Asimov's SF, October-November 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What happened to me is simple,” she said. “I grew up.”

  He was frowning. She couldn't trust him. Not even when he said he could keep her from the worst punishments. Maybe he could. But he wouldn't save her from interrogations. And the last thing she wanted to do was betray her friends.

  She didn't dare trust him. He always tricked her.

  And then she got cold. He was tricking her now, forcing her into conversation while the military closed in on her ship. She wasn't leaving the area—

  Because of him.

  She had to get away from him. Or at least, she had to try.

  “What does that mean, grew up?” he asked.

  “It means it's been a long time since I last saw you, Quint,” she said. “What happened to me is too complicated to explain in an hour-long conversation. I lived a lot. So did you.”

  His frown eased as the tension in his body seemed to go. Maybe she did know him. And maybe she had grown up enough to fool him.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “You're bleeding again.”

  He raised a hand toward his face.

  “Don't touch it,” she said. “I don't know what got in those wounds. But something's keeping them from healing. I don't want you to spread it. Sit back on the bed.”

  He looked alarmed. He sat down.

  She grabbed her kit and brought it over. Then she picked up the numbing agent. “Lean back. Close your eyes for just a minute.”

  He did. She grabbed one of the anesthetics, hoped the dosage wouldn't be too much for him, and as she wiped the numbing agent along his clean cheek, she inserted the anesthetic into his neck.

  “Hey!” he said, and tried to sit up. But she held him down with one hand, knowing the anesthetic would work quickly.

  He fumbled, reached, and fell backward.

  “Hey,” he repeated softly. And then he closed his eyes.

  She stepped back, counting for a full minute. No one, no matter how strong they were, could stay awake with that stuff flowing through them. She checked his vital signs. They were good.

  She hadn't really thought this through. But she had only a few minutes to execute the plan, however haphazard it was.

  Her heart was beating harder than his was. She hurried to one of the escape pods, and checked the supplies. Food and water for a week, more if he rationed. Her hand floated over the communications equipment. If she took it out of the pod, she would buy more time. He couldn't contact anyone. She could leave the emergency beacon.

  But he might die before anyone found him.

  Then she shook her head. One person too many had already died on this mission. She wasn't going to kill Quint, too.

  She left the pod's door open. Then she went to the bed. It had been a long time since she'd lifted someone heavier than she was. She eyeballed him. She thought she could do it without reducing the gravity in the ship.

  She slid under him and pulled him over her shoulder, wobbling a bit under his weight. She lurched like a drunk as she carried him to the pod, glad that the ship was relatively empty, so she didn't hit much. She crouched, her knees screaming in protest, then let him fall to the floor.

  He didn't wake up.

  She shoved him into the pod, checked his vitals one last time, and let out a small sigh of relief. He was fine. He would be fine.

  Weirdly, she felt the urge to apologize. She was leaving him yet again without any explanation—or, at least, without an explanation he could understand.

  But she didn't say anything. Instead, she closed the pod door and went to The Dane's control panel. She noted the coordinates, made sure the pod's emergency beacon showed on her communications readout, and then set the pod loose.

  “Get out, get out, get out,” she whispered. She never wanted to see him again, and she was afraid she would.

  She looked at the screens, watched as the pod tumbled away from The Dane. She needed to get out of this sector. This cruiser couldn't escape Enterran space fast enough to get her to the Nine Planets before Quint was found. Plus she had believed him when he said that he had already released information about the ship.

  Everyone would be looking for her.

  For that reason alone, she couldn't go back to the rendezvous, nor could she contact the others. She hoped they would follow instructions and leave after the designated period of time.

  Not that anyone would be looking for them. As far as the Empire knew, as far as Quint knew, she had been working alone.

  The pod got smaller and smaller until it was just a dot on her screen. She should just leave him to his fate. After all, one death in the service of a cause didn't matter. That was his philosophy, anyway.

  But it wasn't hers.

