Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection)

by James Alan Gardner

  Give the designers a break, for crying out loud. They thought of everything, okay? This isn't that kind of story.

  This is the kind of story where everyone does astral projection.

  George Munroe sat in his hardware store wondering why there were so many types of nails. He had forty little bins in front of him, and each contained nails that were different from all the rest. He pulled out a one-inch finishing nail and a three-quarter-inch finishing nail. (His astral projection could pick up light objects if he concentrated really hard.) When you got right down to it, what was the difference between the two nails? A quarter of an inch. That's all. But one nail had to go in one bin and the other had to go in a different bin. That was the only professional way.

  Running a hardware store sure was a precision business. George knew he could send his astral projection anywhere in the world to indulge in any lifestyle scenario, but hardware had such a depth and richness of scope, George didn't think he'd ever have time for more.

  The bell on the front door of the shop tinkled. George looked up from the nail bins to see a woman, six and a half feet tall, posing beside the lawnware display. Her hair flowed thick and tawny, rippling in the ether wind; her skin was bronzed and flawless, tautly stretched over firm young muscles; her face shone with self-assurance. She wore the sleek skin of a black panther, cut into a maillot that left one breast bare, and around her waist was a cinch made of cobra skulls. In one hand she held an ivory spear, and in the other a dagger made of teak.

  "I am Diana, Goddess of the Hunt," she announced. She had an announcing kind of voice.

  "What can I get for you today?" George asked. "I'm having a special on nails."

  "You are George Munroe?"

  "Yes."

  "Then rejoice, for Destiny has decreed we are to be mated!" She threw aside her spear and dagger with a sweeping gesture. George winced as the dagger headed for a shelf of lightbulbs, but Diana's weapons were only illusory astral props for her persona; they vanished as soon as they left the field of her aura. With cheetahlike grace, Diana strode down the home appliance aisle, seized George by the lapels of his Handee Hardware blazer, and hauled him up to her lips.

  George had never imagined that tongues could be involved in kissing. In movie kisses, you never saw what the actors did with their tongues—it was one of the limitations of the medium. George wondered if it made movie directors sad that they could only show the outside of a kiss. There certainly seemed to be a lot of action happening on the inside.

  Abruptly, Diana let him go. Turning her perfect chin away from him, she said, "I don't think you're trying."

  "Trying what?"

  "To love me. Destiny has decreed we are to be mated. At least you could try to generate some electricity for me."

  George's store carried flashlight batteries, but he was almost certain she had something different in mind. "Is this some mythological scenario?" he asked. "Because it's nice of you to kiss me and all, but right now I'm happy with the small-town hardware business, and I don't feel the urge to play god. Sorry."

  "This is not a scenario!" Diana shouted. The spear rematerialized in her left hand and purple sparks crackled from the tip. "I'm talking about real life. My body. Your body. Egg and sperm. Two become one, then three. Computer analysis at the Population Storage Facility says we complement each other genetically and are ideal progenitors for the future of humanity. Well, at least for one new baby anyway. I'm scheduled to be impregnated by you within twenty-four hours."

  George felt himself growing faint; with an effort of will, he brought himself back to full visibility and tried to consider the situation rationally. He'd always known the Facility couldn't keep physical bodies alive forever. People died; presumably they had to be replaced. Somehow, though, he'd thought science would come up with a more impersonal way to create new life. Like cloning. Why did scientists always talk about cloning if they didn't really do it? It was disappointing the next generation apparently came from what amounted to arranged marriages.

  "I'm sorry," George said. "I didn't understand what you were talking about."

  "The fathers are always the last to know. That's one of the sacred traditions the robots are programmed to observe."

  "They're really good robots, aren't they?" George said.

  "They sure are," Diana agreed with a warm smile.

  George nodded, then kept nodding in lieu of speaking. He wondered if Diana was expecting to make love with him in the near future. Astral bodies could make love, of course; astral bodies could interact with each other in any way physical ones could. But George had watched people making love in a lot of movies, and the hardware store didn't seem suited for that sort of thing. To get a soft place to lie down, they'd have to make a bed out of bags of grass seed, or find some way to arrange themselves on one of the lawn recliners.

