Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  AND LIKE RIGHT INTO my honeymoon suite. This is where you and I came in. Maureen came to the end of her story and she was totally right: I was amazed. I was also like still stunned from the sock on the jaw she gave me, which I am never, ever going to forget. I just put that on the bill with the heartache and suffering she'd caused me in the past. I'd collect on it all someday, for sure.

  She was going to climb out the bathroom window, but I stopped her. She goes, "What now?" like I've been making demands on her.

  I go, "Maureen, you're still cruising the Solar System like some kind of kid on summer vacation. I mean, look at it—Maureen Birnbaum, Tacky Girl Beast. You're getting muscles, honey. If you start growing a mustache, you should seriously think about passing the heavy responsibility to someone else. A guy, maybe." She glowered at me like really threatening, but I held up a hand. "Look at me. Happily married Bitsy Spiegelman Fein, settled wife and planning maybe to be a mother, if you ever let me spend some time alone with Josh. Real adult stuff, real adult hopes and dreams. Who are you? Still Muffy Birnbaum, the One Woman Mercenary Army. It's not chic, sweetie. It doesn't fit you at all. And you know what else doesn't fit? Look at us in the mirror. What do you see?"

  She goes, "I see you, you zod, and me."

  I go, "I see me, twenty-two years old. I see you, and you look the same as you did when you were a junior at the Greenberg School."

  She goes, "I do?"

  I go, "Uh huh."

  She goes, "Whoa, get back! Maybe I really am immortal."

  I go, "Maybe you really are a case of arrested development." I had to duck fast after that one. She grabbed her spear and her bag and everything and like thundered out of the bathroom. Too late I tried to stop her. "Muffy! No!" I yelled.

  She was already crossing the suite to the front door. My darling Josh was standing there in his boxer shorts, socks, and garter, holding two glasses of champagne. He had a peculiar look on his face. The front door slammed shut after Maureen. I looked back at Josh. He turned to me, trying to like make sense out of the apparition that escaped his bathroom. I go, "That was Muffy Birnbaum, sweetheart. You've heard me speak of her."

  He goes, "Right."

  I took one of the glasses from him and drained the champagne in one long gulp. I didn't mention Maureen again. What Josh didn't know wouldn't barf him out. Loose Lips Sink Ships, like I'm totally sure.

  * * *

  Isaac Asimov, it goes without saying, was a science fiction immortal, and it pleased me more than I can say when I was invited to write a story for an anthology called Foundation's Friends, a volume in tribute to the Good Doctor. The idea was to come up with a story set in one of the many worlds and futures Asimov created during his long career.

  There were, naturally, a good many respectful robot and Foundation stories, but I decided to play around with "Nightfall," an early Asimov piece that has frequently been mentioned as the most famous science fiction short story ever written. I asked Isaac's permission to completely trash his classic tale. The postcard he sent to me after reading "Maureen Birnbaum after Dark" is testimony to his well-documented sense of humor.

  * * *

  Maureen Birnbaum

  After Dark

  by Betsy Spiegelman Fein

  (as told to George Alec Effinger)

  ABOUT TWO MONTHS after she barged into my honeymoon with Josh, Maureen showed up again. My jaw no longer hurt where she'd cracked me, but I still recalled how nearly impossible it had been to explain to my new husband what this totally unkempt barbarian girl in chain mail was doing in our hotel suite. I mean, it was our wedding night and all. Josh had just carried me across the threshold, and I'd gone into the bathroom -to freshen up," and there she was, God's Gift to the Golden Horde, Muffy herself She spooked Josh out of his socks when she stormed out of the bathroom and through the front door. Josh's jaw dropped to his knees, okay? I couldn't get his mind back on honeymoon activities for two or three hours. Maureen has caused me a lot of grief over the years, but spoiling my wedding night takes the cake. I was never going to speak to her as long as I lived.

