Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “We're dead,” Rick said.

  I lost it. I tried putting the car in reverse, but put it into fifth gear instead. The car jerked forward and the engine died.

  I turned the key. There was a whine but nothing happened.

  “You need to engage the clutch,” Vlad said.

  I almost cursed him but thought of my koi pond.

  One soldier came over to us and I rolled down the window.

  The heat slapped us like a wet towel.

  “Problem with the car?” asked the soldier. British accent.

  The soldier held his gun easily before him but I could see the whites of his eyes, which, made yellow by his wrap-around shades, darted like rotten eggs from person to person.

  “We're cool,” Vlad said.

  “We're through with being cool!” Rick giggled.

  “All right, gentlemen, I need to see your passports.”

  My heart trip-clawed. Damn Rick. I tried to picture my koi pond. I smelled the soldier's sweat and aftershave. I heard pocket and paper sounds, then Vlad reached across me.

  The soldier tapped the barrel of his gun against the top of the car. “Yours, too, mate.”

  I zipped open the pocket of my cargo pants and brought out my passport.

  The soldier looked through each of the passports carefully. “You were in Italy?”

  “Como,” Rick said. “We were one of the bands that was going to play.”

  The soldier looked at me. “Downtown Dharma.”

  I breathed, nodding.

  “That's bally,” the man said. He handed me the passports back. “And you thought you might pop into a towel-head club tonight, and have a shot at the karaoke machine?”

  I prayed that Rick would not answer that.

  “We were lost,” Vlad said.

  “Right. You know that I believe you. But I'm afraid I also believe you're the kind of ignorant Americans that might just cross the Green Line on impulse. You don't want to do that, mates. We're locked down to vehicular traffic again. You won't get across unless you have a stamp for your passport and you're traveling with a vetted tour guide. Even that I wouldn't recommend. Your night in Como might suggest why.”

  I was afraid one of us would argue about Como, but it was Vlad who was conciliatory. “Sir, really. We are lost.” He sounded plaintive as a child.

  I got an idea. “Could I call a friend on my cell phone who might help us?”

  The soldier shrugged. “All right. But park over there to place your call.”

  He pointed his gun behind us, at a loading dock at the entrance to the street, fifty yards from the checkpoint.

  * * * *

  Ali climbed into the car ten minutes later. Still in his sharkskin suit. He was pissed. He ordered Vlad to sit in the back seat so that he could ride shotgun with me. “This is not the ugly Americans. This is the moron Americans.”

  “Our car died, dude,” Vlad said.

  “Is a good thing. You were approaching the Green Line. Drivers have been shot for not stopping.”

  “We were lost,” I said.

  “But we're Americans,” Rick said, whiny.

  “I take you to Bachus,” Ali said. He was short with us. We'd fucked up. But the British soldier had taken it well. Surely it was more than him taking pity on us just because we were Americans. He must have sensed my Buddha nature beneath my nervousness.

  “I thought Aunt Martha said Cyprus was safe,” Vlad said.

  It was a dig at me, but Ali answered. “Your Aunt Martha is a fine lady. She cares deeply about all peoples of the world. But she listens too much to Andros and Maria. They talk the pretty picture because they think sweet words will make hard men soft. And because they live in the nice house, and go to fine restaurants, and consort with diplomats and intellectuals. Martha smiles at me like I am boy when I tell her the Cyprus Liberation Front has been infiltrated by the Submission Faction. But there have been kidnappings and bombings even in Greek Cyprus these last weeks. Why do you think the U.N. does not let you drive across the Green Line?”

  “They think we have a car bomb?”

  “They do not want an incident. They do not want dead Americans, and airplanes bombing mosques for the vengeance.”

  “Who would Jesus bomb?” Rick said, not giggly. Hysterically.

  “We're on a goodwill mission,” I said. “Rock can unite polar opposites.”

  “Ah, envoys for the peace. Your aunt will be proud.”

  He was being sarcastic, but I didn't want to challenge him. The easy way he'd waved at the soldiers as he reached the Fiat told me he was one dude who took shit from no one.

