Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014

by Penny Publications

  Carol's eyes practically bugged. "They let you go to Vietnam? In the Army?"

  "Sure," said Ulno, his voice a regretful whisper. "I wanted to. How could they stop me?"

  For a moment, there was no sound but the trickle of water and the heavy drone of insects. And then Janice stood and started rolling up the sleeves of her blouse and folding down the collar. "Why don't you two go for a swim?" she asked as she moved to a rock in the sun. "I want to catch some sun."

  It took a few minutes for Ulno to convince Carol to strip down for skinny-dipping, but it wasn't long before Janice could hear them both splashing and laughing in the pool. A little while later, the splashing stopped and the murmuring began. Janice knew what was going on—the same thing had happened back when she first met Ulno six years ago in Helena, after he was home from Vietnam.

  Slowly, somehow, acceptance must be sinking into Carol's brain by now. Sun-baked drowsiness would help with that. But yes, it would start to seem real. Maybe he really was the ice man. Maybe he really had spent all those years trapped in the ice of that glacier—high up above them in the cool air on the summit of Mt. Rebo.

  She'd ask, What were you doing up there?

  He'd murmur, Just climbing—just seeing how high I could go.

  What happened?

  I fell into a crevasse in the glacier. They were a lot larger back then—the glaciers, I mean. I wasn't hurt, but I couldn't get out. So eventually I froze.

  Were you aware that whole time?

  Not really, he'd say. It was like being asleep a long, long time. Dreams upon dreams upon dreams, whole lifetimes of dreams.

  Then she'd ask, Did you feel cold when it happened?

  No, he'd murmur. When you freeze, you don't feel cold. It's strange to say, but you feel warm.

  But your fingers... And everything else...

  Yes, he'd say.

  Oh, poor Ulno. You poor Hemingway hero!

  And moments later, of course, she'd find out that he wasn't such a Hemingway hero after all, when he responded the usual way to her kisses. There'd be a playful slap, and Carol would roll away, suddenly shy but not as offended as she would pretend.

  Even after all those years in the ice, Ulno still had sensation, nerves, reflexes. That was just a line that he had used on the girls back in Helena to win their pity and get their guard down. Somehow, Janice hadn't minded the deception when he'd used it on her.

  She hadn't even minded later when she found out about his fingers—how he had really lost those. Self-inflicted wounds in Vietnam, a dishonorable discharge, but a ticket home at least, back to the tract of nothing the government had given him by a poorly traveled highway. But he'd been too transient, too unsettled, too unambitious—so they had lost touch. At least until he opened the café. Then Janice had come back to him for a while.

  But then—it was hard to say. Who knows what happens? Things change, people grow older. Pretty soon they stopped spending nights together. It happened without a fight or a discussion or even a conscious decision. Just slowly, over time, they fell into different ruts, a little farther apart from each other.

  Janice hadn't known it before, but she was glad the café was gone. Maybe now, Ulno would find something else—something better. Something that would last longer and mean more.

  "All right, sleepy head," called Carol from the other side of the pool. Janice was suddenly aware that it was cooler now and windier. The sun had slipped behind Mt. Rebo. "If you want a ride back to the café, it's time to get up."

  Nobody spoke much on the ride back. The next day, there'd be no café to go to—no rut to fall into, no reason to see each other. Janice hadn't even thought about what she would do next. She had a little money saved, but not much. But she would find something to pass the time, until...

  Until she got another postcard from Ulno, like the one he had sent her in Helena after he'd opened the café. Short, unsentimental, promising nothing, but still able to make her heart jump. "Hi Janice—Long time, no see. Got a good gig going. Come visit sometime.—Ulno."

  That was it—the postcard that had directed the next four years of her life, both good and bad. And now it was all ending. But she could wait for the next one. Things would be different then. Things would work out. All Ulno needed was another new beginning.

  The jeep pulled into the café parking lot just as the sky started to turn indigo above them. Lonely stars poked out of that vast expanse, and Venus burned bright and yellow over the mountains on the horizon. Carol lingered over her goodbyes, but Ulno had gone quiet and cold. Finally, there was nothing left for her to do but leave.

