Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  "I don't, either. My folks don't care much. I don't have too many friends. I wasn't even born here, and I don't know anything about Korea."

  "Play," Tuthy said, his face stony. "Let's see if they'll listen."

  "Oh, they'll listen," Pal said. "It's like the way they talk to each other."

  The boy ran his fingers over the keys on the Tronclavier.

  The cone, connected with the keyboard through the minicomputer, vibrated tinnily.

  For an hour, Pal paged back and forth through his composition, repeating and trying variations. Tuthy sat in a corner, chin in hand, listening to the mousy squeaks and squeals produced by the cone. How much more difficult to interpret a four-dimensional sound, he thought. Not even visual clues…

  Finally the boy stopped and wrung his hands, then stretched his arms. "They must have heard. We'll just have to wait and see." He switched the Tronclavier to automatic playback and pushed the chair away from the keyboard.

  Pal stayed until dusk, then reluctantly went home. Tuthy sat in the office until midnight, listening to the tinny sounds issuing from the speaker cone.

  All night long, the Tronclavier played through its pre-programmed selection of Pal's compositions. Tuthy lay in bed in his room, two doors down from Lauren's room, watching a shaft of moonlight slide across the wall. How far would a four-dimensional being have to travel to get here?

  How far have I come to get here?

  Without realizing he was asleep, he dreamed, and in his dream a wavering image of Pal appeared, gesturing with both arms as if swimming, eyes wide. I'm okay, the boy said without moving his lips. Don't worry about me… I'm okay. I've been back to Korea to see what it's like. It's not bad, but I like it better here…

  Tuthy awoke sweating. The moon had gone down and the room was pitch-black. In the office, the hyper-cone continued its distant, mouse-squeak broadcast.

  Pal returned early in the morning, repetitively whistling a few bars from Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto. Lauren let him in and he joined Tuthy upstairs. Tuthy sat before the monitor, replaying Pal's sketch of the four-dimensional beings.

  "Do you see anything?" he asked the boy.

  Pal nodded. "They're coming closer. They're interested.

  Maybe we should get things ready, you know… be prepared."

  He squinted. "Did you ever think what a four-dimensional footprint would look like?"

  Tuthy considered for a moment. "That would be most interesting," he said. "It would be solid."

  On the first floor, Lauren screamed.

  Pal and Tuthy almost tumbled over each other getting downstairs. Lauren stood in the living room with her arms crossed above her busom, one hand clamped over her mouth.

  The first intrusion had taken out a section of the living-room floor and the east wall.

  "Really clumsy," Pal said. "One of them must have bumped it."

  "The music," Tuthy said.

  "What in HELL is going on?" Lauren demanded, her voice starting as a screech and ending as a roar.

  "Better turn the music off," Tuthy elaborated.

  "Why?" Pal asked, face wreathed in an excited smile.

  "Maybe they don't like it."

  A bright filmy blue blob rapidly expanded to a yard in diameter just beside Tuthy. The blob turned red, wriggled, froze, and then just as rapidly vanished.

  "That was like an elbow," Pal explained. "One of its arms. I think it's listening. Trying to find out where the music is coming from. I'll go upstairs."

  "Turn it off!" Tuthy demanded.

  I'll play something else." The boy ran up the stairs.

  From the kitchen came a hideous hollow crashing, then the sound of a vacuum being filled—a reverse-pop, ending in a hiss—followed by a low-frequency vibration that set their teeth on edge…

  The vibration caused by a four-dimensional creature scraping across its "floor," their own three-dimensional space.

  Tuthy's hands shook with excitement.

  "Peter—" Lauren bellowed, all dignity gone. She unwrapped her arms and held clenched fists out as if she were about to start exercising, or boxing.

  "Pal's attracted visitors," Tuthy explained.

  He turned toward the stairs. The first four steps and a section of floor spun and vanished. The rush of air nearly drew him down the hole. Regaining his balance, he knelt to feel the precisely cut, concave edge. Below lay the dark basement.

  "Pal!" Tuthy called out.

