Asimov's SF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Yes, I do,” Jeff said.

  “Let me make you an offer. It's the best offer I'm ever going to make to you. Do you believe me when I say that?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “Good. If you turn it down and I fly away, I won't be as generous next time. And there will be a next time, I promise you that. That sphere isn't doing you and your mom any good sitting in a safe deposit box.” Cornelius leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Jeff, have you thought about your mom? Wouldn't it be nice if she didn't have to work as a secretary any more? Wouldn't you like to buy her a little store or something?

  “A store?” Jeff said.

  “Mmm hmm. That's right Jeff, a little store on Main Street. And a house. You could get out of these apartments. You could have a little pond in the back yard. Buy yourself a few nice charms. Athletic. Enhanced Vision. Maybe an animal charm?”

  Jeff's head was spinning. How much would all of that cost? He had no idea, but it had to be tens of thousands of dollars.

  “How much money are you talking about?” Jeff asked.

  Cornelius smiled. “Now you're talking my language, Jeff.” He kept his voice low. In the kitchen, mom was sort of stacking dishes, but mostly just standing there with a dish towel. “Here's my offer, and keep in mind, it's non-negotiable: Seven hundred thousand dollars.”

  The world disappeared for a moment. Everything broke into a million little grey dots and went black, like they did on a TV screen. Then they pulled back together and Jeff was still sitting in his living room, across from Mr. Cornelius. His hands were tingling, his fingertips curling involuntarily.

  “A million,” Jeff said through numb lips.

  Cornelius let out a warm, easy laugh. “You're something else, you know that? I offer you a fortune, tell you it's my best offer, and you counter. You're a smart kid, Jeff.” He clapped Jeff on the knee. “Very good. No one's first offer is ever their best. Tell you what, I'll meet you half way: eight-fifty.”

  That was probably more money than Kim and Cindy's parents had combined. He was rich, he and his mom.

  “You've got a deal,” Jeff said.

  Cornelius held out his hand. Jeff shook it.

  “I can arrange to have a cashier's check by the end of the day,” Cornelius said. “Can you get your mom to take you to the bank to withdraw the sphere?”

  “Sure,” Jeff said.

  Cornelius stood. “Your son drives a hard bargain, Mrs. Green, but I think we've finally made a deal,” he said. “I'll be back at six to take care of the details, if that's all right with you?”

  Jeff's mom said it was. They walked him to the door.

  “Can I ask you for one more thing?” Jeff said at the door.

  “As long as it doesn't cost me any more money,” Cornelius said, laughing.

  “No, I'd just like to be there when you absorb the charm. I want to see what it does.”

  Cornelius nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “How much?” His mom asked as soon as she shut the door.

  Jeff grinned. “You're not going to believe it.”

  “More than ten thousand?”

  He nodded. His mom gasped.

  “Twenty?” she said.

  “A little higher,” he said.

  “Twenty-five?”

  He pointed his thumb in the air.

  “Higher? Tell me!”

  He paused. Mom waggled her fists impatiently. “Eight. Hundred. And Fifty. Thousand. Dollars.”

  Jeff watched his mom's eyes get bigger and bigger. She screamed, and grabbed him, and spun him in a circle.

  “We're rich!” Jeff said.

  * * * *

  Jeff pressed the sphere against his cheek, then kissed it. It was hard to believe he'd found it only yesterday. It hurt to give it up, even for a fortune. He'd be rich, but not special. You don't get on the Johnny Carson show for being rich. Cornelius was the one who'd get to be on Carson now.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs, went and opened the door. Cornelius was carrying a long case. He was with another man who was carrying a folder.

  The man was a lawyer. He had Jeff and his mom and Mr. Cornelius sign some papers, then he handed Jeff a check, and Jeff gave Cornelius the midnight blue sphere. Cornelius accepted it with two hands and a little bow, like Jeff was giving him communion or something.

  “Money means nothing to me any more,” he said, gazing at the sphere. “I live for these, for the powers they give. Did you know I have more rare powers than anyone on Earth?” No one answered, but Cornelius didn't seem to be looking for an answer. He reached for his case. “It's time to see what we have.”

