An uncertain look comes to Emil's face. He starts to take a step forward. "Hey, kiddo..."
He likes that this man has called him that from the start. He likes that he hasn't said the word zero. A term, for some reason, he imagines the man's colleagues wouldn't hesitate to use. On his wrist eleven minutes are dwindling. He turns away and runs off into the snowy dark.
#
The lime suit's dimensions were embarrassing before. Now, he knows, he must look downright comical, a wobbly, ungraceful, green mass blobbing across the ground. Ice crunches underfoot. His eyes stream. But that vigor he feels lends him strength. He is moving fast. He has left the plaza behind.
He doesn't make for his apartment, though he knows how to get there from here. He could complete the journey Alfeo Jurado set out on earlier this evening.
The big slabby buildings surrounding the oddly shaped common give way to residential structures, some of them old and cheaply retrofitted. There are still no other pedestrians out, but up ahead he sees vehicular traffic, all of it on-GRID and neatly spaced, throwing light along the street. The zero runs toward this. He needs to get across that street.
Emil Mekelburg must be pursuing him. All of this is quite out of order. Zeroes, the zero knows, are not supposed to behave like this.
He runs toward the lights. He moves fast enough that the generated wind takes the cap's bill and lifts it off his head. Cold rushes over his scalp. He is sorry to have lost the hat, though he isn't sure if it actually belonged to Emil's grandmother or not. Still, he can't pause to pick it up. He races into the street. Flakes twirl in the dazzling spears of light. Big metaplastic shapes move at speeds that could seriously damage him if he stumbled. He wonders what the vehicles' occupants think, seeing him go bouncing across. He realizes he is still grinning, which must make the sight all the more bizarre.
There is only one more block to go. Fatigue suddenly grabs him, and his steps get heavy, then heavier. Despite the cold, he feels clammy. His body continues to throb. The vitality is still coursing through him, but it is as though it is extending beyond himself, spilling off the edges of his being, dissipating into a void.
He pants huge foggy plumes. His damp eyes slide out of focus, and he must strain to bring them back, to see his way to the end of the silent, dead-end street. There is a fence across the end, but it is old and there are gaps, and even with the bulgy suit he squeezes through one.
The scrubby greenery on the other side is weighted with snow. Branches, as he disturbs them, drop slush on his shoulders. The trail is short. It opens onto the concrete embankment. He walks up it a little ways, where there are worn, smoothed steps leading down to the canal's water.
That water isn't flowing now. Most months it does, a big pulsing artery of water, sometimes black, sometimes blue, but always vital and strong. Right now it is frozen over, of course. But he sees the shine of the surface, the ambient city glow revealing the long, iced over canal.
His exhaustion is serious. It is something more profound than fatigue. But he steps carefully down the stairs. There are just a few. He stops and sits down. Again the suit balloons around him, like a beach ball, but for the first time he appreciates its simple design, its utility. When he created shoes, he made them to be functional above all other considerations. This lime monstrosity isn't a garment; it is a body bag. It has a sure and real purpose.
As he lifts his arm, he turns and sees over the lip of the small stairwell. Back down the embankment, Emil stands at the foot of the little trail. He is breathing hard and his clothing looks wet, which means he didn't go back and retrieve his vehicle for the pursuit. Though he doesn't know why, the zero is deeply moved by this fact.
Emil Mekelburg doesn't come any closer. At his side he holds his Cubs cap, and the zero is very glad he got it back.
Struggling against his disappearing strength, he removes the cheap countdown display from his wrist. It shows under two minutes now. He sets it on a step behind him, out of his sight. He looks down on the dark unmoving water. It is still water, just in another form. He knows this. Like how he knows about the harsh winters, but also in the way that he knew the plaza, and the color of Harriet's hair, and Morgan's. And like how he knows the way he makes shoes.
