Asimov's SF, June 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Joe always had talent (his compulsive hand scribbling rudimentary tags, faces, impressionistic line art, filling cheap notebooks for the orphanage staff to shake their heads over). But it was the Scrawl jolt that electrified him and got him to move. He was eighteen. By now he would have been on his own, if Statama hadn't put him in Fairhaven.

  He and Anthea were in an alley half a dozen blocks from the apartment. It was two AM. Joe thumbed the wand's actuator, bonding to the edge of a trash converter. He eased up on the actuator and drew out a clear filament, almost invisible, then quickly slashed a bold design in 3-D neon xplasma green, hanging it out there, a weird mutated kanji entangling a jagged face, very deftly rendered in airy xplaz crystal. His old tag, reflecting in the black mirror puddles dropped in the buckled alley.

  "Nice,” Anthea said.

  Joe bounced on his toes, getting into it. He bonded to another spot on the converter, drew out a line, then depressed the actuator to thicken the stream, rotating the color selector with his middle finger, quick slashing an arrangement of V's, adding a slouch hat, stubby line of a cigarette, squiggle of smoke. Four color Scrawl sketch. He'd done hundreds before Statama locked him up and even then had conducted Scrawl orgies in his mind whenever he could think straight.

  Anthea laughed.

  "Sam Spade,” Joe said.

  "I know. All those V's. You're good."

  "Not that good,” Joe said, but he was grinning.

  "Do another one."

  He thought a minute, then bonded a third time to the trash converter (really fucking it up, just what normal people hated and Scrawlers loved; the xplaz was light as eggshells but the polymers made it sticky, hell to clean up, much worse than paint on brick) and quick-Scrawled a face with zigzag/corkscrew hair.

  "Hey!” Anthea said.

  A searchlight speared into the alley. An amplified voice ordered them to freeze.

  They didn't. They took off fast, came out the back end of the alley and split in opposite directions, no discussion necessary, Joe reacting to blood memory, those orphan years.

  They met back at the apartment, stealthy up the stairs. Faye slept twisted in the bed sheets, groaning. At her bedroom door Anthea turned her ghost eyes on Joe, waiting. She said, “My rig."

  He followed her into the bedroom. She stopped short and turned and opened his long coat, hunkered to unstrap the xplaz kidney, looking up at him, waiting again, letting the rig slip to the floor. Then she stood up on her tip-toes and kissed his mouth. He didn't move.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Faye. I'm—I mean I said I wouldn't without her."

  "What do you want?"

  He touched her face, wanting but not knowing, and she moved her head like a cat so his fingers pushed the stretchy beret thing off, releasing that abundant hair. Then she kissed him again, drew away, and tugged at his belt buckle. He watched her, touching her crinkly yellow hair. She stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. He kept touching her hair but he was afraid. His aloneness had taught him to always keep something back; Father Orpin had taught him passivity and the unconscious trick of numbness; Faye had taught him to take direction. What would Anthea teach him? She seemed to be deciding. Then she stood up and undressed him completely, tenderly, pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it. She held his hand and took him to bed, and he felt the pressure to be something for her ease off.

  "I had this friend,” she said, her head resting on his chest. Joe could feel her jaw move when she spoke. “He couldn't finish, ever—you know? At first I'm thinking Jesus he can go forever. Then I get worried, like he's not finishing because he's not turned on enough. So there's something the matter with me? Dumb stuff. But that wasn't it. After a couple of nights he tells me his mom died right in front of him in a pulser wreck. She was in the front seat and he was in the back, and she just bled out. Now if he's with a girl it's like he freezes, goes all remote, like being afraid of giving himself up, so it never happens. He never surrenders, just wants to cuddle. Which is okay. I guess he really loved his mom. He wouldn't let himself need someone again."

  Joe listened but didn't say anything.

  "He was a real nice boy,” Anthea said. “We were best friends. But he didn't want to be around me anymore after that time he told me. Like before, we were pretending there was no problem? When the pretending stopped he had to get away."

