Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  * * * *

  Toby awoke at midnight, coughing and shivering, gripped by a 105-degree fever.

  The August air was moist, heavy, coagulated; it felt like warm glue. Rising from the cot, I hugged my son, rapped my knuckles on his rocket jockey’s oxygen supply, and said, “Buddy, I have something to tell you. Something bad.”

  “Huh?” Toby tightened his grip on Barnaby Baboon.

  I chewed my inner cheeks. “About this Xavier’s Plague. The thing is, it’s a very, very bad disease. Very bad.” Pain razored through my tongue as I bit down. “You’re not going to get well, Toby. You’re simply not.”

  “I don’t understand.” His eyes lay deep in their bony canyons; the brows and lashes had grown sparse, making his stare even larger, sadder, more fearful. “You said Mr. Medicine would fix me.”

  “I lied.”

  “Lied? What do you mean?”

  “I wanted you to be happy.”

  “You lied? How could you even do that?”

  ‘This Satirev—it’s different from our old city, very different. If you stay down here long enough, you can learn to say anything.”

  Anger rushed to his face, red blood pounding against blue skin. “But—but Santa Claus brought me a Power Pony!”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Toby. I’m so terribly, terribly sorry.”

  “I want to ride my Power Pony!” He wept—wept like the betrayed seven-year-old he was. His tears hit his mask, flowing along the smooth plastic curves. “I want to ride Chocolate!”

  “You can’t ride him, Toby. I’m so sorry.”

  “I knew it!” he screamed. “I just knew it!”

  “How did you know?”

  “I knew it!”

  A protracted, intolerable minute passed, broken by the poundings of the inhalator interlaced with Toby’s sobs. He kissed his baboon. He asked, “When?”

  “Soon.” A hard, gristly knot formed in my windpipe. “Maybe this week.”

  “You lied to me. I hate you. I didn’t want Santa to get me a brown Power Pony, I wanted a black one. I hate you!”

  “Don’t be mean to me, Toby.”

  “Chocolate is a stupid name for a Power Pony.”

  “Please, Toby…”

  “I hate you.”

  “Why are you being mean to me? Please don’t be mean.”

  Another wordless minute, marked by the relentless throb of the inhalator. “I can’t tell you why,” he said at last.

  “Tell me.”

  He pulled off his mask. “No.”

  Absently I unhooked a plaster Wise Man from my son’s Christmas tree. “I’m so stupid,” I said.

  “You’re not stupid, Dad.” Mucus dribbled from Toby’s nose. “What happens after somebody dies?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think happens?”

  “Well, I suppose everything stops. It just…stops.”

  Toby ran a finger along the sleek rubbery curve of his meperidine tube. “Dad, there’s something I never told you. You know my baboon here, Barnaby? He’s got Xavier’s Plague too.”

  “Oh? That’s sad.”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s dead from it. He’s completely dead. Barnaby just…stopped.”

  “I see.”

  “He wants to be buried pretty soon. He’s dead. He wants to be buried at sea.”

  I crushed the Wise Man in my palm. “At sea? Sure, Toby.”

  “Like in that book we read. He wants to be buried like Corbeau the Pirate.”

  “Of course.”

  Toby patted the baboon’s corpse. “Can I see Mom before I die? Can I see her?”

  “We’ll go see Mom tomorrow.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No.”

  A smile formed on Toby’s fissured lips. “Can I play with Happy Land now?”

  “Sure.” I closed my eyes so tightly I half expected to push them into my brain. “Do you want to hold the control panel?”

  “I don’t feel strong enough. I’m so cold. I love you, Dad. I don’t hate you. When I’m mean to you, it’s for a reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “I don’t want you to miss me too much.”

  It would happen to me now, I knew: the tear business. Reaching under his bed, I worked the crank, gradually bringing Toby’s vacant gaze within range of his amusement park. Such a self-referential reality, that toy—how like Veritas, I thought, how like Satirev. Anyone who inhabited such a circumscribed world, who actually took up residence, would certainly, in the long run, go mad.

