Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  No carefree drunk was laughing at his plight.

  Callan wore a long number on threadbare prison clothes, and he stared at his guest with a calm, steady, and irresistible anger. What had happened to him over the last few years, she could only imagine. Men were dangerous. Always. But men living only with men, in such circumstances ... it made her want to cry just to think about it....

  He said, “Helena.”

  He said, “So sit. If you want.”

  They were inside a large airless room part way filled with couples like themselves. A dozen couples, perhaps. But this was one of two visitation days in the month, and out of forty thousand inmates, only twenty of them had company.

  A small tragedy, it was, set against the rest.

  Quietly, without patience, Callan asked, “What do you want, Helena?”

  “How are you?” she blurted.

  He said, “Great, actually,” and showed her a bleak little smile.

  “Really?” she sputtered.

  “Absolutely.” Then he pulled up the sleeve of his jersey, making a muscle and showing a glimmer of the former Callan. “I'm sober now. And look how fit I've gotten....”

  She didn't notice the bicep. What caught her gaze was the star and crescent scars cut into his flesh. There was an odd cult popular among male inmates, she recalled. Something called Islam. It had its own prophet—a mystical man born in the Dark Ages—and its armies had attacked the remnants of the old Roman Empire. But the Pope, in her wisdom, managed to build a consensus. A union of nations. Divisions and schisms that had split the early Christians were healed, at least temporarily. Then loyal heroic men under the Pope's guidance had obliterated the Islamic armies. And for better than a thousand years, that religion had pretended to be extinct.

  Callan meant to show off his scar.

  And Helena had come here to tell him, “You didn't hit Lydia.”

  She blurted those words, then took a huge breath before adding, “I was watching you. You couldn't have. It was your son, I'm almost sure.”

  If anything, he seemed unsurprised by her declaration.

  Bored, almost.

  “I couldn't testify,” she continued. “It would have been my word against Lydia's. And that wouldn't have changed anything.”

  Her lover nodded, and for the moment, he seemed to be hunting for the proper response. Then he quietly told her, “It doesn't particularly matter, Helena,” and he leaned across the smooth plastic table, the steel links of his manacles rattling gently. “Do you know why it doesn't matter?”

  “Why?” she squeaked.

  “If my boy hadn't, I would have. Hit the bitch, I mean.”

  She sat motionless, feeling scared and sorry. And perfectly confused.

  Then Callan sat back like the conquering hero, winked with a shadow of his old charm, and remarked in the most offhand manner, “Do you know what else? If I got out of here today, this minute, I'd do worse. A lot worse. To pretty much every one of you ugly slits.”

  Dies Mercurii.

  Curiously, Helena wakes that next morning feeling ill, but despite a burning nausea and a suffocating fatigue, she dresses herself and fixes her hair, leaving for work just a few minutes late.

  But a traffic tie-up pounces on her.

  Nothing is moving at the intersection. Too late, Helena turns on her radio, listening to a bulletin about a bomb scare at the clinic. It takes the police forever to redirect the traffic around the roadblocks. She arrives late, and as a reward, she learns that Morris will be in meetings the entire morning. Three different women give her the news. “A reprieve,” one of them calls it. Then the woman laughs and clucks her tongue, adding, “You really told him. Nobody thought you had the balls, Helena. But they're big as peaches, aren't they?”

  All morning, Helena plans to lunch at home, allowing herself to build a robust little fantasy about herself and Sarah's boyfriend. She imagines them chatting amiably beside the lilacs. Then she'll lure him indoors on some errand that only a tall boy can manage ... something in the bedroom ... and what happens next changes each time she thinks about it, always reaching a point where she's aroused as well as frightened by her thoughts, and disgusted with herself, and in a strange way, thrilled by the feeling that she has absolutely no control over the flow of her sick, lonely mind.

  But she doesn't drive home at noon.

  Half a dozen co-workers want to take her to lunch instead. Their treat. And with no room for choice, it's easy to tell them “Yes.”

