Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

  Quentin was reading an adventure novel from the thirties. The story was wrapped around a giant two-fingered thunderbird called Lucida's Terror, dead for sixty-six million years now. But a smart and lovely lady scientist found a nest of viable eggs, and what the eons couldn't hatch, she could. She raised the chicks on goat meat and then on evil men, and she trained them to be ridden, and now she was preparing to take her warriors into battle against the Mongolian mammoth corps.

  An engine rumbled, and Quentin recognized the voice of a Trailbreaker.

  Before looking up, he considered what he might do and might say in the next uncomfortable moments.

  But the car was sky blue, not gold, and it was driven by a different middle-aged woman. She parked at the lot's far corner, got out and came around to help an elderly man from his seat. Maybe it was her husband, but there was enough resemblance to make him look like a father. In Quentin's head, that's what they were: Daughter and dad dressed in their Sunday best, stealing a parking spot before making the one-block walk to the Reformed Church and its late-morning service.

  Once more, he reflexively searched the laundry for the face he knew.

  Then he went back to the marching thunderbirds. The story was populated with characters as simple as the animals they rode, and unlike life, quite a lot happened, and unlike life, every twist to the plot was welcome.

  Only part of the evening was spent wrestling with conversations that would never happen. Which was why this Monday happened to be better than last Monday.

  In his head, he told Sandra, "You're too old for me."

  Aloud, he said, "I'm wrong for you."

  An epic fight was wrapped around the secret son pursued by government agencies. It wasn't fair to involve him, he argued. None of this was fair. Through no fault of his own, Quentin had been endangered. But the imaginary Sandra broke into sobs, begging for small gestures of forgiveness and then large ones, and in the end, the daydreamer lost that fictional argument.

  Standing beside the west window, Quentin watched the quiet street and green grass and the bright plastic eggs set in a ring on the neighbor's unmowed yard— cheap symbols of last week's spring equinox.

  Evening never fell, he was thinking, and the sun never dropped.

  Clichés claimed what they wanted, but darkness always emerged from the earth, out from its hidden corners and up from the world's countless holes—shadows given the necessary strength and courage to invade the abandoned, fear-struck air.

  It was Saturday evening and Warner College was between quarters, yet quite a lot was moving on campus. Weaver finches pecked at seeds and each other. A male bloodbird sang from a tall branch. Glade squirrels ran and paused and ran again. But dominating the scene was a flock of Queensland ravens. They spoke among themselves, roosting in the trees while their siblings hopped about the lawn with impunity. The ravens were discussing the human interloper. Wise and rapacious, they debated how Quentin would taste and who deserved the choice bits, and that's why one of the ravens lingered in front of him, one smart and very cruel eye examining his reserves of fat.

  A bad little story occurred to Quentin: Birds of every species banding together, rebelling against humanity.

  The dirty gold Trailbreaker was parked in an otherwise empty faculty lot. Quentin didn't ask what he wanted, much less if he had a plan. He watched himself walk beneath the cow-itch vine that covered the front of Old Warner Hall. The righthand door was locked, but not its amiable partner on the left. The indoor air was cool, high ceilings and deep sandstone walls giving the building its familiar cave-like sensibility. Pausing, he heard nothing. The broad center staircase led upward, and having reached the second floor, habit or momentum carried him up narrow stairs to the third floor.

  He wasn't welcome here. This was a muddy little mistake, he sensed. Then what might have been a voice found him—a muttered phrase, genderless and quickly lost—and he followed, pausing at the small board where a Novice would learn his professor's office number.

  The voice came again. A man was speaking, hushed but emotional. If Sandra was here, she wasn't alone. She was probably entertaining another ex-student, Quentin decided, and he told himself to stop wasting steps, doing nothing for the moment but watching what happened inside his head.

  Small endurable pains were a blessing, proving that he would survive this torment.

  And with that, he took a small step backward.

  "Yes, son. May I help you?"

