Asimov's SF, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  After numerous misadventures with the sails and riggings, the 506 headed down the ship channel toward the Gulf on engine power. Real sailors swept past, white sails flapping in the breeze, their captains offering half-hearted salutes—until recognizing the name on the boat and the identity of its “captain.” Then beer bottles were raised and pretty women waved with enthusiasm. “Well,” the Alpha said, “it's a good thing we didn't have to sail to Aitken Basin."

  They reached the gulf, and Joe's stomach began to protest. “Let me get something.” Leaving Joe at the wheel, the captain went below. When he emerged, however, it wasn't with a bottle of Dramamine.

  It was with a suitcase. “Going on a trip?” Joe said, trying to joke through the nausea.

  "There ain't no clothes in this case, old pal.” The Alpha opened it: there was the pink Aitken Coral, what looked like the entire set of samples—including three chunks returned from the institutes that had done the analyses.

  "Wow,” was all Joe could say. He was trying not to heave.

  "Well, good buddy ... it seems I've got a choice to make.” Joe noted the Alpha's reference to himself, alone, not the team. “Turn this stuff over to the world and see what sort of waves it makes..."

  "It'll be a cultural tsunami!” Joe said, proud of the metaphor, especially under the circumstances.

  Even the Alpha seemed impressed. “Yeah! A cultural tsunami! The world will never be the same, all that shit."

  There was a long moment when neither moved, though the 506 rose on a swell. Then, with a casualness that Joe would always remember, the Alpha simply raised the suitcase and dumped its contents into the greenish-brown soup that was the Houston ship channel.

  Joe pulled himself to his feet, managing to blurt, “What the hell are you doing?” before throwing up.

  As the greenish spatter of partly digested chicken sandwich and beer floated away on the water, the Alpha said, “Is that an editorial comment? Or the seasickness talking?"

  Joe wiped his mouth. “Dammit, Chuck!"

  The Alpha smiled tightly, his eyes a mass of crow's feet caused by a life in pressurized cockpits. “Look at it this way,” he finally said, unusually quietly. “It's just gone back where it came from."

  * * * *

  The Mystic was killed in a bizarre plane crash in Czechoslovakia in 2002.

  * * * *

  With a television network offering substantial money for the exclusive rights, Joe had made the obligatory visit to the Pathfinder landing site during his first week back on the Moon, driving in the enclosed rover with Kari, who served as camera operator.

  It was strange how different it looked from the images seared into his fifty-year-old memory: of course, he and Chuck had landed when the Sun was lowest, throwing features into relief (the better to be avoided during landing). This second time, the Sun was as high as it ever got in the Moon's polar region. The flat top of Pathfinder's descent stage looked strange, scorched from the blast of the ascent motor.

  The flag they had planted had been bleached white by the Sun, but still stood. Proudly waved, if you allowed for the wave to be frozen.

  "Don't mess up your original footprints,” Kari had warned.

  On that first traverse down the lunar memory lane, Joe made sure to avoid the place where he and Chuck had found the Aitken Coral, not with a camera on him. And especially not after the Alpha himself was patched through, live, offering congratulations and asking a favor: “Could you look for my sunglasses? I think I dropped them."

  Now, as Joe Liquori visited the landing site for the third time, it actually looked familiar. Thank God. At his age, in these circumstances, his memory needed all the help he could get.

  Why had he kept the secret for so long? Because Chuck—the Alpha Apostle—wanted it that way. Because the man who had charged through life, playing the game at a higher level than anyone Joe knew, had said so. Period. Because men who possessed the skills to brave a lunar landing shared a unique ability to make the right decisions.

  But now the Alpha was gone. The stone had rolled away. Death had released Joe.

  * * * *

  The Alpha, Chuck Behrens, died in a biking accident near Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2020.

  * * * *

  Joe stopped the rover briefly a hundred yards south of Pathfinder, and it all looked familiar now, like main street in your hometown. Looking at the tracks from his second visit, he gunned the rover again, turning left and steering a path parallel to that of his and Chuck's second EVA.

