Asimov's SF, October-November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Afterward, she just had time to shower and don a blouse and a pair of plain brown slacks before Rick scampered across from next door. He always leapt the fence that separated their two back yards. He never came around to the front door. In part, this was respect for the proprieties (which made it a hypocritical act). In the other part, it was a display of prowess. (Which made it a cocksure act. It was a picket fence he vaulted.)

  Dolly let him into the kitchen and he followed her to the bedroom, where they had sex. Some days they might have a drink or two first. In the beginning, she had always taken a few drinks, even before the discreet knock at the kitchen door.

  When Rick was engrossed in medias res, she whispered urgently, “Howard's at the door! He must have missed the ferry!” And she laughed when he, for a moment, stiffened in alarm.

  “I wish you wouldn't do that!” he said (for this was not the first time she had whispered wolf in his ear). But in fact, the possibility that Howard would miss his boat and would walk in upon her was the only excitement left to Dolly in the affair, which had progressed by stages from the unthinkable to the routine. While Howard's assignments had been out of town, she and Rick had enjoyed intimate clubs and fine meals and nights spent on satin in upscale hotels. There had been an electricity to it then. Confined now to the occasional morning or afternoon liaison, the flames had faded to coals, and coals to ashes.

  Rick had no idea of this. He thought he mattered. But it had been the dancing and the dining and the shows, not Rick's qualities as a lover, that had led Dolly to him. He was no Adonis. As the world measured these things, Howard actually had the edge. Nor was he especially attentive or romantic. What he was, was convenient.

  There were days when she wanted to summon Howard on his cell phone and bring him back on some pretext. She wanted something to happen. Anything. Even confrontation. If she could not have the heat of passion, she would have the heat of anger. Lacking either, she had gone cold. And yet, though she thought of it often, she could never quite bring herself to do it.

  Later, in the front room, she served coffee, and that peculiar silence descended in which by unspoken consent she and Rick would not talk about what they did. Rick, standing by the front window, pulled the curtain a little to the side and remarked how empty the streets seemed with everyone off to work or school—as if some pestilence had caused humanity to disappear.

  Dolly was sitting in her television chair. “I wish Howard would disappear,” she responded with sudden, quiet, and terrible sincerity.

  Rick thought she meant so that they could drop the secrecy and be together openly, and he preened just a bit, for he desired above all else to be desired. But Dolly had not been thinking of him. In a way, she hadn't even been thinking of Howard; but afterward she could never quite convince herself that it was mere coincidence.

  Rick started at the door chimes and Dolly, with malice aforethought, strode to the door as if to throw it open with him in plain sight; but she paused with her hand on the knob until she heard the kitchen door click closed. She smiled a little at that, at what it said about Rick, at what it said about her. Then the bell rang again, and this time she did open the door.

  It was Lillian Gelberson from down the corner. Lillian was a young woman who wore glasses only for effect and operated a blog out of her home. Dolly (who had no idea what a web log was) had privately named her Miss Perky, by which she did not intend a compliment. Lillian had the irritating habit of beginning conversations in the middle. “Oh, Dolly! I'm so sorry,” she announced in a voice apparently intended to be sympathetic, but which sounded instead only cryptic.

  “About what?” Dolly said, wondering if Lillian had seen or heard Rick's departure. Perhaps the woman was sorry that Dolly needed a lover, or that the lover was Rick, or that she herself had no hope of getting one of her own. Dolly was glad something had come along to shoo Rick away, but she was not especially glad that it had been Lillian.

  “About what? Ohmigod! You mean you haven't heard? Ohmigod! The Hyak! It's gone! And then I thought, ohmigod, isn't that the ferry that your husband takes?"

  “What do you mean gone?” Dolly asked in irritation. “Of course it's gone. It leaves at six-thirty."