  “You won’t miss me too much, will you?”

  “I’ll miss you, Toby. I’ll miss you every single minute I’m alive.”

  “Dad—you’re crying.”

  “You can play with Happy Land as long as you like,” I said, operating the dials on the control panel. “I love you so much, Toby.” The carousel turned, the Ferris wheel spun, the roller coaster dipped and looped. “I love you so much.”

  “Faster, Dad. Make them go faster.”

  And I did.

  * * * *

  We spent the morning after Christmas outfitting a litter with the necessities of Xavier’s amelioration, turning it into a traveling Center for the Palliative Treatment of Hopeless Diseases: tubing, aluminum stands, oxygen tank, inhalator. Dr. Krakower placed a vial of morphine in our carton of IV bottles, just in case the pain became more than meperidine could handle. “I’d be happy to come with you,” she said.

  “The truth of the matter,” I replied, “is that in a day or two Toby will be dead—am I right? He’s beyond medical science.”

  “You can’t put a timetable on these things,” said Krakower.

  “He’ll be dead before the week’s out. You might as well stay.”

  Martina and I carried Toby through Satirev to the Third and Hume storm tunnel, Ira Temple riding close behind on the Power Pony, then came William Bell, dragging my son’s Christmas presents in Santa’s canvas sack. Toby was so thin the blankets threatened to swallow him whole; his little head, lolling on the pillow, seemed disembodied, a sideshow freak, a Grand Guignol prop. He clutched his stuffed baboon with a strange paternal desperation: Rumpelstiltskin finally gets his baby.

  By noon Toby was with his stalwart, Veritasian mother, drooping over her arms like a matador’s cape.

  “Does he know how sick he is?” she asked me.

  “I told him the truth,” I admitted.

  “This will sound strange, Jack, but…I wish he didn’t know.” Helen gasped in astonishment as a drop of salt water popped from her eye, rolled down her cheek, and hit the floor. “I wish you’d lied to him.”

  “On the whole, truth is best,” I asserted. “That’s a tear,” I noted.

  “Of course it’s a tear,” Helen replied testily.

  “It means—”

  “I know what it means.”

  Weeping, we bore Toby to his room and set his marionette-like body on the mattress. “Mom, did you see my Power Pony?” he gasped as William and Ira rigged up his meperidine drip. “Isn’t he super? His name’s Chocolate.”

  “It’s quite a nice toy,” Helen said.

  “I’m cold, Mom. I hurt all over.”

  “This will help,” I said, opening the stopcock.

  “I got a Happy Land, too. Santa brought it.”

  Helen’s face darkened with the same bewilderment she’d displayed on seeing her tear. “Who?”

  “Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas. The fat man who goes around the world giving children toys.”

  “That doesn’t happen, Toby. There is no Santa Claus.”

  “There is. He visited me. Am I going to die, Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forever?”

  “Yes. Forever. I’d give almost anything to make you well, Toby. Almost anything.”

  “I know, Mom. It’s…all right. I’m…tired. So…sleepy.”

  I sensed his mind leaking away, his soul flowing out of him. Don’t die, Toby, I thought. Oh, please, ple
ase, don’t…

  “If you want,” said Martina, “I’ll watch over him awhile.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Good.”

  Stunned, drained, the rest of us wandered into the living room, a space now clogged with terrible particulars, the Power Pony, the plush giraffe, all of it. Helen offered to make some lunch—sliced Edible Cheddar on Respectable Rye—but no one was hungry. Collecting by the picture window, we looked down at the City of Truth. Veritas, the vera-city; curiously, the pun had never occurred to me before.

  I followed William and Ira to the elevator, mumbling my incoherent gratitude. Unlike the HEART members, they sympathized tastefully; their melancholy was measured, their tears small and rationed. Only as the elevator door slammed shut did I hear William cry out, “It isn’t fair!”

  Indeed.

  I staggered into Toby’s room. He shivered as he slept: cold dreams. Helen and Martina stood over him, my wife fidgeting with a glass of Scotch, my one-time lover rooted like a moneytree. “Stay,” I told Martina. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Helen? She’s Toby’s friend.”

