The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  I dialed 911 on the car phone. “Get someone over here fast,” I yelled. “I’m on the Turnpike, eastbound, just before the Philadelphia turnoff. I’m Dr. Phil D’Amato, NYPD Forensics, and this is a medical emergency.”

  I wasn’t positive that anaphylactic shock was what was wrong with him, but the adrenalin couldn’t do much harm. I leaned over his chest and felt no heartbeat. Jeez, please.

  I gave Mo mouth-to-mouth, pounded his chest, pleading for life. “Hang on, damn you!” But I knew already. I could tell. After a while you get this sort of sickening sixth sense about these things. Some kind of allergic reaction from hell had just killed my friend. Right in my arms. Just like that.

  EMS got to us eight minutes later. Better than some of the New York City times I’d been seeing lately. But it didn’t matter. Mo was gone.

  I looked at the car phone as they worked on him, cursing and trying to jolt him back into life. I’d have to call Corinne and tell her this now. But all I could see in the plastic phone display was Laurie’s strawberry blonde hair.

  “You OK, Dr. D’amato?” one of the orderlies called.

  “Yeah,” I said. I guess I was shaking.

  “These allergic reactions can be lethal all right,” he said, looking over at Mo.

  Right, tell me about it.

  “You’ll call the family?” the orderly asked. They’d be taking Mo to a local hospital, DOA.

  “Yeah,” I said, brushing a burning tear from my eye. I felt like I was suffocating. I had to slow down, stay in control, separate the psychological from the physical so I could begin to understand what was going on here. I breathed out and in. Again. Ok. I was all right. I wasn’t really suffocating.

  The ambulance sped off, carrying Mo. He had been suffocating, and it killed him. What had he been starting to tell me?

  I looked again at the phone. The right thing for me to do was to drive back to Mo’s home, be there for Corinne when I told her—calling her on the phone with news like this was monstrous. But I had to find out what had happened to Mo—and that would likely not be from Corinne. Mo didn’t want to worry her, didn’t confide in her. No, the best chance of finding out what Mo had been up to seemed to be in Philadelphia, in the place Mo had been going. But where was that?

  I focused on the phone display—pressed a couple of keys, and got a directory up on the little screen. The only 215 area code listed there was for a Sarah Fischer, with an address that I knew to be near Temple University.

  I pressed the code next to the number, then the Send command.

  Crackle, crackle, then a distant tinny cellular ring.

  “Hello?” a female voice answered, sounding closer than I’d expected.

  “Hi. Is this Sarah Fischer?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Do I know you?”

  “Well, I’m a friend of Mo Buhler’s, and I think we, he, may have been on his way to see you tonight—”

  “Who are you? Is Mo OK?”

  “Well—” I started.

  “Look, who the hell are you? I’m going to hang up if you don’t give me a straight answer,” she said.

  “I’m Dr. Phil D’Amato. I’m a forensic scientist—with the New York City Police Department.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Your name sounds familiar for some reason,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve written a few articles—”

  “Hold on,” I heard her put the phone down, rustle through some papers.

  “You had an article in Discover, about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, right?” she asked about half a minute later.

  “Yes, I did,” I said. In other circumstances, my ego would have jumped at finding such an observant reader.

  “Ok, what date was it published?” she asked.

  Jeez. “Uh, late last year,” I said.

  “I see there’s a pen and ink sketch of you. What do you look like?”

  “Straight dark hair—not enough of it,” I said—who could remember what that lame sketch actually looked like? “Go on,” she said.

  “And a moustache, reasonably thick, and steel rimmed glasses.”

  A few beats of silence, then a sigh. “OK,” she said. “So now you get to tell me why you’re calling—and what happened to Mo.”

  Sarah’s apartment was less than half an hour away. I’d filled her in on the phone. She’d seemed more saddened than surprised, and asked me to come over.

