Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  It is our luggage. I recognize my battered Samsonite and the carry-on bags of the Japanese tour group. The flight attendants’ navy blue overnight cases are in front of the pile, strapped like victims to their wheeled carriers.

  On top of my suitcase is a book, and I think, “It’s the travel guide,” even though I know Zoe would never have left it behind, and I hurry over to pick it up.

  It is not Egypt Made Easy. It is my Death on the Nile, lying open and facedown the way Lissa left it on the boat, but I pick it up anyway and open it to the last pages, searching for the place where Hercule Poirot explains all the strange things that have been happening, where he solves the mystery.

  I cannot find it. I thumb back through the book, looking for a map. There is always a map in Agatha Christie, showing who had what stateroom on the ship, showing the stairways and the doors and the unimpressive rooms leading one into another, but I cannot find that either. The pages are covered with long unreadable columns of hieroglyphics.

  I close the book. “There’s no point in waiting for Zoe,” I say, looking past the luggage at the door to the next room. It is lower than the one I came through, and dark beyond. “She’s obviously gone on to the Hall of Judgment.”

  I walk over to the door, holding the book against my chest. There are stone steps leading down. I can see the top one in the dim light from the burial chamber. It is steep and very narrow.

  I toy briefly with the idea that it will not be so bad after all, that I am dreading it like the clergyman, and it will turn out to be not judgment but someone I know, a smiling bishop in a white suit, and mercy is not a modern refinement after all.

  “I have not murdered another,” I say, and my voice does not echo. “I have not committed adultery.”

  I take hold of the doorjamb with one hand so I won’t fall on the stairs. With the other I hold the book against me. “Get back, you evil ones,” I say. “Stay away. I adjure you in the name of Osiris and Poirot. My spells protect me. I know the way.”

  I begin my descent.

  DEAD MAN'S CURVE

  Terry Bisson

  ONE

  "You're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you," Hal said.

  "Probably not."

  "But I'm going to tell you anyway."

  "Probably are."

  "There is another world."

  "Probably is."

  "Camilla, quit acting silly. If you could see me over the phone, you'd know that I was serious. Another world! Besides this one."

  "Like Lechuguilla," I said. "Like the Ruwenzori."

  "No. Really different."

  "Like the Moon?"

  "The Moon is part of this world. I'm talking about something much, much more amazing. Get your clothes on, I'm coming over."

  "The Moon is not part of this world. And I don't walk around the apartment with no clothes on. And I'm watching Unsolved Mysteries, so don't come over until nine unless you can keep your mouth shut."

  Hal was my best friend, is my best friend, all the way from grade school, on and off. We were the only ones from our class, eleven years after graduation, who weren't married. The only halfway normal ones, anyway.

  Hal went to Bluegrass Community College in Frankfort, and sold dope. I worked at the KwikPik and watched Unsolved Mysteries.

  Joke.

  Hal didn't arrive until 9:07. I was sitting on the front steps of the Belle Meade Arms, smoking a cigarette, waiting for him. My last boyfriend wouldn't let me smoke in the apartment, and I kept the prohibition (along with the apartment) after I got rid of him. It was a warm July night and I could hear Hal's 85 Cavalier a block away. The transmission had a whine. It's probably the worst car ever made and I ought to know; my last boyfriend worked for a Chevy dealer.

  But enough about him.

  "There is another world," I said, trying to sound mysterious like Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries.

  "Once you see it you won't laugh," Hal said.

  "Patagonia?" I said. "Tibesti? Macchu Picchu?" We knew all the neat places. As kids we had shared stacks of National Geographics. I was looking for Oz. Hal was looking for where his father had gone. We never found either.

  "Not the Moon. Not Lechuguilla. Not Machu Picchu. This is really different."

  "Where did you read about it?"

  "I didn't read about it. I found it. I've been there. This is serious, Camilla. I'm the only one who knows about it. It's not even like a real place. It's another world."

  "I thought you said it was real."

  "Come on. Get in the car. We're going for a ride."

