F&SF 2011-11-01 - Nov_Dec

by F

  She put her identity card into the reader, and after a pause it directed her to a glass-fronted booth where an immigration official in a sand-colored uniform sat behind a desk. Unlike the air, the man looked manufactured—a face with no wrinkles, defects, or stand-out features, as if they had chosen him to match a mathematical formula for facial symmetry. His hair was neatly clipped, and so, she noticed, were his nails. When she sat opposite him, she found that her chair creaked at the slightest movement. She tried to hold perfectly still.

  He regarded her information on his screen, then said, "Who is your father?"

  She had been prepared to say why her mother was not with her, but her father? "I don't know," she said. "Why?"

  "Your records do not state his race."

  His race ? It was an antique concept she barely understood. "He was Capellan," she said.

  "Capellan is not an origin. No one evolved on Capella."

  "I did," Thorn stated.

  He studied her without any expression at all. She tried to meet his eyes, but it began to seem confrontational, so she looked down. Her chair creaked.

  "There are certain types of people we do not allow on Gmintagad," he said.

  She tried to imagine what he meant. Criminals? Disease carriers? Agitators? He could see she wasn't any of those. "Wasters, you mean?" she finally ventured.

  "I mean Vinds," he said.

  Relieved, she said, "Oh, well that's all right, then. I'm not Vind." Creak.

  "Unless you can tell me who your father was, I cannot be sure of that," he said.

  She was speechless. How could a father she had never known have any bearing on who she was?

  The thought that they might not let her in made her stomach knot. Her chair sent out a barrage of telegraphic signals. "I just spent thirty-two years as a lightbeam to get here," she said. "You've got to let me stay."

  "We are a sovereign principality," he said calmly. "We don't have to let anyone stay." He paused, his eyes still on her. "You have a Vind look. Are you willing to submit to a genetic test?"

  Minutes ago, her mind had seemed like syrup. Now it bubbled with alarm. In fact, she didn't know her father wasn't Vind. It had never mattered, so she had never cared. But here, all the things that defined her—her interests, her aptitudes, her internal doubts—none of it counted, only her racial status. She was in a place where identity was assigned, not chosen or created.

  "What happens if I fail the test?" she asked.

  "You will be sent back."

  "And what happens if I don't take it?"

  "You will be sent back."

  "Then why did you even ask?"

  He gave a regulation smile. If she had measured it with a ruler, it would have been perfect. She stood up, and the chair sounded like it was laughing. "All right. Where do I go?"

  They took her blood and sent her into a waiting room with two doors, neither of which had a handle. As she sat there idle, the true rashness of what she had done crept up on her. It wasn't like running away on-planet. Maya didn't know where she had gone. By now, they would be different ages. Maya could be dying, or Thorn could be older than she was, before they ever found each other. It was a permanent separation. And permanent punishment for Maya.

  Thorn tried to summon up the righteous anger that had propelled her only an hour and thirty-two years before. But even that slipped from her grasp. It was replaced with a clutching feeling of her own guilt. She had known Maya's shortcomings when she took the ice owl, and never bothered to safeguard against them. She had known all the accidents the world was capable of, and still she had failed to protect a creature that could not protect itself.

  Now, remorse made her bleed inside. The owl had been too innocent to meet such a terrible end. Its life should have been a joyous ascent into air, and instead it had been a hellish struggle, alone and forgotten, killed by neglect. Thorn had betrayed everyone by letting the ice owl die. Magister Pregaldin, who had trusted her with his precious possession. Even, somehow, Jemma and the other victims of Till Diwali's crime—for what had she done but reenact his failure, as if to show that human beings had learned nothing? She felt as if caught in an iron-bound cycle of history, doomed to repeat what had gone before, as long as she was no better than her predecessors had been.

  She covered her face with her hands, wanting to cry, but too demoralized even for that. It seemed like a self-indulgence she didn't deserve.

