Asimov's SF, September 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  This was the critical moment. Clarise was the only person in the room who had been part of the attack in the basement apartment. Had she told anyone besides Sean that I was part of an assault from the future? I suspected that she hadn't, that the kids surrounding me saw only an angry father trying to manhandle his daughter out of an unwanted situation.

  I wondered what Clarise saw. An old man, perhaps. Worn out, wrung out, the ghost of the tall, strong father who had swung her over his head and chased her, giggling, across the lawn in simpler days. Did she think the trembling in my hands came from fragility? Did she know how close I was to a battle rage?

  Ten years of training and twenty years of PTSD screamed at me to shoulder the man to my left (who probably thought his beneath-the-jacket groping for his gun was subtle), snatch his weapon from its holster, down five targets, roll to cover, and improvise from there. But Sean hadn't gathered his wits about him yet, so I waited, trembling.

  I had the group's leader pegged now, the one Chen-chi had called Sharken. He was the low-profile type; didn't dress any different than his underlings. But everyone looked sidelong at him to know what to do. He leaned back in his chair.

  "I think your daughter's old enough that she doesn't need to tell you everything she does.” He raised his hand in a casual gesture, probably intending to signal his thugs to take me down.

  "That's debatable,” I said. “But I was referring to the secrets she's been keeping from you."

  The hand stopped mid-gesture.

  "Or didn't Clarise tell you her father works as an undercover agent?"

  I had the room's full attention now. Several thugs pulled their weapons into the open.

  "Hold your fire, you morons.” Sharken's voice was calm, confident. Pitched low, but his words carried clearly in the small room. “Do you want to bring the library staff down here with the police in tow?"

  Sean had pulled Clarise to the side, a few steps away from the door. He murmured something in her ear. She pulled against his arm, whispering furiously. I judged there were about seven and a half minutes left before Jo-jo's bomb exploded.

  Get out, Clarise. For once in your life, do the smart thing.

  Sharken ordered his thugs to tie my arms behind my back and search me. I had no weapons, and it seemed to make them nervous that they couldn't find any. With my face toward the wall as they patted me down for the third time, I could not see Clarise. I hoped that Sean had convinced her to slip out of the room with him.

  Ready or not, I was out of time. I chose my moment and jerked sharply, twisting out of the sloppy hold two thugs had on my arms. I backed into the right-hand thug and made a blind grab for his gun with my bound hands.

  He pulled the holster away, but I'd expected that. I grabbed his belt, bent my knees and heaved. He sailed across my back and slid, flailing, into a kid who'd been trying to grapple me around the neck.

  The room erupted into motion. People shouted; chairs scooted. I put the wall at my back and worked to free my hands. Across the room, Sean was tugging on Clarise's arm, pulling her toward the doorway. She resisted. Dumb thug. Just my luck that he turned out to be a lousy liar.

  Someone clubbed me with a book. I rolled my head with the blow, dodged the next two attacks, and landed a kick to a teenager's midriff. A chair cracked against my shoulders, and I fell flat on my chest.

  A turquoise blur rushed to my side, knocking away a man who'd been about to throw a table lamp at my head. The lamp shattered against the wall. The blur resolved into Clarise. “Don't hurt him,” she shouted. “He's harmless. He just gets these fits."

  "Enough of this,” Sharken said. He pulled a gun from his jacket and aimed it at my head.

  Clarise moved in front of me, a mostly futile maneuver, since she was two inches shorter than I was and only half as broad. Sharken's handling was good. He'd have no trouble hitting us both.

  Time seemed to freeze. Darkness roiled at the edges of my mind. I willed my vision to focus. I couldn't afford a blackout, not now, not yet.

  A gaudy wall clock ticked off seconds with my own unsteady breathing as counterpoint. I wanted to arch my back and rage at the heavens. I wanted to curl up and puke on the floorboards. Anything to ward off the gaping helplessness that had haunted me since Emmeline's death.

  Her face lay before me, hair matted to the floor with her own blood. It had been a man like Sharken who'd killed her; a South American macho who thought that by threatening my wife he'd learn information that I didn't have to give.