  She went to the control panel, scanned for the nearest starbase, and sent a coded message, warning of a ship in trouble, and escape pods at these coordinates.

  It was the least she could do to salve her own conscience, even though doing so might cause her capture.

  She had no idea if she would get out of this alive, but she was going to try. And she was going to try to do it alone.

  But she kept staring at that dot, even as it became part of the blackness of space, indistinguishable from everything around it.

  He had known her well. He had probably known what she would do.

  He had made it easy for her to get into the Empire, to get back on a stealth tech research team. He had done it for the wrong reason, but he had done it.

  Had he let her go this time?

  She closed her eyes for just a moment. He had called her his Achilles’ heel. Maybe she was. And maybe she should be grateful.

  But she'd rather believe that she had escaped him a second time.

  She'd rather believe she had done it on her own.

  Copyright © 2011 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: THE CULT OF WHALE WORSHIP

  by Dominica Phetteplace

  Dominica Phetteplace is a 2007 Clarion West alum who graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Mathematics. She works as a math tutor and lives in Berkeley with her husband, Tom, and her cat, Dominicat. Her first sale is a bittersweet story about . . .

  The problem with handling diseased animals is that you might catch what they have. Since the rats were infected with the suicide bug three months ago, Tetsuo was sure he had traded his brain for a ticking time bomb. In addition to severe headaches, he found himself lingering a little too long on bridges and tall balconies.

  This is not because my love for you is unrequited, the first draft of his departing note read, This is for the whales.

  It was addressed to Aoi, a fellow researcher at the lab. She understood about whales. Her brother was the one who had poisoned the whale meat at the Tsukiji market. Kaito had decided that the problem of whaling could only be solved by rational self-interest. He wasn't a trained scientist, like Tetsuo, nor did he have Tetsuo's access to sophisticated superbugs. Instead, he burgled a dermatologist's office and infected the dead whale meat with Botox.

  Kaito wanted people to believe that the whales themselves had become diseased, their tasty flesh turned to poison. But laboratory tests easily identified the neurotoxin, thus exposing the act of terrorism for what it was and nothing more. Thirteen people were sickened.

  He had escaped to Australia without becoming a suspect because Japanese authorities were convinced that the act was committed by a Westerner, perhaps one of the many tourists who visit the market.

  Aoi had only seen Kaito twice in the five years since he left. They used to be very close. Together they would hand out pamphlets at restaurants that served whale sashimi. Most people that passed on the street would refuse the pamphlets and refuse eye contact. Inevitably, the police would come by and ask the siblings to please stop disturbing the peace, please.

  Aoi didn't love Tetsuo, but that didn't mean they couldn't be friends. She knew she could trust him. She once confessed a wish to improv
e upon Kaito's plans, which Tetsuo listened to very carefully in case he might be able to grant it. She wanted to design a parasite that could live commensally within a whale, but was toxic to humans. A tall order, but if you could be successful, you could fabricate a similar one that would poison shark fins and rhinoceros horns. You could save the tigers.

  Tetsuo thought about Aoi's dream parasite as he ate dinner one night. He was at Junsaya, eating raw chicken skewers. Salmonella wasn't a concern, but even if it was, he would just start eating his chicken cooked. So it would go with any designer parasite or virus you could put into a live whale. There might be an easy way to disinfect it for human consumption, your triumph of science and possible dissertation denatured merely by changing the preparation method.

  That wasn't the only problem. The idea of infecting whales with something, even something benign, bothered him. Was it even ethical?

  Think of it as a vaccine for whales, he told himself.

  No, it's humans that are diseased. And we are the ones that need to be inoculated, he thought again. And not even all of us, just the ones who think it's okay to eat endangered species. They are impure, there are only two cures: cleansing or mind control.

  Tetsuo knew more about the second than the first on account of the fact that he was working in a lab that was researching the mind-altering parasite Toxoplasmosa gondii, variant III. It was a subspecies of T. gondii that the lab was in the process of reverse engineering. They were making rats sick to one day make humans well.

