Asimov's SF, January 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Through the bus windows, I saw Noelene move her car away from the pumps, parking somewhere behind the bus.

  Another little car arrived, pulling up ahead, out of view. But I barely noticed. Watching my hands tremble, I wished I could call home, just once, and tell my news to whoever picked up the receiver.

  Through the open windows, a voice found me.

  I recognized its timbre, its smoothness. Leaping to my feet, I saw a familiar face talking to the big man and Noelene.

  I started to shout, “Claude,” but someone behind me decided to shove me, dropping me to the rubberized floor.

  Shifting in our seat, the rad-hunter looked down at me. The gore and shadows made her look especially defiant. Plainly, I wasn't doing a very good job of defending my nation's honor.

  Claude spoke with the others for several minutes, arguing and explaining before stopping, allowing an increasing number of participants to take their turn. I returned to my seat, listening to every sound. Once again my translator repeated his points, making sure that he was understood. There was gravity to his tone, plus a little despair. Suddenly the rad-hunter pulled away the towel, taking a deep breath before telling me, “They're letting you go.”

  “What?”

  “Your friend just saved you,” she explained, staring at me with a vivid, hateful envy.

  The big man came into the bus and waved at me.

  With shoulders bowed, I went to him. I would have kissed him on the hands and cheeks, I was that happy. Then I was led outside, and Claude watched me until I looked at him. Then he turned to Noelene, offering a few words intended only for her.

  “I didn't know,” she said to me.

  The woman was weeping. Because of me or because of her emotions getting the best of her—I couldn't tell which.

  I started to talk, but Claude interrupted. “You have your passport? You will need it.”

  Where was my soul? I stupidly patted my pockets before remembering that it was stolen a few minutes ago.

  I looked at weepy Noelene.

  “He must have it,” Claude warned.

  She seemed more willing to surrender me than the document. But she placed it in my hands, and for a long moment, I did nothing. I was waiting for an apology. But none was offered. Once again, she claimed, “I didn't know,” and she turned and walked away toward the bus.

  “Don't go,” I blurted.

  Startled, she looked back at me.

  “Go there, and you will die,” I said with all of the authority I could muster. “It'll be like Israel, a burrowing nuke. It'll make a huge mess, and you'll get poisoned and die in some slow awful way.”

  That fate had its terrors, but she refused to cower. Braver than I would ever be, Noelene said, “Your people won't let this happen. How could they? We're allies. We helped your country win its freedom.” She made a bomber with one hand, and smiling, pulled it back toward the sky. “Your president will see us, and in the end, he will give in.”

  As fast as the journey south had been, the return trip was even faster. The tiny Renault rattled and shook, and its driver focused his attentions on the road, barely finding the breath, much less the need, to explain that he had traded in several favors and paid some undisclosed bribe to less forgiving souls, and that's before he had told Noelene that my only child was back in the States, in the Mayo Clinic, dying of cancer.

  “That's why she's sorry,” I muttered.

  “A little lie,” he confessed.

  Watching the same road, I said, “Thank you.”

  Which made him angrier, it seemed. We were heading toward Paris and some final flight home, though he wasn't promising that we would make it in time.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  He didn't answer.

  Again, I told him, “Thank you.”

  Maybe he nodded. I watched but I wasn't sure.

  The car radio was turned up high. It was the middle of the night, but the voices were animated and steady, senselessly describing events of great importance. I found myself thinking about the rad-hunter and what would happen to her and Noelene. Mostly Noelene.

  “I knew where you would be,” said Claude, glancing at me.

  “You're involved with them,” I guessed.

  “Since the beginning,” he allowed. “Yes.” He sighed and a few moments later admitted, “But I'm glad you're here. You are my excuse. Really, I don't want to die tonight.”

  “That's funny,” I muttered.

  He looked at me, insulted.