  My hands finally twisted free of the coarse rope that had bound them. My eyes locked on the barrel of the gun pointed at my daughter, then traced the path from Sharken's knuckles, along his arm, into his face. A fierce intensity, almost laughter, tightened my throat.

  I was not helpless this time.

  My body uncurled like a striking rattlesnake. Sharken fired. Pain flared in my shoulder, but it felt muted, gauzy. If I'd been charging him the bullet would have struck my chest, but I'd sprung sideways, pushing Clarise out of the way and diving into a thug who doubled over with my shoulder in his gut. I grabbed his gun. Didn't bother to pry it out of his hand. Just aimed for Sharken and pressed my finger against his on the trigger.

  It was a clean shot, one of the ones you feel hitting the target before the gun even kicks in your hand. Sharken went down without a sound.

  Thugs tackled me from all directions. I had no strength to resist them. Dimly, I heard Clarise screaming. Even more dimly, I felt the pressure of a gun barrel beneath my jaw. None of it mattered. It was like a dream.

  Reality surged back with an Asian teenager kicking open the conference room door. Chen-Chi stood silhouetted against the brightly lit bookshelves, her feet planted with the conviction of a war goddess. Against her stomach, an assault rifle gleamed. She raised it to position and fired.

  Her posture was dreadful. The kick from the first bullet nearly knocked her to the floor. Her aim was bad, too, but it didn't matter because she was spreading her shots along the ceiling, shattering tiles and fluorescent lights, sending a rain of rubble on the throng. The final glass fragments tinkled to the ground a half-second after the last shot rang in my ears. I began to understand why my future self might have fallen in love with that woman.

  "Everybody back off,” Chen-chi said in a voice of superb authority. “Or the next round goes below the belt."

  Like pack animals, Sharken's thugs cowered in the absence of their leader. Any man in the room could have taken Chen-chi down, but none of them tried. The hands that had been restraining me pulled away so abruptly that I stumbled.

  "In about five minutes,” Chen-Chi continued, “this building is going to explode. If you run, you might make it out alive. So move!"

  The resulting evacuation was so chaotic it was entertaining. I wanted to grin, but the blackout I'd been holding at bay closed in too quickly.

  After vision had faded, but before I completely lost consciousness, I heard high-heeled shoes skitter across the floor. Slender hands grabbed me as I fell. “Typical,” Clarise grunted as she struggled to lift my weight. “You'd think after all these years, he'd know better than to black out over hardwood."

  * * * *

  I woke on the couch in Clarise's apartment. The sky behind the window blinds was dark, but I suspected dawn was not far off. Chen-chi lay curled in the chair opposite me, her feet pulled up on the cushions. She was asleep.

  Down the hallway, Clarise's voice rose and fell in sharp tones. I walked toward it. Through the kitchen doorway I saw her stirring a cup of herbal tea. The back of Sean's head—somewhat bulging and bandaged—was visible where he leaned back in a kitchen chair, balancing it on two legs.

  ". . . told me to get you out,” he was saying. “Lying seemed like the best alternative."

  "And you really thought I was that stupid? That I'd buy that line and leave my own father behind?"

  Sean spread his hands in mock surrender.

  "Stupid or not,” I said, folding my arms and leaning ag
ainst the doorway, “It's what you should have done."

  "Father, Sharken would have killed you."

  "Better me than all of us. Besides, I had a handle on things."

  "Yes, I saw how you were handling things."

  "Don't take that tone of voice with me. I can take care of myself. You know that."

  Clarise set her cup on the counter with an audible thunk. “No, I don't ‘know’ that. Mom didn't even know that."

  Mention of Emmeline threatened to reopen the black chasm. I shoved the gaping memories aside, vaguely aware that I was scowling. “Your mother had every confidence in—"

  "You never saw the look in her eyes when we waited up nights.” Clarise bit her lip, but not fast enough to cover the tremble in her voice. She bent her head over her tea as though reading her future there, or perhaps her past. “I'm glad she died in that car accident,” she said, so quietly that I almost couldn't make out the words. “At least she never had to sit around again, wondering if you'd come home in one piece."

