InterGalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology, Vol. I
Page 10
But that had been my father’s final statement, his last stand before retreating in front of the remorseless tide. When the Politician returned a few nights later, he left Tadeusz and Wojciech behind, and brought instead the Lawyer and the Accountant. The conversation was free of the yelling that had until then kept me apprised of the negotiations’ status. The Politician spoke only briefly. The Accountant did most of the talking, interrupted occasionally by my father.
Following my father’s interruptions, it was generally the Lawyer who spoke, and he did so in an unexpectedly reassuring tone. After a surprisingly brief time, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, the government men left, never to return. My father left the house quietly, though not to spend time with his beloved tractor. Instead, he went into the fields.
It took a bit of coaxing to get my mother and grandfather to reveal the details of the transaction, but I am not shy about coaxing.
The deal my father had negotiated was spectacular. The government—the Americans—would get their land, of course. That was never in doubt. They would hold a ninety-nine-year lease, but at a rental fee so favorable that any question of the expense of my university studies was now immaterial. The land would be returned to our family at the end of the lease and the government would take out a bond to assure that the land—all of the land, including that of the other farmers—would be restored to its original condition. In addition, we were granted title to a significant undeveloped plot of land in a resort area near Warsaw. The land could be developed by us to produce income, or used as a holiday retreat.
Given just how favorable the deal was for my family, one might be tempted to think that my father’s blustering and outrage were merely tactics; that it was an act, cynically planned and carefully executed to extract the highest price possible, a price that was by any standard exorbitant.
But that opinion would do my father a grave disservice. In the days following the settlement, he lapsed into a deep melancholy. There was little talk around the dinner table, except of the most perfunctory and mundane variety. Twice in the week that followed I saw him in deep conversation with my grandfather, once by the machine shed and once on the edge of the eastern field. His head hung low, my grandfather’s hand on his shoulder, he nodded his unenthusiastic acceptance of my grandfather’s reassurance.
To my father, the negotiation had been an utter defeat. To him, the only constant, the only thing that made possible the survival our family and our community through many difficult years, was the land. When famine came, the land allowed our family and our neighbors to survive; when invaders came or were repelled, our family was spared by the value of a working farm to whoever was in control; and when the Nazis came, my great-grandparents were able to protect and conceal helpless refugees.
Even during the political and economic chaos of the Transition, our family had suffered less than many. Generations of our family had fought to keep this land, and no one, no invader, no communist or capitalist or fascist, had ever wrested a square meter of it from us. Until now.
It did not matter that the outcome had never been in doubt; that the land would have been theirs no matter what my father had done or said. It did not matter that he was faced with a power greater than any that his ancestors fought, or any that the world had ever seen. For my father, it was a betrayal of the trust his forefathers had placed in him, and a desecration of the legacy he would leave his descendants. There was no escaping that simple truth, and I think he had hoped to die rather than accept that shame.
But the Americans, by declining to murder him when he shot their bird, had denied him even the dignity of dying to preserve what he was.
The construction of the wall began soon after the Politician’s final visit. It is made of a dark polymer, seemingly grown in place in large sections each night. The wall will encircle the Americans’ newly acquired land, and will be high enough to keep even the most curious from glimpsing their activities.
Even knowing what I now know, it seems unlikely that such security is necessary—given the unpredictable power of the Americans’ machines, few will be willing to go near, and none will likely understand what they see if they did.
The construction began just a month ago, and here, on this cool and damp morning, I sit on a bench at the edge of the garden. I can see the forest in the distance, out over the fields. And beyond it, dark storm clouds roll in from the north.
My mother comes out of the house and sits next to me. We watch the brewing storm in silence for some time.
After a while, she says, “If the child is to stay among us and your father not go insane, you will need to marry.”
That she knows is not surprising—women in these parts can spot a pregnant girl before the girl herself knows. But, of course, I do know.
I nod, accepting her conclusion. It is logical. It is sensible. It does not matter.
We sit a moment longer, inhaling a warm rush of humid air that pushes away the cool morning mist. It is the storm’s way of letting us know it is coming. Mother glances at me. Maybe I am supposed to say something. I can think of nothing.
“The father?” she asks.
I shake my head.
She nods thoughtfully, not requiring an explanation. “Then there are other options,” she says. “Adoption?”
“No,” I say. “She needs her mother.”
My mother is quiet for a moment as the storm clouds roil nearer. The distant flashes of lightning bring no thunder.
“It’s a girl, then?” she asks. I nod, and she asks, “How do you know so soon?”
I look away, across the fields, knowing that to explain in detail is to admit that I am insane. “She sings to me,” I eventually say.
My mother accepts this with no apparent difficulty.
There is so much more I want to say, much that I long to tell someone. About how my daughter shows me places I have never been, places I could not imagine: a world of concretized quantum effect, where all things are everywhere and everything exists both always and never. Another place where abstract intelligences communicate through photons spinning within a tornado of probability. She shows me immense engineered structures whose purpose I cannot begin to identify, but that I know are being built even as I deny their possibility.
But I do not speak of such things. I know it would not be appreciated. Security is vital.
