Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

Which wasn't possible. Not like that. Not after so little time.

  It was 2:09, but I did the only sensible thing. I took a shower, turned it to cold at the end so I was completely awake. Then I made coffee, strong and black, and sat on the edge of the bed sipping it, relearning the room and trying to eliminate the things that almost make sense at that hour, can make too much sense if you're not careful.

  "Serves you right, Jackson," I said, as much to hear a voice as anything. "Now you either call it quits and find another hotel or you work through this like an adult!"

  I set my cup on the bedside table, went over to the television stand, and pulled it out from the wall.

  Nothing. Not a smudge, not a hint that I could see. The tan was unblemished.

  Which was impossible.

  Maybe it was me. A vision thing. But after ten minutes of sightings from various points in the room, I was back sitting on the bed staring at the blank wall.

  What to do? I could phone Rhonda or Bruce or Katie half a continent away, have friends talk me through this. Better yet, phone down to Carmen at the front desk, get her up here, let her be a witness to the whole thing.

  I didn't, couldn't. Not yet.

  What if the Motley reappeared just before she arrived? That's how these things happened, didn't they?

  It was that certainty—absurd, laughable, vivid at this hour—that stopped me. Not because I truly believed it would or could happen, but because the certainty itself felt so real, had me so completely.

  I couldn't help it. What if Carmen came up and the smudges did re-form just as she knocked at the door?

  It took me back to my thoughts about Gordon staying the night in 516, being changed by the Motley. Maybe it adjusted your mind, how you saw things. That was it! The Motley was still there, had worked its special Bozo magic and done something to my ability to see it!

  I grinned, laughed, was still able to, thank God, tracking my growing fear with an equally impressive detachment. I needed to act, do something.

  "Clever, Mr. M.," I told the blank wall. "Seems this round might go to you unless a little Jackson finessing can save the day."

  Save the day? I immediately corrected myself.Save the night! That was more like it, but definitely the wrong thought right then.

  I grabbed the phone handset from the cradle by the bed and pressed the key for the front desk.

  After a ten-second delay, Carmen answered. "Reception?"

  "Carmen, it's Bob Jackson in 516."

  "We don't talk to you."

  I froze where I stood.

  "What? What did you say?"

  "I said: 'Yes, Mr. Jackson? How can I help?'"

  "No, what did you just say before that?"

  "I said, 'Yes, Mr. Jackson?' Is there something wrong?"

  Sure is, kiddo. I've spooked myself good!

  But no point pushing it. It adjusts your mind. "Ah—look, I know it's late, Carmen, but I'm really not sleeping too well. Would you have any sleeping pills down there?"

  "Of course, Mr. Jackson. I can't leave the desk—"

  "That's okay. That's fine. I'll be right down. Thanks, Carmen."

  I fumbled getting the handset back into its cradle, fumbled pulling on my clothes.

  What had she said? That other comment? So odd, so truly strange.

  And now there was the prospect of actually leaving the room. Everything could change. Most certainly would, I was certain. That's how these things worked. I'd go down, get the pills, and the Motley would be back on the wall when I returned, grinning at me, its own Happy Trails maneuver wonderfully complete. Not a bad trick, hey, Mr. J.? Motley one, Bob Jackson nil.

  I had to take charge, go down, anchor myself in the ordered, everyday world.

  I grabbed the magnetic key from the nightstand and stepped out into the hall, waited till the door clicked shut behind me, then headed for the lifts.

  And discovered Motley's next piece of trickery!

  The corridor seemed longer, impossibly extended.

  Adjusts your mind! How you see things.

  My night logic snatched at it. Not surprising, not so strange, I told myself, dragged from sleep like this, primed with weird thoughts. Just another optical trick.

  The setting encouraged it. By their very nature, hotel corridors exist in a state of timelessness. Day or night, the lights are always on. The carpeting steals sound. Every footstep is snatched away the moment you make it. You pass other rooms as if you never exist. And the doors! Blind, replicated, one after the other, just their vacant spy holes tracking you sightlessly like the eyes of figures in portraits.

  Another key factor right there.

  No portraits in hotel rooms or hotel corridors. Always landscapes, abstracts, vistas, safe, Impressionistic pieces. No one wanted eyes watching them in hotel rooms or down those long hallway approaches. Which explained 516's five refugees in ten, why the Motley had the impact it did. Of course! The portrait effect!

  Almost at the lifts, I noticed Room 502 with its double spy hole: one at the usual eye level, one lower down for guests in wheelchairs, children, shorter people.

  My rational mind understood, but the night terrors had me.

  Being watched by something doubled over, folded on itself.

  I laughed—my struggling, rational self did—and laughed again. I was imagining a third spy hole way down at floor level. For the snake, I thought. Or Randion the Living Torso from that old Tod Browning movie!

  Crazy. All crazy. But what you did to cope. To turn it and make it right again.

  Then I was safely past. I pressed the elevator call button, heard one, possibly both of the carriages responding, climbing the long dark throats of the old building.

