Isaac Asimov's SF-Lite

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “He is suffering the agonies of the damned.”

  “Wonderful. And Agatha Dorothy Lissauer, who became a critic, is also still suffering, is she not?”

  “If anything, more than Hazeltine is.”

  “And they will continue to suffer forever?”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “Well,” I said, “no one can ever say that I am a vicious person or that I hold grudges. All who know me speak favorably of my sunny disposition and my ability to forgive and forget. But I do make some exceptions. George, for once you don’t have to ask me for anything. Here is twenty dollars. If Azazel has any use for Earthly money, give him half.”

  THE DAY THE INVADERS CAME

  O. Niemand

  “The Day the Invaders Came ” was purchased by Shawna McCarthy, and appeared in the Mid-December 1984 issue of Asimov’s, with a clever illustration by O. Niemand himself. O. Niemand is the pseudonym of a well-known SF writer, who, for a number of years now, has been producing a string of SF stories written as homages in the voices of various prominent dead American authors. In the past, Niemand has given us brilliant homages to authors such as Steinbeck, Hemingway, Damon Runyon, and Flannery O’Connor—several of these have appeared in Asimov’s, under two different editors now. In fact, to my knowledge, O. Niemand is the only pseudonymous author ever to have had a cover story in Asimov’s (the late James Tiptree, Jr. had a cover story here, but that was after the secret of her identity was generally known). I hope to coax Niemand to contribute more of these little gems in the future.

  Here, Niemand turns his attention to one of the funniest American writers ever published, James Thurber, and manages to catch him exactly—if Thurber ever had written science fiction, then, by golly, this is just what it would have been like!

  * * *

  Some readers have written to me about the way I portray my grandfather in these stories. They complain that he's shown as a cranky, cantankerous old galoot, and that he was shut up in the attic just because he sometimes forgot what year it was. “You’re awful cruel, son,” wrote one correspondent, “so let that nice old codger out from the attic for a change!” Well, I suppose there is some truth in the accusation, although it was never I who put him up there—mostly grandfather retreated to the attic when the rest of our excitable family started to give him the nervous jimjams. He came downstairs often enough when he felt better, and whenever he did he caused some kind of ruckus. That’s what happened the day he defended Springfield when the invaders came.

  We were living in a big white house at 154 State Street, about a half mile from the wall of the dome. We were so close to the dome that from the attic window, which we could look out of only when grandfather was out of the house on one of his mysterious errands, we thought we could see beyond to the lifeless black face of the asteroid itself. My father tried to explain that we simply couldn’t see craters from our house, because the dome was tinted a deep green and the artificial sunlight made it impossible to see out. That didn't stop me from believing that I could see craters. My younger brother, Parren, told a story for years about the dinosaur he had glimpsed creeping among the rills and ridges beyond the dome. We all told him that was impossible, too, but he just got stubborn and maintained that he'd seen what he had seen. My mother had the experience once of imagining that she'd observed a large three-masted sailing vessel scudding across the barren landscape, sails billowing full in the wind. My father almost went berserk. “There isn't any wind out there,” he argued. My mother just shook her head defiantly. She said that she had awakened Parren, who slept in the same room with her, and pointed it out to him; but Parren reported that nothing of the sort had happened. My mother tried to make a deal with him, offering to believe in his dinosaur if he’d believe in her ship, but Parren didn’t care about such a thing. He knew he had seen his dinosaur, and he didn’t need mother’s insincere testimony to support his claim.

  Grandfather was also fascinated by the forbidding territory beyond the dome. He disappeared sometimes, and when he returned he brought back wild tales of his adventures out on the nightside of the asteroid. He generally had one of two kinds of stories: either he prospected among the low hills, certain that gold and jewels and other riches were just waiting to be discovered; or else he fancied that the treacherous Cycladians were planning a sneak attack on Springfield, and that he had to hurry to his observation post. Grandfather had been in the army during the war with the Cycladians, but that had been more than sixty years ago, and peace had been made with them a long time ago. Even during the war, they had never come nearer to Springfield than four or five light-years. Grandfather had never seen any Cycladians in his entire life. He didn’t even know what they looked like.

