Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  ~~~~~

  The past was another country, as they say; they did things differently there.

  The more I looked up, the more I needed to look up. I had twelve or fifteen books scattered across the reference tables.

  Now I know how conspiracy theorists feel. It's not just the Trilateral Commission or Henry Kissinger (a minor ABC/NRC official here) and the Queen of England and Area 51 and the Greys. It's like history has ganged up on me, as an individual, to drive me bugfuck. I don't have a chance. The more you find out the more you need to explain… how much more you need to find out… it could never end.

  Where did it change?

  We are trapped in history like insects in amber, and it is hardening all around me.

  Who am I to struggle against the tree-sap of Time?

  ~~~~~

  The psychiatrist has asked me to write down and bring in everything I can think of—anything, Presidents, cars, wars, culture. He wants to read it ahead of time and schedule two full hours on Friday.

  You can bet I don't feel swell about this.

  ~~~~~

  My other daughter Celine is here. I had tried and tried and tried, but she'd turned out to be a Christian in spite of all my work.

  She is watching me like a hawk, I can tell. We were never as close as Maureen and me; she was her mother's daughter.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Just peachy," I said, "Considering."

  "Considering what?" Her eyes were very green, like her mother's had been.

  "If you don't mind, I'm pretty tired of answering questions. Or asking them."

  "You ought to be more careful with those tools."

  "This is not about power tools, or the shock." I said. "I don't know what Mo told you, but I have been truly discomfited these last few days."

  "Look, Daddy," she said. "I don't care what the trouble is, we'll find a way to get you through it."

  "You couldn't get me through it, unless you've got a couple of thousand years on rewind."

  "What?"

  "Never mind. I'm just tired. And I have to go to the hardware store and get a new switch for the band saw, before I burn the place down, or cause World War III or something. I'm sure they have hardware stores here, or I wouldn't have power tools."

  She looked at me like I'd grown tentacles.

  "Just kidding." I said. "Loosen up, Celine. Think of me right now as your old tired father. I'll learn my way around the place and be right as rain…"

  Absolutely no response.

  "I'm being ironic," I said. "I have always been noted for my sense of humor. Remember?"

  "Well, yes. Sort of."

  "Great!" I said. "Let's go get some burgers at McDonald's!"

  "Where?"

  "I mean Burger King." I said. I'd passed one on the way back from the library.

  "Sounds good, Dad." She said "Let me drive."

  ~~~~~

  I have lived in this house for 26 years. I was born in the house across the street. IN 1957, my friend Gino Ballantoni lived here, and I was over here every day, or just about, for four years, 'til Gino's father's aircraft job moved to California. I'd always wanted it, and after I got out of the Army, I got it on the GI Bill.

  I know its every pop and groan, every sound it makes day or night, the feel of the one place the pain isn't smooth, on the inside doorjamb trim of what used to be Mo's room before it was Celine's. There's one light switch put on upside down I never changed. The garage makeover I did myself; it's what's now the living room.

  I love this place. I would have lived her no matter what.

  I tell myself history wasn't different enough that this house isn't still a vacant lot, or an apartment building. That's at least, something to hang onto.

  I noticed the extra sticker inside the car windshield. Evidently we now have an emissions-control test in this state, too. I'll have to look in the phone book and find out where to go, as this one expires at the end of the month.

  And also, on TV, when they show news from New York, there's still the two World Trade Center towers.

  You can't be too careful about the past.

  ~~~~~

  The psychiatrist called to ask if someone could sit in on the double session tomorrow—he knew it was early, but it was special—his old mentor from whatever Mater he'd Alma'd at; the guy was in a day early for some shrink hoedown in the Big City and wanted to watch his star pupil in action. He was asking all the patients tomorrow, he said. The old doc wouldn't say anything, and you'd hardly know he was there.

  "Well, I got enough troubles, what's one more?"

  He thanked me.

  That's what did it for me. This was not going to stop. This was not something that I could be helped work through, like bedwetting or agoraphobia or the desire to eat human flesh. It was going to go on forever, here, until I died.

  Okay, I thought. Let's get out Occam's Famous Razor and cut a few Gordian Knots. Or somewhat, as the logicians used to say.

  ~~~~~

  I went out to the workshop where everybody thinks it all started.

  I turned on the outside breakers. I went inside. This time I closed the door. I went over and turned on the band saw.

  ~~~~~

  After I got up off the floor, I opened the door and stepped out into the yard. It was near dark so I must have been out an hour or so.

  I turned off the breakers and went into the house through the back door and through the utility room and down the hall to the living room bookcase. I pulled out Vol 14 of the encyclopedia and opened it.

  Nixon, Richard Milhous, it said (1913-1994). A good long entry.

  There was a sound from the kitchen. The oven door opened and closed.

  "What have you been doing?" asked a voice.

  "There's a short in the band saw I'll have to get fixed," I said. I went around the corner.

  It was my wife Susan. She looked a little older, a little heavier since I last saw her, it seemed. She still looked pretty good.

  "Stand there where I can see you," I said.

