Asimov's SF, January 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Y-yes,” Segal managed, fumbling with the sheaf of papers in his hands, only narrowly avoiding spilling them all over the office floor. “As a matter of fact...”

  “We've been working on this thing,” Kurtzberg said, tapping the artboards under his arm with one of his thick fingers, “and we think maybe it'd be a good fit for Wonder House.”

  Yacov waved Segal over and took the sheaf of handwritten manuscript pages from him, while Itzhak motioned for Kurtzberg to hand him the boards. As he fanned through the boards, some covered with paintings in oils and others with pen-and-ink sketches, Itzhak whistled low. “You've been doing all this and keeping up with all your deadlines? Kurtzberg, you're a machine.”

  The young artist shrugged, the faintest hint of a smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. “Eh, I'm quick, so what?”

  “What am I looking at here?” Yacov asked, scanning down the first of the handwritten pages, wincing at Segal's questionable penmanship. The kid wrote in Official Speech, but was so shaky with the pen that it looked like it could have been meant to be Yiddish.

  “We've got this idea for a character...” Kurtzberg began.

  “He's from the future, see,” Segal cut in, hands on Yacov's desk and leaning forward eagerly. “He's the son of the last man on Earth, and he gets sent back in this time machine just before the red sun explodes!”

  Itzhak held up a pen-and-ink sketch of a muscled figure holding a car up over his head. “Come on, a car? Really?”

  “Gravity's stronger in the future,” Kurtzberg answered, a touch of defiance in his tone. “So when he comes back to the present day it's like, what if there was a guy who was as strong as an Earth-man is on the moon ... but here on Earth? He can make big jumps, pick up cars, that kind of thing.”

  “I don't know, guys...” Yacov pulled another cigarette from the pack in his pocket, and lit it from a table-lighter. “The future?”

  Segal blanched, tight-lipped. It looked like he could see his last chance slipping through his fingers.

  “What's this for?” Itzhak said. He held up an art board covered in oil paints. Depicted in Kurtzberg's over-bright colors and blocky anatomy was a muscular figure wearing a skin-tight costume, white with dark sky-blue highlights, like he was wrapped in the flag of Yisrael. On his chest was a triangular shield, in which was emblazoned the Hebrew letter Shin, and it was to this that Itzhak was pointing.

  “It stands for ‘Shaddai,'” Kurtzberg answered.

  “'The Almighty,'” Segal translated into Yiddish, unnecessarily.

  Itzhak nodded, turning his attention back to the pen-and-ink sketches.

  Yacov held the manuscript pages out to Segal. “There are some ... interesting ideas in here, but the writing just doesn't have what it takes, and...”

  “Hold on,” Itzhak interrupted, holding up a finger. “I think these boys may have something here.” He caught the hard look Yacov was giving him, motioning with the manuscript pages. “Sure, it's rough, but there's potential. But I don't see this as a standard story with a few spot illustrations. No.” He held up the pen-and-ink sketches. “These may not look much like any human body I'veever seen, but damned if they don't move. Here's how I see it—a big pen-and-ink piece on every page, maybe even a few of them arranged in order like a filmstrip. Then we cut Segal's text into snippets and just paste it on top of the drawings.”

  “You're joking,” Yacov said, but he could already see the wheels moving behind his partner's eyes.

  “No, no,” Itzhak said, jumping up out of the chair and starting to pace the floor. “This could be the series character we've been looking for, Yacov. This could work.”

  Across the office Kurtzberg and Segal were already huddling, trying to figure out how to give Itzhak what he was asking for. Stories where the pictures carried as much weight as the words?

  Yacov could see that the train had already left the station, and that Wonder House had its new title. They'd have to work out the details, of course. They couldn't very well pay Kurtzberg their regular illustration rate if he was going to be churning out ten times as many illustrations as normal, but at least Segal wouldn't be earning much if he only wrote a handful of words per story. There'd be the question of ownership, of course—Silver Star owned all their series characters outright, and it only made sense for Wonder House to do the same. Who knew? Maybe they'd break with tradition and put the two kids on salary in exchange for their rights. That would be a fair trade, as Yacov saw it.

  None of that mattered now, though. Segal and Kurtzberg were already working out the first story, paring down the handwritten manuscript until it was barer than a drama's script. And Itzhak was standing in the middle of the office, sodden cigar chomped between his teeth, staring out into the middle distance. Yacov had seen that stare before, and knew just what it was that his partner was looking at—the future.

  “Yeah,” Itzhak said in a far-off voice. “This could work.”

  Copyright © 2010 Chris Roberson

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  * * *

  Poetry: DOT ACOLYTES

  by Ruth Berman

  * * * *

  * * * *

  The roadway god rages

  When his acolytes at MNDoT

  Neglect to repair potholes.

  —

  The more furious he grows

  Face black as tar

  With the anger choking him

  —

  The wider and deeper

  And irregularly edged

  Grow the cracks and holes

  Under winter ice.

  —

  The bolts

  On the bridges

  Rattle with rust.