  The voice was firm and soothing, quiet yet pleasantly rich. The words arrived from no particular direction before ending inside his ears. In reflex, Quentin looked up, but no one happened to be floating near the ceiling. A slow turn ended when he saw the dark office door halfway opened, revealing a scholar's wall covered with shelves and tall books, and before the wall sat a wizened little fellow, reading glasses on his nose and drifts of snowy hair hovering over a pale pink scalp.

  Perhaps the voice came from that man. But he said nothing more, and Quentin couldn't tell if his own presence had been noted. Sitting beside a small desk, wearing a neat dark suit with the cravat carefully pressed and tied, the old fellow had large eyes left half-closed and full pink lips clamped shut, and his head was tipped away, one skeletal hand holding some object against the unseen ear.

  Quentin took a half step toward the man, remembering and then forgetting a name. Professor emeritus, the fellow hadn't taught a class in several years. But a name plate decorated the desk beside him. Dr. Julius Hedgewick. Of course. And in another moment Quentin was certain that he had known the name all along.

  Dr. Hedgewick breathed and shook his head slowly, and the voice that Quentin heard before said, "Well, well." The hand was holding a bone-white earpiece, the braided cord leading to a small radio resting on the desk. With a sober smile, the man looked at Quentin, and once again, he said, "May I help you?"

  "I was," Quentin began. But what was he doing? "Leaving. I took a wrong turn."

  "But you're here now." The smile warmed, and with the other hand beckoned. "Come in. Join me, son."

  Quentin stepped inside the office. The last of the day's sun was flooding through the tall rippled glass. Books numbered in the hundreds. Words had no weight, the old shelves bowing under the paper and glue. Quentin read titles and forgot what he read. The general focus was on pioneers and native tribes and the long, generally peaceful settlement of this territory. Hedgewick waited for his guest to sit. The second chair, wearing leather and wheels, looked as if it had been the professor's until it was worn out, relegated now to an honorary status.

  "A lovely day," said Hedgewick.

  Quentin nodded.

  "The Han have an expression. 'May you live in boring times.' "

  "This is a boring day," Quentin said.

  "Which is reason enough to enjoy it."

  It felt important to admit, "I never took any of your classes."

  The confession went unnoticed. With a crooked finger, Hedgewick turned the dial on his portable radio, and with the click he said, "There. I'll save the battery."

  "I wish I had taken something of yours," Quentin added.

  The supplicant's noise was discounted with a shrug. Then those long hands joined together against his chest, and the old fellow said, "I'm writing a history about this school. Which has not always been this wonderfully boring."

  Quentin was a student again, sitting in the front row.

  "Warner College has seen some battles," Hedgewick continued. "I'm sure you know that this was a woman-only school until after the World's War."

  "Yes, sir."

  "But that's rather less than true. After the Garner Sect was destroyed, in October of 1875, school administrators decided to honor a few heroic soldiers." He paused, smiling wistfully. "Do you know what the Garners believed?"

  "Communal property and freedom from government."

  Hedgewick offered no clear reaction. After a moment, he said, "Well, that is the simple description. But no, it doesn't do justice to their radical ideas
. God had chosen them, first of all. And God rules the universe in all of its facets. They took the idea of a sexless deity to its ultimate end, which meant that the Christ was neither female nor male, and from this peculiar notion came the principle of total equality between the sexes."

  Quentin nodded, his rump settling into the seat.

  "The Garners had settlements to the west and north, particularly in the Paha Sapa Mountains. Good at business, enriched by gold, they gained numbers and wealth, which they took as further evidence of their divine entitlement. Believing their own superiority, they let themselves move into full rebellion against the Lakota governor. This was early in 1874. Brigades of cavalry were marshaled and sent west, and there was a yearlong campaign before that awful little war was finished. The campaign ended with the slaughter of everyone but young children and the least guilty women. One victorious brigade happened to pass through Eureka on their way home. A parade was arranged in haste. The veterans rode up the main street, and to reward our heroes, the Warner president agreed to invite ten young men—men of education and some promise—to become students in every sense but officially.