  I’d spoken to Corinne, and told her as best I could. Mo had been a cop before he’d become a forensic scientist, and I guess wives of police are supposed to be ready for this sort of thing, but how can a person ever really be ready for it after twenty years of good marriage? She’d cried, I’d cried, the kids cried in the background. I’d said I was coming over—and I know I should have—but I was hoping she’d say ‘no, I’m OK, Phil, really, you’ll want to find out why this happened to Mo’ … and that’s exactly what she did say. They don’t make people like Corinne Rodriguez Buhler any more.

  There was a parking spot right across the street from Sarah’s building—in New York this would have been a gift from on high. I tucked in my shirt, tightened my belt, and composed myself as best I could before ringing her bell.

  She buzzed me in, and was standing inside her apartment, second floor walk-up, door open, to greet me as I sprinted and puffed up the flight of stairs. She had flaxen blonde hair, a distracted look in her eyes, but an easy, open smile that I didn’t expect after the grilling she’d given me on the phone. She looked about thirty.

  The apartment had soft, recessed lighting—like a Paris-by-gaslight exhibit I’d once seen—and smelled faintly of lavender. My nose crinkled. “I use it to help me sleep,” Sarah said, and directed me to an old, overstuffed Morris chair. “I was getting ready to go to sleep when you called.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “About giving you a hard time, about what happened to Mo,” her voice caught on Mo’s name. “You must be hungry,” she said, “I’ll get you something.” She turned around and walked towards another room, which I assumed was the kitchen.

  Her pants were white, and the light showed the contours of her body to good advantage as she walked away.

  “Here, try some of these to start,” she returned with a bowl of grapes. Concord grapes. One of my favorites. Put one in your mouth, puncture the purple skin, jiggle the flesh around on your tongue, it’s the taste of Fall. But I didn’t move.

  “I know,” she said. “You’re leery of touching any strange food after what happened to Mo. I don’t blame you. But these are OK. Here, let me show you,” and she reached and took a dusty grape and put it in her mouth. “Mmm,” she smacked her lips, took out the pits with her finger. “Look—why don’t you pick a grape and give it to me. OK?”

  My stomach was growling and I was feeling light-headed already, and I realized I would have to make a decision. Either leave right now, if I didn’t trust this woman, and go somewhere to get something to eat—or eat what she gave me. I was too hungry to sit here and talk to her and resist her food right now.

  “All right, up to you,” she said. “I have some Black Forest ham, and can make you a sandwich, if you like, or just coffee or tea.”

  “All three.” I decided. “I mean, I’d love the sandwich, and some tea please, and I’ll try the grapes.” I put one in my mouth. I’d learned a long time ago that paranoia can be almost as debilitating as the dangers it supposes.

  She was back a few minutes later with the sandwich and the tea. I’d squished at least three more grapes in my mouth, and felt fine.

  “There’s a war going on,” she said, and put the food tray on the end table next to me. The sandwich was made with some sort of black bread, and smelled wonderful.

  “War?” I asked and bit into the sandwich. “You think what happened to Mo is the work of some terrorist?”

  “Not exactly.” Sarah sat down on a chair next to me, a cup of tea in her hand. “This war’s been going on a ve
ry long time. It’s a bio-war—much deeper rooted, literally, than anything we currently regard as terrorism.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, and swallowed what I’d been chewing of my sandwich. It felt good going down, and in my stomach.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Sarah said. “Few people do. You think epidemics, sudden widespread allergic reactions, diseases that wipe out crops or livestock just happen. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it’s more than that.” She sipped her cup of tea. Something about the lighting, her hair, her face, maybe the taste of the food, made me feel like I was a kid back in the sixties. I half expected to smell incense burning.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “I mean, what was your connection to Mo?”

  “I’m working on my doctorate over at Temple,” she said. “My area’s ethno/botanical pharmacology—Mo was one of my resources. He was a very nice man.” I thought I saw a tear glisten in the corner of her eye.

  “Yes he was,” I said. “And he was helping you with your dissertation about what—the germ warfare you were talking about?”