  "Nothing like that happened to me,” Joe said. “I don't even remember my mother."

  "I was just telling you about my friend,” Anthea said. “He was a kid is all."

  Joe caressed Anthea's bare back until she fell asleep.

  * * * *

  He woke out of the old-man nightmare because Faye was kicking him. It was morning and Anthea was gone. Joe drew his arms and legs in, blocking Faye's blows (foot shod in a suede ankle boot, sharp-toed).

  "Hey—"

  She was grunting, head down, her blue hair hanging lank in front of her face. She landed a solid strike on his elbow, that nerve. Joe yelped and rolled away off the mattress. The kicking stopped.

  After a moment, grudgingly, Faye said, “Are you really hurt?"

  The nerve was like a hot buzzing wire, numbing his arm. “It's just my crazy bone."

  "Your—Oh."

  He got on his feet, back to her, and awkwardly pulled his shorts on one-handed.

  "I'm sorry,” she said, not sounding that way. “But you were in the wrong bed."

  "Whatever."

  "Poor baby."

  He turned around. She was leaning against the doorjamb holding a cigarette in the crux of her middle fingers, watching him. She had acquired a new tic. Her left eye twitched like an invisible string tugging at the corner.

  "You don't even know what you are,” she said.

  He took a breath. “Then tell me."

  * * * *

  In the beginning there was a rat named Homer. This rat had no parents, which was remarkable but not controversial. Homer was a “pure” clone and his cloned progeny lived less than one hour. Homer Jr. wasn't sick. He simply aged too fast, as designed. Much too fast. Homer himself enjoyed a rat's normal life span though he was moody and anti-social, didn't sleep enough, and tended to bite. But Homer was an otherwise ordinary rodent, and if anyone had thought it was a good idea to send him to Beta Cygni via Tachyon Funnel Acceleration it would have proved a fatal trip, and never mind the years required; no complex life could survive the forces involved. However a few quick-frozen cells protected by lead lined titanium baffles could remain intact and even be thawed and nurtured to maturity (especially hyper rapid-aging maturity) with the assistance of computers and an automated nursery. But, really, what would have been the point? Something brighter and more adaptive than Homer Jr. would be required to locate and decode the alien portal technology.

  * * * *

  Joe dressed quietly in the dark and went to Anthea's room. She was awake reading.

  "Can I borrow your rig?"

  "Only if you borrow me, too."

  "Let's go."

  * * * *

  Joe bonded to the iron fence surrounding a churchyard, drew out a filament, and Scrawled a door. Basic stylistic warping, like a big wavy stick of gum with gothic hinges. Anthea, watching for trouble, said, “And?"

  Joe glanced at her, suppressing an urge to tic. A few days without drug-and-buzz and he felt subject to constant alienating anxiety and the suggestion of a co-existing Other. He drew a filament off the first door and Scrawled a second, this one standing directly in front of a six foot monument. Broken-winged cherubim visible through a Scrawled version of his green door. Then he drew out another filament, like skipping stones, drawing it out, linking one Scrawl to the previous, judging balance and weight, making the linking filaments so thin you could barely see them. Joe filled a portion of the boneyard with doors, his Scrawl version of the old man's dilemma. Anthea laughed.

  "Jesus, you've got eight."

  "Eight's good,” Joe said and stopped. The kidney was almost empty.
He removed the Scrawl rig and handed it to her. “I don't need any more doors, I guess."

  Anthea tilted her head to the side and said, “Ever do it in a graveyard?"

  "I just did."

  "Not Scrawl."

  He grinned. “I know what you mean."

  "Well?"

  Joe looked at her. His breathing was funny. He felt afraid but unrestrained. For once he knew what he was. “Pick a grave,” he said.

  She looked at him.

  "Come on,” he said.

  She picked a very old one with an upright stone, the name and dates almost erased by time: Sarah Medoff 1965-to-something indecipherable. She stretched out on the ground. Joe stared at her.

  "You come on,” Anthea said.