  The door clicked and she started up at sight of a stern, rectangular woman in a uniform skirt, whose face held the hint of a sneer. Thorn braced for the news that she would have to waste another thirty-two years on a pointless journey back to Glory to God. But instead, the woman said, "There is someone here to see you."

  Behind her was a familiar face that made Thorn exclaim in joy, "Clarity!"

  Clarity came into the room, and Thorn embraced her in relief. "I thought you were going to Alananovis."

  "We were," Clarity said, "but we decided we couldn't just stand by and let a disaster happen. I followed you, and Bick stayed behind to tell Maya where we were going."

  "Oh, thank you, thank you!" Thorn cried. Now the tears that had refused to come before were running down her face. "But you gave up thirty-two years for a stupid reason."

  "It wasn't stupid for us," Clarity said. "You were the stupid one."

  "I know," Thorn said miserably.

  Clarity was looking at her with an expression of understanding. "Thorn, most people your age are allowed some mistakes. But you're performing life without a net. You have to consider Maya. Somehow, you've gotten older than she is even though you've been traveling together. You're the steady one, the rock she leans on. These boyfriends, they're just entertainment for her. They drop her and she bounces back. But if you dropped her, her whole world would dissolve."

  Thorn said, "That's not true."

  "It is true," Clarity said.

  Thorn pressed her lips together, feeling impossibly burdened. Why did she have to be the reliable one, the one who was never vulnerable or wounded? Why did Maya get to be the dependent one?

  On the other hand, it was a comfort that she hadn't abandoned Maya as she had done to the ice owl. Maya was not a perfect mother, but neither was Thorn a perfect daughter. They were both just doing their best.

  "I hate this," she said, but without conviction. "Why do I have to be responsible for her?"

  "That's what love is all about," Clarity said.

  "You're a busybody, Clarity," Thorn said.

  Clarity squeezed her hand. "Yes. Aren't you lucky?"

  The door clicked open again. Beyond the female guard's square shoulder, Thorn glimpsed a flash of honey-gold hair. "Maya!" she said.

  When she saw Thorn, Maya's whole being seemed to blaze like the sun. Dodging in, she threw her arms around Thorn.

  "Oh Thorn, thank heaven I found you! I was worried sick. I thought you were lost."

  "It's okay, it's okay," Thorn kept saying as Maya wept and hugged her again. "But Maya, you have to tell me something."

  "Anything. What?"

  "Did you seduce a Vind ?"

  For a moment Maya didn't understand. Then a secretive smile grew on her face, making her look very pretty and pleased with herself. She touched Thorn's hair. "I've been meaning to tell you about that."

  "Later," Bick said. "Right now, we all have tickets for Alananovis."

  "That's wonderful," Maya said. "Where's Alananovis?"

  "Only seven years away from here."

  "Fine. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters as long as we're together."

  She held out her finger for the secret finger-lock. Thorn did it with a little inward sigh. For a moment she felt as if her whole world were composed of vulnerable beings frozen in time, as if she were the only one who aged and changed.

  "We're a team, right?" Maya said anxiously.

  "Yeah," Thorn answered. "We're a team."

  * * *

  Under Glass

  By Tim Sullivan | 8161 words

 
; Tim Sullivan began publishing fiction in the late 1970s and over the course of his career he has published seven novels and thirty-odd stories, edited two anthologies, directed two movies, written six films, and acted in more than a dozen. (If you're looking him up, you can distinguish him from the other moviemakers of the same name by the fact that he went to high school in Bangor, Maine.) His recent contributions to F&SF, including "Planetismal Dawn" and "Inside Time," have been science fiction stories with some far-out elements. Now he shifts gears and gives us a down-to-earth fantasy.

  AFTER I PLACED BOB KROVANTZ'S soul in the attic, I called Rosa Halloran to give her the bad news.

  "Oh, no!" Rosa cried when I told her Bob was dead. There had been a time when they'd been a couple. "Not Bob!"