Mother watches me for a long moment. “I think Bronislaw might be a good choice,” she says at last, referring to the carpenter’s journeyman. “He has a trade, and is quite good at it. He would be kind to you, and a good father. And he is a soft boy; I think he will not make too many demands of you.”
I have met Bronislaw. The thought of any “demand” by that hairy, sweaty simpleton nauseates me. But then I catch myself, knowing that it will never happen, not sure whether to be relieved or saddened.
I nod my agreement to her proposition, knowing that inquiries will begin immediately.
But it does not matter. It will never go that far. Mankind is being relentlessly drawn into a black hole. It is only a question of when, not if, we will all be plucked from the universe we knew and plunged into a place unimaginable.
How long will it be before we and everything we know are consumed and altered forever? Years? Maybe only months.
That short buffer of time will allow my neighbors and family to do something: whether it is to run away, or to convince themselves that they do not need to run, or to simply make their peace with what is to come, I do not know. But I have ventured closer than any. For me there is no buffer; no time. I can already feel the presence of an immense thing for which my experience provides no parallel.
That thing is a part of me now, and I a part of it. All that remains is to learn what it means. But I know it will never let my daughter live here, among outsiders.
My daughter must sense my apprehension. She coos comforting feelings to me: “Everything will be all right,” she seems to say. “You will be with us. We will be together.” I fe
el her love, and can only feel love for her in return.
I smile at my mother. “Don’t tell father. Not just yet. He has too much on his mind right now.”
She smiles back and chuckles softly. She says, “He always has too much on his mind,” and we share a moment in a way we have never done before. I regret that such a moment will probably never come again. She adds, “I can wait, but it will have to be soon.”
I nod. “Soon.” Soon and never. I have seen a place where they are the same thing.
Across the fields, the storm continues its relentless march toward us. It reminds me of a time when I was a girl and I watched beautiful little eddy currents dance and whirl in a stream just before the stream went over a waterfall. I had always wondered what became of them
Silent as Dust
* * *
by James Maxey
The Company I Keep. I’m judging a talent show in the attic of Seven Chimneys. The theatre is a maze of cardboard boxes, gray with grime. The moonlight through the round window serves as our spotlight.
First up is Dan, a deer head with five-point antlers and a startled look in his glass eyes. Dan sings “Jailhouse Rock” as if it were a blue grass ballad, accompanied by Binky, a sock monkey with a quilted banjo.
Next comes Professor Wink, a 65-year-old teddy bear with one eye and half his original fur. Professor Wink is a juggler, keeping aloft a croquet mallet, a broken lava lamp, and the ceramic manger from the Christmas decorations. When all three items are in the air, he grabs an old bowling ball and tosses it into the mix with a cool grace that earns him points.
The last act is Tulip. She’s a baby doll with no left leg. Her act is to climb high into the lofty rafters of this old Victorian attic, then leap. She unpins the threadbare dishtowel someone diapered her with long ago and flips it into a parachute. She drifts toward the floor, reciting the Gettysburg Address. For her finale she lets go, and plummets to a safe landing in a white plastic bucket.
Tulip is an unusually talented baby. Also, alas, a noisy one. She lands with a loud clatter.
I hold my breath.
Darcy’s voice from the room below: “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that.”
“Ish muffin,” Eric mumbles, sounding as if he were on the verge of sleep. The mattress creaks. Then he says, “It’s an old house. It has noises.”
“Something’s moving in the attic,” Darcy says.
“Maybe,” Eric concedes. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What if it’s a raccoon?” she asks. “They carry rabies.”
The light flips on beneath me. Thin pencils of light shoot up through cracks in the corners of their ceiling. I creep across the rafters, light as a breath, placing my weight with practiced precision on joists I know will not creak. I hear Eric and Darcy in the hallway, near the pull-down stairs. I reach the main chimney and slither behind it, into the shaft that leads to the basement.
The springs twang as the attic steps are lowered. Light chases me as I drop into the passage and wedge myself against the bricks. I go corpse quiet. I’ve taught myself not to cough, fart, belch, gurgle, or sneeze. My breathing is soft and silent as cotton gauze.
Eric has clicked on the single light bulb, with its dangling chain. The bulb is coated in cobwebs; a burning smell wafts across the attic. I’m upside down in the shaft, behind five feet of brick. The yoga practice pays off. I don’t feel strained. I’m free to follow the conversation as Eric pokes around the attic, griping to Darcy, still in the hall. A bright beam flickers around the top of the shaft. He’s got a flashlight to supplement the bulb. If he looks in the hole behind the chimney, my presence will be difficult to explain. As he draws closer I see the ancient red brick surrounding me. I normally make this journey in utter darkness.
“This is stupid,” he says, mere feet above me. On the surface, he’s talking about the search. But I hear the subtext in his voice. For two weeks they’ve been arguing about having a baby. Darcy’s ready, Eric isn’t. Every conversation now is colored by this central disagreement.
“Keep looking, please,” she says. My sensitive ears place her at the foot of the stairs.
“What if I find something?” Eric grumbles. The light diminishes as he turns away. “Suppose there is a raccoon up here. Then what?”
“Stomp on it,” she says, half-joking, I think.
