“Isn’t he in the ballroom?”
“No,” he said. “He’s already fifteen minutes late, and nobody’s seen him. You have to sign this,” he said, shoving a clipboard at me.
“What is it?”
“It’s a petition.” He grabbed it back from me. “‘We the undersigned demand that annual meetings of the International Congress of Quantum Physicists henceforth be held in appropriate locations.’ Like Racine,” he added, shoving the clipboard at me again. “Unlike Hollywood.”
Hollywood.
“Are you aware it took the average ICQP delegate two hours and thirty-six minutes to check in? They even sent some of the delegates to a hotel in Glendale.”
“And Beverly Hills,” I said absently. Hollywood. Bra museums and the Marx Brothers and gangs that would kill you if you wore red or blue and Tiffany/Stephanie and the World’s Largest Oil Painting Incorporating a Religious Theme.
“Beverly Hills,” Abey muttered, pulling an automatic pencil out of his pocket protector and writing a note to himself. “I’m presenting the petition during Dr. Gedanken’s speech. Well, go on, sign it,” he said, handing me the pencil. “Unless you want the annual meeting to be here at the Rialto next year.” I handed the clipboard back to him. “I think from now on the annual meeting might be here every year,” I said, and took off running for Grauman’s Chinese.
When we have the paradigm, one that embraces both the logical and the nonsensical aspects of quantum theory, we will be able to look past the colliding electrons and the mathematics and see the microcosm in all its astonishing beauty.
Excerpt from Dr. Gedanken’s keynote address
“I want a ticket to Benji IX,” I told the girl at the box office. Her name tag said, “Welcome to Hollywood. My name is Kimberly.”
“Which theater?” she said.
“Grauman’s Chinese,” I said, thinking, This is no time for a high entropy state.
“Which theater?”
I looked up at the marquee. Benji IX was showing in all three theaters, the huge main theater and the two smaller ones on either side. “They’re doing audience-reaction surveys,” Kimberly said. “Each theater has a different ending.”
“Which one’s in the main theater?”
“I don’t know. I just work here part-time to pay for my organic breathing lessons.”
“Do you have any dice?” I asked, and then realized I was going about this all wrong. This was quantum theory, not Newtonian. It didn’t matter which theater I chose or which seat I sat down in. This was a delayed-choice experiment and David was already in flight.
“The one with the happy ending,” I said.
“Center theater,” she said.
I walked past the stone lions and into the lobby. Rhonda Fleming and some Chinese wax figures were sitting inside a glass case next to the door to the restrooms. There was a huge painted screen behind the concessions stand. I bought a box of Raisinets, a tub of popcorn, and a box of jujubes and went inside the theater.
It was bigger than I had imagined. Rows and rows of empty red chairs curved between the huge pillars and up to the red curtains where the screen must be. The walls were covered with intricate drawings. I stood there, holding my jujubes and Raisinets and popcorn, staring at the chandelier overhead. It was an elaborate gold sunburst surrounded by silver dragons. I had never imagined it was anything like this.
The lights went down, and the red curtains opened, revealing an inner curtain like a veil across the screen. I went down the dark aisle and sat in one of the seats. “Hi,” I said, and handed the Raisinets to David.
“Where have you been?” he said. “The movie’s about to start.”
“I know,” I said. I leaned across him and handed Darlene her popcorn and Dr. Gedanken his jujubes. “I was working on the paradigm for quantum theory.”
“And?” Dr. Gedanken said, opening jujubes.
“And you’re both wrong,” I said. “It isn’t Grauman’s Chinese. It isn’t movies either, Dr. Gedanken.”
“Sid,” Dr. Gedanken said. “If we’re all going to be on the same research team, I think we should use first names.”
“If it isn’t Grauman’s Chinese or the movies, what is it?” Darlene asked, eating popcorn.
“It’s Hollywood.”
“Hollywood,” Dr. Gedanken said thoughtfully.
“Hollywood,” I said. “Stars in the sidewalk and buildings that look like stacks of records and hats, and radicchio and audience surveys and bra museums. And the movies. And Grauman’s Chinese.”
“And the Rialto,” David said.
