The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  Pernell tries another laugh. “So what did they do wrong?”

  The girl looks at him. “The aliens are wrong.”

  “Really,” he says.

  “What are you talking about?” Molly presses.

  “Invaders from space would never, ever act like that.”

  Steve glances over his shoulder. “Kid,” he says. “Don’t take this the wrong way, kid. But you are one certified, genuine fucking idiot.”

  Nothing about the girl shows tension. Not her posture or voice. She shrugs and says, “If there were body snatchers.” Another pause. “If they were real, then they would be nothing like they are in the movies. Nature does not and never will work that way.”

  Silence.

  Amusing this girl is just too much work. Pernell sighs and says, “Young lady. What do you know about body snatchers?”

  Another framing silence descends.

  Then the girl says, “I know that aliens are real. And I know that they’re not only real but extraordinarily common, and if you know what to look for, you’d realize that new aliens are arriving here every day.”

  Tires and the road hum smoothly. Nobody speaks. Three people summon all they know about mental illness and delusional states, every nugget of fact contaminated with slasher movies and sentimental dramas. Then each one of them takes a simple precaution to mollify the fear. Molly sits sideways, her back pressed against her locked door. Steve drops his right hand near the pepper spray kept for unruly fans and disgruntled screenwriters. And Pernell, feeling most vulnerable, slips a Waterman pen from his shirt pocket, exposing the hard tip, mentally practicing how he will stab any hand that comes near him.

  “Maybe I’m stupid,” Molly allows. “Maybe you should explain to stupid me how nature really works.”

  With an agreeable, almost cheery tone, the girl says, “I can try.”

  “Educate all of us,” Pernell teases.

  “Well,” the girl begins. “First of all, it isn’t possible to build a new body, a body that matches a human being exactly, and do that magic in a few hours or days, much less in just a few minutes. Real bodies aren’t plastic dolls or digital images. Flesh demands delicate, exacting work. Hundreds of trillions of proteins have to be fabricated and aligned just so, creating essential enzymes and structural tissues. Skeletons are magnificent puzzles, and they don’t like being slapped together in the wrong order. Organs have to be built and arranged in the proper sequence, and everything has to work with the first heartbeat. Nature understands all of this. It takes twenty years to build an adult human. If organic systems could do the magic in one day, don’t you think they would? Growth is power. Power is relentless. On a world with that kind of fecundity, every organism would have to race through its life cycle just to keep up.”

  Pernell waves his free hand. “Who knew? Thank you.”

  Molly sighs and Steve shakes his head, laughing.

  “Human minds are complicated,” the girl continues. “Even a stupid man’s brain is enormous and sophisticated and ever-changing. The skull holds as many neurons as there are stars in this galaxy, and every neuron has to be integrated with its neighbors, and all of them have to be trained, and the thermodynamic problems alone make it impossible to build a working mind out of fat and blood and nothingness.”

  Pernell shifts his weight. With a quiet, measured voice, he says, “Except we aren’t talking about reality. Are we, dear? Our topic is the movies. And as you pointed out, thank you, movies are stories told with piles of pictures and sounds. They are works of fiction. By its very nature, fiction is under no obligation to obey every rule in the real world.”

  Molly enjoys her boss’s expert dismissal. She laughs and claps her hands once, saying, “Amen.”

  The hitchhiker remains unflustered. “There’s another insolvable problem,” she continues. “In a hundred different films, the earth has been invaded. The inspiration for this scenario comes from human war, but the truth is that nobody will attack this world with starships. Traveling though space isn’t like floating on the sea. The galaxy is enormous. Stars are far apart. And there aren’t any hyperspace tricks to jump from there to here. The best rocket fuel will always be antimatter, but its production would bankrupt any world foolish enough to try to build some stellar armada.”

  Pernell realizes that the Escalade is slowing down. “What are you doing?”

  “We aren’t a bus,” Steve says. “I’m dropping her off.”