“It’s not a spider,” he says, exasperated. He’s moving around, nudging boxes with his feet. “It’s not anything. I stand by my original opinion. It’s the house. It’s old. It creaks.”
“I know what I heard,” she says. “It wasn’t the house.”
“Maybe it’s one of the ghosts,” Eric says, moving closer to the chimney again. “I don’t recall anyone dying in the attic, but it’s easy to lose track.”
Suddenly, there’s enough light in the shaft I can see my shadow spilling down the long wall before me. This is it. “Oh my God!” he shouts, as the light jerks away. “You won’t believe what I just found!”
“What?” Darcy asks, sounding scared.
“My old sock monkey! Mr. Bojangles!”
Oh, right. The monkey was named Bojangles. Where did I get Binky from?
“I’m coming down. An army of raccoons could hide up here. We’ll call an exterminator tomorrow. Have him put out traps, if it makes you feel better.”
“Okay,” says Darcy.
The light clicks off.
My breath slides out of me in a long, gentle release. I loosen my grip on the brick and slink my way back down the shaft toward the cellar. I’m tempted to go back to the attic. That stupid Tulip and her noisy landing almost got me caught. I’d like to pull out her other leg. Fortunately, there’s still a sane person sharing my brain that knows, deep down, I was the one who threw Tulip into the bucket. I was having one of my spells again. From time to time, boredom puts me in tight spots.
My name is Steven Cooper. I’m a Seven Chimneys’ ghost. I’ve haunted the place for three years.
If haunted is the right word. Since, you know . . . I’m not technically dead.
Could Have Been a Tour Guide. It can get confusing talking about Seven Chimneys. There’s the town of Seven Chimneys, a little speck on the map an hour’s drive outside Charlotte. The town has barely two thousand people, most living in mobile homes or old millhouses. In contrast to the modest surroundings, the core of Seven Chimneys is a picturesque village that reached its prime a century ago, with a main street dominated by a dozen Victorian mansions restored to top condition by wealthy Charlotte refugees looking for the laid-back, small town life.
The grandest of these mansions is Seven Chimneys, the house. Thirteen-thousand square feet of towers, wraparound porches, and decorative woodwork. Seven Chimneys isn’t a true Victorian home, since the building started shortly after the Revolutionary War. Three brothers, the Corbens, released from George Washington’s army, traveled to the then-nameless town and built homes close together on a single acre lot. The Corbens prospered, churning out doctors and lawyers and inventors over the coming decades. The three homesites began to sprawl as slave quarters were built, kitchens added on, and, eventually, the houses merged together into a single Frankenstein’s monster mansion with seven chimneys . . . thus, the name.
Sometime before World War I, Franklin Corben, the railroad king, prettied up the place with a Victorian facade and extensive remodeling on the interior, adding electricity, plumbing, etc. Parts of the house in poor repair were walled off.
The hidden rooms, the dead spaces, became useful during prohibition. Behind a secret panel in the library, there’s a room with a well-stocked bar and a slate pool table that I don’t think Eric knows about. He does, however, know about the wine cellar that had its entrance bricked over, with only a hidden trap door inside a pantry to give access. He was the first person to show me the coal chute at the rear of the house that leads to a furnace, and behind the furnace the narrow tunnel that leads to a room with a bathtub in which actual bathtub gin was fermented. The place is cov
ered in dust and spider webs now, forgotten by history. But not by me.
A Close Call. I’m down in the root cellar doing yoga with Professor Wink. I’m naked; I haven’t worn clothes in two years. My pants got snagged once in the chimney and I was stuck for two days. Up above, I can hear a bustle of activity. Eric is kind enough to let the locals hold weddings at Seven Chimneys. The floor boards thud and bump with their movements. It makes it hard for me to stay tuned into Eric and Darcy’s conversation. They’re talking about getting a puppy. Although, of course, the puppy conversation is only a substitute for the whole baby thing.
I’ve warmed up with the Cobbler’s pose. Now I bend into the once impossible Camel pose as if I’m made of rubber. Professor Wink, even boneless, can’t hold this pose.
“It’s not like we’re here most of the time,” Eric argues. “A puppy needs attention. It needs time that we don’t have.”
“We can make time,” Darcy says. “There’s more to life than work. A dog will keep us focused on what’s important.”
Eric counters with, “Maybe after my schedule changes, but that’s no time soon. Look, the world will still be full of puppies a year from now. Let’s think about it then.”
Someone heavy walks overhead and I miss Darcy’s response.
The artfully named “Half Lord of the Fishes” pose has me twisting my torso around to the point I can see my bony, callused butt. It’s hard to believe I learned everything I know about yoga from a picture book I swiped from the library.
After a few minutes I realize I’ve completely lost Eric and Darcy’s voices. I’ll have to wait to find out if they’ve decided anything.
I finish my routine in the so-called Corpse pose, flat as a flounder, every muscle in my body in a state of utter release. Professor Wink is good at this one.
Then I realize someone else is here. I look toward the stairs and find a little girl standing there, staring. She’s wearing a white, frilly dress; she looks like a flower girl. She’s quiet, quieter than me.