by Neil Clarke
An ordinary man. Hoodie. Cap.
Jessica, breathe.
Her head whipped around, eyes wild, hands scrambling reflexively for a weapon. Nobody was at the pumps, nobody parked at the air pump. He could come back any moment. Bring his knife and finish the job.
Please breathe. There’s no apparent danger.
She fell to her knees and crawled out from behind the counter. Nobody would stop him, nobody would save her. Just like they hadn’t saved all those dead and missing girls whose posters had been staring at her all summer from up on the cigarette cabinet.
When she’d started the job they’d creeped her out, those posters. For a few weeks she’d thought twice about walking after dark. But then those dead and missing girls disappeared into the landscape. Forgotten.
You must calm down.
Now she was one of them.
We may not be able to bring you back again.
She scrambled to the bathroom on all fours, threw herself against the door, twisted the lock. Her hands were shuddering, teeth chattering like it was forty below. Her chest squeezed and bucked, throwing acid behind her teeth.
There was a frosted window high on the wall. He could get in, if he wanted. She could almost see the knife tick-tick-ticking on the glass.
No escape. Jessica plowed herself into the narrow gap between the wall and toilet, wedging herself there, fists clutching at her burning chest as she retched bile onto the floor. The light winked and flickered. A scream flushed out of her and she died.
A fist banged on the door.
“Jessica, what the hell!” Her boss’s voice.
A key scraped in the lock. Jessica gripped the toilet and wrenched herself off the floor to face him. His face was flushed with anger and though he was a big guy, he couldn’t scare her now. She felt bigger, taller, stronger, too. And she’d always been smarter than him.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.” Better than fine. She was butterfly-light, like if she opened her wings she could fly away.
“The station’s wide open. Anybody could have waltzed in here and walked off with the till.”
“Did they?”
His mouth hung open for a second. “Did they what?”
“Walk off with the fucking till?”
“Are you on drugs?”
She smiled. She didn’t need him. She could do anything.
“That’s it,” he said. “You’re gone. Don’t come back.”
A taxi was gassing up at pump number one. She got in the back and waited, watching her boss pace and yell into his phone. The invincible feeling faded before the tank was full. By the time she got home Jessica’s joints had locked stiff and her thoughts had turned fuzzy.
All the lights were on. Gran was halfway into her second bottle of u-brew red so she was pretty out of it, too. Jessica sat with her at the kitchen table for a few minutes and was just thinking about crawling to bed when the phone rang.
It was Mom.
“Did you send someone to pick me up on the highway?” Jessica stole a glance at Gran. She was staring at her reflection in the kitchen window, maybe listening, maybe not.
“No, why would I do that?”
“I left you messages. On Saturday.”
“I’m sorry, baby. This phone is so bad, you know that.”
“Listen, I need to talk to you.” Jessica kept her voice low.
“Is it your grandma?” Mom asked.
“Yeah. It’s bad. She’s not talking.”
“She does this every time the residential school thing hits the news. Gets super excited, wants to go up north and see if any of her family are still alive. But she gives up after a couple of days. Shuts down. It’s too much for her. She was only six when they took her away, you know.”
“Yeah. When are you coming home?”
“I got a line on a great job, cooking for an oil rig crew. One month on, one month off.”
Jessica didn’t have the strength to argue. All she wanted to do was sleep.
“Don’t worry about your Gran,” Mom said. “She’ll be okay in a week or two. Listen, I got to go.”
“I know.”
“Night night, baby,” Mom said, and hung up.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Jessica waited alone for the school bus. The street was deserted. When the bus pulled up the driver was chattering before she’d even climbed in.
“Can you believe it? Isn’t it horrible?” The driver’s eyes were puffy, mascara swiped to a gray stain under her eyes.
“Yeah,” Jessica agreed automatically.
“When first I saw the news I thought it was so early, nobody would be at work. But it was nine in the morning in New York. Those towers were full of people.” The driver wiped her nose.
The bus was nearly empty. Two little kids sat behind the driver, hugging their backpacks. The radio blared. Horror in New York. Attack on Washington. Jessica dropped into the shotgun seat and let the noise wash over her for a few minutes as they twisted slowly through the empty streets. Then she moved to the back of the bus.
When she’d gotten dressed that morning her jeans had nearly slipped off her hips. Something about that was important. She tried to concentrate, but the thoughts flitted from her grasp, darting away before she could pin them down.
She focused on the sensation within her, the buck and heave under her ribs and in front of her spine.
“What are you fixing right now?” she asked.
An ongoing challenge is the sequestration of the fecal and digestive matter that leaked into your abdominal cavity.
“What about the stuff you mentioned yesterday? The intestine and the . . . whatever it was.”
Once we have repaired your digestive tract and restored gut motility we will begin reconstructive efforts on your reproductive organs.
“You like big words, don’t you?”
We assure you the terminology is accurate.
There it was. That was the thing that had been bothering her, niggling at the back of her mind, trying to break through the fog.
“How do you know those words? How can you even speak English?”
