Asimov's SF, February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And what if the gun could protect itself ? Over the years, Jack had read every ray-gun story he could find. In some stories, such weapons had built-in computers. They had enough artificial intelligence to assess their situations. If they didn't like what was happening, they took action. What if Jack's gun was similar? What if attempts to destroy the weapon induced it to fight back? What if the ray-gun got mad?

  Jack decided the only safe plan was to drop the gun into an ocean—the deeper the better. Even then, Jack feared the gun would somehow make its way back to shore. He hoped that the weapon would take years or even centuries to return, by which time humanity might be scientifically equipped to deal with the ray-gun's power.

  Jack's plan had one weakness: both the university and Jack's home town were far from the sea. Jack didn't know anyone with an ocean-going boat suitable for dumping objects into deep water. He'd just have to drive to the coast and see if he could rent something.

  But not until summer. Jack was in the final stages of his Ph.D. and didn't have time to leave the university for an extended trip. As a temporary measure, Jack moved the ray-gun back to the pond. He buried the weapon several feet underground, hoping that would keep it safe from animals and anyone else who happened by.

  (Jack imagined a new generation of lovesick teenagers discovering the pond. If that happened, he wanted them safe. Like a real hero, Jack cared about people he didn't know.)

  * * * *

  Jack no longer practiced with the gun, but he maintained his physical regimen. He tried to exhaust himself so he wouldn't have the energy to brood. It didn't work. Lying sleepless in bed, he kept wondering what would have happened if he'd told Deana the truth. She wouldn't have killed herself if she'd been warned to be cautious. But Jack had cared more about his precious secret than Deana's life.

  In the dark, Jack muttered, “It was her own damned fault.” His words were true, but not true enough.

  When Jack wasn't at the gym, he cloistered himself with schoolwork and research. (His doctoral thesis was about common properties of different types of high-energy beams.) Jack didn't socialize. He seldom phoned home. He took days to answer email messages from his sister. Even so, he told himself he was doing an excellent job of acting “normal."

  Jack had underestimated his sister's perceptiveness. One weekend, Rachel showed up on his doorstep to see why he'd “gone weird.” She spent two days digging under his skin. By the end of the weekend, she could tell that Deana's disappearance had disturbed Jack profoundly. Rachel couldn't guess the full truth, but as a big sister, she felt entitled to meddle in Jack's life. She resolved to snap her brother out of his low spirits.

  The next weekend Rachel showed up on Jack's doorstep again. This time, she brought Kirsten.

  Nine years had passed since Kirsten and Jack had seen each other: the day they both graduated from high school. In the intervening time, when Jack had thought of Kirsten, he always pictured her as a high-school girl. It was strange to see her as a woman. At twenty-seven, she was not greatly changed from eighteen—new glasses and a better haircut—but despite similarities to her teenage self, Kirsten wore her life differently. She'd grown up.

  So had Jack. Meeting Kirsten by surprise made Jack feel ambushed, but he soon got over it. Rachel helped by talking loud and fast through the initial awkwardness. She took Jack and Kirsten for coffee, and acted as emcee as they got reacquainted.

  Kirsten had followed a path close to Jack's: university and graduate work. She told him, “No one makes a living as a poet. Most of us find jobs as English professors—teaching poetry to others who won't make a living at it either."

  Kirsten had earned her doctorate a month earlier. Now she was living back home. She currently had no man in her life—her last relationship had fizzled out months ago, and she'd decided to avoid new involvements until she knew where she would end up teaching. She'd sent her résumé to English departments all over the continent and was optimistic about her chances of success; to Jack's surprise, Kirsten had published dozens of poems in literary magazines. She'd even sold two to The New Yorker. Her publishing record would be enough to interest many English departments.

  After coffee, Rachel dragged Jack to a mall where she and Kirsten made him buy new clothes. Rachel bullied Jack while Kirsten made apologetic suggestions. Jack did his best to be a good sport; as they left the mall, Jack was surprised to find that he'd actually had a good time.