  "I'm afraid so, Rosa." I let her sob for a little while. She had lost her husband Ted to pancreatic cancer just a few months earlier, so this was doubly hard for her. What could I say?

  After she got it together, she asked, "How did it happen?"

  "The doctors think psittacosis brought it on."

  "Psittacosis? What's that?"

  "It's an infection people get from bird droppings." I didn't have to tell her that Bob had taken at least fifty birds into his home in recent years; Rosa stayed abreast of what was happening with old friends, even if they didn't see each other, email, or talk on the phone. "It led to bronchitis and morphed into pneumonia and who knows what else." I spared her the fact that his extremities and neck were grotesquely swollen. "In the end it was respiratory heart failure."

  "Oh, poor Bob," she said, remembering how it was between them. They'd had fun for a while, but Bob was simply too set in his ways to form a lasting relationship with another human being. That's why she'd ended up with Ted.

  Rosa sniffled and I did my best to cheer her up. We spoke for a few more minutes, talking about old times, and then said good-bye. After we hung up, I sat for a while in Bob's filthy living room, listening to his birds tweet and squawk. I supposed they wanted to be fed. It was the least I could do, since they were all the family he had.

  I looked around for the birdseed and changed the water in the open cages. The birds fluttered, shrieked, and spoke random words, while I brooded. There was a lot I didn't know. I had been surprised that the hospital called me the previous week. Bob had asked them to contact me if his illness became grave. No family members were informed because there weren't any.

  By the time I got to the ICU he was still conscious, but that was rarely true in the awful days that followed. I looked in on him as often as I could. There was no one else. One morning he did not regain consciousness and he had trouble breathing. A day after that he went into a coma, the swelling so bad the doctors had to perform a tracheotomy so he could breathe. His heart gave out while he was under the knife. The birds he loved so much had killed him.

  Bob left provisions in his will naming me as the executor of his estate and giving me a specific duty to attend to on the day he died. I honored his instructions to close a Mason jar in the presence of his corpse within two minutes of his death. It had all been arranged with the hospital staff by Bob's attorney. I was amazed that Bob had been able to talk them into it.

  I was left alone with his remains. I took the jar out of my bag and opened it immediately. I waited about thirty seconds and clamped the lid back on, took a last sad look at my friend's bloated corpse, and left with the jar.

  On my way to Bob's house I was thinking of how he never forgot a birthday, and how he sometimes sent gifts for no particular reason other than knowing his friends would enjoy them. It was always something delightful: an out-of-print book you'd wanted to read, a favorite movie you hadn't been able to find, a fifty-year-old science fiction magazine in mint condition. He was a generous man who asked for nothing in return, but he had a way of getting what he wanted when it came to his obsessions. Bob collected rare books, sf magazines, posters, obscure recordings, rare films on 16mm, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, and abandoned birds.

  It's all fairly common stock for collectors, except for his birds and the last collection he started. When he first told me about it I was sure he'd finally gone round the bend...not that he hadn't always been highly eccentric. Maybe the word is "disturbed."

  I hasten to add that Bob was never nasty or violent. There was nothing mean about him. He was quiet most of the time, gentle but intense. He could be very funny when he wanted to be, sometimes at the expense of friends who he felt had betrayed him.

  Nothing was beneath him as far as humor goes. Little was above him, either. Fart jokes or jokes about Kant and Pascal were all the same to Bob Krovantz. He had a knack for comic timing, delivering the punch line in his deep voice to devastating effect. If he hadn't been too shy to perform in public, Bob could have done stand-up. He was a brilliant man who never understood how extraordinary he was. Bob was highly self-conscious. His lack of formal education coupled with his pack-rat instincts barely hinted at his personality disorder.

  He let it slip once or twice that his father had been a cruel, tyrannical man, physically abusive and unfaithful to Bob's mother. The only thing the old man had done for his wife and son was paying off the mortgage shortly before dying of heart failure at the Santa Anita horse track.

