Asimov's SF, April-May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Silly!” she said. “It came out again, didn't it.”

  She rolled something down the hardwood floor like a Lilliputian bowling ball. Red and brown and white, with a copper glint.

  Robbie's eye.

  Raymond stopped breathing. Robbie the Rover looked down at his own eye, then back up at the girl, who had come closer. “It's okay, Mobia. We'll just pop it back in. Unless you want to trade for a blue one.” Spavitz hooked her index finger into the corner of her own eye—and popped it out of the socket.

  Raymond made a strangling sound and shoved back from the table, almost overturning his chair. The girl held her blue eyeball up, comparing it to Robbie's brown one.

  “No,” Raymond said.

  Spavitz pushed Robbie's eye into her own socket. The eye bulged, too big for the orbit, throwing off the symmetry of her face.

  “Nope,” she said. “Not gonna fit, boy.”

  Mobia barked.

  Spavitz hooked the eyeball out and thumbed it into the dog's head, then replaced her blue one.

  “There,” she said. “That's all better.” And then she got very close to Robbie's good lens and spoke directly into it. “It's really all better now, Raymond.”

  Raymond gasped.

  “You can come out now,” the girl said.

  Raymond shook his head. His mouth had gone dry.

  “We know you're there,” Spavitz said. “You can be one of us, like Mobia.”

  Raymond hit a button and the screen went black. He grabbed the power cord, yanked it out of the rc unit and flung it down like a dead snake.

  * * * *

  Raymond sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes. He reached for the cup of cold tea he'd left on the floor. When? He'd lost track of time, grown gaunt. Many days had passed since he killed the rc unit. His mind alternated between irrational frenzy and dull resignation. Resigned to what, exactly, he couldn't have said. A half-eaten fiber biscuit lay on the bed next to his pillow. He picked it up and took a listless bite.

  At the work table he slumped in his chair, facing the blank monitor.

  “I know you're not real,” he said. “There's no Spavitz, no Mobia, no Gitzer. No Donner or Blitzen or Rudolf, either, for that matter.”

  He bit into the stale biscuit, tore a hunk off, and chewed doggedly. His own haggard reflection watched him.

  “I know you're not real,” he said, spitting fragments of biscuit.

  The cold light from a single panel dimmed, then brightened. Raymond looked around the confining shelter, his mouth open and half full of chewed biscuit. When the generator finally died he would be entombed in darkness with nothing but the sound of his own breathing. The shelter was vented to the surface, so there was no danger of suffocation, at least.

  But to live in constant darkness...

  Raymond washed down the biscuit with the remains of his tea, then bent over and picked up the power cord and plugged it back into the remote control. His fingers hovered over the On switch. He had to have one more look.

  Raymond pushed the On button.

  An image gathered. Warm afternoon sunlight quivered briefly on a distant wall, then the generator quit, stranding Raymond in the dark.

  * * * *

  Raymond crawled through the narrow tunnel until he emerged blinking into sunlight like some lost and blinded thing.

  A vehicle flashed by on the highway.

  Raymond stood up in the prickly brambles and started to walk. When the rift opened they blended into the human population, made it stronger than it had ever before been. Perhaps it wasn't an invasion at all, but a miraculous relationship. That was the meaning of the warping funnel that killed Samantha. Her death was an accident in the service of a greater good; it was meaningful. And he, Raymond, must already be one of them. Otherwise how could he possibly have endured?

  He stood at the edge of the highway and thought about Spavitz and her family in the sunny little house. They were more than human. Kinder, more durable, safer. From the park came the sound of children laughing and shouting. As yet no one had seen him; there was time to go back. He slipped the clasp knife out and folded it open. Was he one of them or not? He pulled up his shirt and placed the edge of the blade against his skin. After a moment he drew the blade across. What he saw astonished him.

