by Janis Ian
He nodded.
"This was in Boston," I went on, "where the mornings are only cold on days that end in ‘y.’ It was February, so by now I was thoroughly sick of coaxing that beast into life every morning. So this one morning, the goddam thing wouldn’t wouldn’t wouldn’t wake up, and as I got out to wrestle with it, a big guy came walking by and asked if I needed help. It was so cold, you know? Anyway, I didn’t even hesitate." I took a deep breath and a deep gulp of beer. "I stuck out my tits and batted my eyelashes and showed him all my teeth and lied. Yes, I said, I sure did need help."
"And really you just wanted it."
"I never do that kind of shit, you know?" I looked up from my hands to meet his eyes pleadingly. "Not since high school, anyway. But it was so fucking cold."
"Sure."
"I mean, I wasn’t proud of doing it…but there was at least a little bit of pride in how well I was doing it, after all that time out of practice. By sheer body language I pretty much forced him to say, why don’t you go back inside and stay warm and I’ll take care of everything, little lady. So the only actual injury I sustained, except for the temporary blindness from the flash, was one of his teeth that came through the living room window and buried itself half an inch deep in the meat of my shoulder. It got infected real bad."
"My God," Dora said, wide-eyed.
"It was one of the bigger pieces of him they recovered, actually. Half a scapula, two lawns down, that was another one."
I went to reach for my beer but found my hands were full of Dora’s.
"He was a sweet guy, who just wanted to fantasize about fucking me and was willing to pay for the privilege, and I got him turned into aerosol tomato paste."
"How?"
"I had ignored one of the basic rules of Lesbianism: never seduce a capo’s daughter."
He raised one exquisite eyebrow. "Oh dear."
"For fairly obvious reasons Adriana hadn’t gotten around to mentioning what her father did for a living, but somebody else had discreetly tipped me off—after it was too late. It excited me. I had the charming idea that as long as nobody knew about me and Adriana but Adriana, I was safe." I realized how hard I was gripping his hands and eased off, marveling that he had betrayed no sign of pain. "So after my car was blown up I handed Adriana in, and in exchange I got a new name, new street, city and state address, new appearance, new history, and new occupation. I used to paint, but you can’t be a fugitive painter. Thank God for folk music: a chimp could learn it, and there are customers in every hamlet."
He put my right hand on my beer bottle and let go. I took a long sip.
"Now I don’t own a car. And I live in a place where nobody but tourists and fools own a car, and the bicycle is king. A place where there are never ever any cold mornings. A place with no local mob, so cheesy and sleazy no self-respecting made guy would bring his gumar here on vacation. Endsville. I haven’t been as far north as Key Largo in ten years, haven’t left the rock in five. I’m a human black hole: so far up my own ass, daylight can’t reach me. An ingrown toenail of a person."
Damn. One more sip and that beer would be gone. And the two youngsters behind the bar had just put out the last of the fake hurricane lamps and gone off home.
"So your question was, why did I hang my ass out in the breeze, to help a stranger wearing false tits? And the answer is, I guess because I know a little something about being hunted. Every once in a while, just on general principles, those cocky, remorseless sons of bitches ought to get a big unpleasant surprise." I belched and frowned. "And maybe I’ve been safe a little too long."
"And don’t feel like you deserve to be."
"To this day, I don’t know anything about him—not his name or address, or where he was headed that morning, or whether or not he left behind a family—zilch. Once I stopped being too terrified to give a shit, stopped running long enough to wonder, I could have found out, without drawing attention. I’ve never even tried. What the hell do you suppose could have happened to those two fetishware feds?"
"Forget it," said Dora.
I nearly did as he said. But then for no reason I can explain, an odd little thought-train went through my head—one of those brain-fission deals, where several seconds worth of thought somehow take place in a split second.