We aren’t communicating in language. The meaning is conveyed by socio-linguistic impulses interpreted by the brain’s speech-processing loci. Because of the specifics of our biology, verbal communication is an irrelevant medium.
“You’re not talking, you’re just making me hallucinate,” Jessica said.
That is essentially correct.
How could the terminology be accurate, then? She didn’t know those words—cervix and whatever—so how could she hallucinate them?
“Were you watching the news when the towers collapsed?” the driver asked as she pulled into the high school parking lot. Jessica ignored her and slowly stepped off the bus.
The aliens were trying to baffle her with big words and science talk. For three days she’d had them inside her, their voice behind her eyes, their fingers deep in her guts, and she’d trusted them. Hadn’t even thought twice. She had no choice.
If they could make her hallucinate, what else were they doing to her?
The hallways were quiet, the classrooms deserted except for one room at the end of the hall with 40 kids packed in. The teacher had wheeled in an AV cart. Some of the kids hadn’t even taken off their coats.
Jessica stood in the doorway. The news flashed clips of smoking towers collapsing into ash clouds. The bottom third of the screen was overlaid with scrolling, flashing text, the sound layered with frantic voiceovers. People were jumping from the towers, hanging in the air like dancers. The clips replayed over and over again. The teacher passed around a box of Kleenex.
Jessica turned her back on the class and climbed upstairs, joints creaking, jeans threatening to slide off with every step. She hitched them up. The biology lab was empty. She leaned on the cork board and scanned the parasite diagrams. Ring worm. Tape worm. Liver fluke. Black wasp.
Some parasites can change their
host’s biology, the poster said, or even change their host’s behavior.
Jessica took a push pin from the board and shoved it into her thumb. It didn’t hurt. When she ripped it out a thin stream of blood trickled from the skin, followed by an ooze of clear amber from deep within the gash.
What are you doing?
None of your business, she thought.
Everything is going to be okay.
No it won’t, she thought. She squeezed the amber ooze from her thumb, let it drip on the floor. The aliens were wrenching her around like a puppet, but without them she would be dead. Three times dead. Maybe she should feel grateful, but she didn’t.
“Why didn’t you want me to go to the hospital?” she asked as she slowly hinged down the stairs.
They couldn’t have helped you, Jessica. You would have died.
Again, Jessica thought. Died again. And again.
“You said that if I die, you die too.”
When your respiration stops, we can only survive for a limited time.
The mirror in the girls’ bathroom wasn’t real glass, just a sheet of polished aluminum, its shine pitted and worn. She leaned on the counter, rested her forehead on the cool metal. Her reflection warped and stretched.
“If I’d gone to the hospital, it would have been bad for you. Wouldn’t it?”
That is likely.
“So you kept me from going. You kept me from doing a lot of things.” We assure you that is untrue. You may exercise your choices as you see fit. We will not interfere.
“You haven’t left me any choices.”
Jessica left the bathroom and walked down the hall. The news blared from the teacher’s lounge. She looked in. At least a dozen teachers crowded in front of an AV cart, backs turned. Jessica slipped behind them and ducked into the teachers’ washroom. She locked the door.
It was like a real bathroom. Air freshener, moisturizing lotion, floral soap. Real mirror on the wall and a makeup mirror propped on the toilet tank. Jessica put it on the floor.
“Since when do bacteria have spaceships?” She pulled her sweater over her head and dropped it over the mirror.
Jessica, you’re not making sense. You’re confused.
She put her heel on the sweater and stepped down hard. The mirror cracked.
Go to the hospital now, if you want.
“If I take you to the hospital, what will you do? Infect other people? How many?”
Jessica, please. Haven’t we helped you?
“You’ve helped yourself.”
The room pitched and flipped. Jessica fell to her knees. She reached for the broken mirror but it swam out of reach. Her vision telescoped and she batted at the glass with clumsy hands. A scream built behind her teeth, swelled and choked her. She swallowed it whole, gulped it, forced it down her throat like she was starving.
You don’t have to do this. We aren’t a threat.
She caught a mirror shard in one fist and swam along the floor as the room tilted and whirled. With one hand she pinned it to the yawning floor like a spike, windmilled her free arm and slammed her wrist down. The walls folded in, collapsing on her like the whole weight of the world, crushing in.
She felt another scream building. She forced her tongue between clenched teeth and bit down. Amber fluid oozed down her chin and pooled on the floor.
Please. We only want to help.
“Night night, baby,” she said, and raked the mirror up her arm.
The fluorescent light flashed overhead. The room plunged into darkness as a world of pain dove into her for one hanging moment. Then it lifted. Jessica convulsed on the floor, watching the bars of light overhead stutter and compress to two tiny glimmers inside the thin parched shell of her skull. And she died, finally, at last.
James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards; his fiction has been translated into twenty-one languages. His most recent book is the 2018 story collection The Promise of Space from Prime Books. His most recent novel was Mother Go, published in 2017 as an Audible original audiobook on Audible.com. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Find him on the web at www.jimkelly.net.
Men Are Trouble
JAMES PATRICK KELLY
1.