  He directed us down a series of streets, some so narrow we had to back up to let cars coming the other way pass, then had us park in a garage so insanely crowded that I tore the fender off the Fiat on a pillar pulling in, then knocked over a Vespa in the stall behind us as I straightened out.

  We pulled the Vespa upright. It was leaking oil onto the cement. Ali pushed a handful of euros into its pannier.

  “Cypriot insurance,” Ali said.

  Rick giggled. “Can you be our manager?”

  Ali laughed. His teeth were so white they seemed to glow blue. “You don't need a manager. You need a nanny.”

  Gas fumes in the garage made me faintly nauseated. Just like home, except the cars were all dinky—some three-wheelers even. Outside it was still hot, though visually breathtaking in that European way, with a crumbling Venetian tower silhouetted against a sunset of layered golden and reddish clouds, stepped in a three-dimensional effect.

  Rick sang the last line from “Stairway to Heaven.”

  The Bachus was an ancient onion-domed church set smack-dab against the Green Line. The top of the Green Line wall was coiled with barbed wire.

  “What the fuck?” asked Vlad.

  “We know some vespers,” I said.

  “Mr. Ataturk knows what the American and German tourists want. Not church services. So Thursday and Saturday night, he has the rock and roll.” Tonight was Thursday.

  We stepped between concrete pylons designed to dissuade car bombers.

  Inside there was a good crowd already, sitting in the pews, tourist-types, dressed in baggy shorts and baseball caps and Gold's Gym Santorini T-shirts. I spied an emo or three with black hair in their eyes and dour looks on their faces. There was a distinct lack of smoke, only that old dusty church smell, the smell of ancient places I always found comforting.

  Light through stained-glass windows picturing saints and Jesus cast peaceful patterns on the concert-goers.

  Toward the back was a neon-lit table at which sat an elderly jowly man with slicked-back white hair, two muscled skinheads I took for bodyguards, and a cute chick in a headscarf. It was a big table, and the old man motioned us to join him.

  “I am Felix Ataturk. You are the Dharma Bums?” asked the old man.

  “Downtown Dharma, sir,” I said. “Dharma Bums is a group from way back.”

  “You look like you are from way back, as well. But I have seen the video of your Lyon show. Tell me, what inspires men of middle years to keep touring when your contemporaries have become lorry drivers or at best house bands at Atlantic City casinos?”

  “Don't give up on us baby, we can still come thr—” Rick started, and I kicked his ankle.

  I breathed mindfully. “We're past wanting to be big stars,” I said.

  “We have a mission bigger than rock and roll,” Vlad said.

  “Ah.” He looked toward the cute girl. “Shayla, why don't you get these young men drinks. Is beer okay?”

  Shayla smiled, but I could see resentment in her eyes.

  “Just a soda-pop for Rick,” I said.

  When she had gone, Felix Ataturk said, “She does not know her place yet. She has too many Western ideas, mixed with too many fundamentalist ideas. Ali would like to marry her, but tell me, how often have you seen him pray?”

  “I do not pray for an audience,” Ali said, but his face turned red.


  It seemed unkind to put Ali on the spot like that.

  Vlad changed the subject by telling Ataturk our plans for uniting Islam and the West.

  The bodyguards snickered.

  Ataturk drank from a gin and tonic. “You are too old for that kind of idealism. You must become realists, if you want to live much longer. I would have thought Como would have instilled common sense into your heads.”

  “Como inspired us, Mr. Ataturk,” I said. “If we don't do our small part, how can things ever get any better. I mean, look at U2. They do good shit.”

  “U2 are the richest men in Ireland,” Ataturk said. “They have millions to give. They have two hundred security guards at their performances. Perhaps you should follow their example.”

  “I could fire missiles from my drumsticks!” Rick said.

  Ataturk was saved from responding to this inanity by Shayla, who brought back four drinks on a tray.

  One of the bodyguards said something jokingly to her in Greek that did not make her smile.

  Ali attempted to pay for his beer, but she pushed his cash away. “I am not your hostess.”

  “Shayla is my daughter,” Ataturk said. “Beyond that she will define herself as she will. She can play hostess. She can play ice-queen. She can play fundie. She can even play the bass guitar.”

