Isaac Asimov's SF-Lite

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “It isn’t really dangerous, anyway,” he said, trying to convince himself. “It just rewrites my stuff, makes it better. More powerful, y’know.”

  “I suppose,” I said dubiously.

  “I just need to be more careful about what I say,” he said, wheedling.

  “You don’t need to convince me,” I said, “It’s your decision.”

  We were both staring thoughtfully at the screen now.

  “I’ve always wanted to write like that,” he said, “But I just couldn’t, you know, get the hang of it. All those rules and stuff, the spelling, and getting the words to sound good.”

  I nodded.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “I’ve heard that some magazines and stuff will take submissions by e-mail now.”

  “I’ve heard that,” I agreed.

  “You ready for another beer?”

  And with that, the subject was closed; when I refused the offer of more beer, the visit, too, was at an end.

  I never saw Pickman in the flesh again, but his messages were all over the nets in the subsequent weeks—messages that grew steadily stranger and more lurid. He spoke of submitting articles and stories, at first to the major markets, and then to others, ever more esoteric and bizarre. He posted long diatribes of stupendous fury and venom whenever a piece was rejected— the usual reason given was apparently that his new style was too florid and archaic.

  Sometimes I worried about what he might be letting out into the net, but it wasn’t really any of my business.

  And then, after the last of April, though old messages continued to circulate for weeks, new ones no longer appeared. Henry Pickman was never heard from on the nets again, except once.

  That once was netmail, a private message to me, sent at midnight on April 30.

  “Goerge,” it began—Henry never could spell—“I boroed another modem to log on, I could’nt trust it anymore, but I think its angry with me now. Its watching me, I sware it is. I unplugged it, but its watching me anyway. And I think its calling someone, I can hear it dialing. #$”

  And then a burst of line noise; the rest of the message was garbage.

  Line noise? Oh, that’s when there’s interference on the phone line, and the modem tries to interpret it as if it were a real signal. Except instead of words, you get nonsense. The rest of Henry’s message was all stuff like “la! FThAGN!Ia!CTHulHu!”

  I didn’t hear anything from Henry after that. I didn’t try to call him or anything; I figured it might all be a gag, and if it wasn’t— well, if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to get involved.

  So when I went past his place a couple of weeks later, I was just in the neighborhood by coincidence, you understand, I wasn’t checking up on him. Anyway, his house was all boarded up, and it looked like there’d been a bad fire there.

  I figured maybe the wiring in that cheap modem had been bad.

  I hoped no one had been hurt.

  Yeah—bad wiring. That was probably it. Very bad.

  After that, I sort of tapered off. Telecommunicating made me a bit uneasy; sometimes I almost thought my modem was watching me. So I don’t use the nets any more. Ever.

  After all, as I’ve always said, the nets will eat you alive if you let them.

  BODY MAN

  Avram Davidson

  “Body Man” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the June 1986 issue of Asimov’s with an illustration by Arthur George. It was one of a long string of sales to the magazine by Davidson, of both fiction and non-fiction (many of his “Adventures in Unhistory” essays appeared in Asimov’s), that started under George Scithers and later continued under Gardner Dozois. One of the most eloquent and individual voices in modern SF and fantasy, Davidson is also one of the finest short story writers of our times. He won the Hugo Award for his famous story “Or All the Seas with Oysters, ” and his short work has been assembled in landmark collections such as Strange Seas and Shores, The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas with Oysters, The Redward Edward Papers, Collected Fantasies, and The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy. His novels include The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rork!, Rogue Dragon, and Vergil in Averno. He has also won the Edgar and the World Fantasy Award.

  Here he takes a sardonic look at just how far the modern obsession with looking good may eventually go. .. .

  * * *

  The customer pushed his lower lip into his upper lip, shook his head.

  “What,” said Birnbaum.

  “ ‘No warts,’ I told you, Birnbaum.”

  “ ‘No warts,’ of course you told me ‘no warts.’ Who says ‘warts’?”

  “So why are there warts?”

  “What warts, where warts?”

  The customer averted his head, pointed. Said: “Look.”

