Asimov's SF, April-May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Inside Always, we all got why it wasn't murder. Frankie Frye reminded us that she had no way of suspecting it would kill him. She was so worked up and righteous, she made the rest of us feel we hadn't ever had the same faith in Brother Porter she'd had or we would have poisoned him ourselves years ago.

  But no one outside of Always could see this. Frankie's lawyers refused to plead it out that way; they went with insanity and made all the inner workings of Always part of their case. They dredged up the old string of arsons as if they were relevant, as if they hadn't stopped entirely the day Brother Porter finally threw his son out on his ear. Jeb was a witness for the prosecution and a more angelic face you never saw. In retrospect, it was a great mistake to have given immortality to a fourteen-year-old boy. When he had it, he was a jerk, and I could plainly see that not having it had only made him an older jerk.

  Frankie's own lawyers made such a point of her obesity that they reduced her to tears. It was a shameful performance and showed how little they understood us. If Frankie ever wished to lose weight, she had all the time in the world to do so. There was nothing relevant or even interesting in her weight.

  The difficult issue for the defense was whether Frankie was insane all by herself or along with all the rest of us. Sometimes they seemed to be arguing the one and sometimes the other, so when they chose not to call me to the stand I didn't know if this was because I'd make us all look more crazy or less so. Kitty testified nicely. She charmed them all and the press dubbed her the Queen of Hearts at her own suggestion.

  Wilt was able to sell his three years among the immortals to a magazine and recoup every cent of that twenty-five hundred he put up for me. There wasn't much I was happy about right then, but I was happy about that. I didn't even blame him for the way I came off in the article. I expect coquettish was the least I deserved. I'd long ago stopped noticing how I was behaving at any given moment.

  I would have thought the trial would be just Mother's cup of tea, even without me on the witness stand, so I was surprised not to hear from her. It made me stop and think back, try to remember when her last letter had come. Could have been five years, could have been ten. Could have been twenty, could have been two. I figured she must be dead, which was bound to happen sooner or later, though I did think she was young to go, but that might only have been because I'd lost track of how old she was. I never heard from her again so I think I had it right. I wonder if it was the cigarettes. She always said that smoking killed germs.

  Not one of the immortals left Always during the trial. Partly we were in shock and huddled up as a result. Partly there was so much to be done, so much money to be made.

  The arcade crawled with tourists and reporters, too. Looking for a story, but also, as always, trying to make one. “Now that Brother Porter is dead,” they would ask, exact wording to change, but point always the same, “don't you have some doubts? And if you have some doubts, well, then, isn't the game already over?” They were tiresome, but they paid for their Hawaiian punch just like everyone else and we all knew Brother Porter wouldn't have wanted them kept away.

  Frankie was let off by reason of insanity. Exactly two days later Harry Capps walked into breakfast just when Winnifred Allington was telling us how badly she'd slept the night before on account of her arthritis. By the time he ran out of bullets, four more immortals were dead.

  Harry's defense was no defense. “Not one of them ever got a good night's sleep,” he said. “Someone had to show them what a good night's sleep was."

  The politicians blamed the overly-lenient Frankie Frye verdict for the four new deaths and swore the same mistake would not be made twice. Harry got life.

  * * * *

  Why I'm Still Here:

  Everyone else either died or left and now I'm the whole of it. The last of the immortals; City of Always, population one. I moved up to the big house and I'm the postmistress now, along with anything else I care to keep going. I get a salary from the government with benefits and a pension they'll regret if I live forever. They have a powerful faith I won't.

  The arcade is closed except for the peep shows, which cost a quarter now and don't need me to do anything to run them but collect the coins after. People don't come through so much since they built the 17, but I still get customers from time to time. They buy a postcard and they want the Always postmark on it.

  Wilt came to fetch me after the noise died down. “I brought you here,” he said. “Seems like I should take you away.” He never did understand why I wouldn't leave. He hadn't lived here long enough to understand it.

  I tried the easy answer first. I got shot by Harry Capps, I said. Right through the heart. Was supposed to die. Didn't.

  But then I tried again, because that wasn't the real answer and if I'd ever loved anyone, I'd loved Wilt. Who'll take care of the redwoods if I go? I asked him. Who'll take care of the mountains? He still didn't get it, though he said he did. I wouldn't have known how to leave even if I'd wanted to. What I was and what he was—they weren't the same thing at all anymore. There was no way back to what I'd been. The actual living forever part? That was always, always the least of it.

  Which is the last thing I'm going to say on the subject. There is no question you can ask I haven't already answered and answered and answered again. Time without end.

  Copyright © 2007 Karen Joy Fowler

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  ALTERNATE ASTROLOGY

  by Ruth Berman

  Le Verrier would have named

  His planet for himself

  The Glassmaker's planet

  Sand transformed

  To transparency

  Focusing the light of stars

  Over the Milky Way.

  -

  Under alternate skies

  Heavens not our own

  Astrologers forecast:

  The brittle planet

  Rising to a cusp

  Foredooms a crisis

  Unless the ever unpredictable

  Tombaugh's X

  Planet of mystery

  Should countervail.