  Bob's mother hung on for several years. When he had guests, she didn't come out of her bedroom. Reclusiveness ran in the family. Bob never moved out of the house he'd been raised in, so I suppose that in a sense both parents were with him to the end.

  His friends knew what a mess Bob's private life was, but the people with whom he worked never did. He passed from youth to middle age in an office job as a pleasant actuarial clerk for an insurance company, an enthusiastic collector in his free time. I visited him at his job once. Bob's workstation was just one cubicle among dozens. The boss's office door was a few steps away from his tidy desk. Occasionally, as the years passed and the insurance company expanded, he'd be moved to one of their other facilities, each time farther away from his home in El Monte. He didn't seem to mind, as long as he had a steady income.

  "I've got to have a regular paycheck," he'd say. "I can't risk not having the wherewithal to buy what my birds need every day."

  Hardly any of his friends had steady jobs. They were writers, actors, comedians, cartoonists, illustrators, musicians, and sculptors, barely surviving and having little in common other than Bob's friendship. Most of them owed him money at one time or another. Some paid him back and some didn't. Many of them stayed at his house when they had no place else to go, often for months at a time. Those who succeeded usually left him behind.

  His birds never left him, except when they died, which always broke his heart. He had a lot of them crowding his little ranch house, more than fifty when he died. An African Grey Parrot he called Dorian, two green Senegal parrots named Claudius and Messalina, multicolored parakeets, cockatoos, cockatiels, mynah birds, lovebirds, and a baker's dozen of finches. He doted on them. When fumes from a piece of melting plastic accidentally left on the kitchen range asphyxiated two of them, he never turned on a burner again, eating out or dining on cold food for the rest of his life.

  He tore up a few loaves of Wonder Bread and scattered it around his yard every day for the pigeons, sparrows, starlings, and ultimately the crows, the latter late to the feast but invariably driving the smaller birds away. The house and modest grounds were a cacophony of whistles, tweets, and caws in the daytime. Bird droppings were everywhere, inside and out. It was no wonder his final illness was initiated by psittacosis.

  Not that Bob had ever been a robust physical specimen. He was a couch potato who lived on fast food. He'd been in the hospital with heart problems twice before. He would never have believed that his beloved birds would inadvertently harm him, nor would he have changed his behavior if he had.

  As Bob became increasingly isolated, his collections grew. It got to the point where most of his friends didn't want to wade through the white splatters to watch some dreadful Ecuadoran comedy blurrily recorded
on DVD-R or admire his framed one-sheet poster of From Hell It Came, a hilariously dreadful fifties monster movie about a shambling tree stump, so most of them stayed away. Bob was hurt by their rejection and turned ever more to his obsessions. Despite the wretched condition of the house's interior, his collectible items were all neatly bagged in clear plastic, tagged, and catalogued.

  I'm not exactly sure when he began to assemble his final collection during the last few years of his sad life, but he first told me about it in a phone conversation four years ago, shortly after my wife left me. I hadn't been to see him in a while, but we still talked on the phone fairly regularly and exchanged emails.

  "I won a soul from a guy I'm in touch with in Istanbul," he said in his familiar basso profundo.

  "A what?"

  "A soul."

  "Soul music?" I said, trying to imagine how many more CDs he'd collected since I'd last been inside his house. "Percy Sledge...Solomon Burke...Big Mama Thornton?"

  "No, I've already got all their known recordings." He corrected me by adding: "Big Mama Thornton is an R&B singer."

  "Then what do you mean you won a soul?"

  "My bid won."

  "Yes, I got that part, but...soul?"

  "Do I have to spell it out for you?"

  "I guess so."

  "S-O-U-L," Bob said.

  I laughed, but I admitted, "I still don't get it."

  "There are people on the Internet who trade in souls."

  "You mean like a person's essence? That kind of soul?"

  "Yes."

  "Bob, that's ridiculous."

  "Is it?"

  "It's just some con."

  "I've already got three of them," he said without a trace of embarrassment.

  "Three souls?"