  Birnbaum looked. He looked the look of one who saw no warts and merely wondered greatly. Then a look of disbelief, then a look of astonishment, then a look of outrage. “I’ll kill ’im, I’ll kill ’im, that dumb kid assistant! ‘No warts,’ I told ’im. ‘Customer doesn’t care the present body has warts, customer doesn’t want warts on the new body,’ I tell ’im; talk to the dumb kid assistant, talk to the wall. Warts.” He shook his head from side to side with little stiff jerks. A moment later he said, hopefully, “A, a dermatologist, one—two—three, zzzzzzzz?”

  “I wanted a dermatologist, Birnbaum, I’d go to a dermatologist. Eight million, eight hundred thousand—”

  “You're right, you’re right. Okay. Okay.” He flipped through his order book, smeared back the pages, mumbled. “ ‘Consolidated Factors, two Account Execs,’ ‘Regular Republican and Democratic District Club, one Politician (attention: Smile), Church of the Former and the Latter Rains, one Spirit-filled Evangelist, customer will supply own Spirit, eighteen and a half percent discount plus regular ten percent clerical discount .. . ’ ” His mumbling stopped, he gave a quick look up, said, “Two weeks.”

  “Two, weeks?”

  “All right. All right. Next Thursday. Ready by five o’clock, quicker than that it couldn’t be done, figure it out, 800,000 a day overhead, one customer gets two discounts, one isn’t enough, you could live but they won’t let you, you think I lick honey in this rotten business, go train a good body man like he was your own son you live in fear and trembling eventually he’ll go open his own place with your own customers some of them loyalty doesn’t mean a thing, present company exempted, and if you should dast mention to an assistant untactfully a reprimand: right away: the Union.”

  “Birnbaum.”

  “Thank God the Summer is a long way off, comes July, August, the pippick people, ‘specialists,’ you hear? ‘specialists,’ they start walking out off of even the little bit of a day ’ s work you ever get from them, ‘Not only are the pippicks melting but we are also melting too in this terrible weather where you could pass out in any minute,’ the specialists—”

  “Biographies I don’t want, Birnbaum. Warts I don’t want, Birnbaum. Next Friday at what time is none of your business Birnbaum I have a very important appointment, God forbid I should have warts, Birnbaum. You hear.” The air was tepid and smelled of elastiform.

  “You wouldn’t, you wouldn't. Thursday at six o’clock.”

  “Five. ”

  Birnbaum gave a despairing look around the cluttered workshop, slumped into a weary sigh. “So let be five, I’ll go wither lunch, who has the heart to eat? Five. Not before.”

  The young assistant had his own problems, but, “Listen, Bobby,” said Birnbaum, “I regard you as my own son almost, what, the nose mixture I didn’t confide in you, the formula that Kaplan and Kelley I let them eat their hearts out I didn’t give, so when it says on the blue slip ‘No warts,’ so why do you put warts?”

  Bobby looked up slowly from his sandwich, mayo drip on his lower lip. “You know what she says to me, Morris? ‘All you want is my body, Bobby, maybe you been in that business long enough and maybe we been together too long,’ how do you like that, how do you like that?�
��

  Birnbaum, whose wife had long since ceased to make similar accusations, was, despite business pressures, interested. “Who said? Sheila?”

  “Who else but Sheila, you think I’m some kind of a philander, I have the soul of a great artist, Morris, I’m no philander; what does she mean, ‘all I want,’ as though it was a mere nothing of no consequence: Maron! You seen the body on her, Morris?”

  “I didn’t seen.”

  “Oh my God what a body. ‘All, ”’ he said, bitterly, biting into his sandwich with savage teeth.

  Birnbaum breathed a breath or two, nodded. “Yes, but Bobby, I also was once young, similar stories I could tell you, passion I appreciate completely, at the end of the week when she or any other young lady she demands ‘Take me here and take me there or I wouldn’t even let you look at it,’ and you’re reaching into the pockets with both hands and the left foot: so how, so tell me, so explain to me, Bobby, how do you expect you’re going to find anything in the pocket, Bobby, if we lose our paying customers because you paying no attention to the blue slip where it says, clearly and distinctly, Bobby, ‘No warts’?”