  "We were having a fight before you wandered away, remember?"

  "Whatever it was," I said, "I was wrong. You were right. We'll do whatever it is you want."

  "Do you even remember what it was we were arguing about?"

  "No." I said. "Whatever. It's not important. The problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in—"

  "Cut the Casablanca crap," said Susan. "Jodie and Susie Q want to bring the kids over next Saturday and have Little Eddy's birthday party here. You wanted peace and quiet here, and go somewhere else for the party. That was the argument."

  "I wasn't cut out to be a grandpa," I said. "But bring 'em on. Invite the neighbors! Put out signs on the street! 'Annoy an old man here!'".

  Then I quietened down. "Tell them we'd be happy to have the party here," I said.

  "Honestly, Edward," said Susan, putting the casserole on the big trivet. It was her night to cook. "Sometimes I think you'd forget your ass if it weren't glued on."

  "Yeah, sure," I said. "I've damn sure forgotten what peace and quiet was like. And probably lots of other stuff, too."

  "Supper's ready," said Susan.

  (Back to TOC)

  Shadow in the City

  Dean Wesley Smith

  "You don’t see many shadows here in the city

  Only picturesque windows, all covered and dirty

  Black and grey that once was new

  Yesterday that once was you

  No I can’t find my shadow in the city"

  ~ from Here in the City by Janis Ian

  Four years ago the city below her had died along with the rest of the world.

  Now she stood on the abandoned freeway overpass and stared at the gray of Portland, Oregon, and the deep blue of the gently-flowing river below her. Why had she picked today, of all days, to finally go back into the city?

  Carey Noack was five foot two and wiry. Over the last four years she had kept her light-brown hair cut v
ery short. Today, for the final hike into the center of the big buildings, she wore a black sleeveless tee-shirt, jeans, and her favorite tennis shoes.

  "Stupid," she muttered as she used a small towel from her pack to wipe the sweat from her face and arms. It was a typical Oregon summer day, where the bright sun and clear skies made the air feel warmer than it actually was. She finished wiping off her arms, put the towel back in her pack, and grabbed the water bottle.

  She took a long, deep drink of the warm water. She was going to have to be careful, make sure she didn’t push too hard. She hated heat.

  As she stood there on the overpass, it was hard to push away the memories of nightmarish last days she had spent in the city, and her last trip to the coast. It had been hot that week as well. The dead, staring bodies had been everywhere, filling the hot winds with the smell of rotting flesh.

  She had run, trying to get away from the death and the smell. Of course the dead bodies had been in the small towns on the coast as well, and it had taken her some time to find sanctuary. The house she had taken just north of Depoe Bay sat on a rock ledge jutting out into the ocean. The breezes were always off the water, and seldom did the smell of rotting flesh reach her.

  Why, after four long years of living alone on the coast, was she back today, of all days? Was she really that lonely? She knew that many, many nights, especially during the first year, she had simply sat and cried, trying to hold back the overwhelming feelings of sadness, shock, and loneliness. It was one thing to be a loner when the world was alive around her. It was another to be completely alone, talking to herself and her cats.

  She missed her cats. She hoped she had left enough food for them to make it until she got back to the coast.

  She had half expected that the buildings of the city would be crumbling and dead as well, but they weren’t. Windows were covered with dirt and film, weeds were growing thick in the cracks of the sidewalks, and nothing was lit. The stop lights swinging lightly in the hot wind at the end of the overpass were now nothing more than dead eyes hanging over empty streets.

  Carey shook off the feeling, took a second, long drink of water, and stared down at the freeway. She had to be careful. There was no telling what waited for her there.

  The hot wind snapped at her short hair. At least now the wind didn’t bring the smell of death as it had done the day she left. Four years of time had cleared that out, and she was grateful.

  She picked up the backpack and shifted it slightly to make sure one strap didn’t rub her shoulder too long. The pack contained enough water to get her by for a few days, plus food for two weeks, and extra ammunition for her rifle and the pistol in her belt.

  She had spent a pretty good amount of time over the last two years learning how to fire that pistol and rifle quickly and accurately. There was always the remote chance that she might actually might run into someone else, someone alive. And since she was a woman alone, she didn’t plan on taking any chances. But so far there was not even a sign that anyone had passed through during the past four years.

  Still, the small rifle felt good in her hands. A comfort. And for the rest of the walk into town she would carry it off her shoulder, loaded and ready.

  Her hope—and her fear—was there would be other survivors in the city. She was convinced that a normal, sane person would have given up that hope by now, but still, here she was today, standing on the edge of the dead city, ready to check it out.

  Sometimes Carey lay awake at night listening to the waves pound the beach and rocks below her home and thought of people, and how nice it would be to talk to someone, or even listen to someone. Just companionship. But four years of living alone had given her a lot of time to think, and she knew that simple, easy companionship wasn’t going to happen. She was going to die alone.

  She glanced up the freeway. Back that direction was home, with generators for electricity, large screen television for running movies, and a basement filled with more books than she would ever read.