  —Ruth Berman

  Copyright © 2010 Ruth Berman

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  * * *

  Novelette: THE GOOD HAND

  by Robert Reed

  Of his latest tale, Robert Reed says, “Once in my life have I gone overseas. The flight was awful, but France was lovely. Watching recent political events, I asked myself, ‘What if we weren't talking about bombing the Iranian nuclear program, but instead were aiming at people that we know a good deal better? What would be the mentality in that kind of world? Would our good nature or bad push the red button?'” These questions and other unsettling issues are chillingly explored in...

  There was confusion in Booking, my reservation mysteriously lost in the ether. The bloodless beauty behind the counter explained that I could wait for tomorrow's flight out of Chicago, or, “You can sit with the other sheep and pray for no-shows.” Her phrasing, not mine. I chose the flock, putting my name in the pool before calling the office to make appropriate warnings. But a lot of travelers were changing plans, what with the recent events. The big DC-Freedom wasn't even two-thirds full, and I was able to snag an aisle seat. Unfortunately a lot of us seemed to be suffering from spring colds and hacking coughs. One tall and very pretty Japanese-American woman caught my eye, but she claimed three seats across the aisle. Apparently those two little boys were hers. “Oh well,” I thought, “at least they're behaving themselves.” But the toddler began wailing on takeoff, while his older, craftier brother used the distraction to slip free of the seat belt, running amok while we cut through the evening sky.

  Even with the coughing and the motherly screaming and the wild boy who kept sprinting past every few moments, I managed to sleep. But then came the realization that one of my neighbors had eaten something vicious or rancid, and now he or she was dying of some brutal intestinal ailment. Whatever the cause, whoever the source, at unpredictable moments the stuffy damp air suddenly filled with the most noxious stink imaginable, and my body and mind would be dragged out of whatever snoozing state it had achieved in the last little while.

  Of course I blamed the rad-hunter sitting on my left. There were at least six agents scattered about the cabin, each dressed in the black uniform trimmed with smoky orange lines. A small woman, plain-faced and in no obvious pain, she
gave herself away by never acting surprised by the outrage hovering in the air. Of course she could have assumed that I was the culprit, and she was a polite sort of creature. But I have met one or two rad-hunters, and they are not polite people. Their job demands self-centered, disagreeable natures, treating the world with all of the scorn it will endure; and if she wasn't the source of this biohazard, I'm sure at the very least she would have stood and moved somewhere else.

  At this point, I will mention that I'm not a political soul.

  I was a traveler, an innocent with business on his mind, and this was only my third trip overseas, and I had never seen France. And I would see little of it now, what with the demands of my work and an exceptionally tight schedule.

  Landing at De Gaulle brought new difficulties. There didn't seem to be room at the terminal, so our plane was ushered onto a side runway, buses gathering slowly to carry us the final half-mile of our journey. Yet that complication didn't bother me. In my present mood, I would have accepted a parachute and the attendant's boot to my ass, if it meant escaping that coffin. The afternoon air tasted of rain and leaked fuel. I sat patiently on a bus that refused to go anywhere. I watched the pretty mother spank one boy and then his brother. Then just as I wondered if some new problem had arisen, the bus was accelerating, suddenly shooting across the tarmac and then slamming to a stop beside a crowded facility filled with angry passengers and heavily armed guards.

  The consuming ugliness of the airport terminal was something of a marvel, what with its naked steel and concrete block construction. Where was the famous French sense of aesthetics? The little rad-hunter and her uniformed colleagues flashed badges and walked straight past the guards, ignoring and perhaps even enjoying the murderous stares. But I was a civilian. And sadly, I was American. To the limits of international law, I was to be shown the consideration usually reserved for dangerous dogs.

  A gloved hand accepted my passport, and not one or two customs agents looked at it. The process required three bureaucrats and ten minutes of hard consideration before it was handed back to me. They never spoke in my direction, even in French. Knifing gestures were deemed adequate, and when I didn't jump to their commands, a gloved hand grabbed my arm, yanking me into the presence of a fourth official. “You are the guest of a nation and a great people,” he reminded me. “We expect nothing but dignity and respect at all times.”

  With that, I was sent on my way.

  I have no aptitude with languages. Which seems odd, considering that I was always one of the bright children in school. But my employers had taken my limits into account, paying extra for a translator. A young man was at the gate, holding a sign with my name and nothing else written in a neat, officious style.

  “I'm Kyle Betters,” I announced.

  He didn't seem to believe me. Lowering the sign, he scratched at his bare chin, considering who-knew-what factors before replying with a quiet lack of feeling, “Welcome to France, Mr. Betters.”

  His name was Claude, and for the expected reasons we took an instant but workable dislike to one another. Small talk wasn't part of his job description. But directing me to the luggage carousel was a valid duty, and he did it without prompting, watching with thin amusement as I hung my small bag on the very big suitcase, dragging both behind me as we continued down more ugly hallways and out into a parking garage that stank of gasoline and wet concrete.

  Of course his car was tiny, and of course he took offense when I laughed quietly at what looked like a toy.

  His laugh came moments later, watching my middle-aged body struggle to lift my luggage into a volume just large enough to accept it.

