Nebula Awards Showcase 2004

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Feeling tired, I sat there drumming my fingertips on the tabletop. The museum was closing soon. The research had exhausted my limited stores of strength; I didn’t think I could do this many days in a row. But I knew there was something here. There had to be. Even if there was a conspiracy of silence—organized or accidental—the mere existence of that unassuming little house had left too great a footprint on our lives.

  I thought about details that Claire had found particularly affecting.

  And then I typed “Yams”.

  * * *

  Seventy years ago, suffering from a truly epic sense of dislocation that made everything happening to me seem like bits of stage business performed by actors in a play whose author had taken care to omit all the important exposition, I descended a creaky flight of wooden stairs, to join my colleagues in Minnie and Earl’s living room. I was the last to come down, of course; everybody else was already gathered around the three flowery-print sofas, munching on finger foods as they chatted up a storm. The women were in soft cottony dresses, the men in starched trousers and button-downs. They all clapped and cheered as I made my appearance, a reaction that brought an unwelcome blush to my cheeks. It was no wonder; I was a little withdrawn to begin with, back then, and the impossible context had me so off-center that all my defenses had turned to powder.

  It was a homey place, though: brightly lit, with a burning fireplace, an array of glass shelving covered with a selection of homemade pottery, plants and flowers in every available nook, an upright piano, a bar that did not dominate the room, and an array of framed photographs on the wall behind the couch. There was no TV or hytex. I glanced at the photographs and moved toward them, hungry for data.

  Then Earl rose from his easy chair and came around the coffee table, with a gruff, “Plenty of time to look around, son. Let me take care of you.”

  “That’s—” I said. I was still not managing complete sentences, most of the time.

  He took me by the arm, brought me over to the bar, and sat me down on a stool. “Like I said, plenty of time. You’re like most first-timers, you’re probably in dire need of a drink. We can take care of that first and then get acquainted.” He moved around the bar, slung a towel over his shoulder, and said: “What’ll it be, pilgrim?”

  Thank God I recognized the reference. If I hadn’t—if it had just been another inexplicable element of a day already crammed with them—my head would have exploded from the effort of figuring out why I was being called a pilgrim. “A . . . Sea of Tranquility?”

  “Man after my own heart,” Earl said, flashing a grin as he compiled an impressive array of ingredients in a blender. “Always drink the local drink, son. As my daddy put it, there’s no point in going anywhere if you just get drunk the same way you can at home. Which is where, by the way?”

  I said, “What?”

  “You missed the segue. I was asking you where you were from.”

  It seemed a perfect opportunity. “You first.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, the wife and I been here long enough, you might as well say we’re from here. Great place to retire, isn’t it? The old big blue marble hanging up there all day and all night?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “You suppose,” he said, raising an eyebrow at the concoction taking shape in his blender. “That’s awful noncommittal of you. Can’t you even admit to liking the view?”

  “I admit to it,” I said.

  “But you’re not enthused. You know, there’s an old joke about a fella from New York and a fella from New Jersey. And the fella from New York is always bragging on his town, talking about Broadway, and the Empire State Building, and Central Park, and so on, and just as often saying terrible things about how ugly things are on the Jersey side of the river. And the fella from Jersey finally gets fed up, and says, all right, I’ve had enough of this, I want you to say one thing, just one thing, about New Jersey that’s better than anything you can say about Manhattan. And the fella from New York says, No problem. The view.”

  I didn’t laugh, but I did smile.

  “That’s what’s so great about this place,” he concluded. “The view. Moon’s pretty nice to look at for folks on Earth—and a godsend for bad poets, too, what with june-moon-spoon and all—but as views go, it can’t hold a candle to the one we have, looking back. So don’t give me any supposes. Own up to what you think.”

  “It’s a great view,” I said, this time with conviction, as he handed me my drink. Then I asked the big question another way: “How did you arrange it?”

  “You ought to know better than that, son. We didn’t arrange it. We just took advantage of it. Nothing like a scenic overlook to give zip to your real estate—So answer me. Where are you from?”

  Acutely aware that more than a minute had passed since I’d asked him the same question, and that no answer seemed to be forthcoming, I was also too trapped by simple courtesy to press the issue. “San Francisco.”

  He whistled. “I’ve seen pictures of San Francisco. Looks like a beautiful town.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “You actually climb those hills in Earth gravity?”

  “I used to run up Leavenworth every morning at dawn.”

  “Leavenworth’s the big steep one that heads down to the bay?”

  “One of them,” I said.

  “And you ran up that hill? At dawn? Every day?”

  “Yup.”

  “You have a really obsessive personality, don’t you, son?”

  I shrugged. “About some things, I suppose.”

  “Only about some things?”

  “That’s what being obsessive means, right?”

  “Ah, well. Nothing wrong about being obsessive, as long as you’re not a fanatic about it. Want me to freshen up that drink?”

  I felt absolutely no alcoholic effect at all. “Maybe you better.”