  -

  Industrious Farmer George

  Herschel's agrarian planet

  Is good to plant by.

  —Ruth Berman

  Copyright © 2007 Ruth Berman

  [Herschel, patriotically, wanted to name the planet he had discovered the Georgian Star, after King George III. Other astronomers complained, as they did also over Le Verrier's choice. These planets became known as Uranus and Neptune, instead. Tombaugh's X became known as Pluto. The name “george” comes from georgos, the Greek for “farmer."]

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  FIFTH DAY

  by Jack McDevitt

  "In another age, I was a customs officer on the northern border. During winter nights, when the temperature sank to forty below, and the blizzards came and the traffic stopped, it was Asimov's that kept me alert. I retain my passion for the magazine to this day, and sympathize with those unfortunate souls who have never known what it means to catch the late freight to Polaris."—Jack McDevitt

  Jack McDevitt recently won the Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement (SESFA) Awards for best novel, Seeker, and lifetime achievement by a Southern writer. He is believed to be the only Philadelphia taxi driver ever to have claimed either award.

  Francis A. Gelper had been a biologist. He wasn't especially well known outside Lockport. Won one or two minor awards, but nothing that raised any eyebrows. But everyone who knew him said he was brilliant. And they said it in a way that told me they meant it. They liked him, too. They all did. His colleagues shook their heads in disbelief that he was gone; several of his students openly cried when I tried to interview them. In his spare time, he was a Little League coach, and he even helped out down at the senior center. Wednesday evenings, he played competitive bridge.

  He'd been on his way back to his apartment after a social gathering at the university
—they'd been celebrating a prize given to one of the astrophysicists—when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel and drove his hybrid over an embankment. He was thirty-eight years old.

  I'd never actually met him. I'd seen him from a distance on several occasions, and spotted him at the supermarket now and then. I'd always planned to do a feature story on him. Biologist With a Heart. Instead I got to do a postmortem appreciation.

  He was from Twin Rivers, Alabama. I thought the body would be shipped back for the funeral, but they conducted the service locally, at the McComber Funeral Home on Park Street. The place was packed with friends and students. The crowd spilled out into the street.

  The service was one of those attempts to celebrate his life rather than recognize his death. They never work, if you ask me. But there were a lot of people who wanted to say something about him. And the speakers all had trouble with their voices.

  When it was over, I stood outside with Harvey Pointer, the biology department chairman, watching the crowd dissipate. Harvey and I had gone to school together, been in Scouts together. He was a little guy with an outsize mustache and the same mischievous smile that always made him the prime suspect when something happened. “Did he have a girlfriend?” I asked. “Any marital prospects?"

  He shook his head. “I don't think he was the marrying type."

  I let the comment go.

  “You know, Ron,” he said, “Frank got caught up in the genesis problem and he devoted his life to it. He could have gotten a grant in any one of several research areas, but he wanted to settle that one issue. It was the driving force in his career."

  It was one of those hard, bright, sunny days when you have to stand facing away from the sun. “What's the genesis problem?” I asked.

  Harvey grinned. “How life got started. Where the first cell came from."

  “I thought that got settled years ago,” I said. “In a laboratory somewhere. Didn't they mix some chemicals and add heat and water? Or was it electricity?"

  “No.” Harvey stopped to talk to a couple of people from the department. Yeah, they were going to miss him. Damn shame. Then they were gone. “There've always been claims,” he said, continuing where he'd left off, “but nothing's ever stood up.” He jammed his hands down into his topcoat pockets. “Pity. Solve that one and you get to take a Nobel home."

  Genesis. It would make a nice bit to add to the story I'd already half-written.

  * * * *

  As far as we could tell, none of Gelper's family had shown up. His mother and father were still living, and he had a brother and sister. When I broached the subject to Harvey he said he didn't know any details. Gelper hadn't talked much about his family. “I don't think he liked them much,” he added.

  I'd seen odder things over the years, like Arnold Brown's religious conversion at his mother's funeral, and Morey Thomas's insistence when they buried his father that it was no use because the old man wouldn't stay dead. But usually death has a way of bringing families together. Especially when the loss is unexpected.

  I wrote the story and went back to covering the routine social calendar for Lockport, doing weddings and visiting authors at the library and writing features on anybody who did anything out of the ordinary. If you discovered you could play a banjo standing on your head, you could make the front page of the Register.

  So I'd forgotten about Gelper and his missing family when, about a month after the funeral, Harvey called me. “Got something you might be interested in,” he said.

  “What is it, Harvey?"

  “Can you come over?"

  * * * *

  You'd expect a department chairman to be set up in a reasonably elaborate office. In fact, he was worse off than I was. They had him jammed into a space about the size of a large closet. He sat behind a desk piled high with folders, magazines, disks, and legal pads. Behind him, a bulletin board had all but disappeared behind a legion of Post-its, schedules, and articles cut from magazines.

  He got up when I appeared at the door, waved me in, shook my hand, and indicated a chair. “Good to see you, Ron,” he said, leaning back against his desk and folding his arms.

