Asimov's Science Fiction 03/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  Tito liked that image too.

  When they were old enough and lovers, Adola warned him that there wouldn’t be any babies. He hadn’t thought about babies, but their absence bothered him and he asked why not.

  Adola explained human reproduction, in detail, without a trace of shame.

  He listened carefully, thinking about mothers and fathers.

  “Neither of us is fertile,” she said. “The master snips and cuts everyone who comes here.”

  In those days, the master was always reasonable and right.

  “The master can’t take care of babies,” she said.

  Babies did sound like troublesome creatures. But something in her words bothered him.

  She touched Tito. In those places where permission was necessary, she held him, and her musical voice said, “A real and true god can do anything. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice the master has many, many limitations.”

  Tito’s stomach ached, and he said nothing.

  “We have only so many habitats,” she pointed out. “Even the most common residents—the crested hawk-beasts—number no more than two hundred at a time. And they come from a world full of millions and millions.”

  “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “What are you telling me?”

  “I was dying in a ditch,” Adola said. “Shot twice and bleeding, and my leg and arm were broken. And do you know who was under me? My mother. My big brother was beside me. The men shot my brother just once, and he was breathing harder than I was. He still had a voice. We laid there for a long time, listening to each other, and the bad men were lined up nearby, shooting more people. People that we knew. And my mother moaned so sadly and said she was sorry this had to happen. She was moving under me, and she was very weak, and then she said, ‘Keep still, and when night comes, crawl away. Crawl for the bush and try to live.’

  “Then she died, and we laid there waiting.

  “Then after a long time, my brother said, ‘Oh, what is that thing?’ He coughed and then said, ‘Do you see it, Adola?’

  “It was a patch of light, I thought. A second sun was hanging in the sky straight above us. Hundreds of people were dead and dying beside the road, and evil men were laughing when they shot more of us, and I wanted to talk to my brother and tried but I didn’t have a voice, and then something touched me, touched my face and then reached through my skull, and the last words my brother said were, ‘It is the devil, Adola. Fight the devil.’”

  Then she stopped talking, crying for many reasons.

  After a while, Tito said, “The master took you but not your brother.”

  “Which saddens me,” she said. “And sometimes, makes me angry.”

  He held the girl and thought about his own past and how he came here, and eventually she stopped crying.

  “The master is small,” she repeated.

  “I wouldn’t feel it if it was in my hand,” he said.

  “And small in other ways,” she said. “There are only so many quarters here, and the master can make room only when someone dies or goes home again. Which means whenever one person is saved, a million more of us are left behind.”

  He took a breath and held it.

  “The master is empathy,” she said. “But it is toughness too. Can you imagine? You have the power to save the wounded, the crippled. But you must select. You must somehow ignore those who suffer, and what kind of mind can do that for eons?”

  “A great mind,” he said.

  And she waited for a moment. Then she said, “Great,” while pushing her mouth against his neck. “We’ll stop using that word when we talk about the master. All right, Tito?”

  Any lunch is possible, but he has to put his desires into words. In effect, he can order only what he remembers from his life before and what other people have shared with him. Tito pretends to think before telling the master, “Jollof rice, please.”

  Brenda makes a sound. “What’s wrong with ham and cheese?”

  “Jollof rice,” he repeats.

  “But it smells so bad, and it’s spicy,” she says.

  He nods as if agreeing with every complaint, but in another moment the aroma of pepper and rice fills the room. Smiling, he stands and walks confidently to the remembered table.

  This was Adola’s favorite meal.

  Brenda sits on the opposite side of the tiny table, bumping his leg as she sits. “Ham and cheese,” she says. “Yum.”

  Tito picks up his big spoon and fills it and eats happily.

  “I’d offer to share taste,” she says. “But I don’t eat crap.”

  He eats until thirsty and sets the spoon on his plate. Cool water waits in a tall glass. He drinks and listens. When Brenda reaches across the table, she grunts, just a little. Then she doesn’t say anything else, waiting.

  The spoon is missing. Tito knows it, but he reaches to where it was set before, letting his hand close on the air.

  She watches and waits.

  He puts his hand in his lap and says nothing.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” she teases.

  “I’m full,” he says.

  She laughs at him.

  After a moment, he asks, “What are your neighbors doing?”

  “I don’t know. Which neighbor?”

  “The deep-cat.”

  They are called deep-cats because they are considered highly intelligent, second only to the master. “Oh, he’s just sitting there, in his dump. Reading.”

  “You always call it a dump.”

  “Because they don’t pick up after themselves. They’re filthy creatures.”

  “Clutter makes them happy,” he says.

  “Who told you that?”

  Tito says nothing.

  “You’ve never talked to a deep-cat.”

  “Adola did,” he says.

  “She just pretended she did.” Brenda sighs, frustrated that her game hasn’t gone better. Leaning across the table, she sets the spoon back on his plate, not even trying to hide her motions.