  That evening, there was wine and more conversation. Rachel took Jack's bed, leaving him and Kirsten to make whatever arrangements they chose. The two of them joked about Rachel trying to pair them up again. Eventually Kirsten took the couch in the living room while Jack crawled into a sleeping bag on the kitchen floor ... but that was only after talking till three in the morning.

  Rachel and Kirsten left the next afternoon, but Jack felt cleansed by their visit. He stayed in touch with Kirsten by email. It was casual: not romance, but a knowing friendship.

  In the next few months, Kirsten got job interviews with several colleges and universities. She accepted a position on the Oregon coast. She sent Jack pictures of the school. It was directly on the ocean; it even had a beach. Kirsten said she'd always liked the water. She teasingly reminded him of their times at the pond.

  But when Jack saw Kirsten's pictures of the Pacific, all he could think of was dumping the ray-gun into the sea. He could drive out to visit her ... rent a boat ... sail out to deep water...

  No. Jack knew nothing about sailing, and he didn't have enough money to rent a boat that could venture far offshore. “How many years have I been preparing?” he asked himself. “Didn't I intend to be ready for any emergency? Now I have an honest-to-god mission, and I'm useless."

  Then Kirsten sent him an emailed invitation to go sailing with her.

  She had access to a sea-going yacht. It belonged to her grandparents—the ones she'd visited on Vancouver Island just before she and Jack broke up. During her trip to the island, Kirsten had gone boating with her grandparents every day. At the start, she'd done it to take her mind off Jack; then she'd discovered she enjoyed being out on the waves.

  She'd spent time with her grandparents every summer since, learning the ins and outs of yachting. She'd taken courses. She'd earned the necessary licenses. Now Kirsten was fully qualified for deep-water excursions ... and as a gift to wish her well on her new job, Kirsten's grandparents were lending her their boat for a month. They intended to sail down to Oregon, spend a few days there, then fly off to tour Australia. When they were done, they'd return and sail back home; but in the meantime, Kirsten would have the use of their yacht. She asked Jack if he'd like to be her crew.

  When Jack got this invitation, he couldn't help being disturbed. Kirsten had never mentioned boating before. Because she was living in their hometown, most of her email to Jack had been about old high-school friends. Jack had even started to picture her as a teenager again; he'd spent a weekend with the grown-up Kirsten, but all her talk of high-school people and places had muddled Jack's mental image of her. The thought of a bookish teenage girl captaining a yacht was absurd.

  But that was a lesser problem compared to the suspicious convenience of her invitation. Jack needed a boat; all of a sudden, Kirsten had one. The coincidence was almost impossible to swallow.

  He thought of the unknown aliens who made the ray-gun. Could they be influencing events? If the ray-gun was intelligent, could it be responsible for the coincidence?

  Kirsten had often spent time near the gun. On their first visit to the pond, she and Jack had lain half-naked with the gun in Jack's backpack beside them.

  He thought of Kirsten that day. So open. So vulnerable. The gun had been within inches. Had it nurtured Kirsten's interest in yachting ... her decision to get a job in Oregon ... even her grandparents’ offer of their boat? Had it molded Kirsten's life so she was ready when Jack needed her? And if the gun could do that, what had it done to Jack himself ?

  This is ridiculous, Jack thought. The gun
is just a gun. It doesn't control people. It just kills them.

  Yet Jack couldn't shake off his sense of eeriness—about Kirsten as well as the ray-gun. All these years, while Jack had been preparing himself to be a hero, Kirsten had somehow done the same. Her self-improvement program had worked better than Jack's. She had a boat; he didn't.

  Coincidence or not, Jack couldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. He told Kirsten he'd be delighted to go sailing with her. Only later did he realize that their time on the yacht would have a sexual subtext. He broke out laughing. “I'm such an idiot. We've done it again.” Like that day at the pond, Jack had only been thinking about the gun. Kirsten had been thinking about Jack. Her invitation wasn't a carte-blanche come-on but it had a strong hint of, “Let's get together and see what develops."

  Where Kirsten was concerned, Jack had always been slow to catch the signals. He thought, Obviously, the ray-gun keeps dulling my senses. This time, Jack meant it as a joke.

