah! My old man came to Arizona during World War II to do guard duty! There was a big German prisoner-of-war camp down at Papago Park. They also had a bunch of Japanese diplomats stashed outside Tucson."

  “I never knew."

  “You're too young, Sandoval.” He offered that strained smile again. “Twelve years in the department, and you still have so much to learn.” Bubbling under this benign bit of teasing was something more ominous: the department was facing cutbacks, and I was facing a review.

  Hulsey returned, this time with a hurry-up-and-go attitude. “Our last confirmed sighting was in Jerome two days ago. We have a report that puts him here.” She opened the laptop, displaying an overhead satellite picture of Yavapai County.

  She used her touchpad to illuminate a string of dots which marked a rough trail from the northwest, down the Verde River Valley, up and over Jerome, through the mountains and across Prescott Valley to the west and south.

  “How come there are so many dots at the start of the line, and none past Jerome?” I asked.

  “You had this guy tagged, didn't you?” Fennessy said.

  Hulsey frowned, and pulled a plastic baggie out of her pocket. In it was what looked like dried-up contact lens crusted with blood. “We picked this up last night at the mouth of a mine there."

  Fennessy barked a laugh. “Shit, lady, if he's got into those mines, you could look for years and never find him.” Jerome was a former copper town built on the side of a mountain. Most of its mines had played out fifty years ago, but the shafts still honeycombed the place. I should know: as a kid, I used to play in them.

  “Fortunately, we have a sighting from Prescott Valley the day after he ... carved this out of his arm."

  I looked at Fennessy. “Is this guy pulling our robberies?” There had been a series of odd little break-ins and thefts clustered along the north side of Prescott Valley, the big development north of the city proper. Nothing major had been taken—just clothing, food, and, inexplicably, toys. My job for the day was to have been follow-up.

  But Fennessy was still entranced by Hulsey and her many devices. He was drawing his finger in a straight line from Jerome through Prescott Valley. “If this guy's on foot, call it twenty-five miles a day, where would he be now...?"

  We came to the same conclusion. “Skull Valley."

  Hulsey's phone got her again. Before she answered it, I told her I would bring a vehicle around to the front door.

  As I headed down the hall to my ride, Fennessy winked. “Remember, Sandoval, if he does turn out to be a Democrat ... shoot to kill."

  Skull Valley was a rural community of a few hundred ranchers and retirees, too far from downtown for convenient development ... so far. It was wooded, bordered by mountains, and served as a pathway to the desolate reaches of western Arizona.

  It would be a perfect outlaw hideout—and had been for a hundred and fifty years.

  “So who is this guy?” I said, as we headed down into the valley itself. “All I know is the word ‘fugitive.’ Is he old or young? Armed? Dangerous?” I indicated the laptop. “You wouldn't happen to have a picture, would you?"

  She looked out the window, clearly taxed by these basic questions. “Young,” she said finally, as if offering a gift. “Unarmed and not familiar with weapons."

  “Please don't make me feel as though I'm buying vowels on Wheel of Fortune. Give me an age or I can turn the car around."

  “Seventeen."

  That was useful, if only to lower the chance that the fugitive was some kind of terrorist. Not that there aren't teenaged suicide bombers—but I found it unlikely that a 17-year-old would be an international bad-ass worthy of confinement at this Table Mesa facility.

  “Does he have a criminal record?"

  “No.” She was losing patience, or so I assumed, when she exhaled as if she'd just finished a hundred-yard sprint, then brushed back her hair. “Look, if this were up to me, I'd simply give you the file. But this was classified far above me. I'll lose my job and career if it's compromised."

  “You mean, further compromised.” I smiled.

  “Yes.” Strangely, she wasn't amused.

  A thought occurred to me ... dumb, but I couldn't help asking. “He isn't some kind of extra-terrestrial, is he? Is Table Mesa where we keep the frozen aliens?"

  She actually laughed out loud. “I wish! An E.T. would be easier to explain!"

  * * * *

  Armed with that much data, I pulled off at the intersection of 89A and Sharps Road, a location that was as close to a chokepoint as you could find on this route through Skull Valley. There was an antique store—still closed at this hour—and a rutted parking lot.