  We did a couple of minutes of small talk before he came to the point. “You remember I told you what Frank was working on when he died?"

  “Sure,” I said. “How life got started."

  “You knew he left his papers to the university?"

  “No, I didn't. In fact, I hadn't thought of it at all."

  “I've been looking through them."

  “And—?"

  He walked around behind the desk, took his seat, shifted back and forth a few times, and put his hands together. Announcement coming. “I could have called CNN. And the A.P., Ron. Instead I called you."

  “I appreciate that, Harvey."

  He had sharp brown eyes that could look through you. At the moment they had gone dull, as if he'd gone away somewhere. “Frank found the solution."

  “To what?"

  “Genesis.” I stared at him. The eyes came back from wherever they'd been. “He worked out the process by which the first living cells appeared."

  The words just hung there. “Are you serious, Harvey?"

  He nodded. “You think I'd make jokes about something like that? It's true. At least, as far as we can tell. We haven't run all the tests yet, but the numbers seem to be right."

  “Well, you're an honest man, Harvey. You could have taken that for yourself. Claimed credit for a major discovery. Who would have known?"

  “What makes you think I won't?"

  “How much cash is involved?"

  He rubbed his index finger across his mustache. “Truth is, I thought about it, Ron. But I couldn't have gotten away with it."

  “Why not?"

  “I could never have done the equations. And everybody in the department knows it.” He chuckled. “No, this needed somebody brighter than I am.” He glanced out through the single window at Culbertson Hall, directly across from us. It was the home of the student center.

  Bells went off in the building. I listened to doors opening, the sudden rush of voices in the corridors. “What a pity,” I said.

  “How do you mean?"

  “He makes a major discovery. And is killed before he can announce it. Is it really worth a Nobel?"

  “Yes,” he said. “If everything bears out, as I suspect it will. But I think there's a misunderstanding. This wasn't a current set of results, Ron. It looks as if he's had it locked up for more than seven years."

  * * * *

  I asked whether he could explain it to me. In layman's language, so I could pass it on to my readers. The short answer was no. But that didn't stop him from trying. I got out my recorder and he started talking about primal conditions and triggers and carbon and God knows what else. “Could we duplicate it in a laboratory?” I asked.

  “Already have."

  “Really? You've made life?"

  “Well, we've done it virtually."

  “Okay.” What else would my readers want to know? “Why didn't he announce the discovery?"

  Harvey had no idea. “It makes no sense,” he said. “This was the grail."

  “What's he been doing since?"

  “Refining his results, looks like."

  “Stalling?"

  “Maybe.” He took a deep breath. “Are you interested in knowing what the odds were against life developing?"

  “I've no idea. I've always assumed it was more or less inevitable."

  “Not hardly. In fact, if Frank has it right, the possibility was one in trillions."

  “That's a big number."

  “Actually, it goes up another level. Quadrillions.” He pushed back and the chair squeaked. “That first living thing requires a precise sequence of a long series of extraordinarily unlikely events. Then it has to survive to reproduce. We were the longest of long shots, Ron."

  We stood looking at each other. “I guess it explains why those SETI guys never hear anything."

  * *
* *

  Nobody who knew Gelper could offer any explanation why he might have withheld his breakthrough. When Harvey reported that the testing results continued to confirm everything, I wondered whether he might have been unaware of the implications. “No,” said Harvey. “Not a chance."

  So that was how I wrote a story that collected world-wide attention. It's true that hardly anybody in Lockport got excited, but I found myself filing for the A.P. and getting interviewed, along with Harvey, on the Science Channel.

  Harvey was getting credit for the work, since he had made it public, and gradually Gelper disappeared into the background. I tracked down a few women who'd dated Gelper on and off, but none of them had suspected he'd been harboring a secret.

  Eventually, I called his parents, got the father, and offered my sympathies. He thanked me, but his voice was distant. "You're one of his friends?" he asked.

  “I'm a reporter for The Lockport Register,” I said.

  "Oh."

  “Your son did some very important work, Mr. Gelper. You must be proud of him."

  "I've read the stories."

  “He did the breakthrough research years ago. But he never released the results."

  "So I understand."

  “Did he tell you what he was doing?"

  "No."

  “If you don't mind my saying so, Mr. Gelper, that seems strange. I'd expect you would be the first person he'd confide in."

  "Mr.—?"

  “Haight."

  "Mr. Haight, my son and I have not been close. For a long time."

  “Oh. I'm sorry to hear it.” There was silence at the other end. “Can you imagine any reason why he'd have withheld this kind of information?"

  "I'm not surprised he did," he said. Then: "Thanks for calling."

  “Why?” I asked. “Why are you not surprised?"

  "Please let it go."

  And I was listening to a dial tone.

  * * * *

  He wouldn't agree to an interview. Wouldn't return my calls. So I persuaded Harvey to draw up a departmental certificate of recognition to Francis Gelper. We framed it, and I bought a ticket to Huntsville, on my own dime, rented a car, and drove to Twin Rivers.