  On the other hand, he couldn't quite see why making love was necessary. "They're just going to use our physical bodies for this, right?" he asked.

  "Right."

  "So I guess they'll, umm, collect my sperm and use it to impregnate you, right? And if it's like everything else they do to our physical bodies, neither of us will feel a thing. Isn't that how it works?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I don't understand why you're here. It affects our bodies but not our lives. I mean our astral lives. You know what I mean. It just happens, no matter what we do. I can't see any reason for us to, uhh, interact."

  "You cold-hearted bastard," she said. Her hair tossed wildly as if buffeted by a tornado; the cobra skulls in her belt hissed and snapped. Her skin turned scarlet, her pupils crimson, her lips black. "Do you think parenting is a mere physical act?" she shouted in a voice like an earthquake doing ventriloquism. "Do you believe love is irrelevant? Do you deny the importance of a nurturing psychic aura in the formation of human life? Do you want our child to usher forth from a joyless womb?"

  George hadn't really thought about it.

  Given that he'd been living as a psychic phenomenon for twenty-six years, he supposed he wasn't entitled to doubt the importance of psychic auras. Parental attitude at conception probably did make a difference—if Diana conceived a child in her current mood, the baby might turn out kind of cranky. (A cobra on her belt spat venom in George's direction; the astral fluid fell into a bucket of plastic fishing lures and vanished.)

  Was conception the only crucial moment for the baby? No, George had heard prenatal influences could affect the child all through pregnancy. And after that, who raised the infant? The robots, of course; but could they provide a nurturing psychic aura in the child's formative years? Probably…they were really good robots. But just in case, George figured he shouldn't make any long-term plans.

  It was an imposition on his life…but then, it was an imposition on Diana's life too. She was obviously devoted to the goddess scenario—she probably lived in a marble palace on a mountainside with lots of other divinities, doing all kinds of divinity things.

  It must be a real letdown for her to be mated to a storekeeper, even a hardware storekeeper. If she was prepared to make such a sacrifice for their child, George should be too.

  "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I was being selfish. We can, uhh, get married. Or whatever you think is right."

  Slowly her body returned to its previous coloration. The cobra skulls gave a peevish-sounding sniff in unison, then went back to being dead. "All right," she said. "Apology accepted. Diana is a strict goddess, but fair."

  "What do we do now?" George asked.

  "We learn to love each other."

  George had watched a few couples courting in his town, and he thought they should try the same sort of thing: an arm-in-arm walk down to the ice cream parlor. With Diana at her present height, that was easier said than done. Graciously, she assumed a persona no taller than George—a trim lynx-woman with two-inch talons and a pelt of stiff brown fur. George recognized her new body from a collection of clip-art personas published the year before. He'd chosen his own ap
pearance from the same book—Kindly Shopkeeper with a Twinkle in His Eye, #4.

  People on Main Street stared as they walked by, but showed the kind of small-town courtesy George had known they would. "Well, George, got a new friend, I see. Oh, she's your mate. Well, well. Pleased to meet you, missus. A goddess! Well, George, she's a catch, all right. How long are you going to keep that special on nails?"

  At the ice cream parlor, the robot attendant served them two strawberry sundaes. George didn't try to eat his—lifting a spoonful of ice cream took a lot of concentration, and when he put it into his mouth, it would fall right through his astral body anyway. George preferred to watch it all melt into a smooth white cream with swirls of strawberry—it reminded him of paint, just after you add a slurp of red colorizer to the white base, before you put it on the mixing machine and let it shake itself pink.