  In 1973 it had taken the two of them the better part of two hours to reach Great Salt Lake, but today Joe covered the same ground in forty-five minutes. He had the advantage of aiming for a destination—and not stopping every kilometer to set up an instrument package or take pictures.

  He slowed the rover near the cleft. With habits born of twenty-five years of operational flying and space training, Joe checked, double-checked, and triple-checked his suit and consumables, to Kari's approval (she followed via telemetry and video): “We don't want to lose you,” she said.

  "Me, neither. Besides, think what it would do to future tourist flights.” This was a joke: space fatalities only raised public interest, like the deaths of climbers on Mt. Everest. The stranger and more poignant, the better!

  Joe had no plans to feed that particular public appetite.

  He exited, marveling again at the improvements in technology over the past fifty years. Not just the rover, which had the solid feel of a classic Mercedes automobile compared to the Pathfinder's flimsy golf cart, but the suit—slimmer, more rigid, it practically did the walking for you.

  He took one of the standard sample cases—yes, the commercial Aitken Enterprises at least pretended to do some scientific sampling—and started out.

  It was like walking on a beach in boots. But soon he breached the passage easily, to stand once again in the center of Great Salt Lake.

  He wondered about that long, long, long ago visit from Earth—what kind of vehicle had they used? Hell, had they even used a vehicle? His sci-fi mind was filled with wild images ... maybe the Moon was closer to Earth. Maybe they'd climbed here on some kind of space elevator or tower.

  Stupid. Let others worry about that.

  He reached the cleft and looked into the shadows—

  Nothing but bare gray black rock with shiny flecks. Where was the pink coral? It had lasted millions of years! Surely it hadn't faded away in fifty! Could the damage he and Chuck had inflicted—

  No, no, no. Then Joe thought he saw other footprints. Christ, Kari and the others had found it!

  Come on, Joe ... re-group! Once he allowed himself to catch his breath, to stand back, it was obvious he had gone to the wrong cleft! He'd gotten turned around!

  Here it was! Here was a heap of that magical, historical material from Earth's ancient floor—

  Joe got busy collecting.

  It only took twenty minutes to fill the case, the time expanded to let him take images and add voice-over at every step. What he should have done during his first return.

  Now, back to the rover—and to the new world he would create.

  Step. Step.

  He had to halt. He was feeling sick to his stomach, sick in his chest. His vision was blearing.

  Keep going—

  With a grunt, clutching the last sample from the very last Apollo, Joe Liquori fell down.

  For uncounted minutes he lay in the lunar soil, hearing nothing but the steady hiss of the airflow, the gentle click of the pumps. How long would that last? Two more hours?

  He could not move. He was going to die on the Moon!

  Use the radio! He croaked a cry for help. Heard nothing but static. What did he expect? He was lying in a depression, his line of sight to Aitken Station blocked by the hills around Great Salt Lake.

  * * * *

  The Visionary died in his sleep at home in Colorado ... June 2011.

  * * * *

  In the last twenty years, as their numbers dwindled, intera
ction among the Apostles was via e-mail, forwarded jokes about old age. It was the Alpha, typically, who refused to participate, and when he did, referred to the jokes only by punch lines: “There's one less than he thought!” “I can't remember where I live!” “Hell, every other car's going the wrong way!"

  Lying in the lunar afternoon, those were Joe Liquori's increasingly scattered thoughts ... of punchlines to bad jokes. That, and the realization that Chuck Behrens, the Alpha Apostle, might have been wrong...

  A shadow fell across him. “Hey, Joe, what are you doing like that?"

  It was Kari and Jeffords from Aitken Station. They had realized the Moon was no place for a man of ninety to be walking alone, even one who had pioneered the site.

  Back in their rover, Joe showed them the samples, and tried to tell them the history, knowing he was doing it badly.

  Kari stopped him. “We got it, Joe. We saw your pink stuff—and it led us right to what we've been looking for ... a hundred meters away, we found ice!"

  * * * *

  Joe Liquori, the Omega Apostle, died of a heart attack in Lancaster, California, two days after returning from his second flight to the Moon—the one that discovered water ice, making human colonization possible.