  “Nei, papagia,” which even I could recognize was Greek, not Turkish.

  Ataturk glowered and drank from his gin and tonic.

  “I could drink too, but I do not,” Shayla said. “The Prophet forbids it.”

  “Good reason for that,” Rick said. “He would have forbidden benzos, too. They can destroy you surely as whiskey.”

  Shayla glared at Ali. “You told them?”

  Ali drank from his beer, then said something angrily in Turkish.

  “Let us speak in English for our American friends,” Ataturk said. “You have had a problem with prescription drugs, Rick?”

  “Oh, yeah.” While sipping his Coke, he told the story of the Boston show. He exaggerated his Xanax usage and the severity of his seizure, giving his typical rock-star drug-abuser narcissistic spin. The interesting thing was not his B.S. but Shayla's reaction to it. Her brown eyes took on a moist glow. Her features, hawk nose, full lips, high cheekbones, which I'd initially gauged as merely cute suddenly became pretty. Maybe it's that it's hard to see the real women with those ugly scarves; you think they're nuns or chemo victims. Or maybe she was taking pity on Rick and her face had become softer. I'd seen chicks do that before. “Then I spent six weeks at the Betty Ford clinic.”

  Vlad rolled his eyes at the lie.

  “You too, Rickie?” Shayla asked. “That is where I went. After drinking the bourbon, and snorting the lines of coke before concerts. It was at Betty Ford that I found God.”

  “Dennis is my higher power,” Rick said. Then he looked abashed; he apparently didn't want to be so flip. “Do you really play bass?”

  She sneered like Billy Idol. “Do you really play the drums?”

  “Touché.” Rick unconsciously brushed the top of his head, like he still had a full head of hair. “Your band plays tonight, right?”

  Shayla nodded.

  “Well, maybe I could sit in with you. Just for a song?”

  “Maybe. I saw the video of your Lyon show. You have a steady beat, like Ringo Starr.”

  “Thanks,” Rick said. Vlad smirked. Saying you played like Ringo Starr was like saying you had the dependability of a metronome. Which, in Rick's case, was a compliment. “So you play tonight?”

  “My band is called Fatimah. We go on stage in a hour.”

  “I wouldn't do anything flashy.” He sipped his Coke. “I'm a professional. My wild youth is behind me.”

  “Your band will not like an American playing drums,” Ali said.

  “Stuff it, Ali-baba. They'll think it's cool.”

  “It is these kinds of transgressions that inspired madmen to spread Amanita in Istanbul.”

  Mr. Ataturk slammed his glass down so hard I thought it might crack the tabletop. “Ali Musharak, you have been friends with my family for many years. Shayla, while she was once very fond of you, has cooled in that regard. But neither of these facts gives you the license to speak to her rudely in front of guests.”

  “I apologize. Moving forward, I will strive to act as the gentleman, inshallah.”

  He swallowed a deep draught of beer.

  I sipped my beer. Even with the church setting, I was tense now, too. I figured Ali and Shayla had been engaged, and Shayla, in true rock-chick style, had dumped him. And there was this cultural divide thing, too. I didn't know how much anger was for show, how much was deep-seated and real. I had a couple bars of Xanax in my pocket for Rick (just in case) but was wondering if I might need them myself. “So,” I said, to break the silence, “what's this Amanita about?”

  “It is the Russians,” Ataturk said. “The FSB.”

  “It is the Submission Faction,” Ali said.

  “Nonsense,” Ataturk said. “The Submission Faction are medievalists. They believe in humors and the evil eye. They do not have the technology to manufacture drugs. The Russians, however, do. They seek to keep Cyprus divided so Turkey cannot join the E.U. fully.”

  “The Submission Faction delivers it to the target,” Ali said.

  “Perhaps. Any fool can carry a test tube.”

  “But what is it?” Rick asked, tense for the first time since he'd set eyes on Shayla.

  “It's a designer spore,” Vlad said. He'd been the one of us to read about it on the Internet. “Recombinant DNA. Luminescent growths like shrooms. Causes your skin to break out in all sorts of colorful ways.”