He knows the frozen over canal is just beyond the gated bottom of these steps, but he can't see it anymore. His eyes have unfocused, in an absolute kind of way this time. His body feels like it is quivering, but he isn't sure he is moving at all. Some vestige of the smile, however, still tugs at his face. He is sure it does.
This city is landlocked. The nearest decently sized lake is ninety miles away, the ocean several hundred. Alfeo Jurado grew up by a seashore. He came to this spot to remember what a mighty moving body of water looks like, how beautiful it is, how humbling it can be.
Now he pays it his final visit. The ocean breathes hugely upon him, as the tide comes in.
###
Eric Del Carlo's fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Shimmer and many other publications. Look for his latest novel, an urban fantasy tale written with his father Vic Del Carlo entitled The Golden Gate Is Empty, coming soon from White Cat Publications.
When the Wind Blows on Tristan da Cunha
Meryl Stenhouse
I am Gemma Glass. These are my feet, running down the path beside the Hagan's barn where the sheep bawl and the clippers clack and rattle in the fleece. These are my arms outstretched, hands cupping the warm wet air, silky between my fingers. This is my mouth, open, savouring the taste of freedom and the smell of warm summer grass. On the ridge behind me St. Mary's bell rings to tell the island that school is over, done, beaten to death for another year. But I am already flying, already gone.
Black spots dance before my eyes and then the starbursts come, a private light show that only I can see, blooming across the sea and the land and the sky. The starbursts have no colour, just light and shape. They have always spoken to me. I just wish I could understand what they are saying. Today they are everywhere, tumbling over one another, touching everything. Every step brings one into bloom and I can hardly see the world behind them.
I want to tear off my uniform, fly the ugly blue dress behind me like a kite, let the wind and the water kiss my skin. But then Ivy Swain will say there goes that crazy girl again and Roger Rogers will laugh his awful laugh and point at me and say lewd things until the colour rises on my skin and the joy and beauty is gone. So I do not.
Who names their child Roger Rogers, anyway? Celia Lavarello, that's who, whose grandfather's name was Roger so let the boy's name be Roger, nevermind his father's name. They're just as inbred as each other, as everyone else here. Hagen and Lavarello and Rogers and Patterson and Repetto and Green and Swain. All marrying each other for years and years and years.
But not me. Not Gemma Glass. My mother came in with the tide one day, and one day went away again, before I even learned to say her name. I'm only partly one of them.
Dad is in the fields when I reach the house, but I can sneak low along the wall with the cattle on the other side and get to the shed. His bicycle is squeaky and rusted and old, like everything here, but quicker than walking. And I have a long way to go. Out along the road to The Settlement, as we call it, but really it's called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, after the place in the United Kingdom. I can go there now. They said we could, when they changed the rules in 2009. I can go, anytime I want to.
But today I am riding through The Settlement, waving to some people, not waving to others. Everyone knows me, and I know everyone. Past the Post Office, where the mail comes once every couple of months, past the store where we buy things we can't make or grow, things from far away.
From here you can see down to Calshot Harbour, the new harbour they built after the old one was destroyed in the eruption in 1961. The RMS Saint Helena comes here from South Africa once a year, but mostly we just get little fishing boats coming across with mail and supplies. The Saint Helena will be here agai
n in January, which means I have a month to make this work. I'm going to be on that boat. I'm going to go to England.
The road roars beneath my tires, gravel scattering, and I have to be careful on the corners because I have been over so many times, and I don't want to bleed today. Past another farm, there's so much space between them, so few people and yet it feels so crowded here. The volcano is a spike to my right, looming and bare, with the shearwaters wheeling and screaming overhead.
A little further and I see where I'm going, a white house that used to belong to the university when they were playing with the environment, trying to make it better. But they're long gone, like everyone else not born here, leaving us to our sheep and our cattle and each other.
Now there's just one man there. He has a telescope thicker than my leg. We compared one day, laughing, and he brushed my thigh, just there, with the back of his hand. When I cycled back, the sun high in the sky, the starbursts were so thick I had to stop and lie on the grass until they faded. I never knew what they were until he came, but now I know.