  “Not exactly,” Sarah said. “I mean, you know the academic world, no one would ever let me do a thesis on something that outrageous—it’d never get by the proposal committee. So you have to finesse it, do it on something more innocuous, get the good stuff in under the table, you know, smuggle it in. So, yeah, the subtext of my work was what we—I—call the bio-wars, which are actually more than just germ warfare, and yeah, Mo was one of the people who were helping me research that.”

  Sounded like Mo, all right. “And the Amish have something to do with this?”

  “Yes and no,” Sarah said. “The Amish aren’t a single, unified group—they actually have quite a range of styles and values—”

  “I know,” I said. “And some of them—maybe one of the splinter groups—are involved in this bio-war?”

  “The main bio-war group isn’t really Amish—though they’re situated near Lancaster, have been for at least 150 years in this country. Some people think they’re Amish, though, since they live close to the land, in a low-tech mode. But they’re not Amish. Real Amish would never do that. But some of the Amish know what’s going on.”

  “You know a lot about the Amish,” I said.

  She blushed slightly. “I’m former Amish. I pursued my interests as far as a woman could in my church. I pleaded with my bishop to let me go to college—he knew what the stakes were, the importance of what I was studying—but he said no. He said a woman’s place was in the home. I guess he was trying to protect me, but I couldn’t stay.”

  “You know Jacob Stoltzfus?” I asked.

  Sarah nodded, lips tight. “He was my uncle,” she finally said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I could see that she knew he was dead. “Who told you?” I asked softly.

  “Amos—my cousin—Jacob’s son. He has a phone shack,” she said.

  “I see,” I said. What an evening. “I think Mo thought that those people—those others, like the Amish, but not Amish—somehow killed Jacob.”

  Sarah’s face shuddered, seemed to unravel into sobs and tears. “They did,” she managed to say. “Mo was right. And they killed Mo too.”

  I put down my plate, and reached over to comfort her. It wasn’t enough. I got up and walked to her and put my arm around her. She got up shakily off her chair, then collapsed in my arms, heaving, crying. I felt her body, her heartbeat, through her crinoline shirt.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Don’t worry. I deal with bastards like that all the time in my business. We’ll get these people, I promise you.”

  She shook her head against my chest. “Not like these,” she said.

  “We’ll get them,” I said again.

  She held on to me, then pulled away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to fall apart like that.” She looked over at my empty teacup. “How about a glass of wine?”

  I looked at my watch. It was 9:45 already, and I was exhausted. But there was more I needed to learn. “OK,” I said. “Sure. But just one glass.”

  She offered a tremulous smile, and went back into the kitchen. She returned with two glasses of a deep red wine.

  I sat down, and sipped. The wine tasted good—slightly Portuguese, perhaps, with just a hint of some fruit and a nice woody undertone.

  “Local,” she said. “You like it?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  She sipped some, then closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The bottoms of her blue eyes glinted like semi-precious gems out of half-closed lids.

  I needed to focus on the problem at hand. “How exactly do these bio-war people kill—what’d they do to Jacob and Mo?” I asked.

  Her eyes stayed closed a moment longer than I’d expected—like she’d been daydreaming, or drifting off to sleep. Then she opened them and looked at me, shaking her head slowly. “They’ve got all sorts of ways. The latest is some kind of catalyst—in food, we think it’s a special kind of Crenshaw melon—that vastly magnifies the effect of any of a number of allergies.” She got up, looked distracted. “I’m going to have another glass—sure you don’t want some more?”

  “I’m sure, thanks,” I said, and looked at my glass as she walked back into the kitchen. For all I knew, catalyst from that damn melon was in this very glass—

  I heard a glass or something crash in the kitchen.

  I rushed in.

  Sarah was standing over what looked like a little hurricane lamp, glowing white but not burning on the inside, broken on the floor. A few little house bugs of some sort took wing and flew away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She was crying again. “I knocked it over. I’m really not myself tonight.”

  “No one would be in your situation,” I said.

  She put her arms around me again, pressing close. I instinctively kissed her cheek, just barely—in what I instantly hoped, after the fact, was a brotherly gesture.