“Especially the Rialto.”
“And the ICQP,” Dr. Gedanken said.
I thought about Dr. Lvov’s black and gray slides and the disappearing chaos seminar and Dr. Whedbee writing “meaning” or possibly “information” on the overhead projector. “And the ICQP,” I said.
“Did Dr. Takumi really hit Dr. Iverson over the head with a gavel?” Darlene asked.
“Shh,” David said. “I think the movie’s starting.” He took hold of my hand. Darlene settled back with her popcorn, and Dr. Gedanken put his feet up on the chair in front of him. The inner curtain opened, and the screen lit up.
KATHE KOJA
Skin Deep
Since her debut last year, Kathe Koja is receiving wide attention as one of the most exciting new writers around, and has become a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, SF Eye, and elsewhere. Her first novel, The Funhole, is due to be published soon. Her story “Distances” was in our Sixth Annual Collection. She lives in Willowbrook, Illinois.
Here she gives us an unsettling depiction of a close encounter of a very unusual kind …
Skin Deep
KATHE KOJA
The morning, air like steam curling wetly down his throat—the daily bastard rush of the heat: there was no getting used to it, not for him anyway. Skin moist and mushy, like staying too long in the shower, hair always frizzy-slick, always sticking to something, breath like water in his mouth. The bed was a lake of last night’s dreamy sweat, so Taylor sat up to smoke a handrolled cigarette, two fingers absently brushing the puckering sores on his chest and neck; there were more, on his buttocks and thighs. They didn’t hurt. He put out the cigarette, other hand flapping on the nightstand for his glasses: flimsy things, round-lensed with plain pale glass. It pleased him to affect such a quaintness; it gratified his growing sense of the grotesque.
He dressed in the bathroom, pulling clothes from the shower curtain rod. A rich mold had begun in the tub. He ignored it. Shoes, keys, cigarettes, out the door.
The woman at the doughnut shop: “Hey-hey, Blondie,” she always called him Blondie, “lookin’ a li’l worn out today, huh? Big night last night?”
“The biggest.” Spatulate silver tongs, heavy brown doughnuts creamy with grease; she put three in the bag, added an anemic danish, squeezed his fingers as he paid. Outside it was hotter than ever and not even noon. The air conditioner in his car hadn’t worked since January.
Parking, the doughnut bag sagged against his bare thigh; it made him shiver. Her building was old, one of the oldest on the block, and that was saying something. No security, no buzzers, no elevator: no notion, in those days, of such niceties. As he doubletimed it up the stairs, new sweat drizzled on his sores, starting a soft throb in rhythm with his heart, beating too fast for the mere exertion of climbing. His hard knock on the door pushed it open.
“Here,” his voice gluey in his throat, thick with anticipation, “I brought you something sweet,” and he proffered the bag to where she lay, there in the corner between the TV and the unused bed, all of her pulsing, a faint visible vibration, her color the sweet pink sheen of a baby’s mouth, shading to a delicate violet as he gave her the bag, and, in the giving, tore it. Fatty chocolate, the hungry glow of her, and he was hungry, too, oh yes. Keys, he dropped them, shoes off, shirt off in one motion and shorts in the other, sores throbbing, hard-on aching, and fell upon her,
literally, entirely, eyes closed and mouth open, sucking in her smell, enveloped in her, her name wet in his throat.
He cried out when he came, a breathless spent sob of pleasure, and she generated her special purr, a basso that tickled his bones. With his free hand, he rubbed at the sweat on his face, blew out breath like a swimmer: whoo! One of the doughnuts had rolled under the TV stand, and he fished it back with one foot. “Here,” and she ate it, the operation as always a queasy thing to watch: so many teeth, and all of them like—what? rubber? spines? Anemone teeth, yeah. “Good?” and she told him yes, it was very good.
He lay in her for a while, mindless enjoyment of her rich buoyancy, talking quietly as she purred, until inevitably he stiffened again, and again she made him cry. On the TV, an earnest white man implored him to SEEK HOME PROTECTION, PLEASE! before a backdrop of window bars worthy of vanished Spandau. Then the credits for “Another World,” and he sat up, dizzied, wiping more sweat. Time to go, but he dallied, fingerfed her the last crumbs, talked more daily nonsense, took two exhausted bites of the cheese danish; it lay like lead in his mouth.