  He did, panting, surrounded by empty doors and the dead. When he finished he collapsed onto her, crying.

  "Hey—” She held him, patting the back of his head. “Hey, don't cry,” she said.

  * * * *

  TFA fired three Nursery Ships at one year intervals across the interstellar gulf and they were never heard from again. It was the ultimate black-op, the ultimate long shot. Statama had his moment in the sun but the sun was in full eclipse. All human cloning was illegal, and Statama's disposable variety would be even more so. He randomly named the “pure” originals: Barney Huff, Faye Rutherford, and Joe Null. These individuals, whose existence was forbidden by the same government that secretly sanctioned and financed their creation, were harvested and then dumped into the grinding mill of local welfare systems to be forgotten.

  * * * *

  They huddled together in a corner booth of the Deluxe Diner. Traffic streaked by on the pulseway.

  Joe asked, “Do you have money?"

  "You mean running away money?"

  "Yes."

  "How long would it have to be for?"

  "I don't know. I guess until they figured I was safe."

  "Who's ever safe?"

  "You don't have to come,” Joe said, but he couldn't look at her when he said it.

  Anthea held onto his arm tighter. “I want to, Joe."

  He looked at her and knew that, at least for now, they belonged to each other. It was something new and it scared him but he wasn't going to let it go.

  "I'm worried about Faye,” he said. “She's not going to make it by herself."

  "Do what you have to."

  * * * *

  At “birth” the first clone onboard its Nursery Ship now in Alberio space began transmitting unconscious thoughts to its Earthbound “pure.” Space itself was warped by the alien portal effect, the technology deriving from intensified states of consciousness, perhaps, and seeking in the absence of its creators a localized substitute. Soulless robotic Nannies watched over the rapid development of the clone. Cold, unyielding alloy digits at the end of manipulator arms handled living flesh. Auto-injected drugs produced hypnagogic states under which lessons and instructions were imprinted on virgin gray matter. For a brief interval a baby's tormented cry of loneliness was absorbed by thick baffles. Back on Earth the warped overlaying of Barney Huff's rapid-aging clone drove Barney to madness. At which point Statama petitioned that Faye and Joe, his remaining abandoned children, be brought in before they hurt themselves or others.

  * * * *

  They watched from an alley a block away. A vehicle drew up to the curb, black beetle-skinned pulser under manual direction, semi-official-looking. Joe pulled Anthea into the shadows. Two men climbed out of the pulser and entered the apartment building. Presently they returned with Faye, slumped, dragging feet between them. Drugged.

  "Let's go somewhere,” Anthea said.

  "Wait."

  The back door of the vehicle opened and a tall man with white hair stepped out. David Statama. Joe squeezed Anthea's hand. Statama eased Faye into the vehicle, then stood talking to the other men. Presently they got into the pulser but Statama remained in the street. He gazed up at the building, hands in the pockets of his coat. He turned and looked up and down the block. It was as though he knew Joe was near and was only waiting for him to come out and then they would go home together. Home was the place where the bad dreams were quelled.

  Joe squeezed Anthea's hand until it seemed the little bones would crack.

  * * * *

  There was an old man. Machines had raised him, had told him his name was Joe. Machines had given him his directions. This old man found himself inside an asteroid following an elliptical orbit around Beta Cygnus 2. Joe subsisted on a steady diet of fear and insecurity, and he longed for things he'd never seen. Now he blundered between black sheets that might have been anything he believed them to be. A wish, a terminal, a switching station between stars, an abandoned mistake that dropped travelers to their deaths on a double dozen worlds. The machines had suggested that Joe might find his way home by deciphering portals. But he could not begin to fathom the technology, which seemed more shadow than substance. Soon he would die. Or he could step through a portal and also die, though perhaps in a place acquainted with “home” in his deep gene memory, a place of human habitation, blue skies, doors that opened readily. The old man slouched back and forth between the black funhouse mirror-portals and couldn't decide. Madness was a disintegrating filter.