Neither of those feds could possibly have concealed a long gun under that tight leather/so?/so where did they have their rifles stashed?/in a car, obviously, parked in back where the light is poorest: the first shot came as you went out the back door/okay—so if they had wheels, how come they were both tailing Dora on foot just now?/hell, you can’t tail a pedestrian in a car without being spotted/fine, but wouldn’t one of them at least follow in the car, staying well back? Say they bagged Dora: were they going to carry him back through the streets to their ride? In Key West, that’d be taking a big chance, even at this hour/what’s your point?/I don’t think they have wheels/so what?/I don’t think they have rifles either—or else why leave them behind now?/one last time: so what?/so who did shoot at us with a rifle?/oh shit/and where—
That’s as far as I’d gotten when I heard the floorboard creak up on the stage. I’ve played on that stage, I know exactly where that goddam creaky board is, and I realized instantly that a man standing there would have a clear shot at both of us. "Dora, run!" I cried, and kicked my chair over backward trying to move away from him.
The shooter came into view out of the darkness, and apparently let his instincts tell him to choose the larger target first; the rifle barrel settled on Dora. Now I wanted to be going in that direction, to take the bullet, and it was like one of those nightmares where you’re trying to do a 180 but can’t seem to overcome inertia and get moving the right way. Time slowed drastically.
The shooter was definitely not one of the feds: way shorter than either, with hair longer than Dora’s wig. A gentle breeze brought scents of lime and coral. Somewhere far above there was a small plane. Like a million gunshot victims before him, Dora flung his hand up in front of his face in a useless instinctive attempt to catch the bullet. A distant dog barked. The shooter fired. Sound no louder than a nail-gun. Dora caught the bullet. "Don’t do that again," he said to the shooter.
Then nobody said or did anything for several long seconds.
The shooter shook his head once, moved the barrel in a small circle, took careful aim and fired again. Dora caught that slug too. "I warned you," he said sadly.
The shooter apparently decided that if Dora declined to die, maybe I’d be more cooperative. He was right, I would. I was too terrified even to put my hand up in front of my face. I saw the barrel lock on me, saw the shooter’s face past it, I could even see him let out his breath and hold it. Then he squealed, because the rifle was somehow molten, dripping like so much glowing lava from his hands. They burst into flame, and the one near his cheek set his hair on fire. He drew in a deep breath to scream, but before he could he began to vibrate. Ever see one of those machines in a hardware store shake up a can of paint? Like that. In less than a second he began to blur; in three he was gone. Just…gone. So were the hot coals on the stage. Not even a bad smell left behind.
Myself and I conferred, and decided that this would be a good time for me to fall down. To help, I became unconscious.
~~~~~
When I opened my eyes I was at Mallory Square, sitting up against a trashcan, staring out across a few hundred yards of dark slow water at Tank Island. I have absolutely no idea how I got there, or why. The breeze was from the south, salty and sultry. Clouds hid the moon.
"I called my equivalent of the Triple A a couple of years ago," Dora said softly from behind me and to my right. "My tow truck should be here in only another day or two, and then I’ll be leaving this charming star system behind forever. So I feel kind of bad about the two FBI agents. Hunting me was just their job. And from your point of view, hunting me is the sensible thing to do."
Somehow I was past being astonished. I’d worked it out while I was unconscious, wat
ched all the inexplicable little pieces assemble themselves into an inescapable pattern, and accepted it. "I’ve never had much success identifying with any kind of hunter at all," I said.
"And you need to identify with someone before you can empathize with them."
"Well…yeah. At least a little," I said defensively. "I mean, I can identify with you…and for all I know, you’re not even carbon-based. Hell, you’re my imaginary role model. The stranger in a strange land. Brilliant, being a drag queen, by the way. If anybody spots a flaw in your disguise, it just makes them condescending."
"You should do what I’m doing."
"What do you mean? Pretend to be human? Go femme? Kill hit men? Catch b—"
"Go home."
Now I was astonished. I sat up and swiveled to face him. "What the hell are you talking about? You know I—"
He sat cross-legged, staring up at the night sky. At the stars. "Okay, maybe not home—but get out of Key West."
I looked away. "Dora, I can’t."
"Listen to me," he said. "Pat, will you listen?"
"I’ll listen."