  “Do you know what it does?” Jeff asked.

  “I've no idea,” Cornelius said. He took out the other two pieces of the charm. He fitted Jeff's sphere onto one end of the staff, then the other sphere onto the other end. “Why don't we find out.”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and grasped the staff with both hands.

  Nobody moved. Nobody even breathed. Outside, a couple of kids were shouting. A dog barked in the distance.

  Cornelius frowned, opened his eyes. “Strange. I don't feel what I usually feel.”

  “It feels different?” Jeff said.

  “I don't feel anything. I don't sense the new charm inside me.”

  A dud. Jeff wasn't going to say it out loud. Was it possible? Duds were always commons; none of the rare ones were duds.

  They waited. There was some sort of commotion outside—people shouting back and forth.

  “Maybe you just don't feel it with this one,” mom said.

  “Maybe,” Cornelius said.

  Jeff couldn't help but hope that it was a dud. He folded the check in half and slid it into his back pocket. As they used to say when he was little, no backsies. A deal was a deal.

  Jeff's mom looked toward the window. “What's going on out there?”

  It was getting loud. People were shouting and screaming, like there was a fire or something, only they didn't sound scared exactly. Jeff heard a woman shout “On the roof!” A kid was shouting something Jeff couldn't understand—it sounded like Ricky.

  Jeff went to the window and lifted the blind.

  There were twenty or thirty people outside in the fading light. Some were running, some were on their knees peering underneath cars in the parking lot. Jeff recognized Ricky's black-sneakered feet poking out of the hedges. Sherry Underwood was cradling something, running toward the door of her building. She shifted her load to the other hand to open the door, and Jeff caught a glimpse of what it was: two spheres. It was too dark to tell what colors they were.

  “I found one!” Ricky shouted. He clutched a sphere, maybe a burnt orange Laugh Easier, over his head.

  “Oh my god,” Jeff's mom said, peering over his shoulder. “What's going on? Where did those come from?”

  Cornelius edged in, shifting to see. He gasped. Jeff put his hand in his back pocket, over the check.

  “I guess we know what the midnight blue does,” Jeff said. He stepped away from the window. He was dying to get outside, but he didn't want to be rude.

  “I guess we do,” Cornelius's lawyer said, staring out the window. “I guess we do.”

  “Reproduction,” Cornelius said. He sounded like someone had just died.

  The rarer ones would be better hidden. Jeff shifted from foot to foot, impatient, running through likely hiding places that other people wouldn't think of. It would be pitch dark in half an hour—he needed to bring a flashlight.

  “I'm gonna go outside and take a look,” Jeff said. He held out his hand. “Mr. Cornelius, it was good doing business with you.”

  Cornelius shook his hand. His forehead was sweating. “I wish I could say the same.”

  Jeff grabbed the flashlight in the kitchen drawer, bolted out the door while mom said goodbye to Cornelius and his lawyer. “I'll be home late, mom,” he called as he closed the door behind him and hit the stairs running.

  Things were fair again. Jeff threw
open the hall door and drank in the waning light, the chirp of crickets. He leaped off the stoop. One day, he was sure, he would fly off it.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Will McIntosh

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Poetry: SCREAMS

  by Ian Watson

  The aliens came marketing Anti-Wrinkle Scream.

  Actually they resembled Edvard Munch's Screamer:

  long-fingered, bald, a bit like the mythical Greys

  except that these aliens’ mouths weren't thin pursed slashes

  but full and flexible; and their eyes weren't big and slanted

  but round, just a bit bigger than ours.

  * * * *

  Unlike Munch's screamer, these guys didn't dress

  in shapeless black but went nearly nude

  except for a pouch and a tool-belt,

  the better to display their skin so shiny and smooth.

  * * * *

  “Anti-wrinkles cream?” they were asked.

  “We already have hundreds of those!

  The summit of anti-ageing technology.”

  “No,” the aliens replied, “anti-wrinkle scream.”