  I tried to turn the conversation back to where he was from, but somehow I didn’t get a chance, because that’s when Minnie took me by the hand and dragged me over to the wall of family photos. There were pictures of them smiling on the couch, pictures of them lounging together in the backyard, pictures of them standing proudly before their home. There were a large number of photos that used Earth as a backdrop. Only four photos showed them with other people, all from the last century: in one, they sat at their dining table with a surprised-looking Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin; in another, they sat on their porch swing chatting with Carl Sagan; in a third, Minnie was being enthusiastically hugged by Isaac Asimov; the fourth showed Earl playing the upright piano while Minnie sat beside him and a tall, thin blonde man with androgynous features and two differently-colored eyes serenaded them both. The last figure was the only one I didn’t recognize immediately; by the time somebody finally clued me in, several visits later, I would be far too jaded to engage in the spit-take it would have merited any other time.

  I wanted to ask Minnie about the photos with the people I recognized, but then Peter and Earl dragged me downstairs to take a look at Earl’s model train set, a rural landscape incorporating four lines and six separate small towns. It was a remarkably detailed piece of work, but I was most impressed with the small miracle of engineering that induced four heavy chains to pull it out of the way whenever Earl pulled a small cord. This handily revealed the pool table. Earl whipped Peter two games out of three, then challenged me; I’m fairly good at pool, but I was understandably off my game that afternoon, and missed every single shot. When Carrie Aldrin No Relation came down to challenge Earl, he mimed terror. It was a genial hour, totally devoted to content-free conversation—and any attempt I made to bring up the questions that burned in my breast was terminated without apparent malice.

  Back upstairs. The dog nosing at my hand. Minnie noting that he liked me. Minnie not saying anything about the son whose room we’d changed in, the one who’d died “in the war”. A very real heartbreak about the way her eyes grew distant at that moment. I asked which war, and she smiled sadly:
“There’s only been one war, dear—and it doesn’t really matter what you call it.” Nikki patting her hand. Oscar telling a mildly funny anecdote from his childhood, Minnie asking him to tell her the one about the next-door neighbors again. I brought up the photo of Minnie and Earl with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and Minnie clucked that they had been such nice boys.

  Paranoia hit. “Ever hear of Ray Bradbury?”

  She smiled with real affection. “Oh, yes. We only met him once or twice, but he was genuinely sweet. I miss him.”

  “So you met him, too.”

  “We’ve met a lot of people, apricot. Why? Is he a relation?”

  “Just an old-time writer I like,” I said.

  “Ahhhhhh.”

  “In fact,” I said, “one story of his I particularly like was called ‘Mars Is Heaven’.”

  She sipped her tea. “Don’t know that one.”

  “It’s about a manned expedition to Mars—written while that was still in the future, you understand. And when the astronauts get there they discover a charming, rustic, old-fashioned American small town, filled with sweet old folks they remember from their childhoods. It’s the last thing they expect, but after a while they grow comfortable with it. They even jump to the conclusion that Mars is the site of the afterlife. Except it’s not. The sweet old folks are aliens in disguise, and they’re lulling all these gullible earthlings into a false sense of security so they can be killed at leisure.”

  My words had been hesitantly spoken, less out of concern for Minnie’s feelings than those of my colleagues. Their faces were blank, unreadable, masking emotions that could have been anything from anger to amusement. I will admit that for a split second there, my paranoia reaching heights it had never known before (or thank God, since), I half-expected George and Oscar and Maxine to morph into the hideously tentacled bug-eyed monsters who had taken their places immediately after eating their brains. Then the moment passed, and the silence continued to hang heavily in the room, and any genuine apprehension I might have felt gave way to an embarrassment of more mundane proportions. After all—whatever the explanation for all this might have been—I’d just been unforgivably rude to a person who had only been gracious and charming toward me.

  She showed no anger, no sign that she took it personally. “I remember that one now, honey. I’m afraid I didn’t like it as much as some of Ray’s other efforts. Among other things, it seemed pretty unreasonable to me that critters advanced enough to pull off that kind of masquerade would have nothing better to do with their lives than eat nice folks who came calling. But then, he also wrote a story about a baby that starts killing as soon as it leaves the womb, and I prefer to believe that infants, given sufficient understanding and affection, soon learn that the universe outside the womb isn’t that dark and cold a place after all. Given half a chance, they might even grow up . . . and it’s a wonderful process to watch.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  She sipped her tea again, one pinky finger extended in the most unselfconscious manner imaginable, just as if she couldn’t fathom drinking her tea any other way, then spoke brightly, with perfect timing: “But if you stay the night, I’ll be sure to put you in the room with all the pods.”

  There was a moment of silence, with every face in the room—including those of Earl and Peter and Carrie, who had just come up from downstairs—as distinguishedly impassive as a granite bust of some forefather you had never heard of.

  Then I averted my eyes, trying to hide the smile as it began to spread on my face.

  Then somebody made a helpless noise, and we all exploded with laughter.

  * * *

  Seventy years later:

  If every land ever settled by human beings has its garden spots, then every land ever settled by human beings has its hovels. This is true even of frontiers that have become theme parks. I had spent much of this return to the world I had once known wandering through a brightly-lit, comfortably-upholstered tourist paradise—the kind of ersatz environment common to all overdeveloped places, that is less an expression of local character than a determined struggle to ensure the total eradication of anything resembling local character. But now I was headed toward a place that would never be printed on a postcard, that would never be on the tours, that existed on tourist maps only as the first, best sign that those looking for easy travelling have just made a disastrous wrong turn.