  “I don't mean funny,” I apologized. “I meant to say odd. It's odd because ... this sounds silly, I know ... but some part of me wants to be with them now. You know? All those brave noble people doing what they think must be right. I don't want to be there, and I don't want to be a hostage, no. But there's two women that I keep thinking about. Isn't that crazy?”

  “It is human nature,” my savior said, shaking his head wearily.

  The sun was beginning to show itself. Looking east, I began to mention the first flush of dawn. But then the radio gave a harsh sputtering roar before the station fell silent. We listened to the static, and then Claude turned off the radio, and we listened to the road and our own thoughts. Really, at that point, what else could be said?

  Copyright © 2010 Robert Reed

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  * * *

  Short Story: WILDS

  by Carol Emshwiller

  Ursula K. Le Guin has called Carol Emshwiller a “major fabulist,” and the truth of that compliment is eminently clear in her subtle new tale for Asimov's. Carol's next book, a collection of her most recent short stories with a cover by her late husband, Ed Emshwiller, will be coming out in England from PS Publishing.

  The first night in the wild I find a cave in among a pile of fallen rocks. It's so small I have to crawl in backward so as to be facing the right direction in order to get out. It was fine for that one night. I actually sleep a bit. But it's in a low place. If it had rained I'd have gotten wet. Something small had lived there and hadn't been careful not to foul its nest. I don't smell that good now myself, though I don't expect I'll meet anybody.

  But I want a higher place—for lots of reasons. I'd like a view of the valley below. I start climbing. Several times I see berries. At first I don't dare eat any. Then I try them. If they taste good, I keep eating.

  I have to climb, up and down and up and down, all day and most of the next to find a place I like. When I find it I don't have time to look for shelter. I sleep where I fall. At least I'm high up and a hard climb away from everybody and everything.

  In the morning, not far from where I lie, I find an overhanging rock for shelter. I start making a wall around it. Then I go back down to the tree line to find more berries and nibble on greens. I catch a fish by hand and eat it raw. I climb back to my mountain to sleep. There's not much up there but boulders and on every side but one there's riprap. Hard for anyone to climb up to me, on one side the scary cliff, on the other those unstable shoebox size rocks.

  The next day I start on a tower. I already have a pretty good view if I stand on my sheltering rock, but I want an even better one. The view is spectacular. Far below there's a red cinder cone, lower, a marshy green lake, across the valley, more mountains where there's always odd cloud formations.

  I'm not ever going to finish my tower. I want to go on and on with it for the pure pleasure of moving stones. Already in just these few days, I'm stronger than I ever was. My arms hardly look like my arms. I have a start on a beard.

  When my tower is about five feet above my sheltering rock, I stop, go lower down to a marshy pond and gather a reed and make a flute. It only has four holes, but that's enough notes for me.

  Every morning I climb my tower and study the hills and valleys. Then I start my day: Moving rocks, playing the flute, and then I go down below the tree line to eat and drink.

  * * * *

  But one morning, I see somebody climbing up toward me. I hope he's just te
sting himself, climbing as high as he can, getting cold and worn out, teetering on the riprap, and then going right back down. I already tested myself in those ways. I understand the need.

  I look around to make sure nothing of my living here shows. My tower could be a natural formation. I deliberately made it to look that way. I'm not worried it might be discovered.

  Then, as the person nears, I hide.

  * * * *

  I've always hidden. First from Mother and Dad and from my three older brothers. Hiding was my way of life from the beginning.

  I ducked and slunk along. I hunched over. I never looked people in the eye. I grew large, but I wanted to be small. Though I finally grew even larger than my big brothers, I never dared to challenge them.

  And then ... suddenly ... suddenly ... I found the wilds. First I stepped slowly, wondering at it, marveling, and then I ran. Straight into it vowing never to leave. I shouted, I jumped from rock to rock, hid from tree to tree, walked the, then, empty trails. I began to sing. (I never had before.) I kept time by tapping a stick against my knee.

