Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014

by Penny Publications

  The terrace on the day side's fourth level had a rich, mosaic tile floor and ivy-traced Doric columns supporting the roof. It cantilevered out from the building, hundreds of feet above the ground level pool where Oxford had landed. Twelve people sat at three round tables at the far end of the terrace. They sat facing the building, watching him approach. DuFresne had to be the big man sitting in the middle.

  Oxford marched up to the table before he had a chance to lose his nerve. He slammed his hand down on it, making the plates jump and overturning a tumbler full of something that might have been iced tea. "Mr. DuFresne, I want my wife back!"

  The man was shirtless. Bodybuilder muscles rippled across his chest as he waved his hand. The glass was upright again, and full. The spill was gone. "Okay," he said.

  "Okay?" Oxford was stunned. After everything he'd been through, it was this simple? "That's it?"

  "Well," DuFresne said, smiling, "since I don't know who your wife is, and I don't know who you are, what am I supposed to say?"

  "You've kidnapped her, you bastard!" Oxford leaned over the table, causing some of the other men to shift in their seats, ready to jump him, no doubt. "You're holding her here and I've come to get her back."

  "Are you nuts? I don't even know if you can kidnap someone in the AL." He pointed his PAL at Oxford. "Oh. Well, maybe you can, but I sure as hell can't."

  The others looked at their own PALs and eased back in their seats.

  DuFresne shrugged, a motion that seemed to involve about twenty pounds of muscle. "I have no quarrel with the narcs, Mr. B. Nor do I want one," he said. "What's your wife's name?"

  "Emily Brown."

  He looked around the table. "Anyone know her?"

  "Oh, Emily," a man on Oxford's right said. He snapped his fingers as he spoke. "She's, uh, Sasha and Serge's friend's—friend's friend. I met her once. Saw her about an hour ago up at the Sky Pool."

  "There," DuFresne said, smiling. "See? Simple and quiet. Two flights up to the top level and follow the signs."

  Oxford looked at DuFresne carefully. "No tricks?" he said.

  DuFresne raised his hands a few inches. "No quarrel, remember?"

  "Then, thanks," Oxford said. He started to leave, but stopped and turned back. He might be in this world for a long, long time. He nodded to DuFresne. "My apologies," he said. "I shouldn't have been so rude."

  DuFresne looked surprised. "Don't mention it," he said. "In fact—" he grabbed his PAL and pointed it at Oxford. "—that's an invite tag. It'll pop you right to the front door. Come back any time."

  "Thanks again," Oxford said. He turned to leave again.

  "And, Sheriff?" DuFresne said.

  Oxford turned back. Sheriff? Bones had been chatting, it seemed. The word was out that Mr. B. was some kind of super narc enforcer, floating serious mojo.

  "Whoever this woman really is," DuFresne said, "and whatever she did, I had nothing to do with it."

  Oxford nodded, as if an understanding had been reached between stealthy adversaries. Or, at least, that's how he pictured it in his head. He turned away and forced himself to walk slowly. Once at the stairs, though, and out of sight from the balcony, he ran. Pushing his twenty-year-old legs as fast as they'd go, he raced up the stairs. At the top, he took a right, then a left, and came out into the sunlight on the patio of the Sky Pool.

  He thought the place was empty until he saw the top of someone's head poking above a lounge chair. He rushed over and looked down at the chair's occupant. It was a woman—naked, again!—but it wasn't Emily.

  Oxford focused on her eyes, trying to decide whether to apologize first or just ask after Emily or stand over behind the chair and— "Can I help you?" she said. But her face triggered a memory, an old one. Something happy. Something carefree. Something—college! The old Pizza and Beer Club. "Livie?" he said. "Livie Coleman? How crazy is this? Of all places." AftrLyf was turning out to be a small world.

  "No one calls me—Oh, my god. Oxford!" She jumped out of the chair. Oxford backed up a step, afraid she'd want to hug him or something, but she didn't. She grabbed the towel off the lounge chair and held it in front of her, standing with her back to the pool. She shook her head and was suddenly wearing a thick, fluffy robe. "How did you—I mean, I know how, but when did—?"