  The parasite could cause suicide, dementia, and schizophrenia in all mammals, but variant III in particular was associated with increased feelings of religious devotion. It wasn't designed that way, but that's how it ended up.

  T. gondii needed a predator-prey partnership to complete its life cycle, most commonly cats and rats. The bradyzoites would cause lesions in the rat's amygdala that made it sexually attracted to cat urine, something that a rat is normally frightened of. That made the rat more likely to be eaten by a cat, which would transfer T. gondii to the cat's stomach and enable the protozoan to finish its life cycle. Post-digestion, T. gondii would be excreted by the cat and would infect any mammal that came in physical contact with the contaminated cat feces.

  In the paper Impact of Secreted Protein K+a on T. gondii v.III Reproduction, the authors locked infected rats into cages with cats. Mostly the rats got eaten, but there were some cats who didn't understand the rats as food. These cats were advanced to the next stage of the experiment, where they lived with the rats in richer and more complex environments. The rats would congregate around the cat urine, so the researchers became prompt about changing the cat's box. In the absence of easy access to the compound in the urine that was elevating the level of dopamine in the rat's infected brains, the rats began to exhibit what was observed to be worshipful behavior.

  Tetsuo decided to replicate the experiment in his own apartment, just so he could be sure. He brought a cat home from the pet shop to interact with the rats. When it killed and ate two of the experimental subjects, he euthanized it. He did this twice more until he found Yojimbo, a pudgy and gentle orange tabby. Yojimbo ignored the rats, showing no interest either in prey-killing or friend-making.

  Yojimbo's aloofness was steadfast, despite the fact that the rats would huddle to be near him, piling on top of him like possum babies. The rats would take breaks from cuddling only for vital functions (though one rat did starve from forgetting to eat). The rats would eat quickly, drink quickly, pee quickly and then return to Yojimbo with a mouth full of unchewed food, to be deposited in the offering pile in front of him.

  Yojimbo always reacted the same to this, lifting his nostrils in interest, then squinting his eyes in disgust. He never touched his offering pile. Sometimes he would shift, under the bulk of a dozen rats (which kept him warm, he did like that), so that he wouldn't have to face the pile of slobbered-on rat food, but that would mean a new pile would form right in front of him.

  The engineered T. gondii variant III that the lab rats were infected with was evolved to be less deadly than the usual one, which made it easier to treat, but more pernicious in another way. A deadly parasite would kill the host and the brain it was meant to control. A less deadly parasite would let the host live, so it could spread to many more individuals. Tetsuo was engineering an even gentler strain for the rats at home that would infect the brain without eating away at it too much. He wondered if cat pheromones would trigger a similar reaction in infected humans as in infected rats. Tetsuo didn't feel worshipful towards Yojimbo, though he was grateful to the cat for helping his work proceed. He liked the way the cat would purr when he heard the can opener, and soon Tetsuo was feeding his pet six or seven cans of gravy a day.

  Tetsuo emerged from his apartment only for work and to buy cat food. Tonight was different, however. He was going to have dinner with Aoi and Kaito, who had just yesterday returned from a stint at Sea Shepherd, as a crew member aboard a whale protection ship.

  They were going to have chicken sukiyaki at Botan. Beef-free sukiyaki was hard to come by, but Kaito's almost-vegetarianism was formed along a hierarchy of intelligence that permitted chicken but not cows. Dumb fish like salmon fell on the edible side of the dividing line, but the collapse of global fish stocks and looming onset of the desert ocean made seafood unpalatable. To eat fish right now was to steal from sharks and swordfish.

  It was a long walk to the restaurant from Tetsuo's apartment, but he thought it best to avoid the train, for fear he might suddenly decide to throw himself on the tracks. Of course he might also throw himself into traffic as he walked, but that was less of a sure thing. The cars might stop, or you might survive but incur painful and debilitating injuries. The uncertainty and banality made it an unattractive way to go.

