Asimov's SF, January 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

“My lizard was thepoison."

  “I do not understand you."

  “My lizards are not ordinary lizards, and because they are not, they are poison to anything that eats them."

  * * * *

  She was playing more tricks now. She was saying whatever she needed to say to make him lose his courage forever. It was like a spell, one that used logic to confuse the mind—to take away confidence. He could feel himself spinning within it, the spell, like a moth in a spider's cocoon.

  He wanted to run, but he couldn't. He needed the bag back. How could he leave without it?

  “You are putting a spell on me,” he said, as if saying it might change it.

  “Words have no power,” she answered, “which the listener does not give them."

  This was true. He had thought this himself when his mother, in an anger she would not let go of, used words that made him feel shame. Without her words, he knew, there could be no shame.

  “That is true,” he found himself saying, not wanting to but saying it anyway; and when he did, she made a little smile with her mouth. It was both wonderful and horrible. The little sticks showed against the dark hole of her mouth, and the skin of her lips pulled tight, as if on a corpse's skull, cracking. Little lines of blood appeared in the cracks, but the smile did not give up. It stayed.

  If it was a spell that he was feeling, it was not a bad one.

  “What are they,” he asked suddenly, “if they are not lizards?"

  After another snort, she said:

  “They are what is left of the man I loved."

  As he stared at her black dress, the one so many old women in this country wore, he knew that this too was true.

  * * * *

  As if tired out from her smile, she frowned then, but said gently enough:

  “Come in."

  This was how the story always went, didn't it? The witch would get the boy or girl inside her hut, and that would be the end of it. As Perotto had told them once, a witch's spells are more powerful where she lives—in her own hut—where, like her smell or breath or bony hand, they are a part of her and have her power. She needed to get him inside to do what she wanted to him. Any witch would. The gentleness of her words was a lie, wasn't it?

  “I cannot make you enter,” she said. “I can only invite you."

  This had to be a trick. This kindness; this honesty; this pretending she didn't have the power, the spells, to make him do what she wanted. “A witch,” Emilio had told them, “will tell you anything she needs to tell you.” Emilio knew because his own uncle had been killed by a witch's spell during the war. “With a lie she got him to sit beside her on a bench in the old cemetery, telling him she was there to grieve her sister. She touched his hand just once, but it was enough to put it on him. Fifteen days later he died in his bed like a dog!"

  She was offering him the bag now. He could leave if he wanted.

  “If you will not come in, you should have your cat back, to bury it as you wish, to say a blessing over it because it was something you loved."

  This was not how witches were supposed to talk—such kindness. It was more trickery. It had to be. He would grab the bag and leave before she changed her mind.

  But as he took the bag from her, the lizards in her sleeve scampered down her arm and onto his. He jumped and started turn—to run—but she was looking at him with her one brown eye and her one green eye, and the lizards did not feel wrong. They scampered down his arm again, back up, and stopped, watching him. He could not look away. They were green and beautiful and they seemed to like him. If they were a trick, they were not a trick from any story he had ever heard. They were not howling black cats or screeching owls or hissing vipers, the pets witches were known for. They were green and cheerful, and he was sorry he had ever killed the lizards of this country.

  As he looked at the ones on his arm, the walls and roof of the hut began moving again like a slow green wave toward them. They flowed like water, down the path, under the old woman's feet, around them, to his own sandals. For a moment he felt a jerk of fear, but their toes and tails on his bare legs tickled, and he couldn't stop a smile.

  When the wave stopped at last, he was covered with them. His arms and legs and shorts and shirt were green. He itched, yes, but it was fine.

  “Come in,” she said again; and walking carefully so as not to knock any of them from him, he followed her into the hut.

  * * * *

  As he stood in the darkness with her, she touched his arm lightly and he didn't jump. Then she whistled once, as if calling a dog, but it was a witch's whistle—not just a sound in the air, for ears, but something more. As she whistled, a green light swirled like fog from her mouth, and the lizards that had followed them in, their tiny faces faintly by the dim light from her mouth, looked up at her from the floor.