It's the universe talking to me.
#
His name is Luca. He is taller than the tallest man on the island. His hair is sandy blond. I told him once that the Repetto's ancestors were Italian too, but they are not blond like him. They are small and dark. I told him that it was living on the island. It drained the colour out of everyone. He laughed and said their ancestors were probably from the south, of good Roman stock, while he was descended from the invading northern barbarians. I imagined him then in armour, tall and strong, cleaving his enemies before him.
Today when I throw my bike against the wall he is outside, holding something up toward the sky. He is doing a post-doctorate in astrophysics. He has come here to study an anomaly, a hole in the sky.
"Radiation levels were crazy today," he says as I come closer, crunching over the stones and shells. The hut sits on a rocky shelf right against the sea, and when the wind blows the waves slap against the walls and rush over the shingle to the edge of the grass. Nothing grows here.
I could have told him about the radiation. About sitting in the classroom and watching the universe bloom and burst around me. Sometimes they are just circles expanding, like raindrops on the water trough. Sometimes they are flowers with swirling cores and edges curved and twisting. Some days everything is spirals, little curls. Helixes. I savoured the word that he had taught me when he saw me drawing them on my schoolbooks one day. I haven't yet worked out their language, but I will. One day I will know what they are saying to me. And Luca will help.
He snaps the case closed and looks at his watch, a giant silver disk that shines against his tanned skin. "You're early today. Wait...last day of school, wasn't it? How does it feel to be all grown up?" He smiles at me. All grown up. Like he isn't twenty-seven, only eleven years older than me.
I smile at him and feel the tightness of my dress across my breasts. His white teeth shine. I want to lick his lips, run my tongue over those smooth teeth. "It feels good. I'm free!" I throw my arms out and spin, laughing, and the sky is full of blooming flowers.
He laughs with me. "Well, come in and let's celebrate." His long strides take him to the door first and he holds it open for me. I wish the islanders could see this. I wish that they could understand what they lack, what I seek on far away shores.
I stand in the middle of the main room because it is the only space to stand. The desks around the walls are a jumble of screens and keyboards and printers and papers, all of them pointing to the sky. Listening to the universe.
I haven't told him about my visions. Not yet. A lone helix bursts from one of the walls as I turn my head.
He smiles at me. "Tea? Or are you brave enough for coffee today?"
Coffee I normally avoid, because it opens the channel to the stars and fills my world with them. But I think today that will be a good thing. For when I explain it all to Luca.
My heart pounds. The bursts are getting stronger, even inside, even before the coffee. I have lain in bed so many nights thinking about this moment. Explaining to him what it all means, his South Atlantic Anomaly. About how all his measurements and numbers are just readings of what I see all the time, every day.
At night in the dark, he always understands. Is excited, awed. Offers me the one thing I want most in the world. We'll go back to England, he says. I can learn so much from you. In my mind I am standing under the oak trees that I have only ever seen in his pictures.
And sometimes in my room late at night he is kissing me.
But I know it won't be that easy. That I will have to convince him that I truly see them. And if that doesn't work, try another way.
The threat of failure sets my palms sweating and the starbursts increase until the room is filled with flowers blooming over the top of each other. I close my eyes to shut out the world. Now they are clearer with nothing behind them to obscure the patterns. I study them. Lights, patterns, shapes. Is that someone's face? A sharp-edged triangle. A ship? Waves roll across my vision, an ocean stirred to movement on a windy day.
"Gemma?"
His footsteps are raindrops in the pool of my vision. I open my eyes. He is standing before me, a mug in each hand, tin tucked under his arm.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes." I smile. The waves crash around him, through him. A starburst blooms on his temple, spreads out to touch me. I raise my hand, let the light sift through my fingers. "I have—I want to tell you something." My mouth is so dry.