“Trish,” swallowing with difficulty, “Trisha, I have to go now.” He stroked her, rubbing skin between fingers, loving, again, the sheer feel of her. “Tomorrow?”
She gave him to understand No; with the usual complicated juju, she made him understand Thursday, and he frowned, defeated by the thought of two whole empty days. He dressed, holding a chairback for support; dizzy again, with the exertion and the heat she loved. “Bye, babe,” he said, made proud by her soft drowsy sounds. “I’ll be back on Thursday, okay? Bye,” and he walked downstairs like an old man, the new sores seeping gently through his shirt.
* * *
Her name was no more Trisha than his was the sounds she made when she saw him, but they had to call each other something. He had been seeing her for six months, time enough for shamefaced urge to become urgent complacency: every three days at least, shine, rain, or hurricane. Time enough too to stop questioning, aside from the lingering idle wonder of what the hell?
He had come upon her (ho ho) by silly accident. A friend, bitterly bitching about an old girlfriend and his hostage wardrobe still at her place, and he, Taylor, paying back an old favor: “I’ll get it back for you, man,” chuckling all the way to the broken-down apartment building, chuckling as he turned the friend’s purloined key, choking on his chuckle as he saw the new tenant. Skinned his hand raw on the bannister, fell one-kneed and cursing into the afternoon heat of the street, went back and told his friend Get your own fuckin’ clothes! He suppressed the part about the living lump of twinkling flesh; no sense in having people look funny at you, friends, police, board of health, whoever.
Had she drawn him back, after so inauspicious a meeting? He’d toyed with that thought later, for otherwise how explain his next visit? Bowstring tight, sneaks poised for the first one-minute mile, opening the door like the girl in a horror movie whom the audience jeers for her mindless courage.
“Still there,” he’d mumbled through tight teeth, “still fucking in there,” but nothing happened. He stared, panting, exquisitely cautious. The lump moved. He was gone.
He came back. This time the lump looked—oh shit, forlorn? Stupid, but strangely true. That time he’d stayed long enough to learn something even stranger: it was a very smart lump; it was not really a lump; it was a female. (A female what, the jury was still out on that one.) But finding out it, she, was intelligent lessened his fear, and finding that she could talk, after her fashion, and he understand after his, lessened it further. By the end of a week he was feeding her, day-old bread and stale doughnuts, giddy with his own bravery, proud of his bizarre adventure.
The direction it took seemed laughably preordained, later—she was a girl, right? An accident, a stumble as he adjusted the TV for her (she liked TV, any TV) and his bare foot brushed her bulk. He had literally jumped, startled beyond fear at the sheer difference of it, the purely—say it—alien feel of her. And beyond the shock, like an echo: pleasure. Only a whisper of what she could give, but enough even then to intrigue him. Pig for it, he’d mocked himself nervously, and to the undercurrent of her encouragement touched her again. And again. And again, so caught up in the strangeness that his orgasm, when it happened, was almost a surprise; his sticky shorts rode home with him as testimony. You’re sick, he’d told himself, half-laughing, half-guilty, you’ll fuck anything.
The first sores had horrified him. Oh shit I got the alien AIDS, worse than AIDS, I know it is, and he drove there barefoot and shirtless, confronted her in a terror so great he was nearly in tears. She waited out his hysteria, then explained, in her wordless patient way, that the sores were harmless, a by-product of sorts of the meeting of their disparate skins. Comfort came from her in tsunami waves, and he wept with relief, believing her utterly. Harmless, she said harmless, and with a different sort of relief, he shed his jeans.
The biggest questions—what, how—she ignored, or could not answer. His curiosity was very great at first, but when she grew agitated, her color changing, her underbelly swelling like a bullfrog’s throat, he stopped asking, instead tried to calm her down. After a while he even stopped caring, though he wondered how she fared on the days he did not visit—their times together regulated, always, by her choice: apparently she prized her privacy—and how she fed. He wondered, too, who owned the building and why he didn’t come calling for tardy rent. Of course, she’d be daunting—she’d daunted the hell out of him, hadn’t she? And she was being nice. About this too he stopped caring; somebody else’s problem, after all.
