Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

  She was crying, opening her mouth and closing it again, thinking before slowly saying, "There was a boy at the Acropolis. He was seventeen but with an older body, and he was charming and naturally sweet, and he approached us. There were six students, all female, and one of us was a beauty on her worst day, and this was not her worst day. She looked splendid, and we expected the Greek boy to move on her. But no, he ignored the deity among us, and the rest of them too. I was the one he walked beside. I was the girl who learned his name and watched as he bowed to me in that way our grandfathers used to do... but in Queensland, we never learned to do it well, and that's why we gave up the gesture. Not because it was old-fashioned, but because we were so painfully miserable at the gesture."

  Her voice was rolling faster, but this wasn't a lecture. An emotional vein had been opened, tired purple finding light and fresh oxygen before turning into something vivid, bright and hot.

  "Of course my suitor was a professional at this game," she said. "Find a group of tourists and cull the weak one out of the herd. Which was me. He knew exactly what he was doing when he told me that I was a beauty and he loved me at first sight and he could be my friend for as long as I wished and pay him nothing and he would be a good friend, even a great friend. Or I could send him away and he would kill himself before tomorrow. That's the kind of love song he had used on young women for several years already, and I knew that. I understood. And he appreciated my worldliness, at least to the point where he didn't press his love too far. So no, he allowed that maybe he wouldn't slice open his chest and rip his heart from its home. But he told me that I was still quite lovely and looked like a woman who appreciated a good man's charms. And I laughed at him, warning him that he was wrong even when he wasn't. I told him that I was saving myself for my husband. I even mention a fiancé back in Queensland—a man who might or might not have been real. But the boy... I always think of him as being years younger than me... the boy told me to stop and wait, let my silly girlfriends go ahead. Which they did, but not far. Then he winked and said, 'You have never seen a man give so much of himself at one time.' "

  Quentin slowed his gait. But Sandra kept walking and talking, and he had to jog to catch her again.

  "I read something once," she said. "Or maybe more than once, I don't know. This isn't my specialty, and my memory can be treacherous with the sciences. But from what I understand, the universe is far larger than we imagine, and every moment of existence stands by itself, and everything only seems connected."

  "The Principles," he said.

  She seemed not to notice.

  "Suppose you were a god," she said. "Suppose gods could stand back and see the universe as infinite examples of what might be. Every moment leads on to a trillion, trillion possibilities, and there is no end to what will arise, and everything possible is inevitable."

  "Katarina Tan," he said.

  "The sex-crazed mathematician. I know about her."

  "I told you about all of this," he insisted.

  Sandra stopped walking, grabbing up one of his hands and then the other. They were a block short of their destination—the alleyway running behind the grocery and Treasure City. In the darkness, staring at him, she was smiling and not smiling—an odd expression rendered when weaving emotions tried to gain control over the face.

  "They are still there, these past times," she said. "Except they're not the past and they're never endangered. Athens. The Acropolis. That magnificent young man lurking in the marble columns, trying to impress homely girls with his fine Greek body."

  "What are you telling me?" asked Quentin.

  "You don't know," she said.

  He knew that he was exhausted and worried for good reasons, and then he spotted a familiar white car waiting in the alley with its lights out, and for some reason that worried him even more.

  "You don't understand?" she asked.

  And when Quentin didn't respond in the next moment, she said, "Stay here. You don't need to come any farther."

  "Oh," he thought. "She's telling me about Theo's father."

  But Quentin didn't say it, and Sandra was talking again. Quickly, softly. "Of course you won't want to go with me, an old woman destined for closets. I don't know why I would ever think you would."

  "But I don't want to leave you," he began.

  "Besides," she said, "there is a chance, a small but not thin chance, that they won't believe my story, my innocence. And if they don't believe me, they'll take what precautions need to be taken."

  "What does that mean?"

  Sandra sighed, and she made a point of smiling at Quentin until he smiled back at her, in reflex, and then she put her hands on the sides of his face and pulled his mouth down, kissing him intensely and then less so, and at some imprecise point, she was no longer there.

  The opossum waddled across the road, over to Quentin's side of the street, indifferent to him until it discovered that they were on converging paths. Then the creature stopped, hunkering down, growing perfectly still. The scaly tail froze, and the dark eyes gazed straight ahead, and Quentin stopped, arms crossed. They were ten feet apart. "Hello," Quentin said. "You're a beautiful opossum." Another step closed the gap between them. "Roll over. Stick out your tongue. Convince me you're dead."

  But his new friend insisted on watchful stillness.

  Quentin relented, claiming the middle of the street. The early morning air was cool and damp. His arms were happiest crossed, clinging to the body heat. The plain houses slept, and the people inside them slept, and a car was roaring somewhere, but it was moving away and soon gone, allowing the quiet to come back out of its hiding places, reclaiming the world.

  Walking in the street had become habit.

  Quentin's house stood on the next corner.

  He stopped short, wondering if he could turn and run fast enough to catch the white car.

  "Don't," he whispered.