"I’ve been in America a lot more recently than you have. A lot of things have changed, the last ten or fifteen years."
"Nothing really important."
"Cars have changed since you lived there. They all start on cold mornings, now."
"Bullshit!"
"I swear, it’s true. Nobody recognizes anything under the hood any more—but nobody cares, because they don’t need to."
I searched his face. "Are you serious?"
"Nobody carries jumper cables any more. And the capo is not going to send a second mechanic after you—not after this one just vanishes without a trace, not for a purely personal beef. You can go home any time you want to, Pat. Away from here, anyway."
My head was spinning. The concept of being able to be once again what Larry McMurtry calls "a live human being, free on the earth," was way more mindboggling than dodging certain death, or meeting a spaceman. My mother was still alive, last I’d heard. Maybe I could find out the name of the man I’d gotten killed. Maybe he’d left family behind. Maybe there was something I could do for them. Suddenly the universe was nothing but questions.
I grabbed one out of the air. "I’m throwing your own question back at you," I said. "Why did you do this? Why did you kill two men to keep them from blowing your cover…and then five minutes later kill another one in front of me and blow your cover?" Absurdly I felt myself getting angry. "Why did I wake up just now? Now you’ve got to walk around your last few days here wondering how badly I want to be on Geraldo. What would you take such a risk for? How the hell can you identify with any human well enough to empathize…much less a dyke?"
The clouds picked that moment to let the moonlight through. I’d seen him grimace and I’d seen him grin. This was the first time I’d seen him smile, and it was so beautiful my breath caught in my throat. I’ve painted it several times without every really capturing it.
"You really don’t know my heart," he said. "It has five chambers, for one thing."
Then he was gone like the Cheshire Cat.
I never saw him again, and now every night after I get my mother to sleep, and climb into my own bed to snuggle under the covers with my dear partner, I pray to God that Dora got home safely to his own home and loved ones.
I empathize. Like the song says: he waited so long, to remember what it’s like to feel somebody’s arms around his life.
(Back to TOC)
Riding Janis
David Gerrold
If we had wings
where would we fly?
Would you choose the safety of the ground
or touch the sky
if we had wings?
~ from If We Had Wings by Janis Ian & Bill Lloyd
The thing about puberty is that once you’ve done it, you’re stuck. You can’t go back.
It’s like what Voltaire said about learning Russian. He didn’t know if learning Russian would be a good thing or not unless he actually learned the language—except that after you learn it, would the process of learning have turned you a person who believes it’s a good thing? So how could you know? Puberty is like that—I think. It changes you, the way you think, and what you think about. And from what I can tell, it’s a lot harder than Russian. Especially the conjugations.
You can only delay puberty for so long. After that you start to get some permanent physiological effects. But there’s no point in going through puberty when the closest eligible breeding partners are on the other side of the solar system. I didn’t mind being nineteen and unfinished. It was the only life I knew. What I minded was not having a choice. Sometimes I felt like just another asteroid in the belt, tumbling forever around the solar furnace, too far away to be warmed, but still too close to be truly alone. Waiting for someone to grab me and hurl me toward Luna.
See, that’s what Mom and Jill do. They toss comets. Mostly small ones, wrapped so they don’t burn off. There’s not a lot of ice in the belt, only a couple of percentage points, if that; but when you figure there are a couple billion rocks out here, that’s still a few million that are locally useful. Our job is finding them. There’s no shortage of customers for big fat oxygen atoms with a couple of smaller hydrogens attached. Luna and Mercury, in particular, and eventually Venus, when they start cooling her down.
But this was the biggest job we’d ever contracted, and it wasn’t about ice as much as it was about ice-burning. Hundreds of tons per hour. Six hundred and fifty million kilometers of tail, streaming outward from the sun, driven by the ferocious solar wind. Comet Janis. In fifty-two months, the spray of ice and dye would appear as a bright red, white, and blue streak across the Earth’s summer sky—the Summer Olympics Comet.