  He leaves the spoon there. He was hungry when he said he was full, but now his stomach is tiny and tight.

  “Let’s not talk about that woman,” Brenda says.

  “Adola?”

  “Not even her name, please.” She shifts her weight and sighs again. “You don’t know this. How could you? But your little girlfriend was ugly. Not just plain, but homely.”

  “You’ve said that before,” he says.

  “Except you won’t believe me.”

  Tito says nothing, waiting.

  “And black,” Brenda says. “In my life, I’ve never seen a blacker, uglier creature.”

  He feels sick now, keeping his mouth closed.

  “Why do you keep bringing her up, Tito? She’s gone.”

  “I know she’s gone.”

  “You’re in my house,” Brenda says. “You should be polite to your hostess, whenever you get the chance.”

  “I should be,” he agrees.

  Brenda moves. She says, “He’s looking at us now.”

  “The deep-cat?”

  “A slob, but he is beautiful.”

  They were tall creatures with high, meat-fueled metabolisms. But despite being intelligent, their species had done considerable damage to their native world. The deep-cats brought here would die here. Even when the master nursed them back to perfect health, there was no place for them in their original home.

  Brenda laughs. “I just flashed my tits at him,” she says.

  Tito picks up the spoon, as if ready to eat again.

  “I don’t think he likes that, seeing all this good flesh and no way to get over here and chew. You know?”

  “Probably not,” he says.

  “Are you crying?” she asks.

  “A little,” he says. “It’s the pepper, I think.”

  Tito remembers when he had eyes, and the eyes knew a house and yard and trees growing beneath a sky that changed from black to blue and then turned black again. With little prompting, he can
see the woman standing beside him—a towering lady with black hair and a strange painful smile. She held his hand, the hand that was going to be lost. When she spoke, she used a firm voice that commanded attention. She wasn’t his mother, but she insisted that he called her “Mama.” His mother and father had gone somewhere. Where they went was an important secret, and if he asked about them he would be paddled, or maybe some worse punishment would be delivered.

  The two of them were standing on the busy corner outside their rundown little house. “You are such a good boy,” the woman told him. She always said that, even when she was in a bad mood. It was important to be a good boy. That was the message that began every day. Then her strange smile widened, and she let go of the hand and patted him on the head. “No, I won’t leave you. I can’t ever leave you. This is a promise, and I never break my promises.”

  Why was she saying this? The little boy must have said something before, some question that prompted her reaction. But the grown, maimed man cannot remember those words.

  The woman kneeled, despite a bad knee that made her wince. “Trust me. You must trust me.”

  “I do,” said a tiny high voice.

  “How old are you?”

  The voice said, “Six.”

  “A perfect age,” she said.

  Six was six, and nothing about any age was perfect.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked.

  He can’t recall crying now. But she touched his cheek and pulled back dampened fingertips.

  “I do love you,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “More than anything,” she said.

  He kept nodding.

  Looking out into the street, she said, “When I was young.” Then a car went past, and she took a long breath before talking again. “I wasn’t much older than you. And my father, who was always a good man . . . a wonderful man . . . my father got involved with some awful things. Drugs. Powerful, wicked drugs that made him crazy. He was so angry and crazy, and I won’t tell you, not ever, what he did. Or what my mother did to protect me. But living through those days . . . surviving the nights . . . that’s why I’m strong today.” Her hands were shaking, and she was crying. “Stronger than anybody else.”

  He followed her eyes, gazing out into the street. Then came the rough sound of a motor, and he turned and looked. A yellow box on wheels was rolling toward them.

  The woman stood, wincing because of her knee. “That’s not our bus. We want the city bus.”

  The city bus was bigger and nicer looking.

  “Hold my hand,” she said.

  The yellow bus slowed and stopped, and a big door opened. Sitting in front was a gray-haired woman, fat and smiling. “I wasn’t told,” she called out. “First day of school, is it?”

  When she wanted, the black-haired woman had a big smile. “No, the boy’s being home schooled. We’re waiting for the downtown line.”

  “Oh,” said the driver, surprised.

  “We’re on a field trip. To the museum.”

  The boy wondered what a museum was, but he knew better than to ask.

  Pressed at the bus windows were faces. Everybody but the driver was little, like him. Most of them were smiling, watching the strange boy and this tall odd woman standing at the corner. Taped to one window was a sign, one word written in capital letters.

  “Well, he’s a fine looking boy,” the driver said. Then she winked at him and closed the door, and with a lurch and rattle the yellow bus drove away.

  “What’s that word?” he asked.

  “In the window?”

  “Yes.”

  “Purple.”

  “But it’s a yellow bus.”

  She laughed and said, “It’s probably the purple line.” Then she held his hand tighter, just short of where it would hurt.

  “Mama?” he said.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. So much.”

  He leaned into the tall woman, and she stopped squeezing his hand.