  She couldn’t believe that in the midst of all the death, she had managed to make the coast feel like home. The first year she had adopted two stray cats by slowly feeding them until they finally trusted her. Stingy was an old yellow cat who hogged the food, and Betty sat and purred while being petted, but never really left Stingy’s side. Carey talked to them all the time.

  She had set up fishing nets and crab pots, and planned her days around finding enough food to keep going. During the spring, summer, and fall, she kept her gardens tended, with the biggest problem being keeping the deer away. She had built and stocked a root cellar, and filled another close-by house with canned goods that she hoped would last.

  Living like that had cut her off from the sights, sounds, and reminders of what had happened to the rest of humanity. She knew how to be alone, how to live alone. That didn’t worry her any more—but the thought of dying alone terrified her.

  And she really wanted someone to talk to. Someone besides her cats. She had to find out if she really was alone in the world, if the human race was going to die with her, or if there was still hope.

  There had to be hope.

  Considering the fluke circumstances that had allowed her to survive, she was certain that if there was anyone else, their numbers would be few. For a week before that last day, scientists around the world had been whispering among themselves about what seemed like a cloud approaching Earth. No one was exactly certain what it was.

  All they knew was that something out there was bending light, twisting it, ripping it apart, and Earth was going to pass right through it. Still, it was no big deal, just a scientific curiosity.

  She had been a post-doc student in electromagnetics at the time. As the moment Earth passed through the cloud approached, she took her current experiment and moved it to a secure vault, so that it wouldn’t be affected if indeed the cloud possessed high energy levels.

  When she stepped out thirty minutes later, she was the only living soul in Portland.

  The drivers had died instantly. Car wrecks were everywhere, many still burning.

  Out near the airport dark clouds of smoke billowed into the air where half a dozen planes had crashed.

  In a single instant Portland had gone from a beautiful city to a nightmare filled with death.

  Carey could barely remember stumbling out of the lab, checking futilely for signs of life. She found her lover where she had left him that morning, still in bed in her apartment.

  Her mother was slumped over the sink of the family home in Beaverton, with the water still running. She had found her father in his office, collapsed across his desk, his secretary dead in her chair.

  Thousands upon thousands of dead bodies, all caught in a moment in time. At first it seemed like a bad dream, then a nightmare she desperately wanted to wake up from.

  Soon the bodies started to smell and bloat up in the heat, looking even more nightmarish as the maggots took over.

  Finally, after two days of wandering around, she found herself back in the lab, trying to discover what exactly had happened. The instruments probably told the story, but they were a different discipline; she couldn’t interpret them. It didn’t make much difference anyway; everyone who was exposed to the cloud, or whatever signal the cloud was transmitting, had died instantly. She didn’t need the lab to tell her that, and somehow the reason for it didn’t seem all that important after the fact of it.

  The storm had been very selective in its destruction. It killed dogs, but not cats. Horses were gone, but not cattle. Rats, mice, most rodents were dead, but not most fish.

  Deer had survived as well. And raccoons. And a lot of bees and insects of different types. She had no idea what the effect of the massive disruptions in the food chains would be, and she had no way of knowing why some animals survived the cloud and others did not. All she knew was that humans had drawn the short straw.

  The next morning, she headed for the coast to get away from the growing stench of the hordes of the dead.
r />   And now, four years later, she was back.

  Carey took another drink from the bottle of water, and studied the area in front of her. The freeway wound down the hill toward the river. She could see most of the tall buildings, some of the riverfront, and all of the east side. Portland was still a beautiful town. Beautiful—and empty.

  A few dozen cars were pilled and scattered along the freeway where they had crashed. They were such a common sight that Carey didn’t even notice the bodies in them anymore. Today she looked, and could see the gleaming white of skeletons, all securely strapped in their seat belts.

  She finished off the bottle of water, adjusted her backpack, and started overpass down toward the empty, weed-littered freeway surface, rifle in hand.

  ~~~~~

  Toby Landel awoke with a start as the alarm on the computer beeped loudly, echoing through his penthouse apartment. He opened his eyes and stared at the white ceiling and wood beams over his bed.

  Something had triggered his security alarm again.

  "Damned deer," he muttered, tossing aside the sheet and standing. He was nude, but since the morning seemed hot and bright, he didn’t bother to slip on his robe or slippers. He moved across the soft carpet toward the computer room. Outside the expanse of open windows around him, the dead city of Portland looked exactly as it had every day for the past two years. But this morning the sun had already cleared off the haze, and he could tell without even going out the air was hot and dry.

  He had set up the penthouse apartment, on the fifteenth floor of what had been the Baxter Building, to cater to his every need. It had a soft rich carpet, big expansive rooms, and an island kitchen in the center with bright lights and every conceivable appliance.

  He had furnished the living room with a deep, comfortable recliner placed directly in front of a large screen television. He had also brought in a couch for the times he wanted to just lay down. To the right of the living room he had put together a weight and exercise room to keep his six foot frame in top shape. He lifted every day, and ran on a tread mill facing the windows. He figured that he would never know when being in shape would save his life.