Mom and Jill were hammering every number out to the umpteenth decimal place. This was a zero-tolerance nightmare. We had to install triple-triple safeguards on the safeguards. They only wanted a flyby, not a direct hit. That would void the contract, as well as the planet.
The bigger the rock, the farther out you could aim and still make a streak that covers half the sky. The problem with aiming is that comets have minds of their own—all that volatile outgassing pushes them this way and that, and even if you’ve wrapped the rock with reflectors, you still don’t get any kind of precision. But the bigger the rock, the harder it is to wrap it and toss it. And we didn’t have a lot of wiggle room on the timeline.
Janis was big and dark until we lit it up. We unfolded three arrays of LEDs, hit it with a dozen megawatts from ten klicks, and the whole thing sparkled like the star on top of a Christmas tree. All that dirty ice, 30 kilometers of it, reflecting light every which way—depending on your orientation when you looked out the port, it was a fairy landscape, a shimmering wall, or a glimmering ceiling. A trillion tons of sparkly mud, all packed up in nice dense sheets, so it wouldn’t come apart.
It was beautiful. And not just because it was pretty to look at, and not just because it meant a couple gazillion serious dollars in the bank either. It was beautiful for another reason.
See, here’s the thing about living in space. Everything is Newtonian. It moves until you stop it or change its direction. So every time you move something, you have to think about where it’s going to go, how fast it’s going to get there, and where it will eventually end up. And we’re not just talking about large sparkly rocks, we’re talking about bottles of soda, dirty underwear, big green boogers, or even the ship’s cat. Everything moves, bounces, and moves some more. And that includes people too. So you learn to think in vectors and trajectories and consequences. Jill calls it "extrapolatory thinking."
And that’s why the rock was beautiful, because it wasn’t just a rock here and now. It was a rock with a future. Neither Mom nor Jill had said anything yet, they were too busy studying the gravitational ripple charts, but they didn’t have to say anything. It was obvious. We were going to have to ride it in, because if that thing started outgassing, it
would push itself off course. Somebody had to be there to create a compensating thrust. Folks on the Big Blue Marble were touchy about extinction-level events.
Finding the right rock is only the second-hardest part of comet-tossing. Dirtsiders think the belt is full of rocks, you just go and get one; but most of the rocks are the wrong kind; too much rock, not enough ice—and the average distance between them is 15 million klicks. And most of them are just dumb rock. Once in a while, you find one that’s rich with nickel or iron, and as useful as that might be, if you’re not looking for nickel or iron right then, it might as well be more dumb rock. But if somebody else is looking for it, you can lease or sell it to them.
So Mom is continually dropping bots. We fab them up in batches. Every time we change our trajectory, Mom opens a window and tosses a dozen paper planes out.
A paper plane doesn’t need speed or sophistication, just brute functionality, so we print the necessary circuitry on sheets of stiff polymer. (We fab that too.) It’s a simple configuration of multi-sensors, dumb-processors, lotsa-memory, soft-transmitters, long-batteries, carbon-nanotube solar cells, ion-reservoirs, and even a few micro-rockets. The printer rolls out the circuitry on a long sheet of polymer, laying down thirty-six to forty-eight layers of material in a single pass. Each side. At a resolution of dpi, that’s tight enough to make a fairly respectable, self-powered, paper robot. Not smart enough to play with its own tautology, but certainly good enough to sniff a passing asteroid.
We print out as much and as many as we want, we break the polymer at the perforations; three quick folds to give it a wing shape, and it’s done. Toss a dozen of these things overboard, they sail along on the solar wind, steering themselves by changing colors and occasional micro-bursts. Make one wing black and the other white and the plane eventually turns itself; there’s no hurry, there’s no shortage of either time or space in the belt. Every few days, the bot wakes up and looks around. Whenever it detects a mass of any kind, it scans the lump, scans it again, scans it a dozen times until it’s sure, notes the orbit, takes a picture, analyzes the composition, prepares a report, files a claim, and sends a message home. Bots relay messages for each other until the message finally gets inserted into the real network. After that, it’s just a matter of finding the publisher and forwarding the mail. Average time is 14 hours.
