Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 3

by Jim Baen's Universe! staff

  Don't write this down. Don't record this. You didn't hear it from me.

  In any case, one thing she doesn't do is regain full consciousness. He grasps the reason, and communicates it to himself silently, in the voice of Scotty from Star Trek: "She needs more power, Laddie."

  You don't know Scotty? All right, never mind.

  The other thing she doesn't do is protect herself against the rickettsia's harmful effects, or against invading pathogens of any sort, or against the steady seep of her own hungry gut bacteria. How could she? As her immune system comes online the first thing it does is attack the pathogens keeping it alive. By the time he catches her, restrains her, straps her to the table for a thorough examination, he imagines he can already see the first signs of secondary infection, smell the first hints of carrion on her breath, feel the bruised-apple softness of injuries that will never heal. Acting in what he believes is her best interest, he's managed to turn his beloved into a deranged leper.

  Weeping, possibly even howling in despair, he shoots her up with broad-spectrum antibiotics and apoptosis inhibitors, and drowns her in iced saline.

  Sometimes he stops there. Sometimes she kills him and eats him. Sometimes he succumbs to the infection and loses interest in earthly affairs. Love doesn't always conquer all! But these halfway Harrys are no more noble, no less deranged than their brothers in sin, and this isn't their story.

  Our necromancer—damn him!—dries his tears, wipes his hands, straightens his spine and gets back to work.

  * * *

  The stages of grieving are anger, depression, denial, bargaining, and acceptance. Arguably, the necromancer experiences all but the last of these, all smooshed together into a single driving impulse: to do something about it. Our boy has had enough of failure.

  In the icewater bath he can keep the body for a good long while—long enough to make some calls, do some web research, thumb through back issues of Nature, The Lancet, NEMS Kinematic Review and my personal favorite, the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, beloved of brain-death researchers everywhere. There are several overlapping problems in need of solution here; he needs a lot of information.

  He puts in longer, more convincing appearances at work. He has to buy groceries, do laundry, pay bills. You think mad scientists don't have bills to pay? He waits in line at the DMV, just like you.

  He also manages, somehow, to charm away suspicion; the police never search his basement or his attic, the back room of his loft for the missing woman. A week passes, then a month, and finally the better part of a season. He falls into a routine of self-maintenance—how could he not?—and despite his best efforts he begins to forget the angle of her smile, the furrow of her brow, the exact lilting tone of her giggle. Memory is not a hard drive or a box of old photographs; it's designed to show the past through the distorting lens of the present. In his dreams she smells of rot; her footprints are fetid black sponge marks along the floor. If he didn't take sleep medications before, he does so now. If he had the scrip already, he triples his dosage and still wakes up screaming, sweating, his stomach in knots.

  But he hasn't been idle during this time. In the burgeoning literature of the nanotech industry he's found whole classes of machinery powered by ATP, whole companies dedicated to supplying it in various ways. There's even a mitochondrion-sized device called a Freitas cell that uses nanopellets of gadolinium—a radioisotope chemically similar to uranium, but lighter—to power an endless reconstitution of ADP into ATP. Tireless, robust, far simpler in design than the mitochondria they could reasonably be expected to replace. They'll do.

  For ten thousand dollars the necromancer buys a hundred trillion of these, suspended in a solvent called toluene in a little vial of brown glass. He does other things as well, which I won't describe here for fear of spreading the memes in unnecessary detail. This is a warning, not a how-to session.

  Long story short? Too late, yes, I know. But there comes a moment when she opens her eyes again. Looks at him, looks around her, feels the shackles holding her down. Remembers the moments leading up to her death, compares them against her current surroundings. Does the math.

  "What have you done?" she asks him, with a cool, contemptuous anger. She speaks his name, then repeats the question.

  Her voice is all wrong: strong yet oddly squeaky. She has no need to breathe. She could live a hundred years in a coffin without a single whiff of oxygen. Her eyes are wrong as well: too wide, too vivid, too glittery-cold. Her mind as sharp as a razor back behind them somewhere. If looks could kill . . .

  "Darling," he tries.

  But her flesh is stronger, too. If she feels pain, she masters it, bursting her restraints or possibly wriggling out of them, heedless of the skin on her wrists and ankles.

  Does he try to reason with her? Crack a joke? Pull a gun? Even if he fires it, even if he punctures the heart, it won't stop her. She doesn't need a circulation, either. Ironically, a silver bullet lodged inside her might slowly poison the tiny power plants. A lithium bullet would work even better, or any of hundreds of organic toxins, especially in the brain. It hardly matters at that moment, though, because he's laid no real plans for putting her out of commission again. Not his sweet treasure! Not this time!

  "I love you," he says. "Look what I've done, look at all I've sacrificed. For you. For us!"

  But what's he really thinking? That they can get married, raise children? Are they even still members of the same species?

  "Fool," she tells him, striking him dead with a backhand swat. "How many times have I told you not to cling?" And then of course she breaks through the wall to begin her rampage. Hell hath no fury, indeed.