  “No, no. I mean vanished.Disappeared. Ohmigod, helicopters have been crisscrossing the bay and there's not a trace.” She knew this because she had been following the breaking news on the web, uploading links to her blog, trading overwrought IMs. (Nothing is quite so invigorating to a certain turn of mind than the safe proximity of disaster.) Her window opened on a view of the bay, but it had not occurred to her to look out of it. The Web was All.

  Dolly failed at first to understand. The words came at her too fast and all a-jumble. “Do you mean the ferry sank? How can that happen?” Ferries sank in the Philippines, ferries sank in Bangladesh. They did not sink in Elliott Bay.

  “We don't know yet,” Lillian told her. “The fog was in, and people down the harbor say the Hyak never came out the other side.” Lillian continued to chatter hyperkinetic sympathy, but Dolly stopped listening after that.

  “Disappeared.... “she whispered. Perhaps Howard would not be coming home, after all. Rick would like that. Or would he?

  She was sitting on the sofa with no recollection of having gotten there. Lillian was beside her, holding her hands. Go away, she thought at the woman. Go away. But the words never reached her lips. She didn't want company. She didn't want to be alone. “Two thousand, did you say?"

  Lillian may have speculated on how full the vessel had been, but all she said to Dolly was, “It's Howard that matters now,” which was not strictly factual, but which might have been paradoxically true. Howard mattered because he was no longer matter.

  “Dolly, is there anything I can do?"

  Images of Lillian Gelberson in scuba gear searching amidst the sunken hulk of M.V. Hyak, hoisting wreckage from the water, performing mouth to mouth resuscitation. Do what, Dolly wondered. “Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured, but Lillian did not quite hear.

  As the weeks followed and the media ran through their paradigm, her remorse grew ever more intolerable. Each time they showed one of the awkward snapshots on the evening news, she cringed. At meetings of “The Families of the Victims.” (And of course there were such meetings. A regiment of grief counselors flew into Seattle to prolong the agony.) Dolly would avoid the other spouses and families and significant others, would not even meet their eyes. Everyone took this as profound grief. No one recognized it as guilt.

  Perhaps a thousand wives had wished their husbands gone that morning. It was not beyond belief. But Dolly did not believe it. As nearly as she could estimate, the Hyak had vanished at the very moment when she had wished Howard gone. But the elves that grant the wishes oft have cruel streaks in them. She had never intended that a thousand others vanish with him. The weight of a thousand was as the weight of a single one. There was something about that in the Bible. Or in the Koran. Or in a fortune cookie she had once read.

  The media christened it The Disappearance. They early on capitalized the whole business and assigned the roles that everyone was to play. No one ever found any bodies. No flotsam ever graced the shores of Elliott Bay. Consequently, Dolly and the others like her were presented as grieving-but-ever-hopeful that their loved ones would somehow, someday come back. (Although from where, no one seemed quite sure.) And so, she must play Penelope to Howard's Odysseus.

  For a time, Rick concurred. In the spotlight of publicity, his stealthy visits might seem unseemly; and so he abstained for a time out of respect for the dead and also out of a little self-interest. But he never did understand why, after the commotion had died and the cameras sought elsewhere for sensation, Dolly did not re-open that kitchen door. He's gone, he told her again and again. He's never coming back. (Not that it had ever mattered when he had.) Dolly could not explain it either, and, after a time, Rick found another neighbor or a co-worker or maybe even his ex-wife.

  Dolly no longer needed a lover. S
omehow, by vanishing completely, Howard had become ubiquitous, and occupied her life without the bother of actually being present in it. His absence was consequential in a way that his presence had never been. She was asked about him constantly: by friends and relatives, by interviewers for magazines and television stations. She appeared on Conan with a half dozen other bereaved and was applauded by the audience, as if the loss of her husband had been some sort of accomplishment on her part—as indeed she had convinced herself it had.

  * * * *

  Dinah Comfort

  How bright and empty the bay looks from here. Not a cloud in the sky, not a bit of haze over the water. I can almost reach out past the headland and touch Seattle. They call it the Emerald City, but it all looks golden, somehow, in the sunset.