  “I am strong,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Strong,” she repeated. Then once again, just to be certain, “Strong.”

  Adola never kept secrets from Tito. Day by day, she was growing stronger and learning a little more of what she needed to know to live on the Earth again. She described her exercises, and she tried to explain what she was reading and writing. Smart adult humans were expected to read all day long, and they had to watch important television programs, and everyone was expected to absorb facts about famous people and pretty faces and big events that happened before anybody here was born. “Culture,” Adola said. “For people, culture is more important than clothes. Clothes are just a little part of your culture. Though you can’t blend in without knowing what to wear and when and why.”

  Tito had no idea what to wear. And he could never be strong.

  Maybe half of the humans here would leave eventually. But they had to want to leave and work hard enough to learn how to blend in. The Earth would always be cruel, and odd people were most at risk. The master had sent home people that should have stayed here. The master mentioned this whenever telling Tito that he was lucky. “You will be cared for and happy until you die without pain. I will protect you. With every power at my disposal, I will keep you safe.”

  Being safe was good.

  Thanking the master was polite and reasonable, and he was glad for every good thing that he enjoyed.

  And Adola never lied. But then again, quite a lot went unmentioned.

  In their earliest days, she liked to boast about her appetite, proving that her wounded stomach had healed. She was working hard with the weights and her dancing, and she was learning so much through books. There was no reliable school where she lived as a little girl, but once she had the chance, she was an excellent student. Tito brought his books with their bumpy words, and he brought books that spoke to him, strange voices reciting stories about invented people. But what he loved best was to hear this girl reading from her textbooks, even when the subjects made little sense. A train went at this speed and this much time passed and how far did it go, and the Queen of England was who, and who won the World Cup in 1999, and what did it mean when the temperature reached zero?

  He didn’t need to know any of this. He was never returning to the Earth. And maybe Adola wouldn’t leave either. That was one fine hope that he kept secret from everyone, including himself.

  They grew older, and one day she stopped boasting about her brain and the latest lessons. The only thing she said was that every lesson was harder now, and she didn’t know if she was smart enough and determined enough to succeed.

  Believing her was easy, and Tito tried not to lie. But he wanted to tell her how much he wanted her to stay. Their days together meant everything. People weren’t supposed to have favorites, but they were important to each other. He always imagined Adola when he was with other lovers. It didn’t matter if they were apart. In his mind, he could talk to Adola, and she talked to the Tito in her mind. Sometimes he woke when he should be sleeping, like when he was a child. He would make no sound, listening to the silence in the compound, thinking about a life he didn’t want, which meant that there was no Adola.

  One day, she was quiet. She was happy to see him, but the endless talk vanished into nervous silence. He asked why. Five times, he pushed for some reason. At last she admitted that the master was making final preparations for her trip back to the Earth. It sounded as if this was the master’s fault, and she was powerless. She explained how the Earth was full of people, and almost everybody there had friends and family. It was difficult to set one lost person into that chaos and have her blend in. Nothing about the master’s tasks was easy, but this was especially hard.

  “I am going to live in a big city,” Adola said. “Big cities are better. A strange person can hide in plain view.”

  “You aren’t strange,” he said.

  “But we all are,” she said.
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  He sat still, listening to his own racing thoughts.

  “I’m going to be an accountant,” she said. “I’ll have my own name and a life story that everyone will believe, and there will be an apartment where the mail will come to me. Where I’ll sit and watch television and read books that I have never read, and I don’t know what else I’ll do.”

  “What is an accountant?” he asked.

  “People who work with numbers. With other people’s money.” She made a soft, frustrated sound—unusual for her. “I told you this before. My job is very important.”

  “You didn’t,” he said.

  “But I did.” She paused, thinking back. Then she said, “I thought I did. Are you sure you were listening?”

  “I always pay attention to you, Adola.”

  She didn’t speak for a time.

  “When will you leave?” he asked.

  “Very soon.”

  He imagined that she was going tomorrow and they wouldn’t touch again. Reaching for her voice, she caught his hand with both of hers and held it and bent close to say, “Twenty days from now.”

  He swallowed. Then he said, “And I’ll follow you.”

  She didn’t talk, surprised to hear that.

  And he was startled too. But he had said the words, and he felt as if he had never believed anything more surely than this. “I’ll learn what I have to learn, and the master will build a life for me too.”

  “Tito,” she said, interrupting him.

  But he couldn’t stop talking about his sudden, impossible plans.

  Then she set a warm hand on his mouth and kissed the back of her hand, and she kissed his scarred nose and the holes where eyes should be. She never told him that any of this was impossible, and she didn’t encourage him. “Quiet please,” she said once and then again. “Quiet please.” Then Adola told him, “This is too hard to bear as it is, Tito.”

  Her hand dropped away, and he said, “Or you could.”

  “Could what?”

  “Tell the master, ‘No thank you,’ and stay here. With your friends and the deep-cats. And with me.”