Asimov's SF, April-May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Gelper Senior was a retired real estate dealer. He'd been an automobile salesman at one time, had run unsuccessfully for the Twin Rivers school board, and had home-schooled his kids. He was semi-retired at the time of his son's death. Showed up once a week at Gelper and Martin, which specialized in developing new properties.

  His wife had, for a few years, been a math instructor at the local high school. They lived just outside town in a two-story brick home with columns and maybe a quarter-acre. A gardener was digging at some azalea bushes when I pulled into the driveway.

  Mrs. Gelper answered the door. I'd seen no recent photos of her, but she was easy to recognize. She was well into her sixties, with blonde hair pulled back, blue eyes, and the sort of disconnected gaze that let me know I was of minor significance. “Yes?” she said, glancing down at the envelope in which I carried Frank's award.

  I introduced myself and explained that I'd come from Lockport University. In Maryland. She made no move to invite me inside.

  “They've issued your son a certificate of appreciation,” I continued.

  “Oh,” she said. “That's very kind of them.” We stood there looking at each other.

  A voice in back somewhere broke in: “Who's at the door, Margaret?"

  She stepped aside and I saw Gelper Senior, Charlie Gelper, who had apparently been asleep on the sofa. “Please come in,” she said. Then, to her husband: “He's brought something. For Frank."

  I couldn't say the guy was hostile. But he clearly wanted me out of there. Apparently misunderstanding, he said that Frank was dead.

  “It's an award,” I said. “In recognition of his service."

  He got up from the couch and watched while I removed the certificate from a padded manila envelope and held it out for whichever of them might choose to take it. Margaret did. She looked at it and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  Gelper nodded. “Tell them we appreciate it.” I could see the son in the father. Same features, same wide shoulders, same eyes. He waited his turn, took the certificate from her, frowned at it, and said thanks again. The presentation was over.

  “I don't know whether you're aware,” I said, “but he's made a significant contribution to his field."

  “So we've heard,” said Margaret.

  “They're mystified at the school.” I tried to be casual. And of course when you try hard to be casual you know what happens.

  She exchanged smiles with her husband. “Can I get you something? Coffee, maybe?"

  “Yes, please.” I was grateful she'd loosened up a bit.

  Gelper laid the certificate on a side table. We were standing in the living room. They didn't lack for money. Leather furniture. Large double windows looking out on the grounds. Etched glassware. Finely carved bookshelves.

  A copy of The Hunting Digest lay on a chair, and half a dozen books were arranged on one of the shelves. The others were devoted to artificial flowers, reproductions of classic art works, and framed photos.

  “You from Lockport?” Gelper asked.

  “Yes, sir. Lived there all my life."

  I steered the conversation onto hunting, admitted I knew nothing about it, pretended it was something I'd always wanted to do. The coffee came. Margaret asked how well I'd known their son.

  “Only in passing,” I said. “But everybody he worked with, and his students, all thought very highly of him."

  Eventually I was able to get back to Frank's failure to report what he'd found. “It baffles everybody. Harvey, his department head, says if he'd revealed what he knew, he'd have won the Nobel."

  Margaret nodded. “I can tell you why he said nothing.” Her voice shook.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The newspapers say the process is so convoluted, that it requires such a conjunction of unlikely events, that the odds against it are almost infinite."

  “And—?” I said.

  “Scientists,"—she said it as if she were referring to a disreputable pack—"were expecting that it would be routine. You get water, and sunlight, and a few basic elements, and next thing you know you have squirrels."

  “It didn't work out that way,” I said, trying to encourage her.

  She nodded. “No. Despite all the talk, it took the hand of God. That's what Frank proved, what he wanted to deny. It's the fifth day.” Tears were beginning to run down her cheeks.