  I couldn't bear to leave—even to go back for supplies. I don't have a pan or a flashlight or a knife. I left the car by the side of the road. A rented car. I had said to myself, I'll just take a little walk. I saw rocks with bright orange lichen and trees, all leaning to the left, and a cliff with a stony path zigzagging up it. I wondered what it would be like to be in among all that.

  Now I take only what the wilds gives me. It feeds me and teaches me. I trained myself to eat what it gives, insects and snakes. Tiny eggs. When you want to live here, you have to learn new ways.

  The first I ever ate insects was because my brothers forced me to. Raw goldfish, too. I was afraid I'd get sick so I researched what might be poison. Now I live on bugs and raw fish and worse things than they could even think of. Mouse or rat-like creatures. Slugs.

  I have to go down my mountain to get those bugs and snakes. Also berries and roots. Down there is where I set my traps.

  But even as I swallow little snakes, I'm singing.

  * * * *

  But here's this person climbing my mountain. I can't imagine someone being here except to test themselves as I used to do.

  I have plenty of stones for weapons. Except I've never fought in my life.

  He stumbles up the last riprap, and does just as I did when I first got here, collapses on the rocks. That can't be comfortable. He's so worn out he wouldn't have noticed me if I'd been standing right in front of him.

  I dare to come closer. I hold a rock. I peer down at ... Him? Her? What's she doing way out here all by herself ?

  I put down the rock. Being rid of her would be the safest for keeping my place and me a secret—bang her head with a rock and toss her off the steep side. It would look like a bad fall.

  She's small and thin. There's a blondish ponytail coming out from under her red cap, there's red nail polish on her dirty broken nails, she's wearing the wrong shoes for climbing. Besides her canvas pack, she has a small red purse sideways across her shoulder.

  Her pack looks stuffed. Usually people have pans and canteens and a lot of dried food. I'm hoping for things like that. I quietly, carefully, unbuckle the pack. Odd, It's not an ordinary backpack, but more like a mailman's bag.

  Out comes money. A lot. Packages of hundred dollar bills.

  I'm not being careful anymore. I'm looking for something I can use ... anything at all. I shout with frustration and scrabble in the bag. The money is in packets. Some come apart. It's always windy up here. Some blow away in packets and some blow away as single bills.

  She hears me yell. Jumps up and grabs at the bills. Gets a couple. Then turns and tries to close the pack on what's left.

  There's not one thing in there that's of any use to me. I'd even settle for toilet paper.

  It's good I don't have the rock anymore. What I do is slap her. So hard that she's flat out on the rocks.

  When have I ever slapped anybody? At once I say I'm sorry but I'm really not. She doesn't let me help her up and I don't blame her. Who knows what I'm going to do next.

  “Is this all you brought?”

  “It was almost fifty thousand.”

  “No food?”

  She starts counting up the money that's still left in the sack. She shields it from the wind with her body and tries to keep everything deep inside the bag as she counts. Says, “Oh no, oh no,” over and over.

  “No food?”

  “Oh no. Only a couple of thousand left.”

  She rests her head on the money bag and takes deep breaths. If she had the energy she'd be crying. Or maybe attacking me. Then says, “Can I have a drink of water?”

  “You'll have to go back down for it.”

  “I'm so worn out. Could you get me some?”

  “I don't have anything to carry water in. I have to go down to drink, too. I was hoping you'd have a canteen or at least a cup.”

  She lies back, hugging the money pack.

  We're silent.

  She looks too delicate to be out here. I do like her looks. And that makes me think how I'm a hulk. I'm nice and thin now, but still a lumpy man. I'm suddenly conscious, as I used to be when out with people, of my big hands and feet, my hairy arms, my bony face. I've been called a big dumb lug and not just by my brothers.

  “Is that cap waterproof ? I could get you a little bit in that.”

  “I don't think so.”

  We're silent again.