  “No, you’re not,” Pernell tells him.

  But Steve holds to his decision. The girl is crazy and maybe dangerous, and his first job is to keep this spoiled, foolish man safe. The studio hired him for that reason. He has the authority and good reasons to make the decision that he’s making. And that’s why he pushes on the brakes, right up until Molly touches his forearm.

  “You heard him. Let the girl talk, or you’re walking too.”

  They accelerate, incrementally.

  Pernell holds his pen like a knife, but his shoulders relax. “Maybe you’re right, young lady. Maybe the science stinks. But directors aren’t scientists. I know I’m no expert in space travel or biology.”

  “Biology,” the girl repeats enthusiastically. “You know, large portions of the galaxy are full of life. The earth is one example among billions. And evolution isn’t just a local custom. Natural selection is a universal process, working on every species and every living world. Selection forces help pick winners, and worlds that make reasonable choices, no matter how boring, are the same worlds that eventually leap across the cosmos to invade their neighbors.”

  “But you just said,” Molly complains. “Invasions can’t happen.’”

  “The clichéd invasion can’t. Exactly.”

  Molly takes a deep breath and another and says, “But. In the first snatcher movie, seeds drift down from outer space. Not spaceships.”

  “Spores are very tiny seeds,” the girl mentions.

  “I guess so.”

  “Tough spores released into the vacuum will ride on the pressure of starlight, drifting like dust. Most of them won’t touch ground again. But after a few million years, you’re right, a few spores might settle on another world, and some of those spores could germinate. Grow like mushrooms, eating organic matter. Or turn into plants and eat sunlight.” A loud bright and enthusiastic laugh erupts. She pats her legs and says, “Well now, you’re absolutely right. That is the most reasonable plan of attack. It’s so reasonable, in fact, it’s inevitable.”

  Molly smiles warily, unsure why she suddenly cares so much about this painfully uninteresting subject.

  The girl leans between the front seats, her face low, features illuminated by the dash. She has a lovely focused and undeniably smart expression. She’s insane, obviously so, but it’s a fascinating, fetching affliction, and Pernell can’t help but smile along with her, anticipating whatever grand weirdness will come out of her next.

  “Imagine,” the girl says. Then she says the word once more, with a warm delighted voice. “Imagine.”

  No one else speaks.

  “Ten thousand alien spores touch the earth’s surface every day. Every day, microscopic capsules drift down from the sky, coming to rest wherever wind and water place them. Why would anyone notice that quiet onslaught? One day’s sporefall couldn’t dirty a single raindrop. Of course most of the spores are nonviable, sterilized by radiation, killed by deep time. Even the healthy invaders probably won’t find their way to a perfect nourishing environment. Ten thousand spores aren’t enough, obviously. Ten million aren’t enough, probably. But if just one spore in ten billion were successful, we should see the results. Where are the colonies of microbes with very peculiar genetics? Believe me, scientists have looked. Where are the strange purple bushes standing in everyone’s front yard? And why isn’t the ocean floor carpeted with a ropy glowing fungus that arrived thirty years ago, descended from a seed riding Halley’s tail?”

  The girl suddenly reaches between the seats, touching Steve’s
bare arm.

  He jumps, curses.

  “Relax,” she says.

  “I am,” he lies.

  “What’s your name?”

  He hesitates and then for some reason decides to lie. “Bill. I’m Bill.”

  “Well, Bill. I want to slip my finger deep inside your ear.”

  He looks back and says, “No. You don’t want to.”

  Yet she laughs and tries, and with an easy stark violence, he slaps the hand before it can touch his head.

  “Interesting,” she says.

  “No, it isn’t,” he says.