  The restaurant is squeezed inside a substantial old home. Antique photographs decorate the walls, most of them portraits dating back to the pioneer days. Beefy, frequently pregnant women stand in a row with their fellow disciples, their shared husbands kneeling down in front, each of the men looking scrawny and strong from constant work. Helena counts the faces on the nearest wall. Between the standing women and their kneeling men are the children. Maybe two smiling girls for every smiling boy. Accidents would have claimed a few of the missing. And disease, since they are the weaker sex. And the coming Asian wars will eventually slaughter them by the millions. But what astonishes and sickens Helena is that the boys are smiling, as are their fathers. These long-dead souls who couldn't own property, or vote, and who rarely even learned to read. Yet these aren't the pained grins of people staring into the sun. No, what she sees is the honest bright smiles of happy people looking at a future full of nothing but purpose, place and genuine promise.

  Helena eats half of her lunch, if that.

  A note is waiting on her desk when she returns.

  “Come see me,” it reads. Then the sloppy signature: “Morris.”

  His office is larger than hers, and more important. Yet when he looks up, Helena's first impulse is to laugh. Morris is a very odd creature, and she can't help herself sometimes. But instead of laughing, she simply says, “Yes, sir.”

  “Close the door,” he begins.

  There are new laws, and new ways of gaining retribution. Which is why she says, “I think we'd both like to keep the door open. Just to avoid misunderstandings.”

  Morris blinks, then mutters, “Fine.”

  He says, “Then why don't you sit. If that's all right, Helena.”

  She settles in front of his desk.

  The man shakes his head. Then with a practiced air, he asks, “Have you recovered from all that beer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He clicks his tongue with a measured disgust, then tells her, “I'm going to blame the insults on your drinking. I want you to know that.”

  He wants her to relax. To say, “Thank you so much, sir.”

  Instead, she picks up the framed photograph set on his desk. It is his family again, perhaps two years ago. The wife looks younger and prettier, but Morris himself is unchanged. And his son is shorter, and infinitely younger, looking lost among all those smiling girls. Quietly, she asks, “What sort of boy is he?”

  Morris blinks. Asks, “Who?”

  “Luke,” she says. Too quickly.

  But he decides that he's mentioned his son's name in the past. And maybe he has. Maybe he simply doesn't remember. With a measured fondness, Morris says, “He's a good child.”

  “Good in school?” she inquires.

  “In all things. Why?”

  The diamond-shaped scar is missing from the cheek. In a world currently without wars and no quick way to prove themselves to women, young men try to follow the old ways, giving each other elaborate wounds for no better purpose than to show that they can be stupid, without anyone's help.

  “Thank you, sir,” she says finally. “It was the beer. Yes.”

  Thinking that he has won, Morris grins.

  She sets down the portrait, and sighs, and as she rises, she asks, “Is that all?”

  “You were late this morning,” he offers.

  She mentions the bomb scare at the clinic.

  Which Morris already knows about. He nods and sneers, telling Helena and everyone eavesdropping on them, “I hate
the idiots. These self-proclaimed warriors for morality and justice... !”

  She stares at a random point, saying nothing.

  “This is the fairest, richest society on the planet,” Morris promises.

  Which Helena believes, too. Always, and she could never make herself think otherwise. Yet she hasn't the breath to tell him that she agrees with him. The best she manages is a vague nod and an expression that might be confused for a smile. Then with a quiet tone, she points out, “In this society of ours, you've done extremely well.”

  Believing that this is a compliment, Morris nods, and halfway laughs, and says, “I like to think so. I do!”

  Dies Jovis.

  Awake well before dawn, Helena dresses in comfortable trousers and a warm shirt, eats a toasted muffin, sips strong coffee, and while it's still dark outside, she leaves home.