  Diana, on the other hand, dug into the ice cream immediately. "This is a pleasant town," she said to George as she inserted a spoonful into her mouth. George heard a liquidy plop as the ice cream fell through her and landed on her chair. "Of course, the town is quiet for my tastes. But it has potential. I have a friend who does werewolves and he could really liven up the place. You know, lurk on the outskirts, savage a few locals from time to time. Not hurt them for real, of course, just scare them and make them promise to go to another scenario for a while. But as people began to disappear, as the town devolved into a panicky powder keg waiting to explode in an orgy of hysterical butchery, you and I could hunt down the monster and kill it. Wouldn't that be fun?"

  It didn't quite match George's notion of why his neighbors were living in the small-town scenario, but he knew he could be wrong. He went to a lot of movies. He knew that small towns were full of people just waiting to stir up a bloodbath.

  Dirty Ernie Birney came into the ice cream parlor just as George and Diana were finishing up. George shuddered; Dirty Ernie was not the sort of person anyone wanted to meet on a date. The older folks in town said Ernie was at least thirty-five, but he wore the persona of a rotten little eight-year-old. He was foul-mouthed, brattish, whiny, and persistent. George grabbed Diana's furry elbow and said, "Let's get out of here."

  As she stood up, Dirty Ernie whistled and pointed at her chair. "Hey, lady," he said, "looks like you pooped a pile of ice cream."

  Diana moved so fast George's eyes could scarcely track her. Slash, gash, and Ernie's astral arm was nothing but tattered ectoplasm. The boy howled and bolted out the door, the ribboned flaps of his arm trailing after him like red plastic streamers on bike handles.

  "You shouldn't have done that," George said. He thought there was a chance he might throw up, if astral projections could do such a thing.

  "He can fix his arm any time," Diana said. "It's just like assuming a new persona."

  "Yes, but…"

  "Well, I couldn't let him insult me. I'm a goddess, for heaven's sake! Rotten little prick. In a proper scenario, he'd know his place."

  George took Diana by the hand and led her back to the hardware store. He could tell that while they were learning to love each other, it would be a good idea to leave town.

  They leaned on the store's front counter and looked at the latest catalog of available scenarios. Diana was only interested in the heroic ones. She swore if she could watch George rescue her from a dragon, she would fall hopelessly in love with him. George was beginning to suspect his new bride had a pretty narrow range of interests…but then, newlyweds had to learn to accept each other for what they were.

  When Diana had chosen a scenario, George called to Benny, his robot stockboy, who was down in the basement rearranging the plumbing supplies. (Benny did all the physical work around the store. He loved hauling around boxes and often restacked the entire storeroom out of sheer high spirits.) George told Benny he was going away with Diana for a few days and Benny would be in charge of the store. The robot bounced about in a little circle and piddled machine oil in his excitement. George couldn't tell if Benny was excited because he'd be running the store or because George was acquiring a mate. Probably both. Benny's way of thinking ran the same direction as George's on a lot of things.

  For George, the best part of assuming the persona of a knight was designing the coat of arms. He decided on a hammer and screwdriver rampant, argent sur azure. His motto was, "Ferrum meum spectari": My Iron Stands the Test. Diana said she approved of the sentiment.

  Of course, Diana was now captive in the highest tower of a castle overlooking the Rhine. It was the stronghold of the unspeakable Wilhelm von Schmutzig, sorcerer, murderer, ravisher, and author of six pornographic trilogies about elves. A dragon prowled the castle courtyard; mercenaries patrolled the halls. Rumor claimed that diabolical experiments were even now reaching fruition in the castle's dungeons and soon a horde of…of…(George pulled the brochure from his saddlebag to refresh his memory) a horde of disease-bearing zombies would be released on a helpless world. Only one man, the brave Sir Your-Name-Here could avert the onrushing tide of destruction.

  George asked his horse how much farther it was to the castle.

  "Just around the bend," the horse said. It was the astral persona of a man named Hawkins who heartily enjoyed the equine life. "You get to be really big," Hawkins had said. "You can rear up on your hind legs and scare people. You get to eat grass." Hawkins had been doing knightly steeds for years and never tired of the role. He'd told George that sometimes he moonlighted as a Cape buffalo, but it wasn't his first love.