  * * * *

  Summer came. Jack drove west with the ray-gun in the trunk of his car. The gun's safety was on, but Jack still drove as if he were carrying nuclear waste. He'd taken the gun back and forth between his hometown and university many times, but this trip was longer, on unfamiliar roads. It was also the last trip Jack ever intended to make with the gun; if the gun didn't want to be thrown into the sea, perhaps it would cause trouble. But it didn't.

  For much of the drive, Jack debated how to tell Kirsten about the gun. He'd considered smuggling it onto the boat and throwing the weapon overboard when she wasn't looking, but Jack felt that he owed her the truth. It was overdue. Besides, this cruise could be the beginning of a new relationship. Jack didn't want to start by sneaking behind Kirsten's back.

  So he had to reveal his deepest secret. Every other secret would follow: what happened to Deana; what had really been on Jack's mind that day at the pond; what made First Love go sour. Jack would expose his guilt to the woman who'd suffered from the fallout.

  He thought, She'll probably throw me overboard with the gun. But he would open up anyway, even if it made Kirsten hate him. When he tossed the ray-gun into the sea, he wanted to unburden himself of everything.

  * * * *

  The first day on the boat, Jack said nothing about the ray-gun. Instead, he talked compulsively about trivia. So did Kirsten. It was strange being together, looking so much the way they did in high school but being entirely different people.

  Fortunately, they had practical matters to fill their time. Jack needed a crash course in seamanship. He learned quickly. Kirsten was a good teacher. Besides, Jack's longstanding program of hero-dom had prepared his mind and muscles. Kirsten was impressed that he knew Morse code and had extensive knowledge of knots. She asked, “Were you a Boy Scout?"

  “No. When I was a kid, I wanted to be able to untie myself if I ever got captured by spies."

  Kirsten laughed. She thought he was joking.

  That first day, they stayed close to shore. They never had to deal with being alone; there were always other yachts in sight, and sailboats, and people on shore. When night came, they put in to harbor. They ate in an ocean-view restaurant. Jack asked, “So where will we go tomorrow?"

  “Where would you like? Up the coast, down the coast, or straight out to sea?"

  “Why not straight out?” said Jack.

  Back on the yacht, he and Kirsten talked long past midnight. There was only one cabin, but two separate fold-away beds. Without discussion, they each chose a bed. Both usually slept in the nude, but for this trip they'd both brought makeshift “pajamas” consisting of a T-shirt and track pants. They laughed at the clothes, the coincidence, and themselves.

  They didn't kiss good night. Jack silently wished they had. He hoped Kirsten was wishing the same thing. They talked for an hour after they'd turned out the lights, becoming nothing but voices in the dark.

  * * * *

  The next day they sailed due west. Both waited to see if the other would suggest turning back before dark. Neither did. The farther they got from shore, the fewer other boats remained in sight. By sunset, Jack and Kirsten knew they were once more alone with each other. No one in the world would stop them from whatever they chose to do.

  Jack asked Kirsten to stay on deck. He went below and got the ray-gun from his luggage. He brought it up into the twilight. Before he could speak, Kirsten said, “I've seen that before."

  Jack stared at her in shock. “What? Where?"

  “I saw it years ago, in the woods back home. I was out for a walk. I noticed it lying in a little crater, as if it had fallen from the sky."

  “Really? You found it too?"

  “But I didn't touch it,” Kirsten said. “I don't know why. Then I heard someone coming and I ran away. But the memory stayed vivid in my head. A mysterious object in a crater in the woods. I can't tell you how often I've tried to write poems about it, but they never work out.” She looked at the gun in Jack's hands. “What is it?"

  “A ray-gun,” he said. In the fading light, he could see a clump of seaweed floating a short distance from the boat. He raised the gun and fired. The seaweed exploded in a blaze of fire, burning brightly against the dark waves.

  “A ray-gun,” said Kirsten. “Can I try it?"

  * * * *

  Some time later, holding hands, they let the gun fall into the water. It sank without protest.

