by Tim Pratt
He says, "Susan."
Susan says, "Tell me a story." She squirms. "Any story. I don't care what."
"I can't tell you a story," Ed says. "I don't know any stories when you're doing this."
"I'll stop," Susan says. She stops.
Ed says, "Don't stop. Okay." He puts his hands around her waist and moves her, as if he's stirring the Susan beer.
He says, "Once upon a time." He's speaking very fast. They're running out of time.
Once, while they were making love, Andrew came into the bedroom. He didn't even knock. He didn't seem to be embarrassed at all. Ed doesn't want to be fucking Susan when the aliens show up. On the other hand, Ed wants to be fucking Susan forever. He doesn't want to stop, not for Andrew, or the aliens, or even for the end of the world.
Ed says, "There was a man and a woman and they fell in love. They were both nice people. They made a good couple. Everyone liked them. This story is about the woman."
This story is about a woman who is in love with somebody who invents a time machine. He's planning to go so far into the future that he'll end up right back at the very beginning. He asks her to come along, but she doesn't want to go. What's back at the beginning of the world? Little blobs of life swimming around in a big blob? Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? She doesn't want to play Adam and Eve; she has other things to do. She works for a research company. She calls people on the telephone and asks them all sorts of questions. Back at the beginning, there aren't going to be phones. She doesn't like the sound of it. So her husband says, Fine, then here's what we'll do. I'll build you another machine, and if you ever decide that you miss me, or you're tired and you can't go on, climb inside this machine--this box right here--and push this button and go to sleep. And you'll sleep all the way forwards and backwards to me, where I'm waiting for you. I'll keep on waiting for you. I love you. And so they make love and they make love a few more times and then he climbs into his time machine and whoosh, he's gone like that. So fast, it's hard to believe that he was ever there at all. Meanwhile she lives her life forward, slow, the way he didn't want to. She gets married again and makes love some more and has kids and they have kids and when she's an old woman, she's finally ready: she climbs into the dusty box down in the secret room under the orchard and she pushes the button and falls asleep. And she sleeps all the way back, just like Sleeping Beauty, down in the orchard for years and years, which fly by like seconds, she goes flying back, past the men sitting around the green felt table, now you can see them and now they're gone again, and all the peacocks are screaming, and the Satanist drives up to the house and unloads the truckload of furniture, he unpaints the pentagrams, soon the old shy man will unbuild his house, carry his secret away on his back, and the apples are back on the orchard trees again, and then the trees are all blooming, and now the woman is getting younger, just a little, the lines around her mouth are smoothing out. She dreams that someone has come down into that underground room and is looking down at her in her time machine. He stands there for a long time. She can't open her eyes, her eyelids are so heavy, she doesn't want to wake up just yet. She dreams she's on a train going down the tracks backwards and behind the train, someone is picking up the beams and the nails and the girders to put in a box and then they'll put the box away. The trees are whizzing past, getting smaller and smaller and then they're all gone too. Now she's a kid again, now she's a baby, now she's much smaller and then she's even smaller than that. She gets her gills back. She doesn't want to wake up just yet, she wants to get right back to the very beginning where it's all new and clean and everything is still and green and flat and sleepy and everybody has crawled back into the sea and they're waiting for her to get back there too and then the party can start. She goes backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards and backwards--
The cheerleader says to the Devil, "We're out of time. We're holding things up. Don't you hear them banging on the door?"
The Devil says, "You didn't finish the story."
The cheerleader says, "And you never let me touch your tail. Besides, there isn't any ending. I could make up something, but it wouldn't ever satisfy you. You said that yourself! You're never satisfied. And I have to get on with my life. My parents are going to be home soon."
She stands up and slips out of the closet and slams the door shut again, so fast the Devil can hardly believe it. A key turns in a lock.
The Devil tries the doorknob, and someone standing outside the closet giggles.
"Shush," says the cheerleader. "Be quiet."
"What's going on?" the Devil says. "Open the door and let me out--this isn't funny."