  Copyright © 2009 Jack Skillingstead

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  * * *

  Short Story: COWGIRLS IN SPACE

  by Deborah Coates

  Deborah Coates lives in Iowa where she works in information technology at a university. In addition to Asimov's, she has most recently been published in Strange Horizons and her short story, “Chainsaw on Hand” (Asimov's, March 2007), has just been reprinted in Best American Fantasy 2. In her new story, Deborah reminds us that there is a point in our lives when anything is possible, even...

  Jennie Low swore to God

  —I swear to God, she'd say—

  that the best cowgirls in the world were on the Chadron in Northwest Nebraska.

  No one believed her. Most girls with any brains got out quick, spent their time before they left learning makeup tricks and how to walk in heels and leaving behind mother-of-pearl buttons and leather chaps and dust—oh god, the dust. But Jennie was a barrel racer—damn good one, too. Rode the circuit for a while all the way down to Texas, up to Montana. Did the Stampede once, though she said it wasn't worth it, said all she wanted the whole time she was there was to get back home.

  These days Jennie ranched on twelve hundred acres her father give her and taught barrel-racing on Thursday evenings in the summer to little girls from all the hell over. Wouldn't take a dime for it, neither. Not one penny. So, people left her things. She was always finding hand-stitched quilts and crocheted shawls—one time a whole goddamned porch set made from rough-hewn timber—in the damnedest places.

  “Wouldn't trade it for anything,” Jennie said. And she meant it. But there were times—oh, yes, times—when she sure as hell missed the Junkyard Girls.

  Martha'd thought the name was stupid way back, should have called themselves the Junkyard Dogs. “Hell of a lot meaner,” she'd said. “Junkyard Girls—” her lip had curled. “What's mean about that?”

  “We're not trying to be mean,” Pen had told her patiently. “We're just trying to, well ... be.”

  Because for Pen always—probably still today even though she'd got out awhile ago—being was just the hardest damn thing in the world.

  The Junkyard Girls were a horse drill team and for three years in high school they'd ridden practically every summer parade within three hundred miles. They'd practiced at Cass Salvage—which was where they got the name—because it was close by Pen's. And Martha could ride to it if she had to, which she usually did. They'd been good at it, had gone all the way over to Lincoln right after graduation for a state competition where they took second place even though Martha'd gone out with a fake ID that wouldn't have fooled a blind woman the night before and brought back a case of the cheapest local beer she could find. They'd all had hangovers the next day, except Pen. Rode like hell anyway. Because they were the Junkyard Girls and horses and how to ride them were what they knew.

  Jennie hadn't seen any of the Junkyard Girls for pretty nearly eight years, so she'd mostly given up thinking they might all get together again, maybe ride the Scottsbluff parade some Fourth of July.

  So, it took her completely by surprise when Pen called her right the hell out of the blue.

  It was a Wednesday morning and it was raining, cold and miserable, and Jennie was glad for once she didn't have to be out in it. ‘Course working on the books in the back office with the space heater going all out wasn't exactly the best time she'd ever had either.

  Price of cattle was down again, which it always was. You'd think it would have to go up once in awhile, otherwise why wasn't she paying them just to take the cattle off her hands? But, whatever, Jennie didn't ranch to get rich and some days that was a damn good thing.

 
; It was a little after noon when the phone rang. She answered it with her mind half on something else because she expected it to be John Criker from down to Harrison with some prices on the extra hay she'd asked him to look out for.

  “Jennie? Hey, it's me. Pen.”

  “Jesus,” Jennie said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, what the hell, Pen? It's been forever.”

  “I'm sorry,” Pen said. “I mean, I know it's been awhile. But time just—”

  “No, damn, Pen,” Jennie said. “I mean it's good to hear from you.”

  “Oh.” Jennie could hear phones ringing in the background. “Hmmm,” Pen said. “Look, I'm at work and I've got a meeting in, like, ten minutes.” Pen did something—Jennie could never remember what—at some big tech firm in Sioux City. “Have you seen the news? The thing in China?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Pen?”

  Through the almost inaudible buzz of the rural phone line, Pen sighed. “The thing,” she said. “The. Thing. They've found one in China.”

  Well.

  “What the hell, Pen!”