  "I'm playing something original for them," Pal shouted back. "I think they like it."

  The phone rang. Tuthy was closest to the extension at the bottom of the stairs and instinctively reached out to answer it.

  Hockrum was on the other end, screaming.

  "I can't talk now—" Tuthy said. Hockrum screamed again, loud enough for Lauren to hear. Tuthy abruptly hung up.

  "He's been fired, I gather," he said. "He seemed angry." He stalked back three paces and turned, then ran forward and leaped the gap to the first intact step. "Can't talk." He stumbled and scrambled up the stairs, stopping on the landing.

  "Jesus," he said, as if something had suddenly occurred to him.

  "He'll call the government," Lauren warned.

  Tuthy waved that off. "I know what's happening. They're knocking chunks out of three-space, into the fourth. The fourth dimension. Like Pal says: clumsy brutes. They could kill us!"

  Sitting before the Tronclavier, Pal happily played a new melody. Tuthy approached and was abruptly blocked by a thick green column, as solid as rock and with a similar texture. It vibrated and ascribed an arc in the air. A section of the ceiling four feet wide was kicked out of three-space. Tuthy's hair lifted in the rush of wind. The column shrank to a broomstick and hairs sprouted all over it, writhing like snakes.

  Tuthy edged around the hairy broomstick and pulled the plug on the Tronclavier. A cage of zeppelin-shaped brown sausages encircled the computer, spun, elongated to reach the ceiling, the floor, and the top of the monitor's table, and then pipped down to tiny strings and was gone.

  "They can't see too clearly here," Pal said, undisturbed that his concert was over. Lauren had climbed the outside stairs and stood behind Tuthy. "Gee, I'm sorry about the damage."

  In one smooth curling motion, the Tronclavier and cone and all the wiring associated with them were peeled away as if they had been stick-on labels hastily removed from a flat surface.

  "Gee," Pal said, his face suddenly registering alarm.

  Then it was the boy's turn. He was removed more slowly, with greater care. The last thing to vanish was his head, which hung suspended in the air for several seconds.

  "I think they liked the music," he said, grinning.

  Head, grin and all, dropped away in a direction impossible for Tuthy or Lauren to follow. The air in the room sighed.

  Lauren stood her ground for several minutes, while Tuthy wandered through what was left of the office, passing his hand through mussed hair.

  "Perhaps he'll be back," Tuthy said. "I don't even know…"

  But he didn't finish. Could a three-dimensional boy survive in a four-dimensional void, or whatever lay dup… or owwen?

  Tuthy did not object when Lauren took it upon herself to call the boy's foster parents and the police. When the police arrived, he endured the questions and accusations stoically, face immobile, and told them as much as he knew. He was not believed; nobody knew quite what to believe. Photographs were taken. The police left.

  It was only a matter of time, Lauren told him, until one or the other or both of them were arrested. "Then we'll make up a story," he said. "You'll tell them it was my fault."

  "I will not," Lauren said. "But where is he?"

  "I'm not positive," Tuthy said. "I think's he's all right, however.''

  "How do you know?"

  He told her about the dream.

  "But that was before," she said.

  "Perfectly allowable in the fourth dimension," he explained.

  He pointed vaguely up, then down, and sh
rugged.

  On the last day, Tuthy spent the early morning hours bundled in an overcoat and bathrobe in the drafty office, playing his program again and again, trying to visualize ana and kata. He closed his eyes and squinted and twisted his head, intertwined his fingers and drew odd little graphs on the monitors, but it was no use. His brain was hard-wired.

  Over breakfast, he reiterated to Lauren that she must put all the blame on him.

  "Maybe it will all blow over," she said. "They haven't got a case. No evidence… nothing."

  "All blow over," he mused, passing his hand over his head and grinning ironically. "How over, they'll never know."

  The doorbell rang. Tuthy went to answer it, and Lauren followed a few steps behind.

  Tuthy opened the door. Three men in gray suits, one with a briefcase, stood on the porch. "Mr. Peter Thornton?" the tallest asked.

