Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014

by Penny Publications

  They were pretty, the mermaids. Mean girl prettiness. Female prettiness, the kind that masked their own inner rage.

  Was that anger still inside her, lurking under her placid surface like a coral reef? Unseen but shaping every thought current?

  Maybe she was going crazy again.

  Maybe Leonid was trying to drive her crazy.

  Maybe some facet of herself was trying to drag her down with it.

  Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

  Some combinations didn't work when you put them together to sing. Again the mermaids showed their displeasure not by fighting but by sulking, hanging limply in the water and refusing to move. She recorded the dislikes in her notebook but could make no sense of the pattern.

  More worrisome, the Song Chamber had produced a grey globe that refused to hatch. It bobbed loosely as she lowered her hand into the blood-warm water and tested it with her fingers. Through the rubbery substance of the globe's outer layer, she could feel something solid inside, but it didn't twitch at her touch.

  She did what she had promised herself she wouldn't do anymore. She called Leonid.

  He was over faster than she would have thought, there at her door within a quarter hour.

  He fished out the globe to examine it, "I thought we'd eliminated this problem.

  Sometimes they just don't spark. No one knows why."

  Holding the globe over the Chamber's water, he used a pocketknife to slice it open and let it drain. When he peeled away the gray shreds of the globe, the lump inside was not the perfect little body she'd feared. Rather it was a misshapen mass of colors, green and blue and yellow like a rotting Rubik's cube.

  "Do you have something I can put it in?" Leonid said. "I want to take it to the scientists. If you have another, just stick the whole thing in a container and put it in the fridge for me."

  As she crouched by the sink to find the box of baggies, she said, "Why mermaids?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You could have picked some other form for your toy. You could have made all sorts of fish, for example."

  He laughed nervously. "Well, believe it or not, it's my tribute to you."

  She blinked as she handed him the baggie. Color mounted on his cheekbones. "They always seemed to me like women artists.

  Out there singing."

  "Singing to lure men to them."

  His headshake was immediate. "No. I can see where that's coming from. But I always imagine them out there on the rocks, singing into the wind."

  "Where no one can hear them."

  "I know it's difficult. Everything they say about women having to work harder, I've seen it. And having a daughter... well, I think about it more because of her. So I made mermaids for her."

  Something occurred to her. "Why don't they get along?"

  He laughed. "Well, come on. We had to complicate things a little. And you've seen it as well as I have. Sometimes women just take an instant dislike to each other."

  "I think that's true of either sex."

  He shrugged. "Mermaids only come in one flavor though."

  By now it had become ritual to sit watching the mermaids in the evening, to scribble down notes, moving them from tank to tank, trying new song combinations, recording the behaviors. The Mariposa mermaids did funny little flips while blowing bubbles, which seemed unique to them so far. The Amazonias had not just natural armor but tiny tridents that seemed to be outgrowths of their hands. It gave them a wobble when swimming.

  She laid her pen down. Odd to think that Leonid had given time to musing about women artists. And that he'd constructed an image like that, uncharacteristically romantic, the mermaids singing into the wind.

  That wasn't how she thought of them. To her, artists overall were the canaries in the coal mine, the eyes that could see outside the structures containing everyone and voice a warning when there was something poisonous, something dangerous.

  Something that needed to be exposed.

  A self-important view, to be sure.

  She could have gone down that rabbit hole of thought, but she wrenched herself away from it.

  Both sexes—all sexes, if you wanted to be encompassing—saw how it worked. Did women artists have a vantage point that gave them some insight no one else could access? Again, overly self-important. Artists saw from every viewpoint, they splin tered their consciousness, reflected and refracted reality in their minds before they turned it into art.

  Maybe they were more sensitive to those poisons, like the canaries, who warned of danger by dying.

  Perhaps that was why they went crazy so easily.

  An Operetta mermaid swam around the tank in long slow loops. She had to admit there was a great deal of inventive detail to the mermaids. Leonid had confided that they were the work of three comic book artists that he'd commissioned. A talented gene splicer used a three-D rendering of the artists' concepts. The gene tech was incredible. The Starbright mermaid actually twinkled. If you turned out the light it looked like a shifting constellation hanging in the dark water.