  "Why don't you go, too?" asked Ulno.

  "I want to help you clean up."

  "Don't bother," said Ulno, but Janice followed him inside anyway. They tidied up here and there, but the café was mostly clean enough already. The tables were wiped; the dishes were washed. Ulno had thrown out most of the leftover food earlier that day.

  At last, for want of anything else to do, Janice wrote a phone number on the back of a paper placemat and passed it to Ulno.

  "What's this?"

  "You forgot to ask Carol for that tonight."

  Ulno shook his head. "I don't want this. She's nice, she's pretty... but it won't work. It'll be a few dates, and then nothing. I don't think I can take any more endings right now."

  Janice shrugged. "You should call her anyway."

  Ulno balled up the placemat and threw it in the empty garbage can. "Thanks for everything, Janice. But just let me finish up here alone." With that, he disappeared into the back, and Janice sat down on the same stool she always did when she had nothing else to do.

  When the clock on the wall clicked over to 10 P.M., Janice was aware that Ulno had been gone for a long time. Even spaced out like she had been, she would have heard him leave. And for the past half hour, she hadn't heard anything.

  The back of the café was dark and silent, lights mostly turned out and everything put away. When Janice got to the walk-in freezer door, she paused. A frown creased her lips and her eyebrow arched. Opening the door, she was greeted by a puff of frigid air and the sight of Ulno standing still, arms crossed over his chest, little bits of frost already beginning to form in his hair.

  Ulno's breathing had slowed, but Janice could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest if she watched close enough. She could still wake him up and—what? Give him a pep talk, send him on his way, and wait to hear from him again in a few years when he had his next gig figured out?

  Janice suddenly felt ashamed of what she had tried to do with Carol. She had pretended to herself that she was doing Ulno a favor, trying to make him feel better by setting him up with somebody young and pretty and new. But she knew that she had only done it because he was down. She had been trying to bum him off on somebody else while things were bad, so she could pick him up again when things got good. Some friend she was. No wonder they always drifted apart.

  Still, going to sleep in the freezer wasn't exactly a long-term solution either. It would be one thing if Ulno could just wake up again after another ten thousand years—wipe everything clean and start new for a third time. But once he stopped paying the electric bill, they'd shut his power off in two or three months. At best, this plan would get him through to November.

  Janice reached out to wake Ulno, but then stopped short. She thought instead about where she'd be in November. Probably living in half of a cheap apartment, working some crummy job, eating canned soup and dried pasta off a hot plate. It wasn't much. It wasn't anything at all, really. If she had more time, maybe she could do something better. Or maybe she just wasn't that kind of person. But she didn't think it was fair to expect Ulno to always come up with the plans and make them happen. And neither was it fair to her to always have to shoehorn herself into a life already in progress.

  Shutting the door to the freezer again, Janice went back to the front of the café. She didn't have a postcard, so she used the back of another placemat. "Hi Ulno," she wrote. "Three m
onths isn't long enough to get anything going. But if you want, we can figure it out together. Love, Janice."

  Then she taped the placemat to the freezer door, shut out the last few lights in the café, and went back out to the parking lot. Overhead, the Milky Way was starting to show high up above; a ribbon of faint luminescence that went around and around and around the Earth without stopping.

  Maybe he'd come, and maybe he wouldn't. But all Janice could do was put the invitation out there. He'd often told her, half joking and half serious, that he'd been a pretty good caveman once upon a time. But Janice knew he couldn't have done that by himself. Hunters always needed gatherers. That was part of what made humans the way they were.

  But for now, Ulno could have three months of dreams. And in that time, Janice would start what she could for herself, no matter how little that might be.

  Just one minute later, she was already headed down the road.