  * * *

  The arc of each necromancer's tragedy seems preordained; even with differences as great as the similarities, the similarities are vast . . . and troubling. And I will ask each of you to consider this, and to look at your classmates and within yourselves for any symptoms of the disorder.

  You are here for one reason: to help and heal and do no harm, so please believe me—especially you men, yes, are you listening? Believe me when I say that women don't come back to you once they've left. It's a problem mere science will never correct, and one that requires a bit of gentlemanly restraint. No slashing tires! No cheating death!

  That's all for now, yes. Read chapter six tonight, submit a summary in the morning, and never speak of this again, to me or anyone else. One day we'll have the power to take on death with the finesse it truly demands, but I caution you: even then, the gift of love itself will remain fragile, and perhaps not so easily resurrected.

  Sleep well for your exams. I'll see you in the morning. Young man? Yes, you. Mr. Taylor, isn't it? Please come with me. I'm afraid I have some bad news.

  * * *

  The Rest of Your Life in a Day

  Written by Elizabeth Bear

  Illustrated by Jennifer Miller

  The tattoo artist was Yukako Kobayashi, and she was in her sixties or seventies—or possibly older. Her hair was skinned back in a bun; her cheekbones lifted like unfurling wings under button-bright eyes. She was tiny in her batwing sweater and leggings, scrunchy elf boots pooled at her ankles, and Matt was just barely thankful that she hadn't opted for the Laura Holt hair to complete the outfit.

  He was all for cognitive dissonance. Sometimes.

  She didn't turn her back while he undressed, except incidentally as she readied her machine and needles and the dishes of black iron ink. Matt had handled the depilation himself. She did glance across as he slid off his briefs, and said "Your glasses too, please."

  He pushed them up his nose with his thumb, reflexively, and caught himself with a short self-conscious laugh. He had come alone; his only family, his brother Kelly, was practicing with his band—which meant smoking some joints and drinking some beers more than actually playing any music, if Kelly's bitching about his bandmates was anything to go on.

  That was fine with Matt: he hadn't been there when Kelly got his ink, and he wou
ld be damned if Kelly was going to gloat over the pained faces Matt was sure he'd make. And if he told him no, thanks, I'll do it alone, he wouldn't get his hopes dashed when Kelly said he'd come and didn't show.

  Naked, denuded, Matt sat on the edge of the bench, paper crumpling under his ass, stiff plastic denting beneath that. He could barely hear the street noise; easy to forget that New York was going about its business just the other side of the locked, shaded glass doors. Miss Kobayashi pulled on latex gloves—he hadn't known they made them in such small sizes—and wheeled her work surface over. He watched her, deft and precise, a study in gray and black and white, and tried to breathe normally. The ink had an odor to it, chemical, not unpleasant. He wondered how it would smell mixed with blood.

  "Lie down," she said, in the same even tone she'd said everything to him since he and his archmage, Jane, came in to make the appointment. He did, staring at the ceiling. It was clean and interesting, hung with colored silks. The light was good, spotless and white.

  Miss Kobayashi was a Mage, like Jane, like Kelly. Like Matt was training to become. He felt her iron rings through her glove when she patted his hip. As her hands moved over the tray, he'd seen them, lined with pale gold and set with black and gray coral. "Jane says you're sworn chaste." Her English was as American as her outfit, her voice younger than her age and light in tone. "That's an unusually powerful offering for a young Mage these days."

  "I'm not a Mage yet."

  She showed him teeth like stained pearls. "You will be when I'm done with you."

  The way she said it lifted the hairs on his neck. He bit his lip, shut his eyelids. Anything Kelly could do, Matt could do . . . nearly as well. He needed the power. He had reasons.

  "We start at the center," she explained. Another quick pat, which might have been meant to soothe but left him twitching like a nervous bird. "The organs of generation, and then next time, the heart. You are—right handed? Then we finish with that. It will take a year and a day."

  He smelled soap, studied the ceiling as she washed him with impersonal competence. And then there was texture—coolness, a sharp pinch, the sensation of weight and stretching as she handled his genitals. He looked down; she'd locked a chromed steel, leather, and rubber cage around the base of his penis and scrotum. "Keeps the blood in," she said. "Otherwise, at the first needle prick—like a turtle!"

  Show a little faith, he almost said, but instead laid his head back on the table and tried not to feel the blood rising in his face. Or his penis. "If you need a break," she said, "you tell me."

  First, she made him hard. With quick, sharp strokes of her hand, the glove catching on his razor-sensitized skin. He turned aside, embarrassed at how easily he responded to the casual touch of a woman three times his age.

  "Do I have your consent, Matthew Patrick Szczegielniak?"

  Point of no return. This was strength. This was armor. This was a weapon against the creatures who had left him alone in the world, except for Kelly—at first—and then later, when she had unofficially adopted them, Jane. Not that he remembered his parents. Not well, anyway.

  "Yes," Matt said, and made himself open his eyes. At first he thought with relief that only kind of tickles, but then he realized she was drawing careful curlicues over his groin with a magic marker.