"Okay, I'll let you out," the cheerleader says. "Eventually. Not just yet. You have to give me something first."
"You want me to give you something?" the Devil says. "Okay, what?" He rattles the knob, testing.
"I want a happy beginning," the cheerleader says. "I want my friends to be happy too. I want to get along with my parents. I want a happy childhood. I want things to get better. I want them to keep getting better. I want you to be nice to me. I want to be famous, I don't know, maybe I could be a child actor, or win state-level spelling bees, or even just cheer for winning teams. I want world peace. Second chances. When I'm winning at poker, I don't want to have to put all that money back in the pot, I don't want to have to put my good cards back on top of the deck, one by one by--
Starlight says, "Sorry about that. My voice is getting scratchy. It's late. You should call back tomorrow night."
Ed says, "When can I call you?"
Stan and Andrew were friends. Good friends. It was like they were the same species. Ed hadn't seen Stan for a while, not for a long while, but Stan stopped him, on the way down to the basement. This was earlier. Stan grabbed his arm and said, "I miss him. I keep thinking, if I'd gotten there sooner. If I'd said something. He liked you a lot, you know, he was sorry about what happened to your car--"
Stan stops talking and just stands there looking at Ed. He looks like he's about to cry.
"It's not your fault," Ed said, but then he wondered why he'd said it. Whose fault was it?
Susan says, "You've got to stop calling me, Ed. Okay? It's three in the morning. I was asleep, Ed, I was having the best dream. You're always waking me up in the middle of things. Please just stop, okay?"
Ed doesn't say anything. He could stay there all night and just listen to Susan talk.
What she's saying now is, "But that's never going to happen, and you know it. Something bad happened, and it wasn't anyone's fault, but we're just never going to get past it. It killed us. We can't even talk about it."
Ed says, "I love you."
Susan says, "I love you, but it's not about love, Ed, it's about timing. It's too late, and it's always going to be too late. Maybe if we could go back and do everything differently--and I think about that all the time--but we can't. We don't know anybody with a time machine. How about this, Ed--maybe you and your poker buddies can build one down in Pete's basement. All those stupid games, Ed! Why can't you build a time machine instead? Call me back when you've figured out how we can work this out, because I'm really stuck. Or don't call me back. Good-bye, Ed. Go get some sleep. I'm hanging up the phone now."
Susan hangs up the phone.
Ed imagines her, going down to the kitchen to microwave a glass of milk. She'll sit in the kitchen and drink her milk and wait for him to call her back. He lies in bed, up in the orchard house. He's got both bedroom doors open, and a night breeze comes in through that door that doesn't go anywhere. He wishes he could get Susan to come see that door. The breeze smells like apples, which is what time must smell like, Ed thinks.
There's an alarm clock on the floor beside his bed. The hands and numbers glow green in the dark, and he'll wait five minutes and then he'll call Susan. Five minutes. Then he'll call her back. The hands aren't moving, but he can wait.
We Can Get Them
For You Wholesale
Neil Gaiman
Peter Pinter had never heard of Aristippus of the Cyrenaics, a lesser-known follower of Socrates who maintained that the avoidance of trouble was the highest attainable good; however, he had lived his uneventful life according to this precept. In all respects except one (an inability to pass up a bargain, and which of us is entirely free from that?), he was a very moderate man. He did not go to extremes. His speech was proper and reserved; he rarely overate; he drank enough to be sociable and no more; he was far from rich and in no wise poor. He liked people and people liked him. Bearing all that in mind, would you expect to find him in a lowlife pub on the seamier side of London's East End, taking out what is colloquially known as a "contract" on someone he hardly knew? You would not. You would not even expect to find him in the pub.
And until a certain Friday afternoon, you would have been right. But the love of a woman can do strange things to a man, even one so colourless as Peter Pinter, and the discovery that Miss Gwendolyn Thorpe, twenty-three years of age, of 9, Oaktree Terrace, Purley, was messing about (as the vulgar would put it) with a smooth young gentleman from the accounting department--after, mark you, she had consented to wear an engagement ring, composed of real ruby chips, nine-carat gold, and something that might well have been a diamond (PS37.50) that it had taken Peter almost an entire lunch hour to choose--can do very strange things to a man indeed.