  A pattern was set. In small pointed ways, we worked to embarrass and enrage one another. Claude lit a Turkish cigarette, filling the Renault with a toxic cloud. I cracked my window, and when he mentioned his distaste for cold breezes, I rolled it down farther. The flight left me exhausted yet I was too nervous to sleep. I watched the countryside. I studied the cars and trucks that raced along the highway. Our destination was Nancy, and I asked for a road map to better appreciate our journey across a deeply historic landscape. Claude steered me to the glove box. I opened it, finding nothing useful. That was worth a laugh, and as he drove, the hand with the cigarette tapped his head. “I know the way,” he promised. “And besides, you won't see anything. It will be night soon.”

  In another few minutes, yes.

  He drove, and I sat, keyed up to where my stomach ached.

  Eventually we abandoned the wide four-lane highway, striking out east on a narrow highway in desperate need of repair. Traffic circles announced themselves with warning signs, but Claude seemed of the opinion that driving slowly brought its own risks. After the third or fourth circle, he decided that his passenger was suitably rattled. “It is unfair, you know. What you want of us.”

  I knew what he meant, and I was smart enough not to rise to the bait.

  But he continued regardless. “Nations are free entities,” he warned. “We're within our rights to do research in whatever subject we choose. How can a rational man say otherwise?”

  “I haven't said anything,” I pointed out.

  Another cigarette needed to be lit. Exhaling in my direction, he pointed out, “We are not planning to build bombs. Why would we want such horrors?”

  “Why would you?” I agreed.

  But he heard something in my tone. “Uranium is a natural element. Does the United States claim ownership of a native part of our universe?”

  “This isn't my area,” I complained.

  “Nor mine,” he agreed, coaxing the little engine to run at an even higher pitch.

  Holding onto my door handle, I pushed my face close to the open window and the fresh roaring air.

  “Do you think we are unreasonable?”

  Claude wanted me to say, “No, you are reasonable.” Or maybe he hoped that like any good American, I would pick a fight. “My government is powerful, and you're going to obey us from now until Doomsday.” But I didn't match either expectation. “I don't think about these political problems,” I shouted back at him. “Not one way or another. Really, this whole subject doesn't mean a goddamn thing to me.”

  Claude fumed in the darkness.

  I looked outside. By day, this was probably a scenic drive. Massive old trees were whipping past at a furious rate. Something in the moment triggered a memory. Turning back to the driver, I asked, “Do you know why the French plant so many trees along their roads?”

  Claude hesitated, and then finally asked, “Why?”

  “So the German army can march in the shade.”

  That did the trick. He wanted nothing more to do with this American, smashing his cigarette before throwing all of his concentration into getting me to my destination, as fast as possible.

  * * * *

  My slight experience with intercontinental travel has taught me that jet lag is genuine and it is sneaky. Waking that next morning, I felt rested even though I wasn't. I felt as though my faculties had returned, but no, they were still lost out over the Atlantic somewhere. Little clues pointed to my impairment. I didn't quite recognize my hotel room, even though I was fully conscious when I checked in. The toilet's design baffled me briefly, though I'd used it the night before. A hot shower seemed to help, but the channels on the Sony television seemed to tax my intellect to its limits. There were no American networks, but even the French feed of the CBC was missing. The nearest thing to home cooking was the BBC, and it took three minutes to appreciate just what side our British brothers were taking in the present controversy.

  I shut off the television, dressed and went down to the lobby. Claude was supposed to meet me in another hour. Our day's first event was at noon—lunch with representatives for one of the largest retailers in Europe. I was nervous, which was good news. Nervousness gave me energy and a measure of courage. Knowing no French but merci, I headed out the front door, out into the Place Stanislas. Bits of fact crept out of my soggy memory. The plaza was two and
a half centuries old, bordered by an opera house and museum and the venerable Grand Hotel where I was scheduled to remain for four busy days. I wandered south, and without getting lost or committing any major crimes, I discovered a busy restaurant that served a buffet breakfast perfectly suited to a ravenous appetite.

  At some point during the meal, I realized I was being watched. It wasn't just the staff that saw my American credit card, but it was also the local patrons who seemed to recognize a tyrannical monster when they saw one. Nobody was out-and-out rude. But when I glanced at each face, they would stare back at me, showing me what silent, smoldering curiosity looks like.

  Returning to my hotel, I found Claude reading Le Monde. My arrival was noted, but the current article was more important. He focused on every word and finished his cigarette, and then the paper was folded and the butt stamped out, and while looking at my feet, he quietly told me, “I am sorry.”

  I was stunned.

  “For my words, my tone.” He glanced at my face and then looked down again. “It is my fault that we got off so badly.”

  I agreed. But to be gracious, I said, “I played a hand in it.”

  He clearly wanted more from me.

  “I'm not a traveler,” I said. “My flight was awful, and I'm still hurting. I wish I had grace under pressure. But I don't. Never have.”

  Claude tried to make sense of my rambling confessions. Finally, needing to feel useful, he asked, “Do you wish to tour Nancy for a time? It's going to be a little while before our first event.”

  It was strange to hear him say, “Our first event.” Just words, but the effect was to make me thankful to have an ally in this peculiar corner of the world.