  Only she showed up again with another of her crummy adventures. I was trying to make this strawberry cheese quiche from scratch for the first time. I went into the pantry to get something, and there she was. She likes to startle me, I think. Her idea of a cool joke. See, I'm twenty-two and settled now, but Maureen looks >exactly the same way she did as a junior at the Greenberg School. She thinks like a high school kid, too. So I give this little yipe of surprise when I see her, and then I go, "Out! Out!" She smiled at me like nothing weird had ever happened between us, and she came out of my pantry chewing on a handful of sugar-coated cereal. I frowned at her and go, "I didn't mean just out of the pantry. I want you out of the house, like now." I was edged, for sure.

  "Hold on, Bitsy," she goes, "you haven't even heard my latest story."

  "And I'm not Bitsy anymore," I go. "You don't want to be called Muffy, I don't want to be called Bitsy. I'm grown up now. Call me Betsy or Elizabeth. That's what Josh calls me. Elizabeth."

  She laughed. "And where is dear Josh today? I don't want to totally blow him away again or anything."

  "He's seeing patients this afternoon."

  "Good," goes Maureen, "then you can knock off for a little while and listen."

  "I'm not going to listen, sister. I've got work to do. Why don't you find a psychoanalyst to listen to you? It would do you like just so much good."

  "Ha ha," she goes, ignoring everything I said to her. Then she started telling me this story whether I wanted to hear it or not, and I didn't want to hear it.

  I think she thought we were still friends.

  * * * * *

  YOU REMEMBER the last time I bopped by, I told you all about this battle in the far future I won like singlehanded, okay? So after I left you and your darling doctor hubby in Bermuda, I decided to whoosh on out of your honeymoon suite and try to find Mars again. Mars is, you know, my destiny, and where I met that totally bluff Prince Van. I was still drooling like a schoolgirl over him, and I'd been dying to run into him again. But I just kept missing Mars, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Maybe it was my follow-through, or I wasn't keeping my head down or something. I just didn't understand how I was messing up.

  Anyway, from down by your hotel's pool I aimed at Mars, but I landed someplace that didn't look anything like the part of Mars I knew: no ocher dead sea bottom, no hurtling moons, no bizarro green men. I jumped up and down a couple of times to see if maybe it felt like Martian gravity, but no such luck. Good ol' Maureen wasn't going to have any help carrying around her heroinely poundage here. Matter of fact, I was just a teensy bit heftier in this place than on Earth. Right off, I figured wherever this was, it wasn't going to make my short list of fave vacation spots. My God, like who needs a complimentary gift of an extra fifteen pounds to lug around, know what I mean?

  I was disappointed, but so what else is new? If these thrilling exploits of mine have taught me one thing, it's that you can't always get what you want. Yeah, you're right, Bitsy, Mick Jagger said the same thing entire decades ago, but I don't get my wisdom from ancient song stylists of our parents' generation.

  The first thing I do when I de-whoosh in one of these weirdo places is try to sort out the ground rules, 'cause they're always different. It pays to find out up front if you're likely to be scarfed down for lunch by some hairball monster, or worshiped as the reincarnation of Joan Crawford or something. Between you and me, sweetie, being worshiped is only marginally better than death, but we savage warrior-women won't accept either treatment. You must've learned that much from me by now, and I hope you've let your Josh know all about it.

  Bitsy, can I get something to drink out of your fridge? I mean, I just got back from saving the civilization of an entire world from destruction, and I'm dying for a Tab. Jeez, you don't have any Tab, and you used to be Miss Diet Bubbles of Greater Long Island. And no beer, either! Whatever happened to Blitzy Bitsy Spiegelman,
the original party vegetable? You've got five different brands of bottled water in here, and not a single one of them is Perrier! What, you serve one water with fish and another with meat? 'A pure, delicious water from the natural miracle of New Jersey's sparkling springs.' You drink water from New Jersey? Bitsy, are you like fully wheezed or what? Josh's idea, right?

  So where was I? No, never mind, I'll just die of thirst. Anyway, I looked around and at first it didn't really seem like another planet or anything. I was standing in this road, okay? I was most of the way up a hill, and behind me the pavement wound down through these trees and stuff, and I could see a pretty big town down there. It reminded me a lot of this time Daddy and Pammy took me to Santa Barbara, except I couldn't see anything like an ocean from where I was on that hill. Up ahead of me was a big building with a dome on it, like one of those places where they keep their telescopes, you know? I can't remember what they call 'em, but you know what I mean. Well, the dome place was a lot closer than the city, so I started booking it up the road the rest of the way.