  Then she asks, “Do you have any food?”

  “Nothing to carry that in either. I suppose I could bring something up for you.” I don't say, Maybe a little snake you can choke down whole. Maybe a pocketful of bugs.

  I do want to shock her though. I want her to realize money isn't worth much out here. Maybe good for tinder. I haven't been building fires, though if I catch a fish, I suppose she'll want it cooked.

  “When you're feeling rested I'll help you down. Maybe catch you a fish. I don't suppose you have any matches.”

  “No.” So faint I can hardly hear it.

  We're quiet again. Then she says, “I haven't had anything to eat for two days. I'll give you a hundred dollars if you get me something.”

  I laugh.

  “Two hundred? Three?”

  “I'd do it for a knife or a pan.”

  But I take pity on her. “Soon as you're rested, we'll go down.”

  * * * *

  First she takes pains to hide the money. There's only one good place: my overhang. She puts it way in the back and covers it with sand and scree. She doesn't notice my flute. It doesn't look like much more than a dry stick.

  It's a hard climb down, but just the first part. As I'm helping her, we see a couple of hundred dollar bills stuck to the cliff out of the wind. She wants me to get them, but it's too steep. I'm not going to kill myself for money.

  Helping her, I'm conscious not only of how unkempt I am. I don't have a comb. I can't imagine what my hair looks like. And my beard. I only have these clothes. I know I must smell though I do wash them now and then. When I do, I tramp around the forest wearing nothing but my shoes, though I am working on hardening up my feet. Then I'll really feel part of the wilds. You can sense a lot through your feet.

  I notice her hand next to mine. Her long, slim fingers.... No hands could be more different.

  Along the steepest ledge, I hold her by the back of her pants. Her hips, her slim waist, her warmth.... I haven't been near another person for a long time.

  We finally get down into the trees. I take her to my usual spot, beside my stream where it forms a still pool. First she drinks. Then I show her how I catch a fish, bare hands, close to the bank where there's an overhang. I see admiration in her eyes.

  I know I'll have to make a fire or she won't eat it. I suppose that old way must work—tinder and a stick on a punkish piece of wood. I wonder how long it takes.

  Before I even have the punk and dead grasses all gathered into a pile, she says, “You're a real man
of the forest.”

  I lick my finger and put it down on a big black ant, scoop it up and blatantly eat it.

  She flinches. Says, “I guess you are.”

  Then I confess I've never tried to build a fire until now. “We'll see if I really am,” I say. Though, actually, aren't I more a man of the forest if I don't cook my food?

  But it does work.

  She eats as if she hadn't eaten for days and of course she hasn't. Though it smells good, I let her have it all. Does she even notice that? I make do with skink and one small garter snake. This time I eat them out of her sight and after she's lying back, satisfied.

  She says, “I feel much better, but I don't think I can climb back up there tonight. Will you stay with me?” She looks worried—she'd rather not be alone down here. “Though I suppose you're up there because it's safer.”

  “Less buggy, too.”

  But I say I'll stay.

  She picks a place close to where the fire was. I pick one a discreet distance away. I help her make a bed of ferns. A few minutes after we lie down she says, “Do you think you can help me get some of the money back? You owe it to me. It's your fault it blew away.”

  I don't want to think about the money. I just grunt.

  She's frightened in the middle of the night. I hear her move from the far side of the fire, closer to me.

  Down here, not only more bugs, but more noise. Owls hooting or shrieking.

  She moves even closer, whispers, “What is that screaming?”

  “Just baby screech owls calling to be fed.”

  Then she gives a little shriek. “Something ran right over me.”

  “That's how it is down here.”

  * * * *

  In the morning, right away, she wants to go back up to look for more of the money. Her eyes have dark circles. She's in a bad mood. “We have to,” she says. “And it's all your fault the money blew away.”

  I say, “I'm eating and drinking first.”

  She says, “I'm not,” and takes off.