  One car signalled its arrival with a soft chime, a sound quickly snatched away by the carpeting. The doors slid back. I stepped into the plush interior and descended to the lobby, which seemed stark and overlit after the dim infinite corridor up there.

  "Mr. Jackson," Carmen said from behind the reception desk. "Sorry you're having trouble sleeping. This should help."

  She handed me a sleeping pill in its foil wrapping.

  "Thanks, Carmen. I'm probably just overstressed. Got a big meeting tomorrow." What was it you said before? What?

  "What time did you want to be woken? Just in case?"

  "Good point. Make it 7 A.M., okay?"

  "Seven it is. Good night, Mr. Jackson."

  "Good night, Carmen. Thanks."

  It was easier going back, riding the lift up into the night, reaching the quiet fifth-floor elevator lobby, finding the hallway its normal self again. It was as if everything had been reset.

  Not completely reset, thank goodness. When I swiped my card in the lock and pushed back the door, there was no Rush of Weird.

  But the Motley was back on the wall!

  Of course it was, back where it should have been, no doubt had been all along.

  No more games. No more tricks. I rehung the Van Gogh print above the bed, moved the television cabinet back to its original place, reconnected the leads.

  "You win this round, Mr. M.," I said, feeling exhausted, beaten, and yet strangely elated by the whole thing. Collateral damage, I told myself. Waking like this. Being primed. Seeing things.

  I probably didn't need the sleeping pill, but when I was back in bed, ready to settle again, I popped it from its foil and swallowed it just the same. I was asleep in minutes.

  And awake again at 3:17. The Motley woke me.

  It was leering, shimmering on the wall, having itself a merry time! But glowing! Shining somehow!

  Never knew I could be a night light, did you, Mr. J.?

  I lurched from bed, leaden, dizzy but driven, and lunged at the wall.

  Wrong way! Wrong thing to do, I knew, even as I did it. Should have turned on the light first! Should have kept away!

  But it was panic. What passed for it in my drugged, terrified state. I went reeling, fell at the wall, with arms raised to stop myself.

  But i
t wasn't there.

  · · · · ·

  Now everything is different, of course. Not just because it's the view I've never had—looking outfrom the wall. It's because there are so many of us trapped in here, crowding behind, all in our turn, so needy, so frantic to look out again. It's knowing that the next too-curious guest will force me back into that darkness, that all the Clownette's guests checked out—just as I had, some tricked-up version of me—and that out there in the world a brand-new Bob Jackson was probably farewelling a brand-new Gordon and whatever other bits of itself this dark place has managed to squeeze through.

  I'm beyond the revulsion and panic, the rage and disbelief. It adjusts your mind. Now there's just the numbness and despair, the agony of waiting. Feeling them crowding in behind, touching, snatching, muttering.

  At least now I know what the sensation was whenever I first opened the door to 516—all that's left of a scream from a place where screams can no longer be heard.

  Housemaid or guest, housemaid or guest—that's all that matters now, knowing that the day will come when Macklin's has a full house again and the scream is mine.

  OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

  1947 – 2006

  Octavia E. Butler possessed a lifelong interest in science fiction and undertook a noteworthy writing career merging science fiction with previously untapped themes of social issues. An introspective child who grew up in a racially mixed community, she began writing at the age of 10 to escape self-described "loneliness and boredom". While pursuing a degree at UCLA, Butler attended two writing workshops outside of her college studies in 1970. She credits these practicums with giving her the most valuable help with her writing, and with helping her form a kinship with the science fiction community that included author and mentor Harlan Ellison and author Samuel R. Delany.

  Butler's first published novel, Patternmaster (1976), is ostensibly a reworking of one of her childhood stories. It became part of the five book Patternist series, which explores biology, as well as topics of power and enslavement. Butler's most renowned novel, Kindred (1979), is also a modern exploration of slavery that she described as "grim fantasy" rather than science fiction. The novel breaks from using science as its underlying concept, and instead focuses on descriptions of societal divergence. Butler's recurring use of metaphoric references to issues of race, social class, gender and religion would become her literary hallmark.

  Butler won the first of many Nebula and Hugo awards for her novelette Bloodchild (1984), and would later earn such honors as a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant and the PEN American Center lifetime achievement award. She is notable for being a female African American writer of science fiction—a rarity—but mainly she's notable as one of the most eminent science fiction writers overall.

  Bloodchild, by Octavia E. Butler

  Hugo for Best Novelette 1985. Nebula for Best Novelette 1984.

  My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T'Gatoi's sisters had given us two sterile eggs. T'Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn't matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn't take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.

  I lay against T'Gatoi's long, velvet underside, sipping from my egg now and then, wondering why my mother denied herself such a harmless pleasure. Less of her hair would be gray if she indulged now and then. The eggs prolonged life, prolonged vigor. My father, who had never refused one in his life, had lived more than twice as long as he should have. And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children.

  But my mother seemed content to age before she had to. I saw her turn away as several of T'Gatoi's limbs secured me closer. T'Gatoi liked our body heat, and took advantage of it whenever she could. When I was little and at home more, my mother used to try to tell me how to behave with T'Gatoi—how to be respectful and always obedient because T'Gatoi was the Tlic government official in charge of the Preserve, and thus the most important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans. It was an honor, my mother said, that such a person had chosen to come into the family. My mother was at her most formal and severe when she was lying.