  She had begun to whisper, too, and it sounded like “Ricordatelo"—"Remember him"—and the lizards, in the light of the fog, their eyes like green stars, began to move toward the dark center of the room.

  Beside him her voice said, “Can you see our bed?"

  He could. In the dim green light he could see, in the middle of the floor, what looked like blankets, heavy wool ones, lying on a piece of lumpy canvas. What was inside the canvas he didn't know. Straw, rags, old clothes—anything to fill it. The bed was on the floor, and, except for blankets, it was empty. He was sure of it. But the lizards were gathering there; and as he looked at the green shadow that was the bed, it began to change. It was empty, yes, but something was taking shape there.

  The lizards on his arms and legs moved once and fell still. He took a breath.

  “This is where we slept when the war was over."

  “Yes,” the boy heard himself say, and a lizard moved from his neck to his ear.

  “We lived here because we were poor,” she was saying, though in what language he was not sure. “My husband, whose name was Pagano Lorenzo, picked grapes at Bocca di Magra. That was what he did."

  “Yes,” the boy said again.

  “Do you see him?"

  “What?"

  “Do you see my husband?"

  “No...."

  “That is because my sister, who lives in Pozzuoli, the village of red doorways, killed him. She did not have a man. Her man, whom she did not really love, died at Monte Cavallo in the war, while mine returned. She hated me for my fortune and one day asked us to dinner. She made dateri, using the darkest clams, and the portion she gave to him was poisoned. It is easy to do if you know stregheria, if you are strega. You could poison your sister in jealousy—or at least try, witch to witch—but why bother? Why not instead take away what she loved, what you yourself do not have, so that you can watch her grieve forever? Do you see him now, ragazzo?"

  The boy, who was shaking again, blinked and brushed a lizard's tail from his eye. He could see that the shadow on the bed was bigger now. He could feel the lizards on his arms and legs leaving him to join the others on the bed, where the shadow was growing.

  “I—I..."

  “Boys who tell stories about us do not understand. We cannot do everything. I could not save my husband. He died on this bed from the poison, the kind used for rats, and he died in great pain. With a spell she blinded his tongue to the taste of it and he ate it all."

  The shadow on the bed was darkening and he could not stop shaking. It was not a ghost he was seeing, but something else.

  “I did what I could, ragazzo. The lizards of these groves felt for us the affection we felt for them. They had lived with us, and we with them; and so, when my husband died, I gave his soul to them—a piece to each—a thousand pieces...."

  The boy was shaking so hard he could barely stand. The shadow on the bed was complete, and the old woman, though her legs and hip hurt her, stepped to the window now to open it. As sunlight fell to the bed, he saw what the lizards had made, the shape they had taken: A man, sleeping peacefully on his stomach, green as lichen in the sunlight, but one that in the night would be as real a
s a man needed to be for his wife, with her memories, to fall asleep.

  She had wanted the piece of him back, that was all. He saw it now. She hadn't poisoned his cat. The lizard had. The lizard that was a piece of her husband's poisoned soul.

  “I sleep well at night,” the old woman was saying, “because we sleep well when we sleep with what we love. How do you sleep, ragazzo?"

  * * * *

  As the boy walked back through the groves to his house, the bag in his hand, he could hear the grass rustling just behind him. How many there were, he did not know. A hundred perhaps, maybe more. He wanted to look, but did not want to scare them away. Even when he reached the steps to his house, he did not look back. He got a shovel from the shed, returned to the nearest trees, and dug a hole where his parents could not see him digging. There he buried the body, saying the blessing as he filled the hole with dirt. He used the Lord's Prayer, of course, because he had used it before when his pets had died; but also because he did not know another. They waited in the grass while he did this. Then he went back to the house, to his room—stepping quietly past the kitchen and his mother's anger, which did not have to be his anymore, he knew—and saw how it would go: He would open his bedroom window just enough that they could enter at will, sunning themselves on the windowsill when they wanted to, coming in when the sun had set. That night—and any night he wished it—he would need only lie down on his bed, whisper “Remember her” to the darkness, and wait to feel the tiny feet and tails moving over him as the animal—the one he had slept with every night for a year—took shape beside him, paws tucked neatly under it, body somehow warm, so that he could sleep at last.