  We drove out Old 19 to Dead Man's Curve. It's a long hairpin near the top of Caddy's Bluff, over the Kentucky River. Nobody gets killed on it anymore. In the old days, before the interstate, they say people made a living stripping parts off the wrecks at the bottom of the bluff. The ones that didn't go into the river.

  "I never come here that I don't think of Wascomb," I said. In high school, Johnny Wascomb had taken Dead Man's Curve at fifty-nine mph. It was still the record as far as I knew. Ironically, he didn't get killed driving but in an accident in the Navy. He was the only dead person I knew.

  "Funny you should mention Wascomb," Hal said. "I was seeing if I could take the curve as fast as him when it happened."

  "When what happened?"

  "You'll see." Hal drove up the bluff, around the curve, and turned into an old logging road. It was dark back in the trees.

  "Is this a Stephen King thing?" I asked, alarmed.

  "No, Camilla. I'm just turning around." Hal backed out onto the highway and started down the hill, around the curve. Going down, we were on the outside; that's what made it Dead Man's Curve.

  "I drive home from Frankfort this way twice a week. As an experiment, I started taking the curve at forty, forty two, forty four. In two mph increments. The way Wascomb did."

  "I never knew he did it that way."

  "He was very scientific."

  "He went fifty-nine in his GTO," I said. "Not some dinky Cavalier."

  "I'm not even going to go fifty," Hal said. "Watch what happened to me at forty-two."

  Hal set the Cavalier on forty-two as we went into the curve. From where I was sitting it looked like thirty-nine. The white guard posts along the road flickered past, low in the headlights. The curve tightened but Hal kept his speed up. A third of the way around, the big trees gave out and I knew we were over the cliff.

  The tires squealed but only a little. The posts flickered past one by one by one. They were all the same distance apart, and we were at a steady speed, so it looked like nothing was moving. The cable that connected the posts undulated in the headlights like a white wave; then the wave seemed to open, and suddenly the world turned inside out like a sock, and we were in a room.

  Not in the car. A white room. We were sitting on a sort of bench, side by side. I sensed Hal beside me on my right but I didn't see him until he stood up.

  He stood up and I stood up with him. He turned and I turned with him. In front of us was a wall. No, it was a window. Beyond it I could see endless rows of hills, white, but dark, like snow in moonlight. Then Hal turned again and I turned with him. Another wall. I wanted to see through it but Hal stepped back. We stepped back. I saw stars and the white room was gone. What I had thought was stars were leaves in the headlights, across the road. Through the windshield. The world had turned inside out again, or outside in, and we were back in the car, stopped at the bottom of the hill where Old 19 connects with River Road. I recognized the stop sign with the bullet holes.

  Hal was on my left again, not my right. He was looking at me. "Well?" he said.

  "Well?! What the hell was that?" I said.

  "You saw it too, right?"

  "Saw it? I was there. We were there!"

  "Where?" Hal was suddenly like a lawyer or a cop, interrogative. "What was it? What was it for you?"

  "A--white room. Like a waiting room."

  "Then it's real," he said, putting the Cavalier into
gear and turning onto River Road back toward town. "I had to know if it was real. I almost wish to hell you hadn't seen it too. Now I don't know what to do."

  TWO

  The next day Hal picked me up at the KwikPik after work. He was twenty minutes late. I sat out front and waited for him.

  "Sorry I'm late, Camilla," he said. "I wanted to tell my professor about it."

  We both knew what it was. "What did he say?"

  "He didn't have time to talk about it. He had to run out. He has two jobs. He said it might have something to do with the white posts flickering in the headlights. Hell, I had already figured that out. My theory is, they set up a resonance and open a portal into another universe."

  Hal reads science fiction. I never could get into it.

  We headed out Old 19. "I tried it faster and slower," Hal said. "I tried it with the radio on and in low range, etcetera. It only works at forty-two, only in this Cavalier, and only at night. Last night was my third time. I had to take you with me to be sure I wasn't a hallucinating or something."

  Hal pulled into the logging road. "Wait," I said. "How do we know for sure we can always get back?"