  “This is something you don’t know. How could you? But is an illustration of why there are no successful invasions. Life on earth has a similar reaction to unwelcome touches.” She sits back. Pauses. “Nothing could be more reasonable. Life in the galaxy was ancient before there even was an earth. Millions of worlds were thick with organic goo, not sentient but durable and persistent. Comet impacts and the like sent clouds of totipotent spores across the cosmos. As soon as life became possible here, it was here. It was thriving. Yet the evidence shows only one founding family, one set of descendants. That’s a puzzle and a clue. The biosphere around us has a deep driving need to remain pure. Aliens are invaders. No matter how fertile the invading spore, it will be identified and defeated. Really, there isn’t any other explanation for what you don’t see every day. In a universe awash with life, the only way one small world can remain pure is to fight off every trespasser.”

  Pernell shifts his weight and sighs. “You certainly know a lot about this subject. A science student, are you?”

  The girl smiles and says nothing.

  “Or maybe you’re something else,” he allows. “Since you seem to know everything about this business, it stands to reason: You must be some kind of alien monster.”

  Steve laughs.

  Molly gasps and throws one hand over her mouth.

  The girl calmly stares at Pernell, the smile unchanged. “Now why would you believe such a thing?”

  “You said so yourself. Life is everywhere. Aliens must be everywhere. You know things that our scientists probably don’t understand, and since by your own admission you agree that extraterrestrials are trying to make a beachhead here…”

  He lets his voice trail away.

  Molly wraps her arms around her chest, wishing that the boss would stop teasing the crazy girl.

  But Pernell loves late-night bull sessions. Always has. “Tell me if I’m right. You seem to be claiming that we don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to invasions. Because our enemies arrive small, and they can’t just whip up big new bodies out of pods, and the earth can kill the little bastards easily enough.”

  The girl says, “To a degree, yes. You’re right.”

  “Just to a degree?”

  Molly puts her face between the seats. “You know, sir. Tomorrow’s a big day. I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe—”

  “Shut up,” he says pleasantly.

  She retreats.

  “I’m talking to this girl,” he says with a gracious, unconcerned voice. Then to his guest, he asks, “So now, what’s wrong with my thinking?”

  “The word ‘alien.’ It trips you up, if you aren’t careful.”

  “How’s that?”

  She nods, the smile narrowing slightly. “Life on earth came from somewhere else. Assume that’s true. Well, today that original mother world might be on the other side of the galaxy, or she died for some good natural reason. But her offspring are everywhere. In this arm of the galaxy, maybe ten thousand living worlds are infested with this one distinct strain of life, and each one of those worlds protects its independence, and each has evolved complexity and new talents. One or two or ten resident species might be technologically advanced. Those creatures are actively launching spores out into the cold and dark. But maybe these are larger, more sophisticated versions of the early spores. No, they can’t be as swift as the bacteria-sized vanguards. The odds of finding their way to this earth are extraordinarily low. But if one should ever land here, it will be blessed with the same biochemistry as the locals, the same key signatures. Earth life won’t rebel against it, and with a second measure of luck, the beast might do rather well.”

  “So they’re not true aliens,” says Pernell. “That’s your point.”

  “These new spores can be different, yes. They won’t sprout into freestanding new species. They’re sleek, slippery entities that latch onto whatever fertile organism happens to be nearest, giving its host a set of radical instructions. With genes and memes and instructive elements more powerful than either.”

  She makes a soft sighing noise, wrapping her arms around her waist. “For a long time, life on Earth was simple. Microbes at sea and oxygen building up in the atmosphere, and then the oxygen diminished, and then it built again and fell again. But very little changed, and nothing lived on the land. The only multicellular life was flat and rudimentary. Then all at once, on the first day of what’s called the Cambrian Period, there was diversity. Every phylum that exists today exploded into existence. You see, a new set of instructions had arrived, the revolution was unleashed, and that’s only the largest revolution in a string of upheavals that can’t be more obvious, once you know what to look for in the geologic record.”

  She pauses.

  With conviction and considerable pleasure, Molly looks into the back seat, saying, “Oh, you are so crazy.”

  “Now, now,” Pernell says. “Be nice.”