  Still, every few months he borrowed father’s groundcar and raced across the asteroid to an abandoned shack near the dayside. That is what happened on the morning of the day the invaders came. Our maid, Melia, came into the kitchen with a tray. “The old gennamun he ain’t there,” she said. She put grandfather’s breakfast on the table, and my older brother, Rys, who had finished his own, began to eat grandfather’s.

  Mother’s expression grew worried. She looked at me. “Go tell your father,” she said. “Wake him up and tell him that grandfather’s gone again.” I didn’t like the job of waking my father, but you didn’t argue with mother about things like that. You didn’t argue with her about anything.

  My father’s reaction was less concerned. He had been through all of this many times before; it just meant renting another groundcar and fetching grandfather home again. Whether grandfather was poking around for gold or keeping a weather eye out for the Cycladians, our task would be long and tiresome.

  My brothers and I always looked forward to these expeditions, but my mother continued to fret and my father was just plain annoyed. We climbed into the rented groundcar, my parents in the front and the three of us behind them. Mother, as was her habit, gave my father directions in an appalled tone of voice, convinced of the imminent destruction of her entire family and her with it My father, in retaliation, kept growling that we should lay off the arguing and wrestling in the back seat. And so the time passed as we emerged from the nightside portal and hurried toward grandfather’s fortress.

  We did not get outside the dome very often, so these drives were something of a treat, although the truth was that one part of the asteroid looked exactly like any other part. The darkness and the silence frightened my mother. I know, and my father was never enthusiastic about leaving the dome, either: but my brothers and I always stared with wide-open eyes at the grim terrain. “Here’s where the dinosaur was,” said Parren at one point. I heard my father sigh.

  “How can you tell?” demanded Rys.

  “I can see its tracks,” replied my younger brother. We were all tired of hearing about his dinosaur, so no further inquiry was made. We weren’t far, in any event, from our destination.

  We checked each other’s pressure suits and climbed out of the groundcar. Father led us through the shack’s airlock, and when we were safely inside we shucked out of the heavy suits. Grandfather was astonished to see us. but it put him in good spirits. “Boy howdy,” he cried, “reinforcements!”

  “The Cycladians are coming again,” said my mother sadly.

  “I smell them varmints.” said grandfather. “They'll attack at dawn.”

  One of grandfather’s other little crotchets was his distrust of certain modern conveniences. He had no truck with any sort of power that came out of atoms. The shack was equipped with nuclear-generated electrical lights and heat, but grandfather had long ago supplied the place with lanterns and a pot-bellied stove. We looked at each other in the flickering dimness and knew there was nothing we could do until grandfather’s mood changed. He grasped his ancient rifle, ready to prevent any of us from leaving the outpost. He always was a strict one for discipline, even among green recruit reinforcements like us.

  My father, knowing that it was very likely a hopeless task, att
empted to reason with grandfather. “This asteroid has a nightside and a dayside,” he said. “There isn’t going to be a dawn. Ever.”

  “Ye be as skeered as a duck in thunder,” cried grandfather. “Don’t worry, boy. They can’t creep up on me.”

  “But if you stand there looking out that port and waiting for the sun to come up, you’re going to have a long wait!” shouted father in exasperation.

  Grandfather gave a short, courageous smile. “They reckon they’re goin’t’ ketch me unawares, but I know they’re comin’. That’s my secret, boy.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Parren.

  “You new men air purt near alius hungry,” said grandfather sternly. “We’re on short rations here. It’s your skin ye ought t’ be worried about, not your stummick.”

  “And I’m cold, too,” complained my younger brother. There was a small box filled with coal, and Parren scooped some of the black lumps into the stove. The fire flared and the temperature in the shack fluttered up a degree or two.