  * * *

  THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL HORSEMASTER RABBIS OF MPUMALANGA PROVINCE

  Sarah Pinsker | 5445 words

  Sarah Pinsker is a singer-songwriter with three albums and a fourth in production. Her fiction publications include stories in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction. Sarah lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her website is http://www.sarahpinsker.com and you can follow her at http://www.twitter.com/sarahpinsker . The author's first tale for Asimov's focuses a camera lens on love, loss, and...

  I. Options for an Imagined Pictorial Eulogy of Oliver Haifetz-Perec

  IMAGE 1: The photograph depicts an unmade bed covered in gear and clothing. A military-style duffel, half filled, dominates the shot. A camera bag sits next to it, cameras and lenses and lens cleaners laid out neatly alongside.

  IMAGE 2: Shot from the center of the bed. A shirtless man reaches for something high in the closet. He has the too-thin build of an endurance runner, his bare back lanky and muscled. There is a permanent notch in his left shoulder, from where his camera bag rests. A furrow across his back tells of a bullet graze in Afghanistan. The contrast of his skin and his faded jeans plays well in black and white. A mirror on the dresser catches Yona Haifetz-Perec in the act of snapping the picture, her face obscured but her inclusion clearly deliberate. Multiple subjects, multiple stories.

  IMAGE 3: This photograph does not actually exist. A third person in the room might have taken an intimate portrait of the two alone in their Tel Aviv apartment, photographers once again becoming subjects. A third person might have depicted the way her freckled arms wrapped around his torso, tender but not possessive. It might have shown the serious looks on both of their faces, the way each tried to mask anxiety, showing concern to the room, but not each other. They have the same career. They accept the inherent risks. They don't look into each other's faces, but merely press closer. It would have been the last photograph of the two together. Eleven days later, he is beaten to death in Uganda. His press credentials, his passport, his cameras, his memory cards, and cash are all found with his body; it isn't a robbery. Since the third option doesn't exist, the last picture of Yona and Oliver is the one that she took from the bed: his strong back, her camera's eye.

  IMAGE 4: A Ugandan journalist sent Yona a clipping about Oliver's death. A photo accompanies the article. It shows a body, Oliver's body, lying in the street. Yona doesn't know why anyone would think she would want to see that photograph. She does; she doesn't. She could include it, make people face his death head on.

  Instead she opts for

  IMAGE 5: in which Oliver plays football with some children in Kampala, his dreadlocks flying, his smile unguarded (photographer unknown), and IMAGE 6.

  IMAGE 6: The only photo in this collection which was actually taken by Oliver Haifetz-Perec, photojournalist. It is a portrait of Lutalo, the Ugandan gay activist he was there to meet. The camera's gaze is unflinching, as is Lutalo's. His pseudonym means "warrior." The scar across his cheek and nose is the first thing that catches the viewer's attention, traveling from upper left to lower right of his face, the natural path of any English reader's eye. The lighting of the shot highlights the scar rather than diminishing it. Oliver was killed when he intervened in an attack on Lutalo, who managed to escape into hiding. This is a small comfort to Yona, the idea that Oliver's murder was not meaningless. She holds it to her chest when she tries to sleep at night. She wonders why Oliver stepped in, when he had always sworn by his journalistic objectivity, and if she would have done the same. She has always thought of herself as a witness, though she knows that her presence is in itself an imposition on the scene. The photograph of Lutalo is the last one on Oliver's memory card.

  II. No Photos

  All that Yona saw of Johannesburg, she saw from the descending airplane. She didn't bother to take photographs, hadn't taken any in months, though she knew she'd have to get over that soon enough. In any case, the plastic window would ruin any shot she composed.

  Between questions about whether she was sure she was ready to return to work, her editor had warned her to expect secrecy, to accept a blindfold and an undisclosed location. She had assured Mel that she would be fine. In truth, she knew she would welcome the chance to get out of the apartment and away from the constant reminders of Oliver. A recently rediscovered village sounded interesting enough.

  Her contact met her at baggage claim. He was tall, six feet at least. His polo shirt and khakis made him look like the drivers from the game parks. They all had com puter-printed signs, though, whereas he had handwritten her name on a piece of cardboard and drawn a camera next to it.