  Instead of answering, Helen simply stared at Martina and said, “You’re exactly as I imagined you’d be. I guess you can’t help looking like a slut.”

  “Helen, we’re all very upset,” I said, “but that sort of talk isn’t necessary.”

  My wife finished her Scotch and slumped onto the floor. “I’m upset,” she agreed.

  “Toby was so happy to see you,” Martina told her. “I’ll bet he’ll start doing a lot better now that you’re with him.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Miss Coventry. I’m sorry I was rude, but—don’t lie.”

  Martina was lying, and yet as evening drew near, Toby indeed seemed to rally. His fever dropped to 101. He began making demands of us—Helen must bring his Power Pony into the room, Martina must tell him the story of Rumpelstiltskin. I suspected that the infusion of familiarity—these precious glimpses of his wallpaper, closet door, postcard collection, and benighted carpentry projects—was having a placebo effect.

  Placebos were lies.

  While Martina entertained Toby with a facetious retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, a version in which the miller’s daughter had to spin bellybutton lint into peanut-butter sandwiches, Helen and I made coffee in the kitchen.

  “Do you love her?” she asked.

  “Martina? No.” I didn’t. Not any more.

  “How can I know if you’re telling the truth?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  We agreed to keep the marriage going. We sensed we would need each other in the near future: the machinery of grief was new to us, our tears were still foreign and scary.

  At five o’clock the next morning, Toby died. During his final hour, Helen and I positioned him on Chocolate and let him pretend to ride. We rocked him back and forth, telling him we loved him. He said it was a great Power Pony. He died in the saddle, like a cowboy. The final cause was asphyxiation, I suppose; his lungs belonged to Pneumocystis carinii and not to Veritas’s soiled and damaged air. His penultimate word, coughed into the cavity of his mask, was “cold.” His last word was “Rumpelstiltskin.”

  We set him back in bed and tucked Barnaby Baboon under his arm.

  Guiding Martina into the hallway, I gave her a goodbye hug. No doubt our paths would cross again, I told her. Perhaps I’d see her at the upcoming Christmas assault on Circumspect Park.

  “Your wife loved him,” Martina said, pushing the down button.

  “More than she knew.” Bong, the elevator arrived. “I made him happy for a while, didn’t I? For a few weeks, he was happy.”

  Behind Martina, the door slid open. “You made him happy,” she said, stepping out of my life.

  I shuffled into the kitchen and telephoned my sister.

  “I wish my nephew hadn’t died,” she reported. “Though I will say this—I’m counting my blessings right now: Connie, my good health, my job. Yes, sir, something like this, it really makes you count your blessings.”

  “Meet us in an hour. Seven Lackluster Lane. Descartes Borough.”

  Helen and I sealed Toby’s corpse in a large-size Tenuous Trash Bag—Barnaby Baboon was part of him now, fastened by rigor mortis—then eased him into Santa’s sack. We hauled him onto the elevator, brought him down to street level, and loaded him into the back of my Adequate. As we drove across town, political campaign ads leaped from the radio, including one for Doreen Hutter. “While one of my teenage boys is undeniably a drug addict and a car thief,” she said, “the other spends his after-school hours reading to the blind and…”

  I pictured Martina writing those lines, scribbling them down in the margins of her doggerel.

  Reaching the waterfront district, I pulled up beside the wharf where Average Josephine was moored. Boris sat on the foredeck, wrapping duct tape around the fractured handle of a clamming rake, chatting with Gloria and Connie. I fixed on my sister’s eyes—dry, obscenely dry—shifted to my niece’s—dry.

  Thank the alleged God: Boris grasped the situation at once. So Toby wanted to be buried at sea? All right, no problem—the canvas sack would work fine: a few bricks, a few rocks…

  He brought Average Josephine into the channel at full speed, dropping anchor near the north shore, below a sheer cliff pocked with tern rookeries. Wheeling across the water, the birds scolded us fiercely, defending their airy turf like angry, outsized bees.