  Around and around. Her thoughts did that sometimes. Often. Though the medication helped.

  Around and around. Around and around.

  After an hour, she pulled herself to bed.

  Around and around.

  Pomegranate Bistro was on a side of town she didn't usually opt for, one she thought of as just a little snobby, just a little too consciously upscale.

  Saffron was fifteen minutes late. The precision of the timing made Petra wonder if it wasn't calculated, if Saffron hadn't waited in the car, expressing her disdain for Petra with the interval.

  That was paranoid and unworthy of her. She fixed a smile on her face as Saffron came through the tables.

  The first thing you noticed about Saffron was always her costume. Not costume perhaps, but an outfit clearly assembled for its Bohemian effect, vintage items mixed with upscale shoe designers, a necklace that proclaimed eclecticism with every mismatched link. She sat down with a jingle of bracelets, picking up a menu to study it.

  "I hope you didn't have any trouble finding the restaurant," she said from behind the paper. "I know it's not your sort of place, but it's one of my favorites."

  Petra felt things lurking beneath the words. "Not a bit."

  "Any luck finding a new gallery?"

  "I haven't really started looking. I've been working on a new piece. I figured I'd finish that up first. How is getting ready for your show going?"

  "Smooth as silk." Saffron laid the menu down with a sly smile. "I'm good at arranging things."

  That seemed like an ominous segue but Petra seized it nonetheless.

  "I wanted to talk to you about your show."

  "What about it?"

  Petra floundered. "It's... well, mine got pulled and yours arranged. It just seemed odd."

  "I suppose it would." Ice cubes clinked and bangles jingled as Saffron took a sip of water. She set the glass down and dabbed at her scarlet lips with a napkin, staining the clay-colored fabric. "I fucked the gallery owner."

  Petra caught herself gaping like a fish and clicked her mouth shut. "What?"

  The waiter appeared at Saffron's side. She rattled off a quick list, concluding with: "And a glass of the cava. I'm celebrating." Her teeth flashed at Petra. "And you?"

  The waiter regarded her, pen poised over his pad.

  "I'm not ready to order yet."

  "No? You had plenty of time," Saffron said.

  The waiter departed and Petra gathered her wits. "Are you saying you slept with Blake? What did that have to do with my show?"

  "He was worrying about how late you were with the new work. Easy enough to tip him into believing you wouldn't deliver." She licked her lips, a delicate, satisfied cat gesture. "He wanted very much to give me a show by that point."

  "Why me?"

  "You were the next available slot."

  "But why go so far as to have him drop me entirely?"

  "That wasn't my doing. Just a bonus. Sometimes
men do that sort of thing when they're embarrassed."

  "What do you mean, a bonus? I haven't done anything to you."

  "You're competition."

  "Don't you think... don't you think as female artists we should stick together? Things are hard enough without making it worse for each other."

  Saffron's laugh was knife-sharp. "Oh, sister woman person and all of that? I'm happy enough that women have come as far as they have, but I don't buy into that crap. It just gets in the way. This is a dog-eat-dog world, sister."

  "But it doesn't have to be that way. We should cooperate, not compete."

  "A utopia full of happy cooperation where everyone gets what they deserve without working for it? Maybe some unicorns shitting fluffy marshmallow rainbows too." Saffron's sneer distorted the taut lines of her face.

  The waiter returned, looking expectant. Petra rose.

  "I'm sorry," she stammered at him, and fled.

  Inside her apartment, the air smelled of moist chemicals, a briny tang that bit at the inside of her nose.

  She had assembled and filled every tank that had come with the kit. They filled the two bookcases under the window. More clustered on the table and kitchen cabinets. How had the mermaids taken over her life?

  Kerry! She was due back that afternoon.

  She didn't think about Saffron as she cleaned. Didn't think of the sneer. Of the voice. Of the confusion of clothing. Of her words. Didn't think of them.