  Hawkins stopped at the bend and let George scout ahead. Skulking wasn't easy in full plate mail, but the forest was thick on both sides of the road so there was little chance of being seen.

  The walls around the castle were high and thick, the moat deep and foul-smelling even at this distance. The drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, and frankly, the place looked impregnable.

  George considered breaking the seal on the scenario's Hint Booklet. Back at the Population Storage Facility, the robots might impregnate Diana any time now; if George was too slow in winning her love, all would be lost. On the other hand, would Diana love him when she saw he'd looked at the hints? (George was certain she'd check.) No, she would view him as a cheater and a cad, and their baby would probably grow up to be a lawyer.

  George clanked up against a tree to think. If this was a movie, what would the hero do?

  "Halloo, the castle!"

  A mercenary's head looked down on George from one of those little slots castles have instead of real windows. George was once again wearing his red Handee Hardware blazer, and Hawkins had acquired a Handee Hardware saddle blanket. "What do you want?" the mercenary asked.

  "I'm just a poor peasant merchant and I have a delivery for the Lord von Schmutzig."

  "What kind of delivery?"

  "Nails," said George. "Three-quarter-inch finishing nails for the final assembly of the horde of disease-bearing zombies."

  "Nobody told me anything about nails," the mercenary said. "Last night at cocktails, the lord said he had everything he needed to complete his evil zombie horde."

  "Some fool delivered one-inch finishing nails instead of three-quarter-inch ones," George said, improvising. "Building zombies is a precision business. You use nails a quarter inch too long and they'll stick out all over the zombie's body. They'll keep catching on things."

  "Ugh," said the mercenary and let George in.

  George left his horse Hawkins to take care of the dragon. Hawkins knew the dragon personally from other scenarios—it was the astral persona of a woman named Magda who enjoyed being vanquished on a regular basis. Hawkins was sure Magda would agree to feign sleep while Hawkins drove a few nails through her wings with his hooves. She would gladly thrash and moan, spiked helplessly to the dirt, until George found time to plunge his cruel broadsword into the vulnerable soft spot of her abdomen.

  George moved on to the tower where Diana was imprisoned. His red blazer was perfect camouflage; the mercenaries scarcely glanced his way as he passed. "Some
hardware-hawking peasant," he heard one mutter in disgust.

  At the top of the tower steps, George resumed his knightly persona. The armor made it impossible to walk silently and he knew there might be more danger ahead; however, Diana would be expecting him in heroic guise. With broadsword in one hand and shield in the other, he clanked forward to a closed door.

  He could hear nothing from the other side of the door. Considering the thickness of his helmet, George was not surprised. He tried the latch and found the door unlocked. It would be nice to kick the door open the way people did in movies, but concentrating on his astral foot as hard as he could, he barely managed to move the door at all. When it was open enough to squeeze through, he sidestepped his way into the room.

  Diana sat in a chair, bound by coils of thick white cord and gagged with a purple silk scarf. Though she wore the persona of a kidnapped princess—low-cut gown of green velvet, straight brown hair that reached the floor, eyes red from weeping—she still carried vestiges of the goddess of the hunt. The cobras on her belt had already gnawed through the cords around her waist and were snapping at the bindings on her wrists.

  George hurried forward to untie her, but she shook her head violently and nodded toward the far corner of the room. "Mmmph mmph mmph," she explained.

  At first when George looked in the direction she indicated, he saw only a rumpled four-poster bed surrounded by confusing watercolor prints of elves. George found it disturbing that Diana was so eager to draw his attention to the bed while she was still bound and gagged. In fact, finding himself unexpectedly alone with her in an elaborate bedroom stirred nervous flutters in his stomach. He hadn't pictured this moment coming so suddenly. The part of his mind that normally said, "This is what you should do," was completely silent; the part that said, "This is what might happen," had hiccups. It was a huge relief when a lean figure stepped from the shadows behind the bed-curtains and said, "So. Some fool believes he can foil my schemes."