And Silver thinks: There are vast stretches of beach white with coral and shell fragments that would unnerve me if not set off against the blue sea and sky. It is only the unrelieved whiteness of the saltlands, stretching to the horizon where the sea has evaporated, that disturbs my sleep.
And Silver thinks of his great-great-grandfather, whose unpublished memoirs tell how, still in his teens, he escaped from Nazi Germany on foot during the late 1930s. (The rest of his family remained behind and were wiped out.) He walked the whole way to Marseille, where he booked passage or hired on as a deck hand (this much is rather unclear) to the United States. He was a great music lover, not a bad cellist in later life, and claims to have kept himself sane during his trek by playing out favorite Mozart and Brahms pieces in his head. He never whistled or hummed, he simply made the music happen in his head. Writing as an old man, he summed up his experience in this way: “Anywhere we find ourselves, we upright apes cannot do without beauty, even if we must carry it around inside our big ape heads.” Throughout his journey across Europe, he had especially cherished the wrenching middle movements of Bach's Concerto in A Minor and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21.
And Silver thinks, in the moment just before he happily yields to sleep: I like those, too.
Copyright (c) 2008 Steven Utley
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* * *
Novelette: MIDNIGHT BLUE
by Will McIntosh
This is Will McIntosh's second story for Asimov's. He has an upcoming tale in Science Fiction: Best of the Year 2008, and has also published in Interzone, Postscripts, Strange Horizons, Chizine, and other venues. By day, Will is a psychology professor in the Southeast. We're delighted that by night, he has writen a charming tale about childhood in an alternate suburban neighborhood where life is forever changed by the discovery of...
He'd never seen a burgundy before. Kim held it in her lap, tapped it with her finger. She was probably tapping it to bring attention to it, and Jeff didn't want to give her the satisfaction of asking to see it, but he really wanted to see it. Burgundy (Kim had insisted on calling it burgundy red when she showed it at show and tell) was a rare one. Not as rare as a hot pink Flyer or a viridian Better Looking, but still rare.
A bus roared up, spitting black smoke. It was the seven bus—the Linden Court bus, not his. Kids rushed to line up in front of the big yellow doors as the bus hissed to a stop. A second-grader squealed, shoved a bigger kid with her Partridge Family lunch box because he'd stepped on her foot. All the younger kids seemed to have Partridge Family lunch boxes this year.
“What did you say it did when you've got all three pieces of the charm together?” Jeff asked Kim. He said it casually, like he was just making conversation until his bus came.
“It relaxes time,” Kim said. “When you're bored you can make time pass quickly, and when you're having fun you can make time stretch out.”
Jeff nodded, tried to look just interested enough to be polite, but no more. What must that be like, to make the hour at church fly by? Or make the school day (except for lunch and recess) pass in an eyeblink? Jeff wondered how fast or slow you could move things along. Could you make it seem like you were eating an ice cream sandwich for six hours? That would be sparkling fine.
“Want to see it?” Kim asked.
“Okay,” Jeff said, holding out his hands too eagerly before he remembered himself. Kim handed it to him, looking pleased with herself, the dimples on her round face getting a little deeper.
It was smooth as marble, perfectly round, big as a grapefruit and heavy as a bowling ball. It made Jeff's heart hammer to hold it. The rich red, which hinted at purple while still being certainly red, was so beautiful it seemed impossible, so vivid it made his blue shirt seem like a Polaroid photo left in the sun too long.
“Imagine finding this in the wild? Pushing over a dead tree and seeing it sitting there under the root?” Jeff said.
“Yeah, right,” Kim said. “Not likely.” She shook her long brown hair back over her shoulder. She did that all day long in class. She thought she was so gorgeous.
A few of the other kids circled around to take a look. Jeff spun it around until he found the hole where it would be fitted to one side of the staff, when someone got the whole charm together.
“Will your father try to get the other two pieces, do you think?” Ricky Adamo asked, reaching to pet it once, probably just so he could say he'd touched one.
