Asimov's Science Fiction 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  A hum filled the room and hidden lights flashed rapidly. The door in the back wall began to slide. Marie and Walt both stood and joined together behind the tables.

  It took Marie more than a few moments to figure out what exactly she was seeing. The usual two attendants walked Tommy in. They were dressed more like medical professionals than guards, but she could see part of a shock gun poking out from the edge of the left one’s silver smock.

  Stretched between them and for ten or more feet vertically appeared to be a giant bed turned up easel-like on its bottom edge, wrapped in thick layers of a white clothlike material. Peeking out of the folds near the center was Tommy’s head, soaked and dripping as if he’d just come out of his shower or bath, like when he was a boy and Marie had wrapped him up completely in the fluffiest white towels they had, patting and hugging him dry.

  As the easel glided closer Marie could make out the outline of her son’s arms and legs trapped beneath the material, stretched out like a swatted insect and quivering as if attempting movement against some powerful resistance. At the bottom of the easel a variety of wires and hoses leading along the floor and back through the door snaked up into the sheets. Tommy’s head turned slightly side to side, but did not nod forward, held against the bed by some invisible means.

  As this platform slowed to a stop Tommy looked down at them, his eyes squinted. His face looked grayish in spots, but his forehead and cheekbones were polished a luminescent vanilla. A number of black and red streaks near his hairline displayed the battle between skin damage and treatment.

  His voice came out creaking from somewhere deep in his chest. “Who are they?”

  The attendant on the left did not look at him, but said, “They’re your parents.”

  Tommy’s eyes opened a little further, as if he were forcing himself to focus. “No,” he replied, and closed them.

  “Tom, it’s us. Your mom and dad.” Walt had stepped forward, then past the tables.

  The attendant on the right stepped in front of him, waving his hands. “Behind the table, sir.” Walt hesitantly obliged.

  Tommy blinked. “You changed.”

  “We get older, but it’s still us.” Marie didn’t like looking at Walt’s forced smile.

  “You’re not—not who you are in my dream.” Tommy grimaced as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. He moved his head slightly, enough that Marie knew he was focused on her now. But at the moment she couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even say hello. Walt was looking at her expectantly. She looked away.

  “So, son, how are you doing?” Walt asked.

  Tommy grimaced again. “I don’t. Don’t do things.”

  “I mean how are you feeling?”

  Tommy was suddenly staring somewhat wide-eyed. He shook his head.

  “Tommy?” Marie made herself speak. “Do you know where you are, honey?”

  He opened his mouth slightly, let his tongue slip out, pulled it back in. “Prison,” he mumbled. “Sleeping.”

  The attendant on the right—who looked more aggressive than the other one, but maybe that was just the circumstances—spoke up. “He’s been briefed. We brief them each time we bring them back, even if it’s just for repair, neural and muscle stimulation, whatever. It’s in the literature we gave you. We tell them who they are and where they are, and what they did to get themselves here. Most of them remember it pretty quickly, in any case.”

  Marie stared at the man. “I’m Tommy’s mother. Do you ever tell him he might get better, that you might come up with some kind of drug, or some kind of surgery, that will make him stop all that nonsense and then he can come home with us?”

  “I’m not a doctor, ma’am. I have no idea how close they are to any of that.”

  Walt stepped too far forward again, much to Marie’s dismay. The attendant waved his hand again, the fingers of his other hand moving slightly toward his weapon. “Walt, please,” she said. “Move back, honey.”

  Walt turned and took a few agitated steps, then turned around again. “Are they even working on a cure?”

  The attendant didn’t answer. Walt looked up at his son. “Are you sorry for what you did, son? At least tell them that—it might make a difference.”

  “Walt—”

  He waved her away as abruptly as the attendant had waved at him. “Just say it, son. You know you hurt all those people, and now you’re sorry about it. At least tell them that much. It’s a start. You’d been drinking a lot, drugging and such, and people got hurt, and some people killed. We’re all sorry that happened.”

  “Walt, it’s not like it happened once or twice.” She was angry, but didn’t want to say too much in front of the attendants. “He’d been doing those things since age sixteen, robbing and hurting people.” She tried to keep her voice low, but she didn’t think Tommy could hear her, or care if he did. “I don’t think he really meant to hurt anyone, but that didn’t keep it from happening. That’s the truth of it. He wouldn’t or couldn’t stop.”

  “I know, Marie! But they could do something about whatever’s in him making him do these things. Things are changing all the time. They can work honest-to-god miracles now. He could ride back with us one of these days.”

  “The high repeaters are hard,” the attendant interrupted. “No one knows what to do with them. And people need to be protected.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up,” Walt said. “I’m talking to my son.”

  “Walt!”

  “He doesn’t know anything, Marie. He’s just some underpaid guard. Like I don’t know my son belongs here. Like I don’t know people have to be protected.”

  Marie thought Tommy was crying. Then she decided it was something like laughter. Something confused and involuntary. It was strained, and hardly out of his mouth, but it was more like laughter than anything else.

  “People have things. You need,” Tommy said. “What do you do? You do what you do. Do what you have to do. Can’t help it.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Walt said.