  "One wall leads back. You step back into it. It's the easiest part. It breaks the spell or something."

  "Spell. That's not very scientific. What if we get trapped?"

  "You've been trapped in this world all your life, Camilla."

  "It's not the same and you know it. It's bigger, for one thing."

  "You want to chicken out?" he asked.

  "Do you?" There it was; we both grinned. How could we? How often do you get a chance to go to another world?

  Hal backed out onto the highway and started down the bluff.

  "Should I fasten my seat belt?"

  "Gee, I don't know, Camilla. I never thought about it."

  I fastened my seat belt.

  Thirty-seven. Forty. Forty-two (which looked like thirty-nine). The tires were squealing just barely. The transmission whined. "How do we know this speedometer's accurate?" I asked.

  "Doesn't matter. Haven't you ever heard of relativity? Just sit tight. Look straight ahead."

  I kept my eye on the hood ornament, a little chrome cavalier in tights with a plume on his hat. Little buns like raisins. The white posts started flickering in that wave motion, the cable started undulating, and this time I saw the wave turn the world inside out, like a sock. And there we were, in the white room.

  It was easier than walking into a movie theatre. Or out of one. Nothing was there unless I looked at it directly. Then it sort of drew itself in. I looked down and saw the bench, white. The floor, white. I looked at my hands and at my feet. I looked like a video character or a cartoon. I was flat and I only existed when I moved. When I held my hand still it was gone. But when I moved it or looked at it hard, it was there.

  I tried running my tongue around the inside of my mouth. There was nothing there. No spit. No teeth.

  But I could talk. I looked at Hal and said, "Here we are." I couldn't tell where the words came from. Hal said the same words back: "Here we are."

  I wanted to stand up. Suddenly I was standing and Hal was standing beside me. It was easy, like a piece of paper unfolding. It was all beginning to seem normal.

  "Let's look around," I said. "Okay," Hal said.

  The light was like the light in the Kwik-Pik. The longer I looked at things, the more normal they became. But never "normal" normal. The white room was not really white. I could see through the wall to the hills, arranged in endless rows.

  "See those hills," I said.

  "I think they are clouds," Hal said. I looked at him and suddenly I felt scared. You never look directly at people in dreams. I had been hoping this would turn out to be some kind of dream. But it wasn't.

  "Here we are," Hal said again. He reached down and touched the bench behind us. I touched it at the same time. I was doing what he did now. The bench felt normal. But not "normal" normal. "Time to back," Hal said.

  "Not yet," I said. I turned and he turned with me. It seemed that one of us decided what to do for us both, and now it was me again.

  We were facing another white wall. Now that I was looking at it, I could see through it. There were endless rooms, like in a mirror. Only they never got smaller. All the rooms were empty except the first one.

  "There's a person there," Hal said.

  The person in the other room turned toward us.

  I felt myself stumble backward, even though I couldn't move. We must have fallen through the wall because we were at the stop sign, in the car. Bullet holes, seat belt and all.

  "How'd we get here?" I asked.

  "I stepped back," Hal said. "I must have panicked."

  "You should have waited till I was ready!"

  "Camilla, what are we arguing about!? Did you see what I saw? Did you?"

  "Of course. But don't talk about it. No theories. Let's just go back."

  "Tomorrow night."

  "No. Tonight. Right now."

  We turned around and drove to the top of the hill, and went around Dead Man's Curve again. It was like stepping back into (or out of) the theater. It was getting easy. This time I stood and Hal stood with me, and I turned toward the wall (it was on our right) and there he was, right where we had left him, looking through from the other room.

  "Wascomb?" Hal whispered.

  THREE

  "Harold," Wascomb said. It wasn't a question or a greeting. He didn't seem surprised to see us.

  "Camilla is here too," Hal said.

  "Camilla who?"

  "A friend--"

  "Forget it," I said. I had sat next to him in two classes. He had dated my cousin, Ruth Ann, all through senior year.