  Bobby took the last swallow of sandwich, followed it with a long tug at his soft-drink bottle, turned his large and glistening eyes upon his employer, put the bottle down on the spray-tray, asked, “Medium-brown hair slightly receding hairline, ‘Reduce obesity by ten pounds’ it also says on the blue slip?”

  Birnbaum, encouraged, nodded and nodded. “The one, that’s the one—”

  Bobby burped: said, “Morris, to you I may be just a young kid whose erotic impulses, like, overshadow his importance of economic considerations, but let me tell you, Morris, I love artistic integrity above all things, and believe me, Morris: I don’t put warts where they don’t belong; okay, okay, I see I still got ten minutes left on my lunch hour, but I'll bring it in on the dolly and I’ll take a look at it; don’t tell the Union.”

  The next week passed in the usual grind of occupation; Bobby came to work placidly, disconsolately, frenziedly, haggardly. At five on Thursday afternoon a customer perhaps twenty pounds overweight and with a slightly receding line of medium-brown hair came in with his eyebrows raised, followed Birnbaum’s finger, examined the work, examined it carefully, gave several nods of more than merely grudging acceptance, verbally expressed his total satisfaction, and microzapped for the 8,800,000; Bobby came to work on Friday morning sullenly and contentedly; he and his employer toiled together without many words, Consolidated Factors’ Account Execs (two) were picked up by a mere menial; the Representative of the Regular Republican and Democratic District Club praised the quality of the crafted smile, and, smiling, sold Birnbaum two tickets for a dance and ball, Birnbaum offered them to Bobby: Bobby, with a quick jerk of his head, declined.

  He declined lunch, too, was offered and accepted his check plus a small bonus, and helped get the order finished and ready for the Church of the Former and the Latter Rains’ Evangelist a bit ahead of time, thus avoiding an opportunity for the Church’s representative to engage in prolonged witnessing; “Two discounts,” said Birnbaum, shaking his head. “Some have the name, whereas others play the game.”

  At five Birnbaum began to put things together in order to put things away for the weekend, and to sweep and sort; when he looked up to say a parting word for Bobby, Bobby wasn’t there. Shortly before six the front door crashed open and a gorgeous young woman entered, screaming. “You bastard, you son of a bitch, my brothers will kill you, wait till I tell them,” she shouted, some degree of hoarseness hinting that she had been screaming for some while; “Where are you, you bastard, you son of a bitch, they’ll tear you apart, what you did to me,” she cried, ignoring Birnbaum’s presence, though Birnbaum did not ignore hers; “Where is he, where is he,” demanded the splendid creature.

  She beat upon the doors of the finishing room; “Where is who?" queried Birnbaum.

  “That son of a bitch who works here, that rotten bastard, Bobby—”

  She raised her foot to kick the door which Birnbaum at once flung open; “He’s not here, go look, go look, then calm down; my God what did he do?"

  All the while Birnbaum was inviting her to look, she was looking: no dice; when he asked the question she swung her unflawed face and gorgeous body around and, looking at him, she screamed her answer: “ Warts! Warts! Warts! Warts!"

  SPACE ALIENS SAVED MY MARRIAGE

  Sharon N. Farber

  “Space Aliens Saved My Marriage” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the December 1990 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by Laura Lakey. It is one of more than eighteen sales that Farber has made to the magazine since her first sale here to George Scithers in 1978, making her one of the magazine's most frequent contributors. She has also made sales to Omni, Amazing, and other markets. Born in San Francisco, she now lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

  Here she treats us to a holiday Close Encounter of a very different sort—after this one, if you hear the patting and pawing of tiny hooves on your roof on Christmas Eve, you might not be so sure that it's Santa Claus. . . .

  * * *

  When I got home from work, Tim was still in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the sports page. Construction’s slow in December. The kitten began rubbing up against my leg and purring the minute I came in.

  “What do you think, honey?” I asked, petting the kitten. “Shouldn’t we give Mittens two names? I mean, she does have two heads, and all.”

  Tim said, “Whatever you want,” but Stacy stopped splashing her spoon in her Count Chockula and pointed at each head. “Muffin. Tiffany.”