  A simple clarity has possessed her. She promises herself that she'll call work from a toll phone. A day of personal time, she'll request; some nebulous family business demanding her attention. In her mind and whispers, she practices her conversation with the receptionist, and if necessary, with Morris. But then the sun is up, and there aren't any phones to be found, and it's gotten too late to call now anyway. And that's when she discovers that she doesn't particularly care, her guilt tiny and easily buried under things ancient and huge.

  Every passing town has its church. A sect or schism was brought by the first disciples to settle these lands, and a century later, the same flavors of Christianity hold sway. The shape of the church is a clue about the faithful within. The buildings can be round and soft-edged, or they can be tall and imposing. Granite and marble are popular in the oldest sects, while the newish Unity houses—still found only in the cities—are elegant, friendly structures filled with sunshine and empty crosses.

  By contrast, Helena's childhood church was a simple, almost Spartan building, its foundation made of native rock and bone-white mortar, its walls and roof and hard pews made from whatever wood was cheapest on that particular day. But as a girl, it seemed like a wonderful structure. Beautiful, even. Helena wanted to believe that other girls and boys envied her for having such a pretty church. What she liked best—long before she understood the painful symbolism—was the building's color. In her mother's sect, a house of worship was always painted a brilliant crimson. Every wall, every cornice, and even the wooden slats on the roof. The blood of the Christ, for all the world to see.

  That's what Helena was eventually taught, by the priests and by Aunt Ester.

  Years later, she can't even pretend to remember much of the Scriptures. What comes back now are a few poetic phrases, plus the lurid, sad, and endless stories that Ester told with a tireless zeal. What she remembers is her horror, then deep anger, at the idea that Joseph would abandon Mary when she gave birth to God's daughter. Because the Savior couldn't be a woman, that man had believed. “And that was the first sin of the men,” Ester would remind her. “But not their worst sin. Not by a long, long ways.”

  Helena's favorite Gospel is Judith's. She was a prostitute turned disciple, as several of her sister disciples were, and she wrote about the love and redemption offered by her Savior, and the peace that will find everyone in Heaven.

  Cora's Gospel is her aunt's linchpin—a harsh, explicit text written by a noblewoman who carefully listed the tortures inflicted on the Christ by the Jews, then by all men. But even inside that wrenching work, there is forgiveness. And a kind of morality. Like the old Roman centurion who placed himself between the soldiers and the Christ, ordering the rapes to end, then giving the condemned prisoner a long sip of water mixed with wine.

  But Ester always refused to see the man's kindness.

  Quietly but not softly, she would remind her niece, “That man still helped them carry out the sentence. The punishment. Our Savior was hammered onto that cross and put up into the sun, naked except for the blood flowing from her scalp and her hands, and from her brutalized vagina.”

  Helena remembers crying and asking a little question of her aunt.

  She can't recall her exact words. But it was about men. Were they all so awful? she wondered aloud. Are they always so untrustworthy, and cruel?

  She very much remembers Ester smiling instantly.

  Surprising Helena.

  Then with a wink and dry quick kiss to the forehead, Ester told the doubting young girl, “No, honey. No. We won't let them act that way again. Ever!”

  * * *

  Within sight of her childhood home, Helena turns onto a side road.

  She drives slowly and carefully, following what is little more than a pair of ruts across a stony pasture. If she gets stuck now, people will find out. Mother will, and Ester. And for every reason, that would be intolerable.

  A little thicket of wind-beaten trees stands at the crest of the hill. Helena parks where she won't be obvious, and after the long drive, she needs a moment to stretch and regain her legs. The walk itself takes just a moment. Her heart has been pounding for a long while, and her breathing is quick and shallow. But her head is clear, perfectly focused. What she assumes will be the difficult trick—finding the exact spot—proves easy. A slab of pink granite, brought by the glaciers and gouged by their sliding mass, lies in the center of a tiny clearing. With trees on all sides and a few spring wildflowers blooming amidst the green grass, this ground could be confused for a garden. A wind blows, cool and damp. Then Helena hears someone sighing. She gives a start, then realizes it was her own sigh. She is that nervous. That ill at ease. So she tells herself to breathe deeply until she feels steadier, and stronger, and only then does she kneel beside the flat pink rock, knowing its feel before her fingers can touch it.