  “Internally, too,” Ataturk said. “Your lungs and sinuses bloom with sweet-smelling fungi until you asphyxiate.”

  “Heavy shit,” I said.

  Everyone was quiet. Then Shayla said, “It's a pretty way to die.”

  With her accent I couldn't tell whether she was perverse or sincere.

  The bodyguards made low jokes, in Greek or Turkish, then finally the night's first act took the stage, a rap-metal group, Plutonium Rhymes. Baseball caps and golden chains and those stupid gangsta hand signals. They rapped in cockney-sounding English about hating Americans, hating Armenians, hating Palestinians, hating Zionists, hating Kurds, hating Shiites, hating Saudis, hating Al Qaeda. At least they seemed equitable in their hatreds. Their guitarist was ace, though. It was nice to hear a rap act that could actually play instruments.

  “They do not speak about hating the Turks or the Greeks because they once spent a month in jail for that,” Ataturk said.

  The crowd was clapping, but merely politely; it was a church after all. But this pissed the guitarist off. He said, “No encore for you tonight, wankers!”

  And then he stormed off stage, to the hisses and boos of the audience. The rest of the band played on for a few bars then looked at each other, shrugged, and stood up. The turntable dude, shaved head and doleful eyes, apologized to the crowd, then left.

  The crowd politely clapped for him.

  Then Mr. Ataturk took the stage and introduced Fatimah.

  The crowd cheered.

  “Let us rock this house,” Shaylah said, as she tuned her guitar, feedback so loud I felt it in my beer mug.

  The band had a rhythm guitarist, an older guy with long hair like he was stuck in 1992, who seemed competent; but also a young dude, lead guitar, in a fedora and tattoos who kept trying Jimi Hendrix riffs at inappropriate times. The drummer, buff and shirtless, wearing a yarmulke, kept a solid beat.

  Their sound had the anger of Hole but the melodies of R.E.M.

  “They are good, are they not?” Ataturk asked. I allowed they were, though the lead guitarist needed some restraint.

  “They pack every club they play.”

  Shayla looked hot on stage. She'd taken off her black robe (leaving on the scarf), and was wearing jeans and a red mesh shirt that gave a good indication of the shape and color of her curves.
She put down her guitar and played an upright piano as she talked. “Allah's gift to us is our bodies. We must treat them with respect.” She thrust out her breasts as she said that: the crowd cheered. “We must display our beauty, but not let those with impure thoughts take the advantage of it. We must feed ourselves, but not at the expense of our health. Whiskey, gin, marijuana, cocaine, beer—and benzos—will all destroy what Allah has given us. And even our ears—we must take care to keep them from damage.” With that she stepped away from the piano, and inserted two foam ear plugs in her ears. “Now, back to the rocking.”

  The crowd whooped.

  She played a power chord.

  “She's so hot,” Rick said.

  “She is a whore,” Ali whispered, too soft for Ataturk to hear.

  “Dude, you need to come to America, so you can see some real ho's,” Vlad said.

  “I have lived in L.A., and been to Tulsa, and it made me sick.”

  They played a few more songs, political stuff, sure, but mild partly because the lyrics were downright opaque. She had a nice voice, well-timbred, and even when she screamed she kept in tune. She played some love songs. Even with those, the guitarist kept thrashing where calm would have been effective: hadn't he ever listened to Nirvana? And then she just played her guitar, the rest of the band quiet, and she stepped down from the stage, walking between the pews, back toward us. She started singing the Led Zep oldie, “Thank You,” and when she reached our table, she pulled off her head scarf. Her hair was lustrous black and longer than her shoulders and my god so sexy. Rick's eyes bulged. Even I got a hard on. But she wrapped the scarf around Ali's shoulder.

  He threw it to the floor.

  “Asshole,” Vlad whispered to me.

  Shayla stood there, still smiling. I noticed she had a narrow inch-long scar across one cheek. When she'd finished the song, she led Rick to the stage by the hand. There they played “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Rick was under control. Professional like he'd been the entire road trip. The crowd loved it. Or maybe they loved Shayla; who could tell?