  “Why?” Molly asks. “There’s no reason to tolerate…to patronize…somebody that probably walked away from a mental hospital.”

  Pernell drops his hand on Molly’s shoulder.

  She pulls back, glaring at him.

  Then the insane girl takes hold of Pernell’s arm, one finger and the matching thumb curling around his elbow, and she moves his arm back into his lap. He tries to pull free and can’t. Startled, he stabs with the pen hand, but the girl grabs his fist in the dark, using her other hand, and she squeezes until the weapon drops between them.

  Molly turns to Steve, unaware of what just happened. “Pull over here. Now. This has gone far enough.”

  “Finally, somebody’s thinking,” says Steve, putting them on the narrow graveled shoulder.

  The Escalade tilts, tires biting into the soft, unstable earth.

  They stop, and the girl laughs. She laughs and tells them, “Of course you know what I am. What else could I be?”

  Silence feels best. No one wants to talk to the creature. No one wants to risk prolonging this conversation. But Pernell’s arm and hand are aching, and his skin feels sunburned, and worst of all, he can’t just let this business drop. So he finally says, “No, I don’t know. What exactly are you?”

  “Oh, darling,” the girl says, breaking into wild laughter. “You’re riding alone with the next invasion, of course.”

  Five weeks and five hours have passed. The sun is barely up when the Escalade parks behind the motel, out of sight of the Interstate. Steve emerges, stretching his back and setting the car alarm before walking slowly up to the second story, to 209, knocking on the metal door before using the card key. The room is dark and silent. The bed is empty. He sits on the end of the bed and rubs his face and then lays back, weight on his elbows and the sheets smelling of her. He sniffs and smiles, and the toilet flushes, and he lies down just before she comes out of the bathroom.

  “I’m here,” he says.

  “I heard you,” she says.

  He turns and looks at a narrow little body wearing nothing but panties and a dozen bloody anchors. She sits beside him and puts a fond hand on his chest, asking, “How was it?”

  “In a minute,” he says.

  She sits and waits, patience carrying her through the next couple minutes of silence.

  Steve names the town where they shot all night.

  “I remember the schedule,” she says.

  He wants to say something, but this won’t be eas
y. The strongest light is the vertical slash of reflected dawn entering between the blinds. The room is cheap but neat. She washed her Subway uniform yesterday after work, and it hangs where it can dry without wrinkling. He looks at it and then at her face, particularly at the big eyes, saying, “Do you know where that is?”

  “The town?”

  He points. He gives the miles between Fairview and there. He expects her to guess the rest of it for herself, but she seems puzzled and not in any real hurry to understand whatever he is trying to tell her.

  Steve shakes his head, cursing softly.

  Molly lays her hand on his hand, waiting.

  “When we kicked her out…remember what she told us…?”

  “Every word,” she says.

  “‘Genes and memes and instructive elements more powerful than either,’” he repeats.

  “What’s the matter, darling?”

  The exasperation is honest, raw. “If I’m being transformed, I should at least feel like I’m getting smarter. Not dumber.”

  “You’re not dumb,” she says, meaning it.

  “I’m getting confused,” he says. “Flustered, you know? In the pros, I might have to make five big decisions running one pattern, at full speed, and it was easy. Now nothing is easy. Nothing’s simple. Everything I do, my head slows down and I find myself thinking too much and getting nervous.”

  “Did something go wrong?”

  “What?”

  “Last night. At the shoot.”

  “No, not really. It all went pretty much as expected.” He considers. “You mean like a troubled fan or something.”

  “Yes.”

  “No kook with a gun, no.”

  “Good.”

  Steve puts the back of his hand over his mouth, sucking at the salty skin. Sometimes he thinks that his flesh tastes wrong, or his tongue isn’t experiencing the universe in the same way. A couple days ago, with time to kill, he wrote out a list of changes, both obvious and subtle, and the last item was the observation that he was making a list. He never believed in them before, ever.