  * * * *

  In a motel room on the outskirts of metropolitan Seattle eighteen-year-old Joe Null thrashed awake. Cold sweat wrung out of his body. His mind yawed toward some unknowable abyss. He was his own beginning and end, which meant he didn't have to belong to anyone, or even to his fears. But he was not alone; he had choices and he had begun to make them. Anthea returned to the bed with a glass of water. Joe took it gratefully. He hoped it would always be him that she found waiting.

  Home is the place where bad dreams are quelled.

  Copyright © 2007 Jack Skillingstead

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  MARRYING IN by Carrie Vaughn

  Carrie Vaughn's short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Talebones, and other publications. Kitty Takes a Holiday, the third novel in her series about a werewolf named Kitty, has just been released, and the fourth book is on the way. Of her first story for Asimov's, she says, “I wasn't born in Colorado, but my grandmother was, and I'm about as native as you can get without actually having lived your whole life here.” Readers can visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.

  Alice leaned on the immigration officer's counter until he scowled at her. She straightened.

  "How long did you say you're here for?” he asked for the third time, staring at the data on his scanner.

  "Um ... I'm staying.” For the rest of my life. Forever. She hardly believed it herself. “I've got the visa, the immigration stamp should be right there."

  "Let me scan you again."

  She offered the back of her hand and the officer scanned her chip yet again. This time, something must have pinged right because his eyes lit up.

  "Oh yes—here it is. Marriage visa, immigration stamp, it all checks out.” He clicked a button, uploaded her pass into her chip, and gave her a bureaucratic smile. “Welcome to Colorado."

  She repeated to herself, had to be nice, couldn't yell, couldn't growl. He was only doing his job. Her smile was strained. “Thank you."

  The reward for her patience was finding Tom waiting just outside of immigration, before she even reached baggage claim. She lunged at him, and he caught her in his arms, laughing.

  "You made it! I can't believe you're finally here!"

  Neither could she. They'd married six months ago. She hadn't seen him since their honeymoon in New York City. It had taken a year for the visa to come through, and she hadn't wanted to risk coming on a tourist visa, then having her immigration application shuffled to the back of the queue when her time ran out. She'd contacted Colorado immigration every day for the last month looking for reassurance that her application really was on the track for approval. None of the department's email replies reassured her. Finally being here in Tom's arms seemed like the end
of some monstrous quest.

  So there they stood in the walkway outside customs, arms around each other, kissing like the characters in an old movie while the crowd pushed around them.

  * * * *

  Within an hour they were on the tram heading for Pueblo, where Tom was from, where his family had lived for almost two hundred years. They had Pioneer status, which gave everyone in his family free residency. That was why they'd decided to move her out here, rather than move him back to Maryland. She wrote ad copy, her job was portable. She'd join the ranks of the state's many telecommuters. His residency didn't transfer. If he moved out of state for more than five years, barring school or military service, he'd lose his status.

  They'd decided they wanted their children to be born here, so they could make that choice for themselves when they grew up. It was much easier leaving the state than getting in.

  "You don't have to do this,” Tom said. “I'm perfectly happy telling her to wait a couple of days. You should come home—I want to show you the house, you can tell me everything I did wrong with it. Rest up after the flight. You don't have to see her straight off the plane like this."

  Tom's mother had invited them over for dinner tonight. Alice had only met Tom's parents and the rest of his family once—at the wedding, back East. She hadn't had much contact with them then. They'd had a rowdy buffet reception, certainly not enough of a chance to sit down and get to know anyone. Tom seemed to assume they wouldn't get along, the old mother-in-law cliché. Alice didn't know why he was so worried.

  "No, it's fine. I'm looking forward to it.” Might as well get it over with...

  Tom frowned, clearly not looking forward to it. She squeezed his hand and tried to be reassuring.

  Together they leaned toward the window and watched the scenery pass by: mountains to the west, past the rolling green prairie, sharp, uneven smudges on the horizon. They both repelled and beckoned, like a fortress wall. She hadn't seen mountains like this since a family trip to Aspen when she was little. She hardly remembered.