  Copyright © 2006 Bruce McAllister

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  * * *

  CAFÉ CULTURE

  by Jack Dann

  Jack Dann's last story for us was the Nebula-Award-winning novella, “Da Vinci Rising” (May 1995). His latest novel, The Rebel: an Imagined Life of James Dean, came out from Morrow in August 2005. (Check out www.ReadTheRebel.com and/or visit the author at jackdann.com.) Jack lives in Australia on a farm overlooking the sea and “commutes” to Los Angeles and New York. After far too long an absence, he returns to our pages with a deeply disturbing look at an unpromising future.

  A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers.

  "From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

  —Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

  * * * *

  After six Baptist suicide bombers met their god in the fiery nave, aisles, apse, towers, and main altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the cafés that crowded Fiftieth and Fifty-First Streets became de rigueur for writers, artists, actors, news personalities, wealthy dilettantes, activists, dissidents, tourists, the Christian left, and wannabees. Young Muslim women, faces covered in black muslin, sipped ginger ale beside their Armani suited, bearded partners, while students wearing Christ's Commandos® T-shirts argued about the morality of selling a watch that had lodged in a schoolgirl's neck during an explosion on a school bus.

  “Well, the poor thing's dead. The suicide bomber's watch went to pay for the funeral."

  “That would have been one heck of a funeral."

  “It was."

  Max Rosanna's Café was always mobbed with those who needed to be seen and those who needed to see, and the outside tables closest to the stained glass door of the establishment were always on reserve for the titled, the famous, and those who could slip old Max a thousand dollar bill for a sweaty croissant and a flat white coffee. Max's was directly across the street from the cathedral ruins, and Max had his contractors cement the shards of stained glass from the exploding cathedral into the floors and ceiling of the café. At night, lights strobing, Max's would glitter like an old psychedelic dream.

  But it was spring, 11:00 AM, Friday, and the pioneers of the New Rebellion, the New Yorkers who would not show even a flicker of fear, wanted to be in the street. They were boarding their buses, riding their subways, sipping their coffees, eating their croissants and bialys, being seen at Max's, and taking their chances.

  Leo Malkin couldn't afford Max's, but he had done some renovation work on the café for the fat man and was always guaranteed a table somewhere on the premises. But on this clear, clean, beatifically sunny Friday morning, not a chair could be had; it was like trying to get into the Ginza Bar or the Peppermint Lounge in the middle of the last century. Two bouncers kept the line of desperate patrons-to-be away from the patio of the café, which looked like an oasis of shadow under its awnings and umbrellas.

  After being patted, introduced to a soap opera star, and consoled by Max, Leo walked toward Sixth Avenue, toward the demolished RCA Building. Every café was mobbed, and the conversations buzzed like flies on the street. He passed a boy of around fourteen, who glared at him with absolute hatred. Leo nodded to him, which, admittedly, was a stupid reaction. Maybe it's because I look Jewish, but I could just as easily be Arab, and he looks Semitic.

  “Hey!” Leo shouted at the boy.

  The boy turned and stopped. He had delicate features, dark skin, big brown eyes, and coarse black hair cut in bowl fashion. He looked somehow familiar.

  “What's with the look?"

  The boy was wearing jeans and a checkered work shirt; both were slightly too large for him. The jeans were rolled in heavy cuffs over his engineer boots, the shirt was long and wasn't tucked in. The boy shook his head and smiled a beautiful ragamuffin smile that somehow chilled Leo to the bone.

  And then the beautiful boy was gone, snapped back into the crowd.