  "Yes," Tuthy acknowledged.

  A chunk of the door frame and wall above the door vanished with a roar and a hissing pop. The three men looked up at the gap. Ignoring what was impossible, the tallest man returned his attention to Tuthy and continued, "We have information that you are in this country illegally."

  "Oh?" Tuthy said.

  Beside him, an irregular filmy blue cylinder grew to a length of four feet and hung in the air, vibrating. The three men backed away on the porch. In the middle of the cylinder, Pal's head emerged, and below that, his extended arm and hand.

  "It's fun here," Pal said. "They're friendly."

  "I believe you," Tuthy said.

  "Mr. Thornton," the tallest man continued valiantly.

  "Won't you come with me?" Pal asked.

  Tuthy glanced back at Lauren. She gave him a small fraction of a nod, barely understanding what she was assenting to, and he took Pal's hand. "Tell them it was all my fault," he said.

  From his feet to his head, Peter Tuthy was peeled out of this world. Air rushed in. Half of the brass lamp to one side of the door disappeared.

  The INS men returned to their car without any further questions, with damp pants and embarrassed, deeply worried expressions. They drove away, leaving Lauren to contemplate the quiet. They did not return.

  She did not sleep for three nights, and when she did sleep,

  Tuthy and Pal visited her, and put the question to her.

  Thank you, but I prefer it here, she replied.

  It's a lot of /n, the boy insisted. They like music.

  Lauren shook her head on the pillow and awoke. Not very far away, there was a whistling, tinny kind of sound, followed by a deep vibration.

  To her, it sounded like applause.

  She took a deep breath and got out of bed to retrieve her notebook.

  ANGEL

  Pat Cardigan

  Stand with me awhile, Angel, I said, and Angel said he'd do that. Angel was good to me that way, good to have with you on a cold night and nowhere to go. We stood on the street corner together and watched the cars going by and the people and all. The streets were lit up like Christmas, streetlights, store lights, marquees over the all-night movie houses and bookstores blinking and flashing; shank of the evening in east midtown. Angel was getting used to things here and getting used to how I did, nights. Standing outside, because what else are you going to do. He was my Angel now, had been since that other cold night when I'd been going home, because where are you going to go, and I'd found him and took him with me. It's good to have someone to take with you, someone to look after. Angel knew that. He started looking after me, too.

  Like now. We were standing there awhile and I was looking around at nothing and everything, the cars cruising past, some of them stopping now and again for the hookers posing by the curb, and then I saw it, out of the corner of my eye. Stuff coming out of the Angel, shiny like sparks but flowing like liquid. Silver fireworks. I turned and looked all the way at him and it was gone. And he turned and gave a little grin like he was embarrassed I'd seen. Nobody else saw it, though; not the short guy who paused next to the Angel before crossing the street against the light, not the skinny hippy looking to sell the boom-box he was carrying on his shoulder, not the homeboy strutting past us with both his girlfriends on his arms, nobody but me.

  The Angel said, Hungry?

  Sure, I said. I'm hungry.

  Angel looked past me. Okay, he said. I looked, too, and here they came, three leather boys, visor caps, belts, boots, keyrings. On the cruise together. Scary stuff, even though you know it's not looking for you.

  I said, Them? Them?

  Angel didn't answer. One went by, then the second, and the Angel stopped the third by taking hold of his arm.

  Hi.

  The guy nodded. His head was shaved. I could see a little gray-black stubble under his cap. No eyebrows, disinterested eyes. The eyes were because of the Angel.

  I could use a little money, the Angel said. My friend and I are hungry.

  The guy put his hand in his pocket and wiggled out some bills, offering them to the Angel. The Angel selected a twenty and closed the guy's hand around the rest.

  This will be enough, thank you.

  The guy put his money away and waited.

  I hope you have a good night, said the Angel.

  The guy nodded and walked on, going across the street to where his two friends were waiting on the next corner. Nobody found anything weird about it.