  No boats out on the water. The pleasure craft cower in their marinas, for there is no pleasure in this sunset. The tankers and freighters huddle at dock or have scurried here to Bremerton. Even the Coast Guard cutter has put up. Everyone is afraid to venture out onto the Bay. The waters look so lonely.

  He was always late, Ken was. That was his problem from the very start. Never home on time. Always working late, “plugging away at the office.” Plugging away, all right. Plugging a secretary, all legs and ass, damn him. Or hoisting a few with “the boys.” Sorry, I lost track of the time. And whatever happened to the man I married? He lost track of him, too, somewhere along the way.

  He never went looking for love; it always fell into his lap and he never learned how to say no. He hadn't even stayed true to his secretary, the little skirt-hiking bitch. (And so she had forwarded all those e-mails. Treat your wife as you will; but never anger your mistress.)

  Ken never thinks ahead, seldom behind. A narrow window around the present moment is all the reality he ever knows. He couldn't even understand why I was still angry with him after he said he was sorry. But that was the problem, wasn't it? He really was sorry—at that moment, at that time and place—and he really thought a few ritual words wiped away his sins. Inside his head, the whole affair was already Past History and it was somehow my fault that it was still an issue.

  It's done. It's over. Let's move on.

  No, Ken, it isn't that easy. I won't have it be that easy.

  But just this once, Ken, could you please be late?

  Okay, you had her for the weekend. Our little Cindi, our darling, our treasure. Little Cindi with the sunlight smile. I know you love her, too, in your own lunkheaded, irresponsible way. Dammit, you still love me, in your lunkheaded, irresponsible way. I know you like to see her. You're still her father, Ken. Oh, tardy, forgetful, flighty Ken. God, you were such fun to be with when responsibility didn't matter. I can still remember what we once had. I'll never take you back, but I feel sad that I never will.

  Cindi looks forward so to these visits, and it doesn't make me jealous, not really. You pamper her too much, and I guess I can see why. You don't have her every day the way I do. You can afford to pamper, but I have to discipline, and that seems a little lopsided, because at twelve Cindi doesn't understand why I have to be mean when you never are. But it wouldn't be fair to ask you to discipline her when you can't even discipline yourself. You're only supposed to keep her for three days, and I know I've been bitchy before when you've kept her too long.

  I forgot, you said. I lost track of the time.

  Just this once, just this once, just this once, I hope you lost track of the time. I hope you overslept. I hope you got tied up in traffic. I hope you forgot my complaints. I hope you missed putting her on the ferry.

  Twelve. Almost a woman. Almost a person instead of a child. Just beginning to feel the changes taking place inside her. Just beginning to realize the universe of possibilities lying in wait. But still a child. Still our little girl.

  It's getting cold here. I should have brought a sweater with me, but who knew the wait would be this long? Who knows how long it will be?

  The Hyak will reappear someday. That weird fog will roll in again. It will grow thick over the bay and coat everything with chill and damp. And the ferry horn will sound, and the Hyak will sail out of the mist as she sailed into it. Maybe she won't know why I'm crying, Cindi won't. Maybe for her only a moment will have passed. That's the way things happen in Faerie. I'll grow old, and she'll stay young forever.

  It could be this very night. Or tomorrow. There's always a fog in the morning. Someone needs to be here when the ferry arrives. Someone needs to be here.

  * * * *

  Francine Humboldt Whistler, Ph.D.

  Francie Whistler had lobbied hard to be appointed to the Board of Inquiry and was happy that the panel would finally meet. But she did not think it appropriate that the session be preceded by a reception, as if it were no more than an academic symposium. She registered at the desk in the Coast Guard building and the warrant officer checked his list and gave her a numbered name badge with her digital photograph already embedded and directed her to the pre-meeting function room.

  She spent the pre-meeting chatting with the Coast Guard radar tech over cups of scalding coffee. Vehicle Traffic Service radars had reported three different locations for the missing ferry, and each location had been farther off than the vessel could possibly have been. The Task Force might need a physicist to make sense out of that. An unexplained fact within an unexplained fact. A hole inside a hole. It wasn't the real reason she had pulled strings, but it was a true reason and it would do.