  “Good names,” I told her, pouring Muffin and Tiffany a saucer of milk. As usual, the two heads began squabbling over their treat.

  “Any newspapers, Bobby June?” asked Tim.

  When the new tabloids come out, I get to take home the old ones, along with the day old bread and mushy bananas. I’d already read them all, of course. The Quik-Stop-Shop gets real slow after around 2 a.m. “Look here: HOUSEWIFE SEES ELVIS IN LAUNDROMAT. It happened in our town!”

  “Forget it,” said Tim. “People are always seeing Elvis. Didn’t that spaceship. Voyager or whatever it was, see his face on Mars?” This was the longest conversation we’d had since we were visiting my Aunt Martha in Austin, and saw the ghost of Uncle Edgar in the closet. So I figured, maybe this is the time to bring it up.

  “Tim honey, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. Don’t you have any relatives you’d like to invite for dinner, to meet me and Stacy and all?”

  “No,” he said, and went off to read the papers somewhere else.

  I have trouble sleeping when I work third-shift, so I took Stacy shopping for shoes. It’s incredible how quick she seems to outgrow them—she’s only four, and already in a grownup size 6. She has her dad’s feet, I guess, but luckily she has my nose.

  Anyway, the mall was pretty crowded, what with it being the day before the day before Christmas. We did a little last-minute shopping for presents, and we were buying this cute little dog and cat salt and pepper set for Jesse, my friend-at-work, when a woman shrieked.

  “Oh, my god!” she yelled, pointing up at a black velvet painting of Elvis. Tears seemed to be pouring from his eyes.

  “Why’s he crying. Mommy?” asked Stacy.

  The clerk got up on a ladder and pulled down the painting, to check for leaks or something in the wall, but nothing else was wet.

  The woman who'd seen it first reached over and touched the tears, then raised her finger to her mouth. “It’s salty,’’ she said. “Those are real tears!”

  I looked at the painting, and it seemed that the wet eyes were staring deep into my own. And suddenly this thought was there, in my mind. You 'd better go to County Mercy General. There's been an emergency.

  When we got to the hospital, it seemed they'd been looking for me. Grannie had had this bad stomach ache, and they’d been worried she'd bled into a big old fibroid tumor she’d had for a long time, only they hadn'
t wanted to operate before, what with her being so old and all. but now they'd had to operate after all, and her doctor wanted to talk with me, right outside the operating room.

  He was still wearing green clothes and a paper hat and booties, just like on TV. He didn’t mince words, just started right out. “Your grandmother’s had a baby.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I said. “Gran’s seventy-eight!”

  He got that narrow-eyed little look that doctors get when they think you don't believe them, and said, “Of course it’s possible—it happened. It seems your grandmother had been pregnant with twins over fifty years ago, but only one of them actually got born.”

  Then he talked about ovulation, and hibernation, and a lot of other complicated stuff I didn’t get, cause I mean, I dropped out in eleventh grade to work and all. But the long and the short of it seemed to be that this baby had been in her womb for fifty-five years, and in fact was my late daddy’s twin. They’d compared footprints, and it was true.

  “But that’s not the end of it," the doctor continued. “I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff—I’ve delivered babies wearing ancient Egyptian amulets, or tattooed with holy symbols, and once I saw a woman give birth to a Cabbage Patch Doll. But never in all my years of practicing has one of my newborns ever spoken in the delivery room before!”

  “What’d he say?”

  “When I slapped his little behind, he didn’t even cry, he just looked me in the eye and said ‘The Twin returns. Love him tender and don’t be cruel.’ He wouldn’t say anything more, and now he’s acting just like a regular baby.” The doctor took off his paper hat and scratched his head. "The Twin. Must be himself he means, right?”

  “No. No, it isn’t.” I didn’t know yet what he meant, back then, but I knew that something big was going on, or about to happen.

  What with staying with Gran all afternoon, and then making dinner for Stacy and Tim, I only had a few hours sleep before going to work. I was a couple minutes late, but Ralph always covers for me—he’s a real good guy. He was this World War II veteran who they found after drifting alone in a liferaft in the Bermuda Triangle for forty years, but he didn’t let that ruin his attitude.