“He's only keeping this as an investment,” Kim said, holding out her hands to take it back from Jeff, who passed it over, his fingers suddenly feeling much too light. “My father's going to buy me a whole chartreuse to absorb when I'm 18. I'm going to be a doctor.”
“He is not,” Jeff said. “Most of the chartreuse ones that've been found have already been absorbed. The ones that haven't, your father would have to give your whole house and everything in it just to get one sphere.”
“What would you know about it?” Kim said, glaring. “You don't even know what it feels like to absorb one! You've probably never even owned a sphere, let alone absorbed a whole charm.”
Cindy Schneider and Donna Ruiz laughed. Ricky laughed too, even though he'd never owned one either.
“I have too owned a sphere,” Jeff said. “I've owned dozens.”
“Right,” Cindy said. “You must keep them under your bed at the Garden Apartments.” Everybody laughed, except Ricky, who lived at the Garden Apartments too and couldn't pretend he didn't.
Kim took a pack of Double Bubble out of her bag. She shoved a piece into her mouth dramatically, and chewed. “Mmmm! It's so delicious!” she said. She showed Jeff her teeth and chewed some more. “I'd offer you some, but it would just be wasting it. You couldn't appreciate it the way I do, because you haven't absorbed a sky blue charm.”
“Watch this!” Cindy said. She ran onto the lawn in front of the school and spread her arms. Birds landed on them—wrens, bluebirds, blackbirds, finches. “Now just the yellow ones,” she said. All but the yellow finches flew off. Four or five more finches landed. One landed on top of her head. “The pretty yellow birds love me.” She spun in a circle, her long blonde hair spraying outward. The birds held on, trilling brightly.
“Big whoop,” Jeff said, turning back toward the parking lot. Of all the charms that kids at school had, he most wished he had a maroon animal charm. He loved animals, way more than Cindy did. Just the other night he'd had a dream about it. He dreamt he found all three pieces of an animal charm, in the walls of the old car wash on Samsondale Road. He assembled it, grabbed hold of it, felt the charm go into him, and then he'd gone into the woods and called out, and a bobcat had come to him. The bobcat became his pet and went with him wherever he went. He took it to school, and it slept on the floor next to his desk, and all the other kids watched as he leaned over and rubbed its ears.
When he woke up and realized it was just a dream, an awful wave of disappointment had washed over him. Jeff laid in bed for two hours wishing it hadn't been a dream, until the sun came up and he had to get up for school.
The Dellwood bus came. Kim climbed on holding her sphere, with Cindy and Donna right behind, all of them laughing and jabbering. Jeff sat on the bench next to Ricky.
“I hate those snobs,” Ricky said.
“Yeah, me too,” Jeff said. Their bus pulled into the parking lot. “They think they're so great.”
On the way home the bus driver drove right past their stop. Jeff and a half dozen other kids shouted for her to stop. Brakes squealed; the bus stopped in front of the Shop Rite supermarket, a few hundred yards past the Garden Apartments.
“Sorry,” said the bus driver.
“Do we have to walk from here?” David Zimet whined.
“Let the poor bastards walk,” Mike Sass yelled from the back of the bus. Jeff could see a couple of the Garden Apartment kids turn and stare at Mike. If Mike was smaller, someone would go back there and beat the hell out of him, but he was big and fat. He threw the sho
t put on the track team.
* * * *
Jeff's mom came home at five, clutching a brown bag of groceries in one arm. Jeff clicked off the TV; Fred Flintstone shrank to a dot and disappeared. While mom put the groceries away (looked like they were having cheeseburgers for dinner) he told her about the burgundy sphere Kim had brought to school.
“Your grandmother absorbed a burgundy sphere. She used to say that was one of her favorite powers.”
“What does it feel like, when you absorb one?” Jeff asked.
“It's kind of hard to explain,” mom said. “There's definitely something there that wasn't before—you feel that right away.”
“Can you feel something alive going into you? Is it scary?”
“I guess it should be, because you know something living is going into you when you absorb the charm, and it's going to stay there for the rest of your life. And you can sort of feel them.”