  The technician didn't have the answers and knew it, which made him wiser than many others in the room that Francie could overhear. Why did people come to an inquiry with answers? They were supposed to bring questions. The tech had come to give testimony, and that was all. “I'm glad I don't have to make sense out of it,” he confessed. “I just follow the SOPs. But I know what I saw. I ran the diagnostics afterward and everything checked out. All the benchmarks were right on the money. What do you think happened?"

  Francie shook her head. “It's too early to say, Tommy. We don't have all the facts yet.” Everyone was still treating the event as a marine disaster. Francie wasn't so sure. She didn't think the ferry sank. She thought something else had happened, only she didn't know what.

  “All three bearings showed the ferry going away from the radar,” the young man continued. “One going back toward the dock. One toward Duwamish Head. And one toward Queen Anne Hill. That isn't possible. Do you think it was a transient malf in the computer system?"

  Francie flashed on a line from an old Firesign Theater album: How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all? Except in this case there were three places.

  When Commander Randolph arrived, everyone shuffled into the meeting room. The room was long and wide and possessed no outside windows. Francie thought this intentional. There would be reminders enough of that tragic day in the testimony. A view of the scene would have been too oppressive. Chairs stood rank-and-file in military precision. Across the front of the room ran a long table with microphones and name cards, one of which bore her name. Francie took her seat at the far left of the table, next to the federal anti-terrorism expert from Homeland.

  “We'll catch the bastards who did this,” the man whispered to her as she adjusted her seat. His name card announced him Carl Gratz.

  Francie had heard a similar assurance earlier from the marine engineer, only he had hoped to catch the design flaw that caused the boat to founder. She smiled at Gratz and said, “That's why the Task Force was formed,” and he nodded as if she had agreed with him.

  “You're the University representative,” he said after a glance at her name card. “Ms. Whistler?"

  “Dr. Whistler."

  Gratz grinned. “Yeah, me too.” He introduced himself.

  There was a pad of paper at each place, as well as a microphone, a pen, a folder, a water glass, and the other inevitable accouterments of committee meetings. Francie tapped the microphone to see if it was live and heard nothing. In the back of the room, the sound tech was playing
with his board. She shrugged and picked up the pen.

  Turning the pad sideways, she wrote five words across the long margin: Autopsy, Type, Source, Location, and Time. Gratz glanced at what she had written. She underlined the word location and wrote under it three places at once and heading three directions.

  “You think the VTS radars were malfunctioning?” Gratz asked her.

  “I don't know what to think. It's possible.” But they had not been malfunctioning immediately afterward, she remembered. That's what the Coast Guard tech had told her. Under Time, she wrote no radar anomalies after and find out specific times.

  Commander Randolph struck the gavel and two dozen cameras in the back of the room chittered like cicadas, so it was clear what image would grace the front pages and web portals tomorrow. Investigating Committee Opens Deliberations. She wasn't sure that these big, public autopsies ever solved anything. They were for assurance rather than investigation. Look, see, we are treating this tragedy with respect and importance! Posing for cameras outweighed posing questions.

  Was that too cynical? The others she had spoken with during the pre-meeting seemed determined to get to the root of the matter, though they had different roots in mind; but what a committee did was often independent of what any of its members intended it to do. The moment had a logic of its own.

  You're grieving, she told herself, as if she could have forgotten. She wondered whether others on the Task Force had lost a friend or relative with the ferry.

  Work the numbers. Family, school chums, fishing buddies, neighbors, co-workers, merchants ... On the average, a person knows a thousand other people. So, if an estimated thousand passengers each had a thousand acquaintances, that made a million people, which, even allowing for overlap, covered a fair chunk of metro Seattle. Chances were a third of the people in this room knew someone who had been on the ferry that morning. And the rest all knew someone who did.