After he had made this shocking discovery, Peter spent a sleepless Friday night, tossing and turning with visions of Gwendolyn and Archie Gibbons (the Don Juan of the Clamages accounting department) dancing and swimming before his eyes--performing acts that even Peter, if he were pressed, would have to admit were most improbable. But the bile of jealousy had risen up within him, and by the morning Peter had resolved that his rival should be done away with.
Saturday morning was spent wondering how one contacted an assassin, for, to the best of Peter's knowledge, none were employed by Clamages (the department store that employed all three of the members of our eternal triangle, and, incidentally, furnished the ring), and he was wary of asking anyone outright for fear of attracting attention to himself.
Thus it was that Saturday afternoon found him hunting through the Yellow Pages.
ASSASSINS, he found, was not between ASPHALT CONTRACTORS and ASSESSORS (QUANTITY); KILLERS was not between KENNELS and KINDERGARTENS; MURDERERS was not between MOWERS and MUSEUMS. PEST CONTROL looked promising; however closer investigation of the pest control advertisements showed them to be almost solely concerned with "rats, mice, fleas, cockroaches, rabbits, moles and rats" (to quote from one that Peter felt was rather hard on rats) and not really what he had in mind. Even so, being of a careful nature, he dutifully inspected the entries in that category, and at the bottom of the second page, in small print, he found a firm that looked promising.
"Complete discreet disposal of irksome and unwanted mammals, etc." went the entry, "Ketch, Hare, Burke and Ketch. The Old Firm." It went on to give no address, but only a telephone number.
Peter dialled the number, surprising himself by so doing. His heart pounded in his chest, and he tried to look nonchalant. The telephone rang once, twice, three times. Peter was just starting to hope that it would not be answered and he could forget the whole thing when there was a click and a brisk young female voice said, "Ketch Hare Burke and Ketch. Can I help you?"
Carefully not giving his name, Peter said, "Er, how big--I mean, what size mammals do you go up to? To, uh, dispose of?"
"Well, that would all depend on what size sir requires."
He plucked up all his courage. "A person?"
Her voice remained brisk and unruffled. "Of course, sir. Do you have a pen and paper handy? Good. Be at the Dirty Donkey pub, off Little Courtney Street, E3, tonight at eight o'clock. Carry a rolled-up copy of the Financial Times--that's the pink one, sir--and our operative will approach you there." Then she put down the phone.
Peter was elated. It had been far easier than he had imagined. He went down to the newsagent's and bought a copy of the Financial Times, found Little Courtney Street in his A-Z of London, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching football on the television and imagining the smooth young gentleman from accounting's funeral.
It took Peter a while to find the pub. Eventually he spotted the pub sign, which showed a donkey and was indeed remarkably dirty.
The Dirty Donkey was a small and more or less filthy pub, poorly lit, in which knots of unshaven people wearing dusty donkey jackets stood around eyeing each other suspiciously, eating crisps and drinking pints of Guinness, a drink that Peter had never cared for. Peter held his Financial Times under one arm as conspicuously as he could, but no one approached him, so he bought a half of shandy and retreated to a corner table. Unable to think of anything else to do while waiting, he tried to read the paper, but, lost and confused by a maze of grain futures and a rubber company that was selling something or other short (quite what the short somethings were he could not tell), he gave it up and stared at the door.
He had waited almost ten minutes when a small busy man hustled in, looked quickly around him, then came straight over to Peter's table and sat down.
He stuck out his hand. "Kemble. Burton Kemble of Ketch Hare Burke Ketch. I hear you have a job for us."
He didn't look like a killer. Peter said so.
"Oh, lor' bless us, no. I'm not actually a part of our workforce, sir. I'm in sales."
Peter nodded. That certainly made sense. "Can we--er--talk freely here?"