  Now, at this point, the only evidence I had that I wasn't on Earth somewhere was my weight, and you've probably noticed that I've tended to bulk up just a smidge from one adventure to the next. So maybe, I think, I really am just outside of Santa Barbara or somewhere, and the extra fifteen pounds is like this horrible souvenir I picked up in The World of Tomorrow. I did have lots of healthful exercise there, bashing skulls in the fresh air, a diet that would lay Richard Simmons in his grate—I mean, look at these muscles! These lats would make Stallone jealous!

  This is how I'm talking to myself, until I notice that there's a partial sunset going on off to the left. A partial sunset. That's where not all of the suns in the sky seem to be setting at the same time. See, there was this yellow sun plunking itself down on the horizon, and making a real nice show out of the mists in the valley, and ordinarily I would have stopped and admired it because sunsets are like so cute. Why do people get so totally poetic about sunsets, anyway? I mean, there's always another one coming, like buses, and they're all pretty much the same, too. You don't have critics reviewing sunsets. Today's will be just like yesterday's, and there's not much hope that tomorrow's will be any more special. So what's the big deal?

  Well, even after the yellow sun faded away, it was still daytime, 'cause there was still this other little sun hanging around. I thought it might be the moon, except it was almost as bright as the sun that had set, and it was red. "Okay, Maureen," I go, "this is not Earth. And it's not even in the whatyoucall, the solar system. You really flaked out this time."

  A couple of seconds later, I realized I was in big trouble. See, my interspatial whooshing depends on being able to see my goal in the heavens. That's how I got to Mars, remember? I stood out under the night sky and raised my beseeching arms to the ruddy God of War, and like whoosh! there I was. So, despite my steering problems, I've always found my way home 'cause I've always stayed sort of in the same neighborhood. Now, though, it was all different. I wasn't going to be able to see the Earth in the sky at all. And the sun—the right sun, our sun—would be just one bright dot lost among all the others. If it was even there at all.

  But I hadn't been entirely abandoned by Fate. After all, I was only half a mile downwind from an observatory. They'd be able to point me in the right direction, I was sure of it.

  I cranked uphill for a few minutes, starting to feel a little weirded out. The light from the small sun was the color of beet juice, and it kind of sluiced down over the trees and the road and made me look like I'd been boiled too long. I was just telling myself that I hoped no one would see me until I got inside the observatory, when I spotted this guy hustling down the road toward me.

  "Great," I go, "he'll think I've been pickled in a jar or something." But there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I stopped worrying. After all, his color was halfway between a crabapple and an eggplant, too.

  He wasn't a bad-looking guy, either, even though in that light he looked like the Xylocaine poster child. The only odd thing about him was his clothes. He had on a kind of silvery jumpsuit with those stupid things that stand up on your shoulders, like the visitors from the future always wore in old sci-fi movies. He looked like Superman's dad from back in the good old days on Krypton. "Oh boy," I go, "welcome to the World of Superscience."

  I guess he was just as freaked to see me. I mean, I was wearing my working outfit, which was just the gold brassiere and G-string I picked up on my travels, with Old Betsy hung on my hip. Maybe it was the broadsword, or maybe he was just overcome by my ample figure, but he just came to a stop in the middle of the road and stared. I mean, if I whoosh through space in a drop-dead outfit I stumbled on at Lillie Rubin, I land in Fred Flintstone's backyard. If I slide into my fighting harness instead, it figures I end up in some totally tasteful garden party beyond the stars. You can't win, right?

  Which reminds me, Bitsy. Every time I see you, you look like you need intensive care from the Fashion Resuscitators. Look at you now! Everything you're wearing is black or drab colors and loose and shapeless. And hightop gym shoes with black socks? Bitsy! Has the FBS Catalog lost your address, or what?