  "I'm looking for Emily," he said. "Have you seen her? Is she here?"

  She glanced over his shoulder, then quickly back to his face. "I—" was all she said.

  Oxford turned around to find another woman standing just ten feet away. She, too, was naked, but he knew that body, and he knew that face. There was no embarrassment at all, at least not for him. He blinked, and she was suddenly wearing a straight, brown skirt and a white blouse with a little bow at the throat. Her hair was dry and pulled back behind her head.

  "Hello, Oxford," Emily said.

  He rushed over to her, holding her close. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. "I've missed you," he said. "I've missed you so much."

  "I'm sorry you died," Emily said. "Was it very bad?"

  "It was nothing," he said. "After losing you, it was—"

  "I'm so sorry."

  "It's fine," Oxford said. "I've found you, now. We can be together again. Forever." "Emily!" Livie cried.

  Oxford glanced back at Livie, expecting her to be happy for them, but she wasn't.

  Those were tortured tears on her face.

  "He's my husband, Livie." Emily's tone had the weight of proclamation, the dull surety of litany. There was no sparkle to it. "He loved me and cared for me and did everything he could to make me happy. What else can I do?"

  "You can stay!" Livie cried.

  Emily's voice was softer now. "You knew this day would come."

  "Stay?" Oxford said, trying hard to catch up. Emily seemed happy and sad at the same time. And Livie just seemed— "You and Livie?" he said, at last.

  Emily put her hand on his cheek, staring into his eyes. "I do love you, Oxford," she said. "And if you want me to, I'll go with you and we'll be together just like we were and I'll never say a word."

  "But..."

  "But it's always been Livie."

  " 'O,' " Oxford said, thinking back to the time he'd read her diary, when he'd violated her trust so completely and changed both their lives because of it. She'd had a secret so precious, so important, all this time. And he'd never had a clue. "For Olivia."

  "Back in college, I never thought I could," Emily said, "or that Olivia would. And then there you were so sweet and caring and safe and I just—"

  "Settled," Oxford said.

  "It's not like that."

  "It is," he said. He smiled, trying to ease the hurt he saw in her face. "Not in a mean way, but in the way you don't know what's truly possible. You do what you can, because you don't think you can do more."

  "I was never unhappy, Oxford."

  "I believe you."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "Don't be," he said, stepping back. Hadn't part of him always known? He'd lived a lie, and he'd led her to live one too. But it had been a comfortable lie that they'd both been willing to settle for. "We had a lifetime together. I don't deserve more. What matters is that you're happy."

  "I am," Emily said. Then Livie ran into her arms, still crying.

  Oxford turned quietly and left, surprised to find that, deep down, part of him was happy, too.

  Oxford sat on the patio by one of the Last Resort's ground floor pools, watching everyone splash and play in the water. He wasn't sure just what to do next. His entire death so far had been focused on just one goal, and whether he chalked it up as a success or a failure, it was done. Now he was facing eternity with absolutely no idea what to do with it.

  "Howdy, Sheriff."

  Oxford turned to find Cassandra perched on the chair next to him. She was wearing a pair of cutoff shorts and a bikini top. It was a far cry from her seeserv business suit, but at least she was human.

  "I thought you were a cat in the zone," Oxford said.

 
; "You didn't notice?" she said. "House rules. Humans only."

  "Come to check up on me?"

  "I just thought you could use a friend." Oxford looked at her, trying to decide if she was lying or not. "You narcs take seeserv pretty seriously."

  "Listen to you, slinging the lingo like a zonie." She laughed, but quickly settled down into a more serious mood. "Honestly, Oxford, if you want to talk..."

  He nodded. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

  "I still don't know," she said, shaking her head. "I just know that when someone gets lost around here, it's usually because they don't want to be found. Speaking of which, Bones told me where he dropped you. How'd you find the bridge before the place shifted again?"

  "There's a bridge?"

  She laughed again. It was a nice laugh. "Come on, Oxford, tell me how."