  "Welcome," he said. "My name is Odwa Mabuya. Chief Project Manager. I know you must be nervous to go with a stranger. I hope you understand our precautions." His English was accented but fluent. She wondered why he had come to pick her up himself, instead of sending someone.

  She shook his hand. "In my line of work I've gotten in a lot of cars with strangers, but you're definitely the first to blindfold me."

  "We hope you understand the need once you see what we are protecting."

  "Some sort of lost tribe?" she asked.

  He smiled. "Ja. Exactly."

  He took her duffel—Oliver's duffel—but let her carry her own camera bag to the parking lot. They arrived at a small white pickup truck. He put her bag on the seat and proceeded to go through it without apology. She offered her camera bag, and he did the same cursory examination. He searched her pockets as well, in a manner that was both awkward and professional. No hands strayed where they shouldn't have, but he seemed uncomfortable with the process. Her phone, her earplugs, her passport, her sleeping pills, her anti-malarial pills: all went into a pouch that he wore around his neck. Everything else he stowed in the small space behind the seat of his truck. He motioned for her to climb in.

  "Sorry," he said. He handed her an airline-issue sleep mask patterned with snoring sheep. Yona wondered what anyone else in the parking lot thought of this, if they were watching. She put the mask on. These were the terms to which she had agreed.

  "Would you like one of your pills to sleep?" he asked. "The journey is long, and you may feel ill from the bouncing of the bakkie —the truck—without your eyes to warn you. My bakkie has terrible shock absorbers."

  She wanted to say no, wanted at least some sense of where they were going, but as she opened her mouth to do so, the energy to argue drained from her. She was tired, and she would only be frustrated by her inability to see her surroundings. All the pictures untaken.

  "Yes, please. Just a half." She held out her hand.

  She dreamed of the night before Oliver had left for Uganda. Clothing and cameras and documents were strewn across every surface as he tried to choose what would come with him this time. At some point he had given up on packing and pressed her to him.

  "It's only three weeks," she said. "We've been apart three weeks before, dozens of times."

  "Not since the wedding. It feels different somehow."

  "It's no different, Ollie. I'll do my assignment, you do yours, and we'll
be back here in no time, with three months all to ourselves."

  He kissed the top of her head and drew back to look into her eyes. "You promise?"

  She opened her mouth to agree, but in the moment she blinked, his face was not his face anymore. Or rather, it was his face, but bloodied and bruised, his eyes gone, the sockets smashed.

  "I promise," she said, hoping he believed her.

  "Are you okay?"

  It took a moment for her to orient herself. The air whipped by the open windows of the vehicle and the evening sun warmed her face. Her head felt stuffed with cotton.

  "Just a bad dream," she said, still drifting.

  She woke again as the vehicle slowed. She heard the hum of a powerful electric fence. The hairs on her arms stood up.

  "Are you awake?" Odwa asked once they had passed the fence. "You can remove the blindfold now. We are here."

  After the drug and the darkness, Yona could barely keep her eyes open. Still, she wanted to see everything; she had already missed so much. She glanced at the tall fence receding in the truck's mirrors. In front, the pavement had given way to two well-worn furrows through the grass. Where was here? She wasn't supposed to know, yet she couldn't help but wonder. She had landed at midday and it was almost dusk now. She judged by the placement of the sun that they were driving north and east.

  "Do I get to know anything about where we are?"

  "Mpumalanga."

  That narrowed it down to a province, at least. She felt a familiar pull, for the first time in months. "May I start taking photographs?"

  "Ja."

  She twisted to reach her camera bag and pulled out the Nikon D4.

  III: Web Extra: Select Photographs from Yona Haifetz-Perec's Trip Journal

  SHOT 1: The guide in profile. His Bafana Bafana cap obscures his eyes. His right hand is on the wheel, his left on the gearshift. The setting sun is directly behind the photographer, putting Odwa's face into sharp relief. He smiles for the camera, an easy smile.