  Angel was grinning at me. Sometimes he was the Angel, when he was doing something, sometimes he was Angel, when he was just with me. Now he was Angel again. We went up the street to the luncheonette and got a seat by the front window so we could still watch the street while we ate.

  Cheeseburger and fries, I said without bothering to look at the plastic-covered menus lying on top of the napkin holder. The Angel nodded.

  Thought so, he said. I'll have the same, then.

  The waitress came over with a little tiny pad to take our order. I cleared my throat. It seemed like I hadn't used my voice in a hundred years. "Two cheeseburgers and two fries," I said, "and two cups of-" I looked up at her and froze. She had no face. Like, nothing, blank from hairline to chin, soft little dents where the eyes and nose and mouth would have been. Under the table, the Angel kicked me, but gentle.

  "And two cups of coffee," I said.

  She didn't say anything-how could she?-as she wrote down the order and then walked away again. All shaken up, I looked at the Angel, but he was calm like always.

  She's a new arrival, Angel told me and leaned back in his chair. Not enough time to grow a face.

  But how can she breathe? I said.

  Through her pores. She doesn't need much air yet.

  Yah, but what about like, I mean, don't other people notice that she's got nothing there?

  No. It's not such an extraordinary condition. The only reason you notice is because you're with me. Certain things have rubbed off on you. But no one else notices. When they look at her, they see whatever face they expect someone like her to have. And eventually, she'll have it.

  But you have a face, I said. You've always had a face.

  I'm different, said the Angel.

  You sure are, I thought, looking at him. Angel had a beautiful face. That wasn't why I took him home that night, just because he had a beautiful face-I left all that behind a long time ago-but it was there, his beauty. The way you think of a man being beautiful, good clean lines, deep-set eyes, ageless. About the only way you could describe him-look away and you'd forget everything except that he was beautiful. But he did have a face. He did.

  Angel shifted in the chair-these were like somebody's old kitchen chairs, you couldn't get too comfortable in them and shook his head, because he knew I was thinking troubled thoughts. Sometimes you could think something and it wouldn't be troubled and later you'd think the same thing and it would be troubled. The Angel didn't like me to be troubled about him.

  Do you have a cigarette? he asked.

  I think so.

  I patted my jacket and came up with most of a pack that
I handed over to him. The Angel lit up and amused us both by having the smoke come out his ears and trickle out of his eyes like ghostly tears. I felt my own eyes watering for his; I wiped them and there was that stuff again, but from me now. I was crying silver fireworks. I flicked them on the table and watched them puff out and vanish.

  Does this mean I'm getting to be you, now? I asked.

  Angel shook his head. Smoke wafted out of his hair. Just things rubbing off on you. Because we've been together and you're susceptible. But they're different for you.

  Then the waitress brought our food and we went on to another sequence, as the Angel would say. She still had no face but I guess she could see well enough because she put all the plates down just where you'd think they were supposed to go and left the tiny little check in the middle of the table.

  Is she--I mean, did you know her, from where you--

  Angel gave his head a brief little shake. No. She's from somewhere else. Not one of my--people. He pushed the cheeseburger and files in front of him over to my side of the table. That was the way it was done; I did all the eating and somehow it worked out.

  I picked up my cheeseburger and I was bringing it up to my mouth when my eyes got all funny and I saw it coming up like a whole series of cheeseburgers, whoom-whoom-whoom, trick photography, only for real. I closed my eyes and jammed the cheeseburger into my mouth, holding it there, waiting for all the other cheeseburgers to catch up with it.

  You'll be okay, said the Angel. Steady, now.

  I said with my mouth full, That was--that was weird. Will I ever get used to this?

  I doubt it. But I'll do what I can to help you.

  Yah, well, the Angel would know. Stuff rubbing off on me, he could feel it better than I could. He was the one it was rubbing off from.

  I had put away my cheeseburger and half of Angel's and was working on the french fries for both of us when I noticed he was looking out the window with this hard, tight expression on his face.

  Something? I asked him.

  Keep eating, he said.