  Gelper came up behind her, held her shoulders, and looked down at me. He was an imposing figure. “He couldn't have stood that kind of result,” he said in a soft voice. “He abandoned his faith a long time ago. I don't know whether you understand what that means. But it's why he kept it quiet. He lived in denial. Denied everything we know to be true.” He looked shaken. “He was denying the Lord right to the end. Think about it. At this moment, our son is in hell."

  * * * *

  Well, I didn't know how to respond to that so I said thanks for your time and left. As soon as I was clear of the neighborhood, I called Harvey. “I don't think his folks approved of him."

  "You figure out why?"

  “It's a religious thing, apparently. They said something about a fifth day."

  "It figures. They would have been referring to Genesis, I guess. The fifth day was when God created the first living things."

  “It was a sad scene back there, Harvey. I thought religion was supposed to be a comfort."

  "Not always. I guess his being gay didn't help, either."

  “You didn't say he was gay."

  “I couldn't see any reason to spread it around, Ron. I slipped just now, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't print it."

  “I won't. But I've interviewed some women who said they had dated him."

  “I guess you could say he played both sides of the aisle."

  I thought about Gelper standing there trembling and it occurred to me that he was the one in hell.

  * * * *

  I rode down to the local library, commandeered a computer, and did a search on Francis Gelper. I'd done that before, of course, when I'd been putting the original story together. Thousands of entries had popped up. Gelper on telomeres for Nature. Gelper discusses evolutionary extracts for The Darwin Newsletter. Gelper on cell cycle checkpoints for Scientific American.

  But this time I narrowed the search. I added “gay."

  The usual range of off-the-subject results showed up. Joe Gelper plays Gaylord Batterly in Over the Top, with George Francis conducting. Time travel novel Back to the Gay Nineties by Marie Gelper, one of the year's best, according to Mark Francis. Then I saw the one that froze me. It was from something called The Revelation Bulletin:

  Exorcism Rites Performed on Three Boys

  Twin Rivers, Ala. April 11. Three teenaged boys received exorcism rites this past Sunday at the Divine Beneficence Church. The ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Harry Parver, while hundreds of worshippers watched in awe.

  The article went on to name the teens. One of them was Francis Gelper. I checked the date. He would have been fifteen.

  I looked up the Divine Beneficence Church, and drove over. It was a picturesque place, not as big as it sounded in the story. It was freshly painted, with a white picket fence sealing off the grounds, and a large signboard exhorting everyone to attend the Mighty Soldiers of the Lord Revival that weekend. The Rev. Parver was listed as rector.

  Ten minutes later I was back at the Gelper place.

  * * * *

  They were surprised to see me. “Tell me about the exorcism,” I said.

  Margaret went pale; Gelper took to glaring at me. “I don't see how it's any of your business,” he said.

  “What did he have to do? Stand at the front of the church while all his friends watched? And somebody prayed over him?"

  Margaret looked through me. “We had no choice. We were fighting for his soul."

  “Did he have to confess his sins to the entire congregation?"

  Gelper started for me. “Get out,” he said.

  “That explains why he kept it quiet, doesn
't it?"

  “I already told you why. He was denying his God. No wonder he died young."

  He was moving toward me with his fists balled. I'm not normally all that brave when it comes to physical confrontations. But on that afternoon I was in a rage and I stood my ground. “You got it wrong, Gelper,” I said. “He knew the conclusion you'd jump to. That his results supported your notions of creation. And he didn't want that. He wasn't denying God. He was denying your vision of things. He was denying you. He sacrificed everything rather than allow you to misread his work."

  * * * *

  Harvey informs me the odds against life in any one place are so remote that they exceed the estimated number of worlds in biozones in the entire universe by a factor of three. If we assume that the sort of life we know, the carbon-based type that needs liquid water, is the only kind possible, then the chances were two to one against the appearance anywhere of a single living creature. We got lucky. That's what Harvey says.

  But the estimate of the number of eligible planets is wildly speculative. Nobody has a clue how big the universe actually is. So all the talk about probabilities is, in the end, just talk.