  "Where are you?" Wascomb asked. Like Hal, like myself, he was only there if I looked at him hard. There were no details. But when he talked I could hear his voice in my head like a memory.

  "We're here where you are," Hal said. "Wherever this is. Where are we?"

  "I don't know. I'm dead."

  "I know. I'm sorry," Hal said.

  "I don't remember how I died. Am I supposed to remember?"

  "It was a steam explosion," Hal said.

  "You were in the Navy," I said. "You lost your life on the flight deck of the carrier Kitty Hawk."

  "You're Ruth Ann's cousin," Wascomb said. "Tamara. I always thought you were cute."

  "Camilla." But I forgave him everything. Wascomb didn't have many details. Just enough to talk to. But he seemed more solid than Hal or I. I had the feeling that if I reached out, I could touch him through the wall.

  I didn't want to reach out.

  "Are you all dead?"

  "No," Hal said. "We're just--visiting. We came in a car. Sort of."

  "I know. Dead Man's Curve. I discovered it when I was a teenager," Wascomb said. "You go around at a certain speed, at night, and you end up here. You're the only ones since me. I've been here forever. Are you all still teenagers?"

  "At heart," I said.

  "I'm in Community College," Hal said.

  "Be glad you're not dead. It's all over then."

  "But it's not!" I said. "You were dead, but here you are."

  "I'm still dead," said Wascomb. "It's still all over."

  "But it means there is life after death!" I said.

  "Sort of." Wascomb said. "It doesn't amount to much. It's just for people who go around the curve at the certain speed, in a certain car maybe. I think the posts in the headlights set up a wave pattern that flips you through into another Universe. I studied electronics in the Navy."

  "What was your speed?" Hal asked.

  "Fifty one," said Wascomb. "In my GTO. I wanted to bring Ruth Ann. But I had sold my GTO. It was a classic already, even then. How long's it been?"

  "Ten years."

  "Think what it would be worth now. Does Ruth Ann know I'm dead?"

  "It's been ten years," Hal said. "She's happily married."

  "How would you know that?" I said. Actually, Ruth Ann
was getting a divorce but I didn't see any point in going into it.

  "I never should have sold that GTO," Wascomb said. "It wouldn't work in any other car. How'd you make it work?"

  "A Cavalier," Hal said.

  "Cavalier?"

  "It's a kind of a Chevy."

  "Is it any good?"

  "I can't believe you're dead and still talking about cars," I said.

  "Actually, I don't talk about anything usually. It's not much different from being dead. A little better, I guess. I never thought I'd come back here, when I died I mean. What did you say it was?"

  "Steam explosion," I said. "The Kitty Hawk. You were in the Mediterranean."

  ` "What's the Mediterranean?"

  "It's time for us to go," Hal said. "It was--nice seeing you."

  "See, you're not dead. You can go back but I can't. I'll be here forever, I guess. Will you come back and see me?" "Sure," I said. I was just humoring him. Like Hal, I was ready to go.

  "And bring Ruth Ann."

  "What?" We both turned back around.

  "She's married, Wascomb," I said.

  "I thought you said she was getting a divorce."

  "Did I say that?"

  "I think you started to."

  "She thinks you're dead, Wascomb."

  "I am dead. That's why I want to see her. I never get to see anybody."

  FOUR

  Ruth Ann was surprised to see me at her door the next day. "How about asking me in?" I said. I should explain that I have short hair and wear a motorcycle jacket. Ruth Ann is the opposite type.

  Still, I was her cousin and she had to ask me in. Blood's thicker than water. She brought me a canned ice tea and set it on the table.

  "Is this about Aunt Betty?" she asked. My mother, her aunt, is sort of a drunk.

  I had rehearsed how to tell the story, even going over it out loud in the car, but I could see now that it wasn't going to work. It was too bizarre.

  "No, it's about Wascomb, but I can't tell you here," I said. "I came by to see if we could--go for a drive."

  "Johnny Wascomb? Camilla, are you smoking something?"

  I was smoking a cigarette but I put it out. "It's about Wascomb, and it concerns you," I said. "It's about a--message from him to you."