  Copyright © 2009 Michael Cassutt

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: CAMP NOWHERE by Kit Reed

  Kit Reed has a new novel called Enclave that is just out in hard cover from Tor Books. Other novels include The Baby Merchant and Thinner Than Thou, which won an ALA Alex award. Kit's short stories have appeared in venues ranging from F&SF, Asimov's, and Omni to The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Her short collections include Thief of Lives; Dogs of Truth; and Weird Women, Wired Women, which, along with the short novel Little Sisters of the Apocalypse, was a finalist for the Tiptree Prize. A Guggenheim fellow and the first American recipient of a five-year literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation, she is Resident Writer at Wesleyan University. Armed with her usual sardonic wit, Kit takes a harrowing look at the steps one teenager is forced to take when family conflict leads to...

  "It had to be an island, didn't it?” I stick it to Mom. “Like, no escape."

  "Don't be negative, Chazz. This is our best vacation ever!"

  "You always say that, and it never is.” She has us trapped on a boat on some Great Lake in nether Minniesconsin, with no rescue in sight. I am marooned between nothing and nowhere, farther from the ocean than is safe.

  Cool people don't come to places like this, not even on their way to someplace else. Landlocked even though we are floating, I am jammed into the heart of middle America like a slayer's stake. States that I don't even know the names of are crowding me like boulders and it's getting hard to breathe. I poke Mom, in case she isn't feeling guilty. “If I off myself, it's your fault."

  "Don't be silly, it's beautiful!"

  "It's fucking depressing."

  "We're going to love it, you'll see."

  "Yeah, right.” This is nothing like L.A.

  Mom's fingers bite my arm and I look where she is pointing. “This isn't for you,” she says, and I'm like, why are you whispering? “This is for me and Dad."

  I get it. Look at him at the rail, staring moodily at the view.

  Then the island looms like a glacier that we're doomed to hit, and I groan.

  My mom that I don't see much of except on these Quality Time forced marches tries to pick me up single-handed, using only her voice. She wants to put me down in that good place shrinks claim is right here inside our heads. “Oh Chazz, isn't it pretty?"

  "Not really.” But it is. Rustic cabins sit in the dirt like markers on a board game that I don't want to play. There's a cutesy log-cabin lodge with long porches, and every single deck chair is facing out to sea. Pine trees and shells line a beach that, although we are nowhere near the ocean, looks like sand. Trestle tables and a monstrous BBQ pit signal group activities, crap campfires with ghost stories and, yuk. Sing-alongs. Woodsy heaven, and it's sinister as hell.

  "Look, Chazz. Tennis courts. This is going to be fun."

  At the Santa Monica Beach Club, at least you get to go home at the end. “Mom, it's a camp!"

  "This is different,” she says in that shaky soprano, like she has to sell herself as well as me.

  "I hate camp."

  This is ominous. She goes, “Oh, sweetie, this is different."

  We are in yet another enclosed situation, the kind Mom books for our annual stab at family bonding. She and Dad are such big deals at work that they have to pencil in two weeks in some high ticket resort so we don't get, like, alienated or some damn thing.

  Platinum togetherness.

  At home I play the top level on video games you don't even know about, plus I can do anything I want. I eat whatever, whenever, and if Blanca says do my homework or go hook up with my friends, I just blow her off. She knows damn well I don't have any, so I go, “Blanca, get over it,” and she grins. I do go out, just not like she wants.

  I happen to work the dog parks, for, like, discretionary funds? Twilight is best. Little foofy dogs are easy, drop leftovers and they come right up to you. Then, WHAM. They're in the bag. You have to wait until the dog parents give up going, “Mikey, Mikeeeee,” or whatever and leave. Then you sneak Foofy home. Some of the dogs I borrow are pissers but some are really cute. You can see how people get attached. What I do is keep their dog until I see them stapling up REWARD posters at the park. I wait another week. Then I turn up at their front door with Foofy and some story, and you have never seen people so glad. Never mind what I do with the money, it's not the point, although I do give Blanca some of it because she knows. More to the point is the licking and the jumping and the blissed-out looks on these fools’ faces when I reunite them, the thanking and the hugging at the end, plus the begging me to stay in touch which I can not, repeat, not afford to do. I'm a hero, for a day at least. So, like, somebody notices. Besides Blanca, I mean. A blind asshole could see what's going on with me. So, so what?