I stared at my sidekick, willing it to chirp. I’d already tried watching the door, but no one had even breathed on it. I could’ve been writing up the Rashmi Jones case, but then I could’ve been dusting the office. It needed dusting. Or having a consult with Johnnie Walker, who had just that morning opened an office in the bottom drawer of my desk. Instead, I decided to open the window. Maybe a new case would arrive by carrier pigeon. Or wrapped around a brick.
Three stories below me, Market Street was as empty as the rest of the city. Just a couple of plain janes in walking shoes and a granny in a blanket and sandals. She was sitting on the curb in front of a dead Starbucks, strumming street guitar for pocket change, hoping to find a philanthropist in hell. Her singing was faint but sweet as peach ice cream. My guy, talking ’bout my guy. Poor old bitch, I thought. There are no guys—not yours, not anyone’s. She stopped singing as a devil flapped over us, swooping for a landing on the next block. It had been a beautiful June morning until then, the moist promise of spring not yet broken by summer in our withered city. The granny struggled up, leaning on her guitar. She wrapped the blanket tight around her and trudged downtown.
My sidekick did chirp then, but it was Sharifa, my about-to-be ex-lover. She must have been calling from the hospital; she was wearing her light blue scrubs. Even on the little screen, I could see that she had been crying. “Hi, Fay.”
I bit my lip.
“Come home tonight,” she said. “Please.”
“I don’t know where home is.”
“I’m sorry about what I said.” She folded her arms tight across her chest. “It’s your body. Your life.”
I loved her. I was sick about being seeded, the abortion, everything that had happened between us in the last week. I said nothing.
Her voice was sandpaper on glass. “Have you had it done yet?” That made me angry all over again. She was wound so tight she couldn’t even say the word.
“Let me guess, Doctor,” I said, “‘Are we talking about me getting scrubbed?”
Her face twisted. “Don’t.”
“If you want the dirt,” I said, “you could always hire me to shadow myself. I need the work.”
“Make it a joke, why don’t you?”
“Okey-doke, Doc,” I said and clicked off. So my life was cocked—not exactly main menu news. Still, even with the window open, Sharifa’s call had sucked all the air out of my office. I told myself that all I needed was coffee, although what I really wanted was a rich aunt, a vacation in Fiji, and a new girlfriend. I locked the door behind me, slogged down the hall and was about to press the down button when the elevator chimed. The doors slid open to reveal George, the bot in charge of our building, and a devil—no doubt the same one that had just flown by. I told myself this had nothing to do with me. The devil was probably seeing crazy Martha down the hall about a tax rebate or taking piano lessons from Abby upstairs. Sure, and drunks go to bars for the peanuts.
“Hello, Fay,” said George. “This one had true hopes of finding you in your office.”
I goggled, slack-jawed and stupefied, at the devil. Of course, I’d seen them on vids and in the sky and once I watched one waddle into City Hall but I’d never been close enough to slap one before. I hated the devils. The elevator doors shivered and began to close. George stuck an arm out to stop them.
“May this one borrow some of your time?” George said.
The devil was just over a meter tall. Its face was the color of an old bloodstain and its maw seemed to kiss the air as it breathed with a wet, sucking sound. The wings were wrapped tight around it; the membranes had a rusty translucence that only hinted at the sleek b
ullet of a body beneath. I could see my reflection in its flat compound eyes. I looked like I had just been hit in the head with a lighthouse.
“Something is regrettable, Fay?” said George.
That was my cue for a wisecrack to show them that no invincible mass-murdering alien was going to intimidate Fay Hardaway.
“No,” I said. “This way.”
If they could’ve sat in chairs, there would’ve been plenty of room for us in my office. But George announced that the devil needed to make itself comfortable before we began. I nodded as I settled behind my desk, grateful to have something between the two of them and me. George dragged both chairs out into the little reception room. The devil spread its wings and swooped up onto my file cabinet, ruffling the hardcopy on my desk. It filled the back wall of my office as it perched there, a span of almost twenty feet. George wedged himself into a corner and absorbed his legs and arms until he was just a head and a slab of gleaming blue bot stuff. The devil gazed at me as if it were wondering what kind of rug I would make. I brought up three new icons on my desktop. New Case. Searchlet. Panic button.
“Indulge this one to speak for Seeren?” said George. “Seeren has a bright desire to task you to an investigation.”
The devils never spoke to us, never explained what they were doing. No one knew exactly how they communicated with the army of bots they had built to prop us up.
I opened the New Case folder and the green light blinked. “I’m recording this. If I decide to accept your case, I will record my entire investigation.”
“A thoughtful gesture, Fay. This one needs to remark on your client Rashmi Jones.”
“She’s not my client.” It took everything I had not to fall off my chair. “What about her?”
“Seeren conveys vast regret. All deaths diminish all.”
I didn’t like it that this devil knew anything at all about Rashmi, but especially that she was dead. I’d found the body in Room 103 of the Comfort Inn just twelve hours ago. “The cops already have the case.” I didn’t mind that there was a snarl in my voice. “Or what’s left of it. There’s nothing I can do for you.”