  Never mind. I looked at this Luke Floorwalker and I figured it was time for an exchange of interplanetary greetings. I stepped forward and raised my hand in the universal sign of peace. "I come from a planet not unlike your own," I go, real solemn. "I am Maureen Danielle Birnbaum. Do not call me Muffy."

  This dweeb just boggled at me with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish or something. Finally he figured out how his mouthparts were connected, and he goes, "You've come much sooner than we expected."

  "Excuse me?" I go. I hadn't fully realized that my reputation was spreading all through the universe.

  "We didn't think there'd be any serious trouble until after totality," he goes.

  "I'm no trouble," I go. "I come in peace for all mankind."

  He took a couple of steps forward and looked a little closer at my garb. He reached out with a finger to boink my chestal covering. Guys are always trying to do that to me. "Whoa, like men have died for less," I go, in my Command Voice.

  "Forgive me, my dear girl. Your fall into barbarism was also more immediate than we predicted."

  This goober rapidly needed straightening out. Old Betsy sang as I whipped her from her scabbard. "I'm not your dear girl, like I'm totally sure," I go. "And it's not barbarism or anything. It's like being fully wild and free."

  "Whatever," he goes. "But let me introduce myself. I am Segol 154." He cocked his head to one side, so I was supposed to be impressed or something.

  "Segol 154?" I go. "Is that like a name you spraypaint on subway cars? You live on 154th Street, or what?"

  Now it was his turn to look bummed out. "I am Segol 154. That is my cognomination." He said it with this little grisly sneer.

  "Well, forget you," I go. I just didn't like his attitude, you know?

  He paid no attention. "May I ask you, how long have you been under this delusion?"

  I go, "What delusion?"

  He goes, "This belief that you're from another planet?"

  Now, see, in every one of these doggone exploits there comes a time when I have to prove I'm from another planet. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy. So I go, "Why can't I be from another planet?"

  Segol 154 just shook his head sadly. "Because there are no other planets. Lagash is all alone, circling Alpha. There are five other suns, but no planets. Although in the last ten years, the work of Aton 77 and others has deduced the existence of a lesser satellite, we're equally certain that no life could exist upon it."

  "No other planets? Oh yeah?" Okay, so maybe I could've come up with a stronger argument.

  "Yes, that is the case. So you see, you can't be from another planet. You were born on Lagash, just as I was."

  "I never even heard of Lagash until a minute ago! I came from Earth, that beautiful sapphire-blue world my people so sadly take for granted."
<
br />   "If that is the case," he goes, smirking like an idiot, "how do you explain the fact that you speak English?"

  Well, I've told you before, it's just amazing, huh? No matter where my adventures take me, they speak English when I get there. Prince Van spoke English on Mars, and the ape-things in the center of the Earth spoke English, and they were still speaking English in the far distant future. So I guess it was no biggie to find out they spoke English on Lagash, too. But I wasn't going to tell Segol about all that. "I have studied your language," I go. "We've picked up your television programs on Earth for some time, okay?"

  His eyes kind of narrowed, and he looked at me for a little while without saying anything. Then he goes, "What is television?"

  Omigod! Like I'm on a weirdo planet with no TV! "Your radio broadcasts," I go, "that's what I meant. We've studied your language and learned many things about your culture and all."

  He nodded. "It's possible," he goes. "There are many questions I must ask you, before I can be sure you are speaking the truth. But we can't talk here. You must come with me. I was on my way to the Hideout."

  Now, believe me, at first I thought he was a complete dudley, but I've learned to give guys the benefit of the doubt. You never know who's got like, you know, a cute little ski shack in Vail or something. So I didn't bail on this guy just 'cause he looked like he probably bit the heads off chipmunks in his bedroom or something, and anyway he'd just invited me to cruise the local Lagash nightlife.

  I turned around in front of him and I go, "So am I dressed for the Hideout, or what? Is there dancing, or are we just going to like, you know, sit there and drink all night?" Which would've been okay, too. We warrior-women can party till our brass brassieres turn green.

  Segol looked at me like I was whoa nelly crazy or something. "What are you talking about?" he goes. "We're in terrible danger here. The Hideout is our only chance of survival. We have to hurry!"