  It was on Farside, of course. Most tourist destinations, and higher-end habitats, are on Nearside, which comes equipped with a nice blue planet to look at. Granted that even on Nearside the view is considered a thing for tourists, and that most folks who live here live underground and like to brag to each other about how long they’ve gone without Earthgazing—our ancestral ties are still part of us, and the mere presence of Earth, seen or unseen, is so inherently comforting that most normal people with a choice pick Nearside. Farside, by comparison, caters almost exclusively to hazardous industries and folks who don’t want that nice blue planet messing up the stark emptiness of their sky—a select group of people that includes a small number of astronomers at the Frank Drake Observatory, and a large number of assorted perverts and geeks and misanthropes. The wild frontier of the fantasies comes closest to being a reality here—the hemisphere has some heavy-industry settlements that advertise their crime rates as a matter of civic pride.

  And then there are the haunts of those who find even those places too civilized for their tastes. The mountains and craters of Farside are dotted with the little boxy single-person habitats of folks who have turned their back not only on the home planet but also the rest of humanity as well. Some of those huddle inside their self-imposed solitary confinement for weeks or months on end, emerging only to retrieve their supply drops or enforce the warning their radios transmit on infinite loop: that they don’t want visitors and that all trespassers should expect to be shot. They’re all eccentric, but some are crazy and a significant percentage of them are clinically insane. They’re not the kind of folks the sane visit just for local color.

  I landed my rented skimmer on a ridge overlooking an oblong metal box with a roof marked by a glowing ten-digit registration number. It was night here, and nobody who lived in such a glorified house trailer would have been considerate enough to provide any outside lighting for visitors, so those lit digits provided the only ground-level rebuttal to starfield up above; it was an inadequate rebuttal at best, which left the ground on all sides an ocean of undifferentiated inky blackness. I could carry my own lamp, of course, but I didn’t want to negotiate the walk from my skimmer to the habitat’s front door if the reception I met there required a hasty retreat; I wasn’t very capable of hasty retreats, these days.

  So I just sat in my skimmer and transmitted the repeating loop: Walter Stearns. I desperately need to speak to Walter Stearns. Walter Stearns. I desperately need to speak to Walter Stearns. Walter Stearns. I desperately need to speak to Walter Stearns. Walter Stearns. I desperately need to speak to Walter Stearns. It was the emergency frequency that all of these live-alones are required to keep open 24–7, but there was no guarantee Stearns was listening—and since I was not in distress, I was not really legally entitled to use it. But I didn’t care; Stearns was the best lead I had yet.

  It was only two hours before a voice like a mouth full of steel wool finally responded: “Go away.”

  “I won’t be long, Mr. Stearns. We need to talk.”

  “You need to talk. I need you to go away.”

  “It’s about Minnie and Earl, Mr. Stearns.”

  There was a pause. “Who?”

  The pause had seemed a hair too long to mean mere puzzlement. “Minnie and Earl. From the development days. You remember them, don’t you?”

  “I never knew any Minnie and Earl,” he said. “Go away.”

  “I listened to the tapes you made for the Museum, Mr. Stearns.”

  The anger in his hoarse, dusty old voice was still building. “I made those tapes when I was still ta
lking to people. And there’s nothing in them about any Minnie or Earl.”

  “No,” I said, “there’s not. Nobody mentioned Minnie and Earl by name, not you, and not anybody else who participated. But you still remember them. It took me several days to track you down, Mr. Stearns. We weren’t here at the same time, but we still had Minnie and Earl in common.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” he said, with a new shrillness in his voice. “I’m an old man. I don’t want to be bothered. Go away.”

  My cheeks ached from the size of my triumphant grin. “I brought yams.”

  There was nothing on the other end but the sibilant hiss of background radiation. It lasted just long enough to persuade me that my trump card had been nothing of the kind; he had shut down or smashed his receiver, or simply turned his back to it, so he could sit there in his little cage waiting for the big bad outsider to get tired and leave.

  Then he said: “Yams.”

  Twenty-four percent of the people who contributed to the Museum’s oral history had mentioned yams at least once. They had talked about the processing of basic food shipments from home, and slipped yams into their lists of the kind of items received; they had conversely cited yams as the kind of food that the folks back home had never once thought of sending; they had related anecdotes about funny things this coworker or that coworker had said at dinner, over a nice steaming plate of yams. They had mentioned yams and they had moved on, behaving as if it was just another background detail mentioned only to provide their colorful reminiscences the right degree of persuasive verisimilitude. Anybody not from those days who noticed the strange recurring theme might have imagined it a statistical oddity or an in-joke of some kind. For anybody who had been to Minnie and Earl’s—and tasted the delicately seasoned yams she served so frequently—it was something more: a strange form of confirmation.

  When Stearns spoke again, his voice still rasped of disuse, but it also possessed a light quality that hadn’t been there before. “They’ve been gone a long time. I’m not sure I know what to tell you.”