  And this time Jennie meant it.

  “Yeah,” Pen said after a short pause. “I'm coming up there this weekend. You need to call Big Patti. And the Sisters, too.”

  “Big Patti's out in California,” Jennie said.

  “Tell her to come.” There was a brief pause; Jennie heard sharp voices in the background. “Look, I've got to go,” Pen said. “I'll be there Saturday.”

  If anyone asked her, Pen would have told them that Jennie was in charge—Captain of the Junkyard Girls—she'd been the one who made up the routines, who called the practices, who jumped on the other girls for messy tack or wearing the wrong jeans. Anything Pen was involved in she'd always say—and pretty much believed—someone else, someone more noticeable, more willing to stand in front, was in charge. But Jennie'd known since second grade—it was always Pen who called the shots.

  The Sisters were easy to get ahold of. Callie was just down in Scottsbluff and Sallie ("It's Sarah now, jeez, just call me Sarah") was out in Laramie. Jennie'd heard she was getting married come June, but she didn't say anything about that on the phone. All she said when Jennie told her was, “Shit, have you talked to Pen?”

  After the phone calls she turned on the television and let it run in the background while she scanned the Internet. The news reports were vague and Jennie might have missed them completely if Pen hadn't called.

  Mystery Object Found In Qinghai Province, China

  ...defies analysis...

  Village of Miracles

  ...international experts to examine ... baffled and excited ... like nothing...

  The rain had settled into a cold drizzle when Jennie saddled up the piebald and headed out to the north meadow. She had no particular chore in mind beyond a need to get out, to have open space around her. She snugged her slicker up around her neck and ducked down into the damp. The pie was a new horse picked up less than a week ago at auction. She didn't have a feel for him yet, nor him for her, and she let herself focus on that for a bit, his response to the rein and her knees and her shifting weight in the saddle.

  The sky was gray—hard to tell it was only mid-afternoon, felt like evening, like the whole world was waiting, like Jennie had been waiting and told herself she wasn't, for years.

  * * * *

  “What would be the best thing ever?” Sallie had asked that one hot July day when they were taking a break from the new routine down the back end of the junk yard. Pen was loading her saddle and Martha's into the little red pickup her father had given her on her last birthday, an easy swing followed by a hollow thump and the thin clatter of stirrup and leather.

  “Sex with Joe Callahan,” her sister said.

  “You've already had sex with Joe Callahan.” Martha was stretched out on the hood of a white Cadillac, straw cowboy hat pulled down over her face, but it wasn't hard to figure she was rolling her eyes when she said it.

  “Yeah,” Callie said, “And it was awesome.”

  “Going to the moon,” Pen said.

  Martha sat up. “There's nothing on the moon,” she said. “It's just, like, dust and cold and shit. Aliens,” she said. “Aliens would be way cooler.” She slid off the car hood and stretched. Jennie could see her ribs through the thin white T-shirt she was wearing.

  “Aliens here or us on an alien planet?” Pen asked.

  “Oh, us there,” Martha said. “I mean, shit, an alien planet? Who wouldn't want that?”

  “I wouldn't,” Callie said, crunching ice between her teeth.

  “Well, you...” This time Jennie could see Martha roll her eyes. “You think sex with creepy Joe Callahan is cool.”

  “He's not creepy!”

  “He's a sex-obsessed little punkassed jerk.”

  Callie scrambled to her feet. Sallie, as she always did, followed. “Jesus, Martha,” Callie shouted. “Jesus! Why do you always ruin everything?”

  The sisters stalked away, back toward the office, Callie vibrating outrage from every fiber of her being, though Jennie knew she'd be back with fresh ice and another soda in five minutes laughing with her sister as if nothing had just happened.

  “I want to see the Earth from orbit. To stand on the moon. I want to go to Mars and see the rings of Saturn. And I don't care if there are aliens. I don't. I just want ... I want to go.” Pen spoke as if there hadn't just been shouting, as if she'd been so caught up inside her head that she hadn't noticed the entire exchange between Martha and Callie.