He hands me a mug with the blue university coat of arms and clears some papers off a bench, awkward with one hand, but I cannot help him. My hands are glued to the thick ceramic, heat stinging my palm. The wind rattles the shutters on the windows, stirring the helices to jump and dance around them. It is a warning. The helices always come from sharp movement, loud noises. Danger.
The wind and the sea will trap us in here for the night. Luca does not know this, but I do. I know what happens when the wind blows on Tristan da Cunha. My imagination darts ahead to what might happen in the dark.
Luca smiles up at me. "Sit down, Gemma." He pats the wood. The tin is a barrier between us, an unscaleable mountain of biscuit and icing. "What did you want to tell me?"
Where do I start with the telling? My imaginings desert me, my plans, my carefully rehearsed words. "It's about your anomaly." I stumble over the word.
"Well, not my anomaly, but go on."
"You said that it was close here, closer to the earth than anywhere else. The cosmic rays."
"The Van Allen belts, yes. Two hundred kilometres up, full of energetic particles and anti-protons."
I didn't know what those were. I was so far from understanding this, but he could help me. I just had to explain it. "You said that sometimes when astronauts go through the belts they—they see things."
"That's right. The radiation stimulates their brains and they see images that aren't there."
"Yes." I breathe out, slowly, searching for the right words. "Those. I—I see them all the time."
There. Done. I raise my eyes, which have been focused on my cup, to meet his. "I've always seen them. I'm trying to figure out their meaning, but it's hard. You know about space. You could help me. I could help you. Back at your university. We could study them together." My words tumble out, because he is not looking delighted, or astounded, or interested, or any of the expressions I pictured in the dark at night.
His head is tilted slightly to one side, his expression thoughtful. "Do you mean phosphenes?"
I shake my head, unfamiliar with the word. "No, I see images. Starbursts. Like the helixes I drew. You knew what they were."
"Ah." He looks down at his cup, turns it around in his hands before looking back at me. "I do know what they are. What you are seeing are called phosphenes. They happen when the brain is stimulated, by various means. Astronauts see them because they pass through the radiation belts around the Earth."
"
Yes. That's what I see. The cosmic rays here make me see these images—"
But he is shaking his head. "Gemma, the radiation is closest here, but it's still two hundred kilometres up. Only very, very tiny amounts would make it through the atmosphere. Barely more than would normally be found at sea level anywhere. It's not—The Van Allen Belt is not causing your phosphenes. Your images."
"Then how come I can see them?" My chest struggles for air. "I can draw them for you, prove that they're just like what the astronauts see." I put down my cup, but too hasty, and it tumbles off the bench, shattering on the tiles and splashing his shoes. I drop to my knees, trying to gather the shards in shaking hands. I feel a sharp pain. Bright blood wells on my fingers.
"Gemma." He is there beside me, taking my hands, pulling me to my feet. "Don't worry about the cup." He sits me back on the bench and comes back with a first aid kit. I cup my injured hand, watching the blood well and drip. At each beat of my heart there is a tiny pulse of pain in my finger, and from each pulse a flower blooms, sticky-black.
The sting of the antiseptic fills my vision with churning spirals. "I can prove to you that I see them."
He is quiet while he applies a Band-Aid. "I'm not doubting you, Gemma. Phosphenes are a well-documented phenomenon."
"Then why won't you believe me?" His face is close to mine. He smells of salt and sweat.
"I believe you. It's just—" He puts the kit on a bench and pushes the biscuit tin aside to sit next to me. "Phosphenes have all sorts of causes, not just radiation." He is holding my hands in his, gently. Like they might break. His palms are soft, not hard and scratchy like the men of the island. "Sometimes you might see them if you bang your head, or tap your eye. Some people with low blood pressure can see them, because the pressure affects the blood vessels at the back of the eye. Dying people see them. I've seen them sometimes, after a sneeze."
Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 Page 2