  * * * *

  Ikrima Margalit walked jauntily down Fiftieth Street, the distant sun warm on his face, his ultra-light explosive vest more like a silk handkerchief than a vest constructed of material that would make a belt loaded with C-4 look like a New Year's Eve sparkler. He carried no detectable shrapnel, no old fashioned (yet effective) ball bearings, no nails, screws, nuts, or thick wire. His very bones would pierce the nonbelievers. He would explode like a claymore mine, and, somehow, God in his mercy would turn the very sidewalk, cars, and streetlights into killing, cleansing objects of death. Those who understood such things used to call acetone peroxide Mother of Satan because it was so unstable; but this new explosive was stable as a table, and it was called Mother of God after the blessed Virgin.

  To his right and across the street was the old Macy's building; to his left was the noisy line of cafés his mother called temples of corruption. They didn't look like anything but cafés, and the people sitting around sipping coffee and smoking kef were young and happy and pretty. The air smelled perfumed. The hydrogen-powered cars whispered past, as if in slow motion; every once in a while a driver would honk his horn in dumb rage and desperation and would be automatically fined. It was a perfect day, and young Ikrima could feel God so very close to him, could almost hear him between the noise of conversation, the susurration of tires, and the occasional honking horns and sirens. Ikrima knew exactly where God was. His mother had told him that He was just on the other side of the vest that was now like part of his body, part of his very being; and right next to his skin was Paradise, and there, in Paradise, being looked after by the perfect virgin houris were all his friends and heroes, including his blessed father. His mother was on this side of Paradise, with him; and although Ikrima was shivering, as if cold, as if his clothes were cold and wet, he wasn't afraid.

  His mobile rang, a tick-tock melody, the very latest song from Memri.

  “Hello, Momma."

  “Hello, Ike, my blessed son. Tell me where you are?"

  “I'm at the place. It's just up ahead, and I can see the fat man you told me about, the one who is corruption to corruption."

  “Yes, my son."

  “I am almost there, Momma, but I see two girls. They are Muslims, Momma. Dressed in—"

  “They are not,” his mother said. “
Whatever their dress. Now tell me when you are ready."

  “Now, Momma. I love you and will see you with God in Paradise."

  “Yes, my darling, yes,” and Ikrima Margalit pressed the little button of a detonator and became light, exploding, exposing light. He flew to his God in a million pieces. The ground exploded and shards of glass and cement and steel flew like missiles into flesh. The fat man Max exploded in the light, as did everyone around him, and Ikrima joined the houris in self-abnegating love, vengeance, and honor.

  * * * *

  Ikrima's mother Dafna stood in the living room of her commission apartment on 184th Street. She was in her early forties, yet still considered beautiful and shapely. She held the tiny mobile phone to her ear, but the connection was dead; all she could hear was the scratching of her coarse black hair against the earpiece. Her son was suddenly, just-this-minute dead, immolated in the holy cleansing fire of jihad. One minute she was with him, speaking with him—Oh, my darling, how I love you—and the next minute she was listening to her own breathing while her beautiful, precious, brave son made his instant transit to God. He would not be tempted and seduced by life; he was the most precious of God's martyrs. She dropped the phone and bowed to Allah, who made her simultaneity of grief and poignant joy possible. She felt an overwhelming warmth in her loins, as if she were truly being touched by God. She felt a buzzing in her ears, as if God was speaking directly to her, whispering to her like electricity; and she bowed to Him in the East, then fell to her knees in prayer. She nodded, finished, and stood up, shouting joy at the top of her lungs. Her neighbors pounded on her door, which she opened so that she might accept their congratulations; and they sang, “This is not a grieving tent. This is a congratulation tent.” She and her beautiful son Ikrima would soon be together in Paradise. He had done his duty, his last act of devotion. Soon she would do her own divine duty; but first Dafna had to work, for it was Friday, and all her clients paid her on Friday. She cleaned townhouses, condominiums, and co-ops on the Upper East Side inside the Wall of Safety. Once she had collected her money—everyone paid in universal, which was as good as cash—she would go to the Martyrs’ Center and pay for her order of posters, bracelets, calendars, wall hangings, fridge magnets, and watches, which all contained pictures of her martyred son. Then, as a last act of faith, contrition, and celebration, the Martyrs’ Center would distribute the trinkets and keepsakes along with baskets of food and medicine to everyone in her building.