  Instead she cleared the clutter of dishes in the sink, loaded the dishwasher and set it running. She swept and then mopped the hardwood floor, and wiped the woodwork. She polished the windows with vinegar and water, using newspaper, as her mother had taught her, and put the last few boxes still unpacked in a closet. At the grocery store, she bought an armload of scarlet tulips and set them in a glass bowl filled with water and clear marbles that she set in the center of the living room.

  Kerry arrived in a bustle of backpack and sacks and guitar cases, full of talk about the rock camp, the songs, the other girls. Petra listened as Kerry scrolled through her phone's photos, showing Petra shot after shot. Petra was pleased. She'd thought the camp would be good for Kerry, coax her out of her shell.

  Kerry finally couldn't help but notice the mermaids.

  "What are these? Some kind of art thing?" Movement caught her eye. She dropped down beside the tank on the bottom shelf. "Oh. My. God. How adorable are these?"

  "They're from your father."

  Kerry turned to examine the box. Her face took on a pout.

  "You've opened everything!"

  "Your father said to get them started for you."

  "You didn't just get them started!" Kerry dropped the box on the floor. "You did it all. You took all the fun parts and did them already." She folded her arms.

  Petra hadn't even considered this. She felt the pang of having offended, all with the best intentions.

  "I'm sorry," she stammered. She pointed at the sprawl of notebooks on the table.

  "It was all for you, though." The words were false, she realized, even as they left her lips. She'd let the mermaids obsess her. She'd hatched them all, depriving Kerry of the joy of discovery of the permutations and quirks.

  "I'm going to bed." The door slammed behind Kerry.

  Petra stared at the array of tanks. The mermaids had taken over her life. She couldn't work on her art. Every time she went to her studio and tried to look at the latest piece, visions of the mermaids interposed themselves, swimming round and round.

  Would they do the same thing to Kerry?

  She had to say something.

  She had to say something about the mermaids.

  She had to say something about Saffron.

  She had to say something with the rediscovered rage that ran through her like a second musculature system, holding her upright even while it made her shake.

  She had to do something with the anger.

  The first mermaid, a Snowlanthia, flapped when she laid it on the wooden cutting board. She watched it dispassionately. The little gills were not on the throat where she would have expected them to be. Instead they were unobtrusively placed at the mermaid's waist, unnoticeable in the water. Now they splayed open, gasping, like the red mouths of wounds. Its face had no expression.

  It took longer to die than she had thought it would.

  She did three at a time with the next pass. One flopped from the board to fall with a meaty splat on the floor's linoleum. It twitched there.

  She picked it up and snapped the neck as she returned it to the board.

  Horribly, it continued to convulse. Its gills sucked at the inhospitable air.

  When she had a dozen, she took them to her studio. She laid the bodies down on the work table and turned to face the vast canvas that lay waiting to swallow her.

  CYBELE STUDIOS, "LAST WORKS" SHOW. EXHIBIT #23 UNTITLED, MIXED MEDIA.

  The last work of Petra Mookjai, this ten by twenty foot collage incorporates acrylic paints, owl feathers, and desiccated organic material believed to be genetically engineered constructs created by Mookjai's former husband. The notation, "Welcome to the background radiation of my life," is inscribed in the artist's own blood. For more analysis, see Marla Smith's monograph on Mookjai's works, entitled, "All the Pretty Little Mermaids."

  * * *

  DECLARATION

  James Patrick Kelly | 9611 words

  Jim Kelly says, "Those who have been following my column here at Asimov's will recognize that I have written about the thesis behind this story before. Human experience is human experience, and to privilege the real over the virtual runs against trends in our evolving digital culture. Are we reality snobs? Maybe. You may not agree with this—and I'm not sure that I'm 100 percent on board with it myself—but I think it's something worth discussing. 'Declaration' had a previous audio incarnation in Audible.com's Ripoff anthology, edited by Gardner Dozois, but I'm proud that it makes its print debut here."

  "When in the course of human events..."

  As Silk spoke, fluffy clouds formed the phrase in a Magritte sky, which was simultaneously noon and dusk. While Remeny could appreciate the control Silk had over his softtime domain, she wished he wouldn't steer their meeting in an artsy direction. They had work to do.