  Jennie and Martha looked at her and for once even Martha didn't quite know what to say. Though it didn't stop her from saying it anyway. “Jesus, Pen, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Pen blinked, like she didn't realize she'd spoken out loud. She opened her mouth but before she could say she didn't mean it or she was just kidding or something else spectacularly untrue, there was a sharp clang of metal on metal followed by a resounding crash as a stack of old car doors tipped sideways ten feet or so behind where Pen was sitting.

  “Shit!” Martha said as Big Patti emerged from the narrow space between an old Studebaker and a rusted out green and yellow pickup.

  “What?” Patti said. She had a streak of grease across her left cheek and her hat—which she was no longer wearing—had probably left it in an old car somewhere and they'd all have to look for it later—had plastered her bangs flat against her forehead. “I found an old pickup I think's got the door I'm looking for,” she said. “Plus,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “I found something really interesting back there.”

  Patti was not the reason that the drill team was called the Junkyard Girls or why they practiced their routines at the junkyard on the old highway south of Harrison, but, damn, did she love junk. She'd gotten her daddy to give her his old 1975 F150 pickup truck that had been rusting out behind the barn for the better part of the last twenty years and she was rebuilding it piece by loving piece. She was always dragging back old bumpers or brake cables or, once, a cylinder from a Duesenberg engine from the 1930s that Patti claimed could top out at 140 miles per hour.

  “No one cares!” Martha'd told her once. “No one ever cares! Why do you keep showing us this stuff ?”

  But Jennie had stood up and said, “Of course we care.”

  At the same time Callie had said, “Why are you so mean, Martha? My god, can't you just be nice for one single second!”

  Patti pretty much ignored them all, continued to dig through the junkyard and bring the girls her “finds,” which they routinely ignored.

  So, no one paid much attention when Patti said she'd found something interesting in the junkyard.

  “Let me guess,” Martha said. “You found a double-overhead, chrome-plated, mint-condition toothpick holder from 1934.” Then, she laughed. “Ha. Ha, I kill me,” she said.

  This time Jennie rolled her eyes. “What did you find?” she asked.

  Patti had an old towel drawn through one
of her belt loops and she pulled it out and wiped her hands on it.

  “We ought to—” Pen started.

  “It's too hot, Pen.” Martha cut right across whatever she was going to say. “The horses are already unsaddled and no one wants to go over routines for the hundred and fiftieth time. Give it a rest!”

  Pen looked up at her and sighed. She looked at Big Patti. “What did you find?” she asked, echoing Jennie.

  Big Patti looked at each of them in turn. There was a certain flatness to her expression, a certain flatness to her generally, as if she was living half a second out of sync. She wasn't dumb, more like the world was a place she didn't really understand most of the time. “Yeah,” she said and stuck the towel back through her belt loop. “I can show you.”

  Callie and Sallie were still up at the office, but no one suggested waiting for them to come back. Callie would just say it was too hot and messy besides and Sallie would opt to stay with her because Callie never liked to be alone.

  Patti led them back between narrow rows of crushed cars stacked twelve and fourteen high, crushed Cadillacs and Ford pickup trucks and Chevy Malibus, an open space in the middle with an intact Volkswagen bus, painted lime green with all the windows broken out. Jennie thought she'd been through the entire junkyard, but she hadn't seen the bus before and she had started toward it when Patti said, “No, over here,” and took them back past more stacks of crushed cars into the old section that was all jumbled parts and old tires and the stink of standing water.

  “Jesus, Patti,” Martha griped, wiping her hand on her jeans. “Why do you even come back here?”

  Patti shrugged. “There's good stuff back here,” she said, like duh.

  “Shit,” said Martha.

  “Holy shit,” said Jennie, because she'd just spotted what Big Patti'd brought them back there to see—a faded blue pickup chassis—tires gone, headlights gone, everything gone but the metal body and that rusted spectacularly along the sides, front bumper half off and bent in the center, none of that remarkable or noteworthy among the hundreds of other old trucks in the yard.