  I felt as though my lungs had shriveled away, leaving an empty cavity beneath my ribs. “Well. You've chosen a fine way to honor her memory."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Terrorists, Clarise! You've spent the last six years running with the kind of subversive, murderous scum who—” I choked back my own words. Clarise didn't know who'd killed her mother. I'd never told her.

  Clarise squared her shoulders. “No progress comes without conflict. You taught me that."

  "I never meant you should try to overthrow your own government."

  "Why not? Look what your precious government has done to you! They ran you ragged, and when they were done with you, they chewed you up and spat you out without so much as a thank you."

  "Now just a—"

  Chen-chi cut me off with a hand on my shoulder. The yelling must have woken her up. “Let it be, Eugene,” she said. “It's in the past now."

  "Whose past? Yours? Because it feels an awful lot like my present.” I whirled on Clarise, but found I had nothing more to say. Sean had risen from his chair and was holding her, whispering to her, making the anger melt out of her face. I stalked out of the room.

  Chen-chi followed me. “Emmeline's dead,” she said to my back as I stared out a window. “Venting your anger on Clarise won't bring her back."

  "This has nothing to do with you."

  "Doesn't it?"

  I swallowed down an angry retort. I couldn't bring myself to snap at her; her own pain was too evident. She mystified me, this teenager with a much older mind. I was simultaneously intrigued and infuriated by the way she always seemed to know how to quell my anger.

  "You'll have to tell her, you know,” Chen-chi said. “About Emmeline. How she really died."

  "I don't know how,” I whispered.

  "Once you start, the rest will be easy. Trust me. I helped you work through this once before."

  When I didn't answer, she took my hand and gently pulled me into the living room, where we sat on opposite ends of the couch. I stared at her; the woman who had been my wife forty years in the future.

  "It must be strange for you,” I said. “Talking to me, being with me, when..."

  "It's . . . difficult,” she admitted. “Like looking at a ghost of the man you'd become."

  I hesitated, unsure how to say what I needed to without further opening her wounds. “I . . . don't think I'll become the same man again."

  "No.” She sighed, and looked indescribably weary. “Clarise will live now, and, God willing, the world will unfold differently. It's all right,” she added when I opened my mouth to apologize. “I'm not ready for another relationship. Not for a long time."

  I nodded. We sat and listened to the murmur of voices in the kitchen; the tramp of Jo-jo's boots as he returned from wherever he'd been; the sound of a witty comment, and reluctant laughter. I struggled to speak past the dryness in my throat.

  "So what happens now?"

  "We wait,” Chen-chi said softly. “We heal. And after that . . . we begin to live again."

  Copyright © 2010 Nancy Fulda

  * * * *

  GEORGE H. SCITHERS

  1929-2010

  In the inaugural issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the Good Doctor introduced the magazine's first editor, George H. Scithers, as “an electrical engineer specializing in radio propagation and rail rapid transit, who is a Lieutenant Colonel (retired) in the United States Army and who does a bit of writing on the side. He has been involved with the world of science fiction for over thirty years. He was the chairman of Discon1, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Washington in 1963 . . . and has been parliamentarian for several other conventions. He has a small publishing firm, Owlswick Press, publishing books of science fiction interest. . . .” Since Isaac had been despatched by his publisher to “Find someone you can trust, with the ability, the experience, the desire, and the time” to run the magazine, the Good Doctor added, “I know [George] personally, know his tastes in science fiction are like mine and that he is industrious and reliable."

  John Varley's story, “Air Raid” (written under the “Herb Boehm” pseudonym), from Spring 1977—the very first issue of the magazine—was a finalist for the Hugo and the Nebula Awards and George won the 1978 Best Editor Hugo Award for his first year as editor. In 1980, he picked up another Best Editor Hugo Award for his work at Asimov's. Many more stories published under George's reign would go on to win or be finalists for the Hugo and Nebula awards. These stories include Barry Longyear's classic September 1979 novella, “Enemy Mine"; Roger Zelazny's April 1981 novelette, “Unicorn Variation"; and Connie Willis's February 1982 novelette, “Fire Watch,” which appeared in George's last issue as editor of Asimov's. During his time at the magazine, George also edited eleven anthologies of stories from Asimov's and four issues of Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine.