  "Wait," said Botão, "what about we the people?"

  "That's the other one," Silk shot her a (.1) anger blip fading to (.7) irritation. "The Constitution."

  "But we're the people we're talking about," Botão ignored Silk's blippage. "That's the whole point?"

  "Human events," said Silk. "If you'd wait just a second, I'm getting to the people part."

  Botão had only been assigned to their school coop team for a month now and Remeny knew what she did not: Silk didn't like to be challenged, especially not in his own domain. They had chosen his corner of virtuality because Silk had enough excess capacity to host them all, but his was not the ideal place to plot their pretend revolution. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence were going wispy above them.

  "Get on with it then," said Sturm. "And skip the special effects."

  "When in the course of human events," Silk said, "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."

  "Okay," said Botão.

  "... and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

  The four others—Remeny, Sturm, Botão, and Toybox—scanned each other and then turned on Silk. They had agreed to close all private channels and keep their avatars emotionally transparent, so the air filled with blips of confusion and disapproval.

  "Laws of Nature?" said Toybox. "What the hell is that about?"

  "Maybe relativity." Sturm's scorn blip started at (.3) and climbed.

  "They didn't even have relativity back th
en."

  "They did, they were just too stupid to realize it."

  "Mankind? What about the other 52 percent?" Botão was laughing now. "And who is nature's god?"

  "Exactly," said Sturm. "I call bullshit. Crusty oldschool bullshit."

  Remeny kept quiet; she focused on Silk, who was waiting for them to calm down.

  "Agreed," he said. "But it will mean something to the old people because Thomas Jefferson wrote this stuff."

  "Who's he and so what?" said Toybox.

  "Jefferson as in Jefferson County," said Remeny. "As in where we live."

  "I live in softtime." At (.9+), Toybox's rage was nearly unreadable—but then he was always shouting. "That's where I live."

  Silk waved a hand in front of his face, as if the blip was a bad smell. "History is important to reality snobs," he said. "This gets their attention."

  Remeny noticed that he was keeping his temper in check. She was definitely interested in Silk; poise was something she looked for in a boyfriend.

  "So will making their lights flicker," said Toybox. This was why he had flunked one coop already. "Crashing their flix."

  "We're not talking about anything like that," said Botão. "We're students, not terrorists."

  "Speak for yourself." Sturm spread his hands and between them appeared an old-school clock. "Revolutions don't play by the rules." Its face showed two minutes to midnight.

  Remeny couldn't believe Sturm, of all people, aligning himself with terrorists. She agreed with Botão; she didn't really care about the revolution. All she wanted was to get a grade for her senior cooperative, graduate, and never log on to the Jefferson County Educational Oversight Service again. The problem was that a third of her grade for coop was for contribution to the team's cooperative culture. The senior coop was supposed to demonstrate to the EOS that students had the social skills to succeed in softtime by coming together anonymously to plan and execute a project that had hardtime outcomes.

  Of course, anonymity wasn't easy in a county like Jefferson. Students spent hours in soft and hardtime trying to figure out who was who. Botão, for example, was one of the refugees from Brazil and probably lived in Tugatown. Remeny had first met her two years ago in the EOS playgrounds, mostly ForSquare and Sanctuary. Now Botão was Sturm's friend too—maybe even his girlfriend. Toybox defied the rules of anonymnity by dressing his avatar in clothes that pointed to hardtime identity. Everyone knew that he was the Jason Day whose body was stashed in bin 334 of the Komfort Kare body stack on Route 127 in Pineville. Unfortunately for him, no one cared. Bad luck to have him on the team—if he was going to be such a shithead, they might all flunk. Good luck, though, to get Silk—whoever he was. The avatar was new to the senior class, but Silk didn't act new. She thought maybe he was a duplicate of some rich kid they already knew. It cost to be in two places at once and considering how crush his domain was, Remeny guessed Silk had serious money. Probably lived in that gated community at the lake. She wondered what he looked like in hardtime. His avatar was certainly hot in his leathers and tanker boots. Sturm's identity, obviously, was no secret to her, although she hoped that she was the only one on the team who knew that he was her twin brother.