  Easter decorations had been set up on the neighbor's yard. Quentin crossed the curb and sidewalk and then the closely mowed grass, standing before the crucifix. The savior's right breast was exposed, sliced from below and bleeding, her hands and feet were pierced with iron spikes, and blood ran down both of her bare legs, proving the carnage wrought by multiple rapes. Yet that face, that unnaturally pretty face, was at peace. This woman was bearing the evil and sin of this world, and to believe anything else was heresy beyond forgiveness.

  Quentin stepped close enough to touch that beautiful face, and he kicked over the cross and the savior.

  Then he walked the rest of the way home, hunting for bed.

  * * *

  OF FINEST SCARLET WAS HER GOWN

  Michael Swanwick | 10291 words

  Michael Swanwick tells us that he has just finished his "new, incredibly entertaining novel, Chasing the Phoenix, in which confidence tricksters Darger and Surplus accidentally conquer China." As readers may recall from stories like "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" (October/November 2001) and "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play" (July 2005), this sort of thing is always happening to them. A conquering of a different sort takes place in Michael's engaging new fantasy about a determined young woman who enters the uncharted territory of power dressing in Hell.

  Of finest scarlet was her gown; It rustled when it touched the ground. Even the Devil, with all her wealth, Had no such silks to clothe herself.

  Su-yin was fifteen when her father was taken away. She awoke from uneasy sleep that night to the sound of tires on the gravel drive and a wash of headlights through her room. From the window she saw a stretch limousine glide to a halt in front of the house. Two broad-shouldered men wearing sunglasses got out to either side. One opened the passenger door. A woman emerged. She wore a dress that covered everything from her neck to her ankles except for a long slit on the side that went all the way up one leg.

  A thrill of dark foreboding flew up from her like a wind.

  The woman cocked a wrist and one of her bodyguards—Su-yin had seen enough of their kind to know them at sight—h
anded her a cigarette. The other lit it. Flickering match-light played over the harsh planes of a cruel but beautiful face. In an instant of sick revulsion, Su-yin experienced a triple revelation: first that this woman was not human; then that whatever she might be was far worse than any mere demon; and finally that, given the extreme terror her presence inspired, she could only be the Devil herself.

  Quickly, Su-yin pulled on her clothes—jeans, flannel shirt, running shoes—as she had been taught to do if strangers came to the house late at night. But she did not slip out the back door and run through the woods as she was supposed to. Instead, she knelt by the window and watched through the slats of the Venetian blinds.

  The Devil unhurriedly smoked her cigarette, exhaling through her nostrils. Then she flicked away the butt and nodded. One of her underlings went to the front door and hammered on it with his fist. Bam! Bam! Bam! The sound was an assault upon the helpless house. There was a long silence. Then the door opened.

  Su-yin's father stepped outside.

  The general's bearing was stiff and proud. He listened politely while the bodyguard spoke. Then he gestured the man aside, dismissing him as irrelevant, and turned to confront the dark woman.

  She handed him a rose.

  For the space of three long breaths, Su-yin's father clutched the flower, black as midnight, staring down at it in horror and disbelief. Then he seemed to crumple. It was as if all the air had gone out of him. His head sagged. Weakly, he half-turned toward the house, lifting a hand in a gesture that as good as said, "At least..."

  The Devil snapped her fingers and pointed toward the limousine, where a bodyguard held open a door. She might have been giving orders to a dog.

  To Su-yin's shock, her father obeyed.

  Doors slammed. The engine growled to life. Heart pounding, Su-yin sprinted downstairs. Snatching the keys from the end table by the door, she ran for the Lexus. She didn't have a learner's permit yet, but the general had taken her to the parking lot at the stadium when no games were in the offing and let her try the car out under his careful supervision. So she knew how to drive. Sort of.

  By the time she'd gotten down the driveway and onto Alan-a-Dale Lane, the limousine was almost out of sight. Su-yin drove as fast as she dared, the steering wheel loose in her hands. She could see the limousine's red taillights in the distance and did her best to keep up, wandering off the road and jerking back on again. A truck swerved out of her way, horn blaring. Luckily, there were no cops about. But the limo pulled steadily away from her, dwindling on the miracle mile and then disappearing on Route One.

  It was gone.

  Su-yin mashed her foot down on the accelerator. The car leapt wildly forward and through a red light. She heard brakes screeching and horns screaming and what might have been an accident, but paid them no mind. All she could think of was her father.

  Her father was never a religious man. But when her mother died, he had emptied out the mud room and built a shrine there with candles, a framed photograph of his wife, and some of her favorite things: a carton of Virginia Slims, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a stuffed toy that had somehow survived from her childhood in rural Sechuan. Then he had gone into the little room, closed the door, and cried so loudly that Su-yin was terrified. He had seen that fear on her when he emerged, more than an hour later, his face as expressionless as a warrior's bronze mask. Scooping her up, he had lifted her into the air over and over again until she laughed. Then he'd said, "I will always be here for you, little princess. You will always be my daughter, and I will always love you."

  Su-yin's hands were white on the wheel and there were tears flowing down her face. It was only then that she realized that she, the general's daughter, was displaying weakness. "Stop that right now," she told herself fiercely. And almost overshot the strip club in whose lot the Devil's stretch was parked.