  “Are you okay, Tommy?” Marie asked.

  “Okay? I’m okay. You okay? Why don’t you leave so I can sleep?”

  “Don’t talk to your mother that way!” Walt shouted.

  “I sleep, okay? That’s what I do. All I want to do. Dreams aren’t so good, but then you sleep. The parade goes this way. You go that way.”

  “You dream?” Marie asked, shocked.

  “Guess it’s dream. You don’t see me walking. You don’t see me moving. You see where I am. It’s dream.”

  She looked at the attendant. “Ma’am, he’s confused,” he said. “They don’t dream, not while they’re suspended.”

  “Tommy, what do you dream about? Tell me, son.”

  His tongue peeked out again, randomly wetting his lips. Then he clamped his eyes shut. “I sit on the bed. My house, my room. Smell something cooking. Somebody’s doing something outside the door. Making something. Building something. Can’t see. It’s something about me. I don’t know, but I keep smelling. I keep smelling, then I know it’s me cooking. They’re cooking me.”

  “Ma’am, there’s no electrical activity in the brain while they’re in suspension,” the attendant said. “Did you read the literature? In the old days, we’d call them dead. You don’t dream when you’re dead.”

  “Walking in my room,” Tommy continued. “I walk and the room’s so big. Did you make my room bigger? Thinking while I’m walking. I go down halls, up down stairs, in my room. But see nobody. I hear you guys outside the door. Talking. Making things. But I don’t see.”

  “There is a period of time while we’re waking them. You might say while the juice is being turned back on.” The attendant sounded calm, reasonable. “He might dream then.”

  “Tommy, how long do you dream? How long does it last?” she called up to him, unsuccessfully trying to control her tears.

  “Always. There in the room, the whole time. You left me there, Mom. Did you forget I was there?”

  “My boy
says he’s been dreaming, that he’s feeling things, always! No one ever told us that!” she shouted at the attendant.

  “He just thinks that, ma’am. It’s an illusion. He might dream ten, maybe fifteen minutes, tops. But you know how dreams are, it can seem like they go on for hours. It’s just his mind filling in the space, the absent time, when he wasn’t there.”

  “You built something, it’s waiting for me! Why did you build it, Mom? Behind the door! Breathing, Mom!”

  He appeared to be choking, tears streaming down his face. Something pinkish-gray slipped out of his mouth, trailing tendrils of viscous liquid. There was a soft alarm, and the other attendant dragged a telescoping pole out from under a corner of the easel-bed, maneuvered it near Tommy’s face. Liquids and mist enveloped Tommy’s head.

  “Nothing to worry about,” the attendant she’d been talking to said. “It may look alarming, but it happens pretty often. We don’t always get every bit of the gunk out between cycles.”

  Marie went over to the stools and sat down next to Walt. He was staring at the floor and didn’t look up. “I had no idea he’d be dreaming,” she said. “I never even thought of it before.”

  “Remember what the guard said.” Walt stroked her back. “It’s not all the time. It’s dreams—Tommy just thinks it’s all the time.”

  “What’s the difference? It doesn’t matter if it’s an illusion—he still feels it like it’s real.”

  She could feel Walt slumping against her. “We thought at least he’d have a chance this way. Remember the day the sentence came down? We both thought at least some day he might be better. Then they’d give him back to us. It was just a story we told ourselves. A fairytale.”

  “Ma’am, he’s getting pretty tired.” The attendant was standing over them, looking somewhat less threatening. Marie could see now that he was a sad man, who saw so many sad things every day. “I’m afraid you don’t have much visiting time left.”

  Walt and Marie stood side by side, gazing up at their son. His face glistened, his eyes like two shiny marbles. He was like a huge piece of art hanging there, Marie thought, some grand work of relief sculpture, like in a museum, or hanging on the back wall of a church.

  “I haven’t filled you in on all the news, son, all that’s been happening in our little backwoods town.” Walt touched her arm. She glanced at his questioning look, shook her head and continued. “There’s just been all kinds of changes. Remember how it used to take us hours to get anywhere? There’s a thing called a rail train, now—they didn’t have those when you went in. It’s like that monorail they had out of Chicago, only faster, and the train runs underneath. Now they’ve got those rails all over the Midwest and down into Texas, hanging from these huge towers so it’s like a spiderweb everywhere—in the cities they run them right by the tallest buildings—so ordinary farm people like ourselves can drive a little ways to one, and then go anywhere they want, all the way up to Alaska, and even over to Russia if we wanted, in no time at all. Last week I had a doctor’s appointment in Atlanta, and I swear I was home in time to fix your dad his dinner.”

  She could see that the two attendants were uncomfortable, and Walt just stood there like he had no idea what to do. She wondered if they might lose a visit or two over this, if maybe she’d die before she could get another visit with her son, but they still let her talk, and that was the important thing.

  “When you get out you can take one of those rail trains, and it’ll take you anywhere you want to go. You can walk around in China one morning, then have coffee in France. If things don’t work out in one place, then you can always move to another. Maybe you can keep ahead of the trouble that way. And you can visit us sometimes, too, if you’ve a mind to.