  Still, when I look at the night sky now, it's different from what it used to be. It feels cold. And impersonal. Just a machine.

  I wonder if Frank Gelper had felt the same way. And if, in the end, that was the real reason he kept everything to himself.

  Copyright © 2007 Jack McDevitt

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  * * *

  GREEN GLASS

  by Gene Wolfe

  "It's hard for me to believe that Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has turned thirty. I recall early issues when Isaac himself peeped out of the “O” in Asimov's SF, issues to which he was a regular contributor. Heavenly days, I recall Isaac, gracious, funny, and smart. There was never a quicker man with a quip, nor a man more concerned to see that his quips gave no one serious pain. He was a man I knew and counted as a friend, and a man I would have liked to know much better. “His magazine is the same way. I've read it since the first issue. I've sold it stories, beginning I believe with “The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus” in January of 1979. I've chatted with George Scithers, Gardner Dozois, and Sheila Williams whenever I got the opportunity. It is one of the few magazines I'll always subscribe to. But I don't know it from the inside, and I'm hoping Sheila will tell us a little about that now.—Gene Wolfe

  This celebrated author's most recent books include the two-volume fantasy Wizard Knight series, which consists of The Wizard and The Knight, and Soldier of Sidon, which was published by Tor Books late last year. In his newest story, Gene upends reality to take a disquieting look at life under...

  The passage, so narrow his shoulder rubbed its slick walls, ended abruptly at a wide space in which a naked woman sat cross-legged, her eyes closed, as though meditating. He thought of speaking, then of coughing. They seemed to him equally impolite. Silently, he seated himself instead and studied her.

  She was young, hardly more than a girl. Brown hair—long, soft, and nearly straight—veiled her shoulders. Her face was lovely without being conventionally pretty, a face (he thought) as pure and clean as spring water. If she was not real...

  He admitted the possibility. It was possible, in fact very probable, that she was not. If she was not, he hoped to go insane. To believe her, a soulless phantom conjured from his own fevered imagination, wholly real and as human as he.

  Anything else, any smallest shred of doubt, would be unbearable.

  She was sitting in the middle of an open area. He propped his back against a featureless green wall and sat facing her. There was no time. No day and no night. His mind wandered, and for the most part wandered among nothing, nowhere.

  * * * *

  At last she looked up and smiled. “Hello? Are you real?"

  He grinned, “I think so. What are they going to do with us?"

  “Watch us together, maybe. If you're real. Can you get us out of here?"

  “I can't even get myself out. What about you?"

  “No. I—I meet people here. People who aren't real. Some of them are people I know. Knew."

  He nodded. “Same here."

  “I ask them to get me out. They say they will, or that they'll try. Only I never do. What's your name?"

  “Joey. I was named for a baby kangaroo."

  She giggled. “I like that. Last name?"

  “De Mio. Now you'll think I'm a Mafioso. My dad's in the ice-cream business, a wholesaler. Does that help?"

  “It didn't need any help. I'm Josephine Bates, and I've been trying to place your accent. St. Louis?"

  He shook his head. “Chicago."

  “In the ice-cream business."

  “Right. Where are you from, Ms. Bates?"

  “San Diego. You can call me Josephine, Joey. You said you meet people in here like I do."

  He nodded.

  “People you know?"

  “Sometimes. Some were characters from TV. Or movies I'd seen. Harry Potter. Bugs Bunny."

  “Are we crazy?"

  “How should I know?” He rubbed his chin. “There's a way to test it, Josephine. We meet some together and compare notes afterward. If we saw the same thing—"

  “I've got it. How'd you get here, Joey?"

  “You wouldn't believe it.” He shook his head. “Heck, I don't believe it, and I was there. It happened to me, but I still don't believe it."

  “Will you believe me?"

  “Sure.” He grinned. “Anything."

  “Then I'd believe you, right?"

  He shook his head. “Wrong. I'm a good judge of character. That's how I know you're a good judge of character too, see? I know you can be trusted. You'll know I can't."