  They explained that particular words

  in their language, screamed at an exact pitch

  and volume, were efficacious for wrinkles

  on different areas of the face and the body—

  a bit like acoustic acupuncture. Oh the power of sound!

  * * * *

  They would teach these sounds to paying customers

  female and male, and wished to be paid in emeralds—

  they'd been Googling from orbit and admired

  pics of our gems grass-green due to chromium content

  although any sort from light to deep green would do fine,

  though not synthetic emeralds with a veil-like hue.

  * * * *

  People said: “We know about Primal Scream,

  the psychotherapy of Letting It All Hang Out.

  But this sounds new!” Soon prosperous women

  (and men too) were learning to shriek

  and yes, their faces grew quite girl-like (or boy-like)

  and other important parts of them too. Web conmen

  offered cheap recorded screams for download to iPods.

  * * * *

  By the time the Screamer ship left, loaded with emeralds,

  a tenth of the world was shrieking and slowly going deaf.

  —Ian Watson

  Copyright (c) 2008 Ian Watson

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: USURPERS

  by Derek Zumsteg

  Derek Zumsteg lives in a Seattle suburb with his patient wife and builds software for Expedia's European group. Derek is a successful sports writer whose work includes The Cheater's Guide to Baseball (Houghton Mifflin, April 2007) and an essay “Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever,” which was selected for Best American Sports Writing 2007. He's also a co-founder of the USS Mariner baseball blog. Recently, though, he's returned to his first love—writing SF. He attended Clarion West and one of his short pieces ran on Escape Pod, but the following piece is his first pro-fiction sale. Of “Usurpers,” Derek says, “I ran cross-country in high school and know a couple tricks not in this story.” These days he bikes.

  Out of the bus and into the park. Teenage cattle mill in the drizzle, making friendly-hostile noises at each other. Butting heads. Slapping butts. King walks among the herd. Sniffing for the knock-offs, scent of new car on sixteenth birthday, looking for the bleached teeth and perfect, acne-free faces. King's legs feel springy, light, fresh. They want to run. The bunkered computer gave him two days off and it's been all King could do to not sprint down hallways, race cars.

  King spots a knock-off cluster, glowing sunny in the rain, too fit, perfectly proportioned. Tear off some burnished bronze, never-burning skin. Shove it under a microscope, see the designer signature, Chinese characters like tattoos on the necks of college girls.

  Fifty kids fifteen to eighteen stamp their feet. Stretch. Check each other out. Hopping in place to stay loose. Bitching about the bus ride over. Vinyl benches tied up their back if they're from a poor zip. Those boys recognize King, stop him as he passes. Exchange complicated handshakes. Wish him luck and mean it. Tell him to fuck shit up and mean it.

  King seeks someone he hates for pre-race greeting and unpleasantries. Steve. Rich white kid. Last year, Steve ranked twelfth at best all year, after he placed second to King in semis. This year he ran first. First. First. King? Unranked.

  Unbelievable.

  Unfuckingacceptable.

  All ten ranked cross-country runners this season took family trips to China after school let out last year. When they returned and established dominance, King took the Asics guy up on his offer to join the experimental training program. Found himself running by himself, following daily instructions from an email address. King knows there's a machine on the other end, some oracle in some data center chewing on his performance data full time. Responds only to email, immediately, all hours.

  No vacation this year for King. Every day, woke early for the morning run. Usually intervals. Then a nap and back out for the longer afternoon run.

  No job. No more smoking up, ever. No girls, but after the losses, no fans anyway. King's only steady supporter one girl from pep. Still brought cookies, taped cheesy construction paper running shoes on King's locker on meet days. Did not go unnoticed. King reserved particular spots in future court for subjects loyal during trying times.

  Despite newly created competition, King still made state. Represents the worst school in a shithole of a district. Gerrymandered to include all the cheap housing and a commercial wasteland, collapsed strip malls occupied by cut-cut-rate pizza delivery outlets, stores selling all products at fixed prices.

  King finds the Kentwood team. Steve.