  "Really," he said. "I sort of flew. Bounced. Flounced, maybe. It wasn't pretty."

  She looked at him for a moment, a curious expression on her face. "Maybe not," she finally said, "but it worked."

  "Of course." He spread his arms, taking in everything around him. "The zone is my natural habitat. You just see what you want to see and the world plays along."

  "Sometimes," Cassandra said. "Sometimes not."

  "Oh, that's right. Heaven's got bugs."

  "No." She stood up and her clothes transformed into a long, deep blue evening gown with an open back and a scandalous slit up the left side. She held out her hand to him. "But it has more than a few rats."

  He took her hand and stood up. He tried for a tux, but he couldn't get the bow tie right, so he left it with an open collar. "Where are we going?" he asked.

  "Down to the night side. There's a balcony spot where the stars are ferocious." She led him to the stairs and down, still holding his hand as if she were afraid he'd run away. "We can talk about you helping with the zone's rat problem."

  "Me?" His stomach flipped when the downward stairs suddenly became upward stairs. "Sheriff Brown, riding the red range with his high-end six-shooter mojo PAL?"

  "If you like," she said.

  She really did have a nice laugh. He pulled his hand from hers and offered her his arm instead. "Don't look so surprised," he said. "You know I'm the old fashioned kind."

  She smiled and took his arm. "And the world plays along," she said.

  * * *

  STEPPIN' RAZOR

  Maurice Broaddus | 13296 words

  www.MauriceBroaddus.com > has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Cemetery Dance, Apex, Black Static, and Weird Tales. He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books). Maurice has been a teaching artist for over five years, educating creative writing students of all ages. The author's first Asimov's tale takes place in a steampunk influenced Jamaica and provides us with a fascinating look at an alternate world history.

  "Some people have written the story of my life representing as truth what in fact derives from ignorance, error or envy; but they cannot shake the truth from its place, even if they attempt to make others believe it."

  —My Life and Ethiopia's Progress, Autobiography of H.M. Haile Selassie I

  I. Crazy Baldheads

  1988

  Desmond Coke no longer jumped at the thunder of artillery in the sky. They were the weapons of the age. Born in violence, Jamaica had been settled by bloodshed and held by cruelty. The great thrumming sound from the passing airships bristled the skin. Dry brown vines crunched under his weight as he leaned against the cotton tree's steel grey trunk with little concern of dirtying his suit. From his hillside vantage point, he watched the familiar panorama play out through mountaintop haze.

  Ominous shadows, like a shoal of slow moving whales, dove among the clouds. A f lag emblazoned across each of their massive hulls, the crosses of three saints formed the Union Jack. Impassive and smug, the passing battalion represented little more than bloated saber rattling in the name of the Albion Empire. Their standing mission to raze Accompong Town amounted to a bombing raid on the well fortified city. A vain effort, as the town, and much of the island, was reinforced to withstand hurricane assault, much less the tepid shelling of airships.

  Accompong Town launched artillery shells loaded with witchfire, petroleum refined to a gel that blazed with lava's white-hot fury when ignited. Neither side veered near enough to the other to do any real damage. The same dance repeated every few months as Albion warships violated Jamaican airspace on their way to other islands. Ostensibly securing their foothold in the American colony, the so-called United States, any incursion was strictly for show. Albion had its hands full warring with the Five Civilized Nations of the northwest territories and the Tejas Free Republic of the southwest territories.

  Waiting for the smoke to clear, Desmond pinched a pile of dried chiba leaves and rolled them into his spliff. Lighting his spliff and inhaling deeply, the smoke filled his lungs and came out in a ropey fog from his nostrils. The coarsely serrated alternate facing leaves of the chiba plants were to be admired in their own way. Versatile, it found its chief purpose through its intoxicating smoke.

  The cotton tree scraped his back as he shifted. Maroons considered cotton trees sacred. They believed duppies danced among the branches of those rooted in graveyards, the spirits free to play and flit about at whim. Muddled superstitions to some, Desmond clung to the old ways when they served him. No one would search him out where Old Hinge, that particularly fearsome duppy, hung her skin on branches as a warning before making mischief.