  “You're sneaky?"

  “Close enough. How'd they get you?"

  “I was driving down two-oh-one, somewhere between Moose River and Madison. I must have taken a wrong turn. I don't know where or how, but I sort of woke up and realized I wasn't on the highway anymore. I was on a country road or something like that, and it had just gotten narrower. I went down into a long, dark valley with a lot of big trees..."

  He said, “If this still scares you, you don't have to tell me."

  “I was just trying to remember. No lights except my headlights. The trees shutting out the moon and the stars. Up ahead, some kind of animal, big and dark. Its eyes looked yellow in my headlights. I slammed on the brakes, and it was gone. Just gone, like it had never been there at all. I went forward again, slower, out of the valley and up onto a hilltop. There was moonlight all around, as if I were inside the moon with light coming at me from all directions. I thought to myself, if I had a soul, I'd stop right here and enjoy this.

  “As soon as I did, as soon as I had thought that, my headlights went out and my engine quit. I kept on rolling, slower and slower. Rolling up to the very top of the hill. Finally my car stopped and I got out. I guess I was going to open the hood or something."

  “Did you?"

  She shook her head. “When I stepped out, my foot wouldn't stick. Know what I mean? It wouldn't stay down and I went up, slowly, sort of trying to grab the ground with my feet but never getting hold of it. There was a big round thing right above me, like an umbrella but a whole lot bigger. A hole opened and I floated up into it. I couldn't help myself, and here I am. Now what about you?"

  “Later, maybe.” He stood. “I'm a pretty good liar, but I hate it when people think I'm lying and I'm really telling them the truth. Let's go into these tunnels or whatever they are."

  “Passageways. I've been in them, and there's nothing in there."

  “I was in there.” He touched his chest.

  “Really?"

  “Sure. I came out of there, and you were sitting there so pretty, and I sat down to look at you."

  She smiled. “Want to give me a hand up?"

  “Happy to.” He did, finding her hand small but stronger than he expected.

  “Which
one did you come out of, Joey?"

  “I...” The room in which she had sat was ringed by the mouths of passages, all green and twilit, each promising neither more nor less than nothing. “That one, I think. Or else that one next to it."

  “I don't think we ought to split up."

  “Neither do I. It's just the other way, if you ask me. We've got to stay together, no matter what happens."

  “Want to pick?"

  He shook his head. “You do it, Josephine."

  “All right, this one. You go first."

  The floor was smooth without being slick. We could dance in here, he thought. Hip hop, or whatever she wants to do. Ballroom even, if that's what she would like. Only there's no music.

  A voice behind him said, “Hello, you two."

  He turned, looking over Josephine's shoulder.

  “Fields is my name.” The speaker wore an old-fashioned tuxedo. “Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm. Ever hear us? We used to be big."

  “We don't need a band,” Josephine said. “We need to get out of here—to get off this flying saucer or whatever it is and get back home."

  From somewhere behind Shep Fields, a swing band struck up “Vaya Con Dios."

  “Let's go!” With an emphatic gesture, Josephine urged Joey forward. “He can't help us. Or he won't."

  Shep did not follow them, but his music did. “It will be over soon,” Josephine said.

  Joey nodded, wanting to hum under his breath. “Who was that? Was he someone you used to know?"

  “You didn't recognize him?"

  Joey shook his head.

  “One of mine then. Did he tell you who he was? He told me. Do you remember the name?"

  “Shep Fields?” Momentarily, Joey stopped to search his memory. “He said something about rippling rhythm."

  “That's good. We heard the same thing. How was he dressed?"

  “Old fashioned. Formal. A—a tux. Is that what they called them? Only the coat was white."

  “Right. A dinner jacket. So we saw the same thing, too. I took a class in college, American Musical History. There was a tape with interviews of some old-time band leaders, and one of them was Shep Fields. He was dressed like that. They pulled him out of my mind."