  It's not like I'd tell my shrink.

  You wouldn't think it'd be easy to hide a dog on the premises, but when the folks hit it bigtime and we moved uphill into the model home, Mom and Dad fixed up the pool house for me. They said I needed my own space. Like, they think I don't know they put me out there so I won't hear them fight? They don't get that living in the pool house cuts both ways. I could hide a giant panda under my bed and they'd never know.

  When I get back from these deliveries I hit the kitchen and pay off Blanca who, the minute she heard me going out, started to bake. We sit down with cappucinos and hot brownies and she gets all weepy because she's glad all over again because I got home safe, so it's like a party every time. Where, in Camp Nowhere, can I possibly get that rush?

  This is not immediately apparent.

  Sign on the dock reads: No pets allowed, so that's out. Nobody in my demographic, as far as I can tell, which, given the nature of family vacation spots, is a little weird. So is the fact that Dad gloms on to the burly head counselor in her gray camp shirt with a seal on the pocket and, OMG, a lanyard with a whistle, talking her ear off like he'd rather talk to her than us. Also weird? Going uphill, we run into campers coming down with tears streaming. They stumble along with stretched faces like comedy/ tragedy masks and the bad part? I can't tell which, and—weird? Their group leaders are wearing red camp shirts.

  "Mom.” I poke her. “Mom?"

  Her face does things I can't make sense of. After eight squeaks where her voice craps out she goes, “You ... You might ... You might as well know, this is therapy camp."

  "Why, Mom? There's nothing the matter with me. MOM, THERE'S..."

  Her soft hand stops my mouth. “I know,” she says, like we are both grownups. “Chazz, I know."

  "Then why."

  "Hush,” she says. “Don't.” Then she touches my arm softly, which is truly frightening. She's begging. “Trust me."

&
nbsp; Our cabin is, like, out of some horror movie where kids get mauled, usually while having sex: it has wooden flaps that drop over the windows, Wal-mart maple furniture with flowered seats, rag rugs and candle-looking bulbs in fake elk-horn lamps and, up that staircase—you know, the one where creepy music starts because there's Something Awful at the top, crouched to spring?—upstairs in those bedrooms, plaid bedspreads.

  I'd like to say things pick up at dinner down at the lodge, but our first nights in these places are always the worst, even though it's when they serve the best food you're gonna get. There's family-style bowls of Jell-O salad and corn bread in baskets on checkered tablecloths. We sit down on the Ferguson family island, Mom and Dad and me. She makes us join hands, even though Dad's mind is somewhere else, and she gives us this sad, hopeful smile. “Just us, just family. Aren't you glad?"

  I think but do not say I am in no respect glad, because I am cornered in the area of No Escape. See, in a family resort you have to sit down at the same table with the same peeps every single night for two mortal weeks. Mom thinks that's the whole point. I think it's weird. Except for when Gramma comes and on Thanksgiving, we never do that at home, so when we do sit down, all we have in common is me.

  My folks do talent management on Wilshire at Beverly, so dinner runs like a meeting, and on Mom's annual to-do list, the first item is always me. This is our pattern, and believe me, these vacations are patterned.

  They'll use up the dinner hour grilling me, and in these places we have to sit here for the whole hour to prove to the people that we're having fun. Every “So, Chazz” question is loaded. They're all, What is your problem? never, Happy much? Whether I am happy is beside the point. High rollers expect trophy kids, so, my bad. By dessert they've run out of things to ask. I always promise to do better and we eat our pie. They finish their after-dinner decaf and we're done.

  Food's okay, but one look at the personnel and I despair. Usually I can find somebody to hang out with: college kids who don't know I'm only in ninth grade, but these waitpeople are older than my folks. They're all pasty and dismal in gray camp shirts, and instead of smiling when they bring stuff to the table, they come at you like they're fixing to medicate you or throw you down and give CPR.