  Father had made no progress with his calm approach, and he had no more success with any other. Mother joined him in begging grandfather to come home with us, but the old coot only became angry. “Ye’re askin’ me to desert my post!” he shouted. “What air ye, spies for them varmints? Is that it? Just think o’ your mothers and sisters, dependin’ on ye at home!”

  “We don’t have any sisters,” said Rys. “And mother’s here with us.”

  “All the more reason,” snarled grandfather. He turned back to his duty. The hours passed, the shack got colder, and dawn was as far away as ever. Eventually Parren got tired and fell asleep in mother’s lap. Rys threw the rest of the coal into the stove and huddled up against me for warmth. Father glowered by himself in one comer, and grandfather stood wakeful and watchful at the shack’s single port.

  When we awoke we had no idea what time it was. It was still night, of course, but several hours at least had passed. It was very cold in the shack, because the fire in the pot-bellied stove had gone out. Grandfather sat on the floor beneath the port, his rifle beside him. He was studying us closely. “It’s time ye woke up,” he said.

  “Didn’t you sleep, Pa?” asked mother.

  “How could I sleep?” demanded grandfather. “It’s colder'n a freezer full o’ shorn sheep.”

  “Put some more coal in the stove,” said Rys, yawning and shivering.

  “Coal?” asked grandfather “Air ye crazy? What coal?”

  Father explained that the previous night Parren had dumped a boxful of coal into the stove; and, he asked, was there any more? Grandfather grimaced and made some remarks about how weak-minded the younger people were these days. He usually didn’t spend very much time in the cold shack, he said, because he'd rather be out in the hills, looking for gold and jewels. It was very obvious to all of us that grandfather had forgotten all about the Cycladian menace, and this was good news all around. It meant that we might be able to go home soon.

  Grandfather had similar suspicions. “Ye come out here t'honeyfogle me back t’ the goddam dome with ye,” he snapped.

  Father wore a strained smile and he patted the air in what he must have thought was a reassuring gesture. “It's cold here,” he said, “and it’s nice and warm at home.” Grandfather snorted. “But d’ye have gold and jewels layin’ about at home?” I was going to point out that grandfather didn't have gold and jewels laying about here either, but I kept my thought to myself. I learned at an early age that in a situation of this delicacy, sense and logic have little place.

  It developed in the end that grandfather, in his less militant frame of mind, was easily persuaded. We let him think that he might slip away from us another day, and that the gold and jewels weren’t going anywhere. At last, mummified once again in our pressure suits, we made our way from the old shack to the groundcars. Grandfather wanted to drive, but my mother wouldn’t allow it. Father drove his own car, and Rys drove the rented one.

  The trip home was made in relative peace; grandfather lapsed into a sulky silence, and Parren and I dozed. Just before we arrived at the nightside portal, however, grandfather said something that roused us. “What was all that flummery about coal?” he wanted to know. Mother repeated the story of the night before, but grandfather shook his head vigorously. “Don’t ye know where coal comes from, girl?” he cried. “There ain’t ever been anything alive on this goddam asteroid. Ye’d be as like to find coal here as tits on a boar hog. It’d be worth more’n its weight in gold and jewels.” We just looked at each other. Back in the dome, the coal would have made everyone change their ideas about where Springfield had come from. Maybe our chunk of space debris had once been part of some larger world. It was too late for idle guesses now, though. We’d burned every bit of evidence.

  Later we tried to find out where grandfather had found the coal, but he refused to admit that it ever existed. He got so tired of the argument that he never went prospecting again. From that day on, whenever he disappeared, it was to go fight the Cycladian invaders. That made it even more difficult to fetch him home, and soon my father didn’t want to have anything more to do with the matter. My older brother, Rys, took over the job of going after grandfather.

  My mother, however, only let out a wistful sigh now and then. “It sure would have been nice to’ve saved a piece of that coal,” she would say. “It sure would have been nice to be rich.” She was probably right about that.