  Common King adjectives from clippings, one year ago: athletic, fiery, explosive, gifted, temperamental, powerful, intuitive

  Common Steve adjectives from this year's clippings: handsome, self-effacing, dedicated, hard-working, outgoing, forthright, competitive, team leader

  Unused King adjectives: black, African-American

  Unused Steve adjectives: Caucasian, white, gene doper

  The Kentwood team orbits Steve. They wear microfiber jerseys, custom-fitted Nikes that suit their running style, pronation, whatever, all in school colors.

  King's shoes match theirs. King took them from the Kentwood locker room early in the season while they were in the shower tugging each other and joking: Ha ha that's what it'd be like if we were gay. Had time to find the right size. Not even stealing. It's all King's property. Reserves the right to revoke grants.

  They do not notice that King wears the same brand and model of shoes. After reclamation, King did some detail work with a permanent art marker and swapped out white laces for bright gold ones. Plus they are stupid. Makes King smile. Their school district rated the finest. Line shows in property values. Not that King has a house. Lives in an apartment, White Mike the drug dealer in the unit below.

  King excuses himself through the cordon, makes eye contact. King switches his voice. Friendly face.

  “Hey Steve, how are you? Nice to see you again.”

  Steve wants to be the sportsman, magnanimous, rich man's burden. Pulls the oxygen mask down to give King the winner nod.

  “Hey, King, whassup?” Draws out the “ss.” King keeps his smile fixed. Steve sticks out an open hand. They clasp, shake once. Firm, not aggressive. No multi-stage. Obviously. Maintain voice.

  “I missed you at the Ocean Shores invite,” King says. “I heard you took a family vacation.”

  Steve's family frequently mentioned in stories. Of the Boston Prescotts. Implies good breeding, societal pre-approval.

  “Yeah, yeah, took a whole month. Heard you did well at Ocean Shores. Congratulations.”

  King won Ocean Shores Invi
tational. Early summer, rich kids still across the Pacific. Beautiful race. King now looks at the trophy and tastes ash.

  “How did you like China?”

  “The Great Wall was great.”

  “Did you all go over together?” Loaded question.

  Steve bites, starts to list off the other now-ranked runners who went with him. King should have asked for account numbers, PINS.

  “Cool, cool, sounds like fun,” King says.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, nodding head. He kicks at the ground with toe of one foot.

  Embarrassment. Does he feel shame? King decides to stick the knife.

  “Then lemme ask you,” King says. “If you guys are all the same genome, when you jerk each other off in the showers, is that incest?”

  Steve twitches. Faces sour.

  “Is that a joke?” Steve says.

  “Incest isn't funny.” King pauses. “Was that over your heads? Really?” King shakes head, sighs in resignation. Fuck it. “Steve, my man, when they went in there, did they fix that shrinky-dick problem of yours?”

  Steve flushes red. Can't go wrong with dick insults.

  “Of course, right, daddy's got to look out, conceal the family shame.” King keeps pushing. Steve's blood rich in testosterone, all of it natural, generated by reprogrammed organs. Rage twitches across the shoulders, neck. King circles back to yo mama. “Your mom check out the package, make sure it's all working?” Not a tenth of a second before control breaks. Steve yells incoherently, head shaking. Arms come up. Yes.

  Steve pushes King with both hands. King forced two quick steps back, stays up. Wanted the punch, Steve thrown out. Instead it's a scrum, everyone yells at everyone. Longshot hope that Steve's thick blood and the pressure spike combine for a clot, a heart attack, a stroke.

  No such luck. King to the line. Some shoving, elbow testing. Cameras though. Deters false starts. Gray hair with the starter pistol, jacket. Annoyed expression as he waits for everyone to get behind the chalk.

  King concentrates on his breathing. The feeling of the wet air on the inhale. King will win. Acknowledge, set aside. The inhale, cold, heavy, the exhale, warm across his teeth. King's life dedicated to snatching this one win from the domination of the knock-off. Computer priest behind the email address rated his chances under 5 percent. Five percent. Acknowledge, set thought aside. King concentrates on the breath, as it comes and leaves. King finds calm. Each drop of rain on shaved head. Tiny, cold. King sees everyone at the line. Irrelevant. This is natural. He is King.