  Su-yin parked the car and composed herself. The club was shabby, windowless, and obviously closed. But where else could they have gone? She went inside. In the foyer a bearded man with a sleeveless shirt that showed biker tattoos said, "You ain't got no business here, girlie. Scram!"

  "I have an interview," Su-yin said, making it up as she went along, "An audition, I mean. With the head lady."

  "You're talent?" The man stared at her impudently. "Oh, they gonna eat you up."

  Then he jerked his head. "Enda the hall, down the stairs, straight on to the bottom."

  Trying not to show how terrified she was, Su-yin followed his directions.

  The hallway smelled of disinfectant, vomit, and stale beer. The handrail down the stairs rattled and some of the treads felt spongy underfoot. A lone incandescent bulb faded further and further into the distance behind Su-yin.

  Save for the sound of her own feet, the stairway was completely silent.

  Flight after flight she descended, the light growing steadily weaker until she was groping her way in absolute darkness. At some point, because it seemed impossible that the stairway could continue as far down as it seemed, she began counting landings. At twenty-eight, she bumped into a wall.

  By feel, Su-yin found a doorknob. It turned and she stumbled through a doorway into a dim red city. A sun the color of molten bronze shone weakly through its clouds. The air stank of coal smoke, sulfur, and diesel exhaust. Sullen brick buildings, scarred with graffiti, overlooked narrow streets where trash blew in the cold breeze. There was no trace of either her father or the Devil.

  Su-yin took a step backward and bumped into the side of a brick building. The door through which she had come had disappeared.

  "Where am I?" she asked out loud.

  "You're in Hell, of course. Where else would you be?"

  Su-yin turned to find herself face to face with a scrawny, flea-bitten, one-eyed disgrace of a tomcat perched atop an overflowing trash can. He grinned toothily. "Spare a few bucks for a fella what's down on his luck?"

  "I..." Su-yin seized control of herself. She had to expect things would be different here. "Take me to the Devil, and I'll give you whatever money I have." Then she remembered that she'd left behind her purse. "Actually, I only have a few coins in my pocket—but I'll give you them all."

  The cat laughed scornfully. "I can see you're going to fit in here really well!" He extended a paw. "I'm Beelzebub. Not the famous one, obviously."

  "Su-yin." She shook the paw carefully. Its fur was greasy and matted. "Will you help me?"

  "Not for the crap money you're offering." Beelzebub jumped down from the trash-can. "But since I got all eternity with nothing better to do, I'll help you out. Not because I like you, understand. Just because it's an offense against local community standards."

  Hell was a city like any other city save that there was nothing good to be said about it. Its inhabitants were as rude as Parisians, its streets as filthy as those of Mumbai, its air as tainted as that of Mexico City. Its theaters were closed, its libraries were burned-out shells, and of course there were no churches. Those few shops that weren't shuttered had long lines. The public facilities were far from clean and, without exception, had run out of toilet paper long ago. It didn't take Su-yin long to realize that her father was not going to be easily found. There was no such thing as a City Hall or, indeed, any central authority of any kind. Hell appeared to be an anarchy. Nor was there a wealthy district for the privileged. "It's a socialist's dream world," Beelzebub told her. "Everybody's equally miserable here."

  The Devil could be anywhere. And though the cat led her up streets and down, there was not a trace of that Dark Lady to be seen.

  In a rundown park little better than a trash dump she came upon a pale-skinned young man sitting cross-legged on a park bench whose back slats were missing. His hands were resting on his knees, palms up, thumbs touching the tips of his forefingers. His head was tilted back. His eyes were closed. "What are you doing?" Su-yin asked him.

  "Curiosity? Here?" The young man continued staring sightlessly at the sky. "How... curious." Then he lowered his chin and, opening his
eyes, studied her through a shock of jet-black hair. His eyes were faintest blue. "A pretty girl. Curiouser and curiouser."

  Su-yin blushed.

  "Watch out for this one, Toots," Beelzebub said. "He'll talk the knickers offa you in no time flat."

  "It seems you have a friend. In Hell. Inexplicable. Tell me what you see."

  "See?"

  "See," the young man said. "Hell is different for everybody. What you see is pretty much what you deserve."

  "Then I guess I don't deserve much." Su-yin described the litter-filled park and the sad buildings that surrounded it as best she could.

  "No wasps? No flames? None of those nasty little things you can only see out of the corner of your eye? I begin to wonder if you belong here at all." The young man uncrossed his legs, and sat like a normal boy, all elbows and knees. "In answer to your question, I was meditating, foolish though that may well seem to you. Against all reason, I appear not to have entirely given up hope. But I doubt that you're interested in my story."

  "I am, actually." Su-yin sat down on the park bench beside the boy. Unlikely though it was, she couldn't help hoping that he was nice. "What's your name?"

  "Rico. When I was alive, I thought I was a pretty hard sort. I cut class, boosted cars, smoked reefer, had sex with girls. Oh, and I died young. That's important. I was shot dead in my very first hold-up. I strutted through the gates of Hell like a rooster, convinced that I was the baddest, wickedest man ever consigned to damnation.