  This is where they brought Helena's baby brother.

  Ester and the other disciples walked up here to pray over the newborn, and Helena remained in the house, quietly caring for her exhausted mother.

  She already had boy cousins, and just last year, two other women in the house had given birth to sons. Facts that she understood, even as a child. Hadn't she been taught from the beginning that farms needed only so many hands, particularly with the new tractors and pesticides making every chore easy? Didn't she understand that for the last fifteen centuries, give or take, God had willingly, even happily taken away the souls of boys who wouldn't live out the day? This was how things were done. It wasn't to be talked about, ever. It was a private family matter, and it was their family's business. Ester and Mother had spoken at length, night after night, until Mother agreed with what was best. But of course, they didn't know if it was a girl or a boy. Helena could have found herself with a sister. That was a vivid, buoyant hope that lasted right up until the little penis stuck out at them. And really, she would have preferred a baby sister. That's what she kept telling herself, and telling herself, cleaning her mother with old towels and neither of them speaking a word until Ester and the other women returned, nothing in their hands but an empty blanket too small to do anything but swaddle a little baby.

  Helena can remember bolting past them, out the back door and into the snow.

  It was mid-winter. Cold and windy, with the land white and hard. She wasn't a fast runner, but the women were even slower. Helena followed the footprints in the snow. She reached the hilltop first, expecting to find a coyote chewing on her little brother. But there was no baby. Just more footprints, and the granite slab, and she stood on the slab until Ester put a big hand on her shoulder, gasping hard, throwing her own coat over the girl to keep her warm. Saying to her, “There wasn't any pain, darling. No suffering at all.”

  Which was a good thing, wasn't it? But why was Helena crying?

  Then Ester pulled her from the rock, telling her, “You should let him rest now. All right? Let him have his peace.”

  Peace was another good thing.

  “Where did you put him?” Helena remembers asking.

  “In a grave. Of course.” Her aunt kneeled now. A big woman incapable of feeling the snow and the cold, she loo
ked at her niece with dry hard eyes, then calmly reported, “I dug the grave last autumn. In case.”

  Looking down at the stone, Helena realized that it had just been set there. And she kneeled, trying to reach under it, struggling to pull it up and bring out the boy before he suffocated. And then someone else grabbed her, someone who could cry, familiar hands tugging as the woman sobbed, her mother's spent voice saying, “It's too late, darling. Honey. It's for the best. Just try to believe that, will you... ?”

  Along one edge of the pink slab was a different shade of pink—a vivid smear of blood already frozen hard and slick by the brutal chill.

  Long washed away by rains and melting snow, the blood is. Yet the woman puts her face to the stone now, kissing the exact place, and for an instant, if that, she can taste the salt and the rust of all the world's dead.

  * * *

  Helena drives back into the city without recalling the intervening miles. It's a wonder that she didn't have an accident along the way. But she arrives just after noon, driving slowly past her house and turning the corner, the boy's ugly little car parked in front of Lydia's house. Helena isn't sure about anything. What she wants is as a mystery to her. For that moment, she tries desperately to find some way of gaining control over the boy. Maybe she can threaten to tell his father about his sexual adventures. Or she can threaten to tell the police about his stealing her tulips and lilacs. A groundless complaint on a young man's record is almost impossible to remove, she knows. What matters is that she can gain some powerful, persistent role in his life. Then, she tells herself, she can protect him from the countless hazards in a world far too large for anyone to understand.

  She hears herself—her silly, half-crazy thoughts bringing her nothing but shame—and now she watches herself drive past Lydia's house and around the block again, then out onto Saint Judith, not stopping until she reaches the clinic.

  Today, it seems quiet. Peaceful. A light rain is falling, and only the most determined protesters have shown up. Helena parks up the street and walks toward the low brick building. A bearded man puts down his sign and approaches. “You don't want to go in there,” he tells her.