  "Of course, the campus was quite a bit smaller. Warner Hall was the tallest structure, and as old as this room looks to you, it didn't exist then. The entire third floor was a single room, open and serving as the chapel for our pious students and their lady teachers. Several hundred young women were preparing for lives that would demand learning and a measure of wisdom. But these were young women subject to young tendencies. Sitting in the same classrooms with ex-soldiers proved too much of a temptation. Dozens fell in love, and the men adored the attention, and they acted exactly as young men will, and the situation might have remained bearable. But you see, one of the heroes was not. His true character remains a mystery. Who can know? He might have been insane before being sent west to kill heretics. Or the battles made him angry in deep, destructive ways. Or maybe one of the girls professed her love and used him, and then she cast him aside... making her wholly to blame for the breakdown in his soul and sanity.

  "History is built on conundrums, not answers. Whatever the reason, that young fellow was filled with withering rage. He didn't just hate this one despicable girl, but all women and all that they stood for. One morning in 1877, while the entire campus was sitting upon this floor, enjoying chapel, the ex-soldier soaked a mattress with kerosene and dragged it into the basement beneath the only stairs, and then he set the mattress on fire. There it smoldered and flared before choking on its own black smoke. If it hadn't choked, the building would have burned. The stairs would have ignited and collapsed, and the trapped women would have had to leap three stories to the ground, and those that didn't die from the fall or smoke or flames would have been crippled. But thankfully, with God's blessing, the mattress failed in its mission, and the college survived that disaster, and of course the dangerous man was hunted down and executed, while his brothers were told that their presence was no longer welcome here."

  For a moment, Hedgewick glanced at the hallway. Quentin barely noticed, leaning forward now, elbows on knees, waiting for whatever this sage said next.

  "I have given that mattress quite a lot of thought." Eyes turned to the floor, picturing a rectangle of fabric and padding. "Instruments of mass murder aren't selected by chance. I wouldn't be surprised if that mattress had significance to his life and his sickness. Which is another example of our human tendency to let ourselves be wrapped inside our symbols, crippling our ability to act effectively in pursuit of our interests, whether they are worthy or disgusting."

  Hedgewick's eyes looked up, looked at Quentin. "Passion can be dangerous. We know this too well. If you manage to reach my age, son, you may appreciate just how perilous human nature can be. Yet at the same time, it must be said that because passion is incoherent and clumsy, and it is inefficient on its most dangerous day, for those reasons we have been saved endless times. Yes, saved. Spared. Because if we were machines, machines blessed with rational, eff icient mechanical minds, we would have met every enemy with perfect campaigns, and only the perfect few would survive. Or more likely, one machine would have prevailed, and where would be the success in that?"

  The lecture was finished. The pause said so, and the way the professor leaned back in his groaning chair said so, and then the same crooked finger turned the dial on his little radio while he pushed the earpiece back where it belonged. Glancing at Quentin once more, joy buoyed the smile. "She's waiting for you, you know."

  Quentin sat straight up in the chair.

  Then the small hand dropped on his shoulder, and into his right ear, Sandra whispered, "There you are."

  She claimed his hand when they reached the hallway and dropped it again once they were inside her office, and they stood a long step apart, staring at each other. Sandra's mouth was half open. She was breathing quickly, and the oyster glasses were dirty enough to show smudges, and she wasn't pretty. She looked tired and grimy, her hair matted by oil and crumbs clinging to the blue shirt and the thin makeup smeared above her red left eye. Her peculiarly intense gaze made Quentin expect that she was going to leap at him.

  But whatever the urge, it suddenly left her. Pointing to a short sofa, she said, "Sit."