"Sure. Nobody's interested. Now then, how many people would you like disposed of?"
"Only one. His name's Archibald Gibbons and he works in Clamages accounting department. His address is--"
Kemble interrupted. "We can go into all that later, sir, if you don't mind. Let's just quickly go over the financial side. First of all, the contract will cost you five hundred pounds--"
Peter nodded. He could afford that and in fact had expected to have to pay a little more.
"--although there's always the special offer," Kemble concluded smoothly.
Peter's eyes shone. As I mentioned earlier, he loved a bargain and often bought things he had no imaginable use for in sales or on special offers. Apart from this one failing (one that so many of us share), he was a most moderate young man. "Special offer?"
"Two for the price of one, sir."
Mmm. Peter thought about it. That worked out at only--250 each, which couldn't be bad no matter how you looked at it. There was only one snag. "I'm afraid I don't have anyone else I want killed."
Kemble looked disappointed. "That's a pity, sir. For two we could probably have even knocked the price down to, well, say four hundred and fifty pounds for the both of them."
"Really?"
"Well, it gives our operatives something to do, sir. If you must know"--and here he dropped his voice--"there really isn't enough work in this particular line to keep them occupied. Not like the old days. Isn't there just one other person you'd like to see dead?"
Peter pondered. He hated to pass up a bargain, but couldn't for the life of him think of anyone else. He liked people. Still, a bargain was a bargain--
"Look," said Peter. "Could I think about it and see you here tomorrow night?"
The salesman looked pleased. "Of course, sir," he said. "I'm sure you'll be able to think of someone."
The answer--the obvious answer--came to Peter as he was drifting off to sleep that night. He sat straight up in bed, fumbled the bedside light on, and wrote a name down on the back of an envelope, in case he forgot it. To tell the truth, he didn't think that he could forget it, for it was painfully obvious, but you can never tell with these late-night thoughts.
The name that he had written down on the back of the envelope was this: Gwendolyn Thorpe.
He turned the light off, rolled over, and was soon asleep, dreaming peaceful and remarkably unmurderous dreams.
Kemble was waiting for him when he arrived in the Dirty Donk
ey on Sunday night. Peter bought a drink and sat down beside him.
"I'm taking you up on the special offer," he said by way of greeting.
Kemble nodded vigorously. "A very wise decision, if you don't mind me saying so, sir."
Peter Pinter smiled modestly, in the manner of one who read the Financial Times and made wise business decisions. "That will be four hundred and fifty pounds, I believe?"
"Did I say four hundred and fifty pounds, sir? Good gracious me, I do apologize. I beg your pardon, I was thinking of our bulk rate. It would be four hundred and seventy-five for two people."
Disappointment mingled with cupidity on Peter's bland and youthful face. That was an extra--25. However, something that Kemble had said caught his attention.
"Bulk rate?"
"Of course, but I doubt that sir would be interested in that."
"No, no, I am. Tell me about it."
"Very well, sir. Bulk rate, four hundred and fifty pounds, would be for a large job. Ten people."
Peter wondered if he had heard correctly. "Ten people? But that's only forty-five pounds each."
"Yes, sir. It's the large order that makes it profitable."
"I see," said Peter, and "Hmm," said Peter, and "Could you be here at the same time tomorrow night?"
"Of course, sir."
Upon arriving home, Peter got out a scrap of paper and a pen. He wrote the numbers one to ten down one side and then filled it in as follows:
1).Archie.
2)..Gwennie.
3)..
and so forth.
Having filled in the first two, he sat sucking his pen, hunting for wrongs done to him and people the world would be better off without.
He smoked a cigarette. He strolled around the room.
Aha! There was a physics teacher at a school he had attended who had delighted in making his life a misery. What was the man's name again? And for that matter, was he still alive? Peter wasn't sure, but he wrote The Physics Teacher, Abbot Street Secondary School next to the number three. The next came more easily--his department head had refused to raise his salary a couple of months back; that the raise had eventually come was immaterial. Mr. Hunterson was number four.