  I had no idea why she was lying, or even what she was lying about. It was an honor to have T'Gatoi in the family, but it was hardly a novelty. T'Gatoi and my mother had been friends all my mother's life, and T'Gatoi was not interested in being honored in the house she considered her second home. She simply came in, climbed onto one of her special couches and called me over to keep her warm. It was impossible to be formal with her while lying against her and hearing her complain as usual that I was too skinny.

  "You're better," she said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs. "You're gaining weight finally. Thinness is dangerous." The probing changed subtly, became a series of caresses.

  "He's still too thin," my mother said sharply.

  T'Gatoi lifted her head and perhaps a meter of her body off the couch as though she were sitting up. She looked at my mother and my mother, her face lined and old-looking, turned away.

  "Lien, I would like you to have what's left of Gan's egg."

  "The eggs are for the children," my mother said.

  "They are for the family. Please take it."

  Unwillingly obedient, my mother took it from me and put it to her mouth. There were only a few drops left in the now-shrunken, elastic shell, but she squeezed them out, swallowed them, and after a few moments some of the lines of tension began to smooth from her face.

  "It's good," she whispered. "Sometimes I forget how good it is."

  "You should take more," T'Gatoi said. "Why are you in ituch a hurry to be old?"

  My mother said nothing.

  "I like being able to come here," T'Gatoi said. "This place is a refuge because of you, yet you won't take care of yourself."

  T'Gatoi was hounded on the outside. Her people wanted more of us made available. Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve—why any Terran could not be courted, paid, drafted, in some way made available to them. Or they did understand, but in their desperation, they did not care. She parceled us out to the desperate and sold us to the rich and powerful for their political support. Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people. She oversaw the joining of families, putting an end to the final remnants of the earlier system of breaking up Terran families to suit impatient Tlic. I had lived outside with her. I had seen the desperate eagerness in the way some people looked at me. It was a little frightening to know that only she stood between us and that desperation that could so easily swallow us. My mother would look at her sometimes and say to me, "Take care of her." And I would remember that she too had been outside, had seen.

  Now T'Gatoi used four of her limbs to push me away from her onto the floor. "Go on, Gan," she said. "Sit down there with your sisters and enjoy not being sober. You had most of the egg. Lien, come warm me."

  My mother hesitated for no reason that I could see. One of my earliest memories is of my mother stretched alongside T'Gatoi, talking about things I could not understand, picking me up from the floor and laughing as she sat me on one of T'Gatoi's segments. She ate her share of eggs then. I wondered when she had stopped, and why.

  She lay down now against T'Gatoi, and the whole left row of T'Gatoi's limbs closed around her, holding her loosely, but securely. I had always found it comfortable to lie that way but, except for my older sister, no one else in the family liked it. They said it made them feel caged.

  T'Gatoi meant to cage my mother. Once she had, she moved her tail slightly, then spoke. "Not enough egg, Lien. You should have taken it when it was passed to you. You need it badly now."

  T'Gatoi's tail moved once more, its whip motion so swift I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been watching for it. Her sting drew on
ly a single drop of blood from my mother's bare leg.

  My mother cried out—probably in surprise. Being stung doesn't hurt. Then she sighed and I could see her body relax. She moved languidly into a more comfortable position within the cage of T'Gatoi's limbs. "Why did you do that?" she asked, sounding half asleep.

  "I could not watch you sitting and suffering any longer."

  My mother managed to move her shoulders in a small shrug. "Tomorrow," she said.

  "Yes. Tomorrow you will resume your suffering—if you must. But for now, just for now, lie here and warm me and let me ease your way a little."

  "He's still mine, you know," my mother said suddenly. "Nothing can buy him from me." Sober, she wouldn't have permitted herself to refer to such things.

  "Nothing," T'Gatoi agreed, humoring her.

  "Did you think I would sell him for eggs? For long life? My son?"

  "Not for anything," T'Gatoi said stroking my mother's shoulders, toying with her long, graying hair.

  I would like to have touched my mother, shared that moment with her. She would take my hand if I touched her now. Freed by the egg and the sting, she would smile and perhaps say things long held in. But tomorrow, she would remember all this as a humiliation. I did not want to be part of a remembered humiliation. Best just to be still and know she loved me under all the duty and pride and pain.

  "Xuan Hoa, take off her shoes," T'Gatoi said. "In a little while I'll sting her again and she can sleep."

  My older sister obeyed, swaying drunkenly as she stood up. When she had finished, she sat down beside me and took my hand. We had always been a unit, she and I.

  My mother put the back of her head against T'Gatoi's underside and tried from that impossible angle to look up into the broad, round face. "You're going to sting me again?"

  "Yes, Lien."

  "I'll sleep until tomorrow noon."

  "Good. You need it. When did you sleep last?"

  My mother made a wordless sound of annoyance. "I should have stepped on you when you were small enough," she muttered.