  As he crossed a bridge that spanned the Kanda River, he stopped to stare down into the water. It was eleven days ago that he had seen a killer whale in this river.

  It glistened in the moonlight and radiated wisdom. It raised its head out of the water and stared at Tetsuo with knowing eyes. Then it winked and departed before Tetsuo had the chance to wink back. At that moment all Tetsuo wanted was to jump in and be devoured alive by the whale. He could imagine each sensation, the free fall followed by the splash of cold water followed by the snapping of his bones and the warmth of the whale's stomach. This is how he wanted to die, he was sure of it. It was only his work that kept him alive.

  It wasn't until later that he realized he could not die this way, not ever, because he might infect the orca with his disease. The realization that he could not depart in this most perfect manner made him weep.

  DO NOT FEED MY BODY TO THE WHALES. DO NOT SCATTER MY ASHES, he wrote in his parting note.

  He had visited the bridge every day since the sighting. He enjoyed temptation, a function of his enormous willpower, he supposed. Tonight, he stared down at the darkness for a full ten minutes, drying out his eyes. Did he even blink? He did not know. But he did not see a whale. Impossible things do not happen twice.

  * * * *

  Kaito made his announcement during dinner.

  “I wish to strike again,” he whispered.

  Tetsuo shook his head. He did not want Kaito to repeat his crime and its tragic outcome. There is a better way, he wanted to say. You don't have to kill your enemies, you just have to change their minds.

  “Can't you help us?” asked Aoi.

  “Yes. I am working on it. You will know soon,” said Tetsuo. He was making a synthetic and extra-powerful cat pheromone for Aoi to wear. It would inspire devotion, but of an unknown kind. Would the new converts be like zombies? Would they try to eat her brain?

  On the way back from the restaurant, Tetsuo abandoned self-control. He jumped from the bridge, determined to find the whale.

  He landed in the water twenty feet below, and sprained his ankle when his feet hit the concrete bottom of the river. It was much too shallow to support a fully grown orca. Maybe he had seen a baby. Maybe it was s
eparated from its mother and needed his help.

  He stayed in as long as possible, waiting for the baby whale. He had named her Kayoko, sensing intuitively that it was a she. He had to be fished out because he wouldn't leave the water on his own.

  He showed up for work the next morning a little later than usual due to his bum ankle. Dr. Sato summoned him for a meeting right away, uttering those deadly words, “We need to talk.”

  “You have been acting strange lately,” said Sato, and Tetsuo nodded in agreement as he braced himself for the worst.

  “You have recently become a disappointment to me,” Sato continued. “I have not seen you in the evenings lately, nor on the weekends. Your work-ethic leaves much to be desired.”

  Tetsuo squirmed against the maniacal laugh that was struggling to escape from his intestines. He fought it by blinking his eyes hard.

  “And then there is the matter of your suicide attempt.”

  Tetsuo didn't feel like arguing the point right then. He didn't feel like saying: Actually, no, I just wanted to say hi to the baby whale that lives in the river, and while I am going to kill myself soon, very soon, that was not it.

  He was given a warning and a mental-health leave from work. That gave him time to finish his at-home research or come as close to finishing as he could. He doubted his results, but he was meticulous in the execution of his plan, regardless.

  * * * *

  His dead body would be a bio-hazard, and he needed to be responsible in containing it so as not to afflict the innocent. This would be a most ethical plague.

  He wanted to dissolve in a streak of violence. He wanted a high-impact death, to be done in by momentum. But such things were messy, so instead he prepared a cyanide capsule.

  Those hardworking mitochondria. How diligently they produced ATP by forcing protons across membranes. The cyanide would disrupt the membranes by poking holes in them, making ATP synthesis impossible. The body would starve without this fuel, but it would be a very quick starvation, about thirty seconds or so. Tetsuo pitied his organelles, but not his organs, strangely enough.