“I always picture butterflies flying around inside you, and they're the same color as the charm.”
“It's more subtle, though. When I close my eyes,” she closed them, scrunched her eyelids in concentration, “I can sense that there are little blips there, watching. But they're so quiet, and so harmless. They're just hitching a ride because they don't have their own bodies. They just want to live.”
“Symbiotes,” Jeff said, feeling a little proud that he knew the complex word. Mrs. Peters had taught it to them in science.
“That's right, Jeff, very good.”
He went and sat at the old piano while mom looked at the mail. He plunked a few keys. He liked the black keys—they sounded like the music from The Mummy and Dracula.
“How old were you when you got the Musical charm?” he called to mom.
“Fifteen,” she said. “I found one of the spheres, wedged between two big branches of a tree, in the woods behind grandma and grandpa's cottage in Rhinebeck. Grandpa had to chop it free with an ax. I was hopping up and down, calling up to him to be careful.” She sat down next to Jeff; he scooted over to give her room. She played Moon River softly. “I went to a swap meet the next day and traded just about every piece I had for the staff and other sphere to complete the charm. I knew tea green was the musical charm, and the moment I saw that sphere up there in that tree, I knew I'd do anything to finish it. That was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.”
“What others did you find when you were a kid?”
Mom frowned, thinking. “An orange Pretty Handwriting. A purple More Outgoing. I found two blue-grey See in the Dark spheres, so I traded for the staff—that's the only reason it's one of the powers I have.” She shrugged. “Nothing that rare. The Musical was my best find.”
“I wish you could still find spheres and staffs in the wild now.” Freddy King had found a rust brown Good With Machines staff last summer, under the floor at his grandfather's hardware store. That had been something.
“I know. Remember the story I told you that your grandfather told me, about the day they first appeared? Can you imagine, waking up one morning and they're everywhere? Hidden in drain pipes and under porch steps, like Easter eggs.”
“That would be great,” Jeff said. “It's not fair that people used so many of them up. How many did grandpa absorb?”
“Oh, boy. I don't know, maybe a dozen? He had Better Looking, Sense of Smell, Taste, Singing, Sensing Patterns. He didn't have any of the rare ones, but he had a lot. Everyone did back then.” Mom finished the song with a flourish down the keys. “I wish I could afford to buy you a charm. Your twelfth birthday is in a couple of months—I wish I could get you one, but I just can't. They're so expensive.”
Jeff just nodded. He wished it too, but it wasn't mom's fault.
“What time do you want to eat?” she asked.
“Six-thirty?” he said, standing. “I'm gonna go outside for a while, see if David's home.”
“See you around six-thirty,” mom said.
Jeff ran over to David's, wishing he could absorb a mustard Fast Runner. David opened the door munching a hot dog. Jeff had no idea how he stayed so skinny. Skinnybones Jones was always eating.
“Want to go skin-fishing?” Jeff said.
David shrugged. “Okay.” He pushed the end of the hot dog into his mouth, wiped a streak of mustard from his mouth, held up a finger and ran to get his old sneakers. He put them on outside, on the stoop.
“My mother called the school and complained about the bus driver leaving us off in front of Shop Rite,” David said.
“What did they say?”
“They said they'd make sure it doesn't happen again.”
Jeff bet they would, too. David's mom had a screechy voice that made it sound like she was yelling even when she was just asking if you wanted milk with your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When she was really mad, she could rip your eardrums.
They stood on the edge of the brook that ran alongside the Garden Apartments. On the other side of the brook cars whizzed by on Route 304. Jeff counted seven carp swimming languidly among the rocks. There were probably more in the tunnel, where the brook ran under Stephens Road before it continued along beside the Shop Rite parking lot. That's where the big ones usually were—in the tunnel.
Jeff pulled off his shoes and socks and waded into the cold water, stepping carefully, watching for broken glass. He loved to feel the power of the water pushing against his calves. The carp whizzed away, toward the tunnel. David waded in after him in his old sneakers. He didn't like the slippery feel of the algae that grew on the rocks.