  George went on to edit Amazing Stories for four years and worked on Weird Tales for close to twenty years. George received a Special World Fantasy Award in 1992 and World Fantasy's Life Achievement Award ten years later.

  George left Asimov's several months before I joined the staff of the magazine. I got to know him at Philcons and other SF conventions. He was always full of advice and deeply interested in the affairs of the magazine. I last saw him in October 2009 at Capclave, a convention near Washington, DC. We chatted about his new Cat Tales anthologies and about publishing. George was happy to hear of our increase in electronic subscription sales and other news about the magazine. Although I didn't realize it would be our final meeting, I'm glad I had the chance to speak with him one last time.

  —Sheila Williams

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: THE PALACE IN THE CLOUDS by Eugene Mirabelli

  Eugene Mirabelli writes novels, short stories, journalistic pieces and book reviews. He tells us he's an old writer, but new to science fiction. Eugene has been a Nebula Award nominee, and his fiction has been published in Czech, French, Hebrew, Russian, Sicilian, and Turkish. The author's most recent work is the novel, The Goddess in Love with a Horse. Eugene's lyrical first story for Asimov's flies us to the enigmatic site of . . .

  * * * *

  1

  The story of how the city of Venice was built upon the waters of the Adriatic sounds like a fantasy, a pure romance. Nonetheless, it's true. As the Roman Empire collapsed, as Roman armies withdrew and abandoned their outposts, barbarians swarmed in from the North to loot and set fire to the cities of the Italian coast, raping and butchering anyone they caught. Those who escaped the smoking ruins were pursued to the sea, driven into the marshes, the swamps, and lagoons.

  After the invaders left, the survivors waded back to the mainland to rebuild their homes, but soon fresh hordes swept down on them. Looting and slaughter happened again and again. Historians believe that Attila the Hun's merciless invasion in 452 was what finally caused refugees to abandon any hope of returning to the mainland. Instead, they cho
se to build their lives afresh in the lagoons.

  The first lagoon dwellers lived like sea birds on mats of woven reeds. Men with swords who pursued them sank knee deep and deeper in the ooze and drowned when the tide crept in. Meanwhile, the residents learned to navigate the devious maze of safe, shallow canals that flowed through the marsh; they learned to fish and to catch birds. They designed slender boats that could be pushed with a pole while floating in water no deeper than your ankle. They prospered and made settlements on nearby islands, some of them barely more than sandbars. In 466 a dozen of these island and sandbar villages banded together, and that's as good a date as any for the founding of Venice.

  The great seaborn city of Venice—the Venice where opulent palaces, bordellos, and jeweled churches rise from a placid sea, the Venice of murals and painted ceilings that glow in sunlight reflected from the water—that vibrant Venice of famous merchants, courtesans, poets, and painters, grew from those lagoon settlements. The Venetians sailed ever farther down the Adriatic and into the Mediterranean; they became great merchants, sea-going traders, and explorers. Indeed, one of their sons, Marco Polo, traveled the Silk Road to the Eastern end of the earth, Cathay. Another son of Venice, Casanova, bragged of his travels from boudoir to boudoir across Western Europe. Of all the states and principalities that composed Italy, none was so rich or so proud and independent as Venice.

  * * * *

  2

  When I was just a kid my uncle Vincenzo took me for a ride in his open-cockpit two-seater biplane, a beautiful old-fashioned aircraft made of wood and wire and brightly painted yellow canvas. The Second World War had ended only months before and I would have preferred to be in a fighter plane—a P-40 with shark's teeth painted on the air scoop, like the Flying Tigers—but flying risky, old-fashioned aircraft delighted my uncle. As for me, just to be aloft in a plane was wonderful.

  We took off from a grassy field in Massachusetts and circled upward into a placid blue sky. Everything enchanted me that day—the miniature houses far beneath us, the clouds that turned to cool mist as we flew through them, the blue mountains on the horizon. We were headed for a sparkling white cloud, a gorgeous heap of puffy white terraces. Uncle Vincenzo steered us to an opening between two great cloud walls and then—while still in the cloud, but with no obscuring mist—we slowed and bumped gently to a landing. The engine coughed a few times, then there was silence. “Hey! We landed on a mountain!” I said.