As his visits progressed, the day-old treats became freshly-baked (she had a glutton’s passion for chocolate), the talks less perfunctory and more intimate, the intimacies more profound. It was a cliché, but he could talk to her about anything, absolutely anything: she was interested in whatever he had to say, at any length. She was soothing when he needed to be soothed, exciting when he wanted stimulation, silent when quiet was what he craved. And she was so easy to please, her wants minimal. Because that was so, he did more than she asked, brought sweeter treats, cleaned the apartment (while his own place grew more moldy by the day), brought rabbit-ears for the TV when the reception grew balky; he wanted to pay for cable, but neither could figure out a way for installation without unwelcome discovery, so she had to make do with network. Never mind, she said: she loved the soaps, could recite their byzantine intrigues by the hour, a litany of names like Tracey and Reva and Nola: she did it sometimes to amuse him. Her favorite character was called Trisha, and so he called her that; the name pleased her very much.
If someone had pointed out to Taylor that he had become obsessed, he would have laughed, but the truth was that there was little else in his life anymore but her. He had no time for other friends—he was either anticipating the next visit or recovering from the last one—and his barhopping nights seemed, now, a waste of time. A waste of time, too, his job at the video store, reluctant manager to bored clerks; he could not afford to quit, but did the minimum, sliding by. His apartment looked like a garbage can. (He joked, in a tentative way, about moving in with her; her instant negative surprised and wounded him. They never spoke of it again.)
He wanted to come more often: every day, if possible. Not possible, she told him, agitation riding beneath her calm refusal. “Every other day then,” he said, trying for a light request, surprised himself by the anxious demand of his voice. “C’mon, that’s okay, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
When I say, she said, and would not discuss it. That day she was particularly loving, but he was angry and refused to be placated. He left without asking when he might come back, and stayed away for four straight days. When he returned, on the morning of the fifth day, he was half in tears; he could not understand why she would not grant him more time.
He sat in his dark apartment, the TV on without sound, drinking lukewarm beer, absently fingering his sores. Was she growing bored with him? She seemed happy, but how could h
e know? He was at the mercy of her disclosures, and she said nothing about herself; all they talked of was him. How to find out? She would not answer willingly. Force was out of the question, and in any case, he could never bring himself to hurt her; even to think of threatening her made him feel sick. He drank another beer, two, four, and fell asleep with his mouth open. His dreams were of her.
He did not ask again, did not even bring up the subject. But it festered, making him one time sullen, the next almost unctuous. In their times apart, he sat imagining, angrily wondering what solitude provided that he could not. Inevitably his imaginings grew redder, and he came to believe it was not her need for solitude that kept him frustrated and at bay.
It was after a long night of stale beer that he began to watch her building. Not spying, he told himself, just—watching. His beachhead was the greasy spoon across the street from her building, its windows bleary with old fumes, its counter permanently scarred like the veteran of some dire chemical war. He sat there, waiting out the breakfast rush, waiting for a seat by the farthest window. When it emptied, he took his coffee and toast and established himself there, pretending to read the paper. It was a B-movie move, but nothing better suggested itself: if he sat there openly staring, they would make him leave.
He drank his coffee, ate his toast so slowly it hardened. He rested his elbows on the headlines and watched, but nothing happened that he could even remotely connect to Trisha: people left the building, others came: a man in khaki shorts and a red T-shirt, a fat man in an ancient summer suit, a woman in a mottled tank dress. The woman had a halfass furtive air, but maybe that was just his imagination. Besides, what would a woman have to do with Trisha? What would any of them? Asshole, he told himself, go home. And he did.
But he came back, kept coming. He became a regular, quiet and surly in his window booth. One morning, parking, another idea, child of frustration, had birth: forget the greasy spoon, he would watch from inside her building. No one would question or even wonder; it was not a place where motives were asked. He took the paper and a can of beer, and settled in the aching heat at the top of the stairs, sipping, sweating, waiting.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection Page 21