  “Stay with me tonight,” she whispered. “I mean, the couch out there opens up for you, and you’ll have your privacy. I’ll sleep in the bedroom. I’m afraid …”

  I was afraid too, because a part of me suddenly wanted to pick her up and carry her over to her bedroom, the couch, anywhere, and lay her down, softly unwrap her clothes, run my fingers through her sweet-smelling hair and—

  But I also cared very much for Jenna. And though we’d made no formal lifetime commitments to each other—

  “I don’t feel very good,” Sarah said, and pulled away slightly. “I guess I had some wine before you came and—” her head lolled and her body suddenly sagged and her eyes rolled back in her skull.

  “Here, let me help you.” I first tried to buoy her up, then picked her up entirely and carried her into her bedroom. I put her down on the bed, gently as I could, then felt the pulse in her wrist. It may have been a bit rapid, but seemed basically all right. “You’re OK,” I said. “Just a little shock and exhaustion.”

  She moaned softly, then reached out and took my hand. I held it for a long time, till its grip weakened and she was definitely asleep, and then I walked quietly into the other room.

  I was too tired myself to go anywhere, too tired to even figure out how to open her couch, so I just stretched out on it and managed to take off my shoes before I fell soundly asleep. My last thoughts were that I needed to have another look at the Stoltzfus farm, the lamp on her floor was beautiful, I hoped I wasn’t drugged or anything, but it was too late to do anything about it if I was …

  I awoke with a start the next morning, propped my head up on a shaky arm and leaned over just in time to see Sarah’s sleek wet backside receding into her bedroom. Likely from her shower. I could think of worse things to wake up to.

  “I think I’m gonna head back to Jacob’s farm,” I told her over breakfast of wholewheat toast, poached eggs, and Darjeeling tea that tasted like a fine liqueur.

  “Why?”

  “Closest thing we have to a crime scene,” I said.

  “I’ll come with
you,” Sarah said.

  “Look, you were pretty upset last night—” I started to object.

  “Right, so were you, but I’m OK now,” Sarah said. “Besides, you’ll need me to decode the Amish for you, to tell you what you’re looking for.”

  She had a point. “All right,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “By the way, what are you looking for there?”

  “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Mo was eager to show me something at Jacob’s.”

  Sarah considered, frowned. “Jacob was working on an organic antidote to the allergen catalyst—but all that stuff is very slow acting, the catalyst takes years to build up to dangerous levels in the human body—so I don’t see what Jacob could’ve shown you on a quick drive-by visit.”

  If she had told me that last night, I would have enjoyed the grapes and ham sandwich even more. “Well, we’ve got nowhere else to look at this point,” I said, and speared the last of my egg.

  But what did that mean about what killed Mo? Someone had been giving him a slow-acting poison too, which had been building up inside both of them for x number of years, with the result of both of them dying on the same day?

  Not very likely. There seemed to be more than one catalyst at work here. I wondered if Mo had told Jacob anything about me and my visit. I certainly hoped not—the last thing I wanted was that decisive second catalyst to in some way have been me.

  We were on the turnpike heading west an hour later. The sun was strong and the breeze was fresh—a splendid day to be out for a ride, except that we were going to investigate the death of one of the nicest damn people I had known. I’d called Corinne to make sure she and the girls were all right. I told her I’d try to drop by in the afternoon if I could.

  “So tell me more about your doctoral work,” I asked Sarah. “I mean your real work, not the cover for your advisors.”

  “You know, too many people equate science with its high-tech trappings—if it doesn’t come in computers, god-knows-what-power microscopes, the latest DNA dyes, it must be magic, superstition, old-wives-tale nonsense. But science is at core a method, a rational mode of investigating the world, and the gadgetry is secondary. Sure, the equipment is great—it opens up more of the world to our cognitive digestion, makes it amenable to our analysis—but if aspects of the world are already amenable to analysis and experiment, with just our naked eyes and hands, then the equipment isn’t all that necessary, is it?”