  To the south lay low hills and fairly rugged terrain. To the north, flat ranch land, still home to cattle. “Come on,” I said, climbing out of the ride, making sure Hulsey had a hat and carried a water bottle. With her milky complexion, it was obvious she hadn't been working in Arizona for long.

  I started us walking north, figuring that was Fugitive's likely route from his last known location.

  “You've got to be kidding me,” Hulsey said, following with obvious ill grace. “This is it? One deputy is supposed to find my fugitive in a hundred square miles?"

  “This isn't television,” I said. “If you're thinking the local sheriff is somehow going to ‘seal off’ a hundred miles, you're dreaming. Ten thousand Border Patrol and National Guards can't seal off a few hundred miles of fence. Up here we don't have the personnel to do more than throw up three or four roadblocks at a given time. Hell, we have a tough enough time finding a dead body in field. A moving target that doesn't want to be caught is much tougher. And by the way, we're talking more like five-hundred square miles."

  I realized I sounded nasty. “All we're looking for is evidence, a sign. Another data point. Once we have some kind of projected path, then we rustle up a posse."

  Three hours passed, in which Hulsey and I worked a search pattern sometimes as much as a hundred yards apart. When we happened to pass, we talked. That is, I talked. By the time the sun was high enough to blister, and the sky bright enough to blind, Hulsey knew I was thirty-four, that I was separated, that I had two children. What did I think of the current craziness over the illegal invasion? “I wish all you late-comers would have to pass tests,” I said. “My family name is Sandoval, but my heritage is Hopi. We were here before the Spanish."

  We found cattle and the attendant cattle pies. We saw rabbits, a hunting hawk, dozens of examples of Arizona flora that I, as a native, can still not identify. Beer cans, broken glass, a very new bra and a very old sneaker.

  But no blood, no fresh footprints. “What would he be wearing?” I shouted to Hulsey at one point.

  “He was wearing sandals when he escaped."

  Which, given the thefts of clothing from P.V., meant he could be wearing boots, sneakers, or high-heeled pumps by now.

  We could have looked all day. We could have looked all of several days, but shortly before ten AM my radio squawked with a message from dispatch: a Skull Valley resident named Elizabeth McKenna reported a prowler, description to come. She had apparently frightened him off by banging pots and pans and shouting. (Her age was given as sixty-eight and her husband was away golfing.) She had also found something so disturbing she wouldn't talk about it on
the phone.

  “This could be your fugitive,” I said, as Hulsey and I humped it back to the ride.

  “God, I hope so."

  The only thing that troubled me was this: I had chosen to search at what should have been the outside of a box representing the maximum distance a human being could walk in eleven hours, the time of the last confirmed sighting.

  The McKenna residence in Skull Valley was another fifteen miles down the road. Whoever or whatever this fugitive was, he could cover ground.

  * * * *

  “I'm sure he was another illegal,” Elizabeth McKenna said, with real anger in her voice, and a frown on her face. She was an otherwise pleasant, gray-haired woman in shorts and a polo shirt, leading us through her west pasture to this “disturbing sight.” “They're always going through here. Why can't you stop them?"

  What's amusing to me is how a uniform trumps ethnic identity: had Mrs. McKenna seen me in civilian clothing, she'd never have raised the subject, much less used that tone of voice. I suppose I should be grateful.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Hulsey said, “Ma'am, ten thousand border patrol and National Guards can't block a few hundred miles of fence. There aren't enough deputies in the department to seal off this area.” Hulsey threw me a smug look behind Mrs. McKenna's back.

  I nodded an acknowledgement ... even as I was struck by Hulsey's strange posture. Her feet were arranged like a ballerina's. “Ah, you and your husband don't have horses,” I said, noting the dry, horse-apple-free state of the corral, the rusted nature of the fencing.

  “No, that was the previous owners. But ... well, here's what I want to show you."

  As Hulsey lingered a step behind—picking something up? I couldn't tell—we rounded an out-building and almost stumbled on a bloody carcass. It was easily identifiable as a calf—torn apart, half-skinned. I didn't need to get closer to identify the remains.