  NINETENTHS OF THE LAW

  Susan Casper

  “Nine Tenths of the Law” was purchased by Sheila Williams (to whom buying authority had been delegated in this case by Casper's husband, Gardner Dozois), and appeared in the July 1991 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by Bob Walters. It was one of several sales Casper has made to the magazine, going all the way back to the second issue we ever published, in 1977, for which she contributed a word-search puzzle. Susan Casper has also soldfiction to Playboy, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The Twilight Zone Magazine, and to many original horror anthologies. She is co-editor, with Gardner Dozois, of the horror anthology Ripper! an d has just completed her first novel, The Red Carnival.

  Here she gives us a wry look at a woman who discovers that she's not quite herself after surgery. . . .

  * * *

  Mrs. Birnbaum found herself looking down at her own body. She had read about things like that in The National Enquirer, and The Star, but she was never really sure that she believed everything she read in those newspapers. She felt the sudden urge to reach out toward herself and found that the arm stretched out in front of her was thick and muscular, covered in dark black hair. The nails on the hand were neatly clipped rather than sculpted. It was then that she glanced at herself. She was wearing surgical greens and her chest was actually flat enough to allow her to see her shoes—ugly affairs with gum soles and velcro closures. “Minor surgery. What could go wrong?” she wailed. To her horror, the words came out in a deep, masculine voice.

  “Mike, pull yourself together,” someone shouted. It took a moment for her to realize that he was talking to her. “There wasn’t anything we could do.” He reached out a hand in comfort.

  “Mike-Schmike,” she answered, pushing the offending hand away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned and marched out of the operating room.

  Across the hall was a small, glassed-in area. She spotted her doctor, Dr. Sanderson, talking to her daughter, Sharon. The sound of his voice didn’t reach her, but Sharon was in tears. How dare he upset the poor girl like that. Mrs. Birnbaum walked into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Sanderson was saying. “We didn’t expect it. We don’t know exactly what happened yet. There’s always some risk involved in surgery. We did everything that we could.”

  “What are you telling her?” Mrs. Birnbaum asked. Before he could answer, Sharon leapt off the chair and threw her arms around Mrs. Birnbaum and began weeping piteously on her shoulder. “There, there,” Mrs. Birnbaum said, patting he
r daughter’s back. At least someone knew who she was.

  “Oh, Mike,” Sharon sobbed.

  “Dr. Cohen, I’ll leave her with you,” Dr. Sanderson said.

  “So what’s this Dr. Cohen stuff?” she asked, looking around to see who else was there. The three of them were alone.

  “Dr. Cohen, your humor seems very inappropriate,” Dr. Sanderson said. At the same time, Sharon pulled back and said. “Mike?”

  “Why does everyone keep calling me Mike Cohen? You know perfectly well that I,” she said, puffing out her chest and putting her chin up, “am Reba Birnbaum. And you. . .” she added, turning to Sharon, “you ungrateful little girl. Denying your own mother. After all I went through for you. All the sacrifices. I carried you for nine months. Almost ten. You weren’t an easy delivery', you know. I almost died.”

  Dr. Sanderson turned and stormed out of the room.

  “Mother?” Sharon said, staring up at her quizzically. Her face was ashen.

  “It’s okay. Grab your coat. I’ll explain everything in the car,” Mrs. Birnbaum said, only w hat was there to explain? She had no idea herself w hat had happened. She took Sharon’s hand and led her down the hall. “So where's your father?” she asked as they walked.

  “He’s home. He doesn’t know yet." Sharon answered.

  “Great! I’m dying and Nate’s in bed watching football.”

  “That’s not fair,” Sharon snapped. “Mother told him not to come. I mean you told ... I mean ... oh, I'm so confused." She began to cry again.

  “Stop that,” her mother ordered. “Where did they put my coat?” She led Sharon to the elevator and pressed for the fifth floor. Her hospital room was 515. The door was closed and the little curtain drawn, but Mrs. Birnbaum paid no attention. She pushed the door open and dragged Sharon inside. A nurse was bending over the patient in bed A.