  He sat. The room was smaller than her colleague's, the shelves fewer, but just as many volumes filled crevices and odd crannies. Her books were newer and brighter than Hedgewick's, yet the subjects were far more ancient. Papers and folders were stacked on the desk and two separate tables, and still more books were mixed into that purposeful mayhem. This was a busy library. Millions of words waited to be gathered inside the mind of a person, and that odd thought made Quentin happy, happy enough that he didn't have room to think anything else.

  Sandra settled behind her desk.

  "What are we doing?" he asked.

  "I'm waiting," she announced.

  He nodded.

  She studied him, a half-smile tinged with caution.

  "I wanted to tell you," Quentin began. "The other day, I read something interesting about Venus."

  Her caution dissolved into a clear, urgent feeling. She said, "I just remembered."

  "What?"

  "Why I'm angry with you."

  Quentin wanted to go outside and lie down. He wanted ravens to dig the eyes out of his skull.

  Then a phone began to sing, four notes sounding, and after the pause, the notes began all over again. The telephone wasn't in Sandra's office, yet the woman seemed keenly interested. When the ringing stopped, she leaned forward with eyes opened and her top lip curled back over her hard little teeth.

  Hedgewick had interrupted the melody. "Hello?" And then a moment later, "Hello there?"

  Now Quentin was listening, as if nothing else in the world mattered.

  "No, I'm sorry," the old man said. "You have a wrong number."

  Sandra rose, calling out, "What number did they want?"

  "Five-oh-five," the old professor answered.

  She walked to the closest table. Behind a stack of books was a small white sack, and with a distracted air, she glanced at Quentin. Was he still here?

  "I forgot to do something," she lied.

  He nodded.

  "An errand."

  "Okay."

  "You should go home," she said.

  Quentin wanted her to come home with him, but honesty would reveal a sex-crazed monster and that is why he lied.

  "I want to go with you," he told her.

  She wouldn't let him. Quentin understood that.

  Yet Sandra didn't let herself think, happiness making her unusually bold.

  "All right then," she said quietly, surprising both of them. "Come meet my son."

  The Trailbreaker coughed before finding its breath, and Sandra pulled onto the road, looking in every mirror as much as she looked ahead.

  Little neighborhood roads took them north.

  Quentin didn't ask for explanations or instructions. He turned in the seat, and life's only purpose was to watch
what was behind them. The only trailing car was tiny and light blue—not the kind of vehicle he expected from the Federals. But just when the vehicle seemed to follow them too closely, it turned and vanished inside an open garage.

  Quentin buried his questions. He was feverishly curious about Theo and his circumstances and how these occasional, apparently random meetings were organized. But he wanted to be a minion, and those duties included remaining usefully ignorant. Little dramas played out in his head, and they were just that: Play. The police were big men and acidic little women, and nobody could break him, and even if he was broken, he knew nothing nothing nothing that could injure anyone.

  Then the daydream police started to beat him with lacrosse sticks, and he lost control of the daydream.

  Quentin looked forward.

  Sandra was just as silent and just as nervous as he was, but her nerves carried more anticipation than fear. She clung to the big steering wheel. Every purple stoplight was obeyed, every corner needed three looks. She crossed railroad tracks on a battered road and then slipped across Highway 7. A little car dealership passed by, and repair shops and warehouses, and then there was nothing but the asphalt road leading to hills and open countryside. Quentin assumed they were heading for farm country and an isolated field, but Sandra fooled at least one person. They crossed Wolf Woman Creek and then turned right and right again, using a rutted lane and a narrow, plainly substandard bridge to cross the water again.

  "Did you see the flag?" she asked suddenly.

  "What flag?"

  "On the windshield. In the car lot on Bernice."

  He hadn't.

  "It was there," she assured. "And that's where Theodore is."

  "Okay. Good."

  She drove faster, laughing softly. "Maybe someday," she began, and then her mind shifted subjects.

  "Someday what?"

  "I'll teach students how to confound authority figures." She laughed and cuddled with the wheel. "Would you take a class like that?"