  Long after that, they talked in each other's arms. Jack said the gun had made him who he was. Kirsten said she was the same. “Until I saw the gun, I just wrote poems about myself—overwritten self-absorbed pap, like every teenage girl. But the gun gave me something else to write about. I'd only seen it for a minute, but it was one of those burned-into-your-memory moments. I felt driven to find words to express what I'd seen. I kept refining my poems, trying to make them better. That's what made the difference."

  “I felt driven too,” Jack said. “Sometimes I've wondered if the gun can affect human minds. Maybe it brainwashed us into becoming who we are."

  “Or maybe it's just Stone Soup,” Kirsten said. “You know the story? Someone claims he can make soup from a stone, but what he really does is trick people into adding their own food to the pot. Maybe the ray-gun is like that. It did nothing but sit there like a stone. You and I did everything—made ourselves who we are—and the ray-gun is only an excuse."

  “Maybe,” Jack said. “But so many coincidences brought us here...."

  “You think the gun manipulated us because it wanted to be thrown into the Pacific? Why?"

  “Maybe even a ray-gun gets tired of killing.” Jack shivered, thinking of Deana. “Maybe the gun feels guilty for the deaths it's caused; it wanted to go someplace where it would never have to kill again."

  “Deana's death wasn't your fault,” Kirsten said. “Really, Jack. It was awful, but it wasn't your fault.” She shivered too, then made her voice brighter. “Maybe the ray-gun orchestrated all this because it's an incurable romantic. It wanted to bring us together: our own personal matchmaker from the stars."

  Jack kissed Kirsten on the nose. “If that's true, I don't object."

  “Neither do I.” She kissed him back.

  Not on the nose.

  * * * *

  Far below, the ray-gun drifted through the cold black depths. Beneath it, on the bottom of the sea, lay wreckage from the starship that had exploded centuries before. The wreckage had traveled all the way from Jupiter. Because of tiny differences in trajectory, the wreckage had splashed down thousands of miles from where the ray-gun landed.

  The ray-gun sank straight toward the wreckage ... but what the wreckage held or why the ray-gun wanted to rejoin it, we will never know.

  We will never comprehend aliens. If someone spent a month explaining alien thoughts to us, we'd think we understood.

  But we wouldn't.

  Copyright (c) 2007 by James Alan Gardner

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  * * *

  Poetry: THE MIRROR SPEAKS

&nb
sp; by Jessy Randall

  Nothing but egomaniacs

  always bothering me.

  Ask someone else, I'd like to say.

  For heaven's sake, ask your husband.

  Ask a glossy magazine.

  —

  Every now and then

  I give a surprise answer,

  shake things up a bit.

  What harm could it do?

  —Jessy Randal

  Copyright (c) 2007 by Jesse Randal

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: THE EGG MAN

  by Mary Rosenblum

  Mary Rosenblum's first professional publication, “For a Price” (Asimov's, June 1990), was a story she'd written for the 1988 Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Mary will complete a professional circle when she takes on the role of instructor at this year's workshop. Since her first publication, she has written eight novels and sold more than sixty short stories to SF, mystery, and mainstream markets. The paperback edition of her newest novel, Horizons, was released by Tor Books in November 2007. Water Rites, a compendium of the novel Drylands and three prequel novelettes that first appeared in Asimov's, came out from Fairwood Press in January 2007. Although the action in her latest story takes place hundreds of miles south of her earlier works, the people are equally brave, and the land as hard and unforgiving in...

  Zipakna halted at midday to let the Dragon power up the batteries. He checked on the chickens clucking contentedly in their travel crates, then went outside to squat in the shade of one fully deployed solar wing in the 43 centigrade heat. Ilena, his sometimes-lover and poker partner, accused him of reverse snobbery, priding himself on being able to survive in the Sonoran heat without air conditioning. Zipakna smiled and tilted his water bottle, savoring the cool, sweet trickle of water across his tongue.

  Not true, of course. He held still as the first wild bees found him, buzzed past his face to settle and sip from the sweat-drops beading on his skin. Killers. He held very still, but the caution wasn't really necessary. Thirst was the great gentler here. Every other drive was laid aside in the pursuit of water.