  The first stab was bad, sharp. The machine buzzed; he tightened his hands on the edge of the table and held on, breathing deep and slow, and the pain tangled and became complex. He'd been told to expect a floating sensation, but it was more than that. Oh, it hurt all right, but not as badly as he'd feared. In fact—

  "Give me a second," he said, and the needle came off his skin, blessed relief that nevertheless left him abruptly lonely. He realized how much he'd been feeling the vibration, down both legs and up to his solar plexus. His thighs trembled, his ass and abdominal muscles flexed. He curled up, on his elbows, and let himself gasp like an overheated cat. A thin slick of shining fluid covered his genitals, and he almost thought he saw something shimmer behind it. I can do this. I can do anything, if I want the reward bad enough.

  And he wanted it. Jane would make him a warrior monk, she said. Like Galahad. All he had to do was get through this, commit himself to the order, keep putting his heart and body into the training and she'd make him what he wanted to be.

  "All right," he said. "I can do this." And made himself lie back down.

  After that, it went fine for a while. Once he called a rest and once she did, when he had lost track of what was happening and was just lying on his back, eyes closed, feeling the needles perforate skin. The sensations became warmer, rounder. Until she stretched the skin of his scrotum over a wooden spoon to make a smooth surface for the buzzing needles. That seared like a brand.

  By then, it only made him harder.

  The cock ring was, quite frankly, humiliating. Still, Miss Kobayashi was clinical, impersonal, and mostly did not try to engage him in conversation. So no, it wasn't nearly as bad as Kelly had insinuated—but then, he thought Kelly had been trying to psych him out.

  Big brothers. That bully streak was part of their charm.

  He heard himself breathing, deep-chested gasps. Not just the pain of the needles, now; a rooted ache was building behind his testicles. And fire along his nerves, drawn as if with a pen—things flickered and moved in the corners of his vision. He felt himself observed, and cringed from it. There was no one here but the two of them.

  He had the sudden crazy urge to thrust, to push himself into her hand, and lifted his feet a fraction of an inch. A spiked band of fear, of what the needles could do to him if he wasn't still, tightened around his heart, and he mastered himself. The chatter of the machine stopped; she stepped back. "Matthew?"

  And then the giggles hit, making his diaphragm shake while he stuffed his fist against his mouth and tried to keep still.

  When he had himself under control, he peeked to see if Miss Kobayashi was glowering. She huffed approvingly and patted his hip, and he blinked to clear the smear of light haloing her small hands from his vision. A sigh of relief trickled out. "Sorry."

  "Perfectly normal reaction," she said, and bent his penis to the left to get a better angle. The lines had to be gone over several times to make them dark. It was delicate work; too shallow and the ink would fade, too deep and it would scar.

  Miss Kobayashi played no music while she worked, but bent close enough to his sensitive, fresh-shaven skin that he could sometimes feel her breath. He told himself stories to pass the time, and honestly, to distract himself from that aching edge of orgasm that was becoming an unrelenting pressure, and the way the world swam in front of his vision, the muttering voices he almost thought he heard.

  The stories he used were fairy tales, the ones Jane insisted Matt memorize and Kelly scoffed at.

  It was okay for Kelly to scoff; he could play an instrument. Matt had to make do with Bluebeard. Iron John. The Firebird.

  That one was particularly good, especially the part where Tsarevich Ivan was chopped up by his wicked brothers.

  And then Matt thought of the best one, and had a good fifteen minutes with the Beautiful Vassilisa and Baba Yaga, though he never managed to forget the scratch, scratch of the needles, or the way the electricity—the magic, it had to be—scoured him inside and out. Passion was power, and power was passion. If this is like this, I wonder how sex feels.

  He remembered another fairy tale with the Baba Yaga in it, and the doll that Vassilisa's dead mother had left her, that guided her through her captivity by her wicked step-family, and by the witch Baba Yaga too. Eat a little, and drink a little, and listen to my grief.

  His mother had left him something too. Magic, and the Prometheus Club. And Kelly.

  He almost didn't notice when the needle stopped, when cool latex-gloved fingers encircled the base of his penis. He was somewhere else, focused entirely, watching the old witch fly with her iron mortar and pestle for a cart, sweeping away the dust behind. There was a pop, an appalling sudden easing�
�and Matt startled himself with a breathtaking, uncomfortable ejaculation that left him panting like an animal, hands clenched on the bench. "Shit," he said, when he could speak for breathing.

  "It's okay," she said. And she'd been ready for him, too; there was a wad of paper towels in her hand, which she left stowed inside the right glove as she snapped them inside out. God, was he that obvious? "That's not a violation of your oath, I don't think." She dabbed delicately at the bloody skin with a pad of gauze, patting rather than rubbing. He winced. It hurt now—his testicles ached; his penis felt sandpapered—and there was nothing transcendent about this pain.

  But there had been.

  Miss Kobayashi clucked her tongue and stepped back, returning a moment later with a sheaf of mimeos and a tube. "Here are the care instructions. Here's the cream—use it before you dress, and then again after you wash—and wash it as soon as you get home. And if it itches, either apply lotion, or slap at it. Don't rub."