  “And did they tell you we’ve been to other planets? They’d pretty much stopped trying back when you were sentenced, if I remember correctly. Well, now they’ve gone to lots of other worlds, a whole universe full of worlds, and they’ve found people there, too, nonhumans, and they’ve brought things back from those other worlds, and even some of those nonhumans. They’re very different from what we are, of course—some of them have the most outlandish faces! But they’re people like us, too, with feelings like us, mothers and fathers and kids. There’s this farmer down the road from some place I can’t even pronounce, and do you know that he laughs all the time, and that it sounds like a bird? And he raises these melons that are shaped like big orange diamonds, and they smell like chrysanthemums, and taste just like peach cobbler. You can have some when you get out.

  “I can’t remember all there is out there, son, since you went in, and they’ve got lots more in the cities. Anything you’ve ever imagined, you can have now, everything I ever read to you from a fairytale, only better. Think about that, Tommy. That’s what we’re building for you outside your bedroom door. Dream about those things.”

  The old Hispanic woman was already on the transport when they climbed on board. Walt wasn’t looking at Marie, and she couldn’t look at him either. No one official had said anything yet, but what if she had cost Walt future time with their boy?

  The transport rolled away from the building with the faintest whisper. The sun had already set, and shadows were sliding across the ground as the world rapidly dimmed. She wished now the seats were less comfortable, and the bus’s engine had more noise.

  After a mile or so Marie turned to her husband and asked, “Do you ever think it would have been better for him if they still did things the old way?”

  “The old way?”

  “When there still was a death penalty.”

  “Oh, Marie, no. Not at all.”

  She was quiet a few moments, then she said, “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  They lapsed into silence. It was then she became aware of a constant, breathless whisper insinuating itself everywhere in the vehicle. Then she realized it was the old woman in back, praying a little more loudly to herself.

  “I keep thinking about what we used to say,” Marie said softly. “Remember when he was twelve, and he f irst started getting into trouble? Every day it was something new. We joked about it. We said maybe we could keep him in the freezer until he was an adult, thaw him out then. What kind of parents would joke like that?”

  “Normal ones. Normal parents trying to keep their sense of humor, trying not to overreact to every little thing he did wrong. We had no idea what was coming at us down the line.”

  “Maybe we should have overreacted. Did you ever wonder if he might have turned out better if we’d tried to be less understanding?”

  He rubbed her back. “Some people might think that, but I don’t. You do your best, what else are you going to do?”

  “So what were you thinking, Walt, after the visit? Be honest.”

  He frowned. “To be honest I was thinking about these big cattle farms they have now down in Georgia, big factory operations. They keep the cows upright, but their brains are asleep. They milk some and they harvest some for meat, and all the time the cow’s just sleeping, dreaming whatever cows dream. I wouldn’t take nothing from that kind of animal. I want everyone I know to know that much about me.”

  She patted his arm. “You were right in there—we didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You had me going,” he replied. “I thought you’d gone a little crazy. Until I realized you were just doing what you did when he was a boy—telling him a bedtime story.”

  “Sometimes that’s all you can think to do,” she said.

  “Where did you come up with those things?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought about him waking up in the future, and what he might want to see, the kind of world that he might want to dream about. I just hope I didn’t buy us a mess of trouble.”

  “The rules say you can’t tell them what’s going on outside, just a little news about the family. No rules about lying to them, as far as I can tell.”

  “We’re just visitors, you know? That’s all we are to him.”

  “Im
portant visitors. But you know, after they leave home, that’s the best you can be. It’s like you’re not even in the same time zone with them. Your kids, even when you’re close to them, live their time a different way. You can’t live where they are, and you can’t travel with them.”

  By the time they picked up the visitors at the pet center it was almost completely dark. The thin, neatly dressed man boarded quickly, smiling, and fell asleep almost immediately. Marie noticed he had long brown hair all over his trousers and along the openings of his coat sleeves.

  Charlotte’s owner climbed aboard with her pet in her arms, followed by a stern-looking female attendant carrying a medical bag. The attendant wore a holster containing some sort of device with a long, needle-like barrel.

  Charlotte’s eyes were fixed and staring. Marie thought the animal might have been sedated when it suddenly shifted its dull marbled gaze in her direction. It was then that Marie noticed the patchiness of the fur, the stretches of bright red, infected-looking hide, the faded yellow bow taped to the top of her head.

  “You’re going to have to help me if that animal gets away from her,” she whispered to Walt, who hadn’t really been paying attention. “I’m afraid I’d panic and try to kick it to death.”

  About then the woman nodded in recognition, but didn’t smile. Marie thought it might not mean anything—everyone was so tired.

  It was dark enough when they arrived at the facility for the “temporarily deceased” (as too-clever commentators were apt to call them) that Marie could make out nothing of distant features or lights. There was some flurry of activity around one building. Marie pressed her face to the window and saw one of the ladies who’d been on the transport earlier being led to a large luxury sedan, her head bowed. She couldn’t tell if the woman was in custody, if she’d done anything wrong, or if—perhaps—she was a new widow having the worst day of her life. Like with all peeks at someone’s life through a moving window, there was no way to tell.