  The booms faded into a sputtering thunderstorm without rain. Distant rumbles no longer shook the ground and what passed for tranquility returned to the island. Desmond stabbed out his spliff against the tree and fixed a broken smile to his face, tucking the unsmoked portion into his pocket. Still in the rush of the heady smoke, his thoughts floated above reality, the world moving at a much slower pace as his languid steps took him back toward the Cobena Park estate. Crickets renewed their evening chirping. A damp heat clung to the air. Chickens dashed about, their fluttering wings objecting to his presence. A tinge of sorrow nagged him as he passed the wood shanties many of his brethren slept in when not in the fields. Young, listless, machete-wielding laborers who knew nothing of their heritage, up before sunrise; by moonrise still working. Even without the crack of the whip, without the smack of the cane, without a Massa to take away his pickney and sell them up the way. Unlike the Maroons, the rest of the Jamaican populace was made up of people who fled the Americas, the descendants of slaves. The Chinese. The Taino. Not to mention Albion's undesirables, her convicts, debtors, and dissidents. A proud tradition of exiles who settled the island but were not permitted to live in the Seven Cities of the Maroon.

  His life wasn't his own.

  Descended from the Ashanti people, the sixteen thousand Maroons formed the ruling class of Jamaica. The nation's immense wealth stemmed from its production of sugar cane and rum. And chiba, though no one discussed the herb in polite company. The Cobena Park estate was known chiefly for two crops: bananas and chiba. This allowed the family to own a number of indentured servants. Unlike in Albion or the Americas, Maroon servants were considered part of the family. That nuanced difference helped Jamaica's aristocracy lay their heads to pillow at night.

  "What took you so long?" August Cobena asked from behind a table in the kitchen.

  "I just now finished."

  "Come, nuh." August raised both his arms and waited in the middle of the large drawing room. As Desmond neared him, he realized the man wore only his white silk jumpa and a pair of briefs, thankfully covered by the fall of the collarless shirt. August nodded toward the pile of kente cloth. Its silk and cotton material ran smoothly over his fingers, a dark green pattern accented by yellow and black threads.

  Desmond draped the interwoven cloth strips around
August, thinking the man too old to be diapered like a child. He'd always considered August Cobena an avaricious man, whose tiny eyes gleamed from within his large face with a faraway gaze, as though staring through whoever he spoke to in order to fix them on his next goal. Black moles freckled his cheek, his smooth skin, dark like calf hide. His nose was too thin for his face and he never quite shut his mouth, leaving his fat tongue to loll on the cusp of his lips as if forgotten.

  Desmond dutifully wrapped the fabric around him, leaving the man's right shoulder and arm exposed, then allowing the remaining cloth to trail along the ground. It was a sign of prosperity, and August never allowed an opportunity to acknowledge the class differences between him and others to go unattended.

  Gaslit fixtures adorned the walls. Strictly an affectation of wealth well worth the extra heat produced. Putting on a pair of slippers, August moved toward the bar and poured himself a finger of colorless rum from a crystal decanter. The first glass went down in a single gulp. As did the second. He lingered on the third.

  "Are you ready?" Ninky Cobena's voice had both a nasal quality and a sing-song measure to it. Too tall, too loud, and too young—she was nearly thirty years August's junior—her wide hips and high breasts cut a remarkable profile despite her wrappings. Her kente wrap was the inverse pattern to August's: a rich yellow, with green patterns woven against black threads. She, too, wore her cloth around her body styled as a toga, over an undercloth of white lace. The other main difference was a red calico scarf wrapping her head like ivy around a statue, folded in half, tied and tucked. It accentuated her high cheekbones and full lips. Her every move was sure.

  Desmond backed away from the man and took his place in the corner of the room. The fact that they spoke English was the only acknowledgement he was present. The Maroon spoke Asante-Twi when they were among their own and English when obroni were present. Patois was spoken only by the "common" people. Desmond sat between them, among them yet unseen at the same time. Such was the power of class and caste, an accident of shade. All the better positioned to glean scraps of discarded conversation.