They moved slowly, like David's cat moved on the lawn when it was after a bird, careful to avoid letting their shadows pass over the carp. Jeff got behind a pretty big one, eased his hands into the water so they didn't cause even a ripple, then stayed frozen like that, bent over, letting his hands drift toward the carp. When his hands were on either side of it, he closed in slowly, slowly ... then grabbed it.
The carp thrashed, surging forward, but Jeff held tight, pulling it out of the water and holding it up triumphantly. He felt the muscles in its sides flex powerfully as it struggled.
“Let me see!” David said, wading over. He held the tail straight, looked it over. “I'd say a six.”
“Okay,” Jeff said. He thought it was more like a seven. He spread his legs, tossed the carp underhanded, up and away. It hit the water with a splash and swam away, flashing silver in the sunlight.
“Let's try the tunnel,” Jeff said, leading the way. “Maybe the ten is in there.” He'd almost caught the ten a couple of weeks ago; he'd had it by the tail, but it yanked free.
Jeff ducked his head, went under the bridge, feeling the little thrill of fear he always got as he shifted from sunlight into the tunnel's semi-darkness. It was cooler in there, and damp. The concrete overhead rumbled each time a car passed. His eyes adjusted to the shadows, and now he could see three carp drifting among a cluster of rocks near the tunnel wall. Jeff crept over, with David right beside him. The ten wasn't there, but there was a big one—a definite eight even by David's standards. As they closed in on the eight, it waggled its tail, drifted closer to the wall, then closer. It disappeared behind a big rock pressed close to the wall.
“Damn!” David said. “That was a big one.”
Jeff tried to flush it out, but the crack between the wall and the rock was too small. “Come on, let's see if we can move it.” He reached along the side of the rock, found a good handhold. David grasped it on the other side. They counted three, and pulled. The tunnel echoed with their grunts. Even in the semi-darkness, Jeff could see David's face grow beet-red. Jeff planted one foot on the side of the tunnel, and pulled harder. The huge rock shifted, kicking up mud into the water.
“Pull!” Jeff groaned. David grunted louder, a long, guttural howl, his eyes squeezed shut.
All at once the rock tumbled over with a splash. Jeff and David whooped, exchanged a high five. They bent, hands on knees, straining to spot the eight. The water was cloudy, but the mud settled quickly
with the help of the current, exposing a black fissure at the base of the wall.
“The eight must have gone in there,” David said.
“I bet that's where the ten hides, too!” Jeff said. He bent on one knee; the water soaked the end of his shorts, but he didn't care. He tried to peer into the crack. It was too dark.
“We could bring a flashlight,” David suggested.
Jeff looked at David. “Or one of us could stick a hand in there and feel around.” David broke into a grin, shaking his head no.
Jeff burst out laughing. “I know. It would be creepy to stick your hand in that hole, not knowing what's inside,” Jeff said. He took another look in the hole, looked back at David.
“What?” David said.
“You dare me?” Jeff said.
David let loose with one of his wicked laughs, the laugh he laughed when they were thinking of doing something that might get them in trouble. “No way. You wouldn't.”
“You dare me?” Jeff said again.
David looked at the hole. “Yeah, I dare you.”
Jeff rubbed his hands together. “Okay. I'm gonna do it.” He got himself positioned close to the opening, reached forward, stopped with his fingers just inside the dark opening. He laughed. “That's creepy! Man.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay, I'm really gonna do it.” He stuck his hand into the hole. “It's deep,” he said, reaching his arm in further and further, to the elbow, then to the bicep, his heart pounding. He felt a jagged stone, and mud, reached in until his shoulder was pressed against the concrete wall. He felt around, bracing himself, not wanting to be startled if his hand hit one of the carp. His fingers brushed something smooth. He went back, waggled his fingers until they hit the smooth thing again. It wasn't a rock.
“What is this?” Jeff said. He pushed his shoulder deeper into the opening, pedaling his fingers, looking for purchase.
“Be careful, you'll get your arm stuck!” David said, hovering over him.
Asimov's SF, September 2008 Page 13