  Boris dragged Santa’s sack to the stern and set it on the grubby, algae-coated deck. “I hear you were quite a lad, little Toby,” he said, cinching the sack closed with a length of waterproof hemp. “I’m sorry I never knew you.”

  “Even though you can’t hear me, I am at this moment moved to bid you good-bye,” said Gloria. “I feel rather guilty about not paying more attention to you.”

  “The fact of the matter is I’m bored,” said Connie. “Not that I didn’t like Toby. Indeed, I’m somewhat sorry we hardly ever played together.”

  Boris lifted the Santa sack, balancing it on the transom with his hairy, weatherworn hand.

  “I miss you, son,” I said. “I miss you so much.”

  “Quite bored,” said Connie.

  Boris raised his palm, and the sack lurched toward the water like the aquatic armadillo Toby had caught and freed on the Jordan. As it hit the channel, Helen said, simply, “I love you, Toby.” She said it over and over, long after the sack had sunk from view.

  “It’ll be dark in an hour,” Boris told me. “How about we just keep on going?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know—keep on going. Get out of this crazy city.”

  “Leave?”

  “Think it over.”

  I didn’t need to.

  * * * *

  I’m a liar now. I could easily fill these final passages with a disingenuous account of what befell us after we set Gloria and Connie back on shore and returned to the river: our breathless shoot-out with the Brutality Squad, our narrow escape up the inlet, our daring flight to the sea. But the simple fact is that no such melodrama occurred. Through some bright existential miracle we cruised free of Veritas that night without encountering a single police cutter, shore battery, or floating mine.

  We’ve been sailing the broad and stormy Caribbean for nearly four years now, visiting the same landfalls Columbus once touched—Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados—filling up on fruit and fresh water, course uncharted, future unmapped, destination unsettled. We have no wish to root ourselves. At the moment Average Josephine is home enough.

  My syndrome, I’m told, is normal. The nightmares, the sudden rages, the out-of-context screams, the time I smashed the ship-to-shore radio—all these behaviors, I’ve heard, are to be expected.

  You see, I want him back.

  It’s getting dark. I’m composing by candlelight, in our gloomy galley, my pen nib scuttling across the page like a cockroach scavenging a greasy fragment of tinfoil. My wife and the clamdigger come in. Boris asks me if I want coffee. I tell him no.
r />   “Hi, Daddy.” Little Andrea sits on Helen’s shoulders like a yoke.

  “Hi, darling,” I say. “Will you sing me a song?” I ask my daughter.

  Before I destroyed the radio, a startling bit of news came through. I’m still trying to deal with it. Last October, some bright young research chemist at Voltaire University discovered a cure for Xavier’s Plague.

  Andrea climbs down. “I’d be deee-lighted to sing you a song.” She’s only two and a half, but she talks as well as any four-year-old.

  Boris makes himself a cup of Donaldson’s Drinkable Coffee.

  Out of the blue, Helen asks, “Did you copulate with that woman?”

  “With what woman?”

  “Martina Coventry. Did you?”

  I can answer however I wish. “Why are you asking now?”

  “Because I want to know now. Did you ever…?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Once. Are you upset?”

  “I’m upset,” Helen says. “But I’d be more upset if you’d lied.”

  Andrea scrambles into my lap. Her face, I note with great pleasure, is a perfect conjunction of Helen’s features and my own. “‘I hide my wings inside my soul,’” she sings, lyrics by Martina Coventry, music by Andrea Sperry.

  “‘Their feathers soft and dry,’” my daughter and I sing together. Her melody is part lament, part hymn.

  Now Helen and Boris join in, as if my Satirevian training has somehow rubbed off on them. The lies cause them no apparent pain.

  “‘And when the world’s not looking…’”

  We’re in perfect harmony, the four of us. I don’t love the lies, I realize as we trill the final line—our cloying denial of gravity—but I don’t hate them either.

  “‘We take them out and fly,’” we all